Monday, January 18, 2010
Eye Health: How Fast can You Switch Focus?
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There are huge benefits from actually practicing eye movement, speed of focal accommodation being one of them. How quickly can we shift from where we're looking now to refocus where the next target is?
Tech Tip of the day: Near Far Eye Drills. The idea of this simple drill is to work the muscles of the eye that help focus. The drill is taught as part of a suite of eye health movement drills in z-health (what's that?) on both the Neural Warm Up I and the S-Phase Complete Athlete, Volume 1 DVDs (reviewed here).
In the following excerpt from the S-Phase DVD, Master Z-Health Trainer and Sr RKC Sara Cheatham demos how the drill works: one hand far, one hand near; switch focus between hands as quickly as possible for reps; switch hands.
The goal of the drill is not just to move our eyes from the near hand to the far hand, but to move our eyes to the other object and FOCUS on that object, so it's important to make sure that our hands are set at distances relative to our eyes that will require that re-focus/acquisition. By practicing this simple drill, we can improve the speed of acquisition. We likewise help keep our eye muscles in better responsive physical shape.
Start off with this drill slowly: when we're not used to working our eyes, we can get a headache pretty quickly. Also watch for signs of stress: shoulders hunching up, face getting tight. A few deep breaths in through the nose, out slowly through pursed lips, and we're likely good to go again.
The benefits are huge in a sport context of speedy target acquisition, but in regular life, practicing responsiveness can be a life saver, too. The eyes are our primary sensory system - before vestibular, before proprioception. The more quickly we can detect something with practiced efficiency, the less stress in an actual event, the more skill brought to the action requiring a response.
Another quick tip? Try using your eyes to see something before turning your head - but again, go slowly. This can be fatiguing quickly when unaccustomed to the motion. Eye rather than head movement has lots of neurological benefits too, described in this post on the arthrokinetic reflex. Doing so also simply works the muscles of the eye in a more complete range of motion, enhancing perfipheral view.
More Eye Work for more kinds of Performance Strength. There are many other drills that can be practiced with the eyes that have a range of benefits including amazingly strength and cognition. Many of these eye drills, based in sports vision and behavioural optometry, are on the Nerual Warm Up 1 and 2, the S-Phase Video, and many are taught at the Elite Performance Workshop. More focal accomodation drills are on the NWU vids; more of the cognition/performance drills are on S-phase. Many can be practiced seated at a desk with just your hands or with a pencil, so they're easy to do anywhere. The point is to know 'em, love 'em and do them.
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Our eyes are moved by a set of 6 muscles. Intriguingly, we rarely work these muscles with any of the attention we give to our other more obvious prime movers like hips or arms; how we work them is usually only in a very restricted range of motion and action. And like any other tissues in the body, use 'em or lose 'em.
Tech Tip of the day: Near Far Eye Drills. The idea of this simple drill is to work the muscles of the eye that help focus. The drill is taught as part of a suite of eye health movement drills in z-health (what's that?) on both the Neural Warm Up I and the S-Phase Complete Athlete, Volume 1 DVDs (reviewed here).
In the following excerpt from the S-Phase DVD, Master Z-Health Trainer and Sr RKC Sara Cheatham demos how the drill works: one hand far, one hand near; switch focus between hands as quickly as possible for reps; switch hands.
The goal of the drill is not just to move our eyes from the near hand to the far hand, but to move our eyes to the other object and FOCUS on that object, so it's important to make sure that our hands are set at distances relative to our eyes that will require that re-focus/acquisition. By practicing this simple drill, we can improve the speed of acquisition. We likewise help keep our eye muscles in better responsive physical shape.
Start off with this drill slowly: when we're not used to working our eyes, we can get a headache pretty quickly. Also watch for signs of stress: shoulders hunching up, face getting tight. A few deep breaths in through the nose, out slowly through pursed lips, and we're likely good to go again.
The benefits are huge in a sport context of speedy target acquisition, but in regular life, practicing responsiveness can be a life saver, too. The eyes are our primary sensory system - before vestibular, before proprioception. The more quickly we can detect something with practiced efficiency, the less stress in an actual event, the more skill brought to the action requiring a response.
Another quick tip? Try using your eyes to see something before turning your head - but again, go slowly. This can be fatiguing quickly when unaccustomed to the motion. Eye rather than head movement has lots of neurological benefits too, described in this post on the arthrokinetic reflex. Doing so also simply works the muscles of the eye in a more complete range of motion, enhancing perfipheral view.
More Eye Work for more kinds of Performance Strength. There are many other drills that can be practiced with the eyes that have a range of benefits including amazingly strength and cognition. Many of these eye drills, based in sports vision and behavioural optometry, are on the Nerual Warm Up 1 and 2, the S-Phase Video, and many are taught at the Elite Performance Workshop. More focal accomodation drills are on the NWU vids; more of the cognition/performance drills are on S-phase. Many can be practiced seated at a desk with just your hands or with a pencil, so they're easy to do anywhere. The point is to know 'em, love 'em and do them.
