Are you training or just working out?

Anyone that has spent enough time around me knows that I am extremely analytical. It occurs naturally since both of my brothers are engineers.

This mind set is great for some things (We usually think things through before we act) and not so good for other things. (make a decision already will you) Being so analytical is what makes me different than most trainers I know. It is also the reason I train my clients instead of just exercising them. When my clients work on something there is a reason it is done the way it is.

I was recently reading an article that made a lot of sense to me. Rippetoe explains the difference between training and exercising.

When the public pictures a Personal Trainer they tend to picture someone who pushes them harder than they can push themselves. (This can be a good or bad thing) They might think of Boot Camps, Crossfit, etc. where the trainer is there to make sure you can do a few more reps. What do most people talk like when describing their workouts? (Time for my workout, exercise, run, walk, bike ride, etc)

They are talking about exercising.

I want more people to focus on training instead. What is the difference IMO?

Just like Rippetoe, I think most people workout without having the correct kind of goals. When exercising the goal might be to burn so many calories, walk or run so many miles, lift a certain amount of weight, etc. The results of an exercise session tend to be easy to measure. After the workout you feel great about what you accomplished that day.

When training the goals can be things like: increase hip mobility, work on the foundation of strength required to squat correctly, spend 20 minutes with your heart rate near threshold level, etc. The goal of training is to improve performance. The results of a training session tend to be more difficult to measure. It might take weeks, months or even years to see the results.

Quoting Rippetoe: ("Since Training is a process designed to produce an adaptation, this process necessarily entails more than a short period of time, because the adaptations necessary for high-level performance take time to accomplish."

"It must be said that not everybody is interested in Training. For many, Exercise is good enough. They just want to burn some calories, get a little conditioning work, and have better abs. This is fine, for those people. But the second you want more – when you decide that there will now be a goal to accomplish with all this gym time – you've graduated to Training.")

Rippetoe is not a big fan of unilateral exercises. (He is primarily a power lifting coach.) I realize that his ideas don't apply to everyone. I disagree with a lot of his ideas, but not his explanation of the difference between training and exercising.

Like I have told many clients in the past, the key to success is your mind set. The training mind set is going to have greater long-term results than the exercise mind set.

The next time you decide to workout, are you exercising that day or training for the long term?

Tour De Donut 2013: Be careful where you put your Car FOB (remote)

 

This past Saturday was the 25th edition on the original Tour De Donut. I have been involved with it since moving to Illinois in 1993. The only year I missed it we where in Florida for a gymnastics competition.

This years course was the same as last years. Start in Staunton to Mount Olive to Eagerville back to Staunton. The volunteers did a great job as usual. Almost every intersection had a couple of road marshals keeping us safe. Many of these volunteers also were ringing cowbells.

This year was the first time I decided to only take one water bottle. I would regret that around mile 23.

This was also the first time I used my Dodge Charger to get to Staunton.

Little did I know that driving this car would effect my office race result. Like last year we had a timing chip at the bottom of our race numbers.

I always ride with my cars FOB (remote) in my center jersey pocket.

This cost me about 40 minutes

I didn't think placing it there would matter. My brother Gary and I had a great time during the race. He comes up from Austin Texas every year (at least since 2008)  just to ride the TDD. I let him borrow my 2nd string bike.(a 1999 Cannondale Cad 3 R 1000)

Since he weights about 65lbs less that I do, I don't even try to keep up with him. He is also use to riding the hills around Austin which make the TDD course feel flat to him.

I was ahead of Gary when we got to the first donut stop in Mount Olive. Once we left this stop I wouldn't see him again until the second donut stop in Eagerville. A couple of miles after getting back onto Route 66 I see a cyclist down in the road. I slow down to make sure it isn't Gary. As I approach the downed cyclist I hear another rider I know named Gary Wilkening tell me to keep going. Gary Wilkening has stopped racing to help this cyclist. This is the most selfless act I see all day. He gave up any chance he had of a fast finish to help a fellow cyclist. (Gary W. is a part-time EMT)

We find out later that the cyclist broke his shoulder while crashing. Our biggest fear in this race is being hurt in a crash. Any time you put 1500 cyclist in a race, the start is going to get a little scary.

