Article Review - 3 Strength Exercises Everyone Should Do

You can't really go wrong with the recommendations in this article:

The Three Strength Exercises Everyone Should Do

1) Loaded Carries - simple, and there are so many ways to do them.

2) Trap Bar Deadlift - technically easier than the deadlift, and most trap bars come with higher handles to deal with deadlifting with restricted mobility. I use this as my main heavy bilateral lift with my clients. I only teach straight bar deadlifts to people who need to straight bar deadlift for other reasons. If all you need to do is get stronger, we keep with the trap bar.

3) Squats - some variation of the squat is critical. I generally teach a lunge, though, rather than a traditional squat. If you can trap bar deadlift, and you can lunge, you can pretty much execute most daily life movements while utilizing what you've built in the gym. Still, a lunge is ultimately a single-leg variation of a squat.

Good stuff from Greg Nuckols.

Exercise vs. Old Age

The BBC put up two articles - one very short, one moderate length, about the effects of exercise on what we used to consider normal aging.

The shorter one concerns nerve impulses and muscles as we age:

Muscle loss in old age linked to fewer nerve signals

The basic idea there is that as we age, we weaken. As our muscles weaken, we lose the ability to send nerve signals to those weakened muscles.

But continued physical activity and training blunts that effect - keep the muscles, keep the nerve signals, and stay in a virtuous circle of fitness.

Exercise is required. We often think that it isn't, because unlike drinking water, eating, sleeping, going to work, etc. we don't feel an immediate negative consequence for not doing it. But it's insidious, and over time our capabilities go down. It's never too late to start, but like saving for retirement, the earlier you get going the better and longer you reap the rewards.


The second article concerns the immune system of older endurance athletes:

How exercise in old age prevents the immune system from declining

The basic idea here is that exercise reduces the decline in the immune system that usually follows age.

"A separate paper in Aging Cell found that the cyclists did not lose muscle mass or strength, and did not see an increase in body fat - which are usually associated with ageing."

"Associated" with aging is key, here. We think you get a weaker immune system and lose muscle mass and strength, and gain body fat, as you get older because you get older. It's not necessarily the case, and studies are showing that people who continue to exercise as they get older do not show that same effect. In other words, we think aging makes you weak and frail, but it's more like aging without exercise makes you weak and frail.

So keep training, and suffer less of the "age-related" declines in fitness and immune health.

Key takeaways here?

Fixing Diastasis Recti?

There is an article on NPR about "flattening the mummy tummy."

It's more specifically about using ab contraction and draw-in exercises to fix diastasis recti. That is when your abdominal muscles have physically separated. It's fairly common after pregnancy, but plenty of men get this from a variety of other causes.

Flattening the mummy tummy with 1 exercise 10 minutes a day

I see no reason why 10 minutes of contraction, 2 minutes apiece over 5 exercises, wouldn't have a positive effect. I haven't tried this as I don't have diastasis recti. But I have used draw-in exercises, so-called "vacuum" exercises, and fully-exhaled deep contraction exercises on my abs with some success in the past for general strengthening. It seems worth a try if you have this problem. You can fairly easily glean a workout routine for this and do it daily for a few weeks and see if it improves your abs.

Training Women

Not a lot of material aimed at training women accounts for a major difference between men and women - the menstrual cycle.

Nadia Norman addresses this in a well-written and concise and specific article:

How to Work With a Female Client’s Menstrual Cycle for Better Results

If you are a women or train women, this is worth reading.

So is this book by Rachel Cosgrove - but start with the free article!

Goaltenders & Eye Exercise

It might seem odd to think of exercises your eyes, but direct training of vision skills has become a real staple in professional ice hockey.

The NHL website has an article about Michael Cordon (Pittsburgh Penguins, formerly Montreal Canadians) and Eddie Lack (Carolina Hurricanes) that discusses eye training.

Sadly, it's a bit light on specifics beyond testing and doing ball and juggling drills, but it's interesting in and of itself as a concept.

Goaltenders pass the eye test

I have to wonder about how much this will eventually spill over into youth sports, and then, into the general population. Improving visual acuity would have benefits for driving, flying, avoiding vehicles, etc., never mind stopping pucks for a living.

Movement Food - Gray Cook

Gray Cook put up a long article on his website. It's well worth reading.

Movement Food

In short, if supplements are basically patching holes in our diet, what is exercise? Is it the basis of our movement, or is it a supplement used to patch holes in our daily movement patterns?

