FELDENKRAIS

A manual to help you get the best results from
the Awareness Through Movement lessons

Do everything very slowly

I do not intend to "teach" you, but to enable you to learn at your own rate of understanding and doing. Time is the most important means of learning. To enable everybody-without exception-to learn, there should be plenty of time for everybody to assimilate the idea of the movement as well as the leisure to get used to the novelty of the situation. There should be sufficient time to perceive, and organize oneself. No one can learn when hurried and hustled. Each movement is, therefore, allotted sufficient time for repeating it a number of times. Thus, you will repeat the movement as many times as it suits you during the span of time allotted.

When one becomes familiar with an act, speed increases spontaneously, and so does power. This is not so obvious as it is correct.

Efficient movement or performance of any sort is achieved by weeding out, and eliminating, parasitic superfluous exertion. The superfluous is as bad as the insufficient, only it costs more.

No one can learn to ride a bicycle or swim without allowing the time necessary to assimilate the essential, and to reject the unintended and unnecessary, efforts that the beginner performs in his ambition not to feel or appear inadequate to himself.

Fast action at the beginning of learning is synonymous with strain and confusion which, together, make learning an unpleasant exertion.

Look for the pleasant sensation

Pleasure relaxes the breathing to become simple and easy. Excessive striving-to-improve impedes learning. It is less important to learn new feats of skill than it is to master the way to learn new skills. You will get to know new skills as a reward for your attention. You will feel you deserve your acquired skill, and that will add satisfaction to the pleasurable sensation.

Do not "try" to do well

Trying hard means that somehow a person knows that unless he makes a greater effort and applies himself harder he will not achieve his goals. Internal conviction of essential inadequacy is at the root of the urge to try as hard as one can, even when learning. Only when we have learned to write fluently and pleasurably can we write as fast as we wish, or more beautifully. But "trying" to write faster makes the writing illegible and ugly. Learn to do well, but do not try. The countenance of trying hard betrays the inner conviction of being unable or of not being good enough.

Do not try to do "nicely"

A performance is nice to watch when the person applies himself harmoniously. This means that no part of him is being directed to anything else but the job at the hand. Intent to do nicely when learning introduces disharmony. Some of the attention is misdirected, which introduces self-consciousness instead of awareness. Each and all the parts of ourself should cooperate to the final achievement only to the extent that it is useful. An act becomes nice when we do nothing but the act. Everything we do over and above that, or short of it, destroys harmony.

These courses are made to help you to turn the impossible into the feasible, the difficult into the easy: beautiful to see and lovely to do.

Insist on easy, light movement

We usually learn the hard way. We are taught that trying hard is a virtue in life, and we are misled into believing that trying hard is also a virtue when learning. We see, therefore, a beginner, learning to ride a bicycle or to swim or to learn any skill, making many futile efforts and tiring quickly.

Learning takes place through our nervous system, which is so structured as to detect and select, from among our trials and errors, the more effective trial. We thus gradually eliminate the aimless movements until we find a sufficient body of correct and purposeful components of our final effort. These must be right in timing and direction at the same instant. In short, we gradually learn to know what is the better move. Thus it dawns on us that moving the handlebar so as to twist the front wheel in the direction in which we tend to fall stabilizes us on the bicycle. Or that if we move our arms and legs slowly forward in the swimming direction and rapidly in the other direction we actually swim easier and faster. We sense differences and select the good from the useless: that is, we differentiate.

Without distinguishing and differentiating, we perpetuate-and possibly fuse-the good and the bad moves in a haphazard order as they happen to occur and make little or no progress in spite of diligent insistence.

It is easier to tell differences when the effort is light

All our senses are so built that we can distinguish minute differences when our senses are only slightly stimulated. If I were to carry a heavy load (say a refrigerator) on my back, I could not tell if a box of matches were added to the load, nor would I become aware of it being removed. What is, in fact, the weight that must be added or removed to make one aware that some change of effort has occurred? For muscular efforts or our kinesthetic sense, that weight is about one-fortieth (1/40) of the basic effort for very good nervous systems. On carrying 400 pounds, we can tell at once when 10 pounds are added or removed from the load. On carrying 40 pounds, we can tell a change of one pound. And everybody can tell with closed eyes when a fly alights on a thin matchlike piece of wood or straw, or when it takes to the air again.

In short, the smaller the exertion, the finer the increment or decrement that we can distinguish and, also, the finer our differentiation (that is, the mobilization of our muscles in consequence of our sensations). The lighter the effort we make, the faster is our learning of any skill; and the level of perfection we can attain goes hand in hand with the finesse we obtain. We stop improving when we sense no difference in the effort made or in the movement.

Learning and life are not the same thing

In the course of our lives, we may be called upon to make enormous efforts-sometimes beyond what we believe we can produce. There are situations in which we must pay no heed to what the enormous effort entails. We often have to sacrifice our health, the wholeness of our limbs and body, to save our life. Obviously, then, we must be able to act swiftly and powerfully. The question is, wouldn't we be better equipped for such emergencies by making our efforts efficient in general, thus enabling us to exert ourselves less and achieve our purpose economically.

Learning must be slow an varied in effort until the parasitic efforts are weeded out; then we have little difficulty in acting fast, and powerfully.

Why bother to be so efficient?

We need not be intelligent, for God saves the fool. We need not be skillful, for even the clumsiest of us succeeds in the end. We need not be efficient, because a kilogram of sugar yields-roughly speaking-20.000 calories, and one gram calorie produces 426 kilograms of work. From that count, we can waste energy galore. Why go to such troubles as learning and improving? The trouble lies in that energy cannot be destroyed; it can only be transformed into movement, or into another form of energy.

What, then, happens to the energy that is not transformed into movement? It is, obviously, not lost, but remains somewhere in the body. Indeed, it is transformed into heat through the wear and tear of the muscles (torn muscles, muscle catarrh) and of the ligaments and the interarticular surfaces of our joints and vertebrae. So long as we are very young, the healing and recovery powers of our bodies are sufficient to repair the damage caused by inefficient efforts, but they do so at the expense of our heart and the cleansing mechanisms of our organism. But these powers slow, even as early as at our middle age, when we have only just become an adult, and they become sluggish very soon thereafter

If we have not learned efficient action, we are in for aches and pains and for a growing inability to do what we would like to do.

Efficient movement is also pleasant to do and nice to see, and it instills that wonderful feeling of doing well and is, ultimately, aesthetically satisfying.

Do not concentrate

Do not concentrate if concentration means to you directing your attention to one particular important point to the utmost of your ability. This is a particular kind of concentration, useful as an exercise, but rarely in normal occupation and skills.

Suppose you play basketball and concentrate on the basket to the utmost-you will never, or nearly never, have the leisure to do so unless you are alone in front of the basket. When there are two teams playing, the opening for a throw is a short, fleeting instant in which you have to attend not only to the basket, but to the players around you, and to the balance and posture that enable you to perform a useful throw.

The best players are those who attend to the continually changing position of their own players as well as of the opposing team. Most of the time, their concentration is directed to a very large area or space; the basket is just kept dimly in the background of their awareness, from where it can- at the most fleeting opportunity-become the center of attention.

The best and most useful attention is similar to what we do when reading. When we see the whole page, we cannot perceive any of the content, although we can say whether the page is in English or some language we cannot read. To read, we must focus on a minute portion of the page, not even a full line-perhaps, merely a single word, if it is a familiar one and rather short. If we are a skillful reader, we keep on picking our word after word, or groupings of words, to be attended to by our macular vision, which is only a minute portion of the retina, with sufficient good resolution to see small print clearly.

The good way of using our attention is, for the most part, similar to reading. One should perceive the background (the whole page) dimly and learn to focus sharply on the point-attended (concentration) rapidly before the next so that reading fluently means reading 200 to 1000 words a minute, as some people can.

Therefore, do not concentrate but, rather, attend well to the entire situation, your body, and your surroundings by scanning the whole sufficiently to become aware of any change or difference, concentrating just enough to perceive it.

In general, it is not what we do that is important, but how we do it. Thus, we can refuse kindly and accept ungraciously. We must also remember that this generalization is not a law and, like other generalizations, it is not always true.

