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Adherence to a strength training intervention in adult women

January 26th, 2012 · Psychology, Training

Last week I looked at a study about sedentary women doing strength training.  This week I thought it might be interesting to look at a recent study that considered how well overweight and obese premenopausal women adhere to a two-year twice-weekly weight training intervention.  After all, if we’re all going to get out there to persuade our non-lifting friends to take up strength training, we should at least be open-minded about their likely adherence to the programme.

How well would you adhere to a programme of picking this up twice a week?

It’s a really interesting study and quite readable, so I do recommend you go and have a read of it yourself, but I’ve included some of the more interesting points below.

*****

Adherence to a strength training intervention in adult women

Arikawa A Y, O’Dougherty M, Schmitz K.  J Phys Act Health 2011; 8(1):111-118. (Free copy of the study here.)

The study

This study was considering data already collected about 164 premenopausal sedentary women for the “Strong, Healthy, and Empowered” (SHE) study, reported in 2007 (Strength training and adiposity in premenopausal women: strong, healthy, and empowered study.  Schmitz KH, Hannan PJ, Stovitz SD, Bryan CJ, Warren M, Jensen MD.  Am J Clin Nutrition 2007; 86(3):566-72).  This earlier study required the women to participate in two years of strength training.  In order to assess how much the strength training made a difference it was necessary to keep note of whether the women actually did the training.

The authors of the study we’re looking at today used this subsidiary data from the 2007 study to look at whether there was any link between adherence and certain demographic variables.  The demographic variables being considered were: age, self-reported race or ethnicity, education, marital status, number and ages of children living at home and their work status.

The training programmes

For the first year participants were doing two training sessions each week, lasting 60-90 minutes each, and then recording them in a file kept at the YWCA fitness centres.

The sessions were structured with a cardio warm-up and “core” exercises followed by nine common strength training exercises and finishing with a warm-down set of stretches.  On the strength exercises participants did three sets of eight to ten reps for each exercise, always lifting the heaviest weight possible.

In year two participants were allowed, if they wanted, to drop down to two sets of each exercise.  This is estimated as having reduced the length of the workout to 45 minutes.

Strategies to support adherence

It is worth looking at the strategies employed to try and help these women adhere to the training programme.  After all, the team running the original study needed the women to do the training or they could not assess the impact.  To assist with this a number of support strategies were employed, reported as follows:

  • Supervised intervention – For 16 weeks they participants did two sessions a week of supervised training with a qualified fitness professional in groups of two to six participants.
  • Personal booster sessions – Access to one training session with the qualified fitness professional each month and also two group booster sessions every 12 weeks to introduce new exercises, ensure form was still correct and provide social support to the participants.
  • Phone and email reminders – participants were contacted by phone or email once a week if they did not report their completed strength training sessions (their logs were checked weekly).
  • Social support gatherings – twice yearly events for participants to share successes and challenges.  If I’ve learned nothing else from writing this blog, I’ve learned that women starting out on a strength training programme need a huge amount of social support, whether directly like this or through the internet.
  • Incentives – free gifts like t-shirts or water bottles.
  • Study website – this contained contact information for staff, methods to contact each other, success stories, ideas to help overcome challenges etc.
  • Letters/email to significant others – study participants gave names of people they were close to who could encourage them.  These people were sent letters and emails explaining what they were doing and suggesting behaviours and activities that might support the participants.
  • Child care – this was provided to any participant who had children age five or younger.
  • Gym membership – the participants were given a two-year membership to the Minneapolis YWCA fitness centres.

This seems like a well-considered set of strategies.  However it doesn’t hit the mark with one of the biggest factors readers of this site tell me are reasons they struggle to adhere to their training programmes – a lack of time.  For this study the sessions were long enough to not be able to squeeze them into a lunch break or some other convenient window, which would have compounded any time issue too.

Provision of things like child care will have helped a little with the lack of time issue but for anyone with children over five (who would still need child care) or those with busy work lives, it would be easy enough to let time become the front-runner excuse not to train.  Even if the real problem is a lack of motivation, time can often be labelled, either rightly or wrongly, as the actual culprit for not training.

Results – supervised year one

The results can be found in full published together in a single table here.

On looking at them the most interesting part for me is that there was such good adherence while the participants were having their training sessions with a personal trainer.  Most of the adherence is above 90%, no matter how they classified the participants.

The only group where this was not the case were unmarried women with children aged 6-12 – an age group that still requires childcare and where we might assume (correctly or incorrectly) that support at home to provide this child care is less than it might be in a marital home.  These women only managed 76.7% adherence to the programme in these first few months.

Results – unsupervised year one

Even more startling is how quickly this overall adherence dropped off.  In the rest of year one, once the formal supervised training had finished, adherence dropped to 50-70% for nearly all groups, although there are some noticeable splits within that.  Most clearly when looking at race – white women maintained a 70.3% adherence while women of any other colouring only showed 48.6% adherence.  There is more discussion on this particular split later but I don’t really know what to make of it – is it cultural?

In the unsupervised part of that first year it is also helpful to look at the marital and age of children split again.  While the unmarried women with children aged 6-12 were still poor in adherence, they were safely within the main pack showing 50.9% adherence.  This suggests to me that there was much more influence from external factors on whether these women were able to adhere than pure willpower and desire to train.  They saw much less drop-off in adherence than all the other groups who dropped from an adherence above 90%.

The group who stand out this time were the unmarried women with children aged 13 or older, dropping from 96.7% to 36.3% adherence.  While this would usually imply to me something skewing the data, this pattern continues into year two and no other cut of the data reflects this skew, despite the fact that these same women must have been included in other groups (eg. college or non-college educated women).

Results – year two (unsupervised)

By year two the adherence across the board is mostly in the mid-30-50% range.  I was actually surprised by how high this adherence was in year two since it is often the second year when the love-affair with the new training routines and formats tends to finally wear off completely.

The question of race and ethnicity

Throughout this study there were results that surprised me and results that seem very easily explained.

The most extreme difference within a single comparison comes from the split between white and coloured women.  For some reason, white women, who represented 58.5% of the participants, show much greater adherence and without knowing how the other demographic characteristics split between these two groups (eg. did more coloured women have children) it is impossible to say why.

