iamgeekfit tag:nopain2.org,2009:/geekfit/6 2009-11-26T13:59:31Z For grad students, researchers, academics and related who want to get fit, healthy, well and stay that way. Movable Type 4.25 Dig in with Georgie Fear, RD, PhD student, geek & Cook book Author tag:nopain2.org,2009:/geekfit//6.218 2009-11-26T13:58:02Z 2009-11-26T13:59:31Z Want to make great food but have kitchen/food phobias? Check out how easy Geek-like-you Georgie Fear, RD, PhD student makes great food possible with her new cook book, Dig in. Perfect for holiday and anytime eating.

It's been a pleasure in the past to present geeks - phd students, researchers - who also find a path towards fitness. Georgie Fear of AskGeorgie.com is a rather exceptional example of the blend.

Georgie is an RD, a registered dietician (think food doctor, more on this below), a fitness coach, a published researcher, PhD student, and now, Cook Book Author of the new COOK BOOK Dig In

Georgie has just released this awesome cookbook (in both ebook and paper) that is perfect for geeks who both want to eat healthily and tastily, but who don't have time to put together gourmet feasts. In Dig In, while many recipes are from scratch in the traditional sense of whole fresh ingredients, one of the things i enjoy about her recipes is that Georgie is unafraid of using intriguing foods that come in time saving tins, glass jars and plastic containers that still scream "tasty & healthy."

Both are possible.

We'll talk more about Dig In in a moment, but first, allow me to present an interview i've done with Georgie about her geek academic choices, and where health and fitness comes into that picture.

]]> mc - Why food georgie? ok, let's back up a bit. You did an undergrad degree, then your RD - what motivated the RD?

Georgie: I was interested in nutrition from the time I was in high school, though of course it's developed over the years. Like many teenage girls, I thought being skinny was paramount in life, so I cut back on food until I was unhealthy, weak, and miserable. Luckily I got past my disordered habits by learning the science behind nutrition, as well as observing the direct correlation of how well or poorly I fed myself with my athletic achievements. I've always been an athlete, and it was plain to me to see how severe food restrictions were making me thin, yes, but also weak, tired, and generally less vibrant. I knew I could do better. "I'm smarter than this", I told myself.

But that was all personal, I really was planning upon entering college to be either an MD, biologist or a chemist, I always was very into science. It was actually at Freshman Orientation, when someone else said they were majoring in nutrition, that I said, "Wait, you can study nutrition as a major? Oh hell, I'm doing THAT!"

mc - What is an RD? i mean we hear a lot about various "nutrition certifications" but the RD is not that - it's the real thing. What's special about the RD?

Georgie:The RD is more comprehensive. In short, an RD is always going to be the best prepared, after 5 years of full time education and a stringent exam.

To obtain an RD, you have to first complete a Bachelors degree in Nutritional Science, specifically dietetics, and take some nationally recognized core courses. It is a lot more science than people think - biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, and also knowledge of food. You take some Basic Foods classes to learn about food characteristics, and also Experimental Foods, where you can fiddle with experiments like decreasing the sugar in cakes, using fat substitutes, etc. You also take psychology and sociology, classes on metabolism of macro and micronutrients, cultural foods, and counseling classes. It all rolls together in one heck of a background, and I feel like I was immensely prepared after college. The next step is to complete a one year internship, for which I went to Cornell University and did my clinical rotations at University of Rochester Medical Center. Somewhat of a "trial by fire", the internship was very long hours, very hard, but you learn quickly when thrown into a hospital environment. During that year I got a good taste of what it would be like to work in a hospital, and I remember thinking I wanted to do more preventative nutrition, and work with people who are currently WELL, to keep them from becoming the cases I was handling. After the internship, you take an exam, call youself an RD, and start figuring out how to pay all those loans off!

mc - Exhausting! ok after your RD you went to the real world for awhile, and then research called? what drove you back to school?

Georgie: I always wanted to know more, more, more. I'd come home from the hospital after 12 hours seeing patients, and read journals online. I'm a geek, though and through. I wanted to have more understanding of cellular biology and nutrition, and I thought I'd work and taking some graduate classes in cell bio back at RU. So back I came to NJ. It was only after getting back here that Isaid, no, there will years of my life to work, I'm not done learning, and I want to do that full time for a bit longer. Luckily I received a fellowship to Rutgers, so financially it was a real blessing.

mc - Congratulations on the scholarship. No small thing to a great school. What's your research topic (has that topic changed? more than once? since you started?)

Georgie: My research topics have changed a lot! The first lab I worked in was based on drug discovery and nutraceuticals from plants, and I did projects including protease and amylase inhibitors, as well as anthocyanin research. It was an exciting time; I traveled to Tanzania to harvest plants for bioassays, as well as to Alaska to do some work on the native berry species up there. However when a new position opened up with a research group doing exercise and nutrition studied, i decided to change course. My current work (and no I'm not changing it again!) involves physical activity barriers - what factors keep people from becoming more active or staying active, and how can we use that information to educate people for nutrition and health interventions.

mc - How are you blending your professional training practice with your research?

Georgie: I've been doing private counseling for a couple years at a personal training studio and with private clients. I also teach fitness and nutrition classes for Rutgers Recreation, including Kettlebell Technique, Nutrition For Endurance Sports, Weight Loss Workshop, and Food For Fitness. And recently I've been hired as the Sports Dietitian for Rutgers Athletics. As you can imagine, I'm busy! I've had to stop seeing personal clients for the time being, so I can manage all the athletes and keep my classes going. It doesn't "blend with my research" as much at it all bleeds together until I can't tell it apart, and have no need to tell it apart.

My life is nutrition, fitness, food, and sport. When I'm not working with an athlete, *I'm* training, when I'm done giving a grocery tour, I go buy MY healthy grcoeries. I cook recipes and post them for a blog, but it's my dinner. My work is my life, because it's my passion and greatest talent.

mc - And speaking of recipes on your blog, the new AskGeorgie.com, and the previous blog Nutrition Solutions, that has for ages had tons of recipes. I love the fact that you're not afraid to pull something in a can off a shelf and try it. what inspires you (a) to pick that thing off teh shelf and (b)what inspires the recipes - how do you know what amounts of STUFF to put in?

Picking new foods off the shelf, I look for somethign interesting, new, and not full of sugar, fat, or something else I dont want ot be eating! I love spices, because they allow me to experiment with new flavors that aren't high calorie or unhealthful. I'll add a touch of honey or molasses to bring a sweet note to a recipes, but I'm not going to buy a sauce that's more sugar than anything else. Predominantly, my favorite new ingredients come from the produce section. I love finding a new veggie or fruit, and finding a way to cook it or enjoy it. Some of the recent newbies in my kitchen include Chipotle peppers, Fennel, Acorn Squash, escargots, kale, and yes, I'll admit it: Tripe. Blame my Romanian husband, he wanted some traditionally cooked tripe soup for his birthday. Hahaha, You didnt see that on the blog for a reason! I didnt want to scare my readers off!

As for what stuff to put in, some of its experience, such as "these cookies are too dense, they need more baking powder. Too dry? Try more liquid and maybe more fat. For flavors and textures, pairing contrasts always works well, something crunchy with something creamy, cool with spicy, sweet with tart. I made a vegetarian-sausage stuffing last night: dried cranberries (sweet) and a pinch of hot pepper (spicy) took it over the top. When you can get flavors from natural ingredients, or some creative procedure, you don't need to add lots of fat, sugar, etc.

mc - And a recipe book seems like a cool idea, but that also takes time. how did you find the time to do this book!!! that's awesome. Grad student does BOOK!

Georgie: Running marathons, I learned to not look at the whole stretch before me, just one block at a time. Thus the book congealed one recipe at a time.

mc - Ok with that stunned amazement, what i dig about this book is that there are very low tech requirements. someone living in a dorm with a kitchen - not even an oven - you can make almost all these recipes.

Indeed for our readers, here's the complete gear list for Dig In:

The essentials:

Fridge/Freezer
Measuring Cups & Spoons
Blender
Stove
Large Frying pan (1)
Sharp knife
Cutting board
Spatula
Oven
Bowl/Plate to eat off of
Big mixing bowls (2)
Large baking dish (13x9)
Cookie sheet (1)
Can opener
Pot (for pasta, soup, etc)
Microwave
Muffin Tin

(According to Georgie, other than the mixing bowls, you really only need one of everything)

So was that deliberate on your part? i will create no recipe that requires an oven?

Not at all! The recipes were my meals, so when I'm in a rush I use time saving means like the microwave. I also hate heating up the apartment in the summer with the oven, so I dont use it in the hot months. Now that its cold, that baby's on daily.

mc - What was the inspiration for this particular collection?

Georgie: I wanted to make recipes that were interesting enough to make you want to eat them, without being so complicated that you don't want to cook them. I try to keep ingredients short, procedures brief. WHen I make muffins: it's dry stuff in one bowl, wet stuff in one bowl, add one to the other. Stir. Bake. I like streamlined, so if I dont think it makes a difference, say, what order you add ingredients, heck just chuck them in.

mc - Everything in the book is really pretty healthy. What's your philosophy in Recipe Design?

Georgie: I stick to a low glycemic meal plan, in which virtually all my carbohydrates come from vegetables. I do eat grain foods right after workouts, but generally I don't include many grains in my recipes. When I make sweets, muffins, etc I only eat them after a workout, and I stick to about one whole grain food a day. I emphasize a lot of vegetables, protein, and reliance on healthy fats. No trans fat whatsoever. Minimal sugar, no refined grains. There's more on this inside the book in the "about this book" section.

mc - Who's your competition in this space and what sets Dig In apart?

Georgie: There's a lot of "healthy recipe books" out there - but the word "healthy" can be used pretty loosely. I've found that most recipe sources I've found either miss the mark on my nutritional standards, or my taste standards. Most people who would venture to writing recipes come from a culinary background, and they're "light" recipes may taste divine, but still contain too mch sugar sugar, too mch fat, or just too much work for me. On the opposite spectrum, some people like bodybuilders tend to go the other way, where they'll sacrifice taste for function and it's not appealing, varied, or fun enough for me. On a formatting standpoint, I'm visual. I have Gourmet Nutrition, and I'm a bg proponent of Precision Nutrition, but I've never cooked a thing from it. Why? No photos. Visually boring.

mc - Is the veggie edition a sub edition of the main cook book or is it a distinct cook book?

Georgie: It is subset, so I caution people to NOT buy both. It wasnt planned, but someone wrote and asked if I'd give them a price break and just send pdf's of the veggie recipes. So I thought, why not? Good idea! Likewise I never planned on having an ebook, until YOU suggested it!

mc - What's your fave recipe in the book? why?

Georgie: Wow. That's hard! I'll have to name a few. The Ceviche with Avocado (pictured on the cover), the Lemon Herb Grilled Chicken, and the Power Cookies would be my top three. In terms of frequency - the Power Cookies get made the most often.

mc - Are you already thinking about your next book, or is it back to the books?

Georgie: Oh the recipe files are going in a folder in my desktop. I've actually been cranking them out faster than ever the past month or so! Most end up on the blog lately, but some I keep for the next installment.

-----------------

To give you a flavour of Georgie's recipe panache, here are two great original, geek friendly recipes.

Chocolate Oatmeal Power Cookies -protein rich portable meals in a bite.

I know how it is, trying to manage a busy schedule, fit in workouts, and find healthy food can be cumbersome!

