Monday, January 11, 2010
Not Time of Day for Training but Location Location Location
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The question of time of day for training has been asked often. Better to train at night? better to train in the morning? Better for anaerobic? better for aerobic?
Indeed, one of my fave current studies has shown that the circadian clock is th
readed right into the muscles - at least of mice
So this all sounds like business as usual - a little dubious - but heh we still don't know about diurnal effects on training. One other contemporary study suggests well, we know more now than we thought we did, because we varied a usually stable/assumed variable in the study: location. And then lots of things shifted.
In other words, it seems that time of day makes no significant difference to results on a test.
THe authors provide a really nice review of about half a dozen key studies that have looked at time of day and training effect. So why didn't that happen here? Here's what the authors' postulate: weather, light, location. External rather than internal factors.
I love speculation in research papers! something that says we have this finding that's different from other people's and we're trying to figure out A. what the differences are between our set ups and B. why those differences might have an effect. Temperate vs Tropic. Long daylight vs not.
So even here to say "time of day doesn't matter" for training has to have a caveat attached - depending on WHERE and what time of year you may be training. And that's a cool result
Hope the above helps offer one more reason that hitting the tropics is a good idea for health and well-being.
Related Posts:
The question of time of day for training has been asked often. Better to train at night? better to train in the morning? Better for anaerobic? better for aerobic?Indeed, one of my fave current studies has shown that the circadian clock is th
readed right into the muscles - at least of miceJ Appl Physiol. 2009 Nov;107(5):1647-54. Epub 2009 Aug 20.Working around the clock: circadian rhythms and skeletal muscle.
Center for Muscle Biology, Dept. of Physiology, Chandler College of Medicine, Univ. of Kentucky, 800 Rose St., Lexington, KY 40536, USA.The study of the circadian molecular clock in skeletal muscle is in the very early stages. Initial research has demonstrated the presence of the molecular clock in skeletal muscle and that skeletal muscle of a clock-compromised mouse, Clock mutant, exhibits significant disruption in normal expression of many genes required for adult muscle structure and metabolism. In light of the growing association between the molecular clock, metabolism, and metabolic disease, it will also be important to understand the contribution of circadian factors to normal metabolism, metabolic responses to muscle training, and contribution of the molecular clock in muscle-to-muscle disease (e.g., insulin resistance). Consistent with the potential for the skeletal muscle molecular clock modulating skeletal muscle physiology, there are findings in the literature that there is significant time-of-day effects for strength and metabolism. Additionally, there is some recent evidence that temporal specificity is important for optimizing training for muscular performance. While these studies do not prove that the molecular clock in skeletal muscle is important, they are suggestive of a circadian contribution to skeletal muscle function. The application of well-established models of skeletal muscle research in function and metabolism with available genetic models of molecular clock disruption will allow for more mechanistic understanding of potential relationships.
So this all sounds like business as usual - a little dubious - but heh we still don't know about diurnal effects on training. One other contemporary study suggests well, we know more now than we thought we did, because we varied a usually stable/assumed variable in the study: location. And then lots of things shifted.
J Strength Cond Res. 2010 Jan;24(1):23-9.Effects of 5 weeks of training at the same time of day on the diurnal variations of maximal muscle power performance.
Laboratory ACTES, UFR STAPS-Université Antilles-Guyane, Campus de Fouillole, Pointe-à-Pitre, France. stephen.blonc@univ-ag.frThe purpose of this study was to investigate whether maximal muscle power production in humans is influenced by the habitual time of training to provide recommendations for adapting training hours in the month preceding a competition. Sixteen participants performed maximal brief squat and countermovement jumps and short-term cycle sprints tests before and after 5 weeks of training. Subjects were randomly assigned to either a Morning-Trained Group (MTG, 7:00-9:00 hr) or an Evening-Trained Group (ETG, 17:00-19:00 hr). They trained and performed the evaluation tests in both the morning and evening in their naturally warm and moderately humid environment. The results indicated a significant increase in performance (approximately 5-6% for both tests) after training for both groups but failed to show any time-of-day effect on either performance or training benefit. These findings could be linked to the stabilization of performances throughout the day because of the passive warm-up effect of the environment. In summary, our data showed that anaerobic muscle power production could be performed at any time of day with the same benefit.
In other words, it seems that time of day makes no significant difference to results on a test.
THe authors provide a really nice review of about half a dozen key studies that have looked at time of day and training effect. So why didn't that happen here? Here's what the authors' postulate: weather, light, location. External rather than internal factors.
In our study, the lack of difference between morning and evening training could be explained in part by the moderately warm and humid environmental conditions, in which the natural light remains similar from 6:00 to 18:00 hours. Previous studies conducted in our laboratory in a moderately warm environment failed to show any daytime variations in anaerobic performance (31,32). Moreover, this particular tropical environment changes little over the entire year, with few variations in temperature. The passive warm-up effect of this environment has been suggested to blunt the passive warm-up effect of time of day (32). This may thus lead to specific physiologic adaptations to exercise (3) and certainly influences the circadian regulation of some neurohormonal metabolisms. It might have acted as a stabilizer, and the results of the good intraclass correlations for the CMJ as well as the good to very good test-retest correlations for all jumps support this point. Indeed, previous studies conducted in the same environment showed a stability in performance throughout the day, and the training benefit thus appears as strong at any time of day.This is an important observation because, up to now, such stability has only been shown for short-term acute but not chronic exercise. Moreover, it is particularly interesting when improved maximal muscle power performance is sought because training should be carried out at the time of day when performance is highest and maximal (30).
I love speculation in research papers! something that says we have this finding that's different from other people's and we're trying to figure out A. what the differences are between our set ups and B. why those differences might have an effect. Temperate vs Tropic. Long daylight vs not.So even here to say "time of day doesn't matter" for training has to have a caveat attached - depending on WHERE and what time of year you may be training. And that's a cool result
Hope the above helps offer one more reason that hitting the tropics is a good idea for health and well-being.
Related Posts:
- Athletic Bodies: which one is yours?
- Fitness article index
- nurtition article index
- kettlebell training articles
Zhang, X., Dube, T., & Esser, K. (2009). Working around the clock: circadian rhythms and skeletal muscle Journal of Applied Physiology, 107 (5), 1647-1654 DOI: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00725.2009Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Blonc S, Perrot S, Racinais S, Aussepe S, & Hue O (2010). Effects of 5 weeks of training at the same time of day on the diurnal variations of maximal muscle power performance. Journal of strength and conditioning research / National Strength & Conditioning Association, 24 (1), 23-9 PMID: 19966592
PDF
Sunday, January 10, 2010
So you think you're tough enough? Women's 24kg snatch for 120reps
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So i'm gamely preparing for the new RKC five minute snatch test of 100 reps in five minutes with (for women) a 16kg kettlebell. And then Coach Hauer pointed out this performance of Russian Kseniya Dedyukhina who's 2kg lighter than me doing 120 reps with a 24kg in 10mins, one hand switch.
The fun thing is to watch when all the other competitors leave the floor.
So while 120 with a 24 is not a casual affair for gals - yet - it speaks volumes towards our capacity for strength. I'm inspired.
Related Links
The fun thing is to watch when all the other competitors leave the floor.
So while 120 with a 24 is not a casual affair for gals - yet - it speaks volumes towards our capacity for strength. I'm inspired.
