Greetings from Seattle WA. I just have a sec here due to limited internet access and more things to do yet today; but wanted to get this brand new study out to all of you.

Jodie and I just finished an amazing breakfast here by our kind hosts. Fresh espresso, pumpkin pancakes and an omelet with red pepper and roasted garlic. Yummmmmy.

ACSM was killer and tons of info coming soon (soon being early this coming week as I may not have Internet access until then). I cut down on my notes this year and only have 20 pages.

Dave Barr and I saw a killer lecture from Dr. Stu Phillips about testosterone levels and training–short version is that if you are in the normal range, being high or low will NOT accelerate or alter muscle size or strength gains (this excludes the very very low end and the very very high end–those using exogenous testosterone). Exclusive updates to my newsletter group too (thanks for your patience).

Here is the study

Am J Clin Nutr. 2009 May 27, 2009

Ingestion of a protein hydrolysate is accompanied by an accelerated in vivo digestion and absorption rate when compared with its intact protein.

Koopman R, Crombach N, Gijsen AP, Walrand S, Fauquant J, Kies AK, Lemosquet S, Saris WH, Boirie Y, van Loon LJ.

BACKGROUND: It has been suggested that a protein hydrolysate, as opposed to its intact protein, is more easily digested and absorbed from the gut, which results in greater plasma amino acid availability and a greater muscle protein synthetic response.

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to compare dietary protein digestion and absorption kinetics and the subsequent muscle protein synthetic response to the ingestion of a single bolus of protein hydrolysate compared with its intact protein in vivo in humans.

DESIGN: Ten elderly men (mean +/- SEM age: 64 +/- 1 y) were randomly assigned to a crossover experiment that involved 2 treatments in which the subjects consumed a 35-g bolus of specifically produced l-[1-(13)C]phenylal anine-labeled intact casein (CAS) or hydrolyzed casein (CASH). Blood and muscle-tissue samples were collected to assess the appearance rate of dietary protein-derived phenylalanine in the circulation and subsequent muscle protein fractional synthetic rate over a 6-h postprandial period.

RESULTS: The mean (+/-SEM) exogenous phenylalanine appearance rate was 27 +/- 6% higher after ingestion of CASH when compared with CAS (P

CONCLUSIONS: Ingestion of a protein hydrolysate, as opposed to its intact protein, accelerates protein digestion and absorption from the gut, augments postprandial amino acid availability, and tends to increase the incorporation rate of dietary amino acids into skeletal muscle protein.

Just have a few secs here before the next lecture, but check out my twitter updates on the following lower right for some cool stuff.

Gotta run to another lecture, but more coming soon!

thanks for your patience!

Rock on
Mike N

Greetings from sunny Seattle WA. Yes, it is actually sunny out here!

Jodie and I finally made it here ok and we are off to tour the Space Needle, the Experience Music exhibit and Jim Hensen’s Muppets exhibit too

I am off to ACSM tomorrow through Friday, so I will hopefully have updates here but that will all depend on my internet connection. I will have exclusive newsletter only updates for my newsletter friends too.

A few short studies on fat loss in the meantime.

Addition of aerobic exercise to a weight loss program increases BMD, with an associated reduction in inflammation in overweight postmenopausal women.

Silverman NE, Nicklas BJ, Ryan AS. University of Maryland School of Medicine, Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center of the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center, GRECC (BT/18/GR), 10 North Greene Street, Baltimore, MD 21201-1524, USA.

Increased inflammation and weight loss are associated with a reduction in bone mineral density (BMD). Aerobic exercise may minimize the loss of bone and weight loss may contribute to a decrease in cytokines. We tested the hypothesis that aerobic exercise in combination with a weight loss program would decrease circulating concentrations of inflammatory markers, thus mediating changes in BMD. This was a nonrandomized controlled trial. Eighty-six overweight and obese postmenopausal women (50-70 years of age; BMI, 25-40 kg/m(2)) participated in a weight loss (WL; n = 40) or weight loss plus walking (WL + AEX; n = 46) program. Outcome measures included BMD and bone mineral content of the femoral neck and lumbar spine measured by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, soluble receptors of IL-6, and TNF-alpha (sTNFR1 and sTNFR2; receptors in a subset of the population), VO(2) max, fat mass, and lean mass.

Weight decreased in the WL (p

CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that the addition of aerobic exercise is recommended to decrease inflammation and increase BMD during weight loss in overweight postmenopausal women.

My notes: Nothing earth shattering here—you need to EXERCISE (heck, even walking) for weight loss and better health (less inflammation).

Effect of calorie restriction on subjective ratings of appetite.

