Forest for the trees

Been there done that?

Ever notice that when you have a sore tooth your tongue won't leave the spot alone. Keeps returning to it even though you already know it's there and sore?

Then throughout the day it becomes the background of everything you do and think. You perceive good news is a little less good. Bad news a little worse, etc etc. The day takes a little more out of you. You know what I mean, we have all been there.

So what does this mean to me?

Think about that and think about what that means insofar as counting calories. In you are constantly thinking about calories and food values, where will you mind be? Where will you attention be turned. What will be the color of you mood as a result of this?

Working with clients over the years I have coined a new term and a new way to think about calories.  Rather than counting them we can Mind them.  There are plenty of internet tools out there to help you do this and believe it or not once you get into the groove it's kinda fun.  It winds up being a tools in your toolbox rather than a yoke on your mind.

Something to think about as we move about in the real world

Stay tuned true believers.  There's always something around the corner.

Bullet Points

If you have been reading about how to improve your health and fitness for any length of time some of the quickies I am writing out today are somewhere along the "duh" end of the knowledge continuum. Move on quickly.

There is a lot of good useful information out there, however unless you get it before it gets tossed into the commerce grist you will not get very much out of it. Good information, like Tabata style training, gets dumbed down or altered for the purposes of convenience and salability diminishing it's value, substantially.

So here is a quick list of basic things to have in your mental editor when you read about the next new product or training style, or as you start to put your own programs together.

* You lose FAT by creating a caloric deficit- Caloric deficit simply means using more calories than you take in. Burning more than you eat. For better or worse it's largely about the math. Don't get TOO caught up in the math.

* Train the way you are going to play - If you want to train for a sport, define the movement needs and design around that. If you are trying to get healthier define what your issues are and train to mitigate them. If you are trying to get fitter, define what fit means to you and look at the building blocks that will get you there. This is sometimes called Reverse Engineering.

* Big moves do more than small moves. The more muscles you move the more calories you burn. Multi joint big moves more reflect real life.

* Something is always better than nothing.

* Warm up and cool down ARE AS IMPORTANT as the workout.

* Warm up and cool down ARE AS IMPORTANT as the workout.

* Treat your training like a Dr. appointment. It's that important.

* Treat your training as a chance to play again. Find opportunities to nurture the playful.

That should do for now. Read, Think, Digest. Get back to me on it's usefulness

All the best,
Steve

Breathing 101

I would almost guarantee that if you are reading this you are breathing.  Lungs expand air goes in, lungs contract air goes out.  Roughly 8409600 breathes a year, give or take a whole lot.


So you have this down? Nothing I can tell you about it?


OK let me ASK you a couple of things.


What muscles are involved in breathing.  How many.  Do THEY burn calories like other muscles in our bodies?


Does the old adage "Use it or lose it" apply to these muscles?


Do the breathing muscles need to be stretched to stay supple and flexible like other muscles?


Does posture affect breathing?  Does mood?


So run through that and I want to throw one other question at you, but actually just a statement (We here at FitnessNexus are very keen on full disclosure).




Did you know that breathing is the only process in the body that is both voluntary and autonomic?  Yeah, marinate on that for a minute. 


You can consciously control your breath, up to a point at least, but the body will take care of it automatically (WHEW) most of the time.


So don't be so smug you breath-o-philes


There's always more to learn true believers so as always, stay tuned

Living in a three dimensional world part II

At the end of the last post I mentioned that in addition to increased strength and injury prevention working our bodies and limbs through all potential angles was also good for the brain.


Here's why;  Our brains are interactive.  You probably already know this.  We take in information, analyze it, use it as seems appropriate.   You know that reading and learning throughout life helps keep the neurons firing and developing.  The old adage "use it or lose it" applies here.


While it is obvious in academic learning and in life it is less obvious in movement. 


In the case of movement the data is not external like reading a book or figuring out how to nail  together a door frame.  Learning movement is mostly internal.  In this case the data is sent to the brain by sensors we have throughout the body called proprioceptors.  These proprioceptors constantly feed information to our brain about how our body and limbs are aligned, how quickly they are moving and how much tension is being put on the muscles, tendons and joints. 


