Conditioning Research

Ok, so balance training is sensible, functional and good for preventing injuries. What should you do? I am an Occam's Razor type of guy i.e., keep things simple. I don't think that most of those that read this or hillfit.com are elite athletes with lots of time to spend on training. Most of us have jobs and other interests and we need to fit our training into and around our lives. There are a few ideas here for athletes, but I actually prefer to do a couple of simpler things: Stand on one leg when taking a p*ss or brushing your teeth. You do this everyday, several times. When you remember, do it stood on one leg. It will challenge you balance, will not take any time out of your day and the worse that will happen is that you will get tooth paste (or urine) down your front! Putting your socks on When you put your socks on in the morning, do not sit down to do it. Stand on one leg at a time and put your socks on while balancing on one leg. This is a bit more intense and a...

This is from Frank Forencich's excellent book - Play as if your life depends on it. Read an extract here . This emphasises again why it is so important to be "balanced": "...contrary to appearances, we do spend an astonishing amount of time on one foot. In normal human gait, stance phase and swing phase alternate in a complementary fashion; when one leg is swinging free from back to front, the other is supporting the body. All of the time that you are swinging one leg forward you are actually standing on one foot. According to Jacqueline Perry, author of Gait Analysis, single limb support accounts for 80% of the total gait cycle. In other words, you are supported by one leg or the other for 80% of the time you are walking. The other 20% consists of double leg stance at the beginning and end of each phase. When you are running, the situation is even more pronounced: full speed running is conducted entirely on one leg or the other. in other words if you run a...

This is more balance stuff, from Mike Robertson . This is copied from his article Choosing functional exercises . This is what really convinced me about single leg training - the idea that most of the time when we are walking or running we are actually balanced on one leg. From a functional anatomical standpoint it is absolutely critical to be on one leg. Why? Think about this for a moment. How many legs do you run on at a time? Just one. Have you ever had an athlete pull their hamstrings (bilaterally)? The muscles that support the lower leg in single leg stance (quadratus, glute medius, and adductors) are not nearly as active in double leg exercise. The final step up the continuum is to perform a one-leg squat while standing on an unstable surface. Now the athlete must engage the prime movers, stabilizers and neutralizers while dealing with the additional proprioceptive input provided by the instability of the pad. The interesting thing about functional exercise is that it seems...

This one goes back a few years, but it worth thinking about. There are a few studies like this. Twisted ankles and knees are really common in walkers, runners and footballers. The science seems to indicate that balance training, or more properly proprioceptive training, can help to prevent them. Prevention of anterior cruciate ligament injuries in soccer Abstract Proprioceptive training has been shown to reduce the incidence of ankle sprains in different sports. It can also improve rehabilitation after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries whether treated operatively or nonoperatively. Since ACL injuries lead to long absence from sports and are one of the main causes of permanent sports disability, it is essential to try to prevent them. In a prospective controlled study of 600 soccer players in 40 semiprofessional or amateur teams, we studied the possible preventive effect of a gradually increasing proprioceptive training on four different types of wobble-boards during three...

I don't expect everyone to be able to do this stuff....but for an example of some amazing balance (and explosive agility work) check out this video:

I think there is going to be a series of posts coming up about balance training, or proprioception training . I think this is an aspect of training that often gets ignored, manly because we think about muscles not movements. Something that, as I have pointed out before, Vern Gambetta warns against. There are a few things that I want to write about: that balance training is strength training ; that walking is really a single leg activity, reliant on balance; that for injury prevention balance training is at least as important as traditional strength training; that balance training can be simple; and that thinking about balance means we must move away from muscles to movements. "Bodybuiding" has blinded many of us to proper useful training. This stuff is all relevant to hillwalking as well so will probably be cross linked to www.hillfit.com As an example of what I am thinking about, look at this abstract. Balance training was more effective than strength training in prev...

Stress is a real problem for many of us. Work related stress, pressure that we put ourselves under, issues that come out of our personalities. There are a host of problems that cause us stress and a host of physiological responses. Malcolm Kendrick has written a book called The Great Cholesterol Con (not to be confused with the equally good book by Anthony Colpo with the same name Both Colpo and Kendrick do a great job of debunking the junk science around the "cholesterol is bad and causes heart disease" dogma, but Kendrick's particular theory about heart disease is that much of it is related to stress. (To be fair Colpo talks about this too) It is worth reading this very funny and well written book to review some excellent science. The fine writer and blogger Michael Eades reviewed this book recently . Some of Kendrick's essays are available for free here and are a very funny and rewarding read. If stress is so bad, what can you do about it? The article bel...

