High Intensity Exercise - Start Doing Some Here's Why - And How - Part 1by Ryan Andrews

How's That Metabolism?It's bound to happen to your friends. It's likely to happen to your family. In fact, if you take a look around, about 95 out of every 100 people will experience the dreaded age-associated metabolic decline.Research now shows that, on average, folks experience a 2-4% decline in their resting metabolic rate with each passing decade after the age of 25.

Add to this metabolic decline a 5lb loss of muscle mass with every decade and getting older is a depressing proposition.Indeed, for most people these declines are all but definite. However, you're not most people. You've got access to us.

We're going to teach you how to off-set what some erroneously believe is inevitable. Will Work For OxygenWhen it comes to metabolism and muscle preserving strategies, intense exercise is the king. With it, you get to keep that muscle mass and fuel that metabolism. Without it, you get to politely smile while you wave bye-bye to your youth, muscle strength, lean mass, and metabolic rate.

Now, the big question is this; what qualifies as "intense exercise."

Well, certainly resistance training (strength training) is one of the biggies. However, there are a host of other types. Here are a few, taken from the menu of activities that we've prescribed to our clients:

Interval Running, Climbing, Cycling, and Rowing
Resistance Circuits
Body Weight Circuits
Rope Jumping (Skipping)
Running Hills
Burpees, Jumping Jacks, and Other Plyometrics
Medicine Ball Tosses and Rotations
Kettlebell Exercises
Tire Flipping, Fireman Carries, Farmers Walking and Other Strongman Activities

Basically, any physically demanding task that a) incorporates many muscle groups and b) is done near your maximum heart rate qualifies. So feel free to invent your own form of intense exercise. Now, when you do an intense bout of exercise, you overload your muscles. This overload helps stimulate protein turnover, protein building, and gains in lean mass (or at least lean mass preservation).

But what about the cardiovascular system? Well, with all those muscles doing so much work, the cardiovascular system MUST respond by pumping blood faster and delivering a lot of oxygen to your working muscles. So you definitely get a cardiovascular benefit from doing intense exercise.In addition, your metabolic rate also benefits from the increased oxygen consumption. You see, the more muscle you have and the more exercise you do, the more oxygen your body will need. As oxygen generates 5kcal per liter consumed, a high oxygen demand means that your body is burning a ton of calories. After The StormNow, it should be clear that DURING exercise, your oxygen demands are high. That's why you're breathing so heavy. You're getting rid of the carbon dioxide your cells are producing at a high rate and you're taking in additional liters of oxygen.

However, the real key to intense exercise is what happens AFTER your exercise session.If your exercise is intense enough, your oxygen demand remains elevated for well after the exercise session. With low intensity cardio, you only benefit from a few minutes of additional oxygen demand (and metabolic activity). However, with high intensity activity, the oxygen demand can remain high for anywhere from 6 hours to 48 hours, depending on the intensity and duration of the exercise session. And remember, a bigger oxygen demand means more calories burned. So it's only your high intensity activity that boosts your metabolism 24-7.Now, the right question to ask would be this - why is oxygen consumption (and calorie burn) elevated after exercise? Well, after an intense workout, it's necessary for the body to metabolize additional fuel, replenish energy stores, and reload the depleted oxygen stores in the muscle and blood. Further, oxygen consumption (and metabolism) is boosted due to:

Higher body temperature
Increased activity of the heart and respiratory muscles
Elevated levels of hormones that increase metabolic activity
Energy absorbing pathways and the conversion of things like lactate into glucose or amino acids
Recovery of muscle damage

So, with intense exercise, more oxygen is being consumed (and energy being used) during the exercise, after the exercise, and pretty much all day long. Interestingly, you burn a lot of fat too, during this post-exercise period. During high intensity exercise, the rate of fat breakdown is high. However, fatty acid entry into the bloodstream is blocked.

The good news - upon termination of exercise, this block on fatty acid release subsides and the fats overflow into circulation for eventual oxidation during the recovery period. How cool - we're burning tons of fat even after we leave the gym! Beyond fat burning, when you do high intensity activity regularly, additional muscle will be developed. This creates an even further metabolic demand for the body and more energy is utilized for normal daily activities, even at rest.

Heck, only when you train with high intensity on a regular basis do you benefit from an increased thermic effect of feeding. So, make no mistake, if you want to avoid becoming another metabolic slowdown or obesity statistic, the bulk of your exercise should be of the high intensity kind.

But Easy Isn’t All That BadWith all the talk about high intensity training and conditioning – one may be led to believe that lower intensity exercise and normal activities of daily living are worthless. Not so fast. With low intensity exercise, or any easy physical activity, more oxygen is consumed (and energy is being used) during the exercise itself. However you don't get that post-exercise, all-day metabolic boost. Nor do you build much muscle. So, from the "metabolic therapy" aspect of things, low intensity activity doesn't deliver the most bang for your buck. Another drawback of low intensity exercise as your primary exercise mode is that there's an increased energy demand without any real muscle overload. Therefore muscle can become just another fuel source that is gobbled up to sustain your low intensity exercise energy needs. The best visual example of this scenario is the comparison between different types of athletes. Athletes involved with long, low intensity activities tend to be very thin and have minimal amounts of muscle mass. Athletes doing high intensity (thus shorter) activities tend to be bigger with more muscle mass.

