A Case Against Cardio, Part 27 | Mark's Daily Apple

A Case Against Cardio, Part 27


I’m mostly joking with the title. Though, considering how much I’ve written on this topic
since starting this blog way back in 2006, it’s probably not too far
off. And it’s not just me. Endurance training has been getting the snot
beaten out of it in recent years. A variety of media outlets, TED talks, other blogs, observational research and clinical trials have all sounded the alarm about the dangers of excessive chronic cardio.

A new string of studies
has found evidence of higher arterial plaque levels in the most active
endurance athletes. This is becoming a trend. While endurance athletes
tend to have more of the calcified kind of plaque, which is more stable
and theoretically less prone to dangerous ruptures than less-calcified
plaque, it remains worrying. I’ve spoken in the past about the proclivity toward heart problems found in endurance athletes. I know many former peers with atherosclerosis, cardiac arrhythmias, and other heart troubles.



As disconcerting as that is, that’s not what today’s post is about.

Today, I’m asking, “What’s the point?”

The whole “this thing will kill you” tactic is helpful from time to
time, but more effective is the utility argument: what works better?
What gets you fitter, faster, stronger, and sexier?

In recent years, researchers have been running direct
head-to-head comparisons between traditional endurance training and more
intense forms of exercise, like strength training or sprint interval
training. They almost always end badly for cardio. How badly?

Let’s find out:

A recent review asked an important question: what’s
better for altering body composition—resistance training alone,
endurance training alone, or endurance training with resistance
training?

Resistance training won, leading to greater fat loss and retention of
lean muscle mass. Furthermore, RT alone was better at reducing fasting
insulin levels and improving blood lipids.

The only way the authors were able to find endurance training helpful
was by including high intensity interval training in the endurance
category. Their overall conclusion was that the “focus of treatment” for
people interested in losing body fat should be on producing a large
metabolic stress via intense strength training and/or interval training.

This jibes with other recent papers:

Endurance training burns more belly fat when you incorporate strength training.

In obese teens, strength training alone reduced body fat more than endurance training or combined endurance/strength training.

In women with PCOS, both strength training and interval training
reduce body fat and improve insulin resistance without affecting body
weight, which indicates gains in lean muscle mass. In another study, women with PCOS who engaged in standard moderate cardio improved endothelial function but lost no body fat.

It’s surprising, isn’t it? You’d assume that although strength
training is definitely great for health, fitness, and body composition,
adding in some endurance work could only improve those metrics even
more. Sometimes, that’s true, but in the majority of studies, this just isn’t the case. Strength training or interval training alone are generally superior.

How about “unhealthy” people with conditions like heart failure or
diabetes? Aren’t they too fragile to endure resistance training or high
intensity intervals? Wouldn’t an hourlong jog be a better, safer use of
their time?

In September, patients with heart failure (with preserved injection fraction)
were placed on one of two exercise modalities: continuous
medium-intensity cardio (30 minutes at 70% maxHR) or high-intensity
interval training (4×4 minutes at 85-90% maxHR; 3 minutes rest). HIIT
resulted in numerous improvements to arterial function and ventricular
volume. The HIIT group even improved their cardiovascular fitness, with VO2max going up. The cardio group saw no improvements at all.

Other studies
have found that endurance training can improve VO2max in heart failure
patients but has little effect on markers of endothelial function or
arterial stiffness.

Recently, researchers compared the effects of endurance training to either resistance training or HIIT on microvascular function in type 2 diabetes.
Microvascular function refers to the system of tiny, precious little
capillaries delivering blood and nutrients to individual cells and
tissues. Poor microvascular function predicts future cardiovascular problems,
so it’s really important. They found that the training modalities which
employed the most amount of muscle tissue produced the biggest
improvements. As most traditional endurance training localizes muscle
recruitment, while HIIT and strength training tend to target the entire
body, that’s a roundabout way of saying strength training and HIIT trounced endurance training.

Other diabetes researchers examining this exact issue are quick to say that “more exercise is not better” and that it’s all in how
you exercise. You can’t just do something that gets you winded and hope
you’re destroying your glucose intolerance, insulin resistance, and
normalizing your glucose levels. You have to train the glucose sinks—the
actual muscles that will be accepting (or rejecting) the glucose. And
the absolute best way is to move those muscles, particularly vigorously.
Jogging through your neighborhood or cycling for three hours just
doesn’t cover all your bases like a full-body strength workout or a CrossFit WOD.

We’re not the fragile snowflakes we think we are. We can tolerate intense exercise. We cannot tolerate avoiding intense exercise. Dress for the job you want. Train for the intensity you want your body to endure and thrive in.

