Barbell Shrugged - 43 - Performance and Supplement Research for CrossFitters: How to Conduct Experiments on Yourself

Episode Date: January 17, 2013

On this episode of the Barbell Shrugged podcast, we have Dr. Brian Schilling on again to discuss performance and supplement research, and how to perform your own experiments. Like us on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/BarbellShruggedPodcast Follow us on Twitter - @BarbellShrugged Sign up for our Newsletter - http://www.FITR.tv For Free Video on The Top 7 Snatch Mistakes visit - http://forms.aweber.com/form/14/989039414.htm Want to get stronger?  Watch our strength seminar - http://fitr.tv/collections/seminars/products/simple-strength-seminar Want to gain more mobility? Watch our mobility seminar- http://fitr.tv/collections/seminars/products/maximum-mobility Want to get leaner and increase your energy? Watch our nutrition course- http://fitr.tv/collections/seminars/products/faction-foods-nutrition-course To watch the Barbell Shrugged Podcast visit - http://fitr.tv/blogs/barbell-shrugged For free CrossFit exercise technique videos visit- http://fitr.tv/blogs/fitr-tv For answers to more CrossFit related questions visit- http://fitr.tv/blogs/the-daily-bs

This week on Barbell Shrug we have our guest Dr. Brian Schilling. He's a researcher. Why are we having you on? Because we're going to be talking about research and how to conduct your own experiments. Yo, this is CTP and you're listening to the Barbell Shrug Podcast, the number one strength and conditioning podcast for CrossFitter. If you want to check out the video version, which you should, go to fitter.tv and watch that because it's way cooler than just listening. And how do you spell fitter.tv there, Mr. Budso? F-I-T-R.TV.

He's a good speller. All right, while you're there, definitely go and sign up for the newsletter. As part of signing up for the newsletter, you'll get a video that Mike made where he shows you the top seven snatch mistakes that you're probably making that are keeping you from hitting that next PR and lifting some big weight. Look at the seminars, tune into the show,

and get ready to become a more awesomer version of you. We give you the tools you need to succeed. You become a tool. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe. We have Chris Moore and Doug Larson here. That's right.

With our guest, Dr. Brian Schilling. Thank you very much. We brought him on because we're going to be talking about research, and he's a researcher, so he's going to help us out. Second appearance by Dr. Schilling. Is it the third? Third. Third.

I must not have been here for the second one. There's a competition for guests that have been on most frequently. You're probably in the running at this point. You're tied with Rich Froning and Robbie Froman. That's the only thing you're ever going to tie him in, by the way. Probably. Brad Pope, yeah. All right, so first I want to cover,

this episode is brought to you by Faction Foods and Nutrition Course. This is a seminar slash webinar that Doug did where he tells you exactly how you should be eating. Now that we're talking about research, he'll be actually only telling you things that research supports, just so you know. How convenient. How convenient. What else are we talking about?

What's on the board? Let me move my gigantic head for you. Move your head, Chris. Newsletter, yo. All right. Make sure to go to fitter.tv and sign up for the newsletter. When you do so, you will learn about the seven mistakes that you might be making that limits your snatch. Sweet lord. When will that ever stop sounding funny so uh if you are not hitting if you're not snatching at least double body weight that video will most definitely help you out double body double body

weight minimum uh if you implement all those, you will snatch double body weight one day. One day. It's a rough guarantee. And you'll get every episode of the show. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you'll get informed of all the new stuff we're doing. Last thing I'm going to cover before we get started is we're going to be speaking at the Garage Games, the expo they have going on. All three of us, myself, Doug, and Chris. Oh, yeah.

Chris. Oh, yeah. Chris, in Atlanta, Georgia, it'll be February 16th and 17th, 2013, just in case you're listening to this in the future. Well, they will be. I don't know when else you'd be listening to it. We're talking about it. We're talking about it. So make sure, if you're in the Atlanta area and you come out, and there's going to be more speakers than just the three of us,

but, of course, we're going to be the best ones. Chris Moore will be talking about strength programming. Doug will be talking about mobility and restoration and recovery. That's right. And I'm going to be talking about the business of running a CrossFit gym. None of us are going to have much to say, I don't think. I hope for a crowd of 30,000 deranged fans, chanting, covered in mud, like Woodstock.

Like Woodstock, yeah. There'll be four people sitting in the front row with notebooks. The rest of the room will be empty. Is that all we have on the board? Daily BS, what's that all about? Oh, yeah, I want to tell you guys about the Daily BS. That's something we started last month. We're about 40-something episodes in on that.

That's where we answer questions. We spend about three to five minutes. Short YouTube videos where we answer your questions. The best way to submit a question is probably via Twitter. At Barbell Shrugged is the name of our Twitter handle. Is that right? Twitter handle. So you can submit your questions that way or via the website.

If you want to see the Daily BS, go to fitter.tv and just click the Daily BS. What's that? The tab. Button. Start your day right. The websites are confusing. With us. Get a cup of coffee going. Get the Daily BS up. Button? Start your day right. The websites are confusing. With us. Get a cup of coffee going.

Get the daily BS up. See what we're talking about. Then you can go on to work and go about your day. So we decided to, yeah, do that. We're going to talk about research today. And the reason we're talking about research is because we've been getting a lot of questions about what we think about single studies and different supplements. And instead of kind of like going through each individual question, I figured this would be a really good opportunity for us to talk about research in general so that you guys could probably ask better questions.

That sounds bad. Edit that out. No. So why do we want to talk about research? I don't know. Because it's really important. That's how you get your info, right? We're talking about one of the reasons

we want to talk about research. Why do we want to talk about research, Chris? You asking me? I'm just here to tell stupid jokes. I thought he was talking to you. You're the Artie Lang of the show. Yeah, I am. You call me fat? I'm calling you funny.

Man, why do I got to go there? Well, no, I mean, I guess the basic mechanism here is that you're exposed to some bit of information. And information could be good. It could be bad. It could be a mix of both. Who knows? So you need some tools to be able to pick good information from bad. And I guess one of those tools can be looking for quality evidence, you know, markers that can guide you along your way so you can make better decisions, right? And research, reading the fruits

of research studies is one way to get that information, maybe the best way, right? There's your experience, there's information that you get from these studies, combine all these things, makes you more capable of making the better decisions in your training and nutrition in your life. Everything. Yeah. I find also that a lot of people all have people come up to me, ask me about specific types of research or specific pieces of research. And they'll be saying, you know, but the research supports this over here. But I'm like, well, there's research that support just about anything. And that's when, you know, you really... And that can be confusing.

You got to really... And that's what we're going to explain. Yeah, you got to dig into the data yourself. And we're going to talk a little bit about that today. Hopefully, after listening to the episode, you'll be more confident in actually looking at a real study. Most people that talk about research to say research supports something, in my opinion, haven't actually read the study, at least not the whole thing.

More than likely, they saw a quote from a journalist in a newspaper, and they said, oh, wow, look, research supports whatever they're looking at, and they haven't actually dug in and read the study themselves. Well, the classic move somebody says, research supports that device X, product X. When you use it, you get great results. So they start with the thing they want to say, then they go fish for some chunk of data or whatever to support that thing.

Oh, my product's great because of this. They ignored all the stuff that didn't agree with what I wanted to say. They had picked out the one thing that did. I said, oh, because look at that. That's why you need to trust me. Brian, do you ever read papers and see people misquote the stuff that you've done? Yeah, it happens occasionally. And the problem with that is that there's just so much stuff out there. and see people misquote the stuff that you've done? Yeah, it happens occasionally.