The authors gave some consideration to what might be causing this difference.  In particular whether

“the gym environment itself could be a deterrent for some participants and would particularly contribute to this division between white and coloured women.  The authors state that the “YWCA locations were in the city of Minneapolis, which had a 32% minority population […]. The YWCA mission is painted on the entrance walls of the facilities: “The YWCA of Minneapolis works to fulfill our mission of eliminating racism and empowering women.” The gym staff and membership, while majority White, reflected the diversity of the area. According to their geographic location, mission statement, staff and membership and course offerings (including hip hop, salsa and African dance, among other courses), the fitness centers did not appear to be unwelcoming to culturally diverse women. […] data gathered in focus group discussions and interviews with a subsample of intervention participants offer some perspective. Several women mentioned having joined the study in order to obtain a free gym membership. Six women of color and 5 White women explained their choice of a gym location and/or time of work out by noting disliking a crowded gym. Three women of color emphasized the gym provided a positive family experience. One said of her children: “They are all girls and I want them to know that working out is a good thing for them and they should find time as they get older.” Another found the gym “open, friendly”. Another woman of color said she had “respect” for the YWCA community, and in part frequented the gym to join that community. Two women of color had difficulties with the day care. While specific responses differed, it seems that most women did not have problems with gym-based exercise per se, but only with specific conditions: many preferred quiet, non crowded spaces.

There were, however, 6 women (2 women of color and 6 White women) who voiced discomfort with or dislike of the environment. Four specifically said they had been “intimidated” by the gym: for one woman of color it was the machines, for two (1 woman of color and 1 White woman) it was the many men working out in the weights area. The women of color noted this sense of discomfort ended once they became familiar with using the machines. A White woman said she would prefer a woman only gym: “it feels very intimidating for a woman, especially someone who’s you know who’s overweight to try and go and use the machines, when these guys are putting on all these weights, it’s just a macho thing… If they weren’t there it would feel so much more welcoming.” Another White woman, who suggested women only time periods, suggested: “women only [gym hours] and it would be like women trying to get into shape, so it wasn’t like all Barbie dolls…I would go because I would know it would be a welcoming environment”. Two White women voiced their general dislike for being in gyms without elaboration. These responses suggested that at least some women did not want to be in a social atmosphere under observation or in a male-dominated space, or perhaps indoors at all for physical activity. Most focus group responses did not indicate reservations about gym-based exercise. Instead, they emphasized their confidence in their ability to complete strength training correctly, but noted time constraints and issues of convenience.”

Given that many of these comments are coming from white women it seems unlikely that the gym conditions were the reason for this division in adherence.

The issue with parenthood and training

The authors also took time to consider the drop in adherence by women with older children too.  One of the women participating commented, “although her older children no longer required a babysitter, they needed rides to their scheduled activities.”  Another participant had commented that it was easier to adhere when her children were younger and didn’t have their own schedules.

Despite this, I do disagree with a comment from the authors that parenthood in general impacts training.  After all, those women without children didn’t always adhere as well as those women with children up to 5 years old who had access to child care.  The problem is not with being a parent per se but with what resources you have as a parent to handle the multiple commitments that this creates.

Conclusions

So what have we learned here?  Overall we have learned that there is a definite drop off over time in adherence to a training programme by overweight women.  There also seems to be a particular difficulty in training when women have children to care for – especially as those children gain a social life of their own but don’t yet have the means to get about alone.

The comments about the gym environment are especially helpful as they appear to support suspicions that I already had about gym environments putting women off training.  I have a private gym of sorts in my garage but even after years of training I still hate going into a public gym.

Some suggestions to improve this could include more women-only sessions being available in commercial gyms.  It might also be improved if gyms offered family-friendly environments where women can bring partners and children with them to workout in some way with them.  This would offer much more personal support for the women working out and also resolve some child care issues for them.  However, as a general rule in the UK nobody under age 16 is allowed into a commercial gym that has weights and until they resolve that families will not be able to workout together.

If we have friends we want to encourage to start, and then stick to, a training programme there are perhaps a few things we can do to help them.  We could offer to train with them until they have got used to the commercial gym environment and feel confident in going alone.  And even when they do feel confident, perhaps we could still go with them from time to time.  Perhaps we can offer to help with child care to allow them time to train.  These certainly appear to be the biggest barriers to adherence coming out of this particular analysis of the data.

What do you think?  Is there something I’ve missed here?  Are you a mother who has some tips you can share in the comments on how other mothers can successfully combine workouts and parenthood?  If so, I’d love to hear from you.

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Paleo recipes: courgette (zucchini) noodles

January 24th, 2012 · Diet, Recipes

This is an incredibly simple vegetable replacement to pasta that is particularly helpful when you are eating something with a lot of sauce – in particular a creamy sauce.  Most people who follow a Paleo diet will have already come across these, but I wanted to include them here for the sake of completeness.

My preference is to use courgettes but you can also use any member of the squash family for this.

Paleo noodles

Ingredients:
1 large courgette per person

Directions:

  1. Remove and discard the ends of each courgette.
  2. Some people peel the skin off the vegetable.  If it is marrow or squash, which has a thicker and tougher skin, I would do this, but with a courgette the skin is relatively soft and I like the slight green colour added by leaving the skin in place.  If you would like to peel the vegetable, peel it at this stage.
  3. Thinly slice each courgette lengthways, then split the slices into two piles on the chopping board and thinly slice lengthways again across the previous cuts, leaving a pile of thin strands of courgette flesh.
  4. Place the strands in a pan, cover with boiling water (or bring a pan of water to the boil and add the strands once the water is ready) and simmer for 4 – 5 minutes until the strands are tender.  How long it takes will depend on how finely you managed to cut the courgettes!

When ready, drain the strands and serve up like noodles or spaghetti.

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Powerlifting progress 2012: week three

January 23rd, 2012 · Training

I woke on Monday morning, when I should have been doing my first workout of the week, with terrible backache.  I put it down to having taught violin and piano all day on Sunday. When I was first rolling in the morning I thought the problem was in my rhomboids, but I couldn’t find any specific knot. The pain was excruciating though.

