It is often said that the science has to catch up to conventional gym wisdom. This was true of: 1. Protein intake for muscle growth -> Bodybuilders always said 1g per pound....turns out that's about right. 2. The Post-Workout Window -> "make sure you get quick digesting carbs and protein immediately post-workout to blunt catabolism, maximize anabolism, and recover"......while less true for protein and growth, carbohydrate uptake and glycogen re synthesis is indeed more effective when carbs are ingested during or immediately after training. Thus, the better you can reciver, the better your training, the greater the gains - thus an indirect result. Carbs also DO NOT actually seem to enhance the effects of protein ingestion on muscle protein synthesis or inhibiting muscle breakdown, a theory that largely revolved around the impact of insulin on stimulating muscle protein synthesis, which it appears is actually not required and if present can support MPS at low levels. 3. Train low reps for strength & power, high reps for hypertrophy -> It's been well-established at this point that similar degrees of hypertrophy may be achieved across rep ranges and intensity ranges as long as sets are taken to or near failure, with volume being the major predictor of effect magnitude - however you could argue that since the standard BRO hypertrophy training range is so broad (basically anything above 10 reps and from 60-80% RM) that bodybuilders were right after all, especially considering that it is far more effective to achieve higher training volumes at mid-intensities vs. power or endurance level intensities. When it comes to strength, the edge is given to lower rep ranges and higher intensities for achieving greater strength adaptations. https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-017-0177-8 https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-10-53 Some recent analyses on other popular quandaries surrounding how to train or eat have been released. 1. Does exercise order affect strength or hypertrophy? - A systematic review and meta-analysis https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17461391.2020.1733672?journalCode=tejs20& Author's conclusions: - exercises at the beginning of a session see better strength gains - growth is not significantly affected by exercise order, and multi-joint (MJ) to single-joint (SJ) or SJ to MJ order produce similar results 2. Do fast-twitch and slow-twitch fibers need fiber specific training to maximize growth? - Stronger By Science comments on the literature to date and the results of a recent randomized trial https://www.instagram.com/p/B8tqsdpHmEQ/?ck_subscriber_id=698179458 - Greg's OP: It’s only been clearly demonstrated once, in my opinion (“Type 1 Muscle Fiber Hypertrophy after Blood Flow-restricted Training in Powerlifters” by Bjørnsen et al.), with most studies not supporting its relevance. You can read more about the topic at strongerbyscience.com/muscle-fiber-type/ - Science to date: muscle growth is pretty similar when training with loads ranging from ~30% to ~80-85% of 1RM - recent study: Subjects trained their quads with either 80% 1RM or 30% 1RM for three sets to failure for 10 weeks. Both conditions led to significant hypertrophy of both fiber types, with no significant differences between them. Below is a video by Dr. Layne Norton on the relationship between training intensity VS. volume
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Needless to say, 2020 has been a whirlwind of uncertainty. From concern about what this new virus was and even where it was, to hard decisions about how or whether to keep our home businesses open, and of course how long the initial lock-down would ultimately last. Kettlebell events in particular seemed untouchable at first, after all our sport doesn't require close interaction or contact between athletes. However, one-by-one our beloved destination competitions met the chopping block - OKC Vancouver International, Crazy Monkey, Seattle WAKSC Worlds... Of course, our friends managed to "pivot", and so did we. ZOOM Video Communications became all the rage and their stock skyrocketed, resulting in a revenue spike of almost 4-fold by Q2 of 2020! It really is no surprise because the whole kettlebell community bought in and defaulted to the ZOOM platform. Talk about a lifesaver. The NKC managed to salvage the year, participating in 5 competitions - our yearly average. It's a shame we didn't get to see many of our kettlebell friends in person, but we demonstrated exactly what it means to be part of a team, as well as a community - we showed up, we put in the effort, and we gave each other strength in a time of struggle. Nice work team.
