C4 Original Pre-Workout (5th Gen)

Straight up front: this is a recon, not a review. I have not lived with this tub yet. What follows is a coach reading the published label, and the full review lands once I have actually trained on it for a stretch.

C4 Original is probably the first pre-workout most guys ever scooped. For years the knock on it was the proprietary blend, a label that told you a total and not much else. The 5th gen reformulation, the new yellow label, fixes that. Doses are disclosed now, and that matters.

The Label Read

Here is what the label says per 8.9 g scoop: 200 mg caffeine anhydrous, 2 g CarnoSyn beta-alanine, a Velox blend of 1.2 g L-citrulline plus 1.2 g L-arginine, 1 g creatine nitrate, 100 mg of a lentil peptide ingredient they call PeptiPump, plus choline, huperzine, and B vitamins. Thirty servings a tub.

Now the honest part. Beta-alanine at 2 g is under the 3.2 g per day that most of the research used, so treat it as a partial dose. Citrulline at 1.2 g is a starter dose; fuller pump formulas run several times that. And 1 g of creatine nitrate is not your daily creatine covered. Keep taking your 5 g of monohydrate.

One more thing said plainly: no third party sport certification is claimed on this product. My drug tested athletes and the health-basics lane stay on Thorne, which is NSF Certified for Sport. Flavored performance powders like this one are the gym-bag lane. The split is laid out in the dad stack guide.

Who It Is For

The dad who wants a known quantity: moderate caffeine, familiar flavors, a label he can finally read. 200 mg is enough to feel without being a heart-rate stunt. If you train at night or are cutting stims, look at the stim-free Swolverine PRE. If you want the same 200 mg of caffeine with a different label philosophy, Transparent Labs BULK is the other one on my radar.

The Honest Math

$34.99 for 30 servings is about $1.17 a scoop. At time of writing, Subscribe and Save cut the first order to around $24.50 with 20 percent off renewals, and Cellucor runs a GovX ID military discount site-wide. Prices and promos move, so check the page. One flag: the core flavors showed sold out markers when I researched this, so verify stock before you count on your flavor.

For a disclosed-dose formula at a drugstore-adjacent price, that is a fair deal, light doses and all. Get it and I will report back once I have run it through my own training.

Every Dad Carry is an approved affiliate of C4, XTEND, and Cellucor through impact.com. Links on this page pay the site a commission at no extra cost to you. I did not receive this product free, and this recon was published ahead of hands-on testing.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Talk to your doctor before starting any supplement.