Pre-workout powder drinks have become a staple for many fitness-fanatics across the world. However, athletes and gym-regulars alike may not always think about what they are putting into their bodies when a new fad hits the scene.

Thanks to the implementation of the food safety modernization act (FSMA) and new label claim verification requirements, attention to pre-workout supplements has increased in recent years. This newfound popularity has led to an increase in interest for the identification and quantitation of the key ingredients promoted on the labels of these pre-workout drinks. The understanding of what is contained within a consumable supplement is important to ensure that the product being consumed is accurately represented for both product safety and quality.

As such, a rapid and robust analytical technique was needed for the fast and efficient analysis of the key components in these pre-workout powders. Due to the high polarity of the compounds present in these matrices, traditional reversed phase HPLC techniques can become rather difficult and time consuming, and in many cases, can even result in inaccurate quantitation and poor peak shape.

In technical note TN-1207, we present a fast and highly efficient method for the identification and quantitation of four key ingredients of pre-workout powders using HILIC mode HPLC-UV/Vis analytical techniques.

Experimental Details:

Creatine, creatinine, caffeine, and dicyandiamide analytical standards were used for method development purposes. Each of these components were then made into stock solutions and injected at various concentrations to develop a standard calibration curve.

10 mg of pre-workout powder was dissolved into 1 mL of DI water and vortexed for 1 minute at 3000 rpm to ensure the sample was fully dissolved. The samples were then diluted to a concentration of 2.5 mg/mL with DI water for HPLC injection.

Peak quantitation was completed by comparison of the peak areas to the peak areas of the identified peaks in each of the matrices. A calibration curve was then made for each analyte to determine the concentration for creatine, creatinine, caffeine, and dicyandiamide, present in each matrix. The amount of each analyte was initially quantitated for a 1µL injection of a 2.5 mg/mL solution. It was then scaled up to be proportional to the amount of one serving size of each of the pre-workout powders.

The resulting HILIC mode HPLC-UV/Vis method using the Luna 3 µm HILIC 150 x 4.6 mm column demonstrated a high degree of both speed efficiency by exploiting polar interactions between the stationary phase and target analytes while maintaining good retention, peak resolution, and peak symmetry.

This successful separation of chemical standards can be applied to analyzing popular marketed pre-workout powder products. Read the full technical note here:

Analysis and Quantitation of Pre-Workout Powder Components in Matrix by LC/UV using Luna® 3 μm HILIC HPLC Column

Pre-workout powder fan or not, staying healthy is important. And getting that workout/stretch in while in the lab can be a bit of a challenge.

Here are a few tips on how to stay limber while still at your lab, we call it…LABERCISE!!!
We call this one the “AHHH…I HATE ROLLERCOASTERS” stretch

And try our favorite the “Did You Really Think That Buffer Would Work” lean

But don’t forget about the “I Did a Good Job Today” shoulder stretch

And if you feel like you need to step it up a notch, try our advanced workout dance…

LABARENA!