Disappointing Results in 28-Day Creatine + β-Alanine Study: No Performance Benefits, No Muscle Gain, No Fat Loss, No Increase in Phosphocreatine & Carnosine in 32 Women

Let's take a closer look at the study and find how it was possible that two proven ergogenics "failed".

Creatine and beta-alanine belong to the few "proven ergogenics", but according to the latest study from the University of Pittsburg, the Texas Christian University, the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse and the Texas A&M University they are not as effective as some of us may think. Specifically the effects of beta-alanine which was tested in what you may call its "comfort zone", i.e. a graded exercise test on the cycle ergometer for VO2peak with lactate threshold determination, and multiple Wingate anaerobic capacity tests. And still, the overall results of the study is that there a "no consistent additive benefits of BA [beta alanine] and CRE [creatine] supplementation in recreationally active women.

If you are using creatine already try adding bicarbonate as extra-cellular pH-buffer

The Hazards of Acidosis

Build Bigger Legs W/ Bicarbonate

HIIT it Hard W/ NaCHO3

Creatine + BA = Perfect Match

Bicarb Buffers Creatine

Beta Alanine Fails to HIIT Back

In today's SuppVersity article, we are going to have a closer look at the study design, its outcomes and potential explanations for the absence of the highly desirable performance enhancing effects of these two (alleged) ergogenic powerhouses.

As you may know I am not a fan of beta alanine, anyway. Yet despite my alleged bias, I have to admit that the wingate tests the scientists used to determine the effects of the supplementation protocol may have been too short for BA to work. In the most comprehensive meta-analysis of the research to-date, Hobson et al. (2012) found that there are no ergogenic effects to beta alanine on exercises lasting less than 60s or more than 240s; and in the "ergogenic" 60-240s zone, the performance benefit is only 2.85%.

Figure 1: In view of the short study duration it's no wonder that there were no significant effects on body fat and lean mass, but the fact that the beta alanine only group actually gained fat after an initial high loss of body fat is still awkward - still, statistically significant was only the time effect, which tells you that exercise works (Kresta. 2014).

And as far as the absence of benefits of creatine are concerned. The results of the study are in line with previous experimental evidence like that presented by Green et al. who report in their 2001 article in the The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research that...

"[...] short-term Cr supplementation does not enhance MP and PP during repeated upper-and lower-body Wingate tests when not accompanied by an increase in body weight." (Kresta. 2001)

Similarly, Hoffman et al. (2008) could not find perfomance benefits of short-duration beta alanine supplementation in college football players, what the scientists from the College of New Jersey did find, though was an increases training volume and reduces subjective feelings of fatigue in their highly trained subjects in response to the ingestion of 4.5g/day of beta alanine (Hoffman. 2008).

All in all, the results are thus less surprising than they appear to be...

... at least for those of you who don't believe in the unsustainable promises of the supplement industry, but rely on experimental evidence, only. For creatine, the scientists tested the wrong type of exercise. For beta alanine the exercise duration (60s) on the wingate tests was not long enough to show significant performance increases.

Figure 2: Non-significant (!) changes in carnosine (should increase with BA supplementation) and phosphocreatine (should increase with creatine supplementation) in the BA, BAC, CRE and placebo group (Kresta. 2014).

What the previous brief review of selected experimental evidence does not explain, though, are (a) neither the beta alanine, nor the creatine or combined supplementation lead to statistically significant increases in carnosine (via beta alanine) or phosphocreatine (via creatine), (b) the levels of phosphocreatine the high energy resource, that is believed to be responsible for most of the beneficial effects of creatine actually dropped after 2 weeks on maintenance dose of 0.1g/kg creatine, when it was administered after a 0.3g/kg creatine pre-load. These results stand in contrast to previous studies, like...

• Harris and colleagues (2001) who reported that β-ALA supplementation (3.2 g/day) resulted in a 42% increase in muscle carnosine levels after four weeks of supplementation not due to the fact that the carnosine levels didn't increase, but rather due to the fact that the scientists did not find statistically significant interactions among groups in muscle carnosine levels.
  
  As Kresta et al. (2014) point out, "the lack of statistical significance was apparently due to the large variability in muscle carnosine levels observed in response to β-ALA supplementation, assay variability, and/or inadequate sample size", so that "[m]ore research is needed to determine the effects of β-ALA supplementation on muscle carnosine levels in recreationally-active women" (Kresta. 2014).
• Greenhaff et al. (1994) or Harris et al. (1992) who found significant increases in phosphocreatine with similar preloading + maintenance creatine supplementation schemes as the one used in the study at hand, but yielded significantly higher and above all consistent increases in creatine of up to 40% . Results from the present study found non-significant increases in muscle PCr of up to 40%
  
  Again, Kresta et al. suspect that "the lack of significance may have simply been a result of the small sample size", but add that "it is also known that there is individual variability in response to creatine supplementation" (Kresta. 2014) - a fact that is imho unlikely to be a likely cause of the lack of effect in all subjects, though.

Overall it is thus difficult to determine the lack of consistence improvements in carnosine and phosphocreatine levels in the study at hand, it may yet, as Kresta et al. suggest also be possible...

A study by Everaert, et al. indicates that women have naturally lower carnosine levels (Evaerart. 2011 | see figure abvove). Previous studies, e.g. Tallon (2006), however, found no such difference which is interpreted by Harris et al. in their 2012 review as evidence that "that the apparent gender difference reported by Everaert et al. (2011) may have been simply due to a higher type I:II ratio in females in the voxel sampled." (Harris. 2012)

"[...]that sex may have played a role in response to creatine and/or β-ALA supplementation. In this regard, most studies on creatine and β-ALA supplementation have been conducted on males and there is some evidence that females may respond differently to creatine and/or β-ALA supplementation. For example, Fosberg and colleagues (Forsberg. 1991) reported that females had greater total creatine amounts relative to tissue weight; however, other studies show there is no difference between males and females (Forsberg. 1991; Stegen. 2014).

There are also some data suggesting that men may have greater muscle carnosine levels than women (Derave. 2002; Harris. 2012); however, a recent study showed sex did not have an effect on increasing carnosine levels with supplementation (Stegen. 2014). Additionally, Bex and coworkers (2014) reported that carnosine loading is more pronounced in trained versus untrained individuals" (Kresta. 2014).

It is thus possible, but imho again not very likely that the fact that the subjects in the study at hand were women and or their individual training status may have had and impact on the hardly existing response to creatine and/or β-ALA supplementation.

Creatine + bicarbonate appears to offer a superior synergism | learn why

In the end, it's yet not the increase in carnosine or phosphocreatine that's important for us. What we are looking for are performance increases, which were probably absent due to the selected tests, on which previous studies have already shown that creatine and beta alanine have failed before to produce significant performance increases (see previous elaborations on the non-existent effects of BA on 60s and >240s exercise and the issue with creatine and wingate tests), plus changes in body composition for which the four-week study period may simply have been too short.

Against that background I would like to point out that the study at hand does not indicate that either beta alanine or creatine are useful. What it does, thought, is to remind us of the fact that (a) you won't see results over night and (b) even beta alanine and creatine are exercise-specific ergogenics and won't boost your performance an each and every type of exercise to the same extent. Or what do you think are the implications? Comment on Facebook!

