Everything You Thought You Knew About Lactic Acid Is Wrong

For a semi-serious athlete, Jeremy Rosenberg is not unusual. The Los Angeles-based book editor is a weekend warrior on the city’s soccer fields, but says he pays for it after most games.
“A couple of hours after I play I feel like what I imagine a whirling dervish does: A post-ecstatic mental state combined with being totally physically drained,” says Rosenberg. “As long as I don’t stop playing, I feel great. But stopping means soreness.”
Rosenberg and his fellow players don’t pretend to be physical therapists or exercise scientists, but they confidently throw around the same term to explain their aching muscles: Lactic acid.
Ah, lactic acid, the much maligned (and misunderstood) participant in the body’s metabolic energy systems. But Rosenberg and his mates can be forgiven: Many trainers and even some physicians make the same mistake, blaming lactic acid not only for the deep muscle burn felt during exercise and the intense ache afterwards, but also for calling it lactic acid in the first place.
“One of the long-standing myths in exercise science and popular culture is that lactic acid causes fatigue,” explains Lance Dalleck, an assistant professor of exercise and sport science at Western State Colorado University. The only problem is that the body doesn’t produce lactic acid, not even during intense exercise. “Lactic acid exists in sour milk,” says Dalleck, “and blood and sour milk have markedly different mediums.”

Meet the Real Lactic Acid
What most people are referring to when they say “lactic acid” is actually lactate, and it’s not responsible for the burn you feel in your legs after running intervals or peddling furiously to keep up with the peloton in a road race. Nor is it responsible for the soreness you may feel up to 48 hours after a tough workout, as many believe. Indeed, it’s not a waste product of exercise at all. On the contrary, lactate helps to delay fatigue, and can even serve as a fuel for your muscles, says Dalleck.
The whole misunderstanding dates back to a 1922 study by two British scientists, Otto Meyerhoff and Archibald V. Hill. In their Nobel-Prize winning research investigating the energy capabilities of carbohydrate metabolism in skeletal muscle, they suggested that lactic acid is produced in humans as a side reaction to glycolysis (the breakdown of glucose to fuel muscular work). And that’s essentially how it has been explained ever since: Lactic acid is a sort of residue from your muscles burning fuel, and its buildup is what causes the burn and ache athletes commonly experience during and after intense effort. Because after all, acid burns, right?
What recent studies have found fairly conclusively is that while lactic acid—or more accurately, lactate—coincides with “acidosis” in muscles, it’s not the cause. During vigorous exercise, muscles gobble up ATP, the body’s primary energy source. Every time an ATP molecule is split for energy, it breaks down into ADP and one hydrogen ion, also called a proton. It’s the increase in these protons that causes acidification, known as acidosis, and that does burn.
Coinciding with this buildup of protons (from the splitting of ATP) is the buildup of pyruvate molecules, which are produced during the last step of glycolysis. Each pyruvate molecule absorbs two protons to become lactate. Thus lactate production is actually a consequence of acidosis, not the cause, and helps to buffer the negative effects of it. What’s more, during moderate and hard exercise, lactate can even be shuttled back into mitochondria (i.e., the cell’s power plants) and converted into energy. But at some point during intense exercise, the buildup or protons overwhelms the ability of pyruvate to absorb them. That’s when you feel the burn, and that’s when you have to take matters into your own hands.

How Beat the Burn
Your best bet here is beta-alanine, an amino acid that combines with another amino acid called L-histidine to create a substance called carnosine, which buffers against acid buildup in muscle tissue. You’ll find carnosine in beef, but you’d need to eat a whole lot of it to receive an effective dose for improving exercise performance. And since there’s already plenty of L-histadine circulating in your body, supplementing with beta-alanine is the most efficient method for creating performance-enhancing levels of carnosine at the cellular level. (Unabashed product plug: Beta alanine is one of the primary ingredients in Beachbody Performance Energize, our most powerful performance booster to date.)
Because it takes time to elevate carnosine concentration, results typically occur after 1 to 2 months of daily use. The only common side effect from beta-alanine consumption is a harmless, but potentially uncomfortable symptom called paresthesia. It’s characterized by a tingling sensation throughout the body, and most often occurs with high doses. If you experience paresthesia, try taking smaller (i.e., less than 800 mg) doses of beta-alanine throughout the day instead of one large one.

