Jump Squats 80% Type-II Fiber Activity, Cold Thermogenesis Better Fasted, Tuned Swiss Ball Crunch, 5-HTP vs. Asthma, HIIT Before Strength & High vs. Low GI Meal Pre Workout

Image 1: Few of the things the average trainee does in places that call themselves "fitness studios" has little to do have will actually promote fitness, as in being athletic. "Mr. check out my biceps", for example would be similarly lost ding this as the sedentary computer nerd "Mr. biceps" loves to laugh about.

I know from time to time I am not 100% in time when it comes to delivering promised articles, but after an exhaustingly hot day, I am pretty much in-time with the 2nd installment of "On Short Notice" for today and the third for this weekend. Since I felt that it looked awkward to have three posts with the "On Short Notice" in front posted one after the other, I did however decide to ditch that (at least for today) and get straight down to ... well, "business" with posts on the revealing type II fiber specific muscle-damage from jump squats, the reason why you better sit in your ice-tub fasted if you want to practice cold thermogenesis, the superiority of Swiss Ball Crunches with resistance bands over the classic ab machine, the surprising anti-asthmatic effects of super high doses of 5-HTP, the way women benefit equally from a progressive strength training regimen with or without HIIT or steady state cardio before the strength workout, and, lastly, the futility of fretting about the acute effects of high vs. low GI meals before a workout and how that relates to childhood obesity. And while I do, believe it or not, have material for at least another episode, I am not going to bore you with even more short news pieces for this weekend. Don't worry ;-)

• Plyometrics for type II muscle fiber(-damage) It probably depends on your individual take on the usefulness of muscle damage, if the headline to this "On Short Notice" got you excited about plyometric training or not. When I am now telling you that the participants in the recently conducted trial by Macaluso et al. were previously untrained (N=8; age = 22 ± 1 years, height = 179.2 ± 6.4 cm, weight = 78.9 ± 5.9 kg) and the creatine kinase levels (a marker of muscle damage and the subsequent leakage of the creatine kinase enzyme into the blood) peaked at only 529.0 ± 317.8 U/L (that's high, but way below the 1,000er range you often see in untrained subjects after nothing but a couple of eccentric biceps curls being performed to failure) after the exercise intervention, I'd guess that most of you will appreciate that the researchers observed significantly more severely damaged type II than type I fibers (on average 85% vs. 27% of the respective fiber type).

  

  Image 2: The effect of plyomtetrics on your fitness & physique is still  underrated by the most fitness enthusiasts; and that despite the facts that plyos are the bread and butter of many athletes whose physical feats they are admiring.

  If we now make the reasonable assumption that the ~60% higher rate of muscle damage in both the glycolytic and oxidative subtypes of the type II fibers was indicative of the fact that they were the ones which shouldered the main workload of the 10 x 10 jump squat regimen the young men had to perform, this is unquestionable good news for everyone trying to get big and buffed. After all, these fibers, which are also known as type IIa (86% severely damaged) and type IIx fibers (84.% severely damaged vs. just 27% of type I fibers), are the ones that allow bodybuilders to get lean and muscular - not just one or the other... if that got you intrigued about what plyometrics are and if there is more research on it, I suggest you take a(nother) look at my previous posts on "ploys", such as "Building the Jack-of-All-Traits Legs Workout With Squats, Jump Squats and Body Weight Plyometrics?" or even the "Turbo-Fire vs. Insanity ShootOut" from one of the previous installments of "On Short Notice".
• Cold thermogenesis is not for everyone, but if it works for you, better do it fasted! That the amount and in many cases even the presence of the metabolically active brown adipose tissue and with it the thermogenic response to cold exposure is a very individual thing, is something you, as a diligent SuppVersity student will be aware of after all you have already read my previous post of the matter (cf. "Cold Thermogenesis vs. Ephedra").

  

  Figure 1: Cold thermogenesis in postprandial (PP) vs. fasted state (FF); dark areas indicate high 18F-FDG uptake (=high metabolic activity; Vrieze. 2013)

  Since there are still way too many people who actually seem to believe that sitting in a cold bathtub for a couple of minutes everyday would be all it takes to get you ripped and jacked, I thought it prudent to give them the chance to make it actually work and advice them to do it fasted! According to a recently published study from the Department of Internal Medicine at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands (Vrieze. 2013), the metabolic activity of the brown fat in all 6/10 of the 10 healthy, lean male volunteers (18-32 y; body mass index, 20-24 kg/m²) who participated in the study was about twice as high when they sat in a room which was cooled down to 16-18°C for 2h fasted (13.1 g/mL glucose uptake) vs. in the postprandial state (6.8 g/mL).
  Aside from the usual non-responders (40%) and the huge heterogenity with respect to the thermogenic response (6.1 - 27.6g/L), which are typical for these experiments there is a similarly large intra-individual difference with respect to the increase in BAT activity in the fasted state with the highest responder going from 11g/L in the post-prandial to 27.6g/L in the fasted state and the "fasting non responder" with a statistically non-existent (the term "non-significant" would not be bold enough ;-) "increase" in cold induced thermogenesis from 5g/L to 6g/L.

