Showing posts with label fitness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fitness. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Michael Castrogiovanni: Athleticism in Taking Kettlebells out of the Box
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Beautiful Strength. Kettlebells are heavy iron balls with handles. They are great for strength and conditioning work. They look like this:
Indeed, some of us have spent money to learn how to teach people how to use these things safely. Mainly by learning how to swing them between our legs up to above our heads in an arc. A simple move, but folks who watch this and do not know the technique, that simple gesture is pretty freaky. But let's say you've learned the techniques and you're out there practicing kb's - Michael Castrogiovani, an amazingly fit guy, RKC Team Lead, and creative athlete, makes the rather poignant observation is that all the movement happens in that same body zone. Not ot put to fine a point on it: between the legs. And so Michael asks, what happens if we move outside that box?
Athleticism & Strength. There was an interesting theme of discussion at a recent kettlebell certification course, the RKC II - it was athleticism. Athleticism had been ascribed to kettlebell practice, and so the question came up, ok what's athleticism. Fluid movement. Effortless looking movement - making movement look beautiful and easy.
The above video of Castrogiovanni seems a pretty cool example of athleticism, with kettlebells as the tool to let it be demonstrated. Beautiful, isn't it?
Delight. Awhile ago i wrote a post about the rarity of delight especially in one's practice. The live demo that Michael put on with with fellow RKC TL Jeremy Layport was that.
If you get a chance to work with Michael or to see him juggle or kb toss, you'll be delighted, surprised and no doubt inspired by the athleticism. A new way to think about heavy objects moving through space.
Related Posts
Update - Michael has agreed to an interview for b2d on his work with tossing kb's, so will look forward to that in the near future. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Indeed, some of us have spent money to learn how to teach people how to use these things safely. Mainly by learning how to swing them between our legs up to above our heads in an arc. A simple move, but folks who watch this and do not know the technique, that simple gesture is pretty freaky. But let's say you've learned the techniques and you're out there practicing kb's - Michael Castrogiovani, an amazingly fit guy, RKC Team Lead, and creative athlete, makes the rather poignant observation is that all the movement happens in that same body zone. Not ot put to fine a point on it: between the legs. And so Michael asks, what happens if we move outside that box?
Athleticism & Strength. There was an interesting theme of discussion at a recent kettlebell certification course, the RKC II - it was athleticism. Athleticism had been ascribed to kettlebell practice, and so the question came up, ok what's athleticism. Fluid movement. Effortless looking movement - making movement look beautiful and easy.
The above video of Castrogiovanni seems a pretty cool example of athleticism, with kettlebells as the tool to let it be demonstrated. Beautiful, isn't it?
Delight. Awhile ago i wrote a post about the rarity of delight especially in one's practice. The live demo that Michael put on with with fellow RKC TL Jeremy Layport was that.
If you get a chance to work with Michael or to see him juggle or kb toss, you'll be delighted, surprised and no doubt inspired by the athleticism. A new way to think about heavy objects moving through space.
Related Posts
Update - Michael has agreed to an interview for b2d on his work with tossing kb's, so will look forward to that in the near future. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
PDF
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Barefoot Running - even more vid analysis sources
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In case you were curious, here's some nice fine comparison work of barefoot and not foot striking. B2D readers know there have been many of us here for awhile, celebrating foot freedom with minimal footwear, or goodness, naked feet, (see the entire index of articles on same).
Some of us have been just waiting for the moment when barefooting or vff'ing would make it through to the mainstream. THis seems to have happened recently on the cover of nature, with DE Lieberman's research in praise of the unshod. The formal article title is "Foot strike patterns and collision forces in habitually barefoot versus shod runners" The abstract reads:
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CITATION
Lieberman, D., Venkadesan, M., Werbel, W., Daoud, A., D’Andrea, S., Davis, I., Mang’Eni, R., & Pitsiladis, Y. (2010). Foot strike patterns and collision forces in habitually barefoot versus shod runners Nature, 463 (7280), 531-535 DOI: 10.1038/nature08723 Tweet Follow @begin2dig
In case you were curious, here's some nice fine comparison work of barefoot and not foot striking. B2D readers know there have been many of us here for awhile, celebrating foot freedom with minimal footwear, or goodness, naked feet, (see the entire index of articles on same).Some of us have been just waiting for the moment when barefooting or vff'ing would make it through to the mainstream. THis seems to have happened recently on the cover of nature, with DE Lieberman's research in praise of the unshod. The formal article title is "Foot strike patterns and collision forces in habitually barefoot versus shod runners" The abstract reads:
Humans have engaged in endurance running for millions of years1, but the modern running shoe was not invented until the 1970s. For most of human evolutionary history, runners were either barefoot or wore minimal footwear such as sandals or moccasins with smaller heels and little cushioning relative to modern running shoes. We wondered how runners coped with the impact caused by the foot colliding with the ground before the invention of the modern shoe. Here we show that habitually barefoot endurance runners often land on the fore-foot (fore-foot strike) before bringing down the heel, but they sometimes land with a flat foot (mid-foot strike) or, less often, on the heel (rear-foot strike). In contrast, habitually shod runners mostly rear-foot strike, facilitated by the elevated and cushioned heel of the modern running shoe. Kinematic and kinetic analyses show that even on hard surfaces, barefoot runners who fore-foot strike generate smaller collision forces than shod rear-foot strikers. This difference results primarily from a more plantarflexed foot at landing and more ankle compliance during impact, decreasing the effective mass of the body that collides with the ground. Fore-foot- and mid-foot-strike gaits were probably more common when humans ran barefoot or in minimal shoes, and may protect the feet and lower limbs from some of the impact-related injuries now experienced by a high percentage of runners.As this work was covered broadly by the media, i haven't jumped in (just quietly celebrating ahead of the curveness), but wanted to foreground an associated resource that b2d reader Robert Cowham forwarded today, followed by one that's on the main vibram fivefingers page now. Enjoy.
Related Posts
- Running Shoes as Single Factor Thinking
- The neurological benefit of the thinly shod
- Review of wearing vff's five months on (it's been 15 months now)
- do YOUR shoes pass the twist test?
