Sleep and Weight Gain

There is an interesting blog post at the New York Times about lack of sleep and weight gain.

Lost Sleep Can Lead to Weight Gain

This isn't terribly surprising, as you naturally eat less when you spend more time sleeping, and your body recovers better from stress when you get sufficient sleep. Insufficient sleep = insufficient recovery from stress = more release of cortisol (a stress hormone) into your body. This causes more retention of body fat.

The short take away is that sleep is important and you need to get enough of it. This article and the study it looks at just points more towards the value of sleep.

Mindful Training

How closely are you paying attention to your lifting?

A common target for humor in the gym are the "cardio bunnies" - people doing cardio while watching TV, reading a book, flipping through a magazine, or listening to music. It seems like mindless cardio - not too hard, not too easy, and the movement of their own body is the last thing on the person's mind.


Try mindful training. If possible, shut down all distractions. Music, TVs, phones, and distractions. Put everything away except the weights you need to train with. If not possible (such as in a public gym), put on some background music that drowns out outside noises but doesn't require any attention. Or just focus yourself.

Pay attention to every rep, every step of your run, every move of your arms, legs, and body. Put your mind into each lift and each movement, and try to feel what is working. Feel the muscles, feel the impact, and feel the weight.

It sounds kind of new age-y and froo-froo, but it's not. Focus, and try to connect your mind to what you are doing.

You might find you get more out of the workout, and you can increase your intensity* without increasing your weight, reps, sets, or distance. Try to get the most value out of what you are doing by paying close attention to it. There are 168 hours in a week, and you are spending at most 4-5 hours a week training - so make sure that's all you do in those hours, at least for a few workouts.

Being wholly in the exercise can give you better results.



* Here I mean percentage of maximum possible effort, not percentage of 1-rep maximum.

Quick Tip: Demonstrating Strength vs. Strength Training

Quick Tip:

When you are lifting your friend's fridge, shoveling snow, picking up a heavy water cooler bottle, etc. - you don't care how much training effect you are getting. When you pull a one-rep max at a powerlifting meet or weightlifting meet, you aren't worried about how much stronger this one lift will get you. The goal is to move the object, make the lift, and do so safely and effectively. This is demonstrating strength.

In the gym, the goal isn't to lift the weight per se. The goal is to get stronger, so that when you demonstrate your strength it's there for you. It doesn't matter how heavy or light you go in the gym if you can't go heavy when you need to outside the gym. This is strength training.

Outside of the gym - maximize what you can do safely and effectively. Inside the gym - get the most out of your training, don't try to put the most in.

Review: Egoscue: Pain Free Workout Series (DVDs)

Egoscue: Pain Free Workout Series Vol. 1 and 2

2 DVD Set (Beginner, Advanced)

This two-DVD set is billed as a workout you can do to end chronic pain and/or get fit. The first DVD is the beginner's workout, the second is the advanced workout.

Each DVD stars with an assessment/functional test. Basically, a test of where you distribute your weight between your (bare) feet while standing, and a flexibility test - can you fold over at the waist and touch your palms to the floor with straight legs. The recommendation is to do this before and after the workout. It does give you a good idea of how the workouts affect your posture - weight distribution can significantly even out and your flexibility will be better post-workout. Continued checking will tell you if you improve overall - will your weight distribution start to be better at the beginning than where it was when you started? This is how you check.

The workouts are basically a mix of mobility drills, a few bodyweight exercises (crunch variations, pushups) and static poses (both flexibility - like downward dog - and strength, like a free standing squat hold). In a lot of ways it resembles yoga more than a bodyweight strength training routine. If you are familiar with the Pain Free book series, much of these exercises will look familiar.

The DVDs emphasize that health is cumulative, so you're just supposed to let the cumulative work of doing the exercises total up and improve your mobility and health. The workouts follow a method that seems aimed at first dis-associating your joints from each other and then re-integrating them. So first you get your shoulders and hips to work properly separately, then you put them back together.

The basic workout takes about 45 minutes, including explanations. There is an option to watch it workout-only, but instead of explanations and timing the movements for you, it's just music. So it saves no time, and loses valuable explanation. A track with quick cues, rep counts, and timing - just like in the advanced workout - would have been very useful.

