Periodization Made Simple: Part I: Periodizing physical qualities

We all know people who train consistently - maybe too consistently - by doing the same thing in the gym every workout, time after time.  They might take a break for a holiday or vacation or because of injury, but they generally repeat the same type of workout - the same exercises (generally), similar rep schemes, similar number of sets, and similar tempo, month in and month out.  If they're smart they'll constantly strive to add weight, or reps, to their workout, or switch up the exercises once in a while.  You can certainly make progress with this style of training, but it's usually slow and boring and often leads to staleness and/or injury.

High level athletes realized a long time ago that if they wanted to peak for an event - say, the Olympics, or even a season of their sport - they couldn't train the same way all the time.  They'd do general conditioning for part of the year, then more specific training, and finally sport specific training for the last couple of months leading up to their event.  It didn't take long for them to realize that over the long term they'd make better gains by "mixing up" their training this way than if they did similar types of training every week over the year.

Periodization is a term that means changing aspects of your workout in a planned way in order to maximize long term progress.  Reading the literature on periodization can be kind of daunting to a beginner - articles about periodization are often filled with technical vocabulary that you really don't have to know in order to use the principles.

So I'll make it simple.  I'm not going to define a million different terms for you (partially because I can't remember the difference between conjugate and concurrent periodization), just cover the basic concepts so you can use periodization to improve your training (and you should!).

There are 2 general kinds of periodization:  Periodizing physical qualities and periodizing intensity.

You can periodize your training to focus on different attributes or periodize your intensity.  Or you can (and should) do both!  I'll address the first type here (for no particular reason), and the second type in the next post.

Periodizing Attributes:  What this means is that you emphasize different physical attributes in different training sessions.  For example, you might do hypertrophy (hypertrophy means muscle growth) workouts (8-12 reps per set, 3-5 sets per exercise, moderate or slow rep pace, moderate rest between sets, extra calories after the workout), speed/ power workouts (plyometrics, very fast movements, ballistic exercises like kettlebell swings or olympic lifts, sprints, 3-5 reps per set, 2-3 sets per movement, lots of rest between sets), strength workouts (4-6 reps per set, lots of weight, moderate rep speed, 3-6 sets per movement, lots of rest between sets), and conditioning workouts (energy system training) (circuit training with moderate weights, little to no rest between sets, lots of sets).  None of these workouts are easier or harder, by nature, than the others, they just each target a different type of adaptation.

You could work these into your program in various ways.  You could do 3-8 weeks of one type of workout (say, a session of hypertrophy), followed by another "block" of 3-8 weeks focusing on another (say, strength workouts).  The potential downside is that you could lose too much in one area while focusing on another - you might lose all the speed you gained during your speed "block" during the other blocks, since you might go 16-24 weeks without training for a particular quality.

You could try to avoid that by mixing and matching in various ways.  For example, you could do a little bit of hypertrophy, a little speed work, and a lot of strength work for 8 weeks, then a little hypertrophy, a little strength, and a lot of speed work for the next set of 8 weeks, and so forth.  Think of it as having two minors and a major in each block - you'd do enough in each minor area to maintain your ability and you'd make progress in the major area.

Yet another style of periodization (you can see why there's so much terminology around this subject - each method of periodizing has its own name and associated jargon) would be to alternate workouts over the week but focus on each quality equally.  For example, suppose you work out three times per week.  Do one session of hypertrophy work, one session of speed/power work, and one session of strength work.  That way you make consistent progress in all areas.

Which system is best?  I think a lot depends on what you're training for.  If you're an Olympic athlete who has to "peak" at a certain time of year you need a very different system than regular people - and you probably have a professional coach to help you plan that all out.  If you're just like me - someone who wants to keep improving, but has no specific targets - then I'd say try the last system.  This is also a situation where we're splitting hairs - a professional athlete, who is in a situation where a 2% improvement could mean the difference between winning and losing, has to be much more meticulous in their choices than a weekend warrior.  For us amateurs a simpler system that is easier to comply with is probably more useful than something that could serve as a Ph.D. thesis in exercise physiology.

The "attributes" in question can also vary.  Bodybuilders alternate periods of time when they "bulk up" (add bodyweight - usually a combination of fat and muscle), then "lean out" (lose bodyweight, again usually a combination of fat and muscle, but they're hoping to gain more muscle than fat, then lose more fat than muscle, and come out ahead).  And you can focus on different attributes for different areas of your body - you could combine strength for the lower body with speed in the upper, and vice versa.

I'll give my recommendations on how to periodize your training - assuming you're a karateka with an actual life - with specific examples and a training plan - after I cover periodizing intensity.

Osu!

Still Fat?

I just finished reading Stephan Guyenet's post (and every associated comment) relaying some details about a disagreement he had with Gary Taubes at the Ancestral Health Symposium over, I believe, the cause of obesity.

Guyenet, who writes an excellent blog, has lately been endorsing a food reward theory of obesity.  I'll paraphrase: different foods have different reward value.  The reward value is, roughly speaking, some intersection of diversity (increasing variety increases reward value), taste (tastier food has higher reward value), fat and sugar (see taste) and ease of preparation.  People become obese because they eat high reward value food.  When they switch their diet to lower reward value food - almost regardless of the macronutrient ratio - they will lose weight.  When populations start eating higher reward value food they get fatter.  A potential cure for obesity is to eat blander food, with less variety, less seasonings, and cooked in an intentionally bland way.

Gary Taubes, in case you haven't heard of him, is a book author (Good Calories Bad Calories is an absolutely fantastic history of modern nutritional doctrine, even if you disagree with the dietary recommendations) and a journalist who endorses an excess carbohydrate theory of obesity.  To paraphrase, people get fat because they eat too many refined carbs and sugar, which causes disregulation of insulin, which leads their fat cells to accumulate fat.  A potential cure for obesity is to cut most or all carbohydrate, especially refined carbohydrates, sugars, and starch, from the diet.

The two got into a heated disagreement at some point during the AHS (I wasn't there, nor did I watch the video, so I'm going on what I've read in blogs).  I learned quite a bit from the debate, however - especially from the comments!  And I want to share my observations with you.

1. There are different competing theories about nutrition and health (Paleo, low carb, high carb-low fat, vegan, vegetarian, ancestral, weight watchers).  Some are total crap.  Many (the better ones) have components that can explain away the evidence presented by the competitors (your vegan diet "works" because even though it doesn't include meat, at least it reduces the use of white flower; your low fat diet "works" because at least it restricts industrial seed oils along with the healthy saturated fats you demonize; your paleo diet "works" because even though you're still eating too much saturated fat at least you've increased your intake of fresh vegetables.)
2. Each of the competing dietary philosophies are endorsed by plenty of people who saw drastic improvements in health - got leaner, felt better, etc. - when taking up that eating plan.
3. Each of the competing dietary philosophies is derided by plenty of people who got fatter or sicker while taking up that diet plan over a range of time periods (some after years of compliance, some sooner). In some cases that may be a problem with implementation (some people go lacto-ovo-vegetarian by eating only pizza and beer; others concentrate on eggs from pastured chickens, dairy from grass fed cows, fresh vegetables, and no grains - they'll get very different results) or genetic or acquired differences in metabolism and tolerances of certain foods or food groups.  For every healthy, lean vegan you can find someone who got miserably sick on the diet for no obvious reason (not because they did it wrong) - and the same is true for paleo, low carb, low fat, etc.
4. Strategies that work for whole populations (that is, you can find a group of people living on an island somewhere who eat that way and are healthy, lean, and long -lived) will not necessarily work for everybody.  Why not?  It could be that there are genetic differences that make the difference, lifestyle differences (that group that did well on diet X got lots of sunlight, you live in Alaska), or a metabolism damaged by a lifetime of Oreos and Coca Cola isn't the same as that of a hunter gatherer who's never tasted sugar.
5. Whenever anybody figures out the thing that works for them - low carb, low fat, paleo, vegan, whatever - they seem incapable of accepting that it may not work for everybody.  Anybody who tells you they have the whole nutrition thing worked out is full of crap.   Look, cutting out gluten radically changed my health and, in fact, my life - that doesn't mean it will do the same for you.

So I've basically told you that you know even less than you thought you did - no matter what you're advising somebody to eat, you might be wrong - your advice might make them fat and sick, depending on the person.  And, perhaps worse, what you're eating might be wrong for you - in fact, you might be doing everything right, or so you think, and yet you're still fat.

What do you do?

1.  Start with the commonalities.

I've said this before, but there are, in fact, some commonalities among nearly all the diets that "work" for either health or fat loss:

• Cut back on (at least) refined flour and sugar.  I can't find a legitimate diet that encourages white flour and sugar.
• Drink enough fluid/ water (there's disagreement about how much you really need, but if you're thirsty and dry mouthed a lot you're definitely in trouble).  I don't believe that your fluid has to be from plain water, but you have to get at least some fluid in.
• Whatever you eat, get the highest quality version of that food that you can manage: if you eat only beef, get grass fed beef.  Get eggs from pastured chickens.  For plants some need to be organic (generally, if there's an inedible skin or it grows underground, being organic is less important).
• I am very sorry about this, but you're going to have to reduce your energy intake if you want to lose fat.  With some diets this is easier than others - I personally have a much easier time restricting calories when I avoid gluten - but you still have to, at the end of the day, consume less food if you want your body to burn fat.  But, and here's the real kick in the ass, if you reduce intake too much you'll stop fat loss.  Yes, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has a weird sense of humor.