The problem with that is that there's just so much stuff out there. When Forche wrote The Chaos of the Brickyard in the 60s, he was talking about all these journals that are out there, and it's only gotten worse. Again, this was in the 60s. So if you want to find something, you've got to look in 25 different places. It's pretty much impossible to tell if somebody's misquoting something or not because you've got to go back to the source and you can't find some of the stuff yeah actually that that's a great thing right there the the chaos in the brickyard can you explain that most people probably ever heard that

yeah the guy's uh wrote in the science and what he's really doing is he's talking about the research process as uh and using an analogy of building buildings so when you do a single study you make a brick and when you get enough bricks together you build an edifice and what he was arguing is that instead of making edifices, making buildings, now we're just making bricks. We're making piles and piles and piles of bricks, and now we've got to find places to put these bricks, so we have these storage places called journals. And so if you really want to build an edifice, you can't do it anyway because there's too

many bricks to look through, and most of them aren't very well made. And most people just look at one brick and then draw conclusions about the whole world from that one that's right they want can i make a point for some of the readers in the audience an edifice is like a structure a building like a wall so it's like build a what bro mission sucks man edifice equals building brick goes to make the building there you go with that being said, people constantly, I don't see, I see a lot of articles written or blog posts written, and they always, more often are citing single studies, and they're not, you know, referencing, you know,

that they looked through these hundred studies and found they all support this one idea. They're usually trying to pick out exactly what they want to get out of it, out of that single study. Right, and that one study has its own spot in the continuum of internal validity, which is the control within the study, and external validity, which is the generalizability of the study, which those two are typically inversely related. So you can have a whole lot of control, which reduces the generalizability and vice versa. And so that's why one study usually can't set the record straight or can't tell you the whole thing,

because they got to be somewhere along that continuum. Typically, we start out with more control. And then we do a series of studies in which we work on the continuum of more control internally to less control internally and more generalizability. So that probably didn't mean shit to a lot of people. Yeah, sorry. Hey, I'll tell you, that sounds really smart. It does. Some of those words like generalizability, like explain what that is.

Maybe give a specific example of what you're talking about. Well, that is the definition of research, and it puts that apart from something like a case study. If you do a case study, it's a person it's not generalizable the definition of generalizability means that we've done this on a different on a certain number of subjects animals people and therefore we've got a decent idea that that's physiologically anatomically biomechanically how it would apply to the larger group of people so the the generalizability is from this sample, we can apply what we know from this sample to the population. So, oh, sorry, go ahead.

I saw a study, someone was asking about a specific study last week where there were 25 subjects in the study. In your opinion, how many subjects would you like to see in a study before you start basing your own life decisions on that, on that piece of research? It's a great question. And then the answer is it depends. It depends on the size of the effect, which is basically a statistical type thing, but it depends. If there's a huge effect in a small number of people, um, you can get a pretty good idea that there's probably something going on. If there's a very small effect, you need more people for that to appear more statistically significant, at least. So the

answer is, is there is no perfect number. It depends on the study. One of the arguments you'll hear against research is, well, everybody's different. Let me tell you, that's not true, right? If everybody were different, there would be no medicine, right? We couldn't practice medicine. So physiologically, biomechanically, there are more things that are similar between human beings than are different uh so everybody wants to be the exception to the rule right well that doesn't apply to me because i'm different well let me tell you just like a snowflake yeah like every other fucking stuff yeah you're not you're not that special chris didn't get enough sleep this week. So there is no magic number.

And so, again, that's probably why you need more than one study in a specific area, because now you've shown that, okay, with small differences in the methods or whatever, we have more different studies that support this hypothesis. I think you started going that direction. Can you tell us about outliers in studies and what gets done with outliers sometimes and maybe non-responders, maybe in a supplement study or something like that? Yeah, I mean, outliers, there's really two different things. When you say outliers, you're talking about people that don't fit into the rest of the data.

So typically, if you're looking at it mathematically, it's like people that are plus or minus two standard deviations different from the mean value, those are typically outliers. They can be a problem. However, there's also what you call influential data. So if you're looking at a correlational study, a subject can be outlying and not be influential. They can still be on the line. They're just somewhere either at the way bottom of the line or way at the top of the line.

However, if they're somewhere way off the line, not only are they outlying and they're influential, then the line starts to move towards that one. So just to say something is outlying is not nearly as important to saying that something is potentially influential. All right. So let's apply that to something that people – that's a little more tangible that people can kind of grab onto. So if you did a six-week study where you had 20 people and they were all going to squat three days a week, and then at the end of the study, the mean average, like you said, was a 20-pound increase in your squat. And then there was one person that had a 140 pound increase in their squat if you were conducting a study like how does that one person how that big a big outlier that 140 pound increase influence the rest of the data do you throw that

one thing out and say well that doesn't really count for most people so we're not going to use that data point or what do you do with that yeah you'd have to usually a priority that is in in the planning stage just set some sort of way that you're going to deal with those so you'd have to usually a priority that is in in the planning stage just set some sort of way that you're going to deal with those so you're going to say look if somebody is this many standard deviations outside the the mean then we're going to just ignore that data point the other thing you can do is is in in my mind is very transparent is you can run the analysis both ways with and without the person does it really change the story and report it both ways right and that's what you're really saying so So you're saying that, yes, this person is outlying,

but they may not necessarily be influential. The story may pretty much be the same, whether that person is in there or not. And that's where there's, again, we try to be as objective as possible, but there's always a place where some bias can sneak in there. I think that's a really important point, is that a really good paper and a really good study

will be very transparent to you, the readers. When you pick it up, the things they did should basically make sense. Each step should be explained. There shouldn't be any obvious holes where information was withheld. At the beginning, you should see this list of disclosures that let you know of the people who did the study study were any of them paid large amounts of money by the people who also provided supplements that were used in the study, for instance. That's a big key. Investigator X was paid $40,000 by Metrix

to do the study or support the study. Okay, well, maybe I keep that in the back of my mind when I read Supplement X had way amazing results. But it also means you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because there's the appearance of a conflict of interest does not necessarily mean that there is fraud

that's going on. If you see a supplement study, for instance, and maybe that disclosure wasn't there, it might be another cue that someone maybe withheld from you and hidden from you. That information shouldn't be there. What kind of things can the lay person with no research experience look to see that will help them ensure that they're looking at a study that's of quality, that really means something that isn't tainted?

You said taint. Taint. You know, that the people did it in an unbiased way and that research holds up and really means something. Well, I wish I knew the answer to that one of them may be the journal quality you know there are a lot of journals out there and some are better than others but um you know you don't have to look very hard to see retractions as a matter of fact there's a blog called retraction watch if you want to be really amused that's cool it's there's a bunch of stuff out there about you know stuff that's getting retracted but it's it's

hard to i mean um i'm not dismissing any of that goes on but from a from a researcher standpoint there's a lot of pressure to publish and a lot of pressure to make your data say the most it possibly can because that means you get the next grant and a lot of people's jobs are dependent on can they get the grant so it's a it's it's it's it's a it's a tough place to be when you try to be objective, but you're really dependent on finding results that are meaningful and that hopefully lead to more funding, more research. I mean, you can talk all you want about the funding sources, but guess what? If supplement companies didn't sponsor some research, guess how much supplement research would get done? Almost none. That was going to be one of my questions. People a lot of times

say, well, the supplement company funded it, so we can't trust the results. But who else is paying for these studies? The interesting thing is that in my field, if an industry entity gets involved in research, the people who read it go, ah, well, industry is touching

this. Biased. Can't trust that. But you ignore the bias on the other side of the fence. You know, some academic researchers are hugely biased for the reasons that Brian explained. They have pressure on them outside of the questions at hand to deliver certain results. They have their own reputations to think about. So bias isn't like on one side of the fence. You know, a supplement company can have it.

The guy who wants to make his name for saying something different that's unique and gets attention, makes him a worldwide expert, he carries a heavy bias. Like the guy with the red wine research. Big, huge science rock dropped in a pond, got a lot of really great worldwide acclaim and lots of money, and then turned out to be sort of manipulated data. Bias is on all sides of the fence. You've got to be educated to look out for it. We're talking here and it makes it sound like, all right, you should trust research that you read because of these reasons. And then we're saying, don't trust it because of these reasons. What are some things that people could look for if they're looking at studies or research?

