Conditioning Research

Time for another interview. Paleo has become fashionable. It is a movement now with thousands of people on the band wagon. That is not wholly a bad thing, and the many of the popularisers have done a good job. Despite the recent media interest, there were a few souls who discovered this way of thinking years ago. Art DeVany is well known and Tamir Katz ( interviewed here ) was also an “early adopter”, but there were others. I think I initially came across all this stuff about 5 or 6 years ago and one of the first resources that I studied was called EvFit , a fascinating website of thoughts, analysis, references and ideas put together by Keith Thomas in Australia. I’ve returned to Kei th’s writings repeatedly and I thought that it would be useful to ask him a few questions and dig a little deeper into his approach - not just to eating and training but to the influences that have shaped his thought. Keith, thanks for agreeing to do this interview. As I said, I’ve been readin...

This is one where there are some assumptions at play! The paradigm is that fatty food is bad and exercise is good. Within that paradigm rising obesity in the face of a low fat diet must mean that exercise has been reduced. There is of course an alternative paradigm - maybe one of the factors at play (and there will be a number of factors) is diet. Maybe less fat - replaced by carbs - is the problem Anyway - here is the BBC story Despite fewer visits to gyms and a love of high-fat foods , people in the 1960s were slimmer simply because they were more active, the government says. Rates of obesity in English adults have risen from 1-2% in the 1960s to around 26% today, figures show. . ......high fat foods like condensed milk and cooked breakfast were popular .......... Of course there is a role for activity and movement is vital.....but see how fatty food is seen as a problem, not a reason for the lower levels of obesity

Sorry that I have not posted much this week - work has been busy and I have a lot to do this weekend too. There are some posts coming, including an interview that I've been working on for a while and which will address some really interesting issues around evolutionary fitness / paleo diet.

These type of videos crack me up. ( apologies for some strong language in here ) Anyway the point - from Mark Young - is that heavy squatting can cause problems to the back. It reminded me of the point Matt made a while ago : I see this differential in my toddler as well. Toddlers squat constantly, but it is all "mobility" work. The squats are done for the purposes of movement, not for the purposes of lifting a weight. If a toddler wants to lift a weight, they shift into a deadlift position. It's probably been about a year since I've done weighted squats. At this point, I have no desire to go back to them. I am content training the deadlift as the main lift. I know squats have been utilized in weight programs for decades, but that doesn't mean that they are necessarily 100% healthy. Mike Boyle raised some controversial points about squats last year :

I think I have mentioned her book before.

at least it does in adolescent boys: Androgen Responses to Sprint Exercise in Young Men The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a 6-month sprint training program on plasma androgens and catecholamine (CA) concentrations in response to a 6 s sprint in adolescent boys [training group (TG), n=6; control group (CG), n=6]. A 6 s-sprint test was performed on a cycle ergometer before and after training (Pre-T and Post-T, respectively). Plasma total testosterone (TT), bioavailable testosterone (BT), and CA concentrations were measured at rest, after a warm-up, immediately after a 6 s-sprint, and during the recovery (i. e. 5 and 20 min). After training period, plasma TT concentrations increased significantly at the end of the sprint and during the recovery in the TG. No effects for sampling times and period were observed in BT levels. Plasma TT concentrations after 5 min of recovery were positively correlated with the corresponding values of plasma lactate (La) concentration...

In discussing back pain, some people - including Bill De Simone - have recommended that I look at McGill;s exercises. Here is a video of him looking at his ideas which are also described here :