Related Links
- great range of motion in the KB longcycle
- b2d fitness articles
- b2d nutrition articles
- b2d kettlebell articles
Range of Motion demonstration: KB Long Cycle and Yut of Today
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Part of the impetus of z-health mobility work is to get better Range of Motion (ROM) - and better control of it. We're often told this ROM is something we lose as we age, get sedinary and that kids have it in spades. Note a wee child squatting or deadlift'ing to pick something up. Well here's a somewhat older than typical example of form and function. Coach Randy Hauer says the person is coached by Chris Wells:
Great examples here of thoracic mobility, shoulder range of motion, good hip flexibility in particular. These can be helped not by stretching, but mobility work. R-phase Z-health drills like ankle tilts, toe pulls, hip circles. Then thoracic glides back and forth and side to side and some shoulder cam shafts. Combining these in sport-specific movement positions, as in I-phase, also sweet sweet sweet.
Related Links
Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Great examples here of thoracic mobility, shoulder range of motion, good hip flexibility in particular. These can be helped not by stretching, but mobility work. R-phase Z-health drills like ankle tilts, toe pulls, hip circles. Then thoracic glides back and forth and side to side and some shoulder cam shafts. Combining these in sport-specific movement positions, as in I-phase, also sweet sweet sweet.
Related Links
Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Creatine, Beta-Alanine and Aerobic Power. Two naf tastes that go Great Together (for stuff like kb & vo2max training)
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Creatine and Beta Alanine are increasingly discussed and used supplements. How might either 
fit into the kind of training program that works both endurance and power, like say kettlebell training? The following is an overview of some work that's looked at creatine, beta-alanine, and the two together for aerobic power.
Creatine (Cr), an amino acid, is perhaps the most researched supplement on the planet. When it first came out the hope was that it would improve endurance. Apparently, It didn't, and looking back, one might say understandably so, since creatine mainly benefits the phosphocreatine (PCr) energy system - that system used mainly by sprints or sudden explosive moves that makes a blast of ATP (our energy fuel) available for work, fast.
It takes about 10 - 30 seconds to use up the ATP from PCr and about 6 minutes to resynthesize it at rest. The idea of creatine supplementation is that by getting more Cr into the muscle, more PCr will be available and thus more fast ATP is available for a sustained power blast (see for instance Kreider 98 and Volek, Kraemer and crew 97). When tested to see if it would help endurance athletes stay out longer before fatiguing, it just didn't.
Consquently, folks who sprint or folks who do power training in particular, where the focus is on low rep sets but high volume, generally like creatine. It's one of two supplements iron game master Clarence Bass uses. The other being Whey. So it's pretty durn normal and pretty durn popular. For resistance training.
Endurance Redux. Intriguingly, in what seems like a wee corner of the creatine research world, some researchers
have kept studying the aerobi/endurance space. In certain but quite common contexts of effort, creatine may actually help. Here's a quick review.
A good deal of research on endurance looks at time to exhaustion when pumping out maximal load. It's these kinds of tests where creatine didn't make a difference. Creatine or not, people quit pretty much at the same time to exhaustion.
In 2000, researchers set up a test to see if there were different levels of effort - submaximal loads (like VO2Max training) - creatine may make a difference to anything like maximal oxygen level for load and time to exhaustion.
Vo2Max Anyone? What they found, after just a week of supplementation - no special training - at the usual loading phase of 20g Cr a day for a week was that the Vo2 used for amount of effort dropped (see Fig 1 above). That's great. Now that's only a test of 15 mins of effort, but it's a graded effort to exhaustion. As the authors state,
Heart & Power The authors hypothesize that Cr may impact VT due to the presence of greater PCr in the muscle This means the muscles can use that PCr as an energy source a wee bit longer, and that it MAY also be using H+ better (lactate buffering, keeping the Ph balance steady, so delaying fatiuge). Maybe. Now that sounds like Cr. is good for endurance after all?
In 2005, researchers looked at creatine on aerobic power as well as - way cool - what it does to the heart. Their concern was that if creatine brings water into the muscle (that's a not bad thing), what if it did this to the heart? Turns out, from their study that at least 4 weeks of sup'ing with Cr doesn't do anything negative. Groovy. They also found great lean mass improvements without fat mass improvements, though they didn't know what the mechanism for this was.
But what about endurance? Well, as of days of old, nothing again in terms of maximal effort in time to exhaustion. Indeed, they found, unlike the 2000 study, that there was no real significant difference in time to exhaustion between Cr & placebo groups, but once again, submaximal loads showed lower heart rates/more work.
The authors noted additionally beyond the 2000 study, that there was a "significant 3.7% decrease in HRmax following Cr supplementation." They couldn't entirely figure out what creatine was doing that resulted in the lower HRMax, since they saw no changes in the heart with the creatine. They speculate the effect may be due to plasma changes or Doppler flow changes.
Creatine and Beta-Alanine Combo for Endurance? More recently (2006) in the journal Amino Acids, researchers looked at these same measures but investigated creatine & beta-alanine individually and Cr and BA in combination. Like Reece's peanut butter cups, ya got two great tastes that go great together, at least this seems to be indicative.
On the plus side, the same kinds of results for the VT are again seen, and the 2000 hypothesis is again asserted as to why this particular factor is so effected:
Here's an interesting aside on how beta-alanine works from these papers' authors. It's the whole background section of the paper, but it's worth it. They say it so well and this shows why BA may be the next Cr:
That is one of the clearest rationales for a study i've read. The authors ought to get a prize for that related work section. But just to bring it all home, BA sure seems wonderful. Imagine doing Viking Warrior Conditioning on BA:
So for those of us doing power/endurance strength work like the Long Cycle, or Viking Warrior Conditioning, Cr+BA seems well worth exploring. That said, a key point may be to remember that while Cr. can kick in in 7 days and have an effect, it takes BA about 3+ weeks.
If you're thinking of giving either of these supplements a go, brand doesn't matter. Just look for certified GMP (cGMP) - see this overview on supplements for why. On Creatine, also, their are a bunch of types. Creatine Monohydrate is the one that gets studied and is the best. Creapure is a particular Creatine Monohydrate that's micronized for easy mixing that is 99% pure - look for a brand that's re-packaged that and you're doing great.
Best with your training.
Related Posts
Citations
Creatine and Beta Alanine are increasingly discussed and used supplements. How might either fit into the kind of training program that works both endurance and power, like say kettlebell training? The following is an overview of some work that's looked at creatine, beta-alanine, and the two together for aerobic power.Creatine (Cr), an amino acid, is perhaps the most researched supplement on the planet. When it first came out the hope was that it would improve endurance. Apparently, It didn't, and looking back, one might say understandably so, since creatine mainly benefits the phosphocreatine (PCr) energy system - that system used mainly by sprints or sudden explosive moves that makes a blast of ATP (our energy fuel) available for work, fast.
It takes about 10 - 30 seconds to use up the ATP from PCr and about 6 minutes to resynthesize it at rest. The idea of creatine supplementation is that by getting more Cr into the muscle, more PCr will be available and thus more fast ATP is available for a sustained power blast (see for instance Kreider 98 and Volek, Kraemer and crew 97). When tested to see if it would help endurance athletes stay out longer before fatiguing, it just didn't.
Consquently, folks who sprint or folks who do power training in particular, where the focus is on low rep sets but high volume, generally like creatine. It's one of two supplements iron game master Clarence Bass uses. The other being Whey. So it's pretty durn normal and pretty durn popular. For resistance training.
