Conditioning Research

Comment - Well the research keeps on coming! This was just published in the Journal of Applied Physiology Improvement of _VO2 max; by cardiac output and oxygen extraction adaptation during intermittent versus continuous endurance training You really need to get the whole article but the researchers compared interval training with the same period of continuous training, so if someone did 20 mins of continuous training they had someone else do 4 sets of 1 hard minute and followed by 4 easier ones. They were looking at how the training affected the various systems - either making the heart itself more efficient, or making the muscles more efficient at getting oxygen out of the blood. They found that interval training improved both the heart and the muscles' efficiency. Anyway, an interesting thing that the researchers do not really make much of is that the interval training improved vo2 max 300% more than the continuous training! (a 34% increase for the intervals compared with ...

Comment - this one is pretty self explanatory. Another reason to ensure that you get enough antioxidants, preferably through your diet, but this is through supplements. Antioxidant diet supplementation enhances aerobic performance in amateur sportsmen. Aguiló A, Tauler P, Sureda A, Cases N, Tur J, Pons A. Department de Infermeria i Fisioterapia. The effects of antioxidant diet supplements on blood lactate concentration and on the aerobic and anaerobic thresholds and their adaptations to training were analysed. Fifteen amateur male athletes were randomly assigned to either a placebo group or an antioxidant-supplemented group (90 days supplementation with 500 mg . day(-1) of vitamin E and 30 mg . day(-1) of beta-carotene, and the last 15 days also with 1 g . day(-1) of vitamin C). Before and after the antioxidant supplements, the sportsmen performed a maximal exercise test on a cycle ergometer and maximal and submaximal physiological parameters were assessed together with blood lacta...

Comment - This is an interesting one. There is a good point that functional exercise - one that mimics real life movements / activities of daily life - are more effective than isolation resistance exercise. Well yeah, but I think the problem here is also that they picked a dodgy exercise - the leg extension. The article compares the effect of doing leg extensions with the effect of a "standing up" exercise. This is back to specificity again of course but I'd be interested to see what the result would have been if they used a squat or dead lift instead of the leg extension. The leg extension doesn't even use the muscles that you stand up with anyway - that is mostly glutes and hamstrings, only moderately involving the quads. Let's focus on the key thing though - do functional exercise! Sit-to-stand as home exercise for mobility-limited adults over 80 years of age GrandStand SystemTM may keep you standing? Rosie J, Taylor D. Health and Rehabilitation Resear...

Comment - An interesting study which shows some very interesting results form intermittent fasting of the warrior diet or fast5 style - one meal a day. Note the improved body composition - i.e., they lost fat. A controlled trial of reduced meal frequency without caloric restriction in healthy, normal-weight, middle-aged adults1,2,3 Kim S Stote, David J Baer, Karen Spears, David R Paul, G Keith Harris, William V Rumpler, Pilar Strycula, Samer S Najjar, Luigi Ferrucci, Donald K Ingram, Dan L Longo and Mark P Mattson 1 From the Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center, US Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Research Service, Beltsville, MD (KSS, DJB, KS, DRP, GKW, and WVR), and the Clinical Research Branch (PS and LF), and the Laboratories of Cardiovascular Science (SSN), Experimental Gerontology (DKI), Immunology (DLL), and Neurosciences (MPM), National Institute on Aging Intramural Research Program, Baltimore, MD Background :Although consumption of 3 meals/d is the most common ...

Comment - this one has been widely reported in the press The Guardian The Telegraph with headlines that diesel fumes lead to heart disease. Now this is interesting because you see people moving away again from a diet / heart hypothesis - which seems to be pretty dead anyway - they couldn't find the evidence that eating fat raised your "cholesterol". Anyway, what this points to again is the problems of inflammation and the need to ensure that you are living and eating in a way that minimises inflammation and oxidation. So we are talking about a low carb diet, antioxidants, intermittent fasting, exercise...... Air pollutant chemicals and oxidized lipids exhibit genome wide synergistic effects on endothelial cells Ke Wei Gong , Wei Zhao , Ning Li , Berenice Barajas , Michael Kleinman , Constantinos Sioutas , Steve Horvath , Aldons J Lusis , Andre E Nel and Jesus A Araujo Genome Biology 2007, 8:R149 doi:10.1186/gb-2007-8-7-r149 Published 26 July 2007 Abstract (prov...

Comment - while excercise is beneficial in may ways to health - e.g. promoting insulin sensitivity as mentioned a couple of posts ago or enhancing fat burning - too much exercise can be a problem. One of the principles of Art DeVany's theory is that of intermittency building on a power law model i.e., there is a lot of easy low intensity stuff plus some relatively infrequent high intensity exercise. High intensity exercise is important....but it shuouldn't be too frequent or there will be deleterious effects - in this case in terms of suppression of the immune system. Deleterious Effects of Short-Term High-Intensity Exercise on the Immune Function: Evidence from Leukocyte Mitochondrial Alternations and Apoptosis Ta-Chuan Tuan 1, Tai-Ger Hsu 2, Man-Cai Fong 1, Chen-Fu Hsu 3, Kelvin K. C. Tsai 1, Cheng-Yu Lee 1 and Chi-Woon Kong 3* 1 Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan 2 Institute of Sports Science, Taipei Physical Education College, Taiwan 3 Taipei Veterans General hos...