But What about Muscle Soreness?
Along with acidosis, lactate is also frequently blamed for delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), which can occur as soon as 6 hours after exercise, and usually peaks 48 hours afterward. The blame is misplaced here as well, as DOMS is caused by micro tears in muscle, not the buildup of lactate. Still, there are several steps you can take to ease the ache.

Pop Some Ibuprofen
The soreness you feel after a tough workout is the result of swelling and inflammation caused by the micro tears mentioned earlier. Popping Ibuprofen, which is an anti-inflammatory, can significantly reduce the pain, according to a study by Greek researchers in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. But that relief may come at a price. An ever-growing body of research has also linked NSAIDs (including ibuprofen) to everything from cardiovascular issues and intestinal dysfunction to suppressed protein synthesis post-exercise. Occasionally taking a couple of capsules is probably just fine—but give some serious thought to using it regularly.

Take Tart Cherry Extract
Doing so can help reduce DOMS not only after a tough endurance workout, but also after intense resistance training, according to two separate studies at Texas A&M University. Both studies supported the results of previous research, showing that tart cherries can reduce muscle breakdown and inflammation, thereby reducing soreness.

Give Yourself a Massage
 Using a foam roller to knead your muscles post-workout can significantly reduce DOMS, according to a recent study in the International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy.Give each major muscle group at least five rolls, starting with your calves and working your way up your body. Spend extra time on sore spots.

Wear Compression Gear
People who wear compression garments after their workout experience less soreness and faster muscle recovery than people who wear a more traditional gym outfit, like a t-shirt and shorts, according to a recent study in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine. The reason: By compressing the muscle, such garments help reduce swelling and pressure.

Via: Team Beachbody Blog

What kind of Workout Is Best For You?

If you’re unsure what type of workout can deliver not only the results you’re looking for, but also the incentive to do it enough to even see results, take heart. Everyone struggles with this at some point—even the fittest people at the gym.

The key is finding something you actually enjoy doing so that you can stay consistent and excited about it. Whether that’s a different workout every week or a daily power walk, select something that’s realistic for your life and easily accessible so you have no excuse not to get out there and exercise. Read on for ideas of the types of workouts that might work best for you.

If you … get bored easily: Mix it up! If just the thought of hitting the elliptical makes you yawn, then you’re probably the type of person who needs a little more variety in your exercise diet. Doing different workouts throughout the week will keep you on your toes—and will allow you to work on strengthening different parts of your body. Set up a loose schedule for yourself so that you stay on track (say, cardio every Wednesday and strength work on Sundays). Or look into a service like ClassPass, available in multiple major cities, where you can test out a gamut of workouts, from Bikram to barre. Who knows, maybe one will stick—and at least you’ll have plenty of fun in the process.

If you … thrive on goals: Train for a 5K. Or a 10K. Or a 24-hour spin-a-thon. Whatever looms large in your head as something slightly out of your reach, pick it and go for it. (Just be realistic about your goal: If you’ve never run a step, 6.2 miles may be too tough of a challenge.) The initial act of registering for the event—especially paying the entry fee—will make you more motivated to get after the goal. Then come up with a training plan that works for your fitness level and lifestyle. Give yourself at least 12 weeks to prep for the event, then plug workouts into your calendar with automatic reminders so that you stay on track with your training. And when you cross that finish line? Celebrate your accomplishment—then go for an even bigger goal.

If you … are too busy to make it to the gym: Get it done at home. Set yourself up for at-home exercise success by investing in a few key fitness items: a yoga mat, medicine balls or kettlebells and light free weights. Then carve at least 30 minutes into your day for sweating it out. (Need a jump start? Check out these low-impact cardio workouts.) Do yourself a favor, and track and share your workouts on MapMyFitness so that you can see your progress—and stay motivated to get it done on the daily.

If you … are supersocial: Get into a group. Join a boutique cycle studio, a local running club or a Masters swim team, or check out CrossFit. Diving into a team environment is fun but also, more importantly, it holds you accountable since it’s much more obvious when you bail (and when you’re slacking). Plus, when the workout gets supertough, you’ll get that “we’re-all-in-this-together” vibe that’ll have you pushing until the end. Then you can all go out for happy hour or brunch together afterward to toast your hard efforts. Bonus!

If you … are prone to stress: Zen out. The obvious choices here are yoga and Pilates, where you are forced to slow down, focus on your breathing and really tune into your mind-body connection. (Or try these stress-reducing moves that increase flexibility.) But other activities can provide just as much internal peace and with an even better cardio boost. Try swimming laps or going for a hike in your favorite scenic spot. Whatever you do, don’t skip your workout: Studies show that just five minutes of aerobic exercise can begin to stimulate antianxiety effects.