However, again, don't take this to mean that low intensity exercise should be avoided. When combined with a high intensity exercise protocol, each of the drawbacks above is eliminated. The high intensity bouts boost muscle mass. And they also create 24-hour metabolism magic. However, the low intensity exercise does offer some additional calorie burning as well as improvements in the muscle gain to fat loss ratio when added to an intense exercise plan. Indeed, muscular sensitivity to insulin is increased for about 48 hours after a single bout of prolonged low intensity exercise. This probably explains some of the benefits associated with regular “non-exercise physical activity” during the day (e.g., stairs, walking to the bus, playing with kids, etc.) Another bonus for long bouts of low intensity exercise is that the synthesis of new fat is temporarily inhibited, probably due to the low insulin levels and increased counter regulatory hormones. Exercise + NutritionUnfortunately, many people think that eating an unhealthy diet can be reversed with more treadmill or, in general, gym-time. As you probably understand by now, sticking with the "I'll burn the Big Mac off on the treadmill" mentality could actually be doubly disastrous. More unhealthy food and more low intensity exercise can deteriorate overall health while promoting disease and deplete muscle mass in the long run! But even with high intensity exercise, you still need to watch your food intake.

Indeed, in a recent study we did, we were shocked to find that research participants training with an Olympic weight lifting coach and a group exercise instructor for over 5 hours a week saw little benefit from this training... So realize this diet is an intergral part of the equation

NOW, NOT TOMORROW!

Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow!—Og Mandino

Shoes and socks off NOW!

SHOULD YOU BE RUNNING BAREFOOT?


Most of us consider running shoes essential.
But what happens when you decide not to lace 'em up?



By Amby Burfoot PUBLISHED 06/30/2004


As a teenager, I loved to run barefoot on the Connecticut beaches, splashing through the waves. A few years later, I often ran without shoes while training for the college cross-country season, completing workouts that were the hardest, fastest, most puke-able, and yet most enjoyable of my life.Those are strange bedfellows: extreme effort and high pleasure. I have wondered if someone was spiking my Kool-Aid, a popular sports drink of the time. Then I close my eyes and recall how my friends and I snuck onto Shennecossett Golf Course as dusk descended. How we giddily removed our shoes, and felt the fairway underfoot. How we ran an undulating six-mile fartlek loop, sprinting and jogging, sprinting and jogging, the summer sweat cascading off our bodies. How we finished, not another gasp of oxygen in our lungs, and flopped onto the 14th green. The kinesthetic memories are fullblown, from the slight chill of the grass on my feet to the heaving chest and the lightheaded dizziness of the effort. Was it the barefoot running that made the memory so vivid?


Famous runners had gone barefoot before us, of course. In 1960 Ethiopia's Abebe Bikila, the greatest Olympic marathoner of all time, won the first of his consecutive gold medals sans shoes in a world record 2:15:17. My high school coach, "Young John" J. Kelley, was the leading American finisher (19th, 2:24:58) in that 1960 Rome Olympic Marathon, and his descriptions of the torchlit race have always entranced me. Except the part about the stones. "On the ancient Appian Way, we had to run on huge, rounded cobblestones that were completely unyielding," Kelley says. "They had no 'give' at all. I remember that I was afraid of slamming down too hard on them, and I still can't imagine how Bikila did it."While Bikila was making Olympic history, England's Bruce Tulloh was running European record times from 1955 to 1967, almost always in bare feet. He ran 13:12 for three miles on grass, and 27:23 for six miles on cinders. Later, Tulloh taught in Africa, coached, wrote books, and ran solo across America (2,876 miles, albeit in shoes). At 68, his mind is as sharp as ever, and he is ever eager for a good barefoot jaunt. "I'll be running on the beach at Devon this weekend," he said in early summer. "The only reason that more people don't run barefoot is that they're afraid to be unconventional."

That wouldn't apply to either Charlie "Doc" Robbins or Zola Budd, both important contributors to barefoot running. Robbins, winner of two USA National Marathon Championships in the late 1940s, completed 50 straight Thanksgiving Day Road Races in Manchester, Connecticut, before calling it quits two years ago.

Most Thanksgivings, Robbins went shoeless, though he would resort to a pair of socks if the temperature dipped below 20 degrees. Budd set a track world record in January 1984 when, just 16, she ran 5000 meters in South Africa in 15:01.83, more than six seconds under Mary Decker's existing record. (Too bad Budd is better known for her fateful collision with Decker in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic 3000 race.

Decker was thrown horribly off-balance, and twisted and fell to the infield grass.) Interest in barefoot running seemed to wane until 2001, when Michael Warburton, an Aussie physical therapist and 2:42 marathoner, published an online paper titled, simply, "Barefoot Running." (You can view the paper at the sports science web site sportsci.org.) In his section on running economy, Warburton points out that the extra weight of shoes on your feet is much worse than a pound or two around your middle.