Exercise is good for you. But high intensity exercise is best! This article looks at an experiment that examined the effect of training on tumor necrosis factor (TNF). Those training with the high intensity protocol saw TNF decrease. The implication here is that such training would therefore reduce atherosclerosis (heart disease to you and me). This gets back to the whole idea that high intensity training is more effective for health as I talk about here . Aerobic exercise attenuates inducible TNF production in humans Aerobic exercise reduces coronary heart disease risk, but the mechanisms of this protection are not fully understood. Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease mediated by monocyte-derived macrophages, which accumulate in arterial plaques and become activated to release factors, including cytokines, that cause damage. Here we studied the effects of aerobic training on monocyte production of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) in whole blood ex vivo. Healthy young sedentary a...

I think we have touched on these ideas before, but the research in these areas continues. (I really need to get back to some postings about exercise or physical activity. All this stuff is too biochemical. I suppose I'll just have to wait until the exercise journals are published again.) So we are back to obesity being an inflammatory condition which itself promotes insulin resistance. (There is a vicious circle here). Anyway, this article reminds me of something Art Devany wrote : While we are on the subject of inflammation it should be noted that obesity is a state of mild to less than mild inflammation. This is easy to see if you look at the redish faces of obese individuals. They also seem to have a look of pain or distress on their faces, which may truly be moderate pain from the inflammation. A theory I think may be right is 1. fat cells secret a variety of substances that promote inflammation (see the abstract below), and 2. local areas of fat tissue become hypoxic (sho...

I found this one interesting just because it reflects much of my experience. I can think of several friends who were once fit and healthy while at university but who now are not so impressive physically. The thing is that the researchers here point out that the change in body composition and fitness as people leave university and get older is not inevitable - it is attributed to lifestyle. It does not have to happen! You just need to keep exercising and eat better. I am also aware of how many friends actually drink more...or at least drink more habitually. Anyway, read on..... Changes over Four Years in Body Composition and Oxygen Uptake of Young Adult Males after University Graduation Lifestyle changes and challenges following university graduation often present a sharp contrast to the relatively free and basically pleasant university life enjoyed by the typical college student. Adaptation to a new work environment, relocation to a new community, concerns of marriage and family,...

Sorry to go back to the whole intermittent fasting thread of ideas but I came across this account and wanted to highlight it. It is probably not satisfactorily scientific for some but nevertheless is is an interesting account of how one person apparently reversed their diabetes through using an intermittent fasting protocol. It is by a guy called Lee Shurie and explains how he arrived at IF while trying to control his blood sugar after being diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic. Read the story here of How I Defeated Type II Diabetes

Here is one for you. This one will not alter the way you train or the way you eat....however it is interesting.... Role of myokines in exercise and metabolism What it's saying is that when you exercise, various chemical messengers called cytokines are produced. These cytokines act on different cells to activate (or inhibit) them and can have profound effects on different things, particularly immunity. This group and others have thought that skeletal muscle produces specific cytokines - hence the term myokines. Paracrine effects are those on the cells around them. I'm not sure exactly why they use the term endocrine as that's really about hormones being released from organs and they probably meant autocrine, which means it acts on itself. IL6 is a cytokine that has lots of effects. Recently it has been shown to mediate effects which lead to the chronic inflammatory and/or autoimmune diseases (IBD, Rheumatoid arthritis, MS). IL8 is also known as a chemokine because i...

I thought about calling this one blueberries or bacon? This is a good one if you are interested in low carb diets. The study seems to suggest that there are benefits associated with a low carb diet in that it increases the blood's anti-oxidative capacity while not inducing oxidative stress ( potentially unhealthy effects). So maybe instead of all those blueberries and spinach, there may be value in the ketogenic diet - low carb, high fat, moderate protein? Incidentally, oxidative stress is one of the markers for overtraining referred to here . This stuff is all linked together! Effect of Short-Term Ketogenic Diet on Redox Status of Human Blood Rafal R. Nazarewicz, Wieslaw Ziolkowski, Patrick S. Vaccaro, Pedram Ghafourifar. Rejuvenation Research. ahead of print. doi:10.1089/rej.2007.0540. The present study investigated the effect of a ketogenic diet on the blood redox status of healthy female subjects. Twenty healthy females with mean body mass index of 21.45 ± 2.05 kg/m2 were p...