We do not say at the start what the final stage will be

We are so drilled or wired-in by prevailing educational methods that when we know what is required of us, we go all-out to achieve it, for fear of loss of face, regardless of what it costs us to do so. We have it instilled in our system that we must not be the worst of the lot. We will bite our lips, hold our breath, and screw up our straining self in an ugly way in order to achieve something if we have no clear idea of how to mobilize ourselves for that task. The result is excessive effort, harmful strain, and ugly performance. The Awareness Through Movement® lessons will help you to reach your inborn potentiality in the best way and avoid giving you just another opportunity for using yourself in the accustomed way which led you, initially, to seek a better one.

By reducing the urge to achieve, and attending also to the means for achieving, we learn easier. Achieving-we lose the incentive for learning and, therefore, accept a lower level than the potential we are endowed with. When we delay the final achievement by attending efficiently to our means, we set ourselves a higher level of achievement if we are not aware that that is what we are doing. On knowing what to achieve before we have learned to learn, we can reach only the limit of our ignorance, which is often general. Such limits are intrinsically lower than those we can foresee after knowing better.

Do a little less than you can

By doing a little less than you really can, you will attain a higher performance than the one you can now conceive. Do a little less than your utmost while learning. You are thereby pushing your possible record to a higher setting.

Suppose you have not been running for a few years or that you are a middle-aged adult with the usual spread that goes with it: Suppose that you want to do some running again, and set out to the speed you remember: You will soon find yourself out of breath, your heart pounding, and compelled to stop, only to find that you have not achieved what you intended to achieve. Moreover, you will most likely be stiff all over and find it very difficult to persist in what you set out to do.

Now suppose you make your first attempt a little less fast than the top speed that is possible for you at this moment and, looking at your watch, you find that you are short of what you used to be able to do: But you will feel and think you could have done a little better had you really tried your best: This feeling will lead you to try again. The next attempt will be a little faster anyway, so that, continuing to do a little less than your utmost, you go on improving. In the end, you will in a short time give a better account of yourself than in your younger days when youthful stamina and ambition made you always do your utmost. The wisdom of doing a little less than one really can pushes the record of achievement further and further as you come nearer to it, similar to the horizon that recedes on approaching it.

You will understand now why I say in the lessons "lower your knees in the direction of the floor" rather than "try to touch the floor with your knees." This makes no difference to anyone who is beyond improving; but you will convince yourself that it makes a real difference, reminding you to keep yourself out of stress and give yourself a real chance to learn to learn.

©Feldenkrais Resources, Berkeley, CA

Tabata , Tabata , Tabata

Effects of Moderate-Intensity Endurance and High-Intensity Intermittent Training on Anaerobic Capacity and VO2 Max

Title and Abstract

Tabata I. et. al. Effects of moderate-intensity endurance and high-intensity intermittent training on anaerobic capacity and VO2max. Med Sci Sports Exerc. (1996) 28(10):1327-30.

This study consists of two training experiments using a mechanically braked cycle ergometer. First, the effect of 6 wk of moderate-intensity endurance training (intensity: 70% of maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max), 60 min.d-1, 5 d.wk-1) on the anaerobic capacity (the maximal accumulated oxygen deficit) and VO2max was evaluated. After the training, the anaerobic capacity did not increase significantly (P > 0.10), while VO2max increased from 53 +/- 5 ml.kg-1 min-1 to 58 +/- 3 ml.kg-1.min-1 (P <>

Background

In recent years, training and the Internets have become interval crazy. Everybody wants to do nothing but interval training all the damn time (with some even proclaiming that any non-interval training is not only useless but downright detrimental).

Now, I’ve written extensively about this in what must be about a 12 part series on Steady State vs. Interval Training here on the site. I’m not going to rehash the entirety of that series, mind you; go read it. But simply, both intervals and steady state have their place in training. Arguments that one is inherently or always superior to the other has more to do with marketing than reality.

But among other aspects of this particular meme, the idea of the Tabata protocol (often abbreviated Tabatas) gets bandied about all the time. And the problem is that people are using the term to describe something that they don’t really understand. What has happened is that a bunch of people who don’t really know what they are talking about have written so much about the protocol that what it actually is or accomplishes has been completely diluted.

So I figured I’d undilute it by actually examining the study that the whole set of claims and supposed ‘protocols’ are based on. Because, as is so often the case, what people think they are doing as ‘Tabatas’ are nothing like what the actual study did. And most people who think they are doing the Tabata protocol are doing absolutely nothing of the sort.

As a bit of history, the protocol was actually originally developed by a Japanese speed skating coach and later studied by researchers; I bring this up because speed skating is actually a very peculiar sport in a lot of ways (something that I have insight into as I’ve spent the last 5 years training full time as a skater). But I’m not going to get that into detail here; I simply mention it for completeness.

The Study

The study set out to compare both the anaerobic and aerobic adaptations (in terms of one parameter only, VO2 max) to two different protocols of training. The study recruited 14 active male students who were, at best moderately trained (VO2 max was roughly 50 ml/kg/min which is average at best; elite endurance athletes have values in the 70-80 range).

All work including the pre- and post tests were done on a mechanically braked bicycle ergometer; this is an important point that is often ignored and I’ll come back to in the discussion. Every test or high-intensity workout was proceeded by a 10 minute warm-up at 50% of VO2 max (This is maybe 60-65% maximum heart rate).

The two primary tests were VO2 max and the maximal accumulated oxygen deficit (this is a test of anaerobic capacity, basically people with higher anaerobic capacity can generate a larger oxygen deficit) and then subjected to one of two training programs.

The first program was a fairly standard aerobic training program, subjects exercised 5 days/week at 70% of VO2 max for 60 minutes at a cadence of 70 RPMs for 6 straight weeks. The intensity of exercise was raised as VO2 max increased with training to maintain the proper percentage. VO2 max was tested weekly in this group and the maximal accumulated oxygen deficit was measured before, at 4 weeks and after training.

The second group performed the Tabata protocol. For four days per week they performed 7-8 sets of 20 seconds at 170% of VO2 max with 10 seconds rest between bouts, again this was done after a 10 minute warm-up. When more than 9 sets could be completed, the wattage was increased by 11 watts. If the subjects could not maintain a cadence of 85RPM, the workout was ended.

On the fifth day of training, they performed 30 minutes of exercise at 70% of VO2 max followed by 4 sets of the intermittent protocol and this session was designed to NOT be exhaustive. The anaerobic capacity test was performed at the beginning, week 2, week 4 and the end of the 6 week period; VO2 max was tested at the beginning and at week 3, 5 and the end of training.

Results

For group 1, the standard aerobic training group, while there was no increase in anaerobic capacity, VO2 max increased significantly from roughly 52 to 57 ml/kg/min (I say roughly because the paper failed to provide vaules, I’m going by what’s in the graphic below). Frankly, given the lack of anaerobic contribution to steady state training, the lack of improvement in this parameter is absolutely no surprise.

For group 2, both the anaerobic capacity and VO2 max showed improvements. VO2 max improved in the interval group from 48 ml/kg/min to roughly 55 ml/kg/min (see graphic below). It is worth noting that the interval group was starting with a lower value and may have had more room for improvement. Also note that they still ended up with a lower Vo2 max than the steady state group.

I’ve put Figure 2 from the paper (showing improvements in VO2 max) below

Click to Enlarge

As I noted, pay attention to the fact that the Tabata group (black line, filled circles) started lower than the steady state group, they also still ended up lower than the steady state group. As well, note that pattern of improvement, the Tabata group got most of their improvement in the first 3 weeks and far less in the second three weeks. The steady state group showed more gradual improvement across the entire 6 week period but it was more consistent. As the researchers state regarding the Tabata group

After 3 wk of training, the VO2 max had increased significantly by 5+-3ml.kg/min. It tended to increase in the last part of the training period but no significant changes[emphasis mine] were observed.

Basically, the Tabata group improved for 3 weeks and then plateaued despite a continuingly increasing workload. I’d note that anaerobic capacity did improve over the length of the study although most of the benefit came in the first 4 weeks of the study (with far less over the last 2 weeks).

My Comments

First and foremost, there’s no doubt that while the steady state group only improved VO2 max, it did not improve anaerobic capacity; this is no shock based on the training effect to be expected. And while the Tabata protocol certainly improved both, not only did the Tabata group still end up with a lower VO2 at the end of the study, they only made progress for 3 weeks before plateauing on VO2 max and 4 weeks for anaerobic capacity.

Interestingly, the running coach Arthur Lydiard made this observation half a century ago; after months of base training, he found that only 3 weeks of interval work were necessary to sharpen his athletes. More than that was neither necessary nor desirable. Other studies using cycling have found similar results: intervals improve certain parameters of athletic performance for about 3 weeks or 6 sessions and then they stop having any further benefit.