References:

• Bex, Tine, et al. "Muscle carnosine loading by beta-alanine supplementation is more pronounced in trained vs. untrained muscles." Journal of Applied Physiology 116.2 (2014): 204-209.
• Derave, Wim, et al. "Muscle carnosine metabolism and β-alanine supplementation in relation to exercise and training." Sports medicine 40.3 (2010): 247-263.
• Everaert, Inge, et al. "Vegetarianism, female gender and increasing age, but not CNDP1 genotype, are associated with reduced muscle carnosine levels in humans." Amino acids 40.4 (2011): 1221-1229.
• Green, J. Matt, et al. "The effects of creatine supplementation on repeated upper-and lower-body Wingate performance." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 15.1 (2001): 36-41.
• Harris, Roger C., et al. "The absorption of orally supplied β-alanine and its effect on muscle carnosine synthesis in human vastus lateralis." Amino acids 30.3 (2006): 279-289. 
• Harris, R. C., et al. "Determinants of muscle carnosine content." Amino acids 43.1 (2012): 5-12.
• Hobson, Ruth M., et al. "Effects of β-alanine supplementation on exercise performance: a meta-analysis." Amino acids 43.1 (2012): 25-37.
• Hoffman, Jay R., et al. "Short-duration< i> β</i>-alanine supplementation increases training volume and reduces subjective feelings of fatigue in college football players." Nutrition Research 28.1 (2008): 31-35. 
• Kresta, Julie Y., et al. "Effects of 28 days of beta-alanine and creatine monohydrate supplementation on muscle carnosine, body composition and exercise performance in recreationally active females." Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 9.Suppl 1 (2012): P17.
• Stegen, Sanne, et al. "The Beta-Alanine Dose for Maintaining Moderately Elevated Muscle Carnosine Levels." Medicine and science in sports and exercise (2014).
• Tallon, Mark J., et al. "Carnosine, taurine and enzyme activities of human skeletal muscle fibres from elderly subjects with osteoarthritis and young moderately active subjects." Biogerontology 8.2 (2007): 129-137.

Additional(!) HIIT Training Beneficial for Professional Judo Athletes: +15% Increases in Peak and Mean Power & Less Body Fat after 8-Week Training Camp.

Image 1: The Korean National Team - this are the kind of study subjects you want to look for if you are searching for studies that may help you, a fit physical culturist to improve your performance (img Yahoo)

Those of you who have been following the SuppVersity posts for quite some time now, know that I have continuously been ranting against classic endurance training. Not so much, because I think that this is not a sport you can enjoy (I know from personal experience that the "joy" can easily become addictive, though), but because many people perform what they think would be "healthy cardiovascular exercise" with the false expectation that running a marathon will improve their health and physique - more often, than not, the opposite is the case. And negative effects on both your physique (unless you consider being called a skeleton flattering) and longterm health become almost inevitable, when your daily 30 minutes of jogging or your 1h brief walk with your dog progressively increases to a frantic 10k run.

To each his own high intensity training

Image 2: Add 100-150lbs to a weight-west and test how "low" the intensity of a 4km/h walk on a treadmill is for the morbidly obese subjects in the studies that perpetuate the myth of the fat-burning effects "low intensity" exercise (img rosstraining.com).

And while the medical orthodoxy keeps putting out review after review emphasizing how beneficial classic endurance exercise is for the obese prediabetic, they do not give a damn that the 4km/h walk on a treadmill that makes the 250pound sedentary housewife sweat, pant and lose weight, will not have any impact on the girl with the unsexy love-handles who finally wants to get the body of the Shape cover models she is admiring. I mean, think about it: It's all about intensity! If the girl with the love-handles grabbed one of those military backpacks and loaded it with 5x30lbs plates, hopped on the treadmill and started walking at 4km/h, what would you call that? I would call it High Intensity Training (HIT). Now, the girl would probably fall off the treadmill every 30s because the load was way to heavy. What would you call it if she jumped back on after catching her breath? I would call it High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). 

Assuming that you got the message, it should stand out of question that you as a reasonably fit physical culturist can adopt short (max. 50min) bouts of low intensity endurance training as a means of regeneration, but if you are looking to improve your physique or exercise performance (outside of long-distance running) you are way better of if you follow the example of the 29 judoists from the Yongin University in Korea who participated in an 8-week study at the Korea National Sport University in Seoul (Lee. 2011).

Figure 1: Subject characteristics (left) and training program (right) of the 29 judoist participating in study (Lee. 2011)

If you take a look at the subject characteristics in figure 1 (left), you may note that this is the kind of study you and I must rely on, when we are designing our training routines if we want to improve our cardiovascular fitness level and shed the last unaesthetic pounds of body fat - and, if the results from this study translate into your training practice, the addition of an early morning HIIT sprinting session on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday (exact protocol cf. figure 1, right) could provide exactly that: a drop in body-fat and an increase in anaerobic performance. This is particularly noteworthy, because the subjects performed the interval training as part of an already arduous 8-week training camp with concurrent strength and judo training (I wonder if any of the participants was afraid to lose muscle ;-)

Figure 2: Effects of standard and standard + additional HIIT training on VO2Max, peak and mean power (left), as well as body composition in 29 judoists during an 8-week training camp (Lee. 2011)

With their already low body fat percentage of ~13% and a caloric intake of 3.500kcal/day (remember none of the athletes wanted to lose weight), the slight (and statistically non-significant), yet nonetheless evident body-recompositioning effect is certainly not to be scoffed at, if you look at the profound performance increases in the anaerobic peak and mean power test (cf. figure 2).

That the VO2Max, i.e. the aerobic performance did not benefit above the normal protocol is yet an oddity of the study, (cf. "HIIT Even For Infarction Patients") of which the scientists assume that it could be related to the fact that the normal training protocol alone would have been enough to max out on the already high aerobic capacity of the athletes. Which, and thusly we have again come full circle, leads me back to my initial recommendation to fine-tune your training protocol to your needs, which (I would hope) are completely different from the ones of the average sedentary, obese, pre-diabetic resident of the Western hemisphere. And in case you want to learn more about how to do that, I suggest you come back tomorrow, for the next installment of the Intermittent Thoughts with tipps on programming success that will work regardless of whether you will or won't use an intermittent fasting protocol ;-)

80g Glycerol + 2L Water Decreases Body Weight in Athletes & Increases Overall Performance in Sedentary Subjects

If it does not make you as swole as the colorful ad promised it must not be working, right? The jury was not even any longer "out there" for glycerol, but a recent study makes you rethink, whether you just have to look in the right place to see the benefits.

Another of the "odd" Thursdays without an update from "Your's Truly" Adelfo Cerame. And since there is holiday today, over here, I even thought there would not be a SuppVersity Science Round Up today. But hey, you are lucky you (and Carl) got to work, so you can tune in live at 1PM EST, or even better, start listening live at 1PM in order not to miss the Strength and Hypertrophy Round Table!

As far the  topics for today's installment of the SuppVersity Science Round Up are concerned, you are actually only a couple of lines away from reading about one that's on the list:  The effects of glycerol on exercise performance. I don't have to tell you though that this is not everything. Other things I believe you may be interested in are...

• childhood obesity, physical education and attention at school
• wheat gluten hydrolysate and how they don't come up to the expectations early trials have raised
• ammonia accumulation brain-fog, toxicity, liver 'pathologies' and workout performance
• running next to a street entails 'particular downsides' ("particular" is to be taken literally, here ;-)
• homocysteine levels, mortality, cognitive impairment and more
• epigenetic programming by nicotine and different protein contents before birth

These topics alone obviously won't fit into a single episode, but by now you should be aware that the SuppVersity Science Round Up Seconds, which are always published one day after the show aired, will provide you with the things we have missed and additional information, suggested reads and graphs to the topics we covered...  apropos "won't fit in", since the above is not even everything I have up my sleeve, I thought it would be wise to take the glycerol news from the compilation and tackle it on its own, today.

Can the backbone of bad triglycerides really be good for you?

Glycerol, a 3-carbon sugar alcohol that provides the backbone of triglycerides and is naturally found in foods as a component of dietary fats (Burke. 2011), is one of those supplements that have been all the rage for some time, didn't produce the expected instant results everybody was looking for (in this particlar case mostly "skinbursting pumps" and have eventually, in the course of one or two cycles of the regular yearly reformulations of the pre-workout supplements, completely disappeared from the market. I was therefore surprised, when I hit onto a recent study by researchers from the Physical Education and Sport High School in Konya (Turkey) that was published in one of the latest issues of the Journal of Human Kinetics (Patlar. 2012).

