michael reid

Artificial Sweeteners make you Fat!!!!

Here is a really interesting study.  It essentially shows that rats
who are fed artificial sweeteners consumed more calories when they were put back on a normal diet.  Basically the authors concluded that "... products containing artificial sweeteners may lead to increased body weight and obesity by interfering with fundamental homeostatic, physiological processes."  Essentially the rats ability to tell when they were full was disrupted.

Be Well,
Mike Reid

Below is the abstract, you can also read the entire article here:

A Role for Sweet Taste: Calorie Predictive Relations in Energy Regulation by Rats
Susan E. Swithers and Terry L. Davidson
Purdue University

Animals may use sweet taste to predict the caloric contents of food. Eating sweet noncaloric substances
may degrade this predictive relationship, leading to positive energy balance through increased food intake and/or diminished energy expenditure. These experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that experiences that reduce the validity of sweet taste as a predictor of the caloric or nutritive consequences of eating may contribute to deficits in the regulation of energy by reducing the ability of sweet-tasting foods that contain calories to evoke physiological responses that underlie tight regulation. Adult male Sprague–Dawley rats were given differential experience with a sweet taste that either predicted increased caloric content (glucose) or did not predict increased calories (saccharin). We found that reducing the correlation between sweet taste and the caloric content of foods using artificial sweeteners in rats resulted in increased caloric intake, increased body weight, and increased adiposity, as well as diminished caloric compensation and blunted thermic responses to sweet-tasting diets. These results suggest that consumption of products containing artificial sweeteners may lead to increased body weight and obesity by interfering with fundamental homeostatic, physiological processes.

Keywords: learning, energy balance, cephalic-phase responses, thermic effect of food

Behavioral Neuroscience Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association
2008, Vol. 122, No. 1

Olympic Weightlifting - Barefoot

I found this video on youtube.  Take notice of what is not on their feet.  Also, really nice technique on the lifts. 

I am a big fan of training bare foot and have all my athletes train like this which includes squats, single leg squats and the Olympic Lifts (although on these I give the athlete the choice of whether they go with or with out shoes, almost all of them go bare foot by choice).

Be Well,
Mike Reid

Single Leg Squats

Single leg squats are a great exercise for keeping your knees healthy.   In a future post I will give further explanation on why this is a good exercise and even show some research.

Be Well,
Mike Reid

ps Even though there are many coaches who advocate single leg exercises, below I found one who has an interesting argument against them.

from: Charliefrancis.com

Single Leg Squats (SLS) 

“Compete on one leg; train on one leg.” “Train the sport specific way.” It’s hard to miss the promotion of this training method or the self-promotion of its Gurus. You can deep squat over 200kg, yet, when tested, you can’t do one unloaded single leg squat without starting to fall over. Amazed by your newly discovered ‘inadequacy’, you’re easily convinced that you must overcome it. But that argument can be turned on its head. Since the formula for power output is weight times distance divided by time, it is precisely this same test that proves there will be training losses if SLS work is substituted. Let’s get this straight from the outset. You will be hard pressed to ever lift one sixth as much with a single leg squat as you could with both legs, no matter how long you work at it, so there better be a convincing argument for its inclusion. Supporters claim that you must be able to stabilize at least your own bodyweight to be optimally stabilized in motions specific to your sport. But, like the gyroscopic effect of a bicycle in motion, the stabilization requirements for a body in motion are far less than when stationary, regardless of the direction of that motion. Supporters argue that the single leg squat is more specific to the motion of the sport itself. While that might sound reasonable at first, it doesn’t stand up to closer examination. A study by Loren Chiu, a PHD candidate at USC, Dr John Garhammer of Cal. State Long Beach, and Dr. Brian Schilling of the Univ. of Memphis compared the movements of the single leg squat and other movements. They found that the magnitude and direction of forces in a SLS were significantly different when compared to running to cut, backpedal and cutting to the left for both the hip and the ankle. In fact a bilateral squat was much closer to these movements than a SLS. (The Science of Specificity).

College Recruits

These are two athletes I coach and they both want to go and play college basketball in USA or Canada next season.

Be Well,
Mike Reid

"Functional" Training

These are some very interesting photos.  The first is real life functional balance while the other is using an often underused concept of asymmetrical loading.

Be Well,
Mike Reid

Fun Training with Bodyweight

Here is a video of a fun training day we had with the Gothia Basketball Team.  The Training took place in a wrestling hall and was instructed by the clubs head coach.  There are some great body weight strength exercises in the video.

Be Well,
Mike Reid

Great Movements #2 - hip Flexibility Drills

In the below video I go over a series of movements to improve your lower body flexibility with particular attention to the hips.  All the drills are based on the Squat, Lunge and Dead Lift.  Great to use before training sessions as part of a warm up.

Be Well,
Mike Reid

PS  this is also the video to accompany an interview that I did with www.TheCrossOverMovement.com.

V02 Max has no Relationship with Basketball Performance

High V02 Max which is an indicator of your Aerobic capacity is a common measure used when evaluating many different kinds of athletes participating in a variety of sports.  But what has been shown in many research studies is that a high V02 Max has no correlation to performance in anaerobic dominant sports like Basketball or Ice Hockey.  These sport require the ability to sprint repeatedly with short rest and even though endurance is important, anaerobic endurance is most important.

So what does this mean?  Long runs in the woods, as example 5km, are not very helpful in developing athletes that participate in anaerobic dominant sports.  Hopefully this is not earth shattering information for most of you.  Below is another research study that shows that V02 Max is a very poor indicator of performance in Basketball players.

For more information you can also see my posts on Scientific Basketball Training: Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3.

Other sports that this information is applicable to are:

• Handball
• Volley Ball
• Soccer
• Canadian Football (similar to American Football but better!)
• Water Polo
• Tennis

Be Well,

Mike Reid

Reference

Carlo Castagna,  Vincenzo Manzi,  Stefano D'Ottavio,  Giuseppe Annino,  Elvira Padua and David Bishop. 2007: Relation Between Maximal Aerobic Power and the Ability to Repeat Sprints in Young Basketball Players. The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research: Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 1172–1176.