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
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).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. 2012) - 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. 2012), 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 US5-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, 2012), 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. 2012). 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.
- asthmatic adults: 18.7 million (8.2%)
- asthmatic children: 7.0 million (9.4%)
Regardless of the fact that Abdala-Valencia explicitly point out that these effects "occured without systemic increases in serotonin" (Abdala-Valencia. 2012), 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. 2012). 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. - 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. 2012).
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
- 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. 2012 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) 2012–1578.
- Hulton AT, Gregson W, Maclaren D, Doran DA. Effects of GI Meals on Intermittent Exercise. Int J Sports Med. 2012 Jun 15.
- Macaluso F, Isaacs AW, Myburgh KH. Preferential Type II Muscle Fiber Damage From Plyometric Exercise. J Athl Train. 2012;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. 2012 Aug;33(8):627-34. Epub 2012 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. 2012 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. 2012 Jul 31.
- Wojcicki JM, Heyman MB. Reducing childhood obesity by eliminating 100% fruit juice. Am J Public Health. 2012 Sep;102(9):1630-3. Epub 2012 Jul 19.