I was pointed towards this one by Alwyn Cosgrove's blog . His blog posting says it all really. A randomized trial of a hypocaloric high-protein diet, with and without exercise, on weight loss, fitness, and markers of the Metabolic Syndrome in overweight and obese women. Meckling KA, Sherfey R. Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada. T he purpose of this study was to examine the effects of 3:1 and 1:1 carbohydrate to protein ratios, hypocaloric diets with and without exercise, and risk factors associated with the Metabolic Syndrome in overweight and obese Canadian women. Groups were designated as control diet (CON), control diet with exercise (CONEx), high-protein (HP), or high-protein with exercise (HPEx). Free-living women from the Guelph community were studied in a university health and fitness facility. The participants were 44 of 60 overweight and obese women who had been randomized to the 4 weight-loss programs. H...

Let's move away from the fasting debate. Here is a more simple idea to grasp - vigorous exercise can reduce the incidence of diabetes. Diabetes is becoming an epidemic in the West ( even for cats! ) as people get fatter and less active. It is a terrible condition which can lead to a lot of other unpleasant problems. However again it seems that simple physical activity can prevent it in many. This of course links to some of the earlier posts about the way in which e xercise can promote insulin sensitivity . As I get older I think my focus is gradually changing from how to be strong /lean / fast / look good to how to be well / healthy / functional. Exercise is so important simply to keep us healthy that is not right to restrict it to athletes or "keeping fit". It is about keeping healthy. As some of the other studies that I have posted to indicate, important metabolic benefits can occur without changes in body composition - you can get more healthy without looking...

We are getting into a bit of an intermittent fasting series here. This is an interesting study that was picked up by Art DeVany here . He points towards a study reported here which explains a possible mechanism behind the way in which calorie restriction (and possibly fasting) is able to improve longevity. Like most studies which are done out there, this one comes with lots of ifs and buts, however the indication is that going hungry episodically can turn on a beneficial cell cleansing process. More "food for thought".

In the last post I highlighted a bit of the debate about intermittent fasting, posting Alan Aragon's critique of the approach and Bert Herring's refutation of that critique. Alan Aragon commented on that post and pointed me towards a reply that he had written to Bert Herring's response. In the interests of fairness I've posted it below. I'd say one thing - I do not think that Aragon is correct in implying that Herring is doing this for the money. His book is available for free download on his site. In the next post I'll point to another study which indicates that there may be other health benefits to occasional fasting. Not So Fast, Doc Bert Herring, MD has an impressive academic resume, much more impressive than mine. He's an accomplished researcher who's worked for the National Cancer Institute, among other lofty positions. This is why it was especially disappointing to see him half-wittedly critique my article on intermittent fasting. His hasty r...

I have written a little bit already about intermittent fasting (IF). I think interest in it arose most recently from those who were looking at the longevity benefits of calorie restriction. In animal models at least these benefits were also replicated through intermittent fasting, which seems to promote the same beneficial hormone drives. There are variations on this idea. For example, the QOD diet has people eat every other day while the Warrior Diet promotes undereating all day with a feast at night. I've read the Warrior Diet and it is a good read as an introduction. Fast 5 is another similar approach, written by a Doctor. The book is available for free from the Fast 5 Website and is also highly recommended and very good value (considering it is free). Their idea is that you can get the benefits of intermittent fasting from compressing all your eating into 5 hours a day they have it between 5pm and 10pm. Interestingly this is how Hunter-Gatherers tend to eat. They go off...

This study was trying to identify clear indicators for overtraining - i.e. things that could be measured to give an objective indication that an athlete had overtrained. This is interesting in itself, but it is also interesting to note the effects of over training - there is a reduction in antioxidant levels in the body. This is generally thought to be a bad thing. Antioxidants mop up free radicals which otherwise would cause oxidation - damage to cells. If over training is leading to oxidative damage to the body it could explain some of the problems that seem to be associated with endurance exercise. (Just to be clear though this article is about resistance training not endurance exercise...it is just that I think endurance athletes are generally chronically over trained.) Oxidative stress biomarkers responses to physical overtraining: Implications for diagnosis. Margonis K, Fatouros IG, Jamurtas AZ, Nikolaidis MG, Douroudos I, Chatzinikolaou A, Mitrakou A, Mastorakos G, Papassot...

