Pump
L-Arginine
L-Arginine is a nitric-oxide precursor that oral dosing has not shown to reliably improve exercise performance.
How it counts: Counts toward Pump, not the grade
Scored against its clinical dose in the Pump sub-score (and any award that uses it), but it doesn’t move the overall grade.
- Clinical dose
- 6,000–8,000 mg
- Safety ceiling
- —
- Evidence
- weak
- Category
- Pump
Evidence summary
Research confidence: medium
6-8 g acute doses have been studied, but oral L-arginine has NOT been shown to reliably raise systemic NO or improve exercise performance, largely due to extensive first-pass hepatic/intestinal arginase metabolism (~60% bioavailability, further reduced at the splanchnic bed).