Related Posts
Tweet Follow @begin2dig
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Sunday, January 17, 2010
Audio Fitness & Ear Health for the iPod'ing Athlete: In Ear Phones + Custom Sleeves
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You're going deaf and it's your ipod+gym's 
fault. The volume needed to crank the phones on a pod to counter act the noises of the environment usually verges on or goes beyond 80db's. That's not good. In fact it's actually bad. And the rate of youth hearing impairment has gone up so much in the era of the iPod, that the EU is freaking out.
The typical ear bud phone (like the one that comes with ipods) is a big part of where the blame sits, as it sits right beside the ear canal, thus having to crank the volume to be heard - over other competing sounds.
Isolation from the Noise Environment.
There is a fix. It's earphones that support noise isolation. This approach is different than noise cancelation, done by batteries and mics on headphones. Noise isolation is simply achieved by blocking off a great deal of incoming sound into the ear.
The usual method is to use an "in ear" or "canal" headphone design, rather than having something sitting beside the ear canal, ie ear buds. Simply think: earbuds = bad. In ear phones = much better. These enable the ear, effectively, to be plugged, isolating one's hearing from the outside noises; focusing on inner audio peace. The consequence of these monitors is also awesomely that the actual volume of the music can then be turned DOWN substantially. And thus, one's ears are getting the same audio experience at lower decibles. That's critical.
Another plus is that audio quality can improve with better isolation and less drive. This one change can make an audio system feel like new, and a better quality new (more on this elsewhere)
IEM's - In Ear Monitors - the rich variety of type and price
There are numerous types of these headphones now available. Here's a sample listing. The best solution is (of course) a custom made "in ear monitor" designed to fit just YOUR ear. You'll see stage musicians using such monitors rather than those big black speakers facing towards them on stage. More recently, these IEMs have taken off in the audiophile space for simply great listening.
So how get, good audio and the audio isolation to protect one's hearing?
A great solution to bring out the best of great audio and excellent hearing protection isolation in a package that is gym safe is to combine some decent off-the-shelf in ear phones with custom sleeves.
Enter Etymotic Research and ACS. Delighted was i to learn that my fave get around in ear
phones, the Etymotic Resarch 6i's, were being paired (so far just in the UK/EU) with such custom sleeves via customearphones.co.uk (i have nothing to do with this company). I've reviewed the Ety 6i's and Ety's awesome customer service previously (again, no association with the company).
The sleeves are produced by the UK's Advanced Communication Solutions (again no affiliation other than customer), makers of those awesome T2's that Stephen Fry's been blogging about.
Why i like this particular set up is that the Ety 6i's really are a just-right headphone for the quality audio most of us put on our ipods for regular listening (mp3's of 320kbps or less, or aac of some sort; rarely aiff). The 6i ( i is for iPod) is specifically balanced, especially in the bass, for the iPod. If a person wants more audio oomph while staying true to the sound, then it's time to consider a wee exernal amp to drive the ipod sound, like Robert Gerkhe's, discussed here. But that is not a typical gym set up where you may also be using your ipod with an interval timer, say.
Indeed, the 6i is beyond just alright, especially when considering price, value and function and of course audio quality here. They are so infinitely beyond the phones that come with the ipod, it really is like getting a whole other instrument to hear one's music, but they have an unfussy, robust build that can well handle typical ipod scenarios. Like the gym.
Adding custom sleeves makes a great earphone headset even more resiliant and effective.
Sound Comfort. The advantage of the sleeves is at least two-fold. Of the many of these in-ear stock phones i've
sampled, none feels effortless to wear. You do notice them. The Ety's stock sleeves of silicon are likely some of the easiest wearing stock configurations (shown in the white headphones above) and are used by the company's primo Ety 4's as well, but compared to a custom sleeve, well there's no comparison.
The ACS sleeves, shown right in clear and above in colors, is not made of acrylic (like some customs) but a special silicon blend that can be worn all day long (sometimes all night long if one falls asleep to music).
Form = Function. Perhaps more importantly, because they are custom fit, the sleeves do their job as noise isolators better than the non-custom types with that added comfort that makes them really a joy to use, along with the enhanced sense of audio precision. I think i mentioned comfort? They can also be washed, which is great, cuz well, we're talking workouts and sweat here.
How it (the customization + iem purchase) Works
Other Phones
Personally, for the gym and related to'ing and fro'ing, i
think the ety's and the customs are the perfect blend, but you may already have in-ear phones that you love. If you would like to customize these for this comfort, db isolation and enhanced audio zip, you can. As a quick note, ACS does sleeves for most IEMs, too. Here's the page on their site for the info and a list of the brands for which they do customs.
Improving All Parts of Well Being
Working out the physical parts while compromising the vestibular/audio parts is sort of a health contradition, but a lot of us do it: playing our audio to create our own private universe meaning that we have to play it way loud to get the isolation. In ear phones go a long way to redressing the audio overload while improving audio quality. Custom sleeves make that experience that much better - and way more comfortable.
Indeed, in trasit, these are great to wear on trains or planes or the occaisional automobile without being plugged into the 'pod, just for noise isolation. No batteries required.
Again, i'm not remunerated by either Ety or ACS. I do know that they make great products and have awesome customer service. And intiguingly, there's something it seems the UK has put together (with a US partner) in a consumer friendly pacakge ahead of it's US or Euro cousins that is da wee audio bomb - but it a good way.
