SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Big guns without weights? True - the question yet remains: "How big?" I am psyched and the reason is the advanced access publication of the results of the latest study from the Department of Sports and Life Science at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya, Japan (Maeo. 2013b). Why? Well, it claims to solve two of the most urgent issues that keep our sedentary fellow men (and women ;-) from working out: The lack of equipment and the lack of time , exactly those two factors the average American and European slacker pleads as an excuse for not making the necessary, since potentially life-saving physical investments into "metabolic currency" (this is a term my good friend Carl Lanore uses to refer functional muscle mass). "Big guns without weights? You're kiddin', bro!" Actually the idea of using simultaneous voluntary contractions of antagonistic muscle pairs (aka co-contraction ) to improve muscle strength in the absenc...

Other news: Classic cardio ramps up GLP-1 and "posing" increases your maxes by up to 8% . If you have already downloaded and listened to yesterday's installment of the SuppVersity Science Round-Up, you will probably be aware that the first thing I am going to do in today's Seconds is to (re-)address the stevia issue (read up on previous stories about Stevia here at the SuppVersity ). If I recall that correctly, I did in fact forget to mention something that's actually important if you want to get the whole picture - the gut microbiome! But before we tackle this one, let's not forget that there are a couple of other news stories which did not make it into the 60min show, news on the effects of LISS on GLP-1 and the potentiation of the post-activation potentiation effect. Sounds interesting, then let''s go for it! Is stevia toxic, does it cause cancer and infertility?  Let me start with the bottom line first. The currently available scient...

"Is everyone at home taking some time off to recover + prime future muscle growth?" Human beings are creatures of habit. This is particularly true, when it comes to those things and procedures we either like or enjoy or have found to be highly conducive to our goals, in the past. Just like some people simply won't drop their beloved Twinkies and Ding Dongs , although they know that these sugar bombs are bad for them, and others tend to stick to whatever dietary regimen has allowed them to lose 20lbs of body weight in the past, despite the fact that this "trick" has long ceased working for them, many "recreationally active" individuals (aka gymrats) are totally reluctant to any form of carefully planned deviation of their training regimen. Six weeks on, three weeks off - for better or for worse!? If anything, switching gears from a more hypertrophy to a more strength training oriented program, or vice versa, is probably the one modification most...

Image 1: This dog obviously knows how beneficial it is to take 3 weeks off and detrain. If we go by his physique, he did probably not realize that without (pre-)training and re training the distinct line between detraining and laziness becomes as blurred - as blurred, by the way, as many it is for training junkies like me ;-) I plead guilty! Guilty of not taking enough time off - against better judgment. In that, it is not the idea that I would "lose muscle" that urges me to the gym, it is not that I would be afraid to get fat and I could probably even stifle my desire to lift heavy objects, if it was not for the little man in my ear who keeps telling me: "Well, you won't get fat and you won't lose muscle, but think about it: You are fit, young and strong! Why waste your time idling around? Go for it hit the weights and let the veins pop" ... and alas, his words are too convincing to put my gymbag back into the locker and write one of the 237 blogpos...

"Patience is a virtue!" Many bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts have to learn this the hard way - even on drugs, muscles won't grow (hypertrophy) within days and visible gains in lean muscle mass will take years or month. Although the results of a recent study ( DeFreitas. 2011 ) done by scientists from the University of Oklahoma won't help to overcome the delay between training induced muscle stimulus and physiological hypertrophy response, the observations of DeFraitas et al. are nevertheless interesting. By the means of weekly testing the scientists wanted to determine the "precise time course of skeletal muscle hypertrophy" in response to 8 weeks on a specifically designed high intensity resistance training program in 25 healthy, sedentary men. The measured outcomes were whole muscle cross-sectional area (CSA) of the dominant thigh (via computer tomography) and isometric maximum voluntary contractions (MVC).  After only two training sessions (...