2.  Give your current plan a chance.

• Whatever you're doing - low carb, vegan, whatever - do it super strict for 30 days.  If you don't feel/ look better at that point, then it's time to move on.  When/ if you do move on, at least you'll know you gave it a real chance.
• Stay away from fake foods that are aimed at your diet.  If you're gluten free, you shouldn't be eating anything that is advertised as gluten free.  Gluten free Bisquick is not real food - rice is real food, meat is real food, veggies are real, gluten free brownies are not.  Ditto for low fat, low carb, etc.  Invariably the processed products that are manufactured to meet some weird dietary requirement are substituting one evil for another.

3.  Maximize your chance of success by working on the non-dietary factors that are important.

• Get plenty of the 3 S's for leanness:  sleep, sun, and sex.  (I should turn that into a book.)  Getting more of all 3 -but avoiding the excess of sleeping all day, burning, or acquiring an STD - will make you healthier and leaner.
• Train hard but not too hard and enough but not too much.  Cortisol will keep the pounds packed on for most of us (not everyone responds the same to this).  Training too hard can make it just as hard to be lean as training too little.
• Get in plenty of very low intensity movement.  Take long slow walks at night.  
• Minimize the stress in your life.  Try meditating.

4.  If these strategies don't do the trick... MOVE ON!

I'd love to tell you that paleo will work for everyone.  I have strong philosophical and scientific reasons to think that it will.  But... I've been wrong before.  And you can easily find a hundred vegans who are just as certain that staying away from delicious animal products will optimize your health, longevity, and fitness.  So, if you've been giving any dietary strategy a real commitment and it's not working, try something else!  Eat some carbs.  Have a salad.  Whatever.  Just stick to the basic framework:  eat less, cut back on sugar and white flour, and eat higher quality food.

It took me 25 years to find the formula that works for me, and I'm still tinkering with it.  I'm not saying it will take you as long, but:  a) the end result is worth it; and b) the alternative, giving up, is kind of horrible.

Osu!

Paleo Bachelor: Bacon Fried Rice

If you're a foodie, if you like to cook recipes that have multiple steps and require actual skill, then this recipe probably isn't for you.  I only use recipes that are:

• Easy to do (little to no skill required);
• Utilize predominantly ingredients that keep a long time, so you don't have to be super prepared when you shop to buy fresh ingredients;
• Soil an absolutely minimal number of pots/ utensils so cleanup is easy and quick;
• Cook relatively quickly;
• Taste at least decent;
• Fit my modified paleo diet (I eat paleo sort of - I'll also eat some sugar, dairy, artificial sweeteners, and white rice, but I do try to minimize the seed oils and grains otherwise)

Today I cooked a recipe that fits this broad definition.  It's not paleo - there's no getting around the white rice - but if you're okay with that it's pretty paleo otherwise.

I owe my sister in law Amy a big debt for introducing me to the basics of this recipe.  Thanks, Amy!

Here are the ingredients and utensils (this serves 2, or maybe 1 if you're veeery hungry):

1 cup white rice (basmati works well, I'm sure aficionados would prefer specific strains);

3 eggs;

1 tbs. butter (you can substitute any other fat if you don't do dairy - coconut oil, lard, whatever);

2 small onions;

8 or so brussels sprouts (or any other veggie you like - thinly sliced carrots, spinach, cabbage, peas, broccoli, kale, collard greens, whatever);

1 lb. ground beef;

5 slices uncured bacon;

1/4 cup or so gluten free soy sauce (widely available at places like Whole Foods);

salt & seasonings;

1 nonstick pan or wok, large-ish;

1 medium pot/ saucepan with tightly fitting lid;

1 rubber spatula;

1 medium sized bowl;

1 chopping knife & cutting board;

1 spoon.

Directions:

1. Start the rice (put rice, butter or 1 tbs oil, and 1.25 cups water into the saucepan, bring to a boil; lower heat so it simmers and cover for 20 minutes, when it's done let it sit for 10 minutes - once it's at a simmer you can do other stuff).  [Note:  you can absolutely use leftover rice for this, and I have it on good authority that this dish is even better when the rice is cooked the day before!]
2. Cook the 3 eggs in the nonstick pan scrambled style, until they're dry.  Dump them into the bowl.
3. Render the bacon - put over medium or low heat until the bacon is crispy and all the white stuff has melted off.
4. While the bacon cooks slice your onions and other veggies into small, thin slices or chunks.
5. Take the bacon out and dump it into the bowl with the eggs.  If you can, slice it into little bits when you get the chance.
6. Dump the veggies into the pan with the bacon fat, turn up the heat to high, and cook them until the onions are browned.
7. Dump the veggies into the bowl with the eggs and stuff.
8. Throw the beef into the pan; cook until the meat is browned.  I like to add some salt, garlic powder, and whatever else to it.
9. Dump the meat into the bowl.
10. Dump the (hopefully finished) rice into the pan with the last of the fat.  
11. Pour the soy sauce around the rice.  Stir the rice, fat, and soy sauce until it's nice and evenly colored a light brown.
12. Dump everything from the bowl into the pan and  mix it all together.
13. Dish it back into the bowl and eat.  That's what the spoon is for!

If it comes out too greasy for you, cut back on the bacon or the fat you added to the rice (but don't eliminate it altogether).  You can add more garlic, paprika, or cinnamon as you wish.

If this is too carby for you, you can always cut back on the rice and add more veggies.  I found the ratio in this to be pretty much ideal, personally.

Enjoy!

Osu.

Countdown to Promotion: Ultimate Week

For reasons I'll explain in a future post this entry has been delayed.  Sorry!

It is normal to want to train very hard in the days leading up to your promotion/ event/ competition/ whatever.  You're probably in great shape, you're worried about losing the edge off your skills right before you need them most, and you're psychologically probably very "up" for your chosen field.  I have one very general piece of advice:

Resist.

The last few days (and I have no scientifically precise data on the exact number, let's say 3-6) before your peaking event should be mostly restful.  This is not when you're going to make gains - this is when you can rest, heal, recover, and make the most of the hard work you've been putting in at the dojo.  Here's what you need to do:

Gently increase calories.  You need to eat at or even a little bit above maintenance this week.  You don't want to get fat, but unless you really pig out you're not going to gain noticeable amounts of weight in 3 or 4 days.  You don't want to be depleted at your event.  You don't need to eat giant bowls of spaghetti or whatever each night to refill glycogen levels, but you do need to make sure to get a moderate amount of carbs each day while avoiding heavy exercise.

Don't train heavy.  No heavy strength work starting at least 3 days before your event, no high intensity intervals in that same time.  You're just not going to get de-conditioned or weaker in 3 or 4 days - your body isn't that plastic - but you might hurt yourself or just get sore and depleted.  This is not the time to get in shape - the 3 months before this were the time to get in shape.  If you did your work then, you'll be fine.  If you didn't, nothing you do in the last week is going to be enough to matter.

Meditate and relax.  Your mind is very possibly your worst enemy now.  You're probably stressing a lot about the competition.  If you have to think about it, actively visuallize yourself being successful - acing your kata, winning a trophy, meeting your own personal goals for the event.  If you can, avoid thinking about it altogether.  Spend time each day meditating.  Enough anxiety will ruin your performance just as quickly as a physical injury - maybe more quickly.

Stretch and do light skill work.  You don't want to train heavy so your body can heal and regenerate, but you also don't want to let it stiffen.  Keep your motor patterns grooved with short, light workouts.  You're not going to get any better at anything in this last week, but you can easily avoid backsliding.  Go over kata in your head - visualize the moves - which is both good for your technique and very good for remembering the sequences.  Do lots of light, dynamic stretching to keep your body limber.  If you have to wring your shirt out after a workout you're working too hard.

Don't do anything new.  New movements/ techniques lead to soreness, which you don't want to deal with on your event day.  This is not the time to take up hill sprints or Olympic lifts. 

Sleep lots; do soft tissue work.  Get an extra hour or two a night if possible.  You're healing and recovering.  If you can, get a massage - even an amateur massage - get in as much sex as you can handle, and do extra sessions of foam rolling or whatever myofascial release work you prefer.  You're preparing your body for an event, treat it the way a Formula 1 team treats their car the day before a race. 

For me, the mental aspect of this week was the toughest.  As I mentioned before, I get nervous, and if I let myself I'll run through doomsday scenarios in my head and generally work myself into a nervous frenzy.  Then, when the time comes, I forget an astounding percentage of what I used to know.  This is bad!  You have to do whatever it takes (other than binge drinking) to take your mind off the event or to think positively about it.

If you have to travel a long way to your event, bring clean food to eat and try to arrange the schedule so you get as much sleep as possible (not always possible, I know).  Pack early.  Stay calm!

