If you are reading this article, it is a safe bet that you are a gym goer. If you have been going to your favorite gym regularly for a time period that goes back at least ten years, you have also likely noticed that a gym just doesn’t look the way it used to. For starters, they are bigger and brighter (well, some of them), but in particular many gyms have more toys or implements that their patrons can use for any number of reasons. Medicine balls, foam rollers, foam pads, elastic bands, kettlebells, swiss medicine balls, BOSU platforms, etc. are what I’m talking about. If you have no idea what any of these are you either don’t get to a gym, work out in your garage, work out a gym that could double as a garage, go to Curves or you are “old school” and only do push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups.

Many of these implements offer excellent chances to train your body through multiple directions, which many strength coaches and exercise scientists will tell you is a good thing. A common theme amongst many of these “toys” and something which has exploded in popularity is training on an unstable surface. The reason for training on an unstable surface are simple as doing so forces many other parts of your body to get involved to help you maintain necessary posture to complete whatever exercise you may be performing. More muscle activation is thought to result in improved strength, stability and performance. But is this actually the case?

For starters, people who train on an unstable surface and even more so those people who are less experienced need to: 1) use common sense and 2) be careful. If you think stupid things can’t happen while trying out the latest and greatest instability device, just to go to YouTube and type in weight lighting accidents or injuries. Keep searching and you are certain a video of some person standing on a swiss medicine ball or doing squats on such a medicine ball with or without resistance. Not only is this dangerous, it’s largely useless. Therefore, use common sense and be careful.

To shift the discussion more towards how this type of training influences performance, the notion of the size principle comes into play. The size principle applies to everyone who picks up a weight and tells us that as we perform exercises that require higher and higher levels of force to be produced the type of muscle fibers that are recruited changes. For example, when using lighter weights, lower levels of force are required and as a result lesser numbers of muscle fibers are needed (to move the lighter weight). Of those fibers which are recruited they are typically smaller and have less potential for force production. Alternatively, as you complete activities that require greater levels of force, the number of muscle fibers recruited will be increased and larger muscle fibers will get involved as well.

A recent study had study participants complete two different bouts of resistance exercise. In targeting the upper-body, a traditional bench press exercise was completed on a stable surface and a separate workout was completed with the individual lying on a large swiss medicine ball. Therefore, one condition was stable while the other was unstable. The same comparison was made for the lower-body where a traditional barbell squat was completed both on a stable surface and an unstable surface (standing on a BOSU ball). Each exercise bout required the individual to lift a weight that corresponded to 70% of their maximum strength and complete six sets of eight repetitions.

The results are interesting. When upper-body power production was compared between a stable and unstable surface, power production was lower when an unstable surface was used and the reduction in power production got bigger as more sets were completed. A similar phenomenon was also discovered when squats were performed on an unstable vs. a stable surface. Interestingly, a greater difference in power production between a stable versus unstable condition was found with the upper body (Zemkova, Jelen et al. 2012).

Results from this study are very important! No one disputes the importance of force production and how it can impact improvements in strength, power and muscle mass so people need to carefully consider how much they train on an unstable surface. Why? Because research such as this tells us that it can reduce power production and a reduction in power may negatively impact your progress in areas related to strength, power and performance. For these reasons, many people feel like some but not all exercises should have an unstable component or to cycle through workout phases where you incorporate unstable conditions to strike a balance between improved balance and optimal force production.

REFERENCES

Zemkova, E., M. Jelen, et al. (2012). “Power outputs in the concentric phase of resistance exercises performed in the interval mode on stable and unstable surfaces.” J Strength Cond Res 26(12): 3230-3236.

This article is the other book end to the article recently published encouraging people to keep these things simple with their exercise program and do something…anything.  Don’t worry about what type of exercise is best, how long to exercise, how hard to exercise, just pick something you enjoy and do it.  And do it every week.  Don’t focus on what you are not doing, just focus on what you are doing.  And do more of it each workout.

For the educated of readers, you realize the previous article was only half of the argument.  The other half of the argument needs to be had and it is in regards to your diet.  In fact, many people feel that the importance of diet is much greater.  Why is this?  Is this true?  First, it’s extremely difficult to accurately determine the contribution of things such as this, but taking a practical look can offer some insight.  For example, a person could go to the gym or complete their prescribed exercise program several times each week and during each workout they could push themselves to exercise a little harder and little longer.  For these efforts, the person could feel very good about their exercise program.

Compliance to a person’s diet is the same, but harder.  Why?  Because the challenges to stray from sound dietary approaches are everywhere in our society and consistent vigilance needs to be considered.  This doesn’t mean you need to feel like a slave, but understanding that falling off track of your diet can occur quickly each day.  Achieving all of your exercise goals can be conquered in a one to two hour time window, but compliance to your diet requires an all-day approach.  And frankly some days, an extra beer just feels right or stuffed-crust pizza with ranch dressing is screaming your name.

