SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Surrender bro, women are tougher than we'll ever be... and let's not talk about the other tactics by the means of which they trick us into doing whatever they want without us even noticing :-o In the world of search engines for scientific papers on training and exercise science the acronym "HIIT" is currently what the word "sex" has always been on Google & co. Against that background it is actually surprising that no one else but me has taken notice of a paper on the "Sex specific  responses  to  self-paced,  high-intensity  interval  training  with  variable  recovery periods" . The corresponding research was conducted by C. Matthew Laurent et al. from the School of Human Movement, Sport and Leisure Studies at the Bowling Green State University in Ohio and the paper is about to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (Laurent. 2013) Men are different, women too The results of previ...

Image 1: Minimalist strength training for maximal results? In the long run even a one set strength circuit can elicit astonishing changes, if you train consistently, progressively, heavy and with picture perfect form (image Paramount Fitness ). Unconventional wisdom days at the SuppVersity : After yesterdays "news" (I hope it was not real news for the majority of you) about the superiority of high intensity interval over classic steady state cardio in at the lower end of the "fat burning zone", today's news is going to cause a couple of other set-in stone paradigms to totter: resistance training ain't for women low volume resistance training won't help you lose body fat resistance training requires a high protein diet to work The respective data comes from a recently published study by R. Washburn and his colleagues from the Center for Physical Activity and Weight Management at the University of Kansas and researchers from the Southern I...

Image 1: Johanna Quas (86), "Germany's Fittest Granny"; check out this video of her on the high bar to see an extraordinary exception proving the rule - everybody who believes he/she could rival Johanna's gymnastic skills, could try that at the next world cup, where she probably will be competing again. "Rodents are no little human beings", you will probably have heard or read this sentence at least a hundred times by now, but have you heard someone say "3 sets are not 1 set", "women are not men" or "8 weeks are not 16 weeks"? No, well in that case, a recently published meta-analysis of 45 primary strength training studies involving 1712 participants by Michael Fröhlich, Lutz Links and Andrea Pieter, is for you ( Fröhlich. 2012 ). Age, sex, training status, ... a hell lot of things to consider The scientists from the University of Saarland and the Deutsche Hochschule für Prävention  und Gesundheitsmanagementin Saarbrück...

Image 1: Geoffrey Cannon's "Dieting Makes You Fat" was first published in 1983 and has lost nothing of its topicality. According to relatively recent data ( Bendixen. 2002 ; Kruger. 2004 ), roughly 30–50% of the women and 10–30% of the men are currently or have recently attempted to lose weight by "dieting". I would assume that at least 90% of these dieters followed did so by just following the "Hippocratic approach" to weight loss of eating less and exercising more a strategy that is probably even more futile today, than 400BC, when it was first proposed by the father of modern allopathic medicine (cf. Precope. 1952 ), or 1983, when Cannon and Einzig published the first of the countless editions of their explanation for why dieting is a disaster (which is  by the way, not just because a calorie was not a calorie ;-). Dieting makes you fat - fullstop! From earlier as well as more recent studies on the effects of starvation, calorie restrictio...

Researchers ( Constantini. 2010 ) from the University medical center in Jerusalem found that contrary to popular believe, vitamin C will not help ward off the common cold in swimmers. Interestingly, they did observe a positive effect on severity and duration of infection in males, only: The duration of respiratory infections was 22% shorter in vitamin C group, but the difference was not statistically significant. However, we found a significant interaction between vitamin C effect and sex, so that vitamin C shortened the duration of infections in male swimmers by 47% (95% CI: -80% to -14%), but had no effect on female swimmers (difference in duration: +17%; 95% CI: -38% to +71%). The effect of vitamin C on the severity of URIs was also different between male and female swimmers, so that vitamin C was beneficial for males, but not for females. Hitherto, the scientists have no explanation for the observed gender bias. It could however have contributed to the equivocal  resul...

Are you training to gain strength? If so, you might be interested that Polish scientists ( Klimek. 2010 ) found that cryostimulation, i.e. short term exposure to -130°C, stimulates anaerobic exercise performance. In the male subjects, whole body cryostimulation caused a significant (P < 0.05) increase in relative values of peak power (11.1 vs. 11.9 W×kg-1). A significant (P < 0.05) increase in mean power (723.9 vs. 756.1 W) was also observed, as well as an i ncrease in total work (13.77 vs. 14.53 kJ) registered in the Wingate test after the whole body cryostimulation. Additionally, a significant (P < 0.05) decrease in time to reach peak power from 6.67 to 5.92 s in the post-cryogenic treatment test was registered. However, the changes in time to sustain peak power were not significant. Interestingly women did not benefit from the study protocol. While the scientists do not give a comprehensive explanation for the lack of effect on female athletes, I would suspect it is due t...

We all know, women are tough, but would you have expected them to recover much faster from an all out bench press session at the gym? Judge et.al. ( Judge. 2010 ) investigated the effect of recovery time on strength performance following a high-intensity bench press workout in 12 athletes (6 males and 6 females) and age-matched college students of both genders (4 males and 4 females). The subjects completed a 3-wk resistance training program involving a bench press exercise, 3 d/wk, to become familiar with the testing procedure. After the completion of the resistance training program, the subjects, on three consecutive weeks, participated in two testing sessions per week, baseline session and recovery session. During the testing sessions, subjects performed five sets of the bench press exercise at 50% to 100% of perceived five repetition maximum (5-RM). After resting 4-, 24-, or 48-h strength measurements were estimates of one repetition maximum (1-RM), using equivalent perce...