• 

  Video 1 (askthetrainer.com): The Swiss ball crunch with resistance bands takes some "tweaking" to be done correctly. After all you usually don't have the equipment set up in the way you would need it at your gym (click image to watch).

  Swiss ball crunch with resistance bands effective and saver than ab machine While I am not sure how "effective" the ab-machine in the study by Sundstrup et al. actually was, I can tell you that done with resistance bands the allegedly hilariously looking swiss ball crunch is not just at least as effective in recruiting the musculature of the rectus abdominus (104±3.8 vs 84±3.8% nEMG, respectively) as one of those machines, where your legs are locked in a way that the rectus femoris will do take do way too much of the work (2x more activity than in the swiss ball crunch with resistance bands) and you thus set yourself up for future lower back (=lumbar pain).
  Against that background and in view of the fact that Sundstrup et al. found that "both men and women, younger and elderly, and individuals with and without pain benefitted equally from the exercises" (Sundstrup. 2013), it is probably well worth taking the 2-3 min to get the equipment in position and do 3-4 sets of this unquestionably unconventional exercise (check out the SuppVersity EMG Series and my post on "Integrated Core Exercises For 6-Pack Abs" for additional ab exercises).
• 

  A couple of statistics on the current asthma rates in the US
  

  • asthmatic adults: 18.7 million (8.2%)
  • asthmatic children: 7.0 million (9.4%)

  In 2010, most U.S. children aged 17 years and under had excellent or very good health (82%). However, 8% of children had no health insurance coverage, and 5% of children had no usual place of health care. Seven percent of children had unmet dental need because their families could not afford dental care. Fourteen percent of children had ever been diagnosed with asthma. An estimated 8% of children aged 3–17 years had a learning disability, and an estimated 8% of children had ADHD. (Bloom. 2011; based on data from 2010)
  5-HTP switches allergic asthma off No good news for the average Olympian athlete who would then lose his script for his beta-agonists (clenbuterol & co, see also SuppVersity Facebook news from Aug 01, 2013), but probably something those of you who suffer from allergic rhinitis or full-blown asthma will appreciate: The administration of 5-hydroxy-tryptophan an orally available precursor to serotonin over the course of  led to a profound reduction (70-90%!) reduction in allergic lung inflammation in a rodent model (Abdala-Valencia. 2013). While the supplement left all sorts of side-effect related parameters unchanged and did not lead to weight gain, which is an often touted side effect of SSRIs - mostly unjustly, by the way! - the hilariously high dosage of 5mg 5-HTP per kg body weight the rodents received did reduce the allergen-induced transglutaminase 2 (TG2) expression, the migration of immune cells into the lung tissue, the local synthesis of serotonin and the subsequent serotonylation of proteins (serotonin conjugation of proteins) which is a key feature of allergic asthma.
  Regardless of the fact that Abdala-Valencia explicitly point out that these effects "occured without systemic increases in serotonin" (Abdala-Valencia. 2013), which could have led to vasoconstriction and other negative side-effects, I strongly caution against the ingestion of a whole bottle of 5-HTP tabs per day... when the researchers from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine publish a follow up study on humans, I'll let you know, though - in view of the ever-increasing asthma (see infobox on the right) research in this area could not just offer a valuable new treatment strategy, but also insights into the underlying reasons of this epidemic.
• Young women can combine strength training with either steady state or HIIT and still make progress - Somewhat related to my post earlier this week on doing cardio before instead of after your strength workout are the results of a recent study by Silva et al. who found that young women (age ~23y) make identical strength gains, regardless of whether and which type (HIIT sprinting or steady state cardio on the cycle ergometer or classic jogging) they perform before with their twice a week full-body training (Silva. 2013). Just as in the Di Blasio study, the "cardio" sessions, which were performed in a 1 min all-out vs. 1 min active recovery (HIIT) or 95% of the ventilatory threshold (SST) fashion for 20-30min (progressing from 20-30 over the course of the 11 weeks), were performed before the weight training (note: changes in body composition were not evaluated in detail, but I would be very surprised, if the concomitant training regimen, and in that specifically the HIIT protocol, did not outperform the resistance training only protocol in this respect).

  

  Image 3 (rippedfitness.com): You will certainly remember Wednesday's news on doing cardio before weights, well, here you have more evidence that even doing 20-30 min of HIIT won't hamper the gains of fit female beginners on a twice a week full-body regimen with built-in progression regimen - neither will steady state cardio "in the zone", by the way.