Like many people looking for protein rich portable meals, I eat a fair amount of protein bars. But I also have found that little time invested in the kitchen can yield some great tasting and less expensive alternatives. Here's a recipe for Power Cookies, a great protein + healthy carb meal that's ideal for post-workout nutrition or breakfast on the run. If your goals include weight loss, making them with Splenda saves a significant portion of calories and still produces a great tasting cookie. For the hard gainers out there, using regular sugar will give you more carb calories to maximize gains after a workout. And if you can't decide...half and half works too. :)

   * 2 cups oats, (quick or old-fashioned)DSC_0566

   * 1 cup whole wheat flour

   * 1 cup chocolate whey protein powder

   * 1 c Splenda granular (or sugar, if you prefer)

   * ½ tsp salt

   * ½ T baking soda

   * 1 T baking powder

   * 2 T unsweetened cocoa powder

   * ¼ c milled flaxseed

   * ¼ cup raisins

   * ½ c egg substitute (such as Egg Beaters)

   * 5 oz plain Greek Yogurt

   * 1 T canola oil

   * 2 T water

Preheat oven to 375. Mix dry ingredients, (oats through raisins) in a large bowl, and stir well. Add egg substitute, yogurt, oil, and water, and mix. Drop into 8 mounds onto well-sprayed cookie sheets. Makes 8 enormous (meal-size) cookies.

Bake at 375 for 8 min. Take out when the cookies are still soft. (They will continue to dry and get more solid as they cool) Let them cool for 10 minutes, then wrap each cookie in plastic wrap or a ziploc bag, and store in the refrigerator or freezer. (To reheat a frozen cookie, simply unwrap and microwave 30-45 seconds).

Nutrition Facts:

Per cookie (with Splenda) 256 calories, 5 g fat (1 g saturated), 35 g carbohydrate (5 g fiber), 18 g protein

Per cookie (with sugar) 340 calories, 5 g fat (1 g saturated), 58 g carbohydrate (5 g fiber), 18 g protein

Cali Burgers with Chipotle Avocado spread

What is a chipotle? (no, not the restaurant) Chipotles are smoked jalapenos, commonly used in Mexican cuisine. They come in a variety of forms: dried whole, ground into powder, or canned in adobo sauce (a mixture of tomato, garlic, vinegar, salt and spices). I've enjoyed several chipotle-inclusive things, like chipotle salad dressing, or chipotle Tabasco, but have been meaning for some time to hunt down the chipotle itself, to use in my kitchen.

I bought a small can of chipotles in adobo, and upon first tasting almost burnt my tastebuds off! They have a delicious, wonderful, smoky heat, but man they are hot! After reviving myself with some antacids, I decided to use them sparingly, and pair with some cool and creamy ingredients.

Here's the result, I hope you enjoy! Now if I can figure out some use for the other 90% of the can.... drop a line if you have a suggestion!

1/2 avocado

2 oz Philadelphia fat free cream cheese

1 chipotle (canned in adobo sauce) finely chopped + 1 tsp sauce

2 Vegetarian burger patties (I used Boca)

2 oz Cabot 75% reduced fat white cheddar cheese, sliced

2 Arnold Sandwich Thins

2 pieces roasted red peppers

1/2 cucumber, peeled and sliced

To make the sandwich spread, mash the avocado and cream cheese well with fork. Add the chipotle pepper and blend well with fork. Taste it.

Stir in 1 tsp of adobo sauce from canned chipotles if you think it can use a bit more kick. I found that to be just about right, but brave souls could add more.

Grill burgers using indoor (George Forman) or outdoor grill. Place grilled burgers on bottom half of Sandwich Thin, and top with cheddar cheese, cucumber slices, 2T avocado spread, red pepper, and other half of bread. Makes 2 sandwiches. (you won't use all the spread, so store the extra in the fridge, covered.)

Cali Burger Nutrition Facts: (for the whole sandwich) 326 calories, 8 g fat (3 g saturated), 34 g carb (13 g fiber), 35

g protein

Chipotle Avocado Spread Nutrition Facts: (per 2 T, 1/4 whole recipe) 55 calories, 4 g fat (1 g saturated, 3 g carb (2 g fiber), 3 g protein


See how easy Georgie makes, making good food? Step by step instructions that take very small time slices but that result in fabulous food from snacks to full on meals for all occasions.

Why not consider doing yourself or someone you love a favour favour as the holiday season kicks up. Give yourselves the gifts of great, fresh, home made food. Made by a (really smart, food geek, knowledgable) student geek for students/geeks. And heck, you're supporting a fellow geek at the same time. The book is "Dig In." You can order the paper version or download the ebook RIGHT NOW, and begin2dig in.

]]> 10 Tips to Destress in 3 parts: move, breath, sleep tag:nopain2.org,2009:/geekfit//6.216 2009-10-28T15:45:23Z 2009-10-29T13:03:45Z In honour of National Stress Awareness Week in the UK starting Wed Nov. 4, here's a few geek friendly de-stressing tips that can be summarized as: move, breath, sleep - do each well, and we set up the physio-chemical, neuro -kinesio conditions to de stress. In honour of National Stress Awareness Week in the UK starting Wed Nov. 4, here's a few geek friendly de-stressing tips that can be summarized as: move, breath, sleep - do each well, and we set up the physio-chemical, neuro -kinesio conditions to de stress.


(image: what stress does to the body)
]]>
1) MOVE Stress sets off a bunch of chemicals in the brain to ready them for flight. Imagine the butterflies felt before giving a public talk or getting set to jump out of a plane. These are similar to what happens with stress: our nervous system gears us up for fight or flight. Now if we neither fight nor flee, in other words, we don't move, all that chemical soup just zips up and doesn't get dissipated through action. Going for a walk, swinging a kettlebell, moving something, is therefore a very good thing to do. (More on why movement rules here)

2) Move as many joints as we can whether sitting or standing.
Our joints are wired to provide signals about where we are and how fast we're moving (mechanoreceptors). They're also wired to signal noxious stimulus like pain (nociceptors). Usually there are more mechano- than noci- receptors. Activating mechanrecptors is like sending a lot of happy signals to the nervous system, like "i'm moving just fine; all's well."

If we don't move the joints, happy signals go way way down, leaving a clear path for any pain signals to come through louder and clearer than they would if there were also mechanoreceptors sending up signals. So the more joints that move, the louder and clearer the happy signals to the nervous system, the less stress is often perceived as smaller pain signals are dealt with rather than amplified out of proportion.

A side benefit to moving joints is also that if joints designed to move don't move, crud collects around them.Moving them keeps joints lubricated and crud free. Even more, our bodies work by use it or lose it principles called Wolffs Law and Davis Law. What we don't move tends to atrophy, like loss of bone mineral density, or loss of mobility - if we stop moving joints they tend can calcify to hold that position (aka arthritis). Not desirable.

3) Move joints through a full range of motion - a joint like a wrist can move both up and down and side to side. Knees can make circles. Fingers both curl towards the palm and move away from the palm and can make circles flexed or extended.

MOST of the problems like carpal tunnel syndrome and RSI are created not by repetitive movements, but by repetitive movements of a joint in only one of possibly many directions. Pain is well known to add to stress, so joint movement in range of motion is a great way to help reduce low grade pain from regular work activities.

For joint mobility work, i recommend z-health's RPhase and Neural Warm Up. Descriptions of these approaches are reviewed here.


4) Breath with attention Breathing is a well known huge way to relax and de-stress. We get this relaxing effect in no small part because of what we're doing to the carbon dioxide/oxygen ratio in our bodies. CO2 is what keeps our pH levels in balance. Healthy blood pH ranges are very tiny. Some argue that when we breath shallowly - from our upper lungs, holding our guts in, we tend to hyperventilate, sucking in oxygen to excess and thereby wrecking the co2/o2 balance. Upper lung breathing is also associated with that fight or flight threat response, which yup, fires up those threat response (stress) chemicals. Attending to our breathing can help to calm us down, especially as we slow it down. We respond very quickly to these breathing changes, which is a plus. When we find ourselves sighing or yawning alot, or gasping for air - good sign to attend to breathing.

5) breath from the belly - this action moves the diaphragm which is the pump for our lymphatic system - which is what filters a lot of the toxins in our body - so good to keep that moving. 

6) breath in through the nose - this warms and filters air going into the body - even during athletetic exertion - practicing breathing in through the nose is a calming thing that can help us stay more relaxed and our form looser, more efficient, less fatiguing.

7) breath out in longer breaths than breathing in: this helps build up a better level of CO2 in the body which is critical for well being. A great way to practice this kind of breathing is straw breathing: to breath in through the nose and out through pursed lips. Try to get a 1:2 ratio or better on the breathing out.

8) Sleep well - get good quality sleep at night. While debate ranges about how many hours a person needs, they need to be uninterrupted and hi quality. Insomnia/poor sleep can let cortisol levels get elevated and these are directly related to stress. 

8) starchy carbs like rice pudding four hours before bed - if you time your carbs right, you'll sleep as soon as your head hits the pillow according to research out last year, so time those carbs well for sleep.

9) sleep in a darkened room - cover up any LEDs that glare; get curtains that cover the windows to stop light leak even at night. Light is a cue to get up - ANY light - and can affect sleep quality.

10) don't check the clock if you get up in the night and go back to sleep. Just go back to sleep. If needed its more restful to get an alarm we can trust than to check the clock, as that can be a big stressor while trying to fall back.


So this list of top ten destressors can be categorized as move, breath and sleep. Each of them relate to helping our nervous system - the always on guardian of the body - to reduce perceived threat - as that what stress is all about. That's all our nervous system processes: is there a threat or not. So, all of the above really have to do with threat modulation.

Techniques to support each of these concepts of movement, breathing
and rest/recovery will help soothe our nervous systems to a more
restful, positive and productive (ie, less stressed) place.

]]> Why contact lenses rather than glasses: eyeball Range of Motion and related eye care tag:nopain2.org,2009:/geekfit//6.215 2009-07-16T12:23:38Z 2009-07-16T12:54:01Z Wear glasses? think about contacts. Wear either contacts or glasses? think about wearing them as little as possible A lot of geeks wear glasses.

If you wear glasses, you may want to think about moving over to contact lenses.

Why?

The muscles of the eye, focal length, and long term condition. Here's a few tips on how/why to think about each of these issues.

]]>

muscles
There are six muscles that move the eye left right up down and diagonally. When we wear glasses we generally in any direction *only* to the edge of the lens. Especially with current trend's very small and narrow lenses, this may mean a very limited range of motion indeed.

As with any muscle if it's not used to in an effortful way, it deteriorates. If we limit the ROM of our eyeballs, we set them up, effectively, to atrophy. That's one.


Focal Length
The other is that glasses move the focal length of the eye out, to where the lens is. This change in natural position ALSO has an impact on the eye. Wearing contacts has a much smaller effect on changing the actual lens position for focus.


Protection from Deterioration: Go without lensing as much as possible.
Here's one more thing for you to consider: if you're wearing glasses right now, do you really need to do so? The *less* we wear glasses, the more we can practice shape distinction etc without lenses, the more practice both our eyes and brains get at resolving information without lens dependence.

Apparently, the longer in a day that we can go without lenses, the lesser likelihood there is of vision deterioration over time. That our eye sight has to change with age is a misnomer. But (again, apparently) we don't help ourselves by ALWAYS trying to optimize our vision with lensing, as it's called in the trade.