What is something that we can do when we're looking at stuff ourselves to ensure that we're getting high quality information? One of the things you can do is look at the body of research. Don't look at one article, but look at the body that, you know, all the hypotheses and see if they're supported. Is this the same hypothesis that, you know, supplement A works? Is it shown in more than one study? Is it shown in men and women? Is it shown in animals? Have they done animal research? Stuff like that. So again, it's basically just, it's checks in the column, support of the hypothesis or rejection of the hypothesis. This stuff works, this stuff doesn't. How many checks do you get in each column?

And then past that, it really becomes this idea of can you pick out methodological flaws? Can you see that the reason they did find something or didn't find something is because it was a poor design? And that takes a lot of, you have to be an expert. You have to know the area. You have to know the methodologies, know the testing, know the subjects, know the physiology, biomechanics, whatever it may be. It gets harder then. That's a really good point. The cool thing that people out in your office can remember is that you may pick up a study and you may read it.

It could be dead on perfect. It could be terrible. It could be manipulated. It could be flawless, whatever. But it's on you to then read a second and a third one. And with every time you reach out and get more information and you read another paper, you're getting closer and closer and closer

to making the right decision. You're compiling the evidence like Brian's suggesting and you're getting closer to the solution that is accurate. If you read one, you may be led to a wrong conclusion. That's fine. If you read two and three, you reduce that effect. You get close to what you're looking for. The more you read and absorb this information that the more accurate your decision-making will

be because of it. Are there, are there any supplements out there that you feel, um, it's pretty much, uh, there's, you know, a thousand studies on this particular, uh, supplement and there's no point in not taking it you know one of those things where it's you know almost uh well very concrete data dumb not to take it well yeah i mean creating like what's your what's your like top five supplements that you think everybody should be taking oh yeah be stupid not we have for for research support creatine is probably the number one you know um the um, the, uh, the second one, which in my mind, believe it or not, would probably be, um, some sort of, uh, of bicarbonate

for buffering, which obviously it has the side effects, but there are plenty of studies out there that show that, uh, gastric distress, but if you, if you take it in small enough doses, it tastes like ass. If you take it in small enough doses throughout the day, you can really increase your work capacity quite a bit. Boy, top five supplements. What type of product would that be? Baking soda? Baking soda.

Yeah, it just tastes terrible. Yeah, but baking soda and a little bit of tea. I mean, I've heard some pretty nasty stories about it. Let's make this point really clear. Dear listener, don't drink a glass of baking soda. You're going this point really clear. Dear listener, don't drink a glass of baking soda and you're going to shit your pants.

Explosively. Yeah, and you won't be able That story Dr. Fry used to tell is the funniest shit I've ever heard in my life. That's a good one.

Literally. I don't think we're ever going to get Dr. Fry. I mean, we might, but do you want me to tell it? Hope we do someday. Well, the long and short of it,

I guess he was a subject in a study where they were testing the effects of bicarbonate on windgates or something, tell it? I hope we do someday. The long and short of it, I guess he was a subject in a study where they were testing the effects of bicarbonate on windgates or something, was it? Yeah. So you cycle really hard. You see how your fatigue is addressed with that. But I guess he took this large dose. He's doing the exercise test. I guess maybe they're taking IVs periodically or blood samples.

So I guess he had to have, at one point, I guess it was common. Most subjects had to, in between tests, rush off to the bathroom where some poor son of a bitch GA had to hold the IV as you were in the toilet stall, explosively shitting your brains out. Before you got stable and came back out and did another Wingate or whatever.

So I guess this thing is drawing a lot of moisture into your gut. And boy, oh oh boy you don't get tired as quickly but uh yeah fine print you're gonna shit yourself so so how would you feel about uh crossfitters taking taking that in like before a wad you think there's enough time there especially during like multiple events in one weekend yeah i don't know the dose right off the top of my head i'm trying to remember if it's like 125 milligrams, but what they're doing is like breaking it up. This is the point where decimal points are very key. Yeah, that's right.

And it's not just a day of type supplement. It's actually a training type thing. You probably take small doses of baking soda a little bit every day, maybe a little bit more. Build up your tolerance and get it in your system. It could increase your buffering capacity. Similar to what beta-alanine does, except it just works more in the

blood side versus in the muscle side. Who says you never use math in your everyday life? That's right. Numbers and things for ding-a-lings. You mentioned creatine. You said the research is very strong on creatine. What exactly does the research say on creatine? It shows that for short events that rely on ATP,

adenosine triphosphate, and creatine phosphate, that those events will be positively influenced on it. But it also says that it's probably not a day of ergogenic aid. It's probably something you need to take over a period of time so that it builds up in the muscle and then it is available for fueling those workouts. It also shows that it probably doesn't work as well in women. Oh, I didn't know that. Women just have higher levels of creatine to begin with.

Anytime you have to move really fast for a short period of time, lift something really, really heavy, again, for a short period of time, something less than 10 seconds or so, and you're trying to go max speed, max strength, or max power, then creatine helps, and especially repeated bouts of that as well. Yeah, but the problem was is that when creatine came out and everybody was like, oh, we can do research now, every swinging dick out there said, oh, I'm going to do some research. I got this creatine, you know, because it was cheap.

And the methodology was so bad, you couldn't figure anything out. Because some people were saying, well, obviously it doesn't work. Well, again, that was the type of thing where for a while there, it was probably 50-50. But all you had to do was look at the methodology and say, look, the studies that lasted more than a week were pretty much 90% positive, and anything that lasted shorter than a week weren't nearly as strong. They were about 50-50. So it really depends on the methodology. So that's the thing. Once you start getting stacks and stacks and stacks of bricks that start leading to the building of a building, then you have a lot of confidence that what you're seeing is this real phenomenon, right? The level of evidence is very high, high quality in large amounts, lets you know that when you read an outcome of a study, and it also agrees with that pile back there, that you're

seeing something that's real. Now, one thing that, there may be less piles of this kind of evidence, but when there are some studies that showed alternative effects of creatinine, like for neurological function or protection against concussions and stuff didn't you talk about that one time it's hilarious because you know when it first came out because it was marketed towards strength and power athletes it was automatically bad for you that's the kind of the stigma that anabolic steroids brought to us but uh but yeah i mean it was just i i think it was a it'd be about six years ago now the nih had a huge trial looking at creatine in people with

Parkinson's disease. Because besides muscle, your nervous system is the next biggest sink, the next biggest repository of creatine in your body. And it turned out that it had pretty positive effects on Parkinson's disease. By positive effects, what does that mean? It didn't give you Parkinson's. It reduced your score on the unified Parkinson's disease rating scale, which is a very complex type thing where they track symptomology in Parkinson's disease. Using Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease.

So it made people better. It made people with Parkinson's disease better. Was there anything on concussion like in high school athletes? I'm not sure. Maybe like one study. That's a good example of when you see one study published with something interesting and new. Like we did a study on creatine.

It turns out when kids had concussions, their symptoms were reduced. It seemed to have some kind of protective effect. Wow. If you publish that, it's going to get attention. It's going to make a little bit of a splash. Everybody's going to look at that. And then the first thing you're going to think of, I need to have my high school athletes take creatine

because I don't want them getting concussion damage. Yeah. They're not going to publish it if it's not ideal or controversial. It's sexy as hell. The editor likes it. The readers like it. It's going to sell subscriptions. It's going to get them ad revenue.

It's good for everybody. But what you have to keep in mind is that that study functions to do really one thing, raise the possibility that something could be going on. And that's sort of a call that, look, I found this thing. It could be total crap. It could be something real. Other people, please research this to see if we're seeing something that's repeatable and real. So when you see one study that tells you something interesting, and the reader should now become a possibility.

