Indianapolis CrossFit Affiliate - TitanFit

Thursday 100902

Herb — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:52:59 +0000

Workout

Filthy Fifty!

By ANDREW POLLACK

Bears emerge from months of hibernation with their muscles largely intact. Not so for people, who, if bedridden that long, would lose so much muscle they would have trouble standing.

Why muscles wither with age is captivating a growing number of scientists, drug and food companies, let alone aging baby boomers who, despite having spent years sweating in the gym, are confronting the body’s natural loss of muscle tone over time.

Comparisons between age groups underline the muscle disparity: An 80-year-old might have 30 percent less muscle mass than a 20-year-old. And strength declines even more than mass. Weight-lifting records for 60-year-old men are 30 percent lower than for 30-year-olds; for women the drop-off is 50 percent.

With interest high among the aging, the market potential for maintaining and rebuilding muscle mass seems boundless. Drug companies already are trying to develop drugs that can build muscles or forestall their weakening without the notoriety of anabolic steroids. Food giants like Nestlé and Danone are exploring nutritional products with the same objective.

In addition, geriatric specialists, in particular, are now trying to establish the age-related loss of muscles as a medical condition under the name sarcopenia, from the Greek for loss of flesh. Simply put, sarcopenia is to muscle what osteoporosis is to bone.

“In the future, sarcopenia will be known as much as osteoporosis is now,” said Dr. Bruno Vellas, president of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics.

Researchers involved in the effort say doctors and patients need to be more aware that muscle deterioration is a major reason the elderly lose mobility and cannot live independently.

“A doctor sees old people who are shrinking and getting weak, but there is no medical terminology that’s been created and made uniform to allow the doctor to make a diagnosis, look at possible causes, and make a treatment plan,” said Dr. Stephanie A. Studenski, a professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.

Of course, commercial interests are at play as well. “If you are trying to sell drugs, you want to have a very clear criterion for diagnosing the problem and for endpoints to treat it,” said Dr. Thomas Lang of the University of California, San Francisco, who is working on techniques for diagnosing sarcopenia.

A task force of academic and industry scientists met in Rome last November and in Albuquerque last month and has submitted a proposed definition of sarcopenia for publication in a medical journal. The meeting received financial support from several drug companies and food companies.

Underscoring the focus on sarcopenia, four European medical societies proposed a somewhat different definition, and Dr. Studenski is developing yet another.

Whatever the definition, experts say, sarcopenia affects about 10 percent of those over 60, with higher rates as age advances. One study estimated that disability caused by sarcopenia accounted for $18.5 billion in direct medical costs in 2000, equivalent to 1.5 percent of the nation’s health care spending that year.

Causes of the loss of muscle mass or strength might include hormonal changes, sedentary lifestyles, oxidative damage, infiltration of fat into muscles, inflammation and resistance to insulin. Some problems stem from the brain and nervous system, which activate the muscles.

Experts say the best approach to restoring or maintaining muscle mass and strength is exercise, particularly resistance training.

The National Institute on Aging is now sponsoring a controlled trial to test whether exercise can prevent disability in largely sedentary people, age 70 to 89. There is also some early evidence that nutrition, like vitamin D or high levels of protein, might help. “At this point, what we can say is that older people are at risk for eating too little protein for adequate muscle preservation,” said Dr. Elena Volpi of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

Pharmaceutical companies are paying more attention to muscles, a part of the body they once largely ignored. A year ago, for instance, GlaxoSmithKline hired William Evans, a leading academic expert on sarcopenia, to run a new muscle research unit.

But with sarcopenia still not established as a treatable condition, “there is no real defined regulatory path as to how one would get approved in this area,” said R. Alan Ezekowitz, a research executive at Merck.

So for now, many companies are focusing on better defined illnesses like muscular dystrophy and cachexia, the rapid muscle wasting that can accompany cancer or other diseases.

One problem is that academic researchers and drug companies initially viewed sarcopenia as primarily a loss of muscle mass, a direct analogy to bone density in osteoporosis. Muscle mass can be measured by the same scans used for bone density.

But some studies have shown that strength, like gripping force, or muscle function, as measured, say, by walking speed, can be more important than mass in predicting problems seniors might have.

“There’s a lot more to the story than simply having a lot of muscle tissue,” said Brian C. Clark, an expert at Ohio University. “Most of the drug stuff has been targeting muscle mass.”

So the definition is shifting to include muscle strength and function. The academic-industry task force recommends testing whether a person can walk four meters, or about 13 feet, in four seconds.

