Holding Your Ground is Winning

On occasion I am lucky enough to get to help people on their weight loss journey and our lab has literally had more than one person lose more than 100lbs. and keep it off. Once they do this, they do find it is difficult to keep the weight off and sometimes they will have 10lbs. or so come back on. First of all, of the weight that they gain most of the time it is lean mass since resistance training with some cardio is typically the key to the weight loss for these people (and obviously diet also). Now this is hard for them to deal with psychologically since they have worked so hard to lose weight. Any loss of ground can be quite disheartening for them. Also a number of them find themselves plateauing where they aren’t able to lose any more weight for a long period of time. They can get stuck and have a hard time making any more progress.

When this happens, I like to tell them that “holding your ground is winning”. You can’t always keep charging forward and at times your body will resist you so aggressively that getting any additional weight loss to occur will require herculean efforts. My goal with them is to remind them that holding your position is in itself winning. If you are able to keep all of the ground you have gained (maybe even lose a little) this is still a huge victory over where you once were. Giving yourself the space physiologically and emotionally to let yourself hold that ground for a bit before you make another hard push is great for yourself and you should know that is more than alright.

Any person who works hard in any physical endeavor will find that after a few months progress can slow and even halt. Just be aware that this is normal and now you need to figure out what to do next to make progress again. Try and learn from others that have gone through the same plateaus, and learn from them as to how they got things moving again. Sometimes, holding your ground is winning. Thanks for reading.

Adherence Programming

A real problem when writing programs for people is their ability to adhere to it. My students can quickly learn how to write a solid diet or training program for someone, but frequently they can forget that this is a real person that has a job, family obligations, and so on. So when writing a program for anyone (or yourself) ask yourself what can you actually adhere to?

Humans are not machines and most people have busy lives. I know the arguments for people being lazy and I’m sure that there is a specific subset that are in fact incredibly lazy, but instead I would argue that most people are quite busy. Now are they busy doing productive things? No, but they take up lots of time. Like using social media, watching tv, reading mediocre blog posts (like this one). There are also a number of important things in their life like keeping their job, commuting, and taking care of themselves, their home, and their family. With that in mind my goal with most programs for the first step is to see if there is anything we can take out and replace simply? Is there anything that we can quickly change, reward, and therefore reinforce? Look for things like watching TV in bed, snacking, drinking calorie laden beverages, and then doing things like simply adding more steps each day from taking the stairs, parking in the back of the parking lot, not using the drive through, and so on.

Start with small behaviors and then get success in them and then start adding in more advanced things. A workout program of one push up per day is better than no program at all. Think about what a person can adhere to. Expecting someone to overhaul their life overnight is exceedingly rarely success, but asking them to switch from soda to diet soda (for maybe only one can per day) is easy. Build on the success and eventually they will make the progress they are looking for.

NSCA nationals 2019 notes – Part 3

Jerry Mangine – Crossfit Training and the research on it

CrossFit is a popular form of training that tries to increase all fitness abilities in the body. The injury risk for this sport is about the same as any other and the risk is higher when you first start and don’t know what you are doing. The injury risk is mostly explained by how novel the stimulus is, how well trained the athlete is, the effort they are putting in and the coaching they are receiving.

The lactate response for this style of training is quite high. One study looked at the epinephrine release from this training compared to light running on the treadmill and turns out it has a greater response. Studies have shown that after 4-16 weeks on this training body fat percentages goes down and lean body mass goes up. Resting heart rate, blood pressure and aerobic capacity also all improve. In a wrestling study doing the CrossFit workout was harder on the athletes than actually wrestling a match so might be a good form of conditioning for them.

Altogether there has only been 21 published studies on CrossFit and this is quite low considering how many athletes participate in this. Still unclear if the volume, density, or intensity is pushing the physical changes in athletes. When it comes to recovery after one hard training day the following had a lower lactate response which could be related to Glycogen depletion or ATP depletion.

