SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

If you actually work out on the vibration plate (instead of just standing there) it may in fact be an effective adjunct to regular exercise for must of us. I have to admit that I am regularly laughing about the women on the vibration plates in my fitness studio. Now that I have read the latest paper from the Department of Medical Sciences at the University of Tsukuba , however, I will probably see them standing on the "wacker plates" with different eyes. In said study which was conducted by Sechang Oh et al. (2014) the scientists tried to elucidate the effects of what they call "acceleration training" (this is in fact what we know as vibration training) on the physical function, body composition, hepatic and metabolic function, fat contents in the liver and skeletal muscles of overweight subjects (BMI = 28 kg/m²) with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). For the lean NAFLD sufferers I'd suggest HIIT instead of a vibrator ;-) Never Train To Burn...

Vibration training is for lazy men & women, only - right? It cannot speed up the adaptation process in athletes, right? And it certainly has no effects on body composition, right? Not exactly, scroll down and find out why. For those of you who haven't read yesterday's first installment of this research update, I highly suggest you head over now, or after you've read today's follow up on additional vibration training for athletes, caffeine and the effect of muscle size on the strength boosting effects of caffeine, the benefits of and perfect time to psyche up before a sprint event and the muscular myoastatin response to strength, interval and combined training, to make sure you don't miss half this research update. And if you are not interested in any of these news you may still appreciate the bottom line with a brief review of the latest evidence for the differential or identical effects of strength and hypertrophy training on the acute biochemical and ne...

Disclaimer: This article contains prejudiced references to the way women train. Please don't take it personally, ladies; take it as a challenge to show us guys that you know better than that ;-) I know, it is embarrassing to even think of joining the mostly older ladies on the whole body vibrators in your gym. According to a recent study from the Florida International University (Serravite. 2013), it may yet really be worth to grab the Olympic Bar, load it with ~50% of your usual squatting weight, check if no trainer is there to freak out that you + the weight on your back may damage the expensive workout equipment and hop right onto the Whole Body Vibration Plate next to the nice older lady who is staring at you (a heretic) with awe. Now, aside from being talked about at the gym, the main reason to actually take my advice and relocate your squat workouts to the the whole body vibration plates is the increased energy expenditure you can achieve, when you're performing y...

Image 1: The FitVibe Excel is the device that was used in the study. The subjects either squatted or did push ups on the machine for the last 30 seconds of their 180s rest-intervals between sets. When it comes to training methodology it is quite difficult to come up with innovations that really help. One thing that I have always looked down upon as an exercise method for rich, but lazy fat-asses, i.e. training on one of those vibration platforms, has lately gotten a lot of attention, not as a replacement, but as an auxiliary training strategy in the regimen of professional athletes. Its use as part of regenerative measures has already been studied extensively. Broadbent et al., for example, report statistically significant reductions in delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) and interleukin 6 (IL6) in 29 recreational runners, who were exposed to vibration training for 5 days after a 40min downhill run ( Broadbent. 2008 ). And, more recently, Arminian-Far et al. found similar reduc...

Although I suppose that what I am about to tell you won't settle the everlasting debate on the effectiveness of early morning cardio training on an empty stomach (or even cardio training in general) for fat loss, you may nevertheless be interested to hear the results of a a study which has recently been published in the Journal of Human Sports & Exercise ( Mohebbi. 2011 ). Figure 1: Percentage of VO2Max for maximal (red) and minimal (green) fatty oxidation (main axis) and maximal fatty oxidation (secondary / right axis) absolute values in mg/min/fat free mass (data adapted from Mohebbi. 2011 ) Mohebbi & Aziz recruited 12 normal-weight and 10 obese men for their study and measured maximal fat oxidation (MFO) in the course of a standardized treadmill incremental running exercise , where speed and increment were increased at 3 minute intervals. MFO was determined by VO2 / VCO2 measurements during the last 2 minutes of each exercise stage. With the participants performin...