Bulletin #164 – Supplementing For The Endurance Edge

Endurance is critical in athletic training and bodybuilding. Can you increase your endurance through the use of nutritional supplementation? Science says yes. Endurance can be bumped up, regardless the degree of fit-ness, with a balanced nutrition program aided by supplementa-tion. One of the supplements we recommend is Parrillo Max En-durance Formula™. It is special-ly formulated with the following nutrients:InosineThough it sounds like one, ino-sine is not an amino acid but is classified as a nucleoside, one of the basic compounds compris-ing cells. It plays many roles, one of which is helping to make ATP (adenosine triphosphate), the body’s main form of usable energy. Inosine plays many other roles in the body, including re-leasing insulin, facilitating the use of carbohydrate by the heart and, potentially, participating in oxygen metabolism and protein synthesis which improves oxygen utilization.

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DL-PhenylalanineDL-Phenylalanine is an amino acid known to improve mental acuity and pain tolerance. Some interesting research has looked into whether this amino acid canimprove mental focus and alle-viate attention problems. In one study, adults with attention deficit disorder were given a 2-week double-blind crossover of DL-phenylalanineversus placebo. A significant im-provement was noted on mood and attention. Treatment with DLphenyl-alanine also appears to ease depres-sion in patients receiving opiates for chronic non-malignant pain. This amino acid is included in Max En-durance™ to help maximize focus and minimize pain for more produc-tive workouts.Ferulic AcidThe phytochemical ferulic acid is found in the leaves and seeds of many plants, but especially in cere-als such as brown rice, whole wheat and oats. Ferulic acid is also present in coffee, apples, and artichokes. As an effective antioxidant, ferulic acid helps protect the body against free radicals and bodily stress, which can otherwise cause fatigue and illness.

This lessens the total body burden of free radical damage, which is a ma-jor contributing factor as to why we age and suffer from degenerative dis-eases. Ferulic acid also helps to in-crease energy, as well as stimulate an increase in strength and lean musclemass and a decrease in body fat.In one study of 7 Olympic weight-lifters, all experienced an increase in strength and endurance, a decrease in waist circumference and reduced residual joint and muscle soreness. Studies have shown that ferulic acid can decrease blood glucose levels and can be of help to diabetes patients. In addition, ferulic acid seems to pro-tect against cancer, bone degeneration, menopausal symptoms (hot flashes). Like many other antioxidants, ferulic acid reduces the level of cholesterol and triglyceride, thereby reducing the risk of heart disease.Potassium & Magnesium AspartateHave you ever noticed an ammo-nia smell in your clothes after a hard workout? This is because your body was using some amino acids as fuel but was not able to clear the waste products efficiently. When this hap-pens the carbon skeleton of amino acids is burned, leaving ammonia as a byproduct.

Ammonia is quite toxic and is converted to urea in a meta-bolic pathway called “the urea cycle,” which prepares it to be excreted in the urine. The urea cycle requires certain chemical compounds called aspar-tates, which are included in our Max Endurance Formula™. Aspartates are used by the body to detoxify the waste products of protein catabolism.They also help filter out toxic waste products your body generates during intense training. Eliminating these waste products helps you have more energy and recover faster. Ammonia is very toxic and will stop energy pro-duction in the cell. Using the aspar-tates in Max Endurance™ to neutral-ize the ammonia as soon as it forms enables you to have more energy and endurance. We suggest the product be used consistently every day, not just on days of endurance events. Take 5-10 capsules before training.  In addition to Max Endurance Formu-la™, there are other unique and power-ful nutritional supplements for endur-ance. Anyone who wants more energy, strength and stamina should consider ad-ditional supplementation.

I suggest you start with the Liver-Amino Formula™, since it provides protein and heme iron — the precise nutrients your body needs to build muscle, red blood cells and energy producing systems. If you’re not getting enough protein from conventional sourc-es, the Hi-Protein Powder™ is probably the next thing to add. If you need more calories, go with Pro-Carb™, CapTri® or any of our Supplement Bars or pud-dings. If you’re training on the edge andwant to explore the limits of your poten-tial, add in Muscle Amino™.In general, I suggest you begin using endurance supplements when training hard and definitely for at least three to six weeks before your event to build up your nutrient level reserves. This is es-pecially true for Liver-Amino™, since it takes about six weeks to build red blood cells. You’ll get better results if the nu-trition and supplements regimen is fol-lowed daily, not just around competition time. Consistency and dedication make the difference between champions and recreational athletes, and that applies to nutrition and supplementation as well as to training.P.S. Don’t forget your Essential Vitamin Formula™ and Mineral Electrolyte For-mula™, both of which can be doubled when in hard training.

Bulletin #142 – Ultimate Endurance Performance

Parrillo Performance provides the best quality supplements in the world. Pe-riod. We don’t cut any corners when it comes to nutritional support for our athletes. We want you to get the most from your training, and we want you to reach your goals . We’re here to help you win. In addition to our fa-mous success with bodybuilders, we also work with world class endurance athletes. In this article I will describe some of our best supplements for en-durance athletes, why they work and how to use them. Even if you’re not an endurance athlete and are just looking for more energy, our approach to diet and supplementation is sure to help . Finally, it’s also worth mentioning that many of the best bodybuilders also rely on our endurance supplements when they want to train longer and harder, and, more importantly, recover faster and more completely .

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Ultra-endurance activities are as-sociated with loss of lean body mass (1,2). Endurance activity causes loss of lean tissue because as fat and car-bohydrate fuels are exhausted the body draws on its own muscle tissue to use as fuel (3). Amino acids can be converted to glucose in the liver via a process known as “gluconeogenesis” (4,5). The so-called “branched chain amino acids” (leucine, isoleucine and valine) seem to be especially preferred as fuel substrates. In addition to being converted to glucose in the liver, the amino acids are unique in that they can also be used directly as fuel by the muscles (5). These are the amino acids included in our product Muscle Ami-no™ . Muscle Amino™ contains the balance of branched chain amino acids science has shown most beneficial.Have you ever noticed an ammo-nia smell in your clothes after a hard workout? This is because your body was using some amino acids as fuel but was not able to clear the waste products efficiently.

When this happens the car-bon skeleton of amino acids is burned, leaving ammonia as a byproduct. Am-monia is quite toxic and is converted to urea in a metabolic pathway called “the urea cycle,” which prepares it to be excreted in the urine (4,5). The urea cycle requires certain chemical com-pounds called “aspartates,” (4,5) which are included in our Max Endurance Formula™. We have developed this product specifically for use during en-durance activities. It works by provid-ing nutrients which are used by the body to detoxify the waste products of protein catabolism. Max Endurance™ helps filter out toxic waste products your body generates during intense training. Eliminating these waste products helps you have more energy and recover fast-er. Ammonia is very toxic and will stop energy production in the cell . Using the aspartates in Max Endurance™ to “neutralize” the ammonia as soon as it forms enables you to have more energy and endurance .

We suggest the product be used consistently everyday, not just on days of endurance events.Perhaps the most crucial supple-ment for endurance athletes is our Liver Amino Formula™. I cannot overem-phasize the importance of this product. What is endurance activity all about, anyway? It’s about producing energy over an extended period of time. Liver Amino™ helps in at least three ways — by providing heme iron, protein and B vitamins.Energy production in the human body requires two things: a fuel sub-strate and oxygen (3,5). Many people build up the importance of carbohydrates in endurance performance — and right-fully so. Carbs are your body’s best fuel source for endurance activity (3,6,7). However, for those carbs to be used as fuel your muscles require a constant supply of oxygen. Contrary to popular belief, it is usually the rate of oxygen delivery to cells which limits energy pro-duction, not the availability of glucose.As you know, it is the responsibil-ity of red blood cells to deliver oxy-gen to all the working tissues of your body (4). What you may not know is that endurance training actually can de-stroy red blood cells rather than building them up — if your nutrition’s not right. Bodybuilders have long recognized that strength training actually breaks down muscles and that this damage provides the stimulus for subsequent growth dur-ing the recovery period.

To build more muscle, you have to provide the nutrients muscles are made of. The same is true for endurance training, except it’s the blood system that takes a beating. And if you want to recover and be stronger as a result of your workout, you have to feed your body with the nutrients it needs to make red blood cells. Have you ever noticed that many endurance athletes are very thin and don’t have much muscle mass? Why is that? To understand why this happens, and what to do about it, you need to know a little about physiol-ogy and how the body adapts to endur-ance training .Endurance activity causes a condi-tion referred to as “sports anemia” (8-11). This occurs rapidly with the onset of training (9,11). Endurance training causes an increase in mitochondrial con-tent of the muscle tissue (mitochondria are the furnaces inside the cell where fuels are burned — the more energy you produce the more mitochondria you need), in myoglobin concentration (a pro-tein like hemoglobin, which is involved in transporting oxygen inside muscle cells), and in cytochrome enzymes (enzymes of the electron transport chain, involved in aerobic energy production) (12).

All of these are protein structures which are increased as an adaptive response to endurance training. To achieve this in-crease, the body draws on its erythrocytes (red blood cells), hemoglobin and plasma proteins as a source of protein (10-12). This is an example of the “plasticity’” of the body — the body remodeling its own structures to adapt to changing condi-tions. In other words, what’s happening is the body needs to build up its energy producing systems inside muscle cells to adapt to the training stimulus . These energy producing systems are made of protein. And the easiest place for your muscle cells to find protein is to steal it from red blood cells and plasma protein.Couple this increased protein need with the fact that endurance activity causes amino acids to be used as fuel substrates instead of as proteins, and you can see why endurance athletes are fre-quently borderline anemic and why they commonly experience muscle wasting.Liver Amino™ contains heme iron — the most bioavailable iron source (8).

The product contains desiccated liver (not cooked), as cooking can destroy the heme group and decrease its incor-poration in red blood cells by 50% (8). Liver Amino™ formula also provides 1.5 grams of complete protein per tablet. Heme iron and protein are precisely the nutrients your body needs to produce red blood cells. This way you can build your energy producing systems inside muscle cells and your blood system all at the same time, without having to sacrifice one for the other. Plus it’s a rich source of B vitamins, which are used in energy production. Start taking the Liver-Amino (five to eight with each meal) when you’re training hard and definitely at least six weeks before your event, since it takes that long to build up red blood cells.

References

1. Friedman JE and Lemon PWR. Ef-fect of chronic endurance exercise on retention of dietary protein. Int. J. Sports Med . 10: 118-123, 1989 .

2. Hickson JF and Wolinsky I. Human protein intake and metabolism in exer-cise and sports. Nutrition in Exercise and Sport, Hickson JF and Wolinsky I, Eds. p. 5-36. CRC Press, 1989.

3. Nagle FJ and Bassett DR Jr. Energy metabolism in exercise. Nutrition in Exercise and Sport, Hickson JF and Wolinsky I, Eds. p. 87-106. CRC Press, 1989 .

4. Guyton AC. Textbook of Medical Physiology. W.B. Saunders, 1991.

5. Zubay G. Biochemistry . Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1983.

6. Miller GD and Massaro EJ. Car-bohydrate in ultra-endurance perfor-mance. Nutrition in Exercise and Sport, Hickson JF and Wolinsky I, Eds. p. 51-62. CRC Press, 1989.

7. Pate TD and Brunn JC. Fundamen-tals of carbohydrate metabolism. Nutri-tion in Exercise and Sport, Hickson JF and Wolinsky I, Eds. pg. 37-50. CRC Press, 1989.

8. Scrimshaw NS. Iron Deficiency. Scientific American, pg. 46-52, Octo-ber, 1991.

9. Sherman AR and Kramer B. Iron nutrition and exercise. Nutrition in Exercise and Sport, Hickson JF and Wolinsky I, Eds. p. 291-308. CRC Press, 1989.

10. Shiraki K, Yamada T and Yoshimura H. Relation of protein nutrition to the reduction of red blood cells induced by physical training. Japanese J. Physiol. 27: 413-421, 1977 .

11. Yoshimura H, Inoue T, Yamada T and Shiraki K. Anemia during hard physical training (sports anemia) and its causal mechanism with special reference to protein nutrition. World Rev. Nutr. Diet. 35: 1-86, 1980.

12. Haymes. Proteins, Vitamins, and Iron. Ergogenic Aids in Sport; ed. Williams. Human Kinetics Publish-ers; 1983; p 27-55.

Bulletin #92 – Boost Endurance Naturally–and Safely

The spotlight at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, was not only on the games’ amazing athletes, but also on what has turned out to be one of the most abused performance-enhancing drugs ever - eryth-ropoietin (EPO).EPO is a synthetic version of a natural hormone in our bodies that is produced in the kidneys and stimulates the formation of red blood cells. Synthetic EPO is used medi-cally to treat certain types of anemia and other diseases. But as a black market sports drug, EPO is used by athletes to increase the body’s production of red blood cells, which transport oxygen to muscles. The net effect is to boost endurance - a job EPO does well, by 5 to 15 percent. Synthetic EPO, however, has trouble-some side effects when not taken under medical supervision. It thickens the blood, increasing the risk of heart failure and stroke, particularly during intense exercise.

