Insane Exercise
Until now, Drink Your Carbs has been all fun and games. Advanced Exercise is demanding, but it is decidedly amateur. Advanced Exercise is designed to meet tough athletic goals such as finishing marathons and triathlons. The Advanced level of training, however, is unlikely to win you a place on the podium. If your dreams include Olympic gold, or even just taking your athletic endeavors to the highest level possible, you will ultimately find yourself flirting with Insane Exercise.
Fact: Insane Exercise exists because some people don’t know when to stop. This is not a bad thing. If some people were not born without a pause button, we would have no Williams sisters, LeBron James or Laird Hamilton.
Anyone looking for a detailed Insane Exercise plan is going to be disappointed. Insane Exercise is incredibly personal and extremely sport specific. No one would train a swimmer using a fitness plan designed for a sumo wrestler. No NFL lineman could expect to maintain his muscle mass on a weightlifting plan designed for a professional cyclist. The training plan a friend used to prepare for the CrossFit Games was completely different from the plan our podiatrist used to train for the Western States 100-mile Endurance Run. Training is always sport specific, but at the Insane level it becomes laser focused.
If you want to elevate your game to the highest level, you will need the expertise of a coach or trainer. We are unqualified to fill this role. We periodically try to step-up our exercise to the Insane level. Every time we attempt it - with its required six days a week of exercise, obligatory two-a-days, higher weights and even greater intensity - we end up battered, exhausted and in more or less terrible shape. Neither of us has yet to sustain this level of exertion for longer than two weeks before a strain, pulled muscle or, in one case, a blister straight out of a medical journal that engorged Andrea’s big toe into an overripe plum forces us to dial back. This is the great unknown of Insane Exercise. Some people can hack it and some – ourselves included - cannot. The only way to find out is to try. Trust us when we say that your body will let you know into which category you fall.
If you want to elevate your game to the highest level, you will need the expertise of a coach or trainer. We are unqualified to fill this role. We periodically try to step-up our exercise to the Insane level. Every time we attempt it - with its required six days a week of exercise, obligatory two-a-days, higher weights and even greater intensity - we end up battered, exhausted and in more or less terrible shape. Neither of us has yet to sustain this level of exertion for longer than two weeks before a strain, pulled muscle or, in one case, a blister straight out of a medical journal that engorged Andrea’s big toe into an overripe plum forces us to dial back. This is the great unknown of Insane Exercise. Some people can hack it and some – ourselves included - cannot. The only way to find out is to try. Trust us when we say that your body will let you know into which category you fall.
Fact: Andrea’s blister was bad, but it was nothing compared to a show-stopping injury suffered by an old friend. That friend popped his bicep deadlifting north of 400 pounds. At the top of the lift, a tendon snapped and his muscle rolled up like a window shade. The friend is fine, by the way; he had the tendon reattached and he’s as good as new. Steven, on the other hand, is still haunted by the sound.
If your body can withstand the effort, Insane is the path to your athletic best. The rest of us will have to be satisfied at the Advanced Exercise level. It’s nothing to be ashamed of; you can spend your life working out at the Advanced level and be among the fittest people you know.
The question that must be answered is, if Insane Exercise is intended for people who train at the elite level why is it even included in Drink Your Carbs?
We have all been told a certain fairytale that elite athletes are teetotalers. The myth is that these athletes match their brutal exercise regimens to an equally regimented diet. They approach food as nutrition and balance their protein, carbohydrates and fats to whatever mystical ratio is the current fad among Jamaican sprinters. They avoid unnecessary calories, especially the empty ones in alcohol.
There are, most certainly, athletes who adhere to highly restrictive, booze-free diets. We have actually met a few of them, although they have been few and far between. We have met a far larger number of professional athletes - and people who workout as hard as professional athletes - who live a lifestyle far closer to Drink Your Carbs. They may not call it Drink Your Carbs. At times it may not even look like Drink Your Carbs. They do, however, follow the basic model of eating a super-healthy diet and reward themselves with alcohol. They work out crazy hard. Eat crazy lean. And they drink, often as hard as they exercise.