Remember, the last week is the time to recover and relax, not to make improvements.  As hard as it is to do, focus on recovery and not training for a few days.  This works - when I took my nidan promotion (not this one, for reasons I'll explain later) I was in my all time best shape - because I spent 3 months kicking my ass in the dojo, then took a week to recover enough to feel how much I'd improved.  You can certainly do the same.  Stop the heavy training, sleep and eat, and you'll be fine for your event.

If you're reading this while preparing for some peaking event in your life, good luck! 

Osu!

Countdown to Promotion: Penultimate Week

My promotion for sandan (third degree black belt) starts next Friday (July 8).  I wish I had another six months to prepare, or better yet a year, but I don't.  If you're new to the blog, here are the important details:  Promotions in my style are fairly rigorous physically (but not insanely so - we don't regularly hospitalize people during promotions or anything) and are taking place this year over a three day weekend.  I've been training since 1988, but I took a 12 year break from 1994 - 2006, and another year from late 2008 to late 2009, so I'm nowhere near as skilled as I should be.

Assuming you're trying to peak for an event like a promotion, a major tournament, or whatever kind of karate event you're participating in, there are a few things you should be doing.  Note that I'm going to assume that you: a) are not a professional athlete - no 3/day workout schemes here, I assume you have a real life that can't be put totally on hold; b) not a beginner - if you've been training for 3 months and you're testing for your first yellow stripe or whatever in two weeks, you need to just keep on training, not peaking; and c) not injured.  If you're hurt then you need to be dealing with that injury.

The first thing is to come to terms with what you can and cannot do in the last two weeks before a promotion.  If you've been training for years you're not going to get siginificantly better, skill-wise, in two weeks - you're not getting any better at kicking and punching.  You might be ablea to fix some technical errors of memory - for example, suppose you tend to punch with the wrong hand at a certain point in a kata - that's something you can work on, but if you just suck at something, you're probably still going to suck when the test date arrives.

You're also not going to get significantly stronger in two weeks.  Unless you are brand new to strength training (which you shouldn't be) neurological adaptions are slow to come by, and you can't build much muscle tissue at all in such a short time.  Getting stronger takes years, not weeks.

Your'e also not going to get much leaner in two weeks.  If you still have bodyfat to lose it's not going to happen now - putting yourself into a serious energy deficit at this point in time will leave you depleted and weak for your test, which is NOT how you want to present yourself.  If you're competing in a weight class event that's another story, but otherwise don't run yourself down by cutting back on food.

What you can do is improve your conditioning.  Maybe not by miles, but you still have time to add a few extra percent to your endurance while maintaining your skill and strength.  Here's what you have to do:

This week do some planned overtraining (sometimes called over-reaching).  Here's how:

• Every day do a hard session of skill training.  Don't focus on any one thing - remember, you're not going to improve much.  Do a few reps of everything in your syllabus - every kata, every combination, etc.  This is the time to make sure there aren't any kinks in your skills.  You're not going to develop wicked spinning kicks now, but if you haven't done any in three months you can sharpen them up quite a bit.  If you want to devote some time to really focusing on one thing, like your punches, do it after the test.  If you are sparring keep the pace high but the contact very controlled - this is NOT the time to do hard full contact sparring (because of the injury risk).
• Follow each skill session with a serious conditioning session.  As always, think in terms of doing high intensity intervals - work very hard for 10-45 seconds, rest, repeat.  Jump rope, sprint, do kettlebell swings, air squats, thrusters, burpees, bike sprints, etc.  Rotate your efforts - don't choose the same thing every day.  And don't do exercises that you've never done before - the soreness from starting swings for the first time can really hamper your efforts the rest of the week.  Also, do more than you think is probably good for you - really toast yourself.  And DON'T use karate skills for this part of your workout - don't do kicks until you're gasping for air.  It's bad for your kicks.
• Do just enough strength work to maintain your strength levels.  Maybe twice this week do an even more abbreviated session than usual - and follow it with skill training and more conditioning.
• If you can handle it, add a second conditioning session in the morning.  I try to get in a 4 minute workout - Tabata style sets of swings and thrusters with a kettlebell (Tabata protocol means 20s work/ 10 s of rest/ repeat).
• Do light stretching every day.  You're not going to work yourself into a split for the first time, but you want to work near the limits of your range of motion for all your muscles every day to stay limber and help with recovery.
• Eat plenty of clean food.  DON'T cheat by chowing down on ice cream and candy - instead eat plenty of protein and carbs in the form of meat, protein shakes, and starchy root vegetables - think lots of steak and sweet potatoes - to keep glycogen stores high and to improve muscle recovery.  This is NOT the time to try to trim off some excess weight - for two reasons.  First, cutting calories will hamper your body's ability to adapt to the training and make it more likely that you stay sore or get some mild injuries.  Second, if you managed to change your body composition now you'd throw off your balance and technique and you won't have time to adjust before the test.
• Make a special effort to cut back on possibly inflammatory foods.  Even if you think you're okay with dairy, this is not the time to push it.  Cut back on dairy, grains like rice and corn (you shouldn't be eating wheat ever anyway), vegetable oils (again, you shouldn't ever eat them, but...) and peanuts. 
• Do a TON of recovery work.  Foam roll yourself, use a self - massaging tool on sore spots (even better, get a massage or two, if you can afford them), sleep extra, eat more often (this is the week to be less than strict on your intermittent fasting schedule).
• Supplement with creatine, beta alanine, and acetyl-l carnitine to improve endurance.  Will they help?  Maybe, maybe not, but if you have the money this is the time to splurge.  Remember, we're peaking!

I'll write another post about the last week before promotion, but the general idea is we're going to taper off our training a lot and give our bodies a few days to heal, recover, and adapt to all the training.  If you time it right you can come into your test in the best shape you've ever been - and that's pretty much all you can ask for.

Summary: Blog so far

I've recently noticed (I know, I'm a little slow) a huge surge of traffic coming from Dan Djurdjevic's awesome blog (thank you very much!)  Welcome - the kind of people who read Dan's work are exactly my target audience.  For you new readers, and anybody else new to my blog, I thought I'd write up a summary of the key points I've been trying to convey.

KC Philosophy:

I began training in the late 80's.  I took a 12 year break and when I got back into training in 2006 I found that a few things had changed.  I was in worse shape (not as strong, not as flexible, with less endurance, less resistant to injury) at 35 than I had been at 21 - and I had never been what you'd call an athlete.  I had less time and energy for training - a family and a full time job can really interfere with two hour training sessions.  But, (and this turned out to be my saving grace), I was connected to a huge body of information about training that I hadn't had access to before, all thanks to the internet (thank you Al Gore!).

I've spent a considerable amount of time over the past 5 years reading and looking at books, magazines, blogs, websites, videos, and DVD's about diet and training - not just about martial arts training, but about training for athletes in all sports, and every minute of it was devoted to figuring out how that information could make me better at karate.  I learned a lot - I learned how to become and stay more flexible throughout the day, how to get faster and stronger, how to improve my health, how to dramatically improve my endurance, how to practice my skills, all without having to train more than a few hours a week.

It didn't take me too long to realize that not everybody knows all this stuff.  Plenty of wonderful karate instructors spend their time learning and teaching technique instead of poring over the latest research on VO2 Max.  Which is fine - I don't mean to criticize anybody's teaching.  I thought I had learned some things that could help other people - people like me, older people or people who aren't very athletic or don't have fifteen hours a week to train - become better at karate.  Not by showing them or teaching them karate, but by helping them train better so their karate can be better.

Nothing, or almost nothing, in this blog is original.  I stole every last idea from sources from Pavel Tsatsouline to Mike Boyle to Bret Contreras.  I've discovered no secrets, no ideas that you couldn't figure out yourself if you want to spend the hundreds of hours of reading to learn it all.  But if you don't have time for that, you can read my blog and hopefully get a few useful tips that will make your karate training more productive and more efficient.

Here's a summary of the key points I try to convey:



1.  Flexibility Training:


You should do two types of stretching: static stretching and dynamic stretching.  Static stretching means moving a muscle into a stretched position and holding it.  Think of things like sitting on the floor and leaning over a locked leg to stretch the hamstrings, or wedge your legs apart to stretch your adductors.  Dynamic stretching involves moving a muscle fairly quickly into and out of a stretched range of motion.  Think mae keage, or swinging your leg up and back, or up to the side and back. 

Do your dynamic stretching daily, preferably early on.  Do ONLY dynamic stretching before a workout unless you have an injury.  I like 2 sets of 10 leg swings to the front and sides per leg.  Do 3 sets if you're very tight or sore.

If you do any static stretching - which will gradually lengthen the muscle tissue - do it when you're cold (not right after a workout).  You can do it as often as you'd like, but you'll probably need at least 3 times per week to get any results.  And don't do it before a workout!

If you need better range of motion, say in your adductors so you can round/side kick higher, you have to build strength in the target muscle (the one that's holding you back) when it's stretched.  If your adductors are tight, get close to a split (as close as you can) adn draw your legs together - either pulling into the ground or actually pulling them together, sliding so you end up standing.  You can do various other exercises as well, but the point is to build strength in the stretched position - that's how you get the muscle to relax when it's being stretched so it doesn't restrict your movement.


