HIIT workout. 5 Rounds. Go!

I just did a fantastic HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workout and thought I'd share it with you all.

What you need:

• Enough room for the length of your body and as high as you can reach
• A Kettlebell (or dumbbell)
• Yourself

Conditions:

• 5 rounds
• 10 repetitions

The movements:

• Burpees
• Kettlebell swings
• Kettlebell thrusters
• Bicep curls (10 each arm)
• Sit ups

Try and keep your rest between rounds low. 30-60 seconds is long enough. This should be a quick and intense workout. 

I used a 16kg kettlebell but the weight you'll be using is based solely upon yourself (or what you own). If you don't have a kettlebell then dumbbells can make a good alternative. If you have neither then stay tuned for future workouts by subscribing to this blog. Workouts are customisable, if 10 reps is too low, do 15, if 10 reps is too high, do 5 or 8. Keep it intense, that's the key!

Top tip! In later rounds take your time with the swings and curls, these are your 'active recovery' movements, breathe, recover and destroy the burpees and thrusters.

Find me on Instagram and Twitter! Neverforgottenfitness & NF_Fitness.

And don't miss the most popular post on the blog: The Misconceptions of Women Lifting Weights.

Mean and Lean HIIT Workout

Hey! So we all want to burn fat in the quickest time possible. Lucky for us, there's HIIT. HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training, and there's loads of different styles and variants. But the basic idea is to raise your heart rate with really intense short bursts of physical activity.

So today I'm gonna share with you a really great, quick and simple HIIT workout that is customisable as well.

You will need:

• Yourself
• 20m stretch of area, be it a garden, a field or the street.

To start off with make sure you do a proper warm up and dynamic stretching routine, always train safe.

Mark out your 20m (roughly) stretch, this is your sprinting section.

So here's what you're going to do:

• 10 press ups
• Sprint 20m and back
• 10 jump squats
• Sprint 20m and back
• 10 jumping lunges
• Sprint 20m and back
• 10 sit ups
• Sprint 20m and back
• Rest 30-60 seconds
• Repeat

Do this for 5 rounds. It's going to be tough, but keep it up.

The distance is customisable, if a total 40m sprint is too much, drop it, if it's not enough, raise it.

The exercises and the reps are customisable too, change the rep range up or down and change up the exercises too.

Hope you enjoy this HIIT routine and benefit from it! 

Read our top post: The Misconceptions of Women Lifting Weights

Footwear for Fitness

We should really have different footwear for different types of training and I'll go through what's best for different activities.

Weightlifting

For weightlifting we want to be as stable as possible. Stability comes through the ground, our feet, ankles and all the way up through our body. If the ground we're on is unstable we wobble, we fall and lifting weight is dangerous. So the next link up, our feet, also follows the same rules. If what we wear on our feet is unstable... we wobble, we fall and lifting weight is dangerous.

So bearing this in mind, what kind of shoes are the best to lift in?

Flat and firm soled shoes are best suited to weightlifting. We want to have an unbroken surface area, flat and firm soles, something to feel strong against the ground with.

I wear Lonsdale Leyton shoes. They're nothing special, cheap and cheerful. Comfortable? Yes. Flat and firm soles? Yes.

There's loads of great shoes out there, I'd get some awesome Nike ones but I'm a cheapskate. There are also some great specialized weightlifting shoes coming out, Romeleos and adipowers. These are specifically designed for weightlifting and even give a solid higher heel for those of us with poor ankle mobility. 

Some people like to lift barefooted which I also do enjoy sometimes, but you must put safety first in a gym environment, lots of heavy things being thrown about means please do protect yourself as much as you can.

Running

There are different thoughts on footwear for running. Some people believe a minimal shoe which basically gives the soles of your feet protection and that's it is the best. However, I personally believe that with the impact of running; your feet, ankle joints and knee joints all need a bit more protection. Always go with a proper running shoe, breathable material on top with a 'spongy' heel and sole. It's definitely worth spending a little more money on running shoes, you can't really put a price on healthy joints. 

The running shoes I have are Nike Pegasus 32's, they're really comfortable to run in and give me all the proper protection.

