Showing posts with label body fat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label body fat. Show all posts
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Weight Loss Ups your Power - if you're a competitive cyclist and not going nuts with the CR.
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There's been a debate for some time as to whether or not "fasted cardio" is ok. There's a "fasted cardio roundtable" at t-nation discussing this, and good arguments on either side. The title of a recent article made me think "great - a specific study on fasted cardio with elite athletes" Here's the title: "Effects of caloric restriction and overnight fasting on cycling endurance performance." But alas, it's not about fasted cardio: it's about doing an exertion test after ONE night of fasted cardio after having been on a calorie restricted diet.
Not the most usual circumstance. Indeed, the study is interesting nonetheless for a couple of other related reasons: it's looking at the effects on performance of a protocol often used by cyclists before competetive race season when they need to drop some weight to improve their Power to Weight Ratio (PWR) - lighter on the bike but still driving the same power means get there faster, if not fasted.
So not exactly fasted cardio - as in regularly doing cardio in a fasted state. But there are *some* findings that may reasonably be extended - maybe - around fasted cardio. In particular the effects shown around perceived exertion in this condition and intriguingly fat utilization.
Here's the abstract
Here's the actual protocol during the study:
In the lab: the athletes did a submaximal two hour endurance ride (with ipods and music of their choice if they wished) on lab bikes set up just like their racing bikes with the following condition:
Results:
over the 25 days of their CR, they lost weight - in particular their body fat dropped but their lean mass was maintained. They had a 1.7 plus or minus. 5kg body weight loss, with a drop in bf% of 2.1 (plus or minus .4) %. Lean mass increased by 2.1%. No muscle mass loss. That's a plus of exercise while doing calorie reduction: lean mass hangs in.
in the lab: the fasted, post CR test showed no statisitcal difference in power output, Vo2max, resting metabolic rate (RMR), revolutions per minute. In otherwords, nothing performance wise changed - in particular, nothing changed netgatively - as a result of the CR and fasted state of the test.
One place there was a difference: PWR at 90 and 100% vo2max was significantly different post CR (it went up), though no PLWR (power to lean weight ratio) changes.
The authors suggest:
Two notable changes/surprises: first, that perceived exertion was LOWER after the CR period. And second, that despite doing a heavy work load after an 11 hour fast, fat oxidation (using fat as the main fuel for the workout) did not change from baseline. Now me, i must be missing something because both base line test and re-test post CR were the same: post 11 hour fast. But here's what the authors say about the fat oxidation non-change:
Practical Applications
The authors have some cautiously positive effects to report
In other words, there's some good results in terms of body comp and PWR from a pretty intense caloric restriction for three weeks, but we don't know what would happen if this was strung out or for that matter repeated at intervals anywhere into competetive season. This ain't a license to go nuts.
And it's also not much help when thinking about fasted cardio as a regular practice.What i'm not sure this study says is what the authors state in the abstract: that "Caloric restriction (up to 40% for 3 weeks) and exercising after fasting overnight can improve a cyclist's PWR without compromising endurance cycling performance" Caloric restriction for three weeks with regular workouts, sure, but one session of fasted endurance work? Maybe i'm reading this wrong, but that seems a bit of a stretch. All it seems one can say is that after three weeks of caloric restriction, a sub max endurance workout in a fasted state when done by elite athletes doesn't have any negative effects - on them.
On the plus side: one can work to weigh less and maintain power, thereby increasing power. And for sports, like life, where better body comp has a host of benefits, a three week nutritionally balanced calorie cut with maintained workouts - at least for seasoned athletes - can be effective. Does this approach transfer to non-competetive athletes? May be worth investigating.
Citations
Related Articles
There's been a debate for some time as to whether or not "fasted cardio" is ok. There's a "fasted cardio roundtable" at t-nation discussing this, and good arguments on either side. The title of a recent article made me think "great - a specific study on fasted cardio with elite athletes" Here's the title: "Effects of caloric restriction and overnight fasting on cycling endurance performance." But alas, it's not about fasted cardio: it's about doing an exertion test after ONE night of fasted cardio after having been on a calorie restricted diet.Not the most usual circumstance. Indeed, the study is interesting nonetheless for a couple of other related reasons: it's looking at the effects on performance of a protocol often used by cyclists before competetive race season when they need to drop some weight to improve their Power to Weight Ratio (PWR) - lighter on the bike but still driving the same power means get there faster, if not fasted.
So not exactly fasted cardio - as in regularly doing cardio in a fasted state. But there are *some* findings that may reasonably be extended - maybe - around fasted cardio. In particular the effects shown around perceived exertion in this condition and intriguingly fat utilization.
Here's the abstract
Doesn't the above sound to you like the cyclists were doing both caloric restriction for three weeks AND doing fasted cardio at the same time? Well it turns out the only time we know that they did fasted cardio was on two test occaisions: before the diet started and at the end of the three week period
J Strength Cond Res. 2009 Mar;23(2):560-70.
Effects of caloric restriction and overnight fasting on cycling endurance performance.
Ferguson LM, Rossi KA, Ward E, Jadwin E, Miller TA, Miller WC.
Department of Exercise Science, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA. Abstract:
In addition to aerobic endurance and anaerobic capacity, high power-to-weight ratio (PWR) is important for cycling performance. Cyclists often try to lose weight before race season to improve body composition and optimize PWR. Research has demonstrated body fat-reducing benefits of exercise after fasting overnight. We hypothesized that fasted-state exercise in calorie-restricted trained cyclists would not result in performance decrements and that their PWR would improve significantly. We also hypothesized that substrate use during fasted-state submaximal endurance cycling would shift to greater reliance on fat. Ten trained, competitive cyclists completed a protocol consisting of baseline testing, 3 weeks of caloric restriction (CR), and post-CR testing. The testing sessions measured pre- and post-CR values for resting metabolic rate (RMR), body composition, VO2, PWR and power-to-lean weight ratio (PLWR), and power output, as well as 2-hour submaximal cycling performance, rating of perceived exertion (RPE), and respiratory exchange ratio (RER). There were no significant differences between baseline and post-CR for submaximal trial RER, power output, VO2, RMR, VO2max, or workload at VO2max. However, RPE was significantly lower, and PWR was significantly higher post-CR, whereas RER did not change. The cyclists' PWR and body composition improved significantly, and their overall weight, fat weight, and body fat percentage decreased. Lean mass was maintained. The cyclists' RPE decreased significantly during 2 hours of submaximal cycling post-CR, and there was no decrement in submaximal or maximal cycling performance after 3 weeks of CR combined with overnight fasting. Caloric restriction (up to 40% for 3 weeks) and exercising after fasting overnight can improve a cyclist's PWR without compromising endurance cycling performance.
Here's the actual protocol during the study:
For the CR period, subjects followed a fixed-macronutrient, calorie-restricted diet [this was set carbs, fats, proteins equivalent to a 40% reduction in total calories -mc] while maintaining their normal exercise training routines. None of the athletes were actively involved in strength training. Individual training plans typically involved base miles and some interval work, as it was still the off-season. Training was not standardized among athletes, because each athlete was a seasoned cyclist, accustomed to his or her own training regimen, and making changes to those plans could have produced chronic fatigue, muscle soreness, or altered the training volume to which each cyclist was accustomed-any of which could have led to unfavorable temporary adaptations that would have confounded their performance in their paired time trials.In other words, they were doing big calorie restriction and that's the only change to their training. We don't know if training actually changed in any way during this period - though participants were asked to keep things the same during the study as before in terms of these workouts. Ok, let's say that's all fine, then.
In the lab: the athletes did a submaximal two hour endurance ride (with ipods and music of their choice if they wished) on lab bikes set up just like their racing bikes with the following condition:
A metronome was used to ensure that subjects cycled at a constant 50 rpm to allow for consistent evaluation of workload. Subjects warmed up for 5 minutes at 100 W for men and 75Wfor women. The workload was incrementally increased by 50 Wevery 2.5 minutes. When HR reached 35 bpm below age-predicted maximal HR (220 bpm 2 age), or when the respiratory quotient exceeded 1, the workload was only increased by 25 Wevery 2.5 minutes until exhaustion. The subject cycled to exhaustion, ending the test voluntarily when he or she could no longer pedal or keep the 50-rpm cadence. Each subject wore a mouthpiece and nose clip, and ventilatory air was continuously analyzed forO2 consumption and CO2 production using the ParvoMedics system. Also, HR, RPE, and power output were recorded at the end of each stage throughout the test.
Results:
over the 25 days of their CR, they lost weight - in particular their body fat dropped but their lean mass was maintained. They had a 1.7 plus or minus. 5kg body weight loss, with a drop in bf% of 2.1 (plus or minus .4) %. Lean mass increased by 2.1%. No muscle mass loss. That's a plus of exercise while doing calorie reduction: lean mass hangs in.
in the lab: the fasted, post CR test showed no statisitcal difference in power output, Vo2max, resting metabolic rate (RMR), revolutions per minute. In otherwords, nothing performance wise changed - in particular, nothing changed netgatively - as a result of the CR and fasted state of the test.
One place there was a difference: PWR at 90 and 100% vo2max was significantly different post CR (it went up), though no PLWR (power to lean weight ratio) changes.
The authors suggest:
The increase in PWR was influenced by the significant decreases in body weight and percent body fat. Because there was no significant loss of lean body mass, the PLWRwas maintained. Thus, power was maintained not simply because of weight loss but because of the maintenance of fat-free mass. This increase in power output at high intensity levels, accompanied by a decrease in body weight, will provide the cyclist with more energy and power for improved uphill cycling performance.Overall then, the cyclists did get what they wanted: an improved Power to Weight Ratio: their power stays the same, but at a lighter weight. That translates potentially into getting the bike moving down the road faster.
Two notable changes/surprises: first, that perceived exertion was LOWER after the CR period. And second, that despite doing a heavy work load after an 11 hour fast, fat oxidation (using fat as the main fuel for the workout) did not change from baseline. Now me, i must be missing something because both base line test and re-test post CR were the same: post 11 hour fast. But here's what the authors say about the fat oxidation non-change:
Although we hypothesized that we would find a greater reliance on fat oxidation post-CR, particularly because RER [respiratory exchange rate - seeing which fuel is used more, carbs or fat -mc] - measuring has been previously shown to be lower in the fasted state (Aragón-Vargas LF 93, Knapik JJ88 ), this was not statistically supported. ...A possible explanation for the lack of a significant shift to fat metabolism is that the subjects were all highly trained endurance cyclists already and, as such, were able to use fat as a fuel more efficiently than if they had been untrained subjects.Hmm. Makes ya wonder.
Practical Applications
The authors have some cautiously positive effects to report
[The study results] suggests that CR (up to 40% for 3 weeks) and exercising after fasting overnight can improve a cyclist’s PWR without compromising endurance cycling performance. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that a shortterm period of moderately severe CR is not detrimental to the conditioning process. Athletes can continue to prepare for the upcoming race season in terms of endurance training while dieting to reduce body weight without losing significant muscle mass in the process. However, it is not known what would happen to performance if an athlete were to prolong his or her exposure to the CR beyond 3 weeks, or to repeat the 3-week exposure to CR with short intervals of balanced energy intake in between. The current data suggest that a protocol such as the one outlined in this report would be most appropriate if used in the off-season to increase PWR or during the season before a competition.
In other words, there's some good results in terms of body comp and PWR from a pretty intense caloric restriction for three weeks, but we don't know what would happen if this was strung out or for that matter repeated at intervals anywhere into competetive season. This ain't a license to go nuts.
And it's also not much help when thinking about fasted cardio as a regular practice.What i'm not sure this study says is what the authors state in the abstract: that "Caloric restriction (up to 40% for 3 weeks) and exercising after fasting overnight can improve a cyclist's PWR without compromising endurance cycling performance" Caloric restriction for three weeks with regular workouts, sure, but one session of fasted endurance work? Maybe i'm reading this wrong, but that seems a bit of a stretch. All it seems one can say is that after three weeks of caloric restriction, a sub max endurance workout in a fasted state when done by elite athletes doesn't have any negative effects - on them.
On the plus side: one can work to weigh less and maintain power, thereby increasing power. And for sports, like life, where better body comp has a host of benefits, a three week nutritionally balanced calorie cut with maintained workouts - at least for seasoned athletes - can be effective. Does this approach transfer to non-competetive athletes? May be worth investigating.
Citations
Ferguson LM, Rossi KA, Ward E, Jadwin E, Miller TA, & Miller WC (2009). Effects of caloric restriction and overnight fasting on cycling endurance performance. Journal of strength and conditioning research / National Strength & Conditioning Association, 23 (2), 560-70 PMID: 19197210
Aragón-Vargas LF (1993). Effects of fasting on endurance exercise. Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 16 (4), 255-65 PMID: 8248683
Knapik JJ, Meredith CN, Jones BH, Suek L, Young VR, & Evans WJ (1988). Influence of fasting on carbohydrate and fat metabolism during rest and exercise in men. Journal of applied physiology (Bethesda, Md. : 1985), 64 (5), 1923-9 PMID: 3292504
Related Articles
- 6mins to weight loss and fitness?
- Cardio levels when ya can't do HIIT
- HIIT intervals (on bikes) for fat loss
- Hill workouts - with kettlebells
- Respect the Fat
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Thursday, April 29, 2010
Football (er, soccer): best for coach potatoes seeking health, fat loss, muscle?
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What to do if wanting to move off the coach and into health? If a guy - especially a guy just starting up a fitness program - wanted to do just one thing that would help drop fat, build muscle (and muscle mass), improve endurance, enhance bone mineral density, improve cholesterol levels and blood pressure, it's football (what north americans call soceer).
