Another opinion on strength training in women?

[SteelWeaver]

Well, well, well - so: I'll just skip tomorrow's weight training session and go ride my bike instead, then wait to be bathed in anabolic hormones

Some questions - I have very little idea about how this stuff works, so bear with me: how much of a difference does the hormonal response make, and which hormone is most anabolic?

Does this mean that all the women who have significantly increased their muscle mass (naturally) did so by growth hormone, not testosterone? I've never seen a chick get big with cardio.

A comment: I wonder how they worked the HIT protocol in the experiment. Did the researchers kick those women's butts? HIT calls for extreme, very extreme focus and intensity. These women had basic strength training experience. I doubt they were able to generate the type of intensity required for HIT. Also, just by virtue of being women (and this is not a slur on women, just an observation) they probably didn't give it everything they had - even after a couple of years of training, I'm still discovering every day how much more intense I can get in the gym.

(Personally, though, I prefer multiple set training).

 

[MS]

I'll leave many things for you folks to think about (saves me typing them and also provides me with entertainment).

Some things you might want to consider are:

Timeframe (Hint: RMR in the first 3-24 hours after weight training may not be elevated in women, but women randomized to the weight training arm of a trial compared to cardio gained 1.3kg more LBM without losing weight even though their total daily energy expenditure did not change)

Magnitude of measured effect (hint: in the EPOC studies, the difference between low intensity and high intensity was only ~20kcals, but still considered "significant")

Biological relevance (hint:belgiun blue cattle and callipyge sheep don't have higher T levels than normal livestock)

Now it's your turn to come up with some ideas........

 

[SteelWeaver]

Heh heh, well I'm afraid I, for one, am going to have to deprive you of some entertainment for at least a couple of hours while I go check out some cattle and sheep on Google

Good thing I like guessing games, this is going to be a wild one, lol. I wish Mr BMJ would come back.

Mmm, and the type and amount of fat they ate dropped - does this have any connection with the post about women using a greater percentage of fat for exercise?

Are those 20 cals for the entire 3-hour period? If so, it's not much, is it? I'm sure I burn 20 cals much faster than in 3 hours.

Off to google ...

 

[Arioch]

You also forgot researcher bias.

Especially wrt the 1 vs multiple sets.

Any study done by one of the HIT advocates automatically shows that 1 set is a good as mutiple set training for any purpose.

Regardless of what their data shows.

 

[Arioch]

Well, some of the HIT advocates have gone so far over the edge with a cultist type mentality that they are probably card carrying members of the flat earth society.

But yes, if you get a grant for a study, the powers that be like to see results.

You may need to get a grant in the future, after all.

I will actually post something use wrt this thread tomorrow or Thursday (my time)

 

[SteelWeaver]

OK, heavily muscled cattle and sheep, brought about by genetic engineering/selective breeding.

Here's one of the more ... outspoken sites I found:

http://www.ecoglobe.org.nz/ge-news/scot0640.htm

So they have a special gene, not extra T. ??

I just noticed those women only trained 2 days a week.

As for HIT - isn't it just human nature to try to find the thing that will give them the MOST return for the LEAST effort?

Spatts makes some good points there ...

 

[Arioch]

As for HIT - isn't it just human nature to try to find the thing that will give them the MOST return for the LEAST effort?

Then I am glad I am not human. While this may make a certain amount of sense, I have one major problem with the HIT cultists.

They insist their way is the best/only/holy grail/reason for the creation of th universe etc.

I hate this regardless of what it is referring to.

And no decent strength athlete trains HIT. None.

 

[SteelWeaver]

Then I am glad I am not human. .

Ah! Silly me! All along I've been thinking I was interacting with a human here! You're not another Vulcan are you?

They insist their way is the best/only/holy grail/reason for the creation of th universe etc.

I hate this regardless of what it is referring to.

Yes, I hate this too - especially when they say stuff like " the ultimate final true path to ...."

<snicker >

And no decent strength athlete trains HIT. None.

Oh, I'm not selling HIT - just saying what I have observed about human nature. Just because something has a high return on investment doesn't mean it's optimal. I've found for myself that the things that take the most effort are usually the most gratifying, too. But HIT folks would probably say they're putting in more effort, and that the argument is more about TIME.

Do you include bodybuilders in your definition of strength athletes? Technically we're not very strong ...

Anyway, back to MS's hints: I've already made enough ignorant comments on this thread - time for you to tell us what you're thinking. Spatts isn't gonna say any more until she gets references, Mr BMJ is journal-scanning, and Arioch is performing his lordly cult-busting duties, making him too busy to give his full attention to the cattle here.

 

[MS]

Well I'm a bodybuilder and I'm not very weak!

Using spatt's criteria where everything has to be perfectly matched and controlled means we go back to studying mice, and even then we end up rejecting anything we find because there's always something that wasn't controlled or measured. Science, as we know it, would grind to a halt (and maybe that's not a bad thing).

All of the women in these studies were on ad libitum diets. Ummm let's see....for the hormone experiments all women were measured at baseline as well as after exercise. The other details of the age and BMI or fitness experience of the participants is stated.

Maybe a better question would be "what does significant mean"? Is a gain of 1.3kg of LBM over 6 months really significant (or conversely is a loss of that much fat over 6 months significant)? The endurance trained chicks certainly had a lot more aerobic capacity at the end of the study. Does it really matter if you burn an extra 20 cals per day by busting you butt at 75% VO2 max versus cruising at 50% VO2 max?? Does any of this have relevance to women who eat a clean, high protein diet and actually monitor their LBM changes?? Do any of these exercise interventions by themselves turn ordinary women with 25%bf into lean mean muscle goddesses??

And what about over/under training. How would this affect metabolic and hormonal parameters??

 

[MS]

I'll dig up the standard deviations for you tomorrow, but I recall that they were all *significant* results in that the mean plus or minus the STDs for the two treatment groups had almost no overlap in the studies that found a significant difference. In other words ALL of the women in the 75% VO2 max exercise group burned more than ANY of the women in the low or non-exercise groups. I'm not sure about the 6 month study-I'll get back to you on that. In all the significant studies the P-values were between 0.05 and 0.001! So I don't think we have any dietary factors throwing the results way out of whack.......

Maybe tomorrow I'll also post up some studies looking at the effects of bouts of sprinting on women just to add a new dimension to things?