I’ve asked this question before but for all of the ‘All interval all the time’ folks, if intervals stop working after 3-4 weeks, what are people supposed to do for the other 48-49 weeks of the year. Should they keep busting their nuts with supra-maximal interval training for no meaningful results?

On that note, it’s worth mentioning that the Tabata group actually did a single steady state workout per week. Is it at all possible that this contributed to the overall training effect (given that 70% VO2 max training improved VO2 max in the steady state only group)? Does anybody else find it weird that the Tabata promoters ignore the fact that the Tabata group was doing steady state work too?

It’s also relevant to note that the study used a bike for training. This is important and here’s why: on a stationary bike, when you start to get exhausted and fall apart from fatigue, the worst that happens is that you stop pedalling. You don’t fall off, you don’t get hurt, nothing bad happens. The folks suggesting high skill movements for a ‘Tabata’ workout might want to consider that. Because when form goes bad on cleans near the end of the ‘Tabata’ workout, some really bad things can happen. Things that don’t happen on a stationary bike.

As well, I want to make a related comment: as you can see above the protocol used was VERY specific. The interval group used 170% of VO2 max for the high intensity bits and the wattage was increased by a specific amount when the workout was completed. Let me put this into real world perspective.

My VO2 max occurs somewhere between 300-330watts on my power bike, I can usually handle that for repeat sets of 3 minutes and maybe 1 all out-set of 5-8 minutes if I’m willing to really suffer. That’s how hard it is, it’s a maximal effort across that time span.

For a proper Tabata workout, 170% of that wattage would be 510 watts (for perspective, Tour De France cyclists may maintain 400 watts for an hour). This is an absolutely grueling workload. I suspect that most reading this, unless they are a trained cyclist, couldn’t turn the pedals at that wattage, that’s how much resistance there is.

If you don’t believe me, find someone with a bike with a powermeter and see how much effort it takes to generate that kind of power output. Now do it for 20 seconds. Now repeat that 8 times with a 10 second break. You might learn something about what a Tabata workout actually is.

My point is that to get the benefits of the Tabata protocol, the workload has to be that supra-maximal for it to be effective. Doing thrusters or KB swings or front squats with 65 lbs fo 20 seconds doesn’t generate nearly the workload that was used during the actual study. Nor will it generate the benefits (which I’d note again stop accruing after a mere 3 weeks). You can call them Tabatas all you want but they assuredly aren’t.

Finally, I’d note that, as I discussed in Predictors of Endurance Performance VO2 max is only one of many components of overall performance, and it’s not even the most important one. Of more relevance here, VO2 max and aerobic endurance are not at all synonymous, many people confuse the two because they don’t understand the difference between aerobic power (VO2 max) and aerobic capacity (determined primarily by enzyme activity and mitochondrial density within the muscle). Other studies have shown clearly that interval work and steady state work generate different results in this regards, intervals improve VO2 max but can actually decrease aerobic enzyme activity (citrate synthase) within skeletal muscle.

The basic point being that even if the Tabata group improved VO2 max and anaerobic capacity to a greater degree than the steady state group, those are not the only parameters of relevance for overall performance.

Summing Up

First, here’s what I’m not saying. I’m not anti-interval training, I’m not anti-high intensity training. I am anti-this stupid-assed idea that the only type of training anyone should ever do is interval training, based on people’s mis-understanding and mis-extrapolation of papers like this.

High-intensity interval training and the Tabata protocol specifically are one tool in the toolbox but anybody proclaiming that intervals can do everything that anyone ever needs to do is cracked. That’s on top of the fact that 99% of people who claim to be doing ‘Tabatas’ aren’t doing anything of the sort.

Because 8 sets of 20″ hard/10″ easy is NOT the Tabata protocol and body-weight stuff or the other stuff that is often suggested simply cannot achieve the workload of 170% VO2 max that this study used. It may be challenging and such but the Tabata protocol it ain’t.

Joint friendy movements

Everyone knows the best lifts for building strength, size, and sport-specific power. But what if you can't squat because you have bum knees? What if you can't do bench presses and/or overhead lifts because of lingering shoulder injuries? What if your bad back makes deadlifts a bad idea?

I've worked with lots of athletes over the years with the issues I just described, and I've found alternative exercises that helped them get bigger and stronger. I'm able to do this with a concept I call joint-friendly lifting.

Joint-friendly lifts are simply creative variations that aren't as hard on the joints as their traditional counterparts. They allow serious lifters and athletes to work around their limitations without compromising the results they get from their training.

Before I get into the specific exercises, I want to wave the obligatory caution flag: Before switching out the tried-and-true lifts for the ones I show here, make sure the aches and pains you have aren't caused by suboptimal exercise technique, poor program design, or too much training with too little recovery.

I also want to mention an article I wrote a few months ago called "Making Gains with Pain." Today's article shows you how to work around your pain and limitations. The earlier piece shows you how to alleviate that pain. I know I'm biased, but I recommend it as a complement to the one you're about to read.

Joint-Friendly Lifts

The problem: back pain caused by disc issues prevents you from loading your spine with a barbell or dumbbells on traditional squats

The solution: one-legged squat off a bench or step

The kettlebell folks have popularized the pistol squat (shown below). But I rarely use pistols with my athletes, especially those with back pain related to disc problems, since they force a lot of unnecessary spinal flexion. Also, pistols don't allow the glutes to activate as much as the variation shown above due to the position of the torso. Glute activation is important, since it helps reduce the load on the spine and increases stabilization of the knee joint.

The best way to add load to a one-legged squat is to put on a weight vest. This will increase the intensity of the exercise without adding stress to your bad back.

The problem: back and/or knee pain

The solution: sled work

I absolutely love sled training. I use it with just about everyone who walks through our doors. It's especially valuable for those who have knee problems and those who have back trouble. I've found these athletes can move heavy loads on the sled with no added stress on their painful areas.

My favorite sled exercises:

Sled dragging

Sled dragging with the hand position shown in the photo below is much safer than using a waist or shoulder harness for people who have back issues. Be sure to maintain good spinal alignment, and don't allow your arms to move away from your sides.

Sled pulling

This is a great way to blast your quads if you have knee problems and can't do squats, lunges, or leg extensions. It's also a valuable exercise for knee rehab, thanks to the terminal knee-extension action it requires.

No sled? No problem — just get a big tire from a junkyard.

While I'm on the subject of tires, I should mention that tire flips, as performed in the example shown below, are not a joint-friendly lift. Even if you have the hip mobility to get low enough to maintain a neutral spine — an ability that eludes 90 percent of serious lifters, I'd estimate — this exercise still puts a serious amount of stress on your lower back.

I'm not saying tire flips are a bad exercise. But I am predicting that many of the people who do them will end up paying for some back surgeon's new Porsche. There are no bad exercises, just bad applications.

Sled/plate pushing

This is another of our go-to exercises for building strength and increasing work capacity without putting excess stress on the knees and backs of our athletes.

You want to keep your back straight, with your hips more or less level to your shoulders. Athletes with bad backs need to be especially cognizant of their back position, maintaining a neutral spine and avoiding spinal flexion as they step forward.

For building strength, stack up a sled and push it for 20 to 40 yards. To improve conditioning, use a plate push (as shown above) for 50 to 100 yards.

The problem: disc herniation, or any other back injury that prevents you from doing deadlifts, hyperextensions, or reverse hypers.

The solution: one-leg hip lift with weight plate

As with sled dragging, this is another exercise we use with almost everyone we train. But it's especially valuable for athletes and clients who need posterior-chain work but can't do the traditional hip-extension exercises.

Hold as much weight as you can without discomfort on top of your shin, as shown below.

The movement is straightforward. With the heel of your working leg on a bench or step, contract your glutes and hamstrings to elevate your hips off the floor, until your body forms a straight line from the knee of your working leg to your shoulders. Do all your reps with that leg, then switch.

The problem: an injury that puts stress on the shoulder joint during press-type movements

The solution: floor press

By limiting the range of motion, the floor press also limits stress on the injured shoulder. Many of our athletes who experience pain during and after bench presses find they can floor press big weights without discomfort.

The problem: shoulder pain limits or prevents overhead lifts like the shoulder press and push jerk

The solution: angled shoulder press

The reason it works for people who can't perform overhead lifts is simple: It's not overhead. It allows heavy loads and, as a bonus, requires the core muscles to control and resist rotation throughout the range of motion.