For those of you who like to exercise and simply say, “well I’ll just exercise longer” that only works to a certain degree.  How much do you honestly think you can devote each day to exercise?  Even in the most favorable calorie burning of situations, a person can expect to consistently burn no more than 17 – 18 calories per minute (and this estimate is for a larger person of good fitness status who exercises intensely).   More likely you likely are a smaller framed person, don’t have great fitness levels and you don’t push yourself to the max each workout.  In these situations, you will likely burn around 13 – 14 calories per minute.  Even if you truly do exercise for 60 – 90 minutes each workout (not the amount of you spent at the gym), this adds up to around 1,000 calories.  In our society, do you realize how quickly 1,000 calories can be consumed?

In other words, 15 minutes of uncontrolled eating can completely negate an hour or longer on the treadmill.  Not fair, but it is what it is.  Much like with exercise, everyone seems to have an opinion on nutrition and dieting.  Eat at this time but at this time.  This supplement works better than others.  Carbohydrates are bad.  Protein is king.  Fat makes you fat, etc, etc.

Again, the first area of concern should not whether or not you are eating too many carbohydrates, but rather spend your time focusing on how much you are actually eating.  Studies indicate that people eat approximately 25% more calories than what they think.  In other words, people have no idea how many calories are in the foods they like to eat and if you regularly think you are eating 500 calories less each day than what you actually are, the rate at which you can expect to lose weight will no doubt be impacted in an unhappy way.

You would be amazed at the number of conversations which take place or questions that are asked by people during a presentation about something specific related to food (“Will this food make me fat?”) and then they go directly to a fast food joint.  Likely these will be the people too that will gripe about their new diet, complain about their personal trainer or point their fingers at the people who make the dietary supplements they are taking because they don’t work.

As with the exercise article, start small and achievable and in the early going don’t get so caught up in following the latest diet fad, but then go about eating everything that is not nailed down.  Rather set goals that will encourage you to limit how many calories you are consuming.  And as with the exercise program, you must think about it, plan and work hard at the guidelines.

The great news is again that small and consistent efforts add up each day to make a difference.  It doesn’t take a Herculean effort, but it does take effort and it needs to occur on a regular basis.  Many scientists and nutritionists agree that no one food should be considered bad, but consuming them in massive amounts is where the problems begin to enter.

In closing, most people can identify 3-5 things they can immediately do to their diet to make improvements.  Sit down and identify these things and start the first one of your list.  While dietary changes need to be discussed and combined with an increase in exercise, the best advice is the simplest: Eat less and move more.

The human body allows for things to be simplified as such, so don’t let your mind or other people’s opinion enter into your mind and allow you to become confused.  Remember that previous advice and as with your exercise, work at it each day to make continual improvements in your clothes.

Getting sore in conjunction with resistance training is kind of a fact of life.  A death and taxes kind of certainty!  For many, this is enough reason to keep up your program so you don’t detrain and get sore.  In addition, getting sore is oftentimes used (whether it’s appropriate or not) as an indicator of workout quality.  If you get sore, that means you worked hard and challenged your muscles and for the most part this is true.  Soreness does typically come from performing some volume of resistance exercise that is novel or it is something you are not accustomed to completing.  In response to the soreness, your body has to adapt and recover, something it typically does an excellent job of completing.  The result is a bigger, stronger and better you.

It must be highlighted, however, that driving your muscles into the ground every single workout (to get them sore) should not be the goal or outcome from your workout.  Lee Haney was often quoted as saying, “stimulate don’t annihilate” your muscle.  The recovery side of the equation is important and pounding away with too much training and not allowing for enough recovery will lead to problems.  Recent research tells us that creatine monohydrate supplementation may help in the recovery process and facilitate a greater recovery of lost strength and soreness.  Researchers from this study required young men to perform two bouts of biceps curls and had them complete four sets until they could no longer complete any repetitions at a resistance that equated to 75% of their maximum (Veggi, Machado et al. 2013).  For example, if your maximum bicep curl was a 50-pound dumbbell you would use 37.5 pounds so either a 35 or 40 pound dumbbell.

In a blind manner, the subjects ingested a placebo before exercise in one condition and in the other condition they ingested creatine monohydrate at a dosage of 20 grams/day.  After taking their assigned supplement they completed the bicep curl workout and then had their soreness and range of motion measured along with a marker of muscle damage in their blood for several days after each exercise bout.  Regardless of what supplement was consumed, soreness, muscle damage and range of motion were all negatively impacted after the first exercise bout.  In other words, the participants developed soreness after the intense bout of biceps curls.  Nothing too surprising about that.

When the bicep curl was completed a second time (approximately two weeks later), changes in soreness, range of motion and muscle damage markers increased again, but this time to a lesser degree when compared to the responses seen after the first exercise bout.  Again, not too much is surprising here as several other research studies demonstrate these changes after one or two intense bouts of resistance training.  What was interesting related to the response which was seen after the second exercise bout and when creatine monohydrate was ingested.  After the second exercise bout and when creatine was consumed the changes in soreness, range of motion and damage were impacted to a significantly lesser degree than when the placebo was consumed.