While at the 2nd stop we top off our water bottles and I decide I better drink more before the finish.  My brother Gary has waited for me to finish my donuts in Eagerville and we take off together. About 1 mile after this stop we began a short downhill. I hear a rattle and look down to see my only water bottle go flying off the road. I decide to stop and look for it. Someone behind me has seen the bottle and tells me I might as well get back on the bike since my bottle had gone over the ledge. The bottle decided it should take a swim in Bear Creek. 

I don't see Gary again until the finish. Coming though the finishing shoot I notice that no one takes our timing chips off our race numbers. After cooling down and then putting the bikes back into our cars we decide to try and find my brothers friend Mike Bahr. A couple of minutes later Mike comes in. We notice it has been about 30 minutes since I finished. Walking towards Mike we see a bin to put our timing chips in so they can deduct see how many donuts we have eaten. We get 5 minutes off our times for each donut.

After returning home I decide to look up the race results online. Fleet Feet Sports race results 2013 Tour De Donut

I know I finished in around 2 hours. I can't find my results. Eventually I decide to keep looking . They have my time posted around 2:43. How can that be? It is then that I realize the timing chip must have been interfered with by my car remote (FOB)

The moral of this story: Be sure you have your water bottle secure if you only bring one and be careful where you put your car FOB (remote).

How are you adapting? "Train Smarter, Not Harder"

One of my favorite sayings is: "Train Smarter, Not Harder".

What do I mean by this?

 

Watch any Bootcamp or Crossfit workout any you will see the participants pushing themselves harder than they ever thought possible.




They both use some great exercises. I love seeing people perform squats, lunges, push ups, pull ups,  etc.

The thing that concerns me the most about these types of workouts is the volume of work being used. Some people will thrive with these workouts for a while. The question is how long can the participants continue to push themselves before they either get burnt out on injured?

Watch the Crossfit games some time. Look to see how may of the participants are wearing Kinesio Tape.


If you have to wear Kinesio Tape in order to continue to train/work out you might want to change the way you are training.

Remember, it isn't how hard you can push yourself to get stronger, faster, in better condition: It is how your body adapts to the stress of training that matters.

"Train Smarter, Not Harder"

Random thoughts

I haven't been motivated to write for this blog lately, so I am going to take the easy way out by posting some random thoughts.

1. Thinking of new things to write about in a blog can be tough.

2. Taking the easy way out is usually not a very good idea when it comes to your health, but it can work when you don't know what to write about in a blog.

3. I don't believe it is possible to eat chocolate too often.

4. Money can't buy happiness, but it can rent it for a short time.

5. Most things we worry about never happen. Instead focus on what you want, instead of what you don't want to happen.

6. Dogs make great pets because they want to make you happy.

7. Cats are hard to please. (at least compared to dogs)

8. My favorite quote is: "

“Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”

― Isaac Asimov

9. My second favorite quote is: "Health is not valued till sickness comes."

Thomas Fuller

10. It is later than you think when it comes to how you are aging. The sooner you start taking better care of yourself, the easier it is make the changes you need to make.

11. If you can't squat, you need to squat. Squatting is a fundamental movement our bodies are designed to preform.

12. If you never ride your bike at 30 miles per hour, you will never ride at 30 miles per hour.

13. What did you do today to improve your posture?

14. Gravity never rest. Therefore work on your posture since gravity is working against you.

15. If people spent as much time on exercise as they do on watching TV or on the computer, everyone would be an exercise addict.

16. Articles would have to be written on why we should stop exercising so much.

17. 17 is my favorite number. Probably because our address in Berkeley was 6017.

18. Be careful who your mentors are. You might end up like them.

19. The key to success in life is picking the right parents. Good luck with that.

20. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I am done.

Why do you train? Attack your weaknesses.

I am amazed by the number of cyclist I ride with that never think about how they are training. They just like to get on the bike and ride hard. This will get you in somewhat better shape, but what is their plan for improvement?

One of my favorite saying is: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

This can be used in many ways. Think about your home. If you never plan on maintaining it, eventually you will end up replacing things when they break. Although I do this with our house, (we replaced the garage door opener, fence gates, and will be replacing our front doors soon). I do perform maintenance on my body on a daily basis. (Posture and Mobility work) Strength work is done once or twice per week.