The more and varied the data the more the brain has to process and analyze and the more capeable it becomes. 


Instead of "push ups hurt my shoulder" the dialogue becomes "The left shoulder was higher than the right and the push up was harder on the left side"  The ability to identify subtle changes in the body BY FEEL helps performance but it also challenges the brain.




This subject was worth a two part talk because as neuroscience continues to develop we are learning about the very powerful interaction between movement and mental health.  We are moving away from a mechanistic view of ourselves and our bodies to an organic one where everything touches and affects everything else.  As we evolve our view of our bodies so we evolve our view of the world.


Stay tuned true believers. There is always more to learn.


All the best
Steve

Living in a three dimensional world

I had some of my best feedback ever upon ending a class.  The client, already pretty fit came up to me and said what was shocking to her was that when she did my class it didn't seem all that hard, but she noticed when she took other instructor's bootcamp classes after taking a few weeks of mine, THEIR classes were a lot easier.



She wanted to know what was the secret of her getting stronger, more endurance, more control and stamina without me killing her to do it.



Not a GREAT secret but a good one.



Circular training.



In most training we move and think like our limbs (arms and legs) are piston like, they go out and they go back, they go up and they go down, in and out. 



In reality our muscles are not attached in straight lines parallel to the bones.  Mostly the muscles sweep in a gentle arc spiraling around the bone (to varying degrees).  That means when they contract the motion is somewhat circular, other muscles counter that to keep the motion in a straight(ish) line.



By working in a spiral, twining fashion we use the body as it was designed, and by following this smart natural design we get stronger with less perceived effort and as a bonus we avoid injury and, believe it or not (believe it) we get just a wee bit smarter.



Have I blown your 2D world, let me know.


Stay tuned true believers.

Spectrum

Once, a long time ago a client came back to me a few days after our last session.  She was depressed.  She had stopped her walking program on my advice.


Shocked me because I never gave such advice.


The conversation was the merits, nay, the necessity of pushing the body past it's normal functioning.  As most of you know it is this push that causes adaptation.


She was an avid walker.  Walking was not a challenge for her, at least the way she did it, and so she reasoned that she should give up walking.


I then explained that there are a lot of good things to walking.  Health and balance in our lives is not solely tied to the growth and change of hardware and software.  It ties into, and stems from a lot of factors.


She was happy again.


The moral of the story.  Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.  Don't put fitness in a box.  We, all of us, have to strive to work out the blueprint of our minds and bodies until the very last day.


Stay tuned true believers.

What rest means

Short one today True Believers:


What does rest mean..to you.
Is it sleep, is it brain dead via TV or other diversions.
Is it the quiet of a walk in the woods.


I will propose this question to help you reflect on what rest means to you.


How do you feel after you have applied your version of rest?


Take your time, get back to me when you can.


Until next time....

The How And The What

We didn't use to have to exercise.  Life was exercise enough.  One might say exercise was unconscious.


That world is in our rear view mirror now.  Some might say for the better, some for the worse.


I say opportunity lurks


When life was hard enough to test the body on a daily basis there was no time for what the body and mind COULD do.  Only what it HAD to do.


With movement now "optional" in our lives we can make the choice, the conscious choice, to make it more than survival.


The word Yoga derives from the same root word as yoke - which connects animal to plow.  In terms of movement it denotes connecting mind/intention to movement.  This option, to move with awareness and to be aware of what we are about as we move, is a watershed concept in our health and fitness.  It allows us to take our bodies beyond the merely functional tool of movement and survival to a learning tool.


Whatever you choose to do for your exercise and fitness, choose it in relation to who you are, and as you perform your actions turn your awareness to them, not to outcome and certainly not to distractions.


All the best,
Steve

There are choices we make every moment of the day in our lives that both determine and reflect who we are.


Look for all the little things.  Nuances.  Ask yourself if they express your ideal version of you..