As the day progressed and I kept rolling every few hours for 45 minutes at a time (not really recommended – I was bruised to within an inch of my life by the end of the day) I located the problem a little further down my back to my left spinal erector where the bottom of the lat is found which made sense.  For much of the previous day I had been sat at the bottom end of a piano keyboard twisting in the lower back in order to play examples to pupils with my upper body looking as theirs should, straight onto the keyboard.

By Tuesday morning there was only the slightest hint of a twinge – mostly bruising rather than actual pain this time – so I went ahead with my workout. I felt amazing in the gym, which was perhaps partly thanks to the extra day off.  Noticeably I didn’t feel quite so marvellous for my second squat workout of the week.

Plan and results for last week

Workout 1:

  • Back squat: 78kg – 6×2, 2×1 – I didn’t do this.  I just did 5×2, 3×1.  My decision to not add a rep was because several of my second reps weren’t getting to the box height but also I reduced my rest periods back down to where they were before Christmas (squats on 3 minutes rather than on a combination of 4 and 5 minutes).  I also did the doubles consecutively, so really it was an improvement on before.
  • Partial barbell overhead press: 28kg – 8×3 – Ha!  This was an extremely optimistic aim.  I did what should have been the workout for today, following Hepburn, 1×3, 7×2.
  • Chin ups: 4×3, 4×2 – I was really pleased that I managed full range of motion on all my reps this week.  So full in fact that I accidentally wacked the underside of my chin on the third rep of my fourth set on my way back down.  That’s got to be a good sign!

Workout 2:

  • RDL: 95kg – 6×2, 2×1 – Completed as planned though my hands haven’t quite got their callouses back yet so it’s quite sore still.
  • Hip thrusts: 130kg – 8×3 – Completed as planned and I really am set back on my old timing of 1.5 minutes.

Workout 3:

  • Back squat: 78kg – 7×2, 1×1 – still 5×2, 3×1 I’m afraid.  I did try to do a second rep on my sixth set but only got a few inches out of the bottom before having to go back down and put the bar on the bottom pins.  Hugely tedious having to de-rack the bar and re-rack it at the right height again in the middle of a workout.  Several of my reps didn’t get to full depth either.  I wish I knew what is wrong with my squat although I am suspicious that it has something to do with poor upper back mobility that I’ve had since getting back from my walking trip over the New Year.  I can’t get the bar as low as I could before Christmas.
  • Partial barbell overhead press: 30kg – 8×2 – I decided to stay with the Hepburn approach and aimed for 2×3, 6×2.  However I managed an extra rep and did 3×3, 5×2.  At least some
  • Chin ups: 5×3, 3×2 – managed these, though perhaps not as easily as on Tuesday.

Plan for this week

Workout 1:

  • Back squat: 78kg – 6×2, 2×1
  • Partial barbell overhead press: 28kg – 4×3, 4×2
  • Chin ups: 6×3, 2×2

Workout 2:

  • RDL: 95kg – 7×2, 1×1
  • Hip thrusts: 135kg – 8×3

Workout 3:

  • Back squat: 78kg – 7×2, 1×1
  • Partial barbell overhead press: 28kg – 5×3, 3×2
  • Chin ups: 7×3, 1×2
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Paleo recipes: pork chops in a spiced sauce

January 21st, 2012 · Diet, Recipes

There’s lots of pork cooking going on at the moment because pork is surprisingly cheap in the supermarket.  Hopefully everyone who reads this blog also enjoys pork!  This is a recipe that I tried for myself and was so pleased with it that I cooked it up again a week later for Chris’s birthday dinner.  He thought it was absolutely delicious.

Paleo pork chops in a spicy sauce

Ingredients (serves 2 or 4, depending on how many chops you eat):
3 tbsp olive oil
4 pork chops
2 onions, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
2 fresh green chillies, seeded and chopped
1 inch piece of ginger root, peeled and chopped (or 1 tsp ground ginger)
1 ½ tsp cumin seeds
1 ½ tsp ground coriander
1 pint water
2 tbsp tomato purée
4 tbsp double cream (optional)

Directions:

  1. Heat the oil in a pan and fry the pork chops until sealed and browned on both sides.  Remove from the pan and set aside.
  2. Add the onion, garlic, chillies, ginger and spices to the pan, fry gently for a couple of minutes until the onion is starting to brown.
  3. Add the water and tomato puree, bring to the boil, place the pork chops on top.  Cover the pan and simmer over a medium heat for 30 minutes.
  4. If using the cream, remove it from the fridge 10 minutes before the end of cooking time to warm up to room temperature before cooking.
  5. If using cream, remove the chops from the pan, stir the cream into the sauce in the pan and then return the chops.  Cover the pan again and heat through gently on a low heat for a further 5 minutes.
  6. Serve up the pork chops with the sauce while still hot.
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Influence of moderately intense strength training on flexibility in sedentary young women

January 19th, 2012 · Training

A bit later than my usual posting time, but I was out most of the day so I’ve only just finished this!

This was a useful study I stumbled across.  I was actually looking for another bench press study, but when I saw this study my interest was piqued.  Was this a study I could use as helpful evidence to those women who think that strength training will just get them bulky and therefore turn to yoga believing that greater flexibility equals better health?  Could this be a useful study for those of us who train to convince our non-training friends that strength training is not necessarily a bad thing?  Read on and find out.

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Influence of moderately intense strength training on flexibility in sedentary young women

Santos E, Rhea M R, Simão R, Dias I, de Salles B F, Novaes J, Leite T, Blair J C, Bunker D J.  Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 2010; 24(11):3144-3149. (Free copy of the study here.)

The study

This study appears to have been trying to consolidate and delve more deeply into a collection of previous studies that had been done looking into the subject of flexibility improvements as a result of strength training.  The authors wanted to focus specifically on women in their mid-twenties whereas previous studies had either looked at other age groups or, in one case, had looked at a population of both men and women.  In the discussion section of this paper the authors are particularly dismissive of this final study pointing out that not only was there a skew to male participants (65% men and 35% women) but the resistance training group from the study was even more skewed (69% men and 31% women).  The authors believe that the influence of strength training on flexibility varies between men and women.