Anton SD, Han H, York E, Martin CK, Ravussin E, Williamson DA. Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, LA, USA. santon@aging.ufl.edu

BACKGROUND: Energy or calorie restriction (CR) has consistently been shown to produce weight loss and have beneficial health effects in numerous species, including primates and humans. Most individuals, however, are unable to sustain weight losses induced through reductions in energy intake, potentially due to increased hunger levels. The effects that prolonged CR has on subjective aspects of appetite have not been well studied. Thus, the present study tested the effect of 6 months of caloric restriction on appetite in healthy, overweight men and women.

METHODS: Forty-eight overweight men and women with a body mass index (BMI; kg m(-2)) between 25-29.9 took part in a 6-month study and were randomised into one of four groups: healthy diet (control); 25% CR; 12.5% CR plus exercise (12.5% increased energy expenditure; CR + EX); low-calorie diet [LCD; 3724 kJ day(-1) (890 kcal day(-1)) until 15% of initial body weight was lost, then maintenance]. Appetite markers (i.e. hunger, fullness, desire to eat, etc.) were assessed weekly during a fasting state.

RESULTS: Body weight was significantly reduced in all three energy-restricted groups (CR = -10.4 +/- 0.9%; CR + EX = -10.0 +/- 0.8%; and LCD = -13.9 +/-0.7%), indicating that participants were adherent to their energy restriction regimen, whereas the healthy diet control group remained weight stable (control = -1.0 +/- 1.1%). Despite these significant weight losses, appetite ratings of participants in the three energy-restricted groups at month 6 were similar to the weight stable control group.

CONCLUSIONS: CR regimens with low fat diets producing significant weight losses have similar effects on appetite markers over a 6-month time period compared to a weight stable control group.

My notes: I wish they would have measured body fat instead of just using weight and BMI. You want to drop fat NOT muscle; but if you only measure weight you don’t know if you are dropping muscle and fat.

Here is a question I get a fair amount in relation to the location of pain / loss of function and where to look for a solution.

“He who treats the site of pain is lost” —Karel Lewitt, M.D., Dr.

Just because you have a chronic shoulder issue does not mean that you can SOLVE that issue by working ONLY on the shoulder! The first place I would look is the opposite joint; so for a right shoulder I would check the LEFT hip. For a right elbow issue, I would check the LEFT KNEE.

The technical term is interlimb neural coupling (see reference below).

How does this help in the real world? Keep on reading

Hey mike…you got me thinking on joint and cross joint and function. My right elbow has chronic arthritis and joint mice built up. I have full supination/pronation. But my extension is to about 130 degrees and my flexion is only at 90 degrees. It’s quite limited! So I’m always altering movement. I really don’t do much pressing anymore. In Z health should i pay extra attention to my left knee?

Just curious
Thanks a lot man
Jason Ross

The short answer is YES I have a video coming out on this soon, whenever I can steal 5 minutes to upload it.

I can’t guarantee that, but for an elbow, the first place I would look at is the opposite knee and I would check the opposite motion too; so knee flexion (hamstring). Have you ever sprained that ankle on that side? I wold check the talocalcaneal aka subtalar joint since that corresponds to hamstring activity due to gait

Let me know what you find!

Mike N

Mike….I actually have sprained the left ankle pretty severely around 12 years ago. It has never felt as stable.

Thanks for your time man. Jason

Be sure to check out all the killer information on Jason’s blog

Train Out Pain

For a case study on how to use opposite joints and the results, see the link below

Z Health and Marathon Running

REFERENCE

Brain. 2007 Jan;130(Pt 1):159-69. Epub 2006 Oct 3.

Exaggerated interlimb neural coupling following stroke.

Kline TL, Schmit BD, Kamper DG.

Neuromechanics Laboratory, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA.

The patterns of interlimb coupling were examined in 10 stroke survivors with chronic hand impairment. In particular, the potential roles of postural state and motor tasks in promoting the flexed posture of the upper extremity were assessed. Through the use of electromyography analysis, joint angle measurements and a novel biomechanical apparatus to perturb the digits of the hand into extension, measurements of muscle activity and joint position were compared during multiple postural states, locomotion and voluntary muscle activity. The results demonstrated a significant increase in flexion of the digits (P flexion and voluntary leg extension produced significant activity in the other impaired extremity, leg and arm, respectively, in the stroke as compared with the control subjects. Thus, rectus femoris in the impaired leg was active during finger flexion of the impaired hand in the stroke survivors and all four tested muscles in the impaired arm were active during extension of the legs (P interlimb coupling related to active motor tasks, contributing to an upper extremity flexion bias following stroke.

I just have a sec as Jodie and I are off to the airport in a bit for Seattle WA for 8 days. Well, we were supposed to be on a plane now but there was a change to our flight time and the plane already left at 6:30am instead of 2:30pm today! Thanks for the great notice!
All the details will be in my newsletter that goes out tomorrow if anyone is interested (can still sign up at the bottom on this message).

