Conditioning Research

Here is a new video from Erwan of MovNat (I interviewed Erwan earlier this year) In the Youtube notes Erwan says this: I feel it is important to remind that even though the practice of MovNat should include free, exploratory sessions in nature consisting in purely random and adaptive natural movement and spontaneous action, MovNat is above all a training method which involves principles, techniques and programming. The Natural Movement Coaching System that is MovNat is fully scalable and enables practitioners to make faster, broader and safer progress in the practice of natural movement, regardless of experience. To optimize practice and for coaching efficiency reasons, i.e offering a broad range of training variety in a limited space and shortening the learning curve while ensuring full scalability and injury-prevention, it is essential to practice in a custom-built facility first. It is especially true for beginners, people that are out of shape, that risk to injure themselves or ...

We've mentioned Crossfit Endurance before . They use short intervals to train athletes for long distance endurance efforts. Interesting but controversial . Some guys here in Scotland are about to test the Crossfit endurance approach. On the 17th and 18th of October 2009 we’ll be conducting a wee experiment in human-powered distance covering. The West Highland Way, at just under 100 miles, is the ideal venue. Two road cyclists, two mountain bikers and two runners will leave Fort William on Saturday morning. The roadies will follow the A82 (including the detour to Kinlochleven, no slacking here) and the others will be sticking to the WHW route. The mtb and running records are around half an hour apart, so although the roadies will be sitting waiting with their feet up by the fire at the Real Food Café at the half way point, the rest is an unknown. While we’re not expecting to break any records, it’s still very much a test. The runners have trained using Crossfit. High intensity wei...

I'm still thinking about the importance of concentrating on the basics . It is so easy to get diverted onto superfluous stuff that doesn't really matter and only distracts you from the basics of movement and consistency. These thoughts were encouraged by a superb post that I read this morning from Seattle Combatives - Learning From Animals Read the whole thing, but this is what struck me: WHAT IS IT THAT WE CAN LEARN AND UTILIZE FROM THE IN WHICH ANIMALS FIGHT? Consider the following: 1. Animals have only a very limited number of “natural weapons”, and only a very simple “technique” for utilizing them. One or two natural “built in” weapons is it. And one or two certainly do seem to be quite adequate, when you observe the efficiency with which they use them! Would you rather face a black belt in some martial art who had learned many hundreds or thousands of techniques, or a charging tiger who had “only” two claws and one mouth? The leopard is a ferocious and formidable jungle c...

Click to enlarge I'd recommend this to anyone who is within easy traveling distance of Edinburgh. Marcus and Lee are great instructors.

Some of Rannoch 's comments on recent posts have got me thinking. He is right. So much of what you read is written as if the average trainee is an elite athlete training for the national championships. In general that is not true. Most of us are just average guys wanting to keep fit and healthy. We want to be better than average but we also are not elite. We do not need the routines of the champions. We need to move more, to do the basics and get better at basic movements. Here are the comments, which are worth a post of their own: On Craig Ballantyne Whilst CB's sales pitch is relentless, here offers simple effective methods for average people. And this is the key. You talk about training enrgy systems and training geared towards specific activities. well I am afraid that applies to a very small percentage of folks out there. In fact ,if I were to identify one thing that stops people making progress it is trying to adhere to routines and protocols that are beyond the aver...

If you have followed this blog for a while you'll have seen the discussions of "functional training". The High Intensity Training position more or less is that there is no such thing. Everything is specific. You can develop strength and fitness, but the sports specific skills must be developed separately by practising those skills - i.e. bench presses will make you stronger but to be a better puncher you must punch well. Luke went through all this in the interview here . Vern Gambetta had a good piece on his blog today on this area: General or Specific Jay Johnson asked me to comment on balancing specificity and generality in training. Jay is a middle distance and distance coach, but I will broaden this to include all events and all sports. Obviously the highest degree of specificity of training and the most direct transfer occurs when you do the activity itself. Frankly this is where training has advanced significantly over the last sixty years. We realized that stayin...

...that is what I make of this study. Fat is not great.....but fat fit and active helps because the type of fat and its location is changed. Fat distribution in men of different waist girth, fitness level and exercise habit Background : The risk of chronic disease is lower in obese men who are fit and active than obese men who are unfit and inactive. Methods /Objectives: Magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy were used to assess total and regional adipose tissue in 13 men who were slim, fit and active (the slim-fit), in 12 men who were slim, unfit and inactive (the slim-unfit), in 13 men who were fat, fit and active (the fat-fit) and in 12 men who were fat, unfit and inactive (the fat-unfit), in order to investigate the hypothesis that visceral fat and liver fat are lower in the fat-fit than the fat-unfit. Waist girth was used to distinguish slim men (90 cm) and fat men (100 cm). Maximal oxygen consumption was used to identify fit men (above average for age) and unfit men (avera...