Conditioning Research

Something to aim for...... Great squats!  Thanks to Michael Allen Smith for posting this on Facebook.

A few weeks ago I pointed to the ideas of Samuele Marcora and his psycholbiological model of fatigue.  I also recently had an articule published in a UK hillwalking magazine which looked at his ideas. I just noticed an review paper - the whole pdf is available - by the prominent Exercise Scientist Tim Noakes around these ideas: Fatigue is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates the Exercise Behavior to Ensure the Protection of Whole Body Homeostasis The ideas are somewhat different from those of Marcora, who sees motivation as much more important, but the key is still the brain, not the muscles or cardiovascular system: The model predicts that attempts to understand fatigue and to explain superior human athletic performance purely on the basis of the body's known physiological and metabolic responses to exercise must fail since subconscious and conscious mental decisions made by winners and losers, in both training and competition, are the ultimate determinants of both f...

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.

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.

I had a post on this a little while ago ( Get your greens ). Interesting to see another similar study reported in the BBC . It all makes a lot of sense. This is what we are built for - movement in a real outdoor, stimulating environment makes you happier. There is a good press release here : “You get a very substantial benefit from the first five minutes. We should be encouraging people in busy and stressed environments to get outside regularly, even for short bits of time,” says Pretty. After that, increased green exercise continues to add benefit, but with decreasing returns. However, a full day of activity causes another spike in the level of benefit. Both healthy people and those with mental health disorders benefited, with the mentally ill showing the strongest improvement in self-esteem. What is the Best Dose of Nature and Green Exercise for Improving Mental Health? A Multi-Study Analysis Green exercise is activity in the presence of nature. Evidence shows it leads to positiv...

I saw this video linked to the other day via a friend on facebook. It is Dan John - fantastic guy by the way....I'm reading through his book Never Let Go at the moment - and he kicks off the little extract with a statement: The Goal is to keep The Goal as The Goal. That resonates well with me on a number of levels. Why am I training in the first place ? What am I doing this for? To be honest, I am not training to be an elite athlete. I will never play football for Everton, never make the Olympics in anything. My goal(s) - I think - needs to be defined a bit better I want to avoid injury : the old Do No Harm line keeps coming back to me. I am getting tired of hurting myself when training. Sometimes even the the standard DOMS is getting tiresome when I want to performa well at work. So whatever I do I want to feel better not worse as a result Prehab - I'm trying to keep my back right. I think there are some psychological roots to most pain, but there are also physi...

hat tip to Crossfit Fife

From Joe DeFranco ..... If you like this stuff, make sure you check out his DVD STRONG . It is an inspiring and motivating film....and a well made documentary.