Showing posts with label quality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quality. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Food Inc.: the unbearable lightness of the food industry
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Don't care if anyone ever says again there's no 
difference between organic and not; free range or not. I get that much of what gets labelled as free range is specious in the UK for instance, but we all really do need a cold reality check about food production in the West.
Food Inc delivers that view without taking us right to the sharp end of the air gun as did Fast Food Nation. With some basic knowledge about the production of animals, the way the FDA and USDA has been allowed to go toothless, the fact that at least in Europe GMO crops are actually labelled as such becomes something to hang onto and hold dear. The EU may have value after all.
If you haven't seen Food Inc., it's on DVD; now's the time. It's interesting without being bombastic. If you like Michael Pollen of the Omnivore's Dilema you get a lot of him, too. And again, with just basic info that's pretty compelling. Walmart though in the film turns out not to be the big(gest) villain. Nope, it's the laws of states that prohibit anyone publishing a photo of a food production lot at a plant where animals are kept. It's the change of seed practices in the states so that the One Big Seed Company with its GMO corn ensures that farmers can't harvest their own seeds for regrowing. That's patent infringement.
You think you're not eating GMO products? Think again: Arnie vetoed a bill that had been passed in the Cal. Legislature to have GMO/cloned products labelled as such. All the corn based products like Coke, chips, most stuff with soy product or corn bi-products is GMO corn.
13 companies pack 90% of all the meat in america. I could just go on and on.
Ok one more thing: the special relationship meat packing houses have with law enforcement about shipping in illegals to work in the plants and then busting the immigrants, not the companies, when there's a hint of a Union about to emerge. What synergies.
But the most powerful take away is that consumers do affect the system: the meat industry changed because of fast food. Fast food wouldn't have that power if people didn't buy it. Walmart has had to get rid of growth hormoned milk because of consumer demand. Amazing.
So let's ask our stores about the provenance of our food and opt out of the crap. Food Inc gives some pretty compelling rationales of why that's not just Right it's critical. Monocultures eventually crash and take a lot down with them. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
difference between organic and not; free range or not. I get that much of what gets labelled as free range is specious in the UK for instance, but we all really do need a cold reality check about food production in the West.Food Inc delivers that view without taking us right to the sharp end of the air gun as did Fast Food Nation. With some basic knowledge about the production of animals, the way the FDA and USDA has been allowed to go toothless, the fact that at least in Europe GMO crops are actually labelled as such becomes something to hang onto and hold dear. The EU may have value after all.
If you haven't seen Food Inc., it's on DVD; now's the time. It's interesting without being bombastic. If you like Michael Pollen of the Omnivore's Dilema you get a lot of him, too. And again, with just basic info that's pretty compelling. Walmart though in the film turns out not to be the big(gest) villain. Nope, it's the laws of states that prohibit anyone publishing a photo of a food production lot at a plant where animals are kept. It's the change of seed practices in the states so that the One Big Seed Company with its GMO corn ensures that farmers can't harvest their own seeds for regrowing. That's patent infringement.
You think you're not eating GMO products? Think again: Arnie vetoed a bill that had been passed in the Cal. Legislature to have GMO/cloned products labelled as such. All the corn based products like Coke, chips, most stuff with soy product or corn bi-products is GMO corn.
13 companies pack 90% of all the meat in america. I could just go on and on.
Ok one more thing: the special relationship meat packing houses have with law enforcement about shipping in illegals to work in the plants and then busting the immigrants, not the companies, when there's a hint of a Union about to emerge. What synergies.
But the most powerful take away is that consumers do affect the system: the meat industry changed because of fast food. Fast food wouldn't have that power if people didn't buy it. Walmart has had to get rid of growth hormoned milk because of consumer demand. Amazing.
So let's ask our stores about the provenance of our food and opt out of the crap. Food Inc gives some pretty compelling rationales of why that's not just Right it's critical. Monocultures eventually crash and take a lot down with them. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
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Tuesday, September 22, 2009
P90X Review/Critque Part 3b: Workout Alternatives and Why to Consider Them - or "Life is Short & we're complex"
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Tempus Fugit. Part 3b of this P90X critique/review looks at alternatives to P90X workouts. Three reasons to consider alternatives: length,
variety, quality. A P90X workout week is about 7hours minimum, and, as we saw in part 2, despite what seems like incredible variety, it is all one type of effort: aerobic endurance. The question posed therefore, is, is P90X optimal bang for that 7hour buck? Does it benefit all our muscle fibers? Slow and fast twitch? Does it benefit all our physiological systems, like bones, ligaments, joints, visual, vestibular and proprioceptive systems? All our energy systems? For holistic well being - and fat loss and leaning up, for 7 hours - perhaps not, as we'll see.
Now again, if P90X makes a person happy and they want to spend that time doing lots of various cardio workouts, that's fine (well, see below on how fine). Lots of folks may say (and post) P90X is just fine. And that's fine.
My goal here is to ask about how does one define fine? How assess what's good, why it's good, and what might be missing for both better use of those precious minutes in a day that we never get back and more optimal benefit for our bodies beyond cardio/oxidative strength?
So why do this particular set of hour+ long cardio workouts? what's it doing for the ALL of you in that getting ripped paradigm?
Part 1 of this Review/Critique of P90X looked at concepts like Muscle Confusion.
Part 2 looked at how and for whom P90X might actually deliver on it's "getting ripped" mantra
Part 3b started looking at alternatives to the P90X diet approach and
Part 3b, our final part, looks at alternatives to the P90X workout approach.
What are you working this hard and this long to achieve? My concern motivating this discussion is that many folks think they *have* to put in this kind of time to achieve the P90X goals - getting ripped -- and, if that's the goal, they just don't. Even for cardio/endurance. We just don't. Work smarter not harder. And if we're going to work this long, is it the best long for our fitness goals and well being?
A fast example: lean with ripped abs in an hour/week; endurance in 6 minutes
As we saw in part two, if all a person wants is a six pack, the recipe is diet first to get to 10% bf and an ab hypertrophy program - two were suggested (as ab ripper x actually isn't an hypertrophy program). That's 20mins, 3times a week for effort, and the rest of the effort is diet. That's 1 hour vs 7.
Now sometimes folks just don't believe this is really all one needs to do to get a six pack. It's some kind of no pain no gain ethos perhaps. It can't be that simple. The formula is that simple. Application that's another thing. We'll see below examples of stunning recent research that shows 6mins of intense cardio a week has the same physiological benefits as an hour twenty.
Even if folks believe that a six pack is diet to 10% and 20 mins every other day of ab work, they
may want to move more than 20 mins every other day. But why? well, one reason may be what's often put out as "muscle tone"
Muscle tone is another word for both more activation of existing muscle fibers and more muscle fibers to activate. Muscle fibers are densely packed and very small, so even while not incredibly massive, when lean enough to see, one looks pretty wiry strong.
And that might be another thing to check: muscular hypertrophy works on two angles: getting more *stuff* around muscle fiber bundles (sarcoplasmic) and myofibril. Workout type - especially load and recovery - effect hypertrophy type. Bringing more fibers on board, rather than mainly improving the oxidative capacity of the ones we have is what non-aerobic type training privileges - power or hypertrophy strength training rather than endurance (aka P90X)
Is 7 hours a week of cardio work the best way to lay down more muscle fiber? No. Really. It's not. Yes elite marathoners are wiry. But even endurance runners head to the gym for strength training. We'll get into some of the benefits to that below.
So if the goal is then leanness, 6 pack and muscle tone - and perhaps the consequent benefits of health to working out - then we have the first two covered. The recipe for leanness and 6 pack has been stated.
What Type of Muscle, what Type of Strength? If we're doing mainly fat burning/oxidative workouts, we're usually privileging slow twitch muscle fibers. The fast twitch that come into play for power strength or speed aren't getting taxed/developed. They may even atrophy or convert in favour of the growth of the slow twitch privileged muscle types. Faster take longer to get back, too.
You might think you don't care about going fast, but speed, along with a ready nervous system (we'll come onto proprioception) is also the ability to respond quickly to sudden situations, where moving fast can be critical.
But what about the rest of our physiologic systems beyond Muscle?
If we are interested in full body health, there's more to think about that muscle and muscle type. We have multiple energy systems. P90X privileges training one: the oxidative system. Yes really important for fat burning, but that's just part of us. Like the phosphate, glycolytic and lactate energy systems, too.
We also have bones, joints, ligaments and hormones (like insulin) being affected differently by different effort types. And we have a nervous system - a system that is always on and always adapts to what we practice. Immediately and all the time. What are we doing for these systems?
In this article the focus will then be on
Muscle Tone
I'd like to adjust the title here to "muscle tone and bone"
as both components of our physiology, along with our lungs and heart and nervous system (and innards generally) need to be considered.
To get both muscle tone and bone building in one swoop, we're talking about resistance training. There are a couple approaches to resistance work that will impact both muscle and bone. This means dynamic work with load, pulling heavy, or both. An alternative for bones is playing squash or soccer. Apparently the stop/start nature of squash and soccer have tremendous value for bone growth. But so does axial loading: bringing force down directly in the direction of the bone. Which means lifting heavy, or lifting fast.
Mentioning lifting heavy or fast sometimes freaks people out. Heavy seems scary; moving a heavy object quickly also may seem scary. There's a fear of hurting oneself, or that one is not strong enough. But everything is proportional. Load is progressive: i've worked with seniors who on their first lifts were parallel squatting for 5 resps with soup cans, built up to milk jugs, and from there to real weights. Point is, they were finding potent loads for them, causing their bodies to adapt.