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The drug is believed to be responsible for the deaths of 26 athletes.1But this bulletin is not about EPO. It is about how to increase endurance through nutrition and supplementation, without re-sorting to dangerous drugs . I’ve seen amazing results from ath-letes who are willing to take the natural route. Case in point: I once worked with a pro triathlete who regularly consumed 6,000 calories a day from lean proteins and natural carbohydrates. In a qualifier race for his third Ironman, the toughest, most grueling triath-lon in the world, he was able to maintain a sub-six minute pace and turned in the third fastest race of the day.Once in the Ironman, he was fueled by a breakfast of egg whites and oatmeal with CapTri®. During the first half of the bike race, he consumed 32 ounces of a special carbohydrate drink (Pro-Carb™), mixed with a medium-chain triglyceride supple-ment (CapTri®). He dismounted his bicycle in 240th place (out of 1,450 professional competitors).

At the 19th mile marker, he had moved up to 110th place. With seven miles to go, he picked up his pace and fin-ished in 79th place - his strongest Ironman showing everIf that’s the kind of endurance and stamina you’re looking for, no matter what your sport, here’s what to do to get it.Eat a Natural Carb-Laden Diet. Carbohydrate is the body’s preferred fuel source during exercise. It is stored in the liver and muscles as glycogen. More than 99 percent of the carbohydrates you eat are used by the body to make adenosine triphosphate (ATP). This is a molecular fuel used by the muscles to power contractions. The more carbohy-drates you include in your diet, the better your muscles run . In 1967, a now-classic study was per-formed to look at the effects of carbohydrate intake on glycogen levels and endurance. Endurance was measured by exercise time to exhaustion, with the subjects training at 75 percent of their maximal aerobic capacity. The researchers found a direct relation-ship between carbohydrate content of the diet and endurance time.

A low-carbohydrate diet (5 percent of calories) provided enough muscle glycogen stores to sustain one hour of exercise. A moderate carbohydrate diet (50 percent of calories) resulted in glycogen levels to sustain 115 minutes of exercise. The high-carbohydrate diet (82 percent of calo-ries) supported 170 minutes of high intensity exercise. Clearly, a high-carbohydrate diet is beneficial for endurance.2The best source of carbohydrate to meet the energy demands of the body are starchy carbs and fibrous carbs. I recom-mend that you eat at least one to two servings of starchy carbs and one to two servings of fibrous carbs at each meal, along with a lean protein source. For guidelines on how to do this, see The Parrillo Nutrition Manual™.Fuel Your Body with Carbohydrate SupplementsThe longer and harder you train, the more depleted your glycogen reserves become, and the sooner you fatigue. One way to prevent the onset of fatigue and help extend energy is to use a powdered carbo-hydrate supplement in your diet .Select a formulation that contains low DE dextrines, either maltodextrin or rice dextrin. These are slow-releasing carbo-hydrates derived from grains that provide sustained energy levels. This type of formu-lation is found in Parrillo ProCarb™ and Parrillo 50-50 Plus™.For even greater energy and endur-ance, sip that carbohydrate beverage during your workouts.

This provides a source of carbohydrate other than muscle glycogen. With glycogen spared, fatigue is delayed. Mix in CapTri®CapTri® is a me-dium-chain triglycer-ide (MCT) supplement. MCT oil is preferen-tially used as fuel for energy, instead of be-ing stored by the body. Medium chain fatty acid fragments can dif-fuse into the cell very quickly, where they are burned immediately for energy - at the same time as glucose . The ability of MCTs to enter the cells in this manner has a glucose-sparing effect, mean-ing that glucose and its stored counterpart, muscle glycogen, last longer without being depleted. The longer glycogen reserves last, the more energy you have. To boost your endurance during exercise, take CapTri with a carbohydrate sports drink. At the University of Capetown Medical School in South Africa, research-ers mixed 86 grams of MCT oil (nearly 6 tablespoons) with two liters of a10 percent glucose drink to see what effect it would have on the performance of six endurance-trained cyclists. The cyclists were fed a drink consisting of glucose alone, glucose plus MCT oil, or MCT oil alone. In the labora-tory, they pedaled at moderate intensity for about two hours and then completed a higher-intensity time trial.

They performed this cycling bout on three separate occasions so that each cyclist used each type of drink once. The cyclists sipped the drink every ten minutes. Performance improved the most when the cyclists supplemented with the MCT/glucose mixture. The researchers did some further biochemical tests on the cyclists and confirmed that the combination spared glycogen while making fat more ac-cessible for fuel.3Supplement with Endurance-Enhancing Nutrients. These include the following inosine, L-phenylalanine, D-phenylalanine, ferulic acid (FRAC), and magnesium and potassium aspartates, which is the formulation in our Max EnduranceT Formula. Inosine improves oxygen utilization for better stamina, possibly by forcing ad-ditional production of ATP. L-phenylalanine is an essential amino acid that acts as a potent mental stimulant for improved concentra-tion during workouts. The mirror image of L-phenylalanine is D-phenylalanine, an amino acid that inhibits the breakdown of endorphins (a protein-like substance with analgesic properties) for a higher pain threshold. Ferulic acid (FRAC). stimulates the endocrine system to aid recovery and boost workout capacity.4Hard training produces certain waste products, including ammonia .

By turning ammonia into uric acid, aspartates help filter waste products from the system, giving you extra stamina and extending endurance.5Supplement with Liver Tablets. Among the most crucial supplement for anyone who wants to increase endur-ance is desiccated and defatted liver, the basis for our Liver-Amino™ Formula. I can’t overemphasize the importance of this supplement, because defatted liver is an excellent source of heme iron. Iron is essential for the manufacture of two important proteins in the body: he-moglobin, a constituent of red blood cells that gives them their color; and myoglobin, an oxygen-carrying protein in muscle cells. Hemoglobin picks up oxygen from the lungs and transports it to the body’s cells where it is used to produce energy from the foods you eat. Myoglobin allows oxygen to be consumed inside muscle cells. Without adequate iron, the oxygen delivery system won’t work well, nor will oxygen be burned properly inside the cells . Clearly, iron has a central position in produing energy .For best results, I recommend that you take several Liver Amino™ Formula tablets with each meal. Along with ample calories from high-density foods, desiccated liver supplements should help you reach peak levels of performance. There you have it - ways to boost endurance, naturally and safely - as long as you’re willing to go the extra mile nutrition-ally, and not take short cuts.

References

1. Dunn, A. 2000. “Olympics again put oft-abused Amgen drug under scrutiny.” Los Angeles Times, September 18.

2. Bergstrom J., et al. 1967. Diet, muscle glycogen and physical performance. Acta Physiology Scandinavian, 71: 140-150 .

3. Van Zyl, C. 1996. Effects of me-dium chain triglyceride ingestion on fuel me-tabolism and cycling performance. Journal of Applied Psychology 80: 2217-2225.

4 . Murray, M .T . 1996 . Encyclopedia of Nutritional Supplements. Rocklin, Cali-fornia: Prima Health.

5. Wesson, M., et al. 1988. Effects of oral administration of aspartic acid salts on the endurance capacity of trained athletes. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport 59: 234-239 .

Bulletin #62 – Ultimate Endurance Performance

It is well known that endurance exercise performance is highly dependent on carbohydrate fuel availability. Inges-tion of a high carbohydrate (CHO) diet prior to exercise, and supplementation of carbohydrate during exercise, have both repeatedly proven to improve endurance performance. Furthermore, the onset of fatigue during prolonged exercise corre-lates highly with muscle glycogen deple-tion. However, the rate of oxidation of orally supplemented CHO seems to have a maximum limit around 1.0 to 1.1 grams per minute (1). Even when ingestion of oral carbohydrate during exercise is in-creased to a rate of 2 grams per minute, the rate of oxidation of this carbohydrate supplement did not exceed 1 gram per minute. Thus there seems to be an upper limit to how fast the body can digest, ab-sorb, transport, and oxidize carbohydrate. In simple terms, your body cannot digest and absorb carbs fast enough to keep up with the rate of carbohydrate oxidation during prolonged exercise performed at moderately high intensity .

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What this means is that you can’t keep up with the energy demand simply by supplying extra carbs while you exer-cise—your body can’t absorb them fast enough. If you try, you’ll just get a full stomach and a belly ache. So this means that muscle glycogen will be consumed and eventually when it is depleted you will “hit the wall.” So another strategy to improve endurance performance would be to supply another fuel source that could be used at the same time as carbo-hydrates, possibly sparing muscle gly-cogen and delaying the onset of fatigue. There are several theoretical reasons why medium chain triglycerides, such as Cap-Tri®, might help in this regard. CapTri® is a special kind of engineered fat that is processed by the body differently from conventional fats (2). CapTri® is absorbed directly into the bloodstream from the gut and is transported to the liver where it is largely metabolized into ketone bodies. CapTri® is absorbed and metabolized as rapidly as glucose and serves as a source of immediate energy. The liver converts CapTri® into ketone bodies, which are fat breakdown products, which are then transported to the muscles and burned as fuel.

Importantly, the availability of carbohydrate does not seem to suppress the use of CapTri® as a fuel source (2,3). This means that if we add CapTri® to the fuel mix it will be burned at the same time we’re burning carbohydrate, and this extra source of added energy should help relieve the demands on the carbohydrate depot. In theory, this should improve en-durance performance. CapTri® has a number of oth-er interesting metabolic properties that makes it well suited as an energy sub-strate for exercise. It is very rapidly di-gested and absorbed, and does not require transport via the lymphatic system, as do conventional fats (2,4,5,6,7). Further-more, medium chain fatty acids (MCFAs) do not require the carnitine transport system for entry into mitochondria, which further enhances their availability as an immediate energy source . Medium chain fatty acids are thus oxidized as rapidly as glucose itself (2) which is truly remark-able. What this all means is that we have an alternative fuel source which can be burned just as fast as glucose and which can be burned at the same time as glu-cose. Since there is a limit to how fast we can digest and absorb energy from car-bohydrate (about one gram per minute) this represents an excellent way to further enhance supplemental energy intake dur-ing exercise. CapTri® has a very high thermogenic effect, which means it is preferentially burned as a fuel source, and also has very little tendency to be stored as body fat (4,5,6,7).

MCFAs (includes MCTs) have been shown to produce as much energy as glucose when isocaloric quantities of MCFA or glucose was in-gested prior to exercise (8).A recent study was undertaken to examine the effects of MCFA supplementation on endurance exercise performance (8). Six male cyclists all with three years or more of serious training experience at 300-500 km/week were studied. Each subject com-pleted three successive trials consisting of two hours riding at 60% of peak VO2 (60% of maximal intensity) followed im-mediately by a 40 km time trial. Each of these trials were separated by ten days during which time the subjects ate and trained as usual. Before the experimental trials the cyclists consumed either a 10% solution of short chain glucose polymer, an isocaloric 4.3% MCT solution, or else a solution providing a mixture of 10% glucose polymer plus 4.3% MCT. These test formulas were called CHO, MCT, or CHO+MCT, respectively. During the exercise sessions the subjects’ blood and respiratory gases were measured to moni-tor fuel metabolism. When comparing the three for-mulas in terms of average speed to com-plete the 40 km time trial, it was found that the fastest average speed was for the CHO+MCT formula, in the middle was the CHO alone, and the cyclists per-formed the slowest when supplementing with MCT alone (8).

This makes perfect sense if you think about it. We know that the preferred fuel for intense exercise per-formance is carbohydrate, and that endur-ance performance correlates with carbo-hydrate availability. So we would expect that cyclists supplementing with carbo-hydrate alone would perform better than those supplementing with MCT alone, and this is exactly what was observed. Furthermore, we would expect that taking both CHO and MCT together at the same time would result in better endurance performance than either one separately, and this also is what was found. This is because MCFA can be used as fuel at the same time as glucose, thus increasing the overall pool of available energy substrate beyond what can be obtained from car-bohydrate alone. Conventional fats just don’t seem to be very effective at this, apparently because they are metabolized too slowly. When some of the specific me-tabolites were looked at, it was found that both of the supplemental formulas which provided carbohydrate suppressed the rise in endogenous free fatty acids normally seen during prolonged exercise. What am I talking about?

This is simply saying that if you use a carbohydrate-containing supplement before or during exercise this will decrease your use of body fat as a fuel source during the exercise session. Logical, right? If you eat a bunch of carbs right before you train, you’ll burn less body fat than if you train on an empty stomach. This is why it’s so important to define your training goals and know what you’re trying to accomplish. If you what to maximize endurance performance you should supplement with carbohydrate (and even better, with carbohydrate plus CapTri®) before and during training, but if you want to maximize body fat loss during the training session you should do it on an empty stomach. Or if you’re wor-ried about maximizing lean body mass, refer back to the “Next Level” articles in the September and October issues of The Press, where we explain how branched chain amino acid supplementation (Mus-cle Amino Formula™, Hi-Protein Pow-der™, 50/50 Plus™ or Optimized Whey Protein™) can help prevent muscle loss during training . In contrast, the addition of CHO to the MCT-containing formula did not reduce the rise in plasma-free medium chain fatty acids. So while carbohydrate availability seems to reduce the oxidation of long chain fatty acids (which includes both body fat and conventional dietary fats) it does not suppress the use of MCFAs (includes MCTs) (2,8,9).