2.  Skill Training:

When you try to get better at a skill (say, punching or kicking) you are making a neurological adaption - your nervous system is changing.  This process doesn't work the way, say, building muscle does.  Your nervous system learns new things best by practicing them well; and practicing them often.

That has several ramifications.  You want to practice your techniques as often as you can - every day or more would be best.  You want to practice most often while fresh.  At the end of a workout, if you're tired and drained, your technique will be relatively sloppy.  That is the wrong time to practice karate.  Instead, practice karate when you're fresh - even performing just a few minutes of drills several times a day - and save your endurance work for when you're tired.

That also means your workouts should start with a warmup, then dynamic stretching, then skill practice, then strength training, then endurance training - don't put the strength/ endurance stuff before the skill stuff or your technique will suffer.


3.  Strength Training:

If you're doing a routine you got from your typical personal trainer or the pages of a fitness/ bodybuilding magazine you're probably training wrong.  Karateka need explosive strength, not big muscles (although you will gain some size as you get stronger). 

• Focus on workouts shorter than 45 minutes in length. 
• Do exercises with enough weight/ difficulty that you can only complete 5 or fewer repetitions at a time (for example, don't do regular pushups if you can do more than 5 of them; work on one-arm pushups instead). 
• Focus on movements instead of muscles - hip extension (kettlebell swings, deadlifts), knee dominant squatting (one legged squats), an upper body push (pushups, presses) and pull (pullups, body rows) and core (next bullet).
• For your core do mostly exercises where you stabilize your core against a resistance - for example, a plank instead of a situp.  Do a ton of anti-rotation - holding your core stable while some force tries to twist your body - think one armed plank, medicine ball throw, etc.

Stay away from high rep work in the name of strength training.  If you can do 50 pushups, working up to 100 pushups won't make you stronger, just give you better endurance.  You're better off working up to 10 one arm pushups.


4.  Endurance:

Presumably you want more endurance so you won't gas out during sparring or intense kata practice.  Some people train for that by doing lots of LSD (long slow distance) - jogging, hopping on a bike or treadmill for long bouts of steady state "cardio" work.  Unfortunately, you'll get at best mediocre results from that type of training.

The name of the game is High Intensity Interval Training.  You need to work at a level of intensity so high that it really stresses your cardiovascular system.  Instead of jogging, sprint.  Instead of biking, do burpees.  That means you won't be able to keep it up for long - that's fine.  Just rest for a little while and repeat.  Over and over.  I don't know the best work/ rest time ratio - working 20 s, resting 10s, repeating is popular, I also like 15/15 - but the principle is to make the work very, very hard and not to do anything during the rest.  As you get in better shape don't extend the work intervals - don't make them longer - make them harder instead.

One other point:  you may be tempted to kill two birds with one stone and do your conditioning by working martial arts techniques until you're exhuasted.  For example, doing 500 side kicks.  Don't do that.  Why not?  Becasue if you're pushing your endurance close to its limit you're going to end up doing a lot of sloppy kicks - practicing bad technique.  You only want to practice kicks when you're fresh, then once you're getting tired, hammer away at your cardio with a non-skill movement like running or burpees or something else where you don't care about your skill.


5.  Diet:

I'm a big advocate of a roughly Paleo diet.  Put simple:  Avoid all grains (especially wheat, corn, soy); avoid legumes (beans); eat no seed and vegetable oils (corn oil, vegetable oil, canola oil, etc.); restrict any artificial and processed foods; limit dairy; and limit fruit and nut consumption.  Eat animals that are fed on the same principles - so eat only grassfed beef, pastured chicken, etc.  What can you eat other than meat?  Vegetables, fruit, root veggies (sweet potatoes, yams), some nuts and fruit, some dairy (preferably raw, preferably from grass fed cows).  Yes, you'll be eating a lot of fat.  Yes, it's okay.  No, it won't make you fat.  It might heal your gut and cure your arthritis, though.  This diet, which improves insulin resistance and lowers inflammation, will improve recovery, enhance your endurance, help you drop any excess fat, and make you healthier.

There are a lot of resources on the ins and outs of paleo eating both on this blog and in other places.  This diet has made huge differences in my personal health and fitness.  Many paleo bloggers lean towards the low carb end of the spectrum - I don't.  I find that my karate goes better if I eat plenty of carbs.  I just get my carbs from sources other than wheat, corn, and soy.  Meaning I eat plenty of sweet potatoes and rice but no bread.  Try it for 30 days and see how you feel!

 

 

That's a brief summary of the key points to improving your karate practice that I've discovered over the past 5 years.  I have posts up about all of this which cover each in more detail - if you're interested in more explanation of anything here please post questions to comments.

 

Thanks!

Spirit Training

I"m not sure how common this is (though I suspect it is pretty common) but my style tends to get together for extra - intense workouts every so often in a large group setting.  We do it for the new year (Kagami Biraki), an annual beach training, an occasional black belt only training - maybe 2-4 times per year.  Not every person attends every workout, but if you're in the area you're expected to make it to most of them.

The workouts are ineveitably preceeded and postceeded by some social interactions, as people are gathering who don't normally train together, and usually some meeting type stuff - announcements, administrative stuff, etc.  Then the workout.

These workouts are not very technical - there are usually a lot of people involved with a broad cross-section of skills, and communication is often difficult due to the size of the group.  The goal here is not fine tuning anybody's technique.  We're also usually packed nearly shoulder to shoulder, so nobody's going to do much in the way of moving - think lots of punches, lots of blocks, lots of squats/ knees, lots of pushups and crunches, and lots of kiais.

If you're not a martial artist you might not appreciate how taxing it is to, say, throw a thousand punches into the air, but if you're really executing with full force that's quite a workout.  Obviously it's possible to pace yourself and kind of half-ass the whole thing, but we try not to.  After all, you're surrounded by your senpai - your seniors - and you don't want to be the guy slacking off in the middle of the group when everybody else is giving 100%.

Now if you're a regular reader of this blog you know I'm not a fan of marathon workouts.  Long workouts lead to two results - either you pace yourself, which means spending a lot of time practicing half speed techniques, or you don't pace yourself and wind up exhausted, which means spending a lot of time practicing sloppy techniques.  Either way it's the wrong kind of neurological programming.

So why do I go to these events?  There are a few reasons.  There's a social dimension to them, of course (funny story - I'm lined up, randomly, next to this guy who seems familiar.  I vaguely remember him having been around when I went for my nidan promotion four years ago.  I talk to him, and he agrees that we saw each other then, but he knows me from elsewhere.  Turns out he was a year ahead of me in high school and we were on the football team together!)  There's a certain amount of social pressure to show up - the seniors like it when you attend these events.  But there's also a useful training aspect to the workouts.

Training to exhaustion, if you do it right (and by "do it right" I mean put real effort into every technique - I mean don't pace yourself) you're going to get a few benefits.  First, you're going to practice executing technique while exhausted - there are compensations you have to make, and it's not going to hurt to be familiar with them.  Should that be a primary focus of your training?  Of course not.  But once in a while you should remember what it feels like to throw a knee when you're exhausted, and practice mustering up force in your techniques while gasping for air.

This kind of training has an effect on your spirit - your will.  Think about the euphoria people express after finishing their first marathon or climbing a mountain.  Some of it is probably endorphins, sure.  But you also gain confidence in your ability to push through adversity, to push your own body to extremes, to work at your limit.  Most of your training should be done when you're fresh, in short bursts, which is great for developing skill, but it doesn't tell you anything about your ability to push the limits of your endurance.

Making it through these workouts is a bonding experience and a confidence building experience.  There might be an endurance training effect, but I wouldn't swear to it - not if you're doing these things infrequently, which is all you should be doing.

Here are the secrets to benefiting from spirit training:

• Don't pace yourself.  Really work - put everything you have into the first punch, even if you know that you'll pay for it later. 
• Focus on technique.  Don't get too, too sloppy - you want to be sore afterwards but not injured.  You're not going to be crisp on kick #273 - but don't throw your back out either.
• Sleep as much as you can the night before and after.
• Double your protein intake for the two days after the workout.  I recommend my magic recovery formula - 12 oz. milk, 2 scoops MetRx chocolate protein powder (not the meal replacement, just the protein), Rice Krispies to taste, once or twice a day.  Any animal based protein will do.  Probably not a good idea long term, but for a day or two it really helps with recovery.  If you normally do intermittent fasting, don't schedule any fasts for the days after the workout.  You need to be in full anabolism to recover.
• Double your fish oil for the same two days to control the inflammation.
• A little bit is good; a lot is not.  If you run a dojo and you try to do these, for example, every Sunday, you're doing the wrong kind of training.  Your students will start to pace themselves, and if they don't, they'll deeply ingrain sloppy karate into their nervous systems.  In my style we do these at most maybe 4 times a year - which seems about perfect to me.

The leader of our style always exhorts us to show "strong spirit" during these events.  It took me twenty years, but I think I understand at least part of what he means when he says that. 

Osu.

You are NOT a Pap Smear: The Fallacy of "Normal"

It's not normal to eat just once a day.

It is normal to eat a diet based on grains, with bread or cereal at every meal.