To get back to my cyclist friends:

We don't put on this much weight.

Every winter we tend to put on a few pounds due to riding a lot less because of the weather. This means that every spring we have to get back into riding shape. What do I feel is the best way to do this? (Various types of intervals) Like I said, most of the people I ride with don't perform intervals on a regular basis. Making yourself tired doesn't make great training. I begin each ride with a goal for that ride. Most cyclist I know don"t.

Cycling coaches use to tell riders that they needed around 1000 miles of long slow distance riding before adding any intensity.  If you have been riding for more than a couple of decades, it doesn't take long to rebuild your foundation. In other words, the longer you have been riding the less time you need to spend building this base. They type of interval I use depends on what I plan on working on.

Each spring I will spend 3 - 4 weeks using bigger gears a couple of times per week to build some strength on the bike. I have to be careful not to use too big of a gear or I will hurt my knees. These rides have to be done alone to keep from pushing myself too hard.

By the same token, you don't want to push yourself too hard, too often. I use to push myself more when riding alone, but have found that I would have trouble pushing myself on group rides. If I am riding with a group on Wednesday and Saturday, I will only perform intervals on Monday if I have recovered enough from the previous Saturday's ride.

If riding on Tuesday and/or Thursday, I will ride at a easy recovery pace. This pace should be slow enough that I almost feel guilty going so slow. You have to put your ego aside and let other riders pass you.

How do you know what you should work on and when? (I will work on one of my weaknesses during a group ride if I get the chance.)

The following article is from coach Matt Fitzgerald a featured coach on TrainingPeaks.com and author of several books for endurance athletes, including Brain Training for Runners.

Attack your weaknesses

A bicycle ride is at once so simple and so complex. It is your life pared down, just you and the outdoors, away from stress and obligation, or just you and your speed and watts and beats per minute. Yet it is also multifaceted, requiring several types of fitness for your body to motor, climb, sprint and last all day long. Each of us is stronger in some areas and weaker in others. If you've been riding consistently all year, there's probably not much room to improve in the areas in which you're already strong. The key to making a big leap forward before the year is done is to focus on your weakness. "The fastest way to boost your performance is to identify your primary limiter and change your training in ways that push it back," says elite-level cycling coach Hunter Allen, coauthor with Andrew Coggin, Ph.D., of Training and Racing with a Power Meter. Your primary limiter could be anything, depending on factors from your natural physiology to your riding habits. To strengthen it, you must first identify it. Then, use these workouts to attack it head-on.

YOU FEEL LIKE: "I end up gasping for breath before my legs give out on hard rides." OR "It takes me a long time--often 2 full days--to recover from hard rides."

YOUR LIMITER IS: Aerobic Capacity "Aerobic capacity refers to the body's ability to use oxygen to release energy in the muscles while riding," says USA Cycling elite-level coach Jeb Stewart, owner and head coach of Endurofit.com. When oxygen processing is your weak spot, you will tend to have that "sucking wind" feeling even when your muscles still are strong. Because the aerobic system is also the one primarily responsible for postride recovery, not bouncing back from hard workouts is another sign that your aerobic engine needs attention.

TO ATTACK IT: Sneaky Miles Aerobic capacity is closely linked to training volume. Adding even an hour or 2 of riding per week will boost your aerobic fitness noticeably. One manageable way to bump training volume is to go for an easy recovery ride of 30 to 90 minutes within 24 hours of a hard ride. You might not think this would have much of an effect on fitness, but recent studies show that when athletes start even an easy exercise session in a state of lingering fatigue from previous training, their bodies produce higher levels of interleukin-6, an immune-system messenger compound that stimulates fat-burning efficiency and resistance to muscle damage, among other things. If you can't fit an extra recovery ride into your schedule, try doubling or tripling the length of your cooldown at the end of a hard ride instead.

YOU FEEL LIKE: "I bonk sooner than I should during long rides, even when I eat and drink enough." OR "I get muscle cramps during my longer rides."

