SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

The patterns that emerge in Figure 1-3  already suggest that Crossfit gyms are the places where the average user will "leave the most calories" on the floor. Even regular circuit training programs burn ~10kcal/min (Gettman 1981). Graduate research from 2013 suggests that exhausting Crossfit workouts can burn as much as 20kcal/min (Babiash 2013). From previous SuppVerity  articles, you will remember that the number of calories the classic cardio equipment will tell you you'd burned during your last session often is completely off. You have also learned about a year ago that even the best fitness trackers have a margin of error of ~10% - and that's for walking, jogging or running, where it's really easy to estimate the energy requirements. And, assuming that you've been around for quite some time, you may remember that there's credible evidence that we systematically underestimate the energy expenditure of push-ups, pull-ups, burpees and other bodyweig...

You have heard me argue based on theoretical considerations before that "intermittent fasting" is probably best used during cuts, not during "bulks" - the results of the study at hand, even though they may not show stat. sign. inter-group differences, support this suggestion. You will be surprised, but the latest article Tinsley et al. (2016) published in the  European Journal of Sport Science  is indeed the very first study to investigate the effects of time-restricted feeding (TRF) "on nutrient intake, body composition, and strength" when they are combined with a standardized resistance training regimen. That's too good to be true? Well, wait until you've learned more about the methodology and results, but it is indeed cool that someone finally studied the effects of what the majority of people think of if you talk about "intermittent fasting" (that's in contrast to scientists who often think of alternative day fasting when th...

Weight training on separate days!? In "bottom lines" of SuppVersity  articles you've repeatedly read that "in spite of the promising results of the study at hand, I would still suggest that you do your cardio and resistance training on separate days if that's possible". That's a conclusion nobody ever questioned - and that in spite of the fact that the effects of splitting strength (S) and endurance (E) training onto different days on body composition in the long term have not even been investigated, yet. The aim of a recent study by Eklund, et al. (2016) was thus the first to investigate possible differences in body fat and lean mass, blood lipid levels and physical fitness profile following 24 weeks of volume-equated different-day and same-session combined strength and endurance training in previously untrained healthy men and women. You can learn more about the optimal exercise order at the SuppVersity What's the Right Training 4 Y...

I can almost guarantee that the results of this study are not sex-specific. Ladies, pick up the weights fater you hit the treadmill, stairmaster, elliptical or other torture instrument you like to use! It has been a while since the last study on exercise order (cardio or weights first) has been published. Now, scientists from the University of Kurdistan  have conducted another study to investigate the effects of intrasession sequencing of concurrent resistance and endurance training on the serum leptin, testosterone, cortisol responses and body composition in obese men. And don't worry, we are not talking about useless acute-phase data that shows no correlation with either strength or muscle gains, or fat loss (West. 2012). Sheikholeslami-Vatani and colleagues conducted an eight-week study on thirty obese young male students without continuous exercise history (age: 23.2±1.4 year, BMI: 31.8±1.6 kg/m²). You can learn more about the optimal exercise order at the SuppVersity...

Specifically for teenagers it may be important to work out in both aerobic and anaerobic workouts. So, this would be another reason to favor the combined over the other regimen. You will probably have overheard the "knowledgeable" trainers at the gym tell their credulous clients, who just told them they "want to lose that belly fat", that the best thing they could do was to "stop spending that much time with weight training" and to do some more (steady state) cardio. Well, in general, there's nothing wrong about steady state cardio - in fact, many studies show that it is superior to resistance training when it comes to "merely" shedding body weight (in the obese). If "weight loss" is still everything you're aspiring, though, you are either new to the SuppVersity or another of the "headline skimmers" who happen to ask questions that are answered not just in the article, but actually in one of the red boxes... ah, I ...