Comment - I like a nice curry....here is an article which suggests that a certain spice could help to reduce the inflammatory effects of exercise! Curcumin is contained in tumeric..which is in many curries. So if you are sore from too much eccentric exercise - then get that Bhuna ! INFLAMMATION AND CYTOKINES Curcumin effects on inflammation and performance recovery following eccentric exercise-induced muscle damage J. Mark Davis,1 E. Angela Murphy,1 Martin D. Carmichael,1 Mark R. Zielinski,1 Claire M. Groschwitz,1 Adrienne S. Brown,1 J. David Gangemi,3 Abdul Ghaffar,2 and Eugene P. Mayer2 1Division of Applied Physiology, Department of Exercise Science, Arnold School of Public Health and the 2Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine, University of South Carolina, Columbia; and 3Department of Microbiology and Molecular Medicine, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina Submitted 8 December 2006 ; accepted in final form 26 February 2007 Downhill runni...

Comment - There have been a few posts up here about the benefits of interval training over long distance / endurance training (or boring cardio). This one mentions the time efficiency of intervals. The interval group spent 2.5 hours training. The endurance group spent 10.5 hours training. They both got the same results....Intervals are efficient! 1 Exercise Metabolism Research Group, Department of Kinesiology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4K1, Canada 2 Departments of Pediatrics and Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, L8N 3Z5, Canada Brief, intense exercise training may induce metabolic and performance adaptations comparable to traditional endurance training. However, no study has directly compared these diverse training strategies in a standardized manner. We therefore examined changes in exercise capacity and molecular and cellular adaptations in skeletal muscle after low volume sprint-interval training (SIT) and high volume endurance training (ET). S...

UPDATE - MARCH 2008 - More recent fasting research is posted here Intermittent Fasting has been receiving a lot of interest lately from several quarters. There are different approaches to this, for example eating every other day or the practice of compressing the window of time during which you eat, for example through only eating between 5pm and 10pm. An accessible introduction to this approach is the free Fast 5 book which yo can download here. Animal models indicate that there are many benefits to be had from eating this way. Some of the researchers looking at how man eats "in the wild" also say that this is how we are supposed to eat. Check out Loren Cordain's analysis here . It is also the approach of the Warrior Diet and of Art Devany's thinking (although he would add a randomised element to the eating pattern) Anyway, the article below notes how this model of eating also reduces inflammation , something that we will see is a major problem and increasi...

Comment - There is a principle that is often referred to in training which is called "Specificity"- you get what you train for. One element of this is the so called SAID principle - Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands, i.e., the body will adapt in a highly specific way. To become better at squats, you must do squats. To become more explosive, you must train explosively. The body will adapt in a highly specific way to the workout routines it receives. This article below looks at how agility is related to strength. Strength is good. Power is good. But being string and powerful doesn't makes you more agile. To get that you need to train your agility too. EXERCISE PHYSIOLOGY AND BIOMECHANICS Original articles Poor relationship between strength and power qualities and agility performance Marcovic G. The Journal of Sport Medicine and Physical Fitness Year 2007 - Vol. 47 - N. 03 - September - pag. 276 Aim. Despite the important role of agility in successful performanc...

Comment - A couple of days ago I mentioned a post by Mike Boyle in which he promoted interval training to improve conditioning. Here is an abstract of an article which says that for the purposes of conditioning athletes, endurance training has a lot of disadvantages: inappropriate neuromuscular adaptations, a catabolic hormonal profile, an increased risk for overtraining and an ineffective motor learning environment. The mention of a catabolic hormone profile is interesting. We want to build muscle, not tear it down. Anyway, the prescription is to build fitness through means other than distance training. As Mark Sisson says: We all know that we need to exercise to be healthy. Unfortunately, the popular wisdom of the past 40 years – that we would all be better off doing 45 minutes to an hour a day of intense aerobic activity – has created a generation of overtrained, underfit, immune-compromised exerholics. Hate to say it, but we weren’t meant to aerobicize at the chronic and sus...

Comment - This is linked to the last one - a study that explains the physiologic benefits of diet and exercise with respect to insulin sensitivity. We need to increase our sensitivity ot low levels of insulin and we can do that through exercise. Reducing insulin signaling in the brain can prolong lifespan Study explains the physiologic benefits of diet and exercise One route to a long and healthy life may be establishing the right balance in insulin signaling between the brain and the rest of the body, according to new research from Children’s Hospital Boston. The study, published in the July 20 issue of Science, not only reinforces the value of exercising and eating in moderation, but also helps explain a paradox in longevity research. Insulin sends a vital signal throughout the body telling cells to use sugar from the blood. But when cells become less sensitive to insulin, which often happens as we age and gain weight, the body must make more insulin to keep sugar under control and...