In fact, blood levels of the muscle damage markers were improved by over 200% when compared to the placebo and levels of muscle soreness were decreased by 20% over the entire five day measurement period.  The authors concluded that creatine supplementation appears to provide an additive effect on lessening the negative changes which occur after intense and damaging exercise.  Results from their study revealed that creatine supplementation can significantly decrease markers of muscle damage, decrease sores and improve range of motion in the days after completing an intense bout of exercise and this recovery is heightened when creatine monohydrate is provided (Veggi, Machado et al. 2013).

REFERENCES

Veggi, K. F., M. Machado, et al. (2013). “Oral Creatine Supplementation Augments the Repeated Bout Effect.” Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab.

Many people resistance train to get stronger, bigger and leaner.  Every exercise performed as part of your workout consists of two phases: a concentric phase and an eccentric phase.  The concentric phase is when the muscle is getting shorter throughout whatever exercise you are completed.  It is also described as a situation when the force produced inside your muscle is greater than the amount of resistance put forth by the weight you are lifting.  The eccentric phase is basically the opposite; these contractions occur during the part of the exercise when the muscle is getting longer.  Moreover, the force applied by the external item (typically a barbell, dumbbell, etc.) is greater than the amount of force generated inside the muscle being exercised.

Eccentric contractions are able to produce greater levels of force and for this reason; muscle damage and soreness are attributed to this type of contraction.  This is one of the main reasons why going for a one hour run typically produces more soreness than riding an elliptical or cycle for the same amount of time.  Running requires a series of eccentric contractions, particularly if you go downhill, while elliptical or cycling typically do not contain as powerful of eccentric contractions.

Interestingly, scientists have told us that eccentric contractions are most responsible for some of the positive changes which occur inside our muscles that are responsible for an eventual increase in our muscle mass (Adams 2004).  A recent study in the February 2013 issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise had nine recreationally active young men perform a bout of eccentric muscle contractions using their thigh muscles (Cermak 2013).  The exercise bout was intended to generate great amounts of force and resulted in soreness and damage to the muscle.  Muscle biopsies were collected before and after this exercise bout and these muscle samples were analyzed for changes in a type of cell closely linked to recovery and hypertrophy.

For the first time, the authors reported that greater numbers of these cells were activated in our muscle fibers that are much better at generating strength and power (Cermak 2013).  These results tell us that completing workouts which contain eccentric contractions are an important consideration to make sure muscle activation and recovery occurs in response to the exercise bout.  Fortunately, traditional forms of resistance training all contain a concentric and an eccentric period, which means most people already complete these important types of contractions.  In conclusion, performing exercises and workouts which contain significant amounts of forceful muscle-lengthening contractions result in excellent activation of your muscle while also stimulating increases in detailed parts of muscle which can help improve hypertrophy and recovery.

REFERENCES

Adams, G.R., D.C. Cheng, F. Haddad and K.M. Baldwin (2004). “Skeletal muscle hypertrophy in response to isometric, lengthening, and shortening training bouts of equivalent duration.” J Appl Physiol 96(5): 1613-1618.

Cermak, N.M., T. Snijders, B.R. Mckay, G. Parise, L.B. Verdijk, M.A. Tarnopolsky, M.J. Gibala and V.a.N.L. Lj (2013). “Eccentric Exercise Increases Satellite Cell Content in Type II Muscle Fibers.” Med Sci Sports Exerc 45(2): 230-237.

To see the increases you want to see from your workout program and hard work in the gym, you must consider things related to both your exercise program and your nutrition program.  The exercise side of things to gain muscle is somewhat straight forward, but not something that should ever be construed as easy.  Resistance training works best and you need to design your program to facilitate as much muscle growth as possible.  This consists of exercises that use a lot of muscle or looked at another way, exercises that involve the greatest number of joints in the body as possible.  Big boy or big girl exercises!  Squats, presses, deadlifts, lunges, pull-ups, etc. are the exercises of biggest concern.  Next you need to complete a relatively high volume of each exercise by completing at 3-4 sets of 10-12 repetitions.  Finally, you need to keep your rest down to lower levels, somewhere around 60 – 90 seconds between each set.  It’s hard work!  If you’re out of shape or not up for the task, you might not feel well after completing the first few exercises bouts, but studies indicate you will see changes.

