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True or False: Adolescent Athletes at Risk of High Tendon Stress due to Non-Uniform Tendon/Muscle Adaptation

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Not allowing young athletes to lift weights may in fact increase, not decrease, their injury risk and hamper their recovery. I am not sure why, but people won't stop inventing new reasons why professional athleticism would be bad for adolescents. One of the more recently heard claims is that early resistance training will lead to a "non-uniform adaptation of muscle and tendon in young athletes" that may "result[] in increased tendon stress during mid-adolescence" (Mersmann. 2015). In a recent longitudinal study Mersmann et al. investigated the development of the morphological and mechanical properties of muscle and tendon of volleyball athletes in a time period of 2 years from mid-adolescence to late adolescence and the results are quite unambiguous. Read previous True or False!? Articles at the SuppVersity You Cannot Consume too Much Whey?! Caffeine and Creatine Don't Mix, do They?! Creatine is Better Taken After Workouts!? Low Fat fo...
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Nonuniform Muscle Hypertrophy: Activation Patterns and Eventually Exercise Selection Determine Triceps Growth

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Is it possible that you can - within your genetic limits - influence the growth pattern of your tris by the way you train? "Localized muscle growth? Wtf now you're kiddin' me, right!?" Well, I want to be honest with you. It's not like you could actually grow exclusively the peak of your biceps, but the fact that even the observation that the maximal increase in muscle cross-sectional area does actually correspond to the area of maximal stimulation can be considered a "novel finding", is testimony to how under-researched the optimal modalities of training for such profane things as cosmetic muscle gains actually are. In the end, you'd even have to wonder that Taku Wakahara and his colleagues from the Waseda and Doshisha and Ritsumeikan Universities in Japan even dared investing precious time and money into a part of human physiology that's still looked down upon by large parts of the scientific establishment. Maybe, it's like a carte bl...
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Intermittent Thoughts on Building Muscle: Zoning in on "The Big T" - Does Testosterone (Alone) Build Muscle?

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Image 1: As a "serious" researcher you better don't use the words "testosterone" and "muscle" without "anti -doping", "hypogonadism" or "sarcopania" in one of your papers, if you don't want to risk your career. In many of the past installments we have been talking about funky things such as mTOR, myostatin, IGF splice variants and even more exotic stuff. Testosterone, the "big T", the allegedly most important contributor to skeletal muscle hypertrophy has hitherto been "overlooked" - was it the principle of saving the best for last which drove my decision not to address the influence of testosterone on muscle building in the first installment? Was it ignorance? Plain stupidity? Or did I want to start the new Year off with a big Tang... ah pardon "bang"?  The answer is, I was scared. Not because the word "testosterone" has gotten such a bad rep in our metrosexual/feminist s...
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HIT Your Satellite Cells to Increase Your Gains! Only High Intensity "Cardio" Exercise Will Fuel Your Satellite Cell Pool and Set You Up For Future Muscle Growth.

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Image 1: NO-mediated satellite cell recruitement ( Anderson. 2000 ) You have read it on the SuppVersity , you have heard about it on Carl Lanore's Super Human Radio and the BodyRX Show and those of you who have seen videos or pictures from the latest New York City Marathon, should actually have been able to infer it from the way the "finishers" looked like. Intensity not duration is what counts, when doing "cardio". Yet, as a very recent (7 days old) study shows ( Naito. 2011 ), High Intensity Training (HIT) will not only burn off your lovehandles, while keeping your muscles intact, it will also prime your musclefibers for future growth by increasing the number of satellite cells , the small dormant mononuclear progenitor cells that are sandwiched between the basement membrane and sarcolemma of the fibers of your muscle and are recruited, whenever your body feels that you could use a little more or have to replace some damaged muscle mass. While I wil...
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1046 ng/dL Increase in Testosterone for 1.5kg Lean Body Mass in 16 Weeks

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Before you read on: This was a study done on 112 men aged 65–90 years , so the results are only partly significant in view of the effects of testosterone supplementation on younger men. In a double-masked 2x3 factorial design the scientists administered testosterone gel (5g/day vs. 10g/day via Leydig cell clamp) and rhGH (0 vs. 3 vs. 5 µg/kg/d) to the subjects who had a mean baseline testosterone level of 493ng/dL. They summarize the results for the testosterone and the testosterone + rhGH groups as follows: Increases in total testosterone of 1046 ng/dL (95% confidence interval = 1040–1051) and 898 ng/dL (95% confidence interval = 892–904) were necessary to achieve median increases in lean body mass of 1.5 kg and appendicular skeletal muscle mass of 0.8 kg, respectively , which were required to significantly enhance one-repetition maximum strength (≥30%). Co-treatment with rhGH lowered the testosterone le...
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L-Carnitine Changes Gene Transcription in Muscle - After all, it Works!

