SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

If you want to show off your "guns" cold water immersion (CWI) may be counterproductive in the short- and long-run. In the hours and days after the workout, you'll miss the swelling, over weeks you'll blunt 'ur gainz. No, today's article is not about the effects of cold water on a man's "most personal parts". Rather than that, it's - at least in parts - about the latest study from the University of Trás-os-Montes & Alto Douro in Portugal which shows that the immediate post-workout application of cold water immersion will significantly reduce the swelling of your biceps you'd normally see last for days after a workout. This paper, alongside the latest research on the ergogenic effects of capsaicin supplements on short-medium distance running and the surprisingly position-depending inaccuracy of multi-frequency bioimpedance measurements of the body composition of collegiate football players, are the studies discussed in today'...

Don't forget: Cortisol is no stressor, it's released to help us cope w/ stress. While I have repeatedly emphasized that the notion of cortisol as the "muscle-catabolic stress hormone" you have to "keep as low as possible" is fundamentally flawed, there are reasons why you may want to control your cortisol levels within what would be considered the circadian normal zone, i.e. high(er) levels of cortisol that get you going upon waking, lower levels of cortisol in the PM and at night to facilitate optimal glucose control, avoid HPTA suppression (=keep normal thyroid, GH, and testosterone/estrogen levels), allow for healthy and recuperative sleep and so on and so forth. If you are physically healthy and not overweight/obese, you are probably able to achieve this goal if you have the following (health) habits: (1) getting enough sleep (6-8h), (2) adhering to fundamental rules of sleep hygiene (same time, same routine, no blue light exposure before and dur...

Nice gimmick or must have gym equipment? Answer: "it depends". People are investing more in gym-gear than ever before. $150, for example, for 25% discounted Adidas Weightlifting Shoes  - is that a bargain or just a waste of money? Today's SuppVersity  review will help you decide if weightlifting or O-lifting shoes, of which Bloomberg writes that they are among the fastest growing markets in sportswear ( Bloomberg 2017 ), are a good or useless investment. The distinguishing feature of all weightlifting shoes is the raised heel: the exact heights differ, but range from three-quarters of an inch to one inch and are implemented by solid wood or another hard, rigid material. With laces and a strap to tighten and narrow the fit, the shoes facilitate an optimal transfer of force to the ground... that's at least what the theory and shiny adds will tell us. Unlike weightlifting shoes, creatine will boost your squat performance Age, Meat and Cr Non-Responder...

Ideally, your training partner is both competitive and supportive... and if there's no one around just asking the next best person to spot you will make a significant difference, too. Are you training with a coach or partner? No? Well, after reading today's SuppVersity Special , you may want to get one; and that despite the fact that we know only relatively little about the effect of the presence of a training partner, coach or, as investigated most recently, a spotter on our exercise performance, yet. In a recent study from the  Edge Hill University  in the UK, Sheridan et al. investigated the effect of spotter presence on bench press performance. To this ends, twelve recreationally trained participants (age, 21.3 +/- 0.8 years, height, 1.82 +/- 0.1 m, and weight, 84.8 +/- 11.1 kg) performed 2 trials of 3 sets to failure at 60% of 1 repetition maximum on separate occasions. Even for people who know what they're doing a partner or coach may be very helpful. 30...

Supplement producers have built their business on the (unwarranted) premise that you cannot get enough magnesium from your diet, alone. Unlike the effectiveness of oral magnesium supplementation for the treatment of magnesium deficiency, which has been studied in detail, the ever more popular transdermal magnesium preparations are a "scientifically not yet proven form of magnesium application" (Gröber 2017)... that was true earlier this year when Gröber and colleagues from the Akademie für Mikronährstoffmedizin and the  IPEV Institute for Prevention and Nutrition in Germany was written. With the recent publication of a study from the  University of Hertfordshire (Kass 2017), there's finally a single-blind, parallel designed pilot study that deserves the title "study". Mineral water contains Mg, a lot of other minerals and bicarbonate you don't want to miss: Hydrogen Rich Water = Quackery? Glass of Water Before Meals as Diet Tool Every Sip...