Conditioning Research

Watching football is bad for you? This study, says that men with known coronary heart disease should be really really careful about watching a stressful football match.....it could finish them off! Cardiovascular Events during World Cup Soccer Background The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup, held in Germany from June 9 to July 9, 2006, provided an opportunity to examine the relation between emotional stress and the incidence of cardiovascular events. Methods Cardiovascular events occurring in patients in the greater Munich area were prospectively assessed by emergency physicians during the World Cup. We compared those events with events that occurred during the control period: May 1 to June 8 and July 10 to July 31, 2006, and May 1 to July 31 in 2003 and 2005. Results Acute cardiovascular events were assessed in 4279 patients. On days of matches involving the German team, the incidence of cardiac emergencies was 2.66 times that during the control ...

Are you good at chins? Here is a good one - following statistical analysis, this study indicates that short individuals are more likely to achieve maximum chin-up test scores. I am over 6 foot, so that is my excuse for being a bit rubbish at pullups. I can do singles with an extra 20kg, but with no added weight I struggle to get to 6. Chin-up strength tests: does stature matter? AIM : Many organizations place high value on employee physical fitness and use standardized physical fitness tests (PFT) to quantify it. The chin-up strength test is an example of such a test. Participants' anecdotal reports raise some concern that the latter is inherently biased against tall individuals. A demonstration that tall individuals are less likely than short individuals to achieve maximum score on a chin-up strength test, and modified scoring tables that equalize this likelihood across the stature range are sought. METHODS : A statistical summary of 85 chin-up test outcomes is analyzed for lik...

If you want to maximise the fat burning effect of effect of exercise, what should you eat after a workout? This study - and the full paper is currently available here - seems to indicate that you should keep away from a carbohydrate rich meal. It is a really interesting paper to read and what I get from it is that having a carb rich meal after a workout blunts the fat burning effect generated by the exercise. Have a read - see what you think. Devany gives another reason not to eat carbs after the workout Does prior acute exercise affect postexercise substrate oxidation in response to a high carbohydrate meal? BACKGROUND : Consumption of a mixed meal increases postprandial carbohydrate utilization and decreases fat oxidation. On the other hand, acute endurance exercise increases fat oxidation and decreases carbohydrate utilization during the post-exercise recovery period. It is possible that the resulting post-exercise increase in circulating nonesterified fatty acids could atte...

Peter over at the Hyperlipid blog has put up a good post tracking through some recent papers showing again and again that scientists keep reporting that low cholesterol levels are associated with cancer and indeed "with all-cause mortality, showing significant associations with death through cancer, liver diseases, and mental diseases." Of course, the scientists really don't like to admit this..... Check it out at Colorectal cancer and cholesterol

Richard has an excellent post on the whole "Is a Calorie just a Calorie" controversy! 180 Degree Errors Read the whole thing, but his conclusion is worth repeating: So I think we have a 180 degree error and Taubes is right: hyper caloric intake, in itself, does not cause us to be fat. Hyper insulin causes us to be fat, and that issues forth a whole cascade of problems (effects), one of which is hyper caloric intake. Repeat. And the effect of that cause is that very nearly everyone in the diet and nutrition establishment has been [conveniently] fooled. Incidentally, Richard has arrived somewhere close to my current practice - low carb diet plus intermittent fasting . Before anyone wades back in on this debate, take the time to watch Taubes lecture at Berkeley . You do not have to buy the book - he explains the key issues in the lecture. Art Devany has also commented on Taubes: Energy Balance is Dynamic This isn't really metabolic advantage, but Alwyn Cosgrove mentions a...

Just a couple of videos today: first off some bodyweight stuff: then Ross Enamait demonstrates several movements with a pair of homemade ab wheels. A more detailed discussion (with pictures) is provided at the link here . Nice bit of Pantera on the soundtrack too!