Most specialist running shops, or even some mainstream sport shops, now have treadmills in which measure various things about your gait and running style. They can match you up with the best shoe possible for you.

Thanks for reading! I hope this post has been helpful for you, if it has please do subscribe to the blog and follow me on all the social media stuff. Instagram @neverforgottenfitness & Twitter @NF_Fitness. 

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BodypowerUK 2015: May Mayhem

Image above: Mattdoesfitness and I at the Machine booth.

Bodypower!!!!!!! As part of May Mayhem I hopped on over to Birmingham for Bodypower. I went the previous year as well so I will being comparing the two.

First of all I want to say Bodypower is a great event and I really enjoyed it. I'll go over some good points and bad points of the event but I do definitely recommend going because it is really good.

From Colchester to Birmingham it takes around 3 and half hours, I think we left around 9.30am, I think next year we'll leave a bit earlier or even stay over the night before because there's just so much to see and do that really you do need a whole day or even a couple.

So what is Bodypower? Here's me rambling on, Bodypower is a fitness expo for those of us in the UK. It has hundreds of stalls from food to clothes and of course supplements. There's also bodybuilding shows, talks from fitness superstars and demonstrations from chefs.

What do we all love? FOOD. So what was the food like? Let's just say that weirdly enough (at a fitness expo) it's probably not the most macro friendly day. Lots of burgers, sausages, sandwiches, protein icecream (oh yeh!). Yes, yes, meat is great for the ol' protein, and most was advertised as 'lean' meat etc, but it was all cooked in oil and wrapped in bread haha. Having said that, and again weirdly enough, let's just ignore macros for a sec, the food was damn tasty and let's face it we're there for an awesome day so let's enjoy some awesome food! The queue for Muscle Food was horrendous (well done them for being so popular, I'm a customer and a fan of 'The Diet Kitchen' Simon [who was at the stand] as well), but there was no way I was gonna queue for an hour to get some food. From other stalls I tried a lovely Wild Boar and apple sausage and a really fantastic Ostrich burger. I'd never tried Ostrich before but it was really, really good.

I'm a big fan of a few YouTube channels so I was really happy to meet a few, but I found that a lot of the people I wanted to meet were at the Gym Shark booth. Now, I'm all up for a decent queue, I am British after all, but 4+ hours in a queue to meet someone and have a picture? My god. I decided that I met a lot of them last year so I didn't really need to meet them all again, but we did queue for about half an hour or so so Chloe (my partner) could meet Nikki B.

So if you enjoy a good rant, here's my bad points, but please do bear in mind that I did really enjoy the day (just in case that doesn't come across much).

Gym Shark. Love the products, love the YouTube stars they've managed to attain. But! They have too many big stars at one booth, too many, it's really just greedy. It was a massive and really intelligent move from the Gym Shark owners to target popular YouTubers to rep their gear and to come to expos, but I feel like now there's just too many. People were queueing for hours, 4+ hours, some people were just queueing to meet one person but had to wait to get through everyone else. Stop being so greedy, drop some people and let them go to other stands so people can actually spend the day at different places and get to meet their fitness 'idols' in a normal amount of time. It was enough last year to have Ogus, Guzman and Furious Pete etc, but this year to add the Hodge Twins and Steve Cook? People already queue for hours to meet Steve Cook at the ON stand and the Hodge Twins could probably do with their own stand really.

Ok, so we workout and we wear clothes whilst we workout (most of us anyway), but seriously, anybody with a snazzy logo has decided to make a clothing brand. That's great if it's original, but a lot of the stuff was just copies of the more popular brands (like Gym Shark). I'd say at least 50% of the stands there were clothing brands, repetitive, unoriginal clothing brands (sorry guys), but it gets very, very boring after a while. The problem is if you pay enough you can have a stand and there doesn't seem to be any sort of weeding out process for the 'not so great' stands.

Food stands, I don't know what happened but we went on the 1st day and yet a couple of food stands had already run out of grub! "Hi, can I get a..." Sorry, out of this, that, this, oh oh and that, sorry. It's the first day guys, the first day. Get yourselves together.