This is another reason why conventional fats just don’t work well as energy supplements during endurance exercise. If you want the biochemical explanation: carbohy-drate metabolism generates an intermedi-ate called malonyl-CoA which inhibits the activity of the carnitine shuttle. This is the transport system which is required to carry long chain fatty acids inside the mitochondria where they are burned. This means that as long as carbohydrate fuel is available for exercise you won’t burn much fat. It’s only as the carbohydrate stores become depleted that fat burning picks up. On the other hand, MCFAs such as CapTri® do not need the car-nitine shuttle to enter mitochondria, so for this reason they can be burned at the same time as glucose. This is one of their special properties that make them so well suited as an energy source for athletes. Of note, the rate of carbohy-drate oxidation was lower in the MCT and CHO+MCT trials than in the CHO trial after 90 minutes of exercise. Overall the rate of carbohydrate oxidation was highest for the CHO formula, moderate for the CHO+MCT, and lowest for the MCT alone. This also is exactly what we might have expected. The addition of MCT to the CHO formula represents an alternative fuel source which can be used at the same time as glucose . So you would expect this to help the glucose last longer, which it did.

And the rate of glucose oxidation is lowest for the pure MCT supplement because no supplemen-tal glucose is provided in this formula. Equally as important, the decrease in carbohydrate oxidation which occurred as a result of MCT supplementation seems to have been due to decreased oxidation of muscle glycogen, rather than just a decrease in oxidation of plasma glucose. There are two very important findings from this study which will help endurance athletes . First is that the addi-tion of MCT to a CHO beverage supple-ment ingested during exercise signifi-cantly increased cycling speeds during a 40 km time trial done after a two hour “pre-exhaustion” ride at 60% intensity. This means that the MCFAs significantly improved performance at the end of a long (approximately three hours total) endurance event. Second, the MCTs also seemed to spare muscle glycogen at the end of this simulated race. This may in fact be the mechanism by which perfor-mance was improved. At Parrillo Perfor-mance we have noticed for some time that our athletes seem to be stronger and perform better for a longer period when supplementing with CapTri®. We always believed the reason for this to be two-fold. One part of the explanation is that CapTri® provides an additional energy source which can be burned at the same time as glucose, thereby providing greater overall energy delivery to muscles. Also, this additional energy substrate seems to spare muscle glycogen, thereby delaying the onset of fatigue. So you not only can perform faster, you can perform faster longer.

This is the first formal laboratory experiment which has been performed to scientifically prove that these theories of ours actually do work in experienced athletes . I should mention that other ex-periments have been done in the past which failed to demonstrate any decrease in carbohydrate oxidation as a result of MCT supplementation . These trials used doses of MCT around the 30 gram level (about 2 tablespoons), which doesn’t seem to be enough to demonstrate a statistically significant decrement in CHO oxidation. The protocol reviewed here (8) employed an MCT dose around 86 grams, which is equal to 6 tablespoons, administered in a beverage consumed gradually during exercise over 3 hours. So to get this effect you would need to consume about 2 table-spoons of CapTri®per hour. This should be mixed with Pro-Carb™, a slow-release complex carbohydrate, to generate a fairly dilute solution. We suggest two scoops of Pro-Carb™ mixed with two tablespoons of CapTri® in one-half to one liter of water to be consumed gradually during each hour of intense endurance exercise. During a three hour endurance event this would amount to a total of six scoops of Pro-Carb™ and six tablespoons of Cap-Tri® in a total of 1.5 to 3 liters of fluid. Adjust the amount of fluid to suit your particular needs. This will vary somewhat depending on ambient temperature and humidity.

Remember that water replace-ment is just as important, if not more so, than carbohydrate supplementation. This formula will provide a total of 1,320 calories split roughly equally between carbohydrate and MCFA. Also, be sure to experiment extensively with this for-mula before an actual competitive event. Some people experience mild nausea or stomach cramps the first time they use MCT, particularly in fluid form. So break yourself into it before a real competitive event. In summary, this study confirms some of our theories and observations that we’ve been talking about for the last eight years or so. That is, MCFAs like Cap-Tri® improve endurance performance. This seems to be the result of both the availability of a secondary energy source which can be rapidly oxidized along with glucose, thus increasing energy deliv-ery to cells, and also by sparing muscle glycogen oxidation and delaying fatigue. Don’t forget — you heard it here first. For a refresher course on MCFA biochemistry and metabolism, get a copy of our Sports Nutrition Guide which is filled with great information on CapTri® and energy utili-zation during exercise.

References

1. Jeukendrup AE, Saris WHM, Brouns F, Halliday D, and Wagenmakers AJM. Effects of carbohydrate (CHO) and fat supplementation on CHO metabolism during prolonged exercise. Metabolism 45: 915-921 (1996).

2. Bach AC and Babayan VK. Medium chain triglycerides: an update. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 36: 950-962 (1982).

3. Jeukendrup AE, Saris WHM, Schrau-wen P, Brouns F, and Wagenmakers AJM. Metabolic availability of oral medium chain triglycerides co-ingested with car-bohydrates during prolonged exercise. J. Appl. Physiol. 79: 756-762 (1995).Ultimate Endurance Performance

4. Baba N, Bracco EF, and Hashim SA. Enhanced thermogenesis and diminished deposition of fat in response to overfeed-ing with diet containing medium chain triglyceride. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 35: 678-682 (1982).

5. Geliebter A, Torbay N, Bracco EF, Hashim SA, and Van Itallie TB. Over-feeding with medium chain triglyceride diet results in diminished deposition of fat. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 37: 1-4 (1983).

6. Seaton TB, Welle SL, Warenko MK, and Campbell RG. Thermic effect of me-dium-chain and long-chain triglycerides in man. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 44: 630-634 (1986).

7. Hill JO, Peters JC, Yang D, Sharp T, Kaler M, Abumrad N, and Greene HL. Thermogenesis in humans during over-feeding with medium chain triglycerides. Metab. 38: 641-648 (1989).

8. Van Zyl CG, Lambert EV, Hawley JA, Noakes TD, and Dennis SC. Effects of medium chain triglyceride ingestion on fuel metabolism and cycling perfor-mance. J. Appl. Physiol. 80: 2217-2225 (1996).

9. Jeukendrup AE, Saris WHM, Van Dis-sen R, et al. Effect of endogenous carbo-hydrate availability on oral medium chain triglyceride oxidation during prolonged exercise. J. Appl. Physiol. 80: 949-954 (1996).

Bulletin #56 – No Limits: How To Break Through Plateaus—Part 3

So far this series has addressedways to help you break through plateaus inyour muscular development as well as howto spark fat-burning when you’ve seem tohave reached a plateau. This month I’d liketo finish up on how to continue fat loss.So far we’ve covered the most ba-sic concepts of fat loss: eat right and staystrict on your diet (I’m not even going toelaborate on that in this article—we’ve beenthrough it several times lately), don’t cutcalories below your MER (maintenance en-ergy requirement), and use extra aerobics toburn body fat. A couple more items ofgroundwork need to be addressed. How fastshould you lose fat? A pound a week is agood general rule.

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It is possible to lose fatfaster than that, but you increase your riskof losing muscle if you do. I have foundmost people can lose one pound of fat perweek without losing much muscle. So planahead. If you want to lose 20 pounds of fatplan on 10 weeks of dieting, a two-week breakto build your metabolism, and 10 more weeksor dieting, for a total of 22 weeks. If youwant to enter a contest, plan on being readytwo weeks out, so you have time to fine tunethings and fill out a little at the end. Keep inmind that when I say “diet” you still get toconsume a lot of calories—your MER. Thisis not a painful starvation diet.A pound of fat contains approxi-mately 3,500 calories, so to lose a pound aweek that means you need to achieve a nega-tive energy balance of 500 calories a day(multiply that by seven days a week and youget 3,500 calories). Do this by consumingyour MER and doing 500 calories worth ofextra aerobics a day beyond what you nor-mally do. This could be anywhere from 30 to60 minutes of extra aerobics a day, depend-ing on how intense your aerobic activity is.When you do your aerobic exercise youshould be breathing hard and sweating. Thisis a more reliable sign that you’re burningfat than your heart rate.How do I know that I’m losing fatand not muscle? By using the Body Stat Kitonce a week. You can determine your poundsof lean mass and pounds of fat every weekand make adjustments in your training anddiet accordingly to make sure you stay ontrack.

The Body Stat Kit Manual containsdetailed instructions on exactly how tochange your training and diet to make sureyour body composition keeps moving in theright direction. I think one of the reasons theParrillo Program has been so successful forso many people is that everything is scien-tifically controlled. How many calories, howmuch protein, carbs, and fat, how manymeals, which foods, how to combine thefoods, macronutrient ratios, Diet Trac Sheets,the Training Log, Body Stat Sheets—it’s allin the manuals. Every parameter of yourbodybuilding program is covered and noth-ing is left to chance. If you weigh your foodand keep track of your diet and body com-position like you’re supposed to, andsomething’s not working right, we can pin-point exactly what the problem is and makedetailed adjustments to fix it. Otherwise, ifyou’re just going on what “feels right” orseems to make sense, and you don’t makegood progress, you’re not sure what tochange.A very successful approach I wroteabout a couple of months ago involves al-ternating one month on a weight gain cyclewith one month on a fat loss cycle. This wayyour metabolism never adapts and you avoidthe problem of plateaus altogether. Let’s sayone month you gain a pound a week (fourpounds) and it’s 75% muscle.

That’s threepounds of muscle and one pound of fat. Thenext month you lose a pound a week and it’s75% fat. So that month you lose threepounds of fat and one pound of muscle. Atthe end of the two month cycle the net resultis that you’ve gained two pounds of muscleand lost two pounds of fat. After one yearyou would gain 12 pounds of muscle andlose 12 pounds of fat. I believe these goalsare quite realistic and very easily attainablefor anyone, and particularly easy for body-builders who are giving 100% effort to thetraining and nutrition program. The beautyof this idea is that you’re constantly makingprogress, you’re always either gainingmuscle or losing fat, and the constantchange prevents your metabolism fromadapting so you can make continualprogress without wasting time being stuckon a plateau and trying to figure out what todo. In principle you could keep this up foryear after year. If you’re 20% body fat ormore, you may want to devote a few monthsto getting in shape first, or if you’re reallyskinny you may want to spend a few monthsjust putting on size. But if you’re somewherein the middle, maybe around 10% body fat,you might consider giving this program atry.

To gain a pound a week increase yourcalories to 300-500 above your MER, do 20-30 minutes of aerobics a day, and train like apowerlifter with heavy sets in the 3-6 reprange. To lose a pound a week decrease calo-ries to your MER, do 60 minutes of aerobicsa day, and train like a bodybuilder with in-creased volume and moderate weight in the8-12 rep range. I think this approach maywell work better for today’s leaner, cleanernatural bodybuilder than the old style ofweight cycling, which often involved gain-ing 50 pounds in the off season, then losing40 pounds during the pre-contest diet tocome into the show 10 pounds heavier thanlast year. (Although this method also had itspluses, like stretching the fascia.)Now let’s move on to some specif-ics. So we don’t want to cut calories, because that can easily lead to muscle loss.Are there any other dietary manipulationsthat can help? Yes. Continue to eat five, sixor more meals spaced evenly throughout theday. This has several beneficial effects. Ev-ery time you eat your metabolic rate in-creases a little due to the thermic effect offeeding (also known as diet-induced ther-mogenesis). Eating frequently keeps the fur-nace stoked and keeps your metabolismspeeding along.

If you go too long withouteating your metabolism begins to slow down.Make every effort to eliminate fat from yourdiet. I won’t go into the details here, but di-etary protein and complex carbohydrateshave negligible tendency to be converted tofat, whereas dietary fat is very prone to bestored as body fat (1,2,3,4). This is a hot topicin the scientific literature these days and is amatter of debate in the bodybuilding maga-zines. (It is less a matter of debate in thescientific journals, where actual research isreported.) Very little of your body fat comesfrom complex carbohydrates or protein be-ing converted into fat; almost all of it comesfrom fat you eat. How much fat your bodystores seems to be more closely related tohow much fat you eat rather than how manycalories you eat. Admittedly, this is less im-portant during calorie restricted diets. Dur-ing low calorie diets you are not eatingenough calories to maintain your bodyweight, so all of the calories you eat will beburned, even if some do come from fat. How-ever, in diets which provide enough caloriesto maintain body weight or even enough tosupport growth (including the Parrillo Diet)then the fat content becomes very, very im-portant. If you eat a weight maintenance dietor an energy surplus diet to support growth,then the calories supplied as dietary fat willbe stored as body fat, not muscle.

