You probably know enough already

Lyle McDonald has a nice piece on his blog -  Information vs Application.  The idea is that most of us already know most of what we need to know in order to improve our health, performance or body composition.  The problem is that we do not apply what we know.

He is right, especially about how the internet has exaggerated this problem.

more on milk

here is another recent one on dairy, this time pointed out to me by reader Matthew Clarke:

Hepatic accumulation of intestinal cholesterol is decreased and fecal cholesterol excretion is increased in mice fed a high-fat diet supplemented with milk phospholipids

So eat a high fat diet, but don't get a fatty liver.....because you shit out the cholesterol, if you are also eating milk phospholipids... ( and if you are a mouse)


The whole paper is available

I like the last sentence of the paper:

Whether or not this is of therapeutic relevance in man remains to be determined.

maybe something that should be written about every animal study out there!

The Running Engineer and MovNat

I met Naeem at the MovNat clinic in Edinburgh in December.  His website - Running Engineer - has some good material.

Here he is playing with some logs in MovNat style

Gluteal Amnesia

There is another good piece on firing the glutes here:  Hamstring Dominance

The phenomenon of “gluteal amnesia” is most commonly due to overactive hip flexors.  When the hip flexors (psoas, iliacus, rectus femoris, tensor fascia latae) become tight from poor training and/or prolonged sitting/driving, their antagonists (gluteus maximus, primarily) tend to become weak.  This mechanism is known as reciprocal inhibition.  Basically, when the muscles on one side of a joint become tight, this alters the joint kinematics and shuts down the muscle(s) on the other side of the joint.

Now you must be asking yourselves, what in the world does this have to do with tight hamstrings?  It has everything to do with it, of course!  The human body is an amazing piece of machinery and will find ways to accomplish movements regardless if some muscles aren’t functioning to their capacity.  It learns to compensate and calls upon other muscles to perform the movement to accomplish the particular task.  And, if our glutes aren’t working properly the body will lean on its synergists (helpers) to work overtime in tasks that involve hip extension, hip external rotation, as well as deceleration of hip flexion and hip internal rotation. 

The glutes’ “assisters” in movement are the hamstrings as well as the adductor magnus.  And if you’re following along by now, you should be realizing that the hamstrings will be forced into during more work if the glutes are not functioning properly. 

Advanced Glycation End products and muscle strength

Advanced Glycation End producst (AGEs) are interesting.   AGEs are the end-products of glycation reactions, in which a sugar molecule bonds to either a protein or lipid molecule without an enzyme to control the reaction.   Think about caramelised sugar.....

There is a good summary AGEs, where they come from and what they do here: What Are Advanced Glycation End Products?

Anyway, I saw this abstract today....the more AGEs in the skin the lower the levels of strength. 


Skin advanced glycation end product accumulation and muscle strength among adult men.

Aging is associated with decreased skeletal muscle function. Increased levels of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) in skeletal muscle tissue are observed with advancing age and in diabetes. Although serum AGE level is negatively associated with grip strength in elderly people, it is unknown whether this association is present in adult males. To determine the relationship between AGE accumulation in tissue and muscle strength and power among Japanese adult men. Skin autofluorescence (AF) (a noninvasive method for measuring tissue AGEs), grip strength (n = 232), and leg extension power (n = 138) were measured in Japanese adult men [median (interquartile range) age, 46.0 (37.0, 56.0) years]. After adjustment for potential confounders, the adjusted means [95% confidence interval (CI)] for grip strength across the tertiles of skin AF were 44.5 (43.2, 45.9) kg for the lowest tertile, 42.0 (40.6, 43.3) kg for the middle tertile, and 41.7 (40.3, 43.1) kg for the highest tertile (P for trend < 0.01). Moreover, the adjusted geometric means (95% CI) of leg extension power across the tertiles of skin AF were 17.8 (16.6, 19.1) W/kg for the lowest tertile, 17.5 (16.4, 18.7) W/kg for the middle tertile, and 16.0 (14.9, 17.1) W/kg for the highest tertile (P for trend = 0.04). Among Japanese adult men, participants with higher skin AF had lower muscle strength and power, indicating a relationship between AGE accumulation and muscle strength and power. A long-term prospective study is required to clarify the causality.


