Row 1000 meters
Rest 1 minute

Run 800 meters
Rest 1 minute

Row 500 meters
Rest 1 minute

Run 400 meters
Rest 1 minute

Row 250 meters
Rest 1 minute

Run 200 meters

Compare to: Thursday 110804

I didn’t write it, I just posted it.  IU research has found an intersting coorlation

Exercise May Trigger Orgasm in Some Women

Survey results suggest phenomenon is not rare, but causes remain unclear

MONDAY, March 19 (HealthDay News) — Sex may not always be essential for orgasm: A new survey finds that some women can also experience the sensation while exercising.

This type of orgasm is sometimes referred to as a “coregasm” because of its association with exercises that involve core abdominal muscles, said study author Debby Herbenick, co-director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University’s School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation.

“The most common exercises associated with exercise-induced orgasm were abdominal exercises, climbing poles or ropes, biking/spinning and weight lifting,” Herbenick said in a university news release. “These data are interesting because they suggest that orgasm is not necessarily a sexual event, and they may also teach us more about the bodily processes underlying women’s experiences of orgasm.”

The findings are based on the results of online surveys completed by 124 women who reported experiencing exercise-induced orgasms and 246 women who experienced exercise-induced sexual pleasure.

The women ranged in age from 18 to 63, most were married or in a relationship and about 69 percent were heterosexual, according to the study, which was published in a special issue of the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy.

About 40 percent of the women who had experienced exercise-induced orgasms and exercise-induced sexual pleasure had done so on more than 10 occasions. Most of the women who reported exercise-induced orgasms said they were not fantasizing sexually during their experiences, and about 20 percent said they could not control the orgasm.

Abdominal exercises accounted for 51 percent of exercise-induced orgasms, followed by weight lifting (27 percent), yoga (20 percent), bicycling (16 percent), running (13 percent) and walking/hiking (10 percent).

The mechanisms behind exercise-induced orgasms and exercise-induced sexual pleasure remain unclear, but the researchers hope to learn more about the triggers for both experiences.

More information

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health has more about physical activity.

– Robert Preidt

SOURCE: Indiana University, news release, March 19, 2012

Last Updated: March 19, 2012Similar Posts:

Thursday 110804 – Workout Row 1000 meters Rest 1 minute Run 800 meters Rest 1 minute Row 500 me…

Thursday 090730 – Time to run!Workout3x400M Run2:00 Rest200M Run2:00 Rest100m Run2:00 RestInten…

Thursday 090716 – Workout3 Rounds for time of:10 – Ring Dips10 – Deadlift (M 225lb/W 135lb)1000…

Tuesday 100622 – Workout Sorry! Jackie x2! 2x 800m Run or 1000m Row 50-45 lbs Thrusters M/ 50-…

Wednesday 110817 – Workout 8x 200m Run 25-Air Squats Study finds 15 minutes of moderate daily ex…

800m Run
40-KB Swings
20-Pull-ups

400m Run
20-KB Swings
10-Pull-ups

200m Run
10 KB Swings
5-Pull-upsSimilar Posts:

Tuesday 090929 – Workout”Helen”For time 3 rounds of:Run 400 M/Row 500M21 – 53 lbs KB or 55 lbs…

Tuesday 080506 – Workout”Helen”For time 3 rounds of:Run 400 M/500M row21 – 24k KB or 55 lbs du…

Tuesday 081021 – Workout”Helen”For time 3 rounds of:Run 400 M/Row 500M21 – 24k KB or 55 lbs du…

Saturday 090117 – Workout”Helen”For time 3 rounds of:Run 400 M/Row 500M21 – 24k KB or 55 lbs du…

Tuesday 090602 – Workout”Helen”For time 3 rounds of:Run 400 M/Row 500M21 – 24k KB or 55 lbs du…

8x
200m Run
25-Air Squats

Study finds 15 minutes of moderate daily exercise lengthens life

Health benefits of physical activity found to begin before people reach the half-hour standard

HOUSTON — Taiwanese who exercise for 15 minutes a day, or 92 minutes per week, extended their expected lifespan by three years compared to people who are inactive, according to a study published today in The Lancet.

“Exercising at very light levels reduced deaths from any cause by 14 percent,” said study senior author Xifeng Wu, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Department of Epidemiology. “The benefits of exercise appear to be significant even without reaching the recommended 150 minutes per week based on results of previous research.”

Lead author Chi-Pang Wen, M.D., of the National Health Research Institutes of Taiwan, and colleagues also found that a person’s risk of death from any cause decreased by 4 percent for every additional 15 minutes of exercise up to 100 minutes a day over the course of the study. Those exercising for 30 minutes daily added about four years to life expectancy.

“These benefits were applicable to all age groups, both sexes and those with cardiovascular disease risk,” the authors note.

If inactive people in Taiwan were to do low-volume daily exercise, one in six deaths could be postponed by their reduced risk of dying, the authors report. It would be an estimated reduction in mortality similar to that from a successful tobacco control program.

The prospective observational study involved 416,175 Taiwanese who participated in a standard medical screening program run by MJ Health Management Institution between 1996 and 2008. Participants were followed for an average of eight years.

For the exercise study, participants completed a questionnaire covering their medical history and lifestyle information. They characterized their weekly physical activity for the previous month by intensity — light (walking), moderate (brisk walking), vigorous (jogging) or high vigorous (running) – and time.

