Conditioning Research

The basics It is science but not rocket science.  We need to stop trying to make all of this health and fitness stuff more complicated and difficult than it needs to be.  Be generally active, minimise sitting time, stand and walk whenever you can.  Do some resistance training and vigorous "aerobic" activity.  Work hard and progressively on both so that you stimulate adaptation.  Rest enough to grow and recover so that you improve.  Pay attention to safety. Stay mobile enough to squat and sit on the floor.  Diet is responsible for your  bodyweight, not exercise. It is not about the tools Not mentioned: the tools or the protocols.....because lots of things will work.  The tools: machines, bodyweight exercise,  barbells.  The protocols: one set to failure, 3x8-12,  5x5, Reverse Pyramid etc. intervals or a 400m run.  They are not the important concerns.   Lift stuff, sprint, recover.  Ju...

This gets pretty scary

I've been reading The Cure for Everything by Timothy Caulfield, in which he examines myths about health and fitness and debunks a fair few of them.  I am enjoying it.  If you are knee deep in the blogosphere and the various research then not much will be new to you, but the guy writes well.  The establishment position - although not yet what is hitting the media - is pretty settled: You need to do resistance training High Intensity Interval Training is efficient and effecting Fat loss is about a calorie deficit I liked this quote: You should assess every fitness claim - whether it is about a new form of exercise or an amazing new product - by first asking yourself this question: does anyone benefit financially from creating the perception that this works? If the answer is yes, adopt an attitude of healthy scepticism. 

I just wanted to point to a couple of interesting things I'd come across today on running form.  It is weird how what was once a strange underground phenomenon in the darker recesses of the internet has become almost mainstream.  There are now loads of minimal / zero drop / barefoot shoes on the market, as the shoe manufacturers spotted a new market to exploit. A colleague at work was out for a walk at lunchtime today and - remember it is the depths of a cold snowy winter - when he came back he said that he'd seen a guy out running on the street barefoot.  Then when I was on my own way home tonight, I saw a couple running towards me both with Vibram 5 fingers on. All this minimal / barefoot stuff has hit the mainstream and those of us that were highlighting it years ago have been proved right.....or have we? Nothing is ever as simple as that.  There is undoubtedly a marketing opportunity in minmal sh...

This is good

This blog has been getting a bit quieter of late.  My work has been taking a lot of my focus but also I've been reassessing what I post here and why.   I have been posting fewer of the scientific abstracts that I used to put up.  I have realised that I am not always familiar enough with the science to comment accurately on what I am reading.  There are others who do a great job - Adel at Suppversity or Chris Beardsley for example.  I may still put studies up here, but for the in depth analysis, you need to look elsewhere. I suppose that one of the themes recently has been my own progress and experience. Christmas and New Year saw me add about 7 lbs in weight - fat mostly - as I loosened up on my diet for a couple of weeks.   Back into a routine again, things are settling down and I am returning to where I was at the end of December. My training stays the same: I walk for about 3 miles a day: either to or from work plus time at lunch; I train i...

Some great tumbling.......  The hoop stuff from 3:00 is amazing

Interesting to see the NHS Choices blog  - which helpfully examines those science stories that hit the headlines in the light of the science - look at intermittent fasting. Does the 5:2 intermittent fasting diet work? It is pretty sceptical about some of the purported health benefits.

This is a good post from Edinburgh Krav Maga.  It fits in with some of my recent thinking and disillusionment with all the the gurus and cult worship in the world of health fitness and diet. The context of this is self defence and martial arts, but it applies to a lot of life Beware of False Idols No one way is best. Nobody has it all, no one has all the answers. You are smart enough to do your own research and work out what is the best course of action for you to achieve your goals. Seek quality advice from sources who will put you before themselves and their wallets. Just because something is worldwide and or originates in a foreign country it doesn't necessarily make it better....... The world is full of amazing and interesting people with stories to share and things to teach. However, never overlook the local guy or the guy a few towns up from you who I'm sure can teach you so much without the need to travel to the ends of the earth.   I think in the UK and Eur...

Paul Ingraham highlighted this great YouTube channel a few days ago: That was the first time I've been told what the H and N mean in the flu classifications.

One of the topics that I fine fascinating is that of getting older.   More specifically the idea of getting older while maintaining physical function: it is one thing to be old but something totally different to be old and capable of doing things for yourself.  There was an interesting piece on the radio the other day about a Greek island which has a lot of very healthy and active old people.  They were trying to filter out what accounted for their health - it looked like a complex of things: good quality food, wine, physical activity, low stress and lots of social interaction. Anyway, that is off topic.  Well a bit off topic. The other day I posted about a study that linked mortality to how capable an individual was of sitting down and standing up.  A commenter there pointed me to  Phillip Beach's Muscles and Meridians , in which he discusses several floor- or ground-based "archetypal postures," and recommends "erectorcises" to p...

One concept that I keep coming back to at the moment is that of consistency.  I did a post last month in which I bemoaned our constant search for a secret or shortcut to muscle, health and fitness.  This quest leaves us open to being led astray by all sorts of gurus and marketing men each selling some new magic formula. If there is any secret it is consistency.  Just keeping going.  It isn't flash or sexy.  It is boring in some ways. Identify the basics and just keep doing them.  Keep turning up. At this time of year the gyms get full of new members and the pavements are thronged with new runners and powerwalkers.  The ones who will succeed in their goals are not those with special genetic gifts or those who have the best gear.   Those who will succeed will be those who are still in the gym, still on the streets 6 or 12 months from now. Basic habits: sleep minimal stress good food (not too much) some resistance training daily ...

from the article at  Quick and Effective Ab Workouts , some of which I like: “ train as much as necessary (to improve, and to win), not as much as possible! ”  or The Plank and Side Plank One of the best isometric exercise is as follows. For myself, I end a workout with a simple Ab-core torso exercise, called the plank and side plank (see image on left) I do a single 90 second hold for the plank, and 60 seconds each for the side plank.  Total time:  3.5 minutes.  The average person can’t do the plank for 60 seconds!  So don’t settle for average! and some of which I am not too keen on.

When I was at my mum's house at Christmas I found some of my old bodybuilding magazines from the mid 1980s.  Looking through them it is fascinating to see what has changed and what is still the same over that period.  The top pro physiques are much more massive now ( more/better drugs ), but the average natural amateur is not much different.  Nutrition knowledge has been al over the place, but the consensus is still in general terms pretty much what it was then: get enough protein and then watch your calories... Anyway Andreas Cahling was on the cover of one magazine: Apologies for the quality of the photo - the paper was too shiny.   That is Cahling on the saddle, with Johnny Fuller riding pillion. Cahling was never the top level but he was a good competitor in the 1980s.  Well he is still at it!  At the age of 60 he just competed in the Master's Olympia.  He didn't do that well in the placings - younger more massive physiques dom...

The Get Up? No not the Turkish Get up...... This is an interesting one that I came across today, mentioned on a podcast .  When I got home from my walk I did a bit of searching to find out more about the study. The idea is that some researchers have found that those who can sit down and get up using no hands are likely to live for longer.  The more that you have to use other parts of your body - elbows, knees etc to help you up then the more mortality is affected.... The study is Ability to sit and rise from the floor as a predictor of all-cause mortality Methods: 2002 adults aged 51–80 years (68% men) performed a sitting-rising test (SRT) to and from the floor, which was scored from 0 to 5, with one point being subtracted from 5 for each support used (hand/knee). Final SRT score, varying from 0 to 10, was obtained by adding sitting and rising scores and stratified in four categories for analysis: 0–3; 3.5–5.5, 6–7.5, and 8–10. Results: Median foll...