Much is said on the nutritional front, but the two biggest factors appear to be your overall intake of calories and what proportion of these calories that are protein.  Consuming too many or too little calories can have deleterious outcomes relative to your ability to gain muscle and improve your body composition.  Certainly, eating too many calories against how many calories you are burning will result in weight gain.  If much of this weight is fat, your body composition and physique will actually get worse.  However, this presents a challenging situation because to gain muscle, you need consume enough calories on a daily basis to support these aspirations.  Eat too little, you may not gain muscle at all or the rate at which you gain muscle will be slower than you like, but swing too far in the other direction by eating too many calories and you may end up gaining muscle, but also gain too much fat.  You may be asking yourself, how many calories then should I consume and only general recommendations can be provided.  Starting points if you will and from there each person has to be diligent and pay attention to their diet, exercise habits and how their body is responding.  Depending on this response you should respond accordingly.

Outside of eating enough calories, consuming protein in the right amounts and at the correct time is also important.  How much protein to consume is a huge question and one that is beyond the scope of this article, but good general guidelines include: a) 20 – 30% of your total calories, b) 1.2 – 1.8 grams for every kilogram you weigh or c) eat a minimum of 20 – 30 grams of protein every time you eat (assuming you are eating 5-6 times each day.  Protein quality is critical and no source of protein is better than whey protein, but in particular, the leucine content appears to be something scientists are very interested.  Leucine is one of nine essential amino acids and other research has indicated leucine may play a key role in favorable changes in protein metabolism.  To better clarify the impact of essential amino acids and in particular the impact of ingesting more or less leucine in comparison to the other essential amino acids, a study was completed at the University of Texas in Galveston.  This study recruited older and younger participants and had them ingest an 8 ounces fluid solution that contained 6.7 grams of the essential amino acids (Katsanos, Kobayashi et al. 2006).  In one condition, the solution was 26% leucine, providing 1.7 grams of leucine.  These amounts are significant because they were intended to closely match the amount and proportion of leucine that is ingested when a whey protein is consumed.  The other condition provided 2.8 grams of leucine, which made its leucine content 41% of the total amount of essential amino acids.

These scientists were interested in answering two predominant questions: 1) does increasing the amount of leucine from what is provided in a typical whey protein invoke positive changes in muscle protein metabolism and 2) does the age of the participants impact how they respond.  The authors determined that the amount of leucine that was provided to younger participants had no particular impact.  In other words, the changes seen in muscle protein metabolism were similar in the young participants whether the amount of leucine was 26% or 41%.  In the young group, when both amounts of leucine were provided, significant increases in blood levels of amino acids occurred and they occurred very rapidly.  In fact, within 15 minutes of ingesting each solution, blood levels of the essential amino acids began to rise rapidly and within 30 minutes of ingesting each solution, the changes reached their peak levels.  In addition, rates of muscle protein synthesis reached peak levels similar regardless of whether the solution contained 26% or 41% leucine.

Interestingly when both amino acid solutions were provided to the group of elderly participants (average age of 66 years), the solution which contained a greater percentage of leucine was the only group which resulted in peak levels of amino acids in the blood as well as rates of muscle protein synthesis.  These findings nicely coordinated with other studies that have indicated that as a person reaches advanced age, the amount of leucine and other amino acids that are needed appears to increase.  For some reason that scientists can’t quite explain, the amount of leucine and other essential amino acids that are needed to maximally stimulate rates of muscle protein synthesis increase with age.  If you’re young, however, a simple dose of whey protein appears to provide enough leucine and the other essential amino acids to maximally increase amino acid levels in the blood and increase muscle protein synthesis.

REFERENCES

Katsanos, C. S., H. Kobayashi, et al. (2006). “A high proportion of leucine is required for optimal stimulation of the rate of muscle protein synthesis by essential amino acids in the elderly.” Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 291(2): E381-387.

It’s that time of year where people reflect over the past year and for many you think about areas where you can improve in various aspects of your life.  For many folks, improving their health and fitness is considered and more so the desire to lose weight and look like you did a few years back is identified as a priority.  The internet and other aspects of the information age have made the availability of information easier than ever before.  The amount of information available to any individual with a computer and an internet connection is impressive, and this vast amount of information results in conflicting and confusing advice.

Do you exercise in the morning or after work?  Should you eat before you work out or not?  Are carbohydrates important for muscle growth or should I focus on protein?  Should I do cardio before or after weights?  Do I even need extra protein?  Fish oil or not?  Vitamins…yes or no?

These types of questions are everywhere and many times the amount of information and opinion put forth on them is too much.  At the end of the day, improving your health and fitness is straight-forward and most people already know enough to accomplish a great majority of their goals.  For many folks in our society, the first step is to get moving.  Stopping talking about what you are going to do and just start doing something.  Sure, you can sit down and argue for or against any one of a large number of exercise approaches as to which one is best, but the person who does something consistently on a weekly basis will see improvements in their health and fitness.  This is almost a guarantee.  Besides, any person who is actually consistently running, cycling, lifting or completing group fitness and working hard at it is likely more fit than most people. In fact, a number of the largest scientific studies indicate that exercise in the form of walking in minimum doses of 20 – 30 minutes per session can improve a wide number of health aspects.  This data also shows that if the duration is increased to 30, 40 or 60 minutes, the health benefits typically increase.

