Conditioning Research

I just wanted to point towards Adelfo Cerame a bodybuilder with a disability.  I've been reading about him and following his contest prep for a while via the prolific Suppversity blog (I have no idea how Prof Andro has the time to prepare posts of the depth that he achieves almost every day, he is amazing) Adelfo is inspirational. 

So we have been saying this for a while.... One of the key themes of my book Hillfit is that getting stronger will make you more fit for "cardio" activities such as hillwalking or hiking.  The theme is how to get stronger.  Indeed I had one client ask for a refund because I didn't tell her how to improve her cardiovascular fitness!  I need to send her this new paper: Resistance Training to Momentary Muscular Failure Improves Cardiovascular Fitness in Humans: A Review of Acute Physiological Responses and Chronic Physiological Adaptations A detailed, peer reviewed academic survey of the literature and previous studies which demonstrates that proper resistance training...to failure...improves all the standard measures of cardiovascular fitness. This is a proper scientific paper, long and in depth.  The writers have been through all the relevant previous work on this and have demonstrated that getting stronger gets you fitter! The full paper is available on line...

The psychological benefit of exercise in the outdoors, particularly in natural environments, is something that I've mentioned before (e.g. here ).  I also had a piece in TGO on the subject:  Hills not Pills (the reference material for that is here ) It is also something that I mention in the Hillfit book . Alex Hutchinson has a good article on this in the Globe and Mail - Why is walking in the woods so good for you? which focusses on recent science looking at the some of the reasons for this, highlighting the role of your perception, the call on your attention that is made by your environment: The ability to direct voluntary attention is crucial in daily life (and for cognitive tasks like remembering random digits), but it’s easily fatigued. Dr. Berman and his colleagues believe that going for a walk in the park gives voluntary attention a break, since your mind has a chance to wander aimlessly and be engaged – involuntarily but gently – by your surroundings. “In a l...

Spotted this yesterday and thought it worth posting.  If you read around the topic of obesity there are various hormones that get mentioned - leptin, insulin, Peptide YY and others.  Ghrelin is another one that pops up occasionally: a hunger stimulating hormone. Ghrelin Levels Increase After Pictures Showing Food With a background of regular meals, these researchers showed various photos to the subjects: food and "neutral" images.  The findings suggest that sight of food elevates ghrelin levels. Interesting but obvious too?  Seeing food makes you hungry.  I wonder if all this has something to do with the obesity epidemic too.  Images of food are everywhere.  Appetites through the roof.  People are eating more and getting fatter. Be careful what you spend your time looking at.

Thanks for all the comments on the last post.  It is nice to have such supportive readers. I took the advice of some of you yesterday and just did something that made me happy - a 10 mile walk in the Scottish mountains.  The weather was perfect and the day left me feeling tired but energised. (There are more photos here ) I took a video on the top because I was blown away by the views: This morning I was up early and into my local hills where I was lucky enough to experience a cloud inversion.  The cloud and mist hung low across the city but I soon climbed above it into blue skies.  It is stunning to look down on this carpet of white cloud with the blue skies above. Certainly a weekend that has been proper re-creation.  Tiring but worth it for what I saw and did.

I'm struggling bit with this blog. I'm feeling pretty down anyway with the loss of my Dad, but I'm finding it hard to get much motivation to post here.  Partly I think I am learning that it is the basics that are important anyway.  I am tired of all the fads and the personalities, the drama and the seeking after novelty.  Eat real food, get enough sleep, do some strength training, walk lots.   Diet - I used to think it was all about low carb, or high fat, or paleo....now I am not so sure.  I avoid wheat because it makes my stomach unhappy, but otherwise I eat all sorts. Exercise - some basic, safe strength training goes a long long way to promoting all sorts of health.  However, there are so many fads and crazes out there.  So much too which is written as if we are all elite athletes or physiotherapy patients. 

This one reminds me of the stuff that showed chocolate milk to be the ideal post workout snack - it puts the everyday food into focus. You don't need the fancy products....nanas are fine. Full text Bananas as an Energy Source during Exercise: A Metabolomics Approach This study compared the acute effect of ingesting bananas (BAN) versus a 6% carbohydrate drink (CHO) on 75-km cycling performance and post-exercise inflammation, oxidative stress, and innate immune function using traditional and metabolomics-based profiling. Trained cyclists (N = 14) completed two 75-km cycling time trials (randomized, crossover) while ingesting BAN or CHO (0.2 g/kg carbohydrate every 15 min). Pre-, post-, and 1-h-post-exercise blood samples were analyzed for glucose, granulocyte (GR) and monocyte (MO) phagocytosis (PHAG) and oxidative burst activity, nine cytokines, F2-isoprostanes, ferric reducing ability of plasma (FRAP), and metabolic profiles using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Bloo...