Fitness Friday - Fitness News and Information You Can Use

It's time for another Fitness Friday. We start off with two articles from Chad Waterbury (partly as a promotion for his new book), one from his own blog and one from Eric Cressesy's sight. After that we have an article on running from T-Nation. Finally, a nutrition article on the Western diet and its impact on the immune system, then two articles debunking the health risks associated with testosterone replacement therapty (good news for men on T replacement).

Full-Body Training for Mass Rules

Chad Waterbury

 

The best trigger for muscle growth across your entire body is a full-body workout. The combination of an upper-body pull, push and squat/deadlift/lunge is a powerful stimulus to upregulate the anabolic hormones and ramp up protein synthesis.

I’ve written extensively about full-body training over the years, and I keep experimenting with ways to make it better. Here’s what I’ve learned over the years that you can do to make full-body training your go-to strategy for fast muscle gains....

* * * * *

What Cirque du Soleil Can Teach You About How to Build Muscle

Written by Chad Waterbury on June 28, 2014 | by Eric Cressey

I'm in Chicago to speak at the Perform Better Summit this weekend, but fortunately, my good friend Chad Waterbury provided this guest post for today. Enjoy! -EC

In 2001, I went with a buddy to Vegas. I wish I could say the trip was replete with all the temptations that Sin City had to offer, but it was strictly business.

At the time, I had a packed personal training calendar that kept me busy from dawn to dusk. Most of my clients were guys that wanted to build muscle, so I had them do a combination of heavy and high-rep training to failure.

That’s how bodybuilding protocols worked back then, and most of them still do today. I made my clients work hard and they trained each major muscle group about twice per week.

Now this is where my Vegas trip comes in.

That year I went to see the Cirque du Soleil show, Mystere. Many of my clients had seen the popular show and they mentioned that I should make a point to attend, mainly because of two heavily-muscled gymnastics that display mind-blowing feats of strength: the Alexis Brothers.

* * * * *

Running Doesn't Suck

by Max Shank   
07/01/14

Here's what you need to know...

• The anti-running movement has gone too far when it says that running is stupid or that it will eat up all of your muscle.
• The weight-lifter-who-moves-like-garbage and bashes running is becoming a tiresome cliché.
• Short distances like 10-40 meters, 40 to 100 meters, and 100 to 800 meters, in addition to hill sprints and shuttle runs, all have varying benefits ranging from increases in GH and Testosterone to increases in leg strength, coordination, and bone and soft tissue integrity.
• If the endurance nutballs would start doing repeats of 400-800 meters at high effort, they might forget what a thruster is.

The fact that there's been a revolt against "jogging" as a fitness modality is terrific and I'm happy we're moving more towards the center. However, one thing that's gone too far is this whole idea of how running is stupid, or will somehow eat up all of your muscle. I've even heard trainers tell people that running is the worst thing you can do to stay in shape.

Now I'm all for the execution of "jogging" in general, but to make a blanket statement that all running is worthless is extreme. Running sucks? Really? Seriously? Humans are literally built for running. As far as the hierarchy of things you need to do for survival, running is right smack dab at the top of the list, next to keeping your heart beating at all times. Frankly, the weight-lifter-who-moves-like-garbage and bashes running is becoming a tiresome cliché.

Running offers several benefits including, but not limited to:

• Increase in growth hormone and Testosterone production
• Increase in leg strength
• Increase in coordination
• Increase in bone and soft tissue integrity
• Prevention of injuries

Now when I advocate that you run, it's not for 26 miles, but for varying distances up to 800 meters at a time. Here's a short list of the different modalities I use and their benefits....

* * * * *

Next up we have two nutrition/supplement studies. One looks at the impact of the Western diet on the immune system, the other is a new testosterone study that fails to confirm a study from earlier this year that suggested testosterone replacement cause cardiac damage.

Fast food fever: reviewing the impacts of the Western diet on immunity

Ian A Myles

Nutrition Journal; 2014, 13:61 doi: 10.1186/1475-2891-13-61

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Abstract

While numerous changes in human lifestyle constitute modern life, our diet has been gaining attention as a potential contributor to the increase in immune-mediated diseases. The Western diet is characterized by an over consumption and reduced variety of refined sugars, salt, and saturated fat. Herein our objective is to detail the mechanisms for the Western diet’s impact on immune function. The manuscript reviews the impacts and mechanisms of harm for our over-indulgence in sugar, salt, and fat, as well as the data outlining the impacts of artificial sweeteners, gluten, and genetically modified foods; attention is given to revealing where the literature on the immune impacts of macronutrients is limited to either animal or in vitro models versus where human trials exist. Detailed attention is given to the dietary impact on the gut microbiome and the mechanisms by which our poor dietary choices are encoded into our gut, our genes, and are passed to our offspring. While today’s modern diet may provide beneficial protection from micro- and macronutrient deficiencies, our over abundance of calories and the macronutrients that compose our diet may all lead to increased inflammation, reduced control of infection, increased rates of cancer, and increased risk for allergic and auto-inflammatory disease. 

* * * * *

Latest Testosterone Study Finds No Heart Attack Risk

Nancy A. Melville
July 03, 2014

In the latest addition to the ongoing debate over the safety of testosterone treatment, researchers report no significant increased heart attack risk in older men treated with an intramuscular form of the therapy.

The study, published online this week in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy, compared 6,355 Medicare beneficiaries treated with testosterone with 19,065 who were not, between January 1997 and December 2005, and showed no increased risk of myocardial infarction (MI) in the treatment group (hazard ratio [HR], 0.84; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.69 - 1.02).

“In this matched double-cohort study of more than 24,000 Medicare beneficiaries, we found that use of intramuscular testosterone therapy was not associated with an increased risk of MI,” say the authors.

Furthermore, "a dose–response analysis demonstrated no increased risk in MI according to estimated cumulative dose of testosterone. These findings were robust across a range of sensitivity analyses that addressed eligibility criteria, exposure thresholds, follow-up periods, and covariate adjustment,” they add.

* * * * *

Testosterone Therapy Does Not Cause Prostate Cancer

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - Jul 3, 2014) 

What are the dangers of testosterone therapy? Does long-term hormone replacement therapy increase prostate cancer risk? Testosterone replacement therapy is on the rise, though recent reports suggest that low testosterone (Low T) diagnoses may be too prevalent and that excessive treatment pose risks to men. However, according to a recent German study, long-term testosterone therapy does not increase a man's risk of developing prostate cancer.

Some experts caution that testosterone therapy is overused. Evidence shows that the treatment increases prostate size, elevates prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels, and permanently impairs the body's ability to produce natural testosterone. Leading New York robotic prostate surgeon, David B. Samadi, MD, Chairman of Urology and Chief of Robotic Surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital, encourages men to seek a second opinion before beginning a testosterone therapy regimen.

"For some men, Low T is very real and can cause loss of energy, reduced sex drive, weight gain, and depression," said Dr. Samadi. "Men with truly low testosterone levels can experience tremendous benefits from testosterone therapy and may opt for long-term treatment. For them, this is good news. Their risk of prostate cancer is no higher than that of other men."