CITATION
Lieberman, D., Venkadesan, M., Werbel, W., Daoud, A., D’Andrea, S., Davis, I., Mang’Eni, R., & Pitsiladis, Y. (2010). Foot strike patterns and collision forces in habitually barefoot versus shod runners Nature, 463 (7280), 531-535 DOI: 10.1038/nature08723 Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Hypoxia for Muscle Growth: Get Huge or Die?
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A recently accepted paper shows that working in an oxygen deprived environment can gosh darn it, build muscle when doing resistance work. WHile jokes might start about the variety of ways that one could replicate a near-asphyxiated space - from smoking to putting a plastic bag (with some holes) over one's head - i'm thinking that in the case of resistance training (as opposed to altitude/endurance where there's a definite blood/muscle adaptation), based on the findings, we're maybe seeing predictably heightened threat response brought on by 02 deprivation. Here's a look at the study in detail:
What is it with Japanese research and oxygen deprivation? They bring us the most amazing results of occlusion training (b2d discussion here). Now, how about whole body oxygen occlusion?
Some may argue that this seems to be similar to training at altitude, where the benefits are known. Indeed, the authors use a system that's used to generate Everest-like conditions, funnily enough called an "everest generator" and for 5K you can have one, too (shown left).
Thing is, this technique is most often used for endurance athletes (and we've also seen in cycling for instance blood doping associated cases of EPO enriched/adapted blood), and apparently the usual oxygen depletion levels are 20.9% o2 - with associated increased risks of overtraining. Here, in this resistance training study, the researchers use 13ish% o2.
Another unique aspect of this hypoxia study is it's the first time (to my knowledge anyway) researchers have formally looked at effects on resistance training - anaerobic effort as opposed to aerobic effort.
The Rationale: it IS occlusion training. The authors do indeed say yup well, LOW INTENSITY resistance training and partial occlusion has great effect, so how about "systemic hypoxia" - It's the next logical step, isn't it?
Set Up. 10 reps of bench and squat at 70% of tested 1RM in either normal room air or 13% O2. I'm only able to guess that 13% is some standard definition of "acute hypoxia" conditions that are still safe.
The authors alas don't formally justify either why they were going for this percentage or why this definitely NOT low resistance level (like occlusion training uses) was used.
All sorts of Measures. The purpose of the trials were so the researchers will have
And what all the lads love to hear: serum GH - significantly higher in the hypoxia case (potentially triggered, the researchers suppose by increased catecholamine release) Likewise IGF and of course yes the big T, testosterone. But so does cortisol.
And for those trying to burn fat? Not surprisingly to folks who see the world through the nervous system threat/no threat lense, those wonderful fight or flight catecholamines are of course elevated, too. These are the things that help fat mobilisation (discussed here in this b2d piece on HIIT). So gosh, let's see - challenge trying to breath - i'd say that's going to be perceived as a threat to one's system?
So What's Different (than occlusion training)?
The authors suggest that while occlusion training has shown greater muscle growth, they haven't really known why. They put it down to the increased levels of GH noted in occlusion training at LOW REPS. Here they're saying
What they say their specific results also suggest is that IGF-1 may be indedpendent of GH levels. In other words, something else is going on to get a boost in IGF-1 than the presence of GH.
Likewise, they suggest that increases in serum testosterone may have more to do with intensity and muscle mass than "metabolic stress" - like hypoxia.
As for cortisol, another fight or flight hormone, that's also a known biproduct of resistance training. The researchers say they just don't know what the mechanism is such that these levels are particularly higher in this trial. Well heck, again, threat-related hormone; gonna asphixiate. Dunno. seems predictable when seen from that vantage?
Not Normal. The threat hormones did not return to normal levels within an hour after the trials either. Is that good? Not clear, but if overtraining is related to stressing they system, threatening it more than it can handle perhaps, then it's reasonable to see why this kind of training may need to be far more closely monitored for overtraining effects.
Openning New Doors. The biggest outcome it seems right now is the possible relationship of hypoxia to GH - at least in the authors' view:
hypoxic environment in anaerobic work like resistance training - hence the term anaerobic - so it's interesting to see therefore that the hypoxic effect seems to be perhaps on the recovery - where we usually pause between sets to catch our breath and re-oxygenate. Here, in this o2 deprived envrionment, that can't happen. Hence lactate it seems to me goes up. And GH switches in.
Why, when the nervous system might be percieved to be under threat, would the nervous system/brain see this as a good time to, er, grow? (For a review of the systems that get shut down under stress, see this overview of Zebras and Baboons and Stress.)
Again, what these researchers don't seem to clue into is that growth hormone is apparently known to be triggered by stress (and here's a pdf from 76 about how kind of cool this is, where only 1/3 of the sample group was shown to have this particular stress/GH release response). It's role this work shows, is not just to grow the body, but the brain. Is that what's going on? I'm about to die; i suddenly need a bigger brain?
Ramdoc, over at the dragondoor forum (thank you), made the intriguing connexion that GH is related to insulin. Here's 2005 paper outlining the human GH/insulin homeostasis, and that bigger hits of GH lead to a hyperinsulinism - elevated levels of insulin in the bloodstream. That's gonna trigger a temporary blood glucose surge. So if increased GH relates to a rush of glucose to the bloodstream, that certainly would have a survival effect. More fast energy, that means more ATP, more muscle can be recruited, more speed, steve. Cool.
We're about to Die; Let's get Huge?
Well who'd have thought even to test the effects of cutting off c
irculation to see what would happen to our bodies?
I suppose it's an interesting idea - take a process like anaerobic metabolism and string it out to see if by seeing what happens in a less natural environment, we get some better view into a natural environment. And heck, some folks might turn that practice into a way to rehab and train folks.
The responses seen in this environment - a big fat rush of fight or flight related responses - seem pretty predictable. That there's a positive payoff FROM that stress after the event is interesting: survive and get faster, stronger. Recovery means anabolism: more muscle, continued performance improvement. And who knows? Maybe a bigger smarter brain?
But in terms of pushing this principle that's being expressed in the large in this oxygen deprived space? The biggie that those stress levels don't go back to normal in normal time is a reminder that hypoxia work may just be super stressful to our CNS even if we mayn't perceive that directly ourselve - and this study doesn't tell us if it collected any of the athletes' responses to the protocol.