Unlike last week’s study, there are limited subtle comments and side-discussion from the authors of this study, however this doesn’t detract from the helpfulness of the study itself.

The participants

Whereas last week’s study used participants who had been participating in resistance training activities for a minimum of 3-5 days per week for the 6 month period immediately prior to enrolment in the study, this week’s study was looking for young women who had engaged in no physical activity for the 6 months leading up to the study and, in fact, engaged in no regular physical activity other than the study’s strength training programme while the study was taking place.  So we move from one extreme to the other – these women are truly sedentary.

Looking at the women selected they all appear to be in their mid-twenties.  The test group contained 24 women were divided into three groups of eight and the reported age of each of these groups was 26.8 ± 1.6 years, 24 ± 2.3 years and 25.4 ± 2.4 years.

Before they started the experiment the training groups were put through a week of exercise familiarisation.  This seems like an excellent idea as it would have helped prevent the possibility of injury during early training sessions and the initial testing.  However, this needs to be remembered when comparing the opening figures between the control group (who were remaining sedentary) and the training groups.

The experiment

The women were divided into three groups.  One was a control group and remained sedentary all the time, except when being tested (and presumably for some exercise familiarisation so that they knew how to do the machine bench press for the test).  The other two groups were both training groups.

Flexibility and one rep max (1RM) machine bench press were both measured at the start and end of the training period.  It’s worth noting that at the start flexibility was measured 48 to 72 hours after the initial 1RM test while at the other end of the experiment the flexibility was measured first, 48 hours after the final training session, and the 1RM was tested 48 hours after the flexibility measurements were taken.

Quite why they decided to swap these round is not certain and the authors say nothing about this.  The results are still comparable between the groups as the testing protocol was the same between groups though.

In between the opening and closing testing the training groups did 24 training sessions, three times a week over eight weeks.  The training groups did identical workouts except for a different arrangement of the exercises.  One group is described as an agonist/antagonist group and the other as an alternated strength training group.

Agonist/antagonist training group

To understand what is going on here it is necessary to understand what agonist and antagonist mean.  According to wikipedia, an agonist muscle causes movements to occur through the process of contraction.  The antagonist muscle works in conjunction with the agonist muscle, to bring the limb back to its original position.  A really good example is the upper arm where the bicep is the agonist when bending the fist up to your forehead while the triceps is then the antagonist, working to bring the arm back to its straight position.

This training group were given the following superset exercises:

  • Machine seated row and machine bench press
  • Machine triceps extension and machine seated arm curl
  • Abdominals and trunk extension machine
  • Leg extension and seated leg curl

They completed three sets of each pair, performing 10-12 reps on all except the abdominal exercise which was done for 15-20 reps.  The participants took 2 minutes rest between the supersets.

Helpfully they made the workouts progressive, increasing the weight once the participant could complete 12 reps with the weight they were working with.

If you consider the exercises being done by this group the supersets were all made up of pairs of agonist and their matching antagonist muscles, for example the triceps and arm curl which was the example I gave at the start of this section.  This is a popular way to train the upper body for a more advanced trainee but for new trainees who have not previously done these exercises it must have been utterly exhausting.

Alternated strength training group

This group did everything exactly the same as the agonist/antagonist group although if my reading of the training protocol is correct then there was only one set done of each pair and the exercises were done in a different superset order.  This time they were paired as follows:

  • Machine seated row and leg extension
  • Machine bench press and seated leg curl
  • Machine seated arm curl and abdominals
  • Machine triceps extension and trunk extension machine

This is a classic superset of arms with legs, abs or trunk each time – far less exhausting for the beginner trainee as each body part gets a longer rest between sets while the other body part is working.

Results

I have not reproduced the measurements for the six flexibility tests they carried out on the three groups pre and post experiment.  The noticeable point is that the control group saw no flexibility improvement while the two training groups both saw improvements in their flexibility.  Across the board the alternated strength training group saw greater improvement in their flexibility but by an amount that is fairly immaterial when compared to the overall increase seen by both group.  It is therefore fair to agree with the authors when they note that strength training can rapidly improve flexibility in women in their mid-twenties who were previously completely sedentary.

More interesting to me was the results on the machine bench press 1RM.  It is important to note that this is machine bench press – free-weights bench press would require far more from the stabilising muscles and would therefore take longer to reach such high numbers.  However, the difference between the agonist/antagonist group and the alternated strength training group is he and says a lot for what may be an appropriate way to train a new beginner.

Pre-training (kg)

Post 8 weeks training (kg)

Movement (kg)
Agonist/antagonist group

33.2 ± 5.0

40.5 ± 4.8

1.4
Alternate strength training group

29.5 ± 2.9

42.0 ± 1.7

4.3
Control group

23.5 ± 2.3

24.0 ± 3.0

0.2

The question becomes, on reading these results, whether you would want to just gain flexibility or become a bit stronger at the same time for no more effort.  If the latter is attractive to you (and why would it not be?) then alternate strength training seems to be an appropriate way to go with any previously untrained beginner.

Why the difference in results?

Disappointingly the authors don’t seem to try and address why they think the difference in results came about between the two training groups.  I have a couple of theories and have decided to share them below, although I would welcome other people’s thoughts.

Firstly, it is well known that certain leg exercises can give an instant boost to growth hormones.  It is possible that interspersing the leg exercises throughout the workout gives a better hormonal response to the upper body exercises.  However, the upper body exercises are always done first which potentially detracts from this theory.  Perhaps an interesting test would be to replicate this experiment but to have both training groups perform the alternated strength training routine with one group doing the supersets the opposite way round, performing the leg exercise then the upper body exercise, and see if the results differ between these two groups.  Would this make any difference?  Would it make a difference to the results if the 1RM test being done was a squat rather than a bench press?

Secondly, and more plausible, is the idea that these are beginners.  They have, presumably, never done these exercises before, or if they have it was some time ago.  As a result those little supporting muscles are not yet very strong.  It is likely that the agonist/antagonist workout taxes the muscles much more.  While it doesn’t stress the muscles any more, it will stress small supporting muscles that are needed for both exercises in the pair.  If they are tired from the first exercise it may not be possible to get the maximum training affect from the second exercise.  In comparison the alternated strength training group are giving those smaller muscles longer rest between sets when they want to tax them.