Weight on your feet is subject to constant acceleration and deceleration (runners call these movements "strides"), which have a high energy cost. According to Warburton, research has shown that 100 grams of extra weight on your feet decreases your running economy by one percent. Simple math says that two 10-ounce shoes will make you more than five percent less efficient. That's a big deal. When you add five percent to Paul Tergat's marathon world record 2:04:55, he's a 2:11 guy, which doesn't net him enough for a warm bowl of ugali in the Kenyan highlands.

But we don't think much about running economy when we buy a pair of new running shoes. First we want protection from harmful objects. And then we expect cushioning and/or motion control--the stuff of injury prevention. But this is where things get strange, because scientific studies have had a hard time proving that shoes represent a big step forward from the naked foot.

To learn what's going on inside the body, which, after all, is where we runners develop all our stress fractures, Achilles strains, and so forth, a medical team needs to take measurements from--ouch!--inside the body.

I've actually seen this take place in a biomechanics lab, and it's a blood sport. The combatants typically include a mad Ph.D. scientist and several grad students (a.k.a. the "volunteers") desperate to finish their degree work. ("Sure, I'll be happy to let you drill a metal accelerometer into my shin bone before my next treadmill run," says a grad student.) The results of several of these intrusive experiments have shown little change in shock absorption or motion-control in shod versus unclad feet. This apparent difference seems hard to believe.

All that foam padding and all those posts, bridges, and dual-density midsoles have to be doing something, right? Of course they are; they're deceiving the body. Here's an explanation, based on your body's proprioceptive abilities--that is, the way it can communicate up and down all pathways. When you run barefoot, your body precisely engages your vision, your brain, the soles of your feet, and all the muscles, bones, tendons, and supporting structures of your feet and legs. They leap to red alert, and give you a high degree of protection from the varied pressures and forces of running. On the other hand, when you run in socks, shoes, inserts, midsoles and outsoles, your body's proprioceptive system loses a lot of input. "This has been called 'the perceptual illusion' of running shoes," says Warburton. "With shoes, your body switches off to a degree, and your reaction time decreases."The way I see it, there's a simple explanation for the high IQ of barefoot running: We descended from the trees to walk and run this planet's surfaces six million years ago, and we've had time to get really, really good at it, from the soles of the feet to the top of the brain.By now, you might be worried about your Reebok stock or your friends who work at the local running store.

I wouldn't sweat it too much, at least not to judge from the number of bare feet I saw at my last big road race (zero). Even though a guy named Ken Saxton is running a marathon a month this year (barefootrunning.org), I doubt his preference will take off the way instant messaging, low-carb diets, and The Apprentice have. Besides, many podiatrists think it's dangerous. "Most of my patients aren't worldclass runners," says foot doctor Stephen Pribut, DPM. "It wouldn't make sense for them to risk getting twigs and glass in their feet. And I think some soft surfaces increase plantar fascia and Achilles problems. Of course, what doesn't kill you might make you stronger."This a-little-medicine-is-good-for-you perspective is shared by a number of other podiatrists, physical therapists, and coaches.

Their theory: Modern man does spend too much time in shoes, and this weakens many of the foot and leg structures. To correct this, you can walk barefoot around the house, do simple foot strengthening exercises, or run a few barefoot miles a week on safe, secure surfaces. And then put your shoes back on before you hit the pavement. Even Abebe Bikila gave up his barefoot ways. Four years after winning in Rome, he wore Pumas in the Tokyo Olympic Marathon. He won again, despite having had an appendectomy 40 days earlier, and set a new world record, 2:12:11.2. Apparently, the shoes didn't bother him at all.

Note from John ...............

There is a company which has created a virtual bridge between safety and functionality and its product is called the Vibram 5 fingers shoe.

http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/




Check it out and tell them we sent you.

One man's Pipes of Passage

What's the deal with fiber? - John Williams C.S.C.S, CARPT



Everyone tells us we need it….we need more and more fiber, that’s the solution to all our problems. Ok, first thing I always like to ask when hearing something like this is “who” said we need it. The usual answer for most of these general health concepts are to respond doctors or scientists or some other random source. But do you even know why we need it? To have more bowel movements? Nope sorry…false assumption. To lower cholesterol? Nope sorry, never been proven. To lower the risk of colon cancer? Well….yes and no, and you will see that below in more detail. First let’s go over the 2 types of fiber:


Soluble - fiber that is “water soluble” (put it in water it expands into a large gel like substance). This is what expands in our guts, gives us a feeling of fullness, slows down digestion.
Insoluble - fiber that is NOT “water soluble”, this goes through us like sand through a long winding pipe. Simple enough huh?
Ok….so what are the main sources of fiber? Fiber is found in fruits, vegetables, beans, legumes and the most popular source nowadays of “bran fiber”. But what is Bran? Does it really improve our health? Why do we even need it? Let the games begin….


