Month: August 2017

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(almost) Everything You Need To Know About ‘the Anabolic Window’…

Editors note:

This article will address a specific question, and – at times (as Tyler’s style dictates) can get a bit wordy and possibly confusing.

The question involves the physical state of ‘Anabolism’.

You will read about numerous applications for enhancing muscle growth and repair as well as  some ‘myth-debunking.’ So stay tuned!

Tyler’s question is not “what is the Anabolic Window?” – but one that goes beyond simply defining the term. The information provided plums the depth of this subject.

> so what is this question? …

 

“Is the Anabolic Window Real?”

If you’re well informed in the fitness industry, you’ve likely heard of the anabolic window and know the old saying; “nutrient timing is everything, if you want to build muscle!”

However you’ve likely also learned that more recent research has somewhat debunked this “anabolic window” theory – in favour of simply meeting total daily nutrient requirements.

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TRUTH:

If you’re not optimizing your post-workout nutrition properly, you may very well be missing out on some potential ‘gains’.

If you really want to know the truth about the “anabolic window” and post-exercise nutrition, you want to read this article…

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Consuming adequate nutrients; macro and micro nutrients, proteins, fats and carbohydrates etc – are essential to optimize muscle growth.

This much is undisputed.

The data is very clear on the benefits of enhanced protein synthesis, attenuating protein breakdown, and ultimately contributing to muscle growth and repair. However it is the timing of ingestion that has been a topic of heated debate. In some cases, the timing of nutrient ingestion is thought to be more important than the nutrients…

In a nutshell, proper nutrient timing means: ‘optimizing the delivery of nutrients to the muscle during a time when the muscle is primed to use them most effectively.’

 

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Nutrients and Exercise

Resistance exercise training is a reference point commonly used as a basis for the timing of nutrient ingestion due to the metabolic effects of exercise.

The time frame immediately prior to and during exercise is the phase primarily devoted to the use of the body’s energy to improve the quality of the workout. However, this period of time is not consistently associated with enhancing muscle growth after exercise – but it should be –

During exercise and immediately after exercise, the body is in a Catabolic state.

  • Blood insulin is low, while cortisol and other catabolic hormones are high.
  • Liver glycogen levels are reduced, or in some cases depleted.
  • The rates of muscle protein breakdown is at it’s highest.

While resistance exercise itself is known to be an activator for protein synthesis, the absence of any post-exercise nutrition will leave the body in a net catabolic state.

This is because any increase in protein synthesis (creation) is offset by the high rates of protein breakdown (catabolism). This catabolic state can prevail for many hours until nutrients are consumed. Therefore, exercise without any post-exercise nutrition is not a favorable situation for muscle growth.

The consumption of protein and carbohydrates initiates a shift to anabolism by simultaneously reducing all the catabolic factors and amplifying the effects of protein synthesis.

One possible mechanism is that muscle is particularly sensitive to insulin post-exercise, which ensures:

  • the rapid transport of glucose and amino acids into muscle.
  • promotes muscle glycogen synthesis and protein synthesis.
  • inhibits the pathways governing protein breakdown.

Since insulin sensitivity declines with time, the effectiveness of nutrient intervention will also decline along with it.

Although the muscle sensitivity is known to be elevated for up to 48 hours post-exercise, muscle sensitivity is greatest within the first 3 hours and then progressively declines.

 

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Protein Post-exercise

The ingestion of protein post-exercise primarily serves to augment the rates of protein synthesis – but only plays a minor role in stopping the effect of protein breakdown.

Surprisingly, there are very few studies that have analyzed the protein synthetic response of various time-points post-exercise. The general consensus is that there is a clear additive effect of protein synthesis when protein is ingested within the first few hours post-exercise.

Thinking logically however, the sooner the muscles transition from catabolism to anabolism, the greater the potential for muscle growth.

For this reason, while there may not be a clear narrow window when nutrient ingestion is required, most exercise studies clearly support protein supplementation sooner rather than later for the optimal stimulation of protein synthesis. 