Oh, it could have an effect on this. I need to look for more information because right now the chances of it being false are really astronomically high. There's all kinds of error in that that could potentially skew it to one way or the other. But if you saw two or three more studies, somebody was interested and did another one,

then you start going down the path towards a real thing, and it could very well be something real you're observing. I actually saw a study last week about creatine as a myostatin inhibitor. Have you ever seen anything about that? Yeah, the myostatin inhibiting idea is really, really interesting. I'm just not really sure that once you get past the differentiation stage in embryology that you're really going to make a big difference by inhibiting myostatin.

Doug, tell everybody what myostatin is. I don't know much about it. You can talk about that. I don't know shit about myostatin. Regulating muscle amounts in an organism. It regulates protein synthesis. So basically, if you've got a lot of it going on,

it's going to limit the amount of protein synthesis you have, so muscle growth. Can I break the third wall? CTP, put a picture of it going on, it's going to limit the amount of protein synthesis you have, so muscle growth. Can I break the third wall? CTP, put a picture of the myostatin cow and go. Oh, yeah. Yeah, if you're blocking myostatin, then you're going to have unlimited growth of muscle tissue. If you've seen Bigger, Faster, Stronger,

Bigger, Stronger, Faster, which is the movie, Chris Bell goes to see the Belgian blue bull. It's gigantic. That cow was a myostatin-inhibited bull, I guess. Yeah. And it's just gigantic. So there's this one piece of research, Brian Kiefer, who wrote Carb Backloading Something. He talked about taking up to 60 grams of creatine a day as a potential way of doing it.

It's like in the back of the book like you know tucked away somewhere here's where we give you caution before you make kind of decision you need more information exactly completely bullshit it's a single study the 60 grams is uh is just an idea of what you might want to take it's not actually supported by any research so you know and then he puts that out there and then I hear about it through two different ways. I hear about it, and I'm going, I don't, you know, I might try it myself as an experiment on myself, but that's a lot of creatine to be taking in a single day.

You could be flushing a lot of money down the toilet. From what I know, once you get past a certain amount, a lot of that's ending up in the urine. So anything past probably 20 grams or when you're full, which when you get up to a certain, when your muscles are full of creatine, you're not going to store anymore. So I'm not sure about that. I have to look into that. I'd probably venture away from taking so much of one thing that then you're making your

kidneys really hustle to try to get that out of your body. Intuitively, I would express a lot of caution before i tried such a thing yeah but so we'll do it anyway i'll try it yeah we'll see what happens you only live once all right so we've talked about creatine you kind of brought up uh beta alanine is that another supplement you would recommend you only get you only said like two you got three we need to go we got we got five. I mean, I made that number up, of course. You're like, there aren't five.

Beta-alanine seems to have quite a bit of support. I'm not exactly wowed by what I've seen. Interestingly, the stuff that's really wowed me lately is actually diaspartic acid. I mean, again, it comes from fertility research, so I'm not sure how much we can apply that to exercise, but the increases in luteinizing hormone and testosterone are pretty remarkable. The other one that's kind of wowed me lately is cinnamon. Another big study looking at lowering A1C and reducing blood sugar in diabetics that are taking cinnamon. Oh, really? Yeah.

Nice. How much cinnamon? Like, how's it? I'm not even sure if it's like in the gram type in the gram type range, which is not all that much. Like they do the cinnamon challenge once a day? The funniest videos you're ever going to see on YouTube? It's actually pretty inexpensive. So what am I up to for? I think the other ringer is vitamin D right now,

which unless you're getting a whole lot of sun or eating a whole lot of bone marrow and other vitamin D-rich foods, you're probably not getting a whole lot of sun or eating a whole lot of bone marrow and other vitamin D rich foods, you're probably not getting a whole lot of it. If you're deficient, the supplement that's going to shore up that deficiency is going to be the most effective thing for you. Right, right, right. But you know what's funny? Out of the five Brian mentions, they're all not extraordinarily expensive at all. They're all pretty cheap.

Cinnamon shit is almost free if you get this Kroger brand cinnamon or something. That's because I'm cheap, actually. Isn't the majority of the cinnamon sold in the U.S. actually Kasia? Not really cinnamon? Do they use real cinnamon? Real tree bark cinnamon? Really, it's not the same thing. I don't know.

I want to go. If it's just mislabeled and it kind of tastes like cinnamon, but it's not actually cinnamon, then you might not be getting the right thing at all. You and I and the rest of the audience who watches Good Eats will know that yes you were right yes alton brown there's ripoff cinnamon and then there's real tree black ground it's a good thing you're learning all your information off a tv show but yeah that's just like you people at home watching this right now look when you when you go to make up you want to take creative don't say that we can make a recommendation that cretin's i just don't want you to say anything bad about alton brown don't learn anything from podcasts

either but yeah you can go online to amazon and buy a big bucket of cretin for 10 bucks and know We can make a recommendation that creatine is good. I just don't want you to say anything bad about Alton Brown. Don't learn anything from podcasts either. But yeah, you can go online to Amazon and buy a big bucket of creatine for $10 and know that that's probably going to give you a good outcome. You don't need to buy CreaForce 5000 Extreme, which is 10 times the cost, but not any more effective than the other thing. And cinnamon and vitamin D, these things that you can just go to Kroger and buy for almost nothing, and they can really give you a really huge bump in your health and your performance.

But before we take a break... We might add caffeine to that list. Yeah. Caffeine's huge. Just before we take a break, I want to dig into diaspartic acid a little bit just because that's probably one of those supplements that nobody has heard of,

and I think everyone in this room has played around with it a little bit in the last 12 months per your recommendation. No, wait. I think I got a phone call from a sales rep, and then I started asking you about it. I forget how we got into it. I don't remember either. All your hair grew back, didn't it?

That's right. I was completely bald. No, we can talk about the effects that I got out of the aspartic acid uh but i want to hear what because i think you probably looked into a little bit deeper than i did i mean yeah there's there's a few studies out there it's in uh mostly in the fertility research so they're looking at people uh they're looking at men with low sperm counts and they're and they're supplementing with the d form of aspartic acid which is is just an amino acid. It's nothing special, nothing exotic. And it just happens to be found in high quantities in the pituitary gland and in gonadal tissue in men.

So the interesting thing about it is that with the relatively small level supplementation, 3 grams a day, they saw an increase in sperm count in men who had low sperm counts to begin with, but they also saw an increase in luteinizing hormone and testosterone. The important thing about that is that it works on two parts of the axis. So it's not necessarily just increasing testosterone, therefore you get negative feedback, so you stop producing your own testosterone, kind of what happens with large doses of anabolic steroids. You're actually increasing production of the precursor to testosterone

and testosterone itself. Have you seen anything in regard to estrogen with that? Do we need to be taking an estrogen inhibitor or anything like that? That is one of the unanswered questions right now because if you're looking at somebody with a low testosterone, low sperm count, it probably doesn't lead to increased

estrogen. But if you take it, if you have a normal sperm count, normal testosterone, we just don't know if it would increase aromatization from testosterone into estrogen. If you grew a vagina, maybe stop taking it. That might be a good start. If your nipples get really sore,

that'd be good. You start crying at movies? I'm definitely looking out for that one every time I take a shower. What is going on? All right, we're going to take a break and then we're going to... Do something else.

Do something else. I'm like, ah, what am I talking about? Hey guys, this is Rich Froning and you're listening to barbell shrugs for the video version go to fitter.tv checking out my tea bag welcome back to barbell shrug we're talking about research of course uh first i want to point out that we got some sweet t-shirts made we've been we're on episode 43, and we just now got t-shirts. So, Chris, you can show them off. We've got this one right here behind me. That's the back, right?