One of the best CrossFit athletes had pretty normal hormone levels, but a good growth hormone response form the training. The best athletes are learner with lower body fat in general and are denser (think can’t float). When looking at self-reported data the best cross fitters had a great clean and jerk, snatch, and deadlift. The VO2 of higher athletes that were tested was 52.5 with an SD of 5.6 along with had a higher vo2 peak. Critical power was also a bit better in these athletes. The best athletes are also better at short workouts and can do more pull ups (example workout for this was Grace). The best predictors for the athletes is BF% and muscle mass. Great biomechanics slide for quantifying CrossFit WODs, along with using Mateyev periodization for CrossFit. Finally more research needs to be done on this along with injury risk is higher in the beginning.

 

Paul Comfort – Mid thigh clean pull testing.

This was first developed by Haff and Stone in 1997, validated and used by a large amount of different groups since.

Need to be sure to standardize this in that you are in the mid-thigh and look for slack in the line before they start pulling. Also need to understand how to standardize this.

Basic idea is you set the athletes in a rack where you are half way up the thigh and they are in a position where you focus on the knee and hip angle so they can produce maximal force then you not only strap them in but tape in their hands so they can produce maximal force. The grip is always double overhand for this. You want them in the second pull position, tell them to dorsi flex or act like they are on a bar stool. So upright torso on this. The midpoint is the inguinal fold to the patella midpoint when measuring.

Before they pull they need to stay still so you get a good baseline and then do so at the end so you make sure you only measured active force production. When it comes to starting your measurements there are a number of ways to go about this. Aim to get the knee angle at 127-145. Upright torso is the most important part. Make sure your testing is reliable and consistent

Zero them on the force plate before you start so you can easily see how much force they are producing above bodyweight. Have a threshold to start measuring at 20-40N or relative threshold of greater than 5 SD to start measuring. Algorithm and manual calculation here are close. Rate of force development is not reliable. Key considerations, quiet standing before, clearly report methods, signal and noise buffering, time dependent variables, no effect on peak force, standardize for each athlete. Record for 5 seconds. Peak force shouldn’t be at the end of the trial. Do more than one trial and if it increases by more than 250N do another trial. Look at percentages of how much it increases per trial. Look at rate of force development in 50, 100, 200, 250ms and from 0-50, 50-100, etc. You can look to see if max force and RFD group together. Look in to how to standardize and hip to 140-150 degrees. Only want a 5-10 degree forward lean. One to 2 minute rest between attempts, no pre tension, cue them to push with their legs not pull the bar. Zero them on the force plate and when interpreting the data, plyometric training can help with the rate of force development. Look in to the dynamic strength index with your athletes. Typically just need to sample at 1000hz and no filtering the signal. Asymmetry for athletes pulling on the bar goes away with time.

 

Joe Weir and Bayesian statistics

Typical statistics are based on testing a null hypothesis. Then looking at confidence intervals and effect sizes (do this fall in our predicted mean along with how big of an effect are we actually having). These are magnitude based inferences. So then we can use Bayesian statistics

Normal stats have type 1 error where we have false positive and type 2 which is a false negative. There are a number of issues with it, such as it is binary and can answer the wrong question. Just because there is a “significant difference” does not mean that it is important or meaningful. There can be no comparison when it comes to effect size. Also no sense of precision when it comes to confidence intervals.

When it comes to effect sizes you can look at correlations, Cohens d, or hedges g or eta squared. So with magnitude based inferences don’t get hung up with thresholds. A random sample probability simple shows what the chance of it happening on accident. Don’t show you if you were right, just shows you if it was random luck. P just shows you the chance of this being an accident. Bayesian is the credible interval (posterior data is predicted change).  Look at the formula for Bayesian statistics.

So Bayes factor is the chance it could happen and you get pizza graphs which show you the odd ratio of one being true or the other. JASP software is free and you can use this for that form of statistics. Credible interval is more likely to be bigger than 95% confidence interval. Set your priors a priori not after you get your data set. Bigger data set lower effect of priori. Bayes factor provides a nice transition to Bayesian analysis for researchers who have been traditionally trained. This is very neat stuff and I would suggest anyone that might be interested in stats to try to learn about this, but it is definitely not the easiest thing to approach.