Aside: Insulin Sensitivity. One of the best ways to get insulin sensitivity up (a good thing) is to include lifting heavy in one's program. Here's more on why from Dave Barr.
The difference: The key thing here is perhaps a couple points to distinguish what P90X does with weights and what we're talking about here.
P90X as described in part 2 does not include multiple sets of a single move with recovery between sets and staying fresh. The weights used in the circuits are light enough not just to get through a set but to get through multiple sets in an hour. They also focus on bodybuilding isolation moves rather than foundational strength work.
There are at least Four differences in resistance approaches in p90x and a strength/power/hypertrophy focused lifting program:
Options for Adding Load to Your Routine.
So, suppose you think well, ok, let's try this resistance for real approach, i still don't want to have to go to the gym or get a whole bunch of gear. Far enough.
For the no or low gear desirous, Ross Enemait has the gold standard of body weight work, and home made gear that lets a person achieve any kind of muscular tone goals. Tons of vids on his sight and ideas on how to make strength apparatus to work for you.
TNT bands already used in P90X offer space saving, resistance challenging, forms of work. Jon Hinds who developed this version of band offers and awesome workout routine with a set of the bands. These can be great supplements to some basic weights.
The TRX is another space saving workout system that lets a person use bodyweight in a variety of challenging ways, including supporting pull ups and dips. I personally think that Rings are a gas, though. Elite Rings are awesome and fun. Find room for them and you'll feel like a kid anytime you workout with them.
To get into weights, Powerblocks are great space-saving selectable apparatus. But for that matter, a barbell with a sufficient set of plates can be had cheap regularly on ebay, and will really let you start to pull heavy. The best program for full body fitness with a barbell: two moves, found in Power to the People, always assuming diet (discussed in the last article) is dialed in. Here's a really fast approach to blend all three types of strength with a barbell by Charles Staley, too.
The Kettlebell Confession. What i personally find a very powerful tool for general fitness or wha't also called General Physical Preparedness (GPP - as opposed to Sports Specific training) is
kettlebell work. If you have room to swing a cat, you have room for a kettlebell. Why i like the kettlebell so much is that its core simple move, the swing, lets a person do a range of work, from cardio, to raw strength, to power and vo2max, all with the same tool. I've written about why Enter the Kettebell(ETK) is a fabulous program - especially coming off P90X - because its approach captures both these attributes of fast movement for power and strength work for hypertrophy and dynamic work for endurance. It's a complete package. Can work fast and slow twitch muscles; all energy systems; complements related systems work like bone and endocrine etc.
Kettlebell work as spec'd in ETK satisfies the three advantages to lifting fast/heavy that no amount of aerobic movement confers: putting stress on the bones and ligaments to grow and stay strong; different workouts trigger the carbohydrate energy system to help with insulin sensitivity; the lifting effort causes new (fast or slow depending on work out) muscular tissue to be developed, thus leading to enhanced muscle tone.
Depending on your focus, there are a variety of approaches for kettlebell use. Anthony Di Luglio has developed follow along strength/cardio kettlebell routines (reviewed here). Mike Mahler focuses on Charles Staley's Escalating Density Training (also fabulous) applied to double kettlebell work for size and strength. Pavel Tsatsouline's latest book takes this concept even further for power work.
Inspiring examples of KB work may be found with Tracy Reifkind (story here, with excerpts right) and Andrea u-shi
Chang (story here).
One of the compelling things about Tracy's success is that she combined diet first, the importance of which we saw in the last article, with 20 mins a day of kettlebell work. That's it. Diet first (really. diet first. diet most important) & 20 mins a day. And has continued with that program and transformed herself and her health. And she has fabulous tone. Her blog is a great place to see how her workouts have grown in length to 45-50 mins over several years. That first year of 100lbs significant weight loss, diet, and 20mins of KB's.
Which brings us to time.
But a last few quick notes about resistance workouts: recovery recovery recovery - with volume.
There are LOTS of program options from barbells to kettlebells to nada, pending what kind of gear appeals to you. I have not even begun to touch on the rich variety that's out there that also follow good principles. A few to consider within this to challenge the muscles to lay down new fibers. Power to the People and Greasing the Groove are two; Charles Staley's EDT is another; HST is another particularly focused on hypertrophy for mass/size.
Each of these privileges higher total volume in a workout but with lower rep sets with recovery to stay fresh. EDT for instance takes two moves in 15 min blocks. One knows their 10 rep max for a given move, does only 5 reps, and alternates between the two within the 15 mins. Fresh, never to failure, perfect reps. One of the great appeals of P90X for me was that it had real moves like pull ups and push ups. Imagine applying EDT to these moves rather than going to fatigue with each set, as in P90X? Thus privileging fast twitch muscle work, too.
The other thing about a heuristic for a health and fitness well being program is that in lifting, we're talking whole body. Body builders will do arm curls. Someone concerned with an efficient way to work power speed and strength will snatch or clean and press, or do weighted pull ups and single leg squats. They'll develop great abs, legs and arms without ever doing an arm curl.
Ok one other point: drop going to failure.
That is actually an advanced and specific bodybuilding technique that over the past 20 years has been shown to have minimal benefit overall, and not a whole lot of gain for the general practitioner, and new lifter in particular. It is also only induced in Heavy resistance - which P90X is not. And the down side can be overly taxing one's system. Again, advanced technique, and many hypertrophy techniques for mass (like HST) do NOT use it at all.
That and "the pump" sound great, but this is another finishing technique, not basic muscle development, and it's really speculative as to it's value for strength work. And where there may be a role within something known as occlusion training, it's a deliberate, occasional and specific application - not something for every set, every workout.
What will happen is that one will either feel fatigued after such a workout, and/or sore quite quickly when the pump goes down. One will definitely feel like one has done work. But is this better or more effective than feeling strong and fresh at the end of a workout? It would seem to be a wrong focus and priority for the de-conditioned or less experienced trainee. But perhaps if someone buying this program doesn't feel like this - when they think workouts mean no pain no gain - then they'll think it's a crap workout. Hmm.
The Alternative to endurance/fatigue? Heavier, faster.
In a more balanced approach, a good part of the work in a week is focused on heavy/fast lifting where one has learned what their 1, 5 or 10 rep maximum is for the weight and movement involved, and where one is knowingly and deliberately taking advantage of reps/sets/recovery time and load to challenge the various energy systems and force an adaptation.
The P90X approach at best focuses on endurance, and that in only one way: surviving an hour+ of activity per day. That is missing the benefits of heavy lifting and recovery cycles for hormone efficiency - including insulin - joint health, muscular adaptation and bone mineral density maintenance. IT's just NOT a complete fitness program. And for some people('s partners especially), P90X just takes to long.
On Time
P90X is 7+ hours a week of aerobic work. It may be called, core, kenpo, plyo, arms, shoulders, back, legs, but it's endurance/aerobic/cardio, as seen in part 2, and it's long. Why oh why is it 7 hours of cardio-by-proxy? Again, 7 hours is dandy if that's your informed choice and matches your goals. But there is really nothing optimal for fitness in the design of P90X.
Some recent work showed over 2 years - not 12 weeks - obese gals who had the most success with their weight loss worked out 270-300 mins a week. 4.5-5 hours. Not 7. Those are two more hours a week available to spend with your family or your life than in the gym. This doesn't mean that more hours than that a week working out are bad. Not at all. It's just that one does not HAVE to go at 7hours a week for body comp success or health and strength success. While the study suggests five, i have colleagues who spend 45 minutes every other day working out and report being happy with their body comp. What they do in those 45 minutes is the magic.
As we've seen however,
Intervals compress Time. Another approach that as a side effect shortens workout times is Intervals. P90XPlus (the p90x follow up program) talks about Intervals, but it doesn't really use them. Intervals means working at a particular effort - usually hard - then recovering.
So far, the BEST tested fat loss interval approach with both conditioned and non-conditioned women is 8 secs of HARD pedaling followed by 12 secs of light pedaling - for 20 mins. That's it.
With intervals, one burns more calories overall than with steady state cardio, that's one thing,. But the interval also entices other benefits for the physiology, including enhancing the sensitivity and effectiveness of our hormonal systems (from insulin to endorphins), nervous system, energy systems.
While 8/12 for 20 sounds great compared to 60+ mins of slog, here's another study where the focus was on aerobic/endurance fitness. 6mins. A WEEK. resulted in the equivalent physiological benefit of 4.5 HOURS of normal cardio a week - p90x type effort. 6mins vs 390.
We just don't have to go long to get physiological benefits; we have to go hard and recover and hard and recover and hard and recover.
Now it's all fine to go long if we're doing something we enjoy. My fat loss hero Lyle McDonald talks about the total comparative benefits of intervals to steady state cardio where going for an hour of steady state burns more total calories than 30 mins of intervals. That's true. When looking at the raw numbers from the specific session. And there is a role for both. McDonald does not talk about the physiological/energy system differences between the two approaches (he starts to in follow ups); just immediate calories burned. And there's more to us than calories burned (as the 8/12 for 20 study shows). We're complex interconnect systems. Optimal approaches to fitness respect this.
And that's why variety in our workout lives means more than going through a bunch of exercises that are all cardio/endurance based, but variety in terms of systems worked.
So we might ask, do least some of our sessions in a week include optimizing benefit for bone, muscle and the rest of our physiology? is this all time well spent for our whole health? Less can be more, with the right less optimized for all the mores. One approach is a third resistance, a third intervals and a third cardio. And also NEPA's
On Practice: Quality and Quantity. Not either/or
I've said throughout this series that P90X is fine if it makes you happy, and as long as you know that it's an endurance program, is that all you want; it takes far longer than it needs to to deliver the lean effects it advertises. But actually, there is one place where i'd suggest one might want to reconsider P90X and might even say it's flawed. P90X is sloppy. Let me explain.
