Train Less....

Bill pointed me to this really good piece by Paul Ingraham:

Less is Not Less
Go to the gym much less frequently and still gain strength just as quickly

This article thoroughly summarizes scientific research on the question of strength training frequency, and it is a rare example of consensus in exercise science. There is no controversy here: 20+ years of evidence is overwhelmingly clear that most people train more often than they need to.

Read the rest of the article here.

It is interesting in the light of what Doug McGuff wrote last week: The Adaptive Time-Course

This experience has got me thinking that we really have everything about the HIT approach well worked out, except our understanding of the time course of the adaptive process. Ed Garbe discussed his observations that clients always perform better when they come back from vacation and have been off for 14 days. His guess was that for hard-training clients every 9-10 days might be optimal. John Little’s BodPod data shows a range of 10-12 days as an average. In many ways I think that anabolic steroid use may increase the rate of DNA transcription and turnover to compress this time course to accommodate the higher training frequencies of the athletes that are prone to use performance-enhancing agents. It may be that a relatively small portion of their effect is related to supranormal adaptations. Stated differently, perhaps this kind of response could be experienced by natural trainees if we were just patient enough to wait.

Working hard when alredy exhausted is not healthy?

I wonder what we make of this one? A few times on this blog I've mentioned the role of stress and psychological factors in health.

Labour while exhausted may be unhealthy - Perception of work a key factor

Working hard when fatigued may be admired by many Americans, but it is a virtue that could be harmful to one's health, according to new research by psychologists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). The research supports a theory which suggests that exhausted individuals' cardiovascular systems are forced to work harder when they attempt to complete tasks, such as those encountered on the job or at school.

The research, published in the July issue of the International Journal of Psychophysiology, found that fatigued individuals had larger blood pressure increases than rested individuals under conditions where they viewed success as both possible and worthwhile. Investigators believe the effects were determined by effort on the part of the study participants, said UAB psychologist Rex Wright, Ph.D., who led the study.

When fatigued individuals perceive a task as achievable and worth doing, they increase their effort to make up for their diminished capability due to fatigue, Wright said. As a result, blood pressure tends to rise and remain elevated until the task is completed or individuals stop trying because they think success is impossible or too difficult to be justified.

Also reported here and it worth reading.

This stuff is really important. We can obsess over diet and exercise but the role of stress reduction and mental rest is really important.

Recovery again

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 three consecutive days of recovery (R1, R2, R3), using both voluntary and electrically induced contractions at various stimulation frequencies.

Results: Exercise on E1 and E3 resulted in a 40% (120 +/- 12 vs 72 +/- 10 N) and 35% (117 +/- 14 vs 78 +/- 8 N) deficit (P < 0.05) in force at 10 Hz, respectively, which remained depressed (P < 0.05) by 32-34% during R1-R3. At 100 Hz, force, although not altered by exercise at E1 or E3, was decreased (P < 0.05) by 12-16% during recovery. The maximal rate of relaxation (-dF/dtmax) at 10 Hz was reduced (P < 0.05) by 38% on E1, by 32% on E3, and remained depressed by 38% through R3. At 100 Hz, -dF/dtmax was only depressed (P < 0.05) during recovery. Maximal rate of force development (+dF/dtmax) at 10 Hz was reduced (P < 0.05) by exercise, but not in recovery. Maximal voluntary contraction force was depressed (P < 0.05) with exercise at both E1 and E3 and remained depressed (P < 0.05) throughout recovery. The reduction (P < 0.05) in motor unit activation assessed with the interpolated twitch technique, observed during recovery, suggests that part of the incomplete recovery (weakness) is central in origin.

Conclusions: These results demonstrate that three consecutive days of prolonged exercise result in a weakness that persists for at least 3 d, compromising force during both voluntary and induced contractions


Secondly - and this one is more related to the previous study about active vs passive recovery - there was this comparison between different recovery strategies. In this study, active recovery came out on top.....

Comparison of recovery strategies on muscle performance after fatiguing exercise.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to assess the influence of different relaxation modes: stretching (ST), active recovery (AR), and passive recovery (PR) on muscle relaxation after dynamic exercise of the quadriceps femoris.
DESIGN: Ten healthy male volunteers between 24 and 38 yrs of age participated in this study. After the warm-up, subjects performed three sets of dynamic leg extension and flexion (at an angle of 20-110 degrees) at 50% of previously determined maximal voluntary contraction (MVC), with 30 secs. of rest between sets. Immediately after completing the leg exercise, one of the relaxation methods was applied, in a randomized order (AR, PR, ST). Then, subjects performed isometric knee extension at 50% of MVC to the point of fatigue, and surface electromyogram (EMG) of the vastus lateralis muscle was measured.
RESULTS: After AR, the mean MVC was significantly (P <> 0.05). Total time of the effort during EMG measurement was significantly lower for all three recovery modes than at baseline. During the effort after both PR and ST, there was no significant increase in motor unit activation, but a significant increase was noted after AR (P <> 0.05).
CONCLUSION: The results of this study suggest that the most appropriate and effective recovery mode after dynamic muscle fatigue involves light, active exercises, such as cycling with minimal resistance.