*****

This wasn’t necessarily the most useful study to improve my own training but I’m hoping that what I’ve learned here will help me convince a few more of my non-training friends that real strength training is not as detrimental to their overall “health” as they may believe.  Especially when this could give them some of the flexibility they go to yoga for with a few added enhancements.  It’s also given me some good ideas of the sort of workout I might prescribe to a new beginner, although perhaps with a bit more free-weights work and a bit less machine use!  Do you think you can similarly draw on this study in your own training or in convincing friends to take it up?

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Paleo recipes: pine nut stuffed chicken thighs

January 17th, 2012 · Diet, Recipes

This was another recipe put together with the ingredients in my store cupboard.  I tried it a couple of times changing the ingredients a little each time – the variant below is the best combination of flavours I found.  The flavours are quite delicate and this needs serving up with delicate flavoured vegetables, such as asparagus, that won’t overpower the chicken.

Paleo pine nut stuffed chicken thighs

Ingredients (serves 2):
4 large chicken thighs (or 6 small thighs)
Juice of 1 large lemon
2 spring onions, chopped
3 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped
3 tbsp pine nuts
1 tbsp coriander leaves, roughly chopped

Directions:

  1. First prepare the chicken thighs.  Remove the bone by cutting down the length and carefully removing the bone, leaving the chicken thigh as a long flat strip of chicken.  Place the chicken in a dish and pour over a third of the lemon juice, moving the chicken about and turning it to cover the meat all over with the juice.  Cover and leave in a cool place for 20 minutes to flavour the meat.
  2. Using a hand blender, blend together the pine nuts, spring onions, garlic, remaining lemon juice (approximately two-thirds of a lemon) and herbs.  If you don’t have a hand blender then crush the pine nuts using a pestle and mortar and then add the other ingredients, finely chopped, and blend as thoroughly as possible.
  3. Put the oven on to preheat to 180C.
  4. When the chicken is marinated, lay the pieces out on a board, cut-side upwards, and lay a teaspoon or two of the stuffing in a line across the centre of the thigh (where the bone was).  Roll the chicken thighs back into their original shape around the stuffing and hold together using a poultry skewer or cocktail sticks.
  5. Cut a large piece of foil, lay the stuffed chicken in the centre of the foil, drizzle over any remaining lemon juice from marinating the chicken, and then bring together the edges of the foil to seal the chicken in a neat package.  Place the package in the centre of the oven and bake for 35 minutes.
  6. When done, remove the package and carefully unseal it.  There is likely to be hot liquid and steam inside so take care not to scald yourself.  Discard the liquid, as this is mostly water from the chicken.  The skewers can be removed before serving as the chicken should hold its shape round the stuffing once it has been cooked.
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Powerlifting progress 2012: week two

January 16th, 2012 · Training

2012 has not started in a promising style.  Being ill at the end of 2011 followed by a six day haul through mud and bogs had hit my numbers hard.  Week two saw some improvement on week one but progress is definitely slow.

The interesting bit is that I am not feeling the difficulty in my legs but in my mid-back, around the base of the lats.  In the past I’ve seen huge improvement to both my RDL and back squat when I’ve been better able to engage my lats but now I can’t even convince my lats to contract, especially on the right.  To make sure I don’t lose too much acclimatisation to the heavier weights I decided to move them up a notch but, when necessary, do singles.

Plan and results for last week

Workout 1:

  • Back squat: 78kg – 2,1,2,2,2,1,1,1 – this hurt a lot.
  • Partial barbell overhead press: 25kg – 8×3 – easy!
  • Chin ups: 2×3, 6×2

Workout 2:

  • RDL: 95kg – 5×2, 3×1 – I dropped to singles because my back was popping out (at the weak point) on the second rep of my fourth and fifth set.
  • Hip thrusts: 125kg – 8×3 – much better form than week one and felt easy.

Workout 3:

  • Back squat: 78kg – 2,2,2,2,1,2,1,1 – an extra set of two on workout one but not in the right place.  Sets 5-8 felt completely different and hellishly hard when compared to the first four sets (though they didn’t feel easy either).
  • Partial barbell overhead press: 28kg – 8×2
  • Chin ups: 3×3, 5×2

Plan for this week

Workout 1:

  • Back squat: 78kg – 6×2, 2×1
  • Partial barbell overhead press: 28kg – 8×3
  • Chin ups: 4×3, 4×2

Workout 2:

  • RDL: 95kg – 6×2, 2×1
  • Hip thrusts: 130kg – 8×3

Workout 3:

  • Back squat: 78kg – 7×2, 1×1
  • Partial barbell overhead press: 30kg – 8×2
  • Chin ups: 5×3, 3×2
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Does caffeine improve bench press for women?

January 12th, 2012 · Exercises, Training

Throwing myself in at the deep end with my research plans for this year, I thought I would start with a bit of technical reading about the bench press.  On my hunt for material I found a research paper in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition that seemed highly appropriate.  In the paper is a huge amount of extra information hiding just under the surface, so I’m going to do a whole article about it.  Hold onto your hats ladies, there’s a lot of information coming up.

*****

Caffeine enhances upper body strength in resistance-trained women

Goldstein E, Jacobs P L, Whitehurst M, Penhollow T and Antonio J.  Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 2010; 7:18-23. (Free copy of the study here.)

The study

The aim of this study was to establish whether the ingestion of caffeine improved upper body strength performance in women.  It’s refreshing because it has a focus specifically on women, tailoring the study parameters to fit round expectations of the test participants.  I was also excited by the fact that it used resistance-trained women.  Far too often studies looking at strength performance use untrained individuals and the results are then extrapolated to all people, however anyone who has been doing strength training for a while will be aware that in those first couple of years of training the novice trainee can do almost anything and gain strength as a result.

This was research on resistance trained women - much more relevant!

The participants

Taking a quick look at the women they used for this study there were a few criteria that had to be met:

  • Age 18-45.
  • Participate in resistance training activities for a minimum of 3-5 days per week for the 6 month period immediately prior to enrolment in the study.
  • An ability to bench press 70% of their (individual) bodyweight.