Endurance Redux. Intriguingly, in what seems like a wee corner of the creatine research world, some researchers
have kept studying the aerobi/endurance space. In certain but quite common contexts of effort, creatine may actually help. Here's a quick review.A good deal of research on endurance looks at time to exhaustion when pumping out maximal load. It's these kinds of tests where creatine didn't make a difference. Creatine or not, people quit pretty much at the same time to exhaustion.
In 2000, researchers set up a test to see if there were different levels of effort - submaximal loads (like VO2Max training) - creatine may make a difference to anything like maximal oxygen level for load and time to exhaustion.
Vo2Max Anyone? What they found, after just a week of supplementation - no special training - at the usual loading phase of 20g Cr a day for a week was that the Vo2 used for amount of effort dropped (see Fig 1 above). That's great. Now that's only a test of 15 mins of effort, but it's a graded effort to exhaustion. As the authors state,
In summary, creatine loading alters the initial mtabolic responses seen during a short-stage GXT. These alteration are most significant at the early stages of the GXT and are mnifested by a lower sub-maimal Vo2 and heart rate at the end of each GXT stage.The creatine group also lasted about 70s longer, and had a significant improvement in T(vent) or Ventilatory Threshold (VT). AKA Lactate Threshold (a concept familiar to folks doing Viking Warrior Conditioning (VWC) and thinking VO2Max thoughts). VO2max training, remember, isn't sprint training or a maximal effort. It's submaximal, designed to push the edge of the aerobic envelop - to get greater oxidative capacity before flipping over to the anaerobic/glycolytic energy system. Cr sounds pretty good.
Heart & Power The authors hypothesize that Cr may impact VT due to the presence of greater PCr in the muscle This means the muscles can use that PCr as an energy source a wee bit longer, and that it MAY also be using H+ better (lactate buffering, keeping the Ph balance steady, so delaying fatiuge). Maybe. Now that sounds like Cr. is good for endurance after all?
In 2005, researchers looked at creatine on aerobic power as well as - way cool - what it does to the heart. Their concern was that if creatine brings water into the muscle (that's a not bad thing), what if it did this to the heart? Turns out, from their study that at least 4 weeks of sup'ing with Cr doesn't do anything negative. Groovy. They also found great lean mass improvements without fat mass improvements, though they didn't know what the mechanism for this was.
But what about endurance? Well, as of days of old, nothing again in terms of maximal effort in time to exhaustion. Indeed, they found, unlike the 2000 study, that there was no real significant difference in time to exhaustion between Cr & placebo groups, but once again, submaximal loads showed lower heart rates/more work.
The authors noted additionally beyond the 2000 study, that there was a "significant 3.7% decrease in HRmax following Cr supplementation." They couldn't entirely figure out what creatine was doing that resulted in the lower HRMax, since they saw no changes in the heart with the creatine. They speculate the effect may be due to plasma changes or Doppler flow changes.
Creatine and Beta-Alanine Combo for Endurance? More recently (2006) in the journal Amino Acids, researchers looked at these same measures but investigated creatine & beta-alanine individually and Cr and BA in combination. Like Reece's peanut butter cups, ya got two great tastes that go great together, at least this seems to be indicative.
The most noteworthy finding of this study was the significant increase in five of eight indices of cardiorespiratory endurance with CrBA supplementation. Individually, supplementation with Cr showed improvements in power output at VT and TTE, while b-Ala only demonstrated an improvement in power output at LT. A significant improvement in TTE was seen in the placebo group, but this was accompanied by decreases in power output and percent _V VO2peak at LT. The improvement in TTE seen in the placebo group appears to have been driven by relatively large increases in four of the subjects. These individuals demonstrated increases in TTE of 40, 45, 62, and 63 sec compared with a non-significant decrease of 15.4+/- 7.2 sec in the remainder of the group. However, any conclusions based on these findings must be tempered by the fact that there were no significant between-group effects.What about HIIT, Cr and Endurance? Now the interesting bit is where the supplement consideration falls apart again, and researchers' interests turn to HIIT and creatine in 2009. The idea would be that surely here, we'd get to an endurance breakthrough with creatine. But no. once again, doing the time to exhausion test, total work done is the same in both groups.
Regardless, the present data at least suggest that supplementation with CrBA may enhance the potential for submaximal endurance performance as measured by the lactate and ventilatory thresholds....these data at least suggest that supplementation with CrBA especially may delay the onset of the VT and LT during incremental cycle exercise in men. Future studies should examine muscle carnosine and=or PCr levels along with blood lactate concentration during submaximal fatiguing exercise with and without b-Ala and=or Cr supplementation.
On the plus side, the same kinds of results for the VT are again seen, and the 2000 hypothesis is again asserted as to why this particular factor is so effected:
In conclusion, HIIT is an effective and time-efficient way to improve maximal endurance performance. The addition of Cr improved VT, but did not increase TWD. Therefore, 10 g of Cr per day for five days per week for four weeks does not seem to further augment maximal oxygen consumption, greater than HIIT alone; however, Cr supplementation may improve submaximal exercise performance.What about Beta-Alanine and HIIT? Same year, same journal, and pretty much the same HIIT study uses beta-alanine instead of creatine.
A key point? while BA did actually improve TWD - total work done - as well as improving that illusive Time to Exhaustion, it took over three weeks of supplementation of 6g a day.
Results: Significant improvements in VO2peak, VO2TTE, and TWD after three weeks of training were displayed (p <>2peak, VO2TTE, TWD and lean body mass were only significant for the BA group after the second three weeks of training.
Here's an interesting aside on how beta-alanine works from these papers' authors. It's the whole background section of the paper, but it's worth it. They say it so well and this shows why BA may be the next Cr:
This first part represents ideas around fatigue and what's causing it:
High-intensity exercise results in diminished stores of adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP), phosphocreatine (PCr) and glycogenic substrates, and the intracellular accumulation of metabolites (adenosine di-phosphate (ADP), inorganic phosphate (Pi), hydrogen ions (H+) and magnesium (Mg+), each of which has been implicated as a cause of muscle fatigue [1-3]. Excessive formation of H+ results in a decrease in intramuscular pH which may contribute to fatigue in some models of exercise [1,4-6]. Enhancing an individual's ability to buffer protons may delay fatigue by improving the use of energy substrates and maintaining muscular contraction [6-9]. When the time and intensity level of exercise is sufficient, the majority of protons that are produced are buffered by the bicarbonate (HCO3-) buffering system [10,11] in which they are exported from the muscle [12]. Physiological buffering during dynamic exercise is typically controlled by the HCO3- system and is also supported by direct physico-chemical buffering, provided mainly by phosphate, hisitidine residues of peptides and proteins, and the small amount of bicarbonate present in muscle at the start of exercise. However, during short bursts of intense exercise, such as HIIT, physico-chemical buffering will exceed that by HCO3- mediated dynamic buffering, calling on intramuscular stores of phosphates and peptides.
In other words, HIIT pushes the body beyond the muscles' levels of chemicals available for buffering. Here comes why beta-alanine is such a potentially big deal: teh connection to canrosine
Specifically, carnosine (β-alanyl-L-histidine), a cytoplasmic dipeptide, constitutes an important non-bicarbonate physico-chemical buffer. By virtue of a pKa of 6.83 and its high concentration in muscle, carnosine is more effective at sequestering protons than either bicarbonate (pKa 6.37) or inorganic phosphate (pKa 7.2), the other two major physico-chemical buffers over the physiological pH range [7,13]. However, as a result of the greater concentration of carnosine in muscle than bicarbonate in the initial stages of muscle contraction, and inorganic phosphate, its buffering contribution may be quantitatively more important.