UPDATE: even more options for iPhone Athlete, via ACS, Ety and the Apple Store
Related Posts
Tweet Follow @begin2dig
fault. The volume needed to crank the phones on a pod to counter act the noises of the environment usually verges on or goes beyond 80db's. That's not good. In fact it's actually bad. And the rate of youth hearing impairment has gone up so much in the era of the iPod, that the EU is freaking out.The typical ear bud phone (like the one that comes with ipods) is a big part of where the blame sits, as it sits right beside the ear canal, thus having to crank the volume to be heard - over other competing sounds.
Isolation from the Noise Environment.
There is a fix. It's earphones that support noise isolation. This approach is different than noise cancelation, done by batteries and mics on headphones. Noise isolation is simply achieved by blocking off a great deal of incoming sound into the ear.
The usual method is to use an "in ear" or "canal" headphone design, rather than having something sitting beside the ear canal, ie ear buds. Simply think: earbuds = bad. In ear phones = much better. These enable the ear, effectively, to be plugged, isolating one's hearing from the outside noises; focusing on inner audio peace. The consequence of these monitors is also awesomely that the actual volume of the music can then be turned DOWN substantially. And thus, one's ears are getting the same audio experience at lower decibles. That's critical.
Another plus is that audio quality can improve with better isolation and less drive. This one change can make an audio system feel like new, and a better quality new (more on this elsewhere)
IEM's - In Ear Monitors - the rich variety of type and price
There are numerous types of these headphones now available. Here's a sample listing. The best solution is (of course) a custom made "in ear monitor" designed to fit just YOUR ear. You'll see stage musicians using such monitors rather than those big black speakers facing towards them on stage. More recently, these IEMs have taken off in the audiophile space for simply great listening.
But even saying you got yourself this little piece of audio heaven like these awesome custom made ACS T2's, would you want to use these in the gym? Or out and about? Maybe not so much.
Aside: Indeed, good 'phones and a good headphone amp is a great way to get audiophile audio experience at literally or proportionally a tenth of the price. And if you haven't tried that, and you love music, you owe it to yourself. Here's an entire article on high fidelity on the cheap (another passion of mine)
So how get, good audio and the audio isolation to protect one's hearing?
A great solution to bring out the best of great audio and excellent hearing protection isolation in a package that is gym safe is to combine some decent off-the-shelf in ear phones with custom sleeves.
Enter Etymotic Research and ACS. Delighted was i to learn that my fave get around in ear
phones, the Etymotic Resarch 6i's, were being paired (so far just in the UK/EU) with such custom sleeves via customearphones.co.uk (i have nothing to do with this company). I've reviewed the Ety 6i's and Ety's awesome customer service previously (again, no association with the company).The sleeves are produced by the UK's Advanced Communication Solutions (again no affiliation other than customer), makers of those awesome T2's that Stephen Fry's been blogging about.
Why i like this particular set up is that the Ety 6i's really are a just-right headphone for the quality audio most of us put on our ipods for regular listening (mp3's of 320kbps or less, or aac of some sort; rarely aiff). The 6i ( i is for iPod) is specifically balanced, especially in the bass, for the iPod. If a person wants more audio oomph while staying true to the sound, then it's time to consider a wee exernal amp to drive the ipod sound, like Robert Gerkhe's, discussed here. But that is not a typical gym set up where you may also be using your ipod with an interval timer, say.
Indeed, the 6i is beyond just alright, especially when considering price, value and function and of course audio quality here. They are so infinitely beyond the phones that come with the ipod, it really is like getting a whole other instrument to hear one's music, but they have an unfussy, robust build that can well handle typical ipod scenarios. Like the gym.
Adding custom sleeves makes a great earphone headset even more resiliant and effective.
Sound Comfort. The advantage of the sleeves is at least two-fold. Of the many of these in-ear stock phones i've
sampled, none feels effortless to wear. You do notice them. The Ety's stock sleeves of silicon are likely some of the easiest wearing stock configurations (shown in the white headphones above) and are used by the company's primo Ety 4's as well, but compared to a custom sleeve, well there's no comparison.The ACS sleeves, shown right in clear and above in colors, is not made of acrylic (like some customs) but a special silicon blend that can be worn all day long (sometimes all night long if one falls asleep to music).
Form = Function. Perhaps more importantly, because they are custom fit, the sleeves do their job as noise isolators better than the non-custom types with that added comfort that makes them really a joy to use, along with the enhanced sense of audio precision. I think i mentioned comfort? They can also be washed, which is great, cuz well, we're talking workouts and sweat here.
How it (the customization + iem purchase) Works
- First a person orders their custom ety 6i's from the web site's partners. The pack includes the 6i's and a voucher to get the custom moulds done (if you already have 6i's you can get the custom sleeve pack separately)
- ACS has partnered with a number of audiologists thoughout the UK that will take the ear impressions on presentation of said voucher (yes that's right: an audiologist puts goo into the ear canal that takes the shape of your ear, and from these shapes, the sleeves are fit).
- Within two weeks, the custom sleeves are deliverd to your door.
- Swap the ear flanges on the ety's for the custom sleeves.
- enjoy enjoy enjoy.
