Daredevils are Shredded

There was a time when the photo next to this heading didn’t quite represent me…

<Sigh>

Okay, that’s a bit of an understatement. I was fat.

Go ahead, say it - I know ya’ wanna: “HOW – FAT – WERE YOU?”

I was so fat, when I sat around the house, I sat around the house! <Badum-bum-CHING!>

Okay, maybe I wasn’t quite that fat. But I still remember running for the bus and noticing my BACK jiggled. See, boobs are supposed to jiggle. Booty is allowed a little action. With apologies to Sir Mix-a-Lot, what I had going on back there put a whole new spin on the phrase “ Baby Got Back”!

<Shudders from the memory>

Stubborn Fat SUCKS!

Proper diet and training got me from a size 14 to a size 4, but oh, the heartbreak of STUBBORN FAT!!! Despite Herculean efforts to improve my condition, I continue to battle these determined little pockets.

My fellow former-fatties know this jiggly pudge all too well – it’s the kind of fat that settles in and clings with the tenacity of a horny dog humping your leg. Try as you might, this lumpy reminder of bygone dietary abandon simply will NOT leave.

It is BEYOND frustrating.

But wait! What if there was a way to ANNIHILATE stubborn pockets of fat? Would it matter that the method would make you feel like you wanted to DIE… or perhaps fear that you were dying?

WOULD IT???

I thought not!

<Laughs maniacally>

It turns out the solution to stubborn fat may exist in jumping off a cliff… or something only slightly less undesirable: cardio.

<Shudders>

But not just ANY cardio will do.

Ever see a fat daredevil?

Oh, come on, I’m sure you have. You know the type, don’t you? The fat, flabby doughboys jumping Harleys over rows of freight trains… the soft, squishy souls doing cliff-dives off the Grand Canyon…

What’s that you say? You’ve never seen a fat daredevil?

HAH! NEITHER HAVE I!

While they may exist, I’ve sure as heck never seen one! Now I’m speculating here – but it seems to me that maybe, just maybe, the massive amount of adrenaline upon which these junkies thrive helps keep ‘em shredded.

Don’t hate – it’s possible!

Fat and Adrenaline

In “ How to do cardio if you MUST I wrote about various intensities of cardiovascular training and their relative pros and cons. The most… well… intense among these is High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) – and our shredded daredevil friends may be proof of yet another “pro” for this type of training. You’ll recall that HIIT doesn’t “work” by burning off fat – it works by producing catecholamines (yanno, stuff like adrenaline, the “Oh crap – her husband just came home” hormone), which, in turn stimulate the breakdown of fat and the release of fatty acids. Follow up your HIIT intervals with a little steady-state cardio to burn ‘em off and those pesky fatty acids don’t turn back into saddlebags/love handles. ¹

(All this stuff has its basis in research developed by Romijn and colleagues,² if you care to read it.)

<Waits>

<… crickets chirp…>

Anywhoooo… There may be a way to squeeze even more out of this phenomenon – at least in theory – read on to find out now.

But I don’t cliff dive!

So how does this affect YOU, my plump little post-bulk wallflowers? Well, if you're too much of a pussy to jump out of airplanes or set land-speed records riding shotgun on a rocket-launcher, there's hope; there are OTHER ways to stimulate catecholamine release!

We’re going to take advantage of the two steps described by Romijn and colleagues: ²

1. You stimulate remote energy stores (i.e. not near the working muscle) to give up the goodies (stored fatty acids) and release them into the blood stream,
2. You burn off said goodies so they don’t just get stored again.

What starts this whole process? Why, the “I’m freaked right out” hormones; the catecholamines!

The more catecholamine, the more fat is released and the bigger the kick start! It’s literally as if you’re scaring the fat right off your ass!

But, as with all good things, there’s a catch; you have to go hard as hell to mobilize these stubborn pockets of fat – so hard, you go past something called your lactate threshold – and the bad news is it would appear that something about going beyond the lactate threshold may keep the released goodies from getting to where they can be burned off, at least until a few minutes into recovery.² So what does one do?

Following the bouncing ball through my little mind:

• Catecholamine is a substance that helps make daredevils the Masters of Shred
• The harder you go, the more catecholamine you’ll produce.
• The more catecholamine, the more fatty acids are released from lipid stores. But they don’t go anywhere right away ‘cause they’re TRAPPED!
• Lactate builds up and has to be cleared before you can burn off the fatty acids.
• So what is the solution? The magic of mitochondria, right there in your muscle cells! Turns out these hungry little buggers clear both lactate and fatty acids.