In the meantime, for those who are curious, how would one try this at home without an Hypoxia Generator? The mind reels at the possibilities.
Related Posts
A recently accepted paper shows that working in an oxygen deprived environment can gosh darn it, build muscle when doing resistance work. WHile jokes might start about the variety of ways that one could replicate a near-asphyxiated space - from smoking to putting a plastic bag (with some holes) over one's head - i'm thinking that in the case of resistance training (as opposed to altitude/endurance where there's a definite blood/muscle adaptation), based on the findings, we're maybe seeing predictably heightened threat response brought on by 02 deprivation. Here's a look at the study in detail:
Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2009 Dec 14. [Epub ahead of print]
Effects of Acute Hypoxia on Metabolic and Hormonal Responses to Resistance Exercise.
Kon M, Ikeda T, Homma T, Akimoto T, Suzuki Y, Kawahara T.
1Department of Sports Sciences, Japan Institute of Sports Sciences, 3-15-1 Nishigaoka, Kita, Tokyo, 115-0056, Japan; 2Laboratory of Regenerative Medical Engineering, Center for Disease Biology and Integrative Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.
INTRODUCTION:: Several recent studies have shown that resistance exercise combined with vascular occlusion effectively causes increases in muscular size and strength. Researchers speculated that the vascular occlusion-induced local hypoxia may contribute to the adaptations via promoting anabolic hormone secretions stimulated by local accumulation of metabolic subproducts. Here we examined whether acute systemic hypoxia affects metabolic and hormonal responses to resistance exercise. METHODS:: Twelve male subjects participated in two experimental trials: 1) resistance exercise while breathing normoxic air [normoxic resistance exercise (NR)], 2) resistance exercise while breathing 13 % oxygen [hypoxic resistance exercise (HR)]. The resistance exercises (bench-press and leg-press) consisted of 10 repetitions for five sets at 70 % of maximum strength with 1-min rest between sets. Blood lactate, serum growth hormone (GH), epinephrine (E), norepinephrine (NE), insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), testosterone, and cortisol concentrations were measured before normoxia and hypoxia exposures, 15-min after the exposures, and at 0, 15, 30, 60 min after the exercises. RESULTS:: Lactate significantly increased after exercises in both trials (p < style="color: rgb(153, 51, 0);">These findings suggest that resistance exercise in hypoxic condition caused greater accumulation of metabolites, and strong anabolic hormone response.
What is it with Japanese research and oxygen deprivation? They bring us the most amazing results of occlusion training (b2d discussion here). Now, how about whole body oxygen occlusion?
Some may argue that this seems to be similar to training at altitude, where the benefits are known. Indeed, the authors use a system that's used to generate Everest-like conditions, funnily enough called an "everest generator" and for 5K you can have one, too (shown left).Thing is, this technique is most often used for endurance athletes (and we've also seen in cycling for instance blood doping associated cases of EPO enriched/adapted blood), and apparently the usual oxygen depletion levels are 20.9% o2 - with associated increased risks of overtraining. Here, in this resistance training study, the researchers use 13ish% o2.
Another unique aspect of this hypoxia study is it's the first time (to my knowledge anyway) researchers have formally looked at effects on resistance training - anaerobic effort as opposed to aerobic effort.
The Rationale: it IS occlusion training. The authors do indeed say yup well, LOW INTENSITY resistance training and partial occlusion has great effect, so how about "systemic hypoxia" - It's the next logical step, isn't it?
Set Up. 10 reps of bench and squat at 70% of tested 1RM in either normal room air or 13% O2. I'm only able to guess that 13% is some standard definition of "acute hypoxia" conditions that are still safe.
The authors alas don't formally justify either why they were going for this percentage or why this definitely NOT low resistance level (like occlusion training uses) was used.
All sorts of Measures. The purpose of the trials were so the researchers will have
examined the effects of resistance exercise on metabolic and hormonal responses under acute systemic hypoxia. We hypothesized that the resistance exercise in hypoxic condition would cause greater accumulation of metabolic subproducts, and greater responses of anabolic hormones.To this end, a lot of measures were taken of muscle oxidation, hormones, fuel produced (like lactate). As the abstract says, blood lactate levels were significantly higher in the hypoxia trial than in the normal air trial. This isn't much of a surprise, given that lactate tends to kick in as it gets harder for the body to oxidize fuel in the mitochondria. A goal of Vo2max training (like viking warrior conditioning, reviewed here) is to increase the lactate threshold - the level of effort and time before which bi products of lactate production (H+ ions) can no longer be buffered out of the blood.
And what all the lads love to hear: serum GH - significantly higher in the hypoxia case (potentially triggered, the researchers suppose by increased catecholamine release) Likewise IGF and of course yes the big T, testosterone. But so does cortisol.
And for those trying to burn fat? Not surprisingly to folks who see the world through the nervous system threat/no threat lense, those wonderful fight or flight catecholamines are of course elevated, too. These are the things that help fat mobilisation (discussed here in this b2d piece on HIIT). So gosh, let's see - challenge trying to breath - i'd say that's going to be perceived as a threat to one's system?
So What's Different (than occlusion training)?
The authors suggest that while occlusion training has shown greater muscle growth, they haven't really known why. They put it down to the increased levels of GH noted in occlusion training at LOW REPS. Here they're saying
In the present study, we revealed that systemic hypoxia was actually associated with greater GH response to resistance exercise for the first time. The hypoxia may play a key role in the low intensity resistance training with vascularInteresting that systemic hypoxia is being used to understand the mechanisms of a more local phenomena like Kaatsu cuffing.
occlusion-induced muscular hypertrophy
What they say their specific results also suggest is that IGF-1 may be indedpendent of GH levels. In other words, something else is going on to get a boost in IGF-1 than the presence of GH.
Likewise, they suggest that increases in serum testosterone may have more to do with intensity and muscle mass than "metabolic stress" - like hypoxia.
As for cortisol, another fight or flight hormone, that's also a known biproduct of resistance training. The researchers say they just don't know what the mechanism is such that these levels are particularly higher in this trial. Well heck, again, threat-related hormone; gonna asphixiate. Dunno. seems predictable when seen from that vantage?