YOUR LIMITER IS: Endurance To ride long successfully, your body needs to develop the ability to store large amounts of glycogen, or carbohydrate fuel, in your legs and to burn fat efficiently during cycling. If you lack these adaptations, which accrue as a gradual result of depleting your muscle glycogen stores in longer-than-normal rides, no amount of drinking and eating will help. You will experience either complete muscle exhaustion or debilitating leg cramps.

TO ATTACK IT: High-Tempo Intervals The obvious way to boost endurance is to do a weekly long ride, or to add 30 minutes to an hour to your long ride, up to 4 hours. But this workout from Stewart helps you go longer without adding ride time. Endurance gains result mainly from depleting your muscle glycogen stores in training rides. These intervals are performed at a higher intensity than a standard ride, so they deplete glycogen stores faster. n Start a 2-hour ride with a 15-minute warm-up, then, depending on your fitness, do either 2 to 4x10 minutes, 2 to 3x15 minutes or 2 to 3x20 minutes at just below lactate threshold (80 to 85 percent of max heart rate or 90 to 95 percent of 40k time-trial speed/power). Recover after each with 5 minutes of easy spinning.

YOU FEEL LIKE: "I bonk abruptly when trying to sustain a high intensity." OR "I feel overwhelmed by the speed of time trials and time-trial-intensity workouts."

YOUR LIMITER IS: Lactate threshold "A simple definition of lactate threshold is the maximum power you can sustain for 1 hour," says Allen, which is roughly the speed at 85 percent of your max heart rate. If this is your limiter, you'll notice you can't ride at 85 percent of your max heart rate for an hour, and that your max sustainable speed/power is too low. A trained cyclist should be able to churn out at least 30 percent more speed/power in a max-effort hour ride than in a moderate one.

TO ATTACK IT: Microbursts Allen uses a workout he calls microbursts to efficiently raise an athlete's lactate threshold. After warming up, do 15 seconds "on" at a near sprint (150 percent of your threshold power, if you have a power meter), then do 15 seconds "off" at an easy spin (50 percent of your threshold power). Continue for 10 minutes. "It's totally annoying," says Allen, but effective. Unlike steady-pace lactate threshold workouts, he explains, microbursts work primarily by challenging your body to quickly and repeatedly recover from high-intensity muscle fatigue. "Plus, you get a tremendous boost in your ability to change speeds," Allen says. Because it takes only 10 minutes, Allen recommends preceding this with wind-out sprints (below) to get 2 distinct benefits from a single ride.

YOU FEEL LIKE: "My performance drops quickly after the first effort of an interval workout." OR "I struggle with speeding up from an already hard pace, even for a minute."

YOUR LIMITER IS: Anaerobic capacity In practical terms, anaerobic capacity refers to your ability to recover quickly from very hard efforts--those exceeding lactate-threshold intensity--and to repeat such efforts multiple times before you experience a drop in performance.

TO ATTACK IT: Near-Max Intervals There's no way around it: To nudge your anaerobic capacity higher, you need to do short intervals at near-max effort. After a 15-minute warm-up, do one of these workouts from Stewart. In each, ride the hard parts at the highest intensity you can sustain through the last interval without blowing up. These are hard. Two to 4 sets of 3 to 5x30 seconds hard and 90 seconds easy spinning, with 5 to 10 minutes easy spinning between sets. Two sets of 5x1 minute hard followed by 3 minutes of spinning, with 5 to 10 minutes of spinning between sets. Two sets of 5x2 minutes hard followed by 3 minutes of spinning, with 5 to 10 minutes of spinning between sets.

YOU FEEL LIKE: "I get dropped on steep, short climbs and can't keep up when someone in the group attacks." OR "I have no 'snap' in my legs."

YOUR LIMITER IS: Maximum power "This is the ability to contract and relax the muscles very quickly," says Stewart. There is a common misconception that maximum power is something only sprinters need. In fact, the best climbers and time trialists tend to have greater top-end power than those less proficient, so boosting your maximum power is a great way to improve your all-around performance.