The belief that regular bowel movement is important for health is very ancient. But the present theory is based on Dr. Dennis Burkitt’s discovery that relatively few rural black Africans suffer from cancer of the colon. He attributed this to their relatively crude diet.
The theory was that, as fibre made food travel through the gut faster, it allowed less time for cancer-inducing agents to form. This, of course, presupposed that food became carcinogenic in the gut and there was no evidence that it did. Neither was there any evidence that moving food through the intestine at a faster rate decreased the risk of colon cancer. Moreover, the rural Africans’ lifestyle was far from that of the Western city dweller: their diet is different, but also they were not exposed to so many pollutants, toxins or mental stresses. Indeed, there were many factors that could have been responsible for a difference in disease patterns. Other communities - the Mormons of Utah, for example - also enjoyed a low incidence of colon cancer yet they ate a low-fiber diet.


Wait….so more fiber does not lower the rate of colon cancer? Other factors in their lifestyle could of been more important to preventing colon cancer? Hmmmm….go on…..
Commercial interests were quick to see the potential in the recommendation and jump on the bran wagon. Burkitt’s recommendation was based on vegetable fiber, but bran (cereal fiber) has a far higher fibre content and bran was a practically worthless by-product of the milling process that, until then, had been thrown away. Almost overnight, it became a highly priced profit maker. Although totally inedible, backed by Burkitt’s fiber hypothesis, bran could now be promoted as a valuable food. But Dr. Hugh Trowell, Burkitt’s partner and another strong advocate of dietary fiber, stated in 1974 that: “A serious confusion of thought is produced by referring to the dietary fiber hypothesis as the bran hypothesis, for many Africans do not consume cereal or bran”


So basically Fruits and Vegetable based diets are what all the health benefits of fiber are based upon yet Bran jumped on that bandwagon because manufacturers found a cheap way to make their cheap products healthy to the general public? Hmmmmmm……more?
It may be useful at this stage to consider the claims for fiber in curing or preventing other diseases. For example, bran has been a popular way to manage irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) for about thirty years, despite the fact that no placebo-controlled study of bran in IBS has yet shown any convincing beneficial effect. A study, published in 1994, found that while fruit fiber was effective, bran only made the situation worse. Far from being a cure for IBS, they found that it was the bran that was causing it! Bran also caused bowel disturbances, abdominal distension and pain.

Again….”Yeah” for Fruits and Vegetables….but Bran? “Booooooo…….”.


Tests into the supposed benefits of dietary fiber soon showed that there could be other harmful side effects. All the nutrients in food are absorbed through the gut wall and this takes time. Fiber, by speeding food through the gut faster so that less nutrients are absorbed, inhibits the absorption of iron, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, energy, proteins, fats and vitamins A, D, E and K. This happens with all types of fibre although with a normal Western-style, nutrient-rich diet, the loss caused by vegetable fibre intake is unimportant. More importantly, phytate found in cereal fibre (bran) also binds with calcium, iron and zinc making them indigestible, which in turn causes malabsorption. One study, for example, showed that subjects absorbed more iron from white bread than from wholemeal bread even though their intakes of iron were fifty percent higher with the wholemeal bread. Bran has also been shown to cause faecal losses of calcium, iron, zinc, phosphorus, nitrogen, fats, fatty acids and sterols, thus depleting the body of these materials.


WHAT!

Too much fiber can speed up food through the gut, bind itself to essential vitamins and minerals and cause malabsorption? I didn’t see that on the box of Cheerios. So honestly what are we to do for maximum health? Here’s the overview:The source of fiber is important, fruits and vegetables should be our primary source. Bran is cheap, worthless and does more harm than good. (also makes crappy foods “healthy”in the public eye)
If you are not eating processed foods, then you don’t have to worry about blood sugar control with slower gastric emptying, as you get that automatically with fruits and vegetables.
Bowel movements are more based on the BACTERIA environment of the gut. Don’t believe me? Go take some probiotics (healthy bacteria) and let me know what happens….stock up on the TP! If you want more bowel movements, start with treating the source which is the bacteria balance in your gut. Fiber is not the answer.

Fiber is not the magic pill to cure or prevent colon caner or any disease/illness. Eating a diet higher in fruits and vegetables will always give you a healthier body….but it is a small portion of what true health is. Our whole environment from external toxins, stress, and overall lifestyle play into those factors as well. Don’t think a fiber pill is going to save you if you life is chaotic and destructive.

Too much fiber is not going to be healthy too as it can absorb essential nutrients that your body needs and can cause gut irritation (like scratching your skin with your fingernails…fiber is scraping your intenstinal lining). You want to get really sick? Then mess up your gut! I can’t stress how important a healthy gut is for overall health…it’s the biggest factor that we can control and is usually all messed up! Re-read the post on gut health again….and again….and again.

Once again…..moral of the story….eat your fruits and vegetables, stay away from processed foods and don’t believe the marketing hype of manufacturer’s trying to make their food “healthy”…as it usually has more disadvantages than advantages. If you are eating meats, vegetables, fruits, health fats, avoiding sugars, not taking antibiotics (or taking probiotics), controlling stress, limiting toxin exposure…then you don’t need any more fiber do you? Keep your gut healthy, keep your foods natural, and live an enjoyable low stress lifestyle….chances are that you will live long and prosper. If you want more bowel movements….take some probiotics and enjoy!

On Womens Health and beyond...

Women’s health is important to Paradigm Performance Lab.

