L.I.F.T.

Go out there, break yourself down, and then recover.

Then break it down again.

Then recover.

Do it again.

Recover.

Yes, this is a poem.

Make it your mantra.

Break yourself down.  Keep breaking yourself down.  Keep going.  Keep tearing away what you think of yourself.  Keep stripping off those layers of expectation, belief, disbelief, fear.

Change.  Push.  That’s all you have to do.  That’s all you can do.  You can do that or stay in your stasis.  Stay stuck where you are now…where you’ve been for the past umpteen years.

Choose one or the other.  It doesn’t matter how big or small the change is.  It doesn’t matter how much or how little you break it down.  Just break it down.

You never go for a walk?  Go for a walk right now.  It doesn’t matter where, or for how long.  Go.  Fight the tendency to do the same damn thing you always do.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA1rWLsl-Dg&hl=en&fs=1&]

I posted a couple of days ago about Mike Boyle’s claim that people shouldn’t do bilateral barbell (especially, back) squats anymore.

His reasoning is that the back is a bad “transducer” of force from the legs to the upper body.

While I disagree with this use of the word “tranducer,” we won’t go into that here.

Instead, let’s talk about what Coach Boyle wrote on his blog today.  At the bottom, in the post script, it reads:

PS- We haven’t stopped doing bilateral exercises or, lifting heavy weights. We still Trap Bar Deadlift and Olympic lift. I also think that bilateral exercise is crucial for beginners. However, if you have experienced athletes and you want to keep them healthy and get them strong consider the Rear Foot Elevated Split Squat.

Wait Coach Boyle…your athletes still do the Olympic Lifts and deadlifts?!  But I thought the back was a bad “transducer” of force from lower to upper body – the limiting factor in people’s ability to move force with their legs!

What lift requires more “transduction” of power than the Olympic lifts?!  What lift requires more transduction of force than the deadlift?

So you don’t do backsquats anymore, because the back is the limiting factor in gaining leg strength?  So your athletes with weak backs go from their single-leg squats to deadlifts and O-lifts?

I’m confused.

For one thing, it’s potentially dangerous to have legs that are inordinately stronger than your back.  The back is the place where force is transferred from legs to upper body.

As anyone knows, who ever watched “The Weakest Link” – the weakest link goes first!

In this case, the weakest link is Coach Boyle.

I have nothing against you Coach, but it’s this type of thoughtless sensationalist self-aggrandizing bullshit that’s destr0ying the physical training industry in this country and getting people hurt!

So STOP IT.

1. Stop the reductionism.
The body is not a bunch of independently moving limbs connected by “transducers.”  The body is a single unit.  Any effect to one part of it, effects all of the rest of it.

2. Stop the stupid/sensationalist claims for specific exercises.
There’s no “magic exercise” for any bodypart or for the body as a whole.  The body cannot be pigeonholed, as much as you might like to do that.  You have to work the whole thing, you have to do it all, you have to figure it out.  You have to break it down and let it rebuild itself.  Strictly “anaerobic” training (which is a misnomer anyway) will make you a fumbling oaf.  Strictly “aerobic” training will make you a sickly Auschwitz-victim-looking ghost of a human being.

Stop pushing this bullshit information.  Learn the basics.  Practice the basics.  Preach the basics.

In case you don’t know what I mean, I’ll give you a brief outline of what the basics are here:

Basic Human Anatomy/Physiology – learn it.

Basic Biomechanics – force-transfers

Basic Exercise Physiology – things like “progressive resistance,” allo-/homeo-stasis, overload, adaptation, etc.

Basic Dietary Facts – so simple that a child knows them naturally…

Basic Games, Basic Play – if you shut your chattering brain down for a few minutes, you’ll be able to remember these yourself…you don’t have to pay anyone or read anything.

Basic Psychology – Know Thyself.

Six things.  Figure them out.  Take a class.  You can download/view/listen to most of that information for free on the internet (check out Wikipedia, and the iTunes University site).

I think that’s it.  Is there anything else?  Anyone out there in Readerland?

While guys like Pavel will claim that “strength is a skill” – it’s true only to a point, and I think that the point is largely misunderstood or misinterpreted nowadays.

Doing strength-building movements – especially and particularly the classic lifts: deadlift, squat, overhead press, clean, chins (weighted), dips (weighted), bench, maybe row – require some “skill,” but I wouldn’t classify them as “motor skills” in the typical sense.

Those are “strength skills.”  They are practiced in a certain way (with ever increasing load/intensity) in order to disrupt homeostasis and create adaptations in the body.

That is, simply repeating the movements involved in strength exercises will not get you stronger.  Practice the movement all you want, but if you don’t add weight (progressively over time), you won’t get any stronger.  You might, however, get more skilled.