So how do we minimise AGEs? 

 I was reading stuff here:

So based on the data above. We should cook at low temperatures for shorter periods of time. Do not fry your meat, stay away from high-fat spreads (that includes butter, however I'm skeptical of the data, because it seems based on these numbers olive oil is high too which I find hard to believe).

Basically the largest contributors to AGEs in the modern diet is anything grilled, roasted, fried, or baked. If you decrease the intake of any foods that are cooked under dry heat, then you are on your way to extending life. If you do cook meat its best to marinade it with vinegar or lemon juice (decreases AGE formation by 50%).

Dairy again - milk fat and diabetes

The controversy around milk still continues in my mind.  I can see the standard paleo arguments against, but the chemistry is a bit more complex.  Studies keep popping up about the health benefits of milk fat (I long  ago gave up any idea that saturated fat was unhealthy).

Here is another:

 a fatty acid in milk fat is associated with a substantially lower risk of type 2 insulin resistant diabetes.

The excellent Future Pundit blog has a good write up.

Glute Activation

I was skimming around different blogs this afternoon and came across this:

How to Optimize Posterior Chain Power: Glute Activation

There is some realy good material here.

Excessive sitting shortens your hip flexors. This stretches the opposite muscles: your glutes. They become dormant. You can’t fire your glutes properly anymore. The solution is glute activation exercises. Here’s how.

The image doesn't have much to do with the article.....but there are glutes:

Improve your squat depth

I like Nick Tumminello's stuff




this is also good

Modifying Nike Free's for a better "barefoot" approximation

Interesting idea

Exercise and Ageing

This sort of study interests me at the moment, given the current state of my Dad's mind.

The meta-analysis showed that individuals who were physically active at the start of the study (baseline) had a significantly reduced risk of developing cognitive decline during follow-up.
The researchers explain that it is already known that physical activity has positive effects on a wide range of health measures, reducing the risk of heart disease and stroke, diabetes, obesity, hypertension and some cancers.

I think it is interesting that it is about moderate exercise:

This study did not find a clear ‘dose dependent’ effect, ie an association in which increasing levels of activity resulted in increasing levels of protection.

Lots of walking here.....

Of course there are also studies about the importance of strength training and balance

Back to it ......and what really matters

Back to it now....

I took that photo a couple of days ago, just south of Edinburgh.  It was beautiful.

I spent a few days with family and again it puts things in perspective.  All this fitness stuff has to improve your life, your happiness, your health and longevity.   That is so much more than performance.

The metric has to be health and happiness.

Signing off for Christmas

Just signing off for a few days although I may still be updating twitter (@chrishighcock) when I remember or see anything interesting.

Hope you all have a great and restful Christmas with lots of sleep and minimum stress.

MovNat Techniques

More from Erwan of MovNat

Log Lifting

Tree Climbing

Rock Jumping

Barefoot Running

Why Stretching is not a good warm up

Phil Maffetone has a good piece up on the dangers of stretching, and why it’s not the best way to warm up.


UPDATE  Stretching vs. Non-Stretching

Confusion arises when a study shows that ranges of motion or flexibility improve with stretching. This has been shown by some studies. However, increased range of motion at what cost? These studies don’t address this important question. One problem caused by stretching is that muscles become too loose—weaker—allowing the associated joint to move in a wider range of motion. This increased range of motion/flexibility puts more stress on the joint, which is no longer supported properly by the muscle, increasing the risk of injury.

Damaging a muscle through any means, including stretching, will obviously have an adverse affect on an athlete’s gait. The loss of smooth efficient movement puts stress on virtually all other structures—ligaments, tendons, joints and bones, in addition to many muscles. The body tries to compensate for this irregular movement, and in doing so uses up more energy, taking away from ones performance. A recent study by Jacob Wilson and colleagues from Florida State University showed how stretching can result in poor running economy, increasing energy consumption during an endurance event, and decreasing performance.