Really. Better than HIIT, than running, than resistance training alone, football seems to be the Big Pill solution. The only potential downside is that levels of injury may be higher than hitting the weight room or stationary bike. Overall, the cost/benefit analysis may make football the Healthy Choice. As the authors say in the abstract:
Blood Pressure and Heart Rate
Over 12 weeks, men who trained for an hour, two or three times a week, on the football pitch, comparable to endurance training of same lenght and duration. Football also showed up as better than strength training, to the level thought to have significant health benefits. Risk of death from heart attack goes down with bett blood presure too.
The footballers also have a lowered resting heart rate, and lowered heart rate during submax runs. They also have lower heart rates in intermittent exercise. Compared with groups who did resistance training alone, that didn't happne. This indicated both central and peripheral adaptations. That's great.
Vo2Max
A quality near and dear to the hearts of many people is VO2max. Playing football over 12 weeks had the same effect (13% improvement) as "using continuous training" (eg running) for the same time, or HIIT for less time. BUT what's particularly cool is that the football group continued to have an imporvement after the first four weeks of ball play. Runners did not. It also seems that just playing some extra small sided games had the same effect as additional interval running susseions for experienced players. Playing a game is likely more enjoyable than running repeats, too.
Fat Burning (& other metabolic impacts)
Here's the kicker. How does football do for fat burning? Fat oxidation during low to moderate intensity goes up. muscle enzyme activity up, muscle fiber conversion from IIx to IIA up (good). LDL/HDL ration changed signficantly - for the good.
Now here's an interesting comparison: neither low intensity aerobics for 12 weeks, nor high intensity intermitent running or strength training lead to changes in cholesterol. What does show benefit is higher intensity work. Football vs just running seems to hit the sweet spot. Runners do have similar weight loss - just not these other perks to the same degree.
A result i find peculiar is a claim that
Lean Body Mass
12 weeks of football, not only does fat go down, and cholesterol change, lean body mass goes up. The study authors look at related work to say heh, this should be good for glucose tolerance. Indeed, there's one study the authors site that when 12 weeks of football & dietary advice was given to a bunch of 47-49 year olds with type 2 diabetes, glucose tolerance was "markedly improved" (a similar trial without that advice showed no difference. hmm)
Musculo-Skeletal fitness
Soccer is stop and go. I've written before about how such action has been shown to be good for bone mineral density. Seems its good for muscle too. Again, comparing with interval and steady state running where there was no muscle fiber change, football does it all. The cool result is that 12 weeks of football got similar results to "14 weeks of heavy resistance training in young men" These kinds of changes just don't seem to happen in regular endurance training. But they do happen across ages in football.
Bone Mass
I admit i am partial to work on bone mineral density. It's a big deal for gals in particular, and we know that muscle size plays a not inconsiderable role for keeping the bones working. But so does the type of axial loading on the bones.
Here's the latest: go lift or do stop and start sports
Perceived Exertion
How tired are we after an activity? A lot of this experience is assessed perceptually against physiologic markers. Guess what? footballers repport lower poop'dness, despite work done. Play is good.
Injury
All good things come at a price? After last week's exegisis on ankle injuriers in sport, this question of injury level is not inconsiderable: what happens when someone gets off the coach and wants to get back int the game?
Most of the comparisons about footbal are with other on-your-feet activities like running, or very different work like lifting. Alas, no comparisons have (yet) been done with Kettlebells. The point is, when looking at injury, these are the places of comparison: how does football compare with say running?
Stay away from match play and risk of injury seems to be lower.
Just to put the icing on the cake, it seems the study authors would like it to be known that runners are sucks:
Citation:
Krustrup, P., Aagaard, P., Nybo, L., Petersen, J., Mohr, M., & Bangsbo, J. (2010). Recreational football as a health promoting activity: a topical review Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0838.2010.01108.x Tweet Follow @begin2dig
What to do if wanting to move off the coach and into health? If a guy - especially a guy just starting up a fitness program - wanted to do just one thing that would help drop fat, build muscle (and muscle mass), improve endurance, enhance bone mineral density, improve cholesterol levels and blood pressure, it's football (what north americans call soceer).
Really. Better than HIIT, than running, than resistance training alone, football seems to be the Big Pill solution. The only potential downside is that levels of injury may be higher than hitting the weight room or stationary bike. Overall, the cost/benefit analysis may make football the Healthy Choice. As the authors say in the abstract:
Taken together, recreational football appears to effectively stimulate musculoskeletal, metabolic and cardiovascular adaptations of importance for health and thereby reduces the risk of developing life-style diseases.Let's take a look at the attributes the authors reviewed. To begin with, they considered studies of men who have been sedentary and then got into some kind of training protocol.
Blood Pressure and Heart Rate
Over 12 weeks, men who trained for an hour, two or three times a week, on the football pitch, comparable to endurance training of same lenght and duration. Football also showed up as better than strength training, to the level thought to have significant health benefits. Risk of death from heart attack goes down with bett blood presure too.
The footballers also have a lowered resting heart rate, and lowered heart rate during submax runs. They also have lower heart rates in intermittent exercise. Compared with groups who did resistance training alone, that didn't happne. This indicated both central and peripheral adaptations. That's great.
Vo2Max
A quality near and dear to the hearts of many people is VO2max. Playing football over 12 weeks had the same effect (13% improvement) as "using continuous training" (eg running) for the same time, or HIIT for less time. BUT what's particularly cool is that the football group continued to have an imporvement after the first four weeks of ball play. Runners did not. It also seems that just playing some extra small sided games had the same effect as additional interval running susseions for experienced players. Playing a game is likely more enjoyable than running repeats, too.
Fat Burning (& other metabolic impacts)
Here's the kicker. How does football do for fat burning? Fat oxidation during low to moderate intensity goes up. muscle enzyme activity up, muscle fiber conversion from IIx to IIA up (good). LDL/HDL ration changed signficantly - for the good.
Now here's an interesting comparison: neither low intensity aerobics for 12 weeks, nor high intensity intermitent running or strength training lead to changes in cholesterol. What does show benefit is higher intensity work. Football vs just running seems to hit the sweet spot. Runners do have similar weight loss - just not these other perks to the same degree.
A result i find peculiar is a claim that
12 weeks of intense interval training and short-term strength training, no changes were observed in fat mass (Fig. 2b), which may be related to the fact that the total energy expenditure was limited for the interval runners and that the strength training group had no changes in metabolic fitness as indicated by unchanged fat oxidation during exercise, lipid profile, capillarization and enzyme activities (Nybo et al., 2010).Study design is interesting, isn't it? As i've written about before, in work by Trapp, intervals on bikes were the one thing that showed fat loss - especially in the trunk - where steady state did not - even without tracking diet. So hmm. I'll go for total caloric expenditure did not exceed caloric intake in these runners/lifters, but it did in the football case, but i'm not ready to say "football is better than intervals for fat loss" -with fat loss as the single factor of interest. That said, there's more good stuff for football
Lean Body Mass
12 weeks of football, not only does fat go down, and cholesterol change, lean body mass goes up. The study authors look at related work to say heh, this should be good for glucose tolerance. Indeed, there's one study the authors site that when 12 weeks of football & dietary advice was given to a bunch of 47-49 year olds with type 2 diabetes, glucose tolerance was "markedly improved" (a similar trial without that advice showed no difference. hmm)
Musculo-Skeletal fitness
Soccer is stop and go. I've written before about how such action has been shown to be good for bone mineral density. Seems its good for muscle too. Again, comparing with interval and steady state running where there was no muscle fiber change, football does it all. The cool result is that 12 weeks of football got similar results to "14 weeks of heavy resistance training in young men" These kinds of changes just don't seem to happen in regular endurance training. But they do happen across ages in football.
Bone Mass
I admit i am partial to work on bone mineral density. It's a big deal for gals in particular, and we know that muscle size plays a not inconsiderable role for keeping the bones working. But so does the type of axial loading on the bones.
Here's the latest: go lift or do stop and start sports
[T]he increase in leg bone mass following 12 weeks of recreational football training was of a similar magnitude as the gains observed following strength training of the same duration, whereas neither recreational jogging nor high-intensity interval running induced changes in total or leg bone mass. In accordance, both male and female football players have higher hip and spine BMD than equally fit runners (Fredericson et al., 2007; Mudd et al., 2007). Furthermore, meta-analysis of cross-sectional studies reveals that participation in non-weight-bearing sports or physical activities with monotonous and stereotypic movement pattern appears to have little or no effect on bone mass or BMD, whereas strength-based and high-impact sports are associated with higher BMD (Egan et al.,2006).In football, small sided games with lots of turns, stops and starts seems to be optimal.
Perceived Exertion
How tired are we after an activity? A lot of this experience is assessed perceptually against physiologic markers. Guess what? footballers repport lower poop'dness, despite work done. Play is good.
Injury
All good things come at a price? After last week's exegisis on ankle injuriers in sport, this question of injury level is not inconsiderable: what happens when someone gets off the coach and wants to get back int the game?
Most of the comparisons about footbal are with other on-your-feet activities like running, or very different work like lifting. Alas, no comparisons have (yet) been done with Kettlebells. The point is, when looking at injury, these are the places of comparison: how does football compare with say running?
[One study ]Parkkari et al. (2004) "have reported an injury incidence of 7.8 injuries per 1000 h of football participation, which ranks football eight in 31 recreational and competitive sports. Running ranks 20 with an injury incidence of 3.6 injuries per 1000 h of participation, but no differentiation between the types of running has been made. ... In another study involving 31 620 inhabitants in a Swedish municipality, injury rates in persons attending a physician for an acute injury sustained during sports participation were reported (de Loes & Goldie, 1988). In this study, ice hockey and handball were found to have the highest risk followed by football. For males aged 15–59 years, the ranking was ice hockey, horseback riding, handball and football. If an injury incidence of 7.8 injuries per 1000 h of football participation is valid in recreation football in general, the implication is that the players would be exposed to one injury every 1.2 years if he carried out two 1-h sessions per week all-year round and one severe injury every ∼13 years as the severity of most injuries in recreational football is mild to moderate with approximately 9% categorized as severe injuries, defined as injuries that result in missing of work or a corresponding activity for at least 1 day (Parkkari et al., 2004).
It should be emphasized that the above-mentioned injury incidences in football are the incidence for training and match play analyzed together. However, it is well known that for elite and amateur football players the injury risk per hour of activity is approximately 5–10 times higher during match-play than training (Poulsen et al., 1991; Hägglund et al., 2003; Arnason et al., 2004) with injury incidence from two to five injuries per 1000 h of participation in training sessions.
Stay away from match play and risk of injury seems to be lower.
Just to put the icing on the cake, it seems the study authors would like it to be known that runners are sucks:
In the reviewed studies dealing with the fitness and health effects of recreational football and running, around 150 subjects have been followed over 3–4 months of training performed two to three times a week. During these studies, 5% of the footballers (n=3) and distance runners (n=3) contacted the in-house medical doctor regarding injuries, whereas 33% of the interval runners did (n=5) [note the small sample size -mc]. However, further studies are required to obtain more information about injury risk, types of injury, injury severity, etc. for various age groups playing recreational football organized as small-sided games among friends.Ok, just go play ball, already. Getting into some frienly 4 a side games, a couple times a week, seems to have so many pluses going for it's hard to imagine the down side - if everyone is rather at the same level (So great, where does one find these games?)
Field Note - General recommendation before Getting Back in the Game: get one's doctor's ok first to start a new prorgam of action, then consider getting a movement assessment to check how you're moving to reduce the risk of injury. It's also immediately beneficial to practice some sensory-motor drills to help field awareness so as to reduce likelihood of falling on self or colleague, and so actually getting more out of the game. Such drills can start with proprioceptvie awareness work. I like z-health's r-phase and especially i phase for this (overviews).
After R- and I- phase, the drills for fast turning, fast getting up off the ground, and just moving fast in the S-Phase Complete Athlete Vol 1 dvd are awesome - as are the drills for field awareness and quickness (review here). A colleague is using a lot of the z-drills to help the kids baseball team he coaches, from proprioception to visual acuity. Injury down, performance up, much?? oh ya.
Citation:
Krustrup, P., Aagaard, P., Nybo, L., Petersen, J., Mohr, M., & Bangsbo, J. (2010). Recreational football as a health promoting activity: a topical review Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0838.2010.01108.x Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Sunday, January 24, 2010
HIIT (on bikes) - why it results in both more fat reduction, and Spot Fat Reduction at That, too than Hearty Steady State
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There are lots of folks espousing the value of HIIT as an effective calorie burner when trying to burn fat. But is there really a special role for HIIT in the fat burning lexicon, or should we just strive to work harder - like 50-75% VO2max - throughout a cardio session? Some more recent work suggests there may be in terms of metabolic activity and even spot fat reduction. But before we go there, let's refresh a bit about HIIT.
The old argument that HIIT burns more calories than Steady State and so is beter has been given a good walloping by Lyle McDonald. Especially in his head to head of steady state with HIIT he pretty persuasively shows that "The intervals only come out a TINY bit ahead if you compare workouts of identical length and even there the difference is absolutely insignificant."
Review: What's HIIT supposed to Do?
Indeed, work from 2008 lead by Shannan E.
Gormley comparing intervals to a decent level of steady state effort did show a benefit for intervals of a sort, but the question for the researchers is what's the optimal time to spend at that peak intensity in an interval to elicit this effect? As cited previously here, the authors state:
So what about fat loss & HIIT, then?
HIIT means high intensity interval protocol. But what is the best HIIT to do if you're tuning it for fat lost first, and anything else second? And does it make a difference if you're dealing with elite athletes or people who are just well enough conditioned so their hearts won't explode if you ask them to go "really hard" for a bit? Is it 60 secs on? 30 off? 60:60? The infamous tabatta on for 20 off for 10 - and remember that was not primarily a fat burning study but an anaerobic/aerobic capacity study.