Years ago, we witnessed most of the starting lineup of the Denver Nuggets basketball team stumbling into a bar with their entourage. It was during the NBA season, but obviously not on a game night. They proceeded to consume more beer than we would have thought humanly possible. We did not count their drinks because we did not want to stare. Even if we had stared, it unlikely we could have compiled an accurate figure. It was too many, too fast. All we can say is that if either of us drank that many pints we would have left that bar in the back of an ambulance or police cruiser.
We have a friend who competed in the 1984 Olympics and describes the scene at the Olympic Village as a booze-soaked bacchanal. To hear her tell it, most of the athletes kept to the straight and narrow until they were done competing. The moment medals were awarded in their particular sport they unleashed their inner Keith Richards. Apparently, Olympic athletes are bound by the same secrecy rules as members of the Cosa Nostra. She refuses to share the kinds of details and scandals that sell books. But she will divulge that the competitors in the 1984 games behaved exactly as you might expect from an unsupervised group of over 7,000 young, sexy, super-fit 20-somethings. A few athletes returned home with fame, glory and medals around their necks; everyone else returned home with a wicked hangover and crab lice.
We know plenty of athletes who were, while playing for their college teams, locked into hotel rooms on the night before big games because their coaches knew that without supervision they could not be trusted. For the record, that lack of trust was completely warranted. Studies have shown that college athletes binge drink more often than their non-athletic peers.
We have more than just anecdotes to prove it. Researchers at Harvard University’s School of Public Health surveyed more than 12,000 students at 130 colleges and universities and found: “Among male subjects, 57 percent of athletes reported at least one binge drinking episode in the previous 2 [weeks] compared with 48.8 percent of non-athletes. Among female subjects, athletes also reported a higher rate of recent binge drinking (48 percent) than non-athletes (40.2 percent).”
The correlation between athletics and heavy drinking does not end at college graduation. A New Zealand study on the subject found “frequent binge drinking was reported by elite provincial level sportspeople (58 percent), closely followed by elite international/country level sportspeople (54 percent), non-elite (44 percent) and non-sportspeople (35 percent).”
Clearly, there is more drinking among top athletes than is covered by ESPN. This is the reason that Insane Exercise exists. We strongly believe that many of these athletes could benefit from a more measured approach to alcohol. Moreover, current scientific research supports the assertion that moderate drinking - even if that drinking is done more frequently - is far more compatible with athletic training.
So far, we have ignored the physiological effects of alcohol on exercise and post-exercise recovery. Alcohol makes little difference to the amateur athlete, provided you stick to the amount we recommend. If, however, you are trying to squeeze every ounce of performance out your body, there are a few alcohol and exercise related factors you should take into account.
There is no shortage of opinions on the effects of alcohol on exercise, but surprisingly few studies have been done on the subject. This may be because it is a difficult subject to study. Alcohol tolerance and athletic performance are both highly variable and dependent on difficult-to-control factors such as fatigue, hydration and diet. Setting up a well structured, reproducible experiment is no easy task. There is the additional hurdle of getting approval from a university’s clinical research ethics committee to study the effects of an intoxicating substance on human subjects.
The question that must be answered is, if Insane Exercise is intended for people who train at the elite level why is it even included in Drink Your Carbs?
We have all been told a certain fairytale that elite athletes are teetotalers. The myth is that these athletes match their brutal exercise regimens to an equally regimented diet. They approach food as nutrition and balance their protein, carbohydrates and fats to whatever mystical ratio is the current fad among Jamaican sprinters. They avoid unnecessary calories, especially the empty ones in alcohol.
There are, most certainly, athletes who adhere to highly restrictive, booze-free diets. We have actually met a few of them, although they have been few and far between. We have met a far larger number of professional athletes - and people who workout as hard as professional athletes - who live a lifestyle far closer to Drink Your Carbs. They may not call it Drink Your Carbs. At times it may not even look like Drink Your Carbs. They do, however, follow the basic model of eating a super-healthy diet and reward themselves with alcohol. They work out crazy hard. Eat crazy lean. And they drink, often as hard as they exercise.
Years ago, we witnessed most of the starting lineup of the Denver Nuggets basketball team stumbling into a bar with their entourage. It was during the NBA season, but obviously not on a game night. They proceeded to consume more beer than we would have thought humanly possible. We did not count their drinks because we did not want to stare. Even if we had stared, it unlikely we could have compiled an accurate figure. It was too many, too fast. All we can say is that if either of us drank that many pints we would have left that bar in the back of an ambulance or police cruiser.
