ONLINE DRIVERS MEDIA

One study wouldnt be enough to prove that pea is superior to whey as muscle builder, anyways.

You can learn more about protein intake at the SuppVersity

Protein Timing DOES Matter!

5x More Than the FDA Allows!

Protein requ. of athletes

High EAA protein for fat loss

Fast vs. slow protein

Less Fat, More Muscle!

Figure 1: Overview of the study design.

"All subjects followed the same training routine, three times per week with a rest day between each session. Training was based on three exercises involving the elbow flexor and extensor muscles. The exercises soliciting the flexor muscles were arm curl and lateral pulldown. In the arm curl exercise, subjects sat with weights in their hands with a ~40° trunk/arm angle. They had to flex/extend the forearm over the arm. For the lateral pull-down, subjects sat with a bar in their hands above the head. They had to flex/extend the forearm over the arm with a vertical movement. The exercise soliciting the extensors was the bench press. Subjects were lying on their backs with a bar in their hands with a 90° trunk/arm angle, arms extended, and had to flex and extend their upper limbs vertically. Throughout the training program, the number of sets was progressively increased from 2 to 5 while the number of repetitions was reduced in parallel from 15 to 5 repetitions maximum (RM). In the final week, the subjects did three sets of 5 RM in order to preclude any fatigue for the D84 tests" (Babault. 2015).

Pea protein (PE) is similarly satiating as whey (WH) (Lang. 1998).

Dont get me wrong: The fact that I put a huge "?" behind the assumption that pea protein was a better muscle builder than whey does not mean that I would go back on previous recommendation to use pea proteins if you dont want to use dairy protein supplements like whey or casein. They have a high amount of EAA and BCAAs and various of proven health benefits ranging from anti-inflammatory effects (albeit of yellow pea hydrolysate | Ndiaye. 2012) over similar gluco-regulatory effects as whey protein (Smith. 2012) to lipid reducing effects that have been confirmed in both rodent and human studies (Sirtori. 2012).

Figure 2: Muscle thickness in the 3 groups at baseline after 42 and 84 days. There was only a trend (£) for increased gains in the pea protein group (Babault. 2015).

Figure 3: It is strange that the "superior muscle builder" triggers the lowest gains in maximal isometric contractile force. Even the placebo group had greater strength gains - despite a lack of sign. differences at baseline (Babault. 2015).

On paper, the amino acid profile of whey looks more anabolic (higher BCAA content).

Overall, the study clearly indicates that pea protein is a good vegan replacement for whey protein. The assumption that it may be superior to whey protein, however, is questionable. First of all, the strength gains dont reflect these changes. In fact, the whey protein group saw the largest strength increases - as it was the case for the size gains, these differences were not statistical significant, though.

If we also take into consideration that the "size" gains are actually gains in sleeve size (not reliable DXA measurements) which may have been taken way too early after the workouts to reflect actual muscle gains, we dont even have to raise the question whether the fact that the French company Roquette, the producer of NUTRALYS® pea protein, sponsored the study may have constituted an obviously subliminal bias ;-) Anyways, I would not yet replace my whey protein with pea protein isolates | Comment Facebook!

• Babault, et al. "Pea proteins oral supplementation promotes muscle thickness gains during resistance training: a double-blind, randomized, Placebo-controlled clinical trial vs. Whey protein." Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 12:3 (2015).
• Buckley, Jonathan D., et al. "Supplementation with a whey protein hydrolysate enhances recovery of muscle force-generating capacity following eccentric exercise." Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport 13.1 (2010): 178-181. 
• Lang, Vincent, et al. "Satiating effect of proteins in healthy subjects: a comparison of egg albumin, casein, gelatin, soy protein, pea protein, and wheat gluten." The American journal of clinical nutrition 67.6 (1998): 1197-1204.
• Ndiaye, Fatou, et al. "Anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory and immunomodulating properties of an enzymatic protein hydrolysate from yellow field pea seeds." European journal of nutrition 51.1 (2012): 29-37.
• Kerasioti, Efthalia, et al. "Anti-inflammatory effects of a special carbohydrate–whey protein cake after exhaustive cycling in humans." Food and Chemical Toxicology 61 (2013): 42-46.
• Sirtori, Cesare R., et al. "Hypocholesterolaemic effects of lupin protein and pea protein/fibre combinations in moderately hypercholesterolaemic individuals." British journal of nutrition 107.08 (2012): 1176-1183.
• Smith, Christopher E., et al. "The effect of yellow pea protein and fibre on short-term food intake, subjective appetite and glycaemic response in healthy young men." British Journal of Nutrition 108.S1 (2012): S74-S80.
• Sugawara, Keiyu, et al. "Effect of anti-inflammatory supplementation with whey peptide and exercise therapy in patients with COPD." Respiratory medicine 106.11 (2012): 1526-1534.