Desk exercises to combat computer hunch

Some interesting mobility moves and stretches via Lifehacker   to tackle the problems tha flow from sitting at a PC all day

Trans Fats are bad.....but we knew that anyway

Just saw this abstract in the latest

Consumption of dietary fat and meat and risk of ovarian cancer in the Netherlands Cohort Study

Conclusion: This prospective study suggests that trans unsaturated fatty acids, but no other types of fat or meat, are associated with increased ovarian cancer risk.

So avoid the artificual industrial fats......but natural meats and fats are fine?

A New MovNat Video - Combo Training

A new video from Erwan of MovNat.  A series of circuits.....



My interview with Erwan is here

A write up of a clinic with him is here.

Paleo enough for me

I suppoe my diet is developing now towards avoiding toxins - mainly grains and beans - rather than being obsessively low carb paleo (much influence from the Perfect Health Diet) 

So this lunch at Le Sept was fine - Some sort of slow cooked beef stew with mashed tatties.   Great on a cold day.

I like Le Sept.  Great value.

Turning the Food Pyramid Upside Down

A few days ago I posted a video from Peter Ballerstedt 

Here are a couple of additional videos from Peter in which he gives a talk that turns the conventional food pyramid upside down.  ( I was going to say the traditional food pyramid, but the true tradition is probably closer to what Peter recommends).


Grass Based Health: Turning the Food Pyramid Upside Down from Peter Ballerstedt on Vimeo.


Grass Based Health: Turning the Food Pyramid Upside Down. Q&A from Peter Ballerstedt on Vimeo.

Even the mainstream media is waking up to Vitamin D

Midday sun is good for you, say health groups

Englishmen – and other Britons – were urged today to go out in the midday sun to ensure adequate levels of vitamin D.

It is pretty unusual and a change from the conventional wisdom to be told to get out into the midday sun, but that is what the Guardian is recommending.

I liked this bit:

"We have to put over the message that sunshine is enjoyable. Some of the messages have been a bit too negative.

"UK summer sunshine by and large is not desperately strong. It's important not to translate the Australian sun avoidant messages straight to the UK.

"At the moment the suggestion is that exposing the face, arms and legs to the sun for 10 to 15 minutes three times a week is going to do no harm.

"This is probably best done in the middle of the day rather than at either end of the day. Sun before 10 and after four probably doesn't stimulate much vitamin D synthesis."

Amazing Rugby Skills

The always impressive Science of Sport blog has posted the best sports videos of 2010:  Our picks - I like this one in particular!



Check out the others too.

Nomads vs Farmers

Just throwing this one out for further investigation by anyone that is interested:

Fasting Plasma Insulin is Associated with Metabolic Syndrome in Farmers but not in Nomads among the Mongolian Population, China.

A cross-sectional epidemiologic study of 200 nomads and 256 farmers was performed in Inner Mongolia, Republic of China.

Plasma insulin levels and other metabolic factors, such as blood pressure, serum lipids and obesity, were measured.

Participants were classified into 3 categories according to their plasma insulin levels.

Results: Cut-off values grouped into tertiles of fasting insulin for all participants were 6.73 nmol/L and 10.33 nmol/L. The mean number of metabolic risk factors, waist circumference, fasting plasma glucose and triglyceride were higher, and the mean HDL cholesterol was lower in the higher fasting insulin tertile among farmers after adjusting for age, gender, smoking, alcohol drinking and total cholesterol. However, no MetS factors were statistically related with fasting insulin tertile levels among nomads.  Conclusions: In nomads, hyperinsulinemia may not be an indicator of MetS due to their specific life-style.

So it is not just insulin levels.   The Nomads who had higher insulin had lower levels in other risk factors.  It is not just the insulin....

What else is it about the lifestyle? 

Can we guess diet? 

Beauty sleep

This one was doing the rounds yesterday - another support for Lights Out

The idea of people needing "beauty sleep" has acquired some scientific backing, according to a Swedish study.

People deprived of sleep for long periods appear less attractive and more unhealthy than those who are well rested, say researchers.

Dairy controversy - milk lowers cardiovascular disease?