Other Phones
Personally, for the gym and related to'ing and fro'ing, i
think the ety's and the customs are the perfect blend, but you may already have in-ear phones that you love. If you would like to customize these for this comfort, db isolation and enhanced audio zip, you can. As a quick note, ACS does sleeves for most IEMs, too. Here's the page on their site for the info and a list of the brands for which they do customs.Improving All Parts of Well Being
Working out the physical parts while compromising the vestibular/audio parts is sort of a health contradition, but a lot of us do it: playing our audio to create our own private universe meaning that we have to play it way loud to get the isolation. In ear phones go a long way to redressing the audio overload while improving audio quality. Custom sleeves make that experience that much better - and way more comfortable.
Indeed, in trasit, these are great to wear on trains or planes or the occaisional automobile without being plugged into the 'pod, just for noise isolation. No batteries required.
Again, i'm not remunerated by either Ety or ACS. I do know that they make great products and have awesome customer service. And intiguingly, there's something it seems the UK has put together (with a US partner) in a consumer friendly pacakge ahead of it's US or Euro cousins that is da wee audio bomb - but it a good way.
UPDATE: even more options for iPhone Athlete, via ACS, Ety and the Apple Store
Related Posts
Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Friday, January 15, 2010
CoQ10 (coenzyme q10)- is it worth it - from an athletic perspective
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In the world of alluring supplements, coq10 feels like a relative new comer. Is it worth considering adding to one's regimen? CoQ10 is being investigated in so many contexts, the following is a consideration of where it's been looked at in athletics to help make a determination as to whether or not it's worth considering for your own regimen. Shaking the magic 8 ball, signs point to Yes, especially as we age.
CoQ10 as a supplement has been around for awhile, has been heavily studied it seems in Japan in particular, where it became a legal food supplement in 2001. The first review on any toxicity seems to have been done only in 2008 (it's "highly safe"). In the west, it's mainly been used in the area of heart conditions, muscular dystrophy and some uses to combat effects of statins (cholesterol drugs). More generally it is being promoted as a free-radical buster (anti-ageing) and as something good for the skin. In Athletics, however, it's mainly been considered as to whether or not it does anything for aerobic power.
Coq10: What is it Where is it and Why is it
Co-enzyme Q10 is produced in the body - everywhere in the body. Hence it's other name: ubiquinone - ubi, latin, everywhere. It's in that amazing cell, the mitochondria. We develop increasing amounts of mitochondria when we do aerobic work over time. Aerobic work means pretty much everything where we aren't sucking wind as aerobic=predominantly oxygen based. Mitochondria is the fat burning engine of the bod y. We develop more of it from aerobic work to help better oxygenate our bodies' processes including energy production. Indeed, CoQ10 is involved in the electron transport chain - a key part of converting fuel into ATP, so it's essential to that conversion process.
The thing about exercise is that the harder the effort, the more free radicals and reactvie oxygen species are produced. There are questions in research right now about how these things contribute to muscle damage experienced as everything from fatigue to DOMS. Since 96, it's been hypothesized that ROS and muscle stress impact coq10 levels in muscle tissue, and somehow this has a negative effect on muscle performance. The complement to this observation of course is that well, let's bring the level of coq10 up with supplementation.
We see similar logic and results operating with creatine to be available for ATP conversion in the high effort early anaerobic short duration phosphagen energy system (discussed in this b2d article on creatine and beta-alanine for aerobic power).
The plus side also of keeping an aerobic system able to work more may also mean that aerobic threshold extends, putting off going anaerobic for fuel - to the speedily available but sparse glycolytic (think carbohydrate) energy system.
Overview of Research on coq10 and Aerobic Effort
Study results have been all over the map in terms of whether More is Better for athletes. The intriguing thing about such studies and results is how the protocols - the way the study was performed - differs. So we can't just say CoQ10 didn't effect aerobic power - we have to ask, under what conditions is the jury still out - where if anywhere is their promise?
Consider a way early study in 1997 of whom some might say are the ultimate aerobic athletes, cross country skiiers. 94% of these elite Finnish team athletes "felt" their performance and recovery was better compared with only 33% on placebo. Beyond the affect, there were also results that showed a not huge but still significant effect on both anaerobic and aerobic groups compared with placebo over 6 weeks of training.
In 2003, there was a 'systemic review' of CoQ10 in physical exercies (hypertension and heart failure, too). The finding was that "six showed a modest improvement in exercise capacity with CoQ10 supplementation [including the one above] but five showed no effect."
Here's an interesting finding about those papers:
In 2005, in what seems an even crappier study for population, took 6 people and over four weeks looked at whether their was an effect. There wasn't. I can't get at the actual study to see how it was run or whether these men with similar vo2max levels for their age (not great).
But here's something recent that seems really interesting. A new (2010) study spent 8 weeks with groups of sedentary guys.
Study Ref: Gökbel, Hakk; Gül, Ibrahim; Belviranl, Muaz; Okudan, Nilsel (2101). The Effects Of Coenzyme Q10 Supplementation on Performance During Repeated Bouts of Supramaximal Exercise in Sedentary Men Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 24 (1), 97-102 : 10.1519/JSC.0b013e3181a61a50
It's a randomized, double blind kinda set up. Fifteen guys. Here's what was found using wingate tests (those things elsewhere shown to be pretty good for developing mitochondria in 6 mins of effort). The measures are Peak Power, Mean Power and Fatigue index.