Just a quick note of a number of things I've been reading in the last day or so: Cholesterol - I'm still a sceptic What’s Cholesterol Got to Do With It? - Gary Taubes looks at the recent news that the drug Vytorin had fared no better in clinical trials than the statin therapy it was meant to supplant. Trial results forced out of drug company support the concept that cholesterol may not ’cause’ cardiovascular disease - Dr John Briffa comments on the same topic Do Cholesterol Drugs Do Any Good? - Research suggests that, except among high-risk heart patients, the benefits of statins such as Lipitor are overstated - similar article from Business Week and on a different subject: Cutting caffeine may help control diabetes - “We’re not sure what it is about caffeine that drives glucose levels up, but we have a couple of theories,” says Lane, who is the lead author of the study. “It could be that caffeine interferes with the process that moves glucose from the blood and into musc...

I recently posted about a study comparing active and passive recovery in football players. I'm still thinking about the paper and may write something more on it soon. In the meantime I wanted to record a couple of other papers that I came across about recovery or conversely under-recovery! Firstly , one that indicates that three consecutive days of relatively moderate exercise (60% V O2peak) will lead to what I would call over-training - you get weaker, partly due to some systemic fatigue..... Effects of consecutive days of exercise and recovery on muscle mechanical function. Purpose : To investigate the effects of three consecutive days of prolonged exercise on muscle mechanical function, 12 volunteers (V[spacing dot above]O2peak = 44.8 +/- 2.0 mL[middle dot]kg-1[middle dot]min-1, mean +/- SE) cycled at approximately 60% V[spacing dot above]O2peak until fatigue. Methods : Quadriceps muscle function was assessed before and after exercise on day 1 (E1) and day 3 (E3) and during th...

A while ago I posted a couple of videos giving a tutorial for the Get up. Here is another utilising a slightly different technique that I am finding is a bit easier on my knees.

Just to highlight a couple of interesting bits from the newspapers this last week. On Wednesday, the Guardian had a really thought provoking piece on fruit. Not low carb by any means, but certainly saying that the current focus on fruit in the diet is not necessarily healthy: The myths of fruit Fresh fruit is good for us, we believe - so much so that sales of prepared fruit have almost doubled in the UK in the past two years. But are all those ready-sliced apples, mango medleys and 'superfood' smoothies really such a healthy choice? Aida Edemariam investigates Then the Daily Telegraph had an interview with Gary Taubes : Big fat lie For years doctors have held that the only way to lose weight is to eat less fat and take more exercise. But now an eminent science writer says they've got it wrong. So, asks Melissa Whitworth, could Atkins have been right all along? I liked Taubes' realistic comment: Gary Taubes: 'If I was writing about me, I’d assume that I am both wro...

This one is really going to sound heretical. While we are often told to eat lots of veggies, red tea, green tea and chocolate to benefit from their antioxidants. In the past I've pointed to a couple of studies ( here and here ) that raised some questions about the supposed benefits of antioxidants in the diet. This week I've spotted two new studies that indicate that taking supplementary antioxidants - including the popular Vitamin C - can actually interfere with your body's own antioxidant processes - especially in the context of exercise. Maybe chalk up another one for the high fat, low carb boys? Here are the abstracts: Oral administration of vitamin C decreases muscle mitochondrial biogenesis and hampers training-induced adaptations in endurance performance Background : Exercise practitioners often take vitamin C supplements because intense muscular contractile activity can result in oxidative stress, as indicated by altered muscle and blood glutathione concentratio...

Here is a nice tutorial from Jeff Martone on the kettlebell swing ("RKC" style for those that get wound up about such things): Jeff has also written a nice article explaining what he is doing: Kettlebell Basics Drills for Improving Your Swing For the reasons explained here , Crossfitters tend to take the bell a bit higher as shown below:

More intermittent fasting chat. I touched on the issue of working out while in a fasted state earlier . Richard Nikoley ( an interesting blog) posts his own thoughts on fasting and exercise , with his own experiences. It is a really good piece. Isn't the conventional "wisdom" that fasting is bad because your blood sugar lowers too much; and by all means, "you don't want to exercise." After all, Zeus didn't make us like he made virtually all the other animals, who engage in their most strenuous activity of hunting when they're really, really hungry. Right? He also points to Art Devany's comments : Blood glucose will increase after a work out because the release of GH and stress hormones makes you insulin resistant for a brief time. That is why you don’t eat right after.The stress hormones also cause the release of glucose to supply fuel for the muscles, probably it is the glucagon causing the liver to dump glucose. This is not a problem if you...