 

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Carbohydrate Post-exercise

Most weight-lifting athletes primarily focus on protein supplementation post-exercise, with concern mostly on protein synthesis, and with little regard to the need for carbohydrates.

As previously mentioned, protein supplementation focuses on pathways to stimulate protein synthesis and does not have a major affect on protein breakdown. However, the ingestion of carbohydrates post-exercise has a major impact on the effectiveness of the cellular pathways that involve protein breakdown.

Including carbohydrates during post-exercise nutrition plays a prominent role in the transition from muscle catabolism to anabolism.

Glycogen levels in muscle influences the activity of a number of metabolic activities including glucose transport and protein metabolism. That means the restoration of muscle glycogen is paramount in the exercise recovery process.

The combination of carbohydrates with protein results in greater gains in muscle hypertrophy after resistance training when compared with a protein-only supplement.

Timing of carbohydrate supplementation appears to be more stringent than it is for protein.

Post-exercise muscle glycogen synthesis occurs more rapidly when carbohydrates are consumed immediately after exercise as opposed to waiting several hours.

In fact, delaying supplementation for two hours can reduce the rate of muscle glucose uptake and glycogen synthesis by half.

If carbohydrates are not adequately supplied post-exercise, the rate of muscle glycogen synthesis can be extremely low despite normal increases in blood glucose and insulin levels later in the day.

 

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Conclusion

Protein and carbohydrate supplementation post-exercise is a vital component to optimizing post-exercise muscle recovery.

This includes not only maximizing muscle hypertrophy, but also minimizing muscle soreness and optimizing muscle recovery time.

The combination of these nutrients increases the efficiency of muscle recovery when compared to either carbohydrates or protein alone.

Any delay in supplementation post exercise is not recommended, as the muscle remains in a catabolic state until nutrients are delivered to them.

Furthermore, the sensitivity of muscle is highest soon after exercise. Therefore, if getting the most out of a workout is crucial, then consuming nutrients soon after exercise should be considered equally as important.

So as you can see, most of the myth-busting about the anabolic window focuses on protein supplementation alone for post-exercise and that’s where most people get it wrong.

As you read above, carbohydrates post-exercise are perhaps even more important for muscle recovery and growth. 

 

This is for you to stay informed, for your health’s sake!

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TYLER LEES-SCHMUT

Co-Owner / Instructor / Author @

Contact us Now for a Free Consultation*

 

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Weeks Worth of Mindfulness (Aug-Sept)

With the goal of centering your mind – use these 7 Quotes,

allow them to guide you

on your path to a compassionate life.

When frustrated or confronted with a problem – Allow these thoughts to direct your actions.

Settle into your own natural rhythmic breathing, and begin.

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“My suggestion or advice is very simple and that is to have a sincere heart.”

>Tenzin Gyatso<

^

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“ Happiness requires acceptance of others, simplicity of heart, wonder of spirit.”

>Dugpa Rimpoce<

^

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“To respect others is to respect ourselves.”

>Chin Kung<

^

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“Generous love aims to achieve happiness through the realization of the other.”

>Ole Nydahl<

^

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“In this world, happiness is obtained by committing violence on others,

the wise man, moved by compassion, repudiates it.”

>Asvaghosa<

^

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“To receive everything, one must open one’ hands and give.”

>Taisen Deshimaru<

^

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“Don’t suppress anger, but don’t act on it.”

>Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche<

^

*DEDICATION:

“Keep what is True in front of you” – Richard Wagamese

 

 

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Martin Colangelo : “The Better Movement Specialist”

– Blog Author

Owner / Instructor @

*contact me for a free consultation

 

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The Anatomy of FLOW (HAPPINESS and FLOW series #2)

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The Anatomy of FLOW

Control of consciousness determines our quality of life – This much we know.

So the question is,

How do we learn to control our consciousness?

*Before we get into this, note that: knowledge of how to control consciousness has been known for thousands of years – the issue is that every time the cultural context changes,  the information must be reformulated to fit the new cultural context. For this reason, control over consciousness cannot be institutionalized – “there is no way out of this predicament except for an individual to take things in hand personally.”