Is glycerol save? There have not been any reported toxicity effects up to doses of 5g/kg body weight. Glycerol does accumulates in body fluids, with the exception of the brain and the eyes and increases osmotic pressure (which was the reason why people used it in "pump supplements"), as well as the total volume of water in the body. If anything was 'dangerous', or I should probably rather say 'detrimental' to it, it would probably be its energy content (it is subject to gluconeogensis in the liver), which puts you at 'danger' of adding one or another pound of body fat you would probably want to avoid. The results of the study at hand to yet suggest that this is not an issue as long as you are active.

In essence the study protocol is nothing extraordinary: Take a couple of guys, 40 in this case (age 22.82 ± 1.49 years), and feed and water them using...

• 1.2 g/kg body weight) followed by water (26 ml/kg body weight) to 10 sedentary individuals (GS) and 10 soccer players from the University team
• just plain water to the another 10 sedentary men and 10 soccer players

Conduct a baseline test in the course of which all subjects are familiarized with the exercise equipment, a cycle ergometer (Monark 814-E) and required to perform an...

• Astrand Cycle Ergometer Test and an
  
• Wingate Anaerobic Power Test
  *the videos are don't show the study participants

in a room that is kept at 30°C and a barometrical pressure of 668 mm-Hg. For the next twenty days, have half of the guys (athletic groups E and GE) perform a 20-m shuttle run test every day. And finally perform a second follow up to see and evaluate the individual and joint effects of exercise and glycerol supplementation.

What's a shuttle run? I guess those of you who play soccer or basketball will know similar drills (at least I have been tormented by my trainers with them before in both sports and could imagine they are also among the standard repertoire of football coaches - though I have never played that myself):

Video 1: The shuttle run is every trainer's darling and would actually make a nice conditioning workout to be implemented into your own routine - whatever it may you are training for (note: the video is a random pick from YouTube and has no relation to the study at hand).

"The subjects warmed up for several minutes by jogging followed by stretching. The test program was installed on the computer and  initiated. A single beep was emitted at regular intervals. The subjects had to complete a lap or shuttle (foot on or over the line) with each beep. If the subjects completed a lap early they had to wait for the beep before starting the next lap. A triple beep indicated the start of a new level with a slightly faster speed required to complete each  lap.

The subjects were encouraged to complete as many levels as possible. An observer monitored the progress of a given subject, recording each completed lap on the recorder form. The subjects were instructed to turn by pivoting and not to run in a wide arc. The test was terminated when a subject was two or more steps from the line, for two consecutive laps. The observer alerted the subject at this time." (Patlar. 2012)

The shuttle run was followed by a couple of minutes of walking to cool down and a stretching exercise. The data was collected, logged and archived for evaluation.

Now if we take a look at the results of this undertaking they are unquestionably somewhat surprising - at least at first sight (see figure 1). In absolute terms it looks as if we had an across the board, almost identical increase in performance due to the daily shuttle runs in the exercise groups and a surprisingly large beneficial effect of glycerol only in the sedentary subjects (which would by the way be in line with many of the more or less disappointing trials on the benefits of glycerol supplementation in athletes; cd. Burke. 2011):

Figure 1: Changes in anaerobic and aerobic performance - relative values on the left, absolute before (white) and after (black) on the right (Patlar. 2012)

If you take a look at the relative pre-post changes in figure 1 (left), instead of the absolute changes a more distinct picture emerges:

• the benefit the sedentary subjects derived from the supplementation looks even more pronounced,
• the aerobic performance of the soccer players in the exercise group did likewise benefit, albeit less than the performance of the sedentary group, and
• shockingly the increase in anaerobic performance which looks pretty much identical is not statistically significant, yet still reduced in the glycerol supplemented athletes in the exercise + glycerol group (note: there is an increase, it's only relatively smaller)

Now, we all know that hyperhydration goes hand in hand with an increase in body water. In figure 1 I did even plaster a huge red sticker with "hyperhydration" onto the graph to give you an idea of a possible mechanism of action. So, if we wanted to be fair, we would have to take that into account... what? Yeah and you want to know if it will make you blow up like a wale, right, ... so let's see:

Figure 2: Changes in body weight and relative power (watts per body weight) in the course of the trial (data based on Patlar. 2012)

If we assume you are a sedentary slob at 80kg you could in fact gain 1.6kg... whether that's only water or if there is some fat there, as well, I cannot tell. Notwithstanding, I mentioned in the red box on safety issues, already that you can hardly expect to down 80g of glycerol with an energetic value of 4.32kcal/g (i.e. 350kcal per day) extra everyday without gaining at least some weight (assuming all other parameters are constant; plus, this could be muscle as well - well, not if you don't work out, though ;-).

You cannot expect to lose weight, but surprisingly it may still happen that you do if you consume those 350kcal of glycerol with 2l water right before your daily shuttle run. 

At least this is what happened to the soccer players in the supplementation group: They lost 2.66lbs of body weight on average. "Weight" is the unfortunate key word here, because we have no way of telling whether that was muscle, water or fat weight, as the scientists did not measure that separately. But let's be honest, it appears more than unlikely that it is (a) water or (b) muscle. After all the relative anaerobic power increased equally in both groups and why on earth would you lose water when you hyperhydrate? Ok, it could be one of those counter-regulatory reactions our bodies love. That again should however lead to performance decrements we did not see... you see, it's like the idiomatic dog that's chasing his tail. Why don't you play ginea pig and let us know what happens ;-)

WADA Warning for competitive athletes: If you are a WADA controlled athlete, you better avoid glycerol. It may sound hilarious, but it is on the WADA list of prohibited supplements since 2012. Why? Well, the increase in blood volume could mask the use of testosterone and co. because the /dl count would be lower if the total blood volume is higher -- this is something the WADA officials consider call a "masking agent" (Wada. 2012).

How much do you need? Don't forget, for glycerol to work its hyperhydrating magic, you must consume it with similarly hilarious amounts of water as the subjects in the study at hand. According to van Rosendal et al. an effective protocol comprises 1-1.5 g/kg glycerol + 25–35 ml/kg of fluid. Assuming you weigh 80 kg you can't get way with anything below 80g of glycerol + 2l water! Obviously way more than what any of the hitherto no longer available 'pump' or pre-workout supplements contained (at least I have not come across one that has a 80g scoop and says "consume with at least 2l of water on the label" - have you?)

Bottom line: I want to be honest, I still have to make up my mind about the usefulness of this supplement. I guess what actually does the trick is the combination of hyperhydration + energy availability. I have been preaching more than enough about the importance of energy availability over the last couple weeks, so I don't think I have to go into any more details here.

What I do think, however, is that few of you will be aware of the 2008 paper by Judelson et al. in which they report that hydration status is a fundamental determinant of the endocrine response to exercise, with dehydration leading to inappropriately high cortisol and norepinephrine levels that go hand in hand with an attenuation of the testosterone response to exercise, and negative effects on carbohydrate and lipid metabolism (Judelson. 2008).

Since you should by now have gotten the notion that insufficient energy does exactly the same, glycerol could well provide a means to counter this ergolytic double whammy. Against that background it is however strange that the athletes could not derive any athletic benefit from it... and weight loss without dieting (at least they were advised to stick to their habitual diets)?

If there is one definitive message you can take home from this study, though, it would be related to the dosage advice in the blueish info-box on the top right of this last paragraph: You better know how to use a supplement correctly! And this goes for the manufacturers of supps, as well as for the consumers: While the formers should finally stop putting ingredients into their supps to have them on the label, consumers should learn to identify hilariously underdosed and thus useless 'kitchen sink supplements' that 'have it all', but in doses where 'all' does not produce 'any' effect... how you can do that? Easy: Just make sure you get your daily dose of educative SuppVersity posts every day!

