Beast Mode Black Brings Strong Stims, Yohimbe Dose Disclosed!

Ah, “beast mode”. The nirvana of gym goers. That moment when the stims hit you right and the weights are just flying like feathers. However, how often do you really reach this mythical state? Our guess is not often. Beast Sports Nutrition is here to change that.

We recently updated our Super Test Max article, but now it’s time to turn up the stim:

Go BEAST MODE… with the Black Series

Looking to get into Beast Mode and are down with 400mg caffeine and love the yohimbe? Then it’s time to upgrade to Beast Mode Black.

The Beast Mode Black pre workout is not trying to reinvent the wheel. The ingredients present are all familiar, barring perhaps “FruiteX-B”. Instead, Beast is trying to perfect their wheel.

The stimulants aren’t just present; they’re present in some impressive doses for a pre-workout that won’t cost you an arm and a leg. At under $1 per serving, Beast Mode Black is already in PricePlow’s good graces for our cost-conscious, high-energy consumer. After all, not all gym-goers want a $2.50 pre workout!

When Beast Sports Nutrition made Beast Mode Black, they wanted their customers to make their customers hype. The original Beast Mode was selling well, but the market kept getting more and more intense. Beast has been around since 1995, and many consumers wanted their Beast Mode to stay the same. But some wanted… more. Enter Beast Mode Black!

Serious For Serious Stim-Junkies who love their yohimbe

So let’s cut to the chase – when we say high-energy, we’re talking about 400mg caffeine in a scoop here, and a serious dose of yohimbe – and Beast has disclosed its standardization to us!

Let’s take a look at the ingredients, and dig into what this “FruiteX-B” is, after checking our coupon-driven prices on PricePlow, where you can also sign up for Beast News alerts and deals:

Ingredient Analysis:

Although there’s only one “new” ingredient for most of our regular readers here, take a look at this yohimbe dose!

• CarnoSyn Beta Alanine (1,600mg)

  

  We thank Beast for letting us know their yohimbe standardization. We now know that we’re getting just shy of 4.9mg yohimbine – a “no joke” dose!

  Ah, old faithful. Beta Alanine is perhaps one of the most common pre-workout ingredients in the industry. While you can learn all about the mechanisms behind this ingredient, we like to keep our product reviews simple. Beta Alanine is a precursor to carnitine, a molecule that helps buffer, or balance out, the acidic environment within muscle cells.

  What does this mean for you? It means you’ll be better off in your longer exercise bouts, specifically those within the 60-240 second range.^[1] Recent evidence even shows that beta alanine might help with lean mass gains.^[2] While this is likely because it lets you handle more volume, the effect is still there.

  This has become the “PricePlow preferred” dose (~1.6g)

  While the “clinical” dose is around 3g, note that most of those studies are spacing it out throughout the day. This is the first half of that dose, but not the full clinical dose.

  However, this is where we’re starting to land on our agreed-upon preferred BA dosage, namely because the lower dose should mean fewer tingles. Given that CJ on our YouTube channel hates the tingles from the pre workouts with 3g or more of this ingredient, 1.6g is where we like to end up.

• Agmatine Sulfate – Agmass (600mg)

  Agmatine is another classic choice for a pre-workout that helps with nitric oxide synthesis. It limits an enzyme responsible for limiting the amount of nitric oxide in the extracellular environment (the nitric oxide synthase enzyme – nNOS). By limiting this enzyme, your body may have more nitric oxide in one place. Nitric oxide will improve blood flow and help with nutrient delivery.^[3,4]

  

  Beast Mode isn’t just for the guys! But women are smart to half-scoop this one unless they’re really into the caffeine and yohimbe!

  The dosing is where pump-junkies will likely want more, however. 500mg is where agmatine doses typically start getting felt, which is good, but a gram is where things start getting fun. We’re in the middle there, and this is proving Beast Mode Black to be more on the energy-side of the pre workout equation.

• N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine (500mg)

  Tyrosine will help you produce catecholamines.^[5] The catecholamines we care about in the diet and fitness industry are dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. By increasing the amount of epinephrine and norepinephrine (which do the same thing with varying levels of receptor affinity), you force the body into a minor “fight or flight” state. This translates into a deeper focus, which may help you feel every rep where you should.