This sounds like BA would be a no-brainer since it gets carnosine metabolised. But here's why there's a research question:
Mechanisms for increasing muscle carnosine concentration have been somewhat disputed. While carnosine may be increased in chronically trained athletes, the effects of acute training are less clear. In one study, it has been reported that eight weeks of intensive training may increase intramuscular carnosine content [14]. In contrast, several other studies have shown that intense training, of up to 16 weeks, has been unable to promote a rise in skeletal muscle carnosine levels [6,15-17]. Only when β-alanine supplementation was combined with training did an increase in muscle carnosine occur [16], although the increase (40–60%) was similar to that seen with supplementation alone [18].
While carnosine is synthesized in the muscle from its two constituents, β-alanine and histidine [19], synthesis is limited by the availability of β-alanine [18,20]. β-alanine supplementation alone has been shown to significantly increase the intramuscular carnosine content [6,18]. Elevation of intramuscular carnosine content via β-alanine supplementation alone, has been shown to improve performance [6,14,21-24]. Recently, Hill and colleagues [6] demonstrated a 13% improvement in total work done (TWD) following four weeks of β-alanine supplementation, and an additional 3.2% increase after 10 weeks. Zoeller et al. [24] also reported significant increases in ventilatory threshold (VT) in a sample of untrained men after supplementing with β-alanine (3.2 g·d-1) for 28 days. In agreement, Kim et al. [21] also reported significant increases in VT and time to exhaustion (TTE) in highly trained male cyclists after 12 weeks of β-alanine (4.8 g·d-1) supplementation and endurance training. Furthermore, Stout et al. [22,23] reported a significant delay in neuromuscular fatigue, measured by physical working capacity at the fatigue threshold (PWCFT), in both men and women after 28 days of β-alanine supplementation (3.2 g·d-1 – 6.4 g·d-1).
And here's the kicker
Despite the improvements in VT, TTE, TWD, and PWCFT after supplementation, there were no increases in aerobic power, measured by VO2peak [22-24].
So why test BA with HIIT?
Although HIIT alone does not appear to increase skeletal muscle carnosine content [17], training has been suggested to improve muscle buffering capacity [25-27]. When repeated bouts of high-intensity intervals are interspersed with short rest periods, subsequent trials are initiated at a much lower pH [28]. Training in such a manner subjects the body to an acidic environment, forcing several physiological adaptations. Notably, HIIT has been shown to improve VO2peak and whole body fat oxidation in only two weeks (7 sessions at 90% VO2peak) [29]. Furthermore, over a longer period of time (4–6 weeks), HIIT has been reported to increase high-intensity exercise performance (6–21%), muscle buffering capacity, whole body exercise fat oxidation, and aerobic power (VO2peak) [25-27].
The respective supporting bodies of literature for the use of β-alanine supplementation alone and high-intensity training alone have gained recent popularity. However, to date, no study has combined and evaluated concurrent HIIT with β-alanine supplementation. In theory, we hypothesize that an increase in intramuscular carnosine content, as a result of β-alanine supplementation, may enhance the quality of HIIT by reducing the accumulation of hydrogen ions, leading to greater physiological adaptations. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the effects of chronic (6 weeks) β-alanine supplementation in combination with HIIT on endurance performance measures in recreationally trained individuals.
That is one of the clearest rationales for a study i've read. The authors ought to get a prize for that related work section. But just to bring it all home, BA sure seems wonderful. Imagine doing Viking Warrior Conditioning on BA:
Our findings support the use of HIIT as an effective training stimulus for improving aerobic performance, in as little as three weeks. The use of β-alanine supplementation, in combination with HIIT, appeared to result in greater changes in VO2peak and VO2TTE, during the second three weeks of training, while no significant change occurred in placebo group. In addition, TWD significantly (p < class="entity">β-alanine and Placebo groups, respectively. While more research is needed, the current study suggests that in untrained young men, the use of β-alanine supplementation may enhance the benefits of HIIT and augment endurance performance.From the above, we can begin to see why creatine and beta-alanine are being proposed as the super 1-2 punch (well actually the latest is creatine, beta-alanine and citruline malate) for strength in resistance and endurance training. It's a hypothesis but the bet is that combining both Cr shown to be good for certain parts of HIIT and BA shown to be good for quite a few, might just be double plus good?
So for those of us doing power/endurance strength work like the Long Cycle, or Viking Warrior Conditioning, Cr+BA seems well worth exploring. That said, a key point may be to remember that while Cr. can kick in in 7 days and have an effect, it takes BA about 3+ weeks.
If you're thinking of giving either of these supplements a go, brand doesn't matter. Just look for certified GMP (cGMP) - see this overview on supplements for why. On Creatine, also, their are a bunch of types. Creatine Monohydrate is the one that gets studied and is the best. Creapure is a particular Creatine Monohydrate that's micronized for easy mixing that is 99% pure - look for a brand that's re-packaged that and you're doing great.
Best with your training.
Related Posts
- Supplement Curmudgeon: Does that DO anything for you?
- Supplement Quality: is what's on the label really in the Tin?
- Nutrient timing MAY make a difference.
- Dealing with a wretched cold
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Citations
Graef, J., Smith, A., Kendall, K., Fukuda, D., Moon, J., Beck, T., Cramer, J., & Stout, J. (2009). The effects of four weeks of creatine supplementation and high-intensity interval training on cardiorespiratory fitness: a randomized controlled trial Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 6 (1) DOI: 10.1186/1550-2783-6-18Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Zoeller, R., Stout, J., O’Kroy, J., Torok, D., & Mielke, M. (2006). Effects of 28 days of beta-alanine and creatine monohydrate supplementation on aerobic power, ventilatory and lactate thresholds, and time to exhaustion Amino Acids, 33 (3), 505-510 DOI: 10.1007/s00726-006-0399-6
Murphy AJ, Watsford ML, Coutts AJ, & Richards DA (2005). Effects of creatine supplementation on aerobic power and cardiovascular structure and function. Journal of science and medicine in sport / Sports Medicine Australia, 8 (3), 305-13 PMID: 16248471
Nelson, A., Day, R., Glickman-Weiss, E., Hegsted, M., Kokkonen, J., & Sampson, B. (2000). Creatine supplementation alters the response to a graded cycle ergometer test European Journal of Applied Physiology, 83 (1), 89-94 DOI: 10.1007/s004210000244
VOLEK, J. (1997). Creatine Supplementation Enhances Muscular Performance During High-Intensity Resistance Exercise Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 97 (7), 765-770 DOI: 10.1016/S0002-8223(97)00189-2
Friday, January 8, 2010
When to Use Calorie Counting (or Heart Rate Monitors)
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This is the first of a two post piece on Calorie Counting and 
Heart Rate monitoring. Oh you know, there's such debate about whether calorie counting or heart rate monitoring is meaningful or not, it seems worthwhile taking a look at the roles of each.
