Conditioning Research

I've often pointed to stuff in the past about the benefits of being barefoot (although I never write as well as mc on this or any topic) Here is an extract of a good piece from the co-author of the Paleo Diet for Athlete's, Joe Friel : I wish it was so easy as to say that we should all just run barefoot. Had we grown up like Kenyan kids - barefoot and running to school every day - we wouldn't need heavy-duty shoes at all. Our feet and legs would be strong and our technique would be excellent. Unfortunately, that simply isn't the case. We grow up wearing shoes as soon as the parents can dress the baby. I'm afraid the feet of most of us are not well-conditioned. But we can do something about that. I think it might help if you got out of your shoes during the day whenever you can. I'm not talking about running shoes here, but rather your 'street' shoes. Taking them off around the house is a minimal but first step in strengthening your feet. Athletes who d...

An 8 year old!? There are two feelings competing as I watch this: Wow - that kid is fit...I could not do that Is this some kind of abuse? Do 8 year olds really want to do this? This isn't "play"..... In the natural world, would anyone chose to do this? Is there any activity in the life of a hunter gatherer that would approximate to 6 minutes of burpees?

Excellent piece here by Nassim Taleb - Why I do all this Walking, or How Systems become Fragile This is another application of the barbell strategy: plenty of idleness, some high intensity. The data shows that long, very long walks combined with high intensity exercise outperforms just running. After my Aha! flash, under guidance from Art de Vany, I embarked on an Extremistan barbell lifestyle: long, very long, slow meditative (or conversational) walks in a stimulating urban setting, but with occasional (and random) very short sprints, making myself angry imagining I were chasing the bankster Robert Rubin with a big stick trying to catch him to bring him to human justice. I went to the weight lifting rooms in a random way for a completely stochastic workout --typically in a hotel when I was on the road. Like the Grey Swan event, these were very, very rare, but highly consequential weight lifting periods, after a day of semi- starvation, leaving me completely exhausted, then I would b...

one of the things I've written about a fair bit over the years on this blog is the importance of sleep ....yet so often is is this blog that keeps me awake too late! Anyway, some good thoughts and principles are here: Sleeping And Health

This is fantastic.....hat tip to Richard Low carb diets used to be prescribed by doctors! I love the way there were no qualms then about calling people fat

h/t OldHolborn

Ok, again I know it is in rats, but it is interesting. (The full text is available here ) The idea is that reducing the carbohydrate:protein ratio reduces the development of breast tumors. The hypotheseis is that this is due to reduced post-meal insulin release potentially reducing the "proliferative" environment needed for breast tumors to progress. I've had a few this up in the past - for example here - about the potential benefits of low carb / ketogenic diets when it comes to preventing or treating caner. A high protein moderate carbohydrate diet fed at discrete meals reduces early progression of N-methyl-N-nitrosourea-induced breast tumorigenesis in rats Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer in American women. Dietary factors are thought to have a strong influence on breast cancer incidence. This study utilized a meal-feeding protocol with female Sprague-Dawley rats to evaluate effects of two ratios of carbohydrate:protein on promotion and early progression...