Future Proofing Your Eyes NOW
If you're a good up close reader and have difficulty with distance, there are vision exercises you can do to help improve your vision. And the sooner you can do them, the better. here's why: as we get older, if you start to work on repairing distance vision, near vision can be effected. If you spend a lot of time on the computer, which do you want to optimize for?

So a few biggies geeks can do for ourselves for good proactive eye care are:

  • if wearing glasses regularly, think about contacts to improve eye muscle ROM
  • try getting away as long as possible during the day going without lenses.
  • exercise the eyes at least once a day with near/far switching and peripheral vision drills (there's a number of these in the zhealth neural warm ups dvd's and in the s-phase video way more)
  • learn how to massage your eyes (yup you can massage your eyes) (also in the s-phase video)
]]> mc's Change-One-Thing-Only Sure Fire Diet tag:nopain2.org,2009:/geekfit//6.214 2009-07-14T01:10:37Z 2009-07-14T02:11:45Z Want to lose weight? Change one little thing persistently and you will. Here's how. Pretty much all of us know that to lose FAT (not just weight) we have to eat less.
Being able to eat less though - well that's habits.
And a lot about good habits is making it safe for us to change our current behaviours. Change to our nervous system, especially around something as primal and survival based as food is pretty challenging.

Food is crtical to our survival; we're pretty wired to prepare for scarcity.
A lot of the best diet practices today focus therefore on habits rather than calories first, and making it safe for us to change from survival habits to aware habits.

Here's a guarantee that if you don't change anything else but make one change in the following categories, you will lose weight, consistently. The biggie will then be your persistence with this single change.

]]>
Here goes:

  • 40% of food consumed in the states takes place in front of the TV
  • 20% of food consumed in the states takes place in cars.
  • Most westerners are chronically sleep deprived
  • over the past 20 years, portiion sizes for food have gone up significantly. For example 10 inch dinner plates have been replaced with 12 inch plates; we won't even touch super sizing of fast food.
  • Fewer and fewer meals take place deliberately - that is, sitting down simply to eat and converse rather than multitask
  • Americans eat 154 pounds of sugar a year; Brits, 128. For brits that's a 1 pound bag every three days, per person.

So given the above, you could stop all eating in the car, in front of the TV, stop drinking all pop/fruit juice (yes fruit juice), go to bed at a decent time, quit eating lunch at your desk, and generally make all the portions of everything you eat much smaller.

That can sound daunting, eh?

SO here's the deal: help your body that's trying to help you in keeping up your calories feel safe about changing this food scavenging and storing behaviour.

Tell your body (yes talk to it as if it were a seperate you - this apparently actually helps), that you understand it's trying to take care of you - to make sure you'll have the fuel you need to thrive each day, but that what you know and it needs to learn is that it's safe to reduce that amount a bit. Food is plentiful and readily available.

So given that, here comes the Change One Thing Diet Plan:

Pick one of the above things you do - not get enough sleep, eat in the car or at the desk, drink pop, eat in front of the tv, and have a think about how many times you might do each of these in a day or a week.

And then, change One PART of One behavior. (and you though i was gonna say change that WHOLE behaviour, didn't you. Ha! )

For instance, if you eat five meals at your desk WHILE WORKING, commit to find a way to eat at least one of those meal away from your desk, sitting down and just eating - maybe with a friend or colleague. What do you need to let that happen? Pick a day it will work, put a PLAN in place to make that happen, write down what you'll do and when, and post that somewhere you'll see it for days in advance of doing it. Seriously. No joke. The way we're wired, this bringing attention to something that we've been doing habitually and at a survival level is really critical to this kind of change.

If you snack in front of the TV each night of the week PLAN AHEAD - (the planning is actually really important) to find a night you think will be safe not to eat while watching TV (and without overeating prior to this moment), and do that. Think about what you'll need to help you stay food free during this time you habitually feed. Put that in place so that it's totally SAFE to have a food free tv night.

Similarly, if you drink a soda or more a day, think about what day in the coming week you could plan to cut back your soda by one can. Same thing: write down WHEN you'll do this, and how you can make it safe for yourself to make this behavioural change.

If you always go to sleep too late and have to get up too early - the alarm has to wake you up - then plan ahead one night when you can make sure you can go to sleep at a decent time. THink about all the stuff that usually gets in the way of you getting to sleep at that time, and think of what you can do to clear it away just for one night. As before, write down your plan, the day you will do this, and stick with it.

After your plan is executed, keep a log of your success: chart your success. And keep doing it.

What's going on here?
It's no secret: to lose fat we have to take in fewer calories than we need for a day. Getting good habits around food intake - looking at when and how we eat to make it safe to eat less - takes effort and energy. Implementing any ONE of the above new habits well - so that it becomes habitual - takes practice.

As with learning any new skill, we need to bring our attention to that practice to learn it. Planning helps (a) make it safe to attempt the new skill and (b) gets in practice performing the new skill (c) brings attention to that skill.

Having a log builds up a basis for success.

You may say, heh, this is not gonna get me to lose weight - giving up one can of soda a week!

Well, first off, less is less, and that's what we're going for. And second, most diets fail because the planning to make it safe to practice them isn't there, and compliance goes in the toilet.

So do your survival you a favour and don't freak it out.

THink of it this way: if you've rarely been in a weight room, would you expect to just go in and start performing olympic lifts like the clean and jerk without learning HOW to do the move, and getting in lots of practice at lighter or no weights just to get that move?

If not, why not? Not safe? Stupid? Hurt yourself, and you may never go back? Hurt yourself and you won't be able to go back for some time even if you thought it was fun? Or if not hurt yourself get so freaked out you get turned off and don't go back?

It's the same thing with diet:
it's a skill and should be just as repsected in terms of learning the technique to develop life-long practice.

So start with getting this One Thing in the One Thing solid. We're not stupid: we know if we need to lose weight we have to eat less, but if it were easy in this environment of stress and abundance of food, we'd all be lean.

So give your survival you a break, and help it make that one small step for Lean Kind, and, as Beck calls it , our "thinner peace"

So let's begin:
Optimally, this plan needs four days advance warning. So rather than "I'll do it tomorrow", even if you're really keen, plan for it to be four days away from now. There are intriguing reasons for four days, but let's leave that for now. Suffice it to say, we get to practice preparing and making it safe for a system shift.

If this sounds like no big deal, that's great. Relax, enjoy that you have so little to do, and still do the excercise. You're rewiring your brain with this practice, just like learning a new dance step - or whatever other activity may take you effort to learn and practice to get to an effortless level of execution.

pick one thing of the above behaviours that you think will be easiest for you to initiate - seriously, this is not about challenging yourself: we want to build up a base of successes, so it's critical to pick the easiest thing you can that will be no worries to do. Eg, if you drink five cans of pop a day, and feel ok about cutting one out on one day, write that down -

So, something like 4 days from now, which will be Month/Day/Year, i will skip Daily Pop #3.

think about what you need to put in place to make sure that will happen, itemize that plan and write it down.

Eg: i know i've skipped my pop before on days when we have group meetings. I will plan to use that opportunity as my "skip" can.
Also, i know Phil is not at that meeting and we always get drinks together, so that will help.
I will have green tea which Ken keeps telling me about instead.

(doing something else to fill the space - as a kind of reward for that new behaviour is a Good Thing - so having a no cal drink that's low in caffeine but also actually has some evidence to support fat loss is a Good Thing)

stick this plan up somewhere you can see it for at least 4 days in advance of practicing it and read it every day. Get psyched up about the fact that you have a great plan and that this is an accomplishment.

Indeed, if you have someone in your life who is supportive of you, and your health goals, tell them about your plan and that you'll let them know how it goes - there's nothing like a hearty "well done" on successful completion of a task. Guess what? Feeling good about an accomplishment releases all sorts of chemicals in the brain that make us feel good about ourselves. So go for it. Reinforce that behaviour.

Stick with that One Thing Approach for awhile: get some practice under your belt. If next week you want to try for reducing two cans within your Pop Reduction One Thing Campaign, you have lots to play with: go for two cans in one day; or one can each for two days. But the guidance is the same: make a plan, write it down, do the check list, recite it each day for four days before execution.

Now if the plan is sleep - you only have 7 nights to play with and you may find it harder. SO that one may take more planning to make it safe to find ways to get in more than one good night a week. But there are ways :)

I recently sat down with a professional trainer who was SURE sleep was a big deal for him and he wasn't getting enough, and he KNEW this was a biggie for his performance goals. After some detailed exploration of those goals and what was happening in his life, in about 20 mins we had a great plan with practical guidance he could actually implement - suggestions he came up with himself - to make these changes safely, effectively, and most of all consistently. We looked too at what forces might make him think about compromising this practice and how we could murphy-proof these in advance.

it's all in the plan, stan.

Anyway, give the change One THing - really one part of one thing one week at a time a go, and let me know how it goes.

Really - start with the unbelievably super easy steps just to get in your reps, do it consistently even though it may sound trivial - you will build up great practices that willg et you where you want to be with your health.

This sounds slow right? maybe, but how's the other diets you may have tried worked for you? we have these bodies for the rest of our lives, so what's the rush? The goal here is to do the neural work that will let Lean Eating become effortless.

One Thing at a Time will do it.

let me know how it goes.

]]> The Complete 1 Move, Once a Day, One Week Workout tag:nopain2.org,2009:/geekfit//6.213 2009-05-28T15:36:46Z 2009-05-28T15:40:37Z Want to start working out? Ok, here's your plan: one push up, once a day for one week. That's it. Don't you dare to any more than than If you have been toying with the idea of working out but don't know how to get started - here's a simple plan.

For one week, do one push up, once a day.


That's it.

If you can't do a full push up from the ground, no worries, do one from your knees.


If that's too much for you today, that's ok, too. Lean stand arms length away from a wall, and do a push up against the wall.


Again, that's it: one push up, once a day, one week.
WHen you finish week one, and have clocked one pushup a day, and only one, for one whole week, and want an idea for week two, shout.
Good Luck!
(Thanks to zhealth's (what's zhealth?) Eric Cobb for this Week 1 workout plan) ]]> Getting Rid of Goal Crap & Clutter: Sedona Method tag:nopain2.org,2009:/geekfit//6.127 2009-04-14T12:56:55Z 2009-04-14T12:59:12Z IAMGEEKFIT is usually about physical health and well-being. This entry is about getting right/fit mentally to get at that physical well being - and mental well being. It's about how to make sure when you set a goal, there's no... IAMGEEKFIT is usually about physical health and well-being. This entry is about getting right/fit mentally to get at that physical well being - and mental well being. It's about how to make sure when you set a goal, there's no insidious crap floating up around it, unseen, to sabotage your process. The clean up approach is called  "the sedona method."

Based on very preliminary (about a month of )study, there seems to be a really good approach to help not just set goals, but get rid of the crap around goals (eg, fear that might come up around a goal; trepidation; arrogance - whatever - all sorts of stuff).

We don't hear folks talk about that part of the goal process much. In fact i hadn't really thought about the "stuff" around a goal - having previously just focused on whether a goal was SMART (specific, measureable, etc) But what about whether the goal is really YOUR goal? Or if it is (like getting your phd before 2014), then is there stuff up around it that is making achieving it harder than it should be?

I've written a preliminary review of this approach to decluttering around goals over at begin2dig. Suffice it to say that getting a dead simple process to help clear out and let go of stuff around goals, and indeed just to be more open to other possibilities for health, wealth and relationship well being is a Really Good Thing.

