Conditioning Research

I just came across this fascinating blog It is from Michelle : On May 16, 2008 I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 20. I had all the classic symptoms of thirst and weight loss, tested positive for all the autoantibodies and had an AlC of 14%. On January 8, 2009 I eliminated grain, dairy, and legumes from my diet and the results have been remarkable. Only after a few weeks my insulin needs dropped dramatically and after six months on the diet I quit taking insulin altogether. Fascinating stuff - effectively she claims to have cured her Type 1 diabetes by eliminating grains, dairy and beans.....

Rusty has put together a free little report on Building "a vacation body". It is free and has some good ideas on training and intermittent fasting . You can get it here.

Just back from a few days up north . Weather was rotten but it was great being in the big hills again.

Tonight at Krav we did a lot of this sort of drill, moving from Exuberant Animal Style heckling onto stick work. Great fun in the rain led by Rannoch The video by the way is from Ritchie at Streetfight Secrets .

You might have seen the adverts....this stops you from absorbing fat and so you are supposed to lose weight: Fat is high in calories but if it isn't absorbed, it can't contribute to weight gain. The unabsorbed fat passes naturally out of your body in your stools. Note you will also avoid all the vitamins that are in the fat. Barry Groves has discussed this stuff before: If you want to lose weight using alli, you still have to eat a low-fat diet and exercise, which is probably what you are already doing and, if you're doing that, you don't need alli. If you don't also cut your fat intake, you'll spend a lot of time sitting either on the toilet or in very messy, fatty pants . The fat that alli has stopped your body absorbing has to go somewhere; it leaks out of your nether end! There are lots of nasty side effects ( see this woman's experience ) but here is a big one: The US Food and Drug Administration has received more than 30 reports linking the drug to ...

We haven't mentioned Intermittent Fasting for a while. (I still recommend Eat Stop Eat if you want to find out more) Here is a new post on The Health Hut : 25 Reasons Fasting Can Improve Your Health and Well-Being We might not agree with all of the stuff there, but there is some interesting research

This is lazy as a blog post, but I was looking back through some of Bryce Lane's articles and there is some treasure there. This article needs some exposure: Fast Iron Everyone I know complains about time, its “The great American excuse”. “I’d love to lift but I can’t miss the bowflex informercial”, I really expect to hear this someday. Anyway here are some workouts that give you some mighty big bang for the buck in fifteen minutes or less, two or three times a week. The tricks are: 1.) Not to think in reps and sets but in time sections 2.) Think of one exercise or compound for the shoulder/arm area, lower back and upper legs if you have something that effectively covers more than one, then great! 3.) Pay attention to loading, make your exercises progress from light to heavy or heavy to light with no reverses so you don’t waste any more time changing plates than need be. 4.) Use the same equipment for everything, That way you you can stay in the same spot and not kill ...

Bryce Lane is a great thinker in this field of training and conditioning. it is worth reading though his many articles. Carrying on from the previous post, his article on The Martial Art is an interesting read: When you are taking this look consider simple things, like "could I really throw a roundhouse kick anywhere in this place"; "will going to the ground only expose me to every pointy or steel toed boot in the room, while making extricating myself from this mess impossible"; "Is it more likely any of the stuff around me can trip me or my opponent better than either of us could trip or throw each other in the dojo? What you will start to see is that no matter what your skills, half or more of them are useless or a detriment already. You will see that your environment can do-you-in likely far quicker than your opponent. Throw a crowd in an area that is already an obstacle course who become "hostile obstacles" if excited and now you likely just...

A few weeks ago I was talking to someone after Krav Maga class and we were discussing the need to lose the ego. Doing self defence training makes some lads think that they can take on the world when the sensible thing to do most of the time is simply avoid the trouble. Don't go to places where it might kick off. If you are in a bar and something feels wrong, just leave. I think that is something you learn as you get older. Often drink exaggerates the problem. With a couple of pints you might feel like Bruce Lee but in reality you will be more like Bruce Forsyth. Not wanting to sound like Kenny Rogers but usually it is the sensible thing to avoid trouble Doug McGuff's recent post got me thinking about this again. He works as a doctor in what we in the UK would call Casualty / or the Accident and Emergency part of a hospital and was commenting on dangerous activities that kill people. His Dirty Dozen included: 5. If you are walking down a sidewalk and are approaching ...