Supplement stands. There was a lot of great supplement stands, but what constitutes a great stand for supplement company in the eyes of a consumer? Samples. Samples let us know that you trust your own product. It let's us taste it, see it, smell it. That's how you get us to buy your products. Why would you go up to a supplement company you've never seen and just randomly buy their products? You wouldn't. So I don't know why a few didn't do this simple thing. One stand I was hugely disappointed in was the iSatori stand, it was huge and took up a fair bit of floor space, but they had hardly anything on show, what was on show was so far away from the counter you couldn't see it and there were no samples. I really wanted to try and possibly buy their protein as I'd heard it was pretty good, but ended up walking away.

A great stand: Bulk Powders. Loads of things to try and taste, a vast array of products from protein to pre-workouts and even protein hot chocolate! Interesting products, flavours and you could TRY THEM. Awesome.

I was very unimpressed by the US supplement companies. As in there wasn't many. We live in Britain, we have easy access to all the UK based brands, PhD, USN etc, they're in supermarkets even. We want to buy the stuff we can't get usually, MTS, Cellucor etc. Last year Predator Nutrition had a stand and did have some great US products but I didn't see it this year. The Cellucor stand just had their pre-workout (in one flavour...) and their fat burner, that was it! They have so many products and their protein is AMAZING. Why the hell wasn't that represented? It's a huge event, thousands of people go, and you didn't bring any protein to sell? Bit weird.

I seem to remember last year receiving a 'map' on entry to Bodypower to help navigate around, but not this year, so I did find it difficult to find some stuff. There were some navigation points by a couple of the entrances but some stall weren't in their listed places, helpful. Also, there wasn't a lot of info about time and places for certain events being held, an announcement would've been great, "cooking demo to be held by the blahblah stand in 15 mins", that'd would've been super helpful!

Anyway, as I said earlier, don't let these bad points put you off, it was a really awesome day with much fun to be had! It's an amazing opportunity to meet anyone who you admire or respect in the fitness community, Kai Greene, Dana Linn Bailey, Christian Guzman etc. Branch Warren was just wandering around at one point! I will defo be going next year, I will see you there!

Be sure to go grab your tickets from BodypowerExpo site!

Thanks for reading!

Don't forget to follow on Twitter @NF_Fitness and on Instagram @neverforgottenfitness.

For training in Colchester or surrounding areas visit the Training Services info page above.

Karl

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Strength Training Anatomy by Delavier Review

This book is fantastic and I recommend it highly to everyone. It's drawings, of which there are over 600, are highly accurate and highlight muscle groups that will be targeted from each exercise that the book contains. Highlighted muscle groups are really useful to plan routines, especially if you're new to the gym and not sure which exercises work which muscles. The book is also broken down into different muscle groups, back, legs, chest etc, another useful tool for planning routines.  Not only does this book contain free weight exercises, it also contains resistance machine exercises, so no matter what gym you go to, or even if you workout at home you'll always find exercises in this book to do.  It gives tips on form and safety for each exercise, and this third edition of the book has extra pages on stretching and injury prevention. At the back there are two awesome drawings of Hercules, anterior and posterior, which details muscle names. Extremely useful for any budding fitness enthusiasts, instructors and trainers. I hope you find this review to be of use, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have, just comment below or tweet me @NF_Fitness.

The Way Down #2

We awoke in a buzzing camp, feeling much warmer than the previous mornings. Following some great grub it was time for the tipping ceremony. It's customary at the end of each climb to tip the guides and porters for all their hard work. A member of the group is nominated to thank each party and give out the tips. Both before and after this all the guides and porters sing to all the climbers.

For the next hours of trekking downwards all that could be heard were the hums of joyous adventurers, humming the tune of their song.

We travelled back down through the forest, even spying a few cheeky monkeys along the way.

After many, many hours we reached a point in the path that was only metres away from the final gate. Some of our group were still a way behind us so the guide with us, Declan, took us on a little detour to a beautiful, dazzling waterfall. The rocks around it and the water itself seemed to shimmer with gold.

Once we'd taken in the awe of the waterfall we made our way back up to reunite with the others. Walking just a few metres around the corner was Marangu gate, the official end to our climb.