If that sounds interesting, you can get a free CD/DVD and mp3 that actually lays out the whole process that's covered in the 20 CD (!) course . You may well find that you get enough from the CD and web site that you don't need anything else, but i'd encourage you to check out the cd freebie, poke around the articles on the site, and investigate what surfacing and sweeping out one's *stuff" might do for you. Let me know what you find.

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]]> Bones: Care and Feeding for Robust Health - forever tag:nopain2.org,2009:/geekfit//6.126 2009-02-24T21:18:21Z 2009-02-25T09:22:26Z Use it or lose it: bones are living things, constantly being broken down and rebuilt. They adapt to change throughout our lives, and the biggest force they adapt to is that from our own muscles. The more we stock up on muscular activity through childhood and early adulthood the better off we'll be for health throughout the majority of our Post 25 year old lives. This article is about how to build up the bone bank - and it ain't about upping calcium in the diet. Here's a great reason for Geeks to get into resistance training:
fending off future bone loss - and bone loss is a big deal. We really do need to start banking it in childhood and early adulthood for use for what is, the rest of our post 25 year old lives. And if we plan on living past fifty, that's the more-than-50%-of-our-lives part:

In fact, healthy early life practices, including the adequate consumption of most nutrients, calcium in particular, and regular physical activity, contribute to greater bone mineral mass and optimal peak bone mass. Bone is living tissue that responds to exercise by becoming stronger.

and elsewhere:

Overall, the evidence strongly suggests that regular physical activity, especially started in childhood and adolescence, is a cheap and safe way of both improving bone strength and reducing the risk to fall.

So while we've all heard how good calcium is for bone health, fewer of us know, it seems, that bones are living thriving tissue that are CONSTANTLY rebuilding in what's called "remodelling." Bone loss is a constant and natural part of that process: out with the old; in with the new. We may hear about bone deterioration effects more in elderly women (all those broken hips ), bone loss is just as prevalent in all of us.

In a sense, to get our bodies to keep replacing the bone it takes away, we need to prove to our bodies regularly that we NEED the bone mineral density (BMD) we have, and if we want more, well, we have to prove that too. And we prove that by the demands we put on our frame, not by the amount of vitamins we take (though we need those too to build that bone).

The good news is that bone is amazing, living tissue - of which only a part is the skeletal remains we find in mummies and doctors offices. Bone tissue is also (like the rest of us it seems) highly plastic and responds constantly to the demands on it. The thing is, we have to keep making those demands.

The following article is about how bone adapts, and why therefore it's critical to one's longevity to start banking BMD now.

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]]> In the past decade, research has shown in new ways what traditional medicine has suggested for millenia: all the systems in our bodies are connected. More particularly, our bodies, in particular the tissue in our bodies, are responding and adapting and REBUILDING all the time in response to a variety of inputs. It's amazing how quickly our bodies do respond to input change. In the health and fitness domain, we see these changes mainly in terms of body composition: adipose tissue shrinks; muscle fibers and connective tissue enlarge, appearing more taut or larger. The success of 12 week programs shows just how much physical change can happen within a mere 90 days.

Other changes in tissue are more experiental than visual: because of adaptations in our lungs, heart and muscle tissues with exercise, we feel like we have more energy; we may eat more but we're not gaining fat (blessed state). We can work longer or harder without being fatigued or getting out of breath. In some cases, aches and pains seem to diminish or disappear.

One tissue change that we are less aware of but that is perhaps one of the most remarkable is the adaptation of bone. Bone is very much living tissue, constantly responding to our bodies' use - or lack of use - of the 600 or so bones in our skeletal system. Blood vessels run throughout bones constantly taking away bone into the blood stream, and bringing in new nutrients to rebuild bone. Bone itself is made up from collagen, calcium salts, phosphates, magnesium, even protein plays a role in the brilliant, constant reengineering of our gears. The purpose of this post, though, is to consider not so much how bone growth happens from converting collagen tissue in the foetus to fully osified bones in an adult, but recent research around continuous bone adaptation, and the role our actions literally play in bone health.

Most of us have an understanding that healthy bones are "strong" and that not healthy bones are "fragile" - brittle, subject to breaks. And to state even more of the obvious, a broken bone is a problem because of the role of bones in our body: they support the movement of our bodies in space, and let us also move upon the world around us. The bones of our hands, feet, spine, arms are examples of where we see such action. Our bones also protect vulnerable organs, like the ribs around our innards, and the skull around our brain (the spine also serves a protective function, too, acting in part as the pipe through which the spinal cord runs). If a bone is broken or damaged either mobility or protective capacity or both can be compromised. So, having good strong bones, resistant to fracture, for as long in our lives as possible is a Good Idea for enduring health.

While many of us have also been raised hearing how important diet is for such good bone health - encouraging us to eat foods rich in calcium, vitamin D and related - what is less well known outside the fitness community is how critical muscle work is for bone health and strength. Indeed, while 3-10% of bone health is down to nutrition, over 44% of bone building is down to load (use/disuse)(Kirattli 96). We're going to look some of the very recent work in the past decade that has shown what's going on with what's called bone remodelling, and how to use that information to do the best for our bones. HM Frost describes nutrition for bones as fuel for the car: it's needed, but doesn't drive the car. We need action to drive bone health.

This discussion about bone's adaptation to use really begins with what's become known as Wolff's Law (1892):

Every change in the form and function of bone or of their function alone is followed by certain definite changes in their internal architecture, and equally definite alteration in their external conformation, in accordance with mathematical laws.

What this means is that somehow, load or action on a bone effects it. It is only in the past 25 years that this assertion has been shown to operate profoundly, and only in the past ten years a more profound understanding of how that operation works. These efforts to explain Wolf's law are frequently described as Utah paradigm (1992 and on). In this HM Frost proposes the Mechanostat as a refinement of Woolf's law that says the big deal on bone remodelling is the elastic forces exerted on bones. Related work has been showing to what degree Wolff's proposition holds. Much of the following is taken

Bone Modelling - Modelling is a cool concept: in bones it refers to absorption of some bone materials and depositing of new material within the bone matrix. A gerat description of this process is in the Essentials of Strength and Conditioning text book. The big deal is that bone lives. it's ALIVE. and that it responds to need and demand and amazingly RESHAPES to support that demand. This modelling, apparently always makes bones stronger.

Cells know as Basic Multicellular units are involved in this constant dance of reabsorbing and then rebuidling bone (more particularly osteoblasts build up bone; osteoclasts remove it). Hence when astraunats spend time in orbit, their bone mass is less than when they left because the demand on the bone, and BMU's has been less than normal, so bone "building" has been to support efficiency for that system. Wild! This particular kind of bone "loss" is referred to often as "osteopenia" We also need to note that this kind of bone reforming only happens in bone close to marrow (so your skull won't get thinner in space).

Bones and their Incredible Strength

Load Bearing Bones (LBB) like our long bones in the legs and arms (and spine) are largely hollow and light relative to the forces they can support. Their strength apparently comes largely from the architecture within the bones

bone matrices

- the extremely light connections of bone matrix material of the travecular/cancellous bone within the walls/shell of the outer "compact" bone. Indeed, when bones are measured as "thicker" after exercise training, for instance, what apparently is really happening is less that the compact bone is becoming thicker, but that that outer shell is rather being pushed out as more inner architecture is added.

It's the amazing lattice work of collagen fibers, and progressively ossified fibers that contribute significantly to the bones' ability to respond to stresses put upon them. To quote from Wikipedia's page on mechanostat measures: "The fracture load for axial forces of the Tibia for example is about 50 to 60 times the body weight. The fracture load for forces perpendicular to the axial direction is about 10 times lower." Note: that's 50-60 and 5-6 times BODYWEIGHT - not the bone's own weight. That's amazing!

Use It or Lose It
Bones are ready to deform and bend to support loads up to a particular threshold - when that threshold is broached, bone remodeling kicks in - slowly - to help bones adapt to the new loads (Bone rebuilding lags behind muscle building).

Similarly, however, not taxing our bones to at least near their threshold sends bone remodellers in again -but this time in the osteopenia direction; that is, taking bone away and not replacing it with the same amount removed. How exactly this signalling works, alas, is still very much leading edge research, so we don't know *exactly* how to tune our efforts to flip the switches to say "build more bone" - not exactly. Indeed, a review of studies of children and early adolescents to look at various protocols of weight bearing effort to tune optimal bone growth states we still have a lot to learn:

CONCLUSIONS: Although weight-bearing exercise appears to enhance bone mineral accrual in children, particularly during early puberty; it remains unclear as to what constitutes the optimal exercise programme. Many studies to date have a high risk for bias and only a few have a low risk. Major limitations concerned selection procedures, compliance rates and control of variables. More well designed and controlled investigations are needed. Furthermore, the specific exercise intervention that will provide the optimal stimulus for peak bone mineral accretion is unclear. Future quantitative, dose-response studies using larger sample sizes and interventions that vary in GRF and frequency may characterise the most and least effective exercise programmes for bone mineral accrual in this population. In addition, the measurement of bone quality parameters and volumetric BMD would provide a greater insight into the mechanisms implicated in the adaptation of bone to exercise.

Despite some lack of exact specifics, apparently over the past decade alone much has been learned about what goes into enhancing the efforts to grow strong bones. Here's a cool fact that Frost (2001) reports from research in the late 90's: that our muscles create the larges voluntary loads on bones. As Fronst summarizes it:

muscle forces -> bones -> strains -> control of modelling and remodelling (Frost, 402)

OBESITY: It may need to be noted, as Frost's summary also shows, that despite the fact that obese people are heavier and so put extra load on their bones beyond that of healthy weighted people, they also, typically, load their bones (move) a whole lot less than their healthy peers. Thus, bone removal (the astronaut effect, one might say) kicks in, and their bones become even less able to handle their frame.

Use it or Lose it and some gender bits
Apparently we are not particularly mechanically efficient in our joint design, and so it's actually our muscles that put the greatest loads on our bones, and thus it's our own frame's work that causes the main bone adaptations. This muscle to bone connection is one reason, it's been suggested, that researchers have shown that men who usually have stronger muscles than women are going to have stronger, more mass-y bones. This is not to say that women's bones are less healthy than men's, but that relative strength is different because in large part of this muscle-bone interaction. All the more reason for women to get into resistance training, but we'll come onto that. Also important to note is that men and women lose bone mass at about the same rate until, for women, menopause kicks in. On average, post-menopausal women start to have higher bone loss rates than men, but research is showing that exercise has a significant impact on slowing this rate of bone loss, and actually building it.

One very interesting result shows as well that Resistance Training alone in early post-menopausal women in a year long study showed bone mass density improvement and more:

In conclusion, RT alone was as effective as HRT in preventing bone loss at the spine and was more effective than HRT alone in attenuating bone loss at the spine. Moreover, there was no additional benefit in combining HRT with RT for preventing bone loss at the spine in this group of early postmenopausal women.

This is an exciting finding. Once again, we have a result that says healthy lifestyle helps keep one healthy for the long haul, and better in this case than drug therapy alternatives. Further research comparison reviews are here in a 2006 overview.

For older men, some work has been looking at the use of creatine WITH resistance training to reduce bone loss - creatine's effect is not conclusive, but in 12 weeks, the benefit of resistance training clearly is.