In 2007 & 2008 a couple studies came out on HIIT from New South Wales as part of some cool PhD work lead by Gail Trapp that i have come to cite frequently about a great HIIT protocol for fat loss and other cool, related benefits that looked explicitly at intervals for fat burning and effects between conditioned and less conditioned participants. Here's the first one, looking at what different HIIT intervals stir up metabolically.
Any type of heart rate elevation triggers some catecholamine response - so does drinking green tea. But what the authors show
here is that both long and short high intensity efforts - sprints in this case - can be effective to trigger greater catecholomine release, but the longer 24 sec sprint with its equivalent longer recovery seems to be better overall for fat mobilization. That's cool. That's actually less work/minute at 24 secs on 36 off than the shorter burst of 8on/12off (24sec vs 40secs of work). Wow. So longer more intense intervals - not necessarily more work - yields higher levels of fat release for fuel - but both the shorties and the longies are good.
Applying these Inervals to Fat Loss. Trapp and Co. then took this finding to a larger cohort of 45 participants (up from 8 and 8), and went longitudinal running a 15 week study. 15 weeks is *good* for 45 people to hang in there.
To be clear, in the second study, gals in the HIIT group did a five minute warm up, followed by 20mins of 8sec sprint followed by 12s of 20-30rpm recovery. The load was continually adjusted over the course of 15 weeks, starting at everyone getting to 20mins at .5kg of resistance. Based on heart rate, the load was upped by .5kg so that the heart effect was consistent as folks got stronger.
The steady state group worked at 60%V02peak - that's a good clip - about 75% maxHR so no slouching there. They worked up from 10mins to 40mins. The mean heart rate of the groups was 168.6 for the HIIT group; 155.7 for the steady state group (participants were 18-30 years old).
As to the fat loss: There was significant FM loss (P less than 0.05) r="−0.58,">This last point is not surprising, based on energy available for fuel from fat relative to bodyfat % (discussed here). The authors come back to this point stating:
Discussion of Findings - Cautious optimism for Intense Intervals
The authors in true geek science-ness don't overegg the results:
more fat available as fuel in the blood ready to be used, Trapp's crew hypothesizes, maybe people doing HIIT just aren't homeostatically tweaked to reach for calorically dense foods - their bodies know they have that covered. That's a really intersting idea. I wonder if doing HIIT closer to meal times enhances this effect, if that's what's going on.
What about this seeming spot reduction? But even if you want to say there are interesting side effects going on with HIIT that are causing these fat loss responses, the authors' key result is this abdominal fat difference. HIIT took OFF some ab fat; Steady state, i'm sorry to say, put some on. Dang.
Here's where exercise type may play an important role in whether or not this spot effect is achieved. The authors postulate the following:
Translating Results to Other Modes? Do these findings translate to other modalities for HIIT - like oh i dunno, maybe kettlebells? Don't know. Perhaps that would be an interesting comparison for bike, hardstyle with it's tension at the top of the swing say, and that hip/core/lat activation, and GS with its more relaxed swing. Do GS/HS differences fall away as the bell weight gets heavier?
In the meantime, the authors offer the following:
While the authors tested their participants with the 8/12 interval, their earlier work with the 24/36 suggests the benefits might be even greater - on a bike, but maybe with a kettlebell or a rowing machine, too.
Take Away: the Skinny on the Fat & HIIT
There are at least two ways to talk about HIIT - in the performance arena, and in fat burning. In performance, there is a small but not insignificant edge to interval work over intense steady state. In fat burning there is a really significant effect. Here's what i think it is.
While the authors make much of the spot fat reduction - and that's not nothing - the more intriguing thing is that *only* the HIIE group lost fat & had their lean body mass go up.
I've cited before work to show that without diet, any weight loss changes, even over 12 weeks of working out are small. In this case, there was no deliberate dietary intervention. So that there was such fat loss without more or less trying dietarily as well is really kinda eye openingly "what the heck?"
So i am intrigued by the authors' speculation about that catecholamine effect and glycerol release and potential effect on let's say homeostasis - a reduced reach for high cal foods, naturally. Wow. That makes HIIE worth looking at from a whole other point that has a whole lot less to do with the calories burned on the bike and the effect of those intervals throughout every other day of the week. And that's only 3*15. What would 3days at 20 or 30 or 40 minutes do? More is not always better - and intervals can be fatiguing but. Hmm.
Related Posts
main refs
There are lots of folks espousing the value of HIIT as an effective calorie burner when trying to burn fat. But is there really a special role for HIIT in the fat burning lexicon, or should we just strive to work harder - like 50-75% VO2max - throughout a cardio session? Some more recent work suggests there may be in terms of metabolic activity and even spot fat reduction. But before we go there, let's refresh a bit about HIIT.The old argument that HIIT burns more calories than Steady State and so is beter has been given a good walloping by Lyle McDonald. Especially in his head to head of steady state with HIIT he pretty persuasively shows that "The intervals only come out a TINY bit ahead if you compare workouts of identical length and even there the difference is absolutely insignificant."
Review: What's HIIT supposed to Do?
Indeed, work from 2008 lead by Shannan E.
Gormley comparing intervals to a decent level of steady state effort did show a benefit for intervals of a sort, but the question for the researchers is what's the optimal time to spend at that peak intensity in an interval to elicit this effect? As cited previously here, the authors state:It should be noted that although interval training groups spend some of their training time at a very high intensity, a similar amount of time is spent at a lower intensity, and therefore the mean intensity of training may not be any higher than that of a continuous training program. In the current study, the interval training group used 5 min each for the work and the recovery phases of the intervals and had an average intensity of 72% HRR, which is slightly less than the 75% HRR of the vigorous [the steady state -mc] group. The work-recovery periods of Helgerud et al.[16] were 4 min at ∼93% HRmax and 3 min at 70% HRmax, for a mean intensity of 83% HRmax in the interval group, whereas one of the continuous groups used 85% HRmax. Warburton et al.[37] used 2 min at 90% HRR and 2 min at 40% HRR for the work and the recovery phases, yielding a mean intensity of 65% HRR in the interval group, and had the continuous training group use 65% HRR. Wisloff et al.[38] used 4-min work phases at ∼93% HRmax and 3-min recovery phases at 60% HRmax, for a mean intensity of 79% HRmax in the interval group, and used ∼73% HRmax in the continuous training group. Despite the similarity of mean intensity between the interval and the continuous training groups, the interval groups in all of these studies experienced greater improvements in aerobic fitness after training. Therefore, although intensity is a key variable in cardiorespiratory training (as shown by comparing the two continuous training groups in this study), the mean intensity may not be as important as the highest intensity that is used for a significant portion of the training. A topic for future research is to determine what portion of training should be done at high intensities and using what work-recovery periods to obtain the greatest resultsThe above is looking not at fat loss effects of intervals, but training to enhance oxidative capacity for performance. More recently even really brief intense bouts of exercise (like 6 mins a week of effort compared with hours of steady state for the same physiological effect as hours of 60% MaxHR), there are similar kinds of performance benefits. So, there seem to be some performance optimization benefits from (a) looking at finding the right balance of peak intensity to recovery for work sessions and (b) looking at supramaximal efforts that may have similar effects in less time. Again, that's performance, not fat loss, and in the former case, we are talking really small degrees of difference.
So what about fat loss & HIIT, then?
HIIT means high intensity interval protocol. But what is the best HIIT to do if you're tuning it for fat lost first, and anything else second? And does it make a difference if you're dealing with elite athletes or people who are just well enough conditioned so their hearts won't explode if you ask them to go "really hard" for a bit? Is it 60 secs on? 30 off? 60:60? The infamous tabatta on for 20 off for 10 - and remember that was not primarily a fat burning study but an anaerobic/aerobic capacity study.
In 2007 & 2008 a couple studies came out on HIIT from New South Wales as part of some cool PhD work lead by Gail Trapp that i have come to cite frequently about a great HIIT protocol for fat loss and other cool, related benefits that looked explicitly at intervals for fat burning and effects between conditioned and less conditioned participants. Here's the first one, looking at what different HIIT intervals stir up metabolically.
Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol. 2007 Dec;293(6):R2370-5. Epub 2007 Sep 26.Fat Mobilization: Freed for the Burning. Ah ha you say, there's no fat loss measured here. Right. But what IS measured here is catecholamine activation. Those threat response fight or flight hormones are what mobilize fat to get burned, baby burned. And from these the authors suggest a correlation to the level of catecholamine released and the level of glycerol to be found in the blood stream. In other words, higher degree of intensity, greater catecholamine release, more fat mobilised to be used for fuel.
Metabolic response of trained and untrained women during high-intensity intermittent cycle exercise.
Trapp EG, Chisholm DJ, Boutcher SH.
School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Univ. of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia. e.trapp@unsw.edu.au
The metabolic response to two different forms of high-intensity intermittent cycle exercise was investigated in young women. Subjects (8 trained and 8 untrained) performed two bouts of high-intensity intermittent exercise: short sprint (SS) (8-s sprint, 12-s recovery) and long sprint (LS) (24-s sprint, 36-s recovery) for 20 min on two separate occasions. Both workload and oxygen uptake were greater in the trained subjects but were not significantly different for SS and LS. Plasma glycerol concentrations significantly increased during exercise. Lactate concentrations rose over the 20 min and were higher for the trained women. Catecholamine concentration was also higher postexercise compared with preexercise for both groups. Both SS and LS produced similar metabolic response although both lactate and catecholamines were higher after the 24-s sprint. In conclusion, these results show that high-intensity intermittent exercise resulted in significant elevations in catecholamines that appear to be related to increased venous glycerol concentrations. The trained compared with the untrained women tended to show an earlier increase in plasma glycerol concentrations during high-intensity exercise.
Any type of heart rate elevation triggers some catecholamine response - so does drinking green tea. But what the authors show
here is that both long and short high intensity efforts - sprints in this case - can be effective to trigger greater catecholomine release, but the longer 24 sec sprint with its equivalent longer recovery seems to be better overall for fat mobilization. That's cool. That's actually less work/minute at 24 secs on 36 off than the shorter burst of 8on/12off (24sec vs 40secs of work). Wow. So longer more intense intervals - not necessarily more work - yields higher levels of fat release for fuel - but both the shorties and the longies are good.Applying these Inervals to Fat Loss. Trapp and Co. then took this finding to a larger cohort of 45 participants (up from 8 and 8), and went longitudinal running a 15 week study. 15 weeks is *good* for 45 people to hang in there.
Int J Obes (Lond). 2008 Apr;32(4):684-91. Epub 2008 Jan 15.
The effects of high-intensity intermittent exercise training on fat loss and fasting insulin levels of young women.
Trapp EG, Chisholm DJ, Freund J, Boutcher SH.
Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. e.trapp@unsw.edu.au
OBJECTIVE: To determine the effects of a 15-week high-intensity intermittent exercise (HIIE) program on subcutaneous and trunk fat and insulin resistance of young women. DESIGN AND PROCEDURES: Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the three groups: HIIE (n=15), steady-state exercise (SSE; n=15) or control (CONT; n=15). HIIE and SSE groups underwent a 15-week exercise intervention. SUBJECTS: Forty-five women with a mean BMI of 23.2+/-2.0 kg m(-2) and age of 20.2+/-2.0 years. RESULTS: Both exercise groups demonstrated a significant improvement (P<0.05) in cardiovascular fitness. However, only the HIIE group had a significant reduction in total body mass (TBM), fat mass (FM), trunk fat and fasting plasma insulin levels. There was significant fat loss (P<0.05) in legs compared to arms in the HIIE group only. Lean compared to overweight women lost less fat after HIIE. Decreases in leptin concentrations were negatively correlated with increases in VO(2peak) (r=-0.57, P<0.05) and positively correlated with decreases in TBM (r=0.47; P<0.0001). There was no significant change in adiponectin levels after training. CONCLUSIONS: HIIE three times per week for 15 weeks compared to the same frequency of SSE exercise was associated with significant reductions in total body fat, subcutaneous leg and trunk fat, and insulin resistance in young women.
To be clear, in the second study, gals in the HIIT group did a five minute warm up, followed by 20mins of 8sec sprint followed by 12s of 20-30rpm recovery. The load was continually adjusted over the course of 15 weeks, starting at everyone getting to 20mins at .5kg of resistance. Based on heart rate, the load was upped by .5kg so that the heart effect was consistent as folks got stronger.
The steady state group worked at 60%V02peak - that's a good clip - about 75% maxHR so no slouching there. They worked up from 10mins to 40mins. The mean heart rate of the groups was 168.6 for the HIIT group; 155.7 for the steady state group (participants were 18-30 years old).