  If you are a young, fit woman (or man) without years of competitive athletics under your belt and don't train all too often (~2-3 times per week), it does thus obviously not harm your strength gains on a classic strength training program with built in linear progression from 15-18RM to 8-10RM, if you concomitantly work on your conditioning - whether the results would be identical if the subjects were not just fit and healthy but had been training for years and were working out 5x instead of 2x a week, is yet questionable. On the other hand, it is very unlikely that seasoned athletes (and this goes out to the gentlemen, in particular) will lose muscle and ruin their strength gains, whenever they move further than the bench to the squat rack - it's all a matter of total volume and running out of puff due to bad conditioning can just as well keep you from pulling those additional 10kg off the floor as the exhaustion from doing too much cardio.
  This, by the way, brings me back to the notion of "fitness" vs. "being fit", I alluded to in the caption of image 1, already: If you want to exploit the 100 year credit your genes have granted you (see "Exercise for Life Extension" in today's first installment of "On Short Notice"), you better focus on "being fit". Try different things and don't get stuck in a rut.
• High GI, low GI, ... f*** GI! When you, a healthy, more or less well-conditioned individual are about to engage in a high intensity exercise protocol that simulates a football match (bouts of walking (31-39 s), jogging (41-46 s), cruising (41-45 s), sprinting (16-21 s) and standing), it make absolutely no difference whether you ingest a high (=80) or low (=44) pre-workout meal (total energy=377 kcal; CHO=79 g; Fat=3 g; Protein=13 g) 3.5h before your workout (Hulton. 2013).

  

  Image 4: Add Lucozade + Akash rice for high GI (80) or apple juice and basmati for low GI (44) and you have two isocaloric test pre-workout meals

  That's at least what the results of a recent study by Hulton et al. which did not find any differences in blood glucose, fatty acids (FA), glycerol, β-hydroxybutyrate, lactate and insulin (assessed before, during, and after the exercise bout), rates of CHO and fat oxidation (determined at 4 time points during the protocol) or 1 km time trial performance. It should be mentioned, though, that this was not a liquid meal, but consisted of either Lucozade + akash rice (high GI) or apple juice + basmati rice (low GI) with an identical chicken breast + tomato sauce "base" and identical macro-nutrient and calorie content.
  That the long-term consequences on your body composition may still be different is a different cattle of fish though and how "beneficial" liquid sugar, ah... I mean energy drinks, such as Lucozade are is something at least those of you who read my "Fat Content Per Energy Drink 0g, Body Fat Gain Per Energy Drink 18g!" post from June 30, 2013. Whether apple juice is much better is still debatable, though. Wojcicki & Heyman, for example, argue (finally, as I would like to add) in their latest paper that "excessive fruit juice consumption is associated with increased risk for obesity" and the ingestion of "sucrose [...]without the corresponding fiber, as is commonly present in fruit juice, is associated with the metabolic syndrome, liver injury, and obesity". Reason enough for the two pediatrics from the University of California to recommend that the "US Department of Agriculture's Child and Adult Food Care Program, which manages the meal patterns in childcare centers such as Head Start, promote the elimination of fruit juice in favor of whole fruit for children." (Wojcicki. 2013)

Before I eventually call it a week, I would like to remind everyone of the daily mini-news on the SuppVersity Facebook wall. Only few of them will also make it into the "On Short Notice" column (actually the "Exercise for Life Extension" in today's first installment was an exception), so that even the few of you who don't suffer acute short news withdrawal symptoms, may want to stop by from time to time ;-)

References

• Abdala-Valencia H, Berdnikovs S, McCary CA, Urick D, Mahadevia R, Marchese ME, Swartz K, Wright L, Mutlu GM, Cook-Mills JM. Inhibition of Allergic Inflammation  by Supplementation with 5-hydroxytryptophan. Am J Physiol Lung Cell Mol Physiol. 2013 Jul 27.  
• Bloom B, Cohen RA, Freeman G. Division of Health Interview Statistics Summary Health Statistics for U.S. Children: National Health Interview Survey, 2010. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics. Hyattsville, Maryland December 2011. DHHS Publication No. (PHS) 2013–1578.
• Hulton AT, Gregson W, Maclaren D, Doran DA. Effects of GI Meals on Intermittent Exercise. Int J Sports Med. 2013 Jun 15.
• Macaluso F, Isaacs AW, Myburgh KH. Preferential Type II Muscle Fiber Damage From Plyometric Exercise. J Athl Train. 2013;47(4):414-20.
• Silva RF, Cadore EL, Kothe G, Guedes M, Alberton CL, Pinto SS, Pinto RS, Trindade G, Kruel LF. Concurrent training with different aerobic exercises. Int J Sports Med. 2013 Aug;33(8):627-34. Epub 2013 May 4.
• Sundstrup E, Jakobsen MD, Andersen CH, Jay K, Andersen LL. Swiss ball abdominal crunch with added elastic resistance is an effective alternative to training machines. Int J Sports Phys Ther. 2013 Aug;7(4):372-80.
• Vrieze A, Schopman JE, Admiraal WM, Soeters MR, Nieuwdorp M, Verberne HJ, Holleman F. Fasting and Postprandial Activity of Brown Adipose Tissue in Healthy Men. J Nucl Med. 2013 Jul 31. 
• Wojcicki JM, Heyman MB. Reducing childhood obesity by eliminating 100% fruit juice. Am J Public Health. 2013 Sep;102(9):1630-3. Epub 2013 Jul 19.

Before, After or In-Between? Study Puts Another '?' Behind the Widely Accepted 'Cardio After Weights' Paradigm.

