Sunlight benefits the brain

Good stuff form Phil Maffetone

Seeing the natural light of the sun helps the brain work better. No, not staring into the sun, but allowing the eyes to be exposed to natural outdoor light—contact lenses, eyeglasses, sunglasses and windows block the helpful sun rays. Read "Sunlight Is Also Good For Eyes and Brain."

Kurt Harris is back

Just a quick note that Kurt Harris is back blogging with some quality stuff.  His PaNu blog had been dormant for a while but it is going again now with excellent material.  Try:

N=1? 

or

There is No Such Thing as a Macronutrient Part I - Fats

Street Fight Skills

A while back I had a post prompted by my clinic with Erwan Le Corre - Fight for your life.  Erwan stresses moves, skills that will save your life - running, climbing, swimming, fighting etc.


I was reminded of this by one of the aphorisms in Nassim Taleb's excellent new book:  The Bed of Procrustes:

Skills that tranfer: street fights, off path hiking, seduction, broad erudition. 

Skills that don't: school, games, sports, laboratory - what's reduced and organised.

Sleep - fat kids have messed up sleep patterns

Sleep Duration, Sleep Regularity, Body Weight, and Metabolic Homeostasis in School-aged Children.

Objective: The goal was to explore the effects of duration and regularity of sleep schedules on BMI and the impact on metabolic regulation in children.
Methods: Sleep patterns of 308 community-recruited children 4 to 10 years of age were assessed with wrist actigraphs for 1 week in a cross-sectional study, along with BMI assessment. Fasting morning plasma levels of glucose, insulin, lipids, and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein also were measured for a subsample.
Results: Children slept 8 hours per night, on average, regardless of their weight categorization. A nonlinear trend between sleep and weight emerged.

• For obese children, sleep duration was shorter and showed more variability on weekends, compared with school days. 
• For overweight children, a mixed sleep pattern emerged. The presence of high variance in sleep duration or short sleep duration was more likely associated with altered insulin, low-density lipoprotein, and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein plasma levels. 
• Children whose sleep patterns were at the lower end of sleep duration, particularly in the presence of irregular sleep schedules, exhibited the greatest health risk. 

Conclusions: Obese children were less likely to experience "catch-up" sleep on weekends, and the combination of shorter sleep duration and more-variable sleep patterns was associated with adverse metabolic outcomes. Educational campaigns, aimed at families, regarding longer and more-regular sleep may promote decreases in obesity rates and may improve metabolic dysfunction trends in school-aged children.

Monkey Strong

Taleb, DeVany & Ferris: I have some reading to do

My current reading matter.

Gymnastics

She is good.  (via Brad of Eat Stop Eat fame)

Statins - the Mainstream Media wakes up

BBC radio 4 news this morning is reporting a story featured in the Telegraph - throwing doubt on the efficacy of statin drugs.  The BBC is stating that there is little evidence that statins do anything for people who do not alread have heart problems.

Well welcome to the party guys!  The bloggers have been saying this for years and years and years.

Check out Dr Briffa for example:  Do statins save lives in essentially healthy people? (No)

or Dr Stephan Guyenet or many others - such as Peter.   I even featured somethin on this way back.

My training

I was thinking about expanding this blog a bit so that I also recorded - sometimes - my training.  That might show how I put into practice - or try to - some of the things that I discuss here.  I really like what Keith does at Theory to Practice - thinking out loud and showing how he trains.

One of the things that's holding me back is the fact that I am about to enter a really busy few months at work so that my training will be a bit sporadic.  (Although the more busy I end up  - putting in the 12 + hour days  etc and getting more stressed - the more I reevaluate my life and just want to chuck it all in and find something less hectic.  It is hard though.  It is nice to earn good money and there is a certain amount of reward in other ways - status and  achievement.)

Another thing is that some of the stuff that I learn and try to apply is beyond training - it is diet, sleep, stress management, social life, posture etc and I'm not sure that I could or should record all that.  It would all end up a wierd mix of MovNat, HIT, balance, sleep, paleo, Esther Gokhale, Sapolsky, Krav Maga and more.....

We'll see.

Breakfast doesn't matter - more for the intermittent fasting files

Spotted this one this morning:

Big Breakfast Generally Doesn't Help Weight Loss

Dr Volker Schusdziarra, from the Else-Kröner-Fresenius Center of Nutritional Medicine, conducted a study on over 300 people who were asked to keep a journal of what they usually ate. Within the group sometimes people ate a big breakfast, sometimes small, and sometimes skipped it all together.

Schusdziarra said that "the results of the study showed that people ate the same at lunch and dinner, regardless of what they had for breakfast," this means that a big breakfast (on average 400kcal greater than a small breakfast) resulted in a total increase in calories eaten over the day of about 400kcal. The only difference seen was the skipping of a mid morning snack when someone ate a really big breakfast, however this was not enough to offset the extra calories they had already eaten.

 Interesting stuff....but nothing new.  Time to check out Leangains or the 2 Meal Solution.... Mike's 2 Meal Solution was reviewed here and goes through a lot of research like this to explode a lot of myths about fasting.









There is a preview of the book below:

Hiking and fat.....

I don't know whether to post this.....but as ever, this blog basically records thigns I find that are interesting to me.  You can take it or leave it and if i am posting something it doesn't necessarily mean I support it.