As to the fat loss: There was significant FM loss (P less than 0.05) r="−0.58,">This last point is not surprising, based on energy available for fuel from fat relative to bodyfat % (discussed here). The authors come back to this point stating:
High-intensity intermittent exercise training had a marked effect on fat levels for some individuals and a moderate effect for others. The correlation (r=0.58, P less than 0.01)43, 44 The four moderate fat loss responders in the HIIE group (women who had a 3% or less decrease in total fat) possessed significantly lower initial FM than the other women. With the four lean women removed, the mean fat loss in the HIIE group was 3.94±0.91 kg resulting in a 4.3% decrease in body mass and a 14.7% decrease in total FM. This 3.94-kg fat loss compares favorably to the 1.15-kg weight loss reported in a recent meta-analysis of the effects of SEE on weight loss.That all sounds good and reasonable and wonderful, but then comes the particularly interesting bits - gosh what would almost seem like spot fat reductions:
High-intensity intermittent exercise led to a significant decrease (P less than 0.05) in central abdominal fat (−0.15plus or minus 0.07 kg), whereas the SSE and CONT groups had nonsignificant increases in central abdominal fat (SSE group, +0.1 plus or minus 0.08 kg; CONT group, +0.03 plus or minus 0.04 kg).So more weight off the gut area in HIIT, legs and trunk (other newer work (like this one Nov 08 lead by Irving, and this one Aug 09 lead by Coker ) has seen similar results with gut fat). Intriguingly all groups put on fat in the arms (but not a lot). Indeed, the gut fat loss the authors cite as THE finding of the study. Even more, they state
Despite exercising half the time, HIIE subjects in the present study lost 11.2% of total FM with SSE subjects experiencing no fat loss.That's a pretty big difference between the two groups
Discussion of Findings - Cautious optimism for Intense Intervals
The authors in true geek science-ness don't overegg the results:
Collectively, these results demonstrate that intermittent sprinting compared to SEE is a more effective and efficient way of controlling body composition. However, our estimates of energy expenditure and intake lack sufficient precision to comfortably conclude that energy balance was unaffected in the HIIE condition. Thus, it is feasible that the change in FM that occurred in HIIE may have been influenced by unreported changes in diet. Indeed, HIIE-induced suppressed diet intake may be one of a number of possible factors underlying the fat loss effect of HIIE.11 For example, HIIE may have suppressed appetite or decreased attraction for energy-dense foods.24, 25 Another explanation for the HIIE fat loss effects is that this type of exercise may result in enhanced lipid utilization. Prior research in our laboratory has shown that lipid release, as indicated by blood glycerol levels, gradually increased over 20 min of HIIE.20 Catecholamine levels in this study were also found to be significantly elevated after HIIE.20Free Fat. I love this! Because of that catecholomine hit we saw earlier, and because there's
more fat available as fuel in the blood ready to be used, Trapp's crew hypothesizes, maybe people doing HIIT just aren't homeostatically tweaked to reach for calorically dense foods - their bodies know they have that covered. That's a really intersting idea. I wonder if doing HIIT closer to meal times enhances this effect, if that's what's going on. What about this seeming spot reduction? But even if you want to say there are interesting side effects going on with HIIT that are causing these fat loss responses, the authors' key result is this abdominal fat difference. HIIT took OFF some ab fat; Steady state, i'm sorry to say, put some on. Dang.
Here's where exercise type may play an important role in whether or not this spot effect is achieved. The authors postulate the following:
It is considered that spot reduction (that is, deliberately reducing fat stores in specific areas of the body) is not possible, and the body will mobilize preferentially those stores with the highest concentrations of adipose cells.36, 37, 38 There is evidence in the current study that this principle may not apply to every exercise modality. In HIIE, where work is done primarily by the musculature of the legs and the trunk muscles act as stabilizers, there was a decrease in FM and an increase in lean mass, which summated to a significant change in percentage of fat in these two regions. This was not the case with the SSE group.So where work triggers core stabilizers to get that extra intensity, there may be a seeming spot fat loss effect. It's also interesting to note that only the HIIT group had lean body mass increase.
Translating Results to Other Modes? Do these findings translate to other modalities for HIIT - like oh i dunno, maybe kettlebells? Don't know. Perhaps that would be an interesting comparison for bike, hardstyle with it's tension at the top of the swing say, and that hip/core/lat activation, and GS with its more relaxed swing. Do GS/HS differences fall away as the bell weight gets heavier?In the meantime, the authors offer the following:
In conclusion, 20 min of HIIE [on a bike - mc] , performed three times per week for 15 weeks compared to the same frequency of 40min of SSE exercise was associated with significant reductions in fasting insulin, total body fat, subcutaneous leg fat and abdominal fat.
While the authors tested their participants with the 8/12 interval, their earlier work with the 24/36 suggests the benefits might be even greater - on a bike, but maybe with a kettlebell or a rowing machine, too.
Take Away: the Skinny on the Fat & HIIT
There are at least two ways to talk about HIIT - in the performance arena, and in fat burning. In performance, there is a small but not insignificant edge to interval work over intense steady state. In fat burning there is a really significant effect. Here's what i think it is.
While the authors make much of the spot fat reduction - and that's not nothing - the more intriguing thing is that *only* the HIIE group lost fat & had their lean body mass go up.
I've cited before work to show that without diet, any weight loss changes, even over 12 weeks of working out are small. In this case, there was no deliberate dietary intervention. So that there was such fat loss without more or less trying dietarily as well is really kinda eye openingly "what the heck?"
So i am intrigued by the authors' speculation about that catecholamine effect and glycerol release and potential effect on let's say homeostasis - a reduced reach for high cal foods, naturally. Wow. That makes HIIE worth looking at from a whole other point that has a whole lot less to do with the calories burned on the bike and the effect of those intervals throughout every other day of the week. And that's only 3*15. What would 3days at 20 or 30 or 40 minutes do? More is not always better - and intervals can be fatiguing but. Hmm.
Related Posts
- Kettlebells and Cardio - it doesn't have to be VO2max all the time
- Viking Warrior Conditioning, the Review with Kenneth Jay
- Does Cardio interfer with Strength work? How 'bout No
- Running the bells - hill workouts with kettlebells
- Weight loss doesn't work without Diet - really [story 1, story 2]
- Fat, the amazing fuel.
- Getting a handle on the habits of thinner peace (as martha beck calls it)
main refs
Trapp, E., Chisholm, D., Freund, J., & Boutcher, S. (2008). The effects of high-intensity intermittent exercise training on fat loss and fasting insulin levels of young women International Journal of Obesity, 32 (4), 684-691 DOI: 10.1038/sj.ijo.0803781Tweet Follow @begin2dig
GORMLEY, S., SWAIN, D., HIGH, R., SPINA, R., DOWLING, E., KOTIPALLI, U., & GANDRAKOTA, R. (2008). Effect of Intensity of Aerobic Training on VO2max Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 40 (7), 1336-1343 DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e31816c4839
Trapp, E., Chisholm, D., & Boutcher, S. (2007). Metabolic response of trained and untrained women during high-intensity intermittent cycle exercise AJP: Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, 293 (6) DOI: 10.1152/ajpregu.00780.2006
Saturday, September 26, 2009
"Lean Muscle "- muscle is lean - do you mean lean mass?
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Just a quicky about terminology. I've heard many folks referring to building "lean muscle" and burning fat. Even seemingly knowledgeable sites do this. Consider this wikianswer response about building "lean muscle" A review of Staley's muscle logic refers to building "lean muscle mass." Or just do a search for "lean muscle" and check how many sites come back with that
term in the title.
The thing is, muscle *is* lean in that (a) lean means wanting in fat and (b) muscle has very little fat in it. Pretty much ever. It's very particularly designed to be that way.
The "lean muscle" may come from conflating the desire for muscle gain and fat loss on the one hand and measuring "lean mass" relative to body fat % from body composition on the other.
Or maybe it's that gaining muscle is supposed to go with burning fat and hence getting lean. Not always true by the way: see "bulking."
Anyway, lean muscle may be a redundant term but it's pretty pervasive. So let's take these terms apart then:
Lean, in lean mass refers to the measurement of the body sans adipose tissue - the fat that's under the skin (and can be measured by calipers) as opposed to visceral fat, which is the stuff around our internal organs.
Body composition by the way is formally the meanure of fat, bone, muscle tissue. So a lean person - say a man below 10% body fat with a six pack starting to show - is "lean" - as in wanting in fat (that's another great word: to want, wanting - as in to lack). He may be more or less muscular at that bf% than another person who is say
bigger or smaller boned, so not everyone at a particular bf% looks the same to be sure.
Similarly someone can gain lean mass, or gain muscle, and not necessarily put much of a dent in lowering their body fat percentage (as seen recently with obese kids on exercise programs). In fact many folks will eat more to gain muscle mass, and pack on some more fat while doing so. This is partially why it's hard to gain muscle mass while reducing calories to get lean: the fuel to build the muscle mass (new tissue) isn't necessarily there (see discussion on hypertrophy here).
So, there's muscle, there's lean mass, and there's body fat. Muscle and bone is lean; fat is fat. Working to gain muscle doesn't necessitate getting lean(er), but eating at a caloric deficit may (scroll dow to see discussion on weight loss, nutrition, habits, change is pain, here for more).
Now, for most situations the above may be considered a nice distinction (nice is another cool word like want - means fussy or fastidious or jesuitical for that matter), but sometimes folks make the assumption that muscle gain means fat loss when thinking about "lean muscle gain" and since it doesn't, it may help to have this cleared up - help a person working on weight loss and fitness to have a better mental model of what's happening within us.
And so thar we go: muscle is lean already, to get lean is to drop fat, but building muscle is no guarantee of fat loss, though developed in the right circumstances, it can certainly help. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
term in the title.The thing is, muscle *is* lean in that (a) lean means wanting in fat and (b) muscle has very little fat in it. Pretty much ever. It's very particularly designed to be that way.
The "lean muscle" may come from conflating the desire for muscle gain and fat loss on the one hand and measuring "lean mass" relative to body fat % from body composition on the other.
Or maybe it's that gaining muscle is supposed to go with burning fat and hence getting lean. Not always true by the way: see "bulking."
Anyway, lean muscle may be a redundant term but it's pretty pervasive. So let's take these terms apart then:
Lean, in lean mass refers to the measurement of the body sans adipose tissue - the fat that's under the skin (and can be measured by calipers) as opposed to visceral fat, which is the stuff around our internal organs.
Body composition by the way is formally the meanure of fat, bone, muscle tissue. So a lean person - say a man below 10% body fat with a six pack starting to show - is "lean" - as in wanting in fat (that's another great word: to want, wanting - as in to lack). He may be more or less muscular at that bf% than another person who is say
bigger or smaller boned, so not everyone at a particular bf% looks the same to be sure.Similarly someone can gain lean mass, or gain muscle, and not necessarily put much of a dent in lowering their body fat percentage (as seen recently with obese kids on exercise programs). In fact many folks will eat more to gain muscle mass, and pack on some more fat while doing so. This is partially why it's hard to gain muscle mass while reducing calories to get lean: the fuel to build the muscle mass (new tissue) isn't necessarily there (see discussion on hypertrophy here).
So, there's muscle, there's lean mass, and there's body fat. Muscle and bone is lean; fat is fat. Working to gain muscle doesn't necessitate getting lean(er), but eating at a caloric deficit may (scroll dow to see discussion on weight loss, nutrition, habits, change is pain, here for more).
Now, for most situations the above may be considered a nice distinction (nice is another cool word like want - means fussy or fastidious or jesuitical for that matter), but sometimes folks make the assumption that muscle gain means fat loss when thinking about "lean muscle gain" and since it doesn't, it may help to have this cleared up - help a person working on weight loss and fitness to have a better mental model of what's happening within us.
And so thar we go: muscle is lean already, to get lean is to drop fat, but building muscle is no guarantee of fat loss, though developed in the right circumstances, it can certainly help. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
P90X Critique Part 2 0f 3 - WIll you really "get ripped"?
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Does P90x work - when measured against its own claimes: does P90x get one "ripped" in 90 days? This article reviews the exercise and diet plan of P90X to get at that question - but really it's about providing a way to assess any "body transformation" or "12 week" program to see (a) if what's on the label is what's in the tin and (b) if what's in the tin matches what your goals for a program. You'll find criteria about two key components of such programs, diet, and nutrition, and how to assess the degree to which each of these components is likely to deliver the claims a program promises to deliver, and for whom.
The following therefore is more or less a worked example of applying/deriving this assessment via a critique of P90x - a program billed as an "extreme" workout (+ diet) specifically designed for practitioners to 'get ripped.' It's pretty detailed, so long. It looks at the exercise program first and then the nutrition program in the context of its promised results.
Context
In Part 1 of this reflection/critique of P90x we looked at the core P90x concept of "muscle confusion". We also poked at the rationale behind a few of the "bring it" program's routines within this "muscle confusion" context. The conclusion was, based on what's known about physiological adaptations that occur in a 12 week program by novices/deconditioned athletes - P90X's target market - muscle confusion is basically a marketing gimmick.
In this second of this three part series, i'd like to look at the concept of "getting ripped" that is a key part of the P90X delivery promise.
In Part 3 we'll look at alternatives to the two core parts of P90X, but in the right order (a) diet (from places one doesn't usually think about diet - it's not just about the food) and (b) workout practices (they're both practices)
As i said in part 1 and will say so again here, there's nothing wrong with anyone wanting to do - or actually doing - P90X or similar- the routines are "not considered harmful," to draw on a computer science trope (at least not too harmful - we'll see more in part 3b).
What we might ask about P90X is does it deliver what's on the tin? Will anyone who passes the P90X fit test and is therefore deemed "ready" to do P90X "get ripped"? - and in P90X's definition, that pretty much means, at a minimum, have a six pack.
P90X suggests that if you follow it's program, you will be "transformed" from "regular to ripped" in 90 days. That's its formula: do the workouts; follow the diet. So we're going to look at each part of that formula against some objective criteria for ripped-ness.
Basic necessities of Getting Ripped by which to assess P90X capacity to deliver:
There are fortunately only two things involved in getting ripped, level of importance listed here:
RECIPE/FORMULA ASIDE for 6 Pack
If you want to skip the rest of the article here's the recipe for 6 pack abs:
As to why this is the recipe, well that's in the rest of this article.
Results from this article:
First, there are tons of 12 week programs out there, all promising grand things. Where do we get our information about what works in these programs? Usually from the programs themselves. But we saw in the first part of this series that P90X's key concept "muscle confusion" is more marketing than fact, especially in the context of deconditioned or novice trainees. So are the before and after shots for P90X's amazing transformations that seem to be portrayed also a gimmick? How can we make this assessment.