Via: My Fitness Pal

Caffeine and Its Effects on Exercise Performance

It’s the end of a long and trying workday. You want couch, and plenty of it. But on the way home you knock back a double espresso and find, miraculously, on arrival you’re ready for that round of INSANITY:MAX 30 you’d planned to blow off.

Ah caffeine, the original performance-enhancing drug.

Caffeine is the most widely used psychoactive substance in the world. According to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), more than 80 percent of North American adults regularly consume caffeine, with intakes averaging between 210 and 238 mg per day. One in 10 of us ingests 1000 mg per day or more, from sources that include coffee, cola, tea, sports drinks, chocolate, and non-prescription supplements.

Yet despite caffeine’s ubiquity — and considerable research on the topic — its role in athletics is still emerging science. People of all stripes consume caffeine to enhance their well-being and daily activities, but athletes are often left wondering how it affects their performance, notes Louise Burke, head of Sports Nutrition at the Australian Sports Commission and co-author of Caffeine for Sports Performance.

And it’s not as if the beverage industry has played down the potential link between caffeine and athletic performance. As far back as 1928, Coca-Cola sent 1,000 cases with the U.S Olympic team to the Amsterdam games, and Coke remains the Olympics’ longest continuous corporate sponsor.

Until recently, caffeine was considered a banned substance by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Burke says that when it’s intentional, athletes usually used caffeine to reduce fatigue or offset a performance decline that would otherwise occur during an event. But given how prevalent caffeine is, some athletes were “juicing” without even realizing it. “Not all athletes who have caffeine in their system while they train or compete had the intention of gaining a performance advantage,” Burke says. Recognizing this, WADA removed caffeine from its list of prohibited substances in 2004. The National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) still considers it a regulated, but not banned, substance.

How Caffeine Can Give Your Workouts a Jolt

 The stuff works, as any swing-shift employee can attest, and used judiciously can help both get your butt out there on training days, and peak your performance in competition.

At the physiological level, ingested caffeine is quickly absorbed by the stomach and peaks in the blood within 1-2 hours. Initial effects — the jolt — can be felt sooner, and women metabolize caffeine about 20 percent quicker than men.

Because caffeine is absorbed by most human tissue, it can affect all of the body’s major systems. Caffeine stimulates your brain, can elevate your mood, and postpones fatigue. While it doesn’t appear to improve fine motor coordination, it has been shown to improve endurance and performance at simple tasks.

Studies in the 1970s suggested that caffeine helped performance in endurance exercises by upping the level of adrenaline in the blood, which in turn stimulated the release of free fatty acids from fat tissue or skeletal muscle. The idea was that working muscles were using this as an energy source early in the exercise, saving more glycogen for later on.

And there’s probably something to that, according to the American College of Sports Medicine. While conflicting studies in the 1980s left many thinking caffeine had no real net impact on athletic performance, more recent double-blind experiments have found there is a physical gain to be had. For some. At certain concentrations.

Are there any downsides to caffeine? Well, shaky hands are a telltale sign of too much of the stuff. (This is a problem easily solved for most by sticking to low doses.) And if you consume caffeine before bedtime, you’ll probably take longer to fall asleep and sleep less deeply. Happily, the wives’ tale that caffeine is a diuretic has proven false under study: Not only do you not pee more than if you were drinking plain water, you also don’t lose substantially more moisture due to sweat.

How Much Caffeine Is Ideal?

In a well-regarded 2002 study, researchers examined how competitive cyclists performed using caffeine vs. a non-caffeinated but otherwise nutritionally-sound sports drink under two protocols. In the first, they tested how subjects performed in time trials using varying levels of caffeine before or during a ride. In the second, they gave subjects Coca-Cola in the final 40 minutes of a long, steady-state ride. Between the two studies, it was determined that 6 mg/kg of body mass did have an ergogenic effect.

A 2012 study compared that amount to 3 mg/kg of body mass and uncovered that the lower dose was equally as effective. While this research was on cyclists, it’s been shown that caffeine taken before exercise can help across a range of sports, including endurance events like long-distance running, stop-and-go events like racquetball, and sports involving sustained high-intensity activity lasting up to an hour, such as swimming and rowing.

But the benefit may go beyond just the physical. “Performance is not all physiological — a lot of it is mental,” notes Bob Girandola, an associate professor of Biological Sciences at USC who has taught classes on drugs in sports.

