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15 July 2026 · Team Brotein
The research-backed caffeine dose, the timing that actually lines up with your session, and the sleep math nobody wants to hear.
Pre-workout is not complicated, but the details decide whether you get a great session or a 2am ceiling stare. Here is what the research says about dose and timing, in plain numbers.
The International Society of Sports Nutrition's position stand on caffeine puts the performance-supporting range at about 3mg to 6mg of caffeine per kilogram of bodyweight.¹ For an 80kg lifter that is roughly 240mg to 480mg, and the low end of the range is the smart place to start. More is not better; past the useful range you mostly buy jitters, not performance.
Check your total for the day too. Coffee counts. Two flat whites plus a full pre-workout serving stacks up faster than people think.
Caffeine from a drink typically peaks in your blood within about an hour, which is why the standard protocol in the research is a dose around 60 minutes before training.¹ In practice, mixing your scoop 30 to 45 minutes before you warm up lands the peak right where the heavy sets live.
Taking it as you walk in the door is not wrong, it just means your best chemistry arrives for the last third of the session instead of the big lifts.
Caffeine has a half-life of around five hours in most adults, with big individual variation.¹ That means a late-afternoon scoop still has a meaningful fraction of its caffeine in your system at midnight. If you train evenings and your sleep is suffering, that is not a mystery, it is arithmetic.
The honest options: train earlier, take a smaller dose, or accept that the evening session runs on music and stubbornness instead. Sleep is where the muscle gets built; do not trade the whole point away for one session's buzz.
Dose and timing sorted, the rest is picking a formula that is dosed honestly. OGC Pre-Workout in Sour Grape lists exactly what is in it, at doses that match the research rather than the hype. Pair it with the boring fundamentals, a proper meal a couple of hours out and enough protein for the day, and the scoop becomes the bonus it is meant to be, not the whole plan.
