Beta-alanine: The meta-analysis – 18 trials, still a marginal effect

I’ve always thought a meta-analysis on beta-alanine was a good idea. So many of the trials have been underpowered, that it felt like weren’t getting anywhere fast. I wanted to be the one to do it, but life circumstances have kept me from focusing on much other than my main career. So it was a pleasant surprise to see that someone else had the same idea.

With just 11 weeks left before my exams though, I’m going to keep this blog entry brief. Read More...

Restriction: It’s not just for calories

I’m sitting in the Newark airport and having a sandwich at the Earl of Sandwich (it’s the only place I can sit down here, it seems). There was a sign as I came up the ramp for “PI” stating that “He’s a child isn’t a diagnosis”, implying that your child’s cold could be a sign of “PI”. As I’m sitting here eating this club sandwich, there’s another sign outside the restaurant also for “PI” or “Primary Immunodeficiency”.

Primary immunodeficiency is a condition that affects (at best estimate) about 1 in 100 000 births. There are at least 5000 people that see that sign every day. Of those 5000 people, a much lower number of them will have children and even lower still, the number of those individuals who have a child less than 1 year old. In 20 days (almost a month), that sign would be applicable to a single individual if they were all infants under the age of 1. How many days would it take to pick up one case of PI? Probably more than 6 months to a year. Important? Yes. Because PI or SCID (Severe combined immunodeficiency) can result in DEATH before the age of one year if untreated. Read More...

Actually, yes, you can.

The amount of time one rests between sets is an often missed, or often underestimated training variable. It’s also one of the least studied variables when it comes to looking at hypertrophy as the outcome (as opposed to strength, or other performance variables, or even biochemical markers). So it is a treat to see a study where hypertrophy is the variable of interest, and where measurement of hypertrophy is truly a direct measurement. While not every investigator can measure hypertrophy in this way, it does go to show that “It can’t be done,” or “It will never get done,” are just words, because these researchers, in the words of the famous Dos Remedios, “did work.”

de Souza TP, Fleck SJ, Simao R, et al. Comparison between constant and decreasing rest intervals: Influence on maximal strength and hypertrophy. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 24(7) 1843-1850, 2010. Read More...

The most successful people aren’t necessarily the ones you want to listen to

I recently joined Twitter. Mostly, because I wanted to see what the fuss was about and it seemed like a neat way to tap into yet another network. The interesting thing about Twitter early on, is that (for those of us who have attention spans of gnats) that Twitter feed page doesn’t change very often unless you start following people’s Twitter feeds (I’m sorry, but “tweeps”? Seriously, no.) So I started searching for names of people I thought would be interesting to follow and whether they had feeds to follow or not. And on my journey through Google, I stumbled on this excerpt from someone I would consider to be one of the most impressive physique models in the world. I’ve broken them down, point by point instead of the entire crammed-in paragraph. but they are sequential (and I don’t think they’re taken out of context): Read More...

Gymnastics makes you short.

Bias. It’s everywhere. But one of the most annoying biases I’ve seen in a lot of the popular fitness publications, including websites, blogs, as well as paper magazines is what I call the “sport causality bias”, or “elite athlete selection bias”. Read More...