TO ATTACK IT: Wind-Out Sprints Power is the ability to apply force quickly. Cyclists typically train for power by emphasizing force (i.e., by pushing big gears). But Allen's high-rev sprints emphasize the speed aspect, which means high cadence and big power gains without a big time commitment. After a thorough warm-up, start at a slow speed, only 5 to 8 miles per hour, and in your small chainring and a middle gear on your cassette. Do a 10-second all-out sprint with only 1 or 2 gear changes. Wind out the gear before you shift, like you do in a car, going up to 120 rpm before upshifting. Complete 6 to 8 sprints, recovering 2 minutes after each sprint. Allen suggests doing wind-outs and then moving on to microbursts (above).

This article should give you some ideas on how to plan to work on your weaknesses the next time you go out for a ride.

Sugar feeds cancer? Why building muscles can help fight cancer.

This morning I received a newsletter with a link to the following article. Attacking Cancer's Sweet Tooth.

I first read about the theory that Cancer Cells living and growing from their intake of sugar years ago. Cancer Loves Sugar

 The following is from that article:

"Every doctor learned back in medical school all about Otto Warburg's discovery; a discovery of humongous proportions, because way back in the thirties Otto discovered the main biochemical cause of cancer, or what differentiates a cancer cell from a normal, healthy cell. So big a discovery was this, that Otto Warburg was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Cancer has only one prime cause. It is the replacement of normal oxygen respiration of the body's cells by an anaerobic [i.e., oxygen-deficient] cell respiration. -Dr. Otto Warburg

But what else does Warburg's discovery tell us. First off, it tells us that cancer metabolizes much differently than normal cells. Normal cells need oxygen. Cancer cells despise oxygen. In fact, oxygen therapy is a favorite among many of the alternative clinics we've researched.

Another thing this tells us is that cancer metabolizes through a process of fermentation.
If you've ever made wine, you'll know that fermentation requires sugar.
The metabolism of cancer is approximately 8 times greater than the metabolism of normal cells.

Okay, so here is what we can put together knowing the above: The body is constantly overworked trying to feed this cancer. The cancer is constantly on the verge starvation and thus constantly asking the body to feed it. When the food supply is cut off, the cancer begins to starve unless it can make the body produce sugar to feed itself. 

The wasting syndrome, cachexia, is the body producing sugar from proteins (you heard it right, not from carbohydrates or fats, but from proteins) in a process called glycogenesis. This sugar feeds the cancer. The body finally dies of starvation, trying to feed the cancer.
Now, knowing that one's cancer needs sugar, does it make sense to feed it sugar? Does it make sense to have a high carbohydrate diet? 

The reason Food Therapies for cancer even exist today (beyond the fact that they work) is because someone once saw the connection between sugar and cancer. There are many food therapies, but not a single one allows many foods high in carbohydrates and not a single one allows sugars, BECAUSE SUGAR FEEDS CANCER."

This makes sense to me as the most obvious symptom of my wife's first bout with cancer was her level of fatigue. Our brains and liver require sugar (glucose) to function. The theory is that the cancer cells where using enough sugar that her brain wasn't getting enough sugar and this made her feel
tired.

This article from MD Anderson has some great info on sugar as well. Does Cancer Love sugar?

Their angle on this is that it is the obesity from too much sugar that can lead to cancer.

When you think about muscles do you picture a bodybuilder?

Or Grandma showing off her gun.

Why building muscles can help fight cancer?

Did you know that your skeletal muscles can store a lot of glucose (sugar)? Think of your muscles like a sponge. The bigger they are, the more sugar they can store. 
You can also think about this in the opposite direction. The smaller they are, the less sugar they can store. 

Why should you care? 

Picture you body after a meal. The sugars from this meal have to find somewhere to go. If you have lost enough muscle, where does that sugar go? Maybe it circulates in your blood until it finds cancer cells to feed.  Adding muscle to your body gives it a better chance to store it in these muscles instead of feeding cancer cells. 

Muscles < Sugar > Cancer Cells 

Your daily activities can help decide which direction the sugar goes. 

Does this article make you more interested in keeping and or building the amount of skeletal muscles that you have?

Guest Blog: Healthy Habits for Travelers

Today I am posting an article from a guest blogger. His name is Mike Manning. His blog is titled: mikemanningmusings.blogspot.com

Michael is a Fitness and healthy living enthusiast who tries to see the best in all situations.

Let Mike or me know what you think..

