Conditioning Research

I've said before that I am a cholesterol sceptic and I've also pointed towards Dr Malcolm Kendrick. There is a related argument here, again that low cholesterol is a problem: Low cholesterol levels and premature babies This is on a similar theme, but a bit funnier: While I do not think that saturated fat is bad, the evidence is mounting that there may be problems associated with (too many) carbs and carbs of the wrong type .

Here is an interesting study..... Exercise bands are interesting pieces of equipment. They are used by physiotherapists in rehabilitation for injuries, as a piece of training equipment in their own right and also as a method of adding variable resistance to the power lifts - the further you pull the harder it gets. This study caught my eye because I think I have experienced the phenomenon to which it refers. Exercise with latex sport bands represents a risk for latex allergic patients. Based on two clinical observations of adverse reactions during exercise with latex sport bands, we aimed to assess the possible risk for allergic patients posed by this equipment by investigating allergen content and IgE binding potential. Protein extracts of three different latex sport bands were characterized with sera of latex allergic patients. The IgE recognition profile of the allergic patients was identified by component resolved diagnosis and the allergen composition of the extracts was chara...

As promised..... Full Throttle Conditioning “Most athletes know the importance of conditioning, but are not willing to put in the work to develop this weapon. Separate yourself from this mediocre group. You do not need fancy equipment. You do not need anything but you own refusal to accept anything but your best.” What you get A 90 page book – which explains the basics of the energy systems that your body uses and then details how to put together effective conditioning routines. A 1hr 48 minute DVD – Ross clearly puts forward the rationale behind the routines, demonstrates various exercises and how to put them together. The book The book is 90 pages of dense yet accessible information. It starts with the scientific rationale for the routines, explaining in a very understandable way how the energy systems work and how to train them. This is an excellent structure - starting with the ultimate foundations for training and building routines on that basis. Ross has written several ...

A few days ago I put up a post about my new kettlebells . In it I mentioned that I liked the swing movement with the kettlebell, but also with a dumbbell. If you want to see an amazing dumbbell swing, have a look at the video below. A swing with a 123lb dumbbell: Awesome.

Ross Enamait has just released a new product - Full Throttle Conditioning : a DVD (1 hour 48 mins) plus a 90 page book.....for $25. Even with the cost of shipping to the UK that is awesome value. (especially with the current exchange rate) Every product I have ever bought from Ross (and I have bought them all!) has been of excellent quality - deeply researched, well written and based on real life experience - and outstanding value for money. This one looks as if it will continue that tradition. I will do a full review later, but in terms of first impressions, this looks fantastic. The service was amazing too. I ordered this on 20 November and it was delivered this morning.

This article was just published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine . It sounds really interesting, although each time I read the abstract I think it means something different! Any bright ideas out there on the implications of this? I suppose I see it as a lesson in concentrating on what you are doing. If you are training and thinking about something else, the effect will not be so great. Maybe many of us have had that experience in the gym at least - you go to train preoccupied with something else in your life - a sick child, a job problem, a bill, an argument with you partner, whatever....and your mind isn't in it so somehow your strength is not there.... Let me know your thoughts! A continuous mental task decreases the physiological response to soccer-specific intermittent exercise Background : Epidemiological findings of higher injury incidence during the latter stages of soccer match-play have been attributed to fatigue. Objective : To examine the interaction of ph...

The Modern Forager (a very nice blog) points to an interview with Gary Taubes . Taubes is the controversial science journalist who is getting people to think about low carb diets again with his book Good Calories Bad Calories. (I've read it, it is great.) His recent article Does Exercise Really Make us Thinner? is pretty thought provoking too. This book by the way is being sold as "The Diet Delusion" in the UK for some reason.

I have just bought some new kettlebells from the great Stan Pike at Intense Fitness . I dropped in to his place on a drive South last weekend and was impressed to meet this great bear of a man and see inside his garage gym. He is not at all Russian (but a very tall Scot). A 16kg, a 24kg and 32kg. I've been playing around with swings and some snatches . At the moment the 32 seems like a real beast and I wonder if I'll ever get it over head. Despite what I might say sometimes I am an increasingly big fan of kettlebells...or at least of kb movements. I think the swing is great for developing the posterior chain, that series of muscles that "uncurl" you and extend your body. So much of the day is spent sat down and curled up. The swing, I think, works the hips and gets you into extension - a real antidote to the amount of time that we spend in flexion. Of course you can swing with dumbells too, but the kettlebell is a nice toy! I've been watching the video be...