The authors ended up with a group of 15 women who met all of these criteria

Throughout the discussion section of the paper there are comments that could be easily overlooked but which, in my opinion, are more revealing about women (in general) than the study itself.  The first of these is relevant here as the authors note that they struggled to recruit resistance-trained women with an ability to bench press 70% of individual body weight.  They go on to comment: “many recreationally trained women, who frequently participate in resistance training, underestimate the conditioning that is essential for a female to bench press a relatively high percentage of body weight.”

Some thoughts about women and resistance training

This statement from the authors is fascinating.

Firstly I would agree that it is, on the surface, difficult to find women who carry out regular resistance training of the sort I write about on this blog (eg. meaningful weights) and this says a lot about the state of women’s fitness training.  Despite the recent upsurge in women training with real weights, those of use who lift decent amounts of iron are still in a definite minority and even an endangered species (by the official guidelines).

Secondly, 70% of bodyweight is not a huge weight for those who train powerlifting moves on a regular basis but neither is it easy.  Based on my own experience which was, admittedly, hindered by upper body mobility and stability issues from my desk job and hobbies, 70% took dedicated training but wasn’t too difficult – I think I probably got there in just under 6 months once I started introducing bench press as a specific exercise.  70%-80% took far more effort than the first 70% and above 80% has taken specific training working on my bench press weaknesses.

Thirdly, it is clear that the authors knew and understood their test subjects since they went for a weight that is challenging for anyone who isn’t dedicated to resistance training and it also highlights the clear difference between men and women in this area, since mean seem to routinely get to this sort of weight with far less difficulty as far as I can tell and therefore a more sensible cut off for them might have been closer to 100% of individual body weight.  See a graph I put together for one of my earliest articles – there’s a 74% difference between percentage of bodyweight benched by a light men’s class and a light women’s class at competition level.

Finally, given the points above and the statement that many women who frequently participated in resistance training underestimated their ability to bench press 70% of individual bodyweight, I wonder if there is a potential lack of understanding about what resistance training really is and/or a lack of progression in most women’s training programmes – perhaps going to the gym 3 times a week to do the same programme with the same weight and therefore not getting any stronger once they pass a certain point.  As I said earlier, 6 months of progressive training got me to 70% without too much difficulty and the women in this research had to have been training 3-5 times a week for the previous 6 months.  Is there a need for more and better education about effective training programmes in the public domain?

Preparation for testing and supplementation

The 15 women attended three sessions at the testing laboratory.  The first was a familiarisation session where they were “instructed on proper technique and mechanics of the bench press exercise, according to the standard methods defined by Baechle and Earle and the National Strength and Conditioning Association.”  They also did various tests to determine whether they met the criteria of being able to bench press 70% of their individual bodyweight.

At sessions two and three, the test sessions, the participants were asked to continue their usual exercise and diet lifestyle in the seven days leading up to each test day, recording their complete diet on two week days and a weekend day.  This meant that diets could be compared between test subjects to ensure they were consistent.

In the 24 hours before the test the participants were asked to refrain from vigorous activity and avoid any caffeinated food and drink and had to report to the test after a 12 hour period without food.  Essentially this is eliminating any caffeine from the system and ensuring that the test subjects all arrive in a similar fasted state.

One exercise trial was performed with caffeine and one without, although neither the participants nor the testers knew which was which as the caffeine was administered 60 minutes before testing as 6mg/kg dissolved in 16.9 ounces of flavoured Propel Fitness Water and the placebo on the non-caffeine week was 16.9 ounces of this same flavoured Propel Fitness Water without the caffeine dissolved in it.

The experiment tests

Interestingly the researchers decided to carry out two tests.  First they tested one rep max (1RM) by doing a controlled warm-up from 12-15 reps with 50% of 1RM through to singles with 90% of 1RM and then continuing singles until failure.  This is a classic way to test 1RM.

Despite the strenuous nature of doing a 1RM test, the participants then had a five minute rest before testing muscular endurance by doing as many reps as possible at 60% of their 1RM.

Heart rate, blood pressure and RPE (rating of perceived exertion – a scale used by most fitness professionals) were all tested at rest (presumably not long after ingesting the supplement), 60 minutes after ingesting the supplement (immediately before the 1RM testing) and 5 seconds after completing the muscular endurance test.

Results

I have reproduced the main results reported in the paper below:

 

Placebo

Caffeine
1RM

52.1 ± 11.7

52.9 ± 11.1
60% 1RM

23.0 ± 7.1

23.1 ± 6.2

When I saw the results I struggled to see how the authors had concluded that there was a difference, but then I considered in more detail what might be statistically significant in the context of a 1RM.  Most of us know that adding 1kg to your 1RM is something to be proud of.  Especially on bench press where the numbers you are dealing with are small and 1kg is therefore a notable percentage of the lift.  In consequence the authors have concluded: “acute caffeine supplementation appears to be effective for enhancing strength performance in resistance-trained women”.  It seems a reasonable conclusion although with the results they got I think there are probably other things that can be done before

Possible issue with the experiment

Unfortunately any sort of 1RM and muscular endurance testing will, inevitably, produce a slight training effect (though only slight when not training to failure).  In addition, these women were asked to continue training as usual between tests.  As a result there is a good possibility that their bench press naturally improved by a slight amount between the tests.  Whether it could improve enough to affect the result is uncertain and we have no idea which test came first – if they mixed it up (doing placebo with only half the group at the first test and then swapping these sub-groups) then this potential training effect should be removed.  Using women who are already established at resistance training and able to bench press 70% of their bodyweight could also minimise the risk of this having any impact.

Diet results

Do you remember that I mentioned earlier that the participants had to record their diet for 3 days during the week leading up to each test?  These results show that protein and carbohydrate intake in the weeks preceding both the placebo and caffeinated tests are similar with the only variant being to fat intake levels.  It reveals interesting information about the diet of 15 average women who participate in resistance training when no focus is being put on their diets.

Using the caffeine test results as an example, the mean (± standard deviation) intake each day was 2,083 ± 1,095 kcal, being made up of 102 ± 39 g protein, 256 ± 186 g carbohydrate and 117 ±181 g fat (this increases to 145 ± 274 g in the placebo week).  The mean body mass was 63.6 ± 8.3 kg (140lb), so it seems that most of the women were deficient in protein when compared to the standard recommendation for those doing resistance training of 1-1.5g protein per pound of lean bodyweight – unless, on average, 30% of their bodyweight was fat.