Comment Another benefit for resistance exercise - it makes you less insulin resistant. That is a good thing by the way. Effect of a Single Bout of Resistance Exercise on Postprandial Glucose and Insulin Response the Next Day in Healthy, Strength-Trained Men Eivind Andersen and Arne T. Høstmark Department of Sport Medicine, Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Oslo, Norway Arne T. Høstmark Section for Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology, Department of General Practice & Community Medicine, University of Oslo, Norway ABSTRACT Andersen, E., and A.T. Høstmark. Effect of a single bout of resistance exercise on postprandial glucose and insulin response the next day in healthy, strength-trained men. J. Strength Cond. Res. 21(2):487–491. 2007.—Postprandial blood glucose and insulin levels are both risk factors for developing obesity, type-2 diabetes, and coronary heart diseases. To date, research has shown that a single bout of moderate- to high-intensity aerobic exercise perf...

One of the themes I'll keep coming back to is the effectiveness of intervals for conditioning. Mike Boyle had a great post on this today....I'll quote: I thought physiologists knew at least something about conditioning. Boy was I wrong. First they tell me anaerobic threshold, then they tell me lactate threshold, then they say ventilatory threshold. I could have figured out ventilatory threshold on my own. How's this for physiology: If people work really hard they'll pass the ventilatory threshold. In other words they will get out of breath. Wow, people who exercise get out of breath. Unfit people get winded faster than fit people. Thank god I took all those classes. I'm back to work capacity. Vern Gambetta was and still is right. Forget physiology and energy systems, just figure out the game and train for it. As for fitness, if you listen to the "accumulate 200 minutes a week" folks, prepare to quit your job. Who has that kind of time? Once you're hea...

Comment - this is another study that shows that there are benefits to intervals in terms of improving the body's burning of fat. It is a bit odd in that we normally think of intervals as short sprints....here we are talking about two 30 minutes pieces at moderate intensity rather than one single 60 minute session. I would like to have had them test other intervals as well to see if the benefits were increased as the intervals got shorter and more intense. Anyway there is perhaps another conclusion that as the session gets longer fat metabolism tails off......The study is also commented on here Enhancement of fat metabolism by repeated bouts of moderate endurance exercise Kazushige Goto,1,2 Naokata Ishii,1 Ayuko Mizuno,3 and Kaoru Takamatsu3 1Department of Life Sciences, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo, Komaba, Tokyo, Japan; 2Institute of Sports Medicine, Bispebjerg Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark; and 3Institute of Health and Sport Sciences, University of...

Yesterday I posted the abstract of an article about the benefits of high intensity training even when just walking. I also mentioned it in a comment on Art DeVany's blog. Art - the scientist who has written extensively on what he calls evolutionary fitness and practices what he preaches wrote a full post about the article today. you can find it at Intermittent High Intensity Walking Very interesting points - the heart is meant to operate with high variation, not in the steady boring constant rate that characterises too much "cardio".

A unifying theory that pulls together a lot of current research in this field can be found in Art DeVany's essay Evolutionary Fitness and the first chapter of his forthcoming book, both available for free download.

Comment - once again, intervals give a more pronounced benefit and improvement in fitness than continuous "cardio". Effects of High-Intensity Interval Walking Training on Physical Fitness and Blood Pressure in Middle-Aged and Older People KEN-ICHI NEMOTO, MS; HIROKAZU GEN-NO, PHD; SHIZUE MASUKI, PHD; KAZUNOBU OKAZAKI, PHD; HIROSHI NOSE, MD, PHD OBJECTIVE: To examine whether high-intensity interval walking training increased thigh muscle strength and peak aerobic capacity and reduced blood pressure more than moderate-intensity continuous walking training. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: From May 18, 2004, to October 15, 2004 (5-month study period), 60 men and 186 women with a mean±SD age of 63±6 years were randomly divided into 3 groups: no walking training, moderate-intensity continuous walking training, and high-intensity interval walking training. Participants in the moderate-intensity continuous walking training group were instructed to walk at approximately 50% of their peak a...

Comment - there are few trainers that would now encourage you to do "long boring cardio" to burn fat. High intensity intervals are more effective. However, if you are to do some long duration aerobics, you can increase the fat you burn by doing some resistance exercise first..... Effects of Resistance Exercise on Lipolysis during Subsequent Submaximal Exercise. BASIC SCIENCES Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 39(2):308-315, February 2007. GOTO, KAZUSHIGE 1; ISHII, NAOKATA 1; SUGIHARA, SHUHEI 2; YOSHIOKA, TOSHITSUGU 2; TAKAMATSU, KAORU 2 Abstract: Purpose: This study examined effects of prior resistance exercise on fat metabolism during subsequent submaximal exercise with different recovery periods between exercise bouts. Methods: Ten male subjects performed three types of exercise regimens: 1) submaximal endurance exercise only (E), 2) submaximal endurance exercise with prior resistance exercise and 20 min of rest (RE20), and 3) submaximal endurance exercise ...

This is a new blog with a simple purpose - highlighting recent scientific research relating to fitness, strength, conditioning and human performance. I'll put up the abstracts of recently published scientific papers relating to this area and comment on what this means for your training and diet.