To account for occupational effects, participants also characterized their physical activity at work, ranging from sedentary to hard physical labor.

Those who reported less than one hour a week of leisure time physical activity were classified as inactive – 54 percent of all participants. Others were classified as low, medium, high or very high based on the duration and intensity of their exercise. Researchers calculated mortality risk and life expectancy for each group.

Thirteen other variables were analyzed: age, sex, education level, physical labor at work, smoking, alcohol use, fasting blood sugar, systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, body mass index, diabetes, hypertension and history of cancer.

Those who engaged in low-volume exercise had lower death rates than inactive people regardless of age, gender, health status, tobacco use, alcohol consumption or cardiovascular disease risk.

The researchers note that the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week. A third of U.S. adults meet that guideline; about 20 percent of adults in China, Japan or Taiwan meet it.

“A recommendation of 15 minutes of daily exercise should be promoted to East Asian populations,” the authors note.

The study’s findings of reduced mortality through even moderately intense exercise are likely to hold true for other populations, Wu said, even though the total amount of time spent or workout intensity required for a health benefit might differ. “These findings can stimulate people to exercise as much as they can and to not be frustrated that they can’t reach the 30 minute per day guideline.”

This is the first collaboration between Wu, Wen and the MJ Health Group, a major health screening company with more than 600,000 participants in its health database. They have formed the Asian Health Screening Cohort to conduct major research projects. Wu provides scientific expertise with Wen, who also is based at China Medical University Hospital, while MJ Health Group contributes patient epidemiological and clinical data as well as a biobank of tissue samples.

Two other ongoing collaborative projects include development of a liver cancer risk prediction model and a study of telomere length, genetic variation and cancer risk. The second project is funded by an MD Anderson Sister Institute Network Fund Grant. MD Anderson and China Medical University Hospital have a sister institution agreement.Similar Posts:

Thursday 090730 – Time to run!Workout3x400M Run2:00 Rest200M Run2:00 Rest100m Run2:00 RestInten…

Wednesday 090121 – No, we are not asleep. Yesterday’s workout was not kind to Kelin and me…Wo…

Tuesday 120320 – Workout “Charlie” Row 1000 meters Rest 1 minute Run 800 meters Rest 1 minute …

Thursday 110804 – Workout Row 1000 meters Rest 1 minute Run 800 meters Rest 1 minute Row 500 me…

Monday 100809 – Workout 50-Body weight Back Squats (partition as necessary, this is not timed…

Row 1000 meters
Rest 1 minute

Run 800 meters
Rest 1 minute

Row 500 meters
Rest 1 minute

Run 400 meters
Rest 1 minute

Row 250 meters
Rest 1 minute

Run 200 meters

The article below, from MSNBC,  is a nice contrast/counterpoint to yesterday’s read.  Let’s live it up!

Rob Gage  /  Getty Images

Age may be its own virtue, but that doesn’t mean old people lived virtuous lives.

By Christopher Wanjek

Centenarians may have a great deal of wisdom to share, but this apparently does not include advice on how to live to age 100.

Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found that many very old people — age 95 and older — could be poster children for bad health behaviorwith their smoking, drinking, poor diet, obesity and lack of exercise.

The very old are, in fact, no more virtuous than the general population when it comes to shunning bad health habits, leaving researchers to conclude that their genes are mostly responsible for their remarkable longevity.

But before you fall off the wagon and start tossing down doughnuts for breakfast just because your Aunt Edna just turned 102, remember that genetics is a game of chance. What didn’t kill Aunt Edna still could kill you prematurely, the researchers cautioned.

The chosen few
The study, appearing Aug. 3 in the online edition of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, followed the lives of 477 Ashkenazi Jews between the ages of 95 and 112. They were enrolled in Einstein College’s Longevity Genes Project, an ongoing study that seeks to understand why centenarians live as long as they do. About 1 in 4,400 Americans lives to age 100, according to 2010 census data.

A research team led by Nir Barzilai compared these old folks with a group of people representing the general public, captured in a snapshot of health habits collected in the 1970s. The people in this control group were born around the same time as the 95-and-above study group, but they have since died.

Whatever killed the control group — cardiovascular disease, cancer and other diseases clearly associated with lifestyle choices — somehow didn’t kill them. “Their genes protected them,” Barzilai said.

Put down that doughnut
Barzilai said that it would be wrong to forego health advice with the assumption that your genes will determine how long you will live. For the general population, there is a preponderance of evidence that diet and exercise can postpone or ward off chronic diseaseand extend life. Many studies on Seventh Day Adventists — with their limited consumption of alcohol, tobacco and meat — attribute upward of 10 extra years of life as a result of lifestyle choices.

Achy joints? Nix the over-the-counter meds and get moving. Research shows those who exercise have 25 percent less musculoskeletal pain than those who don’t. Click for more of TODAY’s do-it-yourself “Detox your life” tips.

Note also that those people now age 100 lived in an era when obesity was nearly nonexistent and when daily exercise such as walking down streets or up a few flights of steps was more common. Barzilai said anyone can benefit from exercise at any age, even these indestructible old people pushing and exceeding triple digits.

The big picture for the Longevity Genes Project is to identify those genes keeping folks alive for so long and then use them as targets for drug development. For example, most people treated successfully for heart disease ultimately die well before their 90s from yet another age-related disease. This is because we “never change the aging process” with our treatments and cures, Barzilai said.

That is, we can’t turn everyone into centenarians by curing one disease at a time.