Traveling can cause interruptions in healthy activities. If you are a regular at your gym while home, you may find that travel interferes with your exercise routine. Additionally, eating habits from nutritional intake to regular mealtimes may also be compromised during travel. Rather than succumb to the routine-rattling affects of travel, take action before you leave to make healthy decisions that can improve your experience and help you return home healthy, relaxed and well rested.

Before you leave, consider how you can keep up your physical fitness during your trip. Make sure to do some research before booking a hotel. On a recent trip to San Francisco I was able to book a hotel that was great for my personal fitness needs because I searched through a travel reviews site. This site listed out the best hotels in San Francisco and I could scroll through and see what amenities were offered and the reviews of people who stayed there recently. If you belong to a gym with nationwide locations, you’ll find it easier to maintain your regular routine while on the road. Sometimes, however, your travel schedule won’t allow time for working out at the gym. Consider bringing portable fitness equipment such as an exercise band, an Exercise Bar or a jump rope along to facilitate workouts in your hotel room or on the go.

Once you get on that plane or hop into the car for your trip, you can minimize jet lag and other travel discomforts with a few other healthy habits. Always pack healthy snacks such as raw almonds, fresh veggies or fruit along with you for the journey. These will help you remain hydrated and avoid succumbing to unhealthy food options available on flights, in airports or at rest stops along the way.

Upon reaching your destination, take a few moments to get oriented to your surroundings. Locate the fitness center and other amenities at your hotel. In your room, take the time to unpack and organize your belongings before rushing off to meetings or activities. Also, spend a few minutes stretching or walking through a few yoga moves to relax and ground yourself.

During your stay, stick to healthy habits as much as possible. If your hotel offers a complimentary breakfast, choose options such as fresh fruit, whole-grain toast, boiled eggs or wholesome oatmeal instead of caloric pastries or fatty foods like biscuits and gravy. If you are traveling to a region that boasts legendary local cuisine, go ahead and indulge once or twice in these delights. Just remember to counter those indulgences with plenty of exercise and healthy snacks in your room.

By following these simple tips, you can successfully navigate through your travels. Upon returning home, you’ll be easily able to return to your regular, healthy routine.

Sensory Adaptation: Who cooked the bacon?

Do you smell the bacon?

Think about walking into a house after someone has been cooking. (Do I smell bacon? Insert whatever food you love to smell here) At first the smell is very strong. Did you notice that after a few moments you no longer notice the smell? That is sensory adaptation when it comes to the sense of smell. If the stimulus (smell of bacon) hasn't changed, your brain no longer pays attention to it because it (the smell of bacon) is not changing.

Another example is the sense of light. Enter a dark room after being in a brighter room. At first the room is very dark. Once your eyes adjust to the dark room you can now see a little in that room. Or think about going outside on a very bright day. At first you might partially close you eyes until your sense of sight adjust to the brightness.  This is sensory adaptation when it comes to your sense of sight.




When taking my first Anatomy and Physiology course the topic of sensory adaptation was one of my favorite topics. Since the muscular, skeletal and nervous systems where my favorite systems of the body to study I focused on how sensory adaptation applies to them.

I love to think about how sensory adaptation effects our bodies during the aging process. Those individuals that work on keeping as much muscle as possible while aging will have adapted by still being able to easily get up for their chairs, take the steps, work in the yard, etc. Those that haven't challenged their muscles as they age will be challenged by the weakness they have developed. It is all about how you adapt. Think about this: By not working on becoming stronger, more mobile, more steady on your feet, you are working on becoming weaker, less mobile and less steady on your feet.

It is all about the stimulus or lack there of that you ask your body to adapt to.

Would you rather be in her shoes

or Her's?

I have been reading a lot about how bad sitting is for our bodies. Why is sitting so bad for us. The body adapts to sitting by slowing our metabolisms down, slowing blood flow, relaxing muscles, etc.

Mayo Clinic article on why too much sitting is bad for us
"Researchers have linked sitting for long periods of time with a number of health concerns, including obesity and metabolic syndrome — a cluster of conditions that includes increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels."