Did you know? Every three minutes a woman in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer. In 2006, 212,920 new cases of invasive breast cancer were diagnosed, along with 61,980 new cases of non-invasive breast cancer. And 40,970 women died in 2006 from this disease. The awareness of Breast Cancer in women has gained significant attention in recent years. Sadly though, we can not say the same for the methods of early detection and prevention.

Until Now…..

Our continued commitment to bring you the latest information and the best technology has to offer in the way of prevention has led us to the discovery of Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging (DITI). This is a noninvasive screening procedure that detects and records infrared heat emissions from the breast. DITI is especially useful for detecting early lesions before they otherwise become clinically evident. These changes could accompany cancer, fibrocystic breast disease, local injury, infections or vascular disease. Thermography has also been shown to detect the precancerous state of breast tissue up to 10 years before breast cancer is identified by other methods.

As if that’s not enough; we can also use thermography to isolate areas of chronic inflammation, fractures, strains tears and other soft tissue related injuries.

This is HUGE!

Join us on the evening of April 24th , Seven O’clock at Paradigm Performance Lab, to meet Thermographic specialist Nina Rea from Infrared Thermal Imaging.

As a special BONUS, I have invited our local ambassador of wellness Dan Honore, owner of Juices Wild, in Sugar Hill to attend.

Dan has informed me that if we get at least 15 people

confirmed to attend he will bring some natural,

healthy and supremely tasty goodies!

Sign up in person while sipping on a fresh juice at

Juices Wild or email Paradigm directly:

clientservices@paradigmperformancelab.com

770-815-3531

The Education of a Misguided Trainer

Cosgrove's Five Ah-Ha! Moments:The Education of a Misguided Trainer


by Alwyn Cosgrove



In my career I've had several moments of clarity when I learned something new, or when something I had believed was either verified, brought into question, or flat out disproved.
These mini-epiphanies are what I call my "ah-ha!" moments. In every case, these "ah-ha!" moments allowed my thought processes to take a significant step forward, which in turn brought me to a new level in my training education.


Here's a study that I came across about ten years ago (about 4 or 5 years after it was published, I'm embarrassed to admit):


Tremblay A, Simoneau JA, Bouchard C.
Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism.
Metabolism. 1994 Jul; 43(7):814-8.


The premise of the study was to compare twenty (20) weeks of steady state endurance training and fifteen (15) weeks of interval training.


When comparing total calories burned from exercise, the researchers found the endurance training burned 28,661 calories, while the interval training group burned 13,614 calories. In other words, the interval-training group burned less than half the calories of the endurance-training group.



However, when the researchers adjusted the results to correct for the difference in energy cost, the interval-training group showed a 900% greater loss in subcutaneous fat than the endurance group. In other words, calorie for calorie, interval training was nine times more effective than steady state exercise.
Interval training is nine times more effective than steady-state cardio for burning fat.


Additionally, the researchers noted the metabolic adaptations taking place in the skeletal muscle in response to the interval training program appear to favor the process of fat oxidation.
This piqued my interest because until this point we'd been told that it's all about "calories in versus calories out." So we assumed (or at least I assumed) that burning more calories in training would result in greater fat loss. This study (and several others since) have shown that to be completely incorrect.


So the "ah-ha!" moment showed me that we can't ignore the post workout period. That's where the adaptations happen. That's where the results are.
Why did this occur? I've hypothesized that it's related to EPOC, a post exercise elevation of metabolism, but some studies have shown that EPOC isn't as big of a contributor to caloric burn as we originally thought: calories burned during the exercise period is the biggest factor.
And it still doesn't explain the very significant difference in real world fat loss.
Simply put, the subjects doing interval training lost more fat by burning fewer calories than the steady state group. So maybe, as the study showed, total body fat oxidation seems to increase as a result of the adaptations to interval training.
But that still doesn't explain it. An increase in fat oxidation doesn't necessarily mean an increase in total caloric burn or fat lost (as other studies have shown that fuel source during exercise appears to be irrelevant, so fuel source at rest shouldn't matter either unless there is a total caloric deficit).


The bottom line is that perhaps we don't know why. But we do know that it's more effective because of something that happens post workout. And that something is beneficial.
Looking at aerobics for fat loss and ignoring the post workout period is short-sighted. If we studied weight training the same way, looking only at what happens during the workout and ignoring the post-workout adaptations, we'd have to conclude that weight training destroys muscle tissue, making you smaller and weaker. And we know that's not true.


Conclusion: the workout is the stimulus. The adaptation is the goal.


Ah-ha! #3: Cardiovascular programming is an ass-backward concept.


I don't know when I first thought this, but it was confirmed to me when viewing Lance Armstrong's performance in the New York Marathon.
Throughout my college education, countless training certification programs and seminars, I'd been taught the same thing: that cardiovascular exercise was necessary to improve the cardiovascular system and subsequently aerobic performance. But there seemed to be an inherent flaw in that argument.
Let's say I tested your aerobic fitness through a treadmill test.
Then let's say that for the next sixteen weeks, we developed a five-day per week aerobic training program that involved you running at various heart rates and for various lengths of times. The program would progressively increase in difficulty and duration, and the end result was a very significant improvement in your aerobic fitness.
At the end of this sixteen-week period, how much do you expect your swimming times to have improved? Marginally, if at all, right? It seems almost stupid to ask. But wait a second. If you have one cardiovascular system, why doesn't your cardiovascular system improve across the board regardless of the activity?