“Aging is the major risk factor,” Barzilai said. If researchers can figure out which genes work to slow aging and make ordinary people more resilient to chronic disease, we all will have a much better chance of reaching our 100th birthday — and have enough breath to blow out the candles.Similar Posts:

Tuesday 120320 – Workout “Charlie” Row 1000 meters Rest 1 minute Run 800 meters Rest 1 minute …

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Monday 100809 – Workout 50-Body weight Back Squats (partition as necessary, this is not timed…

Tuesday 100622 – Workout Sorry! Jackie x2! 2x 800m Run or 1000m Row 50-45 lbs Thrusters M/ 50-…

Tuesday 190629 – Workout Megan 5x 500m row 20-18 in box jumps 20-20 lbs DB Thrusters Sports S…

Cleans – Find a heavy Single.  remember that weight, we will use it later this week.

Mini MetCon
400m Run
20-Wall Ball Shots
20 Push-ups

300m Run
15-Wall Ball Shots
15-Push-ups

200m Run
10-Wall Ball Shots
10-Push-upsSimilar Posts:

Monday 120213 – You know how each month we do a 5k row coupled with push-ups, and or squats? …

Monday 101227 – Workout Split Jerk 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 Mini MetCon 4x 250m Row 10-Wall Ball S…

Thursday 100819 – Workout Push Jerk 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 MetCon 10x 10-Wall Ball Shots 10-Pul…

Thursday 090226 – WorkoutFor time:50 – Medicine ball cleans/Wall Balls Shots M20 lbs/W14 lbsSo …

Monday 110411 – Workout Press work up to 80% of your 1RM.  Then complete 3 sets of 3 reps at …

it is HOT, drink plenty of water.

If the forecast for Thursday is correct and it is above 100 degrees with the heat index, TitanFit will be closed.  Stay tuned.

Is the Fastest Human Ever Already Alive?

It may not be Usain Bolt — but scientists believe we’re reaching the limits of speed. (And yes, they’re accounting for PEDs.)

By Chuck Klosterman

 Sebastian Derungs/AFP/Getty Images

Allow me to spare you the hyperbole: Usain Bolt is fast.

He is, as far as we can tell, the fastest human who’s ever lived — in 2009, at a race in Berlin, he ran the 100-meter dash is 9.58 seconds. This translates to an average speed of just over 23 mph (with a top speed closer to 30 mph). His ’09 performance in Germany was .11 quicker than the 9.69 he ran at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the fattest chunk ever taken off a world record at that distance. Considering the unadulterated simplicity of his vocation and the historic magnitude of his dominance, it’s easy to argue that Bolt has been the world’s greatest athlete of the past five years. And yet there’s an even easier argument to make than that one: Within the next 10 years, Bolt’s achievements as a sprinter will be completely annihilated.

This is not guaranteed, of course, but it’s certainly more plausible than speculative — for the past 30 years, the men’s record in the 100-meter dash has been assaulted so continually that many of its former record holders don’t even qualify as difficult answers to trivia questions. This was not always the case: Jim Hines broke the 10.0 barrier with a 9.95 at the (high-altitude) 1968 Olympics; that mark stood for 15 years before Calvin Smith ran a 9.93 (also at altitude) in Colorado Springs. But since 1983, the record has been shattered more than a dozen times. Ben Johnson’s steroid-fueled 9.83 in ’87 was the first massive blow, but eight others have chipped away at the record with increasing regularity (Bolt just happened to use a sledge hammer).

The big-picture upshot to all this measured subtraction is simple: Over the past 40 years, man has improved his ability to run 100 meters by .37 of a second. That’s a rough average of .01 a year, but that kind of math is deceptively understated — though the year-to-year improvement isn’t exponential, it also isn’t gradual. The rate of change keeps accelerating. As of this June, 17 men had already run sub-10.0 100 meter dashes, the most ever in the span of a year (with six months still on the calendar). Were he to get in the same physical condition he was in 2009, most track experts concede that the 25-year-old Bolt has the potential to breach the 9.50 barrier at any moment. And this raises the central question fans of track and field have always wanted to know: Is there a ceiling to how fast a man can run? Will there be a day — maybe in 50 years, or maybe in 500 — when someone runs the 100-meter dash in 8.99 seconds?

“In order to answer this question, you have to think like a sprinter. And sprinters believe that — someday — somebody will run the 100 meters and the clock will read 0.00.” Ato Boldon tells me this over the telephone. Boldon is now known as a track analyst for NBC and CBS, but he’s also a four-time Olympic medalist and the fastest man the island of Trinidad has ever produced (in 1998, he ran the 100 in 9.86). “And when a sprinter thinks like that, he’s not trying to trick himself. It’s how you have to think. This idea of human limitation is exactly what we’re competing against. It’s thinking about running a 8.99 that gets you down to 9.58. That’s how it works.”