If you have an LCD monitor, you have two possible solutions:

• Run "automatic configuration" to adjust the screen size on your LCD monitor.
• Activate a proprietary video-card driver.

• Adjust screen size and position on a CRT monitor.
• Activate a proprietary video-card driver.

1. Locate the automatic-configuration button. See the instructions that came with your LCD monitor.
2. Press and release the automatic-configuration button to run automatic configuration and adjust screen size.

1. At the top of the Ubuntu desktop, click on System to display its drop-down menu.
2. Select Administration to display its drop-down menu.
3. Click on Hardware Drivers to first display a "Searching for available drivers window," and then after approximately 20 seconds, display a "Hardware Drivers" window.
4. If the Hardware Drivers window lists only one proprietary video driver, select it to activate it. If the list contains more than one proprietary video driver, select the recommended (or newest) driver to activate it.

1. Locate the horizontal-size, horizontal-position, vertical-size, and vertical-position adjustment knobs. You can usually find these knobs at the back, or under a cover at the front.
2. Adjust the horizontal-size knob until you see a black stripe at either the left or right of the screen.
3. Adjust the horizontal-position knob until you see identical black stripes at both sides of the screen.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you see only thin, identical black stripes at both sides of the screen.
5. Adjust the vertical-size knob until you see a black stripe at either the top or bottom of the screen.
6. Adjust the vertical-position knob until you see identical black stripes at both the top and bottom of the screen.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you see only thin, identical black stripes at both the top and bottom of the screen.

A personal trainer who knows what hes doing is that he will push you exactly so far as it is necessary to make maximal progress. Interestingly, even the best trainers will fail doing the same for themselves.

Learn more about building muscle at www.suppversity.com

Optimizing Rest for Size and Strength Gains

Alternating Squat & BP - Productive?

Farmers Walk or Squat? Is Strong- men T. For You?

Full ROM ? Full Gains - Form Counts!

Battle the Rope to Get Ripped & Strong

Up Your Squat by 25% With Sodium Bicarbonate

Figure 1: Effects of high (SIT30) and lower volume (SIT15) training on power output and lactate threshold (Zelt. 2014)

"A significant main effect of training was observed such that lactate threshold and critical power were higher during post-testing across all groups (p  <  0.05). There was a main effect of training (p  <  0.05) on Wingate peak power with no differences observed between groups at post training."

• Look at his legs, Ronnie Coleman must have done something right... and guess what, the study at hand suggests that part of it could have been his insane training volume.

  the legs of advanced trainees may need a little more hammering -- Maybe you remember this being the take-home message from a previous article, i.e. "Advanced Trainees Benefit from Increased Training Volume! Greater & Steadier Strength Gains with 8 Sets of Squats. Plus: Over 6 Weeks, 1 Set and 4 Sets Equally (In-)Effective." | read more
• the classic single vs. three set debate is still not settled -- While Starky et al.s 1996 study is one of the studies that appears to tip the scale in favor of studies suggests that there is no significant different in the strength and muscle gains in response to increasing the number of sets on a given exercise from one to three sets. Unfortunately, Starky et al. as well as most of their successors picked untrained noobs to test their hypothesis. And we all know: Noobs grow from simply looking at a barbell, right?
  