It's not normal to exercise five or six times a week, getting your heart rate over 180 each time and soaking through your shirt with sweat.


It is normal to have a few beers with your buddies every weekend.


It's not normal to spend your "free" time poring over nutrition and strength and conditioning books, videos, and blogs.

It is normal to gradually gain body fat as you age.

It's not normal to eat only grass fed beef, wild caught fish, and fresh fruits and vegetables.

It is normal to get most of your exercise by chasing your kids or playing some sports on the weekend.


It's not normal to turn down birthday cake at parties, beer at sporting events, and bread at nice restaurants.

It is normal to gradually lose muscle mass as you age.

It's not normal to have a cabinet full of powder, pills, and bottles of fish oil you chow through every day.

It is normal to build up a repertoire of drugs to control your blood cholesterol levels, pressure, and sugar levels as you age.

It's not normal to be 40 and able to knock out one arm pushups, one leg squats, handstand pushups, and dead hang chinups at any time.

The word "normal," like many words, is polysemous (has multiple meanings).  Normal can mean typical or average - when we say people "normally" lose muscle as they age, nobody is claiming that it is preferable or ideal to lose muscle, they just mean that it happens to most people.  But in other contexts "normal" can

mean adhering to some norm - some standard of correctness.  Like the result of a Pap smear.  An abnormal Pap smear isn't a good thing.  An abnormality on a CT scan of your brain doesn't make anybody happy - it's not a sign that you're super smart, it means you might have a tumor or a brain injury.  In those cases "normal" confers judgment on its object - to be normal is good; to be abnormal is bad.

A significant problem is that because we think with words, when those words are ambiguous or have multiple meanings our thoughts can become confused.  If we don't keep in mind that the different senses of the word "normal' are unrelated we can get caught up in various fallacies.  We can start to think that since eating bread is normal (in the sense that it is typical, or that most people do it) that it is good (in the sense that a normal Pap smear is good) or acceptable. 

I'm not just talking about uneducated people - the medical profession commits this fallacy all the time.  Ask most physicians about what you should do if you are over 40 and your hormone levels are significantly lower than they were when you were a teenager.  Most will say that your condition is normal - meaning that it is typical of an aging American - therefore they will not treat it.  The same way they wouldn't treat a "normal" Pap smear result - there's nothing to treat.  The problem is that while dropping hormone levels IS typical, it IS NOT good or healthy.  There IS something to treat there - an illness that happens to be shared by the majority of the population is still an illness.

Imagine a 19 year old college athlete went to the doctor and complained that they weren't as athletic, lean, explosive, or able to recover as quickly as they "used" to.  Contrast that with a 45 year old with the exact same litany of complaints.  How do you think their treatment would differ?  I bet the 19 year old would be offered a battery of tests and treatments.  The 45 year old would be told to rest more and take up some less strenuous sports.

It's NOT normal to eschew sugar and grains; to train hard while aging; to seek mastery of a physical discipline while still working a job and supporting a family; to train for extreme performance; to expect the health of a teenager as you pass 30 or 40 or 50.  It's not normal in the sense of being typical or average.  But it's not abnormal either, not in the sense of an abnormal Pap smear. 

Be un-normal.  Embrace it.  Strive to achieve physical goals that leave others shaking their heads; live a lifestyle that makes people think you're a freak. 

And if you doubt yourself - if the thoughts that being abnormal is bad start to creep into your head - go down to the nearest mall, sit near the food court, and take half an hour to watch "normal people" waddle around the tables.  Listen to them wheeze and huff and snort.  Then ask yourself if you really want to be normal after all.

Move with Intent

I've been posting haphazardly lately, for which I apologize.  I started a new job and did some traveling, which has left me with less time for blogging than I'd like!  On the plus side the job has been a nice change (not that I disliked my old job).

I now sit in a cubicle for eight hours at a time and on some days I literally never have to leave my chair for work reasons.  When I do have to get up, it's to walk 50 feet (or less) to a meeting and get into another chair to sit still for another hour.

We all know the hazards of spending too much of your day sitting.  What to do?  In my old position I had my own office - I could close the door and do whatever short exercise routine I wanted to do, which is often what happened.  I'd knock out pushups, stretches, and even do parts of kata during my workday.  Now it's a lot less convenient to get any activity.

I haven't found a way to get a balanced routine, but I have been climbing stairs.  My cubicle is in the basement of a tall 5-story building (the 5th floor is the roof, but the stairs go that high).  Every hour or 90 minutes I get up, run up the stairs, taking them two at a time, then come back down.  It's like a cigarette break without the smoking.  It wakes me up a little and I'm hoping it causes enough of a catecholamine release to increase my body's use of fat while at rest (I'm not well versed enough on the literature to know if it's enough exercise to actually work that way).  I even put it on my to-do list in Outlook - every morning I add 5 tasks, called Stairs 1 - Stairs 5.  Every time I do a set I check off one of the tasks.

You don't have to climb stairs, but many of us have buildings where we have a place we can go to take a brisk walk, knock out some pushups, do a handful of jump squats, or something else.

There are a few things you can do to enhance this practice:

Do your activity with intensity - go fast, get your heart rate up.  You'll get a slight conditioning benefit, and a little is better than nothing.

Let's face it, this isn't going to be a ballbreaker of a workout.  You're not going to use every iota of your concentration to make it up the stairs.  So instead pay very careful attention to your form and posture.  For example:

• Keep your chin tucked and your head back (so the crown of your head is pulled up towards the ceiling).
• Keep your shoulderblades tucked back towards your rear end by tightening your lats.
• Maintain a slight anterior pelvic tilt the entire time.
• Focus on tightening the glutes with each step and not driving with quads alone.
• Tighten your core - abs, pelvic floor muscles, etc., and keep them taut through the climb.

The idea is to train yourself to maintain good posture.  Then, when you're doing challenging exercise or martial arts exercises, keeping good posture will be somewhat automatic.  There are only so many things you can focus on consciously at any one time -  the more you can shift into the subconscious the better.

You'll get a lot more out of climbing or walking with purpose, with solid posture and activated muscles, than out of just trudging around out of some impulse to just move without considering the quality of movement.

Ose

Is The Training Lifestyle Selfish?

If you're reading this blog and you're interested in improving, or even excelling, as a martial artist, or any kind of athlete, I bet the thought has crossed your mind that your lifestyle is selfish.  Maybe you thought it yourself, or maybe someone close to you said you were being selfish.  Why would this thought occur?

You're probably spending time exercising that you could be spending doing something for other people (like caring for children or doing household chores).  You might be spending time, effort, and money investing in paleo friendly food to eat instead of cheap junk that's more filling.  You might be eating differently from the rest of your family to be healthy, which is increasing the work put into cooking, dishes to be washed, etc.  You might insist on getting eight or more solid hours of sleep instead of staying up late socializing.  You might be spending time and energy reading about nutrition and training instead of spending it with friends or family.

Is this behavior, this lifestyle, selfish?  We could certainly argue that it is somewhat self-centered - that is, you're spending time and attention on yourself.  But you're not the only one who benefits from your lifestyle - there are plenty of indirect benefits that your loved ones can enjoy.

First, being in good shape will undoubtedly increase your functional lifespan.  We can argue all day long about whether lean, athletic people actually live longer, but there is no doubt you'll have more years of being alive and capable of doing stuff - like playing with your grandkids and having good sex, as oppposed to spending your days institutionalized, sitting in a wheelchair and staring at the wall.

Being fit and healthy makes you more patient.  Karate is moving meditation - it clears your head, calms the spirit, and makes you a better friend and a better relative (spouse, parent, whatever).  Exercise in general makes you feel good, and when people feel good they tend to be less irritable, less violent, and better to be around.

Being fit and healthy makes you better in bed.  One or more people close to you can benefit from your improved sexual abilities.

Being fit and healthy makes you a good role model for others close to you.  You might be spending less time with your kids, but the fact that your kids see you  make exercise an integral part of your daily routine is sure to help inspire them to do the same, which will continually enrich their lives.  This doesn't always work - I know of situations where family members reject everything about the fitness lifestyle, as if to spite the person who is in shape - but that's usually a sign of a dysfunctional relationship.

Being fit and healthy may wind up giving you more energy than it takes away.  In many cases you're feeling better, and accomplishing more good with your limited time spent with family members than you would feeling lethargic and having plenty of time.  For example, if you're taking care of your kids, being an engaged, attentive parent for two hours at night might do them more good than being an irritated, inattentive parent for three hours.

Let's imagine for a minute that you're not swayed by my "indirect benefits" argument.  Let's think of this another way.  Suppose you had a bad stomachache and told your spouse/ friend that you were going to see the doctor to get checked out.  Do you think that person would call you selfish for spending that time and money on yourself, or would they be glad you were taking care of yourself?  Do people think you are selfish for brushing your teeth?  Sleeping?  Drinking and eating adequately?  Of course not.  All those activities are directed at yourself - you brush your own teeth - but aren't therefore selfish.  Every capable adult needs to take care of themselves in order to be a functional member of society.  It's like the oxygen mask in an airplane - you put it on yourself first, not to be selfish, but to make sure you stay conscious long enough to take care of the kid sitting next to you.