Skill is not mentioned in P90X. And that's understandable in terms of selling a product for the widest appeal. If one needed training to carry out any of the work in P90X that would detract from its immediate do-ability. And as said, that's fine for someone trying to sell something.
But what about the human being buying it? What have we learned we can apply?
We endure beyond the 90 days, and what do we learn? Any transferable performance skills? Perhaps a person doesn't care about learning any athletic skills: the goal is to kill calories; burn fat. But have we therefore potentially compromised movement quality?
Let's consider possible skills that could be addressed in some of the programs if we cared about their value rather than endurance from faux verions:
For folks doing Yoga-x, one might assume the tree pose with eyes closed. How stable does the person feel? In that position, eyes closed, turn the head quickly to the left. Is the person still standing?
The image is of Kettlebell Master Trainer Mark Reifkind, former gymnast and powerlifter, whose main activities now are kettlebells, bikram yoga and z-health mobility. See his blog for blending strength, power, endurance, mobility - and yoga.
Actual yoga, as seen in Part 1 is also about breathing first, is also not about gratuitously holding isometric poses - which is just more (non-transferable static) endurance work. What do we learn about breathing techniques that we might use from yoga to lift heavier weight?
Kenpo is an art that uses kicking and punching. Both the kick and the punch have more going on in them - such as timing of forces - than simply looking like a kick or a punch. What is the benefit of risking putting one's back out or throwing a shoulder in this de-skilled version of Kenpo looking moves, other than another attempt at entertaining cardio? Wouldn't it be cool to actually learn a kick, how to harmonize the forces, and do those high quality kicks? Or punches. How do you know if your upper cut is effective or bleeding energy? Dunno here.
Plyometrics as discussed in part 1 is usually used to enhance speed and power, very much not endurance, as it's used in P90X, but speed or power aren't tested in this program, so hard to say if a person has gained any speed skills. IT's also very very much about form, where the deceleration is a key part of acceleration: plyometrics is about developing rapid conversion of stored elastic energy into force. So depth jumps and kettlebell overspeed eccentrics work this property (see the Elastic section of this article on Plastic/Elastic in human performance). Getting as many joints involved as possible, in the right way, is key to that energy conversion.
While bounding is great, and hopping on one foot can seem taxing, because these moves are done largely to a kind of fatigue, the notion of developing fast eccentric use of the stored energy goes away - the energy stored by a little hop has already dissipated by the time of the conversion. And so what can be a great speed/power strength effect becomes another endurance effect, fighting fatigue. Likewise, the skill of moving even in the hop to a good landng and from there up into a new hop is never discussed. So what's the point of jumping about in the P90X context called plyo? Another version of cardio?
Even the humble pull up and push up have particular biomechanical features that, when taught, make the performance of the exercise easier but also leverage better use of the body and so better transfer of capacity from one movement to another that use the same muscle groups.
As an example of the degree of attention a simple move can require, the one arm pushup, rushed through one part of one disk in P90X, is the subject of half a book for coordinating muscular activity along the core; speed of shoulder joint to elbow joint is a technique called bone rhythm that assures the physics of the body is working together for optimal efficiency.
In resistance sections, quality of movement is mentioned from time to time, but the notion of quality seems at best very not old but dated school.
In the resistance parts, quality (as poster Brad points out) is quitting a set before "things get squirrelly." And that really feeling the last three reps is what you're going for. Hmm. So kind of going to failure in long *endurance* sets. Why? We know from well the best we know of hypertrophy and strength training that we can get tremendous effect by doing lots of volume with higher quality sets not going near fatigue ( ie where one really feels those "last three reps.") As pointed to, Staley's approach (and HST) is quality short sets with increasing volume.
In the Staley/Tsatsouline seminar DVD, Staley demonstrates convincingly that the most power is in the first three reps of a set. Why not recover to be able to continue to produce best power and force most adaptation? Actually staying fresh and NOT feeling it, and going long (volume) has greater benefit for strength and power - and adjusted appropriately - hypertrophy.
But such sets with lots of breaks perhaps is not providing the variety, entertainment and boredom fighting of changing to a different move every minute, and *feeling* well worked out. Instead such a focused approach says one or two moves done very well for reps with appropriate attention to quality and recovery lead to fabulous health rewards. The focus required to consider the whole movement does not allow boredom, when every rep is a practice of achieving perfection. Our bodies practice and remember what we do (see the SAID principle below). Imagine the benefit of remembering and practicing optimal reps rather than fatigue?
It's not complicated. It's not confusing. But it is important. Because at the end of the day - whether day one or day 91 - quality is always important.
Now some folks have said - me too - that some movement is better than no movement, and isn't it better that folks do something than nothing and didn't i write a positive review a few years back about P90X? Well, ignorance is bliss. We do the best we can with what we know. But what about knowing better?
Analogy: Radial Confusion (or why not start with quality?) To use the oft cited analogy of fitness, the car: suppose we have a car and it's not tuned up - one of the things wrong with it is the pressure in the tires is uneven and the tires haven't been rotated in awhile. But also the timing's off; the seals need to be checked and possibly some replaced, fluids replaced, belts checked or replaced, alignment done, sparks done, air filter done, break seals and fluid checked, rad level checked, etc. There may even be some better types of fuel available for the engine, or better oil for the conditions. The exhaust pipe may be starting to rot through. We don't know any of this; we just know that the car feels abit sluggish. and seems to go through gas quicker than previously. We seek out Someone Who Knows This Stuff.
And we come upon a mechanic that says boy, i know exactly what you mean: the thing used to run great, it doesn't now, but have i got something great for you that's gonna heal this machine. Change the fuel to this great of octane and rotate the tires and you're gonna be so happy. And you'll be even more happy if you wash the windows every time you fill up with gas and be sure to keep the engine really clean. Get under the hood and degunk it. That's a big part of good care.
And that's what we do. And lo and behold! a performance increase: the mileage has improved, it's nice to see better, and the car doesn't feel like it's pulling quite so much to one side. Super duper.
Isn't that great? Plainly we now have the solution to car well being. That mechanic is a genius. We're going to tell everyone that this is the best mechanic around and to get his radial confusion program.
Is rotating the tires - doing something better than nothing? Is it a false sense of security too?
The point of this series has been to help folks make informed choices. I think, based on what we do know about how we work, that we can do better for ourselves right out of the gate in terms of quality and quantity of practice, and we do ourselves a disservice not to treat our bodies as the incredible systems we are.
And our systems adapt immediately to whatever we do with them.
Our nervous systems, as modeled in the SAID principle (see Plastic section of this article), adapt immediately to exactly what we're doing. If we move poorly our nervous system practices that pattern. Going for 60minutes of crappy reps is a lot of reps, reinforcing a lot of poor movement.
Part of the point of showing that shorter workouts can be just as or more effective than hour long ones is also to support the capacity to do quality work. Always going to sweaty fatigue is not actually a sign of strength success. Leaving a strength workout feeling fresh, like there is more in the tank, is also a very good strategy. Pushing to the limit, testing that 1 rep maximum, is a cyclical not constant thing.
Mobility Work and the VVP
So here's one other alternative to P90X or at the very least an important complement - joint mobility. Far better than faux yoga would be 10 or 20 mins of mobility work combined with 10 or 20 mins of progressive balance work (see middle of this post on balance work).
There are loads of mobility programs available Qi Gong is an ancient form of such. The one
approach i prefer is z-health because it is very precisely and deliberately focused on improving the visual, vestibular and proprioceptive systems (vvp). VVP is how our bodies know where we are in space when standing still or moving. These systems are trainable. The pay off of working with the VVP directly is that it seems we also enhance the nervous system's information channels, and that has benefits for feeling better and moving better. I've written a lot about this approach to health, and why it's particularly great in an athletic awareness context. Practicing z-health is also applicable in a sports movement context to help get that precision of movement for quality of movement.
P90X Critique(s) Confession
So yes, i confess, that is actually my third big criticism of P90X: it's drive i suppose for entertainment, to make sure things pop pop pop that results in movement slop. And there are costs to reinforcing poor movement.
My first criticism is that diet is second in importance and my second criticism is that it's dressing up endurance work as plyo, yoga, hypertrophy etc etc etc. All these amazing forms of activity have been stripped of their skill component and particular benefits, and translated into cardio circuits entertainment. It's selling folks words like plyo, yoga, kenpo, resistance so folks feel like they're doing all these various forms of exercise when we're just not.
Examples of Success in Reasonable Contexts.
Sometimes it's useful to see success stories from *other* places than a routine we're considering and look at the differences.
Here's some folks who are blending diet and some hypertrophy training over 6 months, not 90 days, and not working out 7 hours of endurance a week. These are mainly young lads, but you get the idea. Scooby also has a free alternative plan to p90x. His recipe and mine (and others) for a six pack is slightly different, but not hugely.
Likewise i've pointed to these before, here's some 16 week success stories of real and reasonable people combining diet and workouts for real and reasonable results. With real before and after pictures.
Coda
Ignore the label; what's really in the Tin. My hope is that, by the end of this three part series, folks considering a program like P90X know to ask of the workouts, no matter what someone says they are, can look at what's going on in them to see what kind of workout they REALLY are, and this can be assessed by looking at load, reps, recovery and quality.