In the meantime watch me beating up on my bootcamp class.

Amherst I long to walk in your woods.

Own Your Training

I may be a bit of a problem to my clients and students.

It's not my jokes.

.....Okay it's not JUST my jokes.

The problem is I really love what I do. To me there is no other career path that even comes remotely close.

The problem with being infatuated with your profession is you think everyone else feels the same. Maybe I should restate that just a bit. You KNOW everyone feels the same, it's just that THEY don't know it yet.

Why is that a problem?

Because a robot that follows along, does blindly what it's told or programmed to do does NOT care, not even one whit, about what it's doing.

This is not saying anything bad about robots or even androids or cyborgs (yes I am a geek in more than one way).

I am a problem to my clients and students because I want them to understand why. I don't want them going through the motions. Even if they are pushing themselves to the limits physically, I want them engaged mentally. I want them to be as captivated by the WHY as much as they are challenged and inspired by the what.

So I explain. My people know you can't out train a bad diet, they have all heard how one soda will undo the caloric deficit of 45 minutes of work, and, if they stay tuned (not guaranteed by any means) they hear why the calories in that soda are less detrimental that the mode of delivery.

Through the breathing and recovery between Tabata training sets they might get a few words about Elevated Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC), and what it means to their TIME and their goals.

Do they listen? Some do, some don't, and sometimes it's a matter of repetition, or delivery (I know if I open with a knock knock joke they usually tune me out right away) but I keep the information flowing, even if they look at me glassy eyed and on one occasion beg me to stop (okay actually I was training my wife that day).

Where am I going with all this?

We have heard it often enough, Information is power. That's what I want for my people, that's what I want you to want for yourselves.

Until next time true believers.

Steve

Getting along swimmingly

What recovery means

Imagine you are playing a game, diving to the bottom of a pool, starting in the shallow end and each successive time you dive in you move further and further into the deep end.

                As you begin, not having to go very deep at all you only take a small inhale.  Why load up on air if you don’t need to?

                As you progress though, you will have to take deeper breaths to make sure you have enough to last you all the way to the bottom and back up.

                Now Imagine not coming up for air, or taking equally short breaths in the deeper end as you did in the shallow? How far would you get?  How hard would it be?  Could you even keep it up?

                So here is how the metaphor breaks down. The dive is your workout; the coming up for air is your recovery.

                Without recovery you will not be training very hard (depth) or very long (repeated dives).

                The second aspect of this metaphor is about the time above the water breathing.  The deeper you go, meaning the harder you training, the longer your recovery time. If you try to keep the same recovery time even as you get into your training groove and find the  power to go harder, bad things will happen (hopefully not brain damage).  The harder you train the more critical recovery.

                There is one more twist we can throw in here. While you are recovering are you treading water, or have you learned and practice the skills to float.  Which uses up more energy?  And which will let you recover sooner and get back to diving deeper?   This is to say not all recovery is the same.  Just taking a day off is not the same as doing some stretching or very light (walking) cardio.

                More things to plug into your internal vetting machine as you move through the potential maze of training.

                Stay on course True Believers.

Why we do what we do Part II

Breaking out the ??????
 

Last week, with the help of Lewis Carroll I talked about asking the right questions as you begin your training program.  In the seven or so days since you have amassed quite a few.  If you have not stop now and give yourself five minutes to reflect on this.  There are few things in life you will be able to tailor as well as you can your training.

Once you have asked the right questions (and universally once starting down this path more and more questions pop up, it’s a good thing.) or identified what the job is (a watch is not a croissant) now comes step two.

Yes that’s right..Let’s look at tools.

Tools in this context is not just limited to equipment.  Yes in my training with my clients I use a wide variety of equipment from kettlebells to bands, but here we are also talking about protocols.  This can range from LSD (long slow duration) cardio training, to threshold training, to limit strength, speed strength, to yoga, to plyometrics to isometrics.