One key to performing the angled press is keeping your forearm perpendicular to the barbell, as shown below.

The problem: shoulder pain prevents external shoulder rotation when the arms are overhead in exercises like the pull-up and lat pulldown

The solution: angled lat pulldown

This is, as you probably guessed, the pulling version of the angled shoulder press. And like that exercise, it forces your core muscles to work as you struggle to stay upright as the weight pulls you forward. Execution is simple enough: stand in front of the lat-pulldown station and pull the bar to your upper chest.

Final Thoughts

You've heard this one hundreds of times: "Train smarter, not harder." In my opinion, the saying should be updated to this: "Train smarter and harder."

If you currently suffer from back, knee, and/or shoulder pain, you have no choice but to train smarter than the average lifter in your gym. But you also need to train harder to recover from your injury, and to prevent a recurrence. With joint-friendly lifts, it's possible to do both.

But even if you have no injuries, joint-friendly lifts are a pretty good way to help you maintain that winning streak. Not only are they easier on your most vulnerable joints, they provide new, interesting, and challenging ways to build muscle and improve your strength, athleticism, and work capacity.

Assuming, of course, you're interesting in that sort of thing...

Fear or Laziness: What's your excuse?

We get it. Most folks are not up for this. It’s not their cup of tea, their boat doesn’t float on these waters, they don’t like the cut of our jib. Sure, fair enough. Hard work is… well… hard.

But tribal survival, either against the zombie attack or against mass communication ennui (can we really survive on a diet of continually declining dialog skills like Twitter or baby-talk language decline like ‘where u at’?) will depend on a little hard work. Physical work. Tough play.

Heck, some of us actually enjoy this shit. We embrace the silliness of picking up something heavy, only to put it down again. Rinse. Repeat. A recent conversation I eavesdropped on had a pivotal utterance of “now it hurts NOT to move.” The profound idea behind this was as metaphysical as it was physical, but the simpler meaning was the acceptance of the craving for some intense celebration of what the body can do.

Can you dig it?

Here’s some ramblings from a real old post that I’ve expanded on a bit…

Here’s a thought: Any reason you can think of, any little story you have to tell yourself and others, any ‘out’ you might use to get out of this brand of fun that we ironhads and movement junkies lather onto ourselves like physiological/psychological shampoo - any excuse you have falls into one of two categories, Fear or Laziness.

Let’s play a little game and see which of the excuses from these lists below fit into which category (and keep an eye out for any that seem familiar to you):

The lack of resources list

I don’t have…

… a gym membership
… my favorite sexy headband
… every piece of super cool equipment I need to pump my pecs
… time

What you really ‘don’t have’ has nothing to do with external resources, but rather attitude and education, since a dash of both of those will overcome any of the above.

The self defeating list

I can’t…

… find the time
… handle the exercises
… stand the smell of burning muscles
… get around to washing my ’special strength’ undies. I NEED them, or I won’t be strong.
… get to the gym
… because of injury

Can’t or Won’t? Replace Can’t with ‘not willing to’ and you’ll see the problem.

The identifying with your weakness list

I am…

… scared
… weak
… tired
… in pain
… totally baked, dude

You’re identifying with the crappy sheen of superficial self perceptions due to the fear that if you strip all that away to get a view of who you really are, you won’t see much. This is a bummer, since your foundation is probably a pretty groovy place, one that deserves coveting.

Now here’s a big leap for some to take. Could laziness simply be a form of fear? Often we’ll embrace laziness because we fear the alternative. The list above then makes more sense. Let’s NOT DO since DOING means having to face things we may not want to face. Clearing away the muck that we identify ourselves with will find the solid decent human underneath all that, but, as I’ve quoted many times before, “freedom scares you because it means responsibility.”

What’re ya? Chicken?

Herny Rollins

Simple and beautiful.

---

Quote of the Day

“I have never met a truly strong person who didn’t have self-respect. When I see guys working out for cosmetic reasons, I see vanity exposing them in the worst way, as cartoon characters, billboards for imbalance and insecurity. Strength reveals itself through character.

"Muscle mass does not always equal strength. Strength is kindness and sensitivity. Strength is understanding that your power is both physical and emotional. That it comes from the body and the mind. And the heart.

"The Iron is the best antidepressant I have ever found. There is no better way to fight weakness than with strength. Once the mind and body have been awakened to their true potential, it’s impossible to turn back.

"The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black.

"I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.”

- Henry Rollins

Do this

The Lecture can be summed up like this: "Don't even ask me about THAT unless you're first doing THIS!"

Turns out the kid didn't even know how much protein he was getting per day, an issue he should have taken care of before worrying about any ancillary supplement, especially one as questionable as NO2.

Too often in the world of muscle building, fat loss, and athletic performance, we focus on the little stuff while missing the big picture. "Hey, look at that little tree!" we say, all the while oblivious to the fact that we're standing in a lush forest.

It's easy to get lost in the minutia. Those little things can be very cool and fun. But the thing is, if you're missing something major, then all the minor stuff in the world isn't going to suddenly make you bigger, leaner, or stronger.

In other words, don't ask us about the best exercise for your tibialis anterior development if you're not even squatting and deadlifting.

In short, don't ask about that unless you're already doing this!

Newbies make this mistake all the time out of simple ignorance. That's okay, we were all greenhorns once. But even gym vets need a reminder every once in a while.

Perhaps I should feel bad about all of this.

I'm beginning to get the reputation of a cranky old man sitting on the porch yelling at the kids about making noise. I bark at people all day about this and that, telling them not to worry about anything like this or that because they simply aren't ready for "it" yet.

"Hey Tony," they say, "when should I incorporate reverse-hackle sled ring curls with a wombat twist?"

Yeah, that kind of "this or that."

Most of us (and I'm the worst offender) fall in love with all the fringe new lifts and fads and fancy ads. But what we really need to do is spend time on things like basic lifts, basic nutrition, and basic recovery.

Let's discuss.

If you're not taking care of PRE-workout nutrition, don't ask me about POST-workout nutrition.

I'm not going to answer any more questions about post-exercise nutrition. I don't want to hear it. Listen, if you don't take care of pre-exercise nutrition, then even the best post-workout drink isn't going to help or hinder you in any way..

If you eat a meal or two a couple of hours before you train, you have a chance to maintain some level of training intensity. It seems to alleviate "brain fog" and gives the athlete a chance to push hard throughout the whole workout.

Eating breakfast is a habit. Skipping breakfast is a bad habit that's correctable. It works like this: wake up, eat something. My consultation fee is $500. Pay up.

I've discovered in the past few years that actually shopping probably trumps anything else in the field of nutrition. As I've argued before, if you're going to do the "three-apples-a-day diet" and only buy a dozen apples, you're in trouble on day five.

I literally have dozens of eggs in my fridge, enough protein options to curb any hunger, and I don't buy any sugary snacks. These shopping choices make it easier to honor the habit of eating well before training.

Now I'm sure I'm going to get emails asking about what to do if you work out in the morning. First, I bless you. I can barely get out of bed most days, and I applaud anyone who can pile some plates on a bar and bang away while I'm reading the paper and sipping coffee.

The only advice I can give you is the old trick of drinking half a protein drink before bed with a glass of water, getting up to pee a few hours later, and drinking the rest of the shake. It has worked for many... but I'll just sleep in, thank you very much.

If you eat carbs all evening, don't ask me about fat burners!

Whether you love the new article from Time magazine or hate it, it sure shocked a lot of people to find out that exercise alone isn't the cure for excess body fat.

Not long ago, a local bagel place came out with a chocolate chip bagel. One of my college students worked there and brought it in as a special treat for me. Because of the rules of hospitality, I was stuck and nodded my head and thanked her very much. I ate it... and it was better than you think.

I also noticed that I was famished an hour later.

I asked for the nutritional info for the bagel. My student told me she wasn't supposed to let me know. Why? After a little prodding, she told me. The bagel, it seems, had 1100 calories.

That many calories and I was hungry in an hour! I'm sure my blood profiles would reflect that I was one step away from death, too.

I felt like one of those women I used to eat lunch with in the faculty lounge. They'd criticize what I was eating and tout the superiority of their low-fat lunches. Then, later, they'd eat five pounds of birthday cake.

Time magazine is right: You can't out-exercise 1100 calories snacks. The higher the carb load, the harder the hit. It seems fairly easy to eat a stack of syrup-covered pancakes, but eating a can of salmon seems one step from impossible.