Obviously, it’s impossible to talk about sprinting records and human potentiality without mentioning steroids. It’s more than the rhino in the room; it’s possibly the reason the WR in the 100 didn’t move for 15 years and then started falling like an air conditioner shoved out an open window. But for the sake of this specific discussion, PEDs don’t really matter. It isn’t a moral (or even competitive) issue. The question is not what speed a man should run; the question is how fast a man could run, through any means necessary. Steroids tend to be a secondary issue for track fans, principally for two reasons:

• 1. Though nobody will ever talk about it on the record, PEDs have become an integral part of sprinting. It’s pretty much like cycling: There’s just an unspoken “everybody does it” concession. There are sanctioned rules, and athletes get penalized if they get caught breaking them. But nobody really worries about this, simply because …
• 2. People who love track want to see guys run fast. That’s the whole game. There is nothing else. The sport is not built on personal rivalries or constructed purity or nationalism or the import of tradition; the sport is solely driven by the excitement of people doing what no one has done before. In this one specific instance, the ends truly do justify the means. And unlike other sports, there’s no rhetoric or concern about steroids warping statistics, because the only stat that matters is who’s fastest right now. Once a record has been broken, it instantly becomes meaningless. Not even track historians use comparative times as a way to establish greatness. Easy example: Which of these men was the greatest sprinter — Jesse Owens (who won the 1936 Olympics with a time of 10.3), Carl Lewis (whose career best in the 100 was 9.86), or Leroy Burrell (who ran a 9.85)? Track and field is about running fast today. It’s a bottom-line endeavor.

This is not to say that steroids don’t make debates about human speed complex, because they do. Around the same time Ben Johnson ran his (then unthinkable) 9.83, Florence Griffith-Joyner destroyed the women’s 100-meter mark with a 10.49, and that record has not been seriously challenged in the 23 years since. Was something happening with PEDs in the late 1980s that has since been removed from the sport? Why do men keep getting faster, but women do not? These are questions that science cannot seem to answer (or even guess at).

“Bolt’s 9.58 is so low that perhaps no one gets close to it for a very long time, just like Flo-Jo’s record,” says Boldon. “But scientists are always wrong about this stuff. Scientists once believed that if a man ran a four-minute mile, his lungs would explode.”

The scientific understanding of sprinting is pretty immature,” concedes Peter Weyand, and — since Weyand has become the de facto American expert on the science of sprinting — that tells you just how mysterious this phenomenon is. A physiologist and biomechanist at Southern Methodist University, Weyand specializes in terrestrial locomotion; while at Harvard in the ’90s, he directed experiments at Concord Field Station, a facility where researchers regularly placed animals such as cheetahs,¹ wolverines, and kangaroos on treadmills to understand the mechanics of movement. Now 50, Weyand was also a fairly swift runner in his younger days, having run the 100-yard dash in 10.8 as a high school student. “The one thing about sprinting we all understand is that speed comes from how hard the runner’s foot hits the ground. Someone like Bolt is hitting the ground with 1,000 pounds of force, and we just don’t how he does that. For example, we have a very accurate understanding of how much weight someone can lift — we can take a person’s frame and his muscle mass and accurately estimate how much weight he’ll be able to bench press. But world-class sprinters deliver twice as much force as our estimates indicate, and we don’t know why.”

With Bolt, there’s also a second component: Height. While most world-class sprinters are short, Bolt is 6-foot-5 and his stride is an insane 2.44 meters long. When Bolt ran 9.58 in Berlin, he needed only 41 strides to traverse those 100 meters; the man who placed second, 5-foot-11-inch Tyson Gay (who still managed an incredible 9.71), needed 44½ strides. This has led to a popular pet theory about the future of sprinting: Bolt has the proportions and mechanics of a conventional sprinter, but he comes with an inordinately long skeleton. So what would happen if an even taller man were able to move with this kind of fluidity? What if someone with Kevin Garnett’s 7-foot frame moved as naturally as Bolt does at 6-foot-5? Would this hypothetical supersprinter be able to travel 100 meters in only 33 strides? Might sprinting become dominated by sleek, long-stepping giants?

Perhaps. But probably not.

“Being tall is really a disadvantage,” says Weyand. “Bolt is just a freak. Generally, the smaller you are, the stronger you are in relation to your weight. Bolt defies the laws of biology in terms of his start. He’s good out of the blocks, and he shouldn’t be. It’s so strange because Tyson Gay is basically as fast as Bolt once they hit full speed.”

The idea that Bolt’s height is his not-so-secret weapon makes sense geometrically, but not in practicality — he seems to be the only person who somehow benefits from this “disadvantage.” Francis Obikwelu (the 2004 Olympic silver medalist for Portugal) is almost 6-5 himself, and he once ran an impressive 9.86 — but he simply can’t turn his legs over² as quickly as Bolt. His length gets in the way. For whatever the reason, Bolt is flat-out superior at every aspect of high-speed locomotion — stride length, stride power, and the amount of time it takes to reach his top speed. It’s almost like he was designed to do this by a track-obsessed God.

Joe Strummer argued that the future is unwritten, and he’ll be correct about that forever. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try. Is there an irrefutable dead end to the 100-meter dash? Is there a speed at which a human body would just break down and disintegrate, no different than a machine pushed beyond the capacity of its individual components? Some have been arguing “yes” for years. Reza Noubary, a professor of mathematics, computer science, and statistics at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, has estimated “with 95 percent confidence” that the ultimate time for the 100-meter dash is 9.44. That number seems as good a guess as anything else. But if Noubary is correct, it would force us to accept a depressing, unreliable notion — it would essentially mean we’re about 25 years away from the pinnacle of human performance. It would mean that most of us will see the fastest man that could ever exist within our own lifetimes. And something about that just seems unlikely. Beyond the (pretty clear) evidence that people are getting bigger, faster, and stronger at the same time, there’s also been a massive uptick in cultural motivation: There has never been a time when being the fastest man in the world³ was worth so much money (particularly in the 100 meters, where the difference in notoriety between who’s no. 1 and no. 2 is especially vast).

