ONLINE DRIVERS MEDIA

Please, do me a favor and read the info in the red box. Hypoxia ? Kaatsu

Assuming that youve read the headline of this article first, you should already have realized what makes this study special: A realistic training regimen thats relevant for to the "average gym context". "10 reps to failure" - and that is actually pretty close to what the average trainee does on one of his / her "arm days" at the gym.

Against that background I can live with the minor downside that the subjects were 13 healthy men (mean age, 23 years; height 169 cm; body mass 60 kg) who were assigned to train either under normoxic or hypoxic training conditions were a little "too average" (=untrained) for my liking.
As the well-read SuppVersity student youve become ever since youve been reading these articles, you will obviously know that using noobs as your subjects is something exercise scientists like to do, because they know that this helps them to avoid null-results, as they tend to occur in in studies with trained subjects, simply the study duration was too short and / or the training intensity too pathetic to measure significant changes in any of the outcome variables.
As the data in Figure 1 goes to show you, neither (a) nor (b) nor both was the case in the study at hand. The Elbow extensions the subjects performed at a workload of a 10 RM with the non dominant arm to exhaustion three times with 1-minute intervals 3 days each week for 8 weeks, did after all elicit significant strength and size gains in both groups - regardless of whether they were performed while the subjects were inspiring normoxic air (FiO2=20. 9%; at sea level) or hypoxic gas (FiO2=12 .7%; corresponding to 4000 m above sea level):

Figure 1: Thickness of triceps brachii (a and b) in both arms before and after training in the normoxic (N) and hypoxic (H) groups; ** denotes significant difference (Kurobe. 2014)

The overall changes in size and strength are yet luckily not the only significant effect, the researchers from the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Japan observed in their study.

The inter-group differences, i.e. the significantly greater increase in muscle thickness the hypoxia group, was significant, as well. And while the latter cannot be said of the increase in strength, I am pretty sure that the additional size gains alone would be reason enough for some of you to take a bottle with reduced oxygen air (Fi=2=12.7%; meaning only 12.7% of the air in the container would be oxygen to the gym).
References:

• Kurobe et al. "Effects of resistance training under hypoxic conditions on muscle hypertrophy and strength." Clin Physiol Funct Imaging(2014) doi: 10.1111/cpf.12147

Voluntary & NMES contractions for Monster Quads?

You are always looking for new ways to improve your training outcome? Scientists from the Department of Physiotherapy at the University Cardenal Herrera-CEU might have something for you, then. In their latest study, V. Benavent-Caballer, P. Rosado-Calatayud, E. Segura-Ortí, J.J. Amer-Cuenca, and J.F. Lisón tried to elucidate, whether conducting low intensity resistance training in conjunction with  neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) would provide not just an additional growth stimulus, but also corresponding increases in physical performance, muscle cross-sectional area (CSA) and the capacity to perform daily tasks 22 in exactly those subjects researchers will resort to, when theyre looking for generous funding for studies the outcome of which is not going to pay off in form of scripts for a new patentable drug: Older adults living in a geriatric nursing home.
What? Yeah... I have to admit, the subjects are not exactly bodybuilders and a regular high intensity control is missing, but even if it wasnt for the necessary fact that youll belong to the group of "older adults" in 50 years from now, the results of the study at hand would still have a certain relevance for younger trainees. Why? Well, something that makes the elderly grow will certainly do the same in young people. Whether it does so at the same or even higher rates than "regular" strength training will obviously have to be elucidated in future studies.

Table 1: Subject characteristics;  VC = volitional contraction; NMES = neuromuscular electrical stimulation; NMES+ = NMES superimposed onto voluntary contraction. SD = standard deviation (Benavent-Caballer. 2014)

For now, all I can tell you is that the three weekly supervised 30-35 min exercise sessions the 89 participants of the study at hand performed in the course of this 16-week study lead to significantly more pronounced strength and size gains, when the exercise was performed using both voluntary contractions and the forced contractions, the researchers produced by attaching their subjects to the surface electrodes of a portable NMES devices (TensMed S82).
The four adhesive surface electrodes (5 × 5 cm) were placed on the distal medial and proximal lateral portions of the subjects anterior thigh, when they performed their three sets of knee extensions (15 reps each) in a single-leg fashion with 3-minute rest between sets.

Figure 2: Changes in muscle strength (hand grup) and size (rectus femoris), as well as changes in parameters of physical functioning in response to the three training modalities (Benavent-Caballer. 2014)

The participants were instructed to raise the weight in 1 s (concentric phase), keep a full knee extension for 3 s (isometric phase) and slowly lower the weight in 2 s to the starting position (eccentric phase). Each contraction was followed by a 2-second rest period, and the training intensity was set at 40% of 1RM... and yeas, this sounds pretty much like peak contractions, an intensity technique which may in fact be the reason that the old trainees in the study at hand recorded highly significant increases in muscle size even when the peak contraction or rather the whole movement was not superimposed with NMES which was delivered with a ramp-up time of 1 s increasing intensity as the knee was extended from 90° to full extension that was followed by 3 s keeping the knee in full extension and 2 s of a ramp-down with gradually decreasing intensity (see Figure 2, yellow).
References:

• Babault N, Cometti G, Bernardin M, et al. "Effects of electromy ostimulation training on muscle strength and power of elite rugby players." J Strength Cond Res 21 (2007): 431-7.
• Bezerra, Pedro, et al. "Effects of unilateral electromyostimulation superimposed on voluntary training on strength and cross?sectional area." Muscle & nerve 40.3 (2009): 430-437.
• Brocherie F, Babault N, Cometti G, et al. "Electromyostimulation training effects on the physical performance on ice hockey players." Med Sci Sports Exerc 37 (2005): 455-60.
• Delitto A, Brown M, Strube MJ, et al." Electrical stimulation of quadriceps femoris in an elite weight lifter: a single subject experiment." Int J Sports Med 10 (1989): 187-91.
• Dervisevic E, Bilban M, Valencic V." The influence of low-frequency electrostimulation and isokinetic training on the maximal strength of m. quadriceps femoris." Isokinet Exerc Sci 10 (2002): 203-9. 
• Hortobágyi, Tibor, Jean Lambert, and Kevin Scott. "Incomplete muscle activation after training with electromyostimulation." Canadian journal of applied physiology 23.3 (1998): 261-270. 
• Maffiuletti NA, Cometti G, Amiridis IG, et al. "The effects of electromyostimulation training and basket practice on muscle strength and jumping ability. Int J Sports Med 21 (2000): 437-
  43. 
• Malatesta D, Cattaneo F, Dugnani S, et al. "Effects of electromyostimulation training and volley practice on jumping abilities." J Strength Cond Res 17 (2003): 573-9.
• Herrero JA, Izquierdo M, Maffiuletti N, et al. "Electromyostimu lation and plyometric training effects on jumping and sprint time." Int J Sports Med 27 (2006): 533-9.
• Paillard, Thierry, et al. "Effects of two types of neuromuscular electrical stimulation training on vertical jump performance." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 22.4 (2008): 1273-1278.
• Pichon F, Chatard JC, Martin A, et al. "Electrical stimulation and swimming performance." Med Sci Sports Exerc 27 (1995): 1671-6.
• Venable MP, Collins MA, O’Bryant HS, et al. "Effect of supplemental electrical stimulation on the development of strength, vertical jump performance and power." J Appl Sport Sci Res 5 (1991): 139-43