Not to spoil the surprise, but it's the latter.

If you're familiar with the work of Gray Cook, Pete Egoscue, mobility and corrective exercises espoused by Bill Hartmann, Mike Roberston, and Eric Cressey, or the Mobility WOD of Kelly Starrett, you'll understand where he is going with this. It's a plea to look holistically, as the body as a whole piece, and address movement and pain as part of a whole.

Take the time to sit and read that, you won't regret it.

Traps article on T-Nation

I read a good article recently over on T-Nation by Tony Gentilcore:

Strong Traps, Healthy Shoulders

Your trapezius muscle, aka the traps, is a large muscle in your upper back/neck area. A lot of people will train it with upright pulling motions and shrugs, but Tony Gentilcore breaks down a lot of ways to strengthen the entire muscle more effectively.

This features some very effective and useful lifts:

- the landmine press (especially for people with shoulder issues)

- the vertical Pallof Press

- overhead shrugs (something I first encountered maybe 20 years back, and it's still underutilized)

- a variant of the Y using suspension trainers

It's a good article and very useful if you have either an over-active trap or under-active and need to get it all firing and working correctly.

Military Fitness

There was an interesting article in the Military Times about fitness rating in the military.

Spooked by obesity trends, the U.S. military is redefining its basic fitness standards


The US armed forces are attempting to put together a standard that:

- effectively measures health and fitness

- doesn't unfairly penalize the muscular

- doesn't unfairly pass the slender but unfit

- deals with body fat vs. actual physical fitness

- doesn't weaken standards of health and fitness


This is tougher than it sounds. Most of the previous methods - such as the taping method - inaccurately rated body fat. Some common standards, like BMI, fail to deal with people on the extreme ends and don't really give useful information about those in the middle, either.

“We are taking a slightly different perspective on this, focusing on the health: What determinants can we identify that would relate to predispositions for injury or illness?” the defense official said.

So, health and predisposition to injury. Two key issues they want to be able to understand on an individual basis.

And BMI?

"'BMI is absolutely useless'"

The problem is determining what health is, what predisposition to injury and illness actual means in terms of measurements and markers, and then measuring that. This is not a small problem.

Especially interesting to me is the idea of a fitness military specialty. Expect that if that happens, you'll see a lot more military-derived fitness programs and former military fitness specialists touting that experience as the basis for their programs. It's just natural if such a specialty exists.

The article is long but well worth the read.

Article Review: Hips Don’t Lie: 4 Drills to Unlock Your Stiff Hips

I love mobility drills and stretching exercises for the value they bring to your health. They unlocked performance, reduce pain, and increase overall freedom of movement. Hip drills, especially, as often back and knee pain are tied to hip issues. Plus, with all of the sitting we do, I'm as likely as not to just give people hip mobility drills to counteract that. The hips are the new core.

Hips Don’t Lie: 4 Drills to Unlock Your Stiff Hips

This article has several excellent drills you can use to improve your hip health. The wall hinge is one I use often to teach deadlifts and hip hinging in general. "Touch the wall with your butt" beats "break at the hips" in terms of coaching cues. And the kneeling hip rotations (which I learned at DeFranco's gym as "fire hydrants") are excellent pieces to the hip-health puzzle.

I can't help but feel that there are a lot of veiled references to Kelly Starrett in this article. It puts down "couch stretching" - something Kelly Starrett has at least popularized - and has a "chair smash" where you smash your chair. Not a coincidence, in my mind anyway, that Kelly Starrett uses the term "smash" a lot when describing some tissue and mobility work. It's something I don't like to see, because I have had clients and friends and family make great strides in hip health with the couch stretch and "smash" techniques using an Alpha Ball.

I like what it adds, though. Circular hip movements, especially slow ones to ensure you get in the time and technique needed, are key to overall hip health. Making sure you add them in can make a huge difference for knee, hip, and back pain. Never mind improving performance.

I really recommend this article overall.

The Onion on the problems of eating healthy

The mock-newspaper The Onion put up an amusing article called "
Superfoods - Myth vs. Fact."

For example:

"M[yth]: Kale is a delicious way to meet your body’s iron needs

F[act]: Kale is a way to meet your body’s iron needs"

or
"M[yth]: Adding acai berries to your morning smoothie provides a huge antioxidant kick

F[act]: Chances are, if “your morning smoothie” is a recognizable part of your routine, everything’s going to turn out just fine in your life anyway"

Like all good, painful jokes on The Onion, it's rooted in reality.