“I wouldn’t take 9.0 off the table,” says Weyand. “Scientists don’t like making these kinds of predictions, and for good reason. A world record is the most extreme fringe of performance, and weird things happens at those fringes. I need to take off my scientist hat to make that statement and just speak as the Average Joe. But my gut feeling is that it will probably happen in our lifetime, and that feeling is driven by the incentives of modern sports.”

Boldon is less confidant than Weyand; he says he’d bet against a man running 9.0 in the next 40 years, based on the premise that “a pen is harder to refine than a tractor.” The race is short and the moving parts are minimal — at some point, you simply run out of details to improve upon. For a more personal perspective, I e-mailed Tyson Gay (who was nice enough to return my e-mail on the same day he underwent surgery for a torn hip labrum). Gay is the fastest American of all time, having run a 9.69 in the 100 (he’s also the first man to break all three magic barriers within the sprints — he’s run under 10 seconds in the 100, under 20 seconds in the 200, and under 45 seconds in the 400). I posed him two simple questions: (1) If you ran a perfect race under perfect conditions, what time do you think you’d run, and (2) when you’re an old man, how low do you think the world record in the 100 meters will be? His response was rather curious:

I think with everything perfect I possibly could run 9.4, hahahaha. I know that sounds crazy but just being honest. I think the record will be in the 9.4 to 9.3 [range]. Maybe 9.2 range, and that’s only if people can grasp and believe that’s possible. All about the mind.

What’s so interesting about this answer is the dissonance between Gay’s self-perception and his perception of the world at large. He believes he could run almost .3 of a second faster than he ever has — yet he also assumes that specific time is almost the top of the mountain, even 50 years from now. When I read this e-mail to Boldon, he laughed with an immediate sense of recognition. “Typical sprinter narcissism,” said Boldon. “I could run a 9.4, but nobody could run a 9.2.” Even sprinters don’t understand what they do (or how they do it). In an era in which science is able to explain and predict almost everything, it’s amazing how little we know about the potential of rudimentary movement. Sprinting has represented half of the “fight or flight” instinct for the totality of human existence, yet we still have no idea of our true limitations … which explains why track and field will always matter, even if no one in America seems to care.

Chuck Klosterman is the author of six books. His novel The Visible Man will be released in October.Similar Posts:

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5x
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Extended sleep improves the athletic performance of collegiate basketball players

Stanford study is the first to document how sleep extension affects the performance of actively competing athletes

DARIEN, Ill. – A study in the July 1 issue of the journal SLEEP shows that sleep extension is beneficial to athletic performance, reaction time, vigor, fatigue and mood in collegiate basketball players. The study is the first to document sleep extension and the athletic performance of actively competing athletes.

Results of objective measurements show that the mean total sleep time per night during sleep extension was 110.9 minutes longer than at baseline. Indices of athletic performance specific to basketball were measured after every practice to assess changes in performance. Speed during 282-foot sprints improved significantly from 16.2 seconds at baseline to 15.5 seconds after sleep extension, and shooting accuracy increased significantly by nine percent on both free throws and three-point field goals. Subjects also reported improved overall ratings of physical and mental well-being during practices and games.

“Following multiple weeks of sleep extension, elite athletes demonstrated improvements in specific indicators of basketball athletic performance including higher shooting percentages and faster sprint times,” said lead author Cheri D. Mah, MS, researcher at the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Laboratory in Stanford, Calif. “Subjects also demonstrated faster reaction time, decreased levels of daytime sleepiness, and mood improvements.”

The study involved 11 healthy students on the Stanford University men’s varsity basketball team and was conducted during two basketball seasons from 2005 to 2008. Participants had a mean age of 19 years and an average height of about six feet and four inches. Eight of the players were guards, two were forwards and one was a center.

Total sleep time was measured objectively by actigraphy. The players maintained their habitual sleep-wake schedule for a baseline period of two to four weeks during the NCAA basketball season, sleeping for an average of less than seven hours per night. The following period of sleep extension lasted five to seven weeks, during which the participants obtained as much nocturnal sleep as possible with a minimum goal of 10 hours in bed per night. Objective mean total sleep time during sleep extension was nearly 8.5 hours per night.

Participants shot 10 free throws from 15 feet, making an average of 7.9 shots at baseline and 8.8 shots at the end of the sleep extension period. They also attempted 15 three-point field goals, making an average of 10.2 shots at baseline and 11.6 shots after sleep extension. The timed sprint involved running from baseline to half-court and back to baseline, then the full 94-foot length of the court and back to baseline. Reaction time, levels of daytime sleepiness, and mood were monitored using the Psychomotor Vigilance Task, Epworth Sleepiness Scale and Profile of Mood States.

Mah said that she was especially intrigued to find that sleep extension was associated with improvements in diverse basketball skills.

“It was interesting to note that sleep extension significantly improved different measures of physical performance in basketball from shooting percentages to sprinting times,” she said.

According to Mah, an athlete’s nightly sleep requirement should be considered integral to attaining peak performance in all levels of sports. She offered these tips to help athletes improve their performance by maximizing their sleep:

• Prioritize sleep as a part of your regular training regimen.
• Extend nightly sleep for several weeks to reduce your sleep debt before competition.
• Maintain a low sleep debt by obtaining a sufficient amount of nightly sleep (seven to nine hours for adults, nine or more hours for teens and young adults).
• Keep a regular sleep-wake schedule, going to bed and waking up at the same times every day.
• Take brief 20-30 minute naps to obtain additional sleep during the day, especially if drowsy.