Anyway with all that bollocks out of the way, I enjoyed reading Matt Stone's piece:  Can Hiking Make you Fat?

Matt is always controversial - I think he takes some pleasure in being so - but much of what he says here is not particularly new.  If you hang around the blogs I do then you will have heard similar arguments from others, the idea that if you train in such as ways as to be reliant on fat then you body will respond by storing fat so that you have the fuel you need.

Tips for endurance exercisers and recreational hikers/cyclists/runners etc. frequently engaged in physical activity that lasts 2 or more hours in duration…

• Do some form of cross-training at least once per week at a high intensity level while engaged in a heavy endurance exercise load.  Try circuit-training, sprinting, interval training, weightlifting, or metabolic exercise

Interestingly Mark Sisson comes down in a similar place in his classic Case against Cardio post - he wants to ensure that you mix up lots of easy hiking with occasional do or die sprints. 

Knowing what we know about our hunter-gatherer ancestors and the DNA blueprint, we would ideally devise an aerobics plan that would have us walking or hiking several hours a day to maximize our true fat-burning systems and then doing intermittent “life or death” sprints every few days to generate those growth spurts that create stronger, leaner muscle.

However, since allocating a few hours a day to this pursuit is impractical for most people, we can still create a plan that has a fair amount of low level aerobic movement, such as walking briskly, hiking, cycling at a moderate pace, etc a few times a week and keep it at under an hour. Then, we can add a few intense “interval” sessions, where we literally sprint (or cycle or do anything intensely) for 20, 30 or 40 seconds at a time all out, and do this once or twice a week.

Balance exercises

Balance is something that I find absolutely fascinating.    It is a really complex sense with a number of different elements:

• vestibular (equilibrium)
• proprioception (body position awareness), and 
• vision. 

These elements work together: sometimes all 3 contributing equally, sometimes we rely more on one system or two, to keep us stable.   A couple of years back I read a fascinating book on the topic: Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense:  highly recommended.


Anyway, SueC has had a couple of good posts recently which are worth reading on the subject of balance:

Martial arts - a balancing act -  I needed to understand a little more about what balance actually is and how the body controls it

and

Balance exercises - Intrinsic balance can be improved by doing exercises that focus on improving the senses important in detecting a loss of balance - Sue describes some good exercises to play with


Great stuff

Improve your handstand

Jim is always good value:

Back pain....another perspective

Michael Allen Smith  has an interesting post on his back pain

Turn down the lights well before bedtime

here is another interesting one for the #sleep discussions.

"On a daily basis, millions of people choose to keep the lights on prior to bedtime and during the usual hours of sleep," said Joshua Gooley, PhD, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass. and lead author of the study. "Our study shows that this exposure to indoor light has a strong suppressive effect on the hormone melatonin. This could, in turn, have effects on sleep quality and the body's ability to regulate body temperature, blood pressure and glucose levels."

The study is reported here and the abstract is below.  It gets a bit scary:

"Given that chronic light suppression of melatonin has been hypothesized to increase relative risk for some types of cancer and that melatonin receptor genes have been linked to type 2 diabetes, our findings could have important health implications for shift workers who are exposed to indoor light at night over the course of many years," said Gooley. "Further research is still needed to both substantiate melatonin suppression as a significant risk factor for breast cancer and determine the mechanisms by which melatonin regulates glucose metabolism."

But this is all standard Robb Wolf / Lights Out stuff.

Exposure to Room Light before Bedtime Suppresses Melatonin Onset and Shortens Melatonin Duration in Humans.

Context: Millions of individuals habitually expose themselves to room light in the hours before bedtime, yet the effects of this behavior on melatonin signaling are not well recognized. Objective: We tested the hypothesis that exposure to room light in the late evening suppresses the onset of melatonin synthesis and shortens the duration of melatonin production. Design: In a retrospective analysis, we compared daily melatonin profiles in individuals living in room light (<200 lux) vs. dim light (<3 lux). Patients: Healthy volunteers (n = 116, 18-30 yr) were recruited from the general population to participate in one of two studies. Setting: Participants lived in a General Clinical Research Center for at least five consecutive days. Intervention: Individuals were exposed to room light or dim light in the 8 h preceding bedtime. Outcome Measures: Melatonin duration, onset and offset, suppression, and phase angle of entrainment were determined. Results: Compared with dim light, exposure to room light before bedtime suppressed melatonin, resulting in a later melatonin onset in 99.0% of individuals and shortening melatonin duration by about 90 min. Also, exposure to room light during the usual hours of sleep suppressed melatonin by greater than 50% in most (85%) trials. Conclusions: These findings indicate that room light exerts a profound suppressive effect on melatonin levels and shortens the body's internal representation of night duration. Hence, chronically exposing oneself to electrical lighting in the late evening disrupts melatonin signaling and could therefore potentially impact sleep, thermoregulation, blood pressure, and glucose homeostasis.

What is progress when the normal way is down?

I've been re-reading the post I put up yesterday from Bill DeSimmone and there are some elements that have been prompting some reflection.  I think it is worth re posting part of that post alone to highlight the particular issues that he got me thinking around:

...... being obsessed with “progression”  (is no good if it)  leads to injury or makes you dread training.