Walnuts - and other healthy foods - can be expensive.

If you aren't used to eating certain foods (kale, for example), they aren't automatically interesting and delicious.

You have to actually consume flax seeds to benefit from them, which means buying and preparing them.

You need to have a habit of healthy eating before you can tweak those healthy habits to be even better.

You also need money and/or access to healthy foods, as discussed in this article on Precision Nutrition.

I've argued before that it's pretty easy to know what's good and what's bad. A shopping cart full of veggies and raw meats will beat one full of packaged snacks made with veggie powder and processed meats. But if you've got time-poverty, live in a food desert, or actually live in poverty, knowing the first beats the second is only part of the answer. Knowing is half the battle, as they used to say on G.I. Joe, but actually solving it isn't always trivial. It's a painful reminder that the playing field isn't level. Healthy eating something we all need, and something we can all strive towards. But it's not as trivial as just throwing in some "superfoods" to your diet.

Article Review: Get started today

I recently read an excellent article on getting started on improving your fitness and health.

Here’s how to meet your summer fitness goals, starting today

What I like about this article:

Actionable advice. These are things you can do now. Not in six months, not eventually - now. What can you do today and then do tomorrow?

Slow and steady. It's not a "how to get abs in the minimum time!" approach nor does it over-promise. It's about getting moving a little more than you move now, getting lifting a little more than you do now, and getting your diet a little better than it is now. And then repeating that - moving slowly to your destination.

Not only that, but it takes pains to tell you not to do too much to start. Holding back the enthusiasm of a convert to a more healthy lifestyle is hard - but it's critical to long-term success.


What I don't like:

Weak diet advice. It's good advice, but it's a bit narrow and overly specific. If you want something a little more broad and useful, check out this post at Precision Nutrition.

Otherwise, it's great!

TIME, Situps, and fitness in healthy people

Two articles caught my eye today.

The first was TIME Magazine, saying that "Fitness experts are now advising against doing too many sit-ups for risk of back injury."

Yes, that's true, if you mean by "now" you mean "for at least the past 10 years." This was old news 5 years ago. It's true, but badly out of date.

Why Fitness Experts Have Turned Against Sit-Ups

And for all of the "fit and obese is okay" sorts of news I've seen pop up, here is a study of 1.3 million Swedish men that seems to indicate that fit + lean beats fit + obese.

Fitness more protective among normal-weight people

Both are true. Both are useful. TIME is just well behind the curve here. And the study in the second implies that you do still need to control your body fat. Not a terrible surprise, but good to know and good to have for reference.

Larger Muscles Are Stronger?

It might seem obvious to people outside training/gym rat/strength trainer circles, but it might be that larger muscles are stronger than smaller muscles:

A Larger Muscle is a Stronger Muscle Due to Increased Strength and Leverage

There is a myth of "non-functional" muscle, based on the idea that you can be less muscular than someone else but stronger. Also, your body can grow muscle in more than one way, so not all muscle growth is equally useful for all purposes.

But the article I linked to above includes the summary of a study that says, basically, yes, larger is stronger. Larger muscles have more leverage, all things being equal.

It's nice to have scientific research backing the concept. Tested proof is a useful thing. But it's full circle - yes, bigger muscles are probably stronger. And if you're strong without bigger muscles, you'll be stronger with them. All things being equal.

Women Weightlifting article

I just wanted to share this article that came up over on CBS's website:

Women weightlifters challenge stereotypes: "It's cool to be strong"


Why I like this article:

- it's about competitive lifting.

- it has a great before and after training picture of one of the women. I often get the "I don't want to bulk up" concern. It's not going to happen, generally, unless you make "bulking up" the focus of your training and diet. But side-by-side pictures of a woman putting on 20 pounds and leaning out and looking nothing but better = a great example to show beginning female trainees.

- It has this great quote: "[ . . .] I've learned that strong feels so much better than skinny [. . . ]" Yes, yes it does. Strong feels better than fat or skinny, and I've been all three at one time or another. Strong is capable, and capability is attractive to yourself and to others.

The article does conflate "weightlifting" with "powerlifting," however. Lifting weights, or weight lifting, are training practices. "Weightlifting" is an Olympic sport, and it's not the same as powerlifting, which is a non-Olympic and very different sport. It's okay, though, I did the same for years myself.