Mah presented preliminary results from this study at SLEEP 2007, the 21st annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, in Minneapolis, Minn. The results are consistent with similar research she has performed at Stanford involving men and women who compete in other sports such as football, tennis, and swimming.

###

Although this was not an industry supported study, Philips Respironics loaned actigraphy devices to the study investigators.

Learn more about sleep and athletic performance from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine on the Sleep Education Blog at http://sleepeducation.blogspot.com/search/label/athletic%20performance.Similar Posts:

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5x
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10-95 lbs overhead anyhow
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Yesterday the water heater at the house died. No we did not have a memorial service we just decided to move on. This morning, I went to Lowes to get a new unit as I was told they offer same day installs (thanks Kurt).

Once the install was completed, and the guy was standing im my garage, the question popped in my head…Do I Tip This Guy?  I gave him water, offered him food, beer and candy form the kid’s candy bowl.  I turned on the radio for him.  I offered to help lift the water heater.  I fetched the tools that he inadvertently left in the other room.  sadly, however, I did not tip him.

I did not tip the guys that hooked up the dryer last year, nor did I tip the cable guy.  I tip the guy that cuts my kid’s hair but I do not tip the dry cleaner.  Of course I tip the people that serve food…even at a buffet, for goodness’ sake.  I do not tip the at the liquor store (that guy would make a fortune if I did), nor do I tip for fast food (maybe I should and that would cut down my consumption of that garbage.

While typing I was thinking that I tip delivery guys, but that is not always the case.  Yes for pizza (weighs less than a pound) but I did not tip the UPS guy that carried the 2 pood KB (73 lbs).  This tipping stuff is out of hand.  I did get a tip from Helio’s personal trainer when he was in town (name dropper) and you are welcome to tip me too.  I think I will ask my wife for tips going forward (OK, no more free-form writing, stay on taks)!

What to do, what to do?  I found the article below and now I will at least tell Lowes how professional he was and how he did a great job on the install.  Don’t judge me!  Going forward, I will tip EVERYONE (except that guy at the liquor store of course)

But what about people who perform services in our homes: The plumber and window washers? The movers who haul a sofa up two flights of stairs, or the kid who brings us a pizza? And what about carpenters and painters who can begin to feel like family during big remodeling projects? Ask a dozen people whom they tip and why, and you’re likely to get a dozen different answers. Some routinely give extra cash to anyone who helps them out; some never do. (In the way that opposites attract, they are occasionally married to each other.)

The “rules” for tipping for household services appear totally arbitrary. Particularly this time of year — think fall planting, interior sprucing-up and pre-holiday deliveries — generosity can mount up fast.

“Call me old-fashioned, but I always tip the people who come to my house to perform a service,” says Lilly Tijerina, an information security specialist in Virginia. “I believe that most of the people that do the service type of jobs are not highly compensated, so I always give them a tip. I just had some furniture delivered and I tipped both of the delivery men. I had the windows washed earlier this year by a crew of three — the owner and two guys. It came to $350. I tipped the two workers $20 each, not the owner.”

An opposing point of view:

“No, I do not tip those who mow my lawn, clean my gutters, wash my windows, deliver furniture, fix the furnace, renovate the kitchen, upgrade the wiring, et cetera,” says Cyndy Gilbert, of Adelphi, Md., a management analyst at the federal Office of Personnel Management. “If so, I’d be dead broke from all the tipping.”

Are they pre-tipped?

Some tipping rules and regulations

During the holiday season, some homeowners put cash or gifts out for sanitation workers or slip some cookies to their faithful letter carrier.

Tipping government employees can be problematic. Many jurisdictions have regulations that bar their workers from soliciting or receiving money or gifts for doing their salaried jobs. On the other hand, many counties and cities contract out sanitation services to private firms, meaning that trash collectors are not government employees at all, and thus free to pocket tips.

Private companies may have their own rules. For example, Jerry Hardebeck, regional director of public-sector services for Waste Management, which provides garbage collection services in Seattle, said the company has a policy of allowing drivers to accept gratuities as long as they are not alcoholic beverages and not in exchange for taking extra trash.

The U.S. Postal Service prohibits letter carriers from accepting alcohol, money or any gift costing over $20, and requires that cakes, cookies or other goodies be shared with co-workers, says spokesman Gerry McKiernan.

Plumbers and electricians, she reasons, “charge out-of-this-world prices for their services, their travel time and at such rates I’m sure they’ve already included a hefty tip for themselves anyway.”

Spencer Levine, of suburban Maryland, communications director for a nonprofit organization, is somewhere in the murky middle.

“We tip the pizza-delivery guy and the kids who shovel snow from the driveway, even if they don’t do an especially good job, because they are kids. I never viewed house painting as a service for which I would tip, in the same way I am not going to tip Herson’s Honda when I buy a car.”

After a pause he asks, “Are we doing something wrong?”

Perhaps we will find clarity among those working closely in the home-service industry? No such luck.

“Typically, plumbers don’t get tipped, but painters do. There is no rhyme or reason for it,” says Angie Hicks, who runs Angie’s List, a nationwide series of local rating guides for an array of domestic services. “One thing to keep in mind is if they’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty and provided exceptional service: If they came out in the middle of the night if your toilet were overflowing.”