Part of theconfusion in the bodybuilding magazines isdue to the failure to distinguish the variousexperimental designs and improperly apply-ing this information to bodybuilding.Without restricting calories, thereare some things we can do to help shift themetabolism into fat-burning mode. First is toeliminate fat from your diet. Whenever youdo aerobics some of the fuel is derived fromcarbohydrates and some from fat. If you’renot eating any fat or simple sugars whichare easily turned into fat, then the fat youburn during aerobic exercise must come fromstored body fat. If di-etary carbs and pro-tein are not convertedto fat (and they’re notunder conditions of adiet supplying a num-ber of calories equiva-lent to the MER) thenyou will achieve nega-tive fat balance. Thismeans that on a dailybasis your body burnsmore fat than you eat,so you lose body fat.Metabolically speak-ing, this means yourrespiratory quotient isless than your fuelquotient. Within thelast few years it hasbeen discovered thatthis condition (RQ lessthan FQ) must be sat-isfied for fat loss to oc-cur. What this meansis that to lose fat you have to achieve a nega-tive fat balance, not a negative energy bal-ance as is commonly thought. In simple terms:dietary fat matters more than calories. To losefat, don’t eat any fat and do aerobics to burnstored body fat. It’s that simple. We’ve beendoing it that way at Parrillo for years, but theexact details of how it works are just nowcoming out in the scientific journal articles.Second, decrease your carbohy-drate intake. This lowers insulin levels andpromotes fat burning. How do you cut downon carbs without decreasing calories? Well,you have to eat more of something else.

Fatis not an option, so your only other choicesare protein or CapTri®. Either one will work,but a combination of both probably worksbest. Let’s be brutally honest about this. Ifyou’re used to getting most of your caloriesfrom carbs, cutting back significantly oncarbs makes you feel bad, at least for a while.People who cut their carbs dramatically havelow energy levels, are irritable and grouchy,and get headaches. Low carbs sucks, basi-cally. You’ll get used to it after a while, butthe first few weeks of a low carb diet are notfun. CapTri® is more effective at relievingsome of these symptoms than protein be-cause it’s more readily used as an energysource. Protein is not a very efficient energysource. It’s role is to serve as building blocksfor repair and maintenance of tissues, not toprovide metabolizable fuel. Using protein forenergy is kind of like trying to burn a wetlog. Carbs, on the other hand, are a great energy source. So if you want to reduce carbsin your diet to manipulate hormone levelsand promote fat metabolism it makes senseto replace those calories with another fuelsource, namely CapTri®. CapTri® is a goodchoice because it is readily burned as fueland won’t be stored as body fat, (5, 6). Isuggest you ease into this slowly. Start byeliminating starchy carbs from your last mealsof the day. Replace those lost calories fromcarbs with an equivalent number of caloriesfrom CapTri®. CapTri® actually has a higherthermogenic effect than carbohydrate, mean-ing that more of this dietary energy will belost as body heat with less energy availablefor storage. This further promotes additionalfat loss. Continue in this way until you re-duce your daily carbohydrate grams to abouthalf of what you normally consume. At thispoint you’ll be eating mostly protein, veg-etables and CapTri®.Recently I did a feature on how tooptimize your training to maximize fat loss.One of the most important points is to doyour aerobics when you are relatively carb-depleted. This will cause you to burn morefat during your workout (because less carbsare available). The best time is first thing inthe morning before breakfast. Your glyco-gen stores are the lowest they’ll be all day,so you’ll rely more heavily on stored fat. Taketwo scoops of Hi-Protein Powder™ to pre-vent muscle loss, then do your aerobics.Another good time is right after weight train-ing, because then you’re relatively glyco-gen depleted too. You should do moderateto fairly high intensity aerobics, so thatyou’re breathing hard and sweating. Whileit’s true you burn a higher percentage of calo-ries from fat during low intensity aerobics,you will burn more grams of body fat if youperform high intensity aerobics, becauseyou’ll burn so many more total calories.

Also,if you do reasonably intense aerobics youwill get the added benefits of increased vas-cular density and enhanced fat burning ca-pacity. Increase the volume of aerobics pro-gressively as you get leaner. If your fat lossplateaus the first thing to try is to do moreaerobics. If that doesn’t work you shouldprobably back off for a couple weeks, in-crease your calories, put on some muscle,and get your metabolism going again.If you want more details than I haveNo Limits: How To Break Through Plateaus, Part IIIbeen able to squeeze into this article, checkout the Parrillo Performance NutritionManual and the Body Stat Kit. I go into greatdetail about which foods to eat, which foodsto avoid, and how to structure your meals.The Nutrition Manual contains a three stepprotocol for reducing body fat levels to con-test condition, as well as describing how tomanipulate carbs and water at the end. TheBody Stat Kit contains instructions on ex-actly how to modify your training and nutri-tion program based on your weekly changesin body composition. The Nutrition Manualcomes with its own food scale and Diet TracSheets to record your calories and grams ofprotein, carbs, and fat. It even includes afood composition guide that lists the nutri-ent breakdown of all the bodybuilding foods.The Body Stat Kit includes high quality cali-pers and everything you need to chart yourbody composition. Remove the guessworkfrom your bodybuilding program. Don’tleave anything to chance. We’ve got all thedetails covered. You want results? Get themwith Parrillo.

References

1. Flatt JP. Dietary fat, carbohydrate balance,and weight maintenance: effects of exercise.Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 45: 296-306, 1987.

2. Flatt JP. Use and storage of carbohydrateand fat. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 61: 952s-959s, 1995.

3. Swinburn B and Ravussin E. Energy bal-ance or fat balance? Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 57:766S-771S, 1993.

4. Acheson KJ, Flatt JP, and Jequier E. Gly-cogen synthesis versus lipogenesis after a500 gram carbohydrate meal in man. Metabo-lism 31: 1234-1240, 1982.

5. Baba N, Bracco EF, and Hashim SA. En-hanced thermogenesis and diminished depo-sition of fat in response to overfeeding withdiet containing medium chain triglyceride.Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 35: 678-682, 1982.

6. Bach AC and Babayan VK. Medium chaintriglycerides: an update. Am. J. Clin. Nutr.36: 950-962, 1982.

Bulletin #55 – No Limits: How To Break Through Plateaus—Part 2

In the first part of this series Idiscussed breaking plateaus in your mus-cular development. Most of the article dealtwith nutritional considerations and howto manipulate and regulate your nutrientsto spur muscle growth. At the very end Ibegan to delve into adjustments in yourtraining to spark lean mass gains shouldyou reach a plateau. There are several moreaspects concerningtraining and muscle gainthat need to addressedbefore I move on to thesecond part of the dis-cussion, breakingthrough fat-loss pla-teaus. So if you’reready, let’s get started.I get peoplewho call all the time,looking for my  “bless-ing” to take a couple ofdays off. “What aboutover-training?” they ask.“Should I cut down ontraining?” “Should I takea lay off?” Everybodythese days is worriedabout over-training. Iwould like to respond tothis on two levels. First,if you think you will stimulate yourmuscles to grow bigger by not trainingthem, you’re fooling yourself. It’s theworkout that stimulates your muscles togrow. Less workout means less stimu-lus. Rather than cutting back on yourtraining, consider increasing your nutri-tional support instead. This is wheresupplements can really help – when you’retraining so hard that you can barely re-cover. Of course it is possible that youmay fail to recover from your workouts,and in that sense you may be “over-trained.”

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That doesn’t mean that you’reexercising too much however, it meansthat you’re not recovering enough. Thisstate of “over-training” really describes thestate of your body’s balance betweenstress (exercise) on one hand and recov-ery on the other. If the level of stress isso high that you’re not recovering, theanswer most people give is to train less.Rather than this imbalance being a prob-lem of too much exercise, I view it as aproblem of not enough recovery. Peopleare not over-trained,they’re under-recov-ered. Before you cutdown on your train-ing, beef up your nu-trition and get morerest. Approach yournutrition with asmuch intensity asyour workouts. Also,make sleep a priority.Eat right, eat a lot, getenough sleep, andyou probably won’tfeel over-trained anymore. What’s the al-ternative? Train lessand eat less. Doesthat sound like theway to get your bodyto grow?Now I wouldlike to respond to the question of over-training at a second level. This has to dowith the volume of exercise versus theintensity of exercise.

You cannot make upfor low intensity exercise by increasingthe volume. If you’re lifting half-heartedlywithout giving it your full effort, then add-ing a few extra sets onto the end of yourworkout won’t help. While these low in-tensity sets will not stimulate musclegrowth, they will however use up yourrecovery ability. If you find your weighttraining sessions are dragging on for twoor three hours and you’re still not grow-ing, I suspect your exercise volume is toohigh and your intensity is too low. Whenyou enter the gym, you must be very se-rious and all business. You’re not in thereto socialize and have fun. Hit the weightshard at full intensity. Generally, you shouldbe done with your workout in 60 min-utes, and 90 at the most. When it comesto over-training, I find that the volume ofhigh intensity exercise is rarely the prob-lem. The problem usually turns out to bea large volume of low intensity exercise.This is not an effective stimulus forgrowth but will contribute to fatigue.Another area often overlooked is aerobics.When discussing this issue, many peoplewill say if you spend your energy on aero-bics then that leaves you with less energyto grow.

This is a rather short-sighted so-lution to the problem. Your muscles neednutrients to grow. They need blood flow.Moderate to high intensity aerobic exer-cise will increase capillary density andblood flow to muscles, providing forgreater nutrient delivery (1,2). This willallow for more growth over the long term.I am convinced that if you include aero-bic exercise in your training program thiswill allow for greater overall musculardevelopment over the long term. Youshould obviously do more aerobics whenpreparing for a contest and less whileyou’re trying to gain weight, but I believeyou should do aerobics year round.Twenty to thirty minutes a day on the bikewill burn 250-300 calories, so if you’retrying to gain weight just eat a few morecalories to make up for it. Think of it thisway: in the off season eat a Parrillo Barand ride the bike for at least 30 minutes.You’ll strengthen your cardiovascular sys-tem, have a richer blood supply, and endup with bigger muscles. The other ben-efit of aerobics is that it helps you burnfat, so while you’re gaining muscle you’llstay lean. Some bodybuilders are afraidto do aerobics in the off season becausethey think it will make them lose muscle.This won’t happen if you simply eat enough calories to compensate for thoseused during the aerobic activity. If youeat enough high quality calories, this willsupport muscle growth while the aero-bics helps you lose fat.What about supplementation?Can this help me gain more muscle?

Yes,but I want you to sort out the problemswith your diet and training program firstrather than hope that supplements willsomehow fix everything else. Remember,the foundation of bodybuilding successis hard work, consistency, and dedicationto a solid diet and training program.Supplements are the icing on the cake,not the foundation. If you’re eating sloppyand training half-heartedly, supplementswill not give you the results you’re after.On the other hand, if you’re eating rightand training as hard as you can, supple-ments can improve your gains over whatyou could achieve without them.The single best supplement forgaining muscle is Creatine. This is a mol-ecule stored inside muscle cells and is in-volved in energy production (1,2,6,7). Itincreases muscle size and strength dra-matically within the first month of usingit. Muscle gains of 4-14 pounds andstrength increases of 10-15% are typicalduring the first month of creatine supple-mentation. That’s quite amazing when youthink about it. Most of the muscularweight gain is do to storage of water in-side muscle cells. As creatine is stored inthe muscle, it attracts water, causing themuscle cell to swell.

The strength in-creases are due to increased energy pro-ducing ability of the muscle (1,2,6,7).While muscle gains during the first monthof creatine supplementation are miracu-lous, things slow down after that. Afterthe muscles are saturated with creatinethey can’t soak up anymore, and afterthat it’s a matter of maintenance of cre-atine stores. For the first 1-3 weeks youshould use 20 grams of creatine a dayto fully load the muscle, then after that5-10 grams a day is enough to maintainmuscle stores. It stands to reason thatmuscle protein gain will ultimately beenhanced as well, leading to fastermuscle growth, because you’re able totrain heavier while using creatine. This,of course, if providing you increase yourprotein and calories to support thisgrowth.The next most important supple-ments are ones which provide these calo-ries and extra protein, since inadequatecaloric and protein intake is the mostcommon reason for failing to gain moremuscle. The best choices are Hi-ProteinPowder™, Pro-Carb™, and CapTri®which are specially formulated to mini-mize fat accumulation while increasingcalories. A scoop of Pro-Carb™ and Hi-Protein™ mixed together in water hasthe perfect nutrient profile to supportmuscle growth.

I’m working on a newcombination product which will containessentially this same nutrient breakdown.If you’re prone to gaining fat wheneveryou increase calories, I suggest you useCapTri®. CapTri® is unique in that it is away to provide more calories with virtu-ally no tendency to be stored as fat (4,5).At the high end of the supplement ladderare the amino acids. Muscle Amino For-mula™ supplies pure branched chainamino acids, the most common aminoacids incorporated into muscle protein.This supplement is usually reserved forcompetitive bodybuilders and enduranceathletes. It has the effect of making themuscle harder and fuller and is especiallyuseful to minimize muscle loss while di-eting for a contest. If you’re training hardand long enough to lose your pump bythe end of your workout, this is a tre-mendous supplement for you. Liver-Amino Formula™ is also a great supple-ment because it contains 1½ grams ofprotein per tablet as well as heme iron.Take five to eight with each of your sixmeals, you’re looking at an additional 45 to 72 grams of protein. For additional calo-ries, the Parrillo Bar is a tremendous ad-dition to your diet. It contains 250 calo-ries per bar, which includes 11 grams ofquality protein, 37 grams of complex car-bohydrates and five grams of CapTri®.You should now have a prettygood idea of the areas you should con-centrate your focus on if your goal is topack on lean mass.