Exercises & Eating Right Inexpensively (article review)

Over on Lifehacker, there is a helpful article about exercises and eating right inexpensively:

Fitness Isn't Just for the Wealthy: How to Stay Healthy on a Budget

While I'm not generally into the "life hacking" approach, I do like the thoroughness with which they tackle the topic.

It has some good ideas on:

- exercising inexpensively (and yes, bodyweight routines make the list)

- saving money on better quality food (plus ones you don't hear often, like joining a CSA as a net savings overall)

- the importance of making a small investment now to avoid long-term health costs

- overall approaches to living more healthy while spending less than you might think you'd need to.

The article is very good. It's got links to other articles on the specific sub-topics, but even leaving them aside there is a lot of good information here.

Go Outside and Train

Ross Enamait has a really nice article up on his site about training in a new environment:

Improve Productivity By Changing Scenery

It's a good article. It brings me back to two of my "early days" training experiences.

First one - I used to lift in a friend's weight room in his yard. He'd converted a patio and shed into an enclosed dojo/garage gym. I used to train there in the winter, and I didn't bother to put on the heat. Partly this was not wanting to deal with lighting and running a kerosene heater. But also because it drove me to work hard and work fast. I'd go in, lift cold barbells and freezing dumbbells while sitting on or laying down on cold benches. I'd get my work done, then walk home or bike home in the cold.

Second one - I lived in Japan for a few years. I did a lot of outdoor training. I biked to parks and did pullups and muscle-ups on playground bars. I did pushups in the dirt outside. I dragged a home-made sled loaded with random heavy things (and neighborhood kids who wanted a ride) while I ran with the sled behind me. I train in and out of bad weather, bike in the snow, and otherwise go new places and train in new ways. It was limited by what I could access in the way of gear, but it didn't matter. It was all good, positive, effective training.

So read Ross's article, and go try training in a totally new place. Ignore any discomfort and make some training happen. It can make you better.

Sugar research study article

I read this over on Tech Times:


http://www.techtimes.com/articles/100370/20151027/cutting-sugar-without-reducing-calories-drastically-improves-health-of-overweight-children.htm

It's a study led by Dr. Robert Lustig. He's pushed lots of research into, and attention onto, the effects of sugar on the human body.

In my experience, getting clients to cut sugar - especially the mindless, relentless consumption of sugar on a daily basis - unlocks a lot of health, body composition, and performance improvements.

It doesn't even take getting rid of it - only getting the excess down, and being mindful of the eating triggers associated with sugary food.

It's worth considering. Even if you're a "calorie is just a calorie" or "sugar isn't the problem" kind of skeptic, you have to wonder, why do I need added sugar in so many foods? Breads, pasta sauces, peanut butter, oatmeal, etc. etc. - if that added sugar isn't definitely, provably doing something positive for you, avoid it. There is too much evidence mounting that it might be doing something negative to you. Even just from a "calorie is just a calorie" standpoint, extra sugar is extra calories . . .

5-2-1-0

I like this approach for kid's health and fitness:

5-2-1-0: A Simple Formula for Fitness

This plan is:

5 fruits and vegetables a day
2 hours max screen time
1 hour physical activity
0 sugary drinks

It's a good concept. I can nitpick it - I'd allow more screen time if you're studying (I use lots of computer-based study materials myself) and especially if you're standing or stretching while you do it. I'd want 5 servings of vegetables a day - fruit is great, but too much of it can be an issue . . . while too many vegetables is never an issue.

But overall, this is excellent stuff. It's simple, it's easy to remember, it's based on solid numbers (you hit 5 servings or you didn't, you had 0 sugary drinks or you didn't - no gray areas), and it's specific. Importantly, it is focused on behavior not results. You can always control your behavior, and that's the key.

Nice concept. You don't have to make complex plans to improve your health. Simple, quantifiable, based on actions not consequences of them.

Basics: Carb Cycling diets

As it says on my favorite fortune cookie message ever:
"A diet is a selection of food that makes someone rich."
So let's look at a specific kind of diet.

Carb Cycling is an eating approach where you mix days with high carbohydrate intake with days where your carbohydrate intake is low. The idea is to have higher carb foods, especially starchy carbs (bread, sugar, pasta, etc.), on workout days when you body can make the most effective use of them.