Second, i'm guessing that folks who choose to do P90X or other 12 week transformations may know about as much about how fat loss and hypertrophy really work as i did when i started the program: less than i thought i did, and so pretty accepting of the way P90X presents each of these: exercise first, diet second, bf% is just a measure of progress.
The reality, as we'll see, is very much different: diet has to be first, exercise is second and bf% is, in the context of "getting ripped" a very specific target, and one that can be reasonably calculated to determine the length and intensity of a program to deliver desired results.
So to begin, let's begin with where P90X puts its energy first: exercise.
o Muscle Building Very Basic Basics.
P90X doesn't come out and say that it's a muscle building program - and that's good, cuz it's not (more on that in a moment) - but most of us think that the term "getting ripped" implies building muscle.
Likewise, those men's before and after pictures in P90X (like the ones fo JonC, left) seem to imply that muscle mass will accompany the program. Hmm.
There's a lot we don't know about how muscle growth works, but there's a couple of things we do know: to build muscle we need two things: caloric surplus and appropriate muscular stimulation to force an adaptation. In this case, that adaptation means laying down new muscle fiber and so getting some muscle growth. Muscle growth also pretty much requires eating more rather than less: we want more body mass - in these case muscle tissue - the resources for that tissue have to come from somewhere. For us, that's the right nutrients - i.e. food.
Muscle in Two Parts:
That said, here's a factoid from Christian Thibaudeau's excellent and recommended discussion of mass building: with someone (read male in this case) totally committed to muscle building, getting diet and workouts just so, the range of muscle building to expect is .25 to .5lbs of *dry* muscle per week. In the real world that non-fat weight would show up with an additional 40% from additional water/gylcogen. So ten pounds of muscle shows up more like 14lbs on the scale. But whether 10 or 14 pounds of fat free mass let's call it, at .5+ pounds a week, 2 pounds a month, that also means five to ten perfect months to get that 14 pounds.
Here's another factoid from that article - a person sitting at say 120lbs of lean mass (weight minus fat) would need to eat 2440 calories a day to start growing mass with those optimized workouts.
Even before we get to the type of workouts, a basic question we might ask is, is the diet in the program one of caloric surplus or caloric deficit? So whether you gain muscle on P90X or not will largely depend on how much of a caloric deficit - or not - you're in during the program. That discussion is below.
Generally, P90X aims to have a person in caloric deficit - without which fat loss will not occur. Period. So here's a potential contradiction, not unique to P90X, but certainly rather brushed under the carpet in this case: if muscle mass building requires caloric surplus, but the program keeps someone in caloric deficit throughout, how can muscle be built? This isn't a Zen Koan. The inverse may help: if one is eating enough for muscle building, what kind of caloric deficit is going on and what kind of fat loss is occurring?
Another question: if P90X runs a person into caloric deficit, how explain those before and after pictures that *seem* to show more muscle mass at the end of 90 days?We'll come back to these questions. First, let's look at how we might understand what kinds of muscular adaptations P90X promotes.
Kind of Strength Foregrounds Kind of Muscle
Another part of the muscle building adaptation is type of load, rest, volume and recovery. As we said above, to get new muscle fibers to be laid down, there has to be a demand for that kind of growth. As we saw in part 1, also, the type of adaptation in the first 8 - 12 weeks of a resistance program for a neophyte is mainly neurological. That means muscle that already exists is learning how to support the loads. Only once the challenge goes beyond that initial adaptation, effectively, does new muscle get laid down IF the challenge requires that adaptation. Does P90X require that hypertrophy adaptation?
o P90X: endurance training disguised with weights.
In the P90X program, 3 out of the 6 days a week are "resistance" oriented workouts (the other three are "cardio" oriented). But what kind of resistance training are we talking about? Turns out they're something known as circuits.
Circuits in general are usually about putting several exercises together, doing one set of each exercise with little rest between moves. The weights used in each of these sets has to be sufficiently light to be able to move between exercises with limited rest.
Indeed, in P90X resistance workouts, the rep ranges are anywhere from 7 to 12. The only instruction on how to pick a weight is so that one will "feel the burn" in the last couple of reps.
Based on the above template, we get the following in the resistance routines: 20+ minute circuits, 1 set per move, mid to high reps, critically: no rest between sets. At most, there is 60 seconds active recovery between circuits 2-3 circuits.
We've said these workouts are circuits but when rest between sets is taken out of the equation for this kind of period, we're looking at endurance or stamina training rather than muscular strength.
Let's look at how "strong" is used as a term in P90X. "Stronger" throughout the P90X program is largely defined by being able to endure, keep up, do as many reps of a move as Horton and Co perform with as little rest as possible over the course of the hour. That's endurance strength. The adaptations developed in the muscles are mainly aerobic in nature, which means that the muscles get,
Foundational. Basic. Upping oxidative capacity. Not building mass, but improving the muscle's capacity to use oxygen which means greater work capacity for longer. That sounds great for health but doesn't sound like a "getting ripped" program, though, does it? And saying that, are circuits the best way to build this capacity?
Here's an assessment of the kinds of circuits P90X uses for training:
The above Goal 3 Sounds like P90X's "resistnace" workouts (and all the other P90X workouts, too, for that matter). That latter point then is as close as P90X comes to having an effect, and it's not strength per se or muscle building. It's endurance: keep the movement going to keep the heart rate up for periods longer than 4 minutes; improve oxidative capacity (ability to burn fat).
Recap on P90X Circuits
SO what have we learned? Circuits are, at best, novice routines, or for sick or rehabbing, or obese. THis doesn't sound like the deconditioned x-jock population P90X is supposedly targeting. So, P90X, as point 3 above, has tuned the workouts for what? Fat burning. Not muscle building.
Our question at this point might be, are these kinds of circuits the best way to burn fat for a deconditioned jock AND add "lean muscle" that the diet guide says will make up for not seeing much of a change on the scale?
Consider this: in a 24 week program study designed specifically to look at the effects of single set style circuit training vs periodized multi-set program, the lean mass changes for women were 2% lean mass gain over that 6 month period vs 8% gain with the alternative protocol. Likewise percentage body fat went down by 10% in 6 months (eg, someone at 24% went to 21.6%) vs 25% with the alternative protocol (that 24% person wend to 18%).
So, these workouts are *mainly* fat burners/endurance builders, and don't seem to be necessarily the best approach to optimize fat burning or lean mass building. In part 3 we'll look at some of these alternatives in more detail.
Aside: P90X+ Let me cue up here that the P90X+ program is very similar in kind to P90X: 5 more P90X style workouts, but with fewer people on the set. These workouts are to mix into P90X. So one effectively re-does P90X, swapping out some P90X routines for the new ones. So, once more into the breach: more circuits, more little rest between moves. So, effectively, more of the P90X endurance same.
P90X - resisting muscle growth?
We now have a sense of what it takes to build muscle: caloric surplus - we need more to build more; and we need specific types of load/recovery/volume for muscles to grow. In looking at P90X, we see that the type of strength it's geared to building is endurance, not hypertrophy. The muscular adaptations are around fuel consumption - better oxidative/fat burning capacity - rather than mass building.
In sum, based on their design, P90X workouts - including the "resistance" workouts - are circuits, tuned for fat burning rather than muscle building.
Questions a person considering P90X might have at this point are therefore
Another question might be "but what about getting ripped? doesn't P90X deliver at least on that?"
At the top of this article we looked at getting ripped as body fat percentage first and muscle growth second. Ok, it's not delivering on muscle growth per se, so time to look at the diet side of P90X and we'll come back to its fat burning disguised as resistance training.
o The simple formula for a 6 pack? Body Fat Percentage
While i don't think he coined the term, colleague Rannoch Donald of Simple Strength may often be heard to say "there are no secrets." So here's a big non-secret to 6 pack abs: body fat percentage.
What P90X does not come out and say ever, anywhere, is that for a guy to begin to see his abs, he has to be at about 10% BF (in my experience of the guys i've worked with, it's actually below 10%); for gals, we have to be at about 15% or less. It's really that simple.
I wish i had known this at the time i was doing P90X. Rather than focusing on dropping 10 pounds, i might have looked into how feasible/healthy it would be to drop 10% body fat in 90 days, and how to optimize that. That *might* have helped me figure out right there if Kenpo-X and Plyo-X were the best ways to achieve that goal, or if maybe looking into diet-x might have been more profitable.
Indeed, what more and more research shows is that the only way to get to that ripped level BF% is calorie restriction. Calorie restriction (ie, diet) comes first; exercise is second. P90X of course doesn't say this fact either. It's selling "muscle confusion" first; nutrition way second.
o P90X Diet Math
This is not to say that PN doesn't get diet. PN has a diet book. And it's a corker.
What the Nutrition Plan for P90X says about the role of nutrition in getting ripped is as follows:
Please let me note again that one can gain lean mass while in caloric deficit. It's just not a lot. If one is gaining .25 lbs by eating for gain, and working out for muscular growth, how much fiber can be built when eating for loss and doing endurance not hypertrophy workouts? It's a real challenge.
So what's the P90X diet advice?
IT's amazing. Every 4 weeks, the macronutrient ratio changes - to match the demands of this incredible program:
Phase I: Fat Shredder - Days 1-28
Phase II: Energy Booster - Days 29-56
Phase III: Endurance Maximizer - Days 57-90
The above phases map to the following macronutrient ratios:
Macronutrient Goals in Each Phase
Phase I - Protein 50%, Carbs 30%, Fat 20%
Phase II - Protein 40%, Carbs 40%, Fat 20%
Phase III - Protein 20%, Carbs 60%, Fat 20%
How are these ratios achieved? By one of two ways: either follow the portion suggestions of how many portions of each type of macro nutrient to have, or by following the meal plans so even less to think about. Just eat exactly what it in the book, when it says to eat it.
Indeed, the portion approach is not unique to P90X but it is complex: Have X portions from the Protein group; Y portions from the Carbs and Z from fats.
This number of portions approach is to help avoid calorie counting. But the result also means that there are only three "sizes" of menu to fit everyone. Not exactly optimized for fat loss. Consider the following.
Calories Per Day - Three Sizes fits All
Here's how a person determines how many calories they're going to eat a day - what their Total X+Y+Z portions will equal.
Nutrition Level Chart
EA = 1800-2399 = Level I 1800 calories per day
EA = 2400-2999 = Level II 2400 calories per day
EA = 3000+ = Level III 3000 calories per day
Who is losing anything here and by how much? Hmm. This means someone who requires 2399 calories for maintenance in Level 1 will suddenly be on a 600 calorie a day deficit. In 6 days of workouts, that's 3600 calories - a little better than a fat pound. Someone who's closer to 1800 cals for maintenance will be losing far less in that week. Maybe nothing following this meal plan. And indeed, there's a real potential Achilles heal to this approach. IT's how one's Level is calculated: it assumes that ALL P90X workouts burn 600 calories.
Let's look quickly at how one figures out their energy level.
Determining Your Nutrition Level
1. Calculate your RMR
Your Body Weight x 10 = RMR
2. Calculate your Daily Activity Burn
RMR x 20% = DAB
3. Calculate your Energy Amount
RMR + DAB +600 CALS for p90x workouts = EA
Now, RMR stands for resting metabolic rate, and i have yet to find anywhere where it is simplified to body weight times 10, since it regularly takes into account height and other constants, etc, but let's set that aside and just go with this formula.
Here's an example:
1. a 140 lb gal of unknown height has an "RMR" of 1400
2. 20% is 280
3. 1400 + 280 + 600 = 2280 calories.
So that puts the person in EA of Level 1, 1800 calories a day. That would be, all things being equal, a 480 calorie a day deficit, which over 6 days, is 2880 calories, not quite a pound.
A gal at 130 is also in EA Level 1, and also told to eat 1800 calories, and that's only
1300+260+600= 2160, a difference of 360 cals a day, which in 6 days is 2160 - even further away from a pound a week.
A smaller gal at 120, 1200+240+600 = 2040 calories now at 1800, is eating only a 200 calorie a day deficit.
That's 1200 in a week, three weeks to lose a pound.
And that's IF those workouts are really 600kcals a piece. They are not. Or let's put it this way: it depends. Yoga X at about 80-90 mins is 200 calories; Kenpo-X, at 45 mins, is maybe 275 - 435. If you're totally "bringing it" maybe a bit more. So your heart rate is pushing it's aerobic envelop.
This math begins to explain the 6 pounds total i took off during my religious observation of P90X doubles - where i was keenly going for 600 cals a day from double workouts.
Special Case:
If someone is in the EA Level 3 of "3000+" of course potentially coming down from say 4250 a day to 3000, the possibility is that, all things being equal, one will be losing 2.5 ish pounds a week, 30 pounds over the 12 weeks.
o Body Fat X
P90X says that weight of course is "relatively meaningless" since a better measure is body fat percentage. Why? P90X doesn't explain in this guide why body fat percentage is more important than what's on the scale. We're simply told body fat % is the measure of progress.
So how does P90X use body fat %?
In the "relatively meaningless" way one uses weight? that it goes down? That's pretty much it. With one sweetener. It provides three body fat ranges for folks to feel really successful after completing the program:
But there's no correlation between Body Fat % and ripped. It does not come out and say that unless you hit that "Elite Athlete" bf% range, you will not be seeing that 6 pack. It's that simple.
BF% - supposedly important to P90X, but based on who and what army? A few questions a person may have at this point about a program claiming that bf% change is critical may be:
Other than just maybe/maybe not caloric restriction, the P90X diet guide seems to reflect Nutrition Confusion, perhaps to match the exercise program's muscle confusion, discussed in part 1. Over the course of 12 weeks, as said, the macronutrient ratio of the program changes 3 times. There are arguments in the data about why a person would want to start with higher protein and lower carbs and then by the end of the program invert this, but not really.
