Keith Baar

🧪Even given these shortcomings, if you are looking to maximize exercise training, limiting caffeine intake may be warranted. Also, using a high caffeine pre-workout supplement may not be the best idea (since more blood, and therefore caffeine, will flow to the muscles you are training).

🧪Before you yell at me, or god forbid stop drinking coffee, realize two things. First, the dose of caffeine is quite high; equivalent to 6+ cups of coffee a day. Second, the effect in vivo (in mice) was quite small.

Caffeine Decreases Mu scle and Tendon Protein Synthesis and Engineered Ligament Strength In Vitro and Attenuates Adaptation to Exercise in Mice | Journal of Applied Physiology | American Physiological... Caffeine is a well-known stimulant that is widely used to increase alertness and performance. However, there is little information on the effect of chronic caffeine consumption on exercise adaptations...

🧪Our latest paper is out! But, it may upset a lot of people.
Caffeine Decreases Muscle and Tendon Protein Synthesis and Engineered Ligament Strength In Vitro and Attenuates Adaptation to Exercise in Mice | Journal of Applied Physiology journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1...

The VISA-C Questionnaire: A Self-Administered Assessment to Measure Finger/Hand/Wrist Pain in Climbers - Sports Medicine - Open Background Rock climbing places high loads through the hands, wrists, and fingers, leading to high injury rates, with the highest proportion in the fingers. Until now, there has been no attempt to categorize pain in the forearm to assess readiness to train. The purpose of this study was to create a questionnaire, the VISA-C (Victorian Institute of Sports-like Assessment; C for climbing), to measure forearm pain and determine how pain limits training. Methods We asked rock climbers aged 18 to 50 years old, who met the participation criteria and gave consent, to complete a survey containing 8 questions. We analyzed data from climbers who responded to the online questionnaire in the 9-week period between November 5, 2024, and January 8, 2025. We obtained a diverse international sample with English-speaking respondents from 54 countries. We included a supplementary questionnaire to compare the survey results against participant demographics, lifestyle, health, and sport-specific history and habits. Results We analyzed data from 1,110 climbers who completed the form. VISA-C scores were significantly different as a function of pain. The mean VISA-C score of the group with no pain was the highest (83.21/100), lower in the group reporting some pain (72.28/100), and lowest in the most severe group with activity-limiting pain (60.05/100), indicating our questionnaire scales with pain severity. We then used the secondary data gathered on our participants to search for associations between pain or skill level and demographic, health, and training habits. Of these, only blood pressure was associated with differences in VISA-C scores. Conclusions VISA-C score scaled with pain and can be compared broadly across all major demographics. We observed interesting trends in our secondary analyses. Several variables correlated significantly with either VISA-C score or climbing skill level, but none correlated well with both. Many of the variables we compared agreed with existing literature or pointed to novel associations that warrant more investigation.

Our latest paper is a quite applied one. It is a readiness questionnaire for rock climbers. We think that this will provide a quantitative measure of the effect of different training methods on finger tendon health and performance.

sportsmedicine-open.springeropen.com/articles/10....

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This should be a great session. Hopefully, we'll get to answer some questions on pros and cons of different models for studying this difficult tissue.

Interested in injury prevention and rehabilitation in baseball? This might be an interesting meeting.

I will talk about ways to possibly prevent injury and how to optimize native tissue repair after injury.

It should be fun!

tinyurl.com/py869z8k

Exosome enriched serum enhances engineered ligament mechanics and collagen content with no additional benefit of resistance exercise Following resistance exercise, systemic changes foster improved functionality of tendons and ligaments. Post-exercise, muscle tissue releases exosomes…

🧪 New paper alert! We keep trying to understand muscle-tendon crosstalk. Here we determined whether exosomes could explain why serum after resistance exercise makes bigger stronger tendons. Contrary to our hypothesis, it is not exosomes. The search goes on.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Email me at kbaar@ucdavis.edu and I will send it to you

Heartbreaking

That was a textbook Achilles tendon rupture.

And there was no one prouder than @drcontrexin.bsky.social

You were amazing!

Today I had the honor of speaking in front of nearly 3000 people today at the Woodland #NoKings rally. WE FEAR NO KING BECAUSE WE DONT HAVE ONE ✊🏾✊🏾✊🏾✊🏾 let’s gooooooo

Join our information session for prospective online Anatomical Sciences students!

#anatomy #anatomicalsciences #learnonline #onlinelearning #humananatomy

Headshot of Mark Huising against a dark blue background with white text that reads, "From labs to Lives: How Research Funding Solves Real World Problems" and his quote, "[Reduced federal funding] is already stymieing the vital trainee pipeline that U.S. biotech and pharmaceutical companies rely on to maintain the edge in their internationally competitive fields."

Diabetes affects millions of people, but what if we could better understand how the body naturally regulates blood sugar? Mark Huising is leading NIH-funded research to study how beta cells in the pancreas work together with neighboring cells that secrete hormones that control insulin secretion.

Happy Birthday Abigail!

Here is a chance for a young scientist to join one of the most respected labs in the country.

You can do it once a day. For elite athletes trying to come back as fast as possible we might load more. But, for us mere mortals daily is great

Yes. Good luck

A flyer for stand up for science Sacramento on March 7 from 12-4.

Please join us in Sacramento on Friday, March 7 from 12-4 PM to Stand Up For Science!

Outside my expertise. Sorry

I always do isometrics after any other training or activity. If you have active tendinopathies, you may want to add 10 second holds of the specific tendons you are targeting in your sport. Doing a 10s isometric for the Achilles before tennis/pickleball would be strongly advised.

Happy to talk with you about this. Email me at my ucdavis account

That would be great

YouTube video by Tim Ferriss Simple Exercises That Can Repair Tendons, Isometrics vs. Eccentrics, and More — Dr. Keith Baar

I got the chance to chat with Tim Ferriss. We talked all things tendon health and performance. Give it a listen and let me know if you have questions.
youtu.be/BnFzjcPTSsc?...

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YouTube video by EXB124 Physiology & Performance IsoHamstring

🧪 Here is one exercise that we use as the starting point to rehab the high hamstring, one of the hardest tendons to fix.

youtu.be/OwdV1sLSsdc?...

Proud of my University

Lunges, squats and holds for stronger tendons and ligaments In a Q&A, sports medicine expert Keith Baar discusses the effects of aggressive and isometric exercises on bones, tendons and joints, especially in people who are overweight or recovering from injurie...

🧪A nice piece on our research on the UC Davis Health website. The basis for this story is our recent work showing that low intensity long duration (10+ seconds) holds can increase tendon function and strength. Let me know if you have questions or comments.

health.ucdavis.edu/news/health-...

I just see my local area.