Now I want to sharesome tips on what to do when yourprogress stalls when you’re dieting to losefat. Of course, gaining and losing are con-tradictory by nature. What you’ll find,however, is that the goals in bodybuild-ing and fitness dictate that you do bothat the same time. It’s a crazy thought,but it’s possible. Want to know how. Readon.When you talk to most peopleabout fat loss, the most obvious waythey’ll say to lose weight is to restrictcalories. And in fact, the fastest way tolose weight is to stop eating altogether.Unfortunately, when you lose weight bysevere caloric restriction about half ofthe weight you lose is muscle. This isknown as “the starvation response.”When you severely restrict food intakeyour body thinks it’s starving (which itis) so it makes certain metabolic adapta-tions to allow it to survive longer withoutfood. Your body fat represents storedenergy for just such an emergency, soyour body tries to make it last as long aspossible. During starvation your metabo-lism shifts and you end up losing as muchmuscle as fat. Recall pictures you haveseen of prisoner of war survivors or fam-ine survivors. True, they have no bodyfat, but they have no muscle mass either.By losing muscle mass your body candecrease its metabolic rate, or the num-ber of calories it requires to survive eachday.

This means the fat stores will lastlonger, since with less muscle the bodyrequires fewer calories to maintain itselfeach day. So during severe caloric restric-tion you lose muscle and your metabolicrate decreases. And with a slower me-tabolism, the rate of fat burning slowsdown. All of this makes great sense fromthe point of view of surviving a famine,but it’s exactly the opposite of what body-builders want to achieve.Bodybuilders don’t want to loseany muscle while they lose fat. Further-more, we don’t want to slow down ourmetabolic rate because that would meanslower fat loss. So how do we do it? Thekey is to continue to feed your body thenutrients and calories it needs to maintainits muscle mass, and to draw on storedbody fat as a source of energy. Resist thetemptation to cut calories or skip meals.That’s the worst thing you can do. Butbefore we deal with the specifics, we needto lay some groundwork. Some of thebasic issues are: How many caloriesshould I eat? Don’t I need to cut calo-ries? How fast can I lose fat? What can Ido to make sure I’m not losing muscle?Many times in previous articlesI’ve referred to a concept called your“maintenance energy requirement.” Thisis the number of calories you need to con-sume per day to support your present bodyweight and activity level. Metabolicallyspeaking, this is known as your total en-ergy expenditure, or TEE.

It is the sumof your basal metabolic rate (the amountof energy your body expends while at rest,such as during sleep) plus the energy youexpend during activity, including exercise,plus the thermic effect of feeding plusanother factor called adaptive thermogen-esis. There are several ways that researchscientists who study metabolism have offiguring this out. One way is to have aperson live in a special chamber called acalorimeter and measure the heat givenoff by the body. This technique is referredto as “direct calorimetry.” Another wayis called “indirect calorimetry” and in-volves measuring the amount of oxygenconsumed by the body and the amount ofcarbon dioxide produced and using thisdata to calculate the amount of caloriesexpended. These are obviously expensiveresearch procedures and are not availableto people who just would like to knowwhat their TEE is. You have an easy wayof figuring this out for yourself, however,and it doesn’t cost anything. Simply weighall your food and record everything youeat for a week sometime while yourweight remains constant. Pick a weekwhen you’re doing your normal work-out and your normal amount of aerobicactivity. Calculate the average numberof calories you consume a day duringthis period and this is your maintenanceenergy requirement (MER).

Most body-builders on the Parrillo Nutrition Programweigh their food and record their calo-ries anyway, so it doesn’t take any extrawork. Just look over your Diet TracSheets from a week when you didn’tgain or lose any weight and calculate thedaily average. If you haven’t done thisyet, you need to. It provides a scientificbasis for making many decisions aboutyour diet. I can’t tell you how many calo-ries to consume until you know this num-ber. The concept of the MER also pro-vides a useful way to teach you how toconstruct and adjust your diet.After you determine your MER,we can talk about calories. If you want tomaintain your present body weight, youneed to consume the number of caloriesequal to your MER – this is simply thedefinition of MER. If you want to gainweight, you need to consume about 300to 500 calories per day more than yourMER. This will result is a positive energybalance, which means that you are con-suming more energy (calories) per daythan you are expending. These extra calo-ries can be stored as body weight. Ifyou’re eating right and training hard, mostof it will be muscle. If you want to loseweight, you need to achieve a negative energy balance. This means that you needto expend more calories per day than youconsume.There are two ways we could goabout this. First, we could consume lesscalories than our MER, meaning thatwe’re eating fewer calories than our bodyneeds to maintain itself.

This will result inweight loss, but as we discussed previ-ously, anytime we reduce calories we runa risk of losing some muscle. Alternatively,another way of bringing about a negativeenergy balance is to increase our energyexpenditure. By doing more aerobic exer-cise you can increase your TEE andachieve a negative energy balance whilestill consuming your MER. This meansenough calories and nutrients will be pro-vided to maintain your present musclemass as you lose fat. Whereas the weightlost by caloric restriction can be as muchas 50% muscle, the weight lost by increas-ing aerobic exercise activity while main-taining constant calorie intake is almostentirely fat (7,8).To summarize, in order to lose weight youhave to burn more calories than you eat.This is called a negative energy (calorie)balance. You can do this by either eatingfewer calories or by burning more calo-ries. The approach I recommend is to eatthe number of calories equal to your MERand to increase the amount of calories youburn by doing more aerobics. This willresult in more efficient fat loss and lessmuscle tissue loss than the approach ofcutting calories. You still provide amplecalories and nutrients to maintain yourmuscle but draw on stored body fat tofuel your aerobic exercise. Furthermore,aerobic exercise builds the metabolic path-ways that burn fat (1,2). It increases themitochondria and enzyme pathways thatmetabolize fat. And by NOT cutting calo-ries, your body will not decrease its meta-bolic rate and enter into the starvationmode. Not only is this strategy logical,but it is backed up by the scientific litera-ture.

More importantly, it is backed up bythe real life experience of thousands ofbodybuilders. It’s just the way that worksbest.Now keep in mind we’re talkingabout your MER here. If you just finisheda weight gaining cycle you probably wereconsuming 300-500 calories in excess ofyour MER in order to pack on some mass.So you may in fact want to decrease calo-ries from what you had been consumingto gain weight, but don’t decrease thembelow your MER. This is why it’s impor-tant to have some idea what your MERis. This is a useful baseline number thatallows you to make some rational adjust-ments instead of just guessing. Also keepin mind that as you increase muscle massyour MER will increase as well. Muscleis metabolically active tissue and requiresenergy and nutrients to support. For ev-ery 10 pounds of muscle you gain youwill have to eat about 300 more calories aday (roughly) just to maintain your newbody weight. So don’t forget to keepchecking your MER periodically and makeadjustments. If you keep a nutrition logand Diet Trac Sheets like you’re supposedto, it will be easy. So when I say not tocut calories to lose weight, what this lit-erally means is don’t reduce calories be-low your MER, the level you need to main-tain your present muscle mass. If you’vejust been in a calorie-excess mode, thenreducing calories to your MER is reason-able.

References

1. McArdle WD, Katch FI, and Katch VL.Exercise Physiology: Energy, Nutrition,and Human Performance. Lea & Febiger,Philadelphia, 1991.

2. Wilmore JH and Costill DL. Physiol-ogy of Exercise and Sport. Human Kinet-ics, Champaign, IL, 1994.

3. Maughan RJ. Creatine supplementationand exercise performance. InternationalJournal of Sport Nutrition 5: 94-101,1995.

4. Greenhaff PL. Creatine and its applica-tion as an ergogenic aid. InternationalJournal of Sport Nutrition 5: S100-S110,1995.No Limits: How To Break Through Plateaus, Part II

5. Baba N, Bracco EF, and Hashim SA.Enhanced thermogenesis and diminisheddeposition of fat in response to overfeed-ing with diet containing medium chain trig-lyceride. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 35: 678-682,1982.

6. Bach AC and Babayan VK. Mediumchain triglycerides: an update. Am. J. Clin.Nutr. 36: 950-962, 1982.

7. Bouchard C, Tremblay A, Despres J-P, et al. The response to exercise withconstant energy intake in identical twins.Obes Res 2: 400-411, 1994.

8. Hill JO, Melby C, Johnson SL, andPeters JC. Physical activity and energyrequirements. Am J Clin Nutr 62 (S):1059S-1066S, 1995.

9. Flatt JP. Dietary fat, carbohydrate bal-ance, and weight maintenance: effects ofexercise. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 45: 296-306,1987.

10. Flatt JP. Use and storage of carbohy-drate and fat. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 61: 952s-959s, 1995.

11. Swinburn B and Ravussin E. Energybalance or fat balance? Am. J. Clin. Nutr.57: 766S-771S, 1993.

12. Acheson KJ, Flatt JP, and Jequier E.Glycogen synthesis versus lipogenesisafter a 500 gram carbohydrate meal inman. Metabolism 31: 1234-1240, 1982.

Bulletin #51 – Endurance Performance

Endurance training sessionsshould be performed a minimum of threedays per week for 30-60 minutes at mod-erate to high intensity to achieve this train-ing benefit. Some authors recommend lowintensity aerobic exercise for fat loss, be-cause at low intensity a greater percent-age of utilized energy is derived from fat.While this is true, low intensity aerobicexercise is not effective in eliciting themetabolic adaptations which bring abouta shift in energy substrate utilization pat-terns. Furthermore, low intensity aerobicexercise does relatively little to improvecardiovascular and respiratory fitness.While bodybuilders appropriately shouldfocus their training on resistance exercise,they will achieve a higher degree of mus-cularity and leanness if they also includea component of vigorous aerobic exer-cise.IntroductionOptimal endurance training is ofgreat interest not only to endurance ath-letes but to bodybuilders as well. Thisseries of articles will focus on how to useendurance training to help you achieveyour physique goals. Aerobic exercise isthe most effective way to lose body fat,and I’ll explain how to train optimally toburn fat without sacrificing muscle. We’llalso talk about ways to maximize your en-durance performance.General PrinciplesTwo general concepts underpinany successful exercise training program.

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The Overload Principle describes the ideathat an exercise stimulus must be of somethreshold intensity to bring about a train-ing adaptation (1,2). Exercise representsa form of stress, and the body adapts tothat stress by getting stronger. To forcethe body to continue to adapt, the stimu-lus must continually become more intense.This is known as Progressive Overload.We can increase the training intensity byincreasing the load (the resistance), theworkout frequency,  the workout dura-tion, or the power output (work performedper unit time). The most effective way toproduce increases in muscle size andstrength is to increase the load. The mosteffective way to improve endurance per-formance is to increase workout duration.The best way to improve speed is to in-crease power output during the workout.The Overload Principle (sometimes calledThe Intensity Principle) applies to endur-ance training as well as to resistance ex-ercise.The Specificity Principle statesthat the metabolic adaptations that occurin response to a training stimulus are spe-cific to the type of overload applied (1,2).Resistance training causes increases inmuscle size and strength (if it’s intenseenough) and aerobic exercise causes im-provements in cardiovascular endurance,with surprisingly little carry over betweenthe two (1).

Specific exercise elicits spe-cific adaptations creating specific train-ing effects (1).Metabolic AdaptationsAerobic conditioning results inmetabolic adaptations that improve energyproduction (1). Mitochondria from skel-etal muscle acquire a greatly increased ca-pacity to generate ATP by oxidative phos-phorylation. Mitochondria are the smallfurnaces inside cells where food is burned(oxidized) to produce energy. Oxidativephosphorylation is the biochemical path-way mitochondria use to combine fuelsubstrate molecules from food with oxy-gen, resulting in a release of energy whichis used to form ATP. Aerobic trainingmakes mitochondria more efficient at thisprocess, which means they can makemore ATP to power muscle fiber contrac-tions. This is a benefit of aerobic exercisethat you don’t get from weight lifting.Associated with the increased capacity formitochondrial oxygen uptake is an increasein the size and number of mitochondriaand a potential two-fold increase in thelevel of aerobic energy producing enzymesystems (1).

These adaptations are re-quired to sustain a high percentage of aero-bic capacity during prolonged exercisesessions. Animal studies have shown thatskeletal muscle myoglobin can increaseby as much as 80%. Myoglobin is a protein very similar to hemoglobin, exceptmyoglobin is found in muscle cells whilehemoglobin is found in red blood cells.Like hemoglobin, the function of myoglo-bin is to bind oxygen, and an increase inmyoglobin can facilitate oxygen deliveryto mitochondria.Aerobic training causes an in-crease in the muscle’s ability to mobilizeand oxidize fat. This occurs by an in-crease in blood flow within the muscleand in the activity of fat-mobilizing andfat-metabolizing enzymes (1). At anysubmaximal work rate, a trained indi-vidual uses more free fatty acids forenergy than an untrained person (1,2).This is a key point and deserves someemphasis. Aerobic exercise training en-hances the muscle’s ability to use fat asa fuel source and causes a shift in en-ergy substrate (fuel) selection such thatthe trained muscle learns to rely moreon fat as an energy source and less oncarbohydrate. This is important to en-durance athletes because increased useof fat as an exercise fuel has a carbohy-drate sparing effect – the more fat wecan burn the longer the carbs will last.Since carbohydrate (glycogen) depletionis a major factor limiting endurance, thismeans improved performance.