Davie posted this on Facebook

from Pure HIT

Hat Tip to the Bar barians

Well despite what you may have read: Conclusions: We have NOT consistently identified intakes of meat, eggs, or dairy products as risk factors for breast cancer.

Gluconeogenesis - is a metabolic pathway that results in the generation of glucose from non-carbohydrate carbon substrates such as lactate, glycerol, and glucogenic amino acids. So if you don't eat carbs, you body can still make the sugar you need to survive.... This study looked at why a high protein low carb diet incereases your resting metabolic rate....and explains much of the increase as accounted for by gluconeogenesis. Draw some conclusions....... Gluconeogenesis and energy expenditure after a high-protein, carbohydrate-free diet Background: High-protein diets have been shown to increase energy expenditure (EE). Objective: The objective was to study whether a high-protein, carbohydrate-free diet (H diet) increases gluconeogenesis and whether this can explain the increase in EE. Design: Ten healthy men with a mean (±SEM) body mass index (in kg/m2) of 23.0 ± 0.8 and age of 23 ± 1 y received an isoenergetic H diet (H condition; 30%, 0%, and 70% of energy from protein, carbohyd...

Carrying on the theme thinking about age , this has just been published which I thought was interesting. For old people in hospital, it is actually better for them to be fatter. Fat mass protects hospitalized elderly persons against morbidity and mortality Background: It is well established that the combination of protein-energy malnutrition and low body mass index (BMI) increases the risk of death in elderly patients, but recent studies indicate that the risk of death may decrease with higher body weight. However, these studies did not perform direct, separate, and reliable measurements of fat and lean mass by using a reference technique. Objective: Our objective was to evaluate the relation between body composition, based on the 4-compartment model, and morbidity and mortality in hospitalized elderly patients. Design: This prospective study enrolled 125 elderly patients evaluated at admission for body composition on the basis of BMI plus fat mass, lean mass, appendicular skeletal mus...

Make sure you check out the video that Asclepius pointed to here . The move at 35 seconds is unbelieveable.

Krav Maga tonight had a fitness test : pushups to failure then squats to failure. I made 44 pushups and 105 squats. Thought I did OK - my form was good and I could have done more squats. To me a pushup is chest to floor (or close to it / elbows at 90 degrees) and full extension of the arms at the top. Squats are as below.

I spent some time with my Dad this last weekend and it really got me thinking about the whole process of getting old. My Dad is 75, probably not that old in the scheme of things but I really noticed over the last few days, probably for the first time that he has become an old man. How much of ageing is just inevitable? What can you do to prevent some of the major problems associated with getting older? Looking at my Dad I noticed a few things: A loss of muscle - I remember him as a big man, with a huge barrel chest and some lean mass around his upper body. Somehow in recent months that has gone. The muscle is disappearing. Posture - he is bending over. The tonic muscles are getting tighter and he is bending at the hips and neck...stooping. Confidence - he is starting to be less confident in his own abilities, physically and mentally. Balance - he looks unsteady. I think training could remedy much - posture, muscle mass, balance. In Body by Science , McGuff and Little talk about a...

Here is another guest post from Monte Hueftle (you may remember my interview with Monte recently ). Monte talks again about stress and tension causing physical pain. This update is geared towards runners or active people who are battling what they think are over-use injuries, muscle imbalances, or having a body that is out of alignment. I can confidently state to you that in most cases (90%+) your injury is being caused by inner stress and tension and it is not a physical problem. Let me qualify that statement. I am speaking about chronic pain or a chronic injury pattern. Meaning you have had your injury on and off for 2 months or longer. Or you have a chronic injury like sciatica for three months and then it goes away but now you are battling pain in your hip or back or butt. You win these injury battles but there is always a new one challenging you. You have tried numerous treatments and medical specialist but no one knows exactly what is wrong or how to fix it. If they do, what t...