Dairy continues to be one that I swither over.  I have no problems with butter.  Milk give me phelgm and while I love cream I had to cut dow recently to lose some bodyfat.

Anyway, this popped up yesterday too:

A study to be published in the January edition of American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reveals that drinking three glasses of milk per day may lead to an 18% decreased risk of cardiovascular disease.

Again, all the usual caveats - association not causation etc.

More here:  Go ahead, drink your milk

Sugar sends you mad

first of a few posts highlighting some interesting news releases over the last couple of days:

Scientist shows link between diet and onset of mental illness

It is worth reading the report....and I know it is in mice etc but the bit that caught my eye was:

Garner's study raises questions of how diet might be affecting other behavioral or mental illnesses such as autism, Tourette syndrome, trichotillomania and skin-picking. He said that before now, a link between diet and the onset of mental disorders hadn't been shown.

"What if the increase of simple sugars in the American diet is contributing to the increase of these diseases?" Garner said. "Because we fed the mice more tryptophan than in the typical human diet, this experiment doesn't show that, but it certainly makes it a possibility."

Excess frutose again?  Imagine.....more sugar causing disease.  Whatever will they come up with next!

UPDATE see the excellent analysis of this article at Paul's Perfect Health Diet

Knee Pain

Check out Colin's latest post on knee pain. 

dealing with knee pain is often not simply an issue of dealing with the knee and its surrounding tissues.  Making sure you get rid of your knee pain can, and more often will, mean not just work on making sure the knee flexes and extends but that the tibia/femur glide properly over one another  that there is no restriction in dorsi and plantar flexion and that the hip flexes and extends fully. So, in other words, a knee pain could  be considered not to be just a knee problem but a leg problem.

Some interesting ideas.  He has been realy developing his practice recently through the work of Art Riggs. He stresses that massage is really working the fascia

A fascia is a connective tissue that surrounds muscles, groups of muscles, blood vessels, and nerves, binding those structures together like plastic sandwich wraps.[2]

This ties back to the Anatomy Trains approach that I've mentioned before.

Here is a video of Art working on a client's ITB.



Interesting stuff.

Sunset

Sorry, this is generally off topic for this blog but can't resist putting this photo up.  I got up into the Pentlands yesterday just as the sun was going down over snowy hills.  Glorious.

sunset in the West over the Pentland Hills

This is what it is about.  Fitnes, diet, health are all about facilitating action - that is one of the ideas I took from Erwan last week.    It is about being able to do things and for me that means getting in to the hills and seeing things like this.

Grass based health - diet presentation

This is superb!  It is from Peter Ballerstedt, PhD:

A discussion of the difference between the official dietary guidelines (and the "conventional wisdom" they've informed) and what the science has, in fact, shown regarding the importance of animal protein and animal fat in the human diet. The impact of the official dietary guidelines, and the scientific findings, upon animal agriculture is discussed.

Grasse Based Health - Food for Thought from Peter Ballerstedt on Vimeo.

"Food for Thought.” Peter Ballerstedt, PhD.

Emphasise animal fat....minimise carbohydrate.

Stunning Deadlifts

Hat tip to Davie at the @hobogym for this one

5x340kg followed immediately by  31x200kg ......in 68 sec

Hormesis - mild stressors are good for you

This is from wikipedia:

Hormesis (from Greek hórmēsis "rapid motion, eagerness," from ancient Greek hormáein "to set in motion, impel, urge on") is the term for generally-favorable biological responses to low exposures to toxins and other stressors. A pollutant or toxin showing hormesis thus has the opposite effect in small doses as in large doses. A related concept is Mithridatism, which refers to the willful exposure to toxins in an attempt to develop immunity against them.

Favourable responses to stressors.  That is interesting.  One of the things that Erwan talked about this weekend was the benefit of occaisional hardship or challenge, for example exposure to cold or missing a meal (intermittent fasting anyone?)  I've had stuff up here before about cold showers.

I thought of all this again when I saw this abstract.