So, do me a favor. Write down everything you eat for the next two weeks. Note the booze and soft drinks, too. Make an honest assessment of your calorie and carb intake. If you're pouring six Big Gulps down your throat every day, cut those out and note the amazing change to the number of chins you have above your tie. (That'll cost you another $500, by the way. I'll add it to your tab.)

So cut the obvious crap from your diet, then ask me about fat burners.

Here's a few more for you:

Don't ask about bee pollen or any other supposedly "magical" supplement until you start swallowing some fish oil capsules every day. Here's why.

Don't ask about electrolyte replacement until you drink some water.

Don't ask me about hot and cold immersion for recovery until you start getting some real sleep.

If you can't do this, you ain't all that.

I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that you can bench your bodyweight. The bad news is my follow-up question: How many times? I consider someone to be at minimal strength levels when they can:

Bench body weight
Do an honest pull-up
Deadlift double body weight

After that, the athlete should strive for:

15 reps with body weight in the bench press
15 real pull-ups
15 reps with body weight on the bar in the back squat

After those levels, most athletes are strong enough for anything. The problem, of course, is getting from 1 to 15 in those lifts. Do you want to know the secret? Here you go:

If you're not squatting, don't ask about anything else.

Lost in the dust of the last two decades of training advice is the idea of squatting twice a week with workouts worthy of the name "work out." My best gains have been made on high-rep, hellacious squat workouts.

For fat loss, don't ask me about treadmills until you've looked down between your feet at rep 35 with 225 pounds on your back knowing you "only" have 15 more reps to go.

For mass, don't ask about doing curls three days a week verses four days a week until you've felt 315 dig into your back for two minutes of high-rep squats.

Just. Don't.

Now, am I telling you to never try new things? No. Try new training ideas. Try new diet protocols. Try new supplements. Then, stop and gather yourself, and get back to what works.

If you've been training for all of three days, don't ask me about some snazzy new workout program.

Weight training and good eating work. Every. Single. Time. If something isn't working for you, and you're legitimately training hard, then most likely you just haven't been doing it long enough.

I get questions all the time from V-Dieters who ask what they're doing wrong. It seems some of them have only lost four pounds of fat, and they're very disappointed. I ask them how long they've been on the diet. They answer, "One week." Like Dan John, I involuntarily smack my forehead so hard I almost lose consciousness.

With a diet, any diet, the best way to succeed is to do the damn diet for more than three days.

Consistency, consistency, consistency. You just gotta put in the time.

Same goes with training. A few days ago I ran into an old college friend. The last time she saw me I was grossly obese. As in kids-point-and-stare obese. She said, "Tony, you look great! What kinds of workouts do you do?"

Now, it's been... well, more than a few years since I've been in college. I've done a whole lot of different workouts. So I thought about the question and responded, "Hey, remember when I started working out and eating better in my junior year? Well, I never stopped."

Consistency, consistency, consistency.

And don't ask me about new supplements until you consistently use the ones you're already taking. Sure, some supps work, and some don't. But I'm always surprised at how many people won't read the damn label and be consistent with dosing.

If it says two servings per day six hours apart, then take two servings per day six hours apart. Don't miss half your capsules then go looking for the next big supplement when the first one "doesn't work" for you.

Consistency, consistency, consistency.

Don't ask me about sets, reps, exercise choice, or tempo unless you train with spleen-exploding intensity.

Yes, some protocols are better than others for certain goals. But see that guy over there using the "wrong" tempo and "wrong" set/rep scheme on the "wrong" exercise? He's going to get better results than you.

Why? Because you go through the motions of training with all the intensity of a fat guy channel surfing, and he leaves blood on the barbell.

Intensity, intensity, intensity.

A few more, if I'm allowed?

Don't ask me about Testosterone boosters if you drink estrogenic, tittie-growing beer all the time. Real men, hormonally speaking at least, actually drink wine. Put it into a big pewter mug with a Viking goddess engraved on it if that makes you feel more secure in your manliness.

Don't ask me about overtraining unless you've passed out, thrown up, or collapsed to your knees at least once in the gym this week.

Health Insurance

Just doing my part to balance out all the crap put out by the "right" and their propaganda network (FOX News) here is a re-post from Health Beat. What happened to critical thinking in this country? This is not hard. If an insurance company is for it, you can bet it's bad for you. Thanks Maggie!

Truth Squad: The Insurance Industry Spreads Misinformation about What a Public Sector Plan Would Mean For Your Family

Claim: Recently, Karen Ignagni, president and chief executive officer of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), has been trying to put the industry’s best foot forward, arguing that when it comes to reform, healthcare insurers have been the most cooperative members of the healthcare industry.

After all, insurers have agreed to stop shunning sick patients: They will no longer turn away customers who, through no fault of their own, suffer from pre-existing conditions such as breast cancer. Graciously, insurers have said that they will refrain from dropping paying customers because the insurer suddenly “discovers” a pre-existing condition --after the customer is diagnosed with MS. Finally, insurers have pledged to stop charging sicker patients sky-high premiums. Instead, everyone in a given community will pay the same premium for the same plan. (This is now the law in some states).

Truth: What the industry has agreed to hardly represents a “concession”. They have consented to do what insurance companies are supposed to do: cover not just the young and healthy, but those who might actually use the policy.

But Ignagni is right on one point: Insurers are more enthusiastic about reform than most in the healthcare industry. This is hardly surprising. Universal coverage—with a mandate that everyone buy insurance--will bring them as many as 47 million new customers, government subsidies in hand.

What’s not to like?

Granted, insurers are going to have to alter their business plan. But, without reform, the alternative was to go out of business altogether. With the cost of health care spiraling (insurers’ reimbursements have been levitating by 8 percent a year for the last ten years), employers scaling back on benefits, and more and more self-employed Americans discovering that they cannot afford to buy insurance in the individual market, for-profit insurers are in financial trouble. (If you don’t believe that, check out the price of the stocks: UnitedHealth Group, for instance, is trading at $26 and change; eighteen months ago, the company’s shares fetched $57. )

Claim: What the insurance industry is not willing to do is compete with a public insurance plan. The for-profit insurance industry wants a monopoly over all of those new customers. Of course private-sector insurers will have to vie with each other for market share, but thanks to consolidation in the industry, a few major players will be the big winners—as long as they don’t have to go head-to-head with a public sector plan. They know that the public plan would be less expensive because it won’t have to provide profits for shareholders, pay executives multi-million dollar salaries, or spend a fortune on marketing, advertising and lobbying.

While they are willing to compete with each other, they don’t want to go head-to-head with a public sector plan that would definitely cost less and, as I explain below, plans to build on Medicare reforms to offer customers higher quality care.

Claim: Janet Trautwein, CEO of the National Association of Health Underwriters (NAHU), made this very clear earlier this week.

“We all have a stake in achieving meaningful reform that both preserves Americans' freedom to choose their doctors and lowers long-term health care costs. A public option will accomplish neither,” claimed Trautwein, who represents more than 100,000 licensed health insurance agents, brokers, consultants and benefit professionals nationwide.

Then she went out on a limb, and told what I have to call a Big Lie about the public option: "A new government-run health plan will raise costs for Americans with private insurance by systematically underpaying doctors and hospitals, our country's existing public plans -- Medicare and Medicaid--raise the average family's premiums by $1,800 a year. A public option will only exacerbate this problem--and make insurance more expensive."

Let’s break down Trautwein’s allegatins, one by one:

Claim: The NAHU supports reform that preserves our freedom to choose our doctors. A public option would not do that.

Truth: No American would be forced to choose the public option. This means that if your doctor doesn’t participate in the public plan, you could choose whatever private sector insurance he accepts. (Low-income and middle-income households that qualify for a subsidy from the government could use that subsidy to help pay for the private sector plan.).

But most likely your doctor will be part of the public plan. No doctor would be forced to sign on with the public sector option, but the majority will probably take both private sector insurance and public sector insurance—just as the vast majority now take both private insurance and Medicare. As noted below, under the House bill, both Medicare and the public sector plan will hike fees for the lowest-paid physicians.

Claim: The NAHU supports a plan that would “lower long-term costs.” The public option would not do that.