NSCA nationals 2019 notes – Part 2

Long Term Athletic Development – Desmond Ryan

This is for a soccer club in the UK, initially it was garbage, they would do circuit training that was done with little to no effort and it showed on the injury report along with the lack of performance. The goal was to build a challenging and caring youth environment.

The motto was “strong Gunners” (name of the club is Arsenal)

They have 10 full time and 50 part time scouts for the club. The professional game of soccer is increasing in that the athletes are faster, cover more ground in a game, and so on than it did in the past. They have a large sports science and medicine staff. One cool fact about it is that the performance coaches of the kids are paid the same as those for the pros with permanent contracts for them. This helps keep good people and from there they have their framework for developing soccer players. The youngest group is literally the under 10 group and then have 12, 14, 16, 18, and 23 year olds before the pros. So lots of ranks to develop athletes in.

The continuum for development goes from:

• How well not how much
• How well and how much
• How well and much and how fast
• Elite

Exercise selection and load increase in intensity as you go forward on the continuum. A key they keep in mind since they have such huge age ranges is that chronological age and biological age is not the same thing. They pay attention to the peak height velocity of the athletes which happens during puberty. When the athletes are growing at their fastest rate they have the highest risk of injury. They use formulas to predict their height. When it comes to physical performance they have arrested development during puberty (aren’t trying to increase their athleticism, just hold on to it). Athletes tend to get tight during and after puberty. Athletes that mature first have less psychological strength since they had an advantage compared to those that develop later.

Their major ideas to adhere to is: mannerly, objective, and tell the truth.

They aim to kill people with kindness and make no excuses.

They audit their injuries, fitness results, and successes to see where their relationships to training lies. Their goal is to play the long game with their athletes and since they are taking so many years to develop their athletes they really can be deliberate. They try to figure out what an athlete is missing (fitness, mobility, power, strength, etc.) and focus on bringing up those elements and it shows with how many of the athletes go pro, which is a very large number. They track the annual injury rate and then trend that data over the past decade to see how effective that they are being. Very impressive to see the synergy between all of the ranks on each individual athlete for development. Great talk.

 

Jose Antonio High Protein Intake

Taking an evolutionary biology perspective, animals have two priorities: survive and reproduce.

Food would have been slim to none for humans. Animals food was energy dense, so if they got a hold of meat they would eat as much of it as possible. Large boluses of protein are normal and something humans have been doing for a long time.

Tipton initially described a high protein diet as an intake of 35% of total calories or higher, but the problem with this is it doesn’t account for if someone is trying to gain or lose weight. Then Tang in 2014 along with Morales in 2014 described it as an intake of greater than 1.2g/kg of body weight each day. Anotonio describes it as 2.2g/kg of body weight each day and above as high protein.

First study was to do 2g/lbs of body weight per day and doing this for 8 weeks. By Tchaukalava in 2010, there was no negative or positive effects on the body and body composition.

Next study they went 3g/kg per day and at the end the higher protein group lost fat, but no change in lean body mass.

Following was to track for 1 and 2 years of a high intake averaging a bit over 3g/kg each day and there were no health issues such as kidney problems.

The following study did high protein intake for one year on bone mineral density in women and showed no change in bone mineral density even with a high protein intake.

If you want to gain weight steak and whey are your friends

2.5g/kg each day is quite different than .9g/kg.

Some of the research they are doing on genetics look at single nucleotide polymorphisms. This is just one little change on your genes which effects then the expression in your body. First gene they looked at is the FTO gene – this tends to be related to the risk of overeating (rs1421085). These folks are 1.3-1.7x greater risk of being fat.

So looking at this risk allele on a low calorie diet still lost weight at the same speed as the people without it. So calorie restriction gets the job done that they are looking for either way.

Next they looked at CCLII, NFL (biomarker for concussion, elevated after injury, not the sport league), and tau. This was elevated after just doing a round of heading the ball in soccer and for up to a month after the round which is somewhat scary.

Then the COMT gene which is the warrior or worrier gene. Individuals with the AA version are found in higher amounts in MMA fighters and less in sedentary. Naturally makes you lower in dopamine and so executive function is a bit lower and the search for stimulation is a bit higher. Sedentary individuals are typically on the other side of the coin with this.