Here is a study which supports the idea of "afterburn" or turbulence created by training. When you train, even the muscles that you are not working burn more calories after exercise. The harder you train, the greater that effect Oxygen Consumption in Nonexercising Muscle after Exercise. Integrated Arts and Science, Okinawa National College of Technology, Okinawa, Japan. Little is known about the effect of exercise intensity on post-exercise oxygen consumption in non-exercising muscle. This study examined the effect of exercise intensity on muscle oxygen consumption (V.O (2mus)) in non-exercising forearm flexor muscles (nonexV.O (2mus)) after cycling exercise. Eight healthy male subjects performed 20 min of cycling exercise at 30 %, 50 %, and 70 % of maximal oxygen consumption (%V.O (2max)) on separate days. The nonexV.O (2mus) values at rest, at the end of exercise, and during recovery after exercise were measured by near-infrared spectroscopy. V.O (2mus) was determined u...

Maybe a reason for you to increase your intake of sardines and other fatty fish. This was a big retrospective cohort study - i.e. they looked at a what a bunch of people had eaten over their lives and: Of the dietary factors considered in relation to grip strength, the most important was fatty fish consumption. An increase in grip strength of 0.43 kg (95% confidence interval (CI)=0.13-0.74) in men (P=.005) and 0.48 kg (95% CI=0.24-0.72) in women (P Questionnaires like this have been criticised as pretty unreliable methods of researching diets - for example here - but in any case it is still an interesting study..... Diet and Its Relationship with Grip Strength in Community-Dwelling Older Men and Women: The Hertfordshire Cohort Study. OBJECTIVES : To examine relationships between diet and grip strength in older men and women and to determine whether prenatal growth modifies these relationships. DESIGN : Cross-sectional and retrospective cohort study. SETTING : Hertfordshire, United Kin...

Here is a good one: ...study finds that sitting may increase risk of disease Now, researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia say a new model regarding physical activity recommendations is emerging. New research shows that what people do in the other 15 and a half hours of their waking day is just as important, or more so, than the time they spend actively exercising. “Many activities like talking on the phone or watching a child’s ballgame can be done just as enjoyably upright, and you burn double the number of calories while you’re doing it,” said Marc Hamilton, an associate professor of biomedical sciences whose work was recently published in Diabetes. “We’re pretty stationary when we’re talking on the phone or sitting in a chair at a ballgame, but if you stand, you’re probably going to pace or move around “The enzymes in blood vessels of muscles responsible for ‘fat burning’ are shut off within hours of not standing,” Hamilton said. “Standing and moving lightly will re-engag...

Here is another potential reason to exercise. While we have previously seen that excess exercise can cause problems this study is interesting in that it says that moderate exercise actually promotes healing to skin wounds (in mice at least): This improved healing response in the old mice may be the result of an exercise-induced anti-inflammatory response in the wound. EXERCISE ACCELERATES CUTANEOUS WOUND HEALING AND DECREASES WOUND INFLAMMATION IN AGED MICE. This study purpose was to determine the effect of exercise on wound healing and inflammation in young (three months) and old (18 months) female Balb/cByJ mice. Mice were assigned to either exercise (EX) or sedentary control (CON) groups. EX mice were run on a motorized treadmill at a moderate intensity for 30 min per day for eight days. All mice were given four full thickness dermal wounds and the rate of wound closure was assessed daily for 10 days. Four months later, the aged mice were re-randomized to treatment, wounded again ...

I like it when I look through the different abstracts that I get to find interesting bits and bobs for this blog, and come across something totally random and a bit odd. Now I've noted before that there is now a little debate about whether or not antioxidants are really good for you or not. Well OK, but if you accept the orthodoxy you will be aware that there are occasionally stories that tell us that chocolate / cocoa is good for you because it contains all sorts of (supposedly) beneficial antioxidants and polyphenols etc. However, what happens when you make a coca drink? You put milk in! But does adding milk ruin the cocoa's benefits? In this study scientists helpfully thought about that and decided to see whether or not adding milk was a good or a bad thing in terms of the antioxidants. Fascinating! Read on: The effect of milk protein on the bioavailability of cocoa polyphenols. In order to determine whether milk proteins interact with cocoa polyphenols to modulate t...

Just thought I'd flag up a really interesting site / blog that I have come across. It is worth putting in your RSS feed Behind the headlines Behind the headlines provides an unbiased and evidence-based analysis of health stories that make the news. Each day the NHS Choices team selects health stories that are making headlines. These, along with the scientific articles behind the stories, are sent to Bazian, a leading provider of evidence-based healthcare information. Bazian's clinicians and scientists analyse the research and produce impartial evidence-based assessments, which are edited and published by NHS Choices. It is from the NHS so it is pretty orthodox - you won't see them bigging up low carb diets or supporting cholesterol sceptics like me, but the scientists there do a good job at analysing the various health stories that are hitting the headlines and giving a better - and more critical - idea of what they actually say. You might be interested in their take ...