Truth: The public insurance plan would incorporate Medicare reforms (already proposed in the House legislation) that would not only trim spending but enhance the quality of care. The recommendations in the House bill encourage Medicare to realign financial incentives, rewarding providers for higher quality care, rather than volume. (If you are confused about what is actually in the House bill go to “Sustainable Middle Class” where John Freeland offers a lucid summary. Scroll down to the sections headlined: “Modernization and improvement of Medicare,” and “Innovation and delivery reform through the public health insurance option” It’s worth noting that, before he read the House bill, Freeland was not a fan of the public sector option.)

The House bill dovetails nicely with a White House proposal that an Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC) set Medicare fees with an eye to paying more for services that provide the greatest benefit to the patient. Monday, White House budget director Peter Orszag’s office released a letter, signed by 13 healthcare experts--including nine members of the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisers endorsing the idea.

What makes this letter so interesting—and perhaps critical to the debate over reform--is that although CBO director Douglas Elmendorf has expressed reservations about whether the House bill would rein in runaway healthcare spending this group of highly-respected economists—including nearly half of CBO’s own panel of health advisers -- declared that they believe that IMAC could “reduce the rate of growth of health expenditures substantially” as long as it has “the authority to propose changes to Medicare payment rates for services whose prices do not accurately reflect value. It would also be able to recommend more general policy reforms, such as implementation of value-based purchasing [and] bundling of payments.” These initiatives, which change the way Medicare pays for services, were already included in the House bill.

When the public insurance option becomes available in 2013 it would take advantage of Medicare’s reforms. It is critical that everyone understand that the public sector insurance plan will be modeled on a new, improved version of Medicare that incorporates many of the changes that the non-partisan Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPac) has been writing about for years. During the eight years of the Bush administration, these reports were ignored. Now President Obama and White House Budget director Peter Orszag as well as progressive Senators like Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) are determined to implement MedPac’s advice—counsel that focuses on doing what is best for the patient.

Claim: "A new government-run health plan will raise costs for Americans with private insurance. By systematically underpaying doctors and hospitals, our country's existing public plans--Medicare and Medicaid--raise the average family's premiums by $1,800 a year. A public option will only exacerbate this problem -- and make insurance more expensive."

Truth: First, if someone lumps Medicare and Medicaid payments together in order to suggest that Medicare underpays you can be certain that person is lying to you. Medicaid is an entirely separate program for the poor and, unlike Medicare, it is administered by the states. Medicaid pays significantly less than Medicare. The House bill addresses the problem by raising Medicaid payments for primary care to Medicare levels—but everyone agrees that Medicaid payments to specialists and hospitals remain too low.

By contrast, the idea that Medicare “systematically” pays too little just doesn’t square with the facts. Granted, there is a consensus that Medicare underpays primary care doctors and others who practice “cognitive medicine” (listening to and talking to the patient) too little. But the House bill specifically raises Medicare payments for family practitioners by 5% to 10% (paying more in areas where there are greater shortages), while also recommending bonuses for doctors who form accountable care organizations or succeed in managing chronic diseases. In addition, the House plan greatly expands scholarships and loan forgiveness for students who decide to go into primary care.

When it comes to Medicare payments to specialists and hospitals, the situation is far more complicated. Many hospitals insist that they lose money on their Medicare patients. But when the American Hospital Association testified before the Senate Finance Committee earlier this year, it acknowledged that, in 2007, 42 percent of U.S. hospitals turned a profit while serving Medicare patients.

Meanwhile, a 2006 article in the Journal on Health Care Financial Management reports that from 2002 to 2004, Medicare reimbursements for certain patients were very high—though Medicare wasn’t paying enough for patients who wound up in intensive care units (ICUs). While the cost of ICU stays rose, Medicare reimbursement shrank which translated into an average loss of $2700 for each ICU patient. Meanwhile, average Medicare reimbursement for patient not requiring an ICU stay increased by nearly 10 percent. As a result hospitals made money on these Medicare patients.

The report also revealed that just 23 percent of Medicare patients drive hospital losses, and most of these patients were admitted to an ICU. In the end when you combine the high-cost patients with the low-cost patients, 23% of the Medicare patients led to an overall loss of $387 per admission on all Medicare patients.

This suggests that, Medicare was not “systematically underpaying for all patients", though it was paying too little for ICU admissions.

The next question of course is this: why did it cost hospitals so much to care for ICU patients? On closer analysis, researchers discovered that “the pharmacy, supply, and laboratory departments accounted for more than 40 percent of the total costs” for ICU patients. “Rather than being directly related to medical services provided to the patient these areas are sources of incremental items that support patient care.”

Everyone has heard of ICU patients being subjected to a battery of tests; one wonders how many of those lab reports helped the patient? Were they all necessary? The report suggests that “hospitals need to address their costs--particularly in pharmacy, supply, and laboratory departments.”

What is certain is that across-the-board hikes—or cuts—for Medicare make little sense.

Return to the fact that not all hospitals lose money on Medicare: 42% of all U.S. hospitals manage to turn a profit on total Medicare’s reimbursements. This is something that hospitals do not like to talk about.

They know that some hospitals stay in the black when treating Medicare patients simply because they are more efficient. In private conversation, hospital CEOs have confirmed this. Medical Centers such as Mayo Clinic, and the accountable care organizations that Atul Gawande wrote about in the June 1 New Yorker provide better care at a lower cost. Meanwhile, other hospitals make a profit on the majority of their Medicare patients. They should analyze where they lose money and why. Maybe Medicare does need to increase payments for certain patients—while slicing overpayments in other areas. Or, maybe the hospital needs better system management to improve the way it delivers care.

The bottom line is this: as MedPac has pointed out in earlier reports, when private insurers pay hospitals more than Medicare does, too often, private insurers are simply rewarding inefficiency. It costs these hospitals more to care for patients because it takes them longer to make a diagnosis, or because their patients are more likely to acquire an infection, and so stay longer. Some hospitals overtreat—putting patients in an ICU who really need much less expensive—and far kinder—palliative care. Many hospitals run unnecessary tests. When private insurers pay for inefficiency and waste they pass the cost along to all of us, in the form of higher premiums.

Today or tomorrow HealthBeat will be publishing a guest-post that clarifies many of the mysteries of Medicare payment. Look for it—it’s excellent.

The Solution To Childhood Obesity

This worked for me! Can't really say for my mental health but I'm not a burden to the health care system, like all the fat brats that grew up to be diabetic, slovenly, slobs. I blame parents totally for this. It should be treated as child abuse. To my mom's credit, she did get me started on Atkin's when i was 14. Are you part of the problem?

http://vodpod.com/watch/1863810-untitled?pod=mightyjoe

So True

This bears a repost.

http://gubernatrix.co.uk/2009/07/how-to-be-a-better-version-of-yourself/

» by gubernatrix in: common problems, discussion topics

It is a fact of life that some people are born with unusual physical beauty, in the same way that some people are born with a talent for writing or playing the violin. Someone else’s abilities on the violin have absolutely no bearing on yours, so why should someone else’s physical appearance have any bearing on yours?

Photo credit: Murdoch

The one thing that all the good training manuals say, but all the magazines don’t say, is that diet and training programmes must be individualised. We all start from a different basis of genetics, experience, capacity for work, personalities and lifestyles.

Magazines would prefer you to think that a celebrity’s diet or training programme can work the same way for you as it sells more magazines, but this is complete rubbish.

Some celebrities can seem to be more successful than so-called ordinary people at losing weight or getting ripped. But this is not because they are using some magic programme, this is because they are able to afford a highly individualised programme and have the energy and motivation to devote to it.

The fact is that you can also enjoy the same success if you employ these same principles: a programme designed around your needs and goals, a diet based on your lifestyle and approach to eating, plus the motivation to do it all properly – which comes from within you.

There are many ways to obtain these things. You can get expert help, by hiring a personal trainer and nutritionist. You can get support and advice by joining a diet or fitness club. You can design a diet and training programme yourself, by doing the research and teaching yourself the principles.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each route. You might think that hiring a personal trainer and nutritionist is the best route if you can afford it, but this is not necessarily the case. Learning it all yourself, while it might take longer, could be better for you in the long run. Over your lifetime, the knowledge that you have gained can be accessed for free at any time because it is in your head!

Celebrity culture

This is one of the most insidious and destructive aspects of modern (mostly) Western society. Celebrity culture can destroy people. It is vitally important that people stop wanting to look like celebrities and start wanting to look like a better version of themselves. For Christ’s sake, even celebrities don’t want to look like themselves! How many celebrities have you seen with wildly fluctuating weight, cosmetic surgery and drug use?