Plus, we’re all busy. Everyone’s working. Very few single income
families exist these days. And if we want to be able to have it
all—perform well at work, maintain relationships at home, procure and
prepare good food, enjoy much-deserved leisure time—smart, efficient exercise has to be a part of our routine.

This might be even more relevant for my female readers.
In many respects, you have it harder. You often take on more domestic
responsibilities while still working, and yet the conventional wisdom is
that you mustn’t lift too many weights or damage your delicate bodies
with intense intervals. You’re warned about “getting all bulky.” You
want “tone, not muscle.” And so you end up taking hour long
pilates classes or doing 45-minute light aerobics sessions, when you
could just as easily—and to greater effect—lift something heavy for 10-15 minutes or go sprint up a hill or do a quick bodyweight circuit.

What’s the point of hard-core endurance training? If you’re competing, professionally or on an amateur level, I get it.
The drive to push your past its limits and beat the other guys is
powerful and difficult to ignore. There’s something to be said for
satisfying that part of human nature. There are probably benefits to
seeing your enemies driven before you and hearing the lamentations of
their women, particularly psychological ones.

If you’re getting paid to run marathons
or compete in triathlons, keep doing it. You’ve got the justification
you need to tax your body and perform what probably amounts to a
suboptimal training regimen. Just be sure to get out while you can still
walk and move well.

I don’t hate cardio (I might have loved it, in a manner of speaking, a
bit too much, in fact). In the context of a movement-nutritious
lifestyle—lots of walking, strength training, occasional sprinting, physical play—some cardio can be beneficial. It
simply doesn’t work as well as we’ve been told it does. There are just
better ways most of us can and should be spending our training time.

All that said, endurance training can enhance your health, and there are better ways to do it. Stay tuned for Primal Endurance, where I’ll lay out a whole new paradigm for endurance training.

Now let’s hear from you: have you experienced middling or nonexistent
improvements from straight up endurance training? Does this gel with
your experiences?

Thanks for reading, everyone.

Prefer listening to reading? Get an audio recording of this blog
post, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast on iTunes for
instant access to all past, present and future episodes here.

Read more: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/a-case-against-cardio-part-27/#ixzz3s5Lf5TCA

Muscle Regeneration & Hypertrophy Update: Vitamin D and Super-Slow Training - What Are They Good For? - SuppVersity: Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Muscle Regeneration & Hypertrophy Update: Vitamin D and Super-Slow Training - What Are They Good For? - SuppVersity: Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Is it worth to replete vitamin D, but not to train super-slow, right?

No, I haven't dug up a study that deals with vitamin D and super-slow
training at once, but I've found two very recent studies that are in one
way or another related to muscle regeneration and hypertrophy and the
way/s vitamin D and different training methods affect these outcomes.
More specifically, the researchers investigated the effects of vitamin D
(20OHD) repletion and the use of higher times-under-tension (TUT) and
super-slow training.



Before I go ahead, though, I would like to point out that the long-term
implications of some of the results are not totally obvious - a fact I
will therefore (re-)address in the bottom line.

If you periodize appropriately you may actually be able to benefit from super-slow training.

30% More on the Big Three: Squat, DL, BP!

Block Periodization Done Right

Linear vs. Undulating Periodizationt

12% Body Fat in 12 Weeks W/ Periodizatoin

Detraining + Periodization - How to?

Tapering 101 - Learn How It's Done!

• (Super-)slow training and its inferior effects on early-phase
  satellite cell and myonuclear domain adaptation (Herman-Montemayor.
  2015) -- The purpose of one of the latest studies from the Rocky
  Vista University was to identify adaptations in satellite cell (SC)
  content and myonuclear domain (MND) after 6-week slow-speed vs.
  “normal-speed” resistance training programs.
  
  To this ends, thirty-four untrained women
  were divided into slow speed (SS), traditional strength (TS),
  traditional muscular endurance (TE), and nontraining control (C) groups.
  The ladies performed a leg work consisting of three sets of each of the
  following exercises twice per week in the first and thrice per week in
  the fifth week: Leg press, squat, and knee extensions. To investigate
  how the way these workouts were performed would affect the adaptive
  response, the scientists randomly assigned their subjects to four
  different groups:
  • The Super-Slow (SS) group performed 6– 10 repetition maximum
    (6–10RM) for each set with 10-second concentric (con) and 4-second
    eccentric (ecc) contractions for each repetition.
  • The Traditional Strength (TS) group and the Traditional Muscular Endurance (TE) group who performed 6–10RM and 20–30RM, respectively, at “normal” speed (1–2 seconds per con and ecc contractions).
  • The sedentary control group (C) which did not work out at all.
  To allow for a similar number of reps in the TS and SS group, the
  intensity (=weight used) in the SS group was reduced to the same 40–60%
  of the 1RM that was also used in the TE group. The TS group, on the
  other hand trained at 80–85% 1RM.

