Naughty Boy Lifestyle is a supplement brand that has an unusual approach to branding but a solid approach to supplements.
The choice and dosage of ingredients is pretty good and we’re happy to see that they’ve put together a solid supplement.
It’s easy to be skeptical of newer brands on the market – getting outside of the companies we all know and understand is often difficult.
For this, we’re glad that Naughty Boy Lifestyle has set a good standard and put together some quality supplements.
Let’s take a look at Menace in particular and what it brings to the table. It’s a pre-workout that goes hard on ingredient selection and quality, so let’s dive straight in.
NaughtyBoy Lifestyle Menace – Supplement Facts
The label for this product is simple; it has a handful of ingredients that combine a pretty high dose of caffeine with some well-known, studied, well-dosed performance boosters.
Here’s the ingredient label so you can get straight to the backbone of the product:
See our #1 Rated
› Pre-Workouts This Year ‹
Directions for use
As you can see, the dosages are pretty strong so you’re going to be taking in a lot of this product and there will be a lot of things working hard. It’s a comparatively large serving but the end result is a better product when it comes to use – and that’s what matters.
Take a single serving mixed into roughly 500ml of water in the 30-60 minutes before a workout. You can drink it during the start of a workout or during a warm-up but consider the time it takes to get into your body!
We’re glad to see the serving sizes and dosages haven’t been diluted since they make so much difference in the world of nutritional supplements. This is already a great start but – of course – the choice of ingredients is where we need to look first.
Let’s take a quick stroll through the ingredient choices and what they can do for you. We’ll be analyzing the formula as a whole later on but for now it’s important to get a grasp of what we’re looking at.
Naughty Boy Lifestyle Menace Ingredients
This is the make or break portion of the product and we’re going to take some real time, so you get to know each bit and why it’s important.
We think this matters because this product has a ton of good stuff and the benefits are pretty diverse!
4g citrulline
This is a great compound for general exercise support. Derived from watermelons originally, it’s a compound that increases blood flow and improves the serum arginine levels. This effect is primarily prized for improving the ‘muscle pump’ when physique training, but it extends beyond this single dimension.
Rather, you’re going to see some improvements to things like endurance performance. This is primarily affecting the amount of fatigue you experience in response to training – and especially recovery between sets.
This makes this product a great combination with dietary creatine, but it also doesn’t contain any of its own. Keep this in mind and combine it with your own creatine supplementation if you’re looking for better strength endurance performance.
There are also some indications that citrulline can be a seriously useful compound in the nutrient availability of the muscles immediately after exercise. The blood flow in heavily exercised regions of the muscles is crucial during times of nutrient-sensitivity.
If you can improve blood flow reliably during these times – which citrulline does – it can contribute to a good overall recovery process. Recovery is the first step towards growth and is essential for the best results, so this is a good investment in your own performance in the future, as well as good workouts.
2g Glycerol
This is primarily an osmolyte; a hydration aid that increases the uptake of water into the muscles during and after exercise. However, we prefer this compound when combined with creatine – another sign that creatine would rapidly improve this product.
By itself, glycerol is still a useful supplementary compound, but we’d rather see these 2g used as 1g creatine and 1g glycerol. Even so, this can help with hydration and combatting fatigue, which is useful in the long-term for reducing muscle damage and detrimental chemical changes.
Another great combination here would be the inclusion of electrolytes since the uptake of water and electrolytes are some of the most important nutritional changes that support better performance. These can be supplemented independently – as with creatine – using something like Pink Himalayan Salt or a combination of sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium.
You can do these at home, slap them in your shaker, or just take the product as-is. This is a decent compound, but we think it could be managed better within the context of the whole product.
1g Tyrosine
Tyrosine is a great product for improving mental performance and combatting fatigue. This is a central factor in the way you exercise and your ability to consciously move – which is a huge factor in strength and endurance performance – as well as injury management.
The tyrosine in this product thus has a knock-on effect to physical performance, which is great. Reducing your fatigue means putting in a better workout which means better long-term results when you recover and grow. You can’t ask for better than that.
It combines well with the alpha-GPC we’re going to discuss next but – even without the synergy – it is great for those workouts that come at the end of the working day. If you’re stressed and mentally tired, it’s a great way of getting that ‘sharp’ feeling back before a workout.
