Axe & Sledge THE GRIND: Seth Feroce’s Ammonia-Annihilating Aminos

Seth is back, folks! In our line of reviewing Axe & Sledge‘s supplements, we now have The Grind, their amino acid and hydration product, and as with the rest of his lineup that we’ve reviewed, this one certainly does not disappoint. Especially on the taste front!

The Grind is Axe & Sledge’s intra workout supplement with added hydration, endurance, and pump ingredients!

Axe & Sledge is hot stuff on the market right now, and it’s for good reason — we’re loving everything they’ve put together, and The Grind is one such supplement.

The Grind TL;DR:

• Large essential amino acid blend with 5g BCAAs and 2.3g of other EAAs
• Hydration profile with coconut water and betaine
• Ammonia-crushing status in L-Ornithine
• Seth Feroce Approved! What more do you really need?!

This gives us endurance on top of the pro-anabolic, anti-catabolic amino acids inside, and hydration to boot!

And most important to many Axe & Sledge fans, it’s not overly sweet, which we’ve grown to love as everyone else is bombing away with too much sucralose.

Before we get into The Grind, be sure to sign up for discounts using PricePlow’s coupon driven prices, and sign up for Axe & Sledge alerts to never miss a thing on what Seth and company are cooking up:

The Grind Ingredients

• Essential Amino Acids (7,300mg)

  

  We love the addition of L-Ornithine in here, which will take your fatiguing ammonia and turn it into endurance-boosting citrulline!

  Starting off with the amino side of things, we have a little over 7 grams of our essential amino acids, with a big 5 gram dose of our branched chain amino acids (BCAAs). The essential amino acids are the body’s building blocks to proteins, which are necessary to rebuild and repair your muscles following a muscle-destroying workout.

  While the industry seemed to focus on the BCAAs alone originally, we’ve since learned that a full spectrum of the essential amino acids is superior for its anabolic qualities.^[1-3]

  In all reality, the industry likely knew the superiority of more amino acids as opposed to less, but EAAs are more difficult to flavor over. Rather than release just a BCAA product, Seth waited in the shadows until the time was right to put out his own EAA product with his own brand!

  The non-BCAA EAAs

  We’re getting 5g of the BCAA’s in the standard 2:1:1 ratio, but also 2,300mg of 5 other essentials: Lysine, Threonine, Phenylalanine, Tryptophan, and Histidine. They’re “essential” because the body cannot synthesize them itself, and must get them through diet (and some supplementation).

  But yes you read that right, The Grind has five of the six other essential amino acids. Methionine has been left out of this formula, likely due to its smelly nature as a sulfur containing amino acid. The sulfur makes it exceptionally hard to flavor well, so it was omitted here, likely to keep with the theme of low usage of artificial sweeteners. That is a trade-off many Axe & Sledge fans really seem to enjoy, since these products do not have over-the-top amounts of sucralose… and you can actually taste the flavor system.

  At the end of the day, Leucine is arguably the most important amino acid from an athlete’s point of view, since it does drive the mTor pathway of muscle protein synthesis, so it is proper it gets the largest singular dose of any of our amino acids here.

• L-Glutamine (2,500mg)

  

  This is Axe & Sledge Athlete @krista_gia, who uses The Grind to destroy her Mondays

  Glutamine is well known, but also very widely debated in the supplement industry, as an amino acid for helping speed muscle recovery and growth.^[4] A conditionally essential amino acid, glutamine is generally produced by the body as much as it is needed, except for hard working gym goers and athletes, who can deplete their stores rather quickly as they recover from their workouts.

  The effectiveness, however, of oral supplementation glutamine has been highly debated, as research has shown that it doesn’t necessarily equate to muscle building. Nevertheless, at worst, it’s there to help the flavor system (it’s a decent tasting amino), and at best, it’s helping your recovery status and immune system. Whatever the case, it can’t hurt to add in for the vast majority of individuals, so we don’t mind seeing this in a training aid.

• Raw Coconut Water Concentrate (1,000mg)

  

  For the Hardest Workers in the Gym

  A nice source of electrolytes, coconut water concentrate helps with our hydration by supplying minerals necessary for our body to stay balanced in homeostasis while we’re sweating. From this, we are getting sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all important for staying healthy and hydrated during your intense workout sessions.

• Betaine Anhydrous (1,000mg)

  Betaine, or trimethylglycine, is an ergogenic aid that has seen a serious popularity spike in recent years. It has some seriously good effects associated with it, including increasing lean muscle mass, strength, endurance, and power,^[5-7] making it a powerful and well rounded ingredient.

  Betaine also has another function, which is as an osmolyte. This means it helps with the movement of water between cells in the body, which helps give us what we call a “water pump.” Be sure to stay hydrated when using this to reap the full, noticeable effects.

  Betaine is also a muscle builder, but note that the clinical dose for those matters is 2.5g/day. This is an ingredient we don’t frequently see at that dosing in intra workout supplements, and some is always better than none.

  What we’re noticing lately is that the hydration pump effects from betaine are vastly underrated. Judging from the Axe & Sledge line, we can tell that Seth loves a solid water pump, so adding betaine here in the stack makes perfect sense – there’s a few other ingredients in products like Hydraulic (stim free pre workout) and Demo Day (his most excellent carbohydrate product) that function similarly.

• L-Ornithine AKG (1,000mg)

  

  Ornithine supplementation leads to vastly decreased ammonia levels^[8]

  L-Ornithine AKG is a salt formed of a 2:1 ratio of ornithine to alpha ketoglutarate. Ornithine is actually on the arginine pathway, meaning it can help with nitric oxide production.^[9] It does this by bonding with ammonia to create citrulline, the precursor to arginine in the body. While that is great and all, the removal of ammonia is what is especially great for us during training.

  Turn ammonia into something beneficial!

  Excessive ammonia levels reduce muscle functioning, due to its toxicity in the body.^[10] Ammonia is produced by muscle contractions as well^[11], meaning we are producing something by our actions that will then inhibit our actions, similarly to why we dislike lactic acid buildup.

  By removing ammonia from the body, ornithine actually reduces levels of fatigue as well.^[8] Removal of ammonia, plus working to boost our arginine and thus, nitric oxide levels, make ornithine a great addition, especially since it seems this ingredient is often overlooked and underappreciated.

The Grind flavors

Below is a list of the active flavors of The Grind. As noted, this is a low-sucralose product that will take a few sips to get used to if you’ve been drinking way too many artificial sweeteners lately. In our review up above, we ended up loving it because it finishes perfectly and you can actually taste the flavor system:

We’ve only tried one flavor of The Grind so far (Unicorn Blood), but this one may have to be next on the list!!

Final Thoughts

Seth’s products have not disappointed us yet, and The Grind is no exception, although we really do wish we could have snuck some methionine in there for a full EAA profile. As with his Hydraulic product, the flavor system really seems to shine through as well, without an abundance of artificial sweeteners either.

It’s also worth noting that Axe & Sledge is also only using natural colors, a change we absolutely love to see, since some of those dyes can give some unwanted adverse reactions. Overall, we are very pleased with this product, and can’t wait to try the rest of what Seth’s brand has to offer for the hardest workers in the gym.

The full label for The Grind