Getting a Break.
Just before we start looking for workouts that tax our bones to the breaking point in an effort to make them stronger, we need to note another part of the Utah Paradigm: there IS such a thing as going too far, something called microscopic fatigue damage in bone and bones (MDx). There is an operational threshold after which, fractures can strat to accumulate. This can lead to increased big fractures. So while small strains near threshold have a growth effect, going overboard can have the opposite effect - and by multiple hundreds of times.

Big-ing Up the Bones Training
Again, while apparently exactly what levels of effort turn on bone remodelling - and what triggers more oteopenia (bone loss) - studies have shown some pretty consistent findings in exercise types: sudden axial loading. And while walking is good for the heart and other health effects, it apparently doesn't do much for BMD - in post-menopausal women at least. Another study says that "low volume/high intensity" exercise works a treat for maintaining BMD - for early pm gals "spine, hip and calcaneus [heel], but not at the forearm"..(alas i can't get at the whole article to see what that "exercise" is). Likewise, it seems that, similar to the martial arts effects, we can tune for "site specific" exercise regimens to help enhance bone density at vulnerable sites (should you wish to do that).

As recently as 1994, research showed two exercises that seemed to contribute directly to improving bone mineral density: squash and resistance training. Frost's Utah Paradigm review suggests resistance training and soccer. Martial arts also shows bone density growth but mainly at the point of impact, suggesting again that bone responds to load/impact in a rather compelling way.

But especially thinking about elderly, exactly what the balance is between load and impact is not known. It's to our advantage to figure that out - or prevent the need to do so. A LOT of work is going on to understand this tuning:

One recent intense two year study that looked at yup, post menopasal women considered strength training vs power training. Based on what we know from other research about the kinds of sudden impacts that seem to create the most response, it may come as no surprise that the power training group took home the increased BMD prize.

CONCLUSION: The results show that PT may be superior for maintaining BMD in postmenopausal women. Furthermore, PT was safe as it did not lead to increased injury or pain.

While it's inappropriate to generalize a program from a single study, the results here again seem reinforced by other findings: explosive loading has a greater impact than slower loading. At some point we'll look at examples of explosive lifting but in the interim, may i say "kettlebells" and dynamic movements like the clean and jerk or snatch with same?

If one asks the question, what's better for BMD: lots of reps with lighter loads or fewer reps with more load? We only have the rat world at present to site for a finding, but we might be able to predict the result: fewer reps with heavier load elicited "significant" BMD elevation.

So, even if we may be reluctant to take all this work of a particular population and generalize it for younger adults of both genders, it seems that we can say from those other studies of younger athletes there is a common thread: load, and sudden load at that - has benefit. And while most emphasis has been on actually pumping iron, sports that have sudden stop and start (squash and soccer) have shown excellent effects, too.

So what to do?
So, lift, lift fast, or move, move fast; stop and start; jump occasionally (even perhaps hit something)seem generally to be the broad outlines of a BMD protecting/inducing program. But the biggest council and the best seems to be to start soon, start early, and make resistance work - especially of the fast variety - a lifestyle action BEFORE adult development peeking.

A few additional notes are worth adding:

Notes of Runners - Go Heavy! Lift Stuff
Resistance training has been part of sprinters' regimens since Ben Johnson in the mid 80's. In endurance running, most of the research has shown that strength training has great benefits for endurance work. BUT new research has shown that resistance training may be *crucial* for endurance athletes to improve what has chronically been shown as low bone mineral density - in both male and female runners. So it seems running is not part of the "stop and start" type exercise that generates the impact necessary for BMD generation

General Prescriptions for the sedentary/elderly: we're walking here?

While lighter efforts like t'ai chi and light walking, and even running seem to have problems generating any benefit for BMD, there is apparently evidence that as long as there is "load bearing" - like walking home or up the stairs with groceries - but that this also needs to be complemented with resistance work:

Two types of exercises are important for building and maintaining bone mass and density: Weight-bearing exercises, in which bones and muscles work against gravity and resistance training that use muscular strength to improve muscle mass and strengthen bone. Exercise can also improve gait, balance, coordination, proprioception, reaction time, and muscle strength, even in very old and frail elderly people. Overall, the evidence strongly suggests that regular physical activity, especially started in childhood and adolescence, is a cheap and safe way of both improving bone strength and reducing the risk to fall.

Other research echoes the above combo approach explaining a bit more of the why of this dual approach:

Weight-bearing physical activity may reduce the risk of osteoporosis in women by augmenting bone mineral during the early adult years and reducing the loss of bone following menopause. High-load activities, such as resistance training, appear to provide the best stimulus for enhancing bone mineral; however, repetitive activities, such as walking, may have a positive impact on bone mineral when performed at higher intensities. Irrespective of changes in bone mineral, physical activities that improve muscular strength, endurance, and balance may reduce fracture risk by reducing the risk of falling.

I Haven't Fallen and i Can Get Up: a mobility aside to Bone Health.

It's important to note then, that, for general well being, as noted at the beginning of this article, our systems are alive and linked. The above research highlights the fact that falls in the elderly, for example, are not just about BMD - reduced BMD is why a fall results in a fracture, but why does that fall happen? The related issues are strength and agility and mobility. These attributes are of benefit for us throughout life. They also seem strongly to follow the use it or lose it qualities of our other physiological systems.

One of the biggest motivations for bone research is the Loss of BMD for post-menopausal women - and the devastating effects of bone fractures in "frail" elderly of both genders. One of my favorite studies in this space is one that shows a blend of approaches in reducing risk of falls in elderly women.

CONCLUSIONS: Strength, balance, agility, and jumping training (especially in combination) prevented functional decline in home-dwelling elderly women. In addition, positive effects seen in the structure of the loaded tibia indicated that exercise may also play a role in preventing bone fragility.

ideas like social confidence and movement confidence are shown as part of the protocol. Rather than focusing on just bone strength, researchers looked at effects of confidence to reduce fear of falling. Agility and mobility is part one's ability to control the range of motion of a joint. The role of mobility, from my reading, is not stressed in BMD research work, but this study raises at least for me, through its consideration of agility, the role of maintaining the best range of motion of our joints for as much and as long as possible.

There's a vicious circle, is there not, of the older we get the less mobile we get. I work with adults in their early 20's who cannot touch their toes. How much further away from our toes do our hands get as we age? We know that dynamic mobility work like ZHealth helps keep joints mobile. I'd hypothesize that as as mobility stays up, one can perform better - more pain free, more range of motion, thus better action on bones. So perhaps a corollary to working bones with resistance training throughout life is also to keep mobility of joints active too.

Summing Up

While studies have mainly focussed on post-menopausal women, bone health - in particular bone mineral density - is a concern for both men and women. The best cure for bone loss is prevention rather than treatment, and the best approach for this prevention of inevitable bone loss is to bank it up with extra BMD work in childhood, youth and young adulthood. The best approach to do this loading is with resistive force work: power training, stop and start sports.

Nutrition is critical for bone building, but will not cause bone building anymore than simply eating protein will cause hypertrophy. While we still don't know what the optimal prescriptions are for optimal bone mineral density building, all the studies looking at this effect show that doing nothing is the worst approach; better to do some load bearing activities - but not over doing it, or one may have the opposite than desired effect with fracturing the bones beyond repair.

Because of the critical effect of bone loss post our alas early peeking in life, it's great to know that we can bank up bone for future benefit by using it regularly and vigerously - at least a few times a week. If you're reading this, you're not too young to start the deposit, no matter what gender. Use it or lose it seems to be increasingly a way of describing our entire physiological system, and that is certainly the case with our locomotive, protective, rather magnificent living skeletal system.

This overview is in no way exhaustive, and i'm sure i've missed stuff; it is meant to be indicative of where research is at with respect to BMD, and how much we still need to learn about program development for bone support, but that overall, starting that work of axial loading sooner and longer rather than later is critical.

While i've sited the main articles that informed this piece, there are two books i'd like to mention as well: one is Job's Body. The section on bone as living, adapting tissue is grand. Even more compelling are the detailed and effective illustrations and discussion of bone formation in the second edition (haven't seen the third edition yet) of the Essentials of Strength and Conditioning text. My gratitude also goes to HM Frost for that 2001 summation of the Utah Paradigm to that point which draws out the key points in bone adaptation. The article is well worth reading in its entirety if you are interested in this topic. ]]> Fitness Geek Gifts tag:nopain2.org,2008:/geekfit//6.125 2008-12-22T14:27:49Z 2008-12-22T14:30:10Z Gift suggestions for the fitness geek (in training) and some quick health tips for the holidays fitness, health

If you know someone who is getting into fitness right now, or is way into it already, and you're looking for stocking stuffers or larger, consider this list of suggestions over at begin2dig. If any of you want to do training in the new year, or online, shout.

Also, remember: if you feel a cold coming on, hit the Chillated Zinc. Maybe stock up now to be ready - it's not in every pharmacy.

And for just general health stay hydrated and up the vitamin D. Apparently just about all of us are Vit D deficient.

Best of the season to you!

mc

]]> Sit up Straight - or don't. What's good posture, anyway? tag:nopain2.org,2008:/geekfit//6.124 2008-12-02T12:19:25Z 2008-12-23T12:59:07Z When we think about correcting our posture, we often overcorrect from one extreme (slouching) to the other (extending). THere's a better way - avoid sitting; if sitting is necessary learn about neutral spine, and keep that spine mobile.

So sit bolt up in that straight back chair and get ready for some difficult listening
- Laurie Anderson, Home of the Brave

Many of us have been told to "sit up straight" for the sake of our backs - and perhaps as children - to encourage proper bone growth.

Many of us have seen little wheelie chairs that induce a kind of kneeling that are supposed to be good for posture. Or have thought sitting on therapy balls a good way to encourage muscle action to support those low back vertebrae (they're not. i've gotten rid of mine).

, ,
]]> When we think of our posture, we may just thrust our shoulders back and stick our chest out as if on military parade or preparing for a battement in ballet. We're not necessarily either helping ourselves or getting into "good" posture with any of these approaches.

First off, sitting, according to Back Guru PhD Stuart McGill of Canada (yeh!) sux. It places the worst forces on our spines of just about anything (see the article on working out standing or prone but not sitting for more). So sitting is a doomed thing that we should do as little of as possible.

Second, most of the devices like the kneeler, and sit up straight advice, is wrong or let's say leads to poor or sub-optimal practice. Let's take "sit up straight" Our usual response to this invocation is the above described salute situation where we move our backs

into what's called "extension" - We can really get a sense of extension when we lean way back and we curve our spines inward. The opposite of extension, and usually what we get chided for, is slumping forward - having our spines in flexion, the opposite of extension.

Neither extreme is particularly better than the other; neither is a great idea. There is a better way that is less fatiguing, sends better information through our nervous systems, and actually can help energize us. It's called a "neutral spine" - where the spine is neither extended or flexed.

You know all your adjustments on an office chair? This is the posture - the neutral spine - we want to get a chair to support.

But first we need to know how to feel our neutral spine posture. There's some good tips over on "energize with proper posture" called a posture check. The idea, illustrated to the side, is to slump forward (flexion) than pull shoulders way back (extension) then come forward to feeling that place in between the two, neutral. As you think about this posture from time to time, you may find that you're in more extension or more flexion than you are in neutral. That's ok. Just check yourself and head back to neutral. See if you can't set up your chair to support that neutral-ness.

That said, remember sitting sux. It's good to keep your spine (and all of you) moving, so stand up, walk around. And while sitting, doing that slump forward/extend back is actually not a bad pattern for the spine to practice. If you did this forward/back move while standing up, you could complement it with moving the spine side to side, putting at least the low back through more of a range of motion - and that's just the area these posture moves tend to get the most - the low (lumbar) back (rather than the mid back, thoracic, and neck, cervical).