Inflammatory modulation of exercise salience: using hormesis to return to a healthy lifestyle

The whole study is available as a pdf, but the gist of it is that mild stressors are good for you and control inflammation:

One general consequence of hormesis is upregulation of mitochondrial function and resistance to oxidative stress. Examples of hormetic factors include calorie restriction, extreme environmental temperatures, physical activity and polyphenols.

Really interesting stuff

Paleo Diet Research

I just spotted this new abstract.  Does anyone have access to the full paper?

I've bolded up the interesting sentences:

Paleolithic nutrition: twenty-five years later.

A quarter century has passed since the first publication of the evolutionary discordance hypothesis, according to which departures from the nutrition and activity patterns of our hunter-gatherer ancestors have contributed greatly and in specifically definable ways to the endemic chronic diseases of modern civilization. Refinements of the model have changed it in some respects, but anthropological evidence continues to indicate that ancestral human diets prevalent during our evolution were characterized by much lower levels of refined carbohydrates and sodium, much higher levels of fiber and protein, and comparable levels of fat (primarily unsaturated fat) and cholesterol.

Physical activity levels were also much higher than current levels, resulting in higher energy throughput.

We said at the outset that such evidence could only suggest testable hypotheses and that recommendations must ultimately rest on more conventional epidemiological, clinical, and laboratory studies. Such studies have multiplied and have supported many aspects of our model, to the extent that in some respects, official recommendations today have targets closer to those prevalent among hunter-gatherers than did comparable recommendations 25 years ago. Furthermore, doubts have been raised about the necessity for very low levels of protein, fat, and cholesterol intake common in official recommendations. Most impressively, randomized controlled trials have begun to confirm the value of hunter-gatherer diets in some high-risk groups, even as compared with routinely recommended diets. Much more research needs to be done, but the past quarter century has proven the interest and heuristic value, if not yet the ultimate validity, of the model.

Bodyfat makes you less responsive to exercise

Here is an interesting new one for you:  subcutaneous (i.e., under the skin) bodyfat makes you less responsive to resistance exercise.

Adiposity attenuates muscle quality and the adaptive response to resistance exercise in non-obese, healthy adults.

Background:Emerging data have revealed a negative association between adiposity and muscle quality (MQ). There is a lack of research to examine this interaction among young, healthy individuals, and to evaluate the contribution of adiposity to adaptation after resistance exercise (RE).

Objective:The purpose of this investigation was to examine the influence of subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) on muscle function among non-obese individuals before and after RE.\

Design:Analyses included 634 non-obese (body mass index <30 kg m(-2)) subjects (253 males, 381 females; age=23.3±5.2 years). SAT and muscle mass (magnetic resonance imaging-derived SAT and biceps muscle volume), isometric and dynamic biceps strength, and MQ (strength/muscle volume), were analyzed at baseline and after 12 weeks of unilateral RE.

Results:At baseline, SAT was independently associated with lower MQ for males (β=-0.55; P<0.01) and females (β=-0.45; P<0.01), controlling for body mass and age. Adaptation to RE revealed a significant negative association between SAT and changes for strength capacity (β=-0.13; p=0.03) and MQ (β=-0.14; P<0.01) among males. No attenuation was identified among females. Post-intervention SAT remained a negative predictor of MQ for males and females (β=-0.47; P<0.01).

Conclusions:The findings reveal that SAT is a negative predictor of MQ among non-obese, healthy adults, and that after 12 weeks of progressive RE this association was not ameliorated. Data suggest that SAT exerts a weak, negative influence on the adaptive response to strength and MQ among males.

Art DeVany Video

That video I pointed to the other day collapsed the server.  Art has put it on YouTube now. 



He is really starting to promote the book now. 

It is interesting to see how much teh paleo/primal movement has grown and moved on in recent years.  I found it all via a number of sources - I read about Stephen Wedan's experience with diet as a diabetic in Hardgainer, Barry Groves got me going low carb then Clarence Bass pointed to Art DeVany.

Seeing Art's diet now wonder where the fat is - as did Melissa - and Erwan has cetainly influenced me on  exercise, though there is still a role for the weights.

Doug McGuff lecture

Anthony has posted part of a lecture from Doug McGuff

Doug sums it up -  "don't overtrain....and eat like Mark Sisson told you."

