Conditioning Research

At long last Colin has posted the third in his series on posture. In this post we’ll be dealing with upper body issues as they relate to poor posture and as with the lower body there are again a couple of areas that can give us quick results., the thoracic spine and ribs and the big movers of the humerus the lat’s and pec’s. There are obviously other areas that need to be examined but these are a great starting point. Check it out!

File this under inspiration

I train and eat well so that I can be fit enough to walk to places where I can have views like this.  I train to have more fun...and when it is easy to walk for 8 hours and climb these tops it is more fun. This was the view yesterday looking towards Knoydart from Sgurr Mor in Glen Kingie on a perfect day in the West Highlands

I've pointed to material like this before - e.g. the post on Ratey's book Spark - but the post on Paul's Perfect Health Diet blog on joint mobility got me thinking about it again.   It is worth reading and I've put a few comments on the post There was a good review paper recently about the evidence for the relationships between physical activity and exercise and the brain and cognition.  The full paper is avalable .  Interesting stuff. It also links to the ideas of the excellent book The Body Has a Mind of Its Own which I might have mentioned previously, a superb book that mc pointed me towards. I should also mention that Becoming Bulletproof provides a nice explanation of these ideas too.

I have been meaning to mention this book that I bought and read a couple of weeks ago. The Gnoll Credo is a novella which is a thinly disguised polemic about the need for humans to recognise their true nature as hunters and what that means for how we should live and think, what our society should be like. He builds the story around an anthropologist's encounters with a gnoll - a humanoid hyena - in a fantasy world of orcs and elves.  The gnoll explains and illustrates the Gnoll Credo...a set of 10 Commandments (12 actually) for carnivore hunters, explaining their society works and how their minds work. “We are born and we die. No one cares, no one remembers, and it doesn’t matter. This is why we laugh.” That is the basis of the Credo , an apparently nihilistic yet strangely life affirming set of assertions.  It made me think of the Fuck It philosophy (another book that I am enjoying just now). The Gnoll is a hunter and that defines its life and outlook.  You get ...

Over the years I have spent (often more accurately wasted ) a lot of money on books and DVDs on fitness, weight-training, diet and self defence.  I am intrigued by the sales copy  ( will this contain the secret that will turn me into a great athlete? ) and then too often disappointed by what I get in response to my Paypal payment.  I  can cope with poor presentation or production but if the information is lacking or derivative then I am very disappointed and frustrated. However...when I ordered Dan John's new DVD's (and I paid for these, these were not free copies for review)  I was pretty confident that I would not be disappointed.   You feel like you can trust Dan....he is a "good guy." Dan John is solid, reliable and sensible and his material is as well.  He speaks from experience - from his own success in sports -  and from coaching athletes.  He has a background as a teacher too - always a good quality in a coach - so he knows how ...

This looks like an interesting article! Obesity and energy balance: is the tail wagging the dog? We combine evidence from in vitro and in vivo experiments to formulate a perspective on obesity aetiology that emphasises metabolic flexibility and dietary composition rather than energy balance. Using this model, we question the direction of causation of reported associations between obesity and sleep duration or childhood growth. Our perspective generates new hypotheses, which can be tested to improve our understanding of the current obesity epidemic, and to identify novel strategies for prevention or treatment. Does anyone have the full paper?  UPDATE - thanks to the peopel that sent the paper including That Paleo Guy and Paul Jaminet .  Thanks guys