Conditioning Research

Time for another interview. Paleo has become fashionable. It is a movement now with thousands of people on the band wagon. That is not wholly a bad thing, and the many of the popularisers have done a good job. Despite the recent media interest, there were a few souls who discovered this way of thinking years ago. Art DeVany is well known and Tamir Katz ( interviewed here ) was also an “early adopter”, but there were others. I think I initially came across all this stuff about 5 or 6 years ago and one of the first resources that I studied was called EvFit , a fascinating website of thoughts, analysis, references and ideas put together by Keith Thomas in Australia. I’ve returned to Kei th’s writings repeatedly and I thought that it would be useful to ask him a few questions and dig a little deeper into his approach - not just to eating and training but to the influences that have shaped his thought. Keith, thanks for agreeing to do this interview. As I said, I’ve been readin...

This is one where there are some assumptions at play! The paradigm is that fatty food is bad and exercise is good. Within that paradigm rising obesity in the face of a low fat diet must mean that exercise has been reduced. There is of course an alternative paradigm - maybe one of the factors at play (and there will be a number of factors) is diet. Maybe less fat - replaced by carbs - is the problem Anyway - here is the BBC story Despite fewer visits to gyms and a love of high-fat foods , people in the 1960s were slimmer simply because they were more active, the government says. Rates of obesity in English adults have risen from 1-2% in the 1960s to around 26% today, figures show. . ......high fat foods like condensed milk and cooked breakfast were popular .......... Of course there is a role for activity and movement is vital.....but see how fatty food is seen as a problem, not a reason for the lower levels of obesity

Sorry that I have not posted much this week - work has been busy and I have a lot to do this weekend too. There are some posts coming, including an interview that I've been working on for a while and which will address some really interesting issues around evolutionary fitness / paleo diet.

These type of videos crack me up. ( apologies for some strong language in here ) Anyway the point - from Mark Young - is that heavy squatting can cause problems to the back. It reminded me of the point Matt made a while ago : I see this differential in my toddler as well. Toddlers squat constantly, but it is all "mobility" work. The squats are done for the purposes of movement, not for the purposes of lifting a weight. If a toddler wants to lift a weight, they shift into a deadlift position. It's probably been about a year since I've done weighted squats. At this point, I have no desire to go back to them. I am content training the deadlift as the main lift. I know squats have been utilized in weight programs for decades, but that doesn't mean that they are necessarily 100% healthy. Mike Boyle raised some controversial points about squats last year :

I think I have mentioned her book before.

at least it does in adolescent boys: Androgen Responses to Sprint Exercise in Young Men The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a 6-month sprint training program on plasma androgens and catecholamine (CA) concentrations in response to a 6 s sprint in adolescent boys [training group (TG), n=6; control group (CG), n=6]. A 6 s-sprint test was performed on a cycle ergometer before and after training (Pre-T and Post-T, respectively). Plasma total testosterone (TT), bioavailable testosterone (BT), and CA concentrations were measured at rest, after a warm-up, immediately after a 6 s-sprint, and during the recovery (i. e. 5 and 20 min). After training period, plasma TT concentrations increased significantly at the end of the sprint and during the recovery in the TG. No effects for sampling times and period were observed in BT levels. Plasma TT concentrations after 5 min of recovery were positively correlated with the corresponding values of plasma lactate (La) concentration...

In discussing back pain, some people - including Bill De Simone - have recommended that I look at McGill;s exercises. Here is a video of him looking at his ideas which are also described here :

So my backpain. I have also on this blog highlighted my contention that there is a big psychological aspect to all this. I read Sarno years ago and was pretty convinced by his argument. Sometimes your mind will kick off pain to divert your attention from something psychological that it really finds threatening. I interviewed Monte here too who builds on that argument. My personality is such that I do worry. Relaxed on the surface but often quite stressed out underneath. So all this makes sense....and I can correlate back pain with stresses in my life. I am still working on the mental stuff to get over this but I'm getting there. Anyway, remember Z health and mc ? The mc seminar was useful in that it built on the psychological element in a different direction. It accepted that much pain / muscular tightness was due to psychologically perceived threats. Z health is about physical ways to modulate that threat, to persuade your mind through movement that the threat is not seri...

This continues on a bit from my post about " skills ". I have occasionally mentioned on this blog my recurrent back spasms. Occasionally I get a back spasm. Usually in the quadratus lumborum. It has been going on for years since a deadlift workout in about 1992. When I am injured - and I've had a couple of episodes this last couple of weeks - all this stuff about exercise and conditioning goes into the background. The focus is on simple movement. Just to be able to move freely and without pain is sometimes a great blessing that we can take for granted. Skill sets start with being able to walk, sit, get dressed. When they are in place then the essentials are there!

