Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / A very cool, simple hack to greatly improve your strength training - Wisdom Wednesdays

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A very cool, simple hack to greatly improve your strength training - Wisdom Wednesdays · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

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  Speaker 1: Everyone, Welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays. Today we're
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  Speaker 1: going to unpack a pretty cool little hack that could
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  Speaker 1: significantly improve your workouts. It's not supplements, it's not drugs,
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  Speaker 1: and it's not dodgy devices, just some pretty smart physiology
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  Speaker 1: back by research out of Stamford University. Now, when most
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  Speaker 1: of us think about fatigue during strength training, particularly, we
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  Speaker 1: assume that it's muscle failure. But that's only part of
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  Speaker 1: the story. What's emerged now is that your body might
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  Speaker 1: be shutting down not because your muscles are done, but
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  Speaker 1: because your internal temperature is too high. And that's what
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  Speaker 1: this paper out of Stanford by doctor Craig Heller and
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  Speaker 1: colleagues explorers. And this is the key idea. Fatigue is
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  Speaker 1: not just muscle failure, it's often heat failure. So let
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  Speaker 1: me explain what that means. During intensive resistance exercise, your
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  Speaker 1: muscles generate a huge amount of heat inside them, up
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  Speaker 1: to one hundred times more than at rest. Now, this
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  Speaker 1: heat accumulates in your muscle and your core, and eventually
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  Speaker 1: the brain says, hey, this is too hot. Let's shut
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  Speaker 1: the system down, or at least slow it down. Now,
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  Speaker 1: one of the key enzymes involved in muscle contraction is
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  Speaker 1: called power of it kiny is, and that actually becomes
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  Speaker 1: less efficient at higher body temperatures. And we've known about
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  Speaker 1: this for years. It's linked to something called the central
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  Speaker 1: governor and theory of fatigue. But basically what happens is
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  Speaker 1: that your performance drops off, not because your muscles can't go,
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  Speaker 1: but because your body is protecting itself from overheating. So
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  Speaker 1: here's a butt. The researchers asked, what happens if we
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  Speaker 1: can extract heat from the body during workouts, can this
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  Speaker 1: delay the fatigue point? And that's what enters into this
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  Speaker 1: equation something called the radiators of the body, and it's
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  Speaker 1: known as the glabrous skin. And this is where it
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  Speaker 1: gets pretty cold, literally pretty cold. You've got special areas
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  Speaker 1: of skin called glabrous skin. These are non hurry surfaces
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  Speaker 1: like your palms, although I know a couple of people
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  Speaker 1: with arry palms, but also the soles of your feet
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  Speaker 1: and your face for some people. Now, these areas contain
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  Speaker 1: unique blood vessels and they got a pretty tricky name.
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  Speaker 1: They're called ateriovenous anastemosis. Try saying that after a couple
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  Speaker 1: of beers. They're called avas. Let's stick with avas for short.
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  Speaker 1: I want you to think of them as as like
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  Speaker 1: high flow shunts between outeries and veins that kind of
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  Speaker 1: act like radiators for your blood. Now, the Stamford team
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  Speaker 1: built a device that gently cooled one palm using circulating
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  Speaker 1: water at fifteen to sixteen degrees centigrade. So it wasn't
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  Speaker 1: ice cold. It's just cool enough to drop the temperature
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  Speaker 1: of the blood returning to the core. And I've actually
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  Speaker 1: seen that device and it was maybe a year or
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  Speaker 1: two when it was a prototype. And what actually happens
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  Speaker 1: with this device with the water running over it is
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  Speaker 1: really effective at cooling it. And then the cooled blood
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  Speaker 1: is then redistributed throughout the body, lowering core temperature and
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  Speaker 1: also the muscle temperature, enabling the muscles to perform at
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  Speaker 1: high intensity. Now, this is one of the results get really
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  Speaker 1: really interesting. So the researchers tested three things. Firstly, does
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  Speaker 1: heat stress reduce strength performance? Right, So this is trying
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  Speaker 1: to prove the theory, and they found yes, when participants
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  Speaker 1: exercise in a hot environment without the palm cooling, they
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  Speaker 1: had significantly higher core tem They were around thirty nine
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  Speaker 1: degree cent degree and they completed fewer reps. They were
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  Speaker 1: doing bench presses, they could only do thirty six. When
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  Speaker 1: their palms were cooled, their core temperature dropped from thirty
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  Speaker 1: nine to thirty eight point four, and they cranked out
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  Speaker 1: more reps. They got to forty two on average, which
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  Speaker 1: is is six extra reps, which is quick back of
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  Speaker 1: the five pack calculation. That's about sixteen percent. I think.