Gratitude attitudes


There are no definite rules about tipping for home services, but we found these widely shared principles:• Tip workers who go above and beyond in performing a service. 

• Offer drinks or snacks to hard workers, especially those doing tough jobs in grueling weather.

• Call or write the employer to commend a job particularly well done.

For lawn-care crews on contract, Hicks suggests “maybe something at the end of the summer, $20 to $50 or the price of one mowing. And don’t forget about the little things,” such as a glass of lemonade.

Sarah Smock, marketing director for Merry Maids, the nation’s largest residential housecleaning service, says relatively few clients tip during the year; 17 percent regularly give their weekly or twice-monthly cleaners an extra $5 to $10 each per visit, although “there is more tipping at the holidays.”

Rewarding a contractor — who is often handsomely paid — or his employees is a sometime thing, says Chris Landis, president of the Washington area chapter of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry and president of a District of Columbia construction company bearing his name.

Drawing the line

Clients often won’t tip him, as owner of the company, but will reward his contractors and laborers in about 40 percent of projects, he says.

“I’ve had customers take me out to dinner, buy me a bottle of wine, but the real tips go to the guys they see every day. I don’t necessarily encourage it, and I hope it’s just a tip, not for work they are doing on the side, like, ‘While you’re here, can you shave this door or do something?’ It adds up, big time.”

Often, tipping is a simple expression of niceness, says Peter Post, great-grandson of manners doyenne Emily Post, author of four etiquette books and a believer in the “above-and-beyond” maxim: “If someone hauls a couch up three flights of stairs and then moves four pieces of furniture, you want to give them a tip, some lunch if they are there all day, cold drinks. Saying thank you is good. So is doing a letter of appreciation.”

But he rarely offers extra cash. “That’s not what this is about. With plumbers, electricians, carpenters, people who build an addition, the best thing you can do is pay them right away.”

Ann Brown, former Consumer Product Safety Commission chairman, has her own system. She tipped a carpet cleaner who “came quickly, worked well and had a really great attitude,” and she always gives the man who brings Chinese or Indian food $10 because “I am sure he doesn’t get paid that much.”

Her electrician just gets a cup of coffee — “he’s a professional and I think it would be demeaning” to tip him, and the crews that maintain her lawn and pool don’t get gratuities because they work on contract.

The best all-around tippers are often those who rely on the kindness of others.

“I tip all the time,” says bartender Madeline DeLisle, who lives in Washington, D.C. “Plumbers, the TV installer, movers — $25 for each person on the crew. I give $5 or $10 for a food-delivery order. If mail is left at the front desk and someone on the building staff brings it to my door, I tip for that. I don’t know anything about technical stuff, so if the maintenance man helps me by changing a washer or a fuse, I tip for that, too.”

Oh, yes, and she always gives to the building’s staff holiday fund.

“Typically, plumbers don’t get tipped, but painters do. There is no rhyme or reason for it.”

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Can cutting carbohydrates from your diet make you live longer?

By Jerome Burne
Last updated at 9:05 AM on 26th October 2010

It’s an extraordinary claim. But scientists say you can extend your life AND stay fit throughout old age – just by a change of diet that switches on your youth gene…

For centuries man has dreamed of being immortal, fixated on tales of magic fountains that restore youth, the rejuvenating power of a vampire’s bite or asses’ milk.

More recently came claims that injections of monkey glands or hormone supplements would make us live longer.

But so far, what’s actually worked are ­medical advances such as vaccines and better living conditions. Over the past century these have boosted average life expectancy by far more than 50 per cent, from 50 to 88.

The problem is that this longevity does not mean a healthier life. Indeed, thanks to chronic diseases such as diabetes and arthritis, we’re becoming like the Struldbruggs — the miserable characters in Gulliver’s Travels who were immortal, but still suffered from all the ­diseases of old age.

Gradually they lost their teeth, their hair, their sense of smell and taste. All their diseases got worse and their memory faded, so they had no idea who their friends and relations were. At funerals they wept because they couldn’t die.

But now a U.S. geneticist is thought to have discovered the secret to a long life, full of health and energy. And the answer might be as simple as cutting down on carbohydrates.

Professor Cynthia Kenyon, whom many experts believe should win the Nobel Prize for her research into ageing, has discovered that the carbohydrates we eat — from bananas and potatoes to bread, pasta, biscuits and cakes — directly affect two key genes that govern youthfulness and longevity.

She made her remarkable breakthrough after studying roundworms, specifically the C.elegans, a worm just a millimetre in size that lives in soil in temperate climates all over the world.

By tweaking some of their genes she has been able to help these worms live up to six times longer than normal. ‘Not only that, but we also know how to make them stay healthy all that time as well,’ she told an audience at the Wellcome Collection in London earlier this month.

So, what do worms have to do with us?

A great deal, it seems. Professor Kenyon’s work has been successfully repeated in labs around the world — the genes she found controlling ageing in worms do the same thing in rats and mice, probably monkeys, and there are signs they are active in humans, too.

This work has revolutionised our understanding of ageing, explains Jeff Holly, professor of clinical sciences at Bristol University.

‘Ten years ago we thought ageing was probably the result of a slow decay, a sort of rusting,’ he says. ‘But Professor Kenyon has shown that it’s not about wear and tear, but instead it is controlled by genes. That opens the possibility of slowing it down with drugs.’

So how does a worm hold the key to human ageing?