“Caffeine may affect your subjective feeling of fatigue or stress or pain,” Girandol says. “If you and I were doing an exercise and I was taking caffeine and you were not, perhaps it would feel a little bit less strenuous to me.” He explains that over the course of a sustained training regimen that could provide an advantage. “With any kind of performance enhancing substances, there’s a lot of individual variation with people. I always tell athletes here, as long as it’s not illegal…take it during practice and see if you think it’s going to help. Even if it’s just psychological, that’s fine.”

Via: Team Beachbody

The Effect of Dietary Protein on Your Muscles

It’s fairly common knowledge these days that protein is “good” for one’s muscles. However, most folks don’t really understand what it is that dietary protein actually does to support muscle fiber in the body.

Breakdown and Repair
To begin with, let’s get clear about what muscles we’re talking about here. There are three distinct types of muscle fiber in the human body. The digestive tract and other internal organs are primarily smooth muscle. The heart is cardiac muscle. The muscles that help move bones and power the body’s outward movement are skeletal muscle. Skeletal muscle is what most people refer to when they talk about dietary protein’s effect on muscle growth. Smooth and cardiac muscle is constituted through a different cellular process.
Skeletal muscle is almost entirely protein. Think about it. Animal protein (you know, meat) is simply various cuts of animal skeletal muscle. The synthesis of muscle protein is essential to the body’s ongoing growth, repair, and maintenance of the skeletal muscle groups.  Skeletal muscle is constantly broken down through the many physical activities that the body endures. All things being equal, the longer and/or higher the intensity of the activity, the more skeletal muscle breakdown there will be. This breakdown process is known as catabolism. The body’s process of repairing the damage done and building muscle is known as anabolism. This is where dietary protein becomes essential.
The anabolic process starts when dietary proteins are consumed. During the digestive process, the body secretes various enzymes throughout the digestive tract and these break those proteins down into their individual amino acids. When these reach the small intestine, the amino acids are absorbed and then circulated throughout the body. The skeletal muscles use these amino acids as building blocks to create the proteins of new muscle tissue. So in essence, dietary protein fuels the anabolic process.

How to Get the Most out of Dietary Protein
Eat the Right Amount
The RDA for dietary protein is 0.8 g per kilogram of weight in sedentary adults. This equates to about 56 grams per day for an average male and 46 grams per day for an average female. Keep in mind, however, that this is the amount necessary to support repair of the catabolic effects from a sedentary lifestyle. Once activity, exercise and/or hard training is added into the mix, the body’s protein needs go up. Dr. Peter Lemon from the University of Western Ontario found that the RDA for those engaged in strength training is about double that of a sedentary individual, which is roughly 1.7 – 1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body mass per day.
The other important consideration is how much protein to consume per meal. Most researchers agree that 20 grams of protein is the most effective amount to consume per serving. The body can only assimilate so much dietary protein at once. Beyond that, excess dietary protein can be converted to fat and stored that way—but it can’t revert back to protein again. The liver converts excess amino acids to other usable molecules but the process creates ammonia, which is transformed into urea by the liver. The body flushes urea from the system through urination, which is why consuming excess protein can have a dehydrating effect.   Of course, if you ingest too little dietary protein, the anabolic process will suffer.

Choose the Right Protein
There are 21 amino acids the body uses for anabolism and every type of dietary protein is comprised of various amounts of these. The body requires a certain amount of each and while it can create some of these on its own, others have to be ingested. These are known as the essential amino acids and a complete protein contains all of nine essential amino acids. Studies have shown that the most effective anabolic process is possible only if high quality complete proteins are ingested on a regular basis. Complete proteins include: all animal proteins, including eggs and dairy, and certain whole grains such as quinoa.

Timing and Consistency
As all proteins are comprised of different combinations of amino acids, they are digested at different rates. One study found that most bodies can digest 8-10 grams of whey protein per hour, but can only absorb about half as much casein per hour.   Because whey is absorbed so quickly it is a great option for post-workout recovery (when the muscles can accept the most protein for anabolic repair). However, during other times of the day, a protein with a slower absorption rate is a better option. For example, one study found that casein was the superior protein to consume before sleeping to promote maximum overnight recovery.
So yes, protein is quite good for your muscles. In fact, it’s essential. However for maximum effectiveness and fueling the anabolic process, you should consume high-quality dietary protein regularly and in proper amounts.

Via: Team Beachbody