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EUGENIZATION
a personal training blog

From the category archives:

Research (Studies, Reports, etc.)

Pre and Post Workout Nutrition – A Hoax?

June 17, 2008

In her June 5th article for the Times, Gina Kolata questions the “conventional wisdom” around sports nutrition.
Here are the main assumptions that she (and the researchers she interviews) question:
1.  “As yet no convincing evidence exists that a special carbohydrate-to-protein ratio makes a noticeable difference in muscle protein maintenance after exercise. “There is no magic ratio,” [...]

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Strength Training Relieves Chronic Neck Pain.

May 21, 2008

If you read the Harvard Women’s Health Watch, then chances are you’ve already caught wind of a study published in the January 2008 issue of the journal Arthritis Care and Research.  This small study compared the effectiveness of strength training and general fitness training on reducing chronic work-related neck pain.
Result: The group who participated in “general [...]

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Cholesterol is Necessary…For Building Muscle.

January 10, 2008

Thanks to Chris from Conditioning Research for this article:
Surprise – Cholesterol May Actually Pose Benefits, Study Shows.
Yes, indeed; surprise, surprise. 
Chris has already done a very thorough write-up of the study’s results; let’s reference his comments and explore this topic a bit deeper:
1) “The team studied 55 men and women, ages 60-69, who were healthy non-smokers and were able to [...]

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Ab Work? Lift and Lift Heavy.

December 27, 2007

(Image Credit: Julielohre.com)
It’s been a longstanding tradition (well, longstanding from a bodybuilder’s perspective, anyway) that each individual muscle group has to be blitzed, bombed, and blasted in order to get the most out of it. In other words, there’s no way for you to really work a given muscle group unless you devote an [...]

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Trench Warfare – Studies vs. “Results.”

November 17, 2007

What’s more important – theory or practice?
Just because it “works on paper”, does it “work?” And just because “it works”, does it “work?”
Just what the heck am I talking about?
I’m referring to the so-called Diet Debate on CNN’s The Larry King Show that Gary Taubes, Mehmet Oz, Jillian Michaels, and Andrew Weil engaged in. [...]

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Should “Morality” Factor Into Exercise?

November 3, 2007

Just picked this one up on the wire:
Beer After Sport is “Good For The Body.”
Now, your first inclination should be to think, “Hey, didn’t Eugene write a blog post about how the media distorts and misrepresents scientific findings and how we should be reading the studies themselves?”
Indeed I did.
After the initial shock and horror [...]

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Cheaters in Sport.

October 9, 2007

I previously blogged about cheating in professional-level sports and how athletes, though they’ve given their pound of flesh to achieve the lengths they do, are still cheaters if they use illegal substances (read: steroids) to enhance their performances.
Poor Marion Jones.  She was one of my two favorite female athletes from the track and field world [...]

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You Can’t Cheat Your Way To Fitness. Or Can You?

September 17, 2007

What would you look like with 117% larger muscles and 73% more muscle fibers? Well, researchers are one step closer to making those pipe dreams a reality.
Mighty Mice Made Mightier.
(For all you science geeks, like me, here’s the study link. If you can’t be bothered with all that “science stuff”, this picture should make everything [...]

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When Should You Exercise?

September 11, 2007

What’s the best time of day to exercise? Morning? Evening? Lunchtime?
The short and simple answer: Whatever time works for you.
For example, if you’re like most people, you may find that you don’t really get a choice – your schedule (and its relative inflexibility) decides when your exercise time is, even if it’s 5:30am.
For those of [...]

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Become an Educated Consumer!

September 4, 2007

If you’re a client of mine, you’ve heard me say the title of this blog post at least (by my conservative estimate) 7800 times.
It is so vitally important to apply your critical thinking abilities to the confusing and sometimes scary world of fitness and nutrition, I can’t understate it. In fact, let me say [...]

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