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L-Carnitine has long been among my favorites of expensive supplements with ostensibly conclusive scientific background which are pretty worthless in practice. Now, a new study by Keller et al. ( Keller. 2010 ) found that L-Carnitine supplementation in piglets had a distinct effect on gene expression in skeletal muscle: Transcript profiling revealed 211 genes to be differentially expressed in muscle by carnitine supplementation. The identified genes were mainly involved in molecular processes such as cytoskeletal protein binding, insulin-like growth factor (IGF) binding, transcription factor activity, and insulin receptor binding. Identified genes with the molecular function transcription factor activity encoded primarily transcription factors, most of which were down-regulated by carnitine, including pro-apoptotic transcription factors such as proto-oncogene c-fos, proto-oncogene c-jun and activating transcription factor 3. Furthermore, atrophy-related genes such as atrogin-1, MuRF1...
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Leucine + Whey = Upper Body Strength and Mass Gains

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In a very recent study, Walker et. al. ( Walker. 2010 ) investigated the effect of 8 weeks whey-Protein and leucine Supplementation on physical and cognitive performance. The provided 30 moderately fit individuals with 19.7g whey and 6.2 g leucine (WPL) or a calorie-equivalent placebo (P) and put them on a standardized exercise regimen. The results suggests that the availability of high quality protein adds to the protein anabolic effect of leucine to produce strength and lean mass gains: Bench-press performance increased significantly from Week 1 to Week 8 in the WPL group, whereas the increase in the P group was not significant. Push-up performance increased significantly for WPL, and P showed a nonsignificant increase. Total mass, fat-free mass, and lean body mass all increased significantly in the WPL group but showed no change in the P group. Are you missing something? Yes? To be honest, I cannot tell you about the effect on cognitive performance, because, obviously, the author...
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60% More Testosterone by 10 x 5 Reps of Speed Squats at 70% of Body Weight

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We all know that intense exercise is the way to trigger hormonal responses and muscle hypertrophy in the gym. Now a study by Fry & Lohnes ( Fry. 2010 ) quantified this effect to +60% increase in testosterone. The scientists had four weight trained men perform 10 x 5 speed squats at 70% of system mass (1 RM +/- BW) with 2 min inter-set rest intervals . Five minutes upon completion of the workout blood was drawn and cortisol and testosterone levels were analyzed: Post-exercise Tes exhibited a very large effect size (nmol x L-1 pre = 12.5 +/- 2.9, post = 20.0 +/- 3.9; Cohen's D = 1.27). What is confusing, however, is that the scientists state that while cortisol did not change the cortisol/testosterone ratio would not be influenced, only to conclude: The acute increase for Tes is in agreement with previous reports that high power activities can elicit a Tes response. High power resistance exercise protocols such as the one used in the present study produce acute increases of ...
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Yes, Skin Bursting Pumps Will Make Your Muscles Grow

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Arnold already knew: "If you want to grow, go for the pump!" A recent study by Soltow et al. ( Soltow. 2010 ) expands on Arnold's hypothesis - what you need is pump and stretch . The scientists studied the effect of nitric oxide (NO) on C2C12 myoblasts and found: NO, COX-2, and NF-kappaB are necessary for stretch-induced proliferation of myoblasts. Although COX-2 and NF-kappaB are both involved in basal proliferation, NO does not affect basal growth. Thus, NO requires the synergistic effect of stretch in order to induce muscle cell proliferation. So, more NO, some stretch and / or skin bursting pumps? That reminds me of the good old first generation pump supplements with arginine, of which I can only repeat do not dump your good old NO Xplode , White Flood , Super Pump 250 , VPX Shotgun , etc. down the toilette. It is not for nothing that they have been around for years! What's more, Arginine and Ornithine (ingredients of the first generation Pump Supps) ha...
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