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Less IS More
April 28, 2006 10:04 AM
Still having a hard time giving up some of that high volume you have been doing? Everyone goes through this because they think more is more. It isn't.
As I said in the Evolutionary Fitness Essay (available through the Research link above) many years ago, less is more when it comes to hormones. You want an acute, not a chronic, signal and you want the signal to be strong enough to signal to your endocrine system. Too much stress or volume and you get a moderation of GH release and a triggering of stress hormones.
A nice experiment in Journal of Applied Physiology (2002) 92(2) shows this less-is-more effect. The subjects did two 30 second all out sprints on a stationary bike (too long really, but that is the protocol). Then one hour later they did it again (too much again by my standards and too soon). There was one difference between the trials. In the first one they pedalled against a load equal to 7.5% of body mass; in the second, they used 10% of body mass as resistance.
So, the second trial was harder than the first, though the peak and mean power outputs were the same. Which do you suppose elicited the greater GH response? The first one. Less intensity, but pretty intense none the less, resulted in higher GH response.
OK, there are some problems with the study design. Both groups went past the alactic zone and into the lactate zone because they sprinted for 30 seconds. I much prefer to do this sorts of things in the alactic zone, using stored ATP and the ATP-PC system. I don't do sprints that take me beyond this into the zone where you produce lactate because you do not completely breakdown carbohydrate.
Another problem is that lactate accumulation remaining from the first trial limited the power in the second trial and may have made the subjects work harder to get the same power output. Even though this is a bit of a flaw, it further supports the point that too much is less.
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From Chubby to Hot
Mark was a trainer I used when I was starting back into heavier work outs. He helped me do negatives and we talked extensively about eating and working out. If you have been with this site for some time, you may know that Mark's wife began Evolutionary Fitness.
Mark and his wife came over to our table last night to say hello. I had not seen either of them in six months or more. They looked incredible. Mark always looked good, but he was eating 6 meals a day and was not as lean as he could/should have been (because your insulin levels never drop as low as they should when you eat too often). He gave that up at my prodding and has leaned out wonderfully. He lost no muscle mass, just that last bit of thickness in his skin that was hiding some of his dense musculature. He trains very hard and does less volume now he tells me.
But, his wife has gone through the most amazing transformation! She was a pudgy, going-on-worse, pretty black female who read the Evolutionary Fitness Essay and started down that road on her own. She trained hard with Mark and began eating The Way. The woman with me at dinner said look at that female. I saw slender, muscular arms, a tight and beautiful figure and a graceful athletic look. My friend just said, "She is so hot."
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A Tight Core and Home Runs
April 26, 2006 09:37 AM
I should comment on the discussion about the crossed pelvic adaptation and various ways to change this neural pattern.
Yes, it is true that one-legged squats are very effective in addressing this issue. In addition, this trains balance. And, more subtly, losing and retaining balance during the movement stimulates the dorsal horn to regain more healthy responses. The momentary loss of balance activates older, deeper responses that help to overcome the disfunctional neural patterns that contribute to over activation of the hamstrings and back extensors.
Another great way to correct the lower spine processes is to do fairly high step ups onto a taller bench, Again, driving through the heel and the glutes rather than using the hamstrings. And I am doing more one-sided movements in my new routine (about which see my next post).
One more point about all this and my current work out. I have tightened and strengthened my core quite effectively with my new (non-) routine. It has added a lot of distance to my softball hitting. At the last practice, I hit lasers that went by fielders before they could move and mainly they were trying to get out of the way more than catch the shots. I hit one high into the trees beyond left center field that rivaled the shots I have seen only the biggest, young guys hit. No one else in the over 65 group hits them out and most guys hit the ball just out into the grass, not the warning track or over the wall.
Why I have added this distance even though I am down to only 195 pounds seems to be from the tighter rotation that I have gained from my back work outs and improved core strength. The tightly aligned spine and the wound up tension in the core muscles, particularly the deep obliques (not the external obliques), have produced a big increase in power in my hitting.
I stand straight and tall with a nice straight spine and a quick, short stride. This produces a low polar moment of inertia so that I am hitting through the ball with a tight rotation and a very quick quick, explosive, movement. Then I just let the wrists break easily as the bat head comes around. The swing is very relaxed and produces a lot of extension through the ball to give it the back spin to lift it over the fence. If only I could relax this much in my golf swing. That is my next project.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (4)
Calorie Restriction, Part 2
April 22, 2006 01:14 PM
From Chris H come these links to reports about calorie restriction.
The Economist In this story do note the role of intermittent stress through exercise that is thought to promote hormesis.
Intermittent CR is just beginning to be tested. I have done it for more than 20 years and, though I am a sample of only 1, I am confident it works well without the chronic hunger that comes with constant CR.
After all, it is how our ancestors lived for millions of years. Not incidentally, I listened to Charles Mingus' wonderful composition Pithecanthus Erectus this morning with my breakfast. An amazing composition that tells the story of early humans so well. The underlying beat is the pace of the trek, as though you are exploring the Savanna. Dramatic episodes punctuate the trek as you encounter game and danger. The saxophones evoke the cries of wild animals.