The advanced workout takes about 45 minutes, as well, although there are significantly more exercises that you go through. This is good and bad - it's not any longer, but sometimes it's not clear what exactly you are doing and why. Since new exercises are swapped in for old ones, you lose out on some understanding of how to properly execute them. What isn't clear is why some exercises from the basic workout aren't in the advanced workout. Do you no longer need "frog" or the ankle circles any longer? If not, why not - what exercise has taken its place?

Like most exercise DVDs and books, there isn't much theory there to let you know "if X hurts, do Y" or "A has been replaced by B, that's why you don't need to do A any more." This may not be the aim, but again, it limits its utility to either "this works for me" or "this doesn't work for me" with no in between. It is also not clear if certain exercises should be dropped - if I do X and my lower back hurts, am I incorrectly executing it or should I skip it until I've dealt with that pain through other methods?

Content: 4 out of 5. The exercises are good and it feels complete. However, direct guidelines on "how often?" and when to progress to the next level would greatly improve its utility.
Presentation: 4 out of 5. If any DVD ever needed multiple angles, it's this one, and it doesn't have it. A separate exercise-only track would have helped, too.

Overall: As a workout, this isn't a bad start. It's especially useful for folks with injuries or chronic pain or chronic weakness, since it starts out slowly and emphasizes movement quality over movement volume or speed. However, it is hampered by its lack of guidance on progression and frequency. As a mobility drill/off-day workout/flexibility routine, it is also good. Whether it will cure chronic pain or not is unclear. For its price, and with those caveats in mind, it's a good DVD set.

Steroids vs. Natural post

So how much difference does adding 600 mg of testosterone, under a doctor's supervision, make to a trainee?

Over at A Workout Routine, there is a look at a study that compared no exercise vs. exercise, steroids + no exercise and steroids + exercise.

Steroids vs Natural: The Muscle Building Effects Of Steroid Use

Long story short: even with no exercise, additional testosterone can add muscle. With it, it no comparison with natural trainees.

This harkens back to the advice I started out with, by Stuart McRobert, who repeatedly made the point that non-steroid using trainees were ill-served by the advice of steroid-using routines. This article and the review it cites make a similar case. It's long but interesting.

Very Short Version: If you aren't taking steroids, get your training advice from someone who isn't, or trains people successfully who don't.

Maximize Your Minimums

Over on the EXRX forums, I wrote this:

"I'm more and more convinced a good long-term goal - for me and generally for my clients - is to maximize your minimums rather than maximize your maximums. What I mean is, instead of trying to raise their one-rep max, my goal is to raise their baseline walking around strength. Raising the weights they can get all the day, day in, day out, without any problems."

This is my basic training philosophy for most clients, and for myself.

I have a lot of influences here - Paul Carter's emphasis on everyday strength, talks by Dan John and Charles Staley about training, and my own experiences as a trainee and a trainer. What matters to most people, most of the time, are:

- what they can always do rather than what they can do peaking for a competition.

- what they can do on a bad day, with minimum warmup, without injury or painful strain.

Getting someone's 1-rep max up is great. Getting someone's ability to carry boxes up a few flights of stairs without exhaustion and risk of injury is also great. The latter will be more useful to them, generally, unless they're planning to compete at a one-rep max sport (Powerlifting or Weightlifting).

My goal generally is to get people to be able to lift on a bad day what they used to be able to lift only a good day. Day in, day out - enough to get you stronger, no so much you can't recover from the workout, and working towards a better baseline. Maximizing your minimums.

Eating Healthy on the Road

Chris Salvato over at Eat, Move, Improve posted an excellent article on eating healthy while traveling.

Eating Healthy While Traveling


Why do I need to read this? It's full of useful information from an experienced traveler about finding food on the road. When your choices seem to be only fast food or grab-n-go, they aren't, and the article explains where to look. And how to find those places.

But what if I don't eat Paleo? The article assumes a base of paleo-style eating. In this case, it doesn't really matter. As long as your diet includes lean protein, vegetables, and fruit, these tips for finding a healthy meal on the go will be useful. If you really need to add foods not mentioned in your diet, you can - but now you've got a solid base to work from.

Generally, with traveling and eating, the more preparation the better. You can make food and bring it with you, you can pre-plan out places to eat at the stops you know you'll make, and you can tell your friends and family what kind of food you need to eat. But when you're stuck or the situation suddenly leaves you needing to make last-minute choices, these are a great way to deal with the problem!