> the goal of this article is to help you contextualize Flow and its relationship to Happiness <

FLOW can be achieved in as many ways as there are individuals who care to try.

YOGA – achieves FLOW through mental and physical discipline

ZEN – achieves FLOW through cultivating constant spontaneity

BUT – the intended result is the same:

To free the inner life of an individual from the threat of chaos or entropy.

START – by understanding the limits of consciousness

This is what is meant by ‘limits’ of your consciousness – Obviously, you cannot do things like understand 3 conversations at once…

WHY?

  • Well in the first place, you cannot really truly ‘multitask’
    • What happens is your attention simply flips from one subject, to another, and back again -which effects efficiency and reduces performance of the tasks at hand.

Some nitty-Gritty information on neural processing speeds:

  • 7 bits of info can be processed at any one time
  • 126/ second
  • 7,560/minute
  • ½ million/hour
  • 185 billion/lifetime (75 years @ 16hours of wakefulness)

SO THEORETICALLY,

You ARE able to collect the info from 3 different people talking to you simultaneously.

HOWEVER,

You would have to put out of consciousness ALL other thoughts and sensations.

 

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ATTENTION as a SKILL

Attention selects the relevant bits out of the millions of bits of info available to you at any one time

Attention retrieves the appropriate memories, evaluates the situation, and then chooses the best thing to do – based on the information at hand.

A healthy ability to Focus Attention is one in which consciousness remains under control until the task at hand is completed – despite external distractions.

This skill of attention – whether under direct control or not – determines the contents of one’s thoughts and therefore assists in the creation of who we are.

But what if I cannot ‘pay attention’?

  • What is “I” anyway? – “I” is the thing that decides what to do with your attention.
  • The “I” / The Self, directs attention.
  • and Attention determines the self and the contents of thought (as discussed earlier).
  • Paradoxically; The Self directs attention, while attention determines the self.

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Information coming upon your nervous system will either:

  1. Create disorder and get you wound up

OR

  1. Reinforce goals and increase enjoyment, thus freeing up attention which can be focused on making a task at hand more efficient.

FLOW occurs when threats are eliminated and disorder is straightened out.

The battle is not ‘against the self’ – but against the entropy that brings about a disordered mind / consciousness.

Automation: a blessing and a curse

The nervous system is extremely efficient at ‘chunking’ bits of information such that a task that once took 10 units of effort will only need 8 units of effort to complete the next time, maybe 5 the next time and so on and so on…. this process allows some high achievers to execute intensely complicated computations or movements with seeming ease and grace.

AUTOMATION IS HOW HABITS FORM

Habits can either “good” or “bad”

A good habit is to respond with compassion and to treat others with dignity.

A Bad habit is to respond to a task with dread, rolling your eyes as you curse under your breath.

Both these habits can form WITHOUT ATTENTION i.e. without conscious knowledge or intention (a subconscious process).

One must be ever vigilant in clearing their consciousness of these habitual ways of being, moving, seeing, thinking and interacting with others and their environment.

As we age, the less automation the better – The more of our daily life that is automated, the quicker one follows the biological and social patterns generated by society to their – very literal – end.

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On a different note,

Time spent in leisure i.e. free from obligations – typically consists of us using the brain/body as little as possible. This lack of use is disturbing because it in fact hinders progression of skills and decreases the likelihood of FLOW.

If one’s skill is not consistently challenged, the likelihood of FLOW decreases. And if certain skill goes unused for a long enough period the body LITERALLY begins to shut it down, i.e. Use It Or Lose It = You ‘Age’.

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Martin Colangelo : “The Better Movement Specialist”

– Blog Author

Owner / Instructor @

*contact me for a free consultation

 

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(almost) Everything You Need To Know About FAT…

In the past, we were urged to banish that four-letter word…

 … from our diets and from our lives – whenever possible.

