Beside traditional pre workouts, there are many ways to get that extra shot of energy prior to your workout. In fact, If you care about consistency in fitness and athletic performance, you need to let go your traditional pre workout and consider below alternatives:
Coffee:
Coffee is the best option for anybody looking for a pre-workout alternative. Furthermore, it has one big advantage over regular pre-workouts; because although caffeine peaks in blood after 50-60 minutes after consumption, it remains in that levels few hours. It is ideal to have your coffee 30-40 minutes before a workout, but in case you workout late in the day, you can extend that time for around 2 hours or maybe more before a workout. This will give you some flexibility in consumption time to avoid late consumption and affect your sleep.
This flexibility in consumption time is not available with regular pre-workouts as it contains other ingredients that needed to be taken not more than 20 or 30 min prior to a workout.
Take a Nap (The Right Way):
Napping is very powerful method to recharge your body through out the day, especially if you wake up very early, have a regular routine and specific time to nap every day. Napping will get you more productivity in the after noon and evening time. On the other hand, it should be done without affecting your night sleep, and that can be very applicable by:
Avoid it in the late afternoon.
Do not eat before you nap, or at least not much.
Do not nap more than 30 - 40 min.
A Good Warm Up :
Even if you have a good diet, and a high quality sleep, you may still feel sleepy and tired through out the day mainly because of life style which often includes sitting for long time.
You might have heard it before, sitting is the new smoking!
For most of the time, the actual reason of feeling tired and sleepy all the day is because we are not moving enough! However, this can be instantly changed prior to work out by warming up enough. A good and simple way to achieve this is using interval training. This can be tempo run or any interval exercise which can be done for 15-20 minutes. The intervals allow you to have rest in between each intensive run; for example: 10 sec of fast running followed by 50 sec slow jogging or walking. Such exercises can quickly promote sweating which makes your body release dopamine and other hormones responsible for boosting mood and happiness. The intervals and total time can be adjusted according to your physical capacity. A proper warm up using interval training should not exhaust your energy but boosting it instead.
Get Some Sun Exposure :
Try walking or jogging in the sun for few minutes as it can significantly boost your mood and energy levels throughout the day.
Sun light plays a key role in the daily physiological period, which represents a daily cycle of alertness and sleepiness that releases specific hormones in specific times. Therefore, a life style that lacks enough sun exposure can cause hormonal imbalances and negatively affect your mood, and overall health in the long term.
Dietary Alternatives:
Protein bars and healthy home-made cookies are great option in case you are going to gym without enough calories consumed. On the other hand, I considered cucumber water a perfect drink for stimulating alertness because of it is aromatic flavor. Also it helps in suppressing appetite and reducing hunger due to it’s filling effect which is mainly driven by high water content and hydration.
Other Alternatives:
Our performance is strongly attached to our mindset. Define your goals from exercising. Why are you doing it ? and how bad you want it?
This is strongly recommended for beginners since group activities tend to have more motivation and discipline.
Trick your mind:
This can be anything that improves your mood like music, something you eat, drink, or even smell. Just make sure that it has an immediate effect on you so you can get ready for exercise right away. My favorite alternatives of which I personally use are protein bars & cucumber water.
Other options can be unhealthy like having a chocolate prior to a workout. However, if it really improves your mood and makes you exercise then you can rely on it for a while until you manage to switch for a better option.
Check this out (Pre Workouts Full Guide).