Less Can be So Much More. Likewise a take away from this article in particular is that workouts to be effective do not have to be long. Intensity can be used effectively whether the goal is fat loss and cardio well being, or getting toned (getting more muscular density).
Real Resistance Training. While one does develop a certain kind of tone from aerobic effort, i have also suggested complementing that with heavy/fast lifting practice because this kind of effort works other systems that are part of us that straight endurance work does not. A whole athlete/person trains the whole system. You may want to privilege one, but learning how to work with all of them can only be a Good Idea.
Quality and Mobility. The unlooked at aspect of these programs is the skill level, and the benefit of better movement form and quality. Here's a quick note on the benefit of movement quality looking at the deceptively simple front squat by way of example. And here's a general related tip about knowing a bit about mobility and movement, with the arthrokinetic reflex - aspects missing from P90X and most 12 weeks type programs that sacrifice quality for non-stop variety.
Summary for Workouts
I gave a lot of possible nutrition/diet approaches in part 3a. Here, in 3b considering workouts, these are some heuristics i'd suggest for choosing a life time general physical preparedness (gpp) program.
And to take a page from Pavel Tsatsouline, may i suggest think of workouts as Practice to value the skill of what you're doing with a most precious resource: yourself.
And as a finale, here's an example of putting everything together in the real:
Thanks to RKC Team Lead Franz Shneiderman (his blog) for sharing this video.
Related Posts
variety, quality. A P90X workout week is about 7hours minimum, and, as we saw in part 2, despite what seems like incredible variety, it is all one type of effort: aerobic endurance. The question posed therefore, is, is P90X optimal bang for that 7hour buck? Does it benefit all our muscle fibers? Slow and fast twitch? Does it benefit all our physiological systems, like bones, ligaments, joints, visual, vestibular and proprioceptive systems? All our energy systems? For holistic well being - and fat loss and leaning up, for 7 hours - perhaps not, as we'll see.Now again, if P90X makes a person happy and they want to spend that time doing lots of various cardio workouts, that's fine (well, see below on how fine). Lots of folks may say (and post) P90X is just fine. And that's fine.
My goal here is to ask about how does one define fine? How assess what's good, why it's good, and what might be missing for both better use of those precious minutes in a day that we never get back and more optimal benefit for our bodies beyond cardio/oxidative strength?
So why do this particular set of hour+ long cardio workouts? what's it doing for the ALL of you in that getting ripped paradigm?
Part 1 of this Review/Critique of P90X looked at concepts like Muscle Confusion.
Part 2 looked at how and for whom P90X might actually deliver on it's "getting ripped" mantra
Part 3b started looking at alternatives to the P90X diet approach and
Part 3b, our final part, looks at alternatives to the P90X workout approach.
What are you working this hard and this long to achieve? My concern motivating this discussion is that many folks think they *have* to put in this kind of time to achieve the P90X goals - getting ripped -- and, if that's the goal, they just don't. Even for cardio/endurance. We just don't. Work smarter not harder. And if we're going to work this long, is it the best long for our fitness goals and well being?
A fast example: lean with ripped abs in an hour/week; endurance in 6 minutes
As we saw in part two, if all a person wants is a six pack, the recipe is diet first to get to 10% bf and an ab hypertrophy program - two were suggested (as ab ripper x actually isn't an hypertrophy program). That's 20mins, 3times a week for effort, and the rest of the effort is diet. That's 1 hour vs 7.
Now sometimes folks just don't believe this is really all one needs to do to get a six pack. It's some kind of no pain no gain ethos perhaps. It can't be that simple. The formula is that simple. Application that's another thing. We'll see below examples of stunning recent research that shows 6mins of intense cardio a week has the same physiological benefits as an hour twenty.
Even if folks believe that a six pack is diet to 10% and 20 mins every other day of ab work, they
may want to move more than 20 mins every other day. But why? well, one reason may be what's often put out as "muscle tone"Muscle tone is another word for both more activation of existing muscle fibers and more muscle fibers to activate. Muscle fibers are densely packed and very small, so even while not incredibly massive, when lean enough to see, one looks pretty wiry strong.
And that might be another thing to check: muscular hypertrophy works on two angles: getting more *stuff* around muscle fiber bundles (sarcoplasmic) and myofibril. Workout type - especially load and recovery - effect hypertrophy type. Bringing more fibers on board, rather than mainly improving the oxidative capacity of the ones we have is what non-aerobic type training privileges - power or hypertrophy strength training rather than endurance (aka P90X)
Is 7 hours a week of cardio work the best way to lay down more muscle fiber? No. Really. It's not. Yes elite marathoners are wiry. But even endurance runners head to the gym for strength training. We'll get into some of the benefits to that below.
So if the goal is then leanness, 6 pack and muscle tone - and perhaps the consequent benefits of health to working out - then we have the first two covered. The recipe for leanness and 6 pack has been stated.
What Type of Muscle, what Type of Strength? If we're doing mainly fat burning/oxidative workouts, we're usually privileging slow twitch muscle fibers. The fast twitch that come into play for power strength or speed aren't getting taxed/developed. They may even atrophy or convert in favour of the growth of the slow twitch privileged muscle types. Faster take longer to get back, too.
You might think you don't care about going fast, but speed, along with a ready nervous system (we'll come onto proprioception) is also the ability to respond quickly to sudden situations, where moving fast can be critical.
But what about the rest of our physiologic systems beyond Muscle?
If we are interested in full body health, there's more to think about that muscle and muscle type. We have multiple energy systems. P90X privileges training one: the oxidative system. Yes really important for fat burning, but that's just part of us. Like the phosphate, glycolytic and lactate energy systems, too.
We also have bones, joints, ligaments and hormones (like insulin) being affected differently by different effort types. And we have a nervous system - a system that is always on and always adapts to what we practice. Immediately and all the time. What are we doing for these systems?
In this article the focus will then be on
- Muscle tone - laying down new muscle fibers - is what we'll look at to consider alternatives to P90X.
- General well being including more of the body's systems
- checking time
- and the role of checking quality of movement and mobility
Muscle Tone
I'd like to adjust the title here to "muscle tone and bone"
as both components of our physiology, along with our lungs and heart and nervous system (and innards generally) need to be considered.To get both muscle tone and bone building in one swoop, we're talking about resistance training. There are a couple approaches to resistance work that will impact both muscle and bone. This means dynamic work with load, pulling heavy, or both. An alternative for bones is playing squash or soccer. Apparently the stop/start nature of squash and soccer have tremendous value for bone growth. But so does axial loading: bringing force down directly in the direction of the bone. Which means lifting heavy, or lifting fast.
Mentioning lifting heavy or fast sometimes freaks people out. Heavy seems scary; moving a heavy object quickly also may seem scary. There's a fear of hurting oneself, or that one is not strong enough. But everything is proportional. Load is progressive: i've worked with seniors who on their first lifts were parallel squatting for 5 resps with soup cans, built up to milk jugs, and from there to real weights. Point is, they were finding potent loads for them, causing their bodies to adapt.
Aside: Insulin Sensitivity. One of the best ways to get insulin sensitivity up (a good thing) is to include lifting heavy in one's program. Here's more on why from Dave Barr.
The difference: The key thing here is perhaps a couple points to distinguish what P90X does with weights and what we're talking about here.
P90X as described in part 2 does not include multiple sets of a single move with recovery between sets and staying fresh. The weights used in the circuits are light enough not just to get through a set but to get through multiple sets in an hour. They also focus on bodybuilding isolation moves rather than foundational strength work.
There are at least Four differences in resistance approaches in p90x and a strength/power/hypertrophy focused lifting program:
By balancing load, rep, recovery and quality, we can dial in the kind of strength program best suited to support true general physical preparedness.
Compound Moves rather than Isolation Moves. A fundamental power/hypertrophy program would scrap the arm/shoulders/chest isolation work entirely and favour whole body "compound" movements. Bigger bang for the bone and muscle buck. Picking up something heavy; pushing something heavy (relatively speaking) means bringing the whole body into play. P90X has a few of these: pull ups and push ups are awesome. They engage everything. Other examples of such compound moves are deadlifts, squats, renegade rows and the amazing turkish get up as demo'd in Kalos Sthenos.
More Load; Fewer Reps. Getting to know the 1, 5 or 10 rep load maximum for a given move is a valuable thing. That way a person can plan sets to be a certain percentage of a maximal rep, understand that the best no. of reps at that percentage will favour a particular kind of strength building.
Actual Recovery for hypertrophy/power. Like understanding percentage of maximal load for effort, understanding recovery periods - and taking them (seriously) is an often overlooked fact of strength development.
Learn quality moves The above assumes that one seeks the instruction to learn how to perform compound moves well.
Options for Adding Load to Your Routine.
So, suppose you think well, ok, let's try this resistance for real approach, i still don't want to have to go to the gym or get a whole bunch of gear. Far enough.
For the no or low gear desirous, Ross Enemait has the gold standard of body weight work, and home made gear that lets a person achieve any kind of muscular tone goals. Tons of vids on his sight and ideas on how to make strength apparatus to work for you.
TNT bands already used in P90X offer space saving, resistance challenging, forms of work. Jon Hinds who developed this version of band offers and awesome workout routine with a set of the bands. These can be great supplements to some basic weights.
The TRX is another space saving workout system that lets a person use bodyweight in a variety of challenging ways, including supporting pull ups and dips. I personally think that Rings are a gas, though. Elite Rings are awesome and fun. Find room for them and you'll feel like a kid anytime you workout with them.