For me, “progress” in terms of amount of weight lifted is an obsolete standard.  As we age, “normal” is to decline; so, if the weights I handle stay the same, I’m ahead of normal.  The only way to maintain is to train regularly, and the way to train regularly is to avoid injury.

 In the early stages of training, weight and reps are perfectly valid standards.  But once you are strong enough and big enough, you have to weigh the possible marginal benefits of increasing weight and reps vs. the additional discomfort and strain.  For me, I find it a lot more useful to “progress” in terms of control of muscular actions, and the Bodyblade®, Bosu®, and ball are ways of addressing this.

 I think this is a really interesting and important point.  Sometimes the way in which exercise is presented, the idea seems to be that you can forever keep on progressing in terms of weight or reps....obviously that is untrue or else given time we would all be deadlifting 1000lb or whatever.    There is a ceiling.  How do we handle it? 

Bill has an interesting approach in changing the metric.

Balance Training

Balance is fascinating.  This is an interesting study that indicates that martial arts training can improve your balance.......although there may be one of those causation vs correlation things going on here ;-)   I don't think it is specifically the taekwando by the way......

Low-level Taekwondo practitioners have better somatosensory organisation in standing balance than sedentary people.

I'm always intersted in balance - it is something that I think we need to maintain and train both for general functional ability and also for injury prevention.

Weight training followed by a sauna for bigger muscles?

Possibly...... Heat stress enhances mTOR signaling after resistance exercise in human skeletal muscle

These results indicate that HS enhances mTOR signaling after resistance exercise in human skeletal muscle.

Sleep: The energy cost of sleep deprivation

Here is an interesting one.  Again I read these knowing that I really should get more sleep!

Energy expenditure during sleep, sleep deprivation and sleep following sleep deprivation in adult humans

One of the proposed functions of sleep is to conserve energy. We determined the amount of energy conserved by sleep in humans, how much more energy is expended when missing a night of sleep, and how much energy is conserved during recovery sleep. Findings support the hypothesis that a function of sleep is to conserve energy in humans. Sleep deprivation increased energy expenditure indicating that maintaining wakefulness under bed-rest conditions is energetically costly. Recovery sleep after sleep deprivation reduced energy use compared to baseline sleep suggesting that human metabolic physiology has the capacity to make adjustments to respond to the energetic cost of sleep deprivation. The finding that sleep deprivation increases energy expenditure should not be interpreted that sleep deprivation is a safe or effective strategy for weight loss as other studies have shown that chronic sleep deprivation is associated with impaired cognition and weight gain.

It is interesting, but I would stress that last sentence:  chronic sleep deprivation is associated with impaired cognition and weight gain.

You can read more on this here

The findings showed that compared to a typical night of sleep, the amount of energy expended by the subjects during 24 hours of sleep deprivation increased about seven per cent. In contrast, energy expenditure decreased to five per cent during the recovery episode, which included 16 hours of wakefulness (following the sleep deprivation night), then eight hours of recovery sleep.

The study proves there is a direct correlation between the sleep–wake cycle and how the body uses energy. It also demonstrates that sleep deprivation is metabolically costly. 'The function of sleep, especially in humans, is considered one of the most important scientific enigmas,' commented Wright, who hopes the new data will help researchers better understand one piece of the sleep puzzle.

One question arising from the study concerns why humans don't conserve more energy during sleep. 'There are other functions of sleep that are important and cost energy,' explains Wright. 'Some conserved energy may be re-distributed to support vital physiological processes like learning and memory consolidation, immune function, and hormone synthesis and release.'

Vegan diets are bad for your teeth

Well that's what it seems to say in the results......

Oral implications of the vegan diet: observational study.

RESULTS: The study revealed greater incidence of demineralization and white spots in the vegan subjects compared to the omnivorous ones localized at the neck of the teeth and on the vestibular surfaces of dental elements

Optimal Exercise Guide: The Bodyblade Plus

More from Bill DeSimone. 

I had an interview with Bill back in 2009 and his approach has always fascinated and impressed me.  (Anthony is another fan and he had Bill speak at his 21convention last year).  Anyway, since that interview i've remained in touch with Bill and he has shared with me some of his developing thinking.  One of the things we corresponded about was prompted by the Max Pyramid Protocol that John Little developed and wrote about last year - that particular protocol is designed to maximally and safely stress the muscles....at their strongest points when the most fibres are engaged.  A static contraction, or series of them, at the point of maximum moment arm is (are) used to deliver a deep inroad.  I've played with it a bit and it is really useful.


I chatted to Bill about this and he explained that he was looking at other ways of challenging peak muscle torque while both not stressing the joints and actually working the postural muscles appropriately.....


He has now developed those ideas.  I'll quote from Bill:

I've  been using the Bodyblade, Bosu, Ball, and most recently the heavy rope in my studio in NJ for a few years now, both for myself and clients.

The instruction was all in my head and scraps here and there; never had a good reason to clean it up and make it presentable.

Recently I've been working with a martial arts instructor on the Gracie Combatives.  He was having some knee and shoulder trouble, I showed him what to do, and it gave me the excuse to organize the material as a manual for studio clients:  "Optimal Exercise Guide: The Bodyblade, Plus".