Some good friends of mine were kind enough to open up their house to us (little do they know what is in store) and time for a much needed vacation. Neither of us have been to Seattle yet either and I will be a the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) conference this coming Wed-Fri sniffing out the latest and greatest for all of you here. I am working on some special updates and perhaps even an interview(s). Some of it will be released here and some tidbits will only be sent to my newsletter group, so be sure to sign up for my newsletter at the end of this post (it is free too).

If you are going to be at ACSM, drop me a note and we can chat live in person!

So it looks like a previous blog post I did stirred up a few comments and I got permission to post one below as this weeks “Letter to the Editor”

Read on

Ok, time for me to say something about the language you use as you may be hurting yourself and not even realize it. First, let me say, I love your blog posts, I can tell you spend a great deal of time and effort to not only “just post links to research articles”, but you take the time and effort to break down the research articles and you do an excellent job of summarizing and breaking it down to a lay person’s level, who, may be interested and intelligent enough to really “get” the article, but who may not be willing to dedicate the time to actually read the whole study, in part b/c you break it down so well!

Constructive Criticism Details below: Anytime you write on your blog or in these email updates to your blog about strength training, you refer to it as “strength training” or as training for “power/speed athletes”, but I have Never read you making Any derogatory remarks about strength training.

Except for the one blog post about “Broscience“. At the same time, I have observed, that almost anytime you write, on your blog, or in these email updates to your blog, about endurance training, you Almost Always refer to it as exercise conducted by “cardio bunnies” or as exercise conducted by (in this case) “Cardiobots“, or you may use some other derogatory word, but “Cardio bunnies” seems to be your favorite.

And I get that there are people out there who “only” will do endurance training, and I can see how you may feel that strength training is not stressed enough or paid enough attention to and therefore I can see that you may be trying to make a case for why strength training is important. However, at the same time, I think there are probably just as many people out there who “only” engage in strength training and don’t see any value in endurance training. And I know, you know the value in endurance training, b/c I’ve read a number of your blog posts about how amazing you find endurance athletes like the bike race across America.

Plus, I know you are very smart and as a smart person myself (at least I like to think so), who tries to have a good balance of both endurance and strength training, I find it demeaning and simply not necessary, to almost Always make fun of people who engage in endurance training by calling them demeaning names.

This all leads to my question: Why do feel it is necessary to make derogatory remarks about endurance training or people who engage in endurance training, but you (almost) never make derogatory remarks about strength training or people who engage in it, but you in strength training?

Charles

Thanks again for the comments Charles. Much appreciated as it take cajones to actually give constructive feedback.

Yeah, I may be pissing off some cardio people although that is not my intent. I refer to a cardiobot or a cardio bunny as someone who does mindless hours of cardio normally on a treadmill or elliptical without any plan or any change in intensity–just the same thing every day hoping it will work better tomorrow. You can spot these people in big health clubs very easily (and they don’t even wear rabbit ears).

I have HUGE respect for ANY athlete (athlete is defined as anyone that trains and uses their body for a living, so that includes pretty much everyone). I totally understand why people run marathons and heck, bike across the entire US from my volunteer stint on the RAAM and I give mad props to all of them. I personally will not be signing up any time soon though.

Don’t worry, there are tons of stupid things that weight trainers do in the gym too! I tend to forget about it since the only gym I go to on occasion is at work and that is mostly cardio equipment. I do 95% of my sessions in my garage gym (aka the Xtreme Human Performance Center) and for cardio I primarily do KBs, some biking and now that summer is here more sprints, sledge hammer on the tire, push cars, etc.

I do feel the tide is turning and strength work is getting much more respect in the research community, but the reality is its much easier to study endurance training. I fully admit to falling in that camp too as part of my Monster Energy Drink study is using a bike ride to exhaustion because of previous literature (although not much) and it is easier to measure.

Yes, cardio (cardiorespiratory fitness) is very important! I actually believe that many strength athletes could benefit from more intelligent CRF work in their programs, even if strenght is their main goal. My buddy Aaron S from ND said it best, “it just helps to be ‘ft’” I will save you a lecture about HRV and work capacity.

The reality is that this blog will never be a home for die hard endurance fans, and that is fine with me. I don’t mean any disrespect to them, but I have to narrow the focus a bit to provide relevant
info to the loyal readers

Hope that helps and thanks again for the feedback as most just unsubscribe without any comments or why; which makes it very hard for me to improve them. My goal long term is to make this a trusted home for athletic performance enhancement. I agree with Dr. Cobb when he said “it is actually UNnatrual to NOT be athletic”
Rock on
Mike N
PS
If anyone else has comments on this, post away in the comments section!

PPS
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