Legion Pulse vs Pre Kaged… Pre Kaged vs Legion Pulse… which pre-workout will give you bigger pumps, more energy, and sharper focus?
Our team finds out!
[SUMMARY] Legion Pulse and Pre Kaged are both excellent pre-workouts with 100% natural ingredients and excellent reviews online. No matter which one you pick, you’ll get improved muscle pumps, more energy, and better focus while in the gym. THAT being said, both products have their downsides. For Legion Pulse, that’s 350mg of caffeine per serving, which can cause nausea, headaches, high blood pressure, heart palpitations, and other side effects. If you can tolerate this amount of caffeine, then it shouldn’t cause issues for you. As for Pre Kaged, the main downside is underdosed Beta-Alanine, so you won’t get the same muscle pumps and endurance as with Legion Pulse.
Flavors
If the flavor is most important to you, then you’ll want to go with Legion Pulse. I found it to taste a little better than the competitor (personal preference). Legion Pulse also offers 12 flavors compared to 7 flavored versions of Pre Kaged.
That said, both pre-workouts dissolve easily and don’t leave any artificial aftertaste in the mouth, which is good!
Legion Pulse vs Pre Kaged – How do They Work?
Dosage Notes
Both products have the dosage of 1-2 scoops with a big glass of water. We recommend not going 2 scoops with Legion Pulse though, as even just 1 scoop has 350mg of caffeine, which is already a risky dosage!
Read the label instructions carefully and make sure to stick to them, or if in any doubt, reach out to your doc!
Legion Pulse Overview
Legion Pulse is a 100% natural pre workout for energy, focus, muscle pumps and physical endurance.
What makes it different from other pre-workouts? Its makers say that Legion Pulse will not give you upset stomach, energy crashes, or jitters, which are common with high doses of caffeine and other stimulants.
This is kind of cynical in our opinion, as Legion Pulse contains 350mg of caffeine per serving – which is A LOT. Many people can’t tolerate this amount, let alone the crash that comes later.
We’ll give them props for adding the same amount of L-Theanine to help smoothen out the aggressive effects of caffeine, but it still won’t be enough – especially if you’re sensitive to it.
We’ll touch upon this more when we break down Legion Pulse’s ingredients below.
What About Pre Kaged?
Pre Kaged is a product by Kaged Muscle, the brainchild of Kris Gethin. The Welshman is known on the internet as a ‘biohacker’, someone who’s always looking for ways to optimize his training, nutrition, and health.
His story about developing Pre Kaged started 7 years ago. It’s at this point where Kris was trying countless pre workouts but none gave them the same effects as he would get when he dosed ingredients on his own separately.
Frustrated by the lack of effective pre-workouts, Kris combined all of his favorite ingredients in clinically optimal doses into what’s today known as Pre-Kaged.
Just like Legion Pulse, Pre Kaged is a very popular pre-workout around the world. It’s got patented ingredients, and it’s also 100% natural. It brings you a massive 32g of ingredients per scoop, including 6.5g of pure Citrulline and 274mg of organic caffeine.
Both Legion and Pre Kaged look impressive right from the start. It will be a tough call. If anything can help us determine the winner, it’s their ingredients!
Legion Pulse vs Pre Kaged – Ingredients
Legion Pulse contains 6 key active ingredients. Pre Kaged contains 18!
As we’ve said, Legion Pulse is completely natural – that includes flavors and sweeteners.
The same goes for Kaged Muscle Pre Kaged. It’s free of any banned substances, it contains no proprietary blends, and its ingredients are top-of-the-line, including fermented BCAAs.
- The key difference between these two is the number of ingredients they use, and some ingredient dosages.
See for yourself:
Legion Pulse Ingredients:
- L-Citrulline DL-Malate (2:1) (8g)
- Carnosyn Beta-Alanine (3.6g)
- Betaine Anhydrous (2.5g)
- Caffeine Anhydrous (350mg)
- L-Theanine (350mg)
- Alpha GPC (300mg)
Although Legion Pulse only has 6 ingredients, it’s all the right ones. L-Citrulline comes in optimal dose for pumps, Beta-Alanine is also more generously dosed, and betaine can help your blood flow further.
Caffeine dosage is the only downside.
Although a great and effective pre-workout ingredient, it’s a thin line between too little and too much caffeine.
350mg is not recommended if you’re prone to energy crashes or side effects of caffeine. (see more on caffeine’s side effects here: https://medlineplus.gov/caffeine.html)
L-Theanine is there to combat some of the side effects, and Alpha GPC will improve your concentration and memory but you’ll need to take it consistently for weeks to notice the effects as it doesn’t work immediately.
- Related: Legion Pulse vs Cellucor C4
Overall, the ingredient formula of Legion is looking solid. It will improve your focus, energy and concetration. But it comes with a cost of excessive caffeine – it’s too aggressive for our liking.