The cool thing that the researchers found is that the benefit of the coq10 didn't show up in the coq10 group until the fifth wingate (WT) test.
Let's put this in perspective. Wingates are pretty much your all out sprint for 30 secs. Doing one is hard. Doing 3, is absolutely no fun (what the blokes in the 6min a week trial did). Doing 5? With 2 mins of recovery between each? That's not really what you'd call full recovery. It's a break. And it's hard. Why they decided to do 5 of these gruelling sprints?
The rationale tells us about the hypothesis of what we might see with coq10.
In other words, the reason for the multiple bouts of wingates is, taking it from the top:
Wow. And guess what the researchers saw? See below:
Peak power across the trials continued to go down; fatigue goes up. This isn't particularly surprising. With only two minutes recovery between repeats, one is going to get pooped. But what is rather interiguing is mean power (shown above). Only in the coq10 group, does mean power go up, and this in the fifth trial, from 285.6 6 +/-47.7W to 331.5 +/- 84.3Wcompared
with the baseline exercise session (p less than 0.05).
More intriguingly, when considering that fifth trial peak power, they harken back to previous work. Let me give you the whole thing, because the use of related research to make the case is fascinating, and has implications for one's decision to take coq10 or not. For this, bear in mind the energy system hierarchy, simplified, of phophagen - burns out in about 30 secs; takes about 5 mins to recover. 2 mins recovery before going into another anaerobic interval is not going to recharge that, which means cutting into the glycolytic - sugar stores. Those have about a 3-10min shelf life and at supramaximal, we're talking the shorter end of the scale. Then there's the aerobic, fat burning system.
While these are cool results - especially because they map to the hypothesis of what should be shown in the trial if the model is in the zone of being correct, is that difference in power a really big deal? Maybe indirectly in terms of what it *might* be doing anti-oxidatively.
Here's what the authors say:
What Do these Results Portend?
The interesting thing, i find, about the results, is that, despite the limited effects, there may be especial benefit for athletes as we age. Coq10 levels go down with age - hence the other research that looks at heart disease and skin and anti-oxidation etc. If we see that the effect on aerobic power is from anti-oxidant processes, perhaps that's a good sign in general for enhancing recovery - one of the things that gets more challenging, again, as we age.
Another possibility here is that the coq10 is helping the body make use of fat oxidation longer rather than having to punt to the less abundant resources of the anaerobic system. This result also has benefits for effort and recovery.
One of the things to note is that unlike the previous study on sedentary men, this more recent study took 8 weeks to run, not four, and used a somewhat different (better reasoned) protocol for its supramaximal load reps - timing the effect to be seen when going long enough and hard enough to trigger a more aerobic response, the aerobic being where the mitochondria oxygen burners kick in. Again, the directly observed effect mayn't be great. But it's still statistically significant, and it may be, as one of the grocery chains in the UK claims that "every little helps"
Putting Together the Supplement Package
Last week, b2d presented a review of where creatine and beta-alanine may fit into benefitting aerobic effort by improving ventilatory threshold in particular at sub-maximal efforts and total work done, as well as time to exhaustion.
Coq10 is showing up as benefitting effort in supramaximal efforts - those intense wingates.
The obvious question would be what might the combined effect be for aerobic power across sub to supra efforts?
Dosing of CoQ10?
The usual doses on the shelf of coq10 are either 30 or 100mg. Natural coq10 being usually advised over synthetic for absorption etc. Most of the athletic research averages out around 100mg - none are anywhere as low as 30. In a way that's kind of too bad. I haven't seen in any of these pieces a rationale for the particular amounts of CoQ10 chosen, or for that matter why regular dietary sups are only 30. More is not always better, but all i can point to is that the *limited* effects/benefits shown in the CoQ10 work are all at the 100's-ish levels.
On a website by Dr Ray Shalen, MD, he reports the following personal experience after reviewing the usual uses of CoQ10:
Is it Worth It?
This supplement may be of interest for different reasons to different groups: for those wanting to eek out that wee bit more effort in their training, this may be a complement to that work. For those going off warranty (as a colleague calls hitting over forty) its value may be more in the potential recovery benefit than in direct work.
It's not a cheap supplement, especially at 100mg, and it seems reasonably to need about 2 months of regular use to judge effects. Based on the above toxicity we know harm is in the nil zone (but check with your doctor if you have ANY medical conditions if this is ok or not), so if you think these effects sound good to you, happy trialing. Let me know, please, what you find. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
In the world of alluring supplements, coq10 feels like a relative new comer. Is it worth considering adding to one's regimen? CoQ10 is being investigated in so many contexts, the following is a consideration of where it's been looked at in athletics to help make a determination as to whether or not it's worth considering for your own regimen. Shaking the magic 8 ball, signs point to Yes, especially as we age.CoQ10 as a supplement has been around for awhile, has been heavily studied it seems in Japan in particular, where it became a legal food supplement in 2001. The first review on any toxicity seems to have been done only in 2008 (it's "highly safe"). In the west, it's mainly been used in the area of heart conditions, muscular dystrophy and some uses to combat effects of statins (cholesterol drugs). More generally it is being promoted as a free-radical buster (anti-ageing) and as something good for the skin. In Athletics, however, it's mainly been considered as to whether or not it does anything for aerobic power.