This is an interesting study which looks at the positive effects that a high-protein, low glycemic–load diet has in comparison with a "conventional", high glycemic–load diet. The press story is here and it is interesting how they say it talks of the benefit of a "low fat diet". It isn't really about a low fat diet if you look at the percentages. The more fat you have the lower the GI is anyway. Barry Groves has an interesting article about the way in which acne benefits from a low carb diet. Anyway, this seems like another reason to chose a low carb / paleo type diet. The study is here , well the abstract anyway: The effect of a high-protein, low glycemic–load diet versus a conventional, high glycemic–load diet on biochemical parameters associated with acne vulgaris: A randomized, investigator-masked, controlled trial Background No previous study has sought to examine the influence of dietary composition on acne vulgaris. Objective We sought to compare the e...

This article suggests that if you want to maximise the fat burning associated with aerobic exercise (although I would not recommend you focus on aerobics to burn fat anyway ) then you should avoid high GI carbs.....i.e., sweets. Effect of high and low glycaemic index recovery diets on intramuscular lipid oxidation during aerobic exercise. Trenell MI, Stevenson E, Stockmann K, Brand-Miller J. Diabetes Research Group and Newcastle Magnetic Resonance Centre, School of Clinical Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Intramyocellular lipid (IMCL) and plasma NEFA are important skeletal muscle fuel sources. By raising blood insulin concentrations, carbohydrate ingestion inhibits lypolysis and reduces circulating NEFA. We hypothesised that differences in the postprandial glycaemic and insulin response to carbohydrates (i.e. glycaemic index; GI) could alter NEFA availability and IMCL use during subsequent exercise. Endurance-trained individuals (n 7) cycled for 90 mi...

You may have picked up from the sort of things that I am posting that I am not a huge fan of endurance training. I think it is good to be able to walk for 6 or 8 hours but in general I am more in favour of more intense/abbreviated training along the model of the power law that I discussed in the post about football. Mark Sisson had a piece recently called The Case Against Cardio which eloquently and elegantly explained the problems associated with excessive intense endurance training. This article , written for GPs, lists some common problems faced by endurance athletes. The link above takes you to the full text article. The abstract is below. Common problems in endurance athletes. Cosca DD, Navazio F. University of California Davis, Sports Medicine Program, Sacramento, California 95816, USA. david.cosca@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu Endurance athletes alternate periods of intensive physical training with periods of rest and recovery to improve performance. An imbalance caused by overly intensi...

This blog (and my hillfit.com page and blog ) has quite a few book adverts with links to amazon. I have read all the books that I advertise on this site and they are all worth reading. Just so you are clear, if you do order one through one of these links, I get a small (very small) % commission from Amazon. I will only post links to books I've read and would recommend. (Incidentally this is not really something I'm doing for profit - there has been one book order since I started this blog......meaning that so far I've made 51 pence! I don't think I'll retire just yet.) Also I think that since my adverts are for the UK Amazon and most of my visitors are from the USA I may not be targeting my audience correctly... Then again I am not doing this for the money....and just so this post isn't focussed entirely on my advertising strategy, here is an interesting study with another reason to exercise and stay lean: Obesity and lack of exercise could enhance the r...

I have put up a few posts about the benefits of interval training - short intense intervals of work separated by rest periods. (for example here , here and here ) I've also mentioned some problems with respect to the standard prescription for aerobic exercise of long slow endurance type training / "cardio". ( here and here ) The research below illustrates this idea and also highlights some issues that Art DeVany has written about in his blog and research on what he calls Evolutionary Fitness, particularly around the "power law" distribution, an example of which is below. You have frequency on the vertical axis and intensity on the horizontal axis. So In any time period you have a high frequency of low intensity activity and a low frequency of high intensity activity. So maybe lots of easy walking and jogging, plus a few hard and intense sprints/jumps/dives or whatever. He explains it thus : The power law shown here is the signature of nature's strategy...