Image 1 (rippedfitness.com): As of late everyone picks on gals who believe they would get bulky, when they train with weights... I wonder, when people finally start picking on big, but chubby guys who still try to justify their laziness with the "conditioning work induces muscle loss" myth, when they are guzzling their sugary weight gainers.

I know that I am probably one of the few people with a bias towards lifting weight and high intensity interval training who does not discard the merits of steady state aerobics (LISS) as a third pillar of the exercise part of physical culture. In that I am however well aware that we all have only so much time to spare for exercise - although I believe each and everyone of us would be able to carve out another hour everyday, if we just streamlined our schedules and threw out some useless Internet surfing or TV watching, but this is another issue... it may thus be necessary or at least desirable for many of us, if we could combine strength and LISS sessions into a single session. Personally, I have been doing that for years and after some initial experimentation I have, for the most time, relied on the broscientific recommendation to do LISS after workouts (when I could not do it separately).

Cardio? Ok... but when? Before, after or in-between?

The recent publication of a study on the post-exercise response to concurrent endurance and resistance training published in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine does yet make me question if there may not be better ways to combine weight lifting and light intensity steady state cardio training. To elicit whether you'd better walk on the treadmill at 60% of your HRmax before or after your weight lifting workout and whether there may not be an even better third protocol that would involve jumping back ond forth from the treadmill to the bench Andrea Di Blasio and her colleagues from the G. d’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara in Italy recruited 13 young previously untrained women (mean age 24.40y; BMI 21.28 kg/m²).

Figure 1: Outline of the 3 training protocols that were performed by all subjects (Di Blasio. 2013)

On three different occasions, each of the participants, who underwent an extensive initial fitness test and had been required to follow identical nutrition protocols before each of the three testing sessions, performed all three of the endurance / resistance training protocols, i.e.

• ERT - 30 min endurance training, first + 3x resistance training circuit*, 2nd
• RET - 3x resistance training circuit, first + 30min endurance training, 2nd
• AERT - [10min endurance training + 1x resistance training circuit] x3

note: the circuit training was performed in sissy mode, i.e. at 55% of the 1RM because "it allows working for 30-second consecutively" (Di Blasio. 2013)

...in random order. Resting energy expenditure, VO2, ventialtion, respiratory frequency, proportion of oxygen in the expired air were collected for 30 minutes via continuous indirect calorimetry (FitMate Pro, Cosmed, Roma, Italy) with the subjects in total rest and in a reclined position in a standardized and quiet room (please keep that in mind! We are NOT looking at intra-exercise energy expenditure, but what happens, when you head home or shower!) according to a standardized experimentally validated protocol (Compher. 2006).

Conventional wisdom fails, both alternatives useful - pick whatever suits your goals

The results, of this trial were - to say the least - more than surprising. Or ... well, honestly they were not. If you take a closer look at the plotted data in figure 2, you will realize that the RPE value, i.e. the rate of perceived exertion, Di Blasio et al. had elucidated visual analogue scale questionnaires, as well as the cardiovascular turned out to be the crucial parameters:

Figure 2: Resting energy expenditure (total and rel. to RPE, left) and changes in oxgyen consumption (VO2), ventilation and oxygen fraction in exhaled air relative to mean changes after ERT, RET and AERT training (based on Di Blasio. 2013)

Interestingly, the long-stading"resistance training first" principle (RET) turned out to be the least useful protocol current experimental setting (see implications, below). Rather, the study found

"[...] that AERT, compared with the other protocols, induced a higher metabolic rate by in- creasing EE, VO2, Ve and RPE during recovery from training, and independently of their pre-test values." (Di Blasio. 2013)

This is an interesting result, because it suggests that the hitherto certainly unappreciated alternation of strength and LISS training within one exercise session appears to elicit those post-exercise increases in EE, VO2 and ventilation, that are necessary to support the re-synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) / creatine phosphate (PCr), to replenish glycogen and oxygen stores, to propel lactate removal and circulation (Børsheim. 2003).

It stands do reason that all these processes are energy intensive. To (1) quantify all of them in kcal (I wonder how long you could survive if you ate kcal instead of foods and how your mitochondria would function if they burned kcal instead of nutrients) and (2) subsume them under the misleading term  "excess post-exercise oxygen consumption" (EPOC) and judge the "optimal" training regimen by its effect on EPOC is yet short-sighted, not just because "EPOC comprises only 6-15% of the net total oxygen cost of the exercise" (LaForgia. 2006), but also because this practice implies that the total or relative (as fat) amount of energy you expend in the immediate vicinity of  a workout was the main determinant of its effects on your metabolic health and physique.

F*** EPOC, the fat burning zone and the calories in vs. calories out hypothesis!

Figure 3: Figure 3: Changes of key enzymes envolved in the phosphorylation of key enzymes in the protein synthetic cascade in response to endurance (E) and combined endurance and resistance (E+R) training (calculated based on Sahlin. 2011; originally posted in "Resistance After Endurance Training Increases Mitochondrial Biogenesis & Protein Synthesis and Ramps Up Fat Metabolism").