Related to the last post about functional training for being old.....Shaf put this post up about functional training for Rugby which was a good read. It is the same principle - you train the movements that you will need for what ever you are doing: scrums, rucks, lineouts whatever

I saw this abstract that got me thinking a bit about being fit for the long haul and for the challenges of everyday life. There was a thread a while back on one of the boards I look at a lot about "Dad Fitness" developing the fitness to be ready for the challenges of being a Dad - carrying kids, sprinting when necessary, stuff like that . This study looked at "functional fitness" in old people and it is interesting to see how they defined it or tested it at least: "FF was evaluated using a chair stand, arm curl, up and go, sit and reach, back scratch, functional reach, and 12-min walk." These are basic moves you need for everyday life - a bit like Chek's primal patterns (bend, squat, lunge, push, pull, twist and gait) but I like the back scratch being in there! Anyway, I like thinking about this area. I am not a champion athlete. I don't need to be and I don't need to train like one. I need fitness for my life. I want to be fit, fast,...

Vern Gambetta had an excellent post today on his blog , which I am going to reprint below, because I think it is worth a bit of reflection. This is related to something that I was thinking about in response to some of the (anonymous) comments on the post the other day about interval training. If you can get the same effects from intervals as from long duration exercise (and that is how I read this reseach ) then why spend the extra time on the endurance training? You need to do enough, but not more. More means more chance of injury. More means more recovery time. Stimulus Threshold It seems we all preach more is not better but then when it comes down to it we end doing more. As my good friend and colleague Gary Winckler so succinctly states “volume is not a biomotor quality.” I think there must be some comfort in doing more. What we need to focus on instead is the concept of the stimulus threshold. I define that as is the threshold amount of work that is the optimum amount to elic...

Just spotted this: A low-carb diet may stunt prostate tumor growth DURHAM, N.C. -- A diet low in carbohydrates may help stunt the growth of prostate tumors, according to a new study led by Duke Prostate Center researchers. The study, in mice, suggests that a reduction in insulin production possibly caused by fewer carbohydrates may stall tumor growth. “This study showed that cutting carbohydrates may slow tumor growth, at least in mice,” said Stephen Freedland, M.D., a urologist at Duke University Medical Center and lead researcher on the study. “If this is ultimately confirmed in human clinical trials, it has huge implications for prostate cancer therapy through something that all of us can control, our diets.” There has been similar research before.

Some history Kettlebells are fairly fashionable items at the moment in the strength / conditioning field. I've just bought a set myself from Stan Pike at intense fitness here in Scotland. They are good and allow you to do certain movements that are a lot more difficult and a lot different with dumbells. However, have you ever thought about where they came from originally, and I'm not thinking of Russia? I recently came across these objects when in a museum here in Edinburgh. They are described as "bell weights": These date from 1800: I definitely would not want to snatch any of those! Plus the square handle would wreck your palm. Kettlebells were originally the same as these things - weights for use in trade . Interesting

The post on Kettlebell Science promoted a little bit of debate in the comments, which is always encouraging. One of the themes in that post was that the exercise protocol that is chosen is important in terms of the results that you are trying to achieve. This of course is the basic principle of specificity - you'll get a result specific to what you are training. A(n) high intensity interval (HIIT) type protocol, for example, will stress the metabolic / energy pathways that lead to an improved Vo2 max. On this subject, there were a couple of new pieces of research published last week on interval training: Similar metabolic adaptations during exercise after low volume sprint interval and traditional endurance training in humans. Low-volume "sprint" interval training (SIT) stimulates rapid improvements in muscle oxidative capacity that are comparable to traditional endurance training (ET) but no study has examined metabolic adaptations during exercise after these divers...

How about this for an inspiring jump....45" while wearing a 60lb weighted vest! I don't know if this is consistent with the study here but it is a fantastic jump.

This won't be a lengthy post. I just wanted to highlight a few interesting studies that I have come across in the last few days. Check these out. Running won't save you from heart disease : - we have talked before about some of the problems with endurance exercise. Following the sad death of Ryan Shay , the Science of Sport blog say that overall exercise is good and the risk is low...Check their previous posts on this too. I am a cholesterol sceptic. I do not believe that a diet high in cholesterol is a bad thing or that high levels of cholesterol in the blood are bad for you. Of course doctors and pharmaceutical companies say different. Have a look at these: Statin therapy for older heart failure patients seems to bestow little benefit , according to a randomized Swedish study. But others remained believers, the evidence notwithstanding. Cholesterol-lowering drug linked to sleep disruptions - “The findings are significant because sleep problems can affect quality of l...