To get into weights, Powerblocks are great space-saving selectable apparatus. But for that matter, a barbell with a sufficient set of plates can be had cheap regularly on ebay, and will really let you start to pull heavy. The best program for full body fitness with a barbell: two moves, found in Power to the People, always assuming diet (discussed in the last article) is dialed in. Here's a really fast approach to blend all three types of strength with a barbell by Charles Staley, too.The Kettlebell Confession. What i personally find a very powerful tool for general fitness or wha't also called General Physical Preparedness (GPP - as opposed to Sports Specific training) is
kettlebell work. If you have room to swing a cat, you have room for a kettlebell. Why i like the kettlebell so much is that its core simple move, the swing, lets a person do a range of work, from cardio, to raw strength, to power and vo2max, all with the same tool. I've written about why Enter the Kettebell(ETK) is a fabulous program - especially coming off P90X - because its approach captures both these attributes of fast movement for power and strength work for hypertrophy and dynamic work for endurance. It's a complete package. Can work fast and slow twitch muscles; all energy systems; complements related systems work like bone and endocrine etc.Kettlebell work as spec'd in ETK satisfies the three advantages to lifting fast/heavy that no amount of aerobic movement confers: putting stress on the bones and ligaments to grow and stay strong; different workouts trigger the carbohydrate energy system to help with insulin sensitivity; the lifting effort causes new (fast or slow depending on work out) muscular tissue to be developed, thus leading to enhanced muscle tone.
Depending on your focus, there are a variety of approaches for kettlebell use. Anthony Di Luglio has developed follow along strength/cardio kettlebell routines (reviewed here). Mike Mahler focuses on Charles Staley's Escalating Density Training (also fabulous) applied to double kettlebell work for size and strength. Pavel Tsatsouline's latest book takes this concept even further for power work.
Inspiring examples of KB work may be found with Tracy Reifkind (story here, with excerpts right) and Andrea u-shi
Chang (story here).
One of the compelling things about Tracy's success is that she combined diet first, the importance of which we saw in the last article, with 20 mins a day of kettlebell work. That's it. Diet first (really. diet first. diet most important) & 20 mins a day. And has continued with that program and transformed herself and her health. And she has fabulous tone. Her blog is a great place to see how her workouts have grown in length to 45-50 mins over several years. That first year of 100lbs significant weight loss, diet, and 20mins of KB's.
Which brings us to time.
But a last few quick notes about resistance workouts: recovery recovery recovery - with volume.
There are LOTS of program options from barbells to kettlebells to nada, pending what kind of gear appeals to you. I have not even begun to touch on the rich variety that's out there that also follow good principles. A few to consider within this to challenge the muscles to lay down new fibers. Power to the People and Greasing the Groove are two; Charles Staley's EDT is another; HST is another particularly focused on hypertrophy for mass/size.
Each of these privileges higher total volume in a workout but with lower rep sets with recovery to stay fresh. EDT for instance takes two moves in 15 min blocks. One knows their 10 rep max for a given move, does only 5 reps, and alternates between the two within the 15 mins. Fresh, never to failure, perfect reps. One of the great appeals of P90X for me was that it had real moves like pull ups and push ups. Imagine applying EDT to these moves rather than going to fatigue with each set, as in P90X? Thus privileging fast twitch muscle work, too.
The other thing about a heuristic for a health and fitness well being program is that in lifting, we're talking whole body. Body builders will do arm curls. Someone concerned with an efficient way to work power speed and strength will snatch or clean and press, or do weighted pull ups and single leg squats. They'll develop great abs, legs and arms without ever doing an arm curl.
Ok one other point: drop going to failure.
That is actually an advanced and specific bodybuilding technique that over the past 20 years has been shown to have minimal benefit overall, and not a whole lot of gain for the general practitioner, and new lifter in particular. It is also only induced in Heavy resistance - which P90X is not. And the down side can be overly taxing one's system. Again, advanced technique, and many hypertrophy techniques for mass (like HST) do NOT use it at all.
That and "the pump" sound great, but this is another finishing technique, not basic muscle development, and it's really speculative as to it's value for strength work. And where there may be a role within something known as occlusion training, it's a deliberate, occasional and specific application - not something for every set, every workout.
What will happen is that one will either feel fatigued after such a workout, and/or sore quite quickly when the pump goes down. One will definitely feel like one has done work. But is this better or more effective than feeling strong and fresh at the end of a workout? It would seem to be a wrong focus and priority for the de-conditioned or less experienced trainee. But perhaps if someone buying this program doesn't feel like this - when they think workouts mean no pain no gain - then they'll think it's a crap workout. Hmm.
The Alternative to endurance/fatigue? Heavier, faster.
In a more balanced approach, a good part of the work in a week is focused on heavy/fast lifting where one has learned what their 1, 5 or 10 rep maximum is for the weight and movement involved, and where one is knowingly and deliberately taking advantage of reps/sets/recovery time and load to challenge the various energy systems and force an adaptation.
The P90X approach at best focuses on endurance, and that in only one way: surviving an hour+ of activity per day. That is missing the benefits of heavy lifting and recovery cycles for hormone efficiency - including insulin - joint health, muscular adaptation and bone mineral density maintenance. IT's just NOT a complete fitness program. And for some people('s partners especially), P90X just takes to long.
On Time
P90X is 7+ hours a week of aerobic work. It may be called, core, kenpo, plyo, arms, shoulders, back, legs, but it's endurance/aerobic/cardio, as seen in part 2, and it's long. Why oh why is it 7 hours of cardio-by-proxy? Again, 7 hours is dandy if that's your informed choice and matches your goals. But there is really nothing optimal for fitness in the design of P90X.
Some recent work showed over 2 years - not 12 weeks - obese gals who had the most success with their weight loss worked out 270-300 mins a week. 4.5-5 hours. Not 7. Those are two more hours a week available to spend with your family or your life than in the gym. This doesn't mean that more hours than that a week working out are bad. Not at all. It's just that one does not HAVE to go at 7hours a week for body comp success or health and strength success. While the study suggests five, i have colleagues who spend 45 minutes every other day working out and report being happy with their body comp. What they do in those 45 minutes is the magic.
As we've seen however,
- consistent diet and 20 mins a day of one routine - Tracy Reifkind's kettlebell work - has been powerfully transformative.
- Charles Staley's EDT program starts with 15 min blocks every other day, with only two moves in a single block, buidling up to 3, 15 min blocks, and they are killer. The approaches take advantage of varying intensity and including real recovery. They leverage the science of our physiology to effect adaptation.
Intervals compress Time. Another approach that as a side effect shortens workout times is Intervals. P90XPlus (the p90x follow up program) talks about Intervals, but it doesn't really use them. Intervals means working at a particular effort - usually hard - then recovering.
So far, the BEST tested fat loss interval approach with both conditioned and non-conditioned women is 8 secs of HARD pedaling followed by 12 secs of light pedaling - for 20 mins. That's it.
The group which did around eight seconds of sprinting on a bike, followed by 12 seconds of exercising lightly for twenty minutes, lost three times as much fat as other women, who exercised at a continuous, regular pace for 40 minutesQuick note: the study tested with women, not guys, but there's good reason to think this will be effective for men, too, based on the results of other interval protocols studies.
With intervals, one burns more calories overall than with steady state cardio, that's one thing,. But the interval also entices other benefits for the physiology, including enhancing the sensitivity and effectiveness of our hormonal systems (from insulin to endorphins), nervous system, energy systems.
While 8/12 for 20 sounds great compared to 60+ mins of slog, here's another study where the focus was on aerobic/endurance fitness. 6mins. A WEEK. resulted in the equivalent physiological benefit of 4.5 HOURS of normal cardio a week - p90x type effort. 6mins vs 390.
We just don't have to go long to get physiological benefits; we have to go hard and recover and hard and recover and hard and recover.
Now it's all fine to go long if we're doing something we enjoy. My fat loss hero Lyle McDonald talks about the total comparative benefits of intervals to steady state cardio where going for an hour of steady state burns more total calories than 30 mins of intervals. That's true. When looking at the raw numbers from the specific session. And there is a role for both. McDonald does not talk about the physiological/energy system differences between the two approaches (he starts to in follow ups); just immediate calories burned. And there's more to us than calories burned (as the 8/12 for 20 study shows). We're complex interconnect systems. Optimal approaches to fitness respect this.
And that's why variety in our workout lives means more than going through a bunch of exercises that are all cardio/endurance based, but variety in terms of systems worked.
So we might ask, do least some of our sessions in a week include optimizing benefit for bone, muscle and the rest of our physiology? is this all time well spent for our whole health? Less can be more, with the right less optimized for all the mores. One approach is a third resistance, a third intervals and a third cardio. And also NEPA's
On Practice: Quality and Quantity. Not either/or
I've said throughout this series that P90X is fine if it makes you happy, and as long as you know that it's an endurance program, is that all you want; it takes far longer than it needs to to deliver the lean effects it advertises. But actually, there is one place where i'd suggest one might want to reconsider P90X and might even say it's flawed. P90X is sloppy. Let me explain.
Skill is not mentioned in P90X. And that's understandable in terms of selling a product for the widest appeal. If one needed training to carry out any of the work in P90X that would detract from its immediate do-ability. And as said, that's fine for someone trying to sell something.
But what about the human being buying it? What have we learned we can apply?
We endure beyond the 90 days, and what do we learn? Any transferable performance skills? Perhaps a person doesn't care about learning any athletic skills: the goal is to kill calories; burn fat. But have we therefore potentially compromised movement quality?