That can be tested by any doctor, without the special equipment needed to measure muscle mass or strength, said Roger A. Fielding of Tufts University, a leader of the task force.

Experts say that to win approval from regulators and reimbursement from insurers, a drug must do more than merely improve mass or strength. It must, for example, improve walking ability or prevent people from falling.

Or perhaps it could restore mobility faster after a person is bedridden. Older people can lose so much muscle during a prolonged hospital stay that they have to move to a nursing home.

Demonstrating such benefits and cost savings would help counter criticism that doctors and drug companies are trying to turn a natural consequence of aging into a disease.

“If you can get out of a nursing home in three weeks instead of three months, wouldn’t we say it is a useful thing?” said Dr. Studenski, who consults for drug companies.

Efforts to develop muscle drugs are still in early stages, and there have been setbacks.

But for inspiration, researchers can look to the bears, though scientists have no definitive answer to the animals’ youthful secret.

Moreover, a study that has tracked 3,000 people for 50 years found that about 20 of them, now in their 80s, have not lost muscle mass.

“Maintaining the muscle is possible,” said Dr. Luigi Ferrucci of the National Institute on Aging, who directs the study, called the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. “We just don’t know the right formula yet.”

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Wednesday 100901

Herb — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:48:18 +0000

I know, I know, your arms are TIRED. Good, today we run!

Workout
Running Intervals!

Tomorrow…Filthy 50!

Speed Training’s Dirty Secret

by Martin Rooney

Published: August 23, 2010

Acceleration is Sport

Think of a sport – any sport. How often do you see an athlete sprinting at top speed for 40 yards? How about 400 yards?

The answer is…almost never. A high school basketball court is 28 yards long. To first base in baseball, 30 yards; softball, 20 yards; volleyball to the net, 10 yards. How often does a football player actually run most of the field? Only when occasionally something really good…or really bad is happening!

What you do see in sports’ competition is the majority of athletes accelerating and decelerating over and over, and over again. Unfortunately, as we will discover, that isn’t what all training sessions for those sports look like. Before we get to the Dirty Secret of this article, let me share some interesting information about the ability to accelerate.

Training mythology has often boasted that the some of the fastest 10m to 30m sprints in history have been performed by Olympic weight lifters and throwers. How can they be as fast or faster than a world-class sprinter? The solution becomes apparent when we examine what makes great acceleration take place. Acceleration requires huge force production over a longer ground contact than at top speed. Because of this, maximal strength is important for bodyweight. The shot putter or lifter may have the edge here. We also know that stride frequency and stride length are slower and shorter than at top speed. Because of this, the world-class sprinter cannot take advantage yet of their superiorly firing nervous system and subsequent greater turnover. Upper body strength is also critical to great acceleration. Improved arm strength and mechanics are more important to driving the athlete forward than at top speed. This could also give the thrower or lifter the edge. Now as the race goes on, acceleration becomes less and less as the athletes approach their top speed. At the 30m mark, most athletes should be at 95% or more of their top speed. Here’s where the sprinter starts passing the shot putter.

The moral of the story? Your athletes have to run the best 10 yards at the beginning of the race. They have to be fast at “getting going” – that’s where the game is played. This is why I’ve defended the 40 yard dash (and the 10 yard portion especially) as a predictive test that tells me a lot about an athlete.

Because of tests like my cherished 40 (21 4.3’s at the NFL combine over the last 9 years), however, many athletes only think of acceleration in terms of running straight ahead for a short distance. In reality, acceleration can take place in any direction. In actual play, athletes accelerate forward, backward, sideways, and diagonally. Many think acceleration occurs only from a static start. On the contrary, acceleration can also take place from a moving start at any number of speeds. For instance, a receiver in motion may have to accelerate quickly or decelerate quickly on the football field. Both of these are forms of acceleration, and both can be improved with proper training.

As I describe acceleration, I’ll use the classic training situation of forward acceleration from a static start as a common way to describe muscles and biomechanics. Remember that this isn’t always what happens on the sport’s field and that we have to prepare our athletes accordingly.

There are a number of physical and technical characteristics that can lead to poor acceleration. The first and most important characteristic is relative body strength. How strong an athlete is for how much they weigh is directly proportional to how well they can accelerate. Since acceleration is an athlete overcoming their own inertia with the force they produce, the leaner (less body fat) and the stronger they are at that weight are predictors of how well they will accelerate.

