82 year old powerlifter

Something to aim for......



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

Noakes on Fatigue - it is all in the brain....

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 fatigue and athletic performance.

Worth reading.

Being Healthy is a Revolutionary Act

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.

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.

Exercise in the outdoors

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 positive short and long-term health outcomes. This multistudy analysis assessed the best regime of dose(s) of acute exposure to green exercise required to improve self-esteem and mood (indicators of mental health). The research used meta-analysis methodology to analyze 10 UK studies involving 1252 participants. Outcomes were identified through a priori subgroup analyses, and dose−responses were assessed for exercise intensity and exposure duration. Other subgroup analyses included gender, age group, starting health status, and type of habitat. The overall effect size for improved self-esteem was d = 0.46 (CI 0.34−0.59, p < 0.00001) and for mood d = 0.54 (CI 0.38−0.69, p < 0.00001). Dose responses for both intensity and duration showed large benefits from short engagements in green exercise, and then diminishing but still positive returns. Every green environment improved both self-esteem and mood; the presence of water generated greater effects. Both men and women had similar improvements in self-esteem after green exercise, though men showed a difference for mood. Age groups: for self-esteem, the greatest change was in the youngest, with diminishing effects with age; for mood, the least change was in the young and old. The mentally ill had one of the greatest self-esteem improvements. This study confirms that the environment provides an important health service.

The Goal

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 physical elements. I know that there are movement patterns in me that need work and things like the bridge and the TGU are helping to get the muscles firing in the right sequence.
• Health - this is related to the other two. I think 90% of your health comes from diet. A crap diet can't be salvaged by a perfect exercise routine. However there are still health benefits from exercise. McGuff/Little explain in their book.
• Improved performance. This is the one that leads us astray I think. Improved performance at what? We tend to take approaches from elite level athletics and apply it to amateur fitness enthusiasts. What do you really need in order to perform better at whatever you do? Everyday life - the normal lifting, carrying, sprinting for the bus? Hobbies? recreational sport - martial arts, five a side, hillwalking? I think ultimately it is probably a lot simpler than we try to make it.
  

It was easier when I was 17 and wanted to be a competetive bodybuilder! I realised eventually that without drugs I was going nowhere, but the goal then was clear - put on muscle. Now things are less defined. It is easy to get distracted. We are overloaded with information becasue of the internet so we do not stay committed to a simple goal. Our attention, our focus shifts. So we never hit any goal. What is the goal anyway? Health seems too broad.

So where does it take me? A simple resistance training routine, some prehab moves and some fun....I don't know.


I want to be healthy and to be able to perform well at things that I enjoy so that they are more fun. That means hillwalking and Krav Maga.

Motivation

hat tip to Crossfit Fife

Training Montage

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.