No-one could deny that looks are important to the majority of people but you should decide what you think looks good.

I believe it comes down to having respect for yourself as an individual. There is nothing wrong with wanting to change; in fact, this is often a very positive desire. But the focus must be on yourself and how you want yourself to look. Don’t picture a celebrity, picture a better version of yourself.

Can anyone lose weight? Yes. Can anyone put on muscle? Yes. But it may not happen in the way you think it is going to. You will learn a lot about yourself while going through the process and sometimes you will have to be realistic about your goals.

This is another reason why it is dangerous to have a celebrity as a model for your ideal look. It simply may not be possible for you to look like that. You may look great but in a different way. Always focus on the way you look.

Cutting through the crap

Not everyone wants to spend hours learning about training and nutrition in order to be able to create their own personalised programme. But you have to take responsibility for these things to a certain extent.

It is like healthy eating. You don’t have to go back to school and get a nutrition qualification but you should learn the basics and be able to make good choices when you go shopping. You must immunise yourself against marketing claims. Read the nutritional information but do not take any notice of unquantified and vague claims like “low fat” or “whole grain”, which mean nothing.

Trust your instincts. This is part of having respect for yourself and your own capacity to understand what is good and what is bad. I see people all the time getting terribly confused about what is the ‘right’ training programme or the ‘right’ type of food to eat. This is because they are desperately trying to remember what they read in a magazine or what someone told them they should be doing.

If you find yourself in this position, stop trying to remember what someone else said and try to work it out for yourself. This is not as difficult as it sounds.

Here are some simple questions to ask yourself:

1. Are outrageous or unrealistic claims being made? Come on, you know you can’t achieve anything worthwhile in 10 minutes, right? If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it and everyone would be showing amazing results.
2. Do the numbers add up? Often one particular number will be trumpeted, but check all the others to see if it actually makes sense. For example, 1% fat – but how much sugar? Unless it is a raw ingredient, too much of anything is likely to be suspect.
3. Is it adaptable? Anything that is not adaptable to the individual should make you pause and consider. Very few things in life work in the same way for everyone. If adaptability is not built in, you can’t be sure it will work for you. It may be perfectly acceptable for matey over there but not for you.
4. Is the product or service playing on your fears or uncertainties? Be suspicious of anything that plays on your fears or depicts disastrous scenarios if you don’t partake of it. This is usually marketing rubbish.
5. Don’t assume that if something is right then everything else is wrong! This may sound unintuitive but it comes back to taking an individualised approach. For example, some people say you must eat breakfast, others say you don’t have to eat breakfast. There are scenarios where these are both right! So how do you tell the difference? Well, just be careful of absolutes. There are very few absolutes in life. If someone is telling you that you absolutely must do something, this may not be true. You are under no obligation to accept this without question just because someone chose to use strong language!
6. Be suspicious of claims of “best” and “only”. The truth is that lots of things work. This is great news, it means that you can choose a method that works for you. Ultimately the only thing that is important is that it does work.

You’ll probably catch 90% of the crap just by going through this simple thought process.

The breakfast example

Let’s look at this more closely because it is an interesting one. If two seemingly opposite things are both right, how do you work out which is right for you?

The most thorough way would be to do a controlled experiment of both methods – but we don’t all have time to do that!

So you can take a shortcut (oh, and be suspicious of anyone who offers shortcuts!) by finding out the reasons behind the methods and deciding if those apply to you; in other words forming a hypothesis about which is more likely to be best, based on your knowledge of yourself - a topic on which you are a world expert.

In the breakfast example, the conventional wisdom is that eating a healthy breakfast is better than not because it stops you snacking and eating unhealthy food later in the day because you got hungry.

However there are also people who say it doesn’t matter what time you eat and how many times a day you eat, so long as you are eating healthy or ‘clean’ food and you are getting the right amount of calories or macronutrients in a given period of time. These people are often following an ‘intermittent fasting’ style of eating.

In each method, the desired outcome of controlling overall calories is the same and the principle of eating healthy food is the same. It is simply the tactic that is different. One tactic to avoid overeating is to eat at regular intervals, the other tactic to avoid overeating is not to eat for long periods of time.

In either case, eating unhealthy food or eating more than the required number of calories would constitute failure.

So you need to pick the tactic that you think would work for you, given your circumstances. Or try both and see which is best.

What I am saying is that there is nothing inherent in ‘breakfast’ that makes you healthier or thinner. This is why you need to find out what is behind the claims that people make. Remember, there are very few absolutes in life.

Conclusion

Photo credit: burntfilm

At the risk of sounding like a self help guru I believe the key to success is: learn, aspire, believe.

If you want to be slimmer, fitter and healthier, learn about it. What else in life did you achieve without any learning? You had to learn to read, drive your car, play your sport and carry out your trade.

Aspire to be a better version of yourself, not to be someone else. Aspiration is important because true aspirations generally start with being honest about yourself. Aspiring to be better comes from an understanding of where you are now. People who have no aspirations are perhaps kidding themselves about their current situation.

Believe in your ability to cut through the crap and make decisions for yourself. Believe in your ability to carry out a programme of work and get the outcome you want. Right this moment I am watching the Williams sisters playing in the Wimbledon final and I can see right in front of me the difference made by belief. They are both brilliant tennis players – you can’t choose between them where ability is concerned. But Serena has more belief right now and she is winning.

So go on, make it happen!

No Substitute

It's so nice to run again. There really is no substitute for this most basic of exercises. I've tried bicycling, polymetircs, and all manner of energy system training. Nothing opens my lungs up like 20 minutes of pounding the pavement. After several false starts, I think i've found the formula to prevent the knee problems i had on my previous attempts. Watching my stride and doing longer, slower intervals is the key. Instead of adhering to the Tabata, I've modified it to 30/20 or 30/30 with more sets. A little bit of running is better than a lot of almost anything else.

Here is a great article about the futility of treadmills and bikes from Male Pattern Fitness.

The Human Hamster Wheel: Limit Your Treadmill Time!

by Andrew Heffernan on Jun 25, 2009 2:51 PM EDT 1 comment

With his usual eloquence, Alwyn Cosgrove makes an interesting point here about treadmill running:

...steady-state cardio on the treadmill is just fucking stupid....the treadmill switches your hamstring and glutes off — your foot hits the belt and the belt pulls you through —[so] it's mainly a quad exercise.

Think of it this way: if you did 400,000 reps of triceps extensions with 100 pounds you'd get four million pounds of volume. If you didn't balance that out with biceps curls you'd expect the elbow joint to hurt, right? You're damn straight it would!

So long term walking or running on the treadmill is almost guaranteeing knee pain.

When I read this I was reminded of research that Cosgrove and others have cited about knee injuries and female athletes. The upshot is that everyone's quadriceps start out stronger than their hamstrings; over time, however, a male athlete will become less quad-dominant (disproportionately stronger in the quadriceps than the glutes and hamstrings), whereas, unless they are given specific exercises to address the imbalance, women tend to become even more quad-dominant with training. This accounts, at least in part, for the large number of ACL tears among female athletes.

Smart coaches and trainers, then, are careful to include lots of lower-body pulling exercises to address this naturally-occurring imbalance in women.

Given that treadmill-running is almost all knee extension--quadriceps work--as Cosgrove indicates, it seems like women, in particular, would be particularly well-advised to stay off the ever-popular Human Hamster Wheel, or at least make sure to balance it with exercises emphasizing hip extension: deadlift variations, step-ups and Swiss-ball leg curls; stair and hill climbing or running. Even regular-old running around outside--pick your pace--emphasizes hip-extension more than treadmill running.

(They won't look so happy when they get the arthroscopic surgeon's bill).

Cosgrove makes another point in the article that's worth underscoring:

...one mile on the treadmill would be 1500 reps and burn around 100 calories. If you did a circuit of kettlebell swings, undulating ropes, inverted rows, sled pushes, and burpees for four rounds with 10 to 15 reps each, you'd burn 100 calories in less time with less load, and the reps would be spread over the entire body instead of on the ankles, knees, and hips. It's just a superior model.

There's no reason why you have to stick with the same movement--such as running, rowing, or cycling, which are, in essence, low-level resistance exercises--for the duration of your conditioning session: in fact, it doesn't make a lot of sense. If your intention is to burn calories, it seems much smarter to do as Cosgrove suggests, mixing it up with several difference exercises, loading different parts of the body, creating a balanced workout and avoiding excessive strain on any one area.

