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

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.

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