SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Block Periodization - Training revolution or simple trick? This is what we have to ask ourselves in view of these results. With all the news and discussion about nutrition and dietary supplements, it's easy to lose sight of the significant impact even minor tweaks to your training routine may have on your results. The results of a recent study from the Lillehammer University College in Norway, for example, remind us all of the importance to periodize our training regimen. Now you could obviously randomly divide a year into cycles with different workout frequencies, intensities, volume, etc. It does yet go without saying that this is probably not the most promising approach to periodization. What are good ways to periodize your training? As B. R. Rønnestad, J. Hansen, S. Ellefsen point out in the introduction to their latest paper in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports , there is yet a "paucity of studies" that would allow us to decide wh...

Contemporary scientific evidence suggest that you have to pick the right type of (short intense) exercise if you don't want your beta alanine supplement to end up as another "false starter" in your closet. In the past couple of weeks beta alanine (BA) has gotten some bad press, here at the SuppVersity . While some conspiracy theorists may already have smelled a personal vendetta of a sodium bicarbonate advocate like myself against its 'high tech competitor', the actual reason for the negative, or at least not necessarily exciting news is the exercise specificity of beta alanine (BA) supplementation. The most recent BA study from the  University of Bern and the Swiss Federal Institute of Sport in Switzerland and the Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden is yet another rather disappointing BA study to support my previous assertion that the benefits for the average gymrat are largely overblown. What did the researchers do As Gross et al. point out, t...

Figure 1: Number [in millions!] of prediabetics and diagnosed and undiagnosed diabetics in the USA according to data from the American Diabetic Association from January 2011 ( ADA. 2011 ) You probably remember Wednesday's news-item on high-intensity interval training (HIIT) for cardiac patients - as it turned out, even 2 weeks after myocardial infarction our central pump needs real exercise to get back in, or to get into even better shape. Today, I do yet want to go beyond infarction patients and address another, ever-growing sub-group of the self-perceived "victims" of the obesity pandemic, the type II diabetics. About a month ago, J.P. Little and his colleagues from the University of British Columbia Okanagan published a study in the Journal of Applied Physiology ( Little. 2011a ), the results of which confirm (once again) the unpopular hypothesis that getting your ass off the couch in order to work it off in ...