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  Speaker 1: The second question I asked was can palm cooling palm
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  Speaker 1: the palms are your hands. Can palm cooling increase training
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  Speaker 1: volume over time? They also find that the answer was yes.
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  Speaker 1: Participants doing the bench press training twice a week for
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  Speaker 1: three weeks increased their work volume by a whopping forty
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  Speaker 1: percent with palm cooling, and without it they got a
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  Speaker 1: natural thirteen percent increase in their volume just because they
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  Speaker 1: were training, right, So thirteen percent versus forty percent like
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  Speaker 1: that is that's pretty big. And in a longer pull
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  Speaker 1: up training study, they're just focusing on one particular exercise
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  Speaker 1: so they can really isolate it. In the pull up study,
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  Speaker 1: the experience participants improved one hundred and forty four percent
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  Speaker 1: over six weeks with palm cooling and now just five
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  Speaker 1: percent improvement in experienced people who didn't have their palp cooling,
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  Speaker 1: So like, this is really really significant, particularly when you're
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  Speaker 1: talking about experienced trainers, the beginners, and the ones who
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  Speaker 1: didn't use the cooling, they improved twenty percent over the
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  Speaker 1: six weeks, and the ones who used the cooling improved
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  Speaker 1: eighty percent. And really that's a massive effects. That's almost
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  Speaker 1: like taking anabolic steroids but without the side effects. So
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  Speaker 1: the third question they asked was, can palm cooling improve
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  Speaker 1: your raw strength? The one repetition maximum that you may
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  Speaker 1: be aware of, right, that's how much that weight you
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  Speaker 1: can live just for one rep. And yes, as well,
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  Speaker 1: in a ten week pyramid style bench press program the
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  Speaker 1: four week spaceline six weeks with palm cooling, the one
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  Speaker 1: ram increased by twenty two percent during the palm cooling phase. Again,
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  Speaker 1: that's pretty freaking massive for anybody who's been experienced trainer.
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  Speaker 1: So let's explore the mechanism a little bit. It really
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  Speaker 1: comes back to this thermal regulation and that enzyme function
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  Speaker 1: that we talked about at the start. By reducing core
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  Speaker 1: temperature and improving your blood cooling, muscles can continue to
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  Speaker 1: contract effectively and efficiently. These glabrous skin cooling works as
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  Speaker 1: a thermal bypass to cool the blood without having to
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  Speaker 1: dunk yourself in an ice bath, and this allows you
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  Speaker 1: to chemically and physiologically reset fatigue between sets. Therefore you
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  Speaker 1: get more work done, therefore you get the improvements. Right now.
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  Speaker 1: They they have created one of these devices, and it's
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  Speaker 1: bloody expensive at the minute. But there is a little
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  Speaker 1: bit of a DIY hack called the bottle method because
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  Speaker 1: their original one I looked into. It is really really
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  Speaker 1: expensive and clunky. But here's what you can do. You
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  Speaker 1: get a bottle of water, probably a plastic bottle about
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  Speaker 1: half full, and freeze it and then you bring it
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  Speaker 1: into the gym and you hold it in your palms
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  Speaker 1: for sixty to ninety seconds between heavy sets, and that's
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  Speaker 1: pretty much it. You will cool your avas, you'll reduce
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  Speaker 1: your core temperature and likely extend your performance, especially on
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  Speaker 1: big compound lifts like squatch bench presses, dead lifts, pull ups,
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  Speaker 1: those sorts of things that are using lots of muscle
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  Speaker 1: nerve for really increasing your core temperature and the temperature
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  Speaker 1: within the muscles. So let's just do a quick recap.
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  Speaker 1: Fatigue doing strength training is often driven by heat, not
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  Speaker 1: just muscle exhaustion. It is those those two things, but
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  Speaker 1: our palms are one of the most efficient places to
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  Speaker 1: extract body heat thanks to these abas, and then doing
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  Speaker 1: the palm cooling between sets improves both work capacity and
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  Speaker 1: the volume you can get through and long term strength gains.
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  Speaker 1: And you can try the bottle technique. It's cheap, teasy,
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  Speaker 1: and it's based on pretty sound physiology. So to get
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  Speaker 1: strength improvements, you don't need steroids, you don't need fancy technology.
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  Speaker 1: You need something that's in play, insight and in this case,
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  Speaker 1: in the palm of your hands. So that's it for
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  Speaker 1: this week, folks, catch you next time.