This exercise has been used as a quick assessment tool for movement quality because the parameters for both joint mobility and system stability lie at the upper boundaries of what is considered functional. When performed with increasingly heavier weights, there is a high neural demand on cognition and motor control. Thus, this exercise can neither be rushed nor performed without 100% focus. As renowned physiotherapist and FMS founder Gray Cook remarked, symmetry, bodyweight management, strength, and stability can all be addressed with the Turkish Get Up because despite not working many prime-movers, "[it] really blasts your stabilizers" and "stabilizers are what give you the mechanical advantage to be stronger". As the legend goes, if you wanted to learn how to lift you would find your local, village strongman and ask him to teach you. The strongman, knowledgeable in such matters understood that not everyone had the focus, determination, coordination or even physical well-being it takes to begin much less endure years of brutal training. In order to separate the wishers from the workers, the strongman would decree: "This is the Get-Up. You must perform it on both the left and right sides equally. When you can do it with 100lbs I will show you how to lift." The Turkish Get-Up truly is one of the most accessible ways to assess both quantitative and qualitative parameters of physical fitness. Not only will a TGU performed with light-to-moderately heavy weight keep you in the best shape of your life, but it also a mighty feat of strength when attempted with a maximal load. The Turkish Get Up includes both an ASCENT and a DESCENT. TGU: ASCENT STEP 1: FLOOR PRESS STEP 2: ROLL TO ELBOW STEP 3: POST TO HAND STEP 4: HIGH BRIDGE STEP 5: BRIDGE TO KNEE You are about to support yourself and the bell on only two points of contact - so be ready! Most of your weight is in your bottom arm here so take it slow and DO NOT take your eyes off the bell! Pull your foot underneath your body, slightly turning your hips to clear the floor with your knee. Plant the knee directly underneath your torso. If you have trouble running your knee into the floor, it's usually due to not turning the hips. STEP 6: HIP SHIFT STEP 7: ADJUST YOUR FEET STEP 8: KNEELING TO STANDING Don't get cocky! Keep your eyes on the bell, maintain active lockout, keep shoulder blade anchored, and PULL FORWARD into a bilateral stance. DO NOT push back into split squat stance and then step forward. The former utilizes your glute/ham strength and hip stability to ascend, the latter your quad strength and knee stability. TGU: DESCENT STEP 1: REVERSE LUNGE STEP 2: HIP SHIFT / POST STEP 3: SHOOT STEP 4: PLANT YOUR BUTT STEP 5: SLIDE TO YOUR SIDE I have found this technique to be more reliable and predictable than simply reversing the ascending steps. Dropping to the elbow is not usually the issue, but rather getting to the back without dropping awkwardly or directly loading a flexed thoracic spine. Maintaining a stiff arm while sliding out allows a controlled descent at constant speed. People with poor shoulder ROM may have trouble with this step, but then again those people probably cannot TGU without a bent bell arm. STEP 6: ROLL TO YOUR BACK
So what forms the basis - what are the necessary conditions for us to lose fat? To lose fat you must create a calorie deficit. Simply put, a calorie deficit refers to consuming less energy (i.e. food) than your body requires or expends in a given period of time (typically measured within a 24 hour period). Now, the common MISTAKE made by dieters and CICO “deniers” is assuming that CALORIES IN literally refers only to the total (known) numerical value of calories eaten/drank and that CALORIES OUT literally refers only to calories “burned” through exercise - and for some slightly more acquainted with bioenergetics, resting metabolic rate.
CALORIES IN Calories-In is relatively simple: it’s the food you digest. However, the calorie content of food is imperfectly determined and calorie availability can vary between species/variety/source and even due to the degree of processing involved. These are small inconsistencies, but inconsistencies nonetheless. For example, dietary fiber cannot be digested through typical enzymatic action in our small intestine (we do not produce cellulase). So even though fiber HAS calories, it doesn't mean we "absorb" those calories. However, gut flora in our large intestine can - through fermentation - convert fiber into short-chain fatty acids. Those SCFA can translocate from the intestinal lumen into circulation, yielding calories. Thus, the composition of your gut flora influences your CALORIES IN, and that composition differs between people, and across your lifespan. CALORIES OUT This gets more complicated. CALORIES OUT is not simply represented by what the treadmill tells you. You inhabit a living body that, whether you are conscious of the fact or not, is perpetually dependent on energy availability. In short, CALORIES OUT may be summed up as:
IMPORTANT CAVEATS:
So was this client actually in a caloric deficit when she came to me? According to the equation, yes - according to real-life, NO! By definition, because she was not losing weight she was NOT in a caloric deficit. It's important to remember that equations are crude estimations of calorie needs, and just exactly how efficiently individuals digest and utilize/partition the food molecules they eat is unique to them. Activities like resistance training stimulate muscle protein synthesis (MPS) to a large enough degree that we can actually see its effect in 1-2 months - which is pretty amazing to think about! The food you eat literally forms the essential elements of contractile muscle! Because we created a demand for protein and energy (in the molecular form of ATP), we robbed her adipose (fat cells) to maintain, build, and repair actively trained muscles. Training created the deficit, but it also told her body what to do with her food: Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle! If you are human and live somewhere on the blue planet, you have at some point been either interested in losing fat, gaining muscle, or both. Both of these contribute to your total body-weight, and most people tend to assume that when their weight changes they are either losing or gaining fat, or losing or gaining muscle. Is this factually accurate?