That guide is now available from Bill.  Anyone interested in buying a copy of "Optimal Exercise Guide: The Bodyblade Plus":  can get it, Paypal $20 US, $27 outside the US, including Priority Mail, to optimalexercise@comcast.net.)


Bill has provided me with an exclusive extract from the Optimal Exercise Guide to whet your appetite:

How I Stumbled upon the Bodyblade®

I had successfully ignored the Bodyblade for several years.  I was aware of it, usually spotted in the corner of a physical therapy practice; but whenever I asked about it, I only got vague responses.  “It’s for functional training”, “It’s for the core”...but that was about it.  Since I was comfortable with Nautilus-influenced strength training, I saw no need to pursue it further.

I had a similar response to vibration training; again, successfully ignoring the ads in the trade magazines and studies in the NSCA Journal.  The price tag on the vibration machines didn’t help spur my interest.

At the same time, I had some observations about my own training.  After 30-plus years, I knew that the amount of weight I could lift had pretty much topped out.  On a given exercise, I could build up to a maximum amount of weight; but then, at the slightest increment above that weight, the form broke down and the amount of discomfort in the joints went up dramatically.  I could give myself the illusion of progress, by accepting sloppier form or changing exercises, but that inevitably led to an injury or hitting the same dead end. 

Unfortunately, I had a bit of a contradiction in play, in that I still liked to train hard.   With weights, this seemed to lead to more joint aches, especially in the shoulders.  A few years back, this and other musculoskeletal issues had led me to the biomechanics textbooks, eventually resulting in the Moment Arm Exercise manual and the series of You Tube videos.  And, while I did refine the weight training exercises and techniques that I used on myself and clients based on that work, I still didn’t completely eliminate the nagging aches. 

So, in mathematical terms:

Frustrating approach to training + more refined biomechanics + willful ignorance of alternatives= nagging aches.  Not exactly the result I was looking for.

Hedge-clipping

So one day I’m being the nice older brother and helping my sister with some hedge trimming (Hi Liz!).  I use a portable, electric trimmer, with alternating saw blades, which must weigh about 5 pounds.  I use it for about three or four hours in the morning, break for lunch, then fall asleep.  For the entire afternoon.  I was completely exhausted, my upper body quivering, completely spent, and wondering if I stumbled onto a new, debilitating disease.   

Apparently not, but a 5-pound tool should not have taken this much out of me.  Then it dawned on me: it was the vibration.  As the blades alternated to cut, the unit shook.  In order to control the trimmer, you had to steady yourself against the vibration of the unit.  And rather than turn it on and off,  I left it running the whole time; so not only did I have the steady the unit as it cut, I had to control it just holding it between cuts.

Where were those vibration studies again?

Excerpts from selected studies

As usual with studies: the more you read, the less certain the results.

Effects of Vibration Training on Muscle Strength: A Meta-Analysis.  Pedro J. Marin and Matthew R. Rhea.  Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 4: 548-556, 2010.

“Vibration training or whole body vibration (WBV) constitutes a mechanical stimulus that enters the human body via hands when gripping a vibration dumbbell or bar, pulley system, via feet when standing on vibration platform, or applied directly to the muscle belly or the tendon of muscle by a vibration unit…The use of platforms represents the most common form of vibration exercise…Most treatment sessions consisted of short bouts (30-90 seconds) with ~60-second rest between sets…

“Different mechanisms have been suggested in the literature how vibration stimuli can have effect on the neuromuscular system such as stimulation of Ia afferents via spindle…little basic scientific research has examined vibration exercise effects on the function of different physiological properties…Of additionally paramount importance, contraindications have been reported, including erythema, itching of the legs, edema, and shin pain…

“…vibration exercise was shown to compare with traditional resistance training in terms of overall strength adaptations…this tool should be viewed as a potential mode of training in appropriate exercise settings.”

Vibration Training: Could It Enhance the Strength, Power, or Speed of Athletes?  Ian M. Wilcock, Chris Whatman, Nigel Harris, and Justin WL Keogh.  J Strength Cond Res 23: 593-603, 2009.

“It is well known that an acute effect of mechanical vibration on muscles is that it can elicit a muscular reflex called the tonic vibration reflex…in theory, vibration causes the afferent neurons from the muscle spindles to become more sensitive to muscle stretch, which increases the activation of alpha motor neurons…may lead to increased motor unit recruitment, increased firing frequency, and/or improved synchronization, allowing a quicker and more forceful muscular contraction when the muscle is rapidly stretched…

“There has been considerable research into the effects of long-term exposure to vibration in the workplace from an occupational health and safety perspective.  Long-term exposure has been shown to be detrimental, with the effects of WBV and handheld vibration causing vascular, peripheral, and central neurological, bone, joint, and muscle disorders…it seems that WBV training can be undertaken safely, although it is prudent to note the detrimental effects reported in the workplace because overexposure may see athletes reporting similar problems in the future…may need to be monitored for possible adverse effects of vibration training when their overall training volume and/or intensity is high…

“Overall, there does not seem to be any detrimental effect on performance with the controlled use of vibration training in athletes.  There is some evidence that chronic vibration training by athletes may provide small benefit to maximal strength and power…The practicality of vibration training also should be taken into account in terms of time, cost, and reduction of other training for what we have observed to be a small benefit.”

