MaxiNutrition Cyclone Stack Review

Recently I was invited to an event at the GSK Human Performance Labs where we were taken on a tour of the labs and shown the kind of work they do.

A lot of this work involves testing athletic performance in relation to nutrition, and GSK also produce MaxiNutrition products, so we naturally got to sample some of the new range.

After this, MaxiNutrition were kind enough to send me a good supply of Cyclone products, including the shake, bar and milk, to do a real test on.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to cut them any slack.

We’ve previously reviewed the shake at Gymtalk when it was branded as Maximuscle, but this time I wanted to do a more thorough test to really drill down and see if the products ‘work’.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t some kind of highly controlled scientific experiment, it’s still just the finest of broscience, but it’s a lot more measurable than just reviewing products alongside a diet of Frazzles and Stella.

Not that we usually do that of course.

So for this supplement review I thought I’d focus on one of my weakest areas, my arms, and see if I could grow them through a period of 3 weeks’ supplementation with Cyclone products.

Let’s see how it turned out…

Product overview

There were three Cyclone products involved: bars, milk and a shake.

Cyclone Milk is a new product which is the first RTD containing creatine, along with 30 grams of protein.

The Cyclone bars also contain 5 grams of creatine and 23 grams of protein per bar, as well as 1.5 grams of HMB, which is pretty impressive.

The Cyclone shake is a protein shake formula with 30 grams of protein, 5 grams of creatine and a heap of glutamine too.

You can check out the Maxinutrition website for full details on these products.

Due to the high sugar content of all of these supplements, it is clear that they are aimed at people who are looking to add mass and size, so they are ideal for a phase of bulking.

They do really seem to be aimed at men only – I wouldn’t personally recommend these products to a woman.

As with most MaxiNutrition products these are not cheap.

Purchasing the full stack for 3 weeks will set you back over a hundred quid!

Dosage and training

Over the course of the 3 weeks, I took 3 servings of Cyclone products per day, consisting of 2 shakes and either the Cyclone Milk or a Cyclone Bar.

This would depend on the amount, timing and type of training per day, but a typical day would mean I was consuming a shake with my breakfast, a shake post workout, and a bar or milk at a time when food was inconvenient.

During the period, I used the products for what they are: supplements.

I never replaced a meal with them, and was still consuming my 5 daily meals as usual (6 on leg day), as well as a standard whey isolate before bed.

So I can tell you I was definitely in a calorie surplus daily, perfect for growth, even before adding the MaxiNutrition stack.

In fact, the three products were adding around 700 calories per day to my diet, and a good 80 grams or so of protein, and at no point did I feel like they were a burden to eat (they didn’t particularly fill me up at all).

And my training was on point too.

I was working out 4 days a week, with compound movements at the core of each workout, and extra arm sessions built in as a support to my heavy compounds to encourage arm growth.

My typical split would look like this:

So, successes from taking these products can’t really be solely attributed to them, as there was of course a lot of hard work involved too.

Taste and mixability

Overall the taste of the products varied.

The Cyclone Milk is absolutely delicious, thick and creamy with a real chocolate taste, and it gets addictive pretty quickly.

I was tempted so many times to just reach for one of these instead of prepping a shake.

Throw one in your gym bag and you’ve got a real treat for the day.

The chocolate Cyclone shake mixes really well and tastes great.

I also tried the orange flavour which I thought was strange at first, but can be really refreshing post workout with ice cold water.

I hope to see more brands introducing flavours like this, it’s nice to have something sweet tasting after a workout.

The bars, however, are absolutely vile.

The only way I can describe them is a mix between soluble paracetamol and Quality Street.

But with 5 grams of creatine per bar (and they aren’t very big) what do you expect?

And at the end of the day, if I know what I’m eating is going to contribute to real progress, then I will eat it.

If I was fixated on taste I’d be eating Wheetos and full fat milk for breakfast lunch and dinner, and probably wearing football socks and Converse at the gym to go with my no-gains philosophy.

As some of Dorian Yates’ products state: “Tastes like shit – but it works”.

Ingredients

As with all the MaxiNutrition products I’ve tried, the ingredients in this stack are top notch.

They’re derived from whey protein isolates and hydrolysates and include extra glutamine, creatine and HMB, meaning you are consuming products that contain ingredients backed by scientific research that work.

MaxiNutrition don’t really jump on the bandwagon when it comes to new products, evident by the fact they still don’t have a pre-workout supplement, and this is reflected in most of the ingredients their products contain.

But like I said before in my Promax review: you pay for what you get.

Yes the Cyclone stack contains high quality ingredients, but they are also really bloody expensive.

There is also a high amount of sugar in these products – especially the almost 20 grams of sugar in the Cyclone shake.

But if you’re bulking, you can use this to your advantage.

Taken post workout or at a longer period of time between meals, the insulin spike from the sugar can contribute to ideal muscle protein synthesis, particularly with the optimal leucine content of the products, which will maximise muscle growth as suggested by a shit ton of research.

Effectiveness/results

My biceps when I started this experiment were 36.8cm.

Now I’ve finished they are 38cm – which is a growth of 1.2cm in 3 weeks.

It should be noted that I measured them at the peak of the bicep and in the same place on my triceps each time, and it was first thing in the morning to avoid extra size through diet intake during the day (extra water, glycogen etc stored in the muscles).

You know what?

I’m pretty damn pleased with this result.

It’s particularly pleasing as I’ve been training for a few years now, and it becomes very easy to ‘stagnate’ with progress, often due to diet, and my arms are definitely one of the areas that have been harder to grow.

Taking this product and upping my calories, as well as the extra sugar post workout and protein in general, really worked.

So, for effectiveness, yes, this product is effective.

You heard it here, from the professional broscience labs at Gymtalk!

Summary

The Cyclone products from MaxiNutrition are ideal for guys looking to put on lean mass without adding too many calories, and the Cyclone Milk is delicious and extremely convenient.

In this test the products were certainly proven to ‘work’ but at the same time they are very expensive.

And of course you still have to put in the graft, so don’t expect to just take these and see mad gains.

You have to earn that through a solid diet and hard training.

Buy MaxiNutrition Cyclone

You can order these Cyclone supplements by shopping here at the Maxinutrition website.

Don’t forget to use a Maximuscle discount code when ordering to save yourself a bit of cash.

You can also sometimes land a bargain on MaxiNutrition supplements by shopping here at Amazon.co.uk.

Over to you

Have you tried any of these Cyclone supplements?

Thinking of giving them a go?

Any questions or thoughts?

Hit us up with a comment below!