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

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 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

                       

           

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

Breathing 101

Yes, I am pretty sure everyone reading this article knows how to breath (of course we are entering Halloween season and I would hate to miss out on the whole Zombie Chic thing), so I am aware that you may think a wee word on breathing is a waste of your precious time, so rather than TELL you things let me ask you things.

1. How many muscles are involved in inhalation and exhalation.
2. Does use it or lose it apply to those muscles
3. Do the breathing muscles need to be stretched like other muscle in the body
4. Are breathing muscles attached to bones or anything else like other muscles in the body

If you are shocked (okay maybe shocked is to strong a word. Maybe we are just talking one of those zaps you get from dragging your feet on the carpet) by what you don't know or never even thought of we need to talk.