Fatty Acids, Lactate, Mitochondria and <sigh> cardio:

“Regular”, steady-state cardio builds capillary density and mitochondrial density. These are both helpful for clearing lactate and burning off free fatty acids (FFAs) for the following reasons:

• If you can build better capillary density, you’ll solve the delivery problem of getting mobilized fat away from the remote stores – which means more fuel gets to the muscles for those hungry little mitochondria to chew through.
• The more mouths to feed, the better: if you can build better mitochondrial density in your muscles, you’ll have more of these hungry little buggers to chew through that assload of fuel <giggle, I said “ass”…> once it arrives.

HIIT => Steady State => Success!

In short, increasing your mitochondrial density builds your ability to clear lactate and free fatty acids, helping you look like a cliff-diver that much faster. Building up your endurance base in the weeks and months before you try this is a Good Thingä, because of the above points.

Finally, we have a type of cardio that threatens to work better and better the fitter you get!!

Except… (there’s ALWAYS a catch)… the more accustomed you get to the stimulus, the less catecholamine you’ll release. So you vary the modalities and the sprint intervals (and add in a few strategic supplements…) to help counter this effect.

Whew!

All we need now are a few choice words on lactate threshold and catecholamine production, and we’re off to the races (so to speak).

Plasma fatty acid concentrations increase dramatically immediately after intense exercise, while fatty-acid oxidation decreases (at least until shortly after the intense stimulation ends). Great – you release fuel but can’t burn it. But wait: during low-intensity exercise (25% of VO2max), fatty-acid oxidation increases and re-esterification decreases. ³

Did you read that part?

• High-intensity exercise releases fat, but keeps it from being burned off, at least until after it ends.
• Low-intensity exercise burns fat and keeps it from re-depositing. (Low-intensity releases fat too, but not by very much – two to five times higher than resting lipolysis ³ still ain’t all that grand),
• And the better your endurance base (i.e. improved mitochondrial and capillary density), the better you’ll be at burning FFAs.

SO “intense activity before steady-state cardio” is a marriage made in Heaven!

Okay, maybe not Heaven; It IS, after all, still cardio.

<Gags at the word>

Nervous Little Rats

Catecholamines and exercise selection
My smarty-pants friend Cindy Scott⁴ reviewed Catecholamines, Stress, and Disease: A Psychobiological Perspective ⁵ for me and offered me some insight into catecholamine release and stress. The study examined something called nonassociative learning theory, contrasting the physiological response to a familiar or a novel stressor. The subjects (in this case, rats) were divided into several different stress conditions. Some were just kept in a constantly stressed condition – one in which the stress remained, but did not vary. Others were exposed to a stressor, then re-exposed to the same condition at a later time. Still others were exposed to one stressor, then later exposed to a different type of stressor. And the forth group were chronically stressed under one condition, but eventually subjected to a novel stressor.

Okay, we’re all feeling sorry for the little rats now. That is because we are CRAZY! (With apologies to Ikea’s advertising team).

So what was the bottom line? I’ll give you what Cindy gave me: ⁴

“The greatest catecholamine response is not in “untrained” or “unstressed” animals that are exposed to a new stressor., nor is it from the group that is chronically exposed to high intensity stress or what we would think of as “high intensity accustomed individuals”. The greatest release of catecholamines occurs in those “high intensity accustomed individuals” who are exposed to a NEW stressor.

In short, the introduction of a novel form of high-intensity stress generates an even greater response than commensurate but familiar stress.”

Scott’s bottom line here is the part I’m interested in – to get the greatest catecholamine response, become VERY fit, and then do HIIT using an unfamiliar modality.

Or while terrified.

(Oh, and being rat-like helps!).

So, while HIIT followed by steady state cardio will help us reach our shredded best, research shows that variety is not only the spice of life, but also the key to even more effective fat burning!

And sometimes, it sucks to be a girl.

During endurance exercise, most of the fatty acids that skeletal muscle is exposed to are derived from upper body subcutaneous adipose tissue ³ – which bites the big one if you have the archetypal (“I like big BUTTS and I can not lie…”⁶) female fat-pattern.