To look at the situation generally, the major muscle difference between acceleration and top speed, is that the quads are used more in acceleration, and the hamstrings and hip flexors are more utilized during top speed. The most important areas to strengthen for acceleration are the gluteal and quadriceps muscles, the calves and muscles of the upper body, especially the anterior deltoid. Maximal strength is important here because ground contact times are much longer during acceleration than at top speed. Since there’s a greater amount of time to produce force, the more absolutely strong a muscle coupled with great relative body strength, the better the acceleration. For acceleration training, more maximal weights can be used in exercises such as the squat, hip thrusts, lunge walks, chin ups, calf raises, incline bench and step ups.

We know that acceleration has a longer ground contact, smaller stride length, less stride frequency, different technique and teaching cues and relies differently on the muscles of the body when compared to top speed. Since there are different muscle actions during acceleration and top speed, it is logical that there will be different cues used when teaching technique. For instance, for force production at foot contact, acceleration should be taught as a “pushing” motion.

For good acceleration, keep the center of gravity low and forward while trying to push out as long strides as possible. It’s difficult for any athlete to learn to “lean forward,” genetically we’re programmed to keep our bodies from leaning forward and falling. (As explained in my Evolution Manifesto: You fell, a large ferocious animal ate you – we learned.) Driving arm action is also critical to proper acceleration. The athlete should draw in breath right before the acceleration and hold it for the first few steps. This will allow for a Valsavla maneuver and a subsequent better opportunity for your nervous system to produce force. This is all part of what makes it necessary to teach the skill of acceleration to your athletes.

Now for the Dirty Secret.

What you’ve just read is an opportunity to make your athletes faster, but this information alone could also make them more prone to injury!

We have more training information available than ever. We have more trainers training athletes than ever. Kids are starting training younger than ever. We have better equipment and scientific tools than ever. We have fitness screens, performance tests, and better supplements then ever. Why then, if everything was working according to plan, do we have more injuries than ever? Did you ever think about that as you chuck another plate onto the bar and have your kids take off haphazardly into another sprint?

Deceleration: Another “Expendable” in Training

To me, Deceleration Training is like getting 8 hours of sleep and eating right. We all know it’s important to the point of being potentially life threatening, but we still don’t do it as often as we should. Due to the fact I believe so strongly in deceleration, I felt compelled to title this piece as provocatively as possible in hopes it would be read and remind every trainer and coach that uses deceleration even less than they eat their broccoli.

Not sure exactly what Deceleration Training is? Here’s a metaphor to hammer home the point:

Let’s take a car, an athletically-challenged friend’s sturdy, dull kind of car. We’re going to remove the engine and replace it with a high performance engine built by the best racing engine designers in the business. The car is now going to look pretty much the same, but be phenomenally fast. Oh, with the addition of that monster Hemi engine, we’re also removing the brakes. Get in, buckle your seat belt, and enjoy the power and speed – until we need those brakes and crash.

Our athletes are crashing. And the injuries that are happening at an all-time rate just might be our fault! With the advent of the internet and sites like this, we have more information at our disposal than ever. We train them to be faster. We train them to be stronger. We “train in” incredible acceleration, powerful speed, heightened jumps. As we put those metaphorical high performance racing engines into their bodies, the forces that can cause injury increase. So, we need to train them to decelerate, to stop, to land jumps; we need to install high performance braking systems because unlike or natural tendencies to run and jump, we weren’t given the software programs for stopping, cutting and landing. The unchecked increase in non-contact ACL injuries confirms the escalating accident rate. Practice and training have to mimic the actual demands of the sport on the athlete – the kids have to stop, they have to land in an actual game. While it seems counter-intuitive, improving stopping speed and technique not only prevents injuries, but improves speed on the field.

The human body is not designed for modern sports. Stopping, cutting quickly while moving, landing from heights – these abilities are not built into our biomechanical systems. So we either stop playing sports (and we’re all out of jobs we like), or we start teaching our athletes how to control the tremendous forces that are teaching them to generate in these movements.

Studies show the techniques to slow down, stop and land, when taught and practiced are as high as 80%-90% effective in reducing the chance of injuries. Across genders, injury prevention and increased performance are built on proper deceleration and landing techniques. The techniques of deceleration are designed to reduce force, obviously, if you reduce force, you put less strain on the body. Remember, tremendous force, subsequently strain, is present every time an athlete incorrectly decelerates or incorrectly lands from a jump. The scary part is that can be thousands of times a season.

Every sport movement uses all three of these muscle functions:

Concentric contractions to create acceleration (or force production).
Isometric contractions to create stability.
Eccentric contractions to create deceleration (or force reduction).