More to the point, why didn't Lance Armstrong, with perhaps the highest recorded VO2 max in history, win the New York Marathon? Or beat people with lesser aerobic levels than himself?
The seven-time winner of the Tour de France, the greatest endurance cyclist, quite possibly the greatest endurance athlete in the world, finished the Marathon in 868th place, and described the event as the "hardest physical thing" he'd ever done.





The flaw in this thinking was looking solely at VO2 max: the "engine," as it were. It's fair to say that Lance had a "Formula One" engine, but his wheels and chassis were built for a different kind of race. In other words, he just didn't have the structural development for running.
Lance was a cyclist: his body had adapted to the demands of cycling, but not to the specific demands of running. In fact, the longest distance he'd ever run prior to the Marathon was 16 miles. Lance had developed strength, postural endurance, and flexibility in the correct "cycling muscles," but it didn't transfer to running the way his VO2 max did.
The muscles don't move because of cardiovascular demand. It's the reverse. The cardio system is elevated because of muscular demand. We need to program the body based on the movements it's going to perform, not based on the cardiovascular system.
Basically, if that muscular system can't handle the stress of performing thousands of repetitions (which is what you're doing, after all, when running or cycling), then we have to condition that muscular system first. And by doing so, we automatically improve cardiovascular conditioning.
The only reason there's any demand on the cardiovascular system is because the muscular system places that demand: the muscles require oxygen in order to continue to work. In fact, cardiovascular exercise is impossible without moving the muscle first.
I've seen this across various sports. The cardio conditioning required to run a 10K won't transfer to motocross or jujitsu.


Conclusion: If cardio training doesn't transfer well from one activity to another, and it only 'kicks' in because of muscular demand, we should program muscular activity first in order to create a
cardiovascular response.

Originally published by Testosterone Nation 2008

Eat food. Not Much. Mostly Plants....

Eat Food. Not Much. Mostly Plants.by TC

Upton Sinclair was a visionary.

In his book the Jungle, he wrote about how dead rats were shoveled into sausage grinding machines. He explained, in nauseating detail, how diseased cows were slaughtered for beef; how guts and garbage were swept off the floor and sold as "potted ham."

Upton Sinclair even described how the occasional worker would fall into a meat-processing tank and be ground, along with animal parts, into "Durham's Pure Leaf Lard."
The Chicago meat-packing industry was in deep trouble after Sinclair's landmark book, The Jungle, was published in 1906. It caused outrage in America and abroad and meat sales fell by half. The book forced the government to pass the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act, which established the Food and Drug Administration.

Thanks largely to Sinclair, you can be relatively certain that your food is comparatively free of a variety of disgusting things.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of different ways to foul up our food supply and circumstances require that incarnations of Sinclair surface every generation or so to investigate our food supply.

Our modern-day Upton Sinclair is a journalism professor named Michael Pollan whose book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, explored the American food manufacturing system. The book's most significant contribution was the assertion that a combination of political and biological factors had done almost indescribable damage to the overall health of Americans.
Specifically, he traced how a single political decision made in the 70's having to do with farm subsidies led to a single grain — corn — being mass grown without the limitations normally imposed by supply and demand.

Corn became so abundant and consequently so cheap that manufacturers began looking for novel ways to use it. This led to the inclusion of high-fructose corn syrup in hundreds of products and the invention of a dazzling array of corn-based cereals and snack foods.
With all those cheap, salted, and sugared calories to be had, Americans grew increasingly fat and increasingly diabetic. Perhaps worse, though, was the wide-spread use of corn as cattle feed.
Cattle don't do well on grains. It makes them sick and they then require antibiotics. Furthermore, it changed the fatty acid content of their meat. Whereas normally the grass-fed creatures had omega-6/omega-3 fatty acid ratios more consistent with wild game or wild salmon, the corn-feeding turned them into hoofed heart attacks in waiting, the ingestion of which slowly clogged the nation's arteries.

Despite the billion-lumen light Pollan shined on the food industry, he didn't really pontificate too much on what humans should eat. He attempts to rectify that with his latest book, In Defense of Food.

His overall message?
Eat food.
Not much.
Mostly plants.

Okay, on the surface that advice seems almost Forest Gumpian in its simplicity.
But you have to go deeper. Once you do, once you get into Michael Pollan's head and his gut, you realize that "eat food, not much, mostly plants," is a distillation of an entire dietary thought process; a Zen koan (minus a few syllables) that opens your mind up to a higher level of dietary thinking.
His thinking stems largely from the widely accepted notion that people eating a Western diet are prone to a complex of chronic diseases. If these diseased individuals stop eating a typical Western diet, they get better.