  

  It was an honor to meet some of Beast Sports Nutrition’s employees, reps, and athletes at the 2018 Arnold. See our interview with Brandon Hendrickson here

  Weirdly enough, Tyrosine can also be good for stress management.^[5] So while improving your body’s ability to produce epinephrine sounds like it’d be stress inducing, tyrosine helps you manage that.

  We’ve gone on record stating that standard L-Tyrosine outperforms N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine in the research we’ve seen, so it bears repeating here. However, some users still prefer “NALT” here because they claim they ‘feel’ it better, and it mixes better in their drink!

• Taurine (500mg)

  Yes, our new favorite old-school ingredient. Our dedicated followers will know recent research on taurine is really revitalizing interest in this ingredient. Taurine can improve your abilities in the aerobic exercise realm as it had been shown to improve endurance in aerobic athletes. Better yet, the benefit is not dose dependent – the lower doses studied provided as much help as the highest doses!^[6]

  Taurine can also help with hydration and focus as well,^[7] something always appreciated when rocking a pre workout with 400mg caffeine! Yes, that’s right:

• Caffeine (400mg)

  While caffeine needs no introduction, a dose like this might need some explaining.

  Beast Sports Nutrition isn’t experimenting with caffeine in Beast Mode Black. A single scoop of their pre-workout will put you at the recommended daily dose of caffeine. We recommend that you stick to one scoop, perhaps even start at ½ or ¾ scoop if you’re new to high-caffeine territory.

  Strength gains at 400mg!

  

  400mg caffeine is the dose that will get most people closest to 5-6mg/kg per day, where several research studies have proven successful.^[8]

  This is the dose where things start to get interesting on the strength front – depending on your size! An article published in the Strength and Conditioning Journal covered the most reliable research with respect to caffeine and power.^[8] At 5-6mg/kg of bodyweight, researchers from all over consistently see significant increases in strength and even training volume.

  If you weigh between 145lbs and 175lbs, you’re in that 5-6mg/kg range with a full scoop of Beast Mode Black. But if you’re bigger, you may need even more caffeine to get those “clinical gains”… at which point you really would need to build up tolerance and ask yourself if going with a heaping scoop is worth the edginess so much caffeine (and yohimbe!) would give you.

  So either way, bust out that food scale and makes sure you measure this one right – a heaping scoop could put you into uncharted territory!

  To help out with the focus front, next we have an underrated ingredient:

• DMAE (2-Dimethylaminoethanol) Bitartrate (300mg)

  DMAE, while its name is often confused with the stimulant, DMAE more of a focus-enhancing nootropic than a stimulant.

  

  DMAE (Dimethylaminoethanol) is a nootropic related to choline that may improve focus, mental clarity, and potentially memory.

  This ingredient is a form of choline. The benefit of DMAE over other forms of choline is that DMAE can cross the blood brain barrier, which, allows it to directly increase choline levels in the brain.^[9] This has led to enhanced memory and focus in research, but how is still a bit of a question!

  Reason being, the enhanced choline levels don’t seem to translate to higher levels of acetylcholine!^[10] So how does the focus boost happen? We have a few theories up in our main DMAE analysis, but the prevailing theory is that it helps inhibit choline metabolism, keeping more of it freed up in the body.

  Talking dose: 250mg or more is ideal

  We often see DMAE used for two reasons: the right reason and the wrong reason. In the wrong reason, it’s there to confuse consumers that the supplement has the similarly-named stimulant inside. You know this happens when you see it in low doses, like 25-75mg.

  Then there’s the right reason – when it’s inside for the sake of being a fantastic cholinergic supplement. That’s when we have it over 250mg and beyond (this is anecdotal based on our experience with nootropics). And thankfully, that’s the case with Beast Mode Black.

