We've just got stocked up with iForce's highly anticipated Hemavo2 Max, the second generation of he highly popular, and one of my favourite preworkouts, stimulant free preworkout Hemavol.
I'll start off with the simple things, mixability and taste. It does mix better in a shaker cup, when you stir this in a cup you do tend to get some residue, possibly from the creatine and/or L- Citruline. I've been sampling the Lemon Drop flavour, it's good, you get quite a bit of a bitter aftertaste and this is probably attributed to the amount of Agmatine Sulfate, that stuff can ruin any flavouring systems.
We've got 4 flavours in stock, Juicy Watermelon, Lemon Drop, Rainbow Sherbert and Very Cherry Lime. All flavours contain about 25 13.5g servings (that's 1 scoop), so at just over £27 your looking at about £1.10 per serving.
Okay so let's look at what's in the product and what's changed from the original Hemavol.
Firstly we start with Vit C as Ascorbic Acid at 250mg dose, obviously this is a must Vitamin within the body, it helps with everything from boosting your immune system to helping build healthy cartilage, tendons and ligaments, to top this off it is going to help absorb the active ingredients within the product. The second Vitamin they've included is B12 at 1.2mg dose, a big 200 times the required daily dose, this Vitamin is key for normal brain and nervous system function, giving much better mental performance, it also plays a key role in the formation of blood cells, it's something that a lot of people can be deficient in so great to see it included. I'm not entirely sure on why such a high dosage however if you are to stack this with a stimulant based pre workout the inclusion of such a high dosage is going to be great at buffering those stimulants.
Now into the main bulk of the product, they've got 3 different matrix's that thankfully aren't propriety blends, so you know exactly what dosages your getting of each.
To start with you've got the Pumps & Endurance Enhancement. They've kicked this off with 1g of Agmatine Sulfate, a great Nitric Oxide boosting property and a good dose of it too. Secondly we have LCitruline, disappointingly under dosed at 2g, I'd really be looking for more like 5g of this. Lastly they've included HydroMax which is a highly concentrated Glycerol powder, that's going to really help with muscle fullness and pull plenty of nutrients into the muscle. I do think we could have seen the inclusion of Beta Alanine in here to help with muscular endurance, for me I'm not too concerned as my workouts are short and intense but for anyone training for longer than an hour I believe this could have been a useful inclusion.
Moving onto the Strength & Power Amplification matrix. They've included 2 forms of Creatine here, Creatine Nitrate at 1g, Creatine Nitrate is basically Creatine bonded to Nitrate, this gives much greater water solubility, around 10x that of creatine monohydrate, giving much better absorption, I would tick this off as being clinically dosed. The second we have Creatine HCL, this is a trickier one, studies have show a clinical dose being 1g per 100lbs of bodyweight, so including 1g per serving may not be clinically dosed for all but it's okay. Lastly in this matrix they've put a 2.5g dose of Betaine, great ingredient for strength, power and also Nitric Oxide production, so this blend is really going to work hand in hand with the prior matrix.
Finally we have the Nootropic Mind & Focus Boost. This is made up of 2 ingredients, one of which I had to do a bit of research into. Choline Bitartrate at 1g, this just scrapes into being clinically dosed. This ingredient is basically going to give you much better mental focus, as it passes the blood brain barrier it converts to Acytel Choline. Similar to the second ingredient DMAE, which is near enough clinical dose at 200mg, again this is a pre curser to Acytel Choline.
That's the product inside and out, now what have they changed?
They seem to have included very similar ingredients but much better quality and with a better mind focusing blend, however I was very disappointed to see that Niacin had been taken out, it's an ingredient I love to see in my pump based preworkouts.
I used this as a stand alone non stimulant pre workout as well as stacking it with stimulant based pre-workouts. As a stand alone I did like it, got a good pump but a lot better when doubling the scoop, the issue with doubling the scoop is it does make it an expensive product as you'll be getting just over 12 servings for £27.43. I chose to do as iForce recommend and stacked it with their product, this was great as it included my much loved Niacin, it doesn't have an overload of caffeine either, just enough to give you a kick for training, however again stacking 2 products can work out quite expensive, to stack these you'd be looking at over £2 per serving.
A couple of things to take note if you do choose to stack Hemavo2:
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Don't choose something that has a high dose of Agmatine Sulfate, there's plenty in this already, thisespecially goes for people with sensitive stomachs.
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It could be worth going for a pure stimulant product, I've also stacked this with ProLabs – Advanced Caffeine
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If your training for long periods it would be worth while stacking with a product containing Beta Alanine.
Overall I'd give this product a 7/10, tastes great, does the job it's set out to do but there's a few key ingredients missing and for a stacked product it's on the pricey side.