The next two compounds we’re going to discuss are also tied up with mental performance and how it translates to better workouts: alpha-GPC and caffeine!
600mg Alpha-GPC
Alpha-GPC is our favorite form of choline supplement – it’s a pre-drug that allows your body to produce its own choline. This is a benefit because many of the normal forms of choline you might consume are destroyed during the digestion process.
They aren’t all resistant to the stomach and intestinal pressures – either from stomach acid or digestion by gut bacteria. However, what you can get from alpha-GPC is a form that turns into choline along the way.
Why does this matter? Because choline in the diet and the body control the levels of acetylcholine that are produced and circulated in the brain. These are great for controlling mental performance, mood, and even combatting fatigue.
You can see why this is a good addition – especially with the caffeine and Tyrosine. The combination of these three simple, effective compounds is one of the best things Naughty Boy Lifestyle could have done for their pre-workout.
The combination with tyrosine specifically adds up to a comprehensive longer-term mental performance boost. Caffeine is short-term and affects sleep quality negatively, while these nutrients are about better brain nutrition and the pay-off is a calm, positive, sleep-neutral mental performance profile.
With that said, it’s time to talk about the big, standard pre-workout ingredient…
350mg Caffeine
This is the compound you knew was going to be here – the king of stimulants. There’s a reason it’s everywhere and it’s because the short-term boost to mental and physical performance is the cornerstone of a lot of pre-workout supplements.
Menace is no exception; it’s a quality supplement that leverages a lot of caffeine. We want you to note that 350mg is the vast majority of your daily intake so don’t exceed the servings guide. 450mg is the daily recommendation by the FDA and being a “hardcore” two-scooper is fine until your sleep quality sucks and you’re sabotaging your own workout performance/progress.
You need to watch the rest of your daily caffeine intake when using this product as a result – you can’t consume more than 100mg of caffeine elsewhere. That means avoiding other energy drinks and mocha-frappe-latte-whatever at your local Starbucks.
We all take in a ton of caffeine, as a culture, and managing it for your sleep quality and beyond really adds up. Small changes here – even just awareness – can improve your long-term results massively. This product is good but be aware of your stimulant load and keep your eye on your intake!
3.2g Beta-Alanine
This is a classic endurance boosting compound and we’re glad it’s made it into this product. The endurance range it boosts most effectively is in the 2-3-minute region. This is great because almost everyone has to operate in this range for their exercise.
If you’re doing HIIT or more “conventional” long-form endurance exercise, this is going to be your new best friend. It’s a quality supplement ingredient that combats fatigue and allows you to work harder without feeling as gassed out – meaning more work done for the same time/effort!
The result is obviously an improvement to your performance but – equally – a change to the number of calories you can burn or muscle-building stimulus you can put in. These add up in the long term – you won’t see them in one session.
What you will feel, most likely, is a tingly sensation in your limbs. This is a pretty standard response to beta-alanine, and you shouldn’t be too worried. If you take in a large amount it might become uncomfortable but it’s nothing to be worried about, ultimately!
300mg Juglans Regia
It’s walnut extract and it’s probably just here as a filler, but it does have some antioxidant benefits. These can be useful but, overall, this is probably the least effective and least important compound in this product.
We like it overall, but you wouldn’t notice the difference if this wasn’t in there at all. It could provide some mild high-quality dietary fats, but 300mg is nowhere near enough to matter – so we’ll just consider it a small antioxidant boost and basic vitamins/minerals like B6 and manganese.
150mg Biophytum
This is a kind of traditional medicine with modest anti-stress and anti-inflammatory effects. The aim of the product here is to improve energy and support overall wellbeing while also getting in a great workout – biophytum only partially contributes to these goals.
It’s not as well-targeted as the main ingredients we’ve mentioned above but it does provide a positive influence overall. Could we find something better to use instead? Sure, but this does some good stuff and it’s a good product overall so far.
We like the product more than this particular ingredient, but it’s a good secondary one to have for better libido and resistance to stress.
50mg AstraGin
This is basically a secondary ingredient that supports the uptake of amino acids into the bloodstream via better digestive action. This is important for a number of the compounds in this product that are amino acids- citrulline, alanine, and tyrosine.
Basically, if it ends in ‘-ine’, it works better with Astragin. We’d love to see this combined with even 5mg of Piperine, however, which improves the uptake of almost every nutrient through the intestinal wall.