With your list of questions and goals you can start picking out the tools that best fill the needs of the job.  If some of the terms I just used are unfamiliar to you then time for research, and, guess what, more questions.

The purpose of this blog is to set you up to be an informed exerciser, because guess what, once you have carved out the goal, and done the work to identify the tools, you now OWN  your training, and that my friends is a wonderful thing.

If you want to take the short cut (a sign of intelligence) then I invite you to contact me in helping to amass, then possibly cull the list of questions and then after that discuss the tools that will take you where you want to go.

Next entry we will talk about laying out your game plan.

Keep the faith until next time true believers.

Steve

805-285-6401

 

Why We Do What We Do Part I

Asking the right questions

The Hatter was the first to break the silence. `What day of the month is it?' he said, turning to Alice: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear.

Alice considered a little, and then said `The fourth.'

`Two days wrong!' sighed the Hatter. `I told you butter wouldn't suit the works!' he added looking angrily at the March Hare.

`It was the best butter,' the March Hare meekly replied.

`Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well,' the Hatter grumbled: `you shouldn't have put it in with the bread-knife.'

The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, `It was the best butter, you know.'

 So why am I beginning a blog post with an excerpt from Lewis Carroll Alice in wonderland?

First of all I must say don’t get me started on it being a kid’s book.  There was a lot of subtext. Even the “simple” act of going down the rabbit hole can be an earthshaking metaphor.

So let’s stick with what is at hand.

It’s nearly as obvious as the right tool for the right job. The Mad Hatter and March Hare just put a very fine point on it.  The very best butter will do wonders for toast and scones, but, we can say, will not benefit a watch at all.  We can get to bread crumbs and bread knife on the next post.

In here I want to explore matching the right tool to the job.  Does a volleyball player need to bench press? Does an avid gardener need to do bent or rows or lat pull downs?

            To match the right tools for the right job we have to ask the right questions.  Questions like:

            What do you do?

What do you want to do better at? 

            What are the weaknesses I have to shore up?

            What are the strengths I want to capitalize on?

This is just an obvious sample.  Easily a dozen more could be added as we start to hone down on the nuts and bolts of our personal agenda.

So your take away lesson here is not to ask is it good, I am constantly learning great new training techniques but is it butter to my watch?

Until next time true believers,

Steve O’Neill

ACSM CPT

                       

           

Suthin Sumthin

I TRY to donate blood on a regular basis.  I can spare it, it doesn't take long, I have several women fussing over me asking me how I am doing, telling me what a good fellow I am.  What's not to love?

I also have, I must humbly convey, really good veins.  One fellow said "massive pipes". The nurses like it because it's an easy poke.  I also fill up the little blood bag pretty quickly.

Last time I donated, rather on a lark, I drank a lot of water the night before, and during the night whenever I got up I took a wee sip.

That day (well morning) the nurse that attended me was SHOCKED at how quickly I bled out.  She had never seen anything like it.  I told her what I had done and she said that explained it and mentioned it to other staff.

It got me to thinking about the early days of my learning the field of fitness.  We sweat some all the time.  During the day we can compensate for it.  At night not so much.  We wake up in the morning dehydrated.  Just like there is breakfast there SHOULD be a break dehydration.

The moral of the story.  If you are a morning exercisers and you feel like you are not getting you best game on when you go to train.  Water. 

If you find yourself a little hard to settle in and get to business, water.  Dehydration, by lowering the fluidity of blood and thus limiting its travelability (yes I think I just made up a new word) affects both muscle and brain function. 

Now, go play !!!

Meal Frequency Review

The following is not mine. I am posting the abstract in total to make sure credit goes where credit is due.

Please note the mention that ghrelin, a hormone that is part of the signaling process for eating, was the same for both groups,  and that this was a small study.

One final point to ponder.  In our evolution was food always plentiful or did we have times of famine, and how does that relate to our chemical make today.

Steve

Br J Nutr. 2010 Apr;103(8):1098-101. Epub 2009 Nov 30.

 

Increased meal frequency does not promote greater weight loss in subjects who were prescribed an 8-week equi-energetic energy-restricted diet.