As you reflect on the past year and look forward to 2013, seek to find ways each week to improve how much physical activity you get.  And be consistent.  Yes, walking for just 20 minutes with your dog for 3-4 times per week, EVERY WEEK will bolster your body against disease.  Will it put you on the cover of a fitness magazine?  No, it won’t!  But it will help to keep you off the path where you will lose some of your fitness, gaining weight and developing a propensity to have diabetes and heart disease.  Will your body be healthier three months after doing this than before?  Studies indicate the answer to this question is yes.

Understand the message here.  The message is not to say that you will be free of disease and all of your desires will come true by simply walking 20 minutes per day.  This is not an infomercial for “6 minutes Abs”.  The message is simply stating that doing something small and doing it consistently has been shown to be a powerful antagonist to developing a number of aspects of disease.  Will it help you to lose weight?  Maybe, but probably not, particularly if you are like most people and expect to lose the same amount of weight in 8 weeks that it took you to gain in 5 years.  Certainly, if you combine this very modest amount of exercise with a diet that contains too much fat and too many calories (most of us do and don’t realize it), weight loss becomes less (much less) likely.  But it’s a start and that’s all this message is encouraging you to do, to start.

Progressing to a point where weight loss becomes more likely will require you to exercise for longer periods of time and also at a greater intensity of exercise that may require you to walk and jog.  Changes in your diet will also likely be needed, but again consistency needs to be everyone’s focus.  Note that the above research didn’t say anything about whether you should swim, walk on a treadmill, run outside, use free weights, perform group fitness or complete bodyweight exercises.  So until you can look back on your exercise log and you have consistently exercised IN ANY KIND OF FASHION several days per week for the last three months or so, don’t get caught up with worrying about if what you are doing works.

Sure, the crazy fit girl who runs on the treadmill for 45 minutes a day, five days per week, likely has a rocking body but “Rome wasn’t built overnight”.  It starts by doing something.  Yes, results will be more likely to occur if you exercise for longer periods of time, but don’t think you’ll go from doing nothing to 45 minutes, five days per week.  Starting a program is both a physical and psychological adjustment and start small, but be tough and strong and stick with your plan and once you’re out there, work as hard as you can.

For those of you reading who are thinking this article is “too soft” or “warm and fuzzy”, look around.  The people in our world are getting bigger and less healthy and medical care is not cheap.  If you are regularly following a program, that’s awesome and keep it up.  Your body and mind will be better for it.  This article is directed towards the people that don’t think they can make improvements by starting small and think instead they have no chance of losing the weight they desire to lose.  It starts today and everyone can do.  Focus on positive things and get out there!

Even though you enjoy getting in the gym to work hard and break a sweat to relieve stress and feel better, the daily routine will eventually get well… routine.  Sure, some people can seemingly find motivation whenever they need, but for most of us the daily grind can lead us to go through the motions.  This leads to an apathetic approach which may end up in skipped workouts or workouts that you should have skipped.  Overall, an argument can be made that the body can’t tell the difference between one exercise or the other and instead it only knows the stimulus that is placed upon it.  More stimulus equals a greater need to change by the body.  Hopefully the stimulus is telling the body more strength, more endurance, more power, more muscle, etc.

Kettlebells entered the mainstream health and fitness field and they have increased in popularity.  For starters, they are different and this alone can be good.  But the nature of Kettlebells and the exercises commonly performed with them require a great deal of movement by the body and with how much sitting is a part of our professional lives, this can be a great thing.  But outside of these general health and fitness purposes, can Kettlebells really provide a good workout?  A workout on the order of a traditional strength and power workout?

A study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research recently examined this question by having study participants complete two different styles of exercise over a six week period that were intended to help increase lower-body power (Lake and Lauder 2012).  Each group performed their prescribed form of exercise two days per week.  One group performed a kettlebell circuit workout that consisted of a 12-minute exercise of 30-seconds performing the exercise and 30 seconds of rest.  If the participant weighed less than 154 pounds (70 kg) they used a 26.4 pound (12 kg) kettlebell and if they weighed more than 154 pounds they used a 35.2 pound (16 kg) kettlebell.  The other group performed jump squats and completed at least four sets of three jump squats with a load that was shown to maximize their power production.  In this group, volume was adjusted to accommodate different training loads.  Subsequently, volume ranged from 4 sets of 3 repetitions with the heaviest loads to 8 sets of 6 repetitions with the lightest loads.

The authors found that both traditional strength and explosive strength increased with both types of strength program.  If one first considers that previously very little scientifically controlled outcomes were available for the impact of kettlebells these findings were valuable.  Certainly, one could say that if more sets and reps were included the results might have different or these results aren’t useful because the programs used weren’t “real-world” and I would have to disagree.  Overall the programs fell within published guidelines put forth by different experts and professional organizations and until a research study is completed to support these claims, these scientific findings need to be considered.

