Conditioning Research

I have previously interviewed Monte and put up a couple of other posts from him. (His site is here ) He now has a series of videos up which are worth watching. Here is the first, but the full set are here .

I am bad for this - I skim abstracts and jump to conclusions..... video from Brad of Eat Stop Eat (interviewed here by me if you are interested) UPDATE - check out mc's comments on this

This stuff is funny and so true if you read any of the body-building nutrition discussions. Credit Alan

This video from Bill is appropriate to the UK at the moment. Here is a photo I took on a scary drive south last week. I wanted to get to my parents so that I could accompany them to a hospital appointment - more on that later maybe - but the state of the roads almost prevented that. After the first 30 odd miles things improved, but I almost turned back a couple of times. Any way, here is the great Bill DeSimone on how to shovel snow properly!

That is it for a few days. I'm off to battle snow. Have a good one

There is an ebook / fact sheet on this here Sleep, exercise, contribution, diet etc.......

Some good thoughts from Mark Davies: The law is an ass Politicians & the judicial system have got to get it into their heads that a victim DID NOT CHOOSE to be attacked or burgled. If a burglar gets killed in someones house it SHOULD be viewed as "tough luck Joe", as if the burglar HAD NOT chosen to break into the persons home they would not have placed themselves in the situation that got them killed. The person who gets set upon by a gang of chavs who want to kick him or her senseless for amusement, or who want to rob them SHOULD NOT have to worry about the ramifications of saving themselves from injury.

Following on from the piece I put up a couple of weeks ago after the seminar with mc , I found this article by Eric Cobb on Dragon Door. Reflexive Lifting: How To Make Your Neural Reflexes Work With You And Not Against You! In almost all sports, including lifting heavy weights, the eyes play a vital role. While a heavy deadlift doesn't require much in the way of great vision, it does require great eye position! Let me explain. The muscles that surround the eyes, called the extraocular muscles, are all innervated by small nerve endings. These small nerve endings provide propioceptive (body awareness) input to various neuromotor sensors in the spinal cord and the brain. The primary reason for this is that the eyes and the inner ear work together to create balance and stability in virtually all of our movements. How does this apply to your lifts? It's quite simple, really. The small nerve endings in the extraocular muscles actually create full body muscular responses to help guid...

Positive Publicity for low carb diets! Whatever next?! It was interesting to read this in tonight's local paper: Consultant sheds 5 stone in 5 months ahead of Bupa race FOR most people who struggle with their weight, losing a whopping five stone is likely to take years rather than months. But Martin Kay, 38, who lives in Corstorphine, managed to shed more than that in as many months – thanks to a diet primarily used for children with epilepsy. Now he plans to do the 5K Bupa Great Winter Run next month. Mr Kay, who tipped the scales at 20st 4lbs in July, is now a more slender 15st 3lbs following the ketogenic diet over the last five months. It is a high fat, low carbohydrate diet which mimics the body's response to starvation, and forces the body to burn fat round the clock by keeping calories low. The diet was first developed for the treatment of seizures in children during the 1920s and 30s. Mr Kay, who owns a recruitment consultancy business in Leith, said: "I was at ...

Effects of dairy compared with soy on oxidative and inflammatory stress in overweight and obese subjects Background: We recently showed that calcitriol increases oxidative and inflammatory stress; moreover, inhibition of calcitriol with high-calcium diets decreased both adipose tissue and systemic oxidative and inflammatory stress in obese mice, whereas dairy exerted a greater effect. However, these findings may be confounded by concomitant changes in adiposity. Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the acute effects of a dairy-rich diet on oxidative and inflammatory stress in overweight and obese subjects in the absence of adiposity changes. Design: Twenty subjects (10 obese, 10 overweight) participated in a blinded, randomized, crossover study of dairy- compared with soy-supplemented eucaloric diets. Two 28-d dietary periods were separated by a 28-d washout period. Inflammatory and oxidative stress biomarkers were measured on days 0, 7, and 28 of each dietary period....