As if this weren’t already bad enough, the proportion of plasma FFAs made available from lower-body fat stores is even lower in women than it is in men ⁷. Further compounding (or perhaps causing?) this problem is the fact that women tend to have a greater number of alpha-2 receptors in the hip and thigh regions ⁸, (Alpha-2 receptors inhibit lipolysis ⁹).

And sadly, the proportion of energy derived from fat during exercise is higher in women than in men – so we may very well derive more benefit from cardio than men, but we have to work harder to get at that fat. ⁸

<Sigh>

Since areas of so-called “stubborn” body fat have poorer circulation and more alpha-receptors, you can see the benefit of improving capillary density and inhibiting these receptors.

What to do: Enter Stubborn Fat Loss Protocol

Lyle McDonald ^{10, 11} suggests a “stubborn fat loss protocol” that enhances the two-step approach described above. The protocol is designed to overcome some of the above-mentioned problems surrounding mobilizing and burning off the last of the fluffy stuff.

<Geek Alert. Ignore unless you’ve studied OpLog>

Ha! – Finally an area I’ve actually studied in grad school: JIT (Just-In-Time) lipolysis coupled with the logistic problem of getting this stuff to the engines that will burn it. Yep, that was certainly worth five years of my life and a thesis no one will ever read… but I’m not bitter. Who knew I’d be able to use Management Science to help drop body fat!

<End geek alert>

As we did for regular HIIT, the protocol applies intense sprint intervals to create as much catecholamine as possible, which will in turn stimulate the release of FFAs inside those pesky fat cells. But we have a small problem: the intensity of the intervals performed for this protocol must be well over the lactate threshold in order to stimulate the levels of catecholamine required.

Why is this a problem? Because lactate appears to inhibit FFA release from fat cells. McDonald’s interpretation of Romijn and colleagues is that stored triglycerides are broken down, but trapped in the fat cell by lactate and everything else associated with high intensity work. Once the high intensity stimulus due to sprinting is removed, there is a rush of available FFAs in the bloodstream – and this happens about 5 minutes into recovery from that stimulus.

So the FFAs are only released when lactate clears. No problem: you sprint the intervals, then stop and wait for the FFAs to become available. Following this pause with a moderate-intensity cardio-session oxidizes the now-liberated fatty acids so that they don't just re-esterify (for those of you just tuning in now, that’s the technical term for “redeposit on your ass”).

Putting this all together

Insulin is your enemy here, and all foods stimulate some level of insulin-response. For this reason, McDonald recommends doing this fasted or no sooner than three hours after your last meal.

The Supplements

McDonald suggests consuming the following optional supplements 30-60 minutes before you begin: ¹², ¹³

• Oral Yohimbine HCL (0.2mg/kg) ^{14, 15} (That’s about 10mg per hundred pounds bodyweight. The first time you use it, take half the recommended dose to assess tolerance)
• 200mg caffeine
• 1-3g L-Tyrosine

The workout

UPDATE

I started writing this article late in 2006, as a follow-up to “How to do cardio if you MUST”. By the time I had it almost finished, McDonald had published his book “The Stubborn Fat Solution”¹³ with not one, but four different protocols, all aimed at decreasing alpha-2 adrenoreceptors, increasing adipose-tissue blood-flow and jacking up catecholamine release. My friend Lisa Urbanek was kind enough to summarize these for me, which I share with you, below:

Lyle’s Protocol 1: Low Carb Diet plus Low-Intensity Aerobic Activity

If your carbohydrate intake is 20% or less of your cutting calories, this protocol is for you. Why? Well, about four days into your low-carb diet, those dreaded alpha-2 adrenoreceptors are inhibited – while at the same time, adipose tissue blood flow is increased! (Be happy, this is good news!)

Here’s how you can take advantage of your boring diet, my juicy little opportunists!

Perform 45-60 minutes of low to moderate-intensity cardio (McDonald suggests a heart-rate of around 130-140 beats per minute). Since this is a low-intensity workout, you may choose to do it fasted if you like.

Supplementation: 100-200mg of caffeine and 1-3 grams L-tyrosine can be taken 30-60 minutes prior to enhance catecholamine response, as above. 

Lyle’s Protocol 2: Oral Yohimbine plus Low-Intensity Aerobic Activity

If you just can’t bring yourself to do a low-carb diet (or if you’re cycling carbohydrate consumption and today isn’t your “low” day), you can fake Protocol 1 by taking yohimbine to inhibit alpha-2 receptors instead of letting low-carb dieting do it for you.