References:

• Burke LM, Stear SJ, Lobb A, Ellison M, Castell LM. A-Z of nutritional supplements: dietary supplements, sports nutrition foods and ergogenic aids for health and performance--Part 19. Br J Sports Med. 2011 Apr;45(5):456-8. 
• Judelson DA, Maresh CM, Yamamoto LM, Farrell MJ, Armstrong LE, Kraemer WJ, Volek JS, Spiering BA, Casa DJ, Anderson JM. Effect of hydration state on resistance exercise-induced endocrine markers of anabolism, catabolism, and metabolism. J Appl Physiol. 2008 Sep;105(3):816-24
• Patlar S, Yalcin H, Boyali E. The Effect of Glycerol Supplements on Aerobic and Anaerobic Performance of Athletes and Sedentary Subjects. Journal of Human Kinetics. 2012; 34: 69-70. 
• Van Rosendal SP, Osborne MA, Fassett RG, Coombes JS. Guidelines for glycerol use in hyperhydration and rehydration associated with exercise. Sports Med. 2010 Feb 1;40(2):113-29.
• World Anti Doping Association. WADA Prohibited List 2010. < http://www.wada-ama.org/Documents/World_Anti-Doping_Program/WADP-Prohibited-list/2012/WADA_Prohibited_List_2012_EN.pdf > retrieved Nov. 01, 2012. 

Cardio & Weights - Mutual Exclusives or Synergists? Two New Studies Suggest: Cardio "Before" and After Workouts Offers More Benefits Than Downsides for Strength & Mass

Could "cardio" really be more than just a necessary evil on your way to a physique like this?

Yesterday testosterone booster (see "Capsaicin or 28-OB...") and today already the next "bro favorite": The never ending debate about "cardio and weights" (or should I rather write "cardio vs. weights"). If you are no newcomer to the SuppVersity you will be aware that this is not the first time, we are tackling this issue (e.g. "Cardio Before or After Weights?" or "Before, After or In-Between"). While most of the previous posts did however deal with the question of "How do I do the least damage to my resistance training, if I want to do cardio, as well". The two studies, I have in stock for you, today, would suggest that this question in and out of itself is quite nonsensical and that the "correct", or at least way more productive question must be: "How can I use cardio to promote my strength and mass gains?"

Curious? All right, let's take a look at what Tufano, Lundberg and their respective coworkers have in stock for you (Tufano. 2012; Lundberg. 2012)

• The Tufano study confirms that doing cardio after an intense leg workout facilitates recovery- A question yet remains: What are the long term consequences? At least as long as you stick to doing just 20 minutes of cardio at 70% of your maximal heart rate, some cycling after a an eccentric leg workout (6 sets of 10 reps of eccentric leg extensions, specifically designed to induce maximal DOMS).
  
  

  

  Figure 1: Isometric strength after eccentric leg extensions in no, low and mean intensity cycling group expressed relative to pre values (Tufano. 2012).

  In the most recent study from the Department of Kinesiology at the Center for Sport Performance of the California State University the 10 women in the medium intensity cycling arm, who had cycled for 20 minutes at 70% of their individual heart rate recovered faster the muscle damaging workout than the women who went home without a "heavy cool down". What's actually even more astonishingly, though is that they also recovered faster than a third group of women who performed the 20min workout at only 30% of their VO2max.
  
  While there were no differences in pain scale or dynamic strength during the 4-day recovery phase, the isometric strength of the women in the 20min @ 70%VO2max arm of the study showed significant super-compensation effects on day 3 and day 4, so that Tufano et al. conclude:
  

  "Enhanced blood perfusion during moderate-intensity aerobic recovery, in conjunction with a short-term training effect, may enhance isometric strength after DOMS. Therefore, moderate intensity aerobic activity is suggested as a recovery method after multiple eccentric muscular actions." (my emphasis in Tufano. 2012)

  That certainly sounds as if another bro-scientific myth was tumbling and about to fall. Still, Tufano et al. are also right to point in the discussion of their results, that we need further research into the chronic effects of moderate-intensity aerobic 'recovery exercise' after resistance training - I mean, who guarantees that doing this after every workout week after week, month after month won't eventally turn against you?

What? You are not interested in recovery, anyway? All you want is grow and you doubt that the small increase is indicative of earlier supercompensation and that strength and grows would be two different pairs of shoes, anyway? Well, in that case here is another pro-cardio study:

• 

  The first important question this study answers is: How do you cycle with just one leg. You see the answer in the small inset of the image above.

  Aerobic before resistance training leads to minor increase in mTOR response and does not seem to hinder muscle gains! This one certainly flies in the face of what you may have been told by credible and less credible experts for your whole life. I mean, if anything, cardio was supposed to keep the gains lean. While the consensus is that it will diminish your gains -- right? Well, according to the latest study from the Mid Sweden University and the venerable Karolinska Institute and University Hospital in Stockholm this could turn out to be just another counterproductive bro-scientific myth: Skipping cardio altogether is not simply bad for your overall health an conditioning, as it would seem, it could even be beneficial for your gains, as well.
  
  To probe the effects of aerobic training on a whole host of hypetrophy and performance related factors, Tommy R. Lundberg and his colleagues recruited 9 physically active men (23+/-1 yr, 18+/-6 cm, and 75+/-6 kg) who "had been involved in recreational aerobic exercise two to three times per
  week and/or habitual RE one to two times per week for more than a year" (Lundberg. 2012) and had them perform a 45-min one-legged cycle ergometry exercise
  

  "The target load was 70% of the Wmax (cadence = 60 rpm). After 40 min, workload was in-creased by +20 W, and subjects were requested to continue until failure to maintain the prescribed cranking cadence, which typically occurred within 1–4 min (2 min 43 s)" (Lundberg. 2012)

  that was followed by 14 maximal concentric–eccentric knee extensions for each leg 6 h later (2 sets, 7 reps, 90s rest; starting with the AE+RE leg).
  

  "Thus, one limb was subjected to aerobic and resistance exercise (AE+RE), and the contralateral limb to resistance exercise (RE) only." (Lundberg. 2012)

  Before, as well as 15 and 180min minutes after the subjects underwent this training sessen, biopsies were taken and the glycogen content, the mRNA levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (EGF), peroxisome proliferator–activated receptor--gamma-coactivator-1 (PPAR-gamma), muscle RING-finger protein-1, atrogin-1 and myostatin, as well as the phosphorylated proteins mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), p70S6 kinase, ribosomal protein S6 and eukaryotic elongation factor were  measured. To ensure that no dietary factors would interfere with the results meals had been fully standardized on the day of the testing:
  

  "A standardized meal (pasta, tomato sauce, and juice) consisting of 2.21 g CHO/kg body weight, 22 g protein/kg bw, and 0.04 g fat/kg bw was provided at 8:00 p.m. the night before the experimental day. Subjects also had a standardized breakfast (1.01 g CHO/kg bw, 0.31 g protein / kg bw, and 0.24 g fat / kg bw) 1 h before the aerobic exercise session and lunch (2.02 g CHO/kg bw, 0.62 g protein/kg bw, and 0.49 g fat /kg bw) consumed 3 h before RE. These meals consisted of commercial energy drinks (Ensure Plus; Abbott Laboratories BV, Zwolle, The Netherlands). Water was allowed ad libitum at any time during the intervention." (Lundberg. 2012)

  As nice as it is to see a tightly controlled study, investigating a relevant topic and with trained healthy participant like this, I am really not a fan of these 'compare the left to the right leg' studies. And still, the fact that I am happy about any study into the whereabouts of different training modalities is neverthelsess not the only reason I am not going to beat a dead horse here.

  

  Figure 2: Unilateral peak concentric (CON) and eccentric (ECC) power (W) in knee extension and leg press during the experimental bout; data expressed relative to group baseline (Lundberg. 2012)

  The other and probably more relevant reason is that the data you see in figure 2 as surprising at it may seem  -- I mean who would have thought that the resistance training (RT) only leg would see a greater decline in force production during the experimental bout compared to baseline -- does not look like it had been skewed into this surprising direction by carry-over effect from one leg to the other or systemic factors such as central nervous system fatigue or the depletion of liver glycogen levels.
  
  In particular, we don't see anything of the expected drop in resistance training performance in the AE + RE leg due to the previous cardio workout. Even if it was only small, maybe statistically non-significant, common wisdom would dictate that it should be present! What we are seeing instead, however is a beneficial instead of a detrimental pre-conditioned effect in the 'cardio leg', of which you can hardly argue that it speaks in favor of the hypothesis that doing cardio must necessarily hamper your gains, if you allow enough time and food in between the morning and the evening workouts.
  