  So what do other studies say? Studies that used subjects like you and me? People who have been training regularly for ten or more years? People like the fifty-one experienced (>3 years), trained junior lifters who were randomly assigned to low, medium and high volume resistance training in a 2005 study by Juan J. Gonzalez-Badillo et al.
  

  Figure 2: Number of repetitions per week and average intensity (AI) during the 10-week training period in the low-volume (LVG), moderate-volume (MVG), and high-volume (HVG) training groups (left); EEffect size for the snatch, clean & jerk, and squat performances. LVG low volume group; MVG medium volume group; HVG high volume group (Gonzalez-Badillo. 2005)

  As you can see in Figure 2 (right), there is a highly significant advantage of the medium vs. both the low and high volume group who trained at significantly lower, respectively higher volumes (see Figure 2, left) than the guys in the medium volume group for squats and clean & jerks. The snatch, on the other hand, probably because it is the most demanding exercise, technically speaking, benefited from a "little" more volume (~ 100 reps per week).
• the lower the volume, the higher the frequency -- Furthermore, the overview in Table 1, which was originally published as part of a review of the determinants of strength training success by Tan (1999) shows that another volume-related parameter, i.e. the training frequency, figures, as well; with high(er) frequencies producing greater increases in strength gains.

  Table 1: Summary of studies looking into optimal training frequency (Tan. 1999)

  Up to five training sessions for the upper and up to four for the lower body are possible, but whether theyre in fact as productive as the studies Tan cites would suggest appears questionable and will certainly depend on the volume of the individual sessions.
  
  The fact that it seems as if the upper body would respond more favorably to increases in training frequency than the lower body would albeit stand in line with the previously cited beneficial effects of high(er) volume training on the legs.
  
  

  Figure 3: Generally speaking a 2007 review of the literature by Mathias Wernbom et al. supports the notion that legs (in this case the quadriceps) dont just gain the most strength, but also the most size with ~3 training sessions per week; with the one outlier (12x/week) being a low intensity Kaatsu study by Abe et al. (2005)

  Why? Well, the study by Robins et al. conducted in 2012 (learn more) used a high volume on training days, but a necessarily low training frequency (two session per week, A + B). As Tan points out, ...
  

  "[...a]nother point to note from Table 1 is that previously trained athletes are closer to their strength potential and may require higher frequencies compared with untrained athletes" (Tan. 1999)."

  A statement that takes us back to the simple, but significant assessment that we cannot expect to find a training volume thats perfect for everyone: Individualization is key!

Table 2: Recommendations for dynamic external resistance training for hypertrophy (Wernborn. 2007)

The false believe that more helps more is also at the heart of the not exclusively female athletes triad.

Bottom line: I guess we all tend to do way more than wed need to, to achieve optimal results. Against that background its good to be reminded from time to time that "less can be more", as long as we do it frequently and consistently.

As my elaborations have shown, the latter is true for both the athletic / performance oriented, as well as the physique related outcome of any form of training. In the "best case" youre just wasting your time, as the sprint trainers in the study by Zelt et al. In the worst case, on the other hand, you end up in the deep dark black hole I wrote about in the athlete triad series a couple of months ago - a hole from which you can only escape by accepting the negative consequences of detraining and resting for a couple of weeks before you can resume your training slowly.

• Abe, Takashi, Charles F. Kearns, and Yoshiaki Sato. "Muscle size and strength are increased following walk training with restricted venous blood flow from the leg muscle, Kaatsu-walk training." Journal of Applied Physiology 100.5 (2006): 1460-1466.
• Robbins, Daniel W., Paul WM Marshall, and Megan McEwen. "The effect of training volume on lower-body strength." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 26.1 (2012): 34-39.
• Tan, Benedict. "Manipulating resistance training program variables to optimize maximum strength in men: a review." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 13.3 (1999): 289-304.
• Wernbom, Mathias, Jesper Augustsson, and Roland Thomeé. "The influence of frequency, intensity, volume and mode of strength training on whole muscle cross-sectional area in humans." Sports Medicine 37.3 (2007): 225-264.
• Zelt, Jason GE, et al. "Reducing the volume of sprint interval training does not diminish maximal and submaximal performance gains in healthy men." European journal of applied physiology (2014): 1-10.