The Counter Arguments to Measuring. With calorie counting the comments usually suggest - if you just eat good food who needs to count calories? Or if you just get your portion control happening, you don't need to count calories. Or as Chris at condioning research pointed to recently - reports of calories, at least at fast food joints - aren't even accurate. Ya don't say. I'm shocked. shocked that calories are inaccurately reported at fast food establishments. But even food packaging can be off. Heck if ya can't trust giant food companies who can ya trust. Supplement companies? We'll see this is not a show stopper for using Calorie counting.
With the heart rate monitor the arguments are similar: there's a delay in the heart rate monitor - a slight lag, so while you're going hell for leather (where does that expression originate) your monitor is actually lower than what you really are at (by about 2-3 bpm). And heck, what really matters is perceived exertion anyway. Learn how your body feels and go with that.
And i agree with all the above sentiments. Except when they don't work.
I agree, in terms of diet that it's really critical to get with good eating habits and to learn about food to know what good food is. For instance it may be a surprise that an avacado is remarkably high in fiber. But it's also really full of fat. Knowing both these things helps make some healthy choices.
Likewise it's important to learn about how one's body feels especially for understanding whether one is about to push too hard or whether one has taken enough recovery to succeed with the next step, or to get whether one is really pushing hard enough. Bravo. Important stuff.
But how do you know what's really real for you?
Well, cave people didn't have heart rate monitors and they did ok, one might argue. They were in way better shape than us, one might suggest. Yes, sure, until picked off by disease or animal or next of kin. And likewise, until the last 50 or 60 years, we didn't really have to worry about getting all fat either. Calorie counting wasn't needed because, for most folks, calories were not in such amazing abundance - that's one - and fast crap food hadn't been invented. Our circumstances have changed, eh?
And as said, it's great to want to learn about oneself and how one's own body responds to food or effort. But sometimes a great PART of that learning is to get an external reality check.
SO i'd like to offer a couple points where i find both calorie counting and heart rate monitoring to be helpful. In this piece, we'll look at a calorie counting strategy. In the next, we'll look at another for heart rate monitors.
Part 1. When Calorie Counting Helps:
When the Scale Doesn't Want to Move
Executive Summary.
Since the following article has become way longer in detail than anticipated, here's the executive summary. Details unpacking each point below:
Details on each of these points below
I've written not infrequently about precision nutrition and why i think it's helpful for achieving one's body comp goals. Part of the starting point of PN is just to forget about calories and just get practice in order - get some good nutrition habits down about protein and greens and fats - get those right for a month of what's known as 90% daily compliance with those habits. That's a framework. But then ya know what? the individualization guide to be used after that to tune the program for each person does indeed talk about both calories and macronutrient ratios. And why not? If the goal is to cut fat one has to be in caloric deficit. Well how do you know if you are?
As an example, when i was getting my own nutrition house in order, and following the right habits, i wasn't losing weight. I was doing the "just eat clean" thing to a T, and one of the things i loved about PN was the de-emphasis of calorie counting. And then on the forum uk trainer Alex Gold suggested that when he'd stalled out, he did some food logging for a few weeks and things fell into place. I took his advice - reluctantly - got going with fitday and voila, the weight loss started to kick in. What happened?
Calorie Counting as Trend rather than Absolute Value. The biggest benefit of calorie counting tools like fitday, in my experience, is that they offer a consistent set of measures that can be used to model trends.
What i mean by consistent values is that we get all sorts of numbers from all sorts of places about what *should* work for us. For instance, there are Base Metabolic Rates calculated on age, weight, gender and then there's an activity level and that tells you how many calories you supposedly burn in a day just from living your life.
That also means that that is the number of calories you could eat in a day and not lose or gain weight. That's maintenance.
By that logic, you should be able to plug foods into fitday or other calorie counting software and eat to that number and the next day not gain weight. Or lose it. Ok, let's be fair and say over the period of a week.
Does that calculated number for Maintenance Meet the Reality? For myself, according to these calculations i should be able to get away with eating about 300 more calories to maintain my weight than what has turned out to be the case. What's also very useful is that i can track macronutrient ratios - i can see if it makes a difference to how i feel or to my progress to look at the usual ratios of carbs, fats, protein.
By tracking my intake for say two weeks, and watching the scale, i find my own truth relative to that scale/software.
Trends rather than absolutes. Now while the calories add up in fitday to about 300 less than the BMR+Activity level calculation does, of course it might just be that the caloric amounts assigned to the foods i'm eating are not right, or the amounts i'm using are not exact. In other words, the calculation might be fine and my measures or reported calories or whatever are where the error is. Or maybe it's a combination.
But that doesn't matter.
What matters is consistency, and i'm consistent. and so is the error in the system. I consistently measure the same way, and generally eat the same kinds of food. Thus, what i get at the end of the two weeks of eating pretty much the same, at the same levels of input, are trends. So whatever the Absolute Reality is of the Platonic Calorie for this food, i know that when in this software i'm at this putative caloric level, i'm gonna maintain. And likewise if i drop it down, i'm gonna lose.
In other words, i'm calibrating against the system. It's sorta like zeroing a scale if you want to measure stuff in a bowl. You put the bowl on the scale first, zero the scale so that the weight of the bowl is removed from the readout, and then put the stuff in the bowl and remeasure.
Taking time to Set the Level.
The end result is that i zero myself against the system, and then i'm really good to go. It's really important - at least i've found this so for myself - to allow myself this time just to get the data, to do the level setting as it were. And then, bam, i'm wired. It's almost freaky how easy it becomes ONCE that level is dialed in.
Plugging In to Related Feedback Measures. Calorie counting of course is not the goal. The scale is. Well ok, i'll reframe that. Usually it's body fat % and girth. That's then using one measure (calories) against three others: weight on the scale, body fat % and girth (hips, waist, arms, neck, thigh, chest, etc).
Why these other measures are important to me is that if i'm trying to cut fat, i don't really want to lose lean mass or muscle particularly. Just the fat, please. If i watch only the scale, all i get is absolute weight loss. I don't know if that loss is fat or just water or ick, bone mass and muscle tissue. By using other measures i calibrate the success of knowing how to eat to get my weight down with other measures to make sure that that weight loss is associated wtih fat cutting more than anything else.
The Value of Learning What's Normal. In athletic training, a staple of practice is a log of one's workouts. Some folks consider the log as a motivation tool, to see how progress is being made. But another role of the log it seems to me, is to understand simply what's normal? That can't be understood with just a record of sets and reps. That would need to be coordinated with what else is going on in one's world - has work changed? eating changed? some other stressor changed? It's rather difficult to know that without some history to show what's normal.
For example, i know that when i'm doing X kind of training, to feel energized i just can't do a Y workout the next day. At best i can do Z and then i'm ready to do X again. Now if i were to find myself too pooped even for Z consistently for a couple weeks, i'd be going Hmm. And wanting to see what's changing? Maybe i need to try putting that recovery drink back in for instance, or hit the sack sooner.
Without some kind of record of muliple factors, i'm just hacking around, guessing. With logs, i'm still guessing, but the time it takes to narrow something down is usually less. And it seems when i keep better logs the variations happen less. This effect might be down to Attention. The act of recording something puts it in our Attention, and by making something deliberate, we become more aware of it.
Measurement Support for the Big Picture. If you're not familiar with how to measure these other components - fat especially - this again is something that makes the precision nutrition package a worthwhile investment. It has a fabulous measurement guide as part of it.
Of course you can poke around the web to find stuff, but it's nice to have the whole shebang in one place with accurate info at each page, as well as examples for men and women. It goes through how to track a whole fleet of related measures for progress.