This isalso very important to bodybuilders be-cause it offers a way to shift your me-tabolism into a fat-burning mode. Aero-bic training teaches your muscles to burnmore fat and less carbs. This happensat rest as well as during submaximal ex-ercise. (During maximal exercise, carbsare still the main fuel.) Notice what hap-pens if you combine this approach witha very low fat diet. The aerobic trainingshifts your muscle’s fuel selection intofat-burning mode, and your body be-comes a fat burning machine. But there’sno fat in your diet. So where does thefat come from to fuel your muscles?From stored body fat. By combiningproper training and nutrition techniquesyou can teach your body to draw on itsown stored fat as a primary energysource.Cardiovascular andRespiratory AdaptationsThe weight and volume of theheart increase with long-term aerobictraining (1). This is characterized by anincrease in the size of the left ventricularchamber and by a thickening of its walls.The left ventricle is the chamber of theheart which pumps blood out to the body,and intense exercise makes it get biggerand stronger, just like any other muscle.This means it can pump harder and de-liver a larger volume of blood per minuteto working muscles.

This in turn meansmore oxygen delivery, more energy  pro-duction, and more muscular power out-put. The heart’s stroke volume increasessignificantly at rest and during exercise.Stroke volume is the volume of blood theleft ventricle can eject in one beat. Sincethe left ventricle is larger and stronger, itcan pump out more blood in a single beatthan before training. Resting andsubmaximal heart rate are decreased dur-ing aerobic training. Since the heart canpump more blood with each beat, itdoesn’t need to beat as often and heartrate is decreased compared to beforetraining. Plasma volume and total hemo-globin content of the blood increase withendurance training. This also improvesoxygen delivery.One of the most significantchanges in cardiovascular function is anincrease in maximal cardiac output (1,2).Cardiac output is the volume of blood theheart can pump in one minute. The in-creased cardiac output is mediated largelyby the increase in stroke volume. Train-ing also produces a significant increase inthe amount of oxygen extracted from cir-culating blood (1,2). This is determinedby measuring the oxygen concentrationin arterial blood supplying a muscle andin venous blood leaving the muscle. Thedifference is referred to as the arterio-venous oxygen gradient, and it is increasedby endurance training because themuscles become more efficient at extract-ing oxygen from the blood.

This is prob-ably due to the increased capillary supplyof muscle fibers, as well as their increasedmyoglobin and mitochondrial content.Regular aerobic training reduces bloodpressure. Endurance exercise increases theventilatory capacity of the lungs by in-creasing both breathing frequency and tidalvolume (the volume of air per breath). Insubmaximal exercise the trained athleteventilates less than before training (mara-thon runners don’t get out of breath fromclimbing a flight of stairs).One of the most important adaptations toendurance exercise is an increase in thenumber of capillaries surrounding eachmuscle fiber (2). Endurance training canincrease capillary density of muscles by15% (and probably more, I suspect). Thisallows greater exchange of gases, heat,wastes, and nutrients between the bloodand working muscle fibers (2). This fa-cilitates not only energy production, butalso fat metabolism and muscular growth.These increases occur within the first fewweeks to months of aerobic training. Ifyou want to grow big muscles, you needto deliver nutrients to them. The nutrientsare delivered by capillaries. Do your aero-bics.  Endurance is a term that actuallydescribes two separate components:muscular endurance and cardiorespiratoryendurance. Muscular endurance is theability of a muscle or muscle group tosustain high intensity repetitive exercise(2). Muscular endurance is highly relatedto muscular strength and anaerobic con-ditioning. An example is how many rep-etitions you can do with agiven weight on the benchpress.

Technically speaking,strength is defined as yourone rep maximum (1RM).Let’s say your one rep maxat bench is 225 pounds.That means you can prob-ably do 185 pounds for 8reps or so. If you trainbench for several weeks at185 pounds, pretty soonyou’ll be able to do 9 repsat 185. This is an increasein muscular endurance at185 pounds. From a strictlytechnical point of view, thisis not an increase instrength. To demonstratean increase in strength, youneed to increase your 1RM.Going from 8 reps at 185pounds to 9 reps at 185pounds probably won’t in-crease your 1RM by much, if any. How-ever, if you keep training soon you’ll beable to do 12 reps at 185, then the nexttime you test your 1RM you’ll find youcan push up 230 with no problem. Sowhile muscular strength and enduranceare separate concepts, they are closelyrelated. Another example of muscular en-durance is a static muscular contraction,such as a wrestler trying to pin his oppo-nent to the mat (2). Another examplewould be holding a leg extension in thefully extended position. Let’s say you canhold a leg extension at 150 pounds fullyextended for 10 seconds before you startto fail and lower the weight. After severalweeks of training you may be able to holdit for 15 seconds. This is an increase inmuscular endurance. (This technique,along with forced negatives, is in my bagof tricks for breaking through plateaus.)Whereas muscular endurancerefers to individual muscles, cardiorespi-ratory endurance refers to the body as awhole (2). It describes your body’s over-all ability to sustain prolonged rhythmicexercise.

Rather than being limited by theendurance of a particular muscle, your car-diorespiratory endurance is limited by yourbody’s energy producing ability, which isin turn limited by your ability to deliveroxygen to working muscle tissue, whichis in turn limited by your cardiovascularand respiratory systems. Most exercisephysiologists regard VO2 Max as the bestindicator of cardiorespiratory endurancecapacity (2). While strength, defined asthe one rep maximum, is the best way tomeasure performance improvements inresistance training, VO2 Max is the bestway to measure aerobic power (2). VO2Max is defined as the highest rate of oxy-gen consumption attainable during maxi-mal exhaustive exercise (2). You certainlycan exercise at intensities higher than yourVO2 Max, but this recruits the anaerobicenergy producing pathways. After aminute or two at this intensity fatigue willset in and muscular failure will occur. YourVO2 Max represents the highest level ofexercise intensity that you can sustain fora prolonged period of time. The VO2 Maxdictates the rate of work or the pace youcan sustain (2). Aerobic conditioning re-sults in an average increase of 20% VO2Max following six months of condition-ing. This is brought about bya combination of two factors.An increase in cardiac outputresults in more blood, andthus more oxygen, being de-livered to tissues. Second, anincrease in the arteriovenousoxygen gradient means thatmore of this oxygen is beingextracted from the blood bythe muscle.

This means thatmore oxygen is being used bythe muscle to produce energy,and more energy productionmeans more muscle powerand endurance.Lactate ThresholdWhen glucose is me-tabolized anaerobically (with-out oxygen) it is converted topyruvate and subsequentlyinto lactate (lactic acid). Lac-tic acid buildup inside muscle cells is oneof the factors that makes your musclesburn when you train a set of biceps curlsto failure. At lower intensity exercise, youreally don’t recruit the anaerobic energysystem because you don’t need it. (Referback to our series on cellular energy pro-duction.) During endurance exercise, yourbody can supply oxygen fast enough tothe muscles so that you can produce allthe energy you need from the oxidationof glucose and fat, without producing lac-tic acid. As exercise intensity increases,you eventually reach a level where theaerobic energy producing pathway ismaxed out, and anaerobic energy produc-tion begins. At that point, lactate is produced inside muscle tissue and begins toappear in the blood as a waste product.The lactate threshold is the point whereblood lactate begins to appear. Like VO2Max, this is a measure of cardiorespira-tory fitness. Endurance training increasesthe lactate threshold, which means ahigher level of energy production can oc-cur by the aerobic pathway before theanaerobic pathway is called into play.Trained endurance athletes can performexercise at a higher VO2 Max before bloodlactate appears.

This means that they canexercise at a higher intensity (they canproduce more power aerobically) beforeanaerobic metabolism begins.At first it might sound like VO2Max and lactate threshold are really twoways of measuring the same thing, butthey’re not. While they both reflect en-durance performance, they are looking atdifferent aspects. VO2 Max is a descrip-tion of the maximal aerobic energy pro-ducing ability of an athlete. Lactate thresh-old describes the percentage of VO2 Maxat which the athlete can train beforeanaerobic metabolism begins. The increasein lactate threshold, at a given percentageof VO2 Max, is probably due to a greaterability to clear lactate produced by themuscle (due to increased capillary den-sity of the muscle tissue bed), an increasein skeletal muscle enzymes involved inaerobic energy production, and a shift inmetabolic substrate to a fuel mix involv-ing a higher proportion of energy derivedfrom fat.These concepts lay the basicground work you need for a thoroughunderstanding of endurance exercisephysiology. Next month we’ll talk abouttraining intensity, respiratory quotient, fatmetabolism, and specific strategies onhow to incorporate endurance training intoyour program to maximize fat loss with-out losing muscle.

References1. McArdle WD, Katch FI, and Katch VL.Exercise Physiology: Energy, Nutrition,and Human Performance. Lea & Febiger,Philadelphia, 1991.

2. Wilmore JH and Costill DL. Physiol-ogy of Exercise and Sport. Human Kinet-ics, Champaign, IL, 1994.

Bulletin #49 – Energy Channeling For Ultimate Sports Performance

You already know that usingCapTri is a great way to lose fat and getin shape. What you may not know is howto use CapTri to improve sports perfor-mance. In the most basic sense, sportsperformance is about muscle power out-put. The ability of a muscle to producepower is limited by it’s available fuelsupply. Specifically, muscle power pro-duction is closely related to carbohy-drate availability. There is a close cor-relation between muscle glycogendepletion and muscle exhaustion. Theproblem is, your body can only storeso much glycogen.

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When it’s used up,you “hit the wall,” as endurance ath-letes understand all too well.For all but the most relaxed ofexercises (such as walking), carbohy-drate is the muscle’s preferred fuel sub-strate (energy source). Muscles can infact use carbohydrate, fat, and aminoacids as fuel, but these different fuelsources are not equally effective. Car-bohydrate can be stored as glycogenright inside the muscle and is immedi-ately available for use as fuel. For briefperiods of time (one or two minutes)carbohydrates can be utilized to pro-vide energy without the benefit of oxy-gen. This is known as “anaerobic me-tabolism,” and can provide short burstsof energy for very intense exercise ac-tivity, such as weight lifting. Fats playan important role in energy productionduring prolonged exercise. However,there are two problems with fat as anexercise fuel.

First, fat requires oxy-gen to be converted into energy – thereis no anaerobic metabolism of fat. Thismeans that the rate of energy productionfrom fat is limited by the rate of oxygendelivery to muscles. Second, your musclescan store relatively little fat inside them,so before fatty acids can be burned bymuscles they have to be imported fromsomewhere else. You may have noticedthat most fat in humans is stored aroundthe waist and hips, not inside muscles (toobad). This means that fatty acid utiliza-tion is also limited by delivery of fattyacids to muscles. The slowest step intransporting fatty acids from your waistto your muscles is the initial release offatty acids from fat cells in adipose stores.This is a relatively slow process and onlyoccurs at a significant rate when carbo-hydrate energy stores are already depleted.Before much fat is released from adiposetissue, blood sugar levels must drop, caus-ing a decrease in insulin and an increasein glucagon and catecholamines. The cat-echolamine norepinephrine (a cousin ofepinephrine, or adrenaline) is releasedfrom sympathetic nerve endings aroundfat cells and is the most potent stimulusfor fatty acid release.

Obviously, fatty acid utilization isa complicated process and is relativelyslow. Fatty acids can supply energyfast enough to keep up with the de-mands of walking or a slow bike ride,but any exercise more intense reliesmainly on carbs as the primary fuelsource. Your muscles can also usetheir own amino acids as fuel (Godforbid) but this is a real last resort.After glycogen stores are essentiallydepleted and fatty acid metabolism isin high gear, amino acid metabolismkicks in to supply a little extra energy.During a long run, amino acid oxida-tion can account for up to 5-10% ofenergy substrate, which equates toabout 50 grams of protein. This is un-desirable (to make the understatementof the year).Weight lifting is an anaerobic ex-ercise which relies almost exclusivelyon carbohydrate as an energy source.(This is one reason the high fat – lowcarb diet doesn’t make much sense tome.) Simply put, fatty acid metabo-lism is just too slow to meet the en-ergy demands of resistance training.Similarly, intense endurance exerciseis also limited by carbohydrate avail-ability. Time to exhaustion in endur-ance exercise is closely related tomuscle glycogen depletion. When anendurance athlete runs out of glycogenhe doesn’t have to stop, but he will slowdown dramatically. The primary role offat as an exercise fuel is to allow athletesto complete prolonged workouts. It doesthis by reducing the rate of glycogen uti-lization by muscle and thereby delayingthe onset of exhaustion (1).