Two things mentioned:

                                    "A nearly 50 percent increased risk of death from any cause"
                                     "About a 125 percent increased risk of events associated with cardiovascular disease, such as chest pain (angina) or heart attack"

I don't know about you, but those two things alone make me get out of my chair more often. The bad thing about all this sitting is that one hour of exercise won't reverse all the damage done by this sitting. The key is to make sure you get up every 30 - 60 minutes each hour. Get that blood pumping, muscle contracting.

You know the phrase use it or loose it. If you ask your body to rest too much, you will loose your health.

What stimulus's are you asking your body to use it's sensory adaptation to adapt to? I know that isn't the greatest way to end a sentence.  Science was always a much stronger subject for me than English.

 

Why you should care about your thoracic spine when it comes to your lumbar spine.

Our bodies have an amazing ability for one area to cause pain in another. An example of this is how our hips can cause knee pain.

Another example is how one part of our spine can cause pain in another. Today's topic covers how the thoracic spine effects the lumbar spine.
 
Since having the pleasure on injuring my lumbar spine around 5 years ago, I have learned a lot about how the whole spine effects the lumbar region. If you only deal with the lumbar region, you might not be dealing with the cause of your pain.

In previous post I have talked about how the lumbar spine should be stable and the thoracic spine more mobile. If you lose mobility in the thoracic spine your body might compensate by moving through the lumbar spine. Sometimes you won't know it. Sometimes you might wish it hadn't. If your lumbar spine decides to move too much you might get to experience the pleasure of back spasms. Back spams are our bodies way of controlling the spine if it tries to move too much.

Golfer's know they should rotate their thoracic spines.

Rotation:
Our lumbar vertebrae are only suppose to rotate around 3 degrees each while our thoracic vertebrae are able to rotate up to 8 degrees each. This might help convince you that you should learn how to rotate through the thoracic vertebrae instead of the lumbar vertebrae.

One of my favorite ways to work on thoracic extension

Extension:
Another dysfunction in the thoracic spine that can lead to lumbar pain is a lack of extension in the thoracic spine. If you use the lumbar spine to hyper-extend instead of extending in the thoracic spine, that can lead to pain. One the the best ways to make sure you don't hyper-extend the lumbar spine is by keeping the abdominal muscles tight.

One of the best exercises to teach you how to extend the thoracic spine is the overhead squat. A broom stick can be used to teach the proper technique.

If I had only learned how to overhead squat at her age.

Learning how to rotate and extend more though the thoracic spine will make thing a lot easier for your lumbar spine.

How well do you extend from your hips?

I am a firm believer that the solutions to most problems are very simple. The key is figuring out what the real problem is.

They say that 80% of all adults will experience this.

One of the best examples of this is figuring out what is causing back pain.  A few years ago I didn't know much about back pain. That changed one morning when getting out of bed. I went to get up and it felt like my pelvis shifted forward about half a foot. My back muscles went into spasms and I couldn't move in any direction without pain. Since my pelvis had moved too much, my brain decided that all the muscles around it should restrict any movement of the pelvis.  

After making a visit to D.C. Richard Novak it was determined that I had herniated the disk between my L3 & L4. He used Ultrasound and Electrical Stimulation to get the muscles in my lower back to relax.

After this bout of back pain I decided to learn as much as I could about our lower backs. The common theme from all the reading that I have done can be summed up by the following ideas. 

1. Lower Back pain has very little to do with the lower back. If you want to minimize bouts of back pain learn to keep the lumbar spine stable.

2.  One of the main causes of lower back pain is extending from the back instead of the hips.

3. Learning to extend from the hips will keep you from extending from your back.

My favorite hip extension exercises are:

1. Hip Hinges

A simple way to learn how to extend from the hips.

2. Bridging Hip extensions.

The basic version of bridging: Squeeze those glutes.

If you want to minimize your chances of developing lower back pain, learn to extend from the hips.

Next time I will write about the role that the thoracic spine plays in keeping the lumbar spine stable.

Why should you care about knee stability?

 

Why should you care about knee stability? Because your knees are suppose to be stable. Unstable knees tend to become painful knees. I don't know about you, but I don't like knee pain.