  It certainly looks as if the myth of the strength busting effects of any aerobic activity was about to fall and the corresponding protein expressions, the scientists measured before, 15min and 180min after the trial onyl support this notion.
  
  The image that emerges, when you take a closer look at the data in figure 3 is actually quite clear. At "pre" already, i.e. immediately before the resistance training part begins, the 'cardio leg' has and edge over the previously rested leg it won't lose in the course of subsequent hours. After all, despite the fact that at T = 180min some of the values have returned to baseline and/or the levels in the resistance training only leg have caught up, there is never a significant advantage of the resistance training only, over the aerobic + resistance training leg in the whole 3h period (respectively at the three intervals at which the biopsies were conducted).

  

  Figure 3: Selected markers of mitochondrial biogenesis and protein synthesis before during and 15, respectively 180min after the resistance training bout in the AE + RE and the RE only leg (a.u.; data adapted from Lundberg. 2012)

  Personally, I would still not consider these observations conclusive evidence of the superiority of aerobic + strength training in terms of its potential as a muscle builder (that it is a mitochondrial builder stands out of question). What is however undebatable (at least in this particular case), is that doing aerobics earlier in the day and lifting weight later in the day will not have a negative impact on either the performance or the measured markers of the exercise induced growth stimulus the resistance training session will have. It is rather, as the scientists point out that ...
  

  "[...] concurrent exercise elicited greater mTOR and p70S6K phosphorylation compared with RE. Although these differences were modest, if anything, they indicate that translational capacity was reinforced rather than compromisedby the AE + RE intervention. In parallel, myostatin was suppressed for longer time in AE + RE, with no obvious sign of exacerbated protein degradation. Thus, in contrast to the posted hypothesis, it seems that concurrent AE + RE may enhance skeletal muscle anabolic environment." (my emphasis in Lundberg. 2012)

  I guess, there is actually little to add to that, despite the important warning that you must keep an eye on your overall training volume, in case you want to follow this approach. In the end this means that you are switching to a two-times-a-day regimen, which can take its toll not just on the ability of your muscles to adapt and recover, but more importantly on the ability of your central nervous system to cope with this additional stressor. 
  

Can I do HIIT instead? For the first study, the answer probably is no. It makes no sense to use HIIT training as a regenerative means after a workout. For the second study I would guess the answer is yes. After all, the aerobic morning workout was pretty strenuous and glycogen depleting, so I don't see any reason why a brief HIIT training in the 10-20min range would not yield the same if not even better priming effects (cf. "The Anabolic Effects of HIIT" )

Bottom line: I would not say that any of these studies gives you, who are hopefully interested to build muscle and maintain optimal health a free ticket to do as much cardio, whenever you want. What this compilation does yet do, is debunk the myth that you have to become a sedentary slob and discard the cardiovascular and obvious fat loss benefits the implementation of moderate amounts of aerobic training into your regimen will yield just because aerobics will necessarily comprimise your gains, let alone burn away your muscles.

Timed appropriately and used in moderate, instead of excessive amounts, some 'cardio' could in fact offer an overlooked means to provide a greater growth stimulus and promote faster recovery - and that next to all the health- and conditioning related benefits, I guess even the hardcore-bros won't doubt.

References:

• Lundberg TR, Fernandez-Gonzalo R, Gustafsson T, Tesch PA. Aerobic exercise alters skeletal muscle molecular responses to resistance exercise. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2012 Sep;44(9):1680-8.
• Tufano JJ, Brown LE, Coburn JW, Tsang KK, Cazas VL, Laporta JW. Effect of aerobic recovery intensity on delayed-onset muscle soreness and strength. J Strength Cond Res. 2012 Oct;26(10):2777-82.

Aerobic and Anaerobic Energy Costs of Strength Training: Single Set of Squats More Demanding than Bench Press, Triceps Extensions and Lat Pull Down Together!

Image 1: The squat - as intense as it is, it is no replacement for "aerobics"; more on squatting in the EMG Series

As a diligent student of the SuppVersity you will obviously remember yesterday's news on the potentially detrimental chronic increases in cortisol, Kirschbaum et al. (Kirschbaum. 2011) have observed in a group of 304 amateur endurance athletes. This raises the question, whether or not your 3-4 strength training sessions per week would not suffice as "aerobic exercise" - after all, most people are huffing and puffing much more after one sets of squats than after 45 min. on a recumbent bike. And even if you were not interested in increasing your aerobic performance, I assume it would be nice to know if squats really are so energetically intense as they feel, or, in other words, how much more energy you are expending doing squats vs. let's say triceps extension ;-)

And more generally, i.e. in view of the aerobic effect and energy expenditure in the course of a complete strength training session, it would be interesting to know, ...

1. how much total energy you were expending while benching, squatting, rowing and co., and
   
2. what the relation of aerobic to anaerobic energy expenditure was like during heavy resistance training.

Both questions have been a subject of scientific debates for quite some time. The measurement of blood lactate levels, as well as other methods to access total energy expenditure, the ratio of aerobic to anaerobic metabolism and the highly controversial contribution of increased energy expenditure after resistance training (EPOC) have been questioned lately (Robergs. 2007). Reason enough for Jefferson M. Vianna and his colleagues from Brazil and Portugal to take another, closer look at the total and relative energy costs of resistance training (Vianna. 2011), in order veri-/falsify previous empirical data.

As their measuring tool of choice, the scientists selected the oxygen deficit method (AOD), where the anaerobic contribution to the overall energy expenditure is estimated by linear extrapolation of the VO2 at supra-maximal intensities and the AOD is then calculated by subtracting the cumulative oxygen uptake (VO2Ac) from the estimated energy demand. As the scientists point out, thus...

[...] the VO2Ac represents the portion of energy obtained by aerobic processes and the AOD represents the portion of energy obtained by anaerobic processes [so that] their sum equals the total VO2 during exercise.

The subjects in the Vianna study were 14 male resistance trainees (26.6 ± 5.4 years, 1.77 ± 0.07 m height, 80.1 ± 11.4 kg body mass and 11.2 ± 4.6 % body fat) with at least one year of training experience on a protocol with three or more training sessions per week. After height, weight and several skin fold measures (chest, mid-axillary, tricipital, sub scapular, abdominal, supra iliac, and thigh) had been taken, the individual 1RM max for bench press, half squat, lat pull down and triceps extension were assessed. Afterwards, the scientists measured the VO2 for each of the four exercises at 12% and 20% of the previously established 1RMmax. The same procedure was repeated 48+h later at 16% and 21% of the individual 1RM max. Eventually (again 48+h rest), the subjects had to perform their bench presses, half-squats, lat pull downs and triceps extension at 80% of their 1RM. The gas the subjects expired during those sessions was collected and recorded by an open air circuit analyzer - you can see part of the results plotted in figure 1.

Figure 1: VO2Ac (ml/kg) and accumulated oxygen deficit (AOD; ml/kg) at 80% 1-RM for bench press, half squat, triceps extension and lat pull down (data adopted from Vianna. 2011).

If you recall what the scientists said about the interpretation of VO2Ac and the accumulated oxgyen deficit (AOD), it is pretty evident that there is a reason, why many trainees fear the the squat. After all, the "king of all exercises", as it is commonly referred to, has by far the highest total (cf. figure 1), as well as relative (cf. figure 2) anaerobic component of all four tested exercises.

Figure 2: Relative contribution of aerobic and anaerobic metabolism to overall energy costs of bench press, half squat, triceps extension and lat pull down at 80% of the individual 1RM (data adopted from Vianna. 2011).

Despite inter-individual variations this supremacy of the squat is statistically significant (p<0.05, indicating chances that this was an incidental observation are <5%).

Figure 3: Total energy demand (ml/kg) of bench press, half squat, triceps extension and lat pull down at 80% of the individual 1RM (data adopted from Vianna. 2011).

If we finally take a look at the total energy demands, the underlying reason for your panting becomes even more evident: Squatting is 3.3x more energetically demanding than bench pressing or doing triceps extensions or lat pulldowns.