Benefits of fasted training?

Fasted training is an idea that pops up a lot among the paleo crowd.  Art DeVany is supportive for example.  Anyway, in that context I thought this was interesting.....as I read it you recover better if you train fasted.

Comments? 

Training in the fasted state facilitates re-activation of eEF2 activity during recovery from endurance exercise

Nutrition is an important co-factor in exercise-induced training adaptations in muscle. We compared the effect of 6 weeks endurance training (3 days/week, 1–2 h at 75% VO2peak) in either the fasted state (F; n = 10) or in the high carbohydrate state (CHO, n = 10), on Ca2+-dependent intramyocellular signalling in young male volunteers. Subjects in CHO received a carbohydrate-rich breakfast before each training session, as well as ingested carbohydrates during exercise. Before (pretest) and after (posttest) the training period, subjects performed a 2 h constant-load exercise bout (~70% of pretest VO2peak) while ingesting carbohydrates (1 g/kg h−1). A muscle biopsy was taken from m. vastus lateralis immediately before and after the test, and after 4 h of recovery. Compared with pretest, in the posttest basal eukaryotic elongation factor 2 (eEF2) phosphorylation was elevated in CHO (P < 0.05), but not in F. In the pretest, exercise increased the degree of eEF2 phosphorylation about twofold (P < 0.05), and values returned to baseline within the 4 h recovery period in each group. However, in the posttest dephosphorylation of eEF2 was negated after recovery in CHO, but not in F. Independent of the dietary condition training enhanced the basal phosphorylation status of Phospholamban at Thr17, 5′-AMP-activated protein kinase α (AMPKα), and Acetyl CoA carboxylase β (ACCβ), and abolished the exercise-induced increase of AMPKα and ACCβ (P < 0.05). In conclusion, training in the fasted state, compared with identical training with ample carbohydrate intake, facilitates post-exercise dephosphorylation of eEF2. This may contribute to rapid re-activation of muscle protein translation following endurance exercise.

Vitamin D Research

I saw this interesting review of research into Vitamin D:

  Vitamin D in health and disease: Current perspectives


 The whole thing is there as a pdf.   Here is part of the conclusion

Although recommendations of daily vitamin D intake have been provided, higher levels are required in order to have real preventive or treatment effect as numerous studies have proved. UVB radiation plays an alternative ways in improving vitamin D content other than oral supplementation. Its advantage is that it will not cause vitamin D intoxication since excessive vitamin D will be broken down by UVB. However, a number of factors of the UVB such as wavelength, duration of exposure are needed to be carefully controlled so as to avoid erythema.

Despite the close link of vitamin D with human health, vitamin D inadequacy is not widely recognized as a problem by physicians and patients. Greater awareness of this problem is required among researchers, clinician, and patients of the high prevalence of vitamin D inadequacy.

Rannoch interviews Erwan Le Corre

Sorry that I've been posting so much on Erwan and MovNat recently, but following his clinics in Edinburgh there has been a lot to catch up on.  Rannoch has put up an excellent interview with Erwan.

Erwan Le Corre – Talking tigers…

This is a standout quote:

An evolutionary approach is only interesting if it helps us, people of today, people that are still alive. In that sense, I am not interested in a so called “truth”, but in what we can experience today, and how understanding our past may help us improve our present lives.

I am not living a caveman lifestyle, I’m sorry. I am a man of today, I’m in the here and now. I am not “sprinting and lifting heavy things” thinking that I am mimicking a caveman lifestyle. That is BULLSHIT. I am sprinting and lifting heavy things (among many other things I train) in order to be ready to do so in today’s world when the need arises. It’s about real-life preparedness and not role playing. MovNat is about connecting to reality, not to a reality that does not exist anymore.

Does pollution make you fat?

I thought this was interesting:

Polluted air increases obesity risk in young animals

Animals exposed to the fine-particulate air pollution had larger and more fat cells in their abdominal area and higher blood sugar levels than did animals eating the same diet but breathing clean air.

It is not just diet or exercise or stress....the totality of your environment is important to health.....including the air you breathe.