The reality is that an hour a day of exercise and some time spent shopping for, preparing, and cooking nutritious food and some time spent learning about nutrition and exercise should be considered just as normal a part of life as brushing your teeth or seeing a doctor when you're sick.  A hundred years ago people didn't need to do this - they did manual labor on their farm or whatever to stay in shape and they didn't have to fight to stay away from Doritos and Diet Coke because those things weren't widely available - all their food was fairly high quality.  In our society we have to put work into maintaining ourselves the way our ancestors didn't. 

For another analogy, imagine you  moved to a colony on Mars.  You'd have to spend time every day ensuring your air supply was functioning properly.  That woudn't be a selfish investment of time; it would be a necessary part of what you'd have to do to stay healthy in an unusual environment.  We live in an unusual environment (from an biological/ evolutionary perspective) and deliberate exercise and food prep are part of what we need to maintain ourselves within it.

Now I am quite certain that there are people who can take this lifestyle to an extreme that is, in fact, selfish.  If you train, cook, and read books and blogs to the point where you refuse to do any household chores or spend time with your wife and/or kids, then you're being selfish.  If you train an hour a day but expect your partner to skip training so he/she can cook for you and clean the house, you're being selfish. 

But don't ever feel bad for taking a reasonable amount of time out of your day and using it to keep yourself healthy.  You deserve it, and your friends and family deserve to have a healthy, happy, and sane version of you in their lives.

Osu.

Can Cavemen Hug Trees? Paleo, Veganazis, & the Environment

Among many anti-Paleo arguments the veganazis pass around is that the paleo diet is somehow bad for the environment.  They argue that paleo foods use up a disproportional amount of our limited resources - either land or energy - and so eating this way is somehow unfair to others or not sustainable.  This line of thinking is wrong, and muddled, in a variety of ways, and since I haven't attacked a veganazi in a while I figured I'd take the time to do it here.

The first gross mistake made by your typical veganazi is to assume that the beef we are eating is itself grain fed.  This is consistent, at least - after all, the veganazis don't want you to eat your natural diet, they certainly don't care if a cow eats its natural diet.  The problem is that this assumption grossly distorts the energy and land calculations in the veganazi's favor.  Let me explain.

Suppose Abe needs 2000 Calories/day to sustain his life.  Suppose he gets that from corn and soy products primarily.  It wouldn't be too hard to calculate how much land was used, for how long, to grow that food, and how much energy it took to harvest, process, and ship that food to him (I don't have those numbers, and I won't look them up, but I think we can agree that we could get some kind of average number on these counts).  Now suppose Abe's identical twin brother Ben also needs 2000 Calories/day to sustain his life, but he gets his in the form of grain fed beef.  How much land and energy would be used/consumed getting him his daily allotment?  I don't know, but it would have to be much more than Abe's.  Why?  Because you know that to get 2000 Calories of beef, that cow had to consume much more than 2000 Calories worth of grains (that's simple thermodynamics, really).  How much more?  I'm not worried about a number right now.  Plus the cow needed land of its own to live (in addition to the land used to provide it with the grains it ate) and energy to ship the grain to the cow, to process the cow, and to ship the meat to Ben.  However much land and energy are used, it has to be more than was used feeding Abe.

The hitch is that if Ben eats grass fed beef then the energy and land cost of producing the corn and soy his cow ate would be exactly zero.  Instead, the cow would be eating grass that grows just outside his barn.  That drastically changes the energy and land cost of the beef, while making the beef itself a much more nutritious product.  And tastier, but that's another story.

Is it possible that Ben's energy and land costs would be higher than Abe's even if he's fed exclusively on grass fed beef?  I have no idea.  But if large swaths of the population switched from corn and soy to beef we wouldn't just be adding to the burden on the earth - we'd need more grassland from the cows but we'd also need a lot less land to grow soy and corn.  And land on which cattle graze is a heck of a lot friendlier to the environment than fields factory farmed to produce soy and corn.

Next the veganazi tells you that we couldn't support the current population on beef, because there isn't enough room to feed all the cows we'd need to raise.  Is he right?  Again, I have no idea, nor do I care.  Let's assume for a moment that it is true - that there isn't enough land that can grow grass to support all the cows we'd need to feed the human race a beef based diet.  Even then, the fact that we don't have the resources to feed a diet to every last person on earth has nothing to do with the healthfulness or personal benefits of that diet.  I mean, suppose some rare truffle only found on the upper plains of the Ukraine could cure cancer.  Would the fact that there isn't enough of the truffle to give to every cancer inflicted person have anything to do with its benefits?  If a researcher discovered this truffle and shouted "eureka!" would we keep his discovery out of the scientific journals because he couldn't cure everyone?

The veganazi also assumes that we should be worried that, suddenly, the great majority of people in this world will start thinking for themselves and making rational choices about diet to maximize their own health. Do you really think that's a likely scenario? And if it did, by some miracle, happen, would the problems that ensue really outweigh the benefits?

The veganazi's argument (that we couldn't feed everyone on a paleo diet) really means this: we should accept a less than optimal diet, less than optimal health, for ourselves and our children, and lie to them and to one another about it, so that nobody winds up better off than anybody else.  It's the same weird socialist impulse that would say Ferrari shouldn't build sports cars because there are poor people who can't afford them.  And, presumably, nobody should have iPads (at least not until Apple can provide one to every person on earth) or drive cars or wear designer clothes. 

A meat based diet is healthier, by far, than a plant based one.  I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is on this one - I pay a lot of money for my high quality food.  If the paleo diet grows in popularity, good food  might get more expensive.  That doesn't change the fact that it's healthier, it just means I'm going to have to make sure to earn enough money to afford it.  And, as the demand for grass fed beef grows, you can bet lots of entrepreneurial people are going to work out ways to raise grass fed beef in more economical ways.  And if it is true that many people are too poor to afford a meat-based diet, I will feel bad for them, but there are lots of wonderful things that poor people can't afford - that's what the word "poor" means.  They also can't drive nice cars or live in big houses or visit the best doctors.  That's how the system works. The alternative to rationing high quality goods is to deny them to everyone - and how does that make us better of?

If you care about the environment, buy grass fed, locally raised beef and organic produce.  You'll have a much, much smaller carbon footprint and energy footprint than any veganazi chowing down on factory farmed soy products, grains, and other plants that are harvested by gas guzzling machines and shipped in gas guzzling trucks to your supermarket.

And if the time comes when everyone wants to eat beef, and the soy is rotting in the fields as ranchers rush to plant grass for their hungry herds, and the price of meat starts to go up, at least we'll save a ton of money on our health care bills, old age homes, joint replacements, oxygen tanks, and escalators.  Maybe it would all even out in the end.

Reasons NOT to go Paleo

Check out this week's Paleo rodeo; some good stuff in there, as usual, from all over the paleo blogging world.

I'm continuing the Great Leucine Experiment.  Some thoughts:

1. The leucine tastes much better if it's dissolved in at least 12 oz. of warm water.
2. It still tastes pretty bad.  It also smells bad.  
3. I think it's working, but I've been less than perfect diet-wise, so it's hard to tell.  I'm also handicapped by my libraphobia.  Since I can't get on a scale it's hard to discern small fluctuations in bodyfat, especially when you add in the problem of my salt intake varying so widely (I don't watch my sodium intake very much).  If I eat a few ounces of prosciutto on occasion I'm pretty sure I'm going to retain water the next day, so that's going to disguise any visual evidence of fat loss.  Overall, it's hard to tell what's working and what isn't when you have an experimental population of 1.

I went shopping the other day (not my favorite activity) and realized that there are many good reasons not to start or continue a paleo diet.  Here are a few:

• You may receive unusual attention from the opposite sex.  This can be very disconcerting as well as being hard on your existing relationships (perhaps your marriage).  Let's face it, hotness is a curse (so I hear).
• You will likely need to buy new clothes.  I am in the midst of replacing all my size 38 pants with size 32's. I also need a new suit and some new shirts.  Thank goodness my shoes still fit.  This is time consuming, expensive, and bad for the environment (throwing away old clothes and getting new ones).  Sorry, environment!
• Many clothes off the rack will fit you poorly, if at all.  You may find the waists of regular (even loose fit) pants are too loose while the butt and thighs are tight.  Buy a belt!  Sorry, fashion!
• Some people will hate you for effortlessly losing weight - you're sabotaging their ability to excuse their own obesity.  Some will hate you overtly, others will subvert you by encouraging moderation (have just one donut!) or splurges (have some cake, it's your birthday - surely one piece of cake won't hurt!)
• As you age, your continued interest in physical activity will put you further and further out of touch with your peers.  Your old friends will gradually spend more and more time sitting in place and, eventually, in wheelchairs, while you pursue kickboxing, rock climbing, Zumba, and other high intensity activities.  This can be very alienating.  Sorry, friendship!
• Your continued mental vitality will make you acutely aware of how many stupid people there are in the world, preventing you from enjoying the relative bliss of a long, slow slide into dementia.  Sorry, peace of mind!
• You may find yourself annoyed and angry when you read articles by registered dieticians recommending that people feed their kids "heart healthy whole grains" instead of, say, bacon.  Knowledge is a difficult burden to bear.
• With your newfound energy you may find yourself doing more cleaning, home repair, and organizing, instead of living in a disintegrating craphole.  This is great as long as you enjoy cleaning, home repair, and organizing - which I don't.  
• Your doctor will try to convince you to eat more grains and vegetable oil despite the fact that your blood panels show you're in better health, by far, than (s)he is.