Active or Passive Recovery? A study on soccer players

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 worse than after the first.
  

I think there are lots of lessons here about how much training you actually need, how much recovery is required and how different things recover at different speeds. To be fully recovered may need more rest than you think!

It would be interesting to hear Dr Duncan's views on this one!

Neuromuscular Fatigue and Recovery in Elite Female Soccer: Effects of Active Recovery.


PURPOSE:: To investigate the time course of recovery from neuromuscular fatigue and some biochemical changes between two female soccer matches separated by an active or passive recovery regime.

METHODS:: Countermovement jump (CMJ), sprint performance, maximal isokinetic knee flexion and extension, creatine kinase (CK), urea, uric acid, and perceived muscle soreness were measured in 17 elite female soccer players before, immediately after, 5, 21, 45, 51, and 69 h after a first match, and immediately after a second match. Eight players performed active recovery (submaximal cycling at 60% of HRpeak and low-intensity resistance training at < 50% 1RM) 22 and 46 h after the first match.

RESULTS:: In response to the first match, a significant decrease in sprint performance (-3.0 +/- 0.5%), CMJ (-4.4 +/- 0.8%), peak torque in knee extension (-7.1 +/- 1.9%) and flexion (-9.4 +/- 1.8%), and an increase in CK (+ 152 +/- 28%), urea (15 +/- 2), uric acid (+ 11 +/- 2%), and muscle soreness occurred. Sprint ability was first to return to baseline (5 h) followed by urea and uric acid (21 h), isokinetic knee extension (27 h) and flexion (51 h), CK, and muscle soreness (69 h), whereas CMJ was still reduced at the beginning of the second match. There were no significant differences in the recovery pattern between the active and passive recovery groups. The magnitude of the neuromuscular and biochemical changes after the second match was similar to that observed after the first match.

CONCLUSION:: The present study reveals differences in the recovery pattern of the various neuromuscular and biochemical parameters in response to a female soccer match. The active recovery had no effects on the recovery pattern of the four neuromuscular and three biochemical parameters.

Do enough .... not too much

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 elicit a training response. If I can continually train at the threshold and push that threshold then I should be able to make continual adaptation. What good does it do to exceed the stimulus threshold and not be able to recover to do a subsequent session? Another way to describe this is to determine a training target in the context of the whole training plan and hit the target. I think part of the problem is that many people are unsure how to determine the target so they do more to cover themselves. We should be able to workout the stimulus thresholds for various qualities based on the training age of the athlete and their competition objectives. It is certainly not an arbitrary figure like 100 miles a week for a runner or x number of thousand yards for a swimmer; rather it is the actual breakdown and composition of the sessions with a distribution among the performance factors in the context of the training plan. Certainly it is necessary to overload, but remember that it is possible to overload by manipulating volume, intensity and density. Manipulating the means of overload will insure a positive adaptive response.


Perhaps another way to express this concept is to seek optimum training loads rather than maximum training loads.

What do you think?

Too tired to workout? Take a nap!

This study looked at how a short nap after lunch improved the alertness and physical performance of people who were mildly sleep deprived. If you are short of sleep, through overwork, kids or whatever, a nap after lunch could be a good idea if you still want to work and work out well.

And you do not even have to sleep - the participants in the study either slept or just sat quietly for 30 minutes.

The role of a short post-lunch nap in improving cognitive, motor, and sprint performance in participants with partial sleep deprivation.



The aim of this study was to determine the effects of a post-lunch nap on subjective alertness and performance following partial sleep loss. Ten healthy males (mean age 23.3 years, s = 3.4) either napped or sat quietly from 13:00 to 13:30 h after a night of shortened sleep (sleep 23:00 - 03:00 h only). Thirty minutes after the afternoon nap or control (no-nap) condition, alertness, short-term memory, intra-aural temperature, heart rate, choice reaction time, grip strength, and times for 2-m and 20-m sprints were recorded. The afternoon nap lowered heart rate and intra-aural temperature. Alertness, sleepiness, short-term memory, and accuracy at the 8-choice reaction time test were improved by napping (P < 0.05), but mean reaction times and grip strength were not affected (P > 0.05). Sprint times were improved. Mean time for the 2-m sprints fell from 1.060 s (s(x) = 0.018) to 1.019 s (s(x) = 0.019) (P = 0.031 paired t-test); mean time for the 20-m sprints fell from 3.971 s (s(x) = 0.054) to 3.878 s (s(x) = 0.047) (P = 0.013). These results indicate that a post-lunch nap improves alertness and aspects of mental and physical performance following partial sleep loss, and have implications for athletes with restricted sleep during training or before competition.