Conditioning Research

Not sure how much this tells us.    Basically standing one arm presses cause more activation of the "core" than doing them seated with both arms. Muscle activity of the core during bilateral, unilateral, seated and standing resistance exercise Little is known about the effect of performing common resistance exercises standing compared to seated and unilaterally compared to bilaterally on muscle activation of the core. Thus, the purpose of this study was to compare the electromyographic activity (EMG) of the superficial core muscles (i.e. rectus abdominis, external oblique and erector spinae) between seated, standing, bilateral and unilateral dumbbell shoulder presses. 15 healthy males performed five repetitions at 80% of one-repetition maximum of the exercises in randomized order. Results were analyzed with a two-way analysis of variance and a Bonferroni post hoc test. The position × exercise interaction was significantly different for rectus abdominis (P = 0.016), bu...

"Strength is a skill".  That has almost become a cliche, particularly around the kettlebell community, but there is much truth in this simple sentence.  I first same across this idea when Clarence Bass introduce Pavel's idea of synaptic facilitation , that so much of strength is neurological, an idea that Pavel expounded in his article Greasing the Groove (pdf) Of course this is related to the ideas of Z health too (check out the material here ) and Todd Hargrove had a great post the other day on the brain's impact on strength.  Linked to all of this I received a fascinating email this morning from Bill who often comments on the blog.  It explains his experience of how practice makes him stronger.  I'll post it all here and would be really interested in your comments of thoughts: Your recent articles on Z-Health and other neurological aspects of improving performance reminded me of an experiment I did about 6 months ago.  First a little background...

Is this how we were meant to live?

 The report that he is talking about is here by the way by the way, I wonder if neck packing works do to the arthokinetic reflex? mc has a post here that makes me think that that may be so The interview that I did with mc has a good overview of Z Health too

I was reading recently about the amazing Captain Barclay .  His most famous exploit was the walking of 1,000 miles (1,600 km) in 1000 hours for 1000 guineas in 1809.  There is good analysis here. I thought that the way in which his gait was described was interesting.  It is essentially POSE walking. Walter Thom attributes Captain Barclay's pedestrian powers to his great strength and his walking style that involved bending the body forward to throw the weight on the knees, taking short steps and raising his feet only a few inches from the ground. (from here ) When walking, the Captain took com paratively short steps and had an air of leaning more than slightly forward . ( from this book )

In the past I've posted a few things about exercise and brain health, not least the work of John Ratey , and his book Spark .   I can't remember if I've posted it but there is also the work of Kelly Lambert who looks tmovement in terms of addressing depression. Anyway, I saw this mentioned on Twitter the other day: Exercise Training Increases Mitochondrial Biogenesis in the Brain. Exercise training increases brain mitochondrial biogenesis which may have important implications, not only with regard to fatigue, but also with respect to various central nervous system diseases and age-related dementia that are often characterized by mitochondrial dysfunction.

I've mentioned the barefoot running research of Prof Daniel Lieberman before but here is a great interview with him explaining some of his ideas . While he is known mainly for his ideas on running, given some of the things I've been thinking about recently I thought his bit on sitting was interesting: Q. People with bad backs often blame evolution for their pain. They say, “My back aches because man was not meant to walk on two feet.” Are they right? A. If that were true, natural selection would have its toll and we’d be extinct. What is more likely is that many people sit in chairs all day, get no exercise, and thus have weak backs. We did not evolve to sit in chairs all day.

Aerobic exercise bests resistance training at burning belly fat Not sure what I think of this.....

A few day's ago I put up a short review of Dan John's new DVD Intervention .   I just wanted to point to his recent blog post Lifetime Warrior Workout where he puts some of the principles from that DVD into practice in a simple workout pdf. Definitely worth a look.  As Dan says: It’s a very simple sheet, but it contains, in the simplest of ways, the gems of fighting age with weights and stretching.

Just to draw attention to this one: Late-onset intermittent fasting dietary restriction as a potential intervention to retard age-associated brain function impairments in male rats.

I wanted to follow up on the post from earlier about the effect of poles on gait and how they might impact on balance and proprioception. A Warning from the British Mountaineers First of all I wanted to point out something that I noticed this on the BMC (British Mountaineering Council) website: If you use poles all of the time you’ll lose the ability to balance naturally as you step up, walk over uneven ground or boulder hop. So if you are only taking a short walk with a light pack then leave the poles behind or save them for the steep descents. Youngsters need to develop this skill, called proprioception, before they walk any distance using poles. Even the premier mountaineering organisation of Britain recognises the danger that poles pole use poses to proprioception! Todd Hargrove - Better Movement Anyway, I wanted to get the view of an expert on mobility, proprioception and human movement so I got in touch with Todd Hargrove Todd has an excellent blog - Bett...