Training and practices tend to focus on concentric functions, but eccentric contractions set up the concentric. To increase athletic performance and decrease injuries, we need to make eccentric training part of every practice. Deceleration techniques improve neuromuscular control, augment the structural integrity of connective tissue, and reduce forces the body was not built to handle. We can work the eccentric contraction in the weight room and on the field. The key is to pay attention to another critically important, yet often abused training variable, tempo.

The coaching profession generally doesn’t teach and practice deceleration or landing because we assume that kids know how to slow down, know how to stop, know how to land a jump. They don’t. In order to deal with the demands of modern sports on athletes’ bodies, we incorporate three elements into our training regimes.

Every drill has a start and a finish. Just watching the start of a sprint is the equivalent of just watching the start of the game. A coach needs to watch technique at the end of sprints as closely as at the beginning. Watch the landing of a jump. Watch the lowering process of a lift. Be there and be on them to finish and lower just as well as they start and press.
Teach force reduction, or deceleration, techniques and then continually correct technique. It takes more effort to change a learned bad technique than it does to insist on proper technique to begin with. Unfortunately, by high school most athletes have acquired some really bad deceleration techniques; demonstrate correct technique and insist on its practice.
Add tempo to your lifts. Not many athletes care about how much they can lower or how well they can land from a vertical or box jump. Start to value this as a coach and your athletes will start to value it too. Their knees, ankles, hips and wrists will thank you for it.

Estimates are that there are 200,000 ACL injuries alone in the United States each year. Estimated cost for treatment exceeds a billion dollars annually. Economically, how much might our sport insurance rates drop if we could prevent even a quarter of those injuries? How much more money would that give our programs? If good deceleration techniques can prevent a significant percentage of those injuries, how many of our athletes would be on the playing field, increasing their abilities and self-confidence, instead of in rehab?

I’ll never be so bold to think we can prevent ever injury. I also won’t make you believe that lifting and running are the sole mechanisms behind the injury rates. Yes, there’s still a ton we can fix about our training. And yes, we do want to improve the performance and ability of our kids We just need to focus on the whole picture and deceleration is one piece of that puzzle. We know that an athlete who can decelerate actually is faster and performs better on the playing field. Deceleration is a skill. It can be learned. For this learning to occur, it must be continually practiced. Time to start paying as much attention to the brakes as we do the engine.Similar Posts:

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Tuesday 100831

Herb — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:26:10 +0000

Workout
Press (5/3/1)

Mini MetCon
50 Wall Ball Shots

Making Soldiers Fit to Fight, Without the Situps

Soldiers at Fort Jackson, like Pvt. Alyssa Leggat, work on push-ups. The fitness regime involves more agility and balance training.
By JAMES DAO
Published: August 30, 2010

FORT JACKSON, S.C. — Dawn breaks at this, the Army’s largest training post, with the reliable sound of fresh recruits marching to their morning exercise. But these days, something looks different.

It’s 5:30 on a recent morning, and basic training is in progress at Fort Jackson, S.C. A new exercise regimen is “more whole body,” a platoon leader says.

That familiar standby, the situp, is gone, or almost gone. Exercises that look like pilates or yoga routines are in. And the traditional bane of the new private, the long run, has been downgraded.

This is the Army’s new physical-training program, which has been rolled out this year at its five basic training posts that handle 145,000 recruits a year. Nearly a decade in the making, its official goal is to reduce injuries and better prepare soldiers for the rigors of combat in rough terrain like Afghanistan.

But as much as anything, the program was created to help address one of the most pressing issues facing the military today: overweight and unfit recruits.

“What we were finding was that the soldiers we’re getting in today’s Army are not in as good shape as they used to be,” said Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, who oversees basic training for the Army. “This is not just an Army issue. This is a national issue.”

Excess weight is the leading reason the Army rejects potential recruits. And while that has been true for years, the problem has worsened as the waistlines of America’s youth have expanded. This year, a group of retired generals and admirals released a report titled “Too Fat to Fight.”

“Between 1995 and 2008, the proportion of potential recruits who failed their physicals each year because they were overweight rose nearly 70 percent,” the report concluded.

Though the Army screens out the seriously obese and completely unfit, it is still finding that many of the recruits who reach basic training have less strength and endurance than privates past. It is the legacy of junk food and video games, compounded by a reduction in gym classes in many high schools, Army officials assert.