That the results of the study at hand do yet still speak in favor of the mixed-mode AERT protocol - at least as long as your main intention is to perform a relatively light full-body conditioning workout at least 3x times a week - is thus not that it yielded the highest post-exercise energy expenditure, but that it did that at the (relatively) lowest rate of perceived exertion (see figure 2, left) and provided the greatest VO2 stimulus to initiate those beneficial metabolic adaptation which won't just reduce the huffing and puffing on subsequent training sessions, but will also help you build a bigger metabolic engine, that's going to keep you lean and help you shed more fat in the future. Apropos "metabolic engine", those of you who have been around for more than a couple of weeks, should actually remember my a post from November 15, 2011, in which I already discussed that adding strength to endurance training can turn even a 60-min cycling workout into a tree-trunk leg builder (see figure 3).

In conjunction with the study at hand, which is the first I know of that compared "cardio first", "cardio second" and "cardio in-between", directly, the results of the 2011 Sahlin study, which employed a true hypertrophy specific pyramid-style leg training after 60min of cycling (without a "hypertrophy first" control, though) do suggest that it may be about time to re-evaluate the bro-scientific standard protocol of "strength, first", "cardio, second" without the long overcome mantra of "you got to work out in the fat burning zone" in the back of your head.

Interestingly, enough, Yardley et al. have only recently reported that "doing cardio first" can make type I diabetics go hypo (Yardley. 2013). Though this may sound scary at first, it would suggest that, in healthy people, the expression of the energy sensor AMPK, as well as the the mitochondria building, fat browning protein PGC-alpha (cf. "If a High Fat Diet was a Pill, the Lay Press Would Celebrate it as Exercise in a Pill!") is probably higher and all the beneficial downstream effects on metabolic health and body composition more pronounced (as always you can of course also argue otherwise - if you want to get hightened leptin levels down, you'd better do it the exact other way around; cf. "Greater Reduction in Leptin With Cardio After Weights").

Suggestion for combining strength and cardio training in one session for,...

• strength - 15 min LISS before*
• hypertrophy - max. 25 min LISS before*
• fat loss (classic) - max. 40min LISS before
• fat loss (alternative) - 10min HIIT + 5min LISS + body part 1, 10min HIIT + 5min LISS + body part 2

* if you feel like it add a 10min HIIT session to the end

You may certainly argue that you would gain more strength without doing any cardio... still, the average O-lifting heavy weight look is probably not what many of you are training for, right? And when you think about it from a physiological perspective it would only appear logical that you better do your cardio first, lift second and add a ~5min cool-down to leave the gym before your protein synthesis peaks / begins to decline, than experience just that during a 45min LISS session after your workouts.

In this respect, even the "equipment hopping" of the AERT sessions, may have it's merit for advanced trainees. While it may certainly not be optimal to "bulk", switching back and forth from cardio to strength training could be a viable alternative for people whose main goal is to maintain the muscle mass while improving their conditioning - particularly when it is combined with short HIIT sessions 5-10min, followed by a short cool-down done twice before say chest and arms (e.g. HIIT > Chest > HIIT > Arms).

References:

• Børsheim E, Bahr R. Effect of exercise intensity, duration and mode on post-exercise oxygen consumption. Sports Med. 2003;33(14):1037-60.
• Compher C, Frankenfield D, Keim N, Roth-Yousey L; Evidence Analysis Working Group. Best practice methods to apply to measurement of resting metabolic rate in adults: a systematic review. J Am Diet Assoc. 2006 Jun;106(6):881-903.
• Di Blasio A, Gemello E, Di Iorio A, Di Giacinto G, Celso T, Di Renzo D, Sablone A., Ripari P. Order effects of concurrent endurance and resistance training on post-exercise response of non-trained women. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine. 2013 Aug; 11:393-39.
• LaForgia J, Withers RT, Gore CJ. Effects of exercise intensity and duration on the excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. J Sports Sci. 2006 Dec;24(12):1247-64. 

Exercise Science - True of False? Large Muscles First for Growth? Cooling Works Before & After Workouts? Senior Olympians Have Healthy Bones? Hypoxia + HIT = WIN?

I know it's difficult to resist guys, but first things first: Study confirms, you better train the large muscle groups of the upper body first, before you go progress to what many of you probably love the most... no, not what you think now, I am talking about training arms ;-)

I know that you probably think that I had forgotten about the exercise science quickie I announced in Saturday's installment of On Short Notice. Today's SuppVersity article is written proof that this is not the case. With topics that range from the redundancy of hypoxia training and intense workouts and the beneficial effects of training the large muscle groups first in your workout to the usefulness of the internal and external application of cold water and other stuff before and after workouts to elicit performance gains and speed up recovery and the unique benefits only heavy resistance training has to offer to elderly bones, I'd hope that everybody will find at least one item he / she is interested in.

And in the fortunate case that you know all the "right" to the true or false", already, you may want to pick up a couple of recent SuppVersity Facebook news to satisfy your cravings.

