SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

If the above are the ingredients you are using when you prepare your meals, your diet is almost certainly not a low carbohy-drate high fat, but a low carbohydrate high protein diet. Please mind the difference and don't brag in the comments about how great you feel on your "keto diet"! If you are an avid follower of the SuppVersity News  on Facebook ( revisit the post ), you will remember Louise M. Burke's late 2016 paper which showed that a low carbohydrate, high fat diet impairs exercise economy and negates the performance benefit from intensified training in elite race walkers" (Burke 2016). Accordingly, Jørn Wulff Helge from the  Center of Healthy Aging  in Copenhagen, Denmark, wrote in his recent perspective article in  The Journal of Physiology  that "in elite athletes training and performing at intensities similar to elite sports competition, keto-adaptation is not the optimal dietary choice" (Helge 2017). You know,  high-protein ...

Are vegan athletes who supplement their low BCAA baseline diet with amino acid powders making an unhealthy mistake? At first sight a recent study from Poland suggests just that. Upon closer scrutiny, however, the practical relevance of the results appear less and less convincing. It seems (and I have to admit that I fell for that logic, too) only logical that vegans, unlike omnivores and lactovegetarians run the risk of not getting enough BCAAs from their diet. After all, their diets allow the neither the consumption of dairy nor many of the other wonderful high BCAA protein sources. Against that background, I would venture the guess that many vegan athletes spike their diets with copious amounts of the ubiquitous BCAA supplements, supplement vendors all around the globe are pushing on unsuspecting customers who have no clue that a new study claims that these supplements may ruin one of the often-heard benefits of vegan diets: improved glucose management and reduced diab...

Delicious, ergogenic and good for sore, damaged muscles: coffee! You will remember that caffeine can improve skeletal muscle glycogen resynthesis after workouts. The corresponding study by Pedersen et al. is yet no longer the only study which makes the post-, not pre-workout coffee attractive for athletes and gymrats alike. In their latest paper in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research , Aron R. Caldwell and colleagues report the results of an interesting experiment, an experiment with a hypothesis that was based, mainly, on the well-known, but short-lived (2-4 hours) analgesic (=pain relieving) effects of the world's favorite drug: caffeine. You can learn more about coffee and caffeine at the SuppVersity For Caffeine, Timing Matters! 45 Min or More? Caffeine Helps When Taken Intra-Workout, too Coffee can Help You Get into Ketosis Caffeine's Effect on Testosterone, Estrogen & SHBG The Coffee³ Ad- vantage: Fat loss, Appetite & Mood...

No, the message of this article is not that protein shakes don't work. It is that your (hopefully) tasty 20g of serving of whey is not going to build slabs of extra muscle. You all know studies which show that protein supplementation during resistance exercise training enhances muscle hypertrophy. As a SuppVersity  reader, you will yet also be aware of the numerous studies which indicate that extra-protein (before or after workouts) can be wasted if the baseline protein intake of the subjects amounts to 1.2-1.5g/kg protein, already (cf Table 1 ). For some of you, this is yet probably not the only surprise this article holds. The large-scale clinical trial by Reidy, et al. did after all also confirm that protein blends may yield slightly better results than everyone's beloved whey protein. High-protein diets are much safer than some 'experts' say, but there are things to consider... Practical Protein Oxidation 101 5x More Than the FDA Allows! Native Wh...

Where on your traps you place the bar makes a huge difference in biomechanics. This is not the first article in which I try to shed the light of science on the effects of full vs. partial squats. The effect of where you place the bar during the barbell back squat, however, hasn't been addressed in detail in previous SuppVersity articles. In fact, I would guess that the novices among the SuppVersity  readers may not even be aware that where you place the bar on your traps may significantly affect your biomechanics and, eventually, your training outcomes. Learn more about the squat and related exercises at the SuppVersity Partial Squat = Full Strength 100 Body Weight Squats ➯ Jacked Discontinue Sets Up Your Gais Full ROM ➯ Full Gains! Full-Body vs. Split for Athletes Squat, Bench, Deadlift for Gainz As Glassbrook et al. (2017) point out in their latest paper, there are two different variations of the back-squat, differentiated by the placement of the barb...