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Most of the time, whole-body workouts are just something you do when your week is bollixed up with appointments and you can only get to the gym a couple of times. You’re having a root canal on Monday, the twins have oboe class on Wednesday, and your wife needs you to lay out some fresh mulch on Thursday. If you don’t curse your life and run away to Bora Bora first, you’re stuck doing whole-body workouts on the occasional obligation-free day or weekend. Otherwise, you’d sure as hell be hitting the gym four or five time a week and doing upper body and lower body splits. Wonder of wonders, though, a new study suggests that you build considerably more muscle when you do whole body workouts, and it’s largely because the change in the ratio of two directly-oppositional muscle-regulating proteins – myostatin and follistatin – is almost twice as large when you combine upper body and lower body training. What They Did The researchers recruited 40 middle-aged men and randomly assigned them to one of four groups: Upper-body resistance training Lower-body resistance training Combined resistance training (lower body and upper body) Control The three resistance-training groups did three exercise sessions a week for 8 weeks. Blood samples were taken before training began and 48 hours after the last session. What They Found Muscle mass increased significantly in all three resistance-training groups: The upper-body training group gained 0.76 kilograms, +/- .46 kilograms. The lower-body training group gained 0.90 kilograms, +/- .29 kilograms. The combined upper-body/lower-body training group gained 1.38 kilograms, +/- 0.70 kilograms. Clearly, the combined training led to more muscle, but what’s really interesting is how the different training regimens affected a couple of growth-regulating proteins that play a big role in determining how muscular someone (or something) is. You’ve probably heard of myostatin. It’s a growth factor that actually limits muscle growth in humans and other animals. You know those “double-muscled cattle” you sometimes see pictures of, the ones who look like something a CGI artist conjured up to pull Conan’s corpse wagon to the gates of hell? They have a mutation that limits the activity of myostatin, which allows them to grow enormous muscles. Most of us probably wish we had at least a mildly dysfunctional myostatin gene, but there’s another growth factor that works to inhibit levels of myostatin and it’s called follistatin. When levels of follistatin increase, levels of myostatin decrease, thereby allowing more muscle growth (assuming all other factors are optimal). As you probably guessed, resistance training increases levels of follistatin in general, but the researchers in the training study found that while lower-body training increased levels of follistatin (and decreased myostatin) more than upper-body training, whole-body training had almost twice as large an effect on the ratio of follistatin to myostatin. How to Use This Info It looks like the volume of muscle involved in a workout is a factor in determining how much follistatin you produce, which would logically mean that whole-body training increases its levels more than other types of body splits. Of course, like most studies, this one doesn’t perfectly mimic real life. After all, I’ve never met any lifters other than amputees who consistently worked just one half of their body. It could be that when, over the course of a training week or month, the total amount of follistatin produced (and, consequently, the amount of myostatin inhibited) by performing an upper body/lower body split could approximate or equal the amount you’d get from training total body. Regardless, at the very least, this study underscores the value of increased levels of follistatin. It’s possible that you can also increase levels of the protein through diet, too. Egg yolks contain follistatin, but it’s not known for certain if orally ingested follistatin actually leads to additional muscle. Another tactic involves ingesting high levels of epicatechins, a polyphenol found in cocoa powder, dark chocolate, blackberries, and pomegranates. Aside from enhancing mitochondrial biogenesis and improving the skeletal muscles’ response to exercise, increased levels of epicatechins lead to increased levels of follistatin. Like most things that smack of legitimacy, it’s worth a try to up your epicatechin intake while experimenting with a couple of months of whole-body
Origin: Tip: A Great Reason to Do Whole-Body Workouts

First off, let me dispel some of the usual crap you hear about milk in general: The China Study This milk-shaking and oft-referred to study reported that casein, the primary protein in milk, causes cancer, but that doesn’t hold up when you look closely at epidemiological studies. Besides, there’s a lot of casein in mother’s milk. That would be a pretty silly idea on nature’s part if it were to cause cancer. That would be a biological error on par with nature placing a rhino’s genitals on his horn. Every time he butted another rhino, wham! Another generation would go down the tubes. Growth Hormone Yeah, maybe milk contains a little bit of GH, but cows produce it naturally and the levels found in the milk of cows treated with it hasn’t been found to be any higher than cows not treated with it. Besides, GH is a protein. It doesn’t get absorbed in its entirety. Do you think if you eat an egg, it gets absorbed intact, eventually ending up in your liver next to some bacon at Bob’s 24-Hour Bacteria Breakfast Bistro? No, it gets broken down into its constituent amino acids when it hits your digestive system, just like GH does. Whole Milk vs. Low-Fat or Fat-Free Milk Take away all the nutritional mythology and milk is a fairly decent drink, filled with protein, minerals, and, in the right circumstances, nutrients. It’s important to drink whole milk, though. Whole milk drinkers have been shown to have fewer incidences of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease than drinkers of skim milk, and whole milk has also been shown to grow more muscle than skim milk, possibly because of the CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) it contains. Skim milk is also less functionally nutritious and it has to do with how they make it. They remove all the fat, thereby removing all the fat-soluble vitamins like A and D. They then have to fortify the milk by adding those vitamins back in, but unless you’re drinking the milk with some fatty food, those vitamins won’t get absorbed. All that being said, a new study reveals a surprising and compelling new reason to choose whole over skim or low fat and it has to do with estrogen. What They Did Scientists herded up 109 postmenopausal women to see what drinking milk would do to their endocrine levels. (They chose postmenopausal women because they wouldn’t be susceptible to the daily and hourly fluctuations in natural estrogen levels seen in premenopausal women). Each test subject drank 1 liter of semi-skimmed milk (1.5% milk fat) per day for four days, and 1 liter of whole milk (3.5% milk fat) per day for four days, interspersed with a four-day washout period. The scientists measured sex hormone levels in 24-hour urine samples collected after each 4-day period. What They Found The lower-fat milk ended up causing much higher estrogen levels than the whole milk did. That’s not to say the lower-fat milk had more estrogen in it than the whole milk. Instead, it had to do with the way the body handled the estrogen in the milk after drinking it. “Milk consumption resulted in a significant increase in urinary estrone (E1) excretion, whereas estradiol (E2), estriol (E3), and 16ketoE2 excretion only increased after semi-skimmed milk consumption.” Moreover, the semi-skimmed milk led to a higher percentage of conjugated estrogens, which are the most bioavailable form of estrogen and have a longer half-life. They’re also the type found in birth control pills. The scientists theorized that maybe the fat in the whole milk inhibited the enzymes needed to deconjugate the estrogen. What This Means to You Drinking skim milk can contribute to having higher-than-desirable estrogen levels, making it harder to put on muscle and easier to gain fat. It can also lead to heart problems. Granted, the women in this study were drinking a lot of milk – a liter, or a little more than 4 cups a day. Most of us don’t drink that much unless you’re one of those GOMAD (gallon of milk a day) bodybuilders who, after they’re curdled and aged, turn into giant blocks of cheese. Still, even if you’re only drinking average amounts of milk – either for the protein it contains, its nutrients, or as a tasty topping for your oatmeal or cereal – you’re better off drinking whole
Origin: Tip: Another Reason to Avoid Low-Fat Milk