As a result, it is harder for recruits to reach Army fitness standards, and more are getting injured along the way. General Hertling said that the percentage of male recruits who failed the most basic fitness test at one training center rose to more than one in five in 2006, up from just 4 percent in 2000. The percentages were higher for women.

Another study found that at one training center in 2002, 3 recruits suffered stress fractures of the pubic bone, but last year the number rose to 39. The reason, General Hertling said: not enough weight-bearing exercise and a diet heavy on sugared sodas and energy drinks but light in calcium and iron.

The new fitness regime tries to deal with all these problems by incorporating more stretching, more exercises for the abdomen and lower back, instead of the traditional situps, and more agility and balance training. It increases in difficulty more gradually. And it sets up a multiweek course of linked exercises, rather than offering discrete drills.

There are fewer situps, different kinds of push-ups and fewer long runs, which Army officials say are good for building strength and endurance but often lead to injuries. They also do not necessarily prepare soldiers for carrying heavy packs or sprinting short distances.

“We haven’t eliminated running,” General Hertling said. “But it’s trying to get away from that being the only thing we do.” (The new system does include plenty of sprinting.)

Some of the new routines would look familiar to a devotee of pilates, yoga or even the latest home workout regimens on DVD, with a variety of side twists, back bridges and rowinglike exercises. “It’s more whole body,” said First Lt. Tameeka Hayes, a platoon leader for a class of new privates at Fort Jackson. “No one who has done this routine says we’ve made it easier.”

The program was largely the brainchild of two former gym teachers who now run the Army Physical Fitness School based here. They are a military version of Click and Clack, finishing each other’s sentences and wisecracking with the alternating beat of gas-fired pistons.

One, Stephen Van Camp, is a former professional kick-boxer who unwittingly ran a marathon with a fractured ankle. “That’s not tough. That’s stupid,” he now says. The other, Frank Palkoska, is a former Army officer and West Point fitness instructor who adorns his office here with black-and-white photographs of 19th-century exercise classes and an assortment of retrograde equipment like medicine balls and wooden dumbbells.

“It’s back to the future,” Mr. Palkoska says before starting into a lament about the Xbox generation. “Technology is great, but it’s killing us.”

As he and Mr. Van Camp started developing what became a 434-page manual, they began by considering what combat soldiers do and came up with a checklist of things like throwing grenades and dodging gunfire.

Then they matched those needs with exercises. Some of those are already in use by the Army, but others are new and still others are drawn from century-old routines. There are drills that mimic climbing, that teach soldiers how to roll and that require swift lateral movements. Some are done in body armor.

The old style of physical training, he said, was less relevant to soldiers’ tasks, which entail lots of jumping, crouching and climbing. “What we did in the morning had nothing to do with what we did the rest of the day,” Mr. Palkoska said.

Under General Hertling, the new regimen will also include a makeover of the mess halls at its training bases. At Fort Jackson, there are more green leafy vegetables, less fried food, and milk instead of soda. The food line includes color-coded messages to encourage privates to eat low-fat entrees (marked in green). And there are other changes: no more assaulting tires with bayonets, but more time spent on rifle marksmanship and fighting with padded pugil sticks.

The trick now will be to push the program into the rest of the Army, where evidence suggests many soldiers are becoming overweight, particularly during or soon after deployments. The Army Training and Doctrine Command recently distributed the new fitness policy to the entire Army, officially replacing a physical fitness field manual that was first published in 1992.

While the training posts will have to follow the new program, since they are under General Hertling’s command, it is not mandatory for officers in the field. Every unit’s exercise routine is determined by its commander, and the current generation of officers has been indoctrinated under the old system.

The key, Mr. Palkoska says, will be to revamp the Army’s fitness test, which is taken twice a year. It measures a soldier’s ability to do situps, push-ups and a two-mile run. Since soldiers often train to the test, those are the exercises most of them do.

Mr. Palkoska and Mr. Van Camp hope the Army will revise that test by including new kinds of exercises and perhaps eliminating the situp.

“We know kids today are less fit,” Mr. Palkoska said. “We have to adjust.”

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Monday 100830

Herb — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:18:48 +0000

Workout

Tabata!

Shrimp, Sausage and Summer Squash Casserole
Two words in the seafood recipe submitted by Rachel Virden for the Primal Blueprint Reader-Created Cookbook Contest caught our eye immediately: Summer and Squash.

Yes, we loved the combination of shrimp and sausage (who wouldn’t?) and the intensely savory flavor that only comes from sautéing with bacon fat. We were amazed by the way a few simple ingredients baked up into such a rich and satisfying dish. But what made us really happy was discovering a new, inventive way cook up summer’s seemingly endless bounty of squash.