Another quick thought. If you are into hillwalking / hiking / backpacking you will have seen people walking with poles.  The usual justification is that it takes pressure off the knees.  My observation is that it seems to mess up people's gait, especially in climbing or descending. My current theory is that it impacts on proprioception.  This is the way in which the brain senses the body's position in space, through various sensors - propriceptors - throughout the body in nerve endings in muscles, tendons and joints. The brain relies on complex and rich sensory data from across the body to maintain balance and posture as we move. Perhaps using poles diminishes the way in which weight is carried through the feet and so the sensory input is also diminished ...... and this has a negative impact on balance and gait. It is similar to the way in which shoes and stiff soled boots blunt the sensory impact and damage gait. Just a thought.

I am using this post to gather a few referenes togther for a piece I am writing for TGO on balance. Is Balance Training Clinically Effective Balance training can be used prophylactically or after an acute ankle sprain in an effort to reduce future ankle sprains, Ankles can be strengthened to resist sprain Sprained ankles can be avoided by those at high risk through a weekly balance training program, according to new research released today at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine at the HERSHEY(R) Lodge and Convention Center. The Effectiveness of a Balance Training Intervention in Reducing the Incidence of Noncontact Ankle Sprains in High School Football Players Conclusion: The increased risk of a non-contact inversion ankle sprain associated with a high body mass index and a previous ankle sprain was eliminated by the balance training intervention. The intervention in this study was simple: Players balanced for 5 minutes on each leg...

This is the great Chris Hoy talking about the squat.  I saw him in the canteen at work one day a couple of years back being interviewed. His max is around 500lb. thanks to Clwb Hen Enw for pointing it out.

I just wanted to gather together some of the studies I'd referenced before about the dangers of the modern sedentary lifestyle. Summary Our bodies were not built for life in a chair and it is no surprise that research has highlighted the danger that so much sitting poses to health. Scientists have found that time spent sitting was associated with increased risk of mortality. Those who sat “most of the time” were more likely to die during the following 12 years than those who “almost never” sat, even after controlling for age, smoking, body weight and physical activity [2] . Even if they exercised, people who sat for over 6 hours per day had a higher risk of death than those who sat for under 3 hours per day [3] . Sitting watching television for an average of 6 hours a day could shorten life-expectancy by almost 5 years [4] . 1. Owen et al. British Journal of Sports Medicine 2009;43:81–83.  Research on physical activity and health has pointed clearly to increasing th...

Here is another one to support the barefoot guys. An interesting piece on how basketball players who wear shoes with air filled cells building up the heels are more likely to get injured. Basketball Sneakers, Ankle Sprains and Ankle Pains

I've been a fan of Phil Maffetone for a while.  His philosophy of aerobic training is really useful and makes a lot of sense - moving around at a really easy pace so that you are buring fat not carbs.  I'd like to spice it up with some occaisional sprints, but for most people I think his overall philosophy of health as opposed to fitness is really important. I also think he has been ahead of his time in his approach to things like stretching, shoes and diet.  Anyway he has posted a couple of pieces recently on weight training: Part 1 Part 2 you can go and read them yourself, but a few thoughts I had: interesting how the paleo principle means different things to different folks his idea of real function movement - pick things up and carry them has echos of some Dan John (The old Get Up idea:  Our mission? To teach everyone: 1. The Body is One Piece 2. There are three kinds of strength training: Putting weight overhead, Picking it off the ground & C...

I mentioned the other day that I'd been sent some Invisible Shoes to try.  Here is my review Barefoot is best Over the past few years on this blog I've often linked to pieces about the benefits of being barefoot.  Our feet are precisely engineered to support our motion, with an elegant arch to provide a great foundation for whatever we do.  Depending on your personal cosmology they have been designed - by God or evolution - to be the optimal solution, the best things that a biped could stand, walk and run on.  It is not just the engineering either - our feet are full of receptors that feed information to the brain about our body's position in space giving data for your head to work with to keep you balanced and moving efficiently, an idea developed in Becoming Bulletproof . Shoes interfere with all of this - they mess up the mechanics clamping the complex structures of the foot into a rigid brace and damp out all of the sensory information that should be f...

....this will encourage Matt Stone . Association between obesity and reduced body temperature in dogs Conclusion: These findings document an association between obesity and reduced body temperature in dogs and support the hypothesis that obesity in this and other species of homeotherms may result from an increase in metabolic efficiency achieved by a regulated lowering of body temperature. More commentary here Most humans and most animals gain weight because they accumulate fat. That occurs when they take in more energy than they expend. The unused energy is stored as fat. "The way to reduce energy intake is to eat less, but that means you feel hungry, and a common way to increase energy expenditure is to exercise, but many people lack the motivation," he said. Refinetti's study explored the theory that obesity may result from a less obvious reduction in energy expenditure: a reduction in body temperature. The idea is that warm-blooded animals spend much of thei...

I would like to be able to do this  (thanks to Ross )

Fitness in today's chaotic world   This post is just a series of thoughts, bullet points so that I can get some ideas down for something that I might develop further.... We can hack the body with tricks to build muscle, strength and even endurance This can be done with minimal investment in time HIT type training, even with bodyweight and static contractions HIIT intervals, sprints to develop VO2 max and endurance That gives you capacity, potential  BUT WHAT IS THE POINT? We are facing a strange and challenging world that seems to be getting more chaotic and unpredicatable natural disaster riot economic decline peak oil..... To survive in such a world you need not only capacity but also relevant skills.  You can be strong.....but that is only useful up to a point What skills do you need?  What will keep you alive in such a world? The paleo meme -  look at the past to be fit for the future. Paleo is not just diet Hunter Gatherer ...