Not Normal. The threat hormones did not return to normal levels within an hour after the trials either. Is that good? Not clear, but if overtraining is related to stressing they system, threatening it more than it can handle perhaps, then it's reasonable to see why this kind of training may need to be far more closely monitored for overtraining effects.
Openning New Doors. The biggest outcome it seems right now is the possible relationship of hypoxia to GH - at least in the authors' view:
... it is necessary to investigate whether hypoxic exposure plays an important role for the expressions of genes involving muscular hypertrophy in the future...Our data suggest that hypoxia is a potent factor for the enhancements of anabolic hormone (GH) response to resistanceWhy when fleeing the Tiger does GH turn on? Intriguingly, we already induce a kind of
hypoxic environment in anaerobic work like resistance training - hence the term anaerobic - so it's interesting to see therefore that the hypoxic effect seems to be perhaps on the recovery - where we usually pause between sets to catch our breath and re-oxygenate. Here, in this o2 deprived envrionment, that can't happen. Hence lactate it seems to me goes up. And GH switches in.Why, when the nervous system might be percieved to be under threat, would the nervous system/brain see this as a good time to, er, grow? (For a review of the systems that get shut down under stress, see this overview of Zebras and Baboons and Stress.)
Again, what these researchers don't seem to clue into is that growth hormone is apparently known to be triggered by stress (and here's a pdf from 76 about how kind of cool this is, where only 1/3 of the sample group was shown to have this particular stress/GH release response). It's role this work shows, is not just to grow the body, but the brain. Is that what's going on? I'm about to die; i suddenly need a bigger brain?
Ramdoc, over at the dragondoor forum (thank you), made the intriguing connexion that GH is related to insulin. Here's 2005 paper outlining the human GH/insulin homeostasis, and that bigger hits of GH lead to a hyperinsulinism - elevated levels of insulin in the bloodstream. That's gonna trigger a temporary blood glucose surge. So if increased GH relates to a rush of glucose to the bloodstream, that certainly would have a survival effect. More fast energy, that means more ATP, more muscle can be recruited, more speed, steve. Cool.
We're about to Die; Let's get Huge?
Well who'd have thought even to test the effects of cutting off c
irculation to see what would happen to our bodies?I suppose it's an interesting idea - take a process like anaerobic metabolism and string it out to see if by seeing what happens in a less natural environment, we get some better view into a natural environment. And heck, some folks might turn that practice into a way to rehab and train folks.
The responses seen in this environment - a big fat rush of fight or flight related responses - seem pretty predictable. That there's a positive payoff FROM that stress after the event is interesting: survive and get faster, stronger. Recovery means anabolism: more muscle, continued performance improvement. And who knows? Maybe a bigger smarter brain?
But in terms of pushing this principle that's being expressed in the large in this oxygen deprived space? The biggie that those stress levels don't go back to normal in normal time is a reminder that hypoxia work may just be super stressful to our CNS even if we mayn't perceive that directly ourselve - and this study doesn't tell us if it collected any of the athletes' responses to the protocol.
In the meantime, for those who are curious, how would one try this at home without an Hypoxia Generator? The mind reels at the possibilities.
Related Posts
- Threat response - movement
- Catecholamines release in HIIT
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Heart Rate Variability: Depression Monitor for Work?
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Following up on the use of heart rate monitors for recovery/fatigue detection, and at the 
horrid role of stress as what can be a chronic factor in mortality, we may be able to use heart rate variability (HRV) to help detect and so address depression - another stressor. A 2009 study has shown promising results in terms of using HRV to detect if someone is still suffering from the effects of depression. The study looked at folks who were returning to work after being off for depression, and having been cleared to come back to work. Here's the abstract:
As the conclusion of the abstract suggests, this approach could be a very cool, easy way to tune work/practices and to check how someone is doing on return to work. I'm thinking personal iphone ap hooked up to HRV measuring sensor for personal monitoring, too. One could potentially self check not only workout fatigue but work fatigue, too.
citation:
Takada, M., Ebara, T., & Kamijima, M. (2009). Heart rate variability assessment in Japanese workers recovered from depressive disorders resulting from job stress: measurements in the workplace International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health DOI: 10.1007/s00420-009-0499-1
Related:
Following up on the use of heart rate monitors for recovery/fatigue detection, and at the 
horrid role of stress as what can be a chronic factor in mortality, we may be able to use heart rate variability (HRV) to help detect and so address depression - another stressor. A 2009 study has shown promising results in terms of using HRV to detect if someone is still suffering from the effects of depression. The study looked at folks who were returning to work after being off for depression, and having been cleared to come back to work. Here's the abstract:The paper details the simple set up for HRV monitoring and questionnaire to correlate subjective survey responses about depression and this objective factors.
PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to clarify workers' autonomic nerve balance after long-term sick leave due to depressive disorders resulting from job stress compared with healthy workers. METHODS: The participants were 28 Japanese male workers recovered from depressive disorders and 75 healthy male workers. For each participant, the lifestyle and the fatigue within 1 month were assessed by a checklist. Heart rate variability (HRV) was measured at the workplace by acceleration plethysmography (APG). HRV was assessed by the coefficient of variation of rate intervals (CV), the spectral components in the high- and low-frequency areas represented by the normalized HF and LF (nHF and nLF), and the ratio of LF to HF components (LF/HF). RESULTS: There was no significant difference in individual lifestyle and fatigue symptoms between the recovered and the healthy workers. The former workers showed significantly lower CV, higher nLF and log(10)LF/HF, and lower nHF that represent the predominance of sympathetic activity in comparison with the healthy workers. Moreover, the recovered workers who discontinued medications indicated significantly higher nLF and log(10)LF/HF, and lower nHF compared to the recovered workers who continued their medications. CONCLUSIONS: Recovered workers in the workplace tended to show the depressive HRV feature that is the dominant sympathetic activity compared with the healthy workers. They might still be showing job stress that was not detected by the checklist. HRV analyses by APG in addition to questionnaire has the potential to become an effective approach for assessing workers' job stress to prevent repeated absences.