Coq10: What is it Where is it and Why is it
Co-enzyme Q10 is produced in the body - everywhere in the body. Hence it's other name: ubiquinone - ubi, latin, everywhere. It's in that amazing cell, the mitochondria. We develop increasing amounts of mitochondria when we do aerobic work over time. Aerobic work means pretty much everything where we aren't sucking wind as aerobic=predominantly oxygen based. Mitochondria is the fat burning engine of the bod y. We develop more of it from aerobic work to help better oxygenate our bodies' processes including energy production. Indeed, CoQ10 is involved in the electron transport chain - a key part of converting fuel into ATP, so it's essential to that conversion process.
We see similar logic and results operating with creatine to be available for ATP conversion in the high effort early anaerobic short duration phosphagen energy system (discussed in this b2d article on creatine and beta-alanine for aerobic power).
The plus side also of keeping an aerobic system able to work more may also mean that aerobic threshold extends, putting off going anaerobic for fuel - to the speedily available but sparse glycolytic (think carbohydrate) energy system.
Overview of Research on coq10 and Aerobic Effort
Study results have been all over the map in terms of whether More is Better for athletes. The intriguing thing about such studies and results is how the protocols - the way the study was performed - differs. So we can't just say CoQ10 didn't effect aerobic power - we have to ask, under what conditions is the jury still out - where if anywhere is their promise?
Consider a way early study in 1997 of whom some might say are the ultimate aerobic athletes, cross country skiiers. 94% of these elite Finnish team athletes "felt" their performance and recovery was better compared with only 33% on placebo. Beyond the affect, there were also results that showed a not huge but still significant effect on both anaerobic and aerobic groups compared with placebo over 6 weeks of training.
In 2003, there was a 'systemic review' of CoQ10 in physical exercies (hypertension and heart failure, too). The finding was that "six showed a modest improvement in exercise capacity with CoQ10 supplementation [including the one above] but five showed no effect."
Here's an interesting finding about those papers:
Has anything changed since 2003?We identified eleven studies in which CoQ10 was tested for an effect on exercise capacity, six were positive and five showed no effect. Of the six positive trials (Table 1), four were in trained sports persons, athletes, cyclists and skiers, and two involved untrained individuals. Subjects (n = 18 to 28 per study) were given CoQ10, 90 to 100 mg per day for 4 to 8 weeks. Benefits were observed in terms of improved maximum oxygen consumption, averaging 8% (range 3% to 18%) and improved exercise capacity, averaging 13% (range 5% to 33%). Five trials failed to show any statistically significant benefit of CoQ10 (Table 2). Four of these were in trained sports persons and one in untrained individuals. Trials included 10 to 19 subjects and the duration of treatment was four to eight weeks. Dosage and duration of therapy were similar in the two groups of studies.
It is worth noting that whereas all the negative studies were published in peer-reviewed journals, only one of the six positive studies [our skier paper -mc] were published in this way, the other five being published as conference proceedings, probably not peer-reviewed and therefore carried less weight. In conclusion it appears that a modest improvement in exercise capacity may be observed with CoQ10 supplementation but this is not a consistent finding. Inconsistencies in trial results may be due to small numbers of subjects enrolled [in both the showing signs of effect and no signs - mc] and to differences in experimental design. In view of the indication of benefit in some studies, further larger randomised trials in this area are indicated.
In 2005, in what seems an even crappier study for population, took 6 people and over four weeks looked at whether their was an effect. There wasn't. I can't get at the actual study to see how it was run or whether these men with similar vo2max levels for their age (not great).
But here's something recent that seems really interesting. A new (2010) study spent 8 weeks with groups of sedentary guys.
Study Ref: Gökbel, Hakk; Gül, Ibrahim; Belviranl, Muaz; Okudan, Nilsel (2101). The Effects Of Coenzyme Q10 Supplementation on Performance During Repeated Bouts of Supramaximal Exercise in Sedentary Men Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 24 (1), 97-102 : 10.1519/JSC.0b013e3181a61a50
It's a randomized, double blind kinda set up. Fifteen guys. Here's what was found using wingate tests (those things elsewhere shown to be pretty good for developing mitochondria in 6 mins of effort). The measures are Peak Power, Mean Power and Fatigue index.
The cool thing that the researchers found is that the benefit of the coq10 didn't show up in the coq10 group until the fifth wingate (WT) test.
Let's put this in perspective. Wingates are pretty much your all out sprint for 30 secs. Doing one is hard. Doing 3, is absolutely no fun (what the blokes in the 6min a week trial did). Doing 5? With 2 mins of recovery between each? That's not really what you'd call full recovery. It's a break. And it's hard. Why they decided to do 5 of these gruelling sprints?
The rationale tells us about the hypothesis of what we might see with coq10.
The WTs 30-second duration was chosen for being sufficiently long, not only for eliciting maximal glycolytic power but also for requiring a good measure of ‘‘glycolytic/anaerobic endurance’’ (10). The WT strongly stimulates both the adenosine triphosphate-phosphocreatine and glycolytic systems (26), and thus activates purine catabolism and lactic acid production (12). In addition, supramaximal anaerobic exercise has been associated with major increase in plasma catecholamine levels [catecholamines, by the way, are important for fat mobilization, and while any action spurs them, the greater the load the greater the release it seems -mc] (36). These factors are the cause of oxidative stress in supramaximal anaerobic exercise.