When to let go of the Rigerous Tracking: When the practice Registers. Somehow we've moved from calorie counting to help get weight loss (or mass gain) happening, up to the forty thousand foot level ofthe Big Picture - well being. Let's get back to calorie counting, then, and when we can stop - especially after i've just said how useful keeping logs can be.
Once i get into understanding my current caloric intake (as reflected in the system i'm using) where i've got the level that handles my workouts and nutrition and has me on a reasonalbe (.5 to 1lb a week loss) fat cutting pace and most especially, that reflects a consistent trend, i keep tracking that for about two weeks to make sure that i get some practice with those asssumptions. That way, i can validate if i'm right. Which is pretty easy to see: those next two weeks the trend heads DOWN. Happy happy joy joy. Once that's established, i'm usually pretty comfy with knowing what portion sizes are in the zone and what i have to be careful with (like dipping bread into olive oil and balsamic. dam).
Once i' drop the rigerous calorie counting, i keep up with the other body comp measures of girth and calipers, and that on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. That regular recorded feedback helps me tune my practice and adds a little more awareness and attention without being a burden. IF something goes unexpectedly out of line in that period, i have these other strategies to dip back into, like calorie counting for a week just to see what's REALLY going on.
Relative to Other Measures
And that's the main thing here: calorie counting can be a reality check. We may be happy that we're eating clean, but if we're gaining weight when we want to maintain or drop fat, and our body comp measures show that that gain is not just muscle, then it's pretty hard to deny there's an issue.
Granted, there are other approaches to check out what's going on. One could simply reduce the overall portion size at each meal for two weeks and see if that sorts out the issue. Absolutely. But sometimes we may *feel* like we're doing that and see no shift, and so that extra bit of information and rigour of a short term stint with calorie logging can be a way to make a breakthrough. And then let go and let those good nutrition habits take over.
Infrequent but Useful. Personally, i haven't used calorie counting for two years. I've recenty used it again to do exactly this reality check against my goal to put on some muscle mass and make sure i'm feeding the muscles rather than the fat. It's been just the feedback i've needed to tune what i'm doing.
If you want to try Calorie Counting. Here are some steps i've found useful in getting a reality check to tune my nutrition practice for my body comp goals.
A Note about Intermittent Fasting & Calorie Counting
Some folks are drawn to Brad Pilon's Eat Stop Eat for intermittent fasting. For Pilon, he suggests that just not eating once a week - a bit more if you want to lose weight - is a great way to lose weight because you just eat normally the other days of the week. THis approach, i've found, takes care of weight loss about as well as "just eat clean" or "just reduce the portion sizes for a couple weeks." While these strategies can be very successful, and do work in principle, personally, i find that if i'm starting into what i want to be a body comp change period, there's practical benefit to finding out what Normal is. For me, one sure way to do that is calorie counting for a couple weeks. Then, you bet, i have a trend to work against, a personally validated normal, and then if IF is what i want to do, i have a way of validating that, too.
To Count or not to Count.
Your mileage may vary. You may be very successful at losing weight or gaining mass when you want without these kinds of additional feedback measures. If you are, you likely haven't read down to here and bailed out much earlier. Good for you.
This post is really for those of us who do find having these extra measures helpful, and if so, how they might be used for success.
Big Take Aways for Calorie Counting:
At least in my experience and with some of the folks whom i coach:
Hope this is helpful, and all the best for your body comp goals. Heart Rate montoring next.
Related Posts
Heart Rate monitoring. Oh you know, there's such debate about whether calorie counting or heart rate monitoring is meaningful or not, it seems worthwhile taking a look at the roles of each.The Counter Arguments to Measuring. With calorie counting the comments usually suggest - if you just eat good food who needs to count calories? Or if you just get your portion control happening, you don't need to count calories. Or as Chris at condioning research pointed to recently - reports of calories, at least at fast food joints - aren't even accurate. Ya don't say. I'm shocked. shocked that calories are inaccurately reported at fast food establishments. But even food packaging can be off. Heck if ya can't trust giant food companies who can ya trust. Supplement companies? We'll see this is not a show stopper for using Calorie counting.
With the heart rate monitor the arguments are similar: there's a delay in the heart rate monitor - a slight lag, so while you're going hell for leather (where does that expression originate) your monitor is actually lower than what you really are at (by about 2-3 bpm). And heck, what really matters is perceived exertion anyway. Learn how your body feels and go with that.
And i agree with all the above sentiments. Except when they don't work.
I agree, in terms of diet that it's really critical to get with good eating habits and to learn about food to know what good food is. For instance it may be a surprise that an avacado is remarkably high in fiber. But it's also really full of fat. Knowing both these things helps make some healthy choices.
Likewise it's important to learn about how one's body feels especially for understanding whether one is about to push too hard or whether one has taken enough recovery to succeed with the next step, or to get whether one is really pushing hard enough. Bravo. Important stuff.
But how do you know what's really real for you?
Well, cave people didn't have heart rate monitors and they did ok, one might argue. They were in way better shape than us, one might suggest. Yes, sure, until picked off by disease or animal or next of kin. And likewise, until the last 50 or 60 years, we didn't really have to worry about getting all fat either. Calorie counting wasn't needed because, for most folks, calories were not in such amazing abundance - that's one - and fast crap food hadn't been invented. Our circumstances have changed, eh?
And as said, it's great to want to learn about oneself and how one's own body responds to food or effort. But sometimes a great PART of that learning is to get an external reality check.
SO i'd like to offer a couple points where i find both calorie counting and heart rate monitoring to be helpful. In this piece, we'll look at a calorie counting strategy. In the next, we'll look at another for heart rate monitors.
Part 1. When Calorie Counting Helps:
When the Scale Doesn't Want to Move
Executive Summary.
Since the following article has become way longer in detail than anticipated, here's the executive summary. Details unpacking each point below:
- reality check sometimes a reality check on what we think we're doing and actually doing is a good idea if our progress feels like it's plateau'd or is going in a direction we don't want
- "reality" however is relative it seems to the measures we use
- calorie counting can be a good way to get an additional measure to unpack why the scale isn't moving the way we want.
- if we're going to use that, though, we need to base line what it's calculations say something is and what our reality is
- be prepared to take about two weeks to figure out how the calorie counting instrument measures up against the scale.
- once that's done, simply start to reduce from that level to go down or add to go up (the actual numbers become incidental; it's a trend)
- as this gets comfortable, be aware of macro nutrient ratios
- blend with other measures like girth and bodyfat% to see that whatever's happening is pro lean body mass.
- be consistent as much as possible in keeping up the records to get a rich picture for future ref of what does what to one's body
- it's something that need be done only for a period once in awhile if something changes - like a new workout or eating regimen happens
Details on each of these points below
I've written not infrequently about precision nutrition and why i think it's helpful for achieving one's body comp goals. Part of the starting point of PN is just to forget about calories and just get practice in order - get some good nutrition habits down about protein and greens and fats - get those right for a month of what's known as 90% daily compliance with those habits. That's a framework. But then ya know what? the individualization guide to be used after that to tune the program for each person does indeed talk about both calories and macronutrient ratios. And why not? If the goal is to cut fat one has to be in caloric deficit. Well how do you know if you are?