OK, well how much change occurred?  In both groups, strength increased by 9.8% to where the entire study could half-squat 165 – 181% of their body mass.  Their findings indicated that improvements in both groups were not different than each other.  For those athletically minded people where being explosive can be helpful, the results from this study also indicated that both types of training increased explosive strength by almost 20% and again study results indicated that improvements in both groups were similar.

Overall, these authors completed one of the first studies that used kettlebells versus a more traditional style of resistance training to examine changes in strength and explosive strength.  A word of caution with interpreting their results would be to not view the Kettlebells to not work.  This isn’t true at all.  In fact, they worked just as well as traditional jump squats.  Therefore, if you want to change things up, don’t be afraid to grab a kettlebell and put yourself through a challenging circuit.  This might help keep you from waiting too much at the squat rack and will also introduce your body to a new and enjoyable type of exercise.

REFERENCES

Lake, J. P. and M. A. Lauder (2012). “Kettlebell swing training improves maximal and explosive strength.” J Strength Cond Res 26(8): 2228-2233.

In the last few months, the number of published studies using beta-alanine has increased impressively.  Of course, when you consider it may take 18 – 24 months for a study to go from data collection to a peer-reviewed published report, this isn’t as surprising.  While beta-alanine studies have been trickling from a few of the top researchers in this area for the last 5 – 6  years, it usually takes a while before the idea gets picked up by people all across the world.  The same thing was witnessed with creatine monohydrate supplementation in the early 1990s as essentially one European group and one or two North American groups was publishing their work and then an explosion of studies occurred from the late 1990s until around 2005.

One thing that appears to be important for would-be beta-alanine users is that you use it for activities or exercise stimuli that it is best suited to exert its physiological effect (Abe 2000; Artioli, Gualano et al. 2010).  Beta-alanine is widely known as a cellular buffer (Artioli, Gualano et al. 2010), but it is important to understand that it is not the beta-alanine that is actually doing the buffering.  Ingestion of beta-alanine increases intramuscular levels of carnosine and it is carnosine that has the powerful buffering ability which can result in an increase in exercise performance through beta-alanine use.  If you’re thinking, I’ll just supplement with carnosine, you better reconsider because the human body readily breaks down carnosine through the digestive process and renders it non-functional.  But scientists have discovered that beta-alanine can adequately survive the digestive process.   Therefore, supplementation with beta-alanine supports an increase in carnosine levels in the muscle.  Greater carnosine levels increase the buffering ability of the muscle cells which allows then to function optimally in a cellular environment such as intense exercise.

Before this topic delves too much further into beta-alanine, a few chemistry-related terms need to be discussed to ensure you understand exactly what is going on?  Now if you’re thinking, “Chemistry”, I gave up on chemistry back in high school, bear with me, because if you don’t understand these concepts you may be using beta-alanine in situations where it is just not set up to work as well as it could or not at all.  Then you think beta-alanine is junk when in fact it might have been used in the wrong manner.  This is kind of like using creatine monohydrate to increase half-marathon times or using essential amino acid supplementation to improve jumping performance.

When the human body performs exercise a number of components interact to produce (and reproduce) substrates that our cells can use for energy.  The harder you exercise the greater the demand for energy, thus the greater demand these substrates are available and stay in a favorable balance.  These are all considered good things relative to exercise and performance.  On the negative side, several factors also begin to be produced and if exercise intensity is high, they will accumulate in our cells that make it more difficult for the cell to function.  Collectively, people often talk about the cell getting acidic in these situations and frankly muscle cells, brain cells, etc. don’t function well when it becomes acidic.

This is where buffers enter the picture.  Buffers, like carnosine (linked to beta-alanine supplementation) and phosphocreatine (linked to creatine supplementation) aid the cell in promoting a more favorable balance between good things and bad things.  When more of the buffer is in cell, the more the cell is able to resist fatigue.  If fatigue can be resisted, you can run (or cycle) faster and harder over a longer period of time or you can complete more repetitions in the same amount of time, etc.  In this respect, several review articles have illustrated that beta-alanine supplementation seems to work best in exercise situations that exhibit significant acid production (Abe 2000; Artioli, Gualano et al. 2010).  Characteristic running events would be an 800m run, the event some elite level male runners have told is the closest a man can experience to having a baby.  Hmmm, does not sound fun.  In the next few months, this discussion will be expanded by further discussing several of these recent studies that used beta-alanine and highlight some reasons for their conclusions.

REFERENCES

Abe, H. (2000). “Role of histidine-related compounds as intracellular proton buffering constituents in vertebrate muscle.” Biochemistry. Biokhimiia 65(7): 757-765.

Artioli, G. G., B. Gualano, et al. (2010). “Role of beta-alanine supplementation on muscle carnosine and exercise performance.” Med Sci Sports Exerc 42(6): 1162-1173.

