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Study leaves no doubt: For the biceps femoris, Romanian deadlifts rule.

I am not quite sure if some of the guys at my gym even know what the hamstrings, are... I guess if I told them that theyre also started biceps femoris, they were more likely to train it, instead of telling me that they play soccer and thus wouldnt have to train legs (I have honestly never heard something that stupid - I mean, its like, I dont train jumping, because I am a high jumper ;-).

Now, if we assume for the moment that my arguments are convincing enough to include a single hamstring exercise on their every-day-international-chest-and-biceps-day, what should it be, then?
If you look back at the SuppVersity EMG Series, it would be the lying leg curl with tighs raised from the pad or hamstring exercises on the hip pendulum. If, on the other hand, you take a look at the data Matt J. McAllister & colleagues are about to publish in the next issue of the venerable Journal of Strength and Conditioning Researchers, one of the few places, where editors actually care about the interests of muscle-headz like us, the answer would be different.

Figure 1: EMG activity of biceps femoris and semitendinosus durinc ecccentric (light) and concentric (dark) phase of the romanian deadlift, the prone leg curl, good mornings and glute-ham raises in 12 subjects w/ 9y+ training exp. (McAllister)

What? You want to know where this difference comes from? Well, the reason should be obvious, Boeckh-Behrens & Buskies who conducted the study the EMG Series is based on did not test the weighed Romanian deadlift w/ maximum weight for "security reasons".

The leg curl, on the other hand, was significantly less effective when it was done with the tighs lying on the pad (as it was done in the study at hand) - exercise selection and execution did thus both contribute to the surprisingly different study outcomes, which do yet have one thing in common: The insight that activities of similar kinematics, dont necessarily produce similar muscle activation. As McAllister et al. poin out, this revelation may...

"[...] also indicate that the kinematics are not as similar as they appear to be, especially when you consider possible variance of internal and external rotation. For instance, the ST [semitendinosus] and SM  [semimembranosus] insert at the upper medial surface of the tibia, and the BF inserts at the head of the fibula. The greater amount of activity from ST may be related to the fact that ST contributes to the internal rotation of the knee, whereas BF contributes to the external rotation of the knee. Although the potential impact is unclear, the absence of control for hip rotation (internal or external) may have obviated the identification of specific patterns of muscle recruitment. Foot position was not standardized in this study because the investigators felt that the subjects’ experience would allow foot position to be habitual and consistent. This delimitation must be considered when interpreting our results." (McAllister. 2014)

In contrast to the semitendinosus & semimembranosus, the EMG activity for the biceps femoris (BF) was similar for the concentric prone leg curl and concentric romanian deadlift. As McAllister et al. point out, "[t]hese results are consistent with a previous investigation that reported no significant difference in activity from the concentric actions of the BF between the leg curl and stiff-leg deadlift." The authors of the corresponidn study did also find that the biceps femoris was significantly more active during the eccentric portion of the leg curl in comparison with the stiff-leg deadlift - the exact opposite of the findings McAllister et al. present in the study at hand, which showed significantly greater activity from the BF during the eccentric RDL as compared with the eccentric prone leg curl.

Green asparagus from the fridge and  from the market are not created equal - at least not when they finally end up on your plate after a short bath in hot water.

You just have to watch one of the consumer report shows on television to hear it: "Frozen veggies are way better than their reputation would suggest." Actually, here in Germany this sentence has been repeated to soften that Ive even heard people say theyd buy the frozen broccoli because it contained "more vitamins and the other good stuff, you know." And you know what? For some veggies like spinach, for example, this may actually be the case. For others, like broccoli or peas, the nutrient status of the frozen and the raw uncooked vegetable appears to be more or less identical (Favell. 1998). But thats something you cannot say for the green asparagus stems, zucchini and green beans in a recent study from the Università degli Studi di Parma in Italy.