So naturally, we switched to low-fat foods…

But the shift didn’t make us healthier! This is because we cut back the healthy fats as much as we cut back the harmful fats.

FATS …. almost everything you need to know:

You may well be wondering: “isn’t fat bad for you?”

Response: your body needs some fat to survive.

>It’s the body’s major source of energy.

>Fat is required for proper absorption of certain vitamins and minerals.

>Fat is needed to build cell membranes, the vital exterior of each cell, and the sheaths surrounding nerves.

>It is essential for blood clotting, muscle movement, and inflammation.

However for long-term health some fats are better than others….

…. Not all fats were created equal.

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Good Fats include:

  • monounsaturated and
  • polyunsaturated fats.

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Bad Fats:

  • industrial-made Trans Fats.

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Saturated Fats – fall somewhere in the middle.

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All fats have a similar chemical structure: a chain of carbon atoms bonded to hydrogen atoms.

What makes one fat different from another is the length and shape of the carbon chain and the number of hydrogen atoms connected to the carbon atoms.

Seemingly slight differences in structure translate into crucial differences in form and function.

Bad Fats

The worst type of dietary fat is the kind known as trans fat. It is a byproduct of a process called hydrogenation that is used to turn healthy oils into solids and to prevent them from becoming rancid. When vegetable oil is heated in the presence of hydrogen and a heavy-metal catalyst such as palladium, hydrogen atoms are added to the carbon chain. This turns oils into solids. It also makes healthy vegetable oils more like not-so-healthy saturated fats.

Early in the 20th century, trans fats were found mainly in solid margarines and vegetable shortening (. As food makers learned new ways to use partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, they began appearing in everything from commercial cookies and pastries French fries.

Eating foods rich in trans fats increases the amount of LDL cholesterol in the bloodstream and reduces the amount of beneficial HDL cholesterol.

Trans fats create inflammation, which is linked to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and other chronic conditions.

They contribute to insulin resistance, which increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. – in fact, trans fats can harm health in even small amounts:

for every 2% of calories from trans fat consumed daily, the risk of heart disease rises by 23%.

Trans fats have no known health benefits and that there is no safe level of consumption. Today, these mainly man-made fats are rapidly fading from the food supply.

 

In-between Fats

Saturated fats are common in the American diet. They are solid at room temperature — think cooled bacon grease, but what is saturated fat? Common sources of saturated fat include red meat, whole milk and other whole-milk dairy foods, cheese, coconut oil, and many commercially prepared baked goods and other foods.

The word “saturated” here refers to the number of hydrogen atoms surrounding each carbon atom.

The chain of carbon atoms holds as many hydrogen atoms as possible — it’s saturated with hydrogen.

But is saturated fat bad for you?

A diet rich in saturated fats can drive up total cholesterol, and tip the balance toward more harmful LDL cholesterol, which prompts blockages to form in arteries in the heart and elsewhere in the body.

For that reason, most nutrition experts recommend limiting saturated fat to under 10% of calories a day.

Further analysis shows not enough evidence to conclude that saturated fat increases the risk of heart disease, but that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat may indeed reduce risk of heart disease.

 

Good Fat

Good fats come mainly from vegetables, nuts, seeds, and fish. They differ from saturated fats by having fewer hydrogen atoms bonded to their carbon chains. Healthy fats are liquid at room temperature, not solid. There are two broad categories of beneficial fats: monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.

Monounsaturated fats.

When you dip your bread in olive oil at an Italian restaurant, you’re getting mostly monounsaturated fat. Monounsaturated fats have a single carbon-to-carbon double bond. The result is that it has two fewer hydrogen atoms than a saturated fat and a bend at the double bond. This structure keeps monounsaturated fats liquid at room temperature.

Good sources of monounsaturated fats are olive oil, peanut oil, canola oil, avocados, and most nuts, as well as high-oleic safflower and sunflower oils.

Although there no recommendations on monounsaturated fats many experts say to replace saturated and definitely trans fats. 

Polyunsaturated fats.