Is this an indication that, in general, most women who don’t analyse what they eat could do with replacing some of the carbs in their diet with additional protein? This is certainly a suspicion I’ve been developing over the last few years when I’ve been eating out for lunches and dinners with work.  The amount of protein on offer always seems limited yet the people I’m with seem to think it is an enormous amount of meat or fish.

More meat required with the veg (Image: paleo pine nut stuffed chicken thighs)

Some caffeine discoveries

The participants reflect a group with wide range of normal daily caffeine intake, from zero to 416 mg per day.  Most of the participants didn’t show any major responses to the 6 mg/kg of caffeine, compared to a separate study published in 2007 and referred to in this study.  When the women in that earlier test were given 9 mg/kg and reported feelings of “profuse sweating, body tremors, dizziness and vomiting.”  However, three of the women habitually consumed 0-41 mg of caffeine per day and reported some interesting side-effects.

Among their side-effects were “intense emotional responses, including an expressed inability to verbally communicate, focus, and/or remain still, as well as the feeling of wanting to cry.”  This last point I find particularly interesting as it suggests a hormonal reaction to the caffeine in the women who never or rarely ingested any caffeine.  Despite feeling like this, two of these three women still performed better in the muscular endurance phase of testing when under the influence of the caffeine.  That’s the part of the test where, in general, there was no statistically significant improvement in the group as a whole after taking caffeine.

Thoughts and conclusions

So there is plenty to digest in this piece of research.  Not only is there the conclusion reached by the researchers that slight caffeine supplementation may enhance strength performance for those of us who do resistance training, but there are also a few other things to learn.

I’ve hypothesised above that there is potentially a lack of education in the public domain about effective progressive resistance training.  I also think that the results imply that some women are still protein deficient in their diets.  To hypothesise about why this may be would be taking this too far as there are all sorts of possible causes.  If these women are following an unweighed and unmeasured diet then just a few suggestions might include a lack of availability of protein or it’s perceived prohibitive cost, perseverance of the myth that high protein diets cause kidney failure, or that these women are bulking their diets out with wheat produce so that they are too full to eat adequate protein.

Finally, is the impact of the caffeine on those women who rarely consume any caffeine.  I found the record of the emotional side-effects particularly interesting as this is the first time I’ve seen mention of these effects despite having suffered them myself from time to time when I’ve over-done the black tea and coffee.  Yet the participants noticing these side effects still saw a benefit from the caffeine to their muscular endurance despite apparently feeling weepy while on the bench.

Once I get back into my bench press I might start taking in a mug or two of coffee an hour before my workout, although until then I will continue with a couple of mugs of weak black tea each morning so that the extra caffeine isn’t a shock to the system.

 

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Paleo recipes: Chinese pork stir-fry

January 10th, 2012 · Diet, Recipes

Early in the year I needed to cook up something to eat with a very limited store cupboard.  I had made a trip to the supermarket just after New Year, on our way back from the walking trip, but it was late on the Bank Holiday Monday and they had almost nothing left on the shelves.  I was limited to pork chops, onions, peppers, carrots and the herbs and spices in my cupboard.  In an ideal world I would have added a few more vegetables to give it more colour, but I was left using the few ingredients available to me and found the flavour was surprisingly good.

Paleo chinese pork stir-fry

Ingredients (serves 2):
2 thick pork loins or boned pork chops
1 ½ tbsp honey
1 ½ tbsp dry sherry
1 tsp Chinese 5 spice powder
½ tsp ground ginger
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 bell pepper, seeded and thinly sliced lengthways
1 carrot, thinly sliced (I found a mandolin useful for this)

Directions:

  1. Put the dry spices into a wide bowl, add the honey and then the sherry over this and then blend together thoroughly using the back of a spoon.  Slice the pork into thin strips and add it into the bowl with the honey mixture.  Mix well, cover and leave in a cool place to marinade for 20 minutes, mixing it around a couple of times to re-coat the pork.
  2. When the meat has marinated, heat some oil in a wok and add the vegetables.  Keep the heat high and move the vegetables around until they start to soften.
  3. Once the vegetables are almost soft make a space in the centre of the pan and place the meat into this (be sure not to pour the marinade liquid in with it, otherwise the pork will boil in the liquid).  Keep the meat moving about until it is browned all over, mixing it in with the vegetables as you work.
  4. Add the marinade liquid to the pan, coat everything with the liquid and leave to simmer for 3-4 minutes until the pork is cooked through.
  5. Serve immediately while still piping hot.
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New Year, fresh start

January 9th, 2012 · Diet, Psychology, Training

Happy New Year and welcome back to Not Just a Man’s World!

I hope all my reader’s have had a break over the Festive period and are feeling enthused for a fresh start on 2012, just as I am.  2011 was a tough year for me.  I knew that I would be giving up my full-time job at the end of the year moving to a more mixed role of full-time musician to bring in the money that I need with the aim of a five-day “weekend” from Monday to Friday to take me away from the desk, give me more time to be active and mobile, leave me with time to train, and remove as much stress as possible from my life.

To prepare I spent most of 2011 doing a seven-day working week as I put more effort into my music, setting myself up with a reliable income stream from it before I handed in my notice from the desk job.  Unsurprisingly I finished off 2011 incredibly ill.  There was an unpleasant bug going round the UK and both Chris and I succumbed to it before Christmas without any hesitation, leaving us both bed-bound for a couple of days and without an ability to eat much of anything for over a week.

After a break over the Christmas period I thought I would share some of the things I have planned for 2012.  This is my statement of intent for the year that this blog is going to be spruced up a bit!

Workout plan for 2012

While I would like to report on my training for the end of 2011 I didn’t actually do anything for the last two weeks, since I was far too sick to leave my bed, let alone get into the gym for the week before Christmas and was then away on a six day walking trip after Christmas.  As expected after such a long break (12 December to 3 January plus 6 days of strenuous walking) I’ve knocked back my numbers quite horribly.  The figures below compare my final December workouts to the figures I got in my workouts last week.