He cites the "civilized" Aborigines who developed diabetes and went back to the bush so they could eat more naturally and in doing so, heal themselves. Likewise, Americans need to escape the worst elements of the Western diet — heal themselves — by going back to the "bush."
Pollan laments the errors and inconsistencies in food science and, more importantly, the failure to rescind or even take responsibility for these errors. He wishes that the government or public health community would come out with something like the following:
Um, you know everything we've been telling you for the last thirty years about the links between dietary fat and heart diseases? And fat and cancer? And fat and fat? Well, this just in: It now appears that none of it was true. We sincerely regret the error.
But rather than just rail against what constitutes modern food science, he gives a dietary to-do list, most of which, maybe surprisingly, doesn't conflict at all with the bodybuilder or weight-trainer mindset. The following paragraphs detail some of the more significant suggestions on his list.

1. Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
We've had our own version of this at Testosterone for some time, which is, "Don't eat anything that comes in a box." Our version was based mostly on the notion that things that come in a box are generally highly processed, i.e., they get digested very, very quickly and cause a huge insulin surge resulting in, over the long run, decreased insulin sensitivity and undesirable body composition.

But it goes beyond that for Pollan. He decries the lack of nutrition in these foods; how they aren't even food anymore and that many of these so-called improvements — replacing one "bad" macronutrient for a "good" one — have made the food far less desirable, nutritionally speaking.
One of the examples he cites is dairy food. When dairies make their products low-fat, they have to go to great lengths to preserve the body or creamy texture; they have to put in food additives.

In the case of low-fat or skim milk, that means adding in powdered milk, which contains oxidized cholesterol that's much worse for your arteries than ordinary cholesterol.
Furthermore, removing all the fat makes it hard or even impossible for your body to absorb the fat-soluble vitamins that are the very reason some people drink milk in the first place!
Of course, the "grandmother rule" doesn't work very well in the aforementioned case as milk still looks like milk.

Neither would it necessarily work with bread. Traditional bread is of course made with flour, yeast, water, and a pinch of salt. Compare that with the list of two-dozen or so chemical ingredients in Sara Lee's Soft and Smooth Whole Grain White Bread.
"If not for the indulgence of the FDA, you couldn't even call it bread," writes Pollan.
Because the small percentage of whole grains in the bread would render it that much less sweet than, say, all-White Wonder Bread — which scarcely waits to be chewed before transforming itself into glucose — the food scientists have added high-fructose corn syrup and honey to make up for the difference; to overcome the problematic heft and toothsomeness of a real whole grain bread, they've deployed "dough conditioners," including guar gum and the aforementioned azodicarbonamide, to simulate the texture of supermarket white bread. By incorporating certain varieties of albino wheat, they've managed to maintain that deathly but apparently appealing Wonder Bread pallor.

Again, this "bread" might fool your grandmother, but she definitely wouldn't recognize Go-Gurt Portable Yogurt as food as it comes in what looks like a toothpaste tube. Oh it has some yogurt in it, but it also has about a dozen other ingredients in it, none of which your grandmother could discern as real food.

She might look at the "Berry Bubblegum Bash" flavor of Go-Gurt, scratch her graying head and wonder aloud how it could be that it has neither berries or bubblegum in it.
Other Frankenfood examples include breakfast cereal bars that have bright white veins representing, but having nothing to do with, milk; nondairy creamers, Twinkies that don't go stale, cheese-like food stuff that has no bovine contribution at all and, unlike European market cheese, is literally dead, kept in its refrigerator morgue until some fool deems to eat it.
He offers that perhaps a better rule would be, "Don't eat anything incapable of rotting."

2. Avoid food products that make a health claim.
The FDA actually approved the following health claim for Mazola Corn Oil, a product very high in the omega-6 fatty acids that most Americans get way too much of:
Very limited and preliminary scientific evidence suggests that eating about a tablespoon of corn oil daily may reduce the risk of heart disease due to the unsaturated fat content in corn oil.
Of course, if you continue reading, you see the "qualification" of this health claim:
[The] FDA concludes that there is little scientific evidence supporting this claim.
And then, to make it more head-smacking confusing:
To achieve this possible benefit, corn oil is to replace a similar amount of saturated fat and not increase the total number of calories you eat in a day.
I don't know if the aforementioned example proves the FDA is corrupt or just stupid. It appears to be clear, though, that the American Heart Association is corrupt.
Consider that they've bestowed (for a fee) their heart-healthy seal on Lucky Charms, Trix, and Cocoa Puff cereals, in addition to Yoo-hoo Chocolate Drink, and Healthy Choice's Caramel Swirl Ice Cream.
Similar degrees of chutzpah are evident in the countless food manufacturers who claim their product to be chock full of antioxidants. Keep this in mind: all plants contain antioxidants of some kind, so don't think for a minute that the people who make Snickers Bars (which contain cacao from plants) haven't considered slapping a "Rich With Antioxidants!" label on their product.
Meanwhile, the products that truly contain rich amounts of antioxidants — the fresh fruits and vegetables in the produce aisle — have no label to trumpet their nutritional value.

3. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.
We all know this one. The periphery of the grocery store is lined with fresh food, food that rots, food that's alive. Those are the most nutritious foods. Of course, the suggestions isn't fool-proof as Go-Gurt Portable Yogurt is in the dairy case.

4. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible.
Pollan recommends you go to a farmer's market whenever possible. When you go to a farmer's market, you eat food that's in season, food at its most nutritious. Eating in season helps you diversify your diet. If concerned with chemicals, ask the farmer how he or she deals with pests and fertility.

5. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
Pollan isn't against eating meat; he just recommends people eat less of it. Eating too much industrial meat exposes us to more saturated fats, more omega-6 fatty acids, more growth hormones, and more carcinogens.
He contends, though, that the benefits of a diet rich in plant-based foods are probably the only point almost universally agreed on with nutritionists.
The explanation is pretty simple. We need to ingest antioxidants. They not only stabilize the oft-mentioned free radicals, they also stimulate the liver to produce enzymes that break down the antioxidants themselves. These enzymes go on to break down other chemicals as well, including whatever toxins happen to resemble the antioxidants.
In this way, they can neutralize carcinogens.
The more antioxidants in your diet, the more toxins you disarm.

6. You are what you eat eats too.
As discussed earlier in this article, cows and sheep are meant to eat grass, not seeds. If they eat too many seeds, they get sick and require constant antibiotics.
A grass-based diet for farm animals means the meat, butter, or eggs you eat, along with the milk you drink, contains fewer omega-6 and saturated fats, as well as higher levels of vitamins and antioxidants.
Unfortunately, food manufacturers and food retailers have found another way to lie to us. While the meats they sell may be advertised as "grass fed," it doesn't mean anything. Allcows are grass fed until they get to the feedlot. That's where they're fattened up with corn.
Similarly, "free range" doesn't mean chickens were allowed to roam the countryside pecking at grasses and unsuspecting insects. It likely means they had a square foot or two of dirt to "range."
As far as cows, look for the words "grass finished" or "100% grass-fed." Only then can you be reasonably certain of getting healthy meat. As far as chickens, look for the word "pastured."
(To find a source of grass-fed beef or pastured chicken near you, go to eatwild.com.)

7. Eat like an omnivore.
Pollan recommends you add new species to your diet whenever you can. Diversity in diet means diversity in nutrients and antioxidants.
And keep in mind that while the grocery store offers a dazzling diversity of foods or food-like susbstances, most are made from the same four plants, three of which are seeds (corn, soy, and wheat).

8. Eat well-grown food from healthy soils.
Pollan points out that the designation "organic" isn't the last word in food quality. Yes, organic means the food was well-grown in relatively healthy soil and was nourished by organic matter rather than synthetic fertilizer, but that doesn't mean organic Oreos are healthy. It makes little difference to your body whether the high-fructose corn syrup its been fed is organic or not.

9. Eat wild foods when you can.
Wild plants are richer in antioxidants than their domestic cousins. Since they have to defend themselves against pests and disease without the help of man, they had to get tough — develop a bevy of interesting and potentially healthful (to man) phytochemicals — to survive.
Likewise, they tend to have higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids.
While they might be hard to find, consider purchasing and using purslane and lamb's quarters, two of the most nutritious plants (weeds, really) in the world.
Likewise, consider eating wild game when you can, too. They eat wild plants, so their meat is higher in omega-3 fatty acids, too.

10. Don't look for a magic bullet in the traditional diet.
Every year, it seems a new "magic bullet" food hits the mainstream. A couple of years ago, it was algae. Then it was wheat grass. Now it's the acai berry from the jungles of Brazil.
While they might be nutritious, no single food contains the answers to human health. Foods are more than the sum of their nutrient parts and dietary patterns seem to be more than the sum of the foods that comprise them.

11. Have a glass of wine with dinner.
Despite not having great faith in individual ingredients, Pollan does seem to tout the benefits of the polyphenols in red wine, particularly resveratrol (which you might better recognize as Biotest's REZ-V), which study after study has suggested might be beneficial in cardiovascular health, fighting cancer, blocking negative effects of estrogen, and protecting the prostate.
After reading In Defense of Food, I can't help but think how bodybuilders, in their effort to have perpetual abs, have largely ignored nutrition, or at the very least gotten it horribly wrong.
We've jettisoned real milk for some nutritionally void and paradoxically more "harmful" type of milk; ignored entire categories of foods — carbs — when leaving them out might in the long run deprive us of valuable nutrients; been so afraid of fat or carbs that most of us find 15 or 20 "safe" foods and eat them day-in and day-out, thereby depriving us of countless, possibly essential nutrients; allowed ourselves to be hood-winked by labels that advertise "organic" or "grass-fed" or "low-fat" without realizing the potential loopholes; fallen prey to nearly every single wonder food or ingredient like blue-green algae or wheat grass without thinking that it's a combination of foods that constitutes health; and of choosing animal protein over plant-based products again and again in the puzzling belief that all our body needs to grow muscle is a single macronutrient.

I'm not asking you to necessarily change your dietary habits. I'm just asking you to think a little more about what you eat. It's a subject that deserves a little consideration.
Eat food, not too much, mostly plants? It might not work entirely for strength athletes and bodybuilders, but we'd do well to consider taking a step or two in that direction.

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