I liked this quote: Dr. Marantz and colleagues argue that if guidelines can alter behavior, such alteration could have positive or negative effects. They cite how, in 2000, the Dietary Guideline Advisory Committee suggested that the recommendation to lower fat, advised in the 1995 guidelines, had perhaps been ill-advised and might actually have some potential harm. The committee noted concern that “the previous priority given to a ‘low-fat intake’ may lead people to believe that, as long as fat intake is low, the diet will be entirely healthful. T his belief could engender an overconsumption of total calories in the form of carbohydrates, resulting in the adverse metabolic consequences of high-carbohydrate diets,” the committee wrote, while also noting that “an increasing prevalence of obesity in the United States has corresponded roughly with an absolute increase in carbohydrate consumption.” ********************************************************************************** But, the r...

This is another post in the intermittent fasting series. Matt Metzgar pointed this one out to me. Over at his blog he points to a piece of research: looking at how calorie restriction affects muscle hypertrophy. Rats were subjected to muscle loading and then separated into calorie-restricted and non-calorie restricted groups. The surprising result is that the calorie restricted rats actually had greater muscle hypertrophy. The authors believe that this may be due to improved protein synthesis and oxidative capacity. The abstract is here if you are interested. The idea of eating less - which you can do through calorie restriction or intermittent fasting - to enhance your muscle growth is going against all the usual dogma. We have all read that you have to eat more calories to gain that muscle. Often quite absurd regimes of multiple feeds each day are recommended. (I'm not the only one to find these regimes hard to stick to!) I remember years ago thinking that I had to ...

I've been trying to master this exercise recently for the "core" strength and balance it brings. Really hits the hamstrings too and promotes shoulder stability. Or so I am told... However, one question I have is "is this functional?" I am trying to think through whether this has an real world application. I am thinking that it does - not that this is an everyday movement pattern, but that it strengthens aspects of everyday patterns and adds stability and balance....Any ideas? First of all demonstrated by Anthony DiLuglio: Then by Steve Cotter

Recovery is an interesting topic. How often should you train? How much rest do you need? How should you rest - doing nothing, or taking some easy / light training? This study compared passive recovery (doing nothing) or active recovery (easy cycling plus resistance training) after football matches. It is interesting to note that there was no evidence that active recovery promoted faster recovery - they might just as well have done nothing it seems? There are several interesting things to note: Playing a match led to immediate decreases in performance in e.g. sprint performance, jumping and strength; The match also produced markers of muscle damage; The first thing that recovered was sprint performance; The last thing that came back to normal was jump performance which was still diminished even when muscle soreness had disappeared; So, even when you are no longer sore, you may not have fully recovered. The effect was not cumulative - i.e., the performance after the 2nd match was not w...

I'm posting this because it reminds me of a gym I used to go to years ago. Rough, messy but with people who were training hard while also having a good time. Memories of that gym and the people that trained there still make me smile. Anyway, some big squats from British Champion Pete Ratcliffe : There are some other great videos from these guys here

I have not put up anything about Intermittent Fasting for a while! However, in the last few days I've come across some bits and pieces around the subject that I wanted to record. (Incidentally I am realising more that that is the purpose of this blog - as much as anything it is a place where I can store things that I find interesting so that I know where they are! It is great that other people find this stuff intersting as well, but ultimately this is a record of nuggets of information that I have come across that I want to file somewhere, ultimately to weave into my bigger understanding of how to eat, train, live....) Enough of that. A round up of IF bits and pieces Six meals a day is dead - a nice little post from Matt musing on intermittent fasting: In comparison to the many meals a day idea, you have intermittent fasting - a concept that is not only being confirmed by research but also matches up with our evolutionary heritage. Intermittent fasting is also slowly beginni...