In a fasted state, or 3-4 hours after a (preferably low-carb) meal, consume oral yohimbine (0.2mg/kg) – alone or better yet, with caffeine and L-tyrosine 30-60 minutes before performing 45-60 minutes of low-to-moderate-intensity, steady-state cardio as above.  Note that since yohimbine can artificially raise heart rate, use perceived exertion rather than heart-rate to judge intensity for this one.

Lyle’s Protocol 3: New and Improved Stubborn Fat Protocol (SFP 1.0)

This was the original SFP Lyle posted about in his forum, with a few key additions. 

Noteworthy is the addition of a pre-protocol warm-up, to prevent insulin from blunting catecholamine-induced lipolysis.

Also, although the interval “fat-mobilizing” portion should be a bit of a stranger, a refinement on this protocol is that the low-to-moderate intensity steady-state “fat-burning” portion should be a close, personal friend : thanks to exercise specificity, you’ll have better work capacity on a trained modality.

This should make intuitive sense, when you give it a moment. As I noted in the Fatty Acids, Lactate, Mitochondria blah blah blah section, regular, steady-state cardio builds capillary and mitochondrial density, both of which help burn off FFAs.

Put simply, if you and I weigh the same but in the same hour that I can jog six kilometres you can run ten kilometres, you will burn more calories simply because you will have done more work – even if our perceived exertion is the same.

Here’s the sequence:

Warm up – 5-10 minute brisk walk, ideally including dynamic warm-up and stretches. This serves two functions one, to prevent injury and two, to lower lipolysis-reducing blood-insulin levels.

·      
High intensity portion – up to 10 minutes of sprint intervals, or up to 20 minutes of “metabolic” high rep/short rest weight training, such as circuit-style training and/or complexes.

When this was first posted as a discussion on his forum ¹², McDonald’s recommendation was for 30s:60s sprint:recovery intervals. You may choose (as others often do) to vary the sprint:recovery intervals in an effort to keep the stimulus fresh – particularly if you do this protocol more than once a week.

Some examples, courtesy of Cressey and Skwiat ¹⁶ (who also suggest varying the intensities):

These need to be FLAT OUT sprints, with an exertion-level that is appropriate to the duration of the sprint. For example, you’ll push at a higher intensity for a 15-second sprint than you will be able to maintain for a minute – but in either case, go as hard as you can during the hard part.

McDonald suggests using an unfamiliar form of cardio for the interval portion if possible, since catecholamine response drops with adaptation to a cardio modality, but is higher with an unfamiliar stressor (see Cindy Scott’s “nervous rat” discussion, above). Note that outdoor sprinting is not recommended unless you are a trained sprinter.

Scott had this suggestion to add: ⁴

In case this part isn’t clear and you’re thinking “it's really only a suggestion... I love my elliptical too much, I'll just do it all on that and it will be good enough”, I’ll say it louder: USE A DIFFERENT MACHINE, you idiot! If you use a treadmill all the time, do the damn sprints on the stair machine!

[/tough love]

·       Passive rest: 5 minutes (after you do the intervals) – Romijn et al² showed that a few minutes into recovery from high intensity cardio there's a transient increase in blood FFA (free fatty acid) levels. McDonald suggests this is probably from a removal of the inhibition of release, and suggests sitting on your ass after the intervals while you try not to puke.

MariAnne’s note on the passive rest:
You may be different, but personally, I feel like crap if I come to a dead stop after sprinting - I always walk it out for at least five minutes when I’m done. Hell, for all I know this may clear lactic acid a little more quickly – besides, it’s almost certainly safer.

• Steady state cardio: Now, we don’t want to do all that work just to have nomadic fatty acids find their way back to your saddle-bags or love-handles, do you? To prevent this, follow your intervals with 30-40 minutes of moderate-intensity steady-state cardio.

Lyle’s Protocol 4: The Stubborn Fat Protocol 2.0

(AKA SFP on crack!)

This gruelling sequence is basically two back-to-back Protocol 3 sessions, performed as follows:

As before, perform fasted or at least three hours after your last meal, optionally consume the suggested supplements 30-60 minutes before the session, then perform 5-10 minutes of warm-up.