I could go on, but I won't.

Stick to your guns!  Eating right is difficult, but it offers serious rewards.  Try a strict paleo diet for 30 days and see how you feel.  See if that feeling is worth more to you than the joys of having toast with breakfast.  It's your body; your call.

The Great Leucine Experiment

I've managed to stay at pretty much the same level of leanness, maybe adding a touch of muscle, over the holiday season.  That's pretty good - in the past month I've had a Christmas/ New Year's vacation, my 40th birthday (with a corresponding party), and a trip to Florida to visit my in-laws.  As you can imagine, my diet has been pretty far from perfect and my training has been spotty.

Now I'm home for the foreseeable future, and I want to lean out fairly quickly.  I am going to a 3-day karate training weekend in July (with a lot of higher-ups from my style, probably including my first teacher) and I need to be able to perform well, which means lots of hard training this spring.  I'd like to be able to increase my caloric intake for that, but I don't want to do that until I'm as lean as I'd like to be.

My plan is simple.  To lean out I'm going to cut back on alcohol (I was having some gluten free beer, wine, or margaritas 3-4 times a week this past month, which is a lot for me and a lot of empty calories!), cut back on sugar (I tend to overdo the sugar, in the form of chocolate mostly, when I'm not careful), and limit my fruit intake, especially dried fruit (it's just too easy to ingest a ton of calories and a ton of fructose with dried fruit).  I don't plan to do anything in particular training-wise to lose fat, as my regular routine should take care of it.  I'll probably also try to occasionally cycle my carbs - reducing my carb intake for a day or a few days at a time.  If that negatively impacts my training I'll likely stop doing it.  These are all good things to do for anybody, even lean people, but I'm going to be more careful about them.

I'm also going to experiment with leucine.  This is an idea I had that is a shot in the dark - I'm not sure at all that it will work, but I figured I'd try.  The idea isn't really mine, it's based loosely on Martin Berkham's work, but isn't exactly what he recommends.  Let me explain.

Leucine is an amino acid, one of the branched chain amino acids (BCAA's).  BCAA's have been famous for a while now (maybe 15 or 20 years) for their ability to induce some muscle protein synthesis.  That is, if you eat a ton of protein that has a lot of BCAA's in it, or even BCAA's on their own, you get a big uptick in how much muscle protein your body manufactures compared to what you get from ingesting a similar amount of protein that is relatively poor in BCAA's or other amino acids on their own.  This happens because the BCAA's were seen to directly affect the mTOR pathway.  More recently research has shown that it's not the BCAA's as a whole that do this but really leucine (which, remember, is one of the BCAA's).

What's so great about muscle protein synthesis when you want to get leaner?  Well, two things.  First, the more muscle you build the more you'll have, probably.  Muscle burns calories, makes your workouts burn more calories, and, really, who wants to be lean and un-muscled?  I mean, what's the point of that?  Second, protein synthesis is itself energy intensive.  Building a pound of muscle burns a bunch of calories. So keeping mTOR active more of the day should help us lean out, as long as we can do so without ingesting a bunch of calories.

Remember that I only usually eat at night.  I eat a nice dinner around 5:30 or 6:00, usually after training, then a small snack (a handful of Brazil nuts and a little chocolate and fish oil) at 8:15 or so.  Other than that it's just water and some supplements and some fish oil in the morning.

If I want to keep mTOR active all day I could drink a whey protein shake (whey is very high in leucine) 3-4 times a day.  The downside of doing that is I'd be spiking my insulin all day, ingesting a bunch of extra calories, and possibly be doing more harm than good.  That's not even remotely intermittent fasting anymore.

My brilliant (not really) idea was to ingest leucine alone several times a day, during a time when I'd otherwise be fasting.  Hopefully that will activate mTOR, keep my body synthesizing protein, burning lots of extra calories, and adding muscle to my frame without adding a lot of calories to my system or spiking insulin very much (you can't really burn fat while your insulin is high, so having chronically elevated insulin levels is the #1 biggest no-no if you're trying to get lean).  5g of leucine (the amount shown in research studies to activate mTOR) is only 20 calories, so using it 2-4 times per day won't add too many calories to my overall intake, nor should it do a lot to insulin levels.

How do we ingest leucine by itself?  Now we're in the world of supplements.  I bought a tub of leucine powder for about $21 that should be around 100 servings - enough for 30-50 days of use, depending on how often I use it.  As experiments go, not too bad.  The plan was to take 5 g or so of leucine every morning, and then 1-2 more times during the day, to get the protein synthesis machine rolling.

Disaster struck.  Leucine mixed with water tastes like... I'm not sure what it tastes like, as I've never before put anything so disgusting in my mouth on purpose.  It's foul.  It doesn't mix well.  It's quite bitter - enough so that I alternate wanting to tear my tongue out with my hands with wishing I was dead so the taste would go away.  And it lingers on the tongue.

I tried mixing it with tea and sucralose.  The result was a horrible tea flavored sea of bitterness.  Then I tried mixing it with a LOT of water (12 oz. for 5g leucine) in a shaker bottle, holding my nose and just downing it.  Still pretty horrible, but I managed to keep it down.

Can I stick to it?  I'm not sure.  It tastes really bad.  I certainly wouldn't make a lifelong habit out of it.

There are BCAA preparations on the market that are high in leucine and contain flavorings to mask the taste.  If I can't keep downing this stuff I might try one of them.  They are, obviously, more expensive, and I don't want to ingest a lot of artificial coloring agents and sweeteners (sweet tasting things spike insulin).  I'll let you know how things go.

This whole experiment may turn out to be a bad idea for a few reasons.  The energy costs of the active mTOR pathway may turn out to be trivial.  Having mTOR active all day may counteract some of the benefits of fasting all day - I'm not sure my cells will do what I want them doing (engaging repair mechanisms, cleaning out garbage proteins from the cytoplasm) if protein synthesis is ramped up.  Like I said, this is a shot in the dark at a fat loss strategy.  On the bonus side, we're talking about a non-stimulant method of possibly increasing both calorie usage and muscle building, which would be pretty awesome for dieters.

I'll update this blog with results and observations as time allows.

Osu.

Grouping Variables: Scientific Fallacy of the week

First, please read this post about a study on stroke risk.

I read this the other day and got to thinking (I know, dangerous).  There are a lot of ways in which scientific research has steered us wrong over the last 50 years or so that share a very specific commonality that I haven't addressed much before.  In all of them some variable was used and compared to some outcome - positive, like protein synthesis, or negative, like heart attack raate.  In all of them the variable measured failed us because it wasn't specific enough.  Let me explain with what we used to call in my field a thought experiment:

Suppose, for example, that red (and only red) M&M's contained some toxic chemical that caused liver cancer after prolonged exposure, and that nobody knew this.  Suppose some intrepid and well meaning researcher was concerned about liver cancer and spent a lifetime examining epidemiological records (perhaps by studying data collected about the diets and health over a long period of time for a large group of nurses, or doctors, or teachers) to search for possible risk factors for liver cancer.  At some point this researcher might either notice or suspect that chocolate eating was linked to liver cancer - maybe he has some theory to explain this, maybe not.  So he compares the statistics surrounding chocolate eating to liver cancer rates - what do you think he'll find?

Keep in mind that in my imaginary example red (and only red) M&M's contain some unknown substance that causes liver cancer at a moderate rate (that is, not everyone who eats them gets liver cancer, but some do).  I think it's clear our researcher will find a nice correlation of some kind between chocolate eating and liver cancer - people who eat lots of chocolate will get more liver cancer, all else being accounted for, than those who eat none.  Why?  Because people who eat no chocolate certainly aren't eating any red M&M's, while some of those who eat lots and lots of chocolate eat some of that chocolate in the form of red M&M's.  The chocolate eaters are more likely to be exposed to our imaginary toxin.

What would happen if this guy did some real science?  Suppose he took two groups of people and had one group eat more chocolate on purpose than the other, while otherwise keeping all the variables the same.  Some of the chocolate eaters would probably choose M&M's, at least some of the time, and would also eat the red ones.  Some might eat only organic dark chocolate.  The M&M eaters would get cancer at a higher rate, but if the study only compares chocolate eaters to non-chocolate eaters then the rate of liver cancer in the chocolate-eaters would be higher - but ONLY becasue the red M&M eaters would get more liver cancer.  By not specifying the type or source of chocolate you wouldn't be able to tell that from reading the study.

You can imagine what would happen next - this guy would be on the cover of Time magazine telling everybody to stop eating chocolate, the chocolate industry would go into a nosedive, health conscious people would stop eating chocolate.  People might get sicker on average - because they'd be missing out on the health benefits of good chocolate (dark chocolate) in a mistaken attempt to avoid liver cancer, not knowing that they should just be avoiding red M&M's.  It might be decades before doctors were willing to look at new, more sophisticated studies and realize that the problem isn't chocolate in general and recommend that people eat chocolate again, just not the red M&M type of chocolate.