If you have a garden, you know that varieties of summer squash are famously prolific. This time of year, farmers’ markets are also overflowing with zucchini, crookneck and pattypan squash. Just when you think you’ve prepared summer squash in every possible way, a recipe like Shrimp, Sausage and Summer Squash Casserole comes along that transforms a simple crookneck into a rich, flavorful meal.

As you begin cooking, the shrimp, sausage and squash seem like three separate ingredients in the pot. But when you spoon the trio into a pan and bake for 30 minutes, the three meld together into a voluptuous casserole with a buttery texture and rich, meaty flavor.

As much as we loved the shrimp in this recipe, we can imagine that other types of seafood, like salmon or halibut, could be substituted with equally delicious results. However you make it, Rachel’s casserole is a one-dish meal that will make you glad summer, along with its endless supply of squash, is not quite over yet.

Ingredients:

■4-5 pounds yellow crookneck squash (or zucchini), sliced
■1 onion, finely chopped
■6 slices bacon, chopped into pieces
■1/2 pound Italian sausage (spicy or regular)
■1 pound raw shrimp (peeled/deveined/tails off), chopped into bite-sized pieces
■2 eggs
■Butter, if needed for sautéing
■Optional seasonings: salt, pepper, Cajun seasoning or hot sauce, Parmesan cheese
Instructions:

Preheat over to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cook the bacon and sausage together in a large soup pot or other deep pot. When fat begins to render, add the onion. Sauté until bacon is slightly crispy, sausage is crumbled and cooked and onion is soft.

Add the sliced squash (it may be easiest to add it in several batches) and stir to coat with meat and rendered fat. Turn the heat to high. This is necessary to quickly cook off any moisture the squash releases so that the squash can brown and caramelize, rather than “boil” in its own water. If the sausage and bacon have not rendered enough fat to cook the squash, then add some butter to the pot. The squash is done once it is slightly browned and there is no liquid sitting in the pot. By this time, the squash will have reduced by about half. Season with your choice of salt, pepper, Cajun seasoning and/or hot sauce.

Remove the pot from the stove and let it cool slightly.

Beat the eggs in a small bowl and pour over the squash mixture.

Add the raw shrimp and 1-2 handfuls of grated Parmesan cheese (optional).

Stir to combine all ingredients then pour into a casserole dish.

If you like, top the dish with a few pats of butter or a sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Bake until hot and bubbly, approx. 30 minutes.

(It is important to not cook the shrimp prior to baking the casserole. The shrimp will get overcooked and rubbery if you do.) Enjoy!Similar Posts:

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Sunday 100829

Herb — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:12:25 +0000

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Saturday 100828

Herb — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:10:02 +0000

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Friday 100827

Herb — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:09:26 +0000

Workout

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Thursday 100826

Herb — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 03:18:18 +0000

Workout
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“It’s like having a tire with a nail in it.” —Nike’s top coach, on heel-striking
by Christopher on July 30, 2010

If two of America’s greatest runners can get healthy by getting off their heels, why shouldn’t you? Three years ago, Alan Webb was one of the world’s best milers. In 2007, he ran the fastest time in the world in both the mile and 1500 meters. Then he began to get injured and sank into a slump. Recently, as the Portland Tribune reports, he put himself into the hands of Alberto Salazar, the distance running legend who’s now head of Nike’s elite training program. And one of Salazar’s first moves? Just as he did with Dathan Ritzenhein, Salazar immediately got Webb to begin running barefoot-style.

Webb was also landing on his heel, in effect slowing himself down.
“We want to eliminate his braking motion,” Salazar says. “We want to no longer detect any forces coming back. With Galen, there are no forces going back. With Alan, there still are. It’s like having a tire with a nail in it.

Curiously, Webb was once known for appreciating the benefits of a bare foot. When I interviewed him back in 2005, he told me that in high school, he was a size 12 with a flat foot and constant injuries. After his coach got him doing barefoot drills, his feet began to transform: by the time he graduated, Webb told me, he was a size 9 with a raised arch and no more ailments.

So what went wrong? Same thing that happens to the rest of us: he aged, he got bigger, he got a little sloppy. As Salazar puts it,

As he got older he gained too much muscle weight and his form got worse.