From Sporto a natural bodybuilder: The way I perform my straight leg deadlifts is like this. Yes, I am completely aware that my legs aren't locked entirely straight - that is on purpose. I have a slight bend in the knees similar to what a RDL is only I don't sit back as far and I don't stop just below the knees...I go straight down and all the way to the floor. That's why I label this as a hybrid. Either way, this completely fries my glutes and high hamstrings, so however it may look, it certainly works for me! I admit the quality is a little bad, but that's because it was taken with my phone at the time. Enjoy!

Effects of a Low-intensity Intervention That Prescribed a Low-carbohydrate vs. a Low-fat Diet in Obese, Diabetic Participants Low-carbohydrate diets have been associated with significant reductions in weight and HbA1c in obese, diabetic participants who received high-intensity lifestyle modification for 6 or 12 months. This investigation sought to determine whether comparable results to those of short-term, intensive interventions could be achieved over a 24-month study period using a low-intensity intervention that approximates what is feasible in outpatient practice. A total of 144 obese, diabetic participants were randomly assigned to a low-carbohydrate diet (

This is a bit of a daft post....that probably just reveals my OCD side. I was thinking about both intermittent fasting and mobility work. I do practice intermittent fasting, often taking a 24 hour break from eating - as described in Brad Pilon's Eat Stop Eat . Other times I will simply miss breakfast. Kurt Harris describes the advantages of less frequent meals : 1) Enhanced metabolic training in the direction of fat metabolism 2) Lower insulin levels and fewer insulin related diseases (Metabolic syndrome, degenerative diseases, Alzheimer's, common cancers) 3) Greater tolerance for fasting makes it easier to tolerate not eating - this give you "metabolic headroom" -it makes you more functional and resilient - You are a Porsche with a 40 gallon gas tank instead of a truck running on lead acid batteries. 4) If you exercise while fasting, the lack of insulin in the fasting state improves the fat-mobilizing and insulin-sensitizing benefits of the exercise. I eat aro...

This is a bit off topic...this isn't me (it is Petesy ) but I couldn't resist putting this video up. He is on the Grey Corries - just along from Ben Nevis - earlier this week....glorious I was up there in the summer but it is great to see it in winter. The account of his trip is here .

He maybe milks this one a bit, but it is a decent enough tutorial From Adam Steer (who did a guest post once on mobility) UPDATE I appreciate the first two comments below, from guys that really know what they are talking about. This probably is not the most practical way to roll and it is not how I have been taught. He breaks down this particular move well.....but there is a question as to whether this is actually a useful move.

If you are interested in Primal / Paleo / Evolutionary Fitness you should read this article in the National Geographic on the Hadza They grow no food, raise no livestock, and live without rules or calendars. They are living a hunter-gatherer existence that is little changed from 10,000 years ago. What do they know that we’ve forgotten? The Hadza do not engage in warfare. They've never lived densely enough to be seriously threatened by an infectious outbreak. They have no known history of famine; rather, there is evidence of people from a farming group coming to live with them during a time of crop failure. The Hadza diet remains even today more stable and varied than that of most of the world's citizens. They enjoy an extraordinary amount of leisure time. Anthropologists have estimated that they "work"—actively pursue food—four to six hours a day. And over all these thousands of years, they've left hardly more than a footprint on the land. I'd read the magaz...

My Dad has started to get a wee bit confused and forgetful, so things like this are really interesting to me. Tom Naughton pointed this out There is a clear reason why statins would promote Alzheimer’s. They cripple the liver’s ability to synthesize cholesterol, and as a consequence the level of LDL in the blood plummets. Cholesterol plays a crucial role in the brain, both in terms of enabling signal transport across the synapse and in terms of encouraging the growth of neurons through healthy development of the myelin sheath. Nonetheless, the statin industry proudly boasts that statins are effective at interfering with cholesterol production in the brain as well as in the liver. Researchers are only recently discovering that both fat and cholesterol are severely deficient in the Alzheimer’s brain. It turns out that fat and cholesterol are both vital nutrients in the brain. The brain contains only 2% of the body’s mass, but 25% of the total cholesterol. Cholesterol is essential both in...