We waited at the shop for a while for the others and bought t-shirts and passion fruit fanta. It was incredible how much of a treat a fizzy drink was.

I gave Joseph, the guide who helped us on the final day up the mountain, my hat and buff as I noticed he didn't have either. I hope he still carries them with him. He's a true friend and we still exchange emails together.

A bus greeted us and off we went to a lodge to rest up in preparation for our flights to Zanzibar. Arusha airport is the smallest airport you'd ever see in your life. After being waved through 'security' we boarded our tiny 15 seater plane.

The pilot was a lovely chap and the tininess of the plane made us feel all the more adventurous, Indiana Jones style. After a really short flight we touched down in gorgeous Zanzibar.

To be continued...

Compound Movements?

So you've heard of compound movements, but what are they? And how do they benefit you?

What are Compound Movements?

A compound exercise or movement is an exercise that works several muscle groups at the same time, and involves movement around multiple joints. The squat, for example, involves pretty much all the muscles in your legs and glutes and involves the hip, knee and ankle joints.

How do Compounds benefit you?

Compounds are great in many ways and should be the base for any good workout program. Most compounds are based on everyday movements, and being strong in these movements will help in everyday situations.

For example, the deadlift exercise mimics picking items up from the floor. Be it a sofa, a box or even your child, being strong in this movement will help prevent getting injured and help in these everyday situations.

Compounds work more than one muscle group at a time, so combining just a few of these movements you can workout your entire body and save loads of time in the gym. A squat combined with a chin up and a press up will work: your legs, your bum, your back, your shoulders (to an extent), your biceps, your triceps, not to mention all the smaller stabiliser muscles! Only 3 exercises and you've worked nearly all your body!

CAUTION: Be sure to perform these exercises with proper form! Especially the squat and deadlift. You need to practice these movements with proper form to ingrain it into your mind and nervous system so you won't get injured, in or out of the gym. Look out for instructional posts on these movements coming soon.

A great book to look out for is Strength Training Anatomy by Delavier, it has pretty much every exercise in it with useful tips, and lists all the muscles each exercise works. A great tool for planning your own workout program.

So what are some Compound Movements?

Here's a list:

• The squat
• The deadlift
• The bench press (Or similar i.e. push up)
• The lunge
• Shoulder press
• Rowing movements (i.e. Bent over row, upright row)

This is just a small list, there are many compound movements. 

So get your compounds on and #getmoving today!

If you enjoyed this post please +, share, comment and follow me on Twitter using the button at the top right of the blog. Any questions you might have I'll try my best to answer!

Fit Tips - Workout Log

It's such a simple thing, but a workout log can make your workouts so much better. Your workout log can be anything, a small notebook, pieces of paper stapled together or you can even log it on your phone or ipod. Whichever is easiest for you. This is mine:

Yes, I'm a Game of Thrones fan and it had to be a Stark notebook really. You can write down your program in the book however you like, but most important is to write down your progress.

I use a different page for each exercise, write down how much weight I'm lifting for that exercise and the rep scheme.

Example:

Squat 100kg 5 x 5

To progress you'd either increase the weight, increase the amount of sets, or increase the amount of repetitions. Once you've completed a workout, or exercise, circle or tick it and write down what you think you can achieve next workout.

I'd recommend at least logging your main lifts, like squat and deadlift.

If you're not progressing in your workouts you won't be making any progress in your fitness or physique. For the body to grow or for fitness to increase you need to be progressing with the weights for your body to adapt.

Log your workouts and progress! #getmoving

If you enjoyed this post please give it a +, comment below and follow me on Twitter for future posts. I'm more than happy to answer any of your fitness questions!

Countdown to Kili #1

There's now only 42 days until my girlfriend and I set off for Kilimanjaro. As well as this being the journey of a lifetime for us, we are also doing it to raise money for the Keech Hospice. The Keech Hospice looked after my aunt in her final days (See my motivation post for more info) and I can't thank them enough for the amazing work they did for her, and still do for others. Please feel free to donate to the charity, every little helps! (You can donate here).

Training has stepped up a notch!

What does my training include?