Acute Enhancement of Lower-extremity Dynamic Strength and Flexibility with Whole- Body Vibration.  Patrick L. Jacobs and Patricia Burns.  J Strength Cond Res 23, 51-61, 2009.

“Whole-body vibration (WBV)…is characterized by oscillating motions delivered to the entire body that are hypothesized to elicit muscular activity via activation of stretch reflexes…

“…the enhancement of power by WBV may have been induced by increased synchronization of the motor units, improved coordination of the synergist muscles, and/or antagonist inhibition…

“Whole-body vibration seems to serve as a simple, effective, and time-efficient method of preparatory activity as compared with the warm-up strategies commonly recommended by leading fitness organizations…WBV has shown…immediate benefits in muscular performance, suggesting that this approach could effectively prepare an athlete from a resting state to a competitive state of readiness for either athletic training or competition.”

The Effect of Acute Applications of Whole-Body Vibration of the iTonic Platform on Subsequent Lower-Body Power Output During the Back Squat.  Matthew R. Rhea and Joseph G. Kenn.  J Strength Cond Res 23, 58-61, 2009.

“Complex training…the performance of a resistance exercise followed quickly by a plyometric exercise has been concluded to be as effective, if not more so, than strength and plyometric training done separately for the development of power…One issue that may arise in the conventional use…is muscular fatigue…To take full advantage of any benefit, muscular fatigue would need to be avoided…The use of WBV may be useful in elevating neurological performance without resulting in significant amounts of muscular fatigue…it seems that WBV has a significant effect on the neuromuscular system, such that the rate of force development is immediately enhanced…the vibration stimulus seems to influence the nervous system, increasing muscle tissue activation and synchronization.”

Effects of Mechanical Vibration Applied in the Opposite Direction of Muscle Shortening on Maximal Isometric Strength.  Hosanna R Silva, Bruno P Couto, and Lexzek A Szmuchrowski.  J Strength Cond Res 22, 1031-1036, 2008.

“Among the adaptive responses of the muscle, the neural responses play an important role in the strength gains resulting (from strength training)…Training may cause a decrease in impulses that inhibit the neuromuscular system, permitting improvements in muscle strength…Most studies about human responses to mechanical vibrations discuss whole-body vibrations and vibrations applied perpendicularly to the tendon or muscle…

“Considering…that in eccentric activities, reflex mechanisms influence the production of strength, we hypothesized that vibration exposure in the opposite direction of muscle shortening may produce short eccentric effects that could add up to maximal voluntary contraction (MVC), increasing muscle strength by improvement of neural adaptation…one group performed conventional isometric strength training and another group isometric strength training with the addition of mechanical vibrations applied in the opposite direction of muscle shortening…

“Despite the fact that we observed a significant increase in strength, in absolute terms, in both groups, group 2 (training plus mechanical vibrations) reached a significantly greater index of maximal isometric strength increase…which allows us to conclude that training with vibrations added resulted in higher neural adaptation than conventional isometric training…the improvement of strength obtained after training with vibrations was probably caused by optimization of involuntary mechanisms of muscle action through sudden and consecutive periods of eccentric action.”

Summarizing the Studies

• Too much vibration (industrial and occupational levels) can cause problems.
• Limited amounts of vibration, 30-90 seconds in the exercise context, might cause problems, but seems to be generally safe. 
• Vibration seems to offer at least similar benefits to conventional training, and maybe slightly better.
• The benefits that come from vibration training are on the “neuro-“ side of “neuromuscular”.
• The repeated, rapid switching between eccentric and concentric contraction, as the muscle tries to dampen the vibration, seems to be the unique aspect of this kind of training.

For me, this wasn’t convincing enough to buy a several thousand dollar platform; but I was willing to take the general ideas and apply them to far less expensive tools like the Bodyblade ®, Bosu ®, and ball.

How I Applied the Information

Getting back to me, remember, my interest has been in more joint-friendly ways to train hard.  One of the benefits of vibration training not mentioned above is increased circulation to the joint.  As the vibration runs along the bone to the joints, the deep muscles that stabilize that joint contract to dampen the vibration and hold the joint together.  I wrote earlier that they contract “and relax”; actually, no.  They contract eccentrically, then concentrically, as opposed to contracting statically.  Conceptually, just like a biceps pumps as you raise and lower a curl, the circulation would increase in the deep muscles.  My thought was, do a vibration-type exercise (VTE) to increase the circulation to the joints, prior to the weight training exercise.  Another thought was since deep muscles have different functions based on limb position, more than one exercise was necessary.

Learning curves being what they are, I started with doing the vibration-types separate from the weight routine.  Once I got the hang of the moves, I decided to try mimicking the weight training exercise, based on the idea that the best warm-up is a specific warm-up.   Using some of the ideas from the studies, I held back a bit on the pre-exercise, before going into the work set.  I was surprised to see how easy the work set became, but the studies do suggest why.  I found double benefit: the joint aches seemed to go away from the pre-exercise, and I was able to add weight to the work set.

This, however, came back to haunt me, as I started to add so much weight, my joints started to hurt again!  So, another adjustment:  hold back on the work set, then add another set with the VTE for the maximum muscle effort.