Voluntary & NMES contractions for Monster Quads?

Want to get stronger, bigger, faster and leaner? Dont neglect periodization techniques!

30% More on the Big Three: Squat, DL, BP!

Block Periodization Done Right

Linear vs. Undulating Periodizationt

12% Body Fat in 12 Weeks W/ Periodizatoin

Detraining + Periodization - How to?

Tapering 101 - Learn How Its Done!

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

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)

There is evidence from previous studies that a similar NEMS + VC regimen leads to non-significantly higher strength gains in the trained leg and sign. higher cross-education effects in the untrained leg of young men (Bezerra. 2009)

Bottom line: It is, as mentioned before, difficult to predict whether or not the NEMS+ training would produce superior training outcomes in younger athletes, athletes. It is yet almost certain that the combination of NEMS + voluntary contractions would pose a viable tool in the toolbox of any injured athlete who has to cut back on his / her training intensity for health reasons.

Moreover, previous trials in younger subjects confirmed that superimposing NEMS + voluntary contractions is at least on par with classic high intensity resistance training and can promote neural adaptations that lead to increased cross-education effects (strength gains in non-trained leg) in a 2009 study by Bezerra et al. (2009).

Beneficial effects of combining (N)EMS and voluntary contractions (not always superimposed, though) were also reported by Venable et al. (1991) and Dervisevic et al. (2002) for resistance training, Pichon et al. (1995) for swimming, Maffiuletti et al. () for basektball volleyball, Brocherie et al. (2005) for ice-hockey and Herrero et al (2006), Babault et al. (2007) and Paillard et al. (2008) for physical education (vertical jump, strength, etc. tested) | Comment on Facebook!

• 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

NEMS devices are usually marketed as "ab trainers" - do you own one?

Learn more about effective training techniques at the SuppVersity

Optimizing Rest for Size and Strength Gains

"Go Heavy, or go home!?" Bro- or proscience?

Farmers Walk or Squat? Is Strong- men T. For You?

Full ROM ? Full Gains - Form Counts!

Battle the Rope to Get Ripped & Strong

Up Your Squat by 25% With Sodium Bicarbonate

You could do this in front of your TV at home (image from Son. 2014)

"During the training, the subject was required to maintain a shoulder joint angle of 90° in the sagittal plane. The electrical stimulation (pulse width: 200?s; and frequency: 20 Hz (Dreibati et al., 2010)) was delivered through a pair of 5 × 5 cm gelcoated electrodes attached to the region of the biceps brachii muscle belly. The magnitude of the stimulation was determined as the subjects maximum comfortable current level, but no more than 80 mA, with complete elbowflexion from the fully extended state; the mean value was 57.00 (SD 4.28) mA." (Son. 2014)

Figure 1: Maximal force and muscle thickness before and after the NMES training (Son. 2014)

Figure 2: The training did not work for all participants (Son. 2014)

Bottom line: I am pretty sure there is a limit to the application of EMS as a means to increase muscle size & strength. Nevertheless two EMS sessions per week appear to be better than spending the same time on the sofa watching TV without an EMS device contracting your biceps and whatnot.

That being said, physical culturists like yourself probably benefit very little from EMS, unless you intend to stop training, these devices are probably useful only as an adjunct for those who would otherwise fry their nervous system by doing 100 sets of curls everyday... I mean, no voluntary contraction, no CNS overload; but honestly, I suspect that one or two days of full rest would be the better choice for anyone who fits into the "training junkie" category described, here.

• Jongsang Son, Dongyeop Lee, Youngho Kim, Effects of involuntary eccentric contraction training by neuromuscular electrical stimulation on the enhancement of muscle strength, Clinical Biomechanics, Available online 10 June 2014.