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.
Friday, 20 November 2015
Sunday, 8 November 2015
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
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.
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!
Is it worth to replete vitamin D, but not to train super-slow, right? |
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.
- (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.
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. - The Super-Slow (SS) group performed 6– 10 repetition maximum
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).
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.
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.
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. |
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)