Salazar is making it clear that graceful running is a skill you can learn and perfect, not some rare genetic gift you’re either granted or denied at birth, like a single purple eye. Makes sense, right? The first time you try chopsticks, you’ll spray fried rice all over the table. Practice, and you’ll become quick and efficient. Children in Beijing aren’t any more hardwired for digital dexterity than kids in Boston; they just pick it up by application and necessity. Now contrast Salazar’s belief — that there are good and bad ways to run, and the only difference between them is logic and practice — with the doomed sense of predestination you get from comments like these, as Amby Burfoot watches Haile Gebrselassie:

The truth is that Haile’s stride is a gift delivered to him the day he was born. He has a combination of muscle-fiber types, tendon springs, and body-length ratios that are unique to him. He never had to practice his running form; it’s simply the way he runs because it’s the way he was born to run.

Seriously — the greatest distance runner in history never thinks about what he’s doing? Van Gogh obsessed over his draftmanship; Michael Jordan fired up thousands of jump shots a day in the off-season and formed “The Breakfast Club” during the Bulls’ championship seasons for pre-workout workouts; piano virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz lamented that, “If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, my wife knows it. If I don’t practice for three days, the world knows it.” They weren’t born with their dexterity — they earned it. Likewise, maybe we’ll never run as fast as Geb, but as Salazar is teaching Webb and Ritz, there’s no reason we can’t run as well as Geb.Similar Posts:

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Is Your Favorite Ice Cream Made With Monsanto’s Artificial Hormones?

Monsanto has been in the news this week, with a U.S. District Court Judge ruling that the USDA has to at least go through the motions of regulating the company’s genetically engineered sugar beets. Monsanto, you may know, is not likely to win any contests for the most popular company. In fact, it has been called the most hated corporation in the world, which is saying something, given the competition from the likes of BP, Halliburton and Goldman Sachs.

This has gotten me thinking about, of all things, ice cream, and of how Monsanto’s clammy paws can be found in some of the most widely selling ice cream brands in the country. These brands could break free from Monsanto’s clutches. So far they haven’t, but maybe this is about to change.

Ben & Jerry’s gets all their milk from dairies that have pledged not to inject their cows with genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rBGH). Why, then, can’t Haagen Dazs, Breyers and Baskin-Robbins do the same?

Starbucks now guarantees that all their milk, cream and other dairy products are rBGH-free. So do Yoplait and Dannon yogurts, Tillamook cheese, Chipotle restaurants, and many others. But ice cream giants Haagen Dazs, Breyers and Baskin-Robbins continue to use milk from cows injected with rBGH, a hormone that’s been banned in Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Australia and all 27 nations of the European Union. As if to add insult to injury, Haagen Dazs and Breyers have the audacity to tell us, right on the label, that their ice cream is ” All Natural.”

We have Monsanto to thank for rBGH. Monsanto developed the artificial hormone and marketed it aggressively for years, before selling it in 2008 to Elanco, a division of the Eli Lilly drug company. Of course, Monsanto (and now Elanco) wants us to think the hormone is in every way completely satisfactory and safe. Monsanto’s party line has consistently been that there is “no significant difference” in the milk derived from cows who have been dosed with the hormone compared to those who haven’t.

Pardon me for not swallowing Monsanto’s hooey, but if that’s so, why have so many countries outlawed rBGH? Are these countries all run by ignorant Luddites who oppose technology and progress? Or might there actually be compelling reasons?

There are, indeed. One of them is that injecting the genetically engineered hormone into cows increases the levels of a substance called IGF-1 in their milk. Monsanto’s own studies found that the amount of IGF-1 in milk more than doubled when cows were injected with rBGH. Studies by independent researchers show gains as much as six-fold. (Scientific citations in support of the statements in this article can be found here.)

Does it matter whether there are excess levels of IGF-1 in milk? It decidedly did to the European Commission’s authoritative international 16-member scientific committee. Their report said the excessive levels of IGF-1 found in the milk of cows injected with rBGH may pose serious risks of breast, colon and prostate cancer.

How serious is the increased risk? According to an article in the May 9, 1998 issue of the medical journal The Lancet, pre-menopausal women with even moderately elevated blood levels of IGF-1 are up to seven times more likely to develop breast cancer than women with lower levels.

As if these risks to human health weren’t enough reason for nations to prohibit the use of rBGH, there are more. The artificial hormone is also notorious for causing the cows much pain and distress. It does this by increasing painful and debilitating diseases like lameness and mastitis in cows who are injected with it. And because it increases udder infections in cows, it has greatly increased the use of antibiotics in the U.S. dairy industry. If you wanted to design a system to breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria, you’d be hard pressed to do better.

