SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

You will probably have read about the results of this recent study from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences  elsewhere already - hopefully in an article that applied the same rigorous scrutiny as this one. "Wait: EAAs are better than whey?" If that's your overgeneralized and essentially wrong (there was no comparison of EAA vs. Whey, but one of EAA+whey vs. whey 😎) take-home message from the abstract of a recent study in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition  you may have recently read about on Facebook, you better read the rest of today's SuppVersity article on Park's paper, of which I would like to point out that the authors come to a very different, accurate, and more nuanced conclusion, that reads as follows: "that a composition of a balanced EAA formulation combined with whey protein is highly anabolic as compared to a whey protein-based recovery product, and that the response is dose-dependent" ( Park 2020 ...

It may sound awesome but eventually training only one arm is no viable long-term strategy. Having learned about the ability of BFR to increase/facilitate contralateral gains in today's SuppVersity  article, you could yet well use it when you're injured and unable to train one of your limbs (legs/quads should work, too).  In today's third installment of the 2020 research updates , I want to take a look at all that's new and interesting in the realms of blood flow restriction aka # BFR . How effective is it? Who benefits? Who benefits the most? Will it speed up or slow down recovery? And why will it help you make gains even on untrained limbs?  Sounds interesting? Well, here you go: My overview of selected new studies investigating the effects of blood flow restriction from early 2020 will answer these and (hopefully) any related questions you may have. "Blood Flow Restriction" aka # BFR is becoming more and more popular - rightly so? BFR, Cortisol ...

Don't pre-order yet: We don't know if you are a 'responder' and even if you are whether your gains will actually benefit from allegedly increased muscle activity (eventually it's not even clear that high EMG = high motor unit activity, cf. Vigotsky 2017 ). The promise of achieving greater muscle activity at lower weights while embracing the strengths of barbells (stability, easily rackable) and dumbbells (natural/optimal movement pattern) is yet intriguing, I must admit 😏. The "good old barbell" is just that. It's "good" and it's "old" and it has proven its efficacy for generations of bodybuilders and strength athletes. So why would you even consider replacing it with a barbel-ish new device? Maybe because of the results of a recent study from the  University of Cassino and Southern Lazio  which promise increased muscle activation at lower loads and correspondingly reduced injury risk? Sounds good? Well, we'll see... ...

The result, the full-squat is slightly superior, is not as clear as you may have expected it to be. Furthermore, the study suggests that you won't get away without an additional hamstring exercise if you want tree-trunk legs and a fabulous behind. A new study ( Kubo 2019 ) in the "European Journal of Applied Physiology" compared the effects of squat training with different depths on lower limb muscle volumes (that's news as previous studies measured way too often only the acute EMG response |  Neto 2019 )... with a realistic workout program and a sensible study duration of 10 weeks. over which twenty young men were randomly assigned to a full squat group (#FST, n = 10) or half squat group (#HST, n = 10 at study onset). Are you trying to optimize your training for gains ? Find inspiration in these articles: What's the Latest on Failure? 36% Extra-Gains W/ Rest-Pause Pyramid- and/or Drop-Setting!? Training to Failure = Extra Gains? Super-Setting...

Weight lifting shoes don't make a difference and "elevation masks" (those things that simply impair your ability to breath) work... they increase your cerebral oxygenation - don't rely on the potentially misleading abstracts, alone... read SuppVersity ! Stronger, faster, leaner, ... and obviously more muscular. If you want to achieve all that, you got to invest the effort it takes to trigger the adaptational processes that will get your skinny-fat Western a** into Instagram-ready pre-Olympic shape. But what about the myriad of training gadgets will they take you there any faster? A cursory look at the latest scientific evidence seems to suggest that weight lifting shoes may not be as beneficial and - more surprisingly - elevation masks not as useless as many people believe... a cursory look, that is ;-) Hitting a wall? Try one of these exercises , workouts , and programming techniques : 30% More on the Big Three: Squat, DL, BP! Mix Things Up to Make Gains...