I've been reading a few posts recently in different places that all build around the same theme - you need to be realistic about what your training can achieve in terms of muscle growth. Biggest mistake we make with regards to building muscle is false expectations of what is actually possible - from Brad Pillon Accepting your genetic limits - from Richard Winnett I'm not writing this article so that all of us will become remarkably depressed about our genetic limitations to respond to exercise. I'm writing this article so that we all do some realistic assessments of our strengths and weaknesses and how we personally re spond to exercise in order to fine-tune our exercise programs and create some reachable goals. Indeed, if we acknowledge our genetic limitations and factor them into our training, they offer a clear ray of hope...Rather then following the 'conventional wisdom,' if we study alternatives and look for training methods that support how we -- with our kn...

A couple of days ago I mentioned the book Spark that I had ordered, having read about it from Frank Forencich . Bill De Simone commented on the post and summarised the argument: the gist of his book is that running, swimming, etc. benefits creativity, concentration, mood, other brain aspects, more so than weight training and stretching, due to the increased blood flow to the brain. He doesn't devalue weight training/yoga/stretching, just draws a distinction between benefits. Increased heart rate alone, such as from blood pooling during weight training, isn't enough; there has to be the steady increased flow. I just saw this study reported which seems to support that position: In the first study to demonstrate a clear positive association between adolescent fitness and adult cognitive performance, Nancy Pedersen of the University of Southern California and colleagues in Sweden find that better cardiovascular health among teenage boys correlates to higher scores on a range of ...

I saw this mentioned by Frank Forencich and it looks interesting, so I ordered the book ( extract here ). The author's blog has some nice stuff. In Spark, John J. Ratey, MD, takes the listener on a fascinating journey through the mind-body connection, presenting startling new research to prove that exercise is truly the best defense against everything from mood disorders to ADHD to addiction to menopause to Alzheimer's. He explains that the brain works just as muscles do-growing with use, withering with inactivity-and shows why getting your heart and lungs pumping can mean the difference between a calm, focused mind and a harried, inattentive self. Anyway it ties in with some of the ideas that I was thinking of after speaking to mc . It fits in with Kelly Lambert's ideas too. Here is how Frank applies the ideas...it comes down to moving being healthy. "SPARK" your brain with Exuberant Animal from Lauren Muney on Vimeo .

Matt and Seth have been posting interesting things recently on the so-called hygiene hypothesis Here is another study Think again about keeping little ones so squeaky clean "Contrary to assumptions related to earlier studies, our research suggests that ultra-clean, ultra-hygienic environments early in life may contribute to higher levels of inflammation as an adult, which in turn increases risks for a wide range of diseases," said Thomas McDade, lead author of the study, associate professor of anthropology in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research. Relatively speaking, humans only recently have lived in such hyper-hygienic environments, he stressed. I had all this explained to me recently by an immunologist and it is more complicated than it sounds in terms of balancing immune responses....but the overall picture is that we were not designed to live in such sterile conditions . I've heard of a...

I've posted some stuff in the past about back pain , particularly looking at TMS - the pain being real but a physical manifestation of something going on psychologically. Your mind creating real pain in your body to distract you from subconscious worries and anger and other emotions. Your mind is giving you real physical pain to distract you from what is really stressing you.... My interviews with Monte and Adam explain this all in more detail. Then I was at that workshop with mc last week and she was talking about how the body reacts unconsciously to threat....health is about threat modulation....Emotions effecting, causing something physical.....now something physical can affect emotions..... Things connect...that there are emotional factors at play, even at an unconscious level. In my interview with Frank Forencich he alluded to something similar: Depression is epidemic. The World Health Organization forecasts that, by 2020, “depression will be second only to heart disea...

you read a lot about how to speed recovery - stretching, contract baths..... According to this study neither works any better than doing nothing. Effect of Postexercise Recovery Procedures Following Strenuous Stair-climb Running. This study compared the effects of hot/cold water immersion, static stretching, and no recovery (control) interventions on leg strength, rowing performance, and indicators of muscle soreness/damage in the 72 hours following strenuous stair-climb running. Club (n = 14) and elite (Sports Institute) (n = 6) rowers performed the training run on three separate occasions. After each run, participants completed a randomly assigned 15-minute recovery treatment, either hot/cold, static stretching, or control, which were repeated at 24 and 48 hours postrun. No significant strength or performance differences existed between the three recovery treatments for either group. Muscle soreness for both groups remained significantly elevated (p