Strength training -

I'm following my own weightlifting program, generally 3-4 days a week in the gym. I split up my weight training days by pushing and leg movements day, followed by pulling and leg movements, and repeat.

I have a workout log where I have all my main exercises listed and write down my progress. As long as I'm progressing in strength or repetitions I'm happy I'm going in the right direction.

Cardiovascular training -

Currently, I'm trying to get out and run around 4-5 miles at least 3-4 times a week. Getting up and running before work or in the evening if I'm not going to the gym. See my post on safety tips while out running, it's important to stay safe out there.

My main focus while out running is to focus on my breathing, as well improving my cardiovascular capacity. Up on Mt. Kilimanjaro the level of oxygen can be as low as 50% of it's normal level due to the altitude, so keeping my focus on my breathing is important for me.

To increase the intensity of my cardio I run with weight, either using the day bag I'll be using up Kili, filling up a CamelBak with water (3kg), or sometimes both. It's good to get the feeling for the weight you'll be carrying up the mountain as we'll be walking for several hours a day.

Walking - 

We're going to increase the amount of long walks we go on too, to help break in our boots a bit more and to also get used to the walking with weight.

If you're interested in climbing Kilimanjaro there's a really good guide book that we use, check it out here. It's been really helpful to us, I'll do a review on it soon.

I hope you enjoyed this post, look out for more posts in this series! If you did like this post, please +, comment and follow me on Twitter. I'd be more than happy to answer any fitness or Kilimanjaro related questions you might have! #getmoving

Fitness Food - Muscle Mousse Cheesecake

A lovely decadent and versatile protein cheesecake using the amazing Muscle Mousse, for only 307 Calories a pop and a whopping 33g of Protein.

A crumbly biscuit base, followed by a layer of blended banana sweetened with stevia, a layer of Butterscotch protein cheesecake and topped off with sliced banana. You can use any biscuit you want for the base and any flavour of Muscle Mousse. The banana is an optional extra, and can also be replaced with any other fruit to complement the flavour of cheesecake you've gone for, strawberries and raspberries go well in this recipe.

You will need:

Equipment -

• 2 serving glasses
• 1 hand whisk
• 1 hand blender
• 1 glass jug
• cling film/sandwich bag
• 1 medium sized mixing bowl
• 1 spatula

Ingredients - 

• 300g 0% Fat Greek Yoghurt
• 1 serving of Muscle Mousse 
• 1 Banana
• 2 small biscuits
• 1 teaspoon of Stevia/sweetener

As you can see there aren't a lot of ingredients at all, it's a very quick and easy recipe. 

Follow the steps below to make your cheesecakes:

1. Grab your biscuits and pop them into a sandwich bag or wrap them in cling film. 

Once the biscuits are sealed inside, bash them up, go crazy. You can make them into a fine crumb or leave it slightly lumpy, however you'd prefer your bases to be.

Once you've bashed up your biscuits, equally distribute the crumbs into your serving glasses and prod the crumbs down with your fingers or with the back of a spoon. 

Base - Completed.

2. Now for the next layer. Cut your banana in half.

Add half of your banana into your glass jug with 1 teaspoon of Stevia.

Using your hand blender (or just a fork if you don't have a hand blender) blend up the banana with the Stevia.

Next, pour it out in equal amounts on top of your biscuit base.

3. Now for the main part. The cheesecake of omnom-ness! Grab your mixing bowl, yoghurt, Muscle Mousse and hand whisk.

Add 300g of yoghurt and 2 scoops of Muscle Mousse to the bowl and whisk it up.

Using the spatula to scrape the bowl, add the mixture in equal measures to your serving glasses.

4. Next, the topping. With the other half of your banana, slice it up and arrange the slices on top of your cheesecake.

Place your cheesecakes in the fridge for a minimum of about 25 minutes to allow the cheesecake to set.

5. After they're set, they're ready to eat! Top them off with some calorie free syrup!

Here's the final product. ENJOY! I'll put the macro's/calories below for each individual cheesecake and for the mixture as a whole if you wanted to make just one big one. 

If you liked this recipe and want to see more please + this post, comment, and follow me on twitter.

Thanks!