We have a friend who competed in the 1984 Olympics and describes the scene at the Olympic Village as a booze-soaked bacchanal. To hear her tell it, most of the athletes kept to the straight and narrow until they were done competing. The moment medals were awarded in their particular sport they unleashed their inner Keith Richards. Apparently, Olympic athletes are bound by the same secrecy rules as members of the Cosa Nostra. She refuses to share the kinds of details and scandals that sell books. But she will divulge that the competitors in the 1984 games behaved exactly as you might expect from an unsupervised group of over 7,000 young, sexy, super-fit 20-somethings. A few athletes returned home with fame, glory and medals around their necks; everyone else returned home with a wicked hangover and crab lice.
We know plenty of athletes who were, while playing for their college teams, locked into hotel rooms on the night before big games because their coaches knew that without supervision they could not be trusted. For the record, that lack of trust was completely warranted. Studies have shown that college athletes binge drink more often than their non-athletic peers.
We have more than just anecdotes to prove it. Researchers at Harvard University’s School of Public Health surveyed more than 12,000 students at 130 colleges and universities and found: “Among male subjects, 57 percent of athletes reported at least one binge drinking episode in the previous 2 [weeks] compared with 48.8 percent of non-athletes. Among female subjects, athletes also reported a higher rate of recent binge drinking (48 percent) than non-athletes (40.2 percent).”
The correlation between athletics and heavy drinking does not end at college graduation. A New Zealand study on the subject found “frequent binge drinking was reported by elite provincial level sportspeople (58 percent), closely followed by elite international/country level sportspeople (54 percent), non-elite (44 percent) and non-sportspeople (35 percent).”
Clearly, there is more drinking among top athletes than is covered by ESPN. This is the reason that Insane Exercise exists. We strongly believe that many of these athletes could benefit from a more measured approach to alcohol. Moreover, current scientific research supports the assertion that moderate drinking - even if that drinking is done more frequently - is far more compatible with athletic training.
So far, we have ignored the physiological effects of alcohol on exercise and post-exercise recovery. Alcohol makes little difference to the amateur athlete, provided you stick to the amount we recommend. If, however, you are trying to squeeze every ounce of performance out your body, there are a few alcohol and exercise related factors you should take into account.
There is no shortage of opinions on the effects of alcohol on exercise, but surprisingly few studies have been done on the subject. This may be because it is a difficult subject to study. Alcohol tolerance and athletic performance are both highly variable and dependent on difficult-to-control factors such as fatigue, hydration and diet. Setting up a well structured, reproducible experiment is no easy task. There is the additional hurdle of getting approval from a university’s clinical research ethics committee to study the effects of an intoxicating substance on human subjects.
Researchers: “If you would please skip to page 14 of the proposal. Under the heading “Non-Random Controlled Experimental Design” you will see that our plan is to get people drunk and set them loose on a basketball court.”
Ethics Committee: “Rejected. That said, if you find another university to sponsor the experiment we want tickets to the game.”
The study most often cited by those who claim alcohol and exercise are incompatible was published in 2010 by a team of researchers at Massey University in New Zealand. It was a small study involving only 11 participants. All of the participants were men. This is far from ideal; it is too small and too lacking in diversity to be used for broad claims. Nonetheless, the experiment, which was designed to test the direct effect of alcohol on muscle recovery, is genuinely clever.
Each of the study participants was placed - sober - on a seated leg extension machine. The participants then performed 300 single leg extensions while an attached computer took detailed notes on the length, strength and speed of their repetitions. Three hundred repetitions of any exercise is more than enough to work a muscle to complete exhaustion. All of the participants reported major soreness the following day. Although the study fails to mention it, it is very likely that many of those participants awoke so sore that they had difficulty lowering themselves onto the toilet.
Each of the study participants was placed - sober - on a seated leg extension machine. The participants then performed 300 single leg extensions while an attached computer took detailed notes on the length, strength and speed of their repetitions. Three hundred repetitions of any exercise is more than enough to work a muscle to complete exhaustion. All of the participants reported major soreness the following day. Although the study fails to mention it, it is very likely that many of those participants awoke so sore that they had difficulty lowering themselves onto the toilet.