So another great mobility drill we can do while seated is from zhealth, and it's called a "thoracic glide" - it's something to practice because most of us aren't used to thinking about moving this part of our backs.

Our thoracic spines are the vertebrae that run from the bottom of our neck down to about the middle of our backs (bottom of our ribs there abouts). They have a limited range of motion - meaning they can't slump or extend a ton, but they still can move. It's just we don't tend to move them, and a lot of us get really tense or sore in our shoulders.

So the idea of a thoracic glide when seated or standing in neutral is *just* to move that part of the spine back into flexion and up into extension. If we put our hand in the middle of our rib cage, around the sternum, and imagine pressing in while we breath out, that can get the thoracic spine to flex. likewise if we breath in so our chest really rises, like we're sucking our backs into our rib cage, that can get the thoracic to extend. THe important thing is not to make this a shoulder move - they stay relaxed. By flexing and extending that chunk of spine regularly, we can help the spine stay mobile, energized and functioning. And let me say it again - this glide can take practice. So even if it feels like nothing it moving, keep trying and it WILL loosen up. Repetitions are really important.

From time to time moving the head *not* rolling it (bad bad) but just laying the ear towards the shoulder one side at a time, or turning it left side, middle, right side, with that spine in neutral, is also another great thing to do while reading this post. If you can remember to do these neutral spine checks, thoracic glides and occaisional head titls and turns, guaranteed you'll feel a lot better.

So do sit straight up or slump or extend - movement is good and we adapt to it quickly. Better yet though, now that you've read this, take a break to get up, do some spine moves, check your chair, shake your shoulders and enjoy how good neutral feels.

oh ya, ps sitting on those balls is for rehab and need to stay there- i used to think they were great for stabilizing the spine by imbalance triggering muscle activation. Alas. Wrong. Check stuart mcgill ultimate back fitness and eric cressey's new book on the topic for more.


 ]]> Rest Time as Key to Training Success tag:nopain2.org,2008:/geekfit//6.122 2008-11-23T14:21:43Z 2008-12-23T12:59:34Z Want to get strong? Getting the number of reps per set, and the weight to use for those reps per set is important, but an often unconsidered component it the REST time between those sets, and its impact on whether you'll see results (and what kind of results) in your practice or not.

If you're doing resistance training - either with weights, bands or bodyweight (like pullups or push ups) - the rest time you take between sets of repetitions is just as critical as the weight and reps that you choose, and will have a significant impact on your success. Indeed, number of reps in a set, the weight of a set, the total number of sets, and the amount of rest taken between these sets are all related in terms of the kind of strength one's trying to develop.

I used to get impatient waiting around after a set - someone saying "you have to wait 30-90secs" just irritated me, and i'd just go when i felt ready. It's good to trust yourself, but it's also good to learn WHY that wait - and just that wait (waiting too long can also be an issue) is critical for the type of strength you're developing.

What kinds of strength are there, you may ask? Generally, there are several phases


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]]> in a strength program, or types of strength that may be a focus, Strength/Power, Muscle Fiber Development (hypertrophy) and Endurance.Each phase/focus demands a slightly different consideration of the above variables to get the best results. Rest intervals let our energy systems restore themselves sufficiently so that we can actually optimize the work we're trying to carry out. Not paying attention to those intervals can be like throwing the work we do out the window: it's like paying for 100% of a job and only ever getting a 50% return, where the effort you put in can also be doing more harm than good without that recovery spell.

A quick overview of Rest in these types is given in the summary at the end of the article Figuring Out Rest Periods for your Trainging Goals:

  • Strength/Power - Phosphagen System mainly -
    full recharge needs 2-5 minutes based on a high load few rep set.
    Can add volume (no. of sets) without changing rep scheme or break length
  • Muscle Fiber Building/Hypertrophy or just want to get to somewhat longer sets.
    Taxing Glycolytic system and growht hormone triggering -
    recovery is not full recharge
    6-10 reps at 75% load-ish, 30sec - 1.5 mins rest
  • Endurance - want to just keep going.
    Tapping into oxidative system with
    50%'ish RM loads (or less) lighter loads, longer sets, less breaks - 10-15 reps with 30 secs breaks, max, if trained; longer if not.

If you're interested in more of the detail and what's meant by the various energy systems being taxed and needing replenishment (hence the rest intervals), or what 50% of a 1RM is so you can gate your mass/reps/volume AND rest, then please check out the whole article.

In the meantime, the takeaway is: rest intervals are critical. Your rest intervals between sets have a significant impact on the kind of strength you're developing, and the success in your practice so that effort is not counter productive.

]]> Training Tip: Strong Side First tag:nopain2.org,2008:/geekfit//6.121 2008-11-19T17:19:26Z 2008-11-19T17:19:30Z Fast tip: when working with weights (including body weight) doing one side at a time, start with the STRONGER side first. Fast training tip: when doing exercises with weights - or body weight exercises - working one side and then the other, work your STRONG side first.

This advice may seem counter-intuitive: shouldn't we work our weaker side first so we don't do more reps on our strong side that we can do on the weak side?

Here's a couple things: appropriate reps/weights/sets for goal and neurological patterning

Reps: except for very rare occasions*, work with a weight where you *can* do the same number of reps on both sides. granted one side may be more of a challenge than the other, but if there's that big a discrepency with a given weight, pull back and do more work with a weight both sides can manage till you get better parity.
*(for those who have heard about "going to failure" that's what we're talking about and unless you're body building, you can set that aside you will not be going there)

neurological training: the main thing about starting with the stronger side is that it kinda teaches the weaker side the proper way to do the move. Form is everything. According to both Gray Cook in his FMS training, and Eric Cobb in his ZHealth work, there's a neurological patterning that happens in the body, and happens very quickly. The stronger side is usually also the side that is more proficient at a move. Doing great reps sets the pattern for the body.

Neurological effect is another reason to quit before losing form, and it's another reason for picking an appropriate range of reps - doing only perfect reps to do in a set, and to quit as soon as form starts to slide. Once form starts to go, according to Cook and Cobb, we're teaching our bodies to do poor form.

A great approach to getting in good work, and gating rep patterns to maintain good form while building strength and not overreaching is Pavel's ladders (described in detail in Enter the Kettlebell). The ETK ladders approach is a great way to build up volume for strength and endurance, while ensuring perfect rep, and quitting way before form starts to slide. In the ladder concept, you might do one rep on your strong side, then one rep on your left side. Then a break. Then two reps on the strong then two on the weak, break, then three/three and so on, up to five. Pavel has a beautiful system of mixing up intensity and developing progress throughout a week: starting out may be three ladders of three, building up to five ladders of three, then moving up to four steps on the ladder for three ladders, etc. You can do a hard, med and light day this way by varying the number of ladders, too.

It's this pattern alone that makes Enter the Kettlebell (ETK review)a great training program: increase volume progressively, gradually, varying rest and ladder amounts. With a max of five reps, with a doable weight, that's avoiding failure, and keeping great form.

The main take away from this post: in exercises that work one side at a time, start with your strong side - let your reps be gated by your weaker side, but start with your strong side, using perfect form to teach your body how to execute well consistently.

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]]> Knowledge Work leads to Excess Eating? The Geek Nightmare tag:nopain2.org,2008:/geekfit//6.119 2008-11-18T00:13:10Z 2008-11-17T19:25:27Z Knowledge Workers tend to reach for food post reading/computing tasks. Oh great. Another reason to need to take the stairs. Ok, now there's another reason for geeks to need to move it move it. A new study has just shown that after reading, folks tend to reach more for the munchies, even when there's no increase in appetite or anything else.

Here it is:

Glycemic instability and spontaneous energy intake: association with knowledge-based work.

Chaput JP, Drapeau V, Poirier P, Teasdale N, Tremblay A.
Division of Kinesiology (PEPS), Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Laval University, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, G1K 7P4.

OBJECTIVE: To further document the impact of knowledge-based work (KBW) on spontaneous energy intake and glucose homeostasis. METHODS: We used a within-subjects experimental design, in which each participant was engaged in each of the three 45-minute conditions followed by an ad libitum buffet, 1) resting in a sitting position; 2) reading a document and writing a summary; or 3) performing a battery of computerized tests. Fourteen female students (mean age: 22.8 +/- 2.3 years, mean body mass index: 22.4 +/- 2.5 kg/m(2)) were recruited to participate. Plasma glucose, insulin, and cortisol levels at seven time-points, and appetite sensation markers were measured at each experimental condition. RESULTS: The mean ad libitum energy intake after the reading-writing and the automated test-battery conditions exceeded that measured after rest by 848 kJ and 1057 kJ, respectively (p < .05). No specific dietary preference was detected, as reflected by the comparable percent of energy from each macronutrient in the three conditions. No significant difference in appetite sensation markers was observed among the three conditions. Mean cortisol level over 45 minutes in the two KBW conditions was significantly higher (p < .05) compared with the control condition. Finally, a significant increase in variations in plasma glucose and insulin levels was observed as compared with the control condition (p < .01). CONCLUSIONS: This study showed that KBW acutely induces an increase in spontaneous energy intake, and promotes an increased fluctuation in plasma glucose and insulin levels. This study contributes to the documentation of a new risk factor for a positive energy balance, with the potential to lead to overweight in the long-term.

So remember to push that snack beyond arm's reach when at the computer and do take the stairs at least DOWN to up your NEPAs, since we're working at a disadvantage already. Every little helps, eh?

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]]> When you work out, stand up! or lie down - just don't sit tag:nopain2.org,2008:/geekfit//6.118 2008-11-12T20:08:43Z 2008-11-12T20:47:47Z Just a quickie note for folks who work out at the gym and tend to head for the machines rather than free weights when doing resistance training. Skip the machines, find a qualified trainer and learn how to use free... Just a quickie note for folks who work out at the gym and tend to head for the machines rather than free weights when doing resistance training.

Skip the machines, find a qualified trainer and learn how to use free weights, and when you use those free weights, don't sit down; stand up or get prone.

There are a few reasons for this free weight advice:

  • issues around sitting,
  • proprioception,
  • range of motion
  • compound and closed kinetic chain movements
]]> Let's take the more global one first: stand or go prone rather than sit. Stewart McGill, a back guru/researcher, in The Ultimate Back Fitness book shows how just sitting is about the worst posture a human can adopt in terms of stresses on their low back in particular. He shows that doing loaded exercises in this position rather standing or prone is pretty much even worse. Given this, what is the most common position for machines in the gym? Yup. Seated.

The second reason for going to free weights? Use of free weights involves more of our muscular system to deal with balance and control of those masses throughout a movement. And that involvement means also involving more of our nervous system, in particular mechanoreceptors. These are the sensory neurons in our muscles and around our joints that contribute to telling us where we are (our muscles, bones and joints anyway) in space. This awareness is sometimes referred to as proprioception.

So, we are training more of our whole body system to carry out a particular weighted, taxing move, rather than simply forgetting about form and letting the machines work that balance/form for us. This difference between making the effort to control a move ourselves rather than accepting the path set by a machine relates to a third reason: range of motion . The way our bodies move through space is complex. What looks like moving straight ahead for instance, frequently involves rotation, too. A recognized issue with machines is that their fixed positions do not necessarily support our own individual range of motion. An impact of this deficiency is that our joints get less action that they otherwise would with having to move weights freely. A machine may also enforce a range of motion that is uncomfortable, whereas doing the move with free weights would be manageable - especially if one has restricted range of motion due to an injury. Free weights more clearly tell us about the quality of our form and our use of our muscles to manage real motion.

