Can pre-workouts contribute to non-functional overreaching by masking fatigue?
I seem to semi-regularly run into issues with non-functional overreaching. I don’t always notice it during workouts, but do notice once the stimulants wear off, I can be more prone to grumpiness, poor sleep etc. These seem to go away after some fatigue alleviation strategies.
Continuing the discussion from Pre-workouts and overreaching:
If you’re asking whether or not caffeine can mask feelings of tiredness, then yes, that is definitely true. I do not think this is the same as suggesting generates non-functional overreaching, which is a specific term referring to a training intervention not improving a measured fitness adaptation. Generally speaking, caffeine improves performance and has neutral to positive effects on adaptations.
Apologies if I wasn’t clear. I think, more specifically, I’m asking if caffeine and/or ingredients like beta alanine can tend to push your workout intensity/volume beyond the work capacity you’re capable of recovering from? As an example, say I perform a workout without a pre-workout and rate it as an RPE of 9. But the same workout done with a pre-workout may be an RPE of 7 because the pre-workout changes my perception of effort. From your previous statement about neutral to positive effects of caffeine, the answer would be that long-use of pre-workouts don’t show evidence of contributing to overreaching?
If performed a workout with “X” intervention and session was RPE 9 and did the same work, this time without X, and rated it a 7, then the intervention reduced performance in some way.
In any case, I do not think the ingredients in our pre workout supplement, PeriRx, mask fatigue in a way where people will then overreach in a deleterious way. I cannot speak to all pre workouts and their specific ingredients, so your question about “long use of pre workouts” is unanswerable.
The ingredients in our pre workout have evidence that they improve performance and subsequent adaptations, which means that some people can do more at a given level of performance and get more out of it compared to not using it. If the ingredients allowed people to routinely do too much, we would not see this performance or adaptation advantage.