Sportrition’s “Infuze” Pre Workout Review

As a followup to my previous review, this time I’ll be taking a look at Sportrition’s Infuze pre workout (Strawberry Flavor). Again since in my training cycle I am still in recovery from an injury, I am closely documenting how I feel workout to workout and I feel this puts me in a good place to give the product a very clean slate in comparing it to my normal preworkout, a simple 200mg caffeine anhydrous pill.

Cover to Cover

Once again I’ll check out what is on the cover. For a pre workout it is also pretty basic, claiming the four attributes of “Focus, Energy, Growth & Recovery” on the label. I’ll refer back to these later. It also on the very front of the label shows the general dosages of primary ingredients – 3g of Citrulline Malate, 2g of Beta-Alanine (marketed as the premium variant “CarnoSyn”), 1g of Creatine HCL, 750mg of Agmatine Sulfate and 175mg of caffeine. That is pretty handy to have this info up front and I wish more companies did this.

Ingredients – Flavor & Nutrition

First we got some information on flavoring, the flavoring agent is simply mentioned as “natural and artificial flavors” which is a little vague, some silica dioxide which I’ll come back to later and it is flavored with sucralose. I was a little disappointed this was not stevia, but sucralose-base is still fine as I mentioned in the previous review.

As for nutrition, it looks like a small series of vitamins (various vitamin D, B1, B3, B6, B12 and folic & pantothenic acids) I think these are fine and a good roster of items to supplement to address the problems of deficiencies – but of course you all eat your vegetables so you shouldn’t be deficient in any of these. Right?

No calories for this preworkout – as for the taste, well I can’t say it tasted very strongly like strawberries, maybe they should suck it up and make an all natural strawberry flavoring agent for this drink.

Cake N’ Bake

Well it seems the silica powder just wasn’t enough to keep the mixture dry. The product has a huge label on its top lid warning you to keep in a cool, dry place for fear of attracting moisture and caking the powder, thereby hardening it. Well unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to store it anywhere before I had issues with this as upon opening the mixture I did find that it had already caked prior to even getting to me. This powder is very mixable though and I found out that as soon as water hit it, it dissolved fast.

I didn’t have to complain about it as I was notified directly by Sportrition that the batch sent to me was suspected of caking and hardening and that I should contact one of their reps if there is any problem for a replacement batch. Good customer service to spot this problem and notify potential customers before they get their merchandise! However I do feel this product will be stronger when they address this problem in future revisions of this mixture. If the caking happens to you while you could contact the company and I’m sure they’d help you, I’d honestly suggest it isn’t a big deal as it only makes the product harder to scoop – the caking doesn’t affect its quality any.

Ingredients – CarnoSyn Beta Alanine 2g, Citrulline Malate (2:1) 3g & 175mg of Caffeine

These are essentially the key ingredients to me in this mix so I’ll talk about these first. First I have similar thoughts on Beta Alanine as the last review but my understanding of CarnoSyn branded beta alanine is that it has a sustained release feature which means you need to take it fewer times a day to notice the benefits of it. A 2g dose is good as far as I’m concerned but I will note I have no other beta alanine supplementation during the day so I’m probably not taking enough overall (you should probably take CarnoSyn beta-alanine 2-3 times a day and generic beta-alanine 1-3 extra times – I might decide to get more to consume throughout the day in the future and see how it helps). So to anyone reading if you want your muscle carnosine levels elevated be sure to grab extra beta alanine to dose with throughout the day, I’d suggest preferring CarnoSyn-branded beta alanine.

On a stimulant level, the 175mg of Caffeine is only slightly lower than what I’m used to (200mg) and again with the beta alanine it is an okay level of stimulation to me. Enough to talk about its “Energy” properties on the bottle for sure.

Citrulline Malate is a new supplement to me, and its 3g dose should be suitable to get its positive benefits of managing muscle fatigue and recovery, and is adequate as a days dose. However you may find extra citrulline malate is beneficial. I’d definitely give it a point towards its use of “Recovery” on the front of the bottle for this level of dosage.

Ingredients – B Team

Next we got Creatine HCL (1g), Taurine (1g), Agmatine Sulfate (750mg), N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine (500mg). I like the inclusion of taurine since beta-alanine depletes taurine levels and always felt you should balance them, although I consider this a minor issue as it is unlikely normal diet won’t rectify this matter if you eat proper. Agmatine Sulfate I assume is also here for its neurotransmission properties – probably going towards the “Focus” element of the pre workout. And of course Creatine HCL is fine as a creatine base mix although I have no major opinion about hydrochloride bound creatine over just monohydrate or any other number of delivery systems.

This is also my first time with N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine, and I’ll comment more on my thoughts about this next.

Workout Results

During this workout again, like the last pre workout I reviewed, I did notice an energy boost but the stimulant action was weaker than before. However as the workout proceeded, one of the best benefits of this preworkout was my levels of focus and clear headedness was great. I attribute some of this definitely to the N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine, which I honestly will look for in other preworkouts. Again though I am something of a newbie to preworkout consumption, so perhaps I’m just beginning to see how things work. Mileage may vary on this preworkout and its overall effectiveness to you but I had a net positive experience with it and think the average consumer will too. Definitely no junk in it every ingredient has a good reason to be here.

Did it live up to the cover? “Focus” was great, “Energy” was okay perhaps could’ve been more stimulating, “Growth” is difficult to assess with just the dose of Creatine HCL driving that but several ingredients took care of “Recovery” factor just fine. Overall not misleading and I appreciate how the product presents itself.

One perhaps criticism was that the last preworkout I took spoiled me with its incredible mix of natural plant-based stimulants and full 200mg of caffeine. If this preworkout had that, I have a feeling my overall experience would’ve been greater. Fact of the matter is the modern American has a high caffeine tolerance with all the coffee and caffeinated beverages they consume and I’m no different.

All in all good product would try again in the future, hopefully the caking is less of a problem in future revisions for this product.