Why should this work?  Well, the discomfort during the work set with weights wasn’t in the first few reps; it was near the end, approaching “failure”.  “Failing” with the weight meant stalling, so the muscle effort was  applied against the joint, not to moving the weight; and usually accompanied by other muscles trying to substitute for the exhausted prime mover.  By putting the weight down, and resuming the same movement with the ‘blade, the joint stress was relieved, and since the weight of the ‘blade is negligible, the substitution stopped.  And since the ‘blade matches the effort of the prime mover (by flexing more or less based on your effort), it has the same effect as a partner-assist or weight reduction.  To use a dated term, it becomes “isokinetic”: it moves at a set speed and matches your effort.  Unlike isokinetic machines, however, there is no impact with the ‘blade.

And In Conclusion

I can’t honestly claim that this training has dramatically enhanced my physique or made me a better athlete.  I suspect diet and practice would be better options.

I can say, however, that this type of training allows me train as regularly and as hard as I want, with a lot less joint stress.  I get the sensation of high effort, which registers as “a good workout” for the superficial muscles.  I protect the joints by theoretically increasing circulation to the joint and minimizing the mechanical disadvantage.  And if there is a benefit to the “neuro-“ side, in terms of coordination, quickness, or reflexes, more better for me.

Exercise is only so useful if being obsessed with “progression” leads to injury or makes you dread training. 

For me, “progress” in terms of amount of weight lifted is an obsolete standard.  As we age, “normal” is to decline; so, if the weights I handle stay the same, I’m ahead of normal.  The only way to maintain is to train regularly, and the way to train regularly is to avoid injury. 

 In the early stages of training, weight and reps are perfectly valid standards.  But once you are strong enough and big enough, you have to weigh the possible marginal benefits of increasing weight and reps vs. the additional discomfort and strain.  For me, I find it a lot more useful to “progress” in terms of control of muscular actions, and the Bodyblade®, Bosu®, and ball are ways of addressing this.

Get the new Guide

Once again, the guide is now available from Bill.  Anyone interested in buying a copy of "Optimal Exercise Guide: The Bodyblade Plus":  can get it, Paypal $20 US, $27 outside the US, including Priority Mail, to optimalexercise@comcast.net.)

Kurt Harris (PaNu) interview

Kurt Harris is a legend.  PaNu is an awesome resource.  The more I read and learn the closer I get to stuff that Kurt was writing in the first place - the key is always to minimise or eliminate the 3 neolithic agents:

• wheat
• excess frutose 
• excess linoleic acid.

Anyway, Jimmy Moore has put up a new interview with Kurt.  Do yourself a favour - download it and listen to it!

Bill DeSimone video.....

Anthony (Dream) Johnson introduces Bill DeSimone to talk about the Leg Press and Squat......we are not built to barbell squat......  UPDATE - 13 January - Check out Bill's new manual, with an extract here



You will remember that I did an interview with Bill here, and I have something special coming from him shortly......

A fat gut shrivels your brain!

Great headline on this New Scientist piece!

A fat tummy shrivels your brain

Obesity is linked to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, which is known to be associated with cognitive impairment. So Antonio Convit at the New York University School of Medicine wanted to see what impact obesity had on the physical structure of the brain. He used magnetic resonance imaging to compare the brains of 44 obese individuals with those of 19 lean people of similar age and background.

He found that obese individuals had more water in the amygdala - a part of the brain involved in eating behaviour. He also saw smaller orbitofrontal cortices in obese individuals, important for impulse control and also involved in feeding behaviour (Brain Research, in press). "It could mean that there are less neurons, or that those neurons are shrunken," says Convit.

Eric Stice at Oregon Research Institute, Eugene, thinks that the findings strengthen the "slippery slope" theory of obesity. "If you overeat, it appears to result in neural changes that increase the risk for future overeating," he says. Obesity is associated with a constant, low-level inflammation, which Convit thinks explains the change in brain size.

Sleep or rather what happens when you don't get it......

Thought this was an interesting abstract:

Intermittent-Sprint Performance and Muscle Glycogen Following 30 H Sleep Deprivation.


Looks like missing a night's sleep:

• reduced muscle glycogen levels
• the force that could be applied through the quads
• the activation of the quads
• worsened sprint performance
• worsened mood

CONCLUSION: Sleep loss and associated reductions in muscle glycogen and perceptual stress reduced sprint performance and slowed pacing strategies during intermittent-sprint exercise for male team-sport athletes.

Not a surprise I suppose, but interesting.  Losing a night's sleep wrecks you!

A goodie bag?

Earlier today I participated in a 5Km fun run in Edinburgh - the Great Winter Run.  About 1300 were there for a snowy run around  Holyrood Park.

I don't run very often and in preparation for this just did 2 interval sessions over the past 2 weeks and while I did not post a great time (I was 31 minutes) I got around comfortably with no problems on a snowy and hilly course.

But that is not the point of this post....At the end of the race - as it usual at these events - we were given a goody bag.  The contents are below.  I laid them out on the floor when I got home.