Pre Kaged Ingredients:
- Pro Pump Blend (Fermented L-Citrulline 6.5g, Patented Quercetin 200mg)
- Muscle Fuel Matrix (3.5g of Fermented BCAAs)
- Anabolic Activator (3g of additional Fermented Leucine)
- Strength and Power Matrix (Beta-Alanine 1.6g, Natural Betaine 2g, Patented Creatine HCl 1.5g)
- Hydrate and Defend Blend (Tender Coconut Powder 500mg, Spectra™ Total Oracle Blend 100mg)
Pre Kaged has many more ingredients than Legion Pulse, but it’s more balanced. It also contains more patented ingredients. And most importantly, it contains less caffeine – so you’re more likely to get the pre-workout benefits without experiencing a crash later.
If we had to say, we’d go with Pre Kaged formula. It’s safer, more effective, and also contains ingredients that aren’t common in pre-workouts, such as Spectra Total Oracle Blend which, in addition to boosting your natural energy, also protects cellular function.
One downside of Pre Kaged is that since it’s using so many ingredients, it had to sacrifice some of their dosages. For example, L-Citrulline is only dosed at 6.5g per serving, which is less optimal than Legion Pulse for muscle pumps.
Our Thoughts on their Ingredients
The bottom line, both Legion Pulse and Pre Kaged are excellent pre-workouts, but they do have some downsides.
For Legion Pulse, that’s too much caffeine, and for Pre-Kaged it’s underdosed citrulline and beta-alanine. Which is why they don’t quite score as our top 3 pre-workouts on the market at the moment.
Legion Pulse vs Pre Kaged – Side Effects
Legion Pulse is more likely to cause side effects because it has 350mg of caffeine compared to Pre-Kaged’s 274mg per serving.
But if you can tolerate aggressive levels of stimulants, then neither one of these pre-workouts should cause you side effects.
Legion Pulse vs Pre Kaged – Customer Reviews
Both Legion Pulse and Pre-Kaged enjoy great reviews online, as well as some negative reviews from critics who don’t like Pre-Kaged’s Oracle proprietary blend and Legion Pulse’s excess caffeine amount.
We recommend doing more research for yourself to determine which you’ll like better, rather than relying on testimonials of dubious legitimacy.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line on Legion Pulse vs Pre-Kaged is: if you like the aggressive effects of excess caffeine, go with Legion Pulse. It will definitely ramp up your heart rate and blood pressure, filling your body with adrenaline to smash your workouts.
If you prefer a little lighter dose of caffeine without the risk of serious side effects, we’d suggest going with Pre-Kaged. However, Pre Kaged has some downsides on its own; such as having a few key ingredients underdosed.
If you’re looking for the current best-rated pre workout on the market, we recommend checking 4Gauge, which everyone in our team currently uses for their workouts.
Until next time!
Wtf are you talking about underdosed on citruline on pre kaged? 6.5 grams of fermented pure citruline gives you more pumps than 8 grams of cheap citrulline malate
Hi Sean,
This is Jimmy the owner.
What Andrei wrote in this article is absolutely correct and backed by expert data. Citrulline Malate is a citrulline molecule bound to organic malic acid salt. Clinical evidence shows that citrulline malate is, in fact, the most researched form of citrulline, according to the research team over at Examine.com.
Nick Coker, MS, CISSN at Bodybuilding.com writes this about L-Citrulline vs L-Citrulline Malate: “The only difference between L-citrulline and citrulline malate (CM) is the addition of malic acid. That may seem like a minor detail, but it can have a significant impact on your performance.
Malate serves as an important component in the tricarboxylic (or TCA) cycle, which is one way your body produces energy. When you increase malate levels, you increase energy production. Therefore, citrulline malate provides the one-two punch of bringing additional blood—and subsequently, oxygen and nutrients—to exercising muscles, as well as providing increased energy to boost performance levels.”
Mr. Coker continues: “Both have their strengths, but the win goes to citrulline malate. The key difference is its ability to increase both muscle pumps and performance, meaning more reps, more effective time in the gym, and better results. Another advantage to using citrulline malate is that you don’t have to load with it, whereas L-citrulline is most effective after a week of steady usage. That means you can take it right before your workout and experience immediate performance benefits.”
So, your claims that “fermented pure citrulline” gives more muscle pumps than citrulline malate don’t really hold water.
You are correct that you need slightly more citrulline malate to achieve the same effect as with regular citrulline. But saying things like “cheap citrulline malate” is absolute nonsense in the context of scientific data.
And speaking from personal experience, Citrulline Malate has always given everyone from our team better results than “fermented pure citrulline”.
Many thanks for your comment,
Jimmy