Macro's/Calories for individual cheesecakes (Calories/Carbs/Fat/Protein/Fibre):

Macro's/Calories for whole mixture (Calories/Carbs/Fat/Protein/Fibre):

Muscle Mousse Review

Muscle Mousse - Protein Mousse Dessert.

Today I'm going to review Muscle Mousse, which is a protein mousse dessert, just think protein shake that sets. I first came across Muscle Mousse at the Body Power Expo 2014, tried a sample and bought a tub straight away!

I'll go over a few points about Muscle Mousse to give you a better idea about it.

Taste (5 out of 5) - 

Muscle Mousse comes in 6 flavours, and I've been lucky enough to try 2 of them.

Peanut-Choc Caramel: This was the first tub I bought. It tastes a lot like Snickers or a Babyruth bar; nutty, chocolatey, caramelly, mmmmmmm, amazing. It tastes really decadent and not at all like any other protein shake type product I've ever tried. It is on the sweet side but I don't think you'd get this unless you had a sweet tooth anyway!

Butterscotch: Fantastic. Really, really amazing flavour. They actually had samples of this at Body Power which made me want to buy this product. They had actually sold out of this flavour though which is why I got the Peanut-Choc Caramel, I was disappointed until I got it home and tried it, both are awesome. It tastes like Butterscotch Angel Delight (the best Angel Delight flavour in my opinion!) and it isn't as sweet as the Peanut-Choc Caramel.

I can't wait to try every single flavour... White chocolate next I think.

Versatility (5 out of 5) -

The versatility of this product is absolutely great. Awesome as a mousse. Awesome as a thick shake if you don't let it set (sounds kinda weird, tried it, actually really good). It can also be made into a healthy high protein cheesecake (recipe coming... check back soon). You can mix it up with water, milk, almond milk, all tastes great. I'd be interested to try chocolate milk with the chocolate or banana Muscle Mousse, or different flavoured waters. I'll let you know how that goes.

Packaging (4 out of 5) - 

I love the packaging for this product. It's super simple and effective. It was great seeing the Muscle Mousse Moose at Body Power, although I felt super sorry for the guy inside as it was really hot without the costume on top! My only criticism is the size! I want more, bigger tubs please!

Calorie/Macro Breakdown - 

Each 50g serving (2 scoops) has:

175 Calories
30g Protein
12g Carbs
<1g Fat

The product has a good carb to protein ratio, and it's as you'd expect for such a tasty product. I would've actually expected much more fat, so I'm really pleased with the sub 1g.

Conclusion (4.8 out of 5) -

This is an awesome product. Will I re-buy it? YES. Do I use it everyday? No. At the moment I can't really afford to use this product every day, it sells for around £20-£25 for just 15 servings. So I'd rather keep it and use it as a treat for myself. A treat for cutting or bulking in my opinion.

Great product, try it out!

Cellucor C4 Review

I've tried lots of pre-workouts in the past and after I ran out of my last one I decided I'd give Cellucor's C4 Extreme a try. I have to be honest and say I mostly decided to try it just so I could try out the Icy Blue Razz flavour, and I'd heard from other people it's pretty good stuff. So here are my thoughts on the product.

Price (3.5 out of 5)

I usually try and get the cheapest and most simplest products, either from bulk supplement websites or deals at local independent supplement stores. However, this time I used Amazon and found a 60 serving tub for just £38.42, which works out at 64p a scoop. (Since I bought this product the price has actually gone down! (£34 for 60 scoops!!!!! 57p a scoop)).

My previous pre-workout supplement was £23.99 for 30 scoops, which is roughly 80p a scoop. However, as I'll go onto later, really, you need 2 scoops of the C4 for a good workout. So that's really £1.28 a serving versus 80p a serving. Not much of a difference really unless you're on a pretty tight budget, as most of us are these days.

So as far as pricing goes I give C4 a 3.5 out of 5. It's not a bad price, but I can't give it more out of 5 just for the fact I've had other pre-workouts which were slightly better value. Probably due to the fact it has to be transported over seas to the UK, which will definitely increase the price.

