Conditioning Research

Recently I have been doing more and more mobility training. Lots of times it is just Maxwell's Daily Dozen but more often I will use Scott Sonnon's Intu-Flow moves, many of which are in a free ebook . After mentioning my use of Intu-flow, Adam Steer got in touch and offered to write a post explaining a bit more about this system and how it integrates with other physical training. I agreed, happy to learn more about the background to this system. Thanks Adam! Here is the post: The Circular Strength Training® System’s Integrated Approach To Joint Mobility & Health In my early teens, my grandfather did everything he could to encourage me to participate in sports and physical conditioning. As he put it, he was trying to keep me out of trouble, but he set me on a path of physical culture which has shaped my personal and professional life ever since. A fascination with movement and with physical development led me first to a career as a ski coach. Then, as I contin...

Interval training. Periods of harder exercise separated by periods of rest or easy movement. I've written about it a lot on this blog. Over the last 10 years or so it has been touted at the panacea to all training problems. If you google "tabata" you find over 2 million pages. Admittedly lots of these are about Japanese people called Mr Tabata, but most are about the exercise protocol. In some corners of the internet there has been a bit of a backlash recently, with people like Mark Twight and Rob Shaul noting that while intervals can do a lot to benefit aerobic capacity, if you want to go long, sometimes you will need to train long too. ( I point to some of the discussion here ). There was even a study recently that I saw some people jump on to say that intervals were nothing special or at least that they had been over hyped. Effect of High Intensity Interval Exercise on Lipid Oxidation during post exercise recovery The scientists compared intervals with a steady...

As we have been saying already . Dr Briffa here discusses the danger of cutting your cholesterol .... and there is also this new review of the nasty adverse effects of statins: First comprehensive paper on statins' adverse effects released: Provides evidence for reported side effects including muscle and cognitive problems "The risk of adverse effects goes up as age goes up, and this helps explain why," said Golomb. "This also helps explain why statins' benefits have not been found to exceed their risks in those over 70 or 75 years old, even those with heart disease." High blood pressure and diabetes are linked to higher rates of mitochondrial problems, so these conditions are also clearly linked to a higher risk of statin complications, according to Golomb and co-author Marcella A. Evans, of UC San Diego and UC Irvine Schools of Medicine.

This is quite an interesting video from Brad Pilon . Growth hormone or 'GH' is a very important hormone that regulates the release of fat from your body stores so that it can be used as a fuel source. Traditionally we have been taught that to burn fat you need to keep our insulin levels 'normal' or 'under control'. It turns out that the release of body fat is controlled by GH.... Intermittent fasting of course increases GH levels as explained here I like Brad's eat stop eat book on fasting which explains this among other stuff.. Lots of us in the paleo / evolutionary fitness community are regularly practising fasting. Richard often fasts as does Keith - pictured below. Keith - in this post explains how fasting has added the finishing touch to his physique: Essentially, we are designed to be intermittent eaters, but continuous metabolizers. We operate in a slight energy surplus during the day, followed by a negative energy balance during the night. In...

I thought this was interesting. A study conducted by Université de Montréal researchers on downstream and upstream water from the Montreal wastewater treatment plant has revealed the presence of chemotherapy products and certain hypertension and cholesterol medications. So the drugs that people are scoffing are getting pee'd out and then are entering the water supply. We now have fish swimming round in a soup of medication. If you have read elsewhere on this blog there are major health risks associated with statins . Yet with the widespread use of these drugs it seems that we might be getting to a point when they are hard to avoid. Read more here: Hypertension and cholesterol medications present in water released into the St. Lawrence River

This superb clip comes courtesy of Asclepius . Even computer geeks can jump!

You know I like jumps. These look amazing. Steve Cotter is using these moves to help prepare his legs for an upcoming kettlebell contest. He says Trying to prepare the best I can for the first-ever Arnold Sports Festival Kettlebell Championship on March 7th. It has been awhile since I’ve trained like an athlete, for an event that I want to perform well in. Any serious athlete is going to have to train the legs and kettlebells is definitely a serious sport.