The first example that comes to mind that allows for a nice comparison of these two types of “skill” development is the sport of Olympic weightlifting.

In the Soviet Union, and I think in many Eastern Bloc countries with state-funded Olympic training programs, children would be chosen to begin training for their sport at a very young age…perhaps around 5 years old.

For the first three to five years of the child’s training career, they would never touch a real barbell, let alone a weighted barbell.  Instead, they’d practice with a towel, or a wooden dowel.

They’d practice the motor skill of the Olympic lifts – which is a very very specific motor skill (hence those lifts being a sport unto themselves).

Around the age of 10, the child might be allowed to begin practicing with a lightweight barbell, and from there, ever so gradually, progressively add weight – always making sure that they maintained the highest level of motor skill in the execution of the movement.

While a lot of this has to do with children simply being ill-suited for progressive weight training, because they’re still growing at a rapid rate, much of it also has to do with getting a person at a young enough age that they can accumulate 10,000 hours of practice at the skill before they achieve full developmental maturity.

This hearkens back to my old blog posts on skill and skill development.  Skill is problem solving.  It’s the ability to creatively solve problems given the resources available.  “Talent” is what we call “inborn skill.”  And, it seems, that it doesn’t really exist.

While some people may be more uniquely suited for expertise at certain skills (say, because of limb/torso ratios, etc.), the expression of that “talent” is all that really matters.

So, it’s impossible for us to know how real, frequent, or infrequent “inborn” talent is or is not – that is, until every child is given equal access to every musical instrument, athletic sport, computer program, or whatever other skill you want to measure, from the age of 2 on.  Not only that, but they need also be given the freedom, time, money, and emotional support to continue.  Got that?  Great, now tell me how “talented” someone is.

But this post isn’t about talent.  It’s about STRENGTH and SKILL.

The truth is, we all need both.

It’s just that I see so little focus on the real training of EITHER these days.

Most folks in the gym go in and pump some iron to look good.  They don’t try to lift heavy poundages.  They don’t do the classic lifts at all.

They also do bizarre skill-based workouts…things you might do for fun if you were a little kid, but that are treated with unsettling seriousness in an “adult” gym.  Things like balancing on a stability ball on your knees while you move the medicine balls you’re holding in each hand in strange patterns, or while catching and throwing a medicine ball.  Not a lot of laughter…a lot of grimacing.

But what’s the point of that?  I mean what’s the point both of the seriousness with which it’s undertaken, and of the “exercise” itself.  It doesn’t build strength.  There’s no progressing it.  There’s no overload to it.  The body is in too unstable a position to overload.  And it only builds the strangest type of “skill” possible…one divorced from anything you might encounter in life at all.

If you’re going to be performing that trick on a stage, or a streetcorner, for your paycheck, it’s important to practice that.

But if not – what the hell are you doing?

The saddest thing of all is that the trainers aren’t even laughing.  I mean, not the ones who are making the people do it.

Take a look at your programming, ye trainers and trainees.  Return to the basics.

Train STRENGTH with heavy stuff, progressively made heavier, and predominantly with “traditional” (bilateral, barbell) movements.

Train SKILL outside, or wherever you exercise that skill, and try to make it as absolutely perfect as possible…

Ethical considerations are very important in the design, practice, and reporting of scientific research.

However, I think there is something else behind the need for a document like the APA’s extensive manual.  A quote from the Tao Teh Ching will help to illustrate this:

Chapter 18
When the great Dao is lost to sight,
codes of goodness and morality appear.
When cleverness and shrewdness are produced,
massive hypocrisy appears.
When family relationships lose natural harmony,
“filial piety” and “devoted parenthood” arise.
When there is strife and anarchy within the state,
“loyal patriots” abound.
(trans. Chilcott, 2009).

I don’t think that a manual like the APA’s points, necessarily, to rampant unethical behavior.  As one of my graduate professors pointed out, ethical “breaches” are reportedly around 1-2%.  But the manual does point to something, which is the issue related to the field of kinesiology, and ethics in science that I’d like to address here.

It is the habit we have gotten into as scientists of investigating symptoms, instead of causes.

The first example that comes to mind is that of modern gait research.  Modern gait research studies the human foot in a shoe.  However, “The human foot was anatomically modern, and therefore fully functional for bipedal walking and endurance running, more than 100,000 years ago” (D’Aout, et al., 2009, pg. 103).  The use of footwear in general has only been seen in the fossil record as early as 30,000 years ago (Trinkaus, 2005, pg. 1516).  Habitual use of the type of rigid footwear in vogue in our current culture extends back to the 17th century – and at that time was seen mostly in wealthy, or aristocratic populations.  Widespread use of rigid footwear by a majority of Western Europeans probably began only around the time of industrialization – about 150 years ago.