Cameron JD, Cyr MJ, Doucet E.

Source

Behavioural and Metabolic Research Unit, School of Human Kinetics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Abstract

There have been reports of an inverse relationship between meal frequency (MF) and adiposity. It has been postulated that this may be explained by favourable effects of increased MF on appetite control and possibly on gut peptides as well. The main goal of the present study was to investigate whether using a high MF could lead to a greater weight loss than that obtained with a low MF under conditions of similar energy restriction. Subjects were randomised into two treatment arms (high MF = 3 meals+3 snacks/d or low MF = 3 meals/d) and subjected to the same dietary energy restriction of - 2931 kJ/d for 8 weeks. Sixteen obese adults (n 8 women and 8 men; age 34.6 (sd 9.5); BMI 37.1 (sd 4.5) kg/m2) completed the study. Overall, there was a 4.7 % decrease in body weight (P < 0.01); similarly, significant decreases were noted in fat mass ( - 3.1 (sd 2.9) kg; P < 0.01), lean body mass ( - 2.0 (sd 3.1) kg; P < 0.05) and BMI ( - 1.7 (sd 0.8) kg/m2; P < 0.01). However, there were NS differences between the low- and high-MF groups for adiposity indices, appetite measurements or gut peptides (peptide YY and ghrelin) either before or after the intervention. We conclude that increasing MF does not promote greater body weight loss under the conditions described in the present study.

PMID:

19943985

[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

A Thinking Man's Guide To The Warm Up Part II

Earlier this year (snickering behind my hand) I blogged about what the real purpose of warming up is.  Very literally warming up the muscles so they are soft enough to move with force yet activated enough to respond to it FASTER than the speed of thought.

My questions for you at this point is, when we move, when we exercise, are the muscles the only things that move? What do the muscles move? And WHERE does the movement actually take place.

Think on that.  Yes I am going to give you the answer and yes if you don’t already know it then you are gonna go duh, but I do want you do really think about it.  Make your brain itch just a bit and when we scratch it, it will be all that much better.

Okay enough of the filler.

Bones are moved by the muscles, and movement actually takes place at the joints.

Okay if any of you actually said Duh or Doipe I am sorry and I hope you did not smack your forehead to hard.

Now, what has that to do with warming up?

Remember what I said about getting the muscles more loose and fluid.  The key word here is fluid.  In the case of the joints we are literally talking about fluid (as opposed to fluid like).


Synovial fluid is produced at the joint capsule as a result of movement; it has a lubricating effect, helping the bones slide around more easily where they meet at the joint.  Going back to my car/oil metaphor, do you want to be driving around with low oil?  What’s good for the pistons is good for the joints (bet you never heard that variation before).

There is a LITTLE BIT more to the story, but I will save that for part III of warm up, later this same year but I will leave you with this.

                                                     MOVE YOUR JOINTS.

And also a question…

How many angles and degrees do your joints move in?

I look forward to your questions and comments.

www.fitnessnexus@yahoo.com

Tools, Toys and Biofeedback

I am not a gadget person.  My cell phone is actually just a phone. My watch has an alarm and a stop watch; it can cover two times zones.  I have them both for Pacific. 

However, I like “stuff” for training.  I may have more stuff than any trainer I know.  TRX, Bodyblade, kettlebells, clubbells, bands, fitballs, medicine balls, tennis balls, airdiscs, etc.

Why?

As people start down the fitness path and learn by doing what their definitions and needs are they need new goals and challenges.

For example as a strength trainer works on heavier weights they realize that a weak link in the chain of a given movement, say a squat, is holding them back.  Activating a sleeping assistor muscle will take them farther, more quickly and with less injury than just digging in.  Perhaps side squats with band resistance will help with hip involvement, or a twisting motion with either the TRX or Bodyblade will help them engage their core more.

We are constantly discovering and rediscovering our movements.  We clean up, refine and explore. The various tools we have available to us dictate how efficiency we can explore these other roads.