As the conclusion of the abstract suggests, this approach could be a very cool, easy way to tune work/practices and to check how someone is doing on return to work. I'm thinking personal iphone ap hooked up to HRV measuring sensor for personal monitoring, too. One could potentially self check not only workout fatigue but work fatigue, too.
citation:
Takada, M., Ebara, T., & Kamijima, M. (2009). Heart rate variability assessment in Japanese workers recovered from depressive disorders resulting from job stress: measurements in the workplace International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health DOI: 10.1007/s00420-009-0499-1
Related:
- should i do this next set: self-fatigue testing
- sports training on the other side of the weight room: somatosensory work.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
IPoding Athlete Audio Earphone - Update: more custom earphone options at the Apple Store
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Last week i did a post about the importance of good hearing 
protection while listening to one's tunes at the gym. I noted that there's a cool deal in the UK for custom sleeves to be fitted to the very cool etymotic research made-for-ipod ER 6i. While these are way cool for folks who don't need a mic with their earphones, some folks do, as their ipod may be an iPhone.
So i had a wee chat with ACS head honcho Andy Shiach late last week, and he informed me i'm a wee bit out of date. Etymotic has a headphone called the hf2 which is like the 6i except with the necessary inline mic AND they have a custom in-ear phone program AND ACS is doing the custom ear sleeves for them AND you can go into any apple store (in the UK right now), and buy the custom pack: you get the headphones and a vouchure for the custom sleeves. And this program is about to be rolled out world-wide "very soon" The vid below shows how it works.
Folks in the US right now can head to Ety's site to take a peek.
I'll update the site as soon as i learn of the Apple Store US release.
Technical Note: real protection
I also asked Andy about the differences in db ratings on the ety site, claiming 35-40 decibles and the custom sleeves rating 26db on the customhearing.co.uk site, especially since i find the sleeves much better. He explained that the 35-40 db may be the attenuation at some frequencies, but not at all. Indeed it may be quite a bit less as some hotter frequencies. On the other hand, the custom sleeves provide 26db at least at all frequencies. Cool.
So now, even less excuse not to protect one's hearing AND get improved audio experience at the same time. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
protection while listening to one's tunes at the gym. I noted that there's a cool deal in the UK for custom sleeves to be fitted to the very cool etymotic research made-for-ipod ER 6i. While these are way cool for folks who don't need a mic with their earphones, some folks do, as their ipod may be an iPhone.So i had a wee chat with ACS head honcho Andy Shiach late last week, and he informed me i'm a wee bit out of date. Etymotic has a headphone called the hf2 which is like the 6i except with the necessary inline mic AND they have a custom in-ear phone program AND ACS is doing the custom ear sleeves for them AND you can go into any apple store (in the UK right now), and buy the custom pack: you get the headphones and a vouchure for the custom sleeves. And this program is about to be rolled out world-wide "very soon" The vid below shows how it works.
Folks in the US right now can head to Ety's site to take a peek.
I'll update the site as soon as i learn of the Apple Store US release.
Technical Note: real protection
I also asked Andy about the differences in db ratings on the ety site, claiming 35-40 decibles and the custom sleeves rating 26db on the customhearing.co.uk site, especially since i find the sleeves much better. He explained that the 35-40 db may be the attenuation at some frequencies, but not at all. Indeed it may be quite a bit less as some hotter frequencies. On the other hand, the custom sleeves provide 26db at least at all frequencies. Cool.
So now, even less excuse not to protect one's hearing AND get improved audio experience at the same time. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Sunday, January 24, 2010
HIIT (on bikes) - why it results in both more fat reduction, and Spot Fat Reduction at That, too than Hearty Steady State
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There are lots of folks espousing the value of HIIT as an effective calorie burner when trying to burn fat. But is there really a special role for HIIT in the fat burning lexicon, or should we just strive to work harder - like 50-75% VO2max - throughout a cardio session? Some more recent work suggests there may be in terms of metabolic activity and even spot fat reduction. But before we go there, let's refresh a bit about HIIT.
The old argument that HIIT burns more calories than Steady State and so is beter has been given a good walloping by Lyle McDonald. Especially in his head to head of steady state with HIIT he pretty persuasively shows that "The intervals only come out a TINY bit ahead if you compare workouts of identical length and even there the difference is absolutely insignificant."
Review: What's HIIT supposed to Do?
Indeed, work from 2008 lead by Shannan E.
Gormley comparing intervals to a decent level of steady state effort did show a benefit for intervals of a sort, but the question for the researchers is what's the optimal time to spend at that peak intensity in an interval to elicit this effect? As cited previously here, the authors state:
So what about fat loss & HIIT, then?
HIIT means high intensity interval protocol. But what is the best HIIT to do if you're tuning it for fat lost first, and anything else second? And does it make a difference if you're dealing with elite athletes or people who are just well enough conditioned so their hearts won't explode if you ask them to go "really hard" for a bit? Is it 60 secs on? 30 off? 60:60? The infamous tabatta on for 20 off for 10 - and remember that was not primarily a fat burning study but an anaerobic/aerobic capacity study.
In 2007 & 2008 a couple studies came out on HIIT from New South Wales as part of some cool PhD work lead by Gail Trapp that i have come to cite frequently about a great HIIT protocol for fat loss and other cool, related benefits that looked explicitly at intervals for fat burning and effects between conditioned and less conditioned participants. Here's the first one, looking at what different HIIT intervals stir up metabolically.
Any type of heart rate elevation triggers some catecholamine response - so does drinking green tea. But what the authors show
here is that both long and short high intensity efforts - sprints in this case - can be effective to trigger greater catecholomine release, but the longer 24 sec sprint with its equivalent longer recovery seems to be better overall for fat mobilization. That's cool. That's actually less work/minute at 24 secs on 36 off than the shorter burst of 8on/12off (24sec vs 40secs of work). Wow. So longer more intense intervals - not necessarily more work - yields higher levels of fat release for fuel - but both the shorties and the longies are good.
Applying these Inervals to Fat Loss. Trapp and Co. then took this finding to a larger cohort of 45 participants (up from 8 and 8), and went longitudinal running a 15 week study. 15 weeks is *good* for 45 people to hang in there.
To be clear, in the second study, gals in the HIIT group did a five minute warm up, followed by 20mins of 8sec sprint followed by 12s of 20-30rpm recovery. The load was continually adjusted over the course of 15 weeks, starting at everyone getting to 20mins at .5kg of resistance. Based on heart rate, the load was upped by .5kg so that the heart effect was consistent as folks got stronger.