That's the back, and the front is what you're looking at now. CTP was the one that designed the back? That's right. You can go to fitter.tv and order you one so you can be all fancy. That's right. All right, getting back to the topic at hand, and order you one so you can be all fancy. That's right. All right, getting back to the topic at hand, we want to talk about research methods,

which was actually my favorite class I took in school. I think that single class did the most for me in being able to read research and apply it to everyday life and coaching and stuff like that. And you're going to be teaching that this fall at University of Memphis, the graduate program. Do you want to talk about a little bit of what's going on at University of Memphis, the graduate program? Yeah, we've got a really unique setup. I mean, we're trying to set up a program where we have a certain niche, and that niche is informed research consumerism.

So you come to the University of Memphis, get a master's degree in exercise science. No matter what you do, you will be an informed research consumer, which is good. I mean, if you go out to be a coach, people are going to ask you about research. They're going to ask you what they read in the New York Times or whatever. Or if you go on to be a personal trainer, they probably even get more questions, you know? So we want to make sure that people who come out of that program can um can interpret the research correctly and if you want to go from our program on to get a phd then you'll be even more prepared to go on and and uh and get a phd one of the terms that you'll hear is

epistemology which is is studying how we learn so what we're trying to do is is set up a program where we are uh teaching people how to do, how to interpret research, how to do that. And therefore, they can go out and instead of being just a tradesman where they just regurgitate something that's been, this is how we've always done it, they can be creative, thoughtful, they can be a professional in whatever they decide to do. I feel screwed because Doug and I graduated before you refined it to be so awesome. But I will say that coming out of that program, I think it empowers you to do just about anything you want to do. I work in a varied field. We both got degrees there. I think we got a hell of a lot of really priceless experience out of that. I mean, that's why I went from being an idiot undergrad to really understanding how to think better and work hard and get the most out of whatever it was I was pursuing.

That's where it all started for me was in those labs, putting in the work. Well, a big part of it, I mean, I think we have a good program, don't get me wrong, but a good part of it is recruiting good students. So the more good students we get, the more good students we create, you know, we put out there. So, you know So I can name off a bunch of them. Two of them are sitting right here from the master's program.

One from the undergraduate program, guys like Mike Falvo. Oh, sorry. I said sitting. I said sitting here, so you're standing. Take it easy. Guys like Falvo and Corey and even young ladies like Jackie

Barnes. We've had some pretty good people come in, and they've been good going on. I remember when my – Andy's watching this right now like, those motherfuckers. They didn't even say my name. Dr. Galpin himself. Dr. Galpin, yeah. I remember the first moment where I sort of started learning how to think better, and it was in the lab in Memphis.

I was sitting there with some some former students well we were both undergrad research assistants basically getting your feet wet with with research we're sitting in the lab setting up some sort of experiment and dr lauren shoe walked in is he still at alberta or at university of alberta yep yeah dr shoe is a very smart guy he walks in he sort of observed carefully. We were just, you know, basically like two kids playing in a sandbox to him. But we're sort of fiddling with these devices that we're going to measure

something. We're going to set up an experiment. And sort of asking these slight questions. And they go, yeah, well, we thought about that. We set it up this way. Yeah, I mean, we're doing it right. That was the gist of what I was saying. He goes, what did you think about this? What about this alternative?

He goes, well, I think that that's not going to be a problem. I made an assumption. And he immediately recognized I was making an assumption. He said, the greatest quote ever.

He goes, so you assume that? I go, yeah, I mean, sure. It seems like I don't have to think about that. That was the exchange.

He goes, assumption's the mother of all fuck-ups. That's the greatest line to ever first embed itself into my brain. If you think, well, I'm just going to assume that this is true, this is effective, this result is a good result,

that I'm making a good decision, that I don't have improvements to make, whatever assumption you're making, the first thing that's popping in your mind is I'm making an assumption. It's probably overwhelmingly wrong. I need to challenge my assumption here. That was the first moment where it all started sort of slowly coming together for me. An assumption based on emotion, backed up by logic afterward?

Yeah. Usually. You had a hunch. You wanted it to be true. You gathered evidence to make it true, and so it was. That's right. So getting back to research methods, the class, that's kind of where we're going next with the podcast. Why do people do research methods?

Why do they take the class research methods? And how does that set them up to be researchers in the future? So what we try to do is try to instill the idea of how to, first of all, read the literature because you have to be able to read it, interpret it before you can do anything else. Unfortunately, we've gotten into this thing where people, you know, they want to they get some idea. They want to rush out and do it. And they haven't really examined the body of literature to see if it's already been done already. But it's really the idea of setting up the the the the construct of the scientific method how do we go from from hey i wonder about

this to actually getting some real data and it's it's a struggle because we've got people out there um as a matter of fact and it's it's this field not to get too far away but the field of nutrition and exercise is always going to be full of hucksters right because people are desperate skinny guys want to get have more muscle fat guys want to have less muscle, they're less fat, you know, so there's people that are desperate, so they want to believe anything. So you've got these unscientific methods out there of tenacity, you know, we've always done it this way, so therefore that's how you should do it. You know, that's why we're fighting with wrestling and some of these combat sports and all they want to do is run, run, run, run, run, run, run, instead of doing some other stuff.

Or you have things like intuition, like somebody make this argument, well, I think this and I've observed this and, you know, they want to use a equals, you know, A causes B and then B causes C, therefore A causes C. But you have to look at those intermediate steps to see if they have them right. So we're trying to basically allow people recognize those things and then maybe apply a more objective measure or more objective method to come to those conclusions. So the research is usually, from what I've gathered over the years, it's usually kind of chasing what's already happening in the real world,

especially in the world of strength and nutrition. People try something new, they observe some positive effect, and they go, I wonder why that's happening. And they start coming up with hypotheses and testing those hypotheses and then finding conclusions years after people have been applying those methods. Yeah, I think there's some of that both. And that's one of the things that we really need to do better is the sports scientist needs to know more about coaching and the coach's life. And the coach needs to know a little bit more about sports science so i think think there's responsibility on both ends to kind of to come

together so that we are maybe maybe not maybe the research isn't behind or it's it's a more current the problem is is that you know it's my job to do that and my job to bring money to the university and if there's not really good money in sports research, it tends to get pushed off to the side. There's more money in health research, and that's what the federal government wants to fund, etc., etc. There's responsibility on both the coaches' side and the researchers' side to come together. That's kind of the goal of the NSCA, isn't it? It is the mission of the NSCA, isn't it? It is the mission of the NSCA. Now, it may not actually be what's going on in the NSCA,

but it is the mission of the NSCA, which is that's kind of something that sticks in my craw a little bit. So it's bridging the gap between science and practice? Is that what it is? Yeah, basically it says as the worldwide authority in strength conditioning, and again, it's this idea of bringing research to practical application it's still building the bridge under construction it's under construction what uh what kind of what are some different types of research

well you've got your your kind of your it goes on a continuum right so you can talk about different types of designs but i mean what a lot of people think research is something like a case study. Well, a case study is not by the classical definition of research because it's not generalizable. There's only one person or a limited number of people. It's not generalizable. However, it's often a good starting point. That's the Tim Ferriss method.

Yeah, if you've got a small group of people, you can get, or even one person, you can get a whole bunch of data from this one individual, and you can take that data and then maybe formulate a stronger hypothesis. Again, it's not the end, but it's not necessarily a bad starting point either. You just wouldn't want to throw out all case studies, right? Then you can go to like your single group study, and then there's all kinds of designs within there. But you can also go into what we call a meta-analysis,

which is nothing but a systematic review. So instead of a narrative review where some guy reads a bunch of studies and says, this is what I think, a meta-analysis actually applies a statistical method where they look at effect sizes, which is nothing more to say than a fancy way of saying how meaningful different effects are, either correlations or differences between groups, nothing more to say than a fancy way of saying how meaningful different effects are, either

correlations or differences between groups, and it tries to apply it to a body of literature. So you can't do a meta-analysis on two studies, right? You got to have a decent number of studies, whatever that magical number is, and then you can apply a statistical measure. It is more objective than a narrative review. It's not 100% objective because you have to figure out what studies to include and what not to include. And then you have to know about methods and you have to be able to code for different things. For instance, say we're doing a meta-analysis on how many sets you should do to get strong. Well, you got, you're going to find studies with one set, two set, three set, four set, five sets, six sets. How are you going to code them? Are you going to treat a study with five subjects

the same as you're going to treat a subject with 20 subjects? The answer is no, and there's actually a way to control for that when doing a meta-analysis. We're getting more and more into using those, but again, you have to remember there are still limitations. It is more objective. It's not perfect. So if you were to generalize for someone that's never looked at any research in their whole life,

would it just be easier for them to search for a meta-analysis rather than starting to look at every brick in the wall on its own? Absolutely. A well-done meta-analysis is a great place to start. A well-done review in general is a good place to start. We're talking about where do you find good stuff. Sports Medicine is a great journal for reviews. They're narrative reviews. They're narrative reviews.