This is a study which looked at the effect of an exercise programme on fat kids, trying to stop them from becoming fat diabetic kids. (I hope you don't find that phrase offensive. I was a fat kid myself and it was not nice). Anyway the result was that exercise improved insulin sensitivity, even though it did not change body composition. The lesson here was that exercise had an important benefit metabolically even though there may not have been a change in appearance. It is always worth exercising. Exercise alone reduces insulin resistance in obese children independently of changes in body composition (full article available here ) Context : The number of obese children with insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes is increasing but the best management strategy is not clear. Objective : To assess the effect of a structured eight-week exercise training program on insulin resistance and changes in body composition in obese children. Design : Eight weeks of structured supervised ex...

I suppose that I am lucky in that I do not really like most sweet foods. (Honey and thick cut marmalade excepted) For example, I can't understand people who are addicted to Coke....and diet coke is just more of the same for me. I should be glad of that really because I just spotted a piece of news that suggested that artificial sweeteners could sabotage a diet - especially a low carb diet. Incidentally I think this is a very important finding that has some serious implications. Your gut has taste receptors Researchers in the Department of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have identified taste receptors in the human intestines. The taste receptor T1R3 and the taste G protein gustducin are critical to sweet taste in the tongue. Research now shows these two sweet-sensing proteins are also expressed in specialized taste cells of the gut where they sense glucose within the intestine. “We now know that the receptors that sense sugar and artificial sweeteners are not ...

(image from Medline Plus ) Apparently female athletes have a really high incidence of knee injuries - particularly to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). That is a real footballer's injury. I'm showing my age and nationality now, but I always remember that as the injury that Paul (Gazza) Gascoigne suffered in the FA cup final in 1991. Mike Boyle in a provocative article says that most women shouldn't run: wider hips mean narrower knees which leads to more injuries for the average female runner. Incidentally there is an interesting response to Boyle here . Eric Cressey prescribes " increasing glute and hamstrings strength and optimizing frontal plane stability is crucial for resisting knock-knee tendencies and preventing ACL tears ". While I am sure that strengthening these muscles and structures will help, an article has just been published that indicates that the issue is about more than simple biomechanics. There is a problem here in terms of patho...

Is there anyone out there reading this stuff? Do you find it interesting and helpful? I enjoy finding this material and putting it up here but I'd be interested to find out if there are people actually reading this blog. Feel free to comment below....I'm in need of reassurance!

I know most yoga is not like this, but this is a bit over the top..... ( photo ) A case report of patient practising yoga leading to dental erosion. Meshramkar R, Patil SB, Patil NP. Department of Prosthodontics, SDM College of Dental Sciences and Hospital, Dharwad, Karnataka, India. The article presents the case of a patient who was practising Yoga (Kunjal kriya) which led to dental erosion. Dental erosion can be due to extrinsic or intrinsic causes. The intrinsic causes include vomiting due to anorexia nervosa, regurgitation due to abnormality in gastro-intestinal tract or rumination. A 38-year-old male patient presented with a rare aetiology of dental erosion. He had practiced kunjal kriya one of the yogic exercises described in ancient India. In kunjal kriya the patient vomits on an empty stomach in order to clean his or her gastro-intestinal tract. The patient had practiced this form of exercise for over 12 years which had led to severe dental erosion. A proper case history should...

I wrote a few days ago about stretching and especially only stretching the tight muscles. There are a couple of videos here from Mark Reifkind which show a good stretch for the shoulders and biceps. What is every interesting is the second video where you can see someone with tight shoulders and what that looks like. This is the stretch and this is what it looks like when done by someone who is very tight in the shoulders, despite being very strong (400lb bench press).... Pavel's book Relax into Stretch is a good introduction to stretching techniques:

I've written about intermittent fasting before. It is becoming quite a fashionable thing in some corners of the interweb, but there is a reason for that - there is a chunk of scientific data indicating that there are many benefits to be had from this approach to eating, from improved body composition to reduced inflammation. I've just come across this paper to be published next month in Metabolism that adds a little more to the mix of data. It is looking at rats....but the assumption is that there is a similar effect in humans. Basically fasting made the fat cells shrink. Refeeding normally makes them grow back to where they were. But if you add exercise to the mix then the fat cells do not go all the way back to where they were. The paper explains how this is due both to an increase in lipolysis (fat burning) and a decrease in lipogensis (fat making). So what , how do we apply this? Well fasting and intermittent fasting is all well and good but I'd argue that you real...