A number of factors dictate how your body responds to exercise training.  Exercising factors include intensity, rest, frequency, multi-joint vs. single-joint exercises, exercise order and volume.  On the nutrition side, factors such as age, training status/experience, carbohydrate availability, protein quality, nutrient timing and amino acid content all work together (or against each other) to cue the body whether to build or burn muscle.  A recent study examined the impact of ingesting a recommended dose of whey protein or small doses of whey protein that were fortified with increased amounts of key amino acids (Churchward-Venne, Burd et al. 2012).

For those of you interested in this type of research, around 15 years ago scientific studies highlighted first that amino acid and protein turnover was altered in response to a single bout of resistance training (Biolo, Maggi et al. 1995).  Follow-up research then told us that adding a healthy dose of amino acids can increase muscle protein synthesis (Biolo, Tipton et al. 1997).  Some years after that, the science then started to highlight the importance of the essential amino acids; the amino acids you must get in your diet because our bodies lack the ability to produce them.  The first of these studies simply told us that ingesting a large dose (40 grams) of the essential amino acids favorably increased the balance of muscle protein in the body (Tipton, Ferrando et al. 1999).  However, when a 35 gram dose of carbohydrate was added to a much smaller dose of essential amino acids (6 grams), values of muscle protein synthesis were also found to maximally increased as well (Rasmussen, Tipton et al. 2000).

Research then focused more on the essential amino acids and a series of studies told us that nonessential amino acids weren’t required to maximally synthesize muscle proteins (Tipton, Gurkin et al. 1999; Borsheim, Tipton et al. 2002; Volpi, Kobayashi et al. 2003).  From here, research began to explore more closely the specific impact of ingesting either the branched-chain amino acids (isoleucine, leucine and valine), in particular leucine, for their ability to stimulate positive changes in cellular activity.  A number of research papers were subsequently published that highlighted the important effects of these amino acids (Nair and Short 2005; Rieu, Balage et al. 2006; Pasiakos, McClung et al. 2011).

The overall quality of a protein source is determined primarily by its amino acid content.  Higher quality sources of protein have higher amounts of all of the essential amino acids.  In this respect, no other source of protein routinely scores higher on evaluations of protein than whey protein.  More so, isolate versions of whey protein or hydrolysates produced from whey isolate are viewed to be of the very highest quality.  The term isolate means the final protein product is at least 90% protein by weight or only 10% of it is carbohydrate or fat.  Hydrolysates are produced either by exposing the product to acid or enzymes to further break up the protein chain to yield a higher percentage of small peptides that can more easily be taken up into the various tissues of the body.

In essence, people are left with decisions between consuming ideal amounts of whey protein, leucine as well as the remainder of the essential amino acids.  While consuming a minimum of 25 grams or so of a whey protein isolate delivers the needed amounts of cell-activating amino acids, sometimes you find yourself at a place where you need to feed your body, but you can’t.  Maybe you are on the road and can’t mix your shake, at work in meetings or you don’t want to clean up your shaker cup.  All of these reasons highlight why scientists might try to look for unique combinations of proteins and amino acids.  In fact, another reason is the overall bulk or volume of liquid for some populations (older individuals, smaller-framed folks and women) can leave them feeling uncomfortably full or bloated.

In this recent study, Canadian scientists divided 24 males into three groups and assessed the rate of muscle protein synthesis after they ingested different nutrient combinations with and without the presence of resistance exercise.  The first group ingested a typical 25 gram dose of whey.  A second group ingested only 6.25 grams of whey protein, but the protein was fortified with greater amounts of leucine to match the leucine amount provided in the first group.  The third and final group ingested only 6.25 grams of whey protein, but the protein from this group contained added amounts of the essential amino acids (with the exception of leucine) as to deliver the same amount of the essential amino acids (except for leucine) as what was ingested in the group that ingested 25 grams of whey protein (group 1).

All supplements were ingested at rest and without any additional influence of resistance exercise, the ingestion of the two groups which contained leucine (groups 1 and 2) led to significant increases in blood levels of leucine.  In addition, the increased leucine levels in these two groups were significantly greater than the blood levels of leucine found in group 3 (the group which didn’t consume any leucine).  No surprises so far.

Regardless of whether resistance exercise was added or not, immediate changes (the first 3 hours after exercise and feeding) in muscle protein synthesis were actually similar in all three groups.  In other words, if you know you are in super hurry and don’t have time to deal with making a shake and cleaning up the mess, simply delivering an adequate amount of leucine or the essential amino acids will adequately bridge the gap for up to three hours.  NOTE: Don’t lose sight of the fact that ingesting a whey protein shake definitely suffices as well.

However, when these measurements were extended to 3 – 5 hours, only the group which ingested 25 grams of whey protein were able to sustain the increased levels of muscle protein synthesis.  Therefore, if you know you are going to be unable to feed your muscles for an extended period you are better off getting a minimum of 25 grams whey protein shake.  In closing, stimulating muscle protein synthesis takes a constant balance of a number of factors and timely delivery of the right nutrients can greatly impact these changes.