What do the changes in fiber type satellite cell increases actually tell us? Unfortunately,
the answer to this question is by no means straight forward. In
conjunction with the overall increase in domain sizes, cross sectional
fiber size and myonuclear domain numbers (see Figure 1) the
increased satellite cell recruitement in the traditional training group
does yet support its superiority over super-slow training (learn more about satellite cells).

• I know that this is not ideal, but there's
  no way you do 6-10 reps with a time-under-tension (TUT) of 10-0-4 with
  the same weight you'd do 6-10 reps at a normal TUT of 1-0-1 or 2-0-2,
  accordingly, the results the scientists' analysis of the pretraining and
  posttraining muscle biopsies the authors analyzed for fiber
  cross-sectional area, fiber type, SC content, myonuclear number, and MND
  still have practical relevance.
  

  

  Figure 1:
  Percentage change (%) in mean fiber cross-sectional area, myonuclear
  domain size (domain), and number of myonuclei per fiber cross-section
  (myonuclear number) from pretraining to posttraining for each group (TS,
  SS, TE, and C). *Significant increase after training, p , 0.001.
  §Significant
  increase after training, p # 0.05. #Significantly greater increase after
  training compared with all other groups (SS, TE, C), p , 0.01. TS =
  traditional strength (Herman-Montemayor. 2015).

  And what does the scientists' analysis tell us? Well, along with the data in Figure 1,
  the exclusive increase in satellite cell content of type I, IIA, fibers
  (IIX and IIAX increased in both SS and TS, but not TE or control) that
  was observed in the traditional strength (TS) training group appears to
  confirm the superiority of this way of training when it comes to lying
  the foundations of further myonuclear domain growth (learn more in the "Muscle Hypertrophy 101").
  
  The
  fact that myonuclear domain increases of type I, IIAX, and IIX fibers
  occurred exclusively in the TS, yet not in the SS group, where only the
  domains of the type IIA fibers increased, does still appear to confirm
  the common prejudice that - for the average trainee - training at higher
  times under tension (TUTs) does not offer benefits that suggest faster
  or more robust size gains. Compared to strength-endurance training,
  however, super-slow training is still the better option. On a "per load
  basis" it is thus more effective to do fewer reps slower vs. more reps
  at a normal speed if your goal is to "grow" muscle.
• Vitamin D affects muscle recovery directly (Owen. 2015) -- We
  already know that vitamin D figures in one way or another in (a) the
  adaptive response to exercise and (b) the recovery process after
  strenuous workouts. Unfortunately our "knowledge" is based mostly on
  correlations and associations and can thus hardly be considered reliable
  evidence. That's something researchers from the Liverpool John Moores
  University, the Charité in Berlin, the Norwich Medical School and other
  European labs weren't happy with, either. Accordingly, they designed a
  randomised, placebo-controlled trial that involved twenty males with low serum 25[OH]D
  (45 ± 25 nmol.L-1) who performed 20×10 damaging eccentric contractions
  of the knee extensors with peak torque measured over the following 7
  days of recovery prior to and following 6-weeks of supplemental Vitamin
  D3 (4,000 IU.day-1) or placebo (50 mg cellulose).
  
  To complement
  the results of this human trial, the authors conducted a parallel
  experimentation using isolated human skeletal muscle derived myoblast
  cells from biopsies of 14 males with insufficient serum 25[OH]D (37 ± 11
  nmol.L-1) that were subjected to mechanical wound injury. Thus, the
  scientists tried to emulate the process of muscle repair, regeneration
  and hypertrophy in the presence and absence of 10 nmol or 100 nmol
  1α,25[OH]2D3 in the petri dish.
  

  

  Figure 2: In view
  of the fact that the scientists used active vitamin D3 (calcitriol) in
  the in-vitro study, the improved recovery in the human trial is all the
  more the more relevant results of the study. It does yet pose the
  question whether similar or any effects had been observed in subjects
  with sufficient vitamin D levels in whom the provision of extra vitamin
  D3 may have increased 25OHD, but not the systemic calcitriol levels of
  which the scientists' in-vitro dta shows that it is responsible for the
  effects (Owens. 2015).