As reported in D’Aout, et al. (2009) – “Habitually shod Indians wear less often, and less constricting shoes than Western people.  Yet, we found significant differences with their habitually barefoot peers, both in foot shape and in pressure distribution” (D’Aout, et al., pg. 104).  This shouldn’t come as a surprise.  Modifications of tissue morphology following the use of a plaster cast are well known to anyone who has ever had to wear one.  Modern footwear, or even sandals (as shown by D’Aout), alters truly normal (as opposed to an “observed” or “cultural normal”) foot kinematics in much the same way as a plaster cast.

In Western European culture (or those of Western European descent), which have generated the majority of gait research in the past 100 years, the large majority of research has been on individuals who habitually wear shoes.

Can we safely say, then, after 100 years of research, that we truly have a good understanding of normal human gait (as in “physiologically normal” – concerning the human animal as a species that has existed without footwear for roughly 100,000 years)?

Further, if, as Booth and Laye point out, it is true “that removal of 8500 steps (dropping from ~10,000 to ~1500) in the absence of a structured exercise program for two weeks results in abnormal physiological changes in healthy young men” (Booth and Laye, 2009, pg. 2), and we have not noted the daily activity levels of participants in gait research studies, can we claim to have studied “physiologically normal” human gait at all (with or without shoes)?!

First, we are studying an abnormal population in terms of morphology and kinematics, due to the use of footwear (both the restrictive effect of footwear on truly normal movement of the foot, and the accompanying loss of tissue tonus and function accompanying that loss of normal movement).  Then, we are studying a potentially (in terms of gross physiology) abnormal population (in terms of evolutionary history of the animal) due to lack of sufficient movement in general, and the accompanying loss of proprioception and tissue strength/tonus.

When we then begin to recommend “orthotic inserts” as solutions to musculoskeletal or movement impairments, based on those studies of “normal” human gait, are we treating the problem(s) itself (or themselves – namely, lack of physiologically-normal movement, both in quality and quantity), or are we treating the symptom of the problem (i.e., dysfunction caused by lack of physiologically-normal, not culturally-normal, movement)?

What are the ethical implications of pursuing science in this manner?  And shouldn’t the discussion and resolution of this ethical issue precede the practice of designing, performing, and reporting scientific research?

Booth, F.W., Laye, M.J.  (2009).  Lack of adequate appreciation of physical exercise’s complexitiescan pre-empt appropriate design and interpretation in scientific discovery.  Journal of Physiology, Ahead of Print.

Chilcott, T.  (2009).  Daode Jing.  http://www.tclt.org.uk/translations.html

D’Aout, K., Pataky, T.C., De Ciercq, D., & Aerts, P.  (2009).  Plantar pressures in habitually barefoot walkers.  Footwear Science, 1(1), pp. 103-105.

Trinkaus, E.  (2005).  Anatomical evidence for the antiquity of human footwear use.  Journal of Archaeological Science, 32, pp. 1515-1526.

In all things, go to the source.

It’s extremely popular these days for people to treat symptoms of disease, or to address perceived causes of illness, without digging deeper to find out what the real source of the problem is.

Coach Mike Boyle recently posted about ditching back squats in athletic training programs in favor of single-leg squats (thanks, Aaron, for linking to this).  His reasoning?  The low back is the limiting factor for building strength in the legs of athletes.

While that sounds really good, it ignores an important point.  THE LOW BACK IS THE PLACE WHERE LEG POWER TRANSFERS TO UPPER BODY POWER-EXPRESSION AND MOVEMENT.

Coach Boyle is saying that his athletes don’t back squat because it’s dangerous for their low backs, or that their low-backs can’t tolerate it.

Well, yes, if they’re substituting hip mobility for low-back mobility.  Or if their thoracic spines are so inflexible that they can’t rack a bar on their traps properly.  Or if their hamstrings are so tight that their hips dive under when they sit down.

Thing is, the problem could be any OR ALL of those.  Or it could be calf/ankle ROM limitations.  Or it could be that they just have poor motor-patterning.  Etc. etc. etc.

Bypassing the back squat because an athlete has functional limitations is like staying away from vegetables because they’re hard to chew.

You aren’t solving the problem.  If anything, you’re going to make it worse!

You have to address the problems before you start loading the body.  You can’t slap load on a dysfunctional frame and expect it to iron itself out.

If anyone wants to know how to fix their dysfunctions, go get Pete Egoscue’s book “Pain Free” and read it and apply it to yourself.  Or, go to an Egoscue clinic and get a e-cise menu from one of their practitioners.  DO IT.  It works.

I’m not saying single-leg exercises are bad.  I think they’re great!  Taking an athlete who is fully capable of deep (full) and heavy back, front, or overhead squats, and putting them through a rotation of single-leg squats, is a wonderful idea!