Art DeVany promoting his new book

Here is a video here of Art DeVany talking about his new book

UPDATE VIDEO NOW HERE

The book is proving a little controversial in paleo circles......

Erwan Le Corre interviewed in the Scotsman

During this weekend's clinic Erwan was interviewed by the Scotsman newspaper.    The web version is here:  Interview: Erwan Le Corre, fitness guru 

and there is a pdf version for download here

Video Interview with Erwan Le Corre

After Saturday's clinic Naeem  - The Running Engineer - interviewed Erwan and talked about running, particularly Pose technique.

Four Hour Body Trailer

I have no idea what the book is like....but on any level this is a great video.  I've read Tim's 4 Hour Work Week and it was a good and inspiring book although I think it unleashed a horde of people trying to make their fortune by selling crap ebooks.  Anyway this is really well made....it makes you want to buy the book.   Tim is a top marketeer

One Day MovNat Fundamentals Clinic in Edinburgh with Erwan Le Corre

I had mentioned a few weeks ago that this was coming up.  Having interviewed Erwan last year and watched as his profile on the internet has grown since, I was really looking forward to this clinic.   The previous week was tough - my Dad had been in hospital and I was not sure that I would be able to get back to Edinburgh to attend the clinic, but thankfully he got out and was improved enough for me to feel OK about leaving my parents and coming back north.

I returned to an Edinburgh which was cloaked in snow - more snow than at any time since 1963 according to some reports.  So instead of the sunshine and tropical scenery that you normally see in Erwan's videos, this was cold!

There were still classes going on at the gym when we all gathered there so  we chatted outside for a while in the snow.  Despite the weather Erwan turned up in his Vibrams!  Guys had come from all over the UK - London, York, Shropshire, Cumbria, Glasgow  (great to meet Craig)- as well as further afield: Belgium and Hungary.



We went into a cold gym and got changed - all barefoot - and then started a pretty intense 7 hours.  I am not going to go through the whole day in detail - there was too much in there and some you really need to learn  direct from MovNat.  That being said, the day involved a number of things:

• Erwan explaining in some detail his philosophy of exercise and life
• Erwan demonstrating some techniques 
• Erwan coaching us through a number of drills and movements 

So much of the value of the day actually was in the first of those elements as Erwan explained from basic principles his whole approach to movement, exercise and indeed life itself.  Ultimately MovNat is a mental approach, an attitude and mindset rather than a set of physical drills.

Jumping into the day, Erwan had us all introducing ourselves and talking about our background and interest in all this.  I mentioned this blog (and Rannoch made some very kind comments about it) and it was nice to hear that others there actually read what I put up here, although a bit embarrassing too...

Erwan then talked us through the concept of natural movement and how he would define natural movement.  We spoke about how what we do naturally is not always optimal or efficient and how we can learn and improve our movement skills, not learning how to walk or run for example....but how to do it better.

The sort of movements we were looking at were the basics - practical skills that you need for life, abilities that would save your life in extremis.  We all walk, balance, crawl, run, climb, lift, carry, jump, throw & catch.....movements that are part of being alive,  but we can learn to do each of those better, optimally and more efficiently.

We spoke about context and situation and how that affects how we approach movement and about the specificity of exercise.

In many ways some of this came back to the sort of principles that I've discussed here with the HIT guys - particularly Doug McGuff and Luke Carlson - when you learn a skill it is very specific.  So you might learn and practice throwing a punch.  It is a specific movement pattern that you must train and learn.  Punching while holding a dumbbell will not make you a better puncher though - it will just make you better at punching while holding a dumbbell, it is a totally different skill.  You can make the punching muscles stronger - do some chest presses - but to be a better puncher, you need to train the specific skill.    A lot of the "functional training" dogma is that  moves like kettlebell swings somehow transfer to a whole bunch of other skills...the hip snap will make you a better wrestler or whatever, when the evidence and the science is that you might get a stronger posterior chain with the swing but that you need to learn and perfect the technique to apply that strength.   You need to apply it to the skill you are practicing.