Fact: Nearly everyone who has played around in a gym has likely used some form of the machine used in the study. You are seated so that your knee bends over a cylindrical pad and your shin locks in behind a weighted lever. Straightening your leg against the resistance isolates and flexes the quadriceps muscle.
Outside of rehabilitation centers, the seated leg extension is losing popularity. Most of the bodybuilders and trainers we know have quit using it altogether. They insist that the machine puts unnecessary strain on the knees and you can get the same results with less risk by doing weighted squats.
After each participant completed his exercise, he was fed either a glass of orange juice or a screwdriver cocktail. In theory, the juice drinkers were the control group, but we have a hard time believing that they could not tell if their drink contained alcohol. The cocktail recipe was a ratio of 3.2 to one, orange juice to vodka. This is far from a stiff drink, but it was more than sufficient to identify the vodka in our unscientific taste tests.
The total amount of alcohol administered to each participant - excluding the control group who drank pure juice - was equal to one gram of alcohol for every kilogram of body weight. The alcohol was consumed within 90 minutes of completing the exercise. Unfortunately, the study does not detail participants’ resulting blood alcohol content. But the authors do note that “the volume of alcohol consumed . . . is enough to be considered as binge drinking.”
The total amount of alcohol administered to each participant - excluding the control group who drank pure juice - was equal to one gram of alcohol for every kilogram of body weight. The alcohol was consumed within 90 minutes of completing the exercise. Unfortunately, the study does not detail participants’ resulting blood alcohol content. But the authors do note that “the volume of alcohol consumed . . . is enough to be considered as binge drinking.”
Fact: In order for Steven to consume one gram of alcohol for every kilogram of body weight, he would need to drink a six-pack of beer or a little over one-third of a bottle of vodka. As important as the quantity is the speed of the intake. The liver is an impressive organ, but 90 minutes is a very short time to process that much alcohol.
We considered replicating the drinking portion of the experiment. Fortunately, more sensible heads prevailed and we instead consulted a chart published by Brown University. Assuming the chart is still accurate for people beyond college age, Steven’s blood alcohol content would be approximately .12 percent. The chart further details the anticipated effects of such blood alcohol level. “Coordination and balance becoming difficult; distinct impairment of mental faculties and judgment.”
This undoubtedly explains why the study’s authors felt compelled to mention: “Once the required amount of beverage was consumed participants were driven home and instructed to go directly to bed.”
Over the following three days, the participants returned to the lab to do additional leg extensions. All of the participants saw a drop in their strength after doing the initial 300 repetitions. Muscles take time to recover after exercise, so an initial drop in strength was expected. The drinkers, however, lost more strength. The greatest difference was observed on the second day. The non-drinkers had lost 19 percent of their leg previous strength. The drinkers had lost 34 percent.
On the bright side, it appears that the drinking delayed recovery rather than terminated it. By the third day following the exercise, both the drinkers and non-drinkers were regaining their strength at similar rates. The authors’ concluded: “alcohol magnifies the severity of skeletal muscle injury and therefore delays recovery of strength…participants in sports containing intense eccentric muscular work should be encouraged to avoid alcohol intake in the post-event period if optimal recovery is required.”
From this reading, you’d think alcohol and athletics couldn’t safely mix. Muscle recovery is required for strength building and no athlete wants his or her recovery affected or delayed.
Fortunately, for those of us who enjoy both drinking and exercising, the story is far more complicated.
A year after the study was first published, the same group of researchers repeated their experiment, but this time they cut the amount of alcohol in half. Over 90 minutes post exercise, the participants were served one-half gram of alcohol for every kilogram they weighed. In Steven’s case, this would amount to three beers or just over half a bottle of wine.
With the alcohol dose lowered, the results were strikingly different. The follow-up study concluded that the “consumption of a low dose of alcohol after damaging exercise appears to have no effect on the loss of force associated with strenuous eccentric exercise.”