• FruiteX-B Calcium Fructoborate (216mg)

  Here’s the one ingredient most of our readers haven’t seen before, and if they have, it probably wasn’t in a pre workout:

  

  Futureceuticals, the developer of FruiteX-B, has some nice joint pain research, for those of you who go a bit too Beast Mode on leg day

  FruiteX-B Calcium Fructoborate is a sugar-borate ester (SBE) and is the most scientifically studied boron-based dietary supplement.

  SBEs are mostly found in fruits, vegetables, and legumes. Calcium Fructoborate itself is by far the most common SBE around.. However, the FruiteX-B variant of Calcium Fructoborate is produced by reacting boric acid with both fructose and calcium carbonate.

  FruiteX-B, while a newer ingredient on the block that was developed by FutureCeuticals, is mostly known for its amazing ability to maintain bone health and protect joints from degradation.^[11] While boron supplementation, in those that are deficient, can improve brain fog, reduce PMS, or even reduce pain, it seems like Beast Sports Nutrition are using it as a joint and bone health ingredient.

• Yohimbe Extract (Pausinystalia yohimbe) (bark) (75mg – Standardization Disclosed below!)

  400mg caffeine wasn’t enough? Time for a bit more energy and hype!

  

  Ahhhh yes, you can almost feel the yohimbe amplifying this Beast!

  Yohimbe is a dual-purpose ingredient. As an alpha-2 receptor antagonist yohimbe acts as both a “fat burner” (more like a “fat storage blocker”) and a CNS stimulant. As an antagonist, yohimbe can stop receptors from doing their traditional (usually undesired) function. So yohimbe, also known as ‘Y’, blocks receptors associated with fat storage, which should let you burn more fat during exercise.^[12]

  The only issue here is a lack of clarity on the label — Yohimbe Extract can be standardized anywhere from 2% to 8%, and that makes a big difference. So we asked Beast and they were happy to disclose:

  6% yohimbe standardization – yields 4.875mg of yohimbine!

  There’s no way around this – it’s a strong dose. We’ve seen a few stronger, but this is definitely on the upper end of yohimbe doses we’ll see. Needless to say, if you’re sensitive to yohimbe / yohimbine, you’ll need to pass on Beast Mode Black.

  Note that the use of yohimbe also makes Beast Mode Black a primarily American formula, since it is banned in several international countries. The classic Beast Mode pre workout is international-friendly.

• Theacrine (25mg)

  One last stimulant to put things over the top for the energy fan!

  Theacrine and caffeine can be seen as caffeine’s less-annoying twin brother, as it eases many of the “negative” aspects of caffeine (the comedown!). TeaCrine is a longer lasting stimulant that won’t impact your cardiovascular health.^[13]

  The best part? Theacrine seems much more resistant to tolerance build up than caffeine and may even reduce your caffeine tolerance.^[14]

  

  You can’t miss that iconic blue color that represents Beast Sports Nutrition!

  We’ve definitely seen bigger doses here – this is clearly a caffeine- and yohimbe-based pre workout, with this bit of theacrine meant to help keep things going after the caffeine has peaked.

Flavors available:

Beast has actually been through a few runs of Beast Mode Black, since theacrine was originally difficult to flavor until the industry “figured it out”. Beast has kept it simple with Blue Raspberry and Fruit Punch. If you see Pink Lemonade, that’s from an older version.

Note that we have artificial colors like Red #40 in Beast Punch and Blue #1 in Blue Raspberry.

Our Beast Mode Black Review

Mike took a very good, long look at it, and there’s some serious pros, a few cons, and some constructive criticism for Beast:

It’s not for everyone, but it’s for those who need Beast Mode energy

Beast Mode Black is a promising high-energy pre workout on paper, and it’s not going to bankrupt you while at it. It provides everything a “standard” stimulant-lover wants, and should help you crush any workout you could have in front of you.

The Strongest Name in Sports Nutrition. See all of our Beast Products and News on our Beast Sports Nutrition page!

However, we’re left wondering if they went too hardcore here – and we’re talking specifically on the yohimbe. 400mg of caffeine, combined with both 75mg yohimbe and theacrine is not for the faint of heart.

Needless to say, if you can’t handle your stimulants or you’re prone to anxiety or insomnia, we’d avoid Beast Mode Black. But in that case, we’re guessing you wouldn’t buy a product named “BEAST MODE” in the first place!!