REFERENCES

Biolo, G., S. P. Maggi, et al. (1995). “Increased rates of muscle protein turnover and amino acid transport after resistance exercise in humans.” Am J Physiol 268(3 Pt 1): E514-520.

Biolo, G., K. D. Tipton, et al. (1997). “An abundant supply of amino acids enhances the metabolic effect of exercise on muscle protein.” Am J Physiol 273(1 Pt 1): E122-129.

Borsheim, E., K. D. Tipton, et al. (2002). “Essential amino acids and muscle protein recovery from resistance exercise.” Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 283(4): E648-657.

Churchward-Venne, T. A., N. A. Burd, et al. (2012). “Supplementation of a suboptimal protein dose with leucine or essential amino acids: effects on myofibrillar protein synthesis at rest and following resistance exercise in men.” The Journal of physiology.

Nair, K. S. and K. R. Short (2005). “Hormonal and signaling role of branched-chain amino acids.” J Nutr 135(6 Suppl): 1547S-1552S.

Pasiakos, S. M., H. L. McClung, et al. (2011). “Leucine-enriched essential amino acid supplementation during moderate steady state exercise enhances postexercise muscle protein synthesis.” Am J Clin Nutr 94(3): 809-818.

Rasmussen, B. B., K. D. Tipton, et al. (2000). “An oral essential amino acid-carbohydrate supplement enhances muscle protein anabolism after resistance exercise.” J Appl Physiol 88(2): 386-392.

Rieu, I., M. Balage, et al. (2006). “Leucine supplementation improves muscle protein synthesis in elderly men independently of hyperaminoacidaemia.” The Journal of physiology 575(Pt 1): 305-315.

Tipton, K. D., A. A. Ferrando, et al. (1999). “Postexercise net protein synthesis in human muscle from orally administered amino acids.” Am J Physiol 276(4 Pt 1): E628-634.

Tipton, K. D., B. E. Gurkin, et al. (1999). “Nonessential amino acids are not necessary to stimulate net muscle protein synthesis in healthy volunteers.” J Nutr Biochem 10(2): 89-95.

Volpi, E., H. Kobayashi, et al. (2003). “Essential amino acids are primarily responsible for the amino acid stimulation of muscle protein anabolism in healthy elderly adults.” Am J Clin Nutr 78(2): 250-258.

Nobody likes spinning their wheels.  Time is money after all and when research findings are available that allow you to be smarter and get more out of your training and nutrition efforts you should pay attention.  Year after year, it appears more and more research becomes available that gives us valuable information which arms us with enhanced strategies to meet your exercise goals.  In the last ten years, our knowledge base of nutrition and exercise has expanded much beyond what it used to be.  Forget the days of mixing up eggs with milk and God knows what else to gain weight.  Studies tell us time and time again that isolate versions of the milk proteins, whey and casein, are indeed superior sources of protein and recent hydrolysate formulations may offer some added benefits.  Another critical area of information gathering has been regarding nutrient timing.

Hopefully it is common knowledge to you that when you eat holds a great deal of importance and specifically the one hour time period after your resistance training workout is a critical time period where you better feed the body something.  And by “something”, science tells us it should be a minimum of 20 to 25 grams of a high-quality protein.  While the post-exercise window has been aggressively researched, other time periods including the time period before and during a bout of resistance exercise have not been investigated as greatly.

The strategy of ingesting key nutrients during a resistance workout was completed by Beelen and colleagues where they had participants complete a brief bout of sprint cycling and resistance exercise while consuming either carbohydrate or a combination of protein and carbohydrate (Beelen, Koopman et al. 2008).  To accomplish this task, ten healthy males completed a two hour resistance training workout and every 15 minutes throughout the workout they ingested one of two beverages.  Blood and muscle samples were collected and the investigators concluded that the consumption of carbohydrates + protein reduced protein breakdown by 8.4% and improved protein synthesis rates by 33%.  Importantly, improvements were made in both protein breakdown and protein synthesis which resulted in net protein balance improving from an overall negative balance (more protein was broken down that what was built = not a good thing) when just carbohydrate was ingested to an overall positive balance when protein was added to the carbohydrate.  Most importantly changes in muscle protein synthesis revealed a 49% increase in the carbohydrate + protein group (which also was significantly greater than changes seen when just carbohydrate was consumed).

In closing, the timing of nutrients is important.  Multiple studies have indicated that post-exercise ingestion is a primary consideration for athletes wishing to optimize adaptations to their training, but a small group of studies continues to reveal that delivering protein and carbohydrates during resistance exercise is also important.

REFERENCES

Beelen, M., R. Koopman, et al. (2008). “Protein coingestion stimulates muscle protein synthesis during resistance-type exercise.” Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 295(1): E70-77.