Conditioning Research

In glorious Spanish weather - sunny but with a cooling breeze - yesterday we climbed La Maroma, a 2069m beast. The biggest hill I've ever been up, she was beautiful and gave us sights of ibex and eagles as we climbed. This is what it is all about. Get training and get out there. All this was with http://www.purehighwalkingholidaysspain.com/

I am really getting addicted to these shoes.

Andrew (Evolvify) tweeted this earlier tonight. I've not read the full text yet, but it looks interesting. The hormone leptin acts as an appetite suppressor. Some people see Obesity as being a result of leptin resistance - the body no longer reacts to leptin.....appetite is no longer suppressed. So this study suggests that sprinting kicks off the same cascade of signals as does leptin. It signals you to stop eating.... The conclusion is really provocative - restoration of leptin sensitivity via sprinting: In conclusion, this study shows that most of the signaling pathways activated by leptin in rodent skeletal muscle are also activated by sprint exercise in human skeletal muscle, despite a small reduction of leptin serum concentration after the sprint exercise. These findings imply that sprint exercise behave as a leptin mimetic and could be used to stimulate the leptin signaling pathways in human skeletal muscle. This opens the possibility of using sprint exercise ...

What do you think? tight psoas, dodgy QL......  I've been there  Sam has a good pdf on this topic for download too

Inner City Weightlifting .  This looks pretty inspiring. InnerCity Weightlifting Video from Jon Feinman on Vimeo .

The Talk Test and its relationship with the ventilatory and lactate thresholds Data showed that the Talk Test related best to the lactate threshold as compared to the ventilatory threshold "Everybody's thought that the Talk Test related well to the ventilatory threshold," Quinn says. "And it does, to a certain degree. But different physiological phenomena occur at each threshold, and it is the phenomena associated with the lactate threshold that relate better to the different levels of the Talk Test." Quinn says these findings on the relationship of the Talk Test to the lactate threshold make the Talk Test relevant to endurance athletes as well as beginning exercisers. "In order to enhance endurance performance, some training has to occur around the lactate threshold intensity level. When subjects in the study had difficulty talking, they were very close to that lactate threshold intensity. Because of this, athletes could gauge their intensity based o...

Golf Changes the Brain A mere 40 hours of golf training, by middle-aged novices, led to increases in gray matter in parts of the brain involved in visual processing and motor coordination, a new study has found. The experiment stood out, among other reasons, for the informal way test subjects were allowed to pursue the training—outside the lab, on their own schedule—and it reaffirmed the plasticity of the mature brain.  I am still finding the neuroplasticity work and its implications absolutely fascinating.  That is why I am trying to learn to juggle!   (There is a related idea here too - musicians have better hearing )