From Scott Sonnon

Inspired by Asclepius I've bought a copy of Chris Sommer's book Building the Gymnastic Body . I might put a proper review up soon, but I am really enjoying the book. you can tell he publishes it himself in that it is not the best quality printing or binding, but it is good enough. His contention is that gymnastic training is actually the most effective means of building strength and he provides a series of progressions to get you to be effective at a range of gymnastic moves. What I really want to achieve is a planche....just because they look so cool. I'm currently using the progression in the article here. It will take a while but I am progressing. There are some amazing articles on YouTube from Sommer . For all you jump fans,check out this one:

In the past I've noted that there is some evidence for treating cancer with a low carb diet . Cancer cells need glucose to survive and if you starve them of it they die. Richard pulled a lot of the references together here too. Here is an interesting post noting that you never hear about heart cancer. While the heart muscle can use sugar as fuel, many experts claim that the hearts preferred source of fuel is saturated fat and ketone bodies. In fact, Richard Veech MD has shown that the heart works 28 percent more efficiently using ketones as a fuel than it does using glucose. Therefore, more than likely the experts are right that fat is the 'gas' of the heart. Cancer needs sugar to survive . No sugar, no cancer. Your liver is the creator of glucose (sugar) and liver cancer is one of the worst forms of cancer you can get. You pretty much don't get better once you have liver cancer. I tried to help my mother who died of lung cancer a few months ago to adopt a no sugar d...

A short film about the work of Weston Price . If you are interested in this approach, the book Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon is a good application of all this stuff. Check out these powerpoint presentations about Traditional Diets too: parts ONE , TWO and THREE

I've put a few posts up recently about the importance of joint mobility . In particular I've pointed towards Maxwell's Daily Dozen and Sonnon 's free IntuFlow booklet . Blogger Asclepius of the Natural Messiah blog had a good post up today on his own warm up / mobility routine. It is a really good approach to warming up and promoting mobility: Warm up Routine All good dynamic stuff. Which is important because research keeps coming that indicates that static stretching is not a good warm-up strategy! Here is a new study: Effects of Static Stretching on Repeated Spint and Change of Direction Perfrmance Conclusion : These results suggest that an acute bout (4 min) of static stretching of the lower limbs during recovery periods between efforts may compromise repeated sprint ability performance but has less effect on change of direction speed performance.

If - like me - you are interested in low carbohydrate diets,you might like this new bit of research: Low-carbohydrate diet burns more excess liver fat than low-calorie diet, UT Southwestern study finds The low-carbohydrate dieters, however, got only 20 percent of their glucose from glycogen. Instead of dipping into their reserve of glycogen, these subjects burned liver fat for energy. The findings are significant because the accumulation of excess fat in the liver – primarily a form of fat called triglycerides – can result in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, or NAFLD. The condition is the most common form of liver disease in Western countries, and its incidence is growing. Dr. Browning has previously shown that NAFLD may affect as many as one-third of U.S. adults. The disease is associated with metabolic disorders such as insulin resistance, diabetes and obesity, and it can lead to liver inflammation, cirrhosis and liver cancer. "Energy production is expensive for the liver,...

Following my recent posts on natural movement and the particular approach of Erwan Le Corre's MovNat Erwan himself contacted me to clarify some issues and to respond to some of the comments. The videos in the previous posts featured Erwan and I asked him if I could interview him for this blog. He kindly agreed. This is a great and very informative interview, covering movement, diet, sleep and a lot more! Enjoy: 1 Who is Erwan Le Corre? Can you give us some idea of your background in sports / fitness My first "personal trainer" was my dad. Though he had never really practiced any specialized sport himself, as a kid his favourite activity was one of frequent and instinctive physical expression found in exploring his surroundings. Then as a young father he naturally thought it was important to pass on this simple way to me. In his mind, an essential aspect of his role was to have me toughen up physically and mentally, that's why he frequently had me followi...

I don't know how "primal" or natural this is....but what a killer exercise: The video is from Will Heffernan - a top strength and conditioning coach in Ireland.

Natural movement - is this what it is all about? I mentioned MovNat a few days ago in a post called Real Evolutionary Fitness . Here is another video of the guy behind the approach - Erwan Le Corre. Check out Erwan's comment on the previous post.

