Isegoria

New Scientist recently produced a a study demonstrating that fairly low doses of anabolic steroids boost performance in just weeks:

The first rigorous study of the performance-enhancing effects of testosterone in young men was not carried out until 1996. Volunteers were given weekly injections of either 600 milligrams of testosterone enanthate or a placebo for 10 weeks (bodybuilders usually take much larger doses). Performance tests done at the end of this period showed the hormone had improved muscle size and strength in those doing strength training, and to a lesser extent in those who did not exercise.
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In the latest study, Weatherby monitored the performance of 18 male amateur athletes over a six-week training regime. Nine were given weekly shots of testosterone enanthate at a dose of 3.5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight for six weeks (equivalent to roughly half the dose of the 1996 trial), and nine were given a placebo.
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The most unexpected finding was that the greatest increases in muscle size and power occurred just three weeks into the trial.

In One Giant Lift for Mankind, Josh Levin describes “the race for the 1,000-pound bench press”:

For years, the bench press world record crept up slowly and steadily. In the 1950s, Canadian Doug Hepburn became the first man to bench 400, 450, and 500 pounds. In 1957, Hepburn told Muscle Power magazine that a 600-pound bench press was possible, but it wasn’t until 1967 that Pat Casey cracked that barrier. Ted Arcidi broke 700 in 1985, and it took another 17 years until Ryan Kennelly benched 800 pounds in 2002. Now, just two years later, 10 men have benched 800, and a couple are closing in on 1,000. So, why have records that stood up to the strongest men in the world for 50 years crumbled in the last two?

A super-shirt, mostly. In 1983, a college student and powerlifter named John Inzer started making shirts that supported benchers’ shoulders and deltoids. Word spread that the bench shirt not only prevented injuries but actually helped bounce the weight off your chest. The terminology on Inzer’s web site reeks of pseudoscience — the top-of-the-line Inzer Phenom shirt “features the EVS (Escape Velocity System) built inside” — but the shirt’s effect is undeniable. As the record for the shirted bench press shot up to 965 pounds, the unshirted or “raw” mark has stayed at an earthly 713 pounds. (Scot Mendelson has that record.) Nowadays, every top bench-presser uses the shirt for safety and power. “The whole raw thing, you’re just asking for trouble if you’re going to be dealing with any kind of weight,” says Ryan Kennelly. “If you rip your pec, you rip your rotator cuff, you’re out of there. Thank God for bench shirts.”

The bench shirt — which comes in denim or polyester — has arms that jut out zombielike, perpendicular to the chest. The position is so awkward and the fit so tight that lifters typically need help swaddling themselves. As the bar starts to press the weightlifter’s arms down, a percentage of the load goes to deforming the shirt. High-end shirts are so taut that for the bar to even reach a bencher’s chest, the fabric has to be compressed with incredible force. (At one meet, Rychlak had to abandon an 890-pound lift because it wasn’t heavy enough to force the weight down to his pecs.) When the bencher starts to push the bar back up, the shirt acts like a spring. As the material snaps back to its original, zombie-arm orientation, the lifter’s elbows get a bit of extra help moving the weight back into the air.

Inzer says the bench shirt “brings out the deeper strength of a lifter.” Powerlifting traditionalists and scientists think the opposite.

As the record for the shirted bench press shot up to 965 pounds, the unshirted or “raw” mark has stayed at an earthly 713 pounds. I feel so very, very weak.

Eating Lots of Carbs May Raise Cancer Risk reports on a recent Mexican study linking breast cancer to carb consumption:

Scientists think carbs may increase cancer risk by rapidly raising sugar in the blood, which prompts a surge of insulin to be secreted. This causes cells to divide and leads to higher levels of estrogen in the blood, both of which can encourage cancer.

A study earlier this year suggested that high-carb diets modestly raised the risk of colon cancer. Little research has been done on their effect on breast cancer, and results have been mixed. One study last year found greater risk among young women who ate a lot of sweets, especially sodas and desserts.

For this study, researchers enrolled 475 women newly diagnosed with breast cancer and a comparison group of 1,391 healthy women in Mexico City who were matched for age, weight, childbirth trends and other factors that affect the odds of getting the disease.

Women filled out a lengthy food questionnaire developed by Willett and widely used in nutrition studies, and were divided into four categories based on how much of their total calories came from carbohydrates.

Those in the top category — who got 62 percent or more of their calories from carbs — were 2.22 times more likely to have breast cancer than those in the lowest category, whose carb intake was 52 percent or less of their diet.

Fitness gurus are starting to provide interactive workout videos over the Net. From At-Home Workouts Move From TV to Computer:

Thanks to the proliferation of broadband and advances in Internet video technology, a number of companies are starting to offer online fitness classes with the aim of providing exercisers with instant variety — and, sometimes, an interactive experience.

The Yoga Learning Center, where Ms. Hitchcock takes her classes, offers about 50 online video and audio yoga practices and meditations, double the amount it launched with in October 2003. Customers pay $9.95 a month for unlimited access. The center is adding at least one new class each month and, by next year, plans to expand into Pilates.

Meanwhile, New York Yoga, which has offered live, online yoga classes from its New York studios since March 2001, expanded into prerecorded streaming-video classes in December. The site now offers 60 live classes throughout the week and 21 prerecorded sessions. Joining the online studio starts at $7.95 a month.

Beyond yoga, a new site called Daily Fitness is set to launch later this summer with six streaming video classes, including kickboxing, step aerobics and belly dancing. The site will also offer personal training and nutrition sessions, via video teleconference. A base membership is expected to cost about $14.95 a month and training sessions around $35 to $40 an hour.