Does the increase in udder infections have an effect on the milk, and thus any ice cream, cheese or other product made from it? Most definitely, according to Dr. Richard Burroughs, a veterinarian deeply familiar with rBGH. “It results in an increase of white blood cells,” he says, “which means there’s pus in the milk!” The antibiotic use, he adds, “leaves residues in the milk. It’s all very serious.”

How, then, was such a dubious and tainted product ever approved for use in the U.S.? The answer provides a glimpse of how successful Monsanto’s efforts have been to exert control over our nation’s food policies.

By all accounts, the FDA’s 1993 decision to allow the use of rBGH was one of the most controversial in the agency’s history. Made amid widespread criticism from scientists, government leaders and farmers, including many researchers and officials inside the FDA, the decision was overseen by Michael R. Taylor, the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner of Policy from 1991-1994.

Was Taylor unbiased? Prior to holding that position, he was an attorney at King & Spaulding, Monsanto’s law firm, where he presided over the firm’s “food and drug law” practice. After the decision was made which gave the green light to rBGH, he left the FDA and resumed working directly for Monsanto, as vice president and chief lobbyist.

How significant was Taylor’s role in getting rBGH approved? As of August 15, 2010, his Wikipedia entry said that he “has long been hostile to food safety,” and “is widely credited with ushering recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) through the FDA regulatory process and into the milk supply — unlabeled.” (This statement was removed from Wikipedia immediately after I referred to it in a comment following an article I wrote last week for The Huffington Post on the topic. Apparently, if you can get your people in and out of key positions at the FDA, messing with Wikipedia is a piece of cake.)

Congressman Bernie Sanders was specifically referring to Taylor when he said “the FDA allowed corporate influence to run rampant in its approval of BGH.” Documentaries including “The World According to Monsanto” and “The Future of Food” present Taylor’s pro-Monsanto actions at the FDA as a dramatic example of the how corporate influence has exerted massive control over the FDA. Today, Taylor again works for the FDA, now as Deputy Commissioner of Foods.

Things have taken a different turn in Canada, but not for want of effort on the part of Monsanto. During Canada’s scientific review of Monsanto’s application for approval of rBGH, Canadian health officials said Monsanto tried to bribe them, and government scientists testified that they were being pressured by higher-ups to approve rBGH against their better scientific judgment. But in 1999, after eight years of study, Canadian health authorities rejected Monsanto’s application for approval of rBGH.

In the U.S. today, Monsanto continues to wield massive influence over U.S. food policies. In spite of, or perhaps in response to, Monsanto’s toxic and tenacious grip on our nation’s food policy, a movement is afoot. Every day more and more people are refusing to buy ice cream and other dairy products made with rBGH. And every day another organization adds its name to the growing list of groups campaigning against Monsanto’s influence, and calling for the FDA decision allowing the use of rBGH to be revoked.

Late last year, the prestigious American Public Health Association officially called for a ban on rBGH. The Consumers Union, publishers of Consumer Reports has likewise taken an official position opposing rBGH. So has the American Nurses Association, Health Care Without Harm, Food and Water Watch, Center for Food Safety, National Family Farm Coalition, Family Farm Defenders and many other groups.

At this very moment, the plucky Oregon chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) is leading a nationwide effort to persuade Breyers (whose brands include Good Humor, Klondike Bars and Popsicle), and Dreyer’s (whose brands include Haagen Dazs, Nestle and Edy’s) to go rBGH-free. The campaign focuses on Breyers and Dreyer’s because they are the two largest ice cream producers in the country today.

If you want to strike a blow against Monsanto’s efforts to control the world food supply, you can follow me on Twitter, post this article to your facebook page, spread the word and get engaged.

Monsanto and its allies have a grand vision. They are intent on controlling the world’s food supply. Don’t let them. And don’t let them cram their genetically engineered products down your throat. Even in a product as tempting and sweet as ice cream, that’s no treat.

John Robbins is the only son of Irvine Robbins, the co-founder and co-owner of Baskin-Robbins, and was groomed by his father to run what was at one time the world’s largest ice cream company. But John walked away from the company and the wealth it represented in order to advocate for a healthier and more compassionate way of life. To learn more about his journey along his own “rocky road,” see The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less. John is also the author of The Food Revolution, Diet for a New America and six other books. For more info, see johnrobbins.info

John’s father died in 2008, and there are no longer any members of the Robbins or Baskin families involved with the company.Similar Posts:

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