It has been shown that during WT, performance to be dependent on energy release from both anaerobic and aerobic processes (3,11). It has been suggested that the WT may be used as an exercise task that stimulates both aerobic and anaerobic processes (21). In the previous studies, it has been demonstrated that aerobic contribution in WT is between 19.5 (3) and 27% (28) but during the repeated supramaximal activities aerobic contribution might be increased.
Therefore, in this study, we are planning to investigate the effects of CoQ10, which has been known to effects on aerobic performance. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of oral CoQ10 supplementation on performance during repeated bouts of supramaximal exercise.
In other words, the reason for the multiple bouts of wingates is, taking it from the top:
- coq10 is found in mitochondria
- it is important for converting (oxidizing) fat (it's aerobic energy source) into ATP for energy
- there's some work that shows that repeated wingates start to push into the aerobic energy system more than the carb/sugar based glycolytic (fascinating!) and so
- if the extra coq10 in the mitochondria is going to show up, it will show up by being fatiuge busting in these more aerobic, later repeats, by being able to make more energy availabe when the system goes more oxidative.
Wow. And guess what the researchers saw? See below:
Peak power across the trials continued to go down; fatigue goes up. This isn't particularly surprising. With only two minutes recovery between repeats, one is going to get pooped. But what is rather interiguing is mean power (shown above). Only in the coq10 group, does mean power go up, and this in the fifth trial, from 285.6 6 +/-47.7W to 331.5 +/- 84.3Wcompared
with the baseline exercise session (p less than 0.05).
More intriguingly, when considering that fifth trial peak power, they harken back to previous work. Let me give you the whole thing, because the use of related research to make the case is fascinating, and has implications for one's decision to take coq10 or not. For this, bear in mind the energy system hierarchy, simplified, of phophagen - burns out in about 30 secs; takes about 5 mins to recover. 2 mins recovery before going into another anaerobic interval is not going to recharge that, which means cutting into the glycolytic - sugar stores. Those have about a 3-10min shelf life and at supramaximal, we're talking the shorter end of the scale. Then there's the aerobic, fat burning system.
Bonetti et al. (6) suggested that increase in muscle performance might be due to the antioxidant effect of CoQ10 supplementation and/or its probable action on the central nervous system. There is a direct relationship between the PP and MP: PP is based on the alactic (phosphagen) anaerobic processes and reflects to maximal anaerobic power and MP shows the anaerobic glycolysis rate in muscles (25,32).
[...] In conclusion, the most important effect of CoQ10 supplementation is an increase in MP during the WT5. Increase of the MP during WT5 suggested that contribution of aerobic metabolism was increased during the repeated supramaximal exercises and CoQ10 supplementation increased performance in this type of exercises. Therefore, we concluded that CoQ10 supplementation increases exercise performance, especially anaerobic capacity during repeated bouts of supramaximal exercises. This is the first study investigating the effects of CoQ10 on supramaximal exercises.
While these are cool results - especially because they map to the hypothesis of what should be shown in the trial if the model is in the zone of being correct, is that difference in power a really big deal? Maybe indirectly in terms of what it *might* be doing anti-oxidatively.
Here's what the authors say:
This study suggests that the effects of 8 weeks of CoQ10 supplementation on PP and FI during the 5WTs were limited. Of primary importance, our results demonstrate that CoQ10 supplementation increased MP during the repeated bouts of supramaximal exercise. This increase in MP might be due to antioxidant effect of CoQ10 or contribution of CoQ10 to the aerobic metabolism and increasing of the aerobic contribution caused to amelioration of performance during the repeated bouts of the supramaximal exercises. It means that CoQ10 might be used as an ergogenic aid to increase anaerobic power after its effect clearly exhibited with the further research.An ergogenic aid is just something that helps performance. But note the typical reserved speculativeness of the research claims. (1) The effect is limited and (2) we still don't know exactly what's causing the effect we see in the results.
What Do these Results Portend?
The interesting thing, i find, about the results, is that, despite the limited effects, there may be especial benefit for athletes as we age. Coq10 levels go down with age - hence the other research that looks at heart disease and skin and anti-oxidation etc. If we see that the effect on aerobic power is from anti-oxidant processes, perhaps that's a good sign in general for enhancing recovery - one of the things that gets more challenging, again, as we age.
Another possibility here is that the coq10 is helping the body make use of fat oxidation longer rather than having to punt to the less abundant resources of the anaerobic system. This result also has benefits for effort and recovery.
One of the things to note is that unlike the previous study on sedentary men, this more recent study took 8 weeks to run, not four, and used a somewhat different (better reasoned) protocol for its supramaximal load reps - timing the effect to be seen when going long enough and hard enough to trigger a more aerobic response, the aerobic being where the mitochondria oxygen burners kick in. Again, the directly observed effect mayn't be great. But it's still statistically significant, and it may be, as one of the grocery chains in the UK claims that "every little helps"
Putting Together the Supplement Package
Last week, b2d presented a review of where creatine and beta-alanine may fit into benefitting aerobic effort by improving ventilatory threshold in particular at sub-maximal efforts and total work done, as well as time to exhaustion.