They're not systematic. They're not meta-analyses, but they're often really, really good, at least a good starting point. That's where they take a bunch of different studies and then kind of write about what they all kind of support. Exactly. But, again, you have to remember that you're reading one or you're reading the author's interpretation of a bunch of authors' interpretations. Copy of a copy. Right. You of a copy. You've already seen Multiplicity.

You know where we're going with that argument. You're further and further away from the original series. That's how I learned about science. I watched Multiplicity. Michael Keaton, the greatest actor ever. No. That would be Gene Hackman. Gene Hackman. Gene Hackman. Can you tell us about maybe an experiment someone set up versus epidemiological studies?

Well, epidemiology is that you're looking at determinants, right? So you're trying to figure out what things might cause a result. The problem is that no matter how great an epidemiological study is it is always done in retrospect you're looking at associations the only way you can establish cause and effect is to prospectively manipulate something and see what changes right and uh gary taubes i mean he's he wrote an article that they published in Science, which is a big-time journal, about how epidemiology has just gone off the scale. People are just assuming cause and effect, and

unfortunately, that's what's getting filtered down through the media. That's what the people are reading in the popular media and say, oh, look, this causes that, and unfortunately, that's what we get with the China study, these things where people are making too much. It's happening we get with the China study, you know, these things where people are making too much. You want to say exactly what happened with that?

It's happening a lot with nutritional stuff. Right, right, absolutely. It's crazy. So it's like you see a population like in China and you observe a couple things. One, you know, the people who eat meat have more cancer. Was that one of the outcomes? Yeah. Cancer was the big one, I think.

Cancer is up there. And also, the more meat they eat, the more cancer. So therefore, eating meat gives you cancer. So don't eat it. Eat celery stalks all day, every day. Like the Forks Over Knives movie, the firefighter who eats nothing but raw bell peppers and is the fittest man he's ever become now because of this. But they ignore things like the people who also eat more meat

also happen to live in industrial centers with more things that can cause cancer or what have you. Or also have jobs that make them more sedentary by happenstance. I know the China study, they were doing a lot of grouping of protein with processed

foods. That was the confusing thing about that movie, right? They had this confusing middle part where they go, look at the history of farming in the United States. People didn't used to have disease, and now they have lots of disease. And they sort of ignored the main thing in the room.

They kind of hinted a little bit like, well, what else is going up with this change of lifestyle? Also, you know, consumption of industrialized foods, corn sugars, all that kind of stuff. Also going up, but no attempt at all to recognize the gigantic elephant in the room, which is, is that what's also contributing? Or maybe is that the sole cause of this problem?

As I was watching it, I was like, surely they're about to go this direction. And they never did. They let that fruit hang right in front of your face. I don't know. So the moral of that story is correlation is not causation. Correlation is necessary for causation, but it is not sufficient to prove causation. One of the big fallacies in thought.

I guess the other thing, which is huge, which I love, this is the easiest thing for anybody to do, I guess, is conformational bias, where you start off on your journey. There's something you want to believe probably. I want to believe that this thing is going to help me. I want to believe that I'm going to get a benefit. You start looking for information that confirms

that. You want to believe that in Explode Extreme 5000 is going to make your bench press go up. You take it. You start looking for signs that your bench press is going up. Maybe it's not going up, but if I feel stronger, bro, God, it's got to be the thing.

So you start digging and scratching for bits of information that make you feel better. Instead of looking for information that challenges what you believe, so maybe you can make a better decision in the future. I know one thing that happens to me is anytime I start spending more money on supplements, I start taking my training and my nutrition more seriously. Well, that's a great point though, because I wouldn't want to waste my money on those supplements. But that's a good, that's a good point because you're bringing up one of the

things, one of the things in methodology that's so important is the idea of a placebo control. Is there some sort of placebo control, which just about anything isn't going to get published anymore without a placebo control, but you'd be surprised how well you know and the other question is can you have a placebo control if you're giving somebody a mega dose of caffeine for instance who's caffeine naive they're going to know they got the caffeine so from a performance is awesome performance aspect you can't necessarily have a placebo control now if you're looking for a measurement in the blood chances are it doesn't matter if they think they got the real thing or not you're just looking at a measure so it depends on how um how much that would be influenced by the psychological aspect of it that's the tricky thing with with humans that you're trying to assess how well a

program or a pill or an idea is working uh there's this thing in the middle that's very complicated and tricky that can lead to sort of confounded results it can complicate things that thing being the brain which is you know your belief in something changes the the very foundation of what it is you're you're doing if you get the most well-crafted training program in history of the world and if you just think you have a shitty attitude you don't train hard it's not going to work but if somehow you have a shitty program you believe 100 you will get stronger you'll get results. There's this big problem where your belief or lack thereof can really interfere. But you bring up a great point though, because you said the magic word, you said the training program. I hear this all the time. Show me a study that shows me the

perfect training program. Let me tell you, it doesn't exist. And here's why. There are too many acute training variables to manipulate. You can manipulate how much weight you use, the rest between sets, how many workouts. There are so many different things you can manipulate. Millions of combinations. The combinations are exponential. You can look at groupings, and you can say, okay, this appears to be this type of thing. Well, the other thing it tells us is that you might want to use different types of training throughout your training cycle you can have variation what it helps us do is it may help

eliminate certain combinations you may be able to say this probably isn't a good combination whatever it may be you know you can probably work out too much you know over training research stuff like that but this idea that you're going to find one perfect training study um is ridiculous case in point the one that I always bring up, right? Tabata. Tabata says this is the ideal program for utilizing both the anaerobic and the aerobic energy systems. Really? 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, and then repeat it eight times. What about 10 times? Has there been a study comparing 8 times versus 10 times? No. But what about 25 seconds on, 15 seconds off?

Is that not as good? About 12, about 13 seconds, 17 seconds. I mean, so again, it goes on and on. It's like, oh, you got to do Tabata. I'm like, well. Same thing with like squatting, right? Like probably don't have to do Tabata. How many sets should I do? How many reps should I do?

5x5 or 6x4 or 4x6? Which is the best? What in the shit are you talking about? Yeah many reps should I do? Five by five or six by four or four by six? Which is the best? What in the shit are you talking about? Yeah. One thing I realized this last week, kind of, I started thinking, you know,

it's funny at the issue of how much variation should you do? Should I go in the gym and do the same thing over and over again? Should I just front squat and snatch a clean jerk till my eyes fall out? Or should I also do pools? Which one's better? It depends on you. It might depend on your training status, which is another good methodological thing to look for.

What is the training status of the individual you're looking at? Are they well-trained, not well-trained men? And one thing I realized is that, uh, if I'm like, but so and I are kind of similar in that we got some attention problems for us to go into the gym,

for us to go in, like, like Doug, maybe Doug's discipline as hell, right? He could probably go into the gym every day and do X amount of things and execute on those things. He'll plan his program out four months out and he'll stick with it almost the

entire four months. And then deliver on it and get great results. Me and you, if I had to go into the gym and do the same thing two days in a row, I'd be like, man, this sucks. And I start losing my attention. I start not preparing and focusing on what I'm doing. I train not with the intensity I need. But if I just, so I get bad results.