Adding hypoxia on top of already intense workout is probably useless

(Holis. 2013) -- No further improvement if intensity is already high!? Yep, that's at least what a recently published study by scientists from the University of Exeter would suggest. The researchers subjected 9 physically-active male participants to three weeks of intensive single-leg knee-extensor exercise training.

Erratum: Other than I initially wrote the study used identical training sessions for both legs with the sole difference being that one was trained under hypoxic and the other under normal oxygen conditions for 25 minutes (no cuffs here, thx David for the heads-up!).

Suggested read: A brief summary of a summary o the current state of the art as far as blood flow restricted (BFR) / Kaatsu training is concerned (read it).

When they evaluated the results, Holis et al. found that neither the most straight forward parameter, namely the time-to-exhaustion during incremental exercise nor the changes in muscle metabolite concentrations during the workout were significantly different between the leg that was trained under normal and that which was trained under hypoxic conditions. Now this does not necessarily mean that there may not be minimal or other benefits you could derive in the long run (I am thinking about mitochondrial biogenesis) by making an already intense routine even more intense by training under hypoxic conditions. However, if there was such an effect, it is  probably going to be minuscule and certainly not something anyone, but an Olympic athlete would benefit from.

Large muscle groups first! Common BB-wisdom confirmed once again

(Simã. 2013) -- You've certainly heard about the "growth promoting effects" of squats, deadlifts etc., right? Of course you have! And as a diligent student of the SuppVersity you will also be aware that this growth promoting effect is supposed to be the result of the workout induced endocrine response.

Want another Exercise Science Quickie? What about news on light training with high TUTs, the HIIT vs. Liss Formula for more T, DHT & cortisol and the effects your left leg has on your right one (learn about all).
.

"The results indicate that the GH concentration increased after both sessions, but the increase was significantly greater (p < 0.05) after the sequence in which larger muscle-group exercises were performed prior to the smaller muscle-group exercises. No differences were observed between sessions for TT [total testosterone], FT [free testosterone], SHBG [sex hormone binding globulin], C [cortisol], or the T/C [testosterone / cortisol] ratio at baseline or immediately after resistance exercise. These results indicate that performing larger muscle-group exercises first in an upper-body resistance-exercise session leads to a significantly greater GH response." (Simã. 2013)

Don't worry I am not going to discuss for the 1003rd time, whether the absence of any hormonal difference outside of the increased growth hormone response is good or bad for your gain. I just want your to memorize that the GH response corresponds with the workout volume, which was significantly higher, when the 20 male subjects trained the large muscle groups of the upper body before the smaller ones. So even if it was only a question of workout economy, the longstanding rule of thumb to train large muscle groups first would obviously still have its place in today's in parts sometimes ueber-scientificated workout planning.

Competitive sports is not a good means to protect your bone mineral density

(McCory. 2013) -- According to the latest study from the University of Pittsburgh Clinical and Translational Research Center old the mere participation in regular (intense), bot not strength specific physical activity alone does not offer any protective effect against age induced bone loss.

"Our results imply that participation in highly competitive senior athletics does not have a protective effect on BMD, perhaps because of a lower bodyweight or other confounding factors." (McCory. 2013)

Among the parameters which did apparently figure were (you guessed it) bodyweight, and calcium and vitamin D intake. The higher those three parameters were the better the bone mineral density.  Plus: The knee extension peak torque explained another 3.4% of the variance, but only in the hips.

Taking calcium supplement has been associated w/ prostate cancer and CVD in some, but not all studies (Baron. 2005; Spence 2013) With up to 14x elevated lead levels in some OTC calcium supplements the differences may well depend on whether you pick the wrong one (learn more).

That being said I personally believe we'd have seen very different study outcomes if the researchers had not made the common mistake of confusing "sports" with endurance exercise and would thus not have narrow-mindedly focused on those participants of the "Senior Olympics", who competed in running events longer than 400 m (n = 44; 28 males, 16 females), cycling events longer than 5K (n = 17; 11 males and 6 females), and any swimming event (n = 43; 25 males and 18 females). After all, a very recent study from the Catholic University of San Antonio did just confirm that high resistance circuit training (HRC) and heavy strength training can improve the bone mineral density in an elderly population (Romero. 2013).  And what's more, the high resistance had the added benefit of inducing significant improvements in body composition in the thirty-seven healthy men and women (61.6±5.3years) who participated in the randomized trial.

Is cooling a useful tool for performance recovery?

(Poppendieck. 2013) -- According to the latest review by scientists from the University of Saarbrücken, Germany, "the average effects of cooling on recovery of trained athletes were rather small (2.4%, g=0.28)" (Poppendieck. 2013) With a peak in performance increase roughly 4-days after the initially exercise bout and the greatest benefit being observed with endurance athletes, it does also look as if there were particular subgroups of athletes who'd benefit most: Those expose their bodies to several high intensity stimuli within a relatively short timespan, namely.