What in real life has run a course like this?  Take fat for a great example.  Good science shows that saturated fat is bad for your heart - if by saturated fat you mean saturated and trans fats grouped together.  Why?  Because some of the people who eat more [saturated and trans fat together] are going to eat a lot of trans fats - and they are bad for you in various ways.  So if you study them together you might blame both saturated and trans fats for causing heart disease when in reality all of the damage is coming from just the trans fats.  This has really happened, in this country, over the past 40 or so years.

Another example?  Carbs.  You can look at high carb diets and show that they lead to insulin resistance.  Then you find groups that eat lots of carbs and don't get insulin resistance!  Why not?  Because it's not carbs, it's fructose.  Carb eaters in general get more fructose than non-carb eaters - but you can eat carbs from non-fructose sources (think starch, like sweet potatoes) and not develop insulin resistance (I'm slightly oversimplfying this, but the truth is close).  Carbs get a bad rap because some carbs cause health problems.  Then health conscious people avoid all carbs, when some might be better off getting some starch every day as long as they get it from non-fructose containing non-grain sources.

Want more examples?  Branched chain amino acids.  It was discovered something like 20 years ago that some proteins cause a boost in muscle protein synthesis.  So people ate tons of those proteins.  Then it was determined that it's not the protein as a whole that's signalling the protein synthesis, it was the branched chain amino acids (BCAA's) that were doing it.  Then people could take the BCAA's alone and possibly skip the whole proteins.  Recently it was discovered that it wasn't the BCAA's - it was the leucine, which is one of the BCAA's, that was doing all the signalling work.  Now those whole proteins and BCAA powders did contain lots of leucine, so the science on them wasn't wrong, it just wasn't specific enough.  The dangers of these misunderstandings aren't significant, this didn't cause widespread health damage, it's just another example.

Want more?  The study I linked to at the top of the page is a good one, and we've seen various versions of this recently.  Processed red meat is like the red M&M of the meat world.  If you measure total meat consumption against health risks for different stuff you're going to see a correlation - because some (or many) of the people eating a lot of meat are getting it processed.  The harm done by the processed meat will make the meat-eating group on average sicker than those who eat no meat - even though the individuals who happen to eat just fresh meat are just fine!  This study actually took sensitive enough data to recognize that, although the idiots writing the conclusions and the bigger idiots writing the news article about the study didn't care enough to include that.

Want more?  Omega-3 fats.  DHA and EPA are omega-3 fatty acids that are super important to your health - you need a good amount of them, and a good ratio of those fats to omega-6's, to keep systemic inflammation under control.  So lots of people go out and eat lots of omega-3 fats.  But not all omega-3 fats are DHA and EPA or are even turned into DHA and EPA in your body in significant amounts.  So people who hear that omega-3's are good for them, then go out and guzzle flax seed oil (which contains omega-3 fats, just not the kind that humans can easily turn into useful forms), they aren't doing themselves any good at all and might be doing lots of harm.  All because they weren't specific enough.

I'm sure there are other cases like this, I just can't think of any right now.  Post to comments if you have others.

Take home message: science is hard and specificity is important.  Pay close attention to the fine print in these studies, especially before you go around changing your eating habits for the worse. 

(Please note that the red M&M thing was just a way to explain my point - I have no reason to think that M&M's of any color are especially harmful.)

Our Paleo Religion

I've been a faithful listener of The Fitcast since around episode 20 or 30 (they're up to 200 now).  Not always the best content, the hosts are at least sincere, and often entertaining.  This past weekend I was finally listening to episode 200, which included a long interview with guest Alan Aragon.

Alan seems like a nice enough fellow and has some interesting things to say.  Sadly, a big part of his schtick lately has been about attacking the Paleo Diet on various forums.  I guess, if you're not the glute guy like Bret Contreras, or the functional guy like Mike Boyle, you've got to find some way of distinguishing yourself from the rest of the marketplace.

Alan's attack on Paleo seems to consist of two points: first, that there aren't any isocaloric studies (studies where all the groups eat the same number of calories) showing that the Paleo diet provides better results than other diets, and two, that the Paleo diet is "like a religion" to its adherents.

Let me tear both apart.

First, there are plenty of studies (well, several) like this one showing that people who eat freely on a Paleo diet type of plan do much better than people who eat freely on, say, a Mediterranean plan, or the standard american diet.  The reason these studies don't turn out to be isocaloric is that the free eating (meaning, they eat until satisfied) Paleo group ends up eating fewer calories - Paleolithic foods are satisfying and don't lead to powerful cravings.

A schmuck looks at this data and says, "gee, the better results are obviously just a result of the reduced caloric intake, proving that Paleo eating isn't in itself better for you."  Anyone with at least half a brain says, "gee, it's completely fucking amazing that eating a certain style of food allows people to easily cut their caloric intake without starving themselves, and thereby enjoy a huge host of health benefits.  It's like magic, only better!"  I happen to believe there are plenty of  mechanistic studies showing that gluten damages the gut lining, for example, indirectly showing that a gluten-free diet will be superior for health to an isocaloric gluten-containing diet, and that the benefits of eating Paleo aren't solely because of the reduced caloric intake, but even if I'm wrong - Paleo eaters spontaneously eat fewer calories.  That's the fucking (excuse my French) holy grail of health and weight loss in the Western world.  To get an isocaloric comparison you'd have to force feed the Paleo eaters like geese.  Who's going to pay for that?  Corporate agriculture?  The pharmaceutical companies?  I don't think so.  So Alan gets to sound very self important and research driven, a guy who only cares about the science, while misleading the public.  And if you notice he never says a word about gluten and gut health or dairy and autoimmunity - he just decries the lack of isocaloric studies.

The second attack is a little more ad hominem and a little more annoying (to me).  Alan compares Paleo to a religion.  Which seems okay at first, because religions are okay, right (except if you think they aren't, but most Americans aren't reflexively against religion).  So what's the big deal?

It's a simple and common fallacy that Alan endorses - because things share one quality, they must share other unrelated qualities.  Here's how it works:  Religions have many qualities.  One is that they are based on faith, not evidence.  People believe their version of God is the correct one because they believe it, not because of any scientific evidence to that effect.  It's called faith.  Another quality of religions is that many religious people endorse their religion with a very powerful fervor - the term "religious fanatic" comes to mind.  I don't need to come up with examples of  people killing and dying in the name of religion to make this point.  People do that sort of thing in the name of religion much more than, for example, in the name of their love of Star Trek or Justin Bieber, even though people feel very strongly about those two topics as well.

Alan (and Kevin, the poor misguided host of the show) shows that Paleo is "like religion" because of how zealously Paleo adherents advocate for their lifestyle.  I'll buy that.  Even I, paragon of rationality that I am, have been known to proselytize my diet to an  unpleasant degree.  It's hard not to when I see the people around me killing themselves with plant toxins.  So there is a similarity between the zeal of Paleo adherents and the zeal of many religious fanatics.  He then concludes (erroneously) that the two systems are also similar in a separate quality - their lack of actual evidence.  Unless you can show that the only acceptable evidence is isocaloric studies (which are never going to be done), and you completely ignore the abundant anthropological evidence and population studies for some reason, this analogy is completely false.  In fact, since double blind studies on diet are impossible, I would say that research studies in this area are all patently useless.  Then you either have to say that science on nutrition can't be done at all (and knowledge in this area is impossible to attain) or accept that other models of research have to be accepted.

The only acceptable way I can see to deal with Alan for viciously and callously attacking our dietary lifestyle is for all Paleo adherents to immediately decide to, upon meeting him, kill or maim him.  One of us is bound to succeed eventually.  Like a jihad, only in English.  Or maybe a good old fashioned crucifixion.  You don't see enough of those anymore.  No, I'm kidding.  Seriously, I'm kidding.

If I seem annoyed, it's because I am.  I get annoyed at the Alan Aragons of the world because they sound smart, but because they're too narrow minded and too protective of their reputations they can't admit they're wrong and address the research on plant anti-nutrients.  I don't care if Alan eats himself to an early death, but too many people, many of whom don't have time to really think about this seriously, might listen to him and continue on a path of self destruction.  I mean, I have friends who might have listened to his drivel.  I have fond feelings towards Kevin, the host of the Fitcast, because I've listened to him talk for several hundred hours, and I think he listens to Alan and Leigh Peele (another anti-Paleo Fitcast host) and others like them.  And they're steering him wrong.  The sad fact is that neither Alan nor Leigh are going to make names for themselves endorsing Paleo, not getting on the bandwagon this late, so they have to fight against it to seem unique.  I, on the other hand, am selling nothing, so if my advice seems derivative... that's okay.  All I care about is being right, not being original.

I am zealous about this diet because it works for me, and, I strongly suspect, would work for many other people, where other diets have failed us.  I care about some of those people.  People I care about have died because they didn't get a chance to discover this lifestyle before the years of neolithic eating rotted away their health.  If that makes me a zealot, then that is what I am, but don't dare tell me my beliefs aren't based on real science just because you're too lazy to look outside a very narrow window of research.