Here, the idea seems to be (it's not explicit), is that to kick starting the diet, bringing up protein and reducing carbs, will fire up fat loss. Hmm. But after that first month, because people will have been working so hard, they'll need to keep brining up the carb level to have the energy to survive it. There's a few notices about extending a given phase if one wishes, but the guidance is pretty much stick to the plan, stan.
Haven't seen the studies to support this kind of short term mix-it-up. Nutrition is complex. But a higher level fact we do have the resources to say is that fat loss happens with caloric deficit. Is that really achieved in the P90X diet plan?
And let's look at those figures again: the predicted weight loss on this program is 6-12 pounds. A half pound to a full pound a week. That's it. Unless you're in the 3000+ a day with a serious + a day. Honey, i can get you on a diet tomorrow with NO exercise involved that will guarantee to meet or double those numbers. No sweat. Literally. So what is someone doing on P90X if the goal is to get lean, to "get ripped"?
o Is What's on the Label What's in the Tin? Is this a Getting Ripped Diet?
P90X promises "getting ripped" as part of its objective.
If we can accept the premise that caloric deficit is required to reduce fat in order to see one's 6 pack, a key part of the "getting ripped" concept, we have to ask if P90X will really deliver this result?
Based on looking at the differences in caloric deficits to be achieved of just a few points of the Level I scale, for instance, it's pretty clear that the amount of caloric deficit to be achieved in following this program is likely to be highly variable, and likely at most about a pound a week for the people at the outside of the Level, and likely considerably less given that the caloric burn calculated for each workout is exaggerated.
Who will get Ripped on P90X?
Knowing that we need to get to a low body fat % to get the "get ripped" look, and knowing how much caloric deficit we need to burn FAT (as opposed to just lose weight), and knowing that there's such variation of caloric deficit with P90X and that at the most it's calculated to drop about a pound a week of fat for anyone who starts at eating 2999kcals a day, AT BEST, what does this tell us about the likelihood of getting ripped on P90X?
IF all the person needs to lose is 6-12 pounds to achieve the ripeed body fat percentage, then it's possible to get to the Ripped Place in the 90 days.
Otherwise, how can it happen?
Now, we know that *if* one gains lean mass and doesn't lose ANY body fat, their BF% goes down. True enough. But how much lean mass can one reasonably gain in 12 weeks with P90X such that it will effectively overwhelm X% of fat? So let's just put that one to bed.
Effectively, unless you're already close to that goal percentage can P90X deliver "ripped" or just the "getting" part of getting ripped?
And if the best it can deliver for the majority is the "getting" towards ripped, again, a person might ask, is P90X the best way to do it?
o Those Before and After Pictures
Given everything we've looked at above, let's come back to a few of those before and after pictures.
For Women, let's take Amanda for example.
We don't know her stats. That is we don't know her starting BF% or her final one, but what's changed in this photo? What don't we see? A six pack. The abs are angled. Is there less fat? yes. Is there more definition. Yes. Does it look like she's lost more than the 6-12 pounds? No. Has anything else, beside the expression on her face, and the sucking in of the gut changed visibly? No.
Then there is KatieV. Again, what's changed?
IS katie sucking in her gut in the day 1 photo? How about on day 90? Is she already pretty lean? Look at the waist circumference at the hips. Much change? So while the photo looks really cool, the *actual* change is not incredible. And since the arms haven't seemed to have changed, i'm guessing weight loss, a good base of fitness already, and with three days a week of endurance abs on top of all the rest of the workouts, the abs will show. Congratulations! This participant hit the sweet spot.
Is this result what any gal who passes the P90X fit test can expect? As we've seen, realistically, that would depend on a number of factors, particularly starting BF% and realistic expectation of caloric deficit over the 12 weeks. If one starts at 24% bodyfat, will P90X take a person to 14%? No. Remember in the research above 6 months of a slightly more intense workout regimen than P90X net 2% lean mass improvement, 10% bf% reduction. That's 21.4% in 24 weeks, not 12.
And with the guys?
What about their before and after photos?
Really look at the photos. From angle, to lighting, to mass, what's going on? Mainly body fat changes?
Without having access to the actual measurements from before an after we don't really have anything concrete to go on about the degree of change. What we can see is that most of the guys posted as P90X success stories already have some muscular definition in their before shots, even though pose and lighting is not optimized to show this before aspect. Look at the second gentleman in the picture above. He's plainly experienced at workouts and is already at a lower body fat %; he will likely be building lean mass out of the gate, and trimming body fat by the little he needs for the lighting in the after photo to create an effect. Nice lat flare.
The above photo crit is not to take away from anyone's accomplishments on P90X, but to put the results - and expected results - in context, and to look at these photos with a greater reality lens, based on the little detail we actually have.
Not that there aren't some rather wild whoppers on the P90x site.
"Lost 30% body fat" sounds fabulous in this picture, doesn't it? But let's put it in context. We can see some of DavidC's abs - so there's a fat level of 10% or a bit less. That means that a guy who is already skinny, as he seems to be - say at 12% minus 30% of that = 8.4 percent. Definitely in ab-seeing zone. That seems like a very high result to me for someone who's already skinny, but let's take it as true. The point is that he begins the program already close to a Ripped bf%. All the guys in the success stories seem to do so. Well they have to, don't they?
So what's going on with his shoulders that do look bigger? Gotta love all those pull ups.
As we've seen, based on what we know about muscle building, it usually requires caloric surplus AND it requires a program designed to facilitate muscle building adaptation and P90X is mainly an endurance program with a wee bit of hypertrophy-oriented training thrown in.
Since what we see is mainly in the shoulder and arms, and some fat off the waist, well, the diet might also just be at that right place where the caloric deficit was minimal to support muscular growth from the most repeated moves in the "resistance" section: pull ups and push ups (we'll come back to this in part 3). Again, well done. Unusual, but well done. Why do we so rarely see people's legs in these shots, hmm?
In general, what we do know, when we really look at these photos is that we are not seeing people make super weight loss changes OR muscle mass changes. These are relatively close to lean people, getting more lean.
Another question might be: if one is in this happy position of being within sight of lean-ness, is P90x the best way to get there?
o Summing Up: P90X and getting Ripped.
If we start with the simple premise that the main ingredient of of "getting ripped" - signified by 6 pack abs - is first to achieve a particular bodyfat% and second to have some hypertrophy of muscles to show through the skin, then we can assess P90X.
We've seen that P90X is *primarily* a circuit training program that's been tuned for fat burning, not hypertrophy - even it's Ab Ripper X program is endurance rather than hypertrophy. As such, despite the X and extreme labels, P90X workouts are conservative: rehab, novice, obese friendly. Surprising, isn't it? The very stuff of fat fit boot camps.
We've also seen that its diet plan is *very* conservative in terms of weight loss. 6-12 pounds total in 12 weeks.
Thus, we might ask,
To the first question we already have the answer: people already close to that target body fat percentage.
To the second question, we've already had some sense that P90X may not be the best way to get the results in promises. Part three will look at alternatives, which will include nutrition alternatives, as the short answer is yes, there are other what one may even call more balanced alternatives to P90X.
To the third question, well, answer two does here as well.
So what do we have?
Program assessments:
My hope is that with the above information, folks are better able not only to assess the claims and supposed results of P90X with a critical eye, but ANY workout program.
So, next time an infomercial promises you'll lose fat in just a few weeks and it's promoting a device or an exercise routine, look at where the diet plan is hiding. It's usually something like "combined with diet and rest" or something similar.
If the device or program promises muscle gains, again, look for the diet plan AND look at the type of routines being promoted. Are they hypertophy inducing, strength and power or are they, like P90X, safe, novice, fat burners, dressed up as hypertrophy or strength or power?
o Alternatives?
At the end of the day, while P90X is fine for what it is - a novice boot camp type endurance/foundation workout - it's a 12 week program. It's a package that uses bells and whistles around marketing illusions like muscle confusion, nutrition confusion, lots of moves, lots of workouts, and lots of diet changes. It seems it's got all these components to keep us busy, entertained, and hooked enough to buy the product: there's a lot of stuff in here; it must be great.
And then if we actually use the program (most people buy health dvds and don't use them, apparently), that variety is there, perhaps not only to keep us engaged but again to think we must be doing something great to achieve our goals.
As we've seen however, P90X, despite all the hoopla, is actually a conservative program. Circuits are safe; the nutrition program is safe. No major changes; no law suits from health risks. Is it the optimla approach to achieve "getting ripped" - safely?
Let's put it this way, if after looking at what's on the label and comparing it with what's in the tin, and you decide you might not want to do P90X but you still want to get lean, add some muscle, get strong etc, you may want to consider some alternatives.
In part three, i'll go over a few examples of programs and approaches both for workouts (part 3b) and nutrition (part 3a let me know what you think of this one - i'm kinda happy about it) so again, a person looking for an approach will have more information with which to assess whether a program is right for them.
See ya next time.
Related Posts:
The following therefore is more or less a worked example of applying/deriving this assessment via a critique of P90x - a program billed as an "extreme" workout (+ diet) specifically designed for practitioners to 'get ripped.' It's pretty detailed, so long. It looks at the exercise program first and then the nutrition program in the context of its promised results.
ContextIn Part 1 of this reflection/critique of P90x we looked at the core P90x concept of "muscle confusion". We also poked at the rationale behind a few of the "bring it" program's routines within this "muscle confusion" context. The conclusion was, based on what's known about physiological adaptations that occur in a 12 week program by novices/deconditioned athletes - P90X's target market - muscle confusion is basically a marketing gimmick.
In this second of this three part series, i'd like to look at the concept of "getting ripped" that is a key part of the P90X delivery promise.
In Part 3 we'll look at alternatives to the two core parts of P90X, but in the right order (a) diet (from places one doesn't usually think about diet - it's not just about the food) and (b) workout practices (they're both practices)
As i said in part 1 and will say so again here, there's nothing wrong with anyone wanting to do - or actually doing - P90X or similar- the routines are "not considered harmful," to draw on a computer science trope (at least not too harmful - we'll see more in part 3b).
What we might ask about P90X is does it deliver what's on the tin? Will anyone who passes the P90X fit test and is therefore deemed "ready" to do P90X "get ripped"? - and in P90X's definition, that pretty much means, at a minimum, have a six pack.
P90X suggests that if you follow it's program, you will be "transformed" from "regular to ripped" in 90 days. That's its formula: do the workouts; follow the diet. So we're going to look at each part of that formula against some objective criteria for ripped-ness.
Basic necessities of Getting Ripped by which to assess P90X capacity to deliver:
There are fortunately only two things involved in getting ripped, level of importance listed here:
- bodyfat percentage - known bf% level for being able to see muscle definition
- muscle density/mass - what will be seen beneath the skin once at that bf%
RECIPE/FORMULA ASIDE for 6 Pack
If you want to skip the rest of the article here's the recipe for 6 pack abs:
- Get a diet that will get you below 10% body fat if a guy and below 15% if you're a gal. See part 3a for nutrition approach suggestions
- Do either this abs hypertrophy routine as prescribed, or get this book, bullet proof abs, and do its routines. Both have been tested. But NOTHING will show without getting down to that bodyfat %.
As to why this is the recipe, well that's in the rest of this article.
Results from this article:
- Based on this assessment criteria, at the end of this article a person will have some tools with which to assess the claims of an exercise / diet program to deliver the promised results.
- With these tools the person will be able to make an informed choice about whether that program suits their goals.
First, there are tons of 12 week programs out there, all promising grand things. Where do we get our information about what works in these programs? Usually from the programs themselves. But we saw in the first part of this series that P90X's key concept "muscle confusion" is more marketing than fact, especially in the context of deconditioned or novice trainees. So are the before and after shots for P90X's amazing transformations that seem to be portrayed also a gimmick? How can we make this assessment.
Second, i'm guessing that folks who choose to do P90X or other 12 week transformations may know about as much about how fat loss and hypertrophy really work as i did when i started the program: less than i thought i did, and so pretty accepting of the way P90X presents each of these: exercise first, diet second, bf% is just a measure of progress.
The reality, as we'll see, is very much different: diet has to be first, exercise is second and bf% is, in the context of "getting ripped" a very specific target, and one that can be reasonably calculated to determine the length and intensity of a program to deliver desired results.
So to begin, let's begin with where P90X puts its energy first: exercise.
o Muscle Building Very Basic Basics.
P90X doesn't come out and say that it's a muscle building program - and that's good, cuz it's not (more on that in a moment) - but most of us think that the term "getting ripped" implies building muscle.Likewise, those men's before and after pictures in P90X (like the ones fo JonC, left) seem to imply that muscle mass will accompany the program. Hmm.
There's a lot we don't know about how muscle growth works, but there's a couple of things we do know: to build muscle we need two things: caloric surplus and appropriate muscular stimulation to force an adaptation. In this case, that adaptation means laying down new muscle fiber and so getting some muscle growth. Muscle growth also pretty much requires eating more rather than less: we want more body mass - in these case muscle tissue - the resources for that tissue have to come from somewhere. For us, that's the right nutrients - i.e. food.
Muscle in Two Parts:
- We create a demand for adaptation (more myofibrils) by the right type of stimulus: hypertrophy inducing effort.
- We then need to provide the the building blocks to support the adaptation.
- we can eat all we want to support muscular adaptation, but if we're not pushing our muscles appropriately to adapt, then they have no reason to change (grow/get bigger). The result is we'd just get fat.
- The converse is also true: even with the best hypertrophy program going, if we're not providing the right material to feed the growth, muscle building will be stymied.
That said, here's a factoid from Christian Thibaudeau's excellent and recommended discussion of mass building: with someone (read male in this case) totally committed to muscle building, getting diet and workouts just so, the range of muscle building to expect is .25 to .5lbs of *dry* muscle per week. In the real world that non-fat weight would show up with an additional 40% from additional water/gylcogen. So ten pounds of muscle shows up more like 14lbs on the scale. But whether 10 or 14 pounds of fat free mass let's call it, at .5+ pounds a week, 2 pounds a month, that also means five to ten perfect months to get that 14 pounds.
