Conditioning Research

One sent to me by Jorgen.  Interesting given the shange in the length of hte days up at this lattitude.  Even here in Scotland at the moment it is light until well past 10 pm. people there report no difference in insomnia between winter, when there are only 3 hours of daylight, or in summer, when there are 21 hours of daylight. The researchers were surprised because earlier studies have indicated that darkness during winter might accentuate depression and the sleeplessness that derives from it. Seasonal Variations in Sleep Problems at Latitude 63°–65° in Norway The Nord-Trøndelag Health Study, 1995–1997 Most studies on seasonal variability in sleep have asked participants if they think their sleep quality varies with the seasons, which reveals the research hypothesis to the participants. To date, the hypothesis of seasonal variation in sleep has not been tested in a large population-based fully blinded study. The aim of the current study was to investigate monthly va...

Love him or hate him?

I'm off to bed Cutting back on sleep drastically reduces a healthy young man's testosterone levels, according to a study published in the June 1 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Eve Van Cauter, PhD, professor in medicine and director of the study, found that men who slept less than five hours a night for one week in a laboratory had significantly lower levels of testosterone than when they had a full night's sleep. Low testosterone has a host of negative consequences for young men, and not just in sexual behaviour and reproduction. It is critical in building strength and muscle mass, and bone density. More here, but I can't get the full thing .

Zen Habits had a post yesterday saying that there was no evidence that soy was harmful.   Melissa has taken him to task pretty well. Zen Habits - Stupid about Soy

Dan John has talked a lot about Goblet Squats and their value in patterning the squat.  I found this video of a strong set. Deep, straight back. (but crap shoes as Pieter points out in the comment below) EDIT - For what it is worth the video below is what Dan John himself in his new book (Dan has just posted a link to a free ebook  - The Coyote Point Kettlebell Club ) points to to explain the move.  You will see it is more of a mobility move / stretch.

Runners World have put up an interesting interview with Biomechanist Irene Davis, Ph.D., a leading researcher in the running field for more than 20 years. She is very much in favour of barefoot running: Davis is an unabashed promoter of barefoot running and barefoot-like running form. “I believe there is a compelling body of evidence that suggests we need to consider a paradigm change," she told me yesterday. "But paradigm changes are risky, and younger scientists may be more tentative." The whole thing is worth reading but I liked this bit: Why isn't anyone studying barefoot running and landing styles on different surfaces? We've got a lot of hard asphalt out there today. There have been numerous studies that have looked at how runners react to different surfaces. We now know that runners will change their form in just one or two strides when they hit a hard surface like concrete or a soft surface like sand. They'll adapt a softer landing on concre...

My pal Colin - from Edinburgh Deep Tissue Massage -  has posted a superb new piece in his series on posture: Improving your posture Pt2 Excellent ideas which I will steal when I come to write a future article on the dangers of sitting too much. One of the quickest ways of getting big improvements is to target the hip flexors and superficial fascia of the pelvis. Tight hip flexors inhibit the glutes, hip extensors, and through our largely sedentary life styles are one of the big contributors to disrupting our posture and this is also a big issue in athletic performance where the glutes are the powerhouse of so many activities. This inhibition of the glutes makes it difficult to recruit them to pull the pelvis posteriorly and back into balance. The anterior tilt also makes it difficult to recruit the musculature of the lower abdominals so you can see why when you are asked to bring your pelvis back to neutral by contracting both these groups it is possible to do but difficult ...

Well long drawn out tough warm ups seem to.   It makes sense - you get knackered warming up and can't perform as well in the event.  ( abstract here) I reckon they coudl have got even better results with even less of a warm up. "Our study compared a standard warm-up, with what we termed an experimental warm-up," explains Tomaras. "We interviewed a number of coaches and athletes to come up with the traditional warm-up." The experiment involved high performance sprint cyclists performing a traditional warm-up lasting about 50 minutes with a graduated intensity that ranged from 60 to 95 per cent of maximal heart rate before ending with several all-out sprints. The experimental warm-up was much shorter at about 15 minutes, and was performed at a lower intensity, ending with just a single sprint. The researchers conducted a number of tests following each warm-up to accurately measure the athlete's power output and fatigue. "What we found, was that th...

I thought that this was an interesting article.   The journalist asked what different experts considered to be the single best exercise.   The conclusion seems to be hill sprints or at least sprints up stairs.  The approach seems promising, since most of us have minimal time to exercise each week. Gibala last month published a new study of H.I.T., requiring only a stationary bicycle and some degree of grit. In this modified version, you sprint for 60 seconds at a pace that feels unpleasant but sustainable, followed by 60 seconds of pedaling easily, then another 60-second sprint and recovery, 10 times in all. “There’s no particular reason why” H.I.T. shouldn’t be adaptable to almost any sport, Gibala said, as long as you adequately push yourself. Of course, to be effective, H.I.T. must hurt. But a study published last month found that when a group of recreational runners practiced H.I.T. on the track, they enjoyed the workout more than a second group of runners wh...

I've just ordered this lady's DVD after seeing it mentioned by Dan John .  It will be interesting to see what she has to say.

This research is quite disturbing, but not surprising.     Playing on computers is displacing outdoor activity such that even since 1998 the ability to do some pretty basic movements and activities has declined markedly.   Certainly a worry for the future functioning of society. We are training people to sit indoors at desks and we will reap the consequences in poor health both physical and psychological. Academics led by Dr Gavin Sandercock, a children's fitness expert at Essex University, studied how strong a group of 315 Essex 10-year-olds in 2008 were compared with 309 children the same age in 1998. They found that: ■ The number of sit-ups 10-year-olds can do declined by 27.1% between 1998 and 2008 ■ Arm strength fell by 26% and grip strength by 7% ■ While one in 20 children in 1998 could not hold their own weight when hanging from wall bars, one in 10 could not do so in 2008. "This is probably due to changes in activity patterns among English 10...