  What the results of both studies have in common is that they support the
  previously claimed role of vitamin D in muscle repair and regeneration.
  How's that? Well, the supplemental Vitamin D3 the D-ficient human
  subjects received didn't just increase the serum 25[OH]D levels. It also
  lead to measurable improvements of the recovery of peak torque at 48
  hours and 7 days post-exercise. In conjunction with the observation that
  10 nmol 1α,25[OH]2D3 aka calcitriol (=active vitamin D3, not the
  supplement you consume) improved muscle cell migration dynamics and
  resulted in improved myotube fusion/differentiation at the biochemical,
  morphological and molecular level in the cell study, where it also
  increased the myotube hypertrophy at 7 and 10 days post-damage, these
  preliminary data do just as the scientists say "characterise a role for
  Vitamin D in human skeletal muscle regeneration and suggest that
  maintaining serum 25[OH]D may be beneficial for enhancing reparative
  processes and potentially for facilitating subsequent hypertrophy"
  (Owens. 2015).

"Explosive Reps
May Pay Off - At Least on the Bench: Fast Reps = Higher Muscle Activity,
Higher Volume... Gains?" Find the answer to this question from a
previous SuppVersity article here.

So what? Yes and no! Those are the answers to the questions you
are probably about to ask. Yes, it does make sense to keep an eye on
your vitamin D (25OHD in serum) levels, to do blood tests regularly and
to supplement according to your personal needs. Yes, it does also make
sense to get 1,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day even if you don't know
you're deficient. And yes, all that may actually help you to recover
faster.



What neither vitamin D3 nor super-slow training will do, though, is to
turn you into a ripped super-muscular freak. In fact, the answer to the
rarely asked question whether it makes sense to switch from a regular
hypertrophy training regimen with a TUT of 1-0-1 or 2-0-2 to a
super-slow regiment, is "no". Or more precisely: No, it is not generally
recommendable to do super-slow training instead of regular resistance
training if your goal is max. muscle hypertrophy.



A question the study by Herman-Montemayor cannot answer, however, is
whether doing super-slow training only least temporarily (as part of a
perdiodization scheme, for example) would help pro-athletes to make
further or faster progress. Even without a study, though, it can be said
that someone who has been training with a TUT of 1-0-1 and weights
corresponding to his/her 6-10RM (=80-85% of 1RM) for years and for whom
the super-slow training would constitute a novel training stimulus is
probably more likely to benefit from intermediate super-slow training than the subjects in the study at hand for whom this was the first 6-week gym experience | Comment on Facebook!

References:

• Herman-Montemayor, Jennifer R., et al. "Early-phase satellite cell
  and myonuclear domain adaptations to slow-speed versus traditional
  resistance training programs." Journal of strength and conditioning
  research/National Strength & Conditioning Association (2015).
• Owens, Daniel J., et al. "A Systems Based Investigation into Vitamin
  D and Skeletal Muscle Repair, Regeneration and Hypertrophy." American
  Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism (2015):
  ajpendo-00375.

Goblet Reverse Lunge - YouTube

Goblet Reverse Lunge-UCSD - YouTube

7 Muscle-Building, Testosterone-Boosting Tips for Guys 40+

7 Muscle-Building, Testosterone-Boosting Tips for Guys 40+

Written by Jason Ferruggia

"Definitely don’t train to failure”

        while in the next breath he says

 “Learn to be able to wipe yourself out completely on a set of bodyweight pushups or 20 pound dumbbell curls. Tension is key. “

his real message seems to be:

• not to overtrain (ie manage frequency, rest issues)
• not to train train like naturally bigger muscled guys (ie excessive weight-driven tension, as opposed to time and form driven tension)
• not to train like a crossfit lunatic (ie always going to cardio exhaustion, red-lining cortisol)

he says the smartest +  safest way for thinner older guys, is like this:

"You should NEVER feel an exercise in your shoulders, elbows, knees, hips or lower back. Belly of the muscle only."

hugh-jackman

Here’s a question that was asked recently in The Renegade Strength Club Forum, followed by my response.

Jay,

I’m coming back from multiple injuries. I recently got my bloodwork done because I just felt like something was off. And I was right. My estrogen levels are higher than my testosterone, which is low.

My cortisol is high as well.

I’m 5’10, 168 pounds. I am skinny fat!

A guy I hired put me on six meals a day and I followed something called a 4x4x4 workout. Basically it was 4 exercises for 4 sets and you took :04 seconds to raise the weight and :04 seconds to lower it. I did smaller muscles groups (bi’s, tri’s, shoulders) twice a week and larger muscle groups once a week.

My body temperature is only 96.5.

I just keep getting smaller and fatter.

Help

KV

My reply…

Welcome back, brother. You’re the prototypical skinny-fat, injury prone, low-testosterone-high-estrogen/cortisol-having, hardgainer. I can totally relate.