Coq10 is showing up as benefitting effort in supramaximal efforts - those intense wingates.
The obvious question would be what might the combined effect be for aerobic power across sub to supra efforts?
Dosing of CoQ10?
The usual doses on the shelf of coq10 are either 30 or 100mg. Natural coq10 being usually advised over synthetic for absorption etc. Most of the athletic research averages out around 100mg - none are anywhere as low as 30. In a way that's kind of too bad. I haven't seen in any of these pieces a rationale for the particular amounts of CoQ10 chosen, or for that matter why regular dietary sups are only 30. More is not always better, but all i can point to is that the *limited* effects/benefits shown in the CoQ10 work are all at the 100's-ish levels.
On a website by Dr Ray Shalen, MD, he reports the following personal experience after reviewing the usual uses of CoQ10:
The effect from 30 mg is mild, mostly consisting of a slightly higher energy level. The effects become more noticeable with 50 mg. I have taken up to 100 mg in the morning. On this dose, I notice an increase in energy as the day goes on, with an urge to take a long walk or be physically active. There is enhanced focus, motivation, and productivity, along with the desire to talk to people. The 100-mg dose of CoQ10, though, is too much since I feel too energetic and alert even in late evening when I want to slow down and get ready for sleep. I usually do not recommend more than 10 to 50 mg of CoQ10 on a long term basis without medical supervision.Wow again. Personally i've been doing 30mg and haven't noticed a thing - not even mild. Perhaps i work out more than Dr. Shalen and so 30mg is still being attenuated by these training bouts? I may bump it up to 100 for a month or so and see if there's any perceivable effect.
Is it Worth It?
This supplement may be of interest for different reasons to different groups: for those wanting to eek out that wee bit more effort in their training, this may be a complement to that work. For those going off warranty (as a colleague calls hitting over forty) its value may be more in the potential recovery benefit than in direct work.
It's not a cheap supplement, especially at 100mg, and it seems reasonably to need about 2 months of regular use to judge effects. Based on the above toxicity we know harm is in the nil zone (but check with your doctor if you have ANY medical conditions if this is ok or not), so if you think these effects sound good to you, happy trialing. Let me know, please, what you find. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Do your Shoes Pass the Twist Test? How to tell if your Shoes are Good for you (not just your feet)
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With all the debate about footwear of late, one may wonder what's healthy for shodding one's feet when shod they must be? Allow me to (re)present the Twist Test: does the shoe in question twist laterally, a la ringing out a towel? Alternatively or 
complementarily, does it bend at all places OTHER than just at the ball of the foot? Simple check: but the better they twist and bend, the better they're following the mechanics of our feet, and hence the movements of our body.
I'm not sure if it originated with him, but Eric Cobb at the Z-Health (what's that?) R-phase certifications presents the twist test as a way to check the responsiveness of footwear to our feet's actual mechanics.
Consider the joints of the feet - and a reminder that a full one quarter of the joints in the body are in the feet. These joints do allow all kinds of movement in the foot. Do our shoes support or impede this?
More recently i've also been giving shoes a squish. Are the super padded? or just sufficientlty to protect the foot from the ground? Even the largely twisty Nike Free's are still pretty squishy shoes (the 7's - or cross trainers being the least squishy of the bunch). What's the role of the squish? Does that impair signal or provide a good transition platform to more environmentally true conditions? What's the least amount of padding one can get away with?
I've written before about the relationship of speed and position information sent from joints to the brain to process where we are and how we are moving in space, and what happens when those information points are compromised or cut off. Suffice it to say here, that more accurate information from more joints is better. Imagine if we're mo
ving but because of the stiffness of the shoe our joints are saying in our feet well, we're not really moving, what kind of information the brain is getting? Ankle spraining information or just poor function for maybe setting up a back ache information? Is that cuff in that hiking boot really helping or hindering good body movement?
So, next time you're with someone you love and they're contemplating shoes, you might want to subtley give the shoe a twist - and maybe a squish.
Related posts
complementarily, does it bend at all places OTHER than just at the ball of the foot? Simple check: but the better they twist and bend, the better they're following the mechanics of our feet, and hence the movements of our body.Consider the joints of the feet - and a reminder that a full one quarter of the joints in the body are in the feet. These joints do allow all kinds of movement in the foot. Do our shoes support or impede this?
I've written before about the relationship of speed and position information sent from joints to the brain to process where we are and how we are moving in space, and what happens when those information points are compromised or cut off. Suffice it to say here, that more accurate information from more joints is better. Imagine if we're mo
ving but because of the stiffness of the shoe our joints are saying in our feet well, we're not really moving, what kind of information the brain is getting? Ankle spraining information or just poor function for maybe setting up a back ache information? Is that cuff in that hiking boot really helping or hindering good body movement?So, next time you're with someone you love and they're contemplating shoes, you might want to subtley give the shoe a twist - and maybe a squish.
Related posts
- Kick off your shoes and Free Your Feet
- four part series on bare footing with Dr. Mick Wilkinson starts here.
- Fast Review of Terra Plana Dopie Sandles
- Running Shoes as Single Factor Thinking
- Fitting Vibram FiveFingers
- Vibram Five Fingers Article Index
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
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