Here's another factoid from that article - a person sitting at say 120lbs of lean mass (weight minus fat) would need to eat 2440 calories a day to start growing mass with those optimized workouts.
UPDATE Sept 28 '09 - Dustin in the comments below asks why does one have to be in caloric surplus? Let me bring the reply up here. First, read Thibadeau's article above with the reference to a construction analogy for how muscle gets built.Assuming that P90X was designed to promote muscle mass gains (it isn't), at the best, a normal guy would put on 3-6 lbs of muscle plus another 1-2 ish of water/glycogen. So 5-8'ish pounds. And that's in a program where one is eating to GAIN mass combined with workouts to produce mass. Is that P90X? No.
Again, a lot about muscle building is still being worked out, but there are some basics: doing sufficient work to cause hypertrophy of whatever kind means that muscle fiber is getting damaged - torn down in the body building lexicon. That damage triggers muscle cells to signal to related cells to say we need to expand the capacity of some of these muscle fibers cuz they're being asked to do more. Without the right fuel in the system for that growth to happen, it doesn't happen. So let me continue Thibaudeau's analogy now:
Perhaps you just decide you want a bigger garage, so step 1, you knock down a wall of your garage (like what workouts do to muscle - they really do wreak havoc with muscle fibers). Now what? Perhaps that wasn't the best first step, but now you need more bricks (protein) and you need some funds (carbs) to hire workers and expertise to get the space rebuilt.
Turns out, perhaps without the best planning, you only have a set amount of bricks to do do the job - and you only have a set amount of cash right now to pay for the labour.
So effectively, you're short on cash and your short on bricks, so your project manager says "this is the best i can do" and rebuilds the wall more or less to its former level and gives you a bit more room at one end of the shed with clever use of storage and a few extra bricks it was able to scrounge.
Please NOTE. I'm not saying one can't build SOME muscle in caloric deficit. I'm saying it's NOT OPTIMAL. All things being equal it is sometimes possible to build lean mass when in a caloric deficit but it is really sub optimal.
Why should be clearer now: if our focus is to burn fat, we're going into caloric deficit, and our system is working to maintain energy levels and keep systems going. It's not going to have the resource to give over to a big construction job at the same time, when a lot of those resources that would in surplus be used for building are being used for maintenance and fuel.
Even before we get to the type of workouts, a basic question we might ask is, is the diet in the program one of caloric surplus or caloric deficit? So whether you gain muscle on P90X or not will largely depend on how much of a caloric deficit - or not - you're in during the program. That discussion is below.
Generally, P90X aims to have a person in caloric deficit - without which fat loss will not occur. Period. So here's a potential contradiction, not unique to P90X, but certainly rather brushed under the carpet in this case: if muscle mass building requires caloric surplus, but the program keeps someone in caloric deficit throughout, how can muscle be built? This isn't a Zen Koan. The inverse may help: if one is eating enough for muscle building, what kind of caloric deficit is going on and what kind of fat loss is occurring?
Another question: if P90X runs a person into caloric deficit, how explain those before and after pictures that *seem* to show more muscle mass at the end of 90 days?We'll come back to these questions. First, let's look at how we might understand what kinds of muscular adaptations P90X promotes.
Kind of Strength Foregrounds Kind of Muscle
Another part of the muscle building adaptation is type of load, rest, volume and recovery. As we said above, to get new muscle fibers to be laid down, there has to be a demand for that kind of growth. As we saw in part 1, also, the type of adaptation in the first 8 - 12 weeks of a resistance program for a neophyte is mainly neurological. That means muscle that already exists is learning how to support the loads. Only once the challenge goes beyond that initial adaptation, effectively, does new muscle get laid down IF the challenge requires that adaptation. Does P90X require that hypertrophy adaptation?
o P90X: endurance training disguised with weights.
In the P90X program, 3 out of the 6 days a week are "resistance" oriented workouts (the other three are "cardio" oriented). But what kind of resistance training are we talking about? Turns out they're something known as circuits.
Circuits in general are usually about putting several exercises together, doing one set of each exercise with little rest between moves. The weights used in each of these sets has to be sufficiently light to be able to move between exercises with limited rest.
Indeed, in P90X resistance workouts, the rep ranges are anywhere from 7 to 12. The only instruction on how to pick a weight is so that one will "feel the burn" in the last couple of reps.
Based on the above template, we get the following in the resistance routines: 20+ minute circuits, 1 set per move, mid to high reps, critically: no rest between sets. At most, there is 60 seconds active recovery between circuits 2-3 circuits.
We've said these workouts are circuits but when rest between sets is taken out of the equation for this kind of period, we're looking at endurance or stamina training rather than muscular strength.
Let's look at how "strong" is used as a term in P90X. "Stronger" throughout the P90X program is largely defined by being able to endure, keep up, do as many reps of a move as Horton and Co perform with as little rest as possible over the course of the hour. That's endurance strength. The adaptations developed in the muscles are mainly aerobic in nature, which means that the muscles get,
Endurance is an important capacity for an athlete - the ability to keep going in an activity is pretty critical. Indeed, for someone just starting out on an exercise program, endurance strength is often the first phase of a program that will eventually get to other kinds of strength, like hypertrophy, speed and power. It's foundational.
* Increased aerobic enzymes
* Increased mitochondrial density
* Increased capillaries
* More efficient contractions
* Possible changes in fiber type (e.g., fast twitch to slow twitch.
Foundational. Basic. Upping oxidative capacity. Not building mass, but improving the muscle's capacity to use oxygen which means greater work capacity for longer. That sounds great for health but doesn't sound like a "getting ripped" program, though, does it? And saying that, are circuits the best way to build this capacity?
Here's an assessment of the kinds of circuits P90X uses for training:
We can draw several conclusions from the analysis of groups of individuals who have participated in studies involving prescribed circuit training for a prolonged period of time.
* Circuit training is not optimal for increasing cardiovascular fitness when compared to High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
* Circuit training is not optimal for increasing cardiovascular fitness when compared to cardiovascular training when the heart rate is at the target heart rate
* Circuit training is not optimal for forcing anaerobic adaptation when compared to a strength training program
* Circuit training is not optimal for forcing aerobic adaptation when compared to an aerobic training program
* Circuit training is not optimal for increasing muscle size when compared to a hypertrophy-based training program
* Circuit training is not optimal for increasing strength when compared to HIIT or a regular resistance training program
* Circuit training is useful for burning additional calories and stimulating blood flow to the limbs
* Circuit training is useful for squeezing lots of exercise into a short time frame
In light of everything you just read, can anyone actually benefit from circuit training? The answer is yes, but obviously the benefits are not optimal for experienced athletes. Subgroups of trainees such as the elderly, young, rehabbing, novice, or obese athletes might do well circuit training optimized in the following ways:...
# Goal #3: burning calories and fat.
Since we are not able to burn fat unless we are working aerobically, most circuit training programs will not suffice unless each exercise is performed for a duration of at least 4 minutes. In this case we can only hope to burn calories, and possibly a little fat, by moving rapidly to each exercise station and maintaining a steady rhythm. Ultimately the client will be exercising not at, but close to, the anaerobic threshold.
The above Goal 3 Sounds like P90X's "resistnace" workouts (and all the other P90X workouts, too, for that matter). That latter point then is as close as P90X comes to having an effect, and it's not strength per se or muscle building. It's endurance: keep the movement going to keep the heart rate up for periods longer than 4 minutes; improve oxidative capacity (ability to burn fat).
Recap on P90X Circuits
SO what have we learned? Circuits are, at best, novice routines, or for sick or rehabbing, or obese. THis doesn't sound like the deconditioned x-jock population P90X is supposedly targeting. So, P90X, as point 3 above, has tuned the workouts for what? Fat burning. Not muscle building.
Our question at this point might be, are these kinds of circuits the best way to burn fat for a deconditioned jock AND add "lean muscle" that the diet guide says will make up for not seeing much of a change on the scale?
Consider this: in a 24 week program study designed specifically to look at the effects of single set style circuit training vs periodized multi-set program, the lean mass changes for women were 2% lean mass gain over that 6 month period vs 8% gain with the alternative protocol. Likewise percentage body fat went down by 10% in 6 months (eg, someone at 24% went to 21.6%) vs 25% with the alternative protocol (that 24% person wend to 18%).
So, these workouts are *mainly* fat burners/endurance builders, and don't seem to be necessarily the best approach to optimize fat burning or lean mass building. In part 3 we'll look at some of these alternatives in more detail.
Aside: P90X+ Let me cue up here that the P90X+ program is very similar in kind to P90X: 5 more P90X style workouts, but with fewer people on the set. These workouts are to mix into P90X. So one effectively re-does P90X, swapping out some P90X routines for the new ones. So, once more into the breach: more circuits, more little rest between moves. So, effectively, more of the P90X endurance same.
P90X - resisting muscle growth?
We now have a sense of what it takes to build muscle: caloric surplus - we need more to build more; and we need specific types of load/recovery/volume for muscles to grow. In looking at P90X, we see that the type of strength it's geared to building is endurance, not hypertrophy. The muscular adaptations are around fuel consumption - better oxidative/fat burning capacity - rather than mass building.
In sum, based on their design, P90X workouts - including the "resistance" workouts - are circuits, tuned for fat burning rather than muscle building.
Questions a person considering P90X might have at this point are therefore
- a) does the P90X workout focus on fat burning match one's goals?
- b) if so, is the P90X circuit approach the best way to achieve these goals?
Another question might be "but what about getting ripped? doesn't P90X deliver at least on that?"
At the top of this article we looked at getting ripped as body fat percentage first and muscle growth second. Ok, it's not delivering on muscle growth per se, so time to look at the diet side of P90X and we'll come back to its fat burning disguised as resistance training.
o The simple formula for a 6 pack? Body Fat Percentage
While i don't think he coined the term, colleague Rannoch Donald of Simple Strength may often be heard to say "there are no secrets." So here's a big non-secret to 6 pack abs: body fat percentage.
What P90X does not come out and say ever, anywhere, is that for a guy to begin to see his abs, he has to be at about 10% BF (in my experience of the guys i've worked with, it's actually below 10%); for gals, we have to be at about 15% or less. It's really that simple.
I wish i had known this at the time i was doing P90X. Rather than focusing on dropping 10 pounds, i might have looked into how feasible/healthy it would be to drop 10% body fat in 90 days, and how to optimize that. That *might* have helped me figure out right there if Kenpo-X and Plyo-X were the best ways to achieve that goal, or if maybe looking into diet-x might have been more profitable.
Indeed, what more and more research shows is that the only way to get to that ripped level BF% is calorie restriction. Calorie restriction (ie, diet) comes first; exercise is second. P90X of course doesn't say this fact either. It's selling "muscle confusion" first; nutrition way second.
o P90X Diet Math
This is not to say that PN doesn't get diet. PN has a diet book. And it's a corker.
What the Nutrition Plan for P90X says about the role of nutrition in getting ripped is as follows:
Why Diet Matters P90X® Nutrition Plan A large body of scientific evidence shows that diet and exercise work hand-in-hand to promote fitness and physical performance. One reason for this symbiotic relationship is the energy equation. When you expend more calories than you consume, you burn body fat (aka "stored energy") and build lean body mass—but because you need energy to exercise, every calorie you eat must be of the highest quality to get you over the hump.:Well, as we've seen, ya don't always build lean body mass just because you're burning more calories than you consume; and as we've seen, ya don't always build lean body mass when you're working out and reducing caloric intake, either. .25 - .5 pounds a week if EATING to gain that muscle.
Please let me note again that one can gain lean mass while in caloric deficit. It's just not a lot. If one is gaining .25 lbs by eating for gain, and working out for muscular growth, how much fiber can be built when eating for loss and doing endurance not hypertrophy workouts? It's a real challenge.
So what's the P90X diet advice?
IT's amazing. Every 4 weeks, the macronutrient ratio changes - to match the demands of this incredible program:
Phase I: Fat Shredder - Days 1-28
Phase II: Energy Booster - Days 29-56
Phase III: Endurance Maximizer - Days 57-90
The above phases map to the following macronutrient ratios:
Macronutrient Goals in Each Phase
Phase I - Protein 50%, Carbs 30%, Fat 20%
Phase II - Protein 40%, Carbs 40%, Fat 20%
Phase III - Protein 20%, Carbs 60%, Fat 20%
How are these ratios achieved? By one of two ways: either follow the portion suggestions of how many portions of each type of macro nutrient to have, or by following the meal plans so even less to think about. Just eat exactly what it in the book, when it says to eat it.
Indeed, the portion approach is not unique to P90X but it is complex: Have X portions from the Protein group; Y portions from the Carbs and Z from fats.
This number of portions approach is to help avoid calorie counting. But the result also means that there are only three "sizes" of menu to fit everyone. Not exactly optimized for fat loss. Consider the following.
Calories Per Day - Three Sizes fits All
Here's how a person determines how many calories they're going to eat a day - what their Total X+Y+Z portions will equal.
Nutrition Level Chart
EA = 1800-2399 = Level I 1800 calories per day
EA = 2400-2999 = Level II 2400 calories per day
EA = 3000+ = Level III 3000 calories per day
Who is losing anything here and by how much? Hmm. This means someone who requires 2399 calories for maintenance in Level 1 will suddenly be on a 600 calorie a day deficit. In 6 days of workouts, that's 3600 calories - a little better than a fat pound. Someone who's closer to 1800 cals for maintenance will be losing far less in that week. Maybe nothing following this meal plan. And indeed, there's a real potential Achilles heal to this approach. IT's how one's Level is calculated: it assumes that ALL P90X workouts burn 600 calories.
