Our Latest Thermo Matrix Review
Product Overview
Focus Performance Thermo Matrix is a combined weight loss and energy boosting supplement.
Focus Performance manufacture an entire range of sports supplements. What makes them stand out from their competitors is the fact that many of their supplements put an emphasis on “pure living”. They offer “grass fed whey” protein powder, and certified organic hemp protein powder. They also offer mutlivitamin stacks and “earth grown” green and red vegetable powders.
A company that puts such an effort into the quality of their products is always a good thing, regardless of whether or not you really care about organic food or whether your whey comes from a grass fed cow.
Thermo Matrix is designed with athletes and fitness fanatics in mind, as the formula is said to contain a blend of ingredients that contribute to heigthened focus and stamina while training.
This is really important. The presence of ingredients that help you maintain training intensity is what differentiates genuine fat burners from “diet pills”. If you’re reading this site, then you have no interest in the latter. Diet pills usually force the body to lose weight in an unhealthy, unsustainable manner, making you feel tired and eating into your existing muscle mass.
Fat burners are supposed to speed up fat loss while maximizing muscle mass retention. Well, that’s exactly what Focus Performance’s Thermo Matrix is supposed to do.
According to Focus Performance, Thermo Matrix can:
- Elevate your basal metabolic rate
- Burn fat even when at rest
- Heighten focus
- “Massively” increase energy
This is exactly the kind of thing we are looking for. No reference to “rapid weight loss”, but instead a focus on fat burning and increased energy levels.
But there’s one important question we need to ask: is it true? Can Thermo Matrix fat burner really do all of this? Will it help you shed fat quicker? Can it boost energy levels? Is there anything better out there?
Please read our Focus Performance Thermo Matrix review to find out.
Focus Performance Thermo Matrix Formula
The most important thing to look at when reviewing any fat burner is the formula itself.
We look for products that reveal their formula in its entirety on the label, giving us dose sizes for all ingredients, and no proprietary blends.
Some products can just about get away with proprietary blends, but this depends on all kinds of factors; total blend size, number of ingredients, what those ingredients are supposed to be dosed at, and so on.
Generally speaking, better fat burners will give you every ingredient’s serving size on the bottle or on the website. That’s what we see with Thermo Matrix as well.
Here’s a breakdown of the ingredients, their serving sizes, and what they do. We have worked in order, from best to worst:
Green Tea Extract (10:1 – 500mg)
If you’ve been looking into fat burners for a while, then you will no doubt have come across green tea extract several times.
We explain what this stuff does in more detail in our ingredient guide, but we’ll give you a quick overview here too.
Basically, green tea extract provides a number of substances that help us perform better and stay healthy, but from a fat loss perspective there’s one thing green tea extract gives us which we’re very interested in: a catechin called ECGC.
This stuff is known to rapidly increase fat loss. Researchers have observed this stuff working time and again in numerous clinical trials (e.g this one). Its potency is, in our opinion, remarkable.
Thermo Matrix’s 500mg is a very good serving size. It is more than you will get in a lot of fat burners, and it is more than enough to give you good results.
Green Coffee Bean Extract (40:1 – 20mg)
The more we learn about this ingredient, the more we like it.
Unlike many of the over-hyped but exotic sounding ingredients that are grabbing all the headlines at the minute (Garcinia Cambogia being a prime example), Green Coffee Bean Extract sounds much more mundane than it actually is.
Unlike the brown, roasted coffee beans you’re used to seeing, green, ‘raw’ coffee beans contain a special compound that has proven, potent fat burning properties. That compound is chlorogenic acid.
Studies are ongoing, but we think it’s fairly certain that chlorogenic acid helps you shed fat by reducing the insulin response to food consumption. This means that when you do eat, your body gives off less of the “store” signal, helping you avoid ‘bouncing back’ from a low-carb diet or a period of fasting.
Even though the concentration is quite high here, we don’t think 20mg is anywhere near enough of this brilliant ingredient.
Our current top rated fat burner contains many times more GCBE than this.
Caffeine Anhydrous (225mg)
Caffeine anhydrous should be in every high quality fat burner.
While it isn’t suitable for people highly sensitive to stimulants, we think that the “stimulant free” fat burners should remain the exception rather than the rule. Many more people can benefit enormously from taking caffeine than those who suffer from it.