For those that love the stim, want the yohimbe rush, yet don’t want the stuff that’s in the FDA’s crosshairs, you’ll find a holy grail in Beast Mode Black. And if you can’t have that yohimbe, it’s back to Beast Mode for you – and with these deals in this “$2/pre workout market”, we’re not complaining about either.

References:

1. Hobson, R. M., Saunders, B., Ball, G., Harris, R. C., & Sale, C. (2012). Effects of β-alanine supplementation on exercise performance: A meta-analysis. Amino Acids, 43(1), 25-37; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22270875
2. Walter, A. A., Smith, A. E., Kendall, K. L., Stout, J. R., & Cramer, J. T. (2010). Six Weeks of High-Intensity Interval Training With and Without β-Alanine Supplementation for Improving Cardiovascular Fitness in Women. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 24(5), 1199-1207; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20386120
3. Gao, Y., Gumusel, B., Koves, G., Prasad, A., Hao, Q., Hyman, A., & Lippton, H. (1995). Agmatine: a novel endogenous vasodilator substance. Life sciences, 57(8), PL83-PL86; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7637544
4. Keynan, O., Mirovsky, Y., Dekel, S., Gilad, V. H., & Gilad, G. M. (2010). Safety and Efficacy of Dietary Agmatine Sulfate in Lumbar Disc-associated Radiculopathy. An Open-label, Dose-escalating Study Followed by a Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Trial. Pain Medicine, 11(3), 356-368; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20447305
5. Pietz J, Landwehr R, Kutscha A, Schmidt H, de Sonneville L, Trefz FK. Effect of high-dose tyrosine supplementation on brain function in adults with phenylketonuria. J Pediatr. 1995;127(6):936-943; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8523192
6. Waldron, M., Patterson, S. D., Tallent, J., & Jeffries, O. (2018). The Effects of an Oral Taurine Dose and Supplementation Period on Endurance Exercise Performance in Humans: A Meta-Analysis. Sports Medicine; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29546641
7. Zhang, M., Izumi, I., Kagamimori, S., Sokejima, S., Yamagami, T., Liu, Z., & Qi, B. (2004). Role of taurine supplementation to prevent exercise-induced oxidative stress in healthy young men. Amino acids, 26(2), 203-207; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15042451
8. McCormack, William P, and Hoffman, Jay R; “Caffeine, Energy Drinks, and Strength-Power Performance”; Strength and Conditioning Journal; August 2012; Volume 34, Issue 4, 11–16; https://journals.lww.com/nsca-scj/Fulltext/2012/08000/Caffeine,_Energy_Drinks,_and_Strength_Power.3.aspx, full-text at https://education.ucf.edu/iepw/docs/Caffeine,_Energy_Drinks,_and_Strength_Power.3.pdf (archived at https://www.webcitation.org/6k9wFmbwF)
9. Haubrich D.R., Gerber N.H., Pflueger A.B. “Deanol affects choline metabolism in peripheral tissues of mice.” Journal of Neurochemistry. 1981 Aug;37(2):476-82; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7264671
10. Jope R.S., Jenden D.J. “Dimethylaminoethanol (deanol) metabolism in rat brain and its effect on acetylcholine synthesis.” Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. 1979 Dec;211(3):472-9; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/512912
11. Mogoşanu, G., Biţă, A., & Ludovic, B. (2016). Calcium Fructoborate for Bone and Cardiovascular Health. Biol Trace Elem Res; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4930945/
12. Cameron, OG, et. al; “Effects of yohimbine on cerebral blood flow, symptoms, and physiological functions in humans”; Psychosomatic Medicine; July-August 2000; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10949101
13. Lopez HL, Wells S, Ziegenfuss TN. Theacrine-based supplement and method of use thereof. Google Patents; 2014; https://www.google.com/patents/US20150132280, https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2015073576
14. Taylor L, Mumford P, Roberts M, et al. Safety of TeaCrine, a non habituating, naturally-occurring purine alkaloid over eight weeks of continuous use. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2016;13(1):2; https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-016-0113-3