But if I add a little variation, so maybe I add in some exercise that's different for different sake. Maybe it makes it more fun. Maybe I train harder. Well, the value of the exercise is really that it's interesting to me. So I train harder and I get better results just because of that. Both very good. Both excellent. Evidence around which one's best?

Wrong kind of question to ask. I think it's real interesting that you bring up, too. There's not the perfect training program. And then you were a weightlifter, and a lot of research that was done on it, that's kind of how sports science was born. It was born out of studying weightlifters and a lot of Olympic athletes and stuff like that. And weightlifting was like a really

easy thing to study because there weren't as many variables, right? So, I mean, you've got a couple different movements you're doing. Uh, it's a small space that you're conducting these, uh, your exercises and all this kind of stuff. It's go up or down. It's a good measure, right? Outcome. There's a lot of constants and stuff like that. Uh, but then, and you're talking talking about there's not a perfect training program because there's too many variables even in weightlifting where you know the day you're going to do it and what exactly you're going to do and what's going to be the main of you. And then people start talking about like the training program for CrossFit. Right. It's like you have no idea what you're training for. Or Strongman.

Same thing. Yeah, Strongman is the same way. How do you make, even like training to get better at the press? Okay. I've got to come up with a systematic approach to making my press go up. Okay. With what of the 855 silly implements that you're going to have to lift, right?

How do I train a rock optimally or a log or a pipe as a coach? It can be really, as a coach, it can be really tough. It's like, you could be preparing an athlete and like, all right, we're,

we're trying to expand your horizons over here, and then you get nailed from the other side. It's almost like, say, the CrossFit Games every year. You'll see a certain coach have a lot of athletes do well. It's like, well, is that the best coach or is that the best coach for this year's games and next year they'll suck? Or they just recruit the best athletes. Yeah.

Again, variables there too did you ever see uh i love we we played football brian years ago back before we were so damn old yeah leather helmet time but the cool do you ever go back and watch like uh like hard knocks so they do they did a college football version where they followed alabama around uh around during Nick Saban's first year. And one of the scenes they showed was the strength and conditioning session. So they go in there, and there's this guy screaming like a frigging idiot. In a typical strength coach way, he's flexing. He's trying his best to amplify this young group of very exceedingly

genetically blessed human beings who, no matter what you're going to do in there, if you're going to do 10 sets of 10 curls, they're going to go out and be the best football players in the country. Because they were the best when you recruited them to come there in the first place. These guys are like God created the perfect football player. You got him on your team. It doesn't matter how he trains. He's going to run past everybody.

That's right. And there's another guy run past everybody that's right and there's the other guy on the other side of the fence who's thinking everything through he's got a really well thought out training program but i don't want to make talk shit about my own former team but if you put that guy in the university of memphis where as tom used to say he had to have a bunch of half leads instead of athletes it doesn't't matter. Until the culture changes and until better athletes come in, you're not going to improve. You can try as hard as you can

to make everybody's squat go up. Maybe it does, but until other factors like athletic ability and belief and the culture shifts, nothing's going to change. See, that's why you hear all these guys, I want to coach in the NFL.

No, you don't. You want to coach in a high school where you can actually make a difference. That's right. You can actually take some high school guys. You can actually make them pretty good. Have a bunch of young, dumb, naive, physically immature kids

ripe for shaping to be better. Teach them how to do a squat and a good clean pull and teach them that school is actually pretty important. And you should think also about other things, not just football. You can really change a kid's life, empower him in all the best ways possible. Teach him that school is actually pretty important, and you should think also about other things, not just football.

You can really change a kid's life, empower him in all the best ways possible. A friend of mine worked for the Jets, and he went from a big-time college to the NFL. I said, did you like it? He's like, going to the NFL was like finding out Santa Claus isn't real. We've been telling people to read research. We haven't really told them where they can find good research or where to look online or what journal to look at. Do you have any insight there? I mean, besides sports medicine, which, again, only publishes reviews, the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research is probably the best source that we have, at least in this field. It's not perfect, but it's out there. The problem is getting access to it.

If you don't have access to a university that has it, then it's hard to get access to. There's the Journal of... All the names sound very similar, but I think it's the Journal of Sport Science and Medicine, JSSM, which is a free online journal, which is very sport-specific. You'll find stuff like just on rowing or just on tennis or badminton or

something like that. But there's occasionally some training articles in there. I need more badminton research. Right, right. I can't get the answers. Those guys are faster than grease lightning though. So if you want to get fast, you might want to read some badminton research. There's also the Strength and Conditioning Journal,

which is another NSCA publication, which is more kind of like, it's more of the practitioner's journal, I guess you call it, which the quality varies, publication, which is more kind of like, it's more the practitioner's journal, I guess you call it, which the quality varies, I guess. It's pretty watered down. Yeah, it depends. Every once in a while there'll be a jewel in there. But again... If you're brand new to research, though, that's

probably where you should start. It's not going to be quite so technical. And at least there'll be some references at the end of it where you can say, oh, that's kind of interesting. Maybe I'll go read this other article. At least there'll be a source and there won't be like some random thing you'll find on the internet. Because I said so, that's why. That's right.

On the interweb. Yeah. If you go straight to the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, it's going to be very dry and very technical and very like, you're reading stereo instructions. You're not reading someone's thoughts on training like you are in the journal Strength and Conditioning. Absolutely. They sound like the same damn thing.

But if you want to be a really good coach, you want to be informed, you probably need both. You've got to have both sides, see it both ways. I mean, perspective is a big thing. I want to talk about how we can conduct studies on ourselves. You brought up case studies a couple times. Which you do all the time. I personally.

Boldly. Yes, boldly would be a good way to put it. Sometimes if I don't see the result I want, I just go, well, maybe we should double the dose. What if I soaked my nuts in a bowl of caffeine? What would happen? Ice cubes.

Wasn't that an actual study? No, but it was something that I heard one time. You want to increase testosterone, you have to immerse your testicles in ice. I'm like, I don't think I'll just keep my testosterone. Thank you. I mean, I tend to do a lot of studies on myself, maybe not so scientific sometimes.

If somebody were to conduct, say they want to find out if a specific supplement is good for them, what are some things they should look at or how they should conduct an experiment on themselves? That's a great question. Before I mentioned this idea of internal validity, which is the amount of control within the study versus generalizability, which is the external validity. In a case study, you don't care about external validity, right? You're not applying it to anybody else but yourself. So what you need to do then is apply as much control as possible. Is supplement A going to help me?

Well, if I'm going to find out, then I have to do a training program that I've already done before or I have to maintain something that's relatively constant. I can't change my supplement that I'm taking and decide that I'm also going to sleep three more hours a night. And I'm also going to start eating better, et cetera, et cetera, which is pretty much what everybody does. So you get to the end of the thing. It's like, well, the supplement works. I'm like, well, does it work? Or does the fact that you slept three more hours every night work?

Or does something else like that work? Wow. Lightning. Mood lighting. Get your hand off my leg. Oh, hey. Those aren't pillows. Good reference.

Playing street in some automobiles. So that's what you need to do. You need to try to apply as much control as possible. And then you also have to give yourself some time, right? You can't say, well, shit, I used this for a week and it didn't do any better. It's like, well, is it supposed to work in a week or is it something that needs a little bit more time? It's tough to be patient. And what I usually do is look at what does the research say?

So I don't just pick out random supplements that I'm like, well, the marketing is fantastic. I think I should do a study on myself. I usually try to find some research on, say, the aspartic acid was one that I experimented with on myself a little bit. I went out and found as much research about it as possible. Okay, this is the dosage I should probably look at. This is how long I should probably do it before I notice any results or anything like that.