As an example, when i was getting my own nutrition house in order, and following the right habits, i wasn't losing weight. I was doing the "just eat clean" thing to a T, and one of the things i loved about PN was the de-emphasis of calorie counting. And then on the forum uk trainer Alex Gold suggested that when he'd stalled out, he did some food logging for a few weeks and things fell into place. I took his advice - reluctantly - got going with fitday and voila, the weight loss started to kick in. What happened?
Calorie Counting as Trend rather than Absolute Value. The biggest benefit of calorie counting tools like fitday, in my experience, is that they offer a consistent set of measures that can be used to model trends.
What i mean by consistent values is that we get all sorts of numbers from all sorts of places about what *should* work for us. For instance, there are Base Metabolic Rates calculated on age, weight, gender and then there's an activity level and that tells you how many calories you supposedly burn in a day just from living your life.
That also means that that is the number of calories you could eat in a day and not lose or gain weight. That's maintenance.
By that logic, you should be able to plug foods into fitday or other calorie counting software and eat to that number and the next day not gain weight. Or lose it. Ok, let's be fair and say over the period of a week.
Does that calculated number for Maintenance Meet the Reality? For myself, according to these calculations i should be able to get away with eating about 300 more calories to maintain my weight than what has turned out to be the case. What's also very useful is that i can track macronutrient ratios - i can see if it makes a difference to how i feel or to my progress to look at the usual ratios of carbs, fats, protein.
By tracking my intake for say two weeks, and watching the scale, i find my own truth relative to that scale/software.
Trends rather than absolutes. Now while the calories add up in fitday to about 300 less than the BMR+Activity level calculation does, of course it might just be that the caloric amounts assigned to the foods i'm eating are not right, or the amounts i'm using are not exact. In other words, the calculation might be fine and my measures or reported calories or whatever are where the error is. Or maybe it's a combination.
But that doesn't matter.
What matters is consistency, and i'm consistent. and so is the error in the system. I consistently measure the same way, and generally eat the same kinds of food. Thus, what i get at the end of the two weeks of eating pretty much the same, at the same levels of input, are trends. So whatever the Absolute Reality is of the Platonic Calorie for this food, i know that when in this software i'm at this putative caloric level, i'm gonna maintain. And likewise if i drop it down, i'm gonna lose.
In other words, i'm calibrating against the system. It's sorta like zeroing a scale if you want to measure stuff in a bowl. You put the bowl on the scale first, zero the scale so that the weight of the bowl is removed from the readout, and then put the stuff in the bowl and remeasure.
Taking time to Set the Level.
If you take nothing else from this post, take this: give yourself time to set the level of whatever system your using. Once you get that, your success will accelerate; until you get that, you may flounder in a sea of frustration.Generally speaking it takes me anyway about two weeks to get the level set if it's been awhile from using calorie counting. I need to relearn what the level is with my current work outs and life practices.
The end result is that i zero myself against the system, and then i'm really good to go. It's really important - at least i've found this so for myself - to allow myself this time just to get the data, to do the level setting as it were. And then, bam, i'm wired. It's almost freaky how easy it becomes ONCE that level is dialed in.
Plugging In to Related Feedback Measures. Calorie counting of course is not the goal. The scale is. Well ok, i'll reframe that. Usually it's body fat % and girth. That's then using one measure (calories) against three others: weight on the scale, body fat % and girth (hips, waist, arms, neck, thigh, chest, etc).
Why these other measures are important to me is that if i'm trying to cut fat, i don't really want to lose lean mass or muscle particularly. Just the fat, please. If i watch only the scale, all i get is absolute weight loss. I don't know if that loss is fat or just water or ick, bone mass and muscle tissue. By using other measures i calibrate the success of knowing how to eat to get my weight down with other measures to make sure that that weight loss is associated wtih fat cutting more than anything else.
Aside Lean Mass Gains while Cutting Fat And for folks who think that fat cutting inevitably leads to muscle loss too, especially in experienced athletes, here's a recent study that was just brought to my attention:Measuring Is Not Single Factor. So calorie counting is not done just for the heck of it. It's part of a creating a picture of one's practice. We have to be able to connect it with our other measures - and they relate to each other too. For instance, if i'm eating so that i'm losing a lot of weight, but have no energy to do my workouts, or i stop making progress on my lifts or times, or am feeling really nasty and acting the same way, perhaps there's something going on. Likewise if my weight is going down, but my bodyfat measures aren't showing a change on the fat side, do i need to rethink my strategy? Or if my sleep seems to have gone out the window or i feel tired - what's the relationship?Paper was presented at the American College of Sports Medicine (2009).It's interseting to note that the best results in actual lean mass gain were from people who did the smaller caloric restriction. The weight loss may be a bit slower, but the other gains certainly are worth considering in terms of considering a slower cut.
Is It Possible To Maintain Lean Body Mass and Performance during Energy-restriction in Elite Athletes?
Ina Garthe1, Truls Raastad1, Per Egil Refsnes2, Jorunn Sundgot-Borgen1. 1The Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Oslo, Norway. 2The Norwegian Olympic Sports Centre, Oslo, Norway.
Many athletes in sports that emphasize low weight and leanness attempt to reduce their weight in order to enhance competitive performance. The strategy recommended is a gradual weight-loss due to moderate energy restriction promoting a weekly weight-loss of 0.5-1 kg. However, a decrease in body mass due to energy restriction can lead to loss of lean body mass (LBM) and thereby impair performance.
Purpose: To compare the loss of fat mass, LBM and performance in two different weight-loss interventions promoting loss of 0.7% versus 1.4% of body weight per week in elite athletes.
Methods: 30 male and female elite athletes where randomized into two groups, “slow reduction” (SR, n=14, 23.5±3.3 y, 72.2±12.2 kg) and “fast reduction” (FR, n=16, 22.3±4.9 y, 72.2±11.2kg). All athletes followed a 6-12 week energy restriction period depending on the intervention and desired weight loss. Diets were recorded by 4-day weighed food records and each athlete followed an individualized diet plan promoting weekly body weight-loss of 0.7% or 1.4%. All athletes continued training their sport as usual (14.6±3.5h per week), and in addition all included four resistance-training sessions per week to emphasize muscle hypertrophy. Measurementsdonepre and post intervention were: body weight (BW), dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA), 1 RM tests (squat and bench press) and vertical jumping test.
Results: There were no significant differences between groups in any of the measurements pre intervention. BW was reduced with 5.6±3.0% in SR-group (p<0.001) p="0.4)." p="0.1)" p="0.001)" p="0.05)">
Conclusion: Despite a weight-loss of ~5% of body mass it is possible to increase LBM and performance during a gradual weight-loss in normal-weight athletes. The magnitude of weekly weight-loss seems to be one of the factors that influence loss of fat mass versus LBM and performance.
The Value of Learning What's Normal. In athletic training, a staple of practice is a log of one's workouts. Some folks consider the log as a motivation tool, to see how progress is being made. But another role of the log it seems to me, is to understand simply what's normal? That can't be understood with just a record of sets and reps. That would need to be coordinated with what else is going on in one's world - has work changed? eating changed? some other stressor changed? It's rather difficult to know that without some history to show what's normal.
For example, i know that when i'm doing X kind of training, to feel energized i just can't do a Y workout the next day. At best i can do Z and then i'm ready to do X again. Now if i were to find myself too pooped even for Z consistently for a couple weeks, i'd be going Hmm. And wanting to see what's changing? Maybe i need to try putting that recovery drink back in for instance, or hit the sack sooner.