This guy is amazing

Positive attitude is really important. Don't be like this

Here is an interesting study. It all depends on the hormones.......normal weight and obese people has different hormonal reactions to food and different resultant appetites....... Pre- and post- prandial appetite hormone levels in normal weight and severely obese women Background Appetite is affected by many factors including the hormones leptin, ghrelin and adiponectin. Ghrelin stimulates hunger, leptin promotes satiety, and adiponectin affects insulin response. This study was designed to test whether the pre- and postprandial response of key appetite hormones differs in normal weight (NW) and severely obese (SO) women. Methods Twenty three women ages 25-50 were recruited for this study including 10 NW (BMI = 23.1 +/- 1.3 kg/m2) and 13 SO (BMI = 44.5 +/- 7.1 kg/m2). The study was conducted in a hospital-based clinical research centre. Following a 12-hour fast, participants had a baseline blood draw, consumed a moderately high carbohydrate meal (60% carbohydrate, 20% protein, 20% fat)...

Barefoot is healthy....it is how you were meant to walk.... and I 've posted several things about the benefit of ditching the shoes. It has even hit The Guardian. The barefoot running movement has built up serious momentum over the last few years, as followers have raved about the joys of ditching your trainers in favour of your own two feet. The health benefits, they say, are numerous, avoiding such perils as aching knee joints and damaged foot tissue, associated with over-cushioned training shoes. Many, including RunningBarefoot.org founder Ken Bob Saxton, even run marathons barefoot.

Every know and again on this blog I talk about the importance of mental factors . I believe we often underplay the psychological factors of health - the need for us to minimise chronic stress, to have a positive outlook on life. Here is an interesting story from the BBC Optimistic women had a 9% lower risk of developing heart disease and a 14% lower risk of dying from any cause after more than eight years of follow-up. In comparison, cynical women who harboured hostile thoughts about others or were generally mistrusting of others were 16% more likely to die over the same time-scale. One possibility is that optimists are better at coping with adversity, and might, for example take better care of themselves when they do fall ill. In the study, the optimistic women exercised more and were leaner than pessimistic peers. Unhappiness, misery is unhealthy....it is not how things were meant to be. The related story of course is that Divorce makes you ill

Apologies for the embarrassing Mercola sales blurb at the end Rosedale's essay on insulin has been linked to on this blog since the start - required reading... thanks

Taubes said this a while ago. It is about diet.... you can't outrun a dodgy diet. however it is worth reading what mc has to say josef also has something to say.... Embedded video from CNN Video a) exercise makes you hungry so you end up taking in more calories after you exercise because you overestimate how much you burned and b) you justify eating more because "muscle burns more fat calories than fat".

Interesting ideas: The health benefits of a gluten-free diet might also be a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. It's well-known that our digestive system adapts its secretions (rather quickly) to whatever we're eating. A prolonged stint on the Atkins diet, for example, can make it harder to digest starchy foods. According to a 2006 study in Journal of the Pancreas, a colony of lab rats subsisting on low-carb, high-fat food pellets ended up with less pancreatic α-amylase , an enzyme that helps break down complex carbohydrates. Now imagine that you've cut out gluten from your diet completely—that means no bread, no cereal, no wheat whatsoever. Chances are you'll have reduced your total intake of carbs, and thus the amount of α-amylase in your gut. In other words, the mere fact of being on a gluten-free diet could make you more sensitive to grains and cereals—which would only reinforce your conviction that you're gluten-intolerant. Slip up for even one meal, and you...

I've written before about back injuries coming from psychological stress - for example the interviews with Monte and Adam . I thought about these principles after t he English Wicketkeeper was hurt preparing for the test on Friday: Wicketkeeper Prior then suffered a back spasm at 1000 BST shortly after the England players finished their football warm up and to make matters worse, England masseur Mark Saxby was struck on the head by a ball during Australia's catching practice. Reflecting on his freak injury, Prior revealed it had been "really touch and go" over whether he would participate in the match. "I had a bit of a shocker," he stated. "I've absolutely no idea how or why it happened, I was jogging along and suddenly had a back spasm. It was a tricky situation. "The toss was pushed back 10 minutes and thanks to the Aussies for letting that happen. Ten minutes isn't a great deal to ask, but it was great they allowed it. "The keepi...