In my experience, both as an athlete and trainer, exercises which train the upper body and lower body together (thrusters, clean and jerks, burpees, step-up-and-presses, lunge and curl) are, metabolically speaking, about as tough as you can get. The body seems to go into high alert, as oxygen demand skyrockets from virtually every muscle, head to toe. Only slightly less demanding are compound sets of movements for the upper and lower body--something like the circuit described by Cosgrove above.

It takes some time to work up to training with this kind of intensity, but once you're capable of it, it seems like about the most efficient option for fat loss--not to mention safer and more fun.

Edocine Disruptors

Another thing I have been talking about for the last 10 years. This gentleman was on The Daily Show evening.

It’s Time to Learn From Frogs

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Some of the first eerie signs of a potential health catastrophe came as bizarre deformities in water animals, often in their sexual organs.

Frogs, salamanders and other amphibians began to sprout extra legs. In heavily polluted Lake Apopka, one of the largest lakes in Florida, male alligators developed stunted genitals.

In the Potomac watershed near Washington, male smallmouth bass have rapidly transformed into “intersex fish” that display female characteristics. This was discovered only in 2003, but the latest survey found that more than 80 percent of the male smallmouth bass in the Potomac are producing eggs.

Now scientists are connecting the dots with evidence of increasing abnormalities among humans, particularly large increases in numbers of genital deformities among newborn boys. For example, up to 7 percent of boys are now born with undescended testicles, although this often self-corrects over time. And up to 1 percent of boys in the United States are now born with hypospadias, in which the urethra exits the penis improperly, such as at the base rather than the tip.

Apprehension is growing among many scientists that the cause of all this may be a class of chemicals called endocrine disruptors. They are very widely used in agriculture, industry and consumer products. Some also enter the water supply when estrogens in human urine — compounded when a woman is on the pill — pass through sewage systems and then through water treatment plants.

These endocrine disruptors have complex effects on the human body, particularly during fetal development of males.

“A lot of these compounds act as weak estrogen, so that’s why developing males — whether smallmouth bass or humans — tend to be more sensitive,” said Robert Lawrence, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It’s scary, very scary.”

The scientific case is still far from proven, as chemical companies emphasize, and the uncertainties for humans are vast. But there is accumulating evidence that male sperm count is dropping and that genital abnormalities in newborn boys are increasing. Some studies show correlations between these abnormalities and mothers who have greater exposure to these chemicals during pregnancy, through everything from hair spray to the water they drink.

Endocrine disruptors also affect females. It is now well established that DES, a synthetic estrogen given to many pregnant women from the 1930s to the 1970s to prevent miscarriages, caused abnormalities in the children. They seemed fine at birth, but girls born to those women have been more likely to develop misshaped sexual organs and cancer.

There is also some evidence from both humans and monkeys that endometriosis, a gynecological disorder, is linked to exposure to endocrine disruptors. Researchers also suspect that the disruptors can cause early puberty in girls.

A rush of new research has also tied endocrine disruptors to obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes, in both animals and humans. For example, mice exposed in utero even to low doses of endocrine disruptors appear normal at first but develop excess abdominal body fat as adults.

Among some scientists, there is real apprehension at the new findings — nothing is more terrifying than reading The Journal of Pediatric Urology — but there hasn’t been much public notice or government action.

This month, the Endocrine Society, an organization of scientists specializing in this field, issued a landmark 50-page statement. It should be a wake-up call.

“We present the evidence that endocrine disruptors have effects on male and female reproduction, breast development and cancer, prostate cancer, neuroendocrinology, thyroid, metabolism and obesity, and cardiovascular endocrinology,” the society declared.

“The rise in the incidence in obesity,” it added, “matches the rise in the use and distribution of industrial chemicals that may be playing a role in generation of obesity.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is moving toward screening endocrine disrupting chemicals, but at a glacial pace. For now, these chemicals continue to be widely used in agricultural pesticides and industrial compounds. Everybody is exposed.

“We should be concerned,” said Dr. Ted Schettler of the Science and Environmental Health Network. “This can influence brain development, sperm counts or susceptibility to cancer, even where the animal at birth seems perfectly normal.”

The most notorious example of water pollution occurred in 1969, when the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire and helped shock America into adopting the Clean Water Act. Since then, complacency has taken hold.

Those deformed frogs and intersex fish — not to mention the growing number of deformities in newborn boys — should jolt us once again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/opinion/28kristof.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

The doctor is in

Dr. McGill is a very smart man. All of these exercises are recommended by me. Stiring the pot can be extrapolated to the barbell in a corner for more real life motor neural integration.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/core-myths/?em

Is Your Ab Workout Hurting Your Back?

By Gretchen Reynolds

Getty Images

The genesis of much of the ab work we do these days probably lies in the work done in an Australian physiotherapy lab during the mid-1990s. Researchers there, hoping to elucidate the underlying cause of back pain, attached electrodes to people’s midsections and directed them to rapidly raise and lower their arms, like the alarmist robot in “Lost in Space.”

In those with healthy backs, the scientists found, a deep abdominal muscle tensed several milliseconds before the arms rose. The brain apparently alerted the muscle, the transversus abdominis, to brace the spine in advance of movement. In those with back pain, however, the transversus abdominis didn’t fire early. The spine wasn’t ready for the flailing. It wobbled and ached. Perhaps, the researchers theorized, increasing abdominal strength could ease back pain. The lab worked with patients in pain to isolate and strengthen that particular deep muscle, in part by sucking in their guts during exercises. The results, though mixed, showed some promise against sore backs.

From that highly technical foray into rehabilitative medicine, a booming industry of fitness classes was born. “The idea leaked” into gyms and Pilates classes that core health was “all about the transversus abdominis,” Thomas Nesser, an associate professor of physical education at Indiana State University who has studied core fitness, told me recently. Personal trainers began directing clients to pull in their belly buttons during crunches on Swiss balls or to press their backs against the floor during sit-ups, deeply hollowing their stomachs, then curl up one spinal segment at a time. “People are now spending hours trying to strengthen” their deep ab muscles, Nesser said.

But there’s growing dissent among sports scientists about whether all of this attention to the deep abdominal muscles actually gives you a more powerful core and a stronger back and whether it’s even safe. A provocative article published in the The British Journal of Sports Medicine last year asserted that some of the key findings from the first Australian study of back pain might be wrong. Moreover, even if they were true for some people in pain, the results might not apply to the generally healthy and fit, whose trunk muscles weren’t misfiring in the first place.

“There’s so much mythology out there about the core,” maintains Stuart McGill, a highly regarded professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo in Canada and a back-pain clinician who has been crusading against ab exercises that require hollowing your belly. “The idea has reached trainers and through them the public that the core means only the abs. There’s no science behind that idea.” (McGill’s website is backfitpro.com.)

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The “core” remains a somewhat nebulous concept; but most researchers consider it the corset of muscles and connective tissue that encircle and hold the spine in place. If your core is stable, your spine remains upright while your body swivels around it. But, McGill says, the muscles forming the core must be balanced to allow the spine to bear large loads. If you concentrate on strengthening only one set of muscles within the core, you can destabilize your spine by pulling it out of alignment. Think of the spine as a fishing rod supported by muscular guy wires. If all of the wires are tensed equally, the rod stays straight. “If you pull the wires closer to the spine,” McGill says, as you do when you pull in your stomach while trying to isolate the transversus abdominis, “what happens?” The rod buckles. So, too, he said, can your spine if you overly focus on the deep abdominal muscles. “In research at our lab,” he went on to say, “the amount of load that the spine can bear without injury was greatly reduced when subjects pulled in their belly buttons” during crunches and other exercises.

Instead, he suggests, a core exercise program should emphasize all of the major muscles that girdle the spine, including but not concentrating on the abs. Side plank (lie on your side and raise your upper body) and the “bird dog” (in which, from all fours, you raise an alternate arm and leg) exercise the important muscles embedded along the back and sides of the core. As for the abdominals, no sit-ups, McGill said; they place devastating loads on the disks. An approved crunch begins with you lying down, one knee bent, and hands positioned beneath your lower back for support. “Do not hollow your stomach or press your back against the floor,” McGill says. Gently lift your head and shoulders, hold briefly and relax back down. These three exercises, done regularly, McGill said, can provide well-rounded, thorough core stability. And they avoid the pitfalls of the all-abs core routine. “I see too many people,” McGill told me with a sigh, “who have six-pack abs and a ruined back.”