 

During this presentation I got to sit next to Stan Efferding and just chatted with him for a while afterwards about training, life and everything. Some notes from talking with him was how he tries to find what his clients can use right now. In that people try to over complicate and do things like cryotherapy or otherwise and what they need to focus on is just getting more quality sleep. He looks to figure out what behaviors will have the greatest compliance and give them that. He liked the three S’s of simple, sensible, and sustainable. Also how a lot of things can be inconsequential, but diet and sleep should always be in the forefront. Then we chatted about how we both enjoyed the book why we sleep by Matt Walker. He recommended that I read Healthcare Triage and the Bad Foods Bible. Also how stacking choline, b12 and folate for improving liver function and some of his other work with “the Mountain” and preparing him for strongman competitions.

NSCA nationals 2019 notes – Part 1

Fry NSCA Presentation

Overtraining is hard to test in the lab and likely we are looking at overreaching in the lab, though it does happen. You can over work athletes and cause a decline in performance by making them do too much. They had an example from a collegiate football team that got weaker due to doing crazy amounts of conditioning. 1RM actually holds on quite well even though power and mood goes down first from over training. Isometric strength also tends not to change even when athletes are beaten down. However rate of force development can change with overtraining and for that the mid-thigh clean pull can be useful for this. You can also look at eccentric rate of force development during things like jumps on a force plate which becomes not as rapid when someone is over reached, however their jump height actually tends not to change too much.

Change from overreaching might not be significant in your traditional statistics sense, but a decrease in 10 yard sprint speed of 6.3% and at 40 yards was 3.8% has been observed. In high level athletics this can be massive and hugely influence the result of sports. Mental game in sport is effected by overreaching and overtraining and specifically it is usually the first that is affected. Then reaction time and rate of force development followed by power and finally your maximum strength and aerobic performance.

If you get to the point where you are that beaten down it can take you months to fully recover and in some cases it can even be years.

 

Mike Israetal Presentation on the Stimulus to Fatigue Ratio (SFR) and picking your exercises

In order to gain muscle mass you need a few things:

• Mind to muscle connection – what you activate well is what gets trained
• Metabolites in the target muscle – get the burn and metabolically tax the muscle you are interested in
• Pump in the muscle with less sets
• How many sets cause delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) – if lots of work in an exercise doesn’t cause soreness then it is not a good exercise for building muscle.
• Local fatigue induced – how much your performance drops in that exercise.

The more of each of these the higher the growth stimulus to the muscle.

However you need to not induce too much fatigue. This causes your performance to go down and you need to address this in order to progress. It is a proxy of how brutal your training is. Factors in fatigue are:

• Joint stress/discomfort from the exercise
• Perceived effort per set
• Performance falloff in unused muscles – you want to minimize this since total fatigue is what slows you down
• Joint/connective tissue soreness after
• Performance fall off in the target muscle

So SFR is about optimizing growth to fatigue. You want to want exercises that grow the most muscle with the least fatigue. So these are the best exercises to use especially if you are training lots of times each week. This is not an issue with people that can only train 1-3x per week.

So to determine your SFR for an exercise take and assign a number to teach from above with bad being 1 and good being 3.

Stimulus:

• Mind muscle 1 (bad), 2, 3 (good)
• Metabolites
• Pump
• DOMS
• Local fatigue

Add together then divide by the following

Fatigue:

• Joint stress
• RPE
• Systemic Fatigue
• Joint Soreness
• Local Fatigue

So a good example of an exercise that helps here is the push up from a deficit for the pecs. Lots of stimulus with little fatigue. A bad example would be partial squats with bad technique for the quads.

Ways you can increase the SFR is to improve technique, increase the mind muscle connection, and figure out the best technique in the exercise for your body type.

Take and make a list of exercises that you can do and figure out the SFR for each. Remember you are looking for high stimulation with low fatigue. A sad fact of training is the stimulus goes down with time and the fatigue from an exercise goes up. Just the nature of getting bigger and stronger. If you only train once or twice per week, just do hard exercises like squats and deads, but if you train multiple times per week and hit body parts 2-3x then you want to look at this a bit more.