Just don’t try to shortcut dysfunction by creating new exercises and making dogmatic statements about “always” and “never.”

People want to slash their workout times, by doing Tabata protocols, or taking an exercise pill.

“Short but tough workouts,” as outlined in the article linked above, may be good for getting some high-intensity work in – but they’re only as good as the quality of the effort you can put behind them.

Training regimens such as Crossfit, and other high-intensity protocols (like Tabata intervals), usually show the best results in people who are already very well-conditioned.

People who are poorly conditioned can’t maintain that workload.  What ends up happening is burnout, or worse – injury, caused by form deterioration during the session(s).

Quality and Quantity
Quality of movement is just as important as quantity – or intensity.  If you practice doing a particular exercise with bad form, guess what – you’ll get better at doing it improperly!

Form in weightlifting exercise is designed to spare your joints – to put the load on your bones and muscles, and take the load off of the hollow spaces in between.  Doing something with improper form will lead to injury.  If not now, then down the road – either due to repetitive (negative) strain, or due to bad movement-quality in the moment (for instance, not knowing how to decelerate with your knee in a good position = blown ACL).

You have to move, regularly, often, in many ways, with different (and preferably, incrementally increasing) intensities, in order to see long-lasting, healthy change.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

I stole this post heading directly from Bernie DeKoven, because I think it’s right on!

So much emphasis is given to reps, sets, weight, calories, and other “measurements of performance,” that we forget the true reason for playing – TO HAVE FUN!

Don’t forget the real reason behind your actions!

Just started the book “Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes a couple of days ago.  I’m only on page 100, but it’s already incredibly eye-opening.

I’m not going to go into incredible detail (till I’ve finished reading it).  But suffice it to say that there has been a campaign in this country against the reality of diet for at least 50 years.

I’ll delve into this topic more shortly, too, but there’s been a similar campaign around exercise…

more later

Just finished reading “The Life We Are Given” by George Leonard and Michael Murphy.

I found this book after reading Murphy’s “The Future of the Body,” which is an extensive documentation of the “meta-normal” capacities recognized as having occurred in human beings (such as esp, telekinesis, faith healing, the placebo effect, etc.) which appear to be more normal, and therefore, attainable by everyone, than we give them credit for.

The subtitle of “The Life We Are Given” is “A Long-Term Program for Realizing the Potential of Body, Mind, Heart, and Soul.”  I had hoped to find just that.  Instead, I was a little disappointed.

After a very good section on the use of positive visualization and daily affirmations (which I’m using now), the book goes into some redundant sections (redundant to what is covered in the introduction or earlier chapters) on physical activity (including a prescribed movement set), diet, community, etc.

In that, it was very similar to a book I read some years ago – “The Scholar Warrior,” by Deng Ming-Dao.  I actually liked Deng’s book better, with it’s Taoist bent.

Don’t write this book off, though!  If you’ve never been down this path, of self-exploration, development, and transformative practice, it could be just what you need!

The book follows the method used by Leonard and Murphy in their 92 and 93 classes held at the Esalen institute called “Integral Transformative Practice” (ITP).

I think what they did was very good.  And they came up with some great (and in some cases astounding) results occurring in the participants.  But I find the method outlined in the book too restrictive.

Instead, I think one should create their own “transformative practice” – relevant to who they are, their preferences, their individual needs/desires/circumstances.

Following Leonard and Murphy, such a practice should consist of the following:

1. An assessment of your current state – where are you starting from?  What is happening, what has happened in your life?

2. The creation of a relaxation practice in your life.

3. The combination of that relaxation practice (once established), with visualization and affirmation.  The visualizations/affirmations should be goal-states.  Leonard and Murphy say that affirmations should be stated in the present tense – as in “I am at a weight of 165″ (which would actually be your target weight).  I’ve seen different authors recommend different things with regard to this.  Some say you should say “I WANT to weigh 165″ – that fuels the desire.  I think it’s probably personality-dependent.  Do what works best for you.

4. The development of a health and long-term exercise/physical activity practice.  It could be anything, but it should be regular, and progressive – that is, it should adapt as you do, becoming more challenging as you become more able.

5. Finding, or creating, a community of supportive, like-minded individuals, with whom you regularly meet and discuss your progress, trade ideas, learn with/from, etc.

6. Committing to long-term practice of the above steps.

Each of us is on their own path, and there are a million and one ways to do all of the things above.  I think starting is huge in itself.

Consider this book, and Scholar Warrior, if you’re interested in pursuing a “transformative practice” of your own.

Yes…you heard it.  I complain!

I guess I’ve been complaining too much recently.  A friend recently pointed out that my blog posts were starting to sound curmudgeonly.

Sorry for that readers!  I promise to try to make it more up-beat and positive in the future.