And then also, I'm sticking with the same type of training program, same protocol. I like to work in four-week cycles. So what I do is I may just, if I start something like that, I do the identical cycle I did last. So I may run, say, D-aspartic acid for four weeks. Well, what I do is I just do the

identical cycle I did. And at the end of four weeks, if I saw, you know, bigger improvements that I saw than the last time I did the cycle, then obviously something's going on there. At that point, you have reason to suspect that it could be the supplement. It gives you cause to investigate a little further. And the controls he's talking about, it's tough, you know, because things that could be variables are things like your wife screaming at you. Well, I don't know about your wife. Yeah, but like the baby waking up in the middle of the night one night,

threw your hormones off. Or busy at work or not sleeping. Physiologically, you're not identical one month to the next. So there are variables that you need to try to control the best you possibly can. Get the same amount of rest. Eat the same foods. All that kind of stuff. You brought up two.

Well, I was going to say, yeah. So the key is persistence, repeating it a few times you can actually see if this thing happens again and again and i guess a lot of attention to detail like really take the time to consider what's going on in your life i had this big increment or decrement what else was going on this is not gonna be a perfect process but you can address things like well i had no results but also had a really really busy time at work where I slept a few hours here and there less. I didn't really eat that good. Maybe I just washed out any effect or vice versa. You got to really pay attention to these details that you don't necessarily think are that important, but it's

really a problem with your perspective. These things can be, have a real huge effect. That's like, you know, the opposite of a steroid effect. It could take a big chunk out of you. You may not even be aware of it. Pay close attention to what's going on in your life. It's a good habit to craft. You've got to write that stuff down. You can attempt to control a bunch of stuff. That doesn't mean you're actually going to control it. You can say, well, yeah, but I really attempted to control

what I ate. Well, did you? Write it down. Keep some sort of record. Keep a record of your sleep, those types of things. Another thing that Mike brought up is you've got to have some benchmarks. Whether it's your Fran time, your 1RM squat, your body composition, you've got to have some benchmarks. If you're just doing the workout of the day and you don't know if you're making any progress,

and I was like, oh, I had a good workout today. Something must be working. It's like, well, there's too much subjectivity. You've got to have some benchmarks. You don't have to record everything as a benchmark. Have a few things that you're most concerned about. For me at my age, I keep track of my body composition. I'm not a spring chicken anymore.

I keep track of that. I keep track of the weights I lift. I don't do CrossFit, so I don't have to worry about my friend time. So there you go. The great example is I'm trying my best to gain weight. I eat all the time, bro. And then I write it down and go, you're not eating that much. You need outside perspective.

You need something that can be measured and interpreted by somebody else to help you. Same with eating. You think you're eating less, and you can't understand why you're not losing weight. You're eating more than you think. You need somebody else to tell you about that. You're talking about different results for different people, different benchmarks. And I think, say you're looking at something like diasporic acid, it's like, well, it's supposed to raise testosterone. Well, you don't only have to look at performance markers. If you see a slight increase in performance,

but then you also get leaner and you put on muscle mass, that's just more results that you can measure. So you can have an off day and it might throw off your performance benchmark, but if you got, you know, 2% leaner and you actually put gain five pounds, then you might go, okay, well there's reason to believe my testosterone, you know, skyrocketed. Yeah. And those, those things are temporally separated. Typically what happens is you actually gain the muscle and then you actually can express the gain in muscle as a gain in strength.

Those two things don't happen simultaneously. Time. Be patient. Patience. Let these things manifest. Something happened to me the other day. I PR'd my back squat and I hadn't squatted in over three weeks. Nothing heavy.

As soon as I PR my squat i go what changed you know and i'm trying to like retrospectively investigate what could have caused that and it's probably nothing i'll ever figure out because again i'm not recording my daily life and so there's too many variables but chris and i narrowed it down to you know snatch pulls clean pools and box jumps. So, no, but that's a good point. That's a joke,

by the way. We did talk about that as a possibility, but again, there's too many variables to, that's a good starting point. Whether it's real or fake, you can say, what could it have been?

Could it be that this was helping me? And you can sort of build an approach. That's not perfect, but it's more perfect than what you were doing. You, you, you had a question, you thought, could it be the fact that I was just jumping? Let me program eight weeks where I jump a lot. Yeah.

Now it's time to actually do an experiment. Yeah. So that you, if you get good results out of that, like, well, I didn't actually do a lot of this thing. I did increase that, which I suspected was the cause. And look, I got even a little bit of better result. It could actually be for me, maybe just for me,

that that thing is not necessary. I can do this and get good results. Now that can also requires less load and less wear and tear. Then you found something that's really good for you, but you did it because you, you saw something interesting. You had, well,

maybe it was this thing. You create a hypothesis. You go, well, how can I test that for myself? Eight weeks. Let me try the thing. Let me be patient. Let let me be diligent let me control as much as i can let me focus on my training and see if that thing gives me the result i suspect it could yeah and there's a chance it

could and a lot of times i find something's working for me and then i try to apply it to some of uh or athletes and it doesn't work you know it's oh god yeah i'm a shitty coach yeah so sometimes you know you gotta you gotta just because it works for one person doesn't mean it's going to work for everybody that's for sure that was so profound you blew my mind somebody else talk please uh i guess we can talk about population and demographics in regard to that as well as what might work for compliance and stuff like that. I may think that I'm programming for my athletes or something like that, and then they just may not be doing it. And I'm like, oh, it worked for me, not for them, but I didn't know, but they're skipping that exercise.

You told them to sleep eight hours and they slept five yeah you know something's out of your control right yeah i've seen seen studies like that before where it says supplement x uh helps with weight loss and then if you look at the methods it's actually on a population of of obese diabetic women and then the performance athlete who's at eight percent body fat trying to get six percent body fat and he's trying to take the same supplement and you're like well i don't know if that if it necessarily applies to you in the same way it did to them right it probably doesn't yeah the classic example is the boron study which we've done in the 80s right it's like boron increases testosterone yes boron the mineral increases testosterone in post-menopausal women

probably not going to work for a guy with normal testosterone level so but that was the big one oh gotta take the boron gotta get that mineral in you i'm like probably not gonna to work for a guy with normal testosterone level. But that was the big one. Oh, got to take the boron. Got to get that mineral in you. I'm like, probably not going to do much for you. Oh, shit. Well, second study. Boron gives you cancer. Damn it.

It's like the scene in Family Guy that they did a short on superheroes. Like one guy, the family gets doused in radioactive material and they become superheroes. And then the mayor goes, well, I want superhero abilities too. So he rolls around in radioactive waste and they see him on a doctor's table. He's like, well, doctor, what's the news? You have lymphoma. Oh, no powers then? No.

You have to get bit by a spider too. That's the moral of the story. We're going to wrap this up. Let's go around the the table here and uh imagine a table imagine there's a table here and we're gonna go around it starting with doug uh anything you'd like to promote maybe yeah i'll definitely go out and

check out the faction foods nutrition course as mike said at the very beginning whoa buddy explosion uh i talked a little bit about some of the supplements we mentioned today, creatine and beta-alanine specifically. And there's a little bit of research in there. But for the most part, it's pretty practical advice on how to eat better, improve your diet so you can get stronger and leaner and do better at your CrossFit workouts. Chris? Yeah, check out the blog, thechrismoreblog.com. Check out Simple Strength. Reach out.

Send me some messages. Let's get a conversation going that's all i got check out the uh graduate program at the university of memphis or undergraduate for that matter if that's what you're interested in and uh um and read read read read read read ask questions think observe repeatability all this stuff we talked about. Don't think fully. Make my dick itch. All right, make sure to, if you're in the Atlanta area next month, February 16th and 17th, come out and hang out with us. We're going to have a booth.

We're actually going to podcast on site. So maybe we'll even bring you on as a guest. Yeah, come sit down. Yeah. Have a chat. It'll be fun. So check that out. Make sure to go to the website sign up for our

newsletter so we can update you on all the stuff that we're up to see you next time there you go thanks guys thank you