Erwan made the same point - for example getting stronger at pullups will not make you a better climber.  Sure you need some basic level of strength and pull ups may help there.....but ultimately you need to learn how to climb - you need to learn a specific skill.   That goes for all the skills we looked at  walking, running, jumping etc.  Yes a big squat will make you stronger....but if you want to jump across a river or out of the way of a bus you will need to good at jumping.

Much of the day was thinking about these skills  and some basic common principles of how we move efficiently and optimally.  Erwan talked about the different classes of movement too - locomotive, manipulative and combative - and how we can improve each.  A valuable chunk of time was spent learning about running technique.  The MovNat running style is mostly like the Pose technique, but not dogmatically so - there are contexts in which you need to adapt and change style.  One of the clinic participants was a Pose coach so he and Erwan worked together to critique and refine our style - this was a really useful bit of the day.  There is so much to running well, much more than just footstrike.

Time passed quickly and it was a struggle to fit all the elements of the course into the day.  Eventually the day come to an end and the Edinburgh Krav Maga guys came to lock up.

We retired to the closest pub where we had the chance to continue to chat with Erwan and each other.  I really enjoyed the sense of this being a small world, a community: people that I follow and sometimes email like Robb Wolf or Richard Nikoley are friends of Erwan and it was good to make some sort of real life contact with this crowd.

I was also amused by all these paleo boys out on the town.  At a fairly basic Leith pub seeing guys order a homemade beefburger with no bun, double bacon, no chips and extra salad all washed down with an espresso was  great.  Nice but I had a big glass of wine and mellowed out!

What I appreciated most from Erwan was his "life", his spirit.  He came across as vitally alive, loving life and its possibilities, its experience.  He is not shaped by a philosophy or a structured paradigm but by experience - he wants to live and experience things.  It is what feels right and what works that matters not some overarching theory.

It may be a cliche to describe a Frenchman in this way but he has a "joie de vivre"  -  he is experiencing life, and movement is at the heart of that process, and more than that he is enjoying it....there is a gratification to the movement in and of itself.   It is like Frank Forencich talks about in his Exuberant Animal approach - there is fun in this!

Erwan dressed for the Scottish snow!

I left the pub (for a moderately paleo Thai banquet) very much  inspired and excited.  I had learned some skills, but more importantly I had learned something of a way of thinking about movement and developing useful skills.  This is not "functional training" or the sport of fitness, but about developing a range of real and useful skills, techniques that are essential to survival.....but which are also simply fun!

I hope  to meet and train with Erwan again.   He is a great athlete - some of his climbing and mobility was astounding - but more than that he is a philosopher, a thinker.  His videos capture your attention - they are impressive.  However,  what they should also do is to make you think about how he developed these specific  skills and think further about the whole approach to movement.

the clinic has whet  my appetite for this stuff and I am eagerly anticipating the book that Erwan is working on.

A really good day.  I would encourage anyone to attend one of Erwan's clinics or workshops.  The 5 day camps would be fantastic - with a lot more scope to expand on the material that Erwan could only touch on in a 7 hour clinic.

Time to think more on this - MovNat: Explore your true nature.

Loosen your neck and run faster

My pal Colin from Edinburgh Deep Tissue Massage sent me an interesting link to a post from Carson Boddicker:

Hamstrings, Suboccipitals, and Running Speed

in it Carson points out that releasing the suboccipitals - muscles at the top of your neck, base of your skull - increases hip mobility more that addressing the hamstrings directly.

Colin has posted about it too on his blog and all this ties in with the ideas of Tom Myers  on Anatomy trains that I have posted about before  -  all your muscles are connected.

This diagram shows how the hamstrings link to the skull in Myers' analysis.

Really useful stuff.

Looks like Carson Boddicker is another one to follow!

I'm Back and some thoughts

I've been away for a few days visiting my parents.  My Dad is getting old and quite frail and it is very hard to see him like this.  Most of this year I've spent watching my girlfriend's Dad deteriorate and die.

All this puts a lot of things into perspective.  You see what really matters.  Family, faith, health.  We are all going to die.  Some of us are going to get old as well. 

Health is important, fitness and function too, but family and friends are high up in the mix too.  We can't forget that.