The Rundown

Bed Rest Rx. Spending a week in bed, due to injury, surgery or illness, has a big impact on your fitness and health. In 2016, a study found that young men who spent a week on bed rest lost 3.1 pounds of muscle, and their VO2 max and maximum strength declined by 6.4% and 6.9% respectively.

The story may be worse for well-trained athletes. Studies have found that people with the highest initial fitness levels suffer the greatest losses if stuck in bed. In a new review published in Sports Medicine, researchers decided to look at how bed rest effects trained athletes and what can be done to minimize the negative outcomes.

Looking at seven studies that involved athletes classified as one step up from recreational, the researchers found that endurance began to decline within three days or so. This initial rapid decline was associated with a drop in blood plasma volume. The continuing, gradual decline was from physical changes in the heart, circulatory system and muscles.

Muscle strength started to decline within five days. The first part of this decline was from neuromuscular changes in how signals travel from the brain to the muscles and the second part was slower, as the muscles began to shrink.

As for strategies to maintain muscle mass, protein intake is important. The researchers cite a recommendation of 16.5 grams of essential amino acids plus 30 grams of carbohydrate, three times a day. If you can make your way to the kitchen to eat, even better, as the most effective way to stimulate muscle growth and maintenance is eating protein and using your muscles.

How long does it take to regain your fitness? Studies focused on non-athletes say about a week to counter the loss of endurance after a two-week bed rest and two weeks to get back neuromuscular function after a four-week stay in bed.

For those with higher fitness levels, the paper’s authors suggest two to four weeks of progressive rehabilitation after bed rest that lasted up to four weeks. This may vary depending on the reason for the bed rest.

Bacteria Watch. If you’re not regularly cleaning or disinfecting the wristband attached to your fitness tracker, a new study says you may want to start. Researchers from Florida Atlantic University tested 20 watch wristbands made from either plastic, rubber, cloth, leather, gold or silver, with swabs taken from the wristbands of random volunteers (12 males and 8 females).

They found that 95% of the watchbands were contaminated, with cloth yielding the highest bacterial load, followed by plastics, rubber, leather and metal. The watchband of a volunteer who went to the gym showed the highest staphylococcal counts while E. coli was found on 60% of the wristbands.

Extra Point

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Destination NBA: A G League Odyssey. So, full disclosure, I’m not a basketball fan, which limited my interest in this documentary. However, if you are a fan, it’s a well-produced look at the up and coming players trying to make it from affiliate teams to the NBA. The featured stories are often compelling and the film offers interesting off-the-court insights. Destination NBA is streaming on Prime Video.

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Power Hour. What could you achieve if you got up just one hour earlier, every day? Personal trainer and runner, Adrienne Herbert, explores the answers in this podcast where she speaks to “today’s leading coaches, creatives, change makers and innovators” about their morning routines and daily habits.

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Is Breathing Through Your Nose the Secret to Reaching Peak Fitness? If you saw the recent picture of world number one women’s tennis player, Iga Swiatek, training with tape over her mouth, you may have wondered why. This article from the Sydney Morning Herald investigates.