Here is another one to think about with respect to the protective aspects of a low carb / primal / paleo diet (I know it is mice and we are not mice....but still worth thinking about) : Ketogenic diet slows down mitochondrial myopathy progression in mice Mitochondrial dysfunction is a major cause of neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases of adult age and of multisystem disorders of childhood. However, no effective treatment exists for these progressive disorders. Cell culture studies suggested that ketogenic diet, with low glucose and high fat content, could select against cells or mitochondria with mutant mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), but proper patient trials are still lacking. We studied here the transgenic Deletor mice, a disease model for progressive late-onset mitochondrial myopathy, accumulating mtDNA deletions during aging and manifesting subtle progressive respiratory chain deficiency. We found that these mice have wide-spread lipidomic and metabolite changes, including a...

I'd given up trying to master a handstand but I might give it another go. Nice tutorial. Hat tip to the Barbarians

Remember Brad Pilon of East Stop Eat? ( I interviewed Brad here ) Here he talks about how to add 8lbs of lean mass in one workout.... Check out the video and register for a teleseminar (it's free) to find out how supplement companies make some outrageous claims. I like Brad's work. He really cuts through the hype How many calories it REALLY takes to build muscle Why HEIGHT has more to do with the amount of calories you need on a daily basis and how to use the "Rule of 7's and 3's" to determine how BIG you'll actually end up A sneaky trick that all marketers use to get you to THINK that you're gaining more muscle than you really are... and how this same sneaky trick is SAPPING you out of your hard earned money in the process How adding just 5 lbs of muscle in JUST THE RIGHT PLACES gives the illusion of a 25 lb increase in size... DRUG FREE... The TRUTH on testimonials and "before and after"pics and how EVEN YOU can make yourself look super...

This sort of follows on from the last post . I've been thinking about this for a while, trying to integrate different threads of the things that interest me in this whole physical training world. Where I am coming to at the moment maintains the differences I've learned about between skill and strength. Strength training is one distinct area and - while there are controversies - I tend to come down in the HIT school as explained by Doug or John . However I am still drawn to the general athleticism and enthusiasm of people like Erwan Le Corre or Frank Forencich . I do not see the two schools as mutually exclusive though. Where I am now is thinking of the general building of strength - intense infrequent workouts - and then learning a set of fun skills, that will also be useful in life - more regular easy practice and play. So currently I am training weights about once a week, but also training Krav Maga once a week - skill training - and doing easy playing around with other ...

There has been quite a lot on this blog in the past about "functional" training, particularly about whether there is much cross over in training. The basic science is that there is no strength training exercise that carries over to athletic or everyday movements. You can get stronger, but to get better at the skill you need to practice the skill. My interview with Luke Carlson covered all this . Anyway, I spotted this study today. It seems to say that people who do lots of sport and "leisure time physical activity" and in particular play games, have better general motor ability. Obviosuly the whole causation / correlation thing comes in again (i.e. do they play more games because they have more skilled at coordination etc or do the games make them skilled) but it is interesting to reflect on. Generalism in terms of games etc benefits general athleticism? I don't know the key is to learn the skill I think and to get stronger. Is Generic Physical Activity O...

The low carb / paleo blogs have been discussing this study for a while, but it is interesting to see a more mainstream news source take it up (although the story is a bit sceptical): Review Calls for Reevaluation of the Fat-CVD Link Emphasis on reducing dietary saturated fat may miss the target of preventing cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the epidemic of obesity and associated metabolic disturbances, authors of a critical review of the issues concluded. Limiting intake of carbohydrates, particularly refined carbohydrates, offers the best hope for reducing the CVD burden associated with atherogenic dyslipidemia, Patty W. Siri-Tarino, PhD, of the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute in California, and colleagues concluded in an article published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. "Replacement of saturated fat by polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fat lowers both LDL and HDL cholesterol," they wrote. "However, replacement with a higher carbohydra...

This study found genetic differences between elite endurance athletes and elite sprinters. It is true that individuals are truly different and have aptitudes to excel in different areas.

I haven't had anything on fasting for a while, but just spotted this: Fasting and cancer treatment in humans: A case series report Fasting while having chemotherapy seems to lessen some of the side effects.

Just a bit of fun in the MovNat Methode Nauturelle vein.