Let's look quickly at how one figures out their energy level.
Determining Your Nutrition Level
1. Calculate your RMR
Your Body Weight x 10 = RMR
2. Calculate your Daily Activity Burn
RMR x 20% = DAB
3. Calculate your Energy Amount
RMR + DAB +600 CALS for p90x workouts = EA
Now, RMR stands for resting metabolic rate, and i have yet to find anywhere where it is simplified to body weight times 10, since it regularly takes into account height and other constants, etc, but let's set that aside and just go with this formula.
Here's an example:
1. a 140 lb gal of unknown height has an "RMR" of 1400
2. 20% is 280
3. 1400 + 280 + 600 = 2280 calories.
So that puts the person in EA of Level 1, 1800 calories a day. That would be, all things being equal, a 480 calorie a day deficit, which over 6 days, is 2880 calories, not quite a pound.
A gal at 130 is also in EA Level 1, and also told to eat 1800 calories, and that's only
1300+260+600= 2160, a difference of 360 cals a day, which in 6 days is 2160 - even further away from a pound a week.
A smaller gal at 120, 1200+240+600 = 2040 calories now at 1800, is eating only a 200 calorie a day deficit.
That's 1200 in a week, three weeks to lose a pound.
And that's IF those workouts are really 600kcals a piece. They are not. Or let's put it this way: it depends. Yoga X at about 80-90 mins is 200 calories; Kenpo-X, at 45 mins, is maybe 275 - 435. If you're totally "bringing it" maybe a bit more. So your heart rate is pushing it's aerobic envelop.
This math begins to explain the 6 pounds total i took off during my religious observation of P90X doubles - where i was keenly going for 600 cals a day from double workouts.
Special Case:
If someone is in the EA Level 3 of "3000+" of course potentially coming down from say 4250 a day to 3000, the possibility is that, all things being equal, one will be losing 2.5 ish pounds a week, 30 pounds over the 12 weeks.
o Body Fat X
P90X says that weight of course is "relatively meaningless" since a better measure is body fat percentage. Why? P90X doesn't explain in this guide why body fat percentage is more important than what's on the scale. We're simply told body fat % is the measure of progress.
So how does P90X use body fat %?
In the "relatively meaningless" way one uses weight? that it goes down? That's pretty much it. With one sweetener. It provides three body fat ranges for folks to feel really successful after completing the program:
Fit, Athlete, Elite Athlete.Nice correlation implied: if you have a BF% at the third level, maybe you're an "elite athlete" (No question asked of course that if you have that BF% and you're not an elite athlete what else might you be?)
But there's no correlation between Body Fat % and ripped. It does not come out and say that unless you hit that "Elite Athlete" bf% range, you will not be seeing that 6 pack. It's that simple.
BF% - supposedly important to P90X, but based on who and what army? A few questions a person may have at this point about a program claiming that bf% change is critical may be:
- If body fat percentage is so important, and the meaningful way to measure progress, what are the expected body fat % changes on this program for men and women?
- IF it is that important why is it so cavalier about how to take these measures? The guides don't actually tell anyone how to do this - the closest it comes is to say "get a caliper"from their web site.
Other than just maybe/maybe not caloric restriction, the P90X diet guide seems to reflect Nutrition Confusion, perhaps to match the exercise program's muscle confusion, discussed in part 1. Over the course of 12 weeks, as said, the macronutrient ratio of the program changes 3 times. There are arguments in the data about why a person would want to start with higher protein and lower carbs and then by the end of the program invert this, but not really.
- Fact: we know that if you're in caloric deficit, you will lose weight.
- Fact: we know that in short term programs (8-12 weeks) that higher protein diets *throughout* the program tend to have slightly faster higher initial weight loss than other programs, but that after that period, loses level out.
Here, the idea seems to be (it's not explicit), is that to kick starting the diet, bringing up protein and reducing carbs, will fire up fat loss. Hmm. But after that first month, because people will have been working so hard, they'll need to keep brining up the carb level to have the energy to survive it. There's a few notices about extending a given phase if one wishes, but the guidance is pretty much stick to the plan, stan.
Haven't seen the studies to support this kind of short term mix-it-up. Nutrition is complex. But a higher level fact we do have the resources to say is that fat loss happens with caloric deficit. Is that really achieved in the P90X diet plan?
And let's look at those figures again: the predicted weight loss on this program is 6-12 pounds. A half pound to a full pound a week. That's it. Unless you're in the 3000+ a day with a serious + a day. Honey, i can get you on a diet tomorrow with NO exercise involved that will guarantee to meet or double those numbers. No sweat. Literally. So what is someone doing on P90X if the goal is to get lean, to "get ripped"?
o Is What's on the Label What's in the Tin? Is this a Getting Ripped Diet?
P90X promises "getting ripped" as part of its objective.
If we can accept the premise that caloric deficit is required to reduce fat in order to see one's 6 pack, a key part of the "getting ripped" concept, we have to ask if P90X will really deliver this result?
Based on looking at the differences in caloric deficits to be achieved of just a few points of the Level I scale, for instance, it's pretty clear that the amount of caloric deficit to be achieved in following this program is likely to be highly variable, and likely at most about a pound a week for the people at the outside of the Level, and likely considerably less given that the caloric burn calculated for each workout is exaggerated.
Who will get Ripped on P90X?
Knowing that we need to get to a low body fat % to get the "get ripped" look, and knowing how much caloric deficit we need to burn FAT (as opposed to just lose weight), and knowing that there's such variation of caloric deficit with P90X and that at the most it's calculated to drop about a pound a week of fat for anyone who starts at eating 2999kcals a day, AT BEST, what does this tell us about the likelihood of getting ripped on P90X?
IF all the person needs to lose is 6-12 pounds to achieve the ripeed body fat percentage, then it's possible to get to the Ripped Place in the 90 days.
Otherwise, how can it happen?
Now, we know that *if* one gains lean mass and doesn't lose ANY body fat, their BF% goes down. True enough. But how much lean mass can one reasonably gain in 12 weeks with P90X such that it will effectively overwhelm X% of fat? So let's just put that one to bed.
Effectively, unless you're already close to that goal percentage can P90X deliver "ripped" or just the "getting" part of getting ripped?
And if the best it can deliver for the majority is the "getting" towards ripped, again, a person might ask, is P90X the best way to do it?
o Those Before and After Pictures
Given everything we've looked at above, let's come back to a few of those before and after pictures.
For Women, let's take Amanda for example.
We don't know her stats. That is we don't know her starting BF% or her final one, but what's changed in this photo? What don't we see? A six pack. The abs are angled. Is there less fat? yes. Is there more definition. Yes. Does it look like she's lost more than the 6-12 pounds? No. Has anything else, beside the expression on her face, and the sucking in of the gut changed visibly? No.
Then there is KatieV. Again, what's changed?
IS katie sucking in her gut in the day 1 photo? How about on day 90? Is she already pretty lean? Look at the waist circumference at the hips. Much change? So while the photo looks really cool, the *actual* change is not incredible. And since the arms haven't seemed to have changed, i'm guessing weight loss, a good base of fitness already, and with three days a week of endurance abs on top of all the rest of the workouts, the abs will show. Congratulations! This participant hit the sweet spot.Is this result what any gal who passes the P90X fit test can expect? As we've seen, realistically, that would depend on a number of factors, particularly starting BF% and realistic expectation of caloric deficit over the 12 weeks. If one starts at 24% bodyfat, will P90X take a person to 14%? No. Remember in the research above 6 months of a slightly more intense workout regimen than P90X net 2% lean mass improvement, 10% bf% reduction. That's 21.4% in 24 weeks, not 12.
And with the guys?
What about their before and after photos?
Really look at the photos. From angle, to lighting, to mass, what's going on? Mainly body fat changes?
Without having access to the actual measurements from before an after we don't really have anything concrete to go on about the degree of change. What we can see is that most of the guys posted as P90X success stories already have some muscular definition in their before shots, even though pose and lighting is not optimized to show this before aspect. Look at the second gentleman in the picture above. He's plainly experienced at workouts and is already at a lower body fat %; he will likely be building lean mass out of the gate, and trimming body fat by the little he needs for the lighting in the after photo to create an effect. Nice lat flare.
The above photo crit is not to take away from anyone's accomplishments on P90X, but to put the results - and expected results - in context, and to look at these photos with a greater reality lens, based on the little detail we actually have.
Not that there aren't some rather wild whoppers on the P90x site.
"Lost 30% body fat" sounds fabulous in this picture, doesn't it? But let's put it in context. We can see some of DavidC's abs - so there's a fat level of 10% or a bit less. That means that a guy who is already skinny, as he seems to be - say at 12% minus 30% of that = 8.4 percent. Definitely in ab-seeing zone. That seems like a very high result to me for someone who's already skinny, but let's take it as true. The point is that he begins the program already close to a Ripped bf%. All the guys in the success stories seem to do so. Well they have to, don't they?
So what's going on with his shoulders that do look bigger? Gotta love all those pull ups.
As we've seen, based on what we know about muscle building, it usually requires caloric surplus AND it requires a program designed to facilitate muscle building adaptation and P90X is mainly an endurance program with a wee bit of hypertrophy-oriented training thrown in.
Since what we see is mainly in the shoulder and arms, and some fat off the waist, well, the diet might also just be at that right place where the caloric deficit was minimal to support muscular growth from the most repeated moves in the "resistance" section: pull ups and push ups (we'll come back to this in part 3). Again, well done. Unusual, but well done. Why do we so rarely see people's legs in these shots, hmm?
In general, what we do know, when we really look at these photos is that we are not seeing people make super weight loss changes OR muscle mass changes. These are relatively close to lean people, getting more lean.
Another question might be: if one is in this happy position of being within sight of lean-ness, is P90x the best way to get there?
o Summing Up: P90X and getting Ripped.
If we start with the simple premise that the main ingredient of of "getting ripped" - signified by 6 pack abs - is first to achieve a particular bodyfat% and second to have some hypertrophy of muscles to show through the skin, then we can assess P90X.
We've seen that P90X is *primarily* a circuit training program that's been tuned for fat burning, not hypertrophy - even it's Ab Ripper X program is endurance rather than hypertrophy. As such, despite the X and extreme labels, P90X workouts are conservative: rehab, novice, obese friendly. Surprising, isn't it? The very stuff of fat fit boot camps.
We've also seen that its diet plan is *very* conservative in terms of weight loss. 6-12 pounds total in 12 weeks.
Thus, we might ask,
- for whom is P90X likely to be a "get ripped" success story?
- is P90X the best way to achieve this result for this group?
- what are other people supposed to do who want to 'get ripped'
To the first question we already have the answer: people already close to that target body fat percentage.
To the second question, we've already had some sense that P90X may not be the best way to get the results in promises. Part three will look at alternatives, which will include nutrition alternatives, as the short answer is yes, there are other what one may even call more balanced alternatives to P90X.
To the third question, well, answer two does here as well.
So what do we have?
Program assessments:
- - Where is the Diet plan? what are its predicted deliverables?
- - how is progress measured?
- - what are the predicted changes in these measures over what period?
- - what kind of workouts/rest periods are being presented? - endurance/power/hypertrophy
- - what kind of transformations are predicted from these workouts? what are the measures?
My hope is that with the above information, folks are better able not only to assess the claims and supposed results of P90X with a critical eye, but ANY workout program.
So, next time an infomercial promises you'll lose fat in just a few weeks and it's promoting a device or an exercise routine, look at where the diet plan is hiding. It's usually something like "combined with diet and rest" or something similar.
If the device or program promises muscle gains, again, look for the diet plan AND look at the type of routines being promoted. Are they hypertophy inducing, strength and power or are they, like P90X, safe, novice, fat burners, dressed up as hypertrophy or strength or power?
o Alternatives?
At the end of the day, while P90X is fine for what it is - a novice boot camp type endurance/foundation workout - it's a 12 week program. It's a package that uses bells and whistles around marketing illusions like muscle confusion, nutrition confusion, lots of moves, lots of workouts, and lots of diet changes. It seems it's got all these components to keep us busy, entertained, and hooked enough to buy the product: there's a lot of stuff in here; it must be great.
And then if we actually use the program (most people buy health dvds and don't use them, apparently), that variety is there, perhaps not only to keep us engaged but again to think we must be doing something great to achieve our goals.
As we've seen however, P90X, despite all the hoopla, is actually a conservative program. Circuits are safe; the nutrition program is safe. No major changes; no law suits from health risks. Is it the optimla approach to achieve "getting ripped" - safely?
Let's put it this way, if after looking at what's on the label and comparing it with what's in the tin, and you decide you might not want to do P90X but you still want to get lean, add some muscle, get strong etc, you may want to consider some alternatives.
In part three, i'll go over a few examples of programs and approaches both for workouts (part 3b) and nutrition (part 3a let me know what you think of this one - i'm kinda happy about it) so again, a person looking for an approach will have more information with which to assess whether a program is right for them.
See ya next time.
Related Posts:
- P90X critique, part 1: "muscle confusion" real? yoga-x or plyo-x to be x'd out?
- P90X alternatives: part 3a: nutrition for fat burning, ripping and building
- p90X alternatives: part 3b: workout alternatives for time, variety of systems and quality
- MAKE PULL UPS FUN - rings review - they're a gas
- Athletic Bodies: what do athletes in different sports look like under their shirts?
- Cardio and Strength work: research showing they complement each other.
- Nutrition: ten habits for better eating (pdf download)
- perfect reps: not exactly a P90X concept - but huge benefit from thinking about each rep
- shorter workouts: six minutes to fitness part 1 and part 2
- help putting it together? - online training/nutrition consulting available with mc
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