The "king of all exercises" is in fact so energetically demanding that one set of squats at 80% of your 1RM max will still expend ~9% more energy than a workout consisting of bench presses, triceps extensions and lat pull downs! Nevertheless, while it cannot be excluded that squatting will indirectly improve your aerobic exercise performance, as well, in and out of itself, none of the tested exercises is suitable to replace what is commonly understood to be "aerobic" or "cardio training" - but hey, in view of what I have posted about the effects of HIIT training, lately, doing (regular) "cardio" training may be obsolete, anyways ;-)

HIIT is the Hit! Interval, not Steady State Aerobics is the Way to Go - Even for Patients with Myocardial Infarctions!

Image 1: Right in the starting block is where heart health begins... and on the finish line of a marathon race probably is where heart health ends (if not much earlier)

I think it is unnecessary to pose this question again, but in case you missed the innumerable blogposts, where I asked you whether you would rather like to look like an ultra-endurance runner or like a sprinter - here you go: Whose physique would you rather want to have? The sinewy physique of Haile Gebrsellasie or the muscled physique of Usain Bolt and co? I assume in most cases this question is unnecessary... but what if you are sick, obese or even have a heart failure? Obviously you cannot train like a sprinter, then... can you? Yes, you can - at least within your personal physiological limitations! In view of the results of a recent study from the KG Jebsen Center of Exercise Medicine at the Norwegian University in Trondheim, Norway, aerobic interval training would even be the healthier choice (Moholdt. 2011)!

For their study Trine Moholdt and her colleagues recruited 107 patients who had been hospitalized for myocardial infarction 2-12 weeks before the study and randomly assigned them to usual care rehabilitation or an aerobic interval training performed. In the course of the 12 week study period the exercise protocol was performed thrice a week. Two sessions were supervised, the other one had to be performed at home.

• usual care rehabilitation program - the standard program comprised 60 minutes of aerobic exercises performed to music; the sessions were lead by a physiotherapists, and after a 10-minute warm-up, the patients did aerobic exercises like walking, jogging, lunges and squats for 35 minutes, which were followed by a 5-minute cool-down with stretching and relaxation exercises.
• aerobic interval training - the total session time of the interval training was 38 minutes; it consisted of an 8-minute warm-up, followed by 4x4-minute intervals at 85–95% of the maximum heart rate (monitored by heart rate monitor), with active rest of 3 minutes of walking at 70% of maximum heart in between the intervals; the exercise session was terminated with a 5-minutes cool-down.

In view of the still commonly held believe that interval training could easily become (over-)exerting, quite a few medical practitioners, would probably shake their heads over the "irresponsibility of [their] Norwegian collegues - how dare those idiots put ailing cardiac patients on such an tortorous exercise regimen" ... I think I won't have to continue, you know the whole litany... and if you, just like me cannot stand that anymore, and your own (your father's, mother's, grandpa's or grandma's) doctor is one of those, take the following data, print it and use it to shut him up.

Figure 1: Improvements in VO2Max, peak heart rate, respiratory exchange rate at peak heart rate and heart rate recovery in cardiac patients after 12 weeks on the usual care rehabiliation program or an intense aerobic interval training (data calculated based on Moholdt. 2011)

Obviously, the poor cardiac patients did not only survive the "torture", their hearts even thrived on it. The increase in peak oxygen uptake (VO2Max), the standard measure of aerobic performance, was 2.7x higher in the interval group than in the patients who did the usual 60-minutes reha-sessions (cf. figure 1). For the other parameters the differences were not statistically significant after analysis for initial randomization:

Flow-mediated vasodilatation, both non-normalised and normalised to shear stimulus, increased significantly after exercise training in both groups [...] Quality of life increased significantly after exercise training (between-group differences, not significant)

If we look at the blood parameters, however, we do yet see some interesting differences, even your medical practitioner could not argue away:

Figure 2: Changes in high density lipoprotein and adiponectin in cardiac patients after 12 weeks on the usual care rehabiliation program or an intense aerobic interval training (data calculated based on Moholdt. 2011)

While the changes in triglycerides, CRP, ferritin, haemoglobin, and glucose were - within their respective standard-deviations - identical in both groups, there was a marginal but statistically significant greater improvement in high density lipoprotein (HDL) levels (a statistician would say there was an improvement in the interval group, while there was none / no statistically significant one in the reha-group) in the interval group. While this would indicate a lower risk of future (recurrent) heart disease, the accompanying  increase in adiponectin would suggest that the interval training group either had already or were about to lose more body fat than their endurance trained peers.

Unfortunately, the body composition of the patients was not tracked in the study, so this leaves us with the "surprising" benefits of intense interval training for the hearts of patients with prior myocardial infarction as the main result of a study some medical practitioners would probably not even have dared conducting.

Ripped & Buffed vs. Skinny and Sinewy: Training Velocity, not Load, Appears to be Sole Determinant of Exercise Induced Shifts from Slow- to Fast-Twitch Muscle Fibers.

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, athletes, unlike untrained individuals, who have about the same amount of fast and slow-twitch fibers, exhibit discipline specific adaptations in muscle fiber composition, with sprinters having the lowest and middle distance runners the highest ratio of slow to fast twitch muscle fibers. According to data from Aagard and Andersen, Bergh et al. and Fry et al. (Berg. 1978; Aaagard. 1998; Fry. 2003), the range of slow to fast twitch fiber ratios extends from ultra-endurance runners with a 90:10 slow to fast twitch ratio down to weight lifters and sprinters with a minimum of 20:80 slow to fast twitch fiber ratio.

Muscle fiber type and weight loss: Contrary to what you may have guessed, or read elsewhere, obese patients with a higher amount of oxidative slow-twitch fibers have been shown to lose weight easier than their "heavier muscled" peers. In a 2002 study Tanner et al. report (Tanner. 2002):

With weight loss intervention, there was a positive relationship (r = 0.72,P < 0.005) between the percentage of excess weight loss and the percentage of type I fibers in morbidly obese patients. These findings indicate that there is a relationship between muscle fiber type and obesity.

Image 2: For someone who already got morbidly obese, a higher ratio of type II fibers may well be counter-productive if his/her overall goal is weight loss.

Another result of the same study, which could easily be misinterpreted as politically incorrect is the genetically determined higher raio of type II muscle fibers within the African American part of the female study population, which made it increasingly harder for these women to burn the fat. And just in case, you still wonder why a type I fiber, something obviously only skinny people have in excess would help with losing fat, just think about the term "oxidative muscle fiber" for a moment, then add to that the experimental observation that type I fibers have greater mitochondria volume densities than type II fibers (Sullivan. 1978) and you will realize that a highly oxidative muscle fiber is more valuable when it comes to burning fat than a glycolitic one, reagardless of whether or not the latter may "look" better ;-)

In a recent review of the literature Wilson et al. provide the following biological explanation for the differences that exist between endurance and strength athletes (Wilson. 2011):

[...], type I fibers have been observed to have both greater mitochondria volume densities as well as capillary-fiber contact length when compared to type II fibers.  In addition, mitochondria volume density was highly correlated (r = 0.99) with O2 diffusion coefficients across three different muscle groups (retractor, sartorius, soleus) suggesting greater aerobic capacity in type I fibers.

While type I muscle fibers will thus figuratively carry their owners in 80 days around the world, type IIX and IIA fibers exhibit a 10x and 6x greater peak power and a 4x and 3.3x greater contractile velocity than their oxygen-hungry slow twitch cousins.

Figure 2: Relative peak power and contractile velocity of fast twitch fibers vs. slow twitch fibers (data based on Wilson. 2011)

The reason that the two guys from image 1 do not only perform but also look completely differently, lies yet in the greater capacity of type II fibers for exercise-induced hypertrophy (Schoenfeld. 2000). The relative number of type II to type I fibers is thus of paramount importance, if you want to look like a sprinter - not like a marathon runner and if you want to lift heavy weights instead of running cross-country. Fry et al., for example found strong correlations (r = 0.94; almost "causative") between the percentage of type IIA fibers and 1 repetition max snatch performance in national caliber Olympic athletes (Fry. 2003). Now the obvious question is: "How can I influence my individual fiber composition, or is this simply genetically determined?"