What have we learned? Alcohol can delay muscle recovery after exercise, but it appears to be highly dose dependent. We hope the researchers in New Zealand continue testing different alcohol levels. In the mean time, if we want more granularity on how much alcohol one can drink before affecting exercise recovery, we have to look at an earlier study done by a team at the University of Massachusetts. The alcohol dosage used in that study fell between the other two, .8 grams of alcohol for every kilogram of body weight.
There were a few key differences in the UMass study. All 10 test subjects were women. Instead of using leg extensions, they used bicep curls. Blood was taken every day for five days after the exercise to track markers of muscle recovery rather than testing directly for loss of strength. And most importantly, they administered the alcohol before the exercise. In other words, they got a bunch of ladies tipsy and dragged them into the gym.
On the bright side, it appears that the drinking delayed recovery rather than terminated it. By the third day following the exercise, both the drinkers and non-drinkers were regaining their strength at similar rates. The authors’ concluded: “alcohol magnifies the severity of skeletal muscle injury and therefore delays recovery of strength…participants in sports containing intense eccentric muscular work should be encouraged to avoid alcohol intake in the post-event period if optimal recovery is required.”
From this reading, you’d think alcohol and athletics couldn’t safely mix. Muscle recovery is required for strength building and no athlete wants his or her recovery affected or delayed.
Fortunately, for those of us who enjoy both drinking and exercising, the story is far more complicated.
A year after the study was first published, the same group of researchers repeated their experiment, but this time they cut the amount of alcohol in half. Over 90 minutes post exercise, the participants were served one-half gram of alcohol for every kilogram they weighed. In Steven’s case, this would amount to three beers or just over half a bottle of wine.
With the alcohol dose lowered, the results were strikingly different. The follow-up study concluded that the “consumption of a low dose of alcohol after damaging exercise appears to have no effect on the loss of force associated with strenuous eccentric exercise.”
What have we learned? Alcohol can delay muscle recovery after exercise, but it appears to be highly dose dependent. We hope the researchers in New Zealand continue testing different alcohol levels. In the mean time, if we want more granularity on how much alcohol one can drink before affecting exercise recovery, we have to look at an earlier study done by a team at the University of Massachusetts. The alcohol dosage used in that study fell between the other two, .8 grams of alcohol for every kilogram of body weight.
There were a few key differences in the UMass study. All 10 test subjects were women. Instead of using leg extensions, they used bicep curls. Blood was taken every day for five days after the exercise to track markers of muscle recovery rather than testing directly for loss of strength. And most importantly, they administered the alcohol before the exercise. In other words, they got a bunch of ladies tipsy and dragged them into the gym.
Fact: The cocktail administered in the U. Mass study was quite a bit stronger than the cocktail in New Zealand. “The alcohol used was vodka (80 proof) which was mixed with equal parts of orange juice and cranberry drink.” We have no idea what this cocktail is called, but it is only a splash of peach schnapps short of Sex on the Beach.
Ten days after the initial Mass study, the test subjects were invited back to do the same bicep curls with their opposite arm. This time they were not dosed with alcohol in advance. When researchers compared results from the two sets of blood tests, they found no significant differences.
Fact: Assuming there is little difference between drinking right before exercising and drinking right after, Steven is now at five beers or nearly a full bottle of wine without affecting his post-exercise recovery.
Of all of the studies of alcohol and exercise we have seen, the one that interests us the most has yet to be published. In late 2011, Dr. Manuel Castillo of the University of Granada School of Medicine presented preliminary findings to the 11th Annual European Conference on Nutrition. His PowerPoint presentation, which is available online, was entitled, “BEER AFTER EXERCISE: Yes or No?” Considering that drunken tourists account for the lion’s share of Grenada’s economy, it is not surprising that Dr. Castillo’s answer was a resounding “yes.”
Dr. Castillo had 16 men run on a treadmill for 60 minutes in a room heated to 95-degrees. It was the cardio equivalent to Bikram yoga. The goal was, quite simply, to make the men sweat buckets. Dr. Castillo then allowed the men to rehydrate by drinking as much water as they pleased. Two weeks later, the men repeated the treadmill test, but this time each man was given 22 ounces of beer followed by as much water as he pleased.
Dr. Castillo had 16 men run on a treadmill for 60 minutes in a room heated to 95-degrees. It was the cardio equivalent to Bikram yoga. The goal was, quite simply, to make the men sweat buckets. Dr. Castillo then allowed the men to rehydrate by drinking as much water as they pleased. Two weeks later, the men repeated the treadmill test, but this time each man was given 22 ounces of beer followed by as much water as he pleased.