I love this guy

This raised a smile! Researchers are recommending a protein rich breakfast for a range of reasons "Incorporating a healthy breakfast containing protein-rich foods can be a simple strategy for people to stay satisfied longer, and therefore, be less prone to snacking," Leidy said. "People reach for convenient snack foods to satisfy their hunger between meals, but these foods are almost always high in sugar and fat and add a substantial amount of calories to the diet. These findings suggest that a protein-rich breakfast might be an effective strategy to improve appetite control and prevent overeating in young people." however, their definition of protein rich is a bit strange: For three weeks, the teens either continued to skip breakfast or consumed 500-calorie breakfast meals containing cereal and milk (which contained normal quantities of protein) or higher protein meals prepared as Belgium waffles, syrup and yogurt. The abstract is here

or as the headline says:  obesity creates wimpy rats "These results may explain why muscle strength and locomotion are impaired in obese humans, and hence perhaps why it is so difficult to lose excess weight and recover from obesity," said Schilder. The researchers first demonstrated that troponin T expression varied with body weight during normal growth. Then they artificially increased the body weight of one group of rats by 30 percent using a custom-made weighted vest. Externally applied weight caused a shift in the muscle troponin T expression, matching that of animals whose actual body weight was 30 percent higher. In contrast, troponin T expression did not respond to a similar increase in body weight in the obese rats.

Via: this link

I saw this on Bret Contreras' blog the other day.  Interesting concept and worth some thought and tinkering.

My pal Colin ( Edinburgh Deep Tissue massage ) has written a great piece on posture Improving your posture We see a lot of talk about having good posture and what to do to achieve it but what is good posture? It’s probably easier to think of it as how you would stand if you didn’t sit at a desk for 8 hours a day or hadn’t picked up any injuries from playing your chosen sport. You’re spine has natural curves that get disrupted if you don’t pay attention to how you are sitting and the effects of long periods of doing so even with good posture and what happens to how you move when you get injured. Your hips, knees, ankles, shoulders are all affected by the sitting for long periods and obviously can all be injured playing sport. If your pelvis is not constantly pulled forward and down by overly tight tissues will sit relatively level, your shoulder girdle would sit comfortably back if it wasn’t being pulled forward by your tight pec’s etc (this is simplifying it but you get the point)...

Well they are new to me but I just came across these  excellent blogs.   They have gone straight into the RSS reader! Robert Paterson's Weblog - has a lot of paleo material on it as Robert charts his discoveries.  He is finding much of the same material that I am, and presenting it well. His paleo discoveries have prompted him to found another site  The Missing Human Manual Do you want to age well? Most of us do. If you are my age, 60, this is more important a question that if you are 30. But most of us would not wish to have heart disease, cancer, dementia when we get old. Most of us think it is normal that we will get ill like this. But science today tells us that this is not "Normal". Our evolutionary past designed us to be active and fit until we drop dead. Why? Because raising human children takes so long. Mature adults had to do most of the hard work enable us to invest up to 25 years in our kids. We are designed by our evolution to reach a ...

Here is another quick one, heart function improves when fuelled by fat Contrary to what we've been told, eliminating or severely limiting fats from the diet may not be beneficial to cardiac function in patients suffering from heart failure, a study at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine reports. Results from biological model studies conducted by assistant professor of physiology and biophysics Margaret Chandler, PhD, and other researchers, demonstrate that a high-fat diet improved overall mechanical function, in other words, the heart's ability to pump,

I have little faith in the whole cholesterol hypothesis and the labelling of something as "bad" just seems to be dumbing down to the extreme. Anyway, this was interesting: ' Bad' cholesterol not as bad as people think, shows Texas A&M study COLLEGE STATION, May 4, 2011 – The so-called "bad cholesterol" – low-density lipoprotein commonly called LDL – may not be so bad after all, shows a Texas A&M University study that casts new light on the cholesterol debate, particularly among adults who exercise. .....

The great Dan John has posted some new videos of mobility moves he is currently working on.    Birddogs, Can Openers and Tactical Frogs.....

Phil Maffetone was ahead of the pack in some ways - he was talking about a low carb diet for endurance and getting barefoot years ago. Anyway, still thinking of the upcoming Hillfit articles, he had a good piece on the walking gait the other day: I'll copy all of it here but all his articles are worth checking out. More on Gait Dr. Phil Maffetone The two-part article on gait (May 2011) was very popular. Among the reader’s questions were those about walking gait. Walking is an ideal workout for fat burning and overall fitness for millions of people. Runners often walk too, as warm up or cool down, as a method to develop more endurance (i.e., longer runs), and even during marathons, often unplanned. It’s actually not unusual to see the walking gait of runners as abnormal. As discussed in the article on gait, there’s an obvious difference between walking and proper running, especially in how the foot strikes the ground (on the heel for walkers and more forward in runners)...

I interviewed Frank here

the intercostals are there....the abs will follow.  This is coming off the back of little training coupled with a lot of stress from work.   For the rest of this summer my aim is to tighten up a wee bit and get the abs there.

Now my work has quietened down I'll be turning back to this blog more seriously. My focus for a while will be formulating ideas for my hillfit articles