Part I: Short intervals

For the first interval session, perform five (and possibly up to ten, if you’re a real masochist) minutes of short, near-maximal intensity sprints, such as 15:45 work:rest intervals.

Rest for five minutes, then do 20-40 minutes of steady-state cardio, as in protocol 3.

Part II: Long intervals

For the second interval session, perform five (and possibly up to ten, if you’re clinically insane) minutes of LONGER intervals – say 30 seconds work, 30 seconds recovery to a maximum of five one-minute work, one-minute rest intervals.
Don't hesitate to cut volume or duration if your legs are fried – there is no fat-loss benefit in getting injured, okay?

Unlike the first set, this second set of intervals can be done whichever way you can bring yourself to do them – by this point, you are probably ready to fall over. Familiarity is your friend.  Finish with a few minutes of easy cool-down so your heart doesn’t stop, and you’re done.

Metabolic weight-training instead of sprinting

For both SFP 3 and 4, metabolic weight-training can be subbed for either (or both) of the interval portions of the workout. 

For the “short” intervals in the first part, keep the work-sets short (and intense) with relatively short rests. Something like the Tabata protocol (8 sets of 20:10 work:recovery intervals) could be used.  For the “long” intervals at the end, keep the work-sets longer (30-60 seconds) with relatively longer rest-periods (30-60 seconds between sets).

How often?

McDonald urges that you incorporate these smartly into your workouts, making sure to reduce leg-training dramatically if you do more than a two days of the interval-based protocols 3 and 4 per week.

Steady-state protocols 1 and 2 could be performed daily, or on days when neither of the interval-based protocols are performed.

When can I eat?

Eat a protein-based meal right after these protocols are performed. If you can’t bring yourself to eat, at least have a protein shake to assist recovery.

Now – doesn’t that sound fun?

<kindly ignore the sarcasm dripping from that last phrase>

Post-mortem

Before submitting this article to my editors, I ran it past my friend and physician Dr. Blake Wright. ¹⁷ He had this to say:

“In a healthy individual with no pre-existing cardiac disease I do not see any harm in this regimen as long as it is a part of a well rounded programme. It is well to the edge of my knowledge base so I do not consider myself an expert in this field.”

Well that’s reassuring – my doctor thinks the protocol itself is safe enough, at least for healthy folks. However, I was a little concerned about the passive-rest portion of McDonald’s protocol. Anyone who has done these sprints will confirm that feeling nauseous and overwhelmed after sprinting intervals is part of the fun, and that coming to a dead stop… well, feels like it might become permanent condition – after all, legend has it that Pheidippides died after running the first marathon ever.

<Hmmm… Come to think of it, it’s a little surprising there was ever a SECOND marathon…>

Now, I’m looking to lean out the leggies here folks, not die – so I posed my concern to both Dr. Wright and to my friend and nursing student Cindy Scott of nervous-rat fame, above.

From Dr. Wright: ¹⁷

“The large muscles of the legs are referred to as "the peripheral heart". Allowing them to contract and relax as in walking following vigorous exercise increases venous blood to return to the central circulation more quickly and removes used metabolites like lactic acid. "Warming Down" is a wise practice.”

From Cindy Scott: ⁴

“Abrupt stops with all that massive peripheral vasodilation from exercise leads to large amounts of blood pooling in the extremities. Baroreceptors detect it as a blood pressure drop, so the sympathetic nervous system increases production of epinephrine and norepinephrine to increase heart rate. This is referred to as postexercise peril, and can lead to death quite easily.”

Glad I asked.

Turns out I’m not the only worrywart: others have been sufficiently concerned to study this phenomenon in depth.

Blood pressure plummets when exercise ends suddenly. Standing (or presumably, sitting) means not using the “peripheral heart” to increase blood pressure and milk pooled blood back toward the heart from the extremities. In response to this sudden drop in blood pressure, the body cranks out even MORE norepinephrine in an effort to quickly raise it to what had become “normal” during the intense activity. Gradually reducing exercise helps return blood pressure more slowly to baseline levels. Since catecholamines increase reflexively in response to reduced blood pressure, it might be wise to do what we have long been told: cool down gradually rather than just coming to a screeching halt and collapsing.¹⁸

In short, the plus side of coming to a screeching halt is a dramatic increase of yummy lipolytic catecholamines. The down side is that it might kill you. It’s a crap shoot. You've got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?”