What about pre-cooling, then? With average performance increases of +8.6%, +6.0% and +4.2% endurance athletes performing open-end tests, graded exercise tests and time trials are the ones who benefit most. Similar effect was observed for intermittent sprints (+3.3%, g = 0.43), whereas performance changes were smaller during short-term, high-intensity sprints (−0.5%, g = 0.03). Across all sports included in the most recent review of the literature (Wegman. 2013), cooling the musculature before a training session will have a larger effect on performance in hot (+6.6%, g=0.62) than in moderate temperatures (+1.4%, g = 0.004).

The most promising cooling methods were cold drinks (+15.0%, g= 1.68), cooling packs (+5.6%, g = 0.70) and a cooled room (+10.7%, g = 0.49), whereas a cooling vest (+4.8%, g = 0.31) and water application (+1.2%, g = 0.21) showed only small effects. Regardless of the method, the best trained subjects (highest VO2Max) saw the greatest benefits.

For those who want to try it and don't have access to a cryotherapy chamber (effect +3.8%), I'd recommend to go "hard core" and do - irrespective of which muscle group you may have been training - a full-body water immersion. The latter has been shown to be 70% more effective than water immersion of individual body parts. The use of icepacks, on the other hand, will rather compromise than promote recovery (-1.4%).

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Two bad, one good news: The first bad news is that this was it for today - at least if you don't count the facebook news that are already available, e.g.

• Black cohosh for breast cancer prevention? The jury is still out there (learn more)
• Adiponektin does not work in women? With a low type II fiber count and correspondingly lower receptor density it is at least not as effective as in men (learn more)
• Whole grains taste like sh*t? That's at least what the participants of a recent epidemiological study thing and probably also the reason they won't eat them (learn more)

as well as as those I am still going to post within what probably would count as "today" at least for some of you.

These pics are more than 2 weeks old and I can tell you that Adelfo's "anatomy chart" physique has kept improving ;-)

The 2nd bad news is that there won't be a SuppVersity Science Round-Up tomorrow. I had hoped that my voice would recover, but since it failed me several times in the cause of the day, I heavily doubt that you would understand anything I would be grunting into the phone, anyway.

But don't worry, there is also good news. Tomorrow is one of those "every other week" Thursday's where Adelfo Cerame is "in the house" and will (at least that was the pan last week) fill you in on the differences between the current and previous content preps... and I can assure you that's going to be a post even those who are not planning to compete will probably find very useful (I hope you read this Adelfo, 'cause I am just rising the bar, here ;-)

References:

• Baron JA, Beach M, Wallace K, Grau MV, Sandler RS, Mandel JS, Heber D, Greenberg ER. Risk of prostate cancer in a randomized clinical trial of calcium supplementation. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2005 Mar;14(3):586-9.
• Holliss BA, Fulford J, Vanhatalo A, Pedlar CR, Jones AM. Influence of intermittent hypoxic training on muscle energetics and exercise tolerance. J Appl Physiol. 2013 Jan 10. 
• McCrory JL, Salacinski AJ, Hunt Sellhorst SE, Greenspan SL. Competitive Athletic Participation, Thigh Muscle Strength, And Bone Density In Elite Senior Athletes And Controls. J Strength Cond Res. 2013 Feb 25. 
• Poppendieck W, Faude O, Wegmann M, Meyer T. Cooling and Performance Recovery of Trained Athletes - a Meta-Analytical Review. Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2013 Feb 02.
• Romero-Arenas S, Blazevich AJ, Martínez-Pascual M, Pérez-Gómez J, Luque AJ, López-Román FJ, Alcaraz PE. Effects of high-resistance circuit training in an elderly population. Exp Gerontol. 2013 Mar;48(3):334-40.
• Simão R, Leite RD, Speretta GF, Maior AS, de Salles BF, de Souza Junior TP, Vingren JL, Willardson JM. Influence of upper-body exercise order on hormonal responses in trained men. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2013 Feb;38(2):177-81.
• Spence LA, Weaver CM. Calcium intake, vascular calcification, and vascular disease. Nutr Rev. 2013 Jan;71(1):15-22.
• Wegmann M, Faude O, Poppendieck W, Hecksteden A, Fröhlich M, Meyer T. Pre-cooling and sports performance: a meta-analytical review. Sports Med. 2013 Jul 1;42(7):545-64.

Cardio First if You Want to Leave the Gym More "Anabolic" Than You Were When You Came in? Study Finds Higher Testosterone Levels & Identical Strength Performance

The "North American Wife Carrying Championship" is probably not what researchers are talking about when they talk about "concomitant exercise"... but when I come to think about it, I wonder what this does to the hormones of the carrier and the carried ;-)

Let me preface today's SuppVersity post with a reference to previous posts on exercise order and the statement that I don't believe this question is ever going to be settled. Let's take the greater leptin suppression in response to doing cardio first as an example (see "Cardio Before or After Weights?"). For someone with a <10% body fat level, this may in fact be a downside; after all, rock bottom leptin levels have also been implicated in the etiology of the Athlete Triad. For someone who has got quite a few pounds to lose before he or she can even claim having a flat tummy, on the other hand, there is hardly anything more beneficial than finally ridding him-/herself of chronic leptin overexpression and resistance.