At 18 days old the average roundworm is flabby, ­sluggish and wrinkled. Two days later it will probably be dead.

However, Professor Kenyon, based at the University of California, San Francisco, found that damping down the activity of just one of their genes had a dramatic effect.

‘Instead of dying at about 20 days, our first set of mutant worms carried on living to more than 40 days,’ she says.

‘And they weren’t sluggish and worn out — they behaved like youngsters. It was a real shock. In human terms it was the equivalent of talking to someone you thought was about 30 and finding they were actually 60.’

With more sophisticated genetic manipulation, she now has some worms that have lived for an astonishing 144 days. An increase of that proportion would allow humans to live to 450.

Scientists already knew how to make laboratory animals live longer and healthier lives — you just cut back their calories to about three-quarters of their normal amount.

It’s not a practical solution for humans, because you feel cold and hungry all the time.

But what Professor Kenyon found out was why ­drastically reducing calories has such a remarkable effect.

She discovered that it changed the way two crucial genes behaved. It turned down the gene that controls insulin, which in turn switched on another gene, which acted like an elixir of life.

‘We jokingly called the first gene the Grim Reaper because when it’s switched on, the lifespan is fairly short,’ she explains.

The ­second ‘elixir’ gene seems to bring all the anti-ageing benefits — its proper name is DAF 16, but it was quickly nicknamed ‘Sweet Sixteen’ because it turned the worms into teenagers.

‘It sends out instructions to a whole range of repair and renovation genes,’ says Professor Kenyon.

‘Your supply of natural anti­oxidants goes up, damping down damaging free radicals.’

These are the ­compounds produced by our body and the environment, which are linked to a host of diseases from ­cancer to Alzheimer’s.

The Sweet Sixteen gene also ‘boosts compounds that make sure the skin and muscle-building ­proteins are working properly, the immune system becomes more active to fight infection and genes that are active in cancer get turned off,’ she adds.

Kenyon had stumbled on the genetic equivalent of Shangri-La, the fictional valley where people could live for years without really ageing.

Discovering the Grim Reaper gene has prompted the professor to ­dramatically alter her own diet, ­cutting right back on carbohydrates. That’s because carbs make your body produce more insulin (to mop up the extra blood sugar carbs ­produce); and more insulin means a more active Grim Reaper.

So the vital second gene, the ‘elixir’ one, won’t get turned on. To test this, last year she added a tiny amount of ­sugary glucose to the normal diet of some of her worms that had had their genes engineered so they were living much longer, healthier lives.

‘The effect was remarkable,’ she says. ‘The sugary glucose blocked the “youthful” genes and they lost most of the health gains.’

But was this just a special feature of the roundworm or did we all have it?

Following Kenyon’s lead, other researchers started looking for the Grim Reaper/ Sweet Sixteen combination in other animals — and of course in humans. They found it.

One clue came from a small remote community of dwarves living in northern Ecuador who are cancer-free. They are missing the part of the Grim Reaper gene that controls a hormone called insulin-like growth factor. The downside is they only grow to 4ft tall because the hormone is needed for growth.

But this missing bit of the Grim Reaper gene also means they don’t develop cancer and are less likely to suffer from heart disease or obesity.

Professor Jeff Holly, who specialises in insulin-like growth factor, confirms that it is linked to cancer of the prostate, breast and colon.

In fact raised insulin levels, triggered by high carbohydrate ­consumption, could be what ­connects many of our big killers.

Research is at its early stage, but raised insulin triggers an increase in cholesterol production in the liver, makes the walls of blood vessels ­contract so blood pressure goes up and stimulates the release of fats called triglycerides (linked to heart disease).

Professor Kenyon’s work is ­creating a wave of excitement among drug companies who’ve been researching molecules that will damp down the Grim Reaper and boost Sweet ­Sixteen, giving us the benefits of very low-calorie diets without the ­penalties. So far, none is very near being approved.

One way to reduce insulin levels is to exercise, which makes you more sensitive to it, which in turn means you need less of it. It also gives another health benefit in a surprising way. Exercise actually increases the level of damaging free radicals which stimulates the body to produce more protective anti-oxidants.

So should we all be trying to cut back on carbs to reduce our insulin levels?

It is a suggestion that flies in the face of 30 years of health advice to have a lower fat intake and eat plenty of long-lasting complex carbo­hydrates to keep the body supplied with energy.

There is no denying the extra­ordinary breakthrough Kenyon’s work represents and she ‘deserves the Nobel Prize for her findings about ageing’, says David Gems, deputy director of the Institute for Healthy Ageing at University ­College, London.

However he isn’t convinced we know enough for us all to start eating a low-carb diet.

‘The exact role of insulin in health and ageing is a promising and fascinating area,’ he says. ‘But I’m not sure the evidence for the benefit of cutting carbohydrates and keeping insulin levels down is strong enough yet.’

But Professor Kenyon herself doesn’t need convincing.

‘Carbo­hydrates, and especially refined ones like sugar, make you produce lots of extra insulin. I’ve been keeping my intake really low ever since I discovered this.

‘I’ve cut out all starch such as potatoes, noodles, rice, bread and pasta. Instead I have salads, but no sweet dressing, lots of olive oil and nuts, tons of green vegetables along with cheese, chicken and eggs.

‘I’ll have a hamburger without a bun and fish without batter or chips. I eat some fruit every day, but not too much and almost no processed food. I stay away from sweets, except 80 per cent chocolate.’

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