Well, do ya, PUNK?

Shoo!

There – I’ve spelled it all out in excruciating detail. I didn’t say it was gonna be pleasant, and I’m not personally looking forward to it either. But until I suck it up and finalize that pact with Santa (I’m dyslexic), well, I have this.

Now go on – get to it!

<cracks whip>

Disclaimer
Listen to your body, and when in doubt, consult your physician for advice mmmmkay?

Gory Details

Lactate Threshold

Lactic acid is a by-product of the anaerobic metabolism of glucose. (When you read anaerobic, think “fast twitch”. You’ll see why in a minute.)

Exercise is fuelled by glucose, which breaks down through a number of steps into something called pyruvic acid. During anaerobic exercise, such as short sprints or heavy lifting, pyruvic acid is converted into lactate and a hydrogen ion. This is lactic acid, and the hydrogen ion is responsible for the “burn” you feel. Lactic acid diffuses out of muscle tissue and into the blood stream.

Note that had sufficient oxygen been present, pyruvate, rather than converting to lactic acid, would have been consumed (aerobically) by mitochondria within the muscle cells, producing still more ATP through the Krebs cycle ¹⁹

For me, beyond this point there be dragons – but this little summary gives me the pieces I required to develop this next bit.

Slow twitch fibres produce less lactate at a given workload than fast twitch fibres. This is because lactate is essentially the carbon monoxide of the metabolic world – it is the result of the incomplete combustion of glucose, which occurs during anaerobic training. (See? That’s why I said to think “fast twitch”! )

The onset of blood lactate accumulation (OBLA) ²⁰ occurs when the rate at which the body produces lactate exceeds the body’s ability to clear it. This is referred to as the lactate threshold (LT). Since mitochondria chew through lactate oxidatively as fuel ²¹ lactate threshold improves with increased mitochondrial density (d’uh!).

This means that as you become more muscular, those nice, juicy fast-twitch muscles will be able to generate more lactate. But wait! As your aerobic fitness improves, you’ll be able to clear that lactate more effectively thanks to the enhanced mitochondrial and capillary density and improved clearance by the liver and kidneys. Note that lactate clearance is specific to the type of cardio you do. This means that for a given heart-rate, lactate clearance may be considerably lower for an untrained modality – something to consider if you rely upon a heart-rate monitor to tell you how hard you are working! ²⁰

VO2 max

Building your endurance base involves improving something called your VO2 max – which is basically the maximum volume of oxygen your body can possibly use in a minute (the units here don’t matter, but VO2 max is measured in millilitres per kilogram). It should be pretty obvious that as capillary and mitochondrial density improve, more oxygen can get to the muscle cells and more mitochondria are present to oxidize pyruvate. Thus, as your aerobic fitness improves, so to does your VO2 max.

The downside of regular, prolonged endurance training is increased efficiency - which means better fuel economy (ie reduced calorie-burning) if this is all you do for exercise. The upside of endurance training is increased mitochondrial and capillary density. Performing hill repeats ²² is a way to bypass the efficiency problem – allowing you to improve your VO2 max in less time, with less work, less boredom, less chance of adapting to the stimulus, and because you don’t have to do a whole lot of it to achieve the benefits, less risk of losing mass.

What this all boils down to is as follows:

1. The more muscular you are, the more lactate you will generate.
2. The better your cardiovascular base, the faster you’ll be able to clear lactate.

Okay, so that’s the lactate part. Now onto catecholamines!

Exercise and catecholamine production

Exercise stimulates an increase in catecholamines (of note, epinephrine and norepinephrine) ¹, and these “fight or flight” hormones ROCK at mobilizing mammalian fat stores. ^{9, 23}

Since the level of catecholamine stimulation is limited by lactate threshold (you know what that is now! See how smart you’re getting?), it’s easy to see that improving VO2 max means you’ll increase the capacity for catecholamine production.

(On a side note, I’m thinking the increased ability to clear lactate afforded by your “new and improved” VO2 max should only speed the delivery of newly released free fatty acids (FFAs) to your bloodstream during the post-exertion recovery – but sometimes I just like to see myself type.)

