SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Pretty much the study set-up, albeit with a Scott bench to support the arm and much  more weight. Surprising, isn't it? Wouldn't you expect that using a cuff set to restrict the blood flow in a way that increases the pressure in the arm to ca. 120mmHg and keeps all the metabolic byproducts from being carted away would, when it's used on top of an already muscle-damaging eccentric biceps workout, increase, not decrease the muscle damage? Well, I did. After reading the complete study and taking a look at previous research, however, I have admit that the scientists' conclusion that "BFR attenuated HI-ECC-induced muscle damage and there was no increase in cardiovascular responses" is warranted - even if I'd say that the last word on the real-world effect on gains has not been spoken, yet. You can learn more about BFR and Hypoxia Training at the SuppVersity BFR, Cortisol & GH Responses BFR - Where were we in 2013? Cardio with BFR = Win?...

Even though the study has male and female study participants this study is still more geared towards the men - why else do we have testosterone, but not estrogen measurements? As the scientists point out as early as in the title, a recent paper by Trexel et al. (2017) is indeed (at best) a "pilot study" to "evaluate changes in body composition, metabolic rate, and hormones during post-competition recovery" in "physique athletes". In view of the lack of reliable data from the contest preparations o bodybuilders and other physique-sport athletes, even this "pilot" data is more than worth reporting. That's particularly true, because it is still not clear, as Trexel et al. write whether the "physiological effects of contest preparation persist after competition" and thus whether "they may predispose [...] to preferential gain of fat mass and prolonged, deleterious endocrine side effects" (Trexel 2017) Read about rather...

I have to admit, I cannot answer the question about the effects of muscle damage on glycemia once and for all, but for the average workout, it's probably irrelevant and the overall effect beneficial. While I have to admit that I do not know in which of the roughly 2300 published articles I have referred to the studies by Asp et al. (1995), I do  know that a new study from the  Tatung Institute of Technology and the  Department of Sports Sciences at the University of Taipei  (Ho 2016) shows that the experimentally verified reduction in GLUT-4 expression in isolated human skeletal muscle cells probably  lacks practical relevance. The reason that I write "probably", is that we do now have one study that suggests beneficial (Ho 2016) and one that found detrimental effects (Asp 1995) - and a couple of reasons why neither of the studies is fully convincing. One important determinant of your 24h insulin levels is your meal frequency : Grazin' Bad For the Ob...

On a side note: An adequate protein intake is as important for men as it is for women, but both can - for few with real effort - achieve adequate protein intakes from their diet alone - with the same muscle-building effects . If you believed only 50% of the claims on the boxes of the currently available protein supplements, you'd have to have at least five products from three different brands to see optimal results. Luckily, there's science to tell you that the only thing you need is a cheap high EAA protein source that doesn't give you gas, the runs or other side effects... Well, that's at least what a cursory analysis of the results of two new studies suggests. Together, they can be used to argue quite convincingly that neither the protein source ( beef , chicken or whey | Sharp 2017), nor the ratio of fast (whey) vs. slow (casein) proteins (Fabre 2017) will have a meaningful effect on the only relevant study outcome: your real-world gains. High-protein ...

The study setup looked sign. different. You will have heard or read about resistance training experts and bodybuilders alike bragging about "focus" and "visualization" being keys to maximal strength and muscle gains. Now, a recent study from the Capital University of Physical Education and Sports  in China, the Lerner Research Institute , the Kessler Foundation  and the  New Jersey Medical School  in the US provides what I would deem the first decently convincing evidence that "mental effort" is a previously overlooked counterpart to "physical effort" when it comes to strength training. As the authors point out, "[h]istorically, most strength training programs have emphasized that, for maximum strength gain, training should be conducted at load intensities that are at or near the maximum level and last long enough for all motor units/muscle fibers in a muscle or muscle group to be fully activated" (Jiang 2017). As a SuppVersity  r...