Tell me who you are & I tell you how to train

Against that background, the first thing you should memorize about the recently published study by Cadore et al. from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Cadore. 2013) is the training status and physical fitness of the subjects, namely 19 young strength-trained men (mean 23.5 years), who were engaged in regular (4–6 times a week) and systematic training program for at least 3 months. Another important and significant information is the number of training sessions that were conducted. In this case of the 5 visits to the lab, the subjects trained on only two occasions, which means that they participated in both the

• 

  Table 1: Performance was identical regardless of the exercise order.

  strength training which lasted approximately 30 minutes and consisted of 3 sets of 8 repetitions at 75% of 1RM with 90 seconds of resting between bench press, squat, lat pull-down, and knee extensions (in the given order), and the 
• aerobic training, which was performed for 30 minutes on a cycle ergometer at 75% of maximal heart rate

... only twice: Once, doing strength first (ST-AE), once doing aerobics first (AE-ST). The outcomes were, as you may have expected not fundamentally different, which is probably not the not least because the workload was 100% identical:

Figure 1: Total testosterone (nmol/L) and cortisol (nmol/dl) response to cardio first  (AE-ST) or cardio post (ST-AE); mind the axes (Cardore. 2013)

Still the data in figure 1 clearly shows that there is a definitive effect on "anabolism", or I should say the mainstream understanding of "anabolism" with a continuous(!) increase in testosterone in the AE-ST (cardio firs) group and no significant differences in the cortisol response. If you calculate the C/T ratios at the given time points, a purported critical value, when you leave the gym would clearly speak in favor of the AE-ST regimen (see figure 2), but ...

• 

  Figure 2: Increases in cortisol (top) and testosterone (bottom) and respective increases in lean body mass in response to a 12-week hypertrophy oriented resistance training program (West. 2013); cortisol to testosterone pre, mid and post the two 2x30 min workouts in study at hand (bottom) data expressed relative to group basline (Cardore. 2013)

  increases in testosterone after a workout have never been shown to increase gains in the long term; in fact the only long-term study I know of (and I have cited 1000x, already) showed that rather than - allegedly free - testosterone, higher cortisol levels correlate with increases in lean body mass (LBM, cf. figure 2, top + middle)

• the study at hand does not allow any conclusions as far as the real world "anabolism" of the two protocols is concerned; with only one workout we would at least have had to have some protein uptake studies to make a prediction, but that was not part of the protocol

• the increase in total testosterone in the ST-AE group from mid to post-exercise can - as the researchers point out - also be precipitated by the increased receptor binding and not a decrease in secretion. I have written about that in a precious article ("Anabolic workouts revisited"). While long arduous strength workouts decrease the number of androgen receptors, short and hard workouts have been shown to increase the numbers of receptors and also that strength training bout stimulates the acute increases in AR content (Willoughby. 2004). Cardore et al. are yet right to point out that "this hypothesis should be considered with caution and remains speculative" (Cardore. 2013)

So what? Is this yet another nice study of which the researchers claim that its "results are important" (Cardore. 2013), while disqualifying this statement in the previous sentence in which they talk about the "relationship between acute hormonal responses and chronic neuromuscular adaptations to strength training" (no wonder they did no cite the Burd study ;-)? I guess if we went only with the data we, the answer must be yes.

Making HIIT a Hit: Long intervals for increases in VO2 max even in already trained athletes, short intervals for overall fitness and fat loss. Rings a bell? Yep, that was part of the recommendations in part II of the "Making HIIT a Hit" article on the SuppVersity. Now add the weight and some "regenerative" light intensity steady state aerobics and you are set up for a leaner physique and above all a longer, healthier life.

If Cardore et al. do a follow up study on the long-term, real-world effects I will of course inform you. In the meantime I'd personally suggest that you keep to <3 cardio sessions per week. If possible either on seperate days or maybe using an AM - PM system if you want to combine strength and cardio training. Moreover you better keep away from the debilitating long cardio workouts in the non-existent "fat burning zone" and either perform real low level cardio for 40-60min (like walking on an incline treadmill; cycling is even more muscle sparing) and/or high intensity interval training (HIIT; cf. "Making HIIT a Hit - Part I / Part II"). If your goal is to lean out maximally or to minimize fat gains on a bulk, you won't get along without some type of cardio - plus the obligatory dietary tweaks, of course. But couldn't that hamper your gains? Well, training "in the zone" certainly will a moderate amount of HIIT and LISS (very light) are yet not going to hurt. In fact, if you are in this for health, there is no question that you do both cardio and weights - not necessarily in one workout, though.

References:

• Cadore EL, Izquierdo M, Santos MG, Martins JB, Rodrigues Lhullier FL, Pinto RS, Silva RF, Kruel LF. Hormonal responses to concurrent strength and endurance training with different exercise orders. J Strength Cond Res. 2013 Dec;26(12):3281-8.
• West DW, Phillips SM. Associations of exercise-induced hormone profiles and gains in strength and hypertrophy in a large cohort after weight training. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2013 Jul;112(7):2693-702. 
• Willoughby, DS and Taylor, L. Effects of sequential bouts of resistance exercise on androgen receptor expression Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2004; 36:1499–1506.