I've mentioned stress before. Psychological factors are I think under appreciated when it comes to health and fitness. This story harks back to the ideas of Malcolm Kendrick - author of the Great Cholesterol Con - who sees the cause of heart disease as social stress rather than fat. He explained it in the videos here . This study particularly looks at the stress of social subordination. I wonder how "natural" that condition is. Unemployment, poverty, nasty bosses, poor relationships, etc all bring such stresses That is not how it was meant to be N ew research links social stress to harmful fat deposits, heart disease "We are in the midst of an obesity epidemic," Shively said. "Much of the excess fat in many people who are overweight is located in the abdomen, and that fat behaves differently than fat in other locations. If there's too much, it can have far more harmful effects on health than fat located in other areas." She notes that obesity ...

I can't remember if this has been mentioned before, but this has just been published. Metabolic and physiologic improvements from consuming a paleolithic, hunter-gatherer type diet Background: The contemporary American diet figures centrally in the pathogenesis of numerous chronic diseases—'diseases of civilization'. We investigated in humans whether a diet similar to that consumed by our preagricultural hunter-gatherer ancestors (that is, a paleolithic type diet) confers health benefits. Methods: We performed an outpatient, metabolically controlled study, in nine nonobese sedentary healthy volunteers, ensuring no weight loss by daily weight. We compared the findings when the participants consumed their usual diet with those when they consumed a paleolithic type diet. The participants consumed their usual diet for 3 days, three ramp-up diets of increasing potassium and fiber for 7 days, then a paleolithic type diet comprising lean meat, fruits, vegetables and nuts, and e...

I have been thinking a bit about sleep. I never feel like I get enough of it. And s leep is very very good for you . Previously I have referred to the book Lights Out ( here and here and here ). Sufficient sleep - in the dark - is not only good for you it is what you were built to need. Rob Wolf puts it as the third most important need you have after air and water. Usually it is my own fault for not going to bed early and I have tried to think of ways, hacks, to get me to go to bed before it is too late. One is the idea of an Electric Curfew - all electronic equipment turned off by 11:30 or whatever....but I never really built the habit. There are other tricks out there too...but I really need more sleep Anyway I was reading different stuff about sleep and came across this article on Greg Laden's blog: An Evolutionary View of Humans 2: Sleep There are some really interesting ideas there: A typical night with the Efe is, I strongly suspect, typical of any night with a...

Mark Sisson's Ten Primal Blueprint Laws include the following: Primal Blueprint Law #9: Avoid Stupid Mistake s I thought of that this morning. I had the day off and was planning to go hillwalking. Getting my shoes from the living room, I accidentally kicked a sledgehammer that was leaning against the bookcase. Ouch. It was sore but I was not sure that it was that bad.....I hobbled about a bit and while it was sore it didn't feel too bad. I got in the car and drove north. An hour and a half later I changed shoes to head up the hill...it looked sore but not so bad. I started walking. Did one hill ( Morrone ) which was about 2 hours, 10km and 430m of ascent . Nothing special but it was good to be outdoors, with nice views of Lochnagar and the cairngorms. The foot was sore but not that bad....so I did another hill, Ben Gulabin about a 5Km round trip and a 450m ascent. Nice views again.....and the toe was sore but I was walking ok. When I got home and took my sock off, it lo...

On the subject of muscle ups...check out this from the bar - barians .

The Muscle Up has become something of gold standard in upper body gymnastic moves. CrossFit makes a lot of it. Usually done on rings - but also on a high bar - it is basically a pull up followed by a dip. Fair enough. These two are taking it to extremes. First of all a guy doing it with one arm. Then the guy from Beast Skills - a great athlete by the way - shows a progression to this by doing a one arm muscle up with one arm assisting.