• A medal - thanks
• A space blanket - handy.  Will go in my hillwalking kit
• A nice cotton long sleeved T shirt - fine it is good and I will wear it
• Fajita seasoning - ??? eh? WT Heck?
• Andrex toilet roll - why?
• Powerade - yuck.  I will pour it down the toilet and perhaps use the empty bottle
• Powerbar - yuck...throw away or maybe emergency rations in the bottom of my rucksack...but I'd have to be desperate
• Jointace gel - no idea what this is
• Scholl Party Feet Blister Pack - handy for the first aid kit
• Nature Valley Granola bar....again I will not eat this by choice 
• Eat Natural bar... again I will not eat this by choice
• A liquid washing detergent capsule - again........ why?

A wierd mix.  The food and drink was all sugary crap.  Useful things - blister packs, space blanket......Then there was random stuff:  toilet roll, washing detergent, fajita seasoning.

Weird

Get Hillfit

 It is really only relevant to UK readers, but I've had an article published in a hillwalking / backpacking magazine  - TGO - this month.  The article is called "Hillfit" and I have tried to synthesise some of the things I have been learning over the years and featuring in this blog - if you were to read the article you would spot the influences!  Frank Forencich, Doug McGuff, Erwan Le Corre and others.

An idea I was trying ot get across was of walking being a skill that we can develop and get better at.  We need to practice the skills of being a biped, key to which is balance on one leg.....because most walking is tie on one leg.  So I recommend simple balance work.

Then there is the HIT influence - you need to develop strength too.  So I recommend what are essentially superslow air squats (with more space in th article  I'd have had a pushup and a back bridge or body row in there too).   Then I also - for metabolic conditioning - propose a sprint session.

It is all very journalistic in style and doesn't dig too deep but it was fun to write and got me thinking!
 It was also a real discipline trying to write to an 800 word limit and necessarily I feel like I ended up skimming over things, so the whole piece is  a bit of a compromise. Still, I am really happy and excited to have got published like this and hope that I'll be able to write more for them in future. 

TGO has had a long term interest in lightweight backpacking and more unconventional gear so I tried to tap into that with a similarly minimalist / lightweight approach to training.....how to get the maximum return for minimum investment.   It boils down to some sprints, some  strength training and some basic  balance work.


It was funny how this opportunity came about.  I followed TGO via Twitter.  The editor must have checked me out and looked at my blogs and aksed me to write something.

The wonders of the interwebs!

Here is a photo that didn't make it into the mag - me putting a sock on while standing on one leg -  a basic balance training technique!   Or an opportunity to fall on your arse each morning.

Pushups as a skill......

Gus Diamantopoulos has a fascinating post at Renaissance Exercise.   He touches on a lot of things but manly at the end he is talking about how you there is a great skill element even in basic bodyweight exercises: the pushup, squat and chin.  As such high skill moves, the need for skill can often get in the way of the exercise and the "inroad" of the muscles - i.e., form breaks down befor the muscles reach failure.

When you ask an instructor to show you how to push-up or squat, you’re asking him to show you how to perform upper level martial arts, or how to play music on a new  instrument, or how to ride a motorcycle. These are not activities that one can learn quickly.

They require study, theory, practice, and ongoing, repeated practice. This will be sobering and perhaps even disheartening to some but to suggest otherwise is not only overly optimistic, it’s downright irresponsible.

Having said this, I do believe that the burden of such skills is not insurmountable, especially for the truly motivated and disciplined subject.

 My suggestion for anyone who wishes to apply our most general principles to basic and conventional movements is to practice a small number of basic exercises well and often.  Research proper performance of these basics in books and online.  Make every effort to execute your movements with focused precision and intent.  Record your performances using video and watch for every possible discrepancy and continue to practice. Practice in the early stages should trump ambitions for intensity (i.e., muscular failure and deep inroad).

Only when you’ve practiced sufficiently and over-learned these activities can a program of free squats, push-ups and chin-ups be productive and effective. 

It is worth reading through and ties in to some of my recent thought in recent posts, where I have been musing on the development of strength and the separate development of skill.  The video from Doug here and the  work of Erwan Le Corre  have also contributed. 



(Obviosuly you should go slower than this....and the guys neck should not be extended like that....)

Sitting can kill?

A really interesting article in the Scientific American:

Can sitting too much kill you?

What is the take-home message?

There is a rapidly accumulating body of evidence which suggests that prolonged sitting is very bad for our health, even for lean and otherwise physically active individuals. The good news? Animal research suggests that simply walking at a leisurely pace may be enough to rapidly undo the metabolic damage associated with prolonged sitting, a finding which is supported by epidemiological work in humans. So, while there are a lot of questions that remain unanswered (e.g. Is there a “safe” amount of daily sedentary time?), the evidence seems clear that we should strive to limit the amount of time we spend sitting. And when we do have to sit for extended periods of time (which, let’s face it, is pretty much every single day for many of us) we should take short breaks whenever possible.

Finally, if you take only one thing from this post, let it be this—sitting too much is not the same as exercising too little.

Doug McGuff - skill.....strength and more

Anthony (Dream) Johnson has posted this excellent video from Doug (I interviewed him here)


He makes some interesting points which relate to the issue I mentioned yesterday  -   skills vs strength.  Skill based movements are inappropriate for developing strength.    For strength you need effort not technique.  However, there is still value in developing appropriate skills....which gets me back to MovNat.....and developing useful survival skills - running, climbing, fighting etc  Doug explains that fighting, self defence is a skill set.....best trained fresh to best train the skills.   Which interestingly is the opposite of the Krav classes where we get beasted first and then train the skills!