I had a post up a couple of weeks ago pointing to a study that said that the muscles of endurance runners aged in proportion to the amount of running they did. The argument was around the length of telomeres in the muscle cells. Telomeres are structures at the ends of human chromosomes that protect DNA from damage. To help you visualize them, they are often compared to the little plastic tips at the ends of shoelaces. As cells age and replicate, their telomeres shorten. When telomeres become critically short, cells stop functioning properly. So, the general idea is that telomeres may be a “biological clock” that reflects your physiological age/health more accurately than your chronological age. In other words, the longer the telomeres, the healthier the cells. (from here ) This post is just to note that - as ever - it is a complex business and not as straightforward as it might all seem. There is another study which says that endurance training keeps cells "younger" with lon...

The benefits of Vitamin D keep coming: High levels of vitamin D in older people can reduce heart disease and diabetes Dr Franco said: "We found that high levels of vitamin D among middle age and elderly populations are associated with a substantial decrease in cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome. "Targeting vitamin D deficiency in adult populations could potentially slow the current epidemics of cardiometabolic disorders."

Given recent debates about Vitamin D, paleo and milk etc I thought this essay was interesting. Did Lactose Tolerance Trigger the Indo-European Expansion? Some extracts: Agriculture allowed those who practiced it to greatly expand their numbers, but it is distinctly possible that the nutritional quality of the food of early farmers was initially worse than that which had traditionally been available to hunter-gatherers. Consequently, the health of each individual was not necessarily better in the Neolithic period than it had been in the Paleolithic era. The bodies of those who practiced agriculture had to adapt to a new diet consisting of foods that had either not been eaten before or had previously been of only minor importance. According to The 10,000 Year Explosion, “For example, we see changes in genes affecting transport of vitamins into cells. Similarly, vitamin D shortages in the new diet may have driven the evolution of light skin in Europe and northern Asia. Vitamin D is produc...

Good humour from Tom Naughton Now I am a Brit who thinks the NHS is generally good and can't understand the American horror at the idea of a national health service, but I sympathise with some of the ideas here - usually the fascists want to ban good food and leave the bad. Remember they want to ban butter , but subsidise grain.

Well this shouldn't really be a surprise. The science is saying that there is no link between the intake of saturated fat and the risk of CHD [coronary heart disease], stroke, or CVD [cardiovascular disease]. Here is another study which is supporting that idea. (The study is full of assumptions by the way - the claim is that this is a "potentially atherogenic diet". ) Anyway, the Masai have a low carb, high fat diet but they have very healthy blood pressure and lipid profiles. These researchers suggest their health is due to their high levels of energy expenditure. Who knows, maybe it is due to their diet! Is their health in spite of or because of their diet? Daily energy expenditure and cardiovascular risk in Masai, rural and urban Bantu Tanzanians Background Several studies have revealed that the Masai, pastoralists in Tanzania, have low rates of coronary heart disease despite a diet high in saturated fat. It has also been suggested that they may be genetically pr...

With all the recent interest in barefoot running I though this study was of interest. Barefoot running encourages you to land on the forefoot - it is the most efficient gait. Interestingly walking is most efficient when you land on the heel. The cost of being on your toes Walking heels-first is less work than walking on your toes or balls of the feet "....Lots of elite athletes, whether sprinters or distance runners, don't land on their heel. Many of them run on the balls of their feet," as do people who run barefoot. That appears to be the natural ancestral condition for early human runners, he adds. "The important thing is we are remarkable economical walkers," Carrier says. "We are not efficient runners. In fact, we consume more energy to run than the typical mammal our size. But we are exceptionally economical walkers." "This study suggests that one of the things that may explain such economy is the unusual structure of our foot," he a...

Doug McGuff (I interviewed Doug last year here ) mentioned this new DVD on his blog a couple of weeks ago and I received a copy last week. I watched it the other night and really enjoyed it. Presentation If you are going to buy this - and I would recommend that you do - you need first of all to understand what you are getting. This is not a fancy production with animations and graphics. What you get is a video of Dr McGuff giving a 2 hour lecture on nutrition. He backs it up with a whiteboard on which he has sketched out diagrams of the relevant metabolic pathways that he is talking about and there is a handout outlining the points he is teaching, but otherwise it is just Doug lecturing and answering some questions. Don't buy this expecting a fancy production. To me that doesn't matter - the information and the way it is transmitted is what is important. The hunter gatherer diet I forget where I first came across the paleo diet. It was before Art Devany hit the web throug...