Want Bigger Guns? Train Legs Before Arms!

It is quite obvious that an elevation of testosterone and growth hormone facilitates muscle gains by jacking up protein synthesis and ameliorating protein breakdown. Now, intense leg training is famous for increasing both, testosterone as well as growth hormone levels of trainees. It is thus quite logical that Ronnestad et al. found (Ronnestad. 2011) that your arms grow faster, if you train them right after your legs.

The study design the scientists used is quite awkward, but clever. They had 9 (unfortunately) untrained subjects perform 4 workouts per week. On two of the occasions the subjects trained legs + one arm (L + A) on the other two occasions they only trained the other arm. Thus, Ronnestad et al. made sure that "both conditions have the same nutritional and genetic environment".

Figure 1: Plasma testosterone and growth hormone  measured before the strength training session (T-0), immediately after the leg exercises in the L ? A session (T-1), immediately after the arm exercises for both the L + A and A session (T-2), and 30 min after the arm exercises in both L + A and A session (T-3). (Ronnestad. 2011)

As can be seen in figure 1, only leg + arm, but not arm training alone produced measurable elevations of testosterone and growth hormone. Yet, although the cross sectional surface area (CSA, measured by MRA) of the biceps increased in both conditions, the major finding of the study was that...

only L + A increased the elbow flexors’ CSA at the two middle sections where the CSA of elbow flexors was largest.

In other words, the peak of your biceps, this hallmark, every bodybuilder is looking for, comes from training your legs (prior to your biceps).

N3-PUFA Beneficial Only When Combined With Antioxidants

All of you who have been following this blog, lately, will have noticed that I tend to be skeptic whether fish oil and other PUFA supplements are recommendable without certain reservations. A recent study by Filaire et al. (Filaire. 2011) seems to support the view that poly-unsaturated fatty acids increase the potential for oxidative damage and should thus be combined with appropriate amounts of antioxidants to "compensate" this effect.

Over a period of 6 weeks the researchers supplemented a group of 36 judoists with either 600 mg EPA and 400 mg DHA per day or the same amount of long chain polyunsaturated fatty [LCPUFA] acids plus 30 mg vitamin E, 60 mg vitamin C and 6 mg β-carotene and measured resting and exercise-induced lipid peroxidation in their subjects. Here are the results:

At T (1) [before supplementation], there were no significant differences among treatment groups with respect to lipid peroxidation, lag phase, and levels of α-tocopherol or retinol. The consumption of an n-3 LC PUFA supplement increased oxidative stress at rest and did not attenuate the exercise-induced oxidative stress. The addition of antioxidants did not prevent the formation of oxidation products at rest. On the contrary, it seems that the combination of antioxidants added to the n-3 LCPUFA supplement led to a decrease in, CD(max) [conjugated dienes], R (max) [maximum rate of oxidation], and POOL [lipoperoxide ] and MDA [malondialdehyde] concentrations after a judo training session.

So, in a way LCPUFA work like "exercise in a pill": At rest, they increase similar stressors as exercise does. This holds true regardless of additional anti-oxidant supplementation. When you exercise, however, a combination of LCPUFA + antioxidants appears to provide some protection from exercise induced stressors, so that overall, athletes would probably benefit from LCPUFA + antioxidants consumption.

Notice, I purposefully wrote "consumption" and not "supplementation", because let's be honest: If we have a look at the combination of nutrients a natural diet would provide, you always get your LCPUFAs with adequate amounts of antioxidants. So, keeping or switching to a healthy diet should still be your priority - if you then still see the need for additional supplementation, you may want to give a quality fish oil and some vitamins a try.