It stands to reason that genetics is a major determinant of fiber composition, but, hardgainer or not, with appropriate training and nutrition everyone can - at least to a certain degree - shift his muscle fiber make-up from a slow-twitch oxidative to a fast-twitch glycolytic type, even without the use of clenbuterol and other beta-2 agonists which hav been shown to trigger respective shifts from type I to type II muscle fibers in a rodent model (Zeeman. 1988).

Training for shifts in fiber composition

From Wilson et al.'s review of the literature it becomes quite obvious that standard exercise regimen, like jump squats at either 30% or 80% do not provide satisfactory results for someone looking to increase the number, not the size of his glycolytic muscle fibers (Wilson. 2011). In a study by Liu et al. (Liu. 2008), a 5x3RM bench press protocol, performed 3 times per week for 6 weeks, on the other hand, triggered a shift within the type II fibers. It increased the percentage of type IIA fibers from 44.9% to 66.7%, but decreased the type IIX fibers from 33.4% to 19.5%, thus leaving the percentage of slow twitch type I fibers unchanged. A second group from the same study who used a more versatile routine, with the same 5x3 regimen on Mondays, 10x concentric-repetition bench press throws at 30% of their 1RM on Wednesday and 10 stretch-shortening type push-ups on Friday for 5 sets, each, were able to increase the number of type IIA muscle fibers (from 47.7% to 62.7%) without decreases in the number of type IIX fibers, but a profound -50% reduction of slow-twitch oxidative fibers (from 18.2% to 9.2%). Wilson et al. go on and cite several other studies that were able to show the modulatory (increase in type II, decrease in type I) effects of high-velocity contractions on muscle fiber composition (Wilson. 2011) and corroborate that results with findings from other studies which corroborate these results with ...

[...] findings that the percentage of type I fibers may be increased with various types of aerobic training protocols such as endurance cycle training (+12% Type 1) and long distance running (+17% Type 1), [where, on the other hand] studies indicate that sprint training may facilitate the change of slow twitch fibers to fast twitch fibers.

Interestingly, Hortobagyi et al. were able to show that laziness taken to the extreme, i.e. 3 weeks of knee immobilization, also reduced the amount of type I fibers (-9%) and increased the number of type IIX fibers (+11%) in 48 recreationally active men and women (Hortobagyi. 2000). These results should yet be treated with appropriate caution and I would strongly advice against lying on the couch to increase your propensity for muscle growth by decreasing the number of slow twitch and increasing the number of fast twitch muscle fibers, because "recreational activity", for most people, consists of aerobic type of exercises, playing soccer, tennis or whatever - all sports that by and out of themselves would trigger shifts towards a more oxidative (predominant type I) muscle composition. It is thus not surprising that refraining from such activities for 3 weeks would reverse those changes.

So how should you train, then?

In view of the paramount importance of speed, not load in the few experiments which challenge the hitherto established paradigm that muscle fiber composition was largely determined by genetics and transformation was possible only within type II fibers, i.e. from type IIA to type IIX and vice versa, the incorporation of respective training techniques, e.g. concentric-repetition bench press throws at 30% of your1RM, as they were used in the study by Liu et al. (Liu. 2008), into a more versatile hypertrophy-specific routine which would

1. trigger a hypertrophy response, on "classic" strength training days (like 3x5 or 3x8-10), and
2. increase propensity for growth, on "speed-rep" days with exercises like plyometric push-ups, concentric-repetition bench press throws at 30% 1RM, etc.

would appear to be the most reasonable way to train for anyone out there, who does not belong to the "genetic elite" of born sprinters.

Exercise News Round-Up: The Latest on Weight Lifting, Steady State, HIIT, Pyramid Training & Co, Their Effects on Body Composition, Leptin, Muscle Morphology & More

Running may be the "original exercise", but there is more to physical culture than that - irrespective of your gender, by the way; HIIT would be one thing, weight lifting the other that must not be missing from your regimen which can yet still benefit from one or another classic cardio session (img womanshealthmag.com).

I must admit that I am a bit lazy today and not really in the mood of writing a lengthy post on circadian rhythms. The weather is awesome and I think I'd better spend the time in the sun recharging the batteries of my circadian clock, than sitting in front of a computer screen.

Since I do know that the former, i.e. the good weather won't apply to all of you and that reading these posts does not take anywhere as long as writing them, I will yet put together the promised post on "exercise news" - and I can tell you there is half a dozen of them, such as

• liver health, aerobics and strength training
• no leg-based cardio on leg day
• aerobics alone won't cut it
• intramuscular arguments in favor of HIIT 
• reverse or classic pyramid about equally effective
• intense exercise has leptin plummeting

You see, more than enough for one day, so we better get right down and dirty... ah, I mean, sweaty - yeah, sweaty ;-)

• Putting weights into the equation squeezes the fat out of your liver and belly In a recently conducted study into the effects of long-term exercise on the weight and fat loss in post-pubertal overweight adolescent with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, the combination of aerobic and resistance training was "more effective in significantly improving noninvasive biomarkers of NAFLD that are associated with the highest risk of disease progression in the pediatric population" (de Piano. 2012). The main facts about the program
  

  

  Figure 1: Only combined aerobic and resistance training offers the body recompositioning effect we are all looking for: more muscle, less fat - and that works optimally, only, if your liver is still fully functional (de Piano. 2012)

  • one-year intervention + dietary counseling
  • 60min of personalized aerobic training, or
  • 30min aerobic + 30min resistance training
  • performed three times a week

  In the abstract of their study the scientists unfortunately fail to point out that the additional resistance training, which consisted of a standardized, progressive full-body training with 3 sets of 6-20 reps (depending on exercise) had the extra bonus of building more muscle and cutting more body fat than the less versatile three times pe -week 60min aerobics program.
  Moreover, the fact that only the participants in non-NAFLD, "just obese" control group were able to increase their muscle mass, goes to to show you, how important an optimally functioning liver actually is, when it comes to building muscle, losing weight and staying healthy.

• 

  Image 2: If you train legs with a similar volume as Arnold & Franco did, back in the day, you don't want to and probably also don't have to do any additional cardio before or after your workouts.

  Doing 30min of cardio on the elliptical reduces the number of reps you will be able to perform on a subsequent leg workout, but the bench press performance won't suffer. That's the very unsurprising result of a hitherto unpublished dissertation by Jeremy Tan from the University of California in Fullerton (Tan. 2012).
  Tan had recruited twelve young men who had completed four trials in random order. In two of those trials the guys performed 30min on the elliptical machine at 70% of their age-predicted (not measured!) HRmax followed by either 3 sets of back squats or bench presses performed to failure at 75% of their predetermined 1RM - not exactly an "Arnold-esque training volume, anyway, right (see image 2)?
  Bottom line: Better don't do a lengthy cardio workout before your leg training - but also: Don't believe the bro-scientific myth that 30min of cardio were so exhausting (systemically) that you could not train a body part that was not heavily involved in the cardio session (in this case the upper body), afterwards.