UK Availability (3 out of 5)

As far as availability goes, US brands are sometimes difficult to source for us in the UK. Cellucor.com is yet to offer UK shipping, or have a .co.uk site. Some independent supplement stores do carry it, or can order it for you if you ask, UK GNC's can't get hold of it at all. There are a few of the bigger online supplement retailers who can get it, but I actually found it priced the best on Amazon and it came in just a couple of days. Hopefully, Cellucor will branch out a bit more into the UK market and they were at the BodyPowerUK Expo this year, I hope that's a good sign.

UK availability gets a 3 out of 5. Mostly for the fact they don't have a .co.uk store yet and for such a large supplement company I'd have really thought they'd of had one by now. I'd want to see this product in a lot more places in the UK to give it a higher score here.

Taste (5 out of 5)

Icy Blue Razz tastes absolutely AMAZING. It's fantastic, definitely the best tasting pre-workout supplement I've ever had. The only thing I can compare it to is the Blue Tango slushies they sell at Odeon cinemas across the UK, so if you want to know what this product tastes like prior to purchasing it go and grab one of those slushies to try. As I understand it's a blueberry and raspberry flavour, there's a definite blueberry taste which is offset by the raspberry flavour, which sweetens it up a bit. It's blue in name and blue in colour and definitely gives you a blue tongue, which is definitely a great side effect.

For taste a huge 5 out of 5! The best I've tasted yet, I'm a huuuge fan of this blue raspberry flavour. I'd like to see how it compares to other blue raspberry flavoured products out there.

Consistency (4.5 out of 5)

It mixes really, really well. You don't get any floaty bits on top but there is some sinking residue if it's left to settle. It's nice and smooth and isn't at all gritty in your mouth. I don't think you'd need a blender ball in your shaker, you could mix this pre-workout just in a glass with a spoon. When you shake this product up you do get a bit of bubbly froth on top, but I quite like it that way.

If it wasn't for the little bit of residue sinking to the bottom I'd give this product a 5 out of 5, however, it does so I give it a 4.5 out of 5. I don't think there's any pre-workout supplement that could get 5 out of 5 for this topic, if you know of one please leave me a comment below.

Effects (4 out of 5)

I'll break this part of the review into two parts, 1 scoop and 2 scoops. I'll give you some info on my body size, as well as that will impact the effects, smaller individuals will probably feel the effects more and vice versa. I am 5'10" (178cm/1.78m) tall and hovering around 80kg (176lbs) at the moment.

One Scoop -

Doesn't get me super buzzed, but definitely wakes you up. One scoop is perfect for getting you going if you wanted to go for a run, especially in the morning, just enough caffeine. It'd also be great going for a workout if you're going a bit later in the day and actually want to get to sleep at night.

Two Scoops -

I'd definitely recommend two scoops for weightlifting. Two scoops gives you the proper doses of ingredients and gets you a great buzz. You get more focussed and you get the nice tingles. Not the crazy amount of tingles that makes you feel uncomfortable but just the right amount, for me anyway. I also get a pretty damn good pump, veins popping everywhere and you feel a great fullness in your muscles. You get a really nice amount of energy, and after your workout you won't crash as with other products. It brings you up quickly but drops you ever so slowly, slow enough not to leave you hanging, even after an intense workout.

I'd say this is a versatile product because of the different uses I get from either one or two scoops. I get good effects from this product, and let's be honest, the effects of a pre-workout is what we really want from a product such as this. Great energy, great focus and a great pump. 4 out of 5 for Effects, only because for a great workout you need the two scoops.

Packaging (5 out of 5)

Very, very flashy, and mega shiny... which... COMPLETELY appeals to me and all other 5 year olds. But really, they have done the branding really well. Even the name is pretty good, C4... you know... like the explosive... explosive workout? Well done Cellucor. There's also enough info on the packaging about it, ingredient listings and directions are clear. Obviously it comes sealed for freshness and just safety as well. The tub actually comes well filled, it's not a giant tub with a miniscule amount of product in it. And the scoop was on top! Win!

5 out of 5 for packaging, a great all around look and feel.

Conclusion

All in all I'd give the overall product a 4.5 out of 5, it's really tasty, it works really well and it's not hugely overpriced. Thumbs up. Go and give it a bash and see for yourself.