I am not an asparagus expert and can still tell that the cell structure of the Transverse  sections boiled (C - from raw | D - from frozen) is profoundly messed up compared to the raw (A) and blanched (B) variety | legend: c = collenchyma; vp = vascular bundle; p = parenchyma; f = fissure.

In the corresponding experiment, the Italian researchers bought Green asparagus stems (Asparagus officinalis L., var. Grande), zucchini (Cucurbita pepo L., va Quine) and green beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L., var. Giamaica) from a local producer and processed them within 24 hours from harvesting. For each of the veggies four samples were prepared: Raw/uncooked  (R), raw/boiled  (B), blanched (BL) and industrially frozen/boiled (FB)

The raw (ten kilograms of each vegetable), blanched (five kilograms of each vegetable) and industrially frozen  samples  (five  kilograms  of  each  vegetable) had been transported were  transported  to  the  University of  Parma laboratories  under  adequate  refrigerated conditions to avoid the exuberant nutrient loss that occurs upon inadequately slow (re-)freezing.
If you "freeze" your veggies in the freezer compartment of your fridge, this will make the cells blast, so that even before they are cooked, and the nutrients flow out. It is generally assume that the latter would not happen, if the veggies are shock-frosted.

Figure 1: Total antioxidant capacity of green asparagus, zucchini and green beans raw, blanched, boiled and frozen and boiled (Paciulli. 2014); as the data tells you frozen veggies with similar  icy grease on them like you see on the right may not really be a better source of antioxidants than fresh veggies from the farmers or even the supermarket.

If we look at the data in Figure 1, though, it would appear that the cells may have "cracked" already so that they are more susceptible to the subsequent heat assault and the frozen + boiled samples end up having consistently lower total antioxidant (Figure 2) and feric acid reducing capacity than their raw + boiled counterparts.

For a similar reason (nutrient retention), the blanched samples have been cooled immediately after blanching in an ice-water bath for 3 min before they have been transported to the laboratories, where their analysis shows that only the Zucchini lost a small, but significant amount of their total antioxidant activity.
References:

• Paciulli, Maria, et al. "Impact of the industrial freezing process on selected vegetables Part I. Structure, texture and antioxidant capacity." Food Research International (2014).

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

Resistance training alone wont make up for a sloppy diet - no matter if you do it before or after meals.

I am not sure how feasible this is going to be for you, but if you are a type II diabetic or anyone concerned about the potential detrimental health effects of the rise in glucose and triglycerides after a meal, working out 45 minutes after dinner is the way to go.

Abnormally elevated postprandial glucose and triacylglycerol (TAG) concentrations are strong risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in patients with type-2 diabetes. Therefore, scientists expect that interventions that reduce postprandial glucose and TAG concentrations should lower the risk of CVD (Krook. 2003; OGorman. 2008).
Previous studies have shown that acute exercise typically lowers postprandial glucose and TAG concentrations (Tobin. 2008) in patients with type-2 diabetes, but as Timothy D. Heden et al. point out, there is considerable heterogeneity in the responses with some individuals not experiencing beneficial changes in these risk factors (Gill. 2007; van Dijk. 2012).

"One potential explanation why some patients with type-2 diabetes do not have beneficial changes in postprandial glucose and TAG with acute exercise is because of the timing of the acute exercise session relative to meal consumption. Limited evidence suggests that the timing of aerobic exercise around a meal may be important and might explain why some individuals are exercise “insensitive” or “non responders”." (Heden. 2014) 

The only study to directly compare the effect of pre-meal and post-meal aerobic exercise on postprandial glucose concentrations in patients with type-2 diabetes showed that post-dinner, but not pre-dinner walking, lowered postprandial glucose concentrations (Colberg. 2009).