Sometimes you come across science that just doesn't add up. First of all a video: That is a video of Rif and his wife towards the end of a workout aimed at building the VO2 max (the aerobic base or, technically, the maximum capacity to transport and utilize oxygen during incremental exercise). They are working 15 seconds on then 15 seconds off. You can see it is hard work. Ok now compare that to a study that I just came across: Cardiorespiratory Responses to Kettlebell™ Training Exercise: 1162 Board #17 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM [D-20: Free Communication/Poster - Cardiac: Acute Exercise or Exercise Training: THURSDAY, JUNE 2,2005 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM ROOM: Ryman C2] Bishop, Emmett; Collins, Mitchell A. FACSM; Lanier, Angela B. Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA. (Sponsor: Mitchell A. Collins, FACSM) (E. Bishop, Dragon Door Research Grant Recipient.) Although resistance training using Kettlebells™ is not new, the popularity of Russian Kettlebell™ training has recently grown in the U...

Fasting - reduces Heart Disease? Ok I'm sorry. If things go on like this I'll have to call this blog "Intermittent Fasting Research". I do not want to keep banging on about IF , but I keep coming across interesting research on the subject. Here is one from the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2007, reported by Eureka News. The researchers were looking at Mormons in Utah: ORLANDO, Nov. 6 – Foregoing food for a day each month stood out among other religious practices in members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or Mormons), who have lower rates of heart disease than other Americans, researchers reported at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2007. “People who fast seem to receive a heart-protective benefit, and this appeared to also hold true in non-LDS people who fast as part of a health-conscious lifestyle,” said Benjamin D. Horne, Ph.D., M.P.H., study author and director of cardiovascular and genetic epidemiolo...

Well, I have never heard of the Saudi Medical Journal, but those of you with an interest in intermittent fasting might find this new article interesting. Every year during Ramadan, Muslims practice a form of IF, not eating during daylight. This study looked at how this practice affected lung volumes and capacity in healthy people. Evaluation of the effect of islamic fasting on lung volumes and capacities in the healthy persons Objectives : To evaluate the changes in pulmonary volumes during and after Islamic fasting. Methods : It is a cohort study conducted on 117 healthy subjects selected on a random basis from employees, professors and students of Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran, between December 1999 and January 2000. All of them underwent spirometry 10 days prior to Ramadan, 2 times during Ramadan, and one time 10 days post-Ramadan. In first visit, in addition to spirometry they underwent medical examination to make sure they are healthy. All of their spiromet...

You will not have missed the shock/horror scare stories in recent days following the publication of a report from the "World Cancer Research Fund." The BBC : Be thin to cut cancer, study says The Scotsman : Red meat increases cancer risk The Independent : Consumers ignore cancer risks of eating red meat The "scientists" carried out what was reported to be the largest ever inquiry into lifestyle and cancer, and issued several stark recommendations: Limit red meat Limit alcohol Avoid bacon, ham, and other processed meats No sugary drinks No weight gain after 21 Exercise every day Breastfeed children Do not take dietary supplements to cut cancer The media by and large concentrated on one thing .....Here we go again.....red meat is bad ?! (everyone has focussed on this for some reason, rather than the need to limit sugar). OK, good headlines, scary story, ( and I would agree with some of those recommendations, like dumping the sugar) but what do we make of the science?...

There has been a bit of a debate recently on some blogs prompted by some comments within Gary Taubes new book: Good Calories, Bad Calories . The book is an excellent survey of the scientific research regarding diet and fat loss. One of the things he looks at is how the studies show that exercise is pretty ineffective for making people lose weight . exercising to stay healthy is one thing, but exercising to lose weight is usually doomed to failure. This is another argument that seems somewhat heretical but Rob Wolf - a very good strength & conditioning coach (and former research biochemist - so he knows his science) - pointed out in a recent blog post that in his experience of training people over a number of years it is only when people adopt a fairly low carb diet that they make a significant change to their body composition. Our nutritional recommendations are focused at insulin control . You could also say that our nutritional recommendations are what we are designed t...

Vitamin Pills - a waste of money? As I look back over my years of weight-training, body-building, running and the more general fitness / conditioning stuff that I do now, I must have spent hundreds of pounds on supplements: vitamins, minerals, amino-acids, protein powders, creatine , ornithine, dessicated liver, brewers' yeast.....whatever was in vogue....whatever I thought could make me fitter, stronger, bigger leaner. Nowadays I take a multivitamin once in a while but not a lot. Rarely was it based on science or medical opinion. I was motivated to be better, and so on the basis of a magazine article, an advert, hearsay or rumour I would shell out the cash for the latest potion. Looking back maybe it was daft, but I was always looking for that which would make me a little better and always suspicious that the scientists didn't really know much about "performance" enhancement. It was the same attitude to training I suppose - you didn't seek the scientifically...