In other words, an increased supply and oxidationof fatty acids will slow the rate of glyco-gen depletion and improve endurance.The question is, how do we de-liver greater amounts of fatty acids tomuscle during exercise? Fatty acids storedin body fat tissue don’t work very wellfor this purpose. As explained above, thesefats are not released from body stores toa significant degree until carbohydrate re-serves are substantially depleted. Obvi-ously, this won’t help since what we’retrying to do is slow the depletion of bodycarbohydrate stores in the first place.Another approach is to consume a highfat diet. Believe it or not, this has beentried and is called “fat loading” (2). Asyou might imagine, it doesn’t work verywell, unless your idea of fat loading is justto get fat. Apparently conventional dietaryfat is digested and absorbed too slowly toreally be of much help. The answer is tosupplement the diet with medium chainfatty acids. These special fats are digestedand absorbed much faster than regular fat,in fact as fast as glucose (1,3). The rapidabsorption and metabolism of MCFAsprovides an energy substrate that can ef-fectively spare glycogen and delay theonset of fatigue during prolonged intenseexercise.Glycerol is a small three carboncompound which can bind fatty acids, onefatty acid to each of it’s carbon atoms.When long fatty acids (16-18 carbon at-oms in length) are bound, this is called along chain triglyceride (LCT). Everydayvegetable oils are long chain triglycerides.

If medium chain fatty acids (8 to 10 car-bon atoms in length) are bound, this iscalled a medium chain triglyceride (MCT).Conventional fats (LCTs) are very in-soluble in water. This makes them hardto digest and transport. Inside the intes-tine, long chain triglycerides are cleavedfrom their glycerol backbone by an en-zyme called pancreatic lipase. The longchain fatty acids (LCFAs) are then boundby bile salts (produced by the liver andstored in the gallbladder) for transportthrough the intestine. When you eat longchain fats they are not released directlyinto the bloodstream. Once absorbed in-side an intestinal cell, the LCFAs are re-bound to glycerol to re-form LCTs, whichare then bound by proteins to make tinyparticles called chylomicrons. The pro-teins act like detergent to make the fatmore water soluble. The chylomicrons arereleased into the lymphatic system, an-other system of vessels in the body sepa-rate from the circulatory system. Fromthere the lymphatic system delivers thechylomicrons to the bloodstream via thethoracic duct, which is located on the rightside of your neck not far from your spine.The long chain fats are then circulatedthroughout your body by the bloodstream.Most of these fat molecules are absorbedby fat cells and stored there. A few aredelivered to muscle for use as fuel.

Thisis a long complicated metabolic processthat takes a long time. Importantly, pleasenotice that the metabolic pathway followedby LCTs ends up by delivering them tofat cells for storage. Thus the old saying“fat makes you fat.”Medium chain fatty acids(MCFAs) skip this whole process. Sincethey are smaller fat molecules they aremore water soluble and are thereforeeasier for the body to process. MCTs arereleased directly into the bloodstream byintestinal cells, without the need to be in-corporated into chylomicrons and carriedin the lymphatic system. Nutrient-richblood leaving the intestine is carried di-rectly to the liver by the portal vein forprocessing. The liver absorbs almost allof the MCTs from the portal blood andrapidly metabolizes them into ketone bod-ies. Ketone bodies are very small (two tofour carbon atoms) molecules which rep-resent partially broken down fatty acids.The ketone bodies are released from theliver into the bloodstream and are carriedto muscles where they are immediatelyused for energy. This additional energysubstrate (MCFA-derived ketone bodies)actually spares glucose oxidation.

This de-lays glycogen depletion and the onset ofmuscular fatigue.The process of MCT digestion,absorption, conversion into ketones, andtransport to muscle takes place very rap-idly. In fact, energy from MCFAs is avail-able as fast as from glucose itself (1,3).This makes MCFAs the ideal energysource for athletes trying to push the en-velop of endurance. Notice two otherthings that make CapTri the ideal fuel forathletes. First, CapTri is not delivered tofat cells for storage. As amazing as itsounds, medium chain triglycerides arenot stored as fat. Instead they are prefer-entially burned as fuel. Does this meanyou have “carte blanche” to eat as muchas you want, and you won’t get fat aslong as you poor some CapTri on top ofyour food? Of course not. Too many calo-ries will make you gain fat. The point isthat conventional fats are preferentiallystored as fat (that’s the natural result ofthe metabolic pathway they follow)whereas CapTri is preferentially burnedas energy. This means that if you eat aclean diet which includes CapTri you willfind it very difficult to gain fat. It’s harderfor your body to store CapTri as fat thanit is to convert carbohydrate into fat. Be-tween conventional fat, CapTri, and car-bohydrate, CapTri has the least tendencyto be stored as body fat.

For any givenlevel of caloric intake, you will have lessbody fat the more CapTri you are using.The other fact that makes CapTrithe ideal energy supplement for athletesis that MCFAs don’trequire the carnitine shuttle for transport inside mitochondria. Mitochondria are thepower plants inside cells where food mol-ecules are burned to produce cellular en-ergy. Regular fat molecules have to becarried inside the mitochondria by thecarnitine shuttle. The problem is, the car-nitine shuttle is not very active until car-bohydrate stores are significantly depleted.Carbohydrate metabolism generates a me-tabolite called malonyl-CoA which inhib-its the activity of the carnitine shuttle.Therefore, utilization of conventional fatsis severely limited at two places: therelease of fatty acids from fat cellsand the entry of fatty acids into mi-tochondria are both inhibited by car-bohydrate. This is why regular fatsdon’t work very well to spare gly-cogen and improve endurance.Regular fats can’t be used as a sig-nificant energy source until the carbsare already used up, and then it’s toolate. CapTri bypasses both of theselimitations.

While a great deal is knownabout MCFA metabolism, most ofour thinking on MCFAs and exer-cise performance has been theoreti-cal with little experimental data inhumans to back it up. Until now. Astudy was performed using six nor-mal subjects who exercised at 40%VO2 max for 60 minutes or 80%VO2 max for 30 minutes on two dif-ferent occasions (1,4). (VO2 maxdescribes exercise intensity in termsof percent of maximal oxygen con-sumption.) Either a LCFA or aMCFA was infused during the study.Using radioactive tracer techniques,the authors were able to calculate thepercent of LCFA or MCFA oxidized(burned) during the exercise. Total freefatty acid concentration was kept the samebetween the two trials. When the exer-cise intensity was increased from 40% to80%, the oxidation of LCFA remained un-changed, while MCFA utilization increasedsignificantly. It was concluded that entryof LCFAs into the mitochondria is limited(presumably by the carnitine shuttle) sothat oxidation of LCFAs cannot keep upwith the increased energy demands of highintensity exercise. On the other hand,MCFAs are readily oxidized more rapidlyas energy demand increases. This is ex-actly what I have been saying for years.Another study looked at the ef-fects of MCFAs on carbohydrate metabo-lism and cycling performance (1,5). Sixendurance trained cyclists rode at 60%peak VO2 for 2 hours and then performeda 40 km time trial on a laboratory cyclingergometer at 70-90% max on three sepa-rate occasions. Subjects drank an exer-cise drink consisting of glucose alone,glucose + MCFA, or MCFA alone.

Theauthors found that the carbohydrate +MCFA drink significantly improved cy-cling performance compared to either glu-cose or MCFA alone. As expected, MCFAingestion reduced glucose oxidation dur-ing the 2 hour pre-ride at 60% VO2 max,suggesting that the improvement in per-formance resulted from sparing of muscleglycogen by MCFA. Again, just what weexpected.These studies demonstrate threethings about MCFAs and sports perfor-mance. First, MCFAs apparently work toimprove performance by “sparing”muscle glycogen, thereby delaying theonset of fatigue. Second, the effect ofMCFAs appears to be greatest during highintensity exercise. During low intensityexercise conventional fats appear to func-tion adequately as an energy source. Third,the effects of MCFAs are likely to be morepronounced near the end of long endur-ance events (or at the end of longworkouts for bodybuilders). Thismakes good sense, because at thebeginning of the race depletion ofglycogen reserves is not a threat any-way.What are some specific recom-mendations for how to use CapTrito improve athletic performance?First off, don’t wait until the day ofan athletic competition and thenchug a bottle of CapTri right beforeyour event. Big mistake. You’ll pukeand have diarrhea. At the same time.Not good. You need to start usingCapTri several weeks out at a mini-mum, and a few months out wouldbe better. Introduce CapTri intoyour system slowly, say one-halftablespoon per meal. Mix it withyour food and don’t take it by itselfon an empty stomach. After a fewdays, increase your usage by one-half tablespoon per meal. Continuethis until you build up to two to threetablespoons with each meal.

Take afew days off from training before acompetitive event and eat some ex-tra carbohydrates (about 100 gramsextra per meal). This will saturate yourglycogen stores. The day of your eventeat a complex carb for breakfast (oatmealis probably ideal) along with one to twoscoops of Hi-Protein Powder and threeto four tablespoons of CapTri. This isprobably the perfect pre-event meal. If youdon’t like competing with a full stomach,another approach which works quite wellis to combine Pro-Carb Formula andCapTri to make a drink. Use one scoopPro-Carb to one tablespoon CapTri. I’m not kidding, this combination is really quiteremarkable. This makes a fantastic pre-workout drink for bodybuilders as wellas a pre-event drink for endurance ath-letes. Finally, perhaps the most popularapproach is the Parrillo BAR. It combinesCapTri with a medium chain glucose poly-mer along with a high-efficiency proteinsource.If you’re serious about sportsperformance, you owe it to yourself toexperiment with these nutritional tech-niques. This is cutting edge stuff, whichis just beginning to appear in the scien-tific literature. We’ve been developingthese techniques over the last few years,and I think you’re going to hear a lot aboutit in the future. Endurance performanceis limited largely by glycogen substrateavailability. MCFAs allow us to channelan energy substrate directly to workingmuscle to spare glycogen and delay fa-tigue. This means improved performance- Parrillo Performance.

References

1. Berning JR. The role of medium chaintriglycerides in exercise. InternationalJournal of Sport Nutrition 6: 121-133,1996.

2. Sherman WM and Leenders N. Fatloading: the next magic bullet? Interna-tional Journal of Sport Nutrition 5: s1-s12,1995.

3. Bach AC and Babayan VK. Mediumchain triglycerides: an update. Am. J. Clin.Nutr. 336: 950-962, 1982.

4. Sidossis LS, Gastaldelli A, and WolfeRR. Fatty acid uptake by the mitochon-dria limits fat oxidation in strenuous exer-cise. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc. 27 (5,suppl): s102, 1995.

5. VanZyl C, Lambert EV, Noakes TD, andDennis SC. Effects of medium chain trig-lyceride ingestion on carbohydrate me-tabolism and cycling performance.Biochem. Exerc. 1994.

Bulletin #14 – Supplements for Ultimate Endurance Performance Part II

Endurance athletes experience in-creased need for protein (1-4).  Mostpeople are surprised to learn that studiesactually show endurance athletes haveeven higher protein requirements thanmost strength athletes (1,2).  This is dueto the fact that the amino acids (the build-ing blocks of protein) are used as fuelduring endurance training (1,5).  I sug-gest that you consume at least one gramof complete protein per pound ofbodyweight—1.5 grams would be evenbetter—from chicken, fish, turkey or eggwhites each day with at least another .25or .5 gram of additional protein per poundof bodyweight coming from incompletevegetable sources.  This leads directly toour “Hi-Protein Powder.”  

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Calorie for calo-rie, this protein powder is the highest qual-ity protein food available anywhere.  Itcontains exactly the balance of amino ac-ids your body needs to build proteins, in-cluding muscle, red blood cells and theenergy producing systems mentioned.Now we can turn our attention to fuelfor optimum endurance performance.  Wehave developed three  high-energy supple-ments to help meet the needs of seriousendurance athletes: Pro-Carb Powder,CapTri and the Parrillo Supplement Bar.Carbohydrate is the body’s preferredenergy source (6,7) and Pro-Carb is theworld’s most sophisticated carbohydratepowder.  The carbohydrate is supplied asmaltodextrin, a complex carbohydratefrom corn.  Maltodextrin has been foundto be the ideal carbohydrate source forreplenishing glycogen reserves.  It is di-gested and absorbed more rapidly thanconventional carbs from food, but not sofast that it causes an over-release of in-sulin and subsequent hypoglycemia.Maltodextrin provides a much moreuniform energy level than do simplesugars.  Refer to our recent seriesabout carbohydrates and athleticperformance for more detailedinformation about Pro-Carb.CapTri is a special kind offat known as a medium chain triglyceride(8-10).  

CapTri provides twice the energydensity of protein and carbohydrate (8.3calories per gram for CapTri versus 4calories per gram for carbs and protein)and is absorbed into the bloodstream asrapidly as glucose (8-10).  CapTri is pref-erentially used as fuel for energy, insteadof being stored as fat by the body (9).  Asan added benefit, CapTri has a ther-mogenic effect, which means that it isconverted to energy very rapidly (9).CapTri is an extremely concentratedsource of calories which are rapidly ab-sorbed and metabolized for energy by thehuman body.  We think of CapTri as hu-man jet fuel.  Start with 1/2 tablespoon atevery meal.  After a few days, increase toone tablespoon with each meal.  Duringhard training, many athletes go as high astwo or three tablespoons  per meal—alevel they have found to be beneficial.Continue to use CapTri up to and duringyour endurance competition.  You cannotstore the energy from CapTri, so you needto use it at each meal.Another key point which many peopledon’t understand is that some of the en-ergy from CapTri is converted in the liverto ketone bodies, which are used as fuelby the muscles (9,11). The efficiency ofutilization of ketones as fuel substrates byperipheral tissues improves as the bodyadapts to CapTri.  In other words, yourbody gets better at using CapTri as it getsused to it.  