The steady state group worked at 60%V02peak - that's a good clip - about 75% maxHR so no slouching there. They worked up from 10mins to 40mins. The mean heart rate of the groups was 168.6 for the HIIT group; 155.7 for the steady state group (participants were 18-30 years old).
As to the fat loss: There was significant FM loss (P less than 0.05) r="−0.58,">This last point is not surprising, based on energy available for fuel from fat relative to bodyfat % (discussed here). The authors come back to this point stating:
Discussion of Findings - Cautious optimism for Intense Intervals
The authors in true geek science-ness don't overegg the results:
more fat available as fuel in the blood ready to be used, Trapp's crew hypothesizes, maybe people doing HIIT just aren't homeostatically tweaked to reach for calorically dense foods - their bodies know they have that covered. That's a really intersting idea. I wonder if doing HIIT closer to meal times enhances this effect, if that's what's going on.
What about this seeming spot reduction? But even if you want to say there are interesting side effects going on with HIIT that are causing these fat loss responses, the authors' key result is this abdominal fat difference. HIIT took OFF some ab fat; Steady state, i'm sorry to say, put some on. Dang.
Here's where exercise type may play an important role in whether or not this spot effect is achieved. The authors postulate the following:
Translating Results to Other Modes? Do these findings translate to other modalities for HIIT - like oh i dunno, maybe kettlebells? Don't know. Perhaps that would be an interesting comparison for bike, hardstyle with it's tension at the top of the swing say, and that hip/core/lat activation, and GS with its more relaxed swing. Do GS/HS differences fall away as the bell weight gets heavier?
In the meantime, the authors offer the following:
While the authors tested their participants with the 8/12 interval, their earlier work with the 24/36 suggests the benefits might be even greater - on a bike, but maybe with a kettlebell or a rowing machine, too.
Take Away: the Skinny on the Fat & HIIT
There are at least two ways to talk about HIIT - in the performance arena, and in fat burning. In performance, there is a small but not insignificant edge to interval work over intense steady state. In fat burning there is a really significant effect. Here's what i think it is.
While the authors make much of the spot fat reduction - and that's not nothing - the more intriguing thing is that *only* the HIIE group lost fat & had their lean body mass go up.
I've cited before work to show that without diet, any weight loss changes, even over 12 weeks of working out are small. In this case, there was no deliberate dietary intervention. So that there was such fat loss without more or less trying dietarily as well is really kinda eye openingly "what the heck?"
So i am intrigued by the authors' speculation about that catecholamine effect and glycerol release and potential effect on let's say homeostasis - a reduced reach for high cal foods, naturally. Wow. That makes HIIE worth looking at from a whole other point that has a whole lot less to do with the calories burned on the bike and the effect of those intervals throughout every other day of the week. And that's only 3*15. What would 3days at 20 or 30 or 40 minutes do? More is not always better - and intervals can be fatiguing but. Hmm.
Related Posts
main refs
There are lots of folks espousing the value of HIIT as an effective calorie burner when trying to burn fat. But is there really a special role for HIIT in the fat burning lexicon, or should we just strive to work harder - like 50-75% VO2max - throughout a cardio session? Some more recent work suggests there may be in terms of metabolic activity and even spot fat reduction. But before we go there, let's refresh a bit about HIIT.The old argument that HIIT burns more calories than Steady State and so is beter has been given a good walloping by Lyle McDonald. Especially in his head to head of steady state with HIIT he pretty persuasively shows that "The intervals only come out a TINY bit ahead if you compare workouts of identical length and even there the difference is absolutely insignificant."
Review: What's HIIT supposed to Do?
Indeed, work from 2008 lead by Shannan E.
Gormley comparing intervals to a decent level of steady state effort did show a benefit for intervals of a sort, but the question for the researchers is what's the optimal time to spend at that peak intensity in an interval to elicit this effect? As cited previously here, the authors state:It should be noted that although interval training groups spend some of their training time at a very high intensity, a similar amount of time is spent at a lower intensity, and therefore the mean intensity of training may not be any higher than that of a continuous training program. In the current study, the interval training group used 5 min each for the work and the recovery phases of the intervals and had an average intensity of 72% HRR, which is slightly less than the 75% HRR of the vigorous [the steady state -mc] group. The work-recovery periods of Helgerud et al.[16] were 4 min at ∼93% HRmax and 3 min at 70% HRmax, for a mean intensity of 83% HRmax in the interval group, whereas one of the continuous groups used 85% HRmax. Warburton et al.[37] used 2 min at 90% HRR and 2 min at 40% HRR for the work and the recovery phases, yielding a mean intensity of 65% HRR in the interval group, and had the continuous training group use 65% HRR. Wisloff et al.[38] used 4-min work phases at ∼93% HRmax and 3-min recovery phases at 60% HRmax, for a mean intensity of 79% HRmax in the interval group, and used ∼73% HRmax in the continuous training group. Despite the similarity of mean intensity between the interval and the continuous training groups, the interval groups in all of these studies experienced greater improvements in aerobic fitness after training. Therefore, although intensity is a key variable in cardiorespiratory training (as shown by comparing the two continuous training groups in this study), the mean intensity may not be as important as the highest intensity that is used for a significant portion of the training. A topic for future research is to determine what portion of training should be done at high intensities and using what work-recovery periods to obtain the greatest resultsThe above is looking not at fat loss effects of intervals, but training to enhance oxidative capacity for performance. More recently even really brief intense bouts of exercise (like 6 mins a week of effort compared with hours of steady state for the same physiological effect as hours of 60% MaxHR), there are similar kinds of performance benefits. So, there seem to be some performance optimization benefits from (a) looking at finding the right balance of peak intensity to recovery for work sessions and (b) looking at supramaximal efforts that may have similar effects in less time. Again, that's performance, not fat loss, and in the former case, we are talking really small degrees of difference.
So what about fat loss & HIIT, then?
HIIT means high intensity interval protocol. But what is the best HIIT to do if you're tuning it for fat lost first, and anything else second? And does it make a difference if you're dealing with elite athletes or people who are just well enough conditioned so their hearts won't explode if you ask them to go "really hard" for a bit? Is it 60 secs on? 30 off? 60:60? The infamous tabatta on for 20 off for 10 - and remember that was not primarily a fat burning study but an anaerobic/aerobic capacity study.