We’d really like to see more evidence on this kind of product over the next few years as existing studies are relatively few and far between. However, what we’ve seen so far is promising.
This is another example of small combos that could work really well, but the product itself still works without it. Astragin is very well-chosen for the job and we think the reliance on a combination of AAs and Astragin is a fantastic synergy and one we rarely see – A+ for creativity!
See our #1 Rated
› Pre-Workouts This Year ‹
Naughty Boy Lifestyle Menace Formula Analysis
So, what do we think of this product when we look at the whole, and not just at the ingredients? Well it’s pretty strong. It’s a product that offers significant benefits one ingredient at a time, but specifically when combining the key ingredients in the form of amino acids and the absorption benefits.
The combinations come in three basic flavors:
- Performance aids: beta-alanine with citrulline and glycerol help support muscular performance, recovery, and combat chemical fatigue.
- Mental Energy: caffeine, alpha-GPC, and tyrosine really do add up. They benefit your performance, mental wellbeing, and perceptions of energy/focus. These boost physical performance second-hand, and help you get ‘in the zone’ for a workout.
- Miscellaneous: these are the health benefits (like biophytum) and the absorption aids like AstraGin. These aren’t doing the main work, but they add value to the product by improving everything else.
Overall, it’s a solid product for the first really big NBL entry into the supplement market.
Naughty Boy Lifestyle Menace Benefits
Menace benefits include improved mental energy, chemical support in the muscles, and the overall improvement of endurance. The latter is particularly supported, but less so for strength.
On top of this, the mental performance benefits are both short- and long-term which means a better overall workout. It should also improve mood and perceptions of fatigue around a workout, hopefully helping you feel better as well as perform better.
Who Takes It?
We’d say it’s best for those looking for better workouts across the board, but specifically in HIIT and endurance performance.
We don’t recommend this product as your go-to if you’re into strength, specifically, since it’s really not specialized for that goal. However, it does provide some support so if you’re into your endurance and HIIT but want to get strength work in, it’s still suitable for that goal.
We think it’s got a good niche in the market with a general support profile and tons of good endurance boosters.
Potential Side Effects?
The side effect risks with this product are all caffeine – and even then, they’re not very large. They’re no more or less than 350mg of your Starbucks coffee or similar. It’s all about keeping your daily intake in the healthy under-450mg range described by the FDA.
There are likely to be side effects if you have very low stimulant tolerance, or you’re a caffeine-sensitive individual. However, there’s nothing wrong with the caffeine itself and if you’re comfortable drinking coffee and energy drinks, you’ll probably be fine with this.
We recommend talking to your doctor if you’re worried, have pre-conditions, or just want to check in about this product. However, it should be totally safe for otherwise-healthy people.
See our #1 Rated
› Pre-Workouts This Year ‹
Naughty Boy Lifestyle Menace Summary
Pros
- A great ingredient profile with effective doses
- Powerful endurance-booster with key ingredients
- Good synergies with AstraGin and Amino Acids
Cons
- Not particularly effective for strength training
- Likely to use the container relatively quickly with the large serving size
Pricing & Where to Buy
We recommend buying this product from the Cardiff Sports Nutrition site – they have free shipping within the UK and sell Naughty Boy Lifestyle at a great price.
The pricing itself is relatively standard on the market at £35, which is a good price but not amazing.
Naughty Boy Lifestyle Menace Review: Final Word
It’s always interesting to evaluate products from a fresh face on the supplement market and we have been pleasantly surprised by Menace. It’s a solid pre-workout with significant promise for both physical and mental endurance. It contains some impressive ingredients, though the addition of creatine, electrolytes and Piperine would really have widened its appeal.
And that’s perhaps the one downside to NBL Menace. Despite marketing itself as a generic pre-workout, it does very little for strength or size, meaning that athletes interested in strength gains are likely to look elsewhere.
I’m not sure Naughty Boy Lifestyle meant to create such a niche product, not that there’s necessarily anything wrong if they did. And if it suits your style of workout, then great. You’re likely to be very happy with the mental boost and physical push it gives you.
We wouldn’t recommend it as the ideal pre-workout for everyone, but if endurance or HIIT is your thing, then Naughty Boy Lifestyle Menace could be a serious option for you.
See our #1 Rated
› Pre-Workouts This Year ‹
Leave a Reply