Best ingredients for endurance

Purified, dehydrated caffeine — the standard stimulant in pre-workouts, energy, and focus products.

Typical: 100–200 mg

A non-essential amino acid that combines with histidine to form carnosine, the main intramuscular buffer of hydrogen ions during intense exercise.

Typical: 3.2–6.4 g

A generic electrolyte blend is a placeholder for an unspecified mixture of sodium, potassium, and magnesium salts (sometimes with calcium and chloride) used in hydration and endurance powders.

Typical: 500–1,500 mg

A non-protein amino acid that the kidneys convert to arginine, raising plasma arginine more efficiently than oral arginine itself.

Typical: 6–8 g

A blend of the three branched-chain amino acids, most often at a 2:1:1 ratio of leucine to isoleucine to valine, that has been a staple of intra-workout drinks for decades.

Typical: 5–10 g

A salt of citrulline and malic acid, most often in a 2:1 ratio, that has been the traditional form in pre-workouts.

Typical: 6–8 g

A sulfur-containing amino acid abundant in muscle, heart, and brain, and a familiar ingredient in energy drinks and pre-workouts.

Typical: 1–3 g

Dried and milled beet root or beet juice, used in pre-workout, endurance, and heart-health powders as a whole-food source of dietary nitrate.

Typical: 5–10 g

Ordinary salt, about 39% sodium and 61% chloride by weight, and the primary electrolyte lost in sweat.

Typical: 200–1,000 mg

Maltodextrin is a partially hydrolyzed starch consisting of short glucose chains, characterized by a dextrose-equivalent (DE) value that indicates how far the starch has been broken down.

Typical: 15–30 g

The most concentrated common potassium source at about 52% elemental potassium, and the salt used in most blood-pressure trials of potassium supplementation.

Typical: 99–500 mg

Cordyceps militaris is the cultivated, fruiting-body species that has replaced wild Cordyceps sinensis in most supplements because it grows on grain or liquid substrate at scale and contains measurable cordycepin.

Typical: 1,000–3,000 mg

Baking soda, used in sports nutrition as an extracellular buffer that raises blood bicarbonate before high-intensity efforts lasting roughly one to ten minutes.

Typical: 14–21 g

A conditionally essential amino acid and the direct substrate for nitric-oxide synthase.

Typical: 3–6 g

Dextrose is crystalline D-glucose, usually produced by hydrolyzing corn starch.

Typical: 10–30 g

Rock salt mined mainly from the Khewra region of Pakistan, tinted pink by trace iron oxide.

Typical: 200–1,000 mg

Potassium bound to citric acid, about 36% elemental potassium as the monohydrate.

Typical: 99–500 mg

Nitrosigine is a patented complex of L-arginine bound with silicate and stabilized by inositol, developed by Nutrition21.

Typical: 1,500 mg

Highly branched cyclic dextrin (HBCD) is a glucose polymer made by acting on amylopectin with a branching enzyme, producing large cyclic molecules with a narrow molecular-weight distribution.

Typical: 15–30 g

Dehydrated coconut water, made by spray- or freeze-drying the liquid of young green coconuts, sometimes with a maltodextrin carrier.

Typical: 2–10 g

A salt of arginine bound to alpha-ketoglutarate, usually at a 2:1 ratio, that became popular in nitric-oxide pre-workouts in the mid-2000s.

Typical: 3–6 g

A concentrated beet root extract standardized to a declared nitrate content so that a nitric-oxide dose can be delivered in a capsule or small scoop instead of gram-level powder.

Typical: 300–500 mg

A generic descriptor for low-sodium mineral concentrates made by solar-evaporating inland sea or seawater brine, leaving a liquid or dried powder rich in magnesium chloride with smaller amounts of potassium, sulfate, lithium, boron, and dozens of other elements.

Typical: 100–500 mg

CS-4 is a strain of mycelium originally isolated from wild Cordyceps sinensis and grown by liquid fermentation, which makes it far cheaper and more consistent than the wild caterpillar fungus.

Typical: 1,000–3,000 mg

A shrub root from Siberia and northern Asia, marketed for decades as Siberian ginseng even though it is not a true Panax species.

Typical: 300–1,200 mg

Nicotinamide mononucleotide is the phosphorylated intermediate between nicotinamide riboside and NAD+ and one of the most popular healthy-aging ingredients.

Typical: 250–600 mg

An extract of the berries of a woody vine native to northern China and Korea, prized in traditional practice as a five-flavor tonic and used in modern adaptogen, liver, and endurance formulas.

Typical: 500–1,000 mg

Peak ATP is a patented, orally stable form of adenosine 5'-triphosphate disodium from TSI Group.

Typical: 400 mg

Isomaltulose is a disaccharide of glucose and fructose joined by an alpha-1,6 bond, produced enzymatically from sucrose.

Typical: 15–30 g

GlycerSize is Glanbia Nutritionals' stabilized glycerol powder containing 65% glycerol bound to silica, made to replace older 10–25% glycerol monostearate grades in pre-workouts and hydration products.

Typical: 2–5 g