In 2007 & 2008 a couple studies came out on HIIT from New South Wales as part of some cool PhD work lead by Gail Trapp that i have come to cite frequently about a great HIIT protocol for fat loss and other cool, related benefits that looked explicitly at intervals for fat burning and effects between conditioned and less conditioned participants. Here's the first one, looking at what different HIIT intervals stir up metabolically.
Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol. 2007 Dec;293(6):R2370-5. Epub 2007 Sep 26.Fat Mobilization: Freed for the Burning. Ah ha you say, there's no fat loss measured here. Right. But what IS measured here is catecholamine activation. Those threat response fight or flight hormones are what mobilize fat to get burned, baby burned. And from these the authors suggest a correlation to the level of catecholamine released and the level of glycerol to be found in the blood stream. In other words, higher degree of intensity, greater catecholamine release, more fat mobilised to be used for fuel.
Metabolic response of trained and untrained women during high-intensity intermittent cycle exercise.
Trapp EG, Chisholm DJ, Boutcher SH.
School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Univ. of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia. e.trapp@unsw.edu.au
The metabolic response to two different forms of high-intensity intermittent cycle exercise was investigated in young women. Subjects (8 trained and 8 untrained) performed two bouts of high-intensity intermittent exercise: short sprint (SS) (8-s sprint, 12-s recovery) and long sprint (LS) (24-s sprint, 36-s recovery) for 20 min on two separate occasions. Both workload and oxygen uptake were greater in the trained subjects but were not significantly different for SS and LS. Plasma glycerol concentrations significantly increased during exercise. Lactate concentrations rose over the 20 min and were higher for the trained women. Catecholamine concentration was also higher postexercise compared with preexercise for both groups. Both SS and LS produced similar metabolic response although both lactate and catecholamines were higher after the 24-s sprint. In conclusion, these results show that high-intensity intermittent exercise resulted in significant elevations in catecholamines that appear to be related to increased venous glycerol concentrations. The trained compared with the untrained women tended to show an earlier increase in plasma glycerol concentrations during high-intensity exercise.
Any type of heart rate elevation triggers some catecholamine response - so does drinking green tea. But what the authors show
here is that both long and short high intensity efforts - sprints in this case - can be effective to trigger greater catecholomine release, but the longer 24 sec sprint with its equivalent longer recovery seems to be better overall for fat mobilization. That's cool. That's actually less work/minute at 24 secs on 36 off than the shorter burst of 8on/12off (24sec vs 40secs of work). Wow. So longer more intense intervals - not necessarily more work - yields higher levels of fat release for fuel - but both the shorties and the longies are good.Applying these Inervals to Fat Loss. Trapp and Co. then took this finding to a larger cohort of 45 participants (up from 8 and 8), and went longitudinal running a 15 week study. 15 weeks is *good* for 45 people to hang in there.
Int J Obes (Lond). 2008 Apr;32(4):684-91. Epub 2008 Jan 15.
The effects of high-intensity intermittent exercise training on fat loss and fasting insulin levels of young women.
Trapp EG, Chisholm DJ, Freund J, Boutcher SH.
Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. e.trapp@unsw.edu.au
OBJECTIVE: To determine the effects of a 15-week high-intensity intermittent exercise (HIIE) program on subcutaneous and trunk fat and insulin resistance of young women. DESIGN AND PROCEDURES: Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the three groups: HIIE (n=15), steady-state exercise (SSE; n=15) or control (CONT; n=15). HIIE and SSE groups underwent a 15-week exercise intervention. SUBJECTS: Forty-five women with a mean BMI of 23.2+/-2.0 kg m(-2) and age of 20.2+/-2.0 years. RESULTS: Both exercise groups demonstrated a significant improvement (P<0.05) in cardiovascular fitness. However, only the HIIE group had a significant reduction in total body mass (TBM), fat mass (FM), trunk fat and fasting plasma insulin levels. There was significant fat loss (P<0.05) in legs compared to arms in the HIIE group only. Lean compared to overweight women lost less fat after HIIE. Decreases in leptin concentrations were negatively correlated with increases in VO(2peak) (r=-0.57, P<0.05) and positively correlated with decreases in TBM (r=0.47; P<0.0001). There was no significant change in adiponectin levels after training. CONCLUSIONS: HIIE three times per week for 15 weeks compared to the same frequency of SSE exercise was associated with significant reductions in total body fat, subcutaneous leg and trunk fat, and insulin resistance in young women.
To be clear, in the second study, gals in the HIIT group did a five minute warm up, followed by 20mins of 8sec sprint followed by 12s of 20-30rpm recovery. The load was continually adjusted over the course of 15 weeks, starting at everyone getting to 20mins at .5kg of resistance. Based on heart rate, the load was upped by .5kg so that the heart effect was consistent as folks got stronger.
The steady state group worked at 60%V02peak - that's a good clip - about 75% maxHR so no slouching there. They worked up from 10mins to 40mins. The mean heart rate of the groups was 168.6 for the HIIT group; 155.7 for the steady state group (participants were 18-30 years old).