Here are the top 7 things you need to do right now.

1) Reduce Training Volume

Train three days per week. That’s plenty right now.

NO BARBELL LIFTS. First of all, you’re injury prone. Secondly, you’re not built for a lot of the traditional power and Olympic lifts. Lastly, you don’t need the stress right now. Focus on dumbbells, kettlebells and bodyweight.

2) “Stimulate. Don’t annihilate.”

That’s a quote from 8-time Mr. Olympia, Lee Haney. In the day and age where every workout is a competition to be posted on social media, most people train too hard.

You can’t go all Ultimate Warrior on shit and expect to get the results you want and remedy your situation. No extreme psyche up or anything like that.

Definitely don’t train to failure. Lighten all the weights and don’t go below eight reps for a LONG time.

Since you’re 40 and very injury prone I would never recommend going below an 8RM weight.

You could do multiple sets of 5-6 with an 8RM but lets not even worry about that or over-complicate things right now.

3) Master Technique

Only train with weights you absolutely master with perfect form and constant tension. Right of the top I can tell you that you’ll need to reduce the weight you do on every exercise by at least 20%.

You should be getting pumps that make you look 10-15 pounds bigger at the end of a workout. If you’re not something is wrong. It could be your nutrition and hydration but often times it’s just that you’re training too heavy with sloppy form.

This is what 95% of all people do.

Most skinny-fat guys always stay that way, and never look like they train because they constantly go too heavy. They train their egos but never the actual muscle they want to build.

You should NEVER feel an exercise in your shoulders, elbows, knees, hips or lower back. Belly of the muscle only.

Lower the weight in a very controlled two count. Stretch under load (but only to full range of the muscle, NOT the exercise. There’s a big difference and most people have no clue), then contract and squeeze the target muscle as hard as you can. Don’t pause at lockout. Controlled, piston like reps.

Until you really lock in a mastery level of technique don’t “explode” the weight up on anything. Squeeze it up while creating maximum tension in the muscle and throughout the rest of your body. Learn to be able to wipe yourself out completely on a set of bodyweight pushups or 20 pound dumbbell curls. Tension is key. You can get back to exploding sometime later on down the road.

4) Train Each Muscle Group More Frequently

What you are doing right now- training each muscle group once per week is NOT what you want to do. It’s the complete opposite. In skinny-fat hardgainers like us the anabolic response from exercise is very short lived. It lasts just 1-2 days. That means you’d be better served doing a full body workout three times per week right now. Or you can do a well designed upper/lower split where you still get some crossover on each day. Otherwise you are sacrificing gains and taking two steps forward followed by one step back.

5) Stop Doing Cardio

Do zero medium intensity cardio. Do something high intensity for ten minutes at the end of two of the workouts. Sled sprints, battling ropes, Air Assault bike, etc. in short burst intervals of twenty seconds. That’s it for now. 

Spend an hour doing mobility, yoga and walking on your off days.

When you get healthy we’ll talk about how to add some more conditioning back in.

6) Eat for Hormone Optimization & Reduced Stress

Skinny-fat guys only get “more skinny-fat” when following a low carb/ high fat diet. Don’t do that. Keep your carbs up and your fat intake moderate. Definitely never more than 30% of your total calories, max.

No intermittent fasting right now. You don’t need any additional stress and you need to get your body temperature up.

Just eat. 

Wake up and have breakfast. Protein and fruit. Do that again a few hours later whenever you get hungry.

One cup of high quality coffee per day is fine. I’d limit it to that for now.

Have 30-50 grams of starch with protein 90-120 minutes before training. So oatmeal, rice or potatoes with some cottage cheese, chicken, fish, protein powder or eggs.

Have a similar meal 30 minutes or so after your workout. Eat a decent sized dinner with protein, greens and starch. This will be your biggest meal of the day but don’t stuff yourself. Just eat until you’re content.

7) Chill the F Out

Prioritize deep sleep above all else. You need it desperately. It’s the most important thing.

You absolutely CAN’T go a day without meditating for a half hour.

You also need to spend at least ten minutes per day practicing deep breathing.

I would definitely recommend you take yoga twice per week. Or get some of Jill Miller’s Yoga Tune Up DVD’s and do them at home.

You need a calming hobby as well. Trust me. Take up an instrument and/or an art class. Book it on the calendar every week.

Read the Tao Te Ching every morning and spend five minutes writing in a gratitude journal.

Slow down.

Read The One Thing and Essentialism. Figure out what is important in life and in business.

Lastly, go see a good doc in the city, get a full blood panel and work with him to get everything else where it needs to be.