  • Back squat: 80kg 3×3, 5×2 down to 75kg 1×3, 7×2
  • RDL: 95kg 8×3 down to 90kg 8×3
  • Partial overhead press: 20kg 8×3 to 25kg 8×2 (so no loss here, but it was a new exercise in December)
  • Hip thrust: 145kg 2×3, 4×2 down to 120kg 8×3 (I’m not so surprised about this – when I put the weight up to 145kg I struggled to get full extension so I stopped my warm up when I hit a weight I felt I was working hard with this time – I expect this to increase reasonably quickly).

Farewell ye great and mighty hip thrust

In 2012 I would like to finally get a handle on my bench press.  I’m going to increase to 3 workouts a week but also cut the size of the workouts slightly.  Part of the reason for this is that I have gained an allotment at the start of 2012 and anticipate doing some pretty hard digging a few times each week – I don’t want to burn out.

In a few weeks time this should be taking the following format:

  1. Back squat then superset partial overhead press with chins
  2. Superset Bench press with a row and then hip thrusts
  3. RDLs and Hip thrusts

Until I get my squat back I’ll be doing workouts 1, 3 then 1 again each week.

I’ve no doubt this will change as I progress through the year and get used to not sitting at a desk all week but I really do want to crack the bench press this year and see if I can get to competition shape by Christmas.

Figure improvements in 2012

I let myself go a bit towards the end of 2011.  I’d made a conscious decision not to strictly diet at any point in 2011 as I was aware of an unhealthy relationship with food that developed through my 3 months of really hard dieting at the end of 2010.  I wanted time to heal that ticking psychological time-bomb.  I was also aware that there would be no free meals out with clients in 2012 and this year would be naturally easier to diet (for starters, no endless supplies of cake on the cabinets at work for birthdays and successful target achievement and competitions and… you get the drift).

No more cake lying about on a daily basis to tempt me

  • 15 January to 15 February 2012 – I intend doing a 30 day Paleo Challenge at the start of the year.  It’s pretty much underway now, I didn’t really make a note of exactly when it started since there was much rubbish to cut out of my diet anyway, but there might be something inappropriate on Chris’s birthday this week, so it officially starts on 15 January after the partying finishes.  I know the dates above aren’t really 30 days but as 15 February is my birthday, it seems an appropriate date to stop the challenge.
  • January – March 2012 – I will also be getting some of the excess fat off my hips and glutes.  This is one of my experiments for this year though.  I’ve done enough cutting diets in the last few years to know that the only way I could previously get results was an incredibly strict and repetitive food regime, fewer than 950 calories each day, and various cardio strategies over the years.  Despite looking “almost awesome” in December 2010 at the end of my last dieting phase I could never get rid of the handles of fat on the tops of my hips.  They got smaller but never went.  Through monitoring and measuring this year I want to see if the following appear to be true:
    • The fact that stress hinders fat loss is documented in several books on our shelves, hopefully I will find that I finally can shift those lumps of fat that sit at the top of each hip.
    • Reading any bodybuilding article or book by the old school bodybuilders, there is very little “cardio” mentioned.  However, they don’t sit around doing nothing either.  I’m going to see if I can lose weight without a complete starvation diet simply through the fact that I am more mobile each day and therefore using more calories.
    • Being based at home most days should also enable me to try something else too – eating when hungry.  I will always have foods that are appropriate to hand and so I intend eating food when I feel hungry and, where possible, stopping when full.  I will also eat something that appeals and not count the calories of it.  Again, this should hopefully have a positive affect on my figure and it will be interesting to see if I am able to lose weight this way without the psychological issues that come from a regimented calorie-restricted diet.  It will also be interesting to see how much I end up ingesting each day, what foods I tend to favour and what the macronutrient ratio looks like.

The shampoo experiment

I’ve always had trouble with my hair.  It’s thin, limp and hangs in rat-tails unless it’s within half a week since I visited the hairdresser.  It also gets greasy incredibly fast – I’ve never been able to contemplate leaving it unwashed even for one day as I wake up each morning with greasy-looking hair, even if it was washed the evening before.

This first month away from work without clients and internal meetings and a strict “business-acceptable” dress code finally gives me the opportunity I’ve been waiting for to try the shampoo-free experiment.  I can wear headscarves as much as I want and nobody needs to know what my hair looks like.  Everyone’s blog-posts I’ve read about trying this has agreed that it starts to look good after the first month, so I started this experiment on 27 December, when we left for the walking trip.  I’ll be blogging about my progress with photo evidence.

Technical research

Those of you who have been reading my blog for some time will have noticed that the quantity and quality of my technical research posts went sharply downhill towards the end of last year as I had less and less time to read up on topics.

Back to a bit of technical research

This year there are no excuses and areas I want to learn about include:

  • Endometriosis – several of my friends have struggled with this and I think it is surprisingly common.  I’d like to understand more about it, both what it is like as someone with endometriosis and also what the known and suspected causes and potential solutions (if any) may be.
  • Palaeolithic female figures – this is a much longer term project that could take more than just this year, but I’d like to see what I can learn about the figures of early females through skeletal structure and imagery.  It’s going to be delving back into my degree as an archaeologist.
  • Women and bench press – for obvious reasons I’d like to learn more about whether it really is true that women struggle more with the upper body than the lower body when it comes to strength and, if so, why.
  • Ketogenic diets – I promised someone at the end of 2010 that I would look into this and I never did.  This year I’m going to learn more about them.
  • Metabolic Type diet – again, this has been mentioned to me and I am very skeptical but I shouldn’t be skeptical when I know almost nothing about them, so I’m going to at least read a couple of books and understand it better.

As I learn about these I will write about them on the blog.  However, I’m keen to research areas that other people would also like to learn more about, so please do leave a comment or send me an email through the contact form if you have other topics you would be interested to learn more about from me.

I hope you have all got similarly ambitious plans and intentions for 2012, whether in your personal life, in the gym or at work.  Please do let me know if you miss anything from the articles I used to write or if there is something you’d like me to be writing about but which you aren’t seeing.

Best of luck to you all for a happy and fulfilled year!

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