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

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 !!!

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

How do you organize your workout

For body builders there might be 9 or 12 areas to work on, biceps, triceps, deltoids, lats, pecs, quads, glutes, hamstrings, calves, abs, they might add on forearms, traps, inner thigh, etc. A bodybuilder, who is interested in isolating and maximizing size and shape needs to isolate and maximize the pieces of the machine. This is right within the framework of their goals.

One of my compatriots is an Olympic and power lifter (please don’t confuse the two) he looks at moves, pulling off the ground, pushing overhead, pressing forward, etc. Within the framework of his goals he is correct. To break the moves down into the body parts would lose the connection of the parts and sacrifice function.

I OFTEN (though not always)design programs for my clients breaking the body down into four parts or movements, those that push, those that pull, moves for the legs and something for the core or abs. This splits the difference between the two extremes listed above. It allows my clients to focus on a single area rather than a whole complex move but since it involves multiple muscle groups it keeps a quality of functionality by using chains of muscles rather than isolating each.

I need to stress, as I have in most of my blogging articles that none of these lifting styles is superior it’s just a matter of agenda.

If you can clearly define your agenda it will go a long way to helping your define your training.

Physics and Chemistry

An object in motion stays in motion.  An object at rest stays at rest.

It hardly seems fair but there you are.  When you don't move it's easy to not move. When you do get moving it's easy to stay moving.

So, insofar as getting moving, working out, taking care of yourself (and by association your loved ones) The first step is an uphill battle.

That would be the bad news..Darn Physics !!

But here's the good news...

We aren't just objects, we are living, adaptable beings that nature has spent tens of thousands of years designing and redesigning to overcome physics.  In particular..Endorphins.

Often referred to as the "feel good hormone" endorphins kick in during a workout, if we hit a certain intensity, and usher in pain relief and a sense of well being.  This is nature's reward for us fighting the laws of physics.

Nature however is a multitasker.  The endorphins do more than just make you feel better and elevate you mood and outlook.  The cascade effect causes positive physiological changes throughout the body making muscles denser, skin more elastic, brain activity more acute.

The domino effect of the injection of endorphins into the system which in turn releases other hormones helps to regulate blood pressure, sugar, and LDL.  In short it's like a mini tune up.  We all know that cars need regular tune ups to run well and increase their life expectancy.  Imagine how well a car would run if it got a tune up everyday, not just every three thousand miles.

Give yourself a daily tune up.  Come to EXPECT your daily dose of endorphins and let chemistry trump physics