Caffeine can be your best friend while you diet. Quite simply, caffeine keeps us awake and ready to kill it when we would otherwise be feeling tired and demotivated. We know that when we’re dieting hard, going to the gym and doing speed deadlifts is the last thing on our minds. Caffeine gives you the energy boost and the burst in concentration that you need to go in and get the work done.
Caffeine anhydrous is just caffeine without any water molecules attached, making it more potent and more efficient than regular caffeine by weight.
Capsicum Annum Extract (8:1 – 200mg)
This ingredient is usually listed under the name “chili extract”.
Chili extract is used to raise your body’s internal temperature. This forces the body to work harder to keep your body cool. Sweating doesn’t just happen; it requires energy expenditure, raising the amount of calories your body needs to burn, both at rest and during training.
This is what Thermo Matrix means by raising your Basal Metabolic Rate; by keeping your body dosed up with chili, you will burn more calories round the clock to try and get yourself back to normal temperature. It is the “thermo” in Thermo Matrix.
Again, we like to see this stuff in every serious fat burner, and 200mg is pretty much a perfect serving size.
Phenylalanine (25mg)
This is an amino acid that many people consume as part of their normal diet.
It is particularly abundant in cheese and meat, but it is found in other food stuffs as well.
Phenylalanine deficiency is linked to a number of conditions, such as confusion, memory problems, and decreased alertness.
For that reason, it is usually found in natural focus supplements and brain power boosters. We assume that this is also why it is in Thermo Matrix. Dieting means you aren’t getting everything you normally do from your diet, including micro-nutrients. A lack of phenylalanine causes decreased focus and motivation, so supplementing with it in small amounts might help prevent this from happening.
That said, if your diet is on point, it’s highly unlikely that you would become deficient in this amino acid.
Bitter Orange Peel (420mg)
Bitter orange peel is cropping up in every other fat burner stack these days, but we are yet to really be convinced of its effectiveness.
People claim that its active component, synephrine, is able to affect fat loss directly.
However, this effect has only been observed in isolated fat cells so far (at the time of writing). As more research becomes available, we may change our opinion.
But for now, we can’t say that this stuff is the potent fat loss aid it’s cracked up to be.
Thermo Matrix Side Effects
It’s worth taking a quick look at the directions for use and the warning label that Focus Performance have put on the Thermo Matrix purchasing page.
It’s always best to check the manufacturer’s instructions before you start taking a new supplement.
You probably won’t be used to ingesting such a large amount of caffeine in one go, so please do consult with your doctor before doing so. Even if you think you can handle it, the blend of ingredients may produce unexpected consequences!
That said, Focus Performance are clearly a reputable manufacturer. They are based in the UK, which has some very stringent heath and safety laws (putting the US to shame!), so we can be fairly certain that at the very least Thermo Matrix contains no hidden ingredients that can do us significant damage in the long run.
The fact that they produce a range of (apparently quite popular) supplements makes us feel even better still.
Focus Performance Thermo Matrix Review Conclusion
After doing a thorough Thermo Matrix review, we can say with confidence that this is not a bad fat burner at all.
It contains some superb ingredients that help speed up fat loss in different but complimentary ways.
The main ingredients are well dosed, and the extracts are standardized to ensure uniform quality in every bottle.
That said, a hefty chunk of this formula is dedicated to ingredients that don’t really need to be there: phenylalanine and bitter orange peel.
Many people think bitter orange peel (or more specifically synephrine) is an extraordinary fat burner. That’s up to them; as far as we’re concerned, unless we see hard evidence, we’re forced to conclude that the hype around synephrine is exactly that – hype.
So while this formula is good in so many ways, it could definitely be better.
If Focus Performance had cut the Bitter Orange Peel and opted for an appetite suppressant, like Glucomannan, then this could well have turned out to be one of our favorite fat burners.
You could do a lot worse than Thermo Matrix, but there are definitely better fat burners out there in our professional opinion.
Are you starting a serious cut and want something to give you a little more bang for your buck? Check out our current top rated fat burner. Our review team tried this product out and experienced:
- Decreased cravings
- More energy in the gym
- Rapid fat loss
Read our detailed review to see if this fat burner is what you've been looking for!