Comparing my homemade preworkout to C4

Hey all,

As an active member of /r/Fitness, /r/Frugal, and /r/financialindependence, I have been on the hunt for an enhanced homemade preworkout instead of my normal coffee, BCAAs, and creatine. Although there was nothing wrong with this regimen, I decided I could probably come up with a better solution and add in a few more ingredients that I wasn't taking previously.

For some background, my stats are 28 years old, 5'7", 162 lbs, Squat 1RM: 335#, Deadlift 1RM: 415#, and Bench 1RM: 285#. Lately, I have been running a few cycles of the GZCL UHF 5 Week Program with terrific results. A great description of which can be found here including a link to downloading an Excel version of the program. Shout out to /u/gzcl for this awesome program and his consistently helpful contributions. Give his site a look at Swole at Every Height.

After scouring great posts (shout out to /u/forcedobscurity) and a helpful article from Bodybuilding.com, I'd like to offer my attempt at this undertaking along with some pricing and links for anyone who might want to add onto my creation.

Ingredient	Bulk Amount	Bulk Price	Serving Size	Serving Size Price
Creatine Monohydrate	1000 g	$18.96	5 g	$0.095
Beta Alanine	500 g	$21.96	3.5 g	$0.154
BCAA 2:1:1	250 g	$16.96	5 g	$0.339
Caffeine Anhydrous	240 x 200 mg Capsules	$12.95	200 mg	$0.540
Dasani Drops	6 x 56 ml Bottles	$25.81	1.75 ml	$0.134
			Total Per Serving	$1.262

I compared this to the amount of each of these ingredients present in C4, my go-to preworkout for many years. I sourced nutritional data from Bodybuilding.com for the 60 serving of Fruit Punch at $49.99 + $6.23 (shipping) = $56.22.

Ingredient	Bulk Amount	Bulk Price	Serving Size	Serving Size Price
C4 (Total)	390 g	$56.22	6.5 g	$0.937
Creatine Nitrate	60 g	$8.649	1 g	$0.144
Beta Alanine	96 g	$13.839	1.6 g	$0.231
Caffeine Anhydrous	9 g	$1.297	150 mg	$0.022
BCAA 2:1:1	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Here are the C4 prices per serving for each ingredient if we scale for the amount in the homemade preworkout:

Ingredient	Serving Size	Serving Size Price	Scaled Size	Scaled Price
Creatine Nitrate	1 g	$0.144	5 g	$0.720
Beta Alanine	1.6 g	$0.231	3.5 g	$0.505
Caffeine Anhydrous	150 mg	$0.022	200 mg	$0.029
BCAA 2:1:1	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Homemade PWO Price Per Serving: $1.262

C4 Price Per Serving (WITHOUT BCAAs): $1.254

Thoughts: At first glance it seems that the price of C4 is actually cheaper than the bulk homemade version. But what are we actually paying for and in what amount? It's easy to see that many of these supplements are far cheaper in the homemade version. Creatine, for example, is 7 times more expensive in C4 not to mention you can't properly consume the creatine as recommended (~5 grams a day) without consuming a ton of everything else. Thus, you'd have to buy the supplement separately anyways. I'm honestly not too sure why they put it in there other than for curb appeal. Similarly Beta Alanine is more than three times as expensive. Caffeine Anhydrous, on the other hand, is far cheaper in C4. This is due to the fact that bulk caffeine in powder form is difficult to source in the United States. Capsule or pill form is the most commonly distributed form of caffeine anhydrous and Cellucor has manufacturer's access to very large amounts of caffeine powder. Please let me know if any of you know where I might be able to order this so as to significantly bring down the cost.

For better or for worse, this is what I'm using now and it seems to be working fine. I get it, there are a bunch of other things in C4 that I'm not factoring in, but the four ingredients I've analyzed are the only supplements I'm interested in using. I know that I could also improve the price by ordering in larger quantities, but I'm concerned about storage issues. Right now, I have them in separate air tight containers that I manually dish out each morning.

What do you think?

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