One basic idea to diet is that after you work out or train hard, your body has used some or most of the available fuel held in your muscles. Your muscles hold fuel in the form of glycogen, which is a form of carbohydrate. While your body can make proteins, fats, or carbohydrates into glycogen, which you choose to intake can have a different effect on your body.

After you train hard, your muscles also need to be repaired and your body starts to need fuel to increase their size. Protein is required for this, but also it helps if your body sugar levels (insulin levels) are higher.

At the same time, excess calories from carbohydrates will be stored as body fat, not glycogen.

Carb cycling is an approach that attempts to manipulate your carb intake to most effectively recharge your glycogen and increase muscle growth on days when you train, while minimizing the effect of carbohydrates on off days.

That is a gross simplification of the entire process, but it's basically how it works - high carb on workout days so you restore glycogen and encourage muscle building, low carb on off days so you don't gain as much body fat.

Usually you see this diet approach in people attempting to bulk up, not lean out - it's an attempt to gain muscle optimally without gaining too much body fat. However, like all diet approaches, it's possible to tweak it to fat loss, too.

There are several approaches to this.

My personal favorite approach is the dead simple one in this article:


Fat-Burning Machine: Easy Carb Cycling For A Better Body (Scrawny to Brawny, like the book)

This article has the benefit of simplicity. Avoid starchy carbs and fruits and days when you don't lift. Have them on days when you do. Don't worry about specific macronutrient ratios. It favors a simple high carb/low carb split.

This article over on T-Nation is more precise:

Research-Approved Carb Cycling

It also includes links to most of the other good T-Nation articles about carb cycling.

Many of the plans include high, medium, and low carb days. The manipulation is more precise and nuanced.

Any way you do it, however, it boils down to:

Starchy carbs on workout days? Okay.
Starchy carbs on non-workout days? Not okay.


What are the downsides to carb cycling?

The usual social downsides are obvious - it can be hard to get people to avoid inadvertently sabotaging your diet. It's even more so when that diet varies day to day - pasta is okay on Mondays, but not Tuesday? Okay, fine - then you have to miss Monday's workout and swap it with Tuesday and explain to your family why you have to swap meals. That sounds like a joke, but it's a real problem - if many of your meals are shared, your family essentially has to make allowances for your diet.

This can also be a problem in terms of what foods to keep around - if you have leftover bread from yesterday, you can't eat it today unless it's a workout day.

Otherwise, it's a relatively simple approach that neither eliminates an entire category of food nor over-emphasizes it.

What counts as a workout day?

The other snag is that you have to earn your carbs. A few minutes on the exercise bike or a few sets of curls and tris after you skip squats and heavy sled drags isn't going to cut it. You have to work out hard for the carbs to be maximally useful and the body fat to be kept to a minimum. In general, if you aren't sure the workout justifies a high-carb day, or if you're be embarrassed to say it did, keep it a lower-carb day.

Personal experience

I can vouch for this working pretty well, but also for the complications of daily diet changes. When I had full control over all of my meals (I fed me or no one else would), it was easy. When my meals were partly under other people's control (come home to a cooked meal, for example) or I had a rotating workout schedule, it did not work very well. Too many days became inconsistent (high carb on non-workout days, or effectively low-carb all the time.) If you can nail down your schedule and not be tempted by leftover homemade pizza in the fridge or that tin of oatmeal you were allowed yesterday but not today, this can work very well.

Article Review: Bulk Up, Cut Up: Quads and Tri's

When I was rebabbing a knee injury, and while havign a client do more or less the same, I found this article extremely helpful:


Bulk Up, Cut Up: Quads and Tri's

It's actually aimed at bodybuilding, not injury rehabilitation or post-surgery strengthening.

But the cases in point had something that bodybuilders are concerned with - muscle isolation and symmetry. In order to deal with lopsided muscle development post-injury, it's handy to be able to isolate down to a specific lagging muscle on one or both legs.

The exercises in the article are great for that. One VMO is lagging the other? Covered with single-leg exercises for both. Your rectus femoris was injured and you need to bring it back up to speed without letting your body find a way to compensate via other muscles? Covered.

The aim is aesthetics, but the result can be rehabilitation. And as usual with a Christian Thibaudeau article, it is well illustrated, well written, and well explained. Good stuff if you need to get someone's quads back on line one muscle at a time, or even one leg at a time.