The truth is, most of the fluctuations in your bodyweight, at least in the short term (day to day; week to week), are a result of fluid dynamics. Your body is 65-90% water depending on your body composition, and as such where that water goes can really affect your bodyweight! You’ve probably noticed that if you weigh yourself before bed, then again in the morning, you will typically weigh in excess of a pound less after a night of sleep. Is this because you were a fat burning machine while sleeping? Not likely… Your body is an incredible factory that runs all day, and all night. Do you burn energy while sleeping? Not a lot, but yes you do - and the byproducts of cellular respiration include carbon dioxide (exhaled), and H2O. H2O (water) is a molecule that is used for numerous chemical reactions in the body. “Dehydration” reactions occur when two molecules form in the body, and H2O is released as a byproduct. Where does that water go? Well, quite a bit of water escapes your body during the night through exhalation, and evaporation as part of the natural process of body temperature regulation. Yes, it’s true, you can lose several pounds of water overnight, especially the larger or more metabolically active you are. Sometimes you “retain” water in the intracellular space, or even in the bowel. This can certainly add to your normal bodyweight. If you are particularly active, especially in endurance sports or if you perform intense exercise at least 1 hour in length, you can deplete your muscle tissue of a macromolecule called Glycogen. Glycogen is basically stored complex sugars in the muscle tissue that is used to fuel that muscle’s activity. The average amount of whole-body glycogen is 300-400g (for women and men respectively), with some people having as much as 1kg. As much as 65% of glycogen is water, so when you exercise and use up glycogen, you are actually dehydrating. Even higher levels of whole-body glycogen are possible by following a carb-depletion and carb-loading protocol. This possible consequence being that the more fit your are, the more glycogen/weight you can store. This may be partially why weight-loss can slow as a training regimen progresses, as you may be getting better at storing glycogen. Then again, if training frequently but without eating 300-400g of carbohydrate per day to reload glycogen stores, this is not likely the case. Here's where you really see these fluid dynamics at work: fasting, and low-carb diets. Now to be clear, if you start any diet that creates a calorie deficit (whether explicitly stated or disguised as magic) you will typically begin to lose muscle glycogen if the deficit is large enough (and remember a deficit is the negative balance between energy required and energy spent - in other words a combination of diet induced and activity induced deficit). So in the honeymoon phase of any diet (first month) you could reasonably expect up to 10lbs or more of weight loss. That sounds pretty great right?! Sure it is! And the amazing thing is that pretty well any diet can do that in month one. But unfortunately that's the easy weight loss - the low hanging fruit as we sometimes call it. After that initial loss, reality sets in and true rate of fat loss is revealed as something closer to 0.5% - 1% of your bodyweight per week (e.g. 0.5%-1% x 140lb female = 0.7lbs - 1.4lbs per week). That's only 2.8lbs - 5.6lbs per month. Now let's be clear - 5.6lbs loss in a month for a 140lb female is awesome! For larger individuals their weight-loss will be greater (because they have a higher proportion of adipose tissue (fat mass) to lose, and for smaller, leaner individuals that weight loss will be on the lower side. More aggressive weight-loss efforts like crash diets, tea "detoxes", and other get-thin-quick schemes can result in much faster weight-loss. Unfortunately, the faster the weight-loss the higher the proportion of lean mass that makes up that weight (especially in the absence of resistance training). This is problematic because even though total body-weight decreases (for a time) body-fat percentage remains unchanged, or perhaps worsens if this cycle is repeated. The challenge that the average dieter faces after month one is that not only does weight loss slow, thus necessitating a greater deficit, but it can stall and perhaps even increase as a consequence of the fluid dynamics we just discussed. After a month of "clean eating" (i.e. low-sodium, low-carb, and high-protein - makes you urinate more) you are typically glycogen and water depleted. If you have a cheat day or meal, or perhaps have a moment of weakness and scarf down a bag of Doritos for example, you start to drive carbohydrates into your muscle, along with it's associated water component, and the extra sodium will drive water into your extracellular space and lower bowel. This sudden influx can really be seen on the scale, and have a negative effect on your mental fortitude. Frankly, it can be pretty defeating, and unsurprisingly this is where most people fall of the wagon. It is unfortunate because this is where a nutrition coach is worth their weight in gold (OK, perhaps not gold but maybe protein powder?). Not only is a qualified coach educated in the science of weight loss, but many are uniquely equipped to identify and address the mental struggle with weight loss, and work with clients to create practical strategies for staying on track, staying focused, and breaking through barriers. Coach Solly is a Precision Nutrition Certified Level 1 coach who sees nutrition and weight-loss from dual perspectives: not only has he lost 60lbs and kept it off for 15 years, but he has also coached athletes to Pro level physique status, in addition to stepping on a bodybuilding stage himself. |
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