Figure 1: Previous studies indicate that aerobic workouts after meals have more beneficial effects on the potentially unhealthy increases in glucose or triglycerides (Collberg. 2009)

Although no study has directly examined the effect of exercise timing on postprandial TAG in patients with type-2 diabetes, there is evidence that exercise performed the day prior to a high fat meal has no effect on postprandial TAG responses (Dalgaard. 2004; Gill. 2007), while post-breakfast aerobic exercise reduced the postprandial TAG response (Tobin. 2008). Taken together, it appears that aerobic exercise may have its most powerful effect to lower postprandial glucose and TAG responses when performed after a meal, possibly because of slowed gastric emptying and/or greater skeletal muscle glucose and TAG uptake and utilization at this time.

The question that remained was: Is the same true for resistance training?

Since resistance exercise (RE) has a more pronounced long(er)-lasting effect on ones metabolism than aerobic training, the researchers from the University of Missouri tested the hypothesis that post-dinner RE, compared to pre-dinner RE, would in fact be more effective at improving two clinically important postprandial risk factors (glucose and 109 TAG) for CVD at a time of day when they are typically highest in obese patients with type-2 diabetes.

The standardized test workout consisted of the following exercises (in this order): leg press, seated calf raises, seated chest flyes, seated back flyes, back extensions, shoulder raises, leg curls, and abdominal crunches. All exercises were performed for three sets (1-2 min rest between sets) of 10-repetitions for each RE. During this session, the first set for each exercise was a warm-up set and the weight used was 50% of the participants 10-RM. After the warm-up set, the weight for the next two sets was the participants previously determined 10-RM.

Figure 2: Postrandial lipid response in the obese type II diabetics (Heden. 2014)

As you can see in Figure 2 the scientists suspicion was right, the postprandial workout (M-RE) had significantly more pronounced beneficial effects on the lipid metabolism of the type II diabetic subjects who consumed a standardized breakfasts (English muffin, cheddar cheese, one large egg, ham, hash brown, ketchup, and apple or orange juice) lunch (white bread, ham, mayonnaise, cheddar cheese, a granola bar, and apple or orange juice) and dinner meals (spaghetti noodles, spaghetti sauce with beef added, garlic bread, a lemon lime flavored soda, and 1.5 g of acetaminophen (to assess gastric emptying)) containing ~50% carbohydrate, 35% fat, and 15% protein.

Similar effects were observed for the insulin and glucose responses (see Figure 3) which were significantly improved and should thus complement the beneficial effects of the reduced triglyceride and very low density lipoprotein (VLDL) levels.
References:

• Colberg, Sheri R., et al. "Postprandial walking is better for lowering the glycemic effect of dinner than pre-dinner exercise in type 2 diabetic individuals." Journal of the American Medical Directors Association 10.6 (2009): 394-397. 
• Dalgaard, Marian, Claus Thomsen, and Kjeld Hermansen. "Effects of one single bout of low-intensity exercise on postprandial lipaemia in type 2 diabetic men." British Journal of Nutrition 92.03 (2004): 469-476.
• Gill, Jason MR, et al. "Effect of prior moderate exercise on postprandial metabolism in men with type 2 diabetes: heterogeneity of responses." Atherosclerosis 194.1 (2007): 134-143.
• Heden, Timothy D., et al. "Post-dinner resistance exercise improves postprandial risk factors more effectively than pre-dinner resistance exercise in patients with type 2 diabetes."
  Journal of Applied Physiology (2014). Ahead of print.
• Krook, Anna, et al. "Reduction of risk factors following lifestyle modification programme in subjects with type 2 (non?insulin dependent) diabetes mellitus." Clinical physiology and functional imaging 23.1 (2003): 21-30.
• OGorman, Donal J., and Anna Krook. "Exercise and the treatment of diabetes and obesity." Endocrinology and metabolism clinics of North America 37.4 (2008): 887-903.
• Tobin, L. W. L., Bente Kiens, and Henrik Galbo. "The effect of exercise on postprandial lipidemia in type 2 diabetic patients." European journal of applied physiology 102.3 (2008): 361-370.
• van Dijk, Jan-Willem, et al. "Exercise and 24-h glycemic control: equal effects for all type 2 diabetic patients?." Medicine and science in sports and exercise (2012).