As to the fat loss: There was significant FM loss (P less than 0.05) r="−0.58,">This last point is not surprising, based on energy available for fuel from fat relative to bodyfat % (discussed here). The authors come back to this point stating:
High-intensity intermittent exercise training had a marked effect on fat levels for some individuals and a moderate effect for others. The correlation (r=0.58, P less than 0.01)43, 44 The four moderate fat loss responders in the HIIE group (women who had a 3% or less decrease in total fat) possessed significantly lower initial FM than the other women. With the four lean women removed, the mean fat loss in the HIIE group was 3.94±0.91 kg resulting in a 4.3% decrease in body mass and a 14.7% decrease in total FM. This 3.94-kg fat loss compares favorably to the 1.15-kg weight loss reported in a recent meta-analysis of the effects of SEE on weight loss.That all sounds good and reasonable and wonderful, but then comes the particularly interesting bits - gosh what would almost seem like spot fat reductions:
High-intensity intermittent exercise led to a significant decrease (P less than 0.05) in central abdominal fat (−0.15plus or minus 0.07 kg), whereas the SSE and CONT groups had nonsignificant increases in central abdominal fat (SSE group, +0.1 plus or minus 0.08 kg; CONT group, +0.03 plus or minus 0.04 kg).So more weight off the gut area in HIIT, legs and trunk (other newer work (like this one Nov 08 lead by Irving, and this one Aug 09 lead by Coker ) has seen similar results with gut fat). Intriguingly all groups put on fat in the arms (but not a lot). Indeed, the gut fat loss the authors cite as THE finding of the study. Even more, they state
Despite exercising half the time, HIIE subjects in the present study lost 11.2% of total FM with SSE subjects experiencing no fat loss.That's a pretty big difference between the two groups
Discussion of Findings - Cautious optimism for Intense Intervals
The authors in true geek science-ness don't overegg the results:
Collectively, these results demonstrate that intermittent sprinting compared to SEE is a more effective and efficient way of controlling body composition. However, our estimates of energy expenditure and intake lack sufficient precision to comfortably conclude that energy balance was unaffected in the HIIE condition. Thus, it is feasible that the change in FM that occurred in HIIE may have been influenced by unreported changes in diet. Indeed, HIIE-induced suppressed diet intake may be one of a number of possible factors underlying the fat loss effect of HIIE.11 For example, HIIE may have suppressed appetite or decreased attraction for energy-dense foods.24, 25 Another explanation for the HIIE fat loss effects is that this type of exercise may result in enhanced lipid utilization. Prior research in our laboratory has shown that lipid release, as indicated by blood glycerol levels, gradually increased over 20 min of HIIE.20 Catecholamine levels in this study were also found to be significantly elevated after HIIE.20Free Fat. I love this! Because of that catecholomine hit we saw earlier, and because there's
more fat available as fuel in the blood ready to be used, Trapp's crew hypothesizes, maybe people doing HIIT just aren't homeostatically tweaked to reach for calorically dense foods - their bodies know they have that covered. That's a really intersting idea. I wonder if doing HIIT closer to meal times enhances this effect, if that's what's going on. What about this seeming spot reduction? But even if you want to say there are interesting side effects going on with HIIT that are causing these fat loss responses, the authors' key result is this abdominal fat difference. HIIT took OFF some ab fat; Steady state, i'm sorry to say, put some on. Dang.
Here's where exercise type may play an important role in whether or not this spot effect is achieved. The authors postulate the following:
It is considered that spot reduction (that is, deliberately reducing fat stores in specific areas of the body) is not possible, and the body will mobilize preferentially those stores with the highest concentrations of adipose cells.36, 37, 38 There is evidence in the current study that this principle may not apply to every exercise modality. In HIIE, where work is done primarily by the musculature of the legs and the trunk muscles act as stabilizers, there was a decrease in FM and an increase in lean mass, which summated to a significant change in percentage of fat in these two regions. This was not the case with the SSE group.So where work triggers core stabilizers to get that extra intensity, there may be a seeming spot fat loss effect. It's also interesting to note that only the HIIT group had lean body mass increase.
Translating Results to Other Modes? Do these findings translate to other modalities for HIIT - like oh i dunno, maybe kettlebells? Don't know. Perhaps that would be an interesting comparison for bike, hardstyle with it's tension at the top of the swing say, and that hip/core/lat activation, and GS with its more relaxed swing. Do GS/HS differences fall away as the bell weight gets heavier?In the meantime, the authors offer the following:
In conclusion, 20 min of HIIE [on a bike - mc] , performed three times per week for 15 weeks compared to the same frequency of 40min of SSE exercise was associated with significant reductions in fasting insulin, total body fat, subcutaneous leg fat and abdominal fat.
While the authors tested their participants with the 8/12 interval, their earlier work with the 24/36 suggests the benefits might be even greater - on a bike, but maybe with a kettlebell or a rowing machine, too.
Take Away: the Skinny on the Fat & HIIT
There are at least two ways to talk about HIIT - in the performance arena, and in fat burning. In performance, there is a small but not insignificant edge to interval work over intense steady state. In fat burning there is a really significant effect. Here's what i think it is.
While the authors make much of the spot fat reduction - and that's not nothing - the more intriguing thing is that *only* the HIIE group lost fat & had their lean body mass go up.
I've cited before work to show that without diet, any weight loss changes, even over 12 weeks of working out are small. In this case, there was no deliberate dietary intervention. So that there was such fat loss without more or less trying dietarily as well is really kinda eye openingly "what the heck?"
So i am intrigued by the authors' speculation about that catecholamine effect and glycerol release and potential effect on let's say homeostasis - a reduced reach for high cal foods, naturally. Wow. That makes HIIE worth looking at from a whole other point that has a whole lot less to do with the calories burned on the bike and the effect of those intervals throughout every other day of the week. And that's only 3*15. What would 3days at 20 or 30 or 40 minutes do? More is not always better - and intervals can be fatiguing but. Hmm.
Related Posts
- Kettlebells and Cardio - it doesn't have to be VO2max all the time
- Viking Warrior Conditioning, the Review with Kenneth Jay
- Does Cardio interfer with Strength work? How 'bout No
- Running the bells - hill workouts with kettlebells
- Weight loss doesn't work without Diet - really [story 1, story 2]
- Fat, the amazing fuel.
- Getting a handle on the habits of thinner peace (as martha beck calls it)
main refs
Trapp, E., Chisholm, D., Freund, J., & Boutcher, S. (2008). The effects of high-intensity intermittent exercise training on fat loss and fasting insulin levels of young women International Journal of Obesity, 32 (4), 684-691 DOI: 10.1038/sj.ijo.0803781Tweet Follow @begin2dig
GORMLEY, S., SWAIN, D., HIGH, R., SPINA, R., DOWLING, E., KOTIPALLI, U., & GANDRAKOTA, R. (2008). Effect of Intensity of Aerobic Training on VO2max Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 40 (7), 1336-1343 DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e31816c4839
Trapp, E., Chisholm, D., & Boutcher, S. (2007). Metabolic response of trained and untrained women during high-intensity intermittent cycle exercise AJP: Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, 293 (6) DOI: 10.1152/ajpregu.00780.2006
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.
Related Posts
Tweet Follow @begin2dig
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
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
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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