• 

  Figure 2: Cardio alone won't change your body for the better and the changes in CRP and leptin are not statistically significant (data expr. rel. to baseline; based on Bijeh. 2012)

  Aerobics alone won't really cut it and this goes not just for advanced male athletes, but even for middle aged (42y) women (BMI 25-27) who have never trained before. At least this is what the results of Bijeh, Hosseini and Hejazi from the University of Mashhad (Iran) would suggest, because even after 6 months with 3x 60 minutes (55-65 HRmax) none of those body composition parameters women are usually trying to improve, when they are taking up an exercise regimen did come about (Bijeh. 2012): Other than a minimally, but statistically non-significant reduction of body fat a prominent but not significantly different (P=0.2 for the variation) increase in leptin levels in the exercise group were the only "beneficial" changes the "workouts" brought about.
  Plus, in how far the increase  in leptin actually is a good thing does still remain to be seen, also because the CRP levels (inflammatory marker) in the training group increased (likewise not statistically different) and the allegedly statistically significant difference in the waist to-hip ratio (-0.01 in the aerobics group vs. no change in the sedentary control) of the women is so small against the standard deviations of the respective value that I am not sure about how significant it really is - regardless of what ANOVA, a program that's often used to do the statistics on data like that, say.
  Bottom line: If for whatever reason you can only do light "classic cardio" there is no way it will make a difference if you don't combine it with a sound dietary regimen.
• HIIT and classic endurance training equally effective in increasing muscle microvascular density The latest study from the UK shows that HIIT is more and more being accepted by researchers as a viable alternative to the classic aerobic training programs. In a 6-week intervention, Cox et al. assigned 16 young previously sedentary men (age 21±0.7 yrs, BMI 23.8±0.7 kg/m²) randomly to either 40-60 min cycling at ~65% VO_2peak, 5 times per week (ET), or a much less time-consuming HIIT protocol that comprised 4-6 Wingate tests, 3 times per week (HIIT).

  

  Image 3: While the study used the classic wingate test protocol with a stationary bike you can also do 30s all-out sprints, use a spinning bike or whatever else allows for maximal efforts and temporary exhaustion without you hurting yourself or the equipment breaking down (or both ;-)

  Other than most of their colleagues the scientists were yet less interested in the beneficial effects this exercise would have on VO2Max, let alone simple weight loss, but analyzed muscle samples for their microvascular endothelial eNOS and NOX2 content (indicative of the vascularization) and the actual morphological capillarization of the muscle by quantitative immunofluorescence microscopy. Whole body insulin sensitivity, arterial stiffness, and blood pressure were also assessed.
  The results showed that both protocols were equally effective in inducing the adaptive changes in microvascular capillarization and NOX2 expression, while the short intense exercise bouts during the HIIT protocol yielded 12% greater increases in eNOS content (ET 14%; P<0.05, HIIT 36%; difference p < 0.05).
  Now, eNOS is actually better known for its preventive role in CVD (and hypertension), but its negative correlation with body fat levels (higher eNOS <> lower body fat - note: this is almost certainly not a causal relationship(!); cf. Hickner. 2006), its central role in the maintenance of exercise capacity (Lee-Young. 2009) and its putative role the maintenance of mitochondrial function and integrity into the old age (Chanséaume. 2009) it should be obvious that time-efficiency is not the only thing that speaks in favor of HIIT, here. 

• 

  Figure 3: Strength gains (no idea what the scientists mean by "compression", just think about it as the effect size) of 6 weeks, 18 lifting sessions, employing a classic or reverse pyramid loading scheme on chest (bench press), quads (leg extension) and biceps (curl) strength (adapted from Bostani. 2012)

  No statistical significant differences in strength gains between classic and reverse pyramid While Bostani and Shariati did in fact not find statistically significant differences between the strength gains of their physically active, but "non-athlete" (sic!) study participants (N=10 for the two active and the control arm) a closer look at the data in figure 3 to the right does still reveal that it could make a difference, whether increase the weight from set to set (regular pyramid) or decrease it from set to set (reverse pyramid) - at least for your extremities, with the quads responding more favorable to the reverse pyramid and the biceps to the classic pyramid training.
  If the study was not so hilariously poorly described and the translation so sloppy, I would love to use these insights for a recommendation on how to train.
  In the absence of set number, reps and everything else that would be necessary, I can yet just say that this appears to confirm my personal experience, which tells me that you have to hammer your legs to grow and get stronger, while the classic pyramid with it's generally lower overall volume matches the "hit it hard and short" approach that appears to work best for biceps, in the longer run.

• 

  Figure 4: Eight weeks of intense exercise in the presence of a negative energy balance (as evidenced by the weight loss) take their toll on leptin levels, it is yet not sure for whom that's a bad thing (data based on Ferdosi. 2012)

  Intense exercise will make make your leptin levels drop and that irrespective of whether you do endurance training, strength training or both! That's the long and short of a study that has been published in the latest issue of Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences (Ferdosi. 2012), which did not even find a quantitative difference between the effects 8 weeks of 3 session of either 40 minutes (increasing from 25 in the first two, to 35min in weeks 3-6 and 40min in weeks 7-8) cycling at 75-85% HRmax (aerobic), a standard full-body workout (resistance) or both strength and aerobic training concomitantly (concomitant).
  It is thus obvious that done at a high enough intensity and in the presence of a negative energy balance, the same endurance exercise that elicited an increase in leptin in the Bijeh study (remember, this was more of a leisurely walk and without a build-in progression) will decrease leptin levels significantly.
  Now, that's great if you got a lot of fat to lose and are leptin resistant anyway, if you are yet lean already (with a BMI of 29kg/m² the healthy but untrained 48 male study participants, here, were not exactly ripped, but far from being obese) this can become a problem that could not just forestall fat loss, but could precipitate endocrine imbalances - and that's nothing that can only happen to women, in whom it usually manifest as amenorrhea (Christo. 2008)

That's it for today, but since I know you will be asking, yes, there I will catch up with the circadian rhythm series and yes I understand that the last item of today's installment has left at least some of you very dissatisfied. So, yes, I will finally address the issue of amenorrhea (but also hypogonadism in men) in an individual post, although I still don't have the clearcut "do this, don't do that" solution to the problem, I wanted to find before, I write the respective post... ah, and in case neither of those things does interest you, don't worry there will of course be other posts in the next days, as well ;-)

References:

• Bostani M, Shariati M. The Comparison of Between the Effects of Two Training Methods on Dynamic Strength of Non-Athletes Males Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. 2012; 46: 417–420
• Bijeh N, Hosseini A, Hejazi K. The Effect of Aerobic Exercise on Serum C - Reactive Protein and Leptin Levels in Untrained Middle-Aged Women. Iranian J Publ Health. Sep 2012; 41(9).
• Chanséaume E, Morio B. Potential mechanisms of muscle mitochondrial dysfunction in aging and obesity and cellular consequences. Int J Mol Sci. 2009 Jan;10(1):306-24. Epub 2009 Jan 13. 
• Christo K, Cord J, Mendes N, Miller KK, Goldstein MA, Klibanski A, Misra M. Acylated ghrelin and leptin in adolescent athletes with amenorrhea, eumenorrheic athletes and controls: a cross-sectional study. Clin Endocrinol (Oxf). 2008 Oct;69(4):628-33. Epub 2008 Mar 10.
• Cocks M, Shaw CS, Shepherd SO, Fisher J, Ranasinghe AM, Barker TA, Tipton KD, Wagenmakers AJ. High intensity interval and endurance training are equally effective in increasing muscle microvascular density and eNOS content in sedentary males. J Physiol. 2012 Sep 3.
• de Piano A, de Mello MT, Sanches PD, da Silva PL, Campos RM, Carnier J, Corgosinho F, Foschini D, Masquio DL, Tock L, Oyama LM, Oller do Nascimento CM, Tufik S, Dâmaso AR. Long-term effects of aerobic plus resistance training on the  adipokines and neuropeptides in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease obese adolescents. Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2012 Aug 27.
• Ferdosi MH, Asad MR. The Effect of Endurance, Resistance and Concurrent Trainings on Plasma Leptin Levels of Non-Athlete Males. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. 2012; 46: 311–315.
• Hickner RC, Kemeny G, Stallings HW, Manning SM, McIver KL. Relationship between body composition and skeletal muscle eNOS. Int J Obes (Lond). 2006 Feb;30(2):308-12.
• Lee-Young RS, Ayala JE, Hunley CF, James FD, Bracy DP, Kang L, Wasserman DH. Endothelial nitric oxide synthase is central to skeletal muscle metabolic regulation and enzymatic signaling during exercise in vivo. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol. 2010 May;298(5):R1399-408. Epub 2010 Mar 3.
• Tan J. Acute effects of lower body aerobic exercise on lower body and upper body resistance training workshops. California State University. 2012. Publicatin no. 1513816.