Fact: A 22-ounce bottle of beer is referred to as a “bomber.” It is roughly equivalent to two beers, assuming one foams over a bit onto the table.
Dr. Castillo did not serve his beer from a bomber. Included in his presentation are photographs of a sweaty, shirtless hunk of a man drinking lager from a large graduated cylinder.
If you have ever watched one dog inspecting another at a dog park, you understand the level of scrutiny Dr. Castillo applied to his study participants. After both of the treadmill/hydration tests, each man was given a full checkup and put through a DEXA x-ray body composition scan. Blood, saliva and urine were collected. Vision and reflexes were tested. The participants were even subjected to a multiple-choice exam. Dr. Castillo did everything short of requiring a semen sample.
Dr. Castillo did not test his samples for markers of muscle recovery. He instead looked for indicators of rehydration. He wanted to know if alcohol after exercise dehydrates the drinker. His results made headlines around the world. The body scans, blood, urine, saliva and test scores all concurred. Subjects were more hydrated after drinking beer and water than when drinking water alone.
Dr. Castillo did not test his samples for markers of muscle recovery. He instead looked for indicators of rehydration. He wanted to know if alcohol after exercise dehydrates the drinker. His results made headlines around the world. The body scans, blood, urine, saliva and test scores all concurred. Subjects were more hydrated after drinking beer and water than when drinking water alone.
Fact: The final slide of Dr. Castillo’s presentation sums up both his and our enthusiasm for his research. Beneath a montage of a pouring beer and a man leaping into the air in the classic victory pose were the words: “RUN! ENJOY! BE HAPPY!!!”
Here is what we think know about alcohol and exercise, using Steven as our example: The alcohol equivalent of six beers in the hour and a half after exercising will delay Steven’s muscle recovery by about 36 hours. Three beers over the same amount of time will have zero effect on Steven’s recovery. The equivalent of five beers consumed in only a half an hour also appears to have no effect on recovery; we are less confident about this one since the study subjects consumed their alcohol prior to exercising which is something Steven refuses to do.
If Steven wants to ensure that alcohol will not negatively impact his exercise recovery while taking advantage of its hydrating effects, the magic formula appears to be two drinks. Two drinks is well below the threshold affecting muscle recovery while offering the benefits of improved hydration and higher scores on some multiple-choice exams.
If Steven wants to ensure that alcohol will not negatively impact his exercise recovery while taking advantage of its hydrating effects, the magic formula appears to be two drinks. Two drinks is well below the threshold affecting muscle recovery while offering the benefits of improved hydration and higher scores on some multiple-choice exams.
Fact: The multiple-choice exam administered by Dr. Castillo was designed using the Vienna Test System. There is no need to look this up on the web; just picture the monitor from an Apple II+ attached to the button console from the classic arcade game Defender. Unfortunately, we have to wait until the study is published to learn exactly what questions were asked.
For now, we will simply accept Dr. Castillo’s results as confirming that a couple of beers also improves the play of videogames from the pre-Dragon’s Lair era.
Additional and more comprehensive studies will be helpful. For example, we would like to see different types of alcohol tested separately. We currently accept the U.S. Centers for Disease Control assertion that “[i]t is the amount of alcohol consumed that affects a person most, not the type of alcoholic drink.” However, it may turn out that wine, beer and hard liquor have different physiological effects when it comes to exercise recovery. We hope that the teams in New Zealand and at UMass will consider rerunning their experiments using beer or wine instead of vodka cocktails. We similarly hope that Dr. Castillo’s shirtless beer drinker will show up in a future presentation sipping on a glass of shiraz.
Nonetheless, the presently available studies are more than enough to convince us that drinking alcohol is fully compatible with serious athletics as long as athletes are not binge drinking. In other words, the current drinking pattern of many competitive athletes is exactly the wrong approach.
Nonetheless, the presently available studies are more than enough to convince us that drinking alcohol is fully compatible with serious athletics as long as athletes are not binge drinking. In other words, the current drinking pattern of many competitive athletes is exactly the wrong approach.
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