Olympic Time

 The Olympic Games

It's that time again: The Summer Olympic Games, when the best athletes from all over the world compete for the title of the world's best! As an exercise physiologist and strength coach, it's truly an amazing spectacle to watch such displays of incredible athleticism and talent (unless you are watching ping pong, they're good don't get me wrong but maybe not what you think of when you hear Olympic Athlete).  The drive for athletes to better themselves and improve performance is the basis for my field in the first place, so it's exciting to see the inspiration and reason for what we do!

History of The Olympics
 Originally the Ancient Olympic Games were held in Olympia Greece, going back as far as the 8th Century BC!  Some of the original games hosted events such as: running and jumping events, discus, javelin throw, boxing, wresting and some equestrian events.  The majority of the competing athletes were from surrounding city-states that declared a temporary truce while the games were in session.  The Olympics continued to be a popular event until sometime around ~400 AD when the Emperor put a stop to them.  They weren't resumed until the 19th century!  The games were continued again in 1890 when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was established.  The Winter Olympic Games weren't even established until 1921.

 

Politics, Performance Enhancing Drugs and Professionals
The 20 and 21st century molded the Olympic Games into what they are today.  The Olympic Games have come along way from 241 participants representing 14 countries in 1896 to about 10,500 participants from 204 countries at the 2008 Summer Games.  During this span, issues such as professional athletes competing, mass media and corporate sponsorship have had a huge impact on how the games are portrayed. There has been a lot of debate on whether or not professional athletes should be able to compete in the games. Personally I think the Olympic Games wouldn't be a competition of the world's best athletes without them!  It has brought on challenges of athletes being forced to choose between their regular sport season or the Olympics but I think an athlete would be crazy to turn down a shot at Olympic gold.

There are also some major political issues that come into play with the Olympic Games. A lot of countries seem to associate winning medals with being a political powerhouse and therefore put a lot of pressure on their athletes to be the best in the world.  This pressure actually led to a lot of the performance enhancing drug developments that seem to go hand in hand with today's sports.  Some of the Eastern European countries were known to "recruit" athletes as a young age, pump them full of who-knows-what kind/amount of performance enhancing drugs, and send them out to settle for nothing but gold. 

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 The technological advances of recent, have brought with them issues of corporate sponsorship, media rights and battles for advertisements. Watching the Olympics is now like watching a digital billboard.  However, we can't complain too much because this has given us the ability to watch any event at any time.  It's just a shame that so many issues and conflicts have stolen the thunder from the athletes and the reason for the Games in the first place.

Regardless of the negative issues, the Olympic Games are still an amazing spectacle and I highly recommend everyone watch them! Go watch your favorite country/team and find out how they're doing: 

 http://www.london2012.com/

Eat Like Matt Kemp....Swing Like Matt Kemp?

Eat Like Matt Kemp....Swing Like Matt Kemp? If only it were that easy.  No matter how closely I or probably the majority of the population, followed Matt Kemp's eating/training program, it's doubtful we could ever swing the bat like him.  However, that doesn't mean his nutritional strategies can't be helpful.  I recently read a Men's Health article that focused on Matt Kemp's nutritional practices during training and thought I would comment on them.

 

What is it?
Matt Kemp uses a nutritional strategy called "Carb Cycling" which is often used by bodybuilders and athletes that are training at a high intensity or are looking to put on lean muscle mass versus fat and muscle mass.  It basically consists of a rotation between high-carb days and low-carb days.  The idea is that training days are high carb days and rest/off days are low-carb days.

What Does It Do?
During exercise, specifically intense exercise (as is common during sports training), carbohydrates are the primary source of energy.  So, it makes sense to provide your body with higher amounts of energy (carbohydrates) on days that you are training hard.  Carbohydrates are also important during the recovery process as well, especially when you are training heavy multiple days in a row. In the body, carbohydrates are stored as glycogen in the liver and muscles which can be broken down and mobilized during exercise for energy.  However, when carbohydrates are consumed during rest/inactivity and carbohydrate stores (glycogen) are full, then they are converted to fat and stored as an alternate source of energy.  This is why off days require lower amounts of carbohydrates as they are not needed as much on those days.  It's important to remember that you still need to hit your total calorie mark for the day.  So, on low-carb days you need to make up those calories with either a higher protein or fat intake in order to prevent muscle loss.

Is it Healthy?
Research has shown that a low carbohydrate diet for an extended period of time may actually increase insulin sensitivity.  In other words, your body will become more efficient in the way it responds to sugar and can increase the rate that sugar is cleared from the blood and stored for energy.  A higher level of insulin sensitivity decreases one's chance of developing Type II diabetes.  A low-carb diet has also been shown to be beneficial for weight-loss programs and is currently one of the more recommended diet plans by dietitians.

