Inside Exercise

Dr Glenn McConell chats with legendary Australian former marathon world record holder and lifelong exerciser Derek Clayton and the three top researchers who have tested him over 50 years. Derek, who is now 82 years old, broke the marathon world record in 1967 running 2:09:36 when the previous record was 2:12:11(!). Then in 1969 he ran 2:08:33 a world record which wasn’t broken until 1981. He then...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Dr Tommy Lundberg from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. He is an expert on resistance training (RT) and has focussed on the effect of concurrent training on exercise adaptations. That is, does doing concurrent resistance and endurance training affect the responses to resistance and endurance training compared to doing either alone. His research has specif...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Associate Professor Lykke Sylow from The University of Copenhagen. She is a rising star in exercise metabolism and in particular the effect of exercise on cancer. This is the second podcast episode on exercise and cancer (See Professor Kathryn Schmitz episode #9). Remarkably she said that if you are a non-smoker your biggest risk of getting cancer is inactivity. Not cl...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Professor Paul D. Thompson who is Chief of Cardiology, Emeritus at Hartford Hospital, Hartford, CT and Professor of Medicine, Emeritus at the University of Connecticut. He has published over 500 peer reviewed journal articles, was a past President of the American College of sports medicine (ACSM) and was a impressively fast marathon runner. This is the third of a serie...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Professor Bryan Heiderscheit from the University of Wisconsin in USA. He is an expert on running injuries. This is the third of a series of podcast episodes on running injuries (See Professor Irene Davis’s and Associate Professor Rasmus Østergaard Nielsen’s episodes). Bryan focuses on overstriding and how increasing the stride rate can reduce overstriding and therefore...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Associate Professor Rasmus Østergaard Nielsen from Aarhus University who is an expert on the affect of training load and shoes on running-related injuries. This is the second of a series of podcast episodes on running injuries (See Prof Irene Davis’s episode). Rasmus went from an overweight gamer to an injured runner to a exercise researcher! His research focuses on in...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Professor Irene Davis from the University of South Florida who is a top running injuries researcher and the current president of the American College of Sports Medicine. She makes the argument that we were born to run and have evolved to land on the ball of the foot during running and this reduces impact load compared with landing on the heel. Modern running shoes tend...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Dr David Martin. David has a remarkable and varied background starting off as a research scientist at the Australian Institute Sport and then National Sports Science Coordinator at Cycling Australia. He then became Director, Performance Research and Development at the Philadelphia 76ers. He is currently Chief Scientist, Director of Performance at Apeiron Life, San Fran...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Professor Mark Haykowsky from the University of Alberta, Canada and remarkable heart transplant recipients Dwight Kroening, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and Elmar Sprink, Cologne, Germany. Dwight was very fit before a heart defect resulted in his heart transplantation (HT) way back in 1986. Elmar was an endurance athlete who suffered a series of cardiac arrests before his...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Associate Professor Chris Fry from the University of Kentucky, USA. Joint injury causes muscle weakness and atrophy (reductions in muscle size) due to the the inactivity but also separately due to the injury itself. Substances are released from muscle to help repair the joint/bone. Prehab is important before surgery. There can be residual effects long after joint injur...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Assistant Professor Kevin Murach who is a rising star from the University of Arkansas, USA. Kevin is an expert on muscle, muscle growth, adaptation to exercise training, “muscle memory”, the regulation of muscle growth and muscle memory and the effect of aging etc. Muscle memory definitely seems real (especially in slow muscle fibers). Looks like epigenetics involved m...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Dr Nicola Guess from Oxford University, England and Professor Jonathan Little from the University of British Columbia, Canada. Nicola is a dietitian researcher with many years of expertise including the importance or otherwise of glucose “spikes” or excursions and the pros and cons of continuous glucose monitor use. Jonathan is an expert on exercise metabolism who is c...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Associate Professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Jill is an expert on the brain and exercise. We discussed the effect of acute (one bout) and chronic physical activity/ exercise on cognitive function, brain blood flow (BBF), dementia/Alzheimer’s disease risk and progression etc. A very interesting chat. Twitter: @Barnes_Lab 0:00. Introduction and welc...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Professor Margie Davenport from the University of Alberta, Canada. She is an expert on exercise and pregnancy. We discussed the effect of pregnancy on the health (including pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes) and exercise performance of the mother and on the health of the fetus during pregnancy and the offspring after pregnancy. It became very clear that there need...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Professor Darren Candow from the University of Regina. Saskatchewan, Canada. He is an expert on creatine (Cr) and the effects of creatine supplementation on resistance exercise and other exercise. He is also examining the role of creatine in bone metabolism and cognitive function. Get greater increases in strength than muscle mass when supplement with Cr during resista...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Associate Professor Nisha Charkoudian from the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, Natick, Massachusetts, USA. She is an expert on the effects of extreme environments on exercise capacity. We talked about dehydration, electrolytes, effects of humid vs dry environments etc. We also discussed the importance of considering sex as a biological variable. T...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Associate Professor from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is an expert on the effect of beta2-agonist asthma bronchodilator medications (like Ventolin) on muscle and exercise performance. We talked about what is asthma/exercise induced bronchoconstriction, can you train your lungs?, the increased prevalence of asthma in endurance athletes, can asthma limit aer...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Professor Luc van Loon from Maastricht University, The Netherlands. He is an expert with a wealth of knowledge on the role of physical activity/exercise and nutrition on muscle adaptation. A lot of his research focuses on protein and protein synthesis. He applies these studies to young healthy individuals, the aged and also has conducted important experiments on people...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Professor Michael Kjær from the Department of Clinical Medicine, Bispebjerg Hospital, the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is an expert on tendons and exercise. We chatted about muscle vs musculotendinous junction vs tendon, what structures get injured and why, tendon injuries: mechanisms, prevention, treatment, acute vs chronic/overuse tendon injuries, best to re...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Professor Sue Bodine from the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, Oklahoma, USA. She is an expert on muscle, in particular muscle atrophy with inactivity/aging. We chatted about how with age muscle size is reduced and this is associated with a reduction in muscle fiber size and also a loss of fast muscle fibers. Resistance training (and perhaps intense endurance exer...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Professor Shona Halson from the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia. We chatted about how much sleep athletes need compared with how much sleep they actually get. Night sleep vs naps vs total sleep in athletes vs non athletes. The importance of consistency of sleep. Caffeine, sleep and exercise performance. Is overtraining actually a lot less common th...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Assoc Prof Andre La Gerche a world leading Sports Cardiologist from St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia. Acute exercise for long periods at a high intensity can result in abnormal right ventricle function. In addition, years of long, hard exercise training is associated with increased coronary artery calcium (CAC) levels and atrial fibrilla...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Professor Wim Derave from the Ghent University in Belgium. We talked about the different muscle fibres/fiber types in humans and his recent evidence that pure Type 2X muscle fibers may not really exist or maybe only in some sedentary individuals. He also made the point that muscle fiber type info is not used enough in sports contexts. He outlined some non invasive ways...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Professor José Calbet from the University of Las Palmas de Gran, Canary Islands, Spain. José has a very strong research record and is a global leader in his field. He has done amazing invasive exercise studies in humans to determine the limiting factor(s) to VO2 max. We talked about what is VO2 max, the factors determining VO2 max, the limits to VO2 max, the effects of...

Dr Glenn McConell chats with Professor Ylva Hellsten from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. She is an authority on the effect of exercise on blood flow and cardiovascular function. We talked about heart rate before exercise and blood flow and blood pressure during and after exercise. She pointed out that muscle blood flow can increase by 100-fold during exercise! We discussed the effect of...