Interesting study: Muscular Strength Is Inversely Related to Prevalence and Incidence of Obesity in Adult Men The purpose of the study was to determine the relation between quintiles of muscular strength after adjustment for age and body weight, and excessive body fat (EBF) and excessive abdominal fat (EAF) when controlling for cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and other potential confounders. A two-phased cross-sectional and longitudinal study was conducted assessing the prevalence and incidence of EBF and EAF across quintiles of muscular strength. The sample included 3,258 men (mean age = 42.2 +/- 8.9; weight (kg) = 81.2 +/- 11.0; BMI = 25.3 +/- 2.9; %fat = 19.4 +/- 5.8; waist girth (cm) = 91.2 +/- 9.0) who completed at least two clinical examinations as part of the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study (ACLS). Muscular strength was assessed with tests of upper and lower body muscular strength using rack-mounted weights with participants placed into strength quintiles. CRF was measured by...

Just to add to the controversy Effects of strength training with eccentric overload on muscle adaptation in male athletes The enhanced eccentric load apparently led to a subtly faster gene expression pattern and induced a shift towards a faster muscle phenotype plus associated adaptations that make a muscle better suited for fast, explosive movements. So the negatives - not "fast" moves - worked towards making the athletes faster....

I've posted a few things before (e.g. here ) about the benefits of being barefoot. (Something mc has written about too) Here is an interesting video of a guy running barefoot. It is informative to watch his gait - how he lands on the forefoot. Natural.

Way back I pointed out something about fasting - that fasting "turns on" autophagy . Autophagy is described by this article : Autophagy is a cellular process that occurs during states of low energy such as that seen with fasting. Autophagy literally means self consumption. During low energy states the cell actually eats itself and the internal material is recycled and used to fuel other cellular processes. It’s basically cellular energy management. So during states of fasting, autophagy takes place to reduce the number of cells, reuse and recycle the materials from the cell for fuel. The neat thing is that newer younger cells are much more adept to this process compared to older cells, which is why older cells end up accumulating, and contributing to aging. This means that regular states of fasting would keep your cells younger and more efficient. I also pointed to research that weight training promoted autophagy. Anyway, I saw this today that says that autophagy is essent...

Another thing from the weekend is the idea of bone rhythm. This is explained a bit in this video The idea as I understand it relates to thinking about the femur as a lever. There is a hinge at the knee and hip. To move efficiently you want both ends of the lever to be moving as the same speed. For example in a squat your knee and hip should start moving and finish moving at the same time. That makes the lever more efficient? If the knee locks but the hip keeps going for example or vice versa then the lever is not operating as efficiently as it could do with matched speeds. mc explains it thus : Bone rhythm effectively means that one gets the top and bottom of a prime mover bone move at the same speed in an action. In a push up, we see this when the shoulder and the elbow finish the move together - both in the press up and in the descent. This move tune alone is worth the price of admission. In the DVD both upper and lower body drills are taught, as well as how to cue another per...

This also follows on from Sunday's seminar . One of the things I had read about concerning zhealth was that it makes a big thing of eye movements, the visual system. We spoke about the nervous system acting in terms of THREAT or NO THREAT . One of the ideas of the threat state was that the body will seek to fold in on itself - to go into a foetal position to some degree. As Rannoch said on sunday - you try to protect the soft sensitive parts with the hard bony bits. You curl up and bring your arms in front of you as you flinch, protecting your face, gut and genitals with your shoulders and arms. In that post on Sunday I also talked about Rif / Chek's take on this: going foetal is basically about flexion - everything flexes: biceps, abs, hamstings, pecs. The opposite is going erect - the extensors work - the quads, the lats, the triceps, the lower back, the glutes. It is about extension . Now another thing that mc mentioned on Sunday was about the impact of your eye ...

This follows on from the post I had up on motor learning a couple of days ago . ASCLEPIUS has just posted this today which is really worth reading I have just finished reading Daniel Coyle's 'The Talent Code'. It adds some biology to the idea that 'you are what you do' and 'practice makes perfect'. It is no revelation that our brains are plastic and can adapt throughout life - but Coyle digs a little deeper. I encourage you to read more