Let's consider possible skills that could be addressed in some of the programs if we cared about their value rather than endurance from faux verions:
For folks doing Yoga-x, one might assume the tree pose with eyes closed. How stable does the person feel? In that position, eyes closed, turn the head quickly to the left. Is the person still standing?The image is of Kettlebell Master Trainer Mark Reifkind, former gymnast and powerlifter, whose main activities now are kettlebells, bikram yoga and z-health mobility. See his blog for blending strength, power, endurance, mobility - and yoga.
Actual yoga, as seen in Part 1 is also about breathing first, is also not about gratuitously holding isometric poses - which is just more (non-transferable static) endurance work. What do we learn about breathing techniques that we might use from yoga to lift heavier weight?
Kenpo is an art that uses kicking and punching. Both the kick and the punch have more going on in them - such as timing of forces - than simply looking like a kick or a punch. What is the benefit of risking putting one's back out or throwing a shoulder in this de-skilled version of Kenpo looking moves, other than another attempt at entertaining cardio? Wouldn't it be cool to actually learn a kick, how to harmonize the forces, and do those high quality kicks? Or punches. How do you know if your upper cut is effective or bleeding energy? Dunno here.
Plyometrics as discussed in part 1 is usually used to enhance speed and power, very much not endurance, as it's used in P90X, but speed or power aren't tested in this program, so hard to say if a person has gained any speed skills. IT's also very very much about form, where the deceleration is a key part of acceleration: plyometrics is about developing rapid conversion of stored elastic energy into force. So depth jumps and kettlebell overspeed eccentrics work this property (see the Elastic section of this article on Plastic/Elastic in human performance). Getting as many joints involved as possible, in the right way, is key to that energy conversion.
While bounding is great, and hopping on one foot can seem taxing, because these moves are done largely to a kind of fatigue, the notion of developing fast eccentric use of the stored energy goes away - the energy stored by a little hop has already dissipated by the time of the conversion. And so what can be a great speed/power strength effect becomes another endurance effect, fighting fatigue. Likewise, the skill of moving even in the hop to a good landng and from there up into a new hop is never discussed. So what's the point of jumping about in the P90X context called plyo? Another version of cardio?
Even the humble pull up and push up have particular biomechanical features that, when taught, make the performance of the exercise easier but also leverage better use of the body and so better transfer of capacity from one movement to another that use the same muscle groups.As an example of the degree of attention a simple move can require, the one arm pushup, rushed through one part of one disk in P90X, is the subject of half a book for coordinating muscular activity along the core; speed of shoulder joint to elbow joint is a technique called bone rhythm that assures the physics of the body is working together for optimal efficiency.
In resistance sections, quality of movement is mentioned from time to time, but the notion of quality seems at best very not old but dated school.
In the resistance parts, quality (as poster Brad points out) is quitting a set before "things get squirrelly." And that really feeling the last three reps is what you're going for. Hmm. So kind of going to failure in long *endurance* sets. Why? We know from well the best we know of hypertrophy and strength training that we can get tremendous effect by doing lots of volume with higher quality sets not going near fatigue ( ie where one really feels those "last three reps.") As pointed to, Staley's approach (and HST) is quality short sets with increasing volume.
In the Staley/Tsatsouline seminar DVD, Staley demonstrates convincingly that the most power is in the first three reps of a set. Why not recover to be able to continue to produce best power and force most adaptation? Actually staying fresh and NOT feeling it, and going long (volume) has greater benefit for strength and power - and adjusted appropriately - hypertrophy.
But such sets with lots of breaks perhaps is not providing the variety, entertainment and boredom fighting of changing to a different move every minute, and *feeling* well worked out. Instead such a focused approach says one or two moves done very well for reps with appropriate attention to quality and recovery lead to fabulous health rewards. The focus required to consider the whole movement does not allow boredom, when every rep is a practice of achieving perfection. Our bodies practice and remember what we do (see the SAID principle below). Imagine the benefit of remembering and practicing optimal reps rather than fatigue?
It's not complicated. It's not confusing. But it is important. Because at the end of the day - whether day one or day 91 - quality is always important.
Now some folks have said - me too - that some movement is better than no movement, and isn't it better that folks do something than nothing and didn't i write a positive review a few years back about P90X? Well, ignorance is bliss. We do the best we can with what we know. But what about knowing better?
Analogy: Radial Confusion (or why not start with quality?) To use the oft cited analogy of fitness, the car: suppose we have a car and it's not tuned up - one of the things wrong with it is the pressure in the tires is uneven and the tires haven't been rotated in awhile. But also the timing's off; the seals need to be checked and possibly some replaced, fluids replaced, belts checked or replaced, alignment done, sparks done, air filter done, break seals and fluid checked, rad level checked, etc. There may even be some better types of fuel available for the engine, or better oil for the conditions. The exhaust pipe may be starting to rot through. We don't know any of this; we just know that the car feels abit sluggish. and seems to go through gas quicker than previously. We seek out Someone Who Knows This Stuff.
And we come upon a mechanic that says boy, i know exactly what you mean: the thing used to run great, it doesn't now, but have i got something great for you that's gonna heal this machine. Change the fuel to this great of octane and rotate the tires and you're gonna be so happy. And you'll be even more happy if you wash the windows every time you fill up with gas and be sure to keep the engine really clean. Get under the hood and degunk it. That's a big part of good care.
And that's what we do. And lo and behold! a performance increase: the mileage has improved, it's nice to see better, and the car doesn't feel like it's pulling quite so much to one side. Super duper.
Isn't that great? Plainly we now have the solution to car well being. That mechanic is a genius. We're going to tell everyone that this is the best mechanic around and to get his radial confusion program.
Is rotating the tires - doing something better than nothing? Is it a false sense of security too?
The point of this series has been to help folks make informed choices. I think, based on what we do know about how we work, that we can do better for ourselves right out of the gate in terms of quality and quantity of practice, and we do ourselves a disservice not to treat our bodies as the incredible systems we are.
And our systems adapt immediately to whatever we do with them.
Our nervous systems, as modeled in the SAID principle (see Plastic section of this article), adapt immediately to exactly what we're doing. If we move poorly our nervous system practices that pattern. Going for 60minutes of crappy reps is a lot of reps, reinforcing a lot of poor movement.
Part of the point of showing that shorter workouts can be just as or more effective than hour long ones is also to support the capacity to do quality work. Always going to sweaty fatigue is not actually a sign of strength success. Leaving a strength workout feeling fresh, like there is more in the tank, is also a very good strategy. Pushing to the limit, testing that 1 rep maximum, is a cyclical not constant thing.
Mobility Work and the VVP
So here's one other alternative to P90X or at the very least an important complement - joint mobility. Far better than faux yoga would be 10 or 20 mins of mobility work combined with 10 or 20 mins of progressive balance work (see middle of this post on balance work).
There are loads of mobility programs available Qi Gong is an ancient form of such. The one
approach i prefer is z-health because it is very precisely and deliberately focused on improving the visual, vestibular and proprioceptive systems (vvp). VVP is how our bodies know where we are in space when standing still or moving. These systems are trainable. The pay off of working with the VVP directly is that it seems we also enhance the nervous system's information channels, and that has benefits for feeling better and moving better. I've written a lot about this approach to health, and why it's particularly great in an athletic awareness context. Practicing z-health is also applicable in a sports movement context to help get that precision of movement for quality of movement.P90X Critique(s) Confession
So yes, i confess, that is actually my third big criticism of P90X: it's drive i suppose for entertainment, to make sure things pop pop pop that results in movement slop. And there are costs to reinforcing poor movement.
My first criticism is that diet is second in importance and my second criticism is that it's dressing up endurance work as plyo, yoga, hypertrophy etc etc etc. All these amazing forms of activity have been stripped of their skill component and particular benefits, and translated into cardio circuits entertainment. It's selling folks words like plyo, yoga, kenpo, resistance so folks feel like they're doing all these various forms of exercise when we're just not.
Examples of Success in Reasonable Contexts.
Sometimes it's useful to see success stories from *other* places than a routine we're considering and look at the differences.
Here's some folks who are blending diet and some hypertrophy training over 6 months, not 90 days, and not working out 7 hours of endurance a week. These are mainly young lads, but you get the idea. Scooby also has a free alternative plan to p90x. His recipe and mine (and others) for a six pack is slightly different, but not hugely.
Likewise i've pointed to these before, here's some 16 week success stories of real and reasonable people combining diet and workouts for real and reasonable results. With real before and after pictures.
Coda
Ignore the label; what's really in the Tin. My hope is that, by the end of this three part series, folks considering a program like P90X know to ask of the workouts, no matter what someone says they are, can look at what's going on in them to see what kind of workout they REALLY are, and this can be assessed by looking at load, reps, recovery and quality.
Less Can be So Much More. Likewise a take away from this article in particular is that workouts to be effective do not have to be long. Intensity can be used effectively whether the goal is fat loss and cardio well being, or getting toned (getting more muscular density).
Real Resistance Training. While one does develop a certain kind of tone from aerobic effort, i have also suggested complementing that with heavy/fast lifting practice because this kind of effort works other systems that are part of us that straight endurance work does not. A whole athlete/person trains the whole system. You may want to privilege one, but learning how to work with all of them can only be a Good Idea.
Quality and Mobility. The unlooked at aspect of these programs is the skill level, and the benefit of better movement form and quality. Here's a quick note on the benefit of movement quality looking at the deceptively simple front squat by way of example. And here's a general related tip about knowing a bit about mobility and movement, with the arthrokinetic reflex - aspects missing from P90X and most 12 weeks type programs that sacrifice quality for non-stop variety.