So, in the slightly modified words of Barney Stinson: "Carb Up!" (on training days that is)

Running is Stupid

I don't even know why people go for long runs anymore? They're boring, painful, and you can get more bang for your buck by doing High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) or "sprint work" than you can from long runs.  Okay, so obviously I'm incredibly biased against running and it's mostly because I'm not good at am jealous of those that are.  However, I wasn't completely exaggerating when I said you can get more out of your workouts utilizing HIIT than from long/slow runs.  When you go out for a long run, you will burn ~400-500 calories an hour and you can improve your cardiovascular system (i.e. increased blood volume, decreased RHR, increased metabolic enzymes, improve aerobic capacity).  But that's really all your doing is burning some calories and improving one area of fitness, endurance.  Long distance running can also result in a decrease in power, speed and compromise your ability to increase muscle mass.

 

Now, when you go out and work on interval training you are going to experience a whole smorgasbord of benefits.  Sprint work/interval training can give you similar improvements in cardiovascular performance as long-distance running (not quite to the same extent), as well as several other benefits, including: increased power, improved training tolerance at high intensities, maintain muscle strength and size, and a higher calorie expenditure throughout the day (EPOC).

Specificity of Sport
Depending on what your goals are, you should adjust your HIIT accordingly. For example, if you are training for football with the average play lasting  5-7 sec with 25-35 sec of rest in between plays, you should train in a similar manner and perform sprints in the range of 5 to 7 sec of all out effort.  On the other hand, if you are looking to increase your 800m time then you should train with longer duration sprints. By employing different sprinting strategies, you will utilize different energy systems and make improvements in certain areas.  It all depends on what speeds you want to improve at. Train with a purpose! If you are just looking to improve general fitness than I would suggest doing a little bit of everything and mixing it up.


Work to Rest Ratios
When performing interval work, obviously it's not possible to just sprint non-stop for 30 min and call it a day which is why it's call INTERVAL work.  In other words, you split up the bouts of running with intermittent rest periods.  Like I mentioned before, it all depends on what your goals are. Below is a table that lists examples of work to rest ratios and what energy systems they are using.

Work to Rest Ratio	Work(s)	Rest(s)	Purpose/Event	Intensity
1:12-1:20	5-10	60-200	Short-Term/Explosive (football, Shot put)	90-100%
1:3-1:5	15-30	45-150	Short-Term (100-200m sprint, hockey)	75-90%
1:3-1:4	60-180	180-720	Long Sprints (400m, 800m, Basketball)	30-75%
1:1-1:3	>180	>180	1600m	20-35%

In conclusion, I recommend HIIT training to people. Not only will you receive a lot of the same benefits as long-distance running, it also takes less time, increases calorie expenditure throughout the day, improves power/sprinting endurance and won't diminish gains in muscle mass. So get out there and sprint!

Counting Calories Made Easy

I know I know, counting calories sounds lame and tedious and a very "obsessive/compulsive" thing to do but it can have a HUGE impact on your fitness goals.  I'm sure most people associate counting calories or label checking with weight loss and I'm here to say that's not always the case.  I once heard a quote that fitness is 30% gym work and 70% kitchen work. So regardless of your goals, tracking your diet is definitely going to help!

 

How To Count?
It sounds simple enough right? Just count the calories for the amount of food you eat by reading food labels. Well sometimes you don't always know what you ate. For example, some restaurants don't have their nutrition information listed or maybe you ate a homemade recipe at a friends house and they didn't measure exactly what they put into it.  It's okay to guestimate a little bit; just use your best judgement on amounts or contents of certain foods. There's no need to whip out your food scale at a restaurant and measure the ounces of your salmon fillet. A ballpark figure is good enough, unless you are a bodybuilder in the final days of a cut phase trying to melt off those last few pounds of fat; then you may want to pay a little closer attention.


Counting Made Easy
Luckily we live in a day and age where technology can pretty much do everything for us which is why counting calories is so much easier these days.  I've recently become hooked on the app "My Fitness Pal." It's a dietary/fitness tracking software that syncs an online publicly shared profile with your app on your phone, similar to a social network for tracking fitness.  One reason I like it so much is because it has the nutritional info for a lot of foods already plugged into their database, so all you have to do is point amd click what you ate for what meal.  It also allows you to pull up "reports" for different time periods so you can see what you ate over a week.  It will give you total amounts in calories and grams for your food intake as well as percentages of total intake.  So if I want to see how much protein I average each day and what percentage of my daily intake is protein, all I have to do is pull up that report.  The program will also take into account your gener, age and activity level in order to come up with a recommended daily total for calorie intake.  And if you are looking to gain/lose weight, it will show you how many calories you SHOULD be eating.

Tracking Progress:

One of the other nice features about calorie/fitness counters, is the ability to track your progress. A lot of them have the ability to check-in with daily measurements (i.e. weight, hip/waist measurements etc.) which allows you to track your progress over time and see the effectiveness of your eating strategy.  Whenever, I start a new workout program I like to monitor my progress to "test" out how well it works or whether or not I like it. I recommend doing this to all of my clients as well.  It allows you to go back to old workouts and adjust them accordingly to fit your goals.  By tracking your food intake, you can combine that with your workouts, weigh-ins, and pictures (it all comes down to what you look like anyway, right?) so you can get a great idea of how well a program is working/not working for you.