8 seconds on 12 seconds off I've talked about this researcher before, Gail Trapp has been looking at interval training and fat loss for her PhD , titled: Effect of High Intensity Exercise on Fat Loss in young Overweight Women Like any good research scientist, she is getting as many papers out of this research as she can! He is another one in the International Journal of Obesity: The effects of high-intensity intermittent exercise training on fat loss and fasting insulin levels of young women Objective : To determine the effects of a 15-week high-intensity intermittent exercise (HIIE) program on subcutaneous and trunk fat and insulin resistance of young women. Design and procedures: Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the three groups: HIIE (n=15), steady-state exercise (SSE; n=15) or control (CONT; n=15). HIIE and SSE groups underwent a 15-week exercise intervention. Subjects : Forty-five women with a mean BMI of 23.22.0 kg m-2 and age of 20.22.0 years. Results : Both exerc...

I've had posts up previously about balance . There are studies out there showing that balance or proprioception training can reduce the incidence of knee and ankle injuries. I've also said that balance training need not be complicated - personally I've got into the habit of putting my socks on each morning while standing up rather than sitting down - you have to balance on one leg to do it. Anyway, I've also posted before that all this training ultimately should be about keeping you functioning for everyday life and as we age it becomes increasingly important that we maintain our ability to balance not least to prevent falls. Forget high performance sports, as we get older we want to maintain our independence and fitness and being able to stand and walk and balance becomes essential not for tricks but for life itself. I saw this interesting article in the NY Times on balance : Noting that each year one in three Americans 65 and older falls, and that falls and their ...

I have had a couple of posts before on Growth Hormone and how to increase your production of it: Intermittent Fasting increases Growth Hormone Melatonin promotes GH release Short rests boost GH release So if you are interested in maximising your GH, practice IF , get enough sleep in the dark and work out intensely with short rests between sets. Here are a couple of new bits of research on GH and exercise, to think about in developing your training and indeed lifestyle. The growth hormone response to repeated bouts of sprint exercise with and without suppression of lipolysis in men . A single 30-s sprint is a potent physiological stimulus for growth hormone (GH) release. However, repeated bouts of sprinting attenuates the GH response, possibly due to negative feedback via elevated systemic free fatty acids (FFA). The aim of the study was to use nicotinic acid (NA) to suppress lipolysis in order to investigate whether serum FFA can modulate the GH response to exercise. Seven non-obese, h...

One of the writers / trainers that I enjoy reading is Robb Wolf . I think his ideas on diet, training and fitness in general are really useful and backed by some good science. His blog is worth keeping an eye on, but I recently spotted this interview that Matt did with Robb. Some nice tips in there.

On one of the forums that I frequent there has been some discussion recently about a test piece suggested by Bud Jeffries . So here's the challenge: You need either two 32kg kettlebells or one 150lb kettlebell or one 150lb t-handle Hungarian core blaster (I believe that's what Dan John calls it). It's simple. 20 sprawls or squat thrusts or whatever version of the burpee you like and 20 swings with 140-150lbs. Repeat five times as fast as possible. There was some interesting subsequent discussion with some guys posting some pretty impressive times. Anyway, it go me thinking about burpees and it is an excuse to post some good burpee related video! The single leg burpee with dumbbells. Lots of balance work A burpee plus snatch Burpee Madness

Over the past 6 days, the Guardian newspaper (UK) has been running a series on the official fitness programme used by the British Army . This exclusive six-part series of booklets has been developed by the Army Physical Training Corps to offer you a comprehensive guide to getting fit. In addition to a Fitness Test and Training Programme , there is some good material here with a set of downloadable booklets covering: Warm up and flexibility Running Upper body Lower body Core Improvised training I might not agree with everything written there but the booklets are definitely worth checking out....