Ono of the main reasons I love being a personal trainer is because I am fascinated by how the human body is designed. In order to get the best training results, I focus on how the body is suppose to function. Many people still train like body builders in the sense that they try to train individual muscles. I use to train this way. (Bicep curls for the front of the arms) Our brains are not designed to understand this concept. They are designed to understand/control movements. Vern Gambetta his website, gambetta.com/  taught me this concept. (Train movements, not muscles)

A few years ago I learned the concept of that certain joints should be more mobile while others should be more stable. As you move up the body from the ground, a mobile joint is followed by a stable joint.  Example: Ankles should be more mobile, knees more stable and hips more mobile. We still want controlled mobility (stability) in the ankles and hips. Movement in a joint without stability leads to joint pain.

Ankle Flexion and Extension

Ankle Rotation

Hip Flexion and Extension

Hip Rotation

If you don't have enough mobility in the ankles or the hips, your brain will allow the knees to become more mobile and less stable than they should be. This in turn can lead to knee pain. Our bodies do a great job of creating movement in a joint that needs stability if the mobility of the nearest joint is compromised. In the short term this is ok, but not a great idea in the long term.

In 1983 I suffered a knee injury that required surgery. After the surgery, my rehab consisted of quad sets and straight leg raises.

Quad Sets

Straight leg raises

If this injury had occurred twenty years later, my rehab would have been a lot different. In 1983 the focus was on the knee cap and quadriceps muscles. Now the focus is on the hip muscles as well as the quadriceps. Imagine that the knee cap is the train (controlled by the quads) and the femur is the train track. (controlled by the hip muscles) It doesn't due a whole lot of good to focus on the train, if the tracks aren't stable enough.

If you want your knees to remain as pain free as possible, work on their stability. My favorite knee stability exercises are Peterson Step Ups, Standing Terminal Knee Extensions, and Monster Walks.

Peterson Step Up

Standing Terminal Knee Extensions

Monster Walks with a band around the ankles for added resistance

Why do I like these exercises? Because they develop controlled mobility in the ankles and hips while developing stability in the knees at the same time. 

Combining knee stability exercises and strength training exercises (my favorites are Bulgarian Squats and One Legged Stiff Legged Deadlifts) a couple of times per week with foam rolling exercises keep my right knee happy which makes me happy.

Do you belly breathe?

Are you looking for an easy way to improve your health with very little effort?

Consider changing the way you breathe.

For some reason we begin breathing more from our chest and less from our bellies as we age.



Just because we do this doesn't mean it is a great idea. 

http://www.normalbreathing.com/index-chest-breathing.php#.UUd6KFe1Wvk



Some of the reasons listed in that article:
 1.   Chest breathing reduces blood oxygenation
  2.  Chest breathing causes lymphatic stagnation  
  3.  Thoracic breathing means hyperventilation and low oxygen levels in cells
 
 What is a better way to breathe?

Belly Breathing

 

This is a very powerful and very simple technique.  It teaches you slow breathing from the "diaphragm" or belly.  It relaxes you and directly reduces many of the symptoms of fatigue.

Plan to practice Belly Breathing once a day, starting with two minutes.  Then, gradually increase the time up to about 5 minutes.

Here's a good way to learn Belly Breathing:

Lie comfortably on your back, with a pillow under your head, your knees bent and your back flat.  You can stretch your legs out if that's more comfortable.  Place one hand on your belly.  Once you're comfortable, you can start the exercise.

Inhale while you slowly count to 4.  Expand your belly as much as you can – like a balloon.   You know you're doing "belly breathing" right when you can feel your belly expand.  Then, exhale to the slow count of 4, just letting all the air out of the balloon.  As you exhale, just feel yourself letting go of tension. 

Keep repeating the belly breathing to the slow count of 4.  When your mind wanders, just gently bring your attention back to the counting and belly breathing. 

After you have practiced this exercise for about a week, try doing your Belly Breathing when you are sitting.  Then, try it at different times during the day, even when you are standing.  Notice that it is very relaxing.

Once you have mastered your Belly Breathing, you can use it when you are exercising.  Also, during exercise, people tend to breathe from the chest instead of from the belly.  Breathing rapidly from the chest increases anxiety.  Breathing slowly from the belly lowers anxiety and reduces the stress we feel while exercising.

Focus on how to improve your health by changing the way you breathe.