SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

The indoctrination machine of the supplement industry is pretty efficient. At least that's what I gather from the "bro-talk" in my own gym - I guess you know what I mean, right? If there is something free form amino acids products can do that plain whey cannot do, it's increasing the revenue of their producers. No wonder that they are touted as "almost as potent as illegal gear" and sold for prices that make me roll with the eyes. Dozens of patented "optimal" BCAA - leucine : valine : isoleucine - ratios and "superior anabolic blends" ... come on, you are beyond believing every lie you are dished up, aren't you? You never gave in to the temptation? Right you were! A recent study from Japan confirms once more: It's complete proteins trigger complete growth effects, their individual amino acids, which were used in the control arm of a recent (unfortunately) rodent study from the Meiji Company Limited, the Graduate School of A...

Want to learn more about fiber types? ➫ review past SuppVersity articles I am not telling you a secret, when I say that testosterone alone - in the absence of training - will lead to significant increases in skeletal muscle mass (if you think that sounds like a secret you must have missed my previous article from the "Intermittent Thoughts on Building Muscle" series | read more ). To a certain extend, the same is true for DHT ( learn more ), and - as a recent 6-week rodent study by Karina Fontana, Gerson E. R. Campos, Robert S. Staron and Maria Alice da Cruz-Höfling shows even by the structurally similar, orally bioavailable derivative Mesterolone (aka Proviron ), which produces pretty drastic, fiber-type specific increases in muscle size, when it is administered in super-physiological doses for 6 weeks (Fontana. 2013). AAS +/- HIT = ? Basically the question the researchers from the universities of Campinas (Brazil) and Ohio had in mind, when they came up with the...

This is just a random selection of the unlimited movement patterns your body has been designed to execute - don't make the mistake and rely on only one of them! The amount of really interesting, let alone revolutionary new studies on the effects of different exercise modalities is not exactly high, to say the least. I am not quite sure, what the reasons are, but as I have stated before, part of it certainly is that you cannot monetize on the results by producing patentable drugs based on your findings and will thus have a hard time to find sponsors / get funding. It is therefore no wonder that many published papers are spin-offs of small scale trials that have been conducted as part of dissertations. Others simply use rodent models, which may provide relatively reliable data, when it comes to the effects of running on a treadmill, but are not exactly what I would want to see, when it comes to weight lifting or any other of the myriad complex movement patterns our bodies can , b...

Image 1: If you don't want to be strong and look good naked, you better not train like "old school" like Arnold, Franco Columbu (img), Dave Draper, Frank Zane & Co. Although, I do assume that you just dropped everything, went home from work early, or simply did not leave the house at all to be able to listen to my appearance on Carl Lanore's Super Human Radio , yesterday, I know that sometimes more important things (whatever that may be) get into one's way and will thusly give you a second chance, today (click here to download the podcast )... well, so far for the humorous part of this post. Assuming that by now, you did listen to the podcast you should remember that I promised to have something about exercise and strength training in the news, today. And as Carl will probably assert, Super Humans usually stick to their promises, although - and I did mention that yesterday, as well - the number of significant studies, i.e. studies that do not involve ...

Image 1: Who would you like to be? And how do you train to achieve his physique? Sprinter or marathon runner? Ripped and buffed or skinny and sinewy? Although this is, after all, a question of muscle vs. fat, bone and tissue mass , it is upon closer examination as much a qualitative question, as it is a quantitative one - a question that may well be influenced by the way you train! Unlike our adipose tissue which has almost unlimited capacity to grow, the size of our muscles appears to limited by a number of factors, among which the individual fiber-make-up , i.e. the ratio of slow-oxidative endurance-type fibers (type I) to fast-twitch type IIA (fast-oxidative glycolytic), and fast twitch IIX (fast glycolytic) seems to play an important role, when it comes to getting big and buffed or skinny and sinewy. Figure 1: Slow- and fast-twitch faber composition in athletes and non-athletes (data based on Carrol. 1998 ; Widrick. 2002 ) As the data in figure 1 goes to show...