I saw this on Vern Gambetta 's page and thought it was worth posting: What is Function? Full spectrum work, in multiple planes, using multiple joints, incorporating full range of motion that is proprioceptively demanding. What is Functional Training? Training that incorporates a full spectrum of training methods, designed to elicit optimum adaptive response appropriate for the sport or activity being trained for. No one system of the body is emphasized to the exclusion of another. No one training method or physical quality becomes an end unto itself. Each athlete is a case study of one – respect the individual. Be real – Avoid artificial restraints and positions. The goal of Functional Training is to develop Athleticism , the ability to perform athletic movements (Run, Jump, Throw, & Lift) with sound technique at optimum speed, with precision, style and grace within the context of your sport. Vern has a blog with some thought provoking posts. What are you training for? The...

Researchers at Texas A&M University have discovered that lower cholesterol levels can actually reduce muscle gain with exercising. As mentioned before, I am a cholesterol sceptic . I am not a believer in the so called "lipid hypothesis" - that eating saturated fats raises cholesterol in the blood which causes heart disease. There are lots of holes in that theory. Anyway this blog is supposed to be about conditioning and exercise. So how does this fit in with all the cholesterol discussion? I've noted before that when it comes to cholesterol lower is not necessarily better ! We also saw that dietary fat intake seems to protect female runners form injury. Now there is a piece of research (rep orted here ) that lower cholesterol levels can actually reduce muscle gain with exercising. The abstract is here, but it actually plays down the controversial bit! Researchers at Texas A&M University have discovered that lower cholesterol levels can actually red...

This one is fairly straightforward. The abstract is below but if you can get hold of it the full article is definitely worth reading: In conclusion, there is evidence to support the hypothesis that low-carbohydrate diets may confer greater benefit in terms of weight loss compared with healthy-eating advice, and are not dangerous in the short term for people with and without Type 2 diabetes. Little is know about the long-term effects of these diets, and this present study is subject to post-study monitoring for 2 years with intention to report annual data. A low-carbohydrate diet is more effective in reducing body weight than healthy eating in both diabetic and non-diabetic subjects Abstract Background Low-carbohydrate diets are effective for weight reduction in people without diabetes, but there is limited evidence for people with Type 2 diabetes. Aims To assess the impact of a low-carbohydrate diet on body weight, glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), ketone and lipid levels in diabeti...

Training for football (sorry I really struggle to call it "soccer") There are some interesting football training ideas in this video: The video is just to get your attention.....but related to some of the drills in that video, here is an interesting study. Note that Plyometric training improved jumping and sprinting ability - a conclusion that is in itself worth taking on board if you are designing training programmes; There was a difference in the outcome depending on the surface that was used: training on sand improved both jumping and sprinting ability and induced less muscle soreness; training on grass surface was better at enhancing counter movement jump performance; the sand surface showed a greater improvement in the squat jump. However....we do play football on grass not sand, although if the performance improvements are transferable from the sand to the pitch that probably doesn't matter. Plyometrics do really help as we have noted before on this blog . Effect o...

Low Carb I've talked before about low carb diets . To be honest up front, I believe in low carb diets - I think they are healthier, tastier and more effective for getting you to burn fat. ketogenic diets Emma has a really good explanation of what a ketogenic diet is Ketosis is a kind of soft metabolic switch, when the body burns fat primarily for fuel instead of glucose. Imagine if your car could run on both petrol and electric at the flip of a switch, and the two could be mixed to different proportions to produce different effects. Ketones are the substances produced when the body breaks down fat (dietary or body stores) for fuel in the liver. It's a dimmer switch, we all produce ketones all of the time, though those of us on a high carbohydrate Western diet don't produce very many. Our ancestors who lived during the ice ages and ate mammoth fat probably produced a lot of ketones. We usually have a higher ketone level in the morning, after an overnight fast. The more fa...