Friday, November 1, 2013

Guidelines for Optimum Testosterone & Growth Hormone Production


Although there are many hormones that play important roles in strength training, none are quite like the “Big T” – Testosterone. Testosterone plays a VITAL role in protein synthesis, and makes other hormones more anabolic (or AWESOME) just by showing up! Several factors stimulate Testosterone production; however, production is optimized when the “Fab Five” are included into exercise training programs.

The “Fab Five”:

1.       Large Muscle Group Exercises – These are movements or lifts that utilize large and multiple muscle groups. For example, the dead lift involves back, abdomen, hip, and leg muscles.     

2.       Heavy Resistance Training – This means lifting weight that is at 85-95% of 1-repetition maximum.

3.       Moderate to High Volume – This is done by including multiple sets and multiple exercises.

4.       Short Rest Intervals – In between sets, rest time should be between 30-seconds to 1-minute.

5.       Two or More Years of Resistance Training Experience.  

Growth Hormone (GH) is extremely important for growth and development, AND it also targets our skeletal muscle and fat cells. GH increases protein synthesis and also increases lipolysis, or the breakdown of fat cells (we love that!). The “Fab Five” helps with the production GH, but the primary time that GH is released is during REM sleep. Mom and Dad were right all those years…WE NEED SLEEP TO GROW. Getting an appropriate amount of sleep allows our bodies to adequately rest and recover. Below is a picture of the average amount of sleep needed according to age; please note that these durations vary according to health and lifestyle.

 
A quick recap --- to manipulate and optimize the benefits of Testosterone and Growth Hormone it is important to include the “Fab Five” into exercise programs and get the proper amount of recovery time and sleep.

3 comments:

  1. Excellent info Brittney! Hormones are a largely overlooked factor in over-all health and fitness. There are more Americans exercising than ever yet obesity rates are still sky rocketing. I believe the reason is a massive hormone imbalance caused by our sleeping and eating, or more specifically our snacking, habits. Poor Habits don't allow Americans bodies to perform autophagy, our body's natural cleaning and repairing state where many of our essential hormones are released. By not allowing ours bodies to reach autophagy we are not allowing ourselves to produce adequate amounts of hormones like Testosterone and GH.

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  2. This is very interesting information. Great blog post. Thanks!

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