An open letter to OUT magazine
Dear OUT Magazine,
In reference to Joshua Stein’s “Corporeal Downsizing” article (May 2010), the misinformation in such a short paragraph was overwhelming. However, briefly: 1) It is physically impossible for muscle to turn into fat. People may accumulate fat if their daily caloric needs go down while their caloric intake stays the same, but muscle cells do not transform into fat cells even with disuse. They simply get smaller. 2) While circuit training and whole-body workouts are in vogue currently, what determines muscle growth has more to do with consistent increases in workload than it does with which muscles a person uses on which day. You can, in fact, build muscle on a circuit program. And 3) The calories a person burns with “cardio” is quite negligible; you can achieve the same weight-loss effect by reducing your calorie intake. It is misinformation such as that in your article that perpetuates long-disproven fitness myths and propagates ongoing ignorance about effective methods for weight (or muscle) loss. A magazine of your calibre should have higher standards for its sources. Read More...
Belief shouldn’t be part of why something works (unless it’s curing cancer)
But supplements, diets and workout programs shouldn’t be things that require your belief. Read More...
Chocolate milk: Yummy, but not special.
The ‘original’ chocolate milk study came out in 2006. And it seems like the whole chocolate milk thing just won’t die. Alas, document delivery has yet to deliver the article to my inbox yet (have I mentioned how much I love the Internet?), so I leapt forward in time to look at another study in the small puddle of chocolate milk studies.
This study doesn’t quite get at the question, “How important, exactly, is post-workout nutrition?” but rather, “How does chocolate milk compare to other forms of post-workout nutrition?” Read More...
Fear of loss: How the fitness claims get you
All through my undergraduate “career”, I worked in labs. Just as there are gym rats, I was a lab rat. Great experience for me. Okay pay for a student. But when I finished my undergrad, I already knew I was going to start my Masters in the fall. And at the time, I also felt that I had never really earned an honest dollar. I had never set foot outside the Ivory Tower and so I wanted to experience what a “joe job” might be like. My first choice was to be a waiter–pretty social, they seem to have a lot of fun for the most part, and the pay was probably better than my lab stipends. But in Toronto, getting a job as a waiter is tough competition. In the end, I lucked out, but there was a period of a month or so where I hadn’t found that job.
So what’s a 23 year old, freshly graduated biology major to do? Hit the want ads, of course. What happened next is a story unto itself, but the crux of the story is that I ended up doing a short stint as a door-to-door salesman with a franchise of one of the largest direct sales companies in the world. Read More...
Feel the PUMP! Um..that’s it.
Snarkiness aside, I’ve been wanting to discuss nitric oxide or NO supplements (as well as pre-workout drinks) for a long time; but oddly enough, the literature was incredibly sparse on the topic in terms of studies involving humans and outcomes training individuals would be interested in. NO-type ingredients seem to be in everything, to the point where you don’t have to _decide_ to take an NO-related ingredient, you probably just are, particularly if you’re taking anything that is designed as a pre-workout supplement. In fact, it’s amazing that they can stuff more than 30 ingredients into a single pre-workout drink such that it will still fit into a couple of scoops. Read More...
If research isn’t the "real world", then what can it show us?
When I was in physics class in my undergraduate degree, I remember doing an experiment to demonstrate the laws of momentum. I don’t remember the specifics of the experiment, but I do remember using an air-table (similar to an air hockey table, but smaller) and pucks (similar to air hockey pucks, but smaller) to demonstrate how conservation of momentum occurs in an almost frictionless environment.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t live in a frictionless world. Those of you who live on air-hockey-table-like-environments, I can’t speak for you. And back then, I probably thought very similarly to the way some people think about research now: “If nothing on Earth is truly frictionless, short of air-hockey tables and mag-lev devices, why do we have to do this experiment?” The answer back then, was, “Because we’re telling you do it, so quit bitching already and push the friggin’ puck.” But I’ve tried that answer on people who ask, “We never use supplement X/training technique Y in tightly controlled situations, so how do the results of these studies help us?” and a) it doesn’t go over very well, and b) they’re really confused about some mysterious puck. Read More...
How much would you pay for 2 more reps at the end of your workout?
The concept of progressive overload is a cornerstone to any weight-training program. Lifting more weight, or lifting the same weight for more reps is the goal that is theorized to produce muscle growth, or better performance (however you decide to measure that).
Citrulline malate has been an ingredient in a multitude of sport supplements. It is theorized to work through 3 proposed mechanisms: 1) malate is proposed to accelerate ammonium clearance and citrulline is proposed to facilitate lactate metabolism (these effects however, were noted in microbial models, i.e. germs in a dish); 2) citrulline malate has been noted to protect against acidosis which is proposed to counter fatigue; 3) Citrulline malate is proposed to increase nitric oxide production, which has been shown to have many potentially physiologically beneficial effects (though none of these effects may affect the stuff you’re concerned about like muscle growth, fat loss, or any performance benefit). Read More...
Get off the never ending path to nowhere
Everytime I’m at the gym, I notice the banks of “cardio” machines. In fact, for many consumers, the number and availability of the card machines is the single most important factor in decision making when buying a guy membership (which is why gyms can get away with less-than-optimal weight areas but they can’t get away from sub-par cardio equipment.) In the winter time (in Canada) I can understand how using a cardio-machine can be useful. Personally, I abhor most forms of cardio for the sake of doing cardiovascular work. I’ve been a competitive swimmer, and a competitive rower and we never did cardio just to do cardio. We worked out because we wanted to get faster. That being said, if it’s nice outside and you can run (or bike, or climb stairs, or row), there are a number of very good reasons why you should leave the gym and the endless run/bike/stairclimb to nowhere, but I’m going to focus on the biomechanics and energetics of running/walking.
Treadmill running is very different than overground running. Treadmill _walking_ is very different than overground walking. This has been shown time and time again in numerous biomechanics studies. But when it comes to fat loss and treadmill running or even treadmill intervals (if you’re of the school that cardio, in any of its many forms, including HIIT is important for fat loss), these differences are quite important. To understand some of these differences though, we need to have a language for gait. Read More...
Six people. One study. No practical outcomes. You drink protein before working out.
There is a neat research tool that I use a lot. It’s called the Web of Science. A lot of you use PubMed to find articles. You punch in a topic and it spits out a list of studies about that topic (roughly). Web of Science is a similar database, but it’s like a reverse lookup for studies. I punch in a study and Web of Science tells me about all the studies that have citied that study (i.e. have listed it in the references). This is an extremely useful tool when looking for follow-up studies.
We’ve already talked about very recent evidence about pre-workout protein and energy expenditure, so this week, I wanted to find the most recent evidence of using pre-workout protein for muscle growth, since that’s probably the REAL reason you’re drinking protein before a workout. While there are some studies that have looked at post-workout protein as well as both pre and post-workout protein, surprisingly, there haven’t been many studies on just pre-workout protein use and muscle growth. Read More...
Death by sand–when do fine details matter?
The very fact that you are reading this means that you are a person who is looking to improve yourself. Maybe you’re not quite started yet, or maybe you’ve been well on your way for many years; or maybe you’re trying to help other people. Read More...