Now this is what I call an experiment! Sorry for the harsh headline, but that is me dumbing down the study below. I've written about stress before and Dr Dan had a good post on the subject today too. Stress via increased cortisol can make you fat, but now this indicates that when you are fat you cope less well with stress. A nasty vicious circle. Higher body fat percentage is associated with increased cortisol reactivity and impaired cognitive resilience in response to acute emotional stress Objective: Cortisol is elevated in individuals with both increased emotional stress and higher percentages of body fat. Cortisol is also known to affect cognitive performance, particularly spatial processing and working memory. We hypothesized that increased body fat might therefore be associated with decreased performance on a spatial processing task, in response to an acute real-world stressor. Design: We tested two separate samples of participants undergoing their first (tandem) skydiv...

This weekend the Guardian and Observer had an interesting feature with a series of articles about the training routines of several of Britain's medal winners from the last Olympics. It concentrates on Running , Cycling and Swimming . There are an interesting set of articles there if you like such stuff. If you flick through the training diaries of the athletes I think it interesting how often they do powercleans and powersnatches. I also liked Diver Tom Daly's routine too. His warm up looked fun: 5.30–9pm: I start with a warm-up game of " wall tennis " with my coach (playing squash with your hands), then I start weight conditioning..... I remember playing that game as a kid. Anyway, take the time to look through the whole feature - there is good stuff there.

A comment from Asclepius at Natural Messiah got me thinking about this. He pointed me to MovNat which is an updating of Methode Naturelle . I'd come across MN a few years ago - in connection to Parkour or Free Running - but had forgotten about it. Wikipedia explains: A (Natural Method) session is composed of exercises belonging to the ten fundamental groups: walking, running, jumping, quadrupedal movement, climbing, equilibrism (balancing), throwing, lifting, defending and swimming. The more I think about it, the more that I like this approach. There is a blog here by a guy working on this template.

Natural Messiah is a good blog that I have have in my RSS Reader. It has a "paleo" bias in terms of diet and exercise, but the guy that writes it is a thinker who does not blindly adopt any template without thinking it through: ................ those who follow a paleo model - .......{must} maintain an evidence-base for their paleo-oriented beliefs. I want to make sure that my exercise and nutritional patterns are at worst non-detrimental to my health and so continually try to record, measure and adjust my current model as appropriate. One of the things he was musing on today was whether basic gymnastic moves were "paleo", I think he concluded that they were not, but that fundamental gymnastic moves were still fantastic exercises: gymnasts train with basic movements and holds that can involve contractions throughout the whole body. Planches, Body Levers, Muscle Ups and HSPUs are simply fantastic kit-free exercises. Add a sprint on to the end and you have a comp...

Well that is the implication of this study as I read it. The researchers took some endurance athletes and replaced their regular endurance style training with "frequent high-intensity sessions each consisting of 8–12 30-s sprint runs separated by 3 min of rest". There was a big reduction in training volume but these guys maintained their fitness and actually got more efficient at using energy.... Four weeks of speed endurance training reduces energy expenditure during exercise and maintains muscle oxidative capacity despite a reduction in training volume We studied the effect of an alteration from regular endurance to speed endurance training on muscle oxidative capacity, capillarization, as well as energy expenditure during submaximal exercise and its relationship to mitochondrial uncoupling protein 3 (UCP3) in humans. Seventeen endurance-trained runners were assigned to either a speed endurance training (SET; n = 9) or a control (Con; n = 8) group. For a 4-wk intervention...

Rob keeps on coming up with interesting moves. He calls this " Mr Spectacular " Complete a two handed kettlebell Clean & Press, set kettlebells on floor by feet, walk out on your hands, do a push up, walk back up, repeat. Killer! I used a modified version of this tonight as part of a circuit. I did a dumbbell snatch with the left hand followed by one with the right, then walked the hands out to a plank, did a pushup and walked the hands back. Did 10 reps, then 10 " slasher to halos " then 3 flights of stairs carrying a 25kg plate. Then repeated the whole circuit. .