When you pour liquid cooking oil into a pan, there’s a good chance you’re using polyunsaturated fat. Corn oil, sunflower oil, and safflower oil are common examples. Polyunsaturated fats are essential fats. That means they’re required for normal body functions but your body can’t make them. So you must get them from food. Polyunsaturated fats are used to build cell membranes and the covering of nerves. They are needed for blood clotting, muscle movement, and inflammation.

There are two main types of polyunsaturated fats:

> omega-3 fatty acids
> omega-6 fatty acids

Both types offer health benefits.

Eating polyunsaturated fats in place of saturated fats or highly refined carbohydrates reduces harmful LDL cholesterol and improves the cholesterol profile. It also lowers triglycerides.

Good sources of omega-3 fatty acids include fatty fish such as salmon, mackerel, and sardines, flaxseeds, walnuts, canola oil, and unhydrogenated soybean oil.

Omega-3 fatty acids may help prevent and even treat heart disease and stroke.

In addition to reducing blood pressure, raising HDL, and lowering triglycerides, polyunsaturated fats may help prevent lethal heart rhythms from arising.

Evidence also suggests they may help reduce the need for corticosteroid medications in people with rheumatoid arthritis. Studies linking omega-3s to a wide range of other health improvements, including reducing risk of dementia, are inconclusive

Omega-6 fatty acids have also been linked to protection against heart disease. Foods rich in linoleic acid and other omega-6 fatty acids include vegetable oils such as safflower, soybean, sunflower, walnut, and corn oils.

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WELL – there you go!

almost everything you need to know about FATS!

Take care folks

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TYLER LEES-SCHMUT

Co-Owner / Instructor / Author @

Contact us Now for a Free Consultation*

 

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How to Become an Extraordinary Person (HAPPINESS and FLOW series #1)

How to Become an Extraordinary Person

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When do people feel most happy?

What is ‘Happiness’ in the first place?

Let’s start with what happiness ‘Is Not’:

  • Happiness is not something that just happens.
  • It is not the result of good fortune or random chance.
  • It is not something that money can buy or power command.
  • It does not depend on outside events (but on how we interpret them).

 

J.S.Mill once said…

“Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

 

Viktor Frankl…

“Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue … as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.”

 

How do you attain so enigmatic a goal that cannot be reached by a direct route?

> You begin by trying to achieve control over the very contents that occupy your thought, or consciousness.

 

Now let’s look at what Happiness IS

  • Happiness is having Optimal Life Experiences.

Optimal life experiences are conceived by gaining control over your conscious mind.

This increasing feeling of control adds up to a sense of ‘mastery’ – as in: you feel yourself participating in the creation and unfolding of your own life.

 

Optimal life experiences occur when a person’s body / mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile – and is thus something that we make happen ourselves!

 

Therefore,

an individual who has made up their mind to consciously invest their attention toward a chosen goal – cannot help but become a more complex person.

By reaching ever higher and continuously challenging your skill level, you become an increasingly extraordinary person.

Obstacles in the way of Extraordinary

  • Misconception: the Universe was not created to answer your needs.
  • Chronic dissatisfaction of the current situation
  • Locked into biological or social ‘stimulus-response patterns’

More knowledge from J.S.Mill:

“No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitutions of their modes of thought.”

Such ‘modes of thought’ include our conception or definition of ‘Happiness’.
One will always be dissatisfied if they believe happiness one thing, when in actuality, it is something else altogether. Improvement in one’s ‘lot’ comes down to how well the mind filters and interprets everyday experiences.

The first step to emancipation from biological and social control is to try and find rewards in the events of each moment.

An ordered and challenging mental environment is one in which attention can be freely invested to achieve a person’s goals. It is the opposite state of Entropy i.e. ‘Negentropy’, or FLOW.

If a person is able to organize their consciousness such that they experience FLOW as often as possible – then that person’s quality of life will inevitably improve.

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Martin Colangelo : “The Better Movement Specialist”

– Blog Author

Owner / Instructor @

*contact me for a free consultation