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Leg Presses
April 21, 2006 07:23 AM
Since reading Stuart McGill's book Ultimate Back Fitness I have begun doing one-legged leg presses. I happen to have a machine at my gym that I can sit in with my legs horizontal to the ground. I can place one foot on the ground and one on the pressing plate. This lets me do one legged presses in complete safety. Another good thing about this set up is that the pressing platform remains stationary and the seat moves. So, it is more like standing up, which is a better movement than pressing the plate away from the body. Lastly, these sorts of machines tend to have only limited weight because, I suppose, they are not made for heavy lifters. Using one leg means that you can have a much heavier load, if you can do it. I am close to doing the whole stack with one leg so there is no way I could have an adequate load using two legs.
Now, why do one-legged presses?
Read More »LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (5)
48 Years
April 19, 2006 02:43 PM
Today would have been Bonnie's and my 48th anniversary. I miss her.
Everything she touched she filled with beauty; our children, our lives, and our homes. Everywhere in our homes and these pictures I can see her touch and feel her presence.
As a small tribute to her talent as a homemaker and interior designer, I include a few pictures of our last three homes. My photography is inadequate to capture the interest, texture, and complexity of her designs.
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LINK · Everything · Comments (2)
Data Points from the Calorie Restriction Meetings
April 17, 2006 08:49 PM
I heard a lot of good research on the effects of calorie restriction on extending life presented by good scientists. There is little consensus on whether restriction does or does not extend life. There were a few empirical survival curves that seemed to show that it does. But, there were so many contrary indications that it is a completely open hypothesis at this point.
Several data points stood out for me.
1. They are not able to do CR research on primates at all well. When primates are caged they don't eat anyway and they throw their food all over the place, into other cages and at keepers. Even the ones that are calorie restricted don't eat all their food.
2. There are a lot of messed up experiments, as in any field and the amount of calorie restriction is often a guess rather than an accurate estimate.
3. Exercise, even moderate walking, is pretty effective at promoting weight loss and improved metabolic profiles. A very well done experiment produced a 6 kilogram weight loss in over weight and obese subjects. This is one of the first to show this effect and it may be because the training regimes were tailored to the subjects. Nonetheless, exercise is not even in the experimental designs of most of the research. I pointed out that yeast and C. Elegans had to work harder to achieve the same intake when their energy sources were diluted. In other words, they were excerising. This was like a new insight to the person who did the research. They do not monitor energy expenditure and, thus, do not really know if it is the CR or the exercise. There is this comfounding of treatments in many of the experiments. Nonetheless, there seemed to be a slight hostility toward exercise, as though some of these people believe the rate of living theory, which I showed in an earlier post is bogus and nothing more than a weak correlation.
4. Intermittent CR seems to work at promoting weight loss and improved metabolic profiles among human subjects.
5. Ad libitum feeding is usually the other treatment. Meaning that the experiments compare pigging out with moderate or more than moderate restriction relative to the pigging out intake. I don't see what one can learn from that, but experimental difficulties seem to be driving this alternative hypothesis to CR.
6. The lab rats they use are pretty weird creatures with strange genetic defects. They couldn't live a day in the wild.
7. The one experiment on wild rats, a really clever attempt, was a failure. They take the rats and see how long they can hang on a wire. The lab rats hang there for different time periods. But, the wild rats just pull themselves up on the wire and run off.
8. There were many very thin people there. Some looked very gaunt and may have too little protein reserve in their muscle mass to survive a crisis such as sepsis or a virus.
9. In spite of their very lean appearance, they all seemed to move well and were likely far healthier than, say, a crowd of obese people would be.
10. Yet, I was very careful not to bump into anyone at the top of the stairs lest I send them crashing to the floor several stairs down. There was obvious frailty among some.
I choose to live like the wild animals rather than the lab rats. I choose intermittent CR, retaining my lean body mass while enjoying, as far as I can see, the full benefits of CR. I also exercise and, thus, expose my body to another form of CR, an acute negative energy balance. Too many there were excessively focused on food and a few admitted to the same defects that appeared in earlier starvation experiments. They were tempted to hoard, shop lift, and act in strange ways. When they felt this way they knew they had gone too far.
The brain is one of the organs exposed to calorie restriction and it may lose cortical mass. Anorexics have shrived brains, which may be an underlying reason for their inability to recover from their dangerous behavior. Intermittent CR protects the brain. Chronic CR, unless practiced with high sophistication, may not.
The wild animal is my model. Humans would do better if they learned to be good animals.
LINK · Evolutionary Fitness · Comments (6)
Home Runs in the Press
The University press office sends me these articles when they spot them in the press.
This article by Michael Salfino in the Birmingham News is about my research on home runs and gets it pretty much right. Debate over Bonds doesn't say if steroids actually work.
LINK · Sports · Comments (0)
One Year
April 10, 2006 01:50 PM
The blog is a year old sometime this month, maybe by now.
Even with the long down time with my wife's health, we will exceed 5.5 million hits today.
Its been fun and I can see that at least some of my comments are helpful.
In a day or so I am going to tell all about how to run a movie studio.
LINK · Everything · Comments (3)
Regrets over Brokeback Mountain
April 9, 2006 11:59 AM
How could anyone who was attached to the movie regret how successful it was?
Apparently, Randy Quaid could. He seems to have taken the wrong kind of contract for his participation in the movie. I know none of the details, but Michael Kim has sent me his interesting piece from the film blog Libertas. See Applications of De Vany's Hollywood Economics.
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