Podcast #19: Naturopathic Medicine, Nutrition & Performance

Ben Greenfield (0:00)

Podcast, episode number 19 from bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Welcome to the bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast. This is your weekly free audio exposure to cutting edge fitness, diet, and wellness news. Hey, whether you're an Ironman triathlete, or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, this podcast is gonna present you with the latest exercise and nutrition content from the nation's top experts. My name is Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, certified nutritionist, an exercise, diet, and wellness guru. Each week, I'm gonna be bringing you cutting edge fitness, nutrition, and wellness advice. Stay tuned for this week's podcast from bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield coming to you on October 28th, 2008 from bengreenfieldfitness.com. I have a packed episode today with a listener Q&A on aerobic fitness and strength and whether you can achieve the two simultaneously. We have a fantastic interview with Dr. Todd Schlapfer who talks quite a bit about not only what naturopathic medicine is all about, but how you can apply some of the nutritional philosophies of naturopathic medicine to achieve better recovery and enhance performance. And finally, I have a special announcement about a brand new newsletter at a website where I've created a new meal plan and new exercise or workout for you every week for free, delivered right to your email inbox. So without any further ado, let's delve right into this week's content at bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Listener Q&A. Before I get into this week's listener Q&A, be sure to go to the blog and post a comment if you have a question, or email me ben at bengreenfieldfitness.com. We love to get feedback from our listeners. And in addition to posting a comment on the blog, I would also really encourage you to go to our page on iTunes and leave us feedback. You can actually give a podcast that you like a star rating. If you don't like our podcast, don't give us feedback. No, I'm just kidding.

You can rate anything from one up to five stars, and basically give people an idea of what you get out of the podcast so that they might know a little bit more before they subscribe to this podcast. Now let's go ahead and move on to the question. And listener Steve asks, is it possible to become stronger and more aerobically fit at the same time?

Well, basically the idea behind Steve's question is that some strength and conditioning professionals are of the mind that if you are trying to build power and strength, that because that's primarily an energy system that uses fast twitch muscle, or what we would call anaerobic energy, that it would not be something that we could concurrently train with aerobic slow twitch energy systems. Now, what I'd like to reference to answer Steve's question is a study that appeared fairly recently in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research for September 2008

And in this journal, the researchers evaluated the effects of doing your strength training at the same time as your aerobic training. So essentially, trying to pursue two different results, both strength and aerobic fitness, via the same workout program. Now, what the researchers found was very interesting, and I'm going to give you some of the practical applications from the study. But first, I'd like to present to you the type of exercise, and the type of the workout routines that were compared during this study. So in the first study, or in the first group, strength or resistance training exercises were performed all by themselves. So group A did aerobic warm up for about five minutes. They did traditional strength training, which involves doing sets of resistance exercises with brief rest periods. And then after their strength training, they performed aerobic exercise for about 30 minutes, and then they cooled down. In group B, there was an aerobic warm up of about 20 minutes, but instead of doing strength followed by aerobics, group B alternated sets of resistance exercise with brief periods of what they called aerobic, cardio acceleration, which means that the individuals exercised vigorously between each strength protocol, rather than simply resting. And so this would be considered a little bit closer to circuit style training, and more specifically circuit style training that includes an aerobic component between each resistance training exercise. Specifically in this study, the same eight to nine basic strength training exercises were used. It was just that one group did about a minute of hard cardio efforts after each strength effort, whereas another group did all their strength, and then they finished with their resistance training. Now, what was found by the researchers was that, first of all, both groups became fitter, but the group who engaged in the circuit style training with aerobic and resistance training exercise combined actually had greater adaptations than the group that was engaging in just the strength training. And when I say adaptations, essentially what they were measuring for, cardiovascular adaptations, was the effect on maximal aerobic capacity, resting heart rate, and blood pressure.