I recently managed to stumble upon PBS’s The Real Olympics:

No event in the ancient world can be compared to the Olympic Games, held every four years and without interruption for nearly 12 centuries. The games drew tens of thousands of people from Greek colonies along the length of the Mediterranean and the shores of the Black Sea when Greek culture and influence were at their height.

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The games were almost 800 years old when Jesus Christ was born, and it took a special Christian edict to stop them, four centuries after his death. Abandoned and long forgotten, they would return in the modern age as the inspiration for the most prestigious sport event on earth.

The first episode — which I didn’t catch in full — “reveals how the ancient games have been appropriated and reinvented in the modern era by ideologues of all stripes and persuasions, including the Victorian upper classes and the Nazis.” The Victorians — or at least the Victorian aristocrats, like Pierre de Coubertin, who created the modern Olympics — wanted to believe that the ancient Olympics were a contest between wealthy aristocrats, amateurs who competed for the love of sport. Of course, the real ancient Olympics were win-at-all-costs competitions for prizes and glory, where athletes competed in the nude, with no signs of social rank.

Naturally, the Nazis, with their emphasis on physical fitness, invested a lot of national pride and money in the Berlin Olympics of 1936, and it’s the Nazis who are largely responsible for much of the pomp and circumstance we now associate with the games. In fact, the Nazis created the Olympic torch relay. From Olympic Flame:

For the ancient Greeks, fire had divine connotations — it was thought to have been stolen from the gods by Prometheus. Therefore, fire was also present at many of the sanctuaries in Olympia. A fire permanently burned on the altar of Hestia in Olympia. During the Olympic Games, which honoured Zeus, additional fires were lit at his temple and that of his wife, Hera. The modern Olympic flame is ignited at the site where the temple of Hera used to stand.

Fire did not appear at the modern Olympics until 1928. Dutch architect Jan Wils had included a tower in his design for the Olympic stadium for the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics and came up with the idea of having a fire burn throughout. On July 28, 1928 an employee of the Amsterdam electricity board lit the first Olympic fire in this so-called Marathontower, known as the “KLM’s ashtray” by the locals.

The idea of an Olympic Flame was met with enthusiasm, and was incorporated as a symbol of Olympism. German sports official and sports scientist Carl Diem conceived the idea of an Olympic torch relay for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. More than 3,000 runners carried the torch from Olympia to Berlin. German track and field athlete Fritz Schilgen was the last to carry the torch, igniting the flame in the stadium.

Protein Sports Drink May Boost Endurance reports on a study that compared Accelerade, a sports drink with whey protein, to Gatorade, which contains no protein, just carbs:

Saunders and his colleagues tested the sports drinks by having trained cyclists pedal a stationary bike to the point of exhaustion while replenishing with either the protein-added or carb-only drink every 15 minutes. The athletes performed a second, more demanding ride the next day. One to two weeks later, they went through the process again, this time with the other drink.

Saunders’ team found that the men lasted 29 percent longer during the first test and 40 percent longer during the second test when they drank the protein-containing drink.

There were also signs of less exercise-induced muscle damage, according to the researchers. After the exercise tests, the cyclists’ blood levels of creatine phosphokinase — an enzyme released from muscles under stress — were lower when they consumed protein during the workout.

This week, What’s Your Workout? looks at Sheri Woodruff, 38 years old, single, manager of financial communications for General Motors Corp. in New York City:

‘I don’t respond well to the idea of doing something because it’s good for me,’ she says. ‘For some, exercise is stress relief or quiet time for themselves, but for me it’s trying something new or challenging myself.’

Her membership at New York Sports Club across the street from her apartment is seldom used. She drops in about twice a month to use the treadmill or elliptical trainer but rarely lifts weights. She runs the three-mile reservoir loop in Central Park once or twice a week, but the majority of her weekly exercise comes from activities she’s signed up to do, such as her company softball league or bike-ride fund-raisers. She also plans her vacations around sporting activities. “My life is my workout,” Ms. Woodruff says.

Frankly, I wasn’t that interested in her workout routine, and she didn’t seem that impressive in pictures either. This bit caught my eye though:

Ms. Woodruff’s adventurous attitude toward fitness began as a teen. An athlete in high school, she played field hockey, lacrosse and was a catcher on the softball team. One day, the wrestling coach approached her in the weight room and asked if he could sponsor and train her as a power lifter. “I was 17 years old, and took it as a weird dare so I said ‘sure why not,’” she recalls. She went on to win the 127-pound-and-under division, squatting 400 pounds, in a high-school weight-lifting tournament.

OK, that’s impressive.

What’s Your Workout? is a new column looking “at the lifestyle and fitness routines of busy businesspeople” — starting with Jim Sud, executive vice president of growth and business development for Whole Foods Market Inc. in Austin, Texas:

Mr. Sud leaves his house at 6:30 a.m. and drives about 10 minutes to his health club, Mecca, located across the street from his office in downtown Austin. From there, he runs various loops around Town Lake, generally around 45-50 minutes. He ends up back at the gym, where he stretches and, twice a week, lifts weights. By 8:30 a.m., he’s at the office.

Some people are born to run. At 6:30 a.m. I’m not.

According to Television watching may hasten puberty, watching television may reduce melatonin levels — and low melatonin levels hasten maturation:

Scientists at the University of Florence in Italy found that when youngsters were deprived of their TV sets, computers and video games, their melatonin production increased by an average 30 per cent.

?Girls are reaching puberty much earlier than in the 1950s. One reason is due to their average increase in weight; but another may be due to reduced levels of melatonin,? suggests Roberto Salti, who led the study. ?Animal studies have shown that low melatonin levels have an important role in promoting an early onset of puberty.?

(Hat tip to FuturePundit.)