Without some kind of record of muliple factors, i'm just hacking around, guessing. With logs, i'm still guessing, but the time it takes to narrow something down is usually less. And it seems when i keep better logs the variations happen less. This effect might be down to Attention. The act of recording something puts it in our Attention, and by making something deliberate, we become more aware of it.
Measurement Support for the Big Picture. If you're not familiar with how to measure these other components - fat especially - this again is something that makes the precision nutrition package a worthwhile investment. It has a fabulous measurement guide as part of it.
Of course you can poke around the web to find stuff, but it's nice to have the whole shebang in one place with accurate info at each page, as well as examples for men and women. It goes through how to track a whole fleet of related measures for progress.
- body weight measuring and calibrating a decent scale,
- doing body fat measures with callipers, where the sites are for measuring, the equations to use,
- what girth measures are,
- what strength and performance measures are,
- recovery measures (really critical),
- what blood measures are,
- how to take photographs
When to let go of the Rigerous Tracking: When the practice Registers. Somehow we've moved from calorie counting to help get weight loss (or mass gain) happening, up to the forty thousand foot level ofthe Big Picture - well being. Let's get back to calorie counting, then, and when we can stop - especially after i've just said how useful keeping logs can be.
Once i get into understanding my current caloric intake (as reflected in the system i'm using) where i've got the level that handles my workouts and nutrition and has me on a reasonalbe (.5 to 1lb a week loss) fat cutting pace and most especially, that reflects a consistent trend, i keep tracking that for about two weeks to make sure that i get some practice with those asssumptions. That way, i can validate if i'm right. Which is pretty easy to see: those next two weeks the trend heads DOWN. Happy happy joy joy. Once that's established, i'm usually pretty comfy with knowing what portion sizes are in the zone and what i have to be careful with (like dipping bread into olive oil and balsamic. dam).
Once i' drop the rigerous calorie counting, i keep up with the other body comp measures of girth and calipers, and that on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. That regular recorded feedback helps me tune my practice and adds a little more awareness and attention without being a burden. IF something goes unexpectedly out of line in that period, i have these other strategies to dip back into, like calorie counting for a week just to see what's REALLY going on.
Relative to Other Measures
And that's the main thing here: calorie counting can be a reality check. We may be happy that we're eating clean, but if we're gaining weight when we want to maintain or drop fat, and our body comp measures show that that gain is not just muscle, then it's pretty hard to deny there's an issue.
Granted, there are other approaches to check out what's going on. One could simply reduce the overall portion size at each meal for two weeks and see if that sorts out the issue. Absolutely. But sometimes we may *feel* like we're doing that and see no shift, and so that extra bit of information and rigour of a short term stint with calorie logging can be a way to make a breakthrough. And then let go and let those good nutrition habits take over.
Infrequent but Useful. Personally, i haven't used calorie counting for two years. I've recenty used it again to do exactly this reality check against my goal to put on some muscle mass and make sure i'm feeding the muscles rather than the fat. It's been just the feedback i've needed to tune what i'm doing.
If you want to try Calorie Counting. Here are some steps i've found useful in getting a reality check to tune my nutrition practice for my body comp goals.
- Get a program you like for recording your food intake (if it records your workouts for showing energy used in a day that's great too. I personally like FitDay - indeed i like it so much i run a PC emulator on my mac pretty much just to use it. The site is free to use, but i find the food entry on the software more convenient than the website. The main attributes are that the software records food, exercise and has a daily weight log.
- Give yourself time to set a level. This is the toughie if you want to lose weight right now. Allow yourself to take a week or two to get a clear picture of what your usual daily practice is. Do your calories vascilate wildly? do the ratios of fat, carb, protein, go all over the place from day to day? As you record these facts against your DAILY weight log, you'll be able to see how your body responds over a decent amount of time like 10-14 days. The first task may then be just to get more consistent - like trying to get to what maintenance or below maintenance is calculated to be and see if that's right for you; or too high or low. But you can't know that without staying consistent for awhile.
- be rigerous - using a calorie log can be a pain in the butt. like really. but it doesn't really work unless you really count everything. Like the milk in my tea. That adds up to at least a cup of milk a day. That for me is not nothing. I actually don't mind when i'm into it doing the recording, and maybe it's part of that Awareness through Attention - that as i record these things i learn more about heh this is way high in carbs and not enough in protein. What would happen if i up my protein with a bit more in my recovery drink?
- weigh yourself daily; track your girth and bf% weekly - you don't have to weigh yourself daily, but i find that by doing this i can see the trends in my body for wieght to vascilate. Then i can get a sense of when i might be putting on water, or when perhaps i ate later so there's just more food in my gut when i step on the scale. This is just more data. The given day is less important than the trend. And the more points of data, the clearer the picture of the trends. After having done this awhile i find i can look at the scale with more equanimity. Oh it's up a bit today; tomorrow it will be down. Likewise, and perhaps this is a result of more practice, seeing the number be lower is equally amorphous. It may be a bit up the next day, but the trend says it's all good; it's all going down. Tracking bf% and girth weekly will definitely reality check the scale to show the trend on all the things that count is heading in the right direction - or that something within the trend needs tuning.
A Note about Intermittent Fasting & Calorie Counting
Some folks are drawn to Brad Pilon's Eat Stop Eat for intermittent fasting. For Pilon, he suggests that just not eating once a week - a bit more if you want to lose weight - is a great way to lose weight because you just eat normally the other days of the week. THis approach, i've found, takes care of weight loss about as well as "just eat clean" or "just reduce the portion sizes for a couple weeks." While these strategies can be very successful, and do work in principle, personally, i find that if i'm starting into what i want to be a body comp change period, there's practical benefit to finding out what Normal is. For me, one sure way to do that is calorie counting for a couple weeks. Then, you bet, i have a trend to work against, a personally validated normal, and then if IF is what i want to do, i have a way of validating that, too.
To Count or not to Count.
Your mileage may vary. You may be very successful at losing weight or gaining mass when you want without these kinds of additional feedback measures. If you are, you likely haven't read down to here and bailed out much earlier. Good for you.
This post is really for those of us who do find having these extra measures helpful, and if so, how they might be used for success.
Big Take Aways for Calorie Counting:
At least in my experience and with some of the folks whom i coach:
- calorie counting is about trends, not instnaces
- cc'ing is not single factor; it's part of one measure against a recommended set of measures like girth, body fat%, weight, etc
- it needs time to find the zero point to start using it effectively
- it doesn't need to be used all the time, but as a tool to help get in the groove of what you want your body comp/well being practice to be
Hope this is helpful, and all the best for your body comp goals. Heart Rate montoring next.
Body Comp Coaching. IF you'd like to explore online coaching for your nutrition & bodycomp goals, email me. I take on a very few clients right now, usually for 16 week blocks. Included, Precision Nutrition including the PN Forum and online tools, personal assessment of where you're at now and what your goals are, bi-weekly assessment guides, live bi-weekly coaching and nutrition ed sessions, email support. £375GBP for four months, guarenteed you'll know yourself and nutrition, make great strides in your body comp goals, know what works for you, and how to achieve your goals, learn how to trouble shoot nutrition challenges, moving at your own pace and with a nutirtion plan that is designed for you and works for you.
Related Posts
- B2D Nutrition Index
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- Dieting is Hard - but there are strategies for success.
- Motivation as a Skill
- Where heart rate monitors may help in resistance/kb training
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