Thus, using it consistently willallow you to get more out of it when youreally need it.  Also, these same ketonebodies produced by CapTri help preventthe use of amino acids as fuel (11).  thatway, your aminos get used as protein in-stead of being burned as energy.  CapTrialso decreases catabolism of skeletalmuscle protein (9,11),  This is why CapTriis effective in reducing the loss of leanbody mass commonly experienced by en-durance athletes.The Parrillo Supplement Bar is the en-durance athlete’s dream.  It is a combina-tion of everything — protein, carbs andCapTri — in just the right ratio for opti-mum energy production.  Energy-dense,ready to eat and great tasting.  The Bar isvery popular with cyclists and hikers and bodybuilders eat them between meals forextra calories.To sum up, Parrillo Performance hasdeveloped a unique and powerful line ofnutritional supplements for endurance ath-letes and anyone who wants more energy,strength and stamina.  I suggest you startwith the Liver-Amino Formula, since itprovides protein and heme iron — theprecise nutrients your body needs to buildmuscle, red blood cells and energy pro-ducing systems.  Where to go from thereis a highly individual matter.  If you’renot getting enough protein from conven-tional sources, the Hi-Protein Powder isprobably the next thing to add.

If youneed more calories, go with Pro-Carb,CapTri or the Supplement Bar.  TheSupplement Bar is a nice choice becauseyou get protein, carbs and CapTri all inone.  If you’re training on the edge andSupplementation For Ultimate Endurance Performance, Part IIwant to explore the limits of your poten-tial, add in Max Endurance Formula andMuscle Amino.  Feel free to call or writeand we’ll help you work out your indi-vidualized program.In general, I suggest you begin usingendurance supplements when traininghard and definitely for at least three to sixweeks before your event to build up yournutrient level reserves.  This is especiallytrue for Liver-Amino, since it takes aboutsix weeks to build red blood cells.  Weget better results if the nutrition and supple-ments regimen is followed daily, not justaround competition time.  Consistency anddedication make the difference betweenchampions and recreational athletes, andthat applies to nutrition and supplementa-tion as well as to training.P.S. Don’t forget your Essential Vita-min Formula and Mineral-Electrolyte For-mula, both of which can be doubled whenin hard training.

References

1.  Hickson JF and Wolinsky I.  Hu-man protein intake and metabolism in ex-ercise and sports.  Nutrition in Exerciseand Sport, Hickson JF and Wolinsky I,Eds. p. 5-36.  CRC Press, 1989.

2.  Houck J an Slavin J.  Protein nu-trition for the athlete. Sports Nutrition forthe 90s, Berning JR and Steen SN, Eds.p 1-14.  Aspen Publishers, 1991.

3.  Lemon PWR.  Influence of di-etary protein and total energy intake onstrength improvement.  Sports Sci. Exch.2, 1989.

4.  Lemon PWR.  Protein and AminoAcid Needs of the Strength Athlete.  J.Sports Nutr.  1: 127-145, 1991.

5.  Friedman JE and Lemon PWR.Effect of chronic endurance exercise onretention of dietary protein.  Int. J. SportsMed.  10: 118-123, 1989.

6.  Miller GD and Massaro EJ.  Car-bohydrate in ultra-endurance perfor-mance.  Nutrition in Exercise and Sport,Hickson JF and Wolinsky I, Eds.  p. 51-62.  CRC Press, 1989.

7.  Pate TD and Brunn JC.  Funda-mentals of carbohydrate metabolism.Nutrition in Exercise and Sport, HicksonJF and Wolinsky I, Eds.  pg. 37-50.  CRCPress, 1989.

8.  Babayan VK.  Medium chain trig-lycerides and structured lipids.  Lipids  22:417-420, 1987.

9.  Bach AC and Babayan VK. Me-dium chain triglycerides: an update.  Am.J. Clin. Nutr.  36: 950-962, 1982.

10.  Record, Kolpeck and Rapp.  Longchain versus medium chain triglycerides— a review of the metabolism and clini-cal use.  Nutr. Clin. Prac.  1: 129-136,1986.

11.  Haymond MW, Nissen SL andMiles JM.  Effects of ketone bodies onleucine and analine metabolism in normalman.  Amino Acids — Metabolism andMedical Applications, Blackburn GL,Grant JP and Young VR, Eds.  pg 89-95.Published by John Wright PSG Inc., 1983.

Bulletin #13 – Supplements for Ultimate Endurance Performance

Parrillo Performanceprovides the best qualitysupplements in the world.Period.  We don’t cut any cor-ners when it comes to nutritional supportfor our athletes.  We want you to get themost from your training, and we want you toreach your goals.  We’re here to help youwin.  In addition to our famous success withbodybuilders, we also work with world classendurance athletes.  In this article I will de-scribe some of our best supplements for en-durance athletes, why they work and how touse them.  Even if you’re not an enduranceathlete and are just looking for more energy,our approach to diet and supplementation issure to help.  Finally, it’s also worth men-tioning that many of the best bodybuildersalso rely on our endurance supplementswhen they want to train longer and harder,and, more importantly, recover faster andmore completely.Ultra-endurance activities are associatedwith loss of lean body mass (1,2).  Endur-ance activity causes loss of lean tissue be-cause as fat and carbohydrate fuels are ex-hausted the body draws on its own muscletissue to use as fuel (3).  Amino acids can beconverted to glucose in the liver via a pro-cess known as “gluconeogenesis” (4,5).  Theso-called “branched chain amino acids” (leu-cine, isoleucine and valine) seem to be espe-cially preferred as fuel substrates.  In addi-tion to being converted to glucose in theliver, the amino acids are unique inthat they can also be used di-rectly as fuel by the muscles(5).  These are the amino ac-ids included in our product“Muscle Amino.”  MuscleAmino contains the balanceof branched chain amino ac-ids science has shown mostbeneficial.Have you ever noticedan ammonia smell in yourclothes after a hard workout?This is because your bodywas using some amino acidsas fuel but was not able toclear the waste products effi-ciently.  

Parrillo Performance
800-344-3404 

When this happens thecarbon skeleton of amino acids isburned, leaving ammonia as a byproduct.Ammonia is quite toxic and is converted tourea in a metabolic pathway called “the ureacycle,” which prepares it to be excreted inthe urine (4,5).  The urea cycle requires cer-tain chemical compounds called “aspar-tates,” (4,5) which are included in our “MaxEndurance Formula.”  We have developedthis product specifically for use during en-durance activities.  It works by providingnutrients which are used by the body todetoxify the waste products of protein ca-tabolism.  Max Endurance helps filter out toxicwaste products your body generates duringintense training.  Eliminating these wasteproducts helps you have more energy andrecover faster.  Ammonia is very toxic andwill stop energy production in the cell.  Us-ing the aspartates in Max Endurance to “neu-tralize” the ammonia as soon as it forms en-ables you to have more energy and endur-ance.  We suggest the product be used con-sistently everyday, not just on days of en-durance events.Perhaps the most crucial supplement forendurance athletes is our “Liver-Amino For-mula.”  I cannot overemphasize the impor-tance of this product.  What is enduranceactivity all about, anyway?  It’s about pro-ducing energy over an extended period oftime.  

Liver-Amino helps in at least three ways— by providing heme iron, protein and Bvitamins.Energy production in the human bodyrequires two things: a fuel substrate and oxy-gen (3,5).  Many people build up the impor-tance of carbohydrates in endurance perfor-mance — and rightfully so.  Carbs are yourbody’s best fuel source for endurance activ-ity (3,6,7).  However, for those carbs to beused as fuel your muscles require a constantsupply of oxygen.  Contrary to popular be-lief, it is usually the rate of oxygen deliveryto cells which limits energy production, notthe availability of glucose.As you know, it is the responsibility ofred blood cells to deliver oxygen to all theworking tissues of your body (4).  What youmay not know is that endurance training ac-tually can destroy red blood cells rather thanbuilding them up — if your nutrition’s notright.  Bodybuilders have long recognizedthat strength training actually breaks downmuscles and that this damage provides thestimulus for subsequent growth during therecovery period.  

To build more muscle, youhave to provide the nutrients muscles aremade of.  The same is true for endurancetraining, except it’s the blood system thattakes a beating.  And if you want to recoverand be stronger as a result of your workout,you have to feed your body with the nutri-ents it needs to make red blood cells.  Haveyou ever noticed that many endurance ath-letes are very thin and don’t have muchmuscle mass?  Why is that?  To understandwhy this happens, and what to do about it,you need to know a little about physiologyand how the body adapts to endurancetraining.Endurance activity causes a conditionreferred to as “sports anemia” (8-11).  Thisoccurs rapidly with the onset of training (9,11).  Endurance training causes an increasein mitochondrial content of the muscle tis-sue (mitochondria are the furnaces inside thecell where fuels are burned — the more en-ergy you produce the more mitochondria youneed), in myoglobin concentration (a pro-tein like hemoglobin, which is involved intransporting oxygen inside muscle cells), andin cytochrome enzymes (enzymes of the elec-tron transport chain, involved in aerobicenergy production) (12).  All of these areprotein structures which are increased as anadaptive response to endurance training.  Toachieve this increase, the body draws on itserythrocytes (red blood cells), hemoglobinand plasma proteins as a source of protein(10-12).  

This is an example of the “plastic-ity’” of the body — the body remodeling itsown structures to adapt to changing condi-tions.  In other words, what’s happening isthe body needs to build up its energy pro-ducing systems inside muscle cells to adaptto the training stimulus.  These energy pro-ducing systems are made of protein.  Andthe easiest place for your muscle cells to findprotein is to steal it from red blood cells andplasma protein.Couple this increased protein need withthe fact that endurance activity causesamino acids to be used as fuel substratesinstead of as proteins, and you can see whyendurance athletes are frequently borderlineanemic and why they commonly experiencemuscle wasting.Liver-Amino contains heme iron — themost bioavailable iron source (8).  (Refer toour article about Liver-Amino for more in-formation.)  The product contains desiccatedliver (not cooked), as cooking can destroythe heme group and decrease its incorpora-tion in red blood cells by 50% (8).  Liver-Amino formula also provides 1.5 grams ofcomplete protein per tablet.  Heme iron andprotein are precisely the nutrients your bodyneeds to produce red blood cells.  This wayyou can build your energy producing sys-tems inside muscle cells and your blood sys-tem all at the same time, without having tosacrifice one for the other.  Plus it’s a richsource of B vitamins, which are used in en-ergy production.  Start taking the Liver-Amino (five to eight with each meal) whenyou’re training hard and definitely at leastsix weeks before your event, since it takesthat long to build up red blood cells.Next month we’ll examine several supple-ments that can be used in an endurance pro-gram for ultimate performance.

References

1.  Friedman JE and Lemon PWR.  Effectof chronic endurance exercise on retentionof dietary protein.  Int. J. Sports Med.  10:118-123, 1989.

2.  Hickson JF and Wolinsky I.  Humanprotein intake and metabolism in exercise andsports.  Nutrition in Exercise and Sport,Hickson JF and Wolinsky I, Eds. p. 5-36.  CRCPress, 1989.

3.  Nagle FJ and Bassett DR Jr.  Energymetabolism in exercise.  Nutrition in Exerciseand Sport, Hickson JF and Wolinsky I, Eds.p. 87-106.  CRC Press, 1989.

4.  Guyton AC.  Textbook of MedicalPhysiology.  W.B. Saunders, 1991.

5.  Zubay G.  Biochemistry .  Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1983.

6.  Miller GD and Massaro EJ.  Carbohy-drate in ultra-endurance performance.  Nu-trition in Exercise and Sport, Hickson JF andWolinsky I, Eds.  p. 51-62.  CRC Press, 1989.

7.  Pate TD and Brunn JC.  Fundamen-tals of carbohydrate metabolism.  Nutritionin Exercise and Sport, Hickson JF andWolinsky I, Eds.  pg. 37-50.  CRC Press, 1989.

8.  Scrimshaw NS.  Iron Deficiency.  Sci-entific American, pg. 46-52, October, 1991.

9.  Sherman AR and Kramer B.  Iron nu-trition and exercise.  Nutrition in Exercise andSport, Hickson JF and Wolinsky I, Eds.  p.291-308.  CRC Press, 1989.

10.  Shiraki K, Yamada T and YoshimuraH.  Relation of protein nutrition to the reduc-tion of red blood cells induced by physicaltraining.  Japanese J. Physiol.  27: 413-421,1977.

11.  Yoshimura H, Inoue T, Yamada Tand Shiraki K.  Anemia during hard physicaltraining (sports anemia) and its causalmechanism with special reference to proteinnutrition.  World Rev. Nutr. Diet.  35: 1-86,1980.

12.  Haymes.  Proteins, Vitamins, andIron.  Ergogenic Aids in Sport; ed. Williams.Human Kinetics Publishers; 1983; p 27-55.