I have been sent some invisible shoes to try out!!! Fantastic.  They came in the post this week and over the weekend I am looking forward to setting them up, fitting them and doing some almost barefoot walking.  These are pretty authentic huaraches.

I saw that someone on Facebook had linked to this and took a look.  An interesting approach and nice design. In an unhealthy society like ours, being healthy has become a revolutionary act. The Manifesto is worth downloading  and you should browse through the 101 ideas for being healthy .  Nice and holistic.

Well maybe not exactly mainstream but the hipster, IT crowd who read Lifehacker type stuff. Eating Ancestrally: How To Start Eating and Living Like A Human The whole basis of eating and living a Paleo lifestyle is to use “scientific evidence and evolutionary clues” to decide how we should eat, exercise, and play. Which of course is a(n unattributed) quote from Angelo Copolla

You may be aware that there have been riots in England.  I was going to write "in the UK" but as someone who live in Scotland, there is some sensitivity about this - it has been peaceful up here and we don't want to be lumped in with the animals down south.... Anyway, I think this is a joke, but if you want to be fit for some looting you might want to check out: “Lifting for Looting” – Your exercise guide for Maximum Riot Performance.

This is a good mobility move for a part of the body that is often too stiff and immobile due to our sedentary lives.  It is also one of the basic 5 daily mobility moves that Colin Gordon recommends

Paul Jaminet at the Perfect Health Diet has talked a bit about infection and the impact on the brain .  This is an interesting report of how: a small amount of exercise shields older animals from memory loss following a bacterial infection, according to a study in the August 10 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings suggest moderate exercise may lead to several changes in the brain that boost its ability to protect itself during aging — a period of increased vulnerability. Here is the abstract We have previously found that healthy aged rats are more likely to suffer profound memory impairments following a severe bacterial infection than are younger adult rats. Such a peripheral challenge is capable of producing a neuroinflammatory response, and in the aged brain this response is exaggerated and prolonged. Normal aging primes, or sensitizes, microglia, and this appears to be the source of this amplified inflammatory response. Among the outcomes of this exaggera...

I've said that I am writing a series of articles on fitness for a UK hillwalking / backpacing magazine - TGO .  I am picking up on some of the things that I've covered here over the years, looking at fitness for the hills in terms of: conditioning - intervals / sprints to improve VO2 max etc strength - the importance of absolute strength skill - i.e. how you walk I'm also picking up on things like posture I'm working on a piece now which is looking at the dangers of sitting.  I've posted some links before on this - e.g. this great infographic One of the ideas is that sitting has profound effects on your posture and structure which does not leave you in a fit state to walk.  You are too tight in the wrong places, so we need to address the impact with corrective exercises - glute activation for example and stretching the hip flexors -  and the cause by avoiding so much sitting. Anyway, the other thing that is relevant is how inactive we are.  Hunter...

interesting stuff.  Does dieting make you fat? A twin study

we need more old ladies pushing prowlers......

James Steele has had a peer reviewed article published identifying what protocols can be recommended for resistance training based not on tradition or fashion but on evidence!  How novel  ;-) The full article is available here   and I'd recommend you to download it and have a read.  It challenges some popular  ideas that are out there - like plyometrics - and makes some recommendations based on what the science says. It is good stuff - similar to the stufy here in fact!

I think I've mentioned before the idea of brain maps .  mc started wrote about this a while ago and pointed me towards the book - The Body has a Mind of its Own There was a good discussion of the ideas at Paul's Perfect Health Diet blog too recently, with something from Todd Hargrove and a good follow up discussion It is also a topic on which the excellent Becoming Bulletproof is built.  Anyway, I spotted this interesting report on how brain maps - at least in rats - are pretty flat.  They are not good at estimating their position with respect to height.  Read more here Animal's brains are only roughly aware of how high-up they are in space, meaning that in terms of altitude the brain's 'map' of space is surprisingly flat, according to new research. In a study published online today in Nature Neuroscience, scientists studied cells in or near a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which forms the brain's map of space, to see whether they ...

I feel quite left out.  Seems like everyone was at UCLA over the weekend having a great time.  I followed the tweets as much as I could and it sounded like a great event. There are some good overviews from Richard Matt David Chris Jamie I've intereviewed some of the participants on this blog before and it is interesting to see how big and how quickly the paleo movement is growing. UPDATE - ALL THE POWERPOINT SLIDES ARE NOW HERE

Apologies for the lack of action on this blog over the past week.   I've been visiting my parents - Dad has dementia and spending time with him is precious - and working.   Also as mentioned before I am writing a monthly piece on fitness for hillwalking for a UK hillwalking magazine TGO and getting that drafted well takes a bit of effort. More to come though