Supplement Details

Yohimbine: an alpha-2-adrenoceptor antagonist; administered prior to exercise, it boosts lipolysis and serum FFA levels both during]and following exercise. ²⁴

With this protocol, we are looking to increase catecholamine production, and there is unfortunately a problem with circulating norepinephrine – it binds to both beta and alpha receptors. I won’t pretend to understand the details of how this all works, and will instead direct you to further reading ¹⁶, but my understanding of this situation is as follows: binding to beta receptors increases thermogenesis, but binding to alpha-2 receptors leads to the inhibition of further norepinephrine release. The really cool thing about Yohimbine is that because it is a selective alpha-2 receptor antagonist, it prevents this negative feedback from inhibiting norepinephrine production. As an added perk, Yohimbine increases peripheral blood flow ^{25, 26} – so the fatty pockets enjoy increased blood supply, helping deliver released FFAs to where they can be burned off.

McDonald suggests avoiding Yohimbine within 3-4 hours of taking Ephedrine¹². He also suggests sticking to pharmaceutical-grade (vs. herbal), and starting with half-doses to assess tolerance (MariAnne’s note – not a bad idea. I get really nasty headaches from Yohimbine and I started with a very low dose).

Cressey and Skwiat ¹⁶ suggest dosing Yohimbine HCl at 0.2mg/kg^{14, 15}, noting that lower doses don’t work as well.

A potential problem with Yohimbine: even a very small increase in insulin inhibits lipolysis. ³ Insulin potentiates FFA re-esterification and inhibits lipolysis. ²⁷ Since Yohimbine can potentiate postprandial (that means after a meal, folks) insulin secretion ²⁴, and carbohydrates (and even milk proteins!) are insulinemic. ²⁸ You do NOT want cookies and milk near this workout! That being said, although protein can convert partially (58%) to glucose ²⁹, a 10-15g serving of protein may be prudent – the tiny amount of insulin stimulated from six to eight grams of glucose likely won’t be enough to outweigh the potential to spare muscle protein. 

Caffeine: Research shows that caffeine boosts fat-burning from exercise. Although Caffeine increases both lipolysis and resting energy expenditure, the increase in metabolism by itself isn’t enough to burn off the mobilized fat – but it does enhance the fat-burning due to exercise, working synergistically with lipolytic hormones to further promote lipolysis ³⁰. Interestingly, this effect may be stronger in lean individuals than in the obese ³¹ – good news for already-lean bodybuilders!

It can be a beneficial ergogenic aid for brief (i.e. intense) exercise, and it appears to be glycogen-sparing during endurance activity, promoting instead the burning of fat as fuel ^{32, 33}. If I’m reading this right, this means it may help you go harder for the HIIT, and then help you burn fat and avoid burning muscle during the steady state cardio that follows HIIT.

Caffeine induces insulin resistance ³⁴, which, on lower carbs/calories, is glycogen-sparing, and hence, muscle-sparing: by limiting the muscle's use of glucose (in favour of using fatty acids instead), what little glucose that’s available is spared for the brain ³⁵. Furthermore, unlike ephedrine ³⁶, caffeine does not lower catecholamine release prior to intense activity. ³⁷ And seeing as most of us will do the stubborn-fat protocol in the AM, caffeine provides a welcome kick in the pants!

L-Tyrosine: this catecholamine precursor ³⁸ induces a short-lasting (about 30-minutes) but significant increase in NE, EPI and DA ³⁹. (NE = norepinephrine, EPI = epinephrine, DA = dopamine. That’s right – catecholamines!)
The N-Acetyl form appears to have better bioavailability. McDougal offers that Tyrosine, which is very well documented for efficacy, not only enhances neurotransmitter output, but will enhance mental focus and help increase muscle fibre recruitment, meaning you’ll notice an immediate increase in strength. He suggests dosing with the N-Acetyl form at 25%-50% the dosing of regular L-Tyrosine. ⁴⁰
(MariAnne’s note: just watch the dosing, depending on the type you use.)

AVOID Ephedrine HCL: because it may reduce catecholamine release when taken prior to intense activity, avoid this one for the Stubborn Fat Loss protocol! ³⁷ If you’re taking Ephedrine for your cut, resume its consumption 3-4 hours after consuming the (optional) pre-protocol Yohimbine.

A Word on Diet:

McDonald notes that a low-carb diet will impair alpha-2 adrenoceptors a few days into it. This makes a compelling argument for lowering carbs for this portion of your cut. If you’re not a low-carb kinda dieter, he suggests you do the protocol first thing in the AM, fasted, and eat your carbs later in the day. ¹²