The talks from Mark Sisson and Drew Baye are also worth watching.....

The Psychological and Physiological Effects of Good Posture

Rannoch pointed to this article over on Facebook - How You Can Become More Powerful by Literally Standing Tall

More impressively, expansive postures also altered the participants’ hormone levels. Using salivary samples, Carney and colleagues found that expansive postures led individuals to experience elevated testosterone (T) and decreased cortisol (C). This neuroendocrine profile of High T and Low C has been consistently linked to such outcomes as disease resistance and leadership abilities. Although past research has found that occupying a powerful role leads to expansive postures, Carney et al.’s paper is the first to investigate the reciprocal relationship – the causal effect of posture on the mental experience of power.

 We talk a lot about hormones and the importance of minimising chronically high cortisol.  The implication of this is that you can consciously have an impact on limiting this hormone simply by adopting a more confident posture.   Make yourself bigger, more cocky looking.....and you will be even on an hormonal level.


Interesting stuff - expansive, confident posture has impacts on your behaviour and your hormonal state.    This is body/mind stuff again and also ties in to the piece on Posture and Attractiveness that I highlighted last month. 

Art DeVany on the development of our metabolism

I can't embed this one, but there is a great video of Art speaking in Zurich recently (at ZurichMinds)


Arthur de Vany: "Evolutionary Fitness"

There are some nice quotes:

You are not what you eat.....you are what your metabolism does with what you eat. 

 Every cell has only its own agenda to fulfill 

Food and action are signals to your DNA

Fight for your life

Erwan Le Corre had a quote on Twitter the other day:

"Run for your life". Could be jump, crawl, climb, swim, fight etc,... for your life. Moving naturally will make you feel strongly ALIVE.

That was an idea that he brought up in the clinic in Edinburgh  last month - that there are certain skills you need to develop, not for any reason other than for survival.  You may have to run for your life, jump for your life or crawl for your life.

You might also need to fight for your life.   Self defence / combatives are important skills in movnat which a lot of the people involved in the movement seem to forget.  In any case it is simple fun.

 
So I was back to Krav Maga tonight.  I've not been training much there for a while.  Last year was busy with work and various family problems.  This year though I want to be more regular in my attendance.

I could tell that I had been missing for a while.  In the warm up I had my ass kicked at a ladder of plyometric pushups....by a very fit girl - respect to Louise.   Then I was very rusty at just about everything.

It is skill development.  Learning techniques...punches, kicks, blocks.  It takes time, drills, repetition.  It is one of the things that has come up on this blog before - strength development is one thing, but you need to practice the skills to apply that strength.  They are different things:  strength and the application of it.

Sleep your way to the top

Thanks to Fitbomb for posting this

Quotes from Erwan Le Corre

Erwan Le Corre (interview here and review of clinic here) has been putting some great quotes up via twitter:

"Paleo"-fitness sounds backward to me. All my ancestors are gone. What matters is my life, here and now. I am a human of today's world.

"Run for your life". Could be jump, crawl, climb, swim, fight etc,... for your life. Moving naturally will make you feel strongly ALIVE.

On the subject of MovNat etc, Naeem, in a testimonial from one of his clients, has some excellent thoughts on movement :  Testimonial - Iron Man Cédric Hénaux

Don't exercise too much

There has been a theme in a few things I've been reading and listening too recently about the dangers of over-exercising.  It is an issue that comes up fairly regularly in Robb Wolf's podcasts where they warn of the dangers of overtraining, especially on "Crossfit" style routines where there are no planned back off weeks or periodisation.

Anyway, crashed out yesterday reading the Guardian magazine in one of those New Year sort your life out articles, these paragraphs caught my eye:

Exercise only in moderation

The two key terms for energy researchers in 2010 have been BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) and VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor): BDNF stimulates the formation of new connections between brain cells; and VEGF produces new blood vessel-lining cells, potentially keeping the arteries free of flaws that are the potential sites of clots, and therefore preventing heart attacks and strokes.

Regular exercise increases levels of both, so it should be good for you – but there's a snag: too much exercise lowers BDNF levels. Does that have a damaging effect on brain cells? We don't yet know, but anecdotal evidence of the breakdown in health of athletes and enthusiasts who train to near-exhaustion every day tends to suggest that it does.

The main message, then, is to give your body time to recover after exercise. The current advice is to exercise to breathlessness (it doesn't matter what you do – anything you continue to enjoy) for around 30 minutes, and avoid exercising more than three or four times a week.

Do something....but not too much.

Another jump.....

In the comments to yesterday's post, someone pointed to a video of them doing another big leap:

big jumps.....

I went through a phase of posting videos on this blog of impressive jumps.....here is another one I came across today while poking around

The Perfect Health Diet

One blog I am reading a lot of at the moment is Paul's Perfect Health Diet.  I have bought his book and it is excellent, really explaining some of the science behind food in a very accessible way.

It has been steering me more towards a different approach to eating, not paleo as such but simply avoiding toxic foods:  grains and beans mainly, but also vegetable oils and excess fructose.

There is a lot of good discussion on the blog too including around autophagy which I've mentioned here before.