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Training Tips and Principles 

Nutritional Tips

  Did you know this?

• That a meta-analysis (a large comparative study that examines existing research) of resting metabolic rate showed that weight loss while dieting or exercising showed less than - 2% or no change respectively  in resting metabolic rate when normalised to body weight. (Ballor D., Poehlman E. A meta-analysis of the effects of exercise and/or dietary restriction on resting metabolic rate. Eur J Appl Physiol (1995) 71:535-542)

• When exercising at -10 degrees celsius for 60 minutes, men dressed in t-shirts and shorts burned 13% more energy overall and 35% more energy from fat when compared to exercising at 22 degress celsius.  (Timmons, Araujo, and Thomas. Fat utilization enhanced by exercise in a cold environment. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 17 (6), p.673-378) 

• In 1994 Hakkinen and Kallinen reported in Electromyography and Clinical Neurophysiology (34, 117 - 124) that female athletes who divided their strength training routines into two daily sessions may get better results in both muscle hypertrophy and neural adaptations for increased strength.

• One study has shown significant benefit from using oral creatine supplementation for 10 weeks on maximal strength, exercise capacity, and fat-free mass.  All three showed increases of 20-25%, 10-25%, and 60% respectively when compared with placebo.  In addition, muscle phosphocreatine levels returned to normal after cessation of creatine supplementation (Vandenberghe, Goris, Van Hecke, Van Leemputte, Vangervan, and Hespel. Long-term creatine intake is beneficial to muscle performance during resistance training. Journal of Applied Physiology. 83 (6): 2055-2063,1997)

• The American Journal of Physiology (268, E268-E276, 1995) contained an article that showed daily growth hormone administration in conjunction with resistance training did not improve muscle strength and anabolism in older men when compared to resistance training without growth hormone administration.  Although there was an increase in fat free mass, the authours believed this could be due to an increase in "noncontractile protein and fluid retention".

• A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1993:58:561-565) examining the effects of muscle hypertrophy while following approximately 800 calories a day showed significant increases in the cross-sectional area of both the slow twitch and the fast twitch muscle fibers as a result of weight training.

• An article published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise (Vol. 27, No. 6, pp.868-873, 1995) examined muscle hypertrophy in the quadriceps femoris muscle of 20 subjects by having them perform either eccentric or concentric contractions at equal power levels (90% of their maximal concentric).  The study concluded that those who performed concentric only contractions resulted in greater muscle hypertrophy of the Type II fibers compared with those who performed eccentric only contractions.   

• An experiment examining resistance training on muscle use during exercise conducted at Ohio University (Journal of Applied Physiology 76(4): 1675-1681, 1994) illlustrated that short term resistance training resulted in less of the loaded muscle used during the lifts.  The authours of the study suggested that neural factors were mainly responsible for this result.

• In 1995 a study in Medecine and Science in Sports and Exercise (Vol 27, No. 8, pp. 1210-1219) compared the effectiveness of using a hydraulic-type training apparatus and a weight training device (modified to closely resemble the body and arm position of the hydraulic-type apparatus) training the arm flexors 3 times a week for 20 weeks.  The study concluded that both training apparati effectively increased strength and muscle mass, however the weight training device resulted in a significant increase in muscle cross-sectional area over the hydraulic-type training.

• When examining strength and muscle characteristics between men and women, Miller et al. (European Journal of Applied Physiology, 66:254-262, 1993) found no significant differences "in the strength to cross-sectional area ratio for elbow flexion or knee extension, in biceps fiber number, muscle area to fiber area ratio in the vastus lateralis or any motor unit characteristics".