Finally, a fourth reason for considering free weights is something called compound movements. Compound movements engage more muscles to carry out a task than so called "isolation" moves. They're so called because there's no such thing really as a move that only involves one muscle, but there are moves that put specific emphasis on a muscle. The biceps curl is a famous example of an isolation move: the focus is on the biceps. These are the main muscles working, even though other muscles are called into play as antagonists and stabilizers, the biceps pretty much alone are driving the movement. Even here, though, the flexors along the forearm are supporting the grip it takes to hang onto that weight. As mass increases, those flexors may give out before the biceps. There are ways around this: strap the weight to the wrist, and isolate the work of the biceps even more. Is there any athletic reason to do this? Maybe not, but bodybuilders, working on proportion for sculpting their shape will.

We can see that moves like a bench press, push up, pull up or squat all involve a number of muscle groups for them to work. Arguments have been made that compound work is more supportive of athletic training because it supports real movements: deadlifts work chains of muscles used in sprints for breaking force, for example. Indeed, that term "chain" is commonly used in discussing open and closed kinetic (movement/energy) chain movements, of which there are two types: open and closed.

Technically, closed kinetic change exercises are defined by Steindler in 56 as those where the force applied is not sufficient to overcome resistance (nicely described in this note). So in a squat, force goes through the ground but doesn't move the ground. In a pull up, force is acting on the bar, but doesn't move the bar. More commonly closed kinetic chain has therefore been translated to mean where one part of the body - the would be moving part - is fixed: squats feet on the ground; pull ups, hands on the bar; push ups, all fours are on the floor.

Some of the discussion around closed kinetic chain work has been that it involves more of the body than its opposite - open chain. Compound movements are also more often than not closed chain movements.

Open chain means that force can overcome resistance, but these also sometimes get joints moving in ways that aren't exactly natural. A typical example of this kind of open chain move is the knee extension machine, which some have argued causes the knee to create a shear force along the joint it's not designed to support. It's also carried out seated on a machine, where the thigh action is isolated and the knee action up is really forcing the rectus femorus of the quads to get that knee up. That said, research is not yet conclusive around superiority/inferiority of one type over the other. Open/Closed are raised here as a way of categorizing movement and muscle involvement.

It may be worth noting that it's rather tough to find an example of a closed chain exercise that isn't standing or prone - what we might think of as more natural or athletic positions: crawling, climbing, resting, running. Seating doesn't come into it.

SUMMARY If you want to do the best by your body, you may want to consider work that

primarily uses free weights rather than machines

involves standing or prone positions rather than sitting

privileges compound rather than isolation style movements

in order to respect and enhance muscular involvement, proprioception, optimal physical positioning for range of motion and natural movement patterns.

]]> Kick Your Shoes Off, Free your Feet, tell your nervous system you care tag:nopain2.org,2008:/geekfit//6.113 2008-09-10T01:53:26Z 2009-06-24T20:02:25Z If you do nothing else for yourself and your health today, do this: take your shoes off and walk around a bit in your bare feet. Not only your feet, but your nervous system will thank you for it. There's been a LOT of work in the past 4-5 years about new research in foot ware and care. Guess what? feet work. All by themselves.

Guess what else? shoes stop feet from working. That's a pretty global condemnation but it's true: with a handful of exceptions, modern shoes are based on 200 year old technology (the lasts of shoe design), and for the most part are way way way too restrictive to let our feet do their thing.

It's not just four inch heels or wing tips that are the problem: it's also flip flops and horror of horrors those gorgeous high tech trainers with designs to "correct" supination or too much pronation or heel strike or whatever. And just when you realize that that's as bad as putting the foot into a cast, we find that flip flops and Birkenstocks sandles are equally horrific for other reasons: toes have to claw onto the sandle to keep them on. Despite claims that such "foot muscle work" is good for you, it really isn't. The body doesn't keep our feet in flexion (toes curled) with every step we take when we walk barefoot. That means just about every shoe in my closet is for the chop.

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Why? Our feet are one of the most jointed parts of our body (after the skull and the hands) and yet daily, what do we do? Lace up shoes to restrict those bones from doing what they were designed to do to support us: MOVE.

THere's a fantastic piece in the New York Magazine from earlier this year that describes most of the latest research and why shoes suck. Recommended reading.

One benefit of freeing the feet this article doesn't touch on is the relation of squished feet to the nervous system. We don't talk about the nervous system much, it's just sorta there, right? But here's the thing: the nervous system, as described by Eric Cobb, is hard wired to check only very few things. One of these, demonstrated in the startle reflex, is not fight or flight, but the very binary Threat or No Threat. "We're geared to optimize for survival, not performance," according to Cobb. Most of the nerves in our bodies designed to detect how we're moving in space are at the joints. Guess what happens in terms of that Threat/No Threat thing if our joints are squished and so not sending happy "we're free and moving" signals back to the rest of the system? Is that going to be interpretted as a Threat or a No Threat?

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]]> As Cobb demonstrates in his seminars, because we're totally connected systems, optimized for survival, if we get a message somewhere in our body that says there's a signal interruption, other parts of the body respond - and they respond immediately. In one demo, Cobb did a muscle test on a barefooted athlete to check for hamstring (back of the leg) strength. Rock solid. He then simply grabbed the athlete's foot, holding it snugly as in a laced shoe, and did the muscle test again. It was like those leg muscles got unplugged. Why?

This shut down response is part of the signaling process that says if there's something wrong somewhere, we your nervous system, don't want you exerting effort that could put you at further risk. Attend!

So above and beyond all the amazing stories about how shoes are bad for us biomechanically - because they get in the way of our own vastly superior biomechanics - they're also bad for us neurologically. Squished or non-mobile joints tell our body there's a problem. Every step we take with these immobilized joints sends that message "there's a problem; there's a problem: threat threat threat."

As most of us have experienced, if we don't attend to the quiet signals, our body has a way of sending messages out to get attention. And not necessarily at the site of the problem. Restricted feet lead to knee issues, or a hip issue or back issue, or shoulder ache or a jaw pain or maybe a wrist pain, to name a few hot spots.

What to Do?

If you want to love your body and you don't have time to do a work out today, try this: take your shoes off. Walk somewhere you feel safe to do so in your bare feet to let your feet move. You may want to probe a little further - are all those bones in your feet mobile?

I've asked some folks this and they've just laughed - like they have no idea. Well sports fans, we don't have flippers (tho shoes turn our feet into flippers); those joints are there for a reason . So let's take a look. There are some very simple things we can do to make our feet send happy talk back to the nervous system, and that will have a cascade of good effects for other body bits, too.

Toe Pulls

Toe pulls are one great way to get a few of the foot joints rolling. Take a look mid way down this t-nation article for a description by Cobb of how to do these. Shown below is the center toe pull:

The Middle Toe Pull: Begin in neutral stance, reach your leg behind your body, and curl the toes under with the knee in a neutral position. Use the knee and foot position to create a "stretching" mobilization just below the ankle in the target area pictured.


Once positioned correctly, perform five slow mini-squats (three to five inches) with the front leg. If you're doing this correctly, you should feel a strong stretching sensation in the target area.

Target Position
This simple stretch opens up the cuneiform joints at the top of the foot. Which also impact the top of the leg and go right into the pelvis. We're so connected. There are more simple pulls for the feet and circles for the ankles that Cobb has developed in a system called Z health (here's an overview of what Z is about: general | more specific). These drills are gone into much more detail in a DVD called R-phase.
Why more than take my shoes off? That's big enough isn't it?Yes, taking your shoes off is a great awesome first step, as it were. And if you're not somewhere it feels safe to go totally barefoot, you can get pretty close with a range of foot wear. Here's some options:

Puma Future Cats:

Vivo Barefoot (shown below)
** a note on sizing vivo barefoots, mentioned in the New York Magazine Wrecking Your Feet article above. In my limited experience with them, the web site sizing at Terra Plana.com, at least for women, is out of sync with what's in the box:i'd ordered a pair of what's on the web site as UK 7 EU 40's USA 9's only to receive shoes that were marked as UK 6.5's EU 40s. So, too small. So i asked for the UK 8's/EU 41's -
Again, these arrived marked as EU 41's BUT UK 7's/ US 9.5s on the label on the boot. They sure ain't what a US 9.5 is, and they seem like 40's at best to me.
SO - it seems that (a) vivo's for women only go up to a UK 7, and at that THEY ARE A SHORT 40, and (b) they seem to only go up by half not whole sizes (6.5 to a 7). Indeed, once upon a time (update: and now again after emails to them about this issue) it seems vivo's site owned that they were short shoes for their size: "Vivo Barefoot shoes are cut wide in the toe box but tend to run short." (just google for 'vivo barefoot fit') Here's an international sizing correspondences.You can see the vivo's true fit is off the grid.
The folks managing the online sales for terra plana, the footshopltd.co.uk, have been very good about handling the returns, and have said they have alerted the head office (theirs or terra plana's i'm not sure) about the web site/box size discrepencies, but i haven't seen a change on the site as yet. Indeed, they recently emailed me to say this is now a known problem but is unlikely to change until new stock is created in the spring. Again, the sizes on the current site have not been changed to reflect this. What's with that?
So if you're thinking of ordering, ask someone to confirm how they're labelled ON THE ACTUAL SHOE: only EU sizes show up on the box and the *actual* shoes seem to be one size smaller than what they are on the shoe label. Go by the UK size on the label on the shoe, NOT on the web site - that's a more accurate reflection of the shoe's size (again this is at least the case for women's boots; don't know about the men's lines). Quality control on this side of production seems confused at best. Props to footshopltd for their good customer service, but really really disappointed that a now known and acknowledged problem hasn't meant the web site sizes are updated appropriately


Asics Tiger Tai Chi
Nike Free's (there's also the Nike Eclipse NM worth checking out)


and of course what barefoot-esque list would be complete without the remarkable Vibram Fivefingers (review on fit of all fivefingers models, with and without socks)



And these just in from Michael Scott at the Dragon Door Forum, are WuShu's




testing shoes for joint liberty wearability
These options are not exhaustive. Here's a simple test to see if the shoes you're interested in are joint freeing enough for work as better for your feet than what you've got on: twist 'em. If they can twist around the middle, give 'em a go. Now, i'll say this in passing, but there's a very expensive shoe on the market called MBT's - or Masai Barefoot Technology. They claim to be barefoot based and do all sorts of things for our muscles, but they're not and they don't. If you have questions, give them the twist test. They fail. Like alot. Nuff Said? Trust your feet.

Kathy Mauck of Z health talks about how the only part of the body we distrust this much is the feet that we brace it to such a degree. Why is that? Trust your feet! Ya, let's trust our feet.


The Path to Bare Pseudo Bare Feet
Getting to bare footedness can be a psychological as well as a physical challenge (for some its also a style challenge. alas) To this end, some folks rate the Nike Frees as a great transition shoe for going from regular shoes/trainers towards bare feet. The Tigers and Vivo's on the other hand have *much less* sole/cushioning so that you really do feel the ground beneath your feet. This is a GOOD thing. Our gate will adapt - back to normal. Trust our feet.