IF YOU are frying a steak and mindful of your health, then marinate it in either beer or red wine. So say food scientists who measured amounts of a family of carcinogens found in fried steaks after steeping them in booze. Interesting report in the New Scientist! I must admit I do like to marinate my meat, often in wine and olive oil. Maybe I'll try some beer. Steak in Guinness has been seen on pub menus. Here is the abstract : The effect of beer or red wine marinades on the reduction of heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAs) formation in pan-fried beef was compared. The cooking experiments were performed under well-controlled temperature and time conditions. The samples were analyzed for HAs contents using solid-phase extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography−diode array detection/fluorescence detection. Unmarinated samples cooked in similar conditions provide...

Actually there is no evidence ( in this study at least ) that a higher fruit and vegetable intake reduces the incidence of cancer..... However another study does suggest that a high carbohydrate diet is a risk factor for breast cancer Such heresy....

Every now and again I come across the idea of cold water dousing as a method of promoting health in various ways. There seems to be a great tradition of cold showers and cold water bathing among old school "physical culturists". On my desk as I write is a book with a handwritten date in the front of 20 September 1899: " Strength and how to Obtain it " by Eugene Sandow , which I found years ago in a second-hand book shop. There is a chapter in the book - " The Magic Cold Bath " in which the great Sandow recommends daily cold baths - pouring cold water over the head and body and then jumping in and out of the cold water (!) This idea persists. Art DeVany 's fabulous essay on Evolutionary Fitness has this paragraph: Stay cool and exposure your skin to fresh air and sunlight. Don’t be warm and cozy all the time. End your shower with a cool rinse over your legs. Wear as little as you can tolerate for your workouts. If you can’t stay warm working out...

Lance Swings and so does Ross :

Here is one for you - a nice little free booklet of exercises to assist in correcting anterior pelvic tilt, a common cause of back pain. I know that stretching out the psoas can often relieve my back pain and this booklet explains why a tight psoas can be a problem, tugging your pelvis out of position. Mobility work is another route to loosening our muscles of course ( as in Scott Sonnon's booklet ). Anyway, check out the booklet: 4-essential-strategies-for-the-correction-of-anterior-pelvic-tilt The guy that wrote that has some good free videos on Youtube too, for example

Here is a fun video of a jump, then the news: I have put lots on here previously about stretching - the general idea being that stretching does not tend to improve athletic performance. Here is another one in a similar vein. It might improve flexibility but doesn't improve performance. Investigation into the long-term effects of static and PNF stretching exercises on range of motion and jump performance. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the long-term effects of two different stretching techniques on the range of motion (ROM) and on drop jump (DJ). DJ scores were assessed by means of a contact mat connected to a digital timer. ROM was measured by use of a goniometer. The training was carried out four times a week for 6 weeks on 10 subjects as passive static stretching (SS), and on 9 subjects as contract-relax PNF (CRPNF) stretching. The remaining nine subjects did not perform any exercises (control group). One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) results indicated...

Antioxidant supplements do not help much! In fact there have been studies that indicate they might do more harm than good. Vitamins C and E and Beta Carotene Supplementation and Cancer Risk: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Observational studies suggest that a diet high in fruits and vegetables, both of which are rich with antioxidants, may prevent cancer development. However, findings from randomized trials of the association between antioxidant use and cancer risk have been mostly negative.... Conclusions Supplementation with vitamin C, vitamin E, or beta carotene offers no overall benefits in the primary prevention of total cancer incidence or cancer mortality.

I've posted stuff previously ( here and here ) about sugar and cancer the idea being that starving cancers of sugar can kill them. Other cells can be fuelled in other means but tumours need sugar, so if you cut off the supply then they struggle to grow: unlike healthy cells, which generate energy by metabolizing sugar in their mitochondria, cancer cells appeared to fuel themselves exclusively through glycolysis, a less-efficient means of creating energy through the fermentation of sugar in the cytoplasm. The theory is simple: If most aggressive cancers rely on the fermentation of sugar for growing and dividing, then take away the sugar and they should stop spreading. Meanwhile, normal body and brain cells should be able to handle the sugar starvation; they can switch to generating energy from fatty molecules called ketone bodies — the body's main source of energy on a fat-rich diet — an ability that some or most fast-growing and invasive cancers seem to lack. Here is another ...