Tools give us options, options give us the opportunity to explore, and what is exploration with movement but play?

A Thinking Man's Guide to "The Warm Up"

What is a warm up?

Many people understand a warm up to be stretching to loosen the muscles.  In reality warming up really is just that, this misunderstanding has led to injuries with average exercisers and high level athletes.

A muscle can be seen as a rubber band, which can stretch several times beyond its resting  length and then pull back to its original size.  If that rubber band were put in a freezer (inactivity) then taken out, when you tried to stretch it, it would most likely snap.

The purpose of an effective warm up is to warm up that rubber band that that it has the elasticity to move.

Another way to think about this is starting your car.  If it has been a few days since you have driven or you live in a colder climate you will let it set and idle for a bit.  The oil, usually described as a car’s life blood, is thick and viscous when the engine is cold.  As the car warms ups the oil gets thinner, more fluid, and moves through the system more easily.

Not letting the engine idle can mean it clogging out just when you are about to accelerate into traffic. Bad thing.  Warming up your muscles, tendons and joints before regular exercise is the idling time your body needs to get it’s fluids…well fluid, so that it does not clog out when you begin your routine.

An additional value of a smart generalized warm up routine is that it does not have to be done JUST before a workout.  Ideally it could be done several times a day for the same purpose, keep that rubber band lose and functional, keep the fluids circulating.

We train to be better at life. The more you marry the two, using one to assist the learning of the other, the stronger you will be for it body and mind.

If you need help with program design you can contact me at

Fitnessnexus@yahoo.com

All the best,

Steve

A Few Words About Accoutrements

 

As I have talked about in previous entries knowing where you want to go with your training is pivotal. If you want to lose weight Powerlifting would not be helpful, lots of jogging would but then you have to ask WHY you want to lose weight. Is it to help your health or to look better, or both.  The answers to these questions may also change your choices.  If you have high blood pressure or other health issues the long slow steady of a walk or walk jog might be better, if you don’t have those issues and are really more concerned about how you look, shorter threshold training will help muscle tone, utilize more fat stores in the long run and leave more training time for other Bodyshaping pursuits.

That awareness of why, which is also your prime motivation, factors in to what type of accoutrements you will have.

If you are going to be focusing on heavy full body lifting then soft soled shoes like wresting shoes are best. They give you maximum awareness of the ground.  If you are running then investing in the appropriate running shoe will save you down time from injury.

The inspiration for writing this blog entry came from a section of one of my old textbooks that talked about the fluid ball, inter-abdominal pressure, and lifting belts.

The fluid ball is the abdominal area, soft tissues organ etc.  Not a heck of a lot of bony structural support, yet when doing full body lifts like the squat, deadlift, clean and jerk, snatch, or even simply overhead moves like the overhead lunge, a great deal of force is transferred though this area from ground to over head.

With this force comes the chance of injury to the lower back, the only hard structure in the area.  By bracing the deep abdominal muscles and the diaphragm the fluid, which cannot be compressed, becomes part of the bracing mechanism to support the back.  It’s an essential technique and one many people use to varying degrees without any formal training.

You will often see people at gym making use of weight belts; their purpose is to constrict even further the abdominal / subinguinal area so that there is even greater bracing and thus greater protection for the spine.

This is an important piece of equipment for those exercisers who are dedicated to training for maximum amounts of strength (and usually very short duration).  They are appropriate for their goals.

Useful as they are in context are they something YOU need for YOUR training goals?

For most general fitness they are not relevant. Further, over dependence on them can lead to weakening of the supporting muscle structure.  If you have seen someone doing bench press, bicep curls, upright rows etc wearing a lifting belt they are not only helping their lifting power, they are potentially damaging their bodies.

To tie this up, the explanation of the lifting belt is just an example of how we need to think through what our goals are carefully and construct our training and our equipment,  accordingly.  You also now have a brief glimpse of the working of the core in training.

If you have questions or need clarification I can be reached via email at:

                                                          Fitnessnexus@yahoo