Summary for Workouts
I gave a lot of possible nutrition/diet approaches in part 3a. Here, in 3b considering workouts, these are some heuristics i'd suggest for choosing a life time general physical preparedness (gpp) program.
- Lift heavy and Lift Compound, full body several times a week
- Ramp in aerobic training with intervals on some days; sports or spots/steady state cardio on others as you feel you wish to do so.
- stay fresh - not failed: use recovery wisely
- include some joint mobility work into your daily practice for the neurological benefits as well as musclo-tendinous ones.
- Give yourself a chance to adapt: it takes more than 90days to become conditioned, but that's a great start. We have the rest of our lives to practice; why not begin as we mean to go on?
And to take a page from Pavel Tsatsouline, may i suggest think of workouts as Practice to value the skill of what you're doing with a most precious resource: yourself.
And as a finale, here's an example of putting everything together in the real:
Thanks to RKC Team Lead Franz Shneiderman (his blog) for sharing this video.
Related Posts
- Part 1 of this Review/Critique of P90X looked at concepts like Muscle Confusion.
- Part 2 looked at how and for whom P90X might actually deliver on it's "getting ripped" mantra
- Part 3b started looking at alternatives to the P90X diet approach
- Athletic Bodies: which one is yours? could your train to be closer to your?
- on steady state cardio and its value (vs Intervals) - using kettlebells and lot on mitochondria
- Does cardio work interfere with strength training? how 'bout no.
- Vo2Max with Viking Warrior Conditioning (VWC)
- cardio steady state/interval blend with kettlebells: running the bells.
- tuning form: arthrokinetic reflex demo
- supporting recovery - with headphones
- mobility and mechanoreception - loads of info and reviews of Z-Health neuromuscular approaches
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Is what's on the label really in your supplement?
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Most of us into health and nutrition dabble in supplements. Some whey protein here; a vitamin D capsule, maybe some fish oil, there. We do this because we believe what we've read about these things being a good idea. But what if what's on the label isn't what's in the tin? How do we really know we're getting what's promised by the label?
At the recent Z-Health 9S:sustenance course, overviewed here, we talked a lot about supplements: about what ones are worth taking, yes, but also about where to source them, once you've made the decision to use them. Based on that discussion, i did some further digging. It's not a story with a happy ending. Sorta more like left who's on stage at the end of Richard III: oh goodie the exciting, poetic, smart villain is dead, while this cheating asshole is left to run the kingdom but at least no one will be fighting anymore. hoo frickin' rah.
So this post presents a brief overview of legislation in the US around dietary supplements, problems with supplement quality and contamination, what good manufacturing practice (aka cGMP is) what third party certification like Consumer Labs or USP does with GMP (overivewed, anyway), a glimpse at the EU situation, and why June2010 is not the end of the War of the Roses.
History and Current Unregulated Practice. In the US, since 1994, there's been no requirement to have the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) assess either what goes into supplements or how they're made. Indeed, the FDA explicitly does NOT certify supplements (the way it does drugs and biologics). As its own web site says:
There are in the US alone about 4 various standards groups that certify supplements against the Good Manufacturing Process. These are Consumer Labs, mentioned above, the NSF, NPA and USP (we'll come back to these in a second). According to Wikipedia's entry on cGMP, this means,
In contrast, with GMP, the process of how a supplement is made is submitted to the certification body, assessed against the certification group's standards, and then audited in practice. The specific details of each group's auditing process are detailed on their sites, but here are the types of things they consider for certification:
USP (US Pharmacopia)
"Will break down and release into the body" is a pretty important thing, isn't it? Seems obvious, but some supplements in those ConsumerLabs.com random tests have been shown to be inert - they don't break down at all even in acid, never mind water, like ever.
NSF
Why so many certification labs? It's a business. NSF also tests tools. ConsumerLabs tests everything. USP and NPA don't. Why might a company choose one cert over another? Good question. Certifications cost money. One might also believe that the auditing practices of one group seem more amenable than another. It's worth digging into each program to see what you would find most comforting.
Natural Products? For instance, some of us like to privilege "natural" products in our supplements over synthetics. Whether there is a clear difference in terms of absorption or not can be debated, and indeed the vitamin D2 vs D3 debate is a great example of such a discussion (though vitamn D2 is from natural products that are vegetarian sourced and then irradiated rather than from squished fish and animal parts, but i digress).
For that preference, there is a GMP certification group focusing on standards for naturals. Called, naturally enough, the Natural Products Association. Their guidelines for GMP spec are quite detailed, too. They have a considerable list of companies on their listings as well, and it's great that these can be checked.
UK/EU
In the EU, the standards seem to be incredibly weak. Ya have to demonstrate that in quantity and quality, they are safe. Placebo is safe: having nothing in the supplement including what's on the label, is safe. Despite this breadth, the UK fought them: why pay money to say what you've been selling for years is safe, went the argument - at least in part. Gosh, sport, i dunno. Maybe it's NOT. That said, some folks think the legislation is protecting law makers rather than conusmers. But then what IS a consumer to do who wants to make sure what's on the label is what's in the tin?
In the UK, some companies do send their products to be tested. But that's product testing, not product process auditing. When they want to prove their goodness in terms of GMP, they can go the ISO (international standards) route and get ISO 9001:2008 accreditation.
Becuase i say so? Another company that makes natural products in the UK and claims to use Good Manufacturing Practice, for made-in-uk supplements, however, doesn't say how that claim is verified.
Another supplement shop suggests that GMP in the UK is self-regulated: it's GMP compliant if we say it is:
June 2010: Law comes back to the Supplement Wild West - sort of. Back in the states, apparently by June 2010, supplement companies will have to be compliant with minimum GMP to sell their wares (pdf of whole rule here). Hoorah. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it. Here's the irony. Remember, this law/ruling is for Dietary Supplement makers. So watch this exception:
GMP - better than a kick in the head. There's something to be said, perhaps, for companies who have taken it upon themselves to pick up the cost of quality assurance third-party certification. There can be corruption everywhere, to be sure. Inspectors paid off, etc etc, but for the most part, why bother with the certification then? There seem to be a thriving fleet of businesses making money on supplements without any breath of certification.
So, take away: the above may help explain why some products cost a *little* more than others. Certification is not the big cost, but production mechanisms, practices and oversight for compliance DO cost more.
If the result of that process is both a safe-from-contaminent and quality product such that what's on the tin is *in* the tin, then that is value for money.
If you're not sure if your favorite supplement shop is GMP certified by a third-party, why not ask them? If enough people do ask, they might up their game. They may say no, they can't afford to raise prices. Likewise, you may decide it's too great a risk of potentially wasting your money *not* to get your sups from a GMP certified source.
ps - supplements that are likely *worth* investing in, based on the best of what we know?
whey protein, creatine, b complex - the research on these guys is so long standing now and so repeated in terms of results, it's hard to argue. THough i would say pea protein and rice protein are also great alternatives - as algae oil seems to be for fish oil.
So for the few things that have been shown to add real benefit, may be worth chasing down the ones with the highest certified potency/quality/purity?
Tweet Follow @begin2dig
At the recent Z-Health 9S:sustenance course, overviewed here, we talked a lot about supplements: about what ones are worth taking, yes, but also about where to source them, once you've made the decision to use them. Based on that discussion, i did some further digging. It's not a story with a happy ending. Sorta more like left who's on stage at the end of Richard III: oh goodie the exciting, poetic, smart villain is dead, while this cheating asshole is left to run the kingdom but at least no one will be fighting anymore. hoo frickin' rah.So this post presents a brief overview of legislation in the US around dietary supplements, problems with supplement quality and contamination, what good manufacturing practice (aka cGMP is) what third party certification like Consumer Labs or USP does with GMP (overivewed, anyway), a glimpse at the EU situation, and why June2010 is not the end of the War of the Roses.
History and Current Unregulated Practice. In the US, since 1994, there's been no requirement to have the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) assess either what goes into supplements or how they're made. Indeed, the FDA explicitly does NOT certify supplements (the way it does drugs and biologics). As its own web site says:
FDA does not approve dietary supplements.Why might such oversight at the level of the FDA be important? Well, our fave sup companies might not be delivering the goods. Consider this story from June this year on a consumerlabs.com test of various supplements:
Unlike new drugs, dietary supplements are not reviewed and approved by FDA based on their safety and effectiveness. Most dietary supplements that contain a new dietary ingredient (a dietary ingredient not marketed in the United States before October 15, 1994) require a notification to FDA 75 days before marketing.
The notification must include the information that was the manufacturer or distributor's basis for concluding that the dietary supplement will reasonably be expected to be safe. After dietary supplements are on the market, FDA evaluates their safety through research and adverse event monitoring.
Potency problemsIn ConsumerLab.com testing last November, four out of seven supplements contained less ginkgo than claimed on their labels, and one failed to break apart properly to release its ingredients. Seven out of nine failed in tests in 2003, as did six out of 13 in 2005."It is now believed that ginkgo is among the most adulterated herbs," the company reports.Tests by California scientists of two dozen ginseng supplements, reported in a nutrition journal in 2001, found that many differed from their labels. The concentrations of some ginseng compounds varied by up to 200-fold from product to product.In ConsumerLab.com tests, six out of nine chondroitin supplements failed testing in April 2007. One had only 8 percent of what it claimed to contain, and one "maximum strength" product had none.
Vitamins and minerals had problems, too. A "high potency" iron supplement contained less than half the amount claimed. Of 23 top-selling vitamin C pills, one provided less than half the amount promised; the suggested dosages of some others were beyond recommended safe levels. Of 10 vitamin A supplements, one provided twice its stated amount, raising concern about toxic side effects.