As you make the transition, initially, your feet will feel tired. That's ok. That just shows you how much your muscles and joints have been atrophying in your footwear. They'll come back such that not wearing these slippers will feel clonky and unnatural. As it should be.




Putting it Together: Towards Bare Feet and Increased Mobility
This article has stressed two things: first, if you can do nothing else for yourself today, kick your shoes off and think about how you can let your feet be a little freer. Let the joints designed to move, move. We know that when parts of our bodies go unused, our body stops talking to those parts: they get weak, atrophy, etc. and that joint death has costs. So let your feet go. There are even a few shoe suggestions to help the transition.

The second critical part of this article is to get a plan, stan, to work the joints of the feet through their complete range of motion. The Toe Pull is one example of a simple move designed to open one set of joints in the foot. There are others. I strongly recommend that you consider getting the R phase DVD or take a Z health class/workshop to learn how to move your feet and ankles (and every other joint in your body) through their full range of motion.

But if you do nothing else, start with your feet and kill your shoes - at least the non-twisty ones, or the ones with heels.
Do the toe pulls; make circles with your ankles; roll from the inside to the outside of the foot. You can even do all these things sitting down.

These instructions are way too generic because you really do want to make sure you're moving joints, not just stretching ligaments. But guaranteed that if you free and mobilize your feet, you'll feel better. There really will be a spring in your step, and that tells your body it can relax a little more: the threat level's down.

]]> Suleiman Al-Sabah: Yet Another Fit Researchin' Geek tag:nopain2.org,2008:/geekfit//6.111 2008-08-27T10:14:01Z 2008-08-27T15:04:07Z Most folks who are working on their PhD's are obsessed with the degree, especially the dissertation: it's all encompassing and it becomes a great way to say no to things like working out or eating right because, heck there's just no time; other priorities, etc. ... What council would you have for grad students/RA's who say either a.they don't have the time to work out b.don't need to work out c. don't really need to eat right? health, students, workout One of the challenges of IAMGEEKFITters is figuring out how to combine good eating and physical activity with the more time consuming, cerebral demands of like in academia, where the main physical requirement is to work in front of a computer screen. So are there models of folks who are in similar situations who have, however, found a path to working on getting healthy

A few months ago IAMGEEKFIT profiled PhD student Mike T. Nelson to see what motivates him to get out of the lab, and go pick up stuff and put it down, many times, all within the demands of courses, classes, exams and numerous other pay-the-rent obligations.

200808261539.jpg

Today, i'm pleased to be able to introduce another person in the Research space, Suleiman Al-Sabah. Besides already holding a PhD and working as a fulltime researcher at Reading, Al has serious chops in karate and is also an RKC kettlebell instructor. The following presents an interview with Al, covering his research, his background in wellness, and how he keeps motivated to go move his body rather than spend more time at the microsope.

Read on for the interview

]]> When did you complete your PhD and what is your research area?

2003, University of Leeds. I would call the area molecular pharmacology. More specifically I investigated a specific receptor that is now targeted by a molecule found in lizard venom to treat diabetes (Exendin-4 – trade name Byetta). It was very much a structure/function study or ‘mutate and see’.

Why did the gila monster (the lizard) evolve to have a component in it’s venom that potentiates insulin secretion in a glucose dependant manner?

If you could point readers to one article about your field, what would it be?

Maudsley, S., Martin, B., and Luttrell, L. M. The origins of diversity and specificity in G protein-coupled receptor signaling. (2005) J Pharmacol Exp Ther 314(2), 485-494

…a nice review but doesn’t cover some of the newer concepts.

and this one for the technique I use the most;

Krasel, C., Bunemann, M., Lorenz, K., and Lohse, M. J.Beta-arrestin binding to the beta2-adrenergic receptor requires both receptor phosphorylation and receptor activation.(2005) J Biol Chem 280(10), 9528-9535

Is choosing two papers cheating?

You use what you need, sir. No worries.

What's the research question you're most interested in right now, and how come?

What comes first, activation of c-src or receptor phosphorylation? and if that is too cryptic or esoteric I am investigating the mechanism of receptor desensitization (or the loss of response to a drug over time) and if that can be harnessed therapeutically.

Neat. Ok, how can drug desensitization over time be used beneficially, if that's what you're saying you want to investigate?

OK I bit more background first.

Traditionally drugs can be classed as agonists; which activate a receptor, antagonists; which block the effect of an agonist and partial agonists; that do not achieve the same level of response of a full agonist.

It has been shown that some receptors can signal even in the absence of an agonist (be it the natural agonist or a drug). This is termed ‘constitutive activity’. Some drugs that were thought to antagonists are in fact ‘inverse agonists’; that is they reduce the activity of a constitutively active receptor. One consequence of treatment with an inverse agonist can be, in some cases, receptor up regulation; this is an increase in the number of the receptors at the cell surface making the cell more responsive to a given stimulus. This may be beneficial in some circumstances but it is not the desired effect if you had initially set out to block that receptor. Receptor desensitization may be a way to achieve a ‘super receptor blocker’ especially if the drug is ‘biased’ to arrestin-dependant signaling as opposed to classical G-protein dependant signaling. I am just speculating here but understanding the mechanism of desensitization will help in the development of therapies that are limited by this process.

Interestingly, it is thought that topical capsaicin (used to relieve pain in some conditions) acts by causing desensitization of the nerves involved in carrying the pain signal and a recent review has highlighted the capsaicin receptor (TRPV1) as a potential target in the treatment of diabetes (Suri & Szallasi 2007).

Wow. Very cool. To move from your research to help folks at the micro level to the physical stuff at the macro: you're an advanced level karate practitioner. When did you start your MA practice? Has it ever conflicted with school?

I started when I saw at school at about the age of 13. No, it never conflicted with school. I would say it taught me focus and discipline and if anything, helped me in my academic endeavours. I was never a naturally gifted athlete and as my instructor was also my physics (Ron Hicks now a 5th Dan black belt ) teacher I could intellectualise the training process.

How did you maintain your MA practice through your PhD work?

I found the two complemented each other well. You need tenacity at get anywhere in either. Although I worked hard in the lab I had plenty of time to train. Looking back now I think I was training too much, but it never had a negative impact on my work. I know many PhD students that spend too much time procrastinating, they end up working late as a result and I never found that I was very productive late in the evening. Blowing of some steam in the dojo was a better option.

Was karate your main physical activity or were there other things you did either in the gym or at home as part of a "work out"?

Initially.

I was one of the top ranking karateka at the university club and was encouraged by our instructor, the mighty Bob Rhodes to train at the city club where I found my self at the bottom of the ranking order. These guys pretty much made up the national team. I was getting thrown around like a rag doll and though I needed to do something to get stronger so I started weight training.

Of course this was really bodybuilding, which was not what I needed. It was about this time that I discovered the work of Pavel Tsatsouline. ‘Beyond Stretching’ really changed the way I trained as did ‘Power to the People’ and later ‘The Russian Kettlebell Chalenge’. I used to deadlift at lunch time at the university weight room which was 5 min from my lab and I got hold of a kettlebell from Stan Pike and started training with that. I even convinced the university sports center to buy a pair of kettlebells, I don’t think they would have agreed if they knew what they were.

Most folks who are working on their PhD's are obsessed with the degree, especially the dissertation: it's all encompassing and it becomes a great way to say no to things like working out or eating right because, heck there's just no time; other priorities, etc. So how you managed to keep up with your practice is of moment.

I think that you have to be obsessed with, or at least passionate about, your subject if you are going to pursue it to PhD level. In the life-sciences there is also the problem that there is often very little correlation between the amount of work you put in and the results you get, very frustrating.

I find the trick to staying active is to make it a habit, setting goals also helps.

That way training does not eat into my time I just make it part of my day and working at a university makes really easy.

I get up early do some joint mobility/dynamic stretching and some karate based drills, sometimes a little kb work. I walk past the university (Reading these days) gym on the way to work and some days do a few pull-up ladders. Takes very little time and I am still in work early and alert. Depending on work some lunchtimes (“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) I will walk to the gym on campus and do a bit of exercise (a couple of sets of deadlifts or some more pull-ups) this takes less time than most take for lunch.

Then when I get home in the evening I will finish off any kettlebell training I had scheduled. I don’t have to find an hour plus where I work out. Even when I trained for a half-marathon at the start of the year most of my sessions were just running home from work the long way.

That is so awesome: running to work as half marathon training. Were you able to keep up your nutrition, too? If so what was your practice?

Well I have experimented with all kinds of weird and wonderful nutritional programs. It is very easy to eat inappropriately in our environment – lots of easily available junk food. So I always strived to eat correctly. Again, like training, it is easier to stick to a program/diet if you make it a habit.

What has changed if anything in your health/fitness practice since moving to full time research?

I train much less. Maybe it is because I am older but I couldn't’t recover from what I used do. I haven’t done a formal karate session for several years. This is partly because of karate politics but also most sessions start at 8pm. I find that I am much too alert after training and it takes a good few hours to wind down. I need my sleep. I also try to focus on one goal at a time instead of chasing everything at once like I once did.

You're a certified kettlebell instructor. Where, when and how did kettlebells come into your life?

At Leeds when I was a PhD student, about 2000. Stan Pike was the only person I could get hold of one from back then. I still have one of his early models. Now they are everywhere (except at Reading University!). It was from reading Pavel’s work that got me interested. He used karate terms like kime in his writing, that really intrigued me. I think training with kettlebell improved my karate, they definitely improved my stamina, flexibility and posture.

What made you decide to certify?

I wanted to make sure I was training correctly. I had already decided that this was going to my main from of exercise for the foreseeable future and there is more to the RKC style of training than just lifting a round weight with a handle. It is the training system, not the training tool.

You may be interested to know that somebody I used to train with (karate) has now started his own kettlbell instructor’s certification (www.KettlebellSeminars.co.uk ). I have been training with kettlebells for as long as him. I wanted to make sure I was still learning and I am please to say that I learnt a lot at the RKC.

Have any of your colleagues picked up the KB habit from you?

Some did in Leeds. Not many of my colleagues in Reading have, although some friends have, my wife has. I think my colleagues see it as a weird macho thing not the incredibly time-efficient and effective all-round fitness tool that it is. I think they prefer their Wii fits. I want to drop a KB on a Wii fit.

i would like to see that on you tube. What council would you have for grad students/RA's who say either

  • a.they don't have the time to work out
  • b.don't need to work out
  • c. don't really need to eat right?

A) You do have time. It doesn’t have to be hours straight. It can be few minutes spread through out the day. You are not working every waking hour are you? Lean to exercise effectively and efficiently and you will find the time easily.

B) Does your back hurt? What does your posture look like? If you sit at a desk or work in a lab all day you probably need to do some form of exercise, but that’s just my opinion. A good exercise program should enhance your life.

C) If you have made the decision to eat ‘right’ then you will find the time. Organize yourself so that eating ‘right’ is a habit. There is a lot of argument as to what ‘right’ is (e.g. vegetarians, high carb low carb etc). But ‘wrong’ is probably the highly processed stuff you get in packets. Do some research (It’s what you are good at), and make informed decisions.

Any other comments you'd like to add about either recommendations/tips for grad students thinking about starting a fitness/eating program?

I work in the health sciences, and I am surprised that other who do, don’t make exercise a priority in their life. The side-effects are great! We in the developed world have a struggle on our hands avoiding the diseases of our affluence. Making exercise and eating appropriately second nature seems like a sane approach.

Thanks for your time, Al. Great discussion.

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