Recommendations:

I recommend to everyone, whether you are trying to lose weight, gain weight, or just stay where you are... counting calories can help! You don't have to get all nerdy about it and directly calculate out how much you need of each macronutrient but it is a good idea to have a general number in your head of what to shoot for. Plus, with how easy smart phones and apps have made calorie counting, it hardly takes any effort at all! At least try it for a week to see what your typically dietary intake looks like, you may be surprised at how much damage your Saturday night on the town is doing to your diet. And remember, it's not as tedious as it sounds, thanks to technology!

Are You Fast or Slow?

Fast Twitch, Slow Twitch, Red, White....What does it all mean?

Skeletal muscle is made up of different fiber types and each fiber type functions differently.  I'm sure a lot of you have heard the term fast or slow twitch muscle fibers which are sometimes referred to as red or white fiber. Basically, there are three main types: 1) Type I (aka slow twitch, red fiber type), Type IIa (aka fast twitch-a, hybrid) and TypeIIx (aka fast-twitch-x, white fiber type).  The top picture below shows what a stain of muscle tissue looks like.  The red areas represent Type I and Type IIa fibers, while the white areas represent Type IIx fibers.  As science progresses and the techniques used to measure fiber types become more sensitive, more and more isoforms (hybrids or types in-between the big 3) of these fiber types are being discovered.  The bottom picture portrays the different isoforms and how they are classified.

Each name implies a slightly different meaning and is basically just a term to characterize the different fiber types.  Fast twitch is a term given to muscle fibers that can contract very quickly (the name says it all) compared to slow twitch fibers that contract in a much slower fashion.  Because fast-twitch fibers contract so quickly and powerfully, they also fatigue easily.  Therefore they are best-suited for fast, explosive movements.  On the other hand, slow-twitch fibers are more fatigue resistant; meaning they can continue to work for extended periods of time.  That explains how muscle fibers are characterized by contraction speed but why the red/white names?  Slow twitch fibers are typically red because they have a rich blood supply.  They are built for slow contractions performed over an extended period of time, so they derive most of their energy from aerobic metabolism (oxygen consuming).  On the other hand, type II fibers are often white because they have a poor blood supply and derive the majority of their energy from anaerobic metabolism (without oxygen).  So how does this apply to performance? 

Each person has a different percentage of these fibers distributed throughout their musculature which may help them perform better at certain types of exercises/events. Your fiber type isn't necessarily going to predict what kind or how good of an athlete you will be but it can be a predictor of your genetic potential.  For example, if the majority of your muscles are made up of fast-twitch muscles, marathon running probably isn't going to be your forte.  However, you can "manipulate" your fiber type to some extent.  Research has shown that any type of exercise will shift your type IIx fibers towards more of a typeIIa isoform, meaning it becomes more aerobic in nature and will be more fatigue resistant.  So there is hope!

 

Gain Muscle While You Sleep?

Maybe your mom did have a reason for making you get your 8 hours every night.  Sleep is probably one of the most overlooked areas of human performance.  I'm sure all of you have experienced that feeling of being dazed and confused after a night of terrible sleep or none at all.  A lack of sleep can have a huge impact on performance. Research has shown that it may not have a significant effect on maximal performance; meaning if you were to stay up all night you could still probably perform maximal effort exercises (i.e. sprints or max lifts) just as well as you could after a full nights rest. However, sub-maximal efforts or long duration exercises may be affected by the lack of sleep. Also, metabolically there could be some major disruptions occurring that could impact you later down the road. For example, sleep is one of the most potent stimulators for the production of growth hormone (GH).  Growth hormone is a major player in protein synthesis leading to increases in muscle and bone mass.  Levels seem to reach their peak about 4 hours after the onset of sleep and slowly decline throughout the night/day.  Therefore if you go a night without sleep or "good sleep" you will miss out on this increase in GH. Another hormone that is affected by sleep is cortisol.  Cortisol is often referred to as the "stress" hormone.  It is often classified as a catabolic hormone which means it can lead to tissue (i.e. muscle) breakdown instead of synthesis, which is NOT ideal for someone looking to gain muscle mass.  Cortisol levels are highly correlated with a lack of sleep; meaning the more you don't sleep, the higher your cortisol levels will likely be which can be detrimental to muscle growth.   A lack of sleep can also increase insulin resistance which is a condition than can lead to Type II diabetes if continued over time.  This will also set you up for possible weight gain and trouble maintaining your figure.

These are just a view of the effects that sleep deprivation can have on the body as it relates to performance and building muscle.  There is a slue of other side-effects, including psychological, physical and emotional effects that are also related to sleep.  Basically, sleep is a time for your body to rest, recover, and repair itself for the next day of activities.  Without out, you are setting yourself up for failure.