Ok they above sounds like a rip off: claiming to have something in it that just isn't there. But the problems don't stop there. What about putting crap into the supplement that isn't on the label and may be a banned substance or just some crap drug? This too has apparently happened:Last year, nearly 200 people were sickened by supplements containing up to 200 times the amount of selenium stated on the label. Symptoms included hair loss, discolored and painful fingernails, muscle cramps, joint pain, diarrhea and fatigue.
So what is a consumer to do?Spiking Your Shake"Random batch spiking" has a long history in the supplement business. It works like this: "The manufacturer sprinkles an illegal substance into an over-the-counter dietary supplement," says Feliciano. "The legal ingredients are claimed on the label, but they don't disclose the drug."
Chris Lockwood, formerly the senior category director of diet, energy, food, and beverage at the supplement retailer GNC and now a doctoral candidate in exercise physiology at the University of Oklahoma, recalls taking a popular protein powder in the early 1990s: "When I first took it, I got great gains. I felt great. I got strong. I got lean. But then something happened to it." Years later, he related his experiences to one of the product's formulators who confirmed for him that the powder had been spiked with Clenbuterol, an asthma drug that supercharges your metabolism.
There are in the US alone about 4 various standards groups that certify supplements against the Good Manufacturing Process. These are Consumer Labs, mentioned above, the NSF, NPA and USP (we'll come back to these in a second). According to Wikipedia's entry on cGMP, this means,
Since sampling product will statistically only ensure that the samples themselves (and perhaps the areas adjacent to where the samples were taken) are suitable for use, and end-point testing relies on sampling, GMP takes the holistic approach of regulating the manufacturing and laboratory testing environment itself. An extremely important part of GMP is documentation of every aspect of the process, activities, and operations involved with drug and medical device manufacture. If the documentation showing how the product was made and tested (which enables traceability and, in the event of future problems, recall from the market) is not correct and in order, then the product does not meet the required specification and is considered contaminated (adulterated in the US). Additionally, GMP requires that all manufacturing and testing equipment has been qualified as suitable for use, and that all operational methodologies and procedures (such as manufacturing, cleaning, and analytical testing) utilized in the drug manufacturing process have been validated (according to predetermined specifications), to demonstrate that they can perform their purported function(s).Process Check vs Spot Check. In other words how the stuff is made is checked, not just a given batch "randomly" selected to be tested by a lab. On some bulk supplement sites, they will post batch "certificates of purity" as a kind of quality control - and a person then has to take it on faith that that certificate matches up with the batch actually in the holder's control and that is then being parceled out from that batch (in another process, introducing another opportunity for contamination) into smaller tins.
In contrast, with GMP, the process of how a supplement is made is submitted to the certification body, assessed against the certification group's standards, and then audited in practice. The specific details of each group's auditing process are detailed on their sites, but here are the types of things they consider for certification:
USP (US Pharmacopia)
The USP Verified Mark helps assure consumers of a manufacturer's commitment to quality and helps them easily identify and choose a product thatA list of USP cert'd supplement companies can also be found on their web site.
- contains the ingredients listed on the label, in the declared potency and amount
- does not contain harmful levels of specified contaminants
- will break down and release into the body in a specified amount of time
- and has been made according to the FDA's Good Manufacturing Processes
"Will break down and release into the body" is a pretty important thing, isn't it? Seems obvious, but some supplements in those ConsumerLabs.com random tests have been shown to be inert - they don't break down at all even in acid, never mind water, like ever.
NSF
What does NSF certification of a dietary supplement mean to consumers?They seem to be missing that disolvability eh? But you can also check if your brand uses the NSF for their certification. Likewise if you're concerned about banned substances, NSF makes a business of certifying for this compliance, too.
NSF International was one of the first organizations to develop an independent product evaluation program to address the rapidly growing dietary supplements industry.
The purpose of our voluntary program is to test and certify dietary supplements products to
- verify the identify and quantity of dietary ingredients listed on the product label;
- ensure the product does not contain undeclared ingredients or unacceptable levels of contaminants; and
- demonstrate conformance to currently recommended industry Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) for dietary supplements.
Why so many certification labs? It's a business. NSF also tests tools. ConsumerLabs tests everything. USP and NPA don't. Why might a company choose one cert over another? Good question. Certifications cost money. One might also believe that the auditing practices of one group seem more amenable than another. It's worth digging into each program to see what you would find most comforting.
Natural Products? For instance, some of us like to privilege "natural" products in our supplements over synthetics. Whether there is a clear difference in terms of absorption or not can be debated, and indeed the vitamin D2 vs D3 debate is a great example of such a discussion (though vitamn D2 is from natural products that are vegetarian sourced and then irradiated rather than from squished fish and animal parts, but i digress).
For that preference, there is a GMP certification group focusing on standards for naturals. Called, naturally enough, the Natural Products Association. Their guidelines for GMP spec are quite detailed, too. They have a considerable list of companies on their listings as well, and it's great that these can be checked.
UK/EU
In the EU, the standards seem to be incredibly weak. Ya have to demonstrate that in quantity and quality, they are safe. Placebo is safe: having nothing in the supplement including what's on the label, is safe. Despite this breadth, the UK fought them: why pay money to say what you've been selling for years is safe, went the argument - at least in part. Gosh, sport, i dunno. Maybe it's NOT. That said, some folks think the legislation is protecting law makers rather than conusmers. But then what IS a consumer to do who wants to make sure what's on the label is what's in the tin?
In the UK, some companies do send their products to be tested. But that's product testing, not product process auditing. When they want to prove their goodness in terms of GMP, they can go the ISO (international standards) route and get ISO 9001:2008 accreditation.
ISO 9001:2008 specifies requirements for a quality management system where an organizationSo far, myprotein.co.uk, claims to be the sole UK supplement maker with the 9001:2000 certification, never mind the ultra recent 2008 version (it takes the better part of a year or more to get to that certified process so no wonder myprotein has just been able to announce the slightly earlier standard).
All requirements of ISO 9001:2008 are generic and are intended to be applicable to all organizations, regardless of type, size and product provided.
- needs to demonstrate its ability to consistently provide product that meets customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements, and
- aims to enhance customer satisfaction through the effective application of the system, including processes for continual improvement of the system and the assurance of conformity to customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements.
Becuase i say so? Another company that makes natural products in the UK and claims to use Good Manufacturing Practice, for made-in-uk supplements, however, doesn't say how that claim is verified.
Another supplement shop suggests that GMP in the UK is self-regulated: it's GMP compliant if we say it is:
What is GMP?I have not been able to find anything to show either that there is anything other than a shop claiming that their supplements follow GMP protocols in order to claim GMP "certified." That said, it seems like the only real EU-wide objective approach is the ISO 9001:2000/2008 certification. As in the states, there are a variety of groups set up to help organizations meet these criteria and get their practices assessed by accredited labs.
Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) offers quality assurance; it is a set of strict pharmaceutical regulations, codes, and guidelines that ensure that food supplements are constantly manufactured and controlled to a high standard which is suitable for use. Within the UK it is only legally applicable to medicines and veterinary medicines, however, GMP is a self-regulatory code within the supplements industry which is used alongside the regulations that are set out within the Food Supplements Directive.
Simply Supplements’ purchasing team ensure that all of our supplements comply with the Food Supplements Directive and that countless products are GMP certified.
June 2010: Law comes back to the Supplement Wild West - sort of. Back in the states, apparently by June 2010, supplement companies will have to be compliant with minimum GMP to sell their wares (pdf of whole rule here). Hoorah. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it. Here's the irony. Remember, this law/ruling is for Dietary Supplement makers. So watch this exception:
The most important and obvious change is that the final rule does not apply to dietary ingredient suppliers and manufacturers. The burden of compliance with cGMPs fully lies with the dietary supplement’s manufacturer and requires dietary supplement manufacturers to test 100% of the incoming dietary ingredients.Excuse me? So this sort of means that while manufactures have to be able to say what their processes are and list that their processes follow GMP, and that will take some cost and effort, who's to say what's on paper is what they do? Who is going to police this? The FDA itself is woefully understaffed. And while it can carry out random inspections, is the cost of a fine cheaper than the cost of changing manufacturing practice?
GMP - better than a kick in the head. There's something to be said, perhaps, for companies who have taken it upon themselves to pick up the cost of quality assurance third-party certification. There can be corruption everywhere, to be sure. Inspectors paid off, etc etc, but for the most part, why bother with the certification then? There seem to be a thriving fleet of businesses making money on supplements without any breath of certification.
So, take away: the above may help explain why some products cost a *little* more than others. Certification is not the big cost, but production mechanisms, practices and oversight for compliance DO cost more.
If the result of that process is both a safe-from-contaminent and quality product such that what's on the tin is *in* the tin, then that is value for money.
If you're not sure if your favorite supplement shop is GMP certified by a third-party, why not ask them? If enough people do ask, they might up their game. They may say no, they can't afford to raise prices. Likewise, you may decide it's too great a risk of potentially wasting your money *not* to get your sups from a GMP certified source.
ps - supplements that are likely *worth* investing in, based on the best of what we know?
- fish oil or equivalent broad spec fatty acids
- vitamin d
- coq10
- protein/bcaa
- creatine
- a multi
- some e
- some magnesium
whey protein, creatine, b complex - the research on these guys is so long standing now and so repeated in terms of results, it's hard to argue. THough i would say pea protein and rice protein are also great alternatives - as algae oil seems to be for fish oil.
So for the few things that have been shown to add real benefit, may be worth chasing down the ones with the highest certified potency/quality/purity?
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