Who, me? Stressed?

First of all, I apologize to anyone who subscribes in a reader and got this post without content - I was trying out a new keyboard and published by accident.  I didn't even realize it until this morning.

If you're a new reader who heard my interview on The Applied Karate Podcast, then welcome!  I recommend searching the archives for anything you found of interest, or posting questions to the comments.  I'll happily respond to any questions people have (though I won't always know the answers, obviously).  If you're a reader of this blog and not a listener of the Applied Karate Podcast, I recommend you check it out.

I've had a hectic few months.  I started a new career (software developer) and moved (to Brooklyn, New York), but with my kids still back in Maryland I've been doing a lot of travelling back and forth.  My training has suffered badly and my blogging has suffered even more!

A couple of quick notes: in times of stress (especially time stress) many of us turn to comfort foods that we know aren't good for us, often saying things like, "a little candy may not be good for me long term, but it will give me the energy to get through this very stressful day, and that's what I need right now."  I can't claim to be immune to this impulse by any stretch, but it's worth avoiding.  If you're really just having a very tough day that's one thing, but if your life is very busy and you need to get things done day in and day out you'll have a lot more energy and strength overall if you keep to a stricter diet.  By stricter I mean "cleaner" - plenty of high quality meat and veggies, no grains, plenty of clean starches (white rice, sweet potatoes) - I DO NOT mean low calorie.  High stress periods of life are not necessarily the times when you want to try to cut a lot of weight (sometimes they are, but adding stressors to yourself can be counterproductive when you're already under duress).

I have some more thoughts about stressful periods of life:

• If  you think you don't have time to train you're wrong.  Many of us get sort of trapped into the idea of "a workout" as a big block of time for exercise.  You might not have an hour to set aside for exercise, but very few of us have jobs where we really can't get up every hour or so and knock out some exercise.  Put a chinup bar in a doorway and do a couple of chinups every time you go through it.  Stand up from your desk and throw a few punches.  If you work in a cubicle, kiai loudly, it will make everybody appreciate your efforts.  Brush your teeth in kiba dachi.  Practice your posture - pack your neck and shoulders, and tighten your abs, while standing around - you can do this on the train ride to work, waiting for a meeting, wherever.  I can't promise the same results as if you added in dedicated workouts but it will help.
• Try not to skimp on sleep.  It's tempting to "make" extra time by cutting short on sleep - look, if you have to, then you have to, but the value of quality sleep for health is very large.  Your long term health will suffer.  Those hours you gain aren't free.
• If you need downtime, then take it.  People can't do grueling work all day, day after day, without a break - they lose efficiency.  The trick is to take a real break, do something that makes you happy, don't feel guilty about it, and don't think of it as "wasting" time.  If you love videogames, play them - but don't just play computer solitaire because you're too wiped out to get your work done and kill hours doing something you don't actually enjoy.

The more you say, "screw it, I'm having a tough time, I don't have the energy to eat right or train" the harder it's going to be for you to get back on track when things lighten up.  Don't get down on yourself for taking it a little easier, but don't cut yourself too much slack either.

Please listen to the Podcast.  I'll try to get the final article on periodization up soon, I promise!  And I'm thinking about another round of before-and-after photos... though I haven't made much progress this year, sadly.

Osu!

Periodization Made Simple Part II: Periodizing Intensity

In Part I of this series I discussed one of the major types of periodization, periodizing by physical attribute.  Basically, this means rotating your training to focus on one major physical quality at a time - building muscle, getting stronger, getting faster, or gaining endurance.  You do this by designing workouts that focus on one of those qualities, and either rotating the workouts one after the other or focus on just one type of workout for a block of time - from 3-8 weeks - then switching to another "type."

Periodizing Intensity:  This is a very different idea than periodizing attributes (though they can work together).  To periodize intensity means to vary how hard you're working at whatever you're doing.  Remember, any type of workout - strength, speed, hypertrophy, or energy system - can be very hard, or very taxing, on your body, or comparatively less taxing.  People just can't charge full speed ahead week in and week out forever without crashing and burning.  To prevent this we build planned de-loads or rests into our training.

There are a few different ways to handle this, and I'll go over the most common.


When do we periodize intensity? 

This is a great question.  There are roughly two ways to handle this.  The first is to do planned deloading periods.  That means that you, or your coach, or whoever, figures out ahead of time that you're going to go full blast for, say, 8 weeks, then do a 1 week deload.  (There's nothing special about 8 weeks, it's just an example number - fill in your own block of  time).  This is especially handy when you're working towards a competition or a meet.  I've written before (read this and this) that you should prepare for a promotion or a competition by resting in the days immediately preceding the "event."

The downside to this style is that if you're just training - if you're not heading towards any specific goal date, like a contest, but just trying to generally improve - you still need rest occasionally but it's really hard to say with confidence, "oh, I'll work this hard, and I'll definitely need a rest after 6 weeks - not 5 or 7, but definitely 6."  If you try that, and you don't have a team of physiologists planning things out for you, you run a real risk of going too long without a break or getting rest you don't need.

So what's the alternative?  Many people advocate resting or de-loading when you physically need it.  That sounds kind of obvious - rest when you need to rest!  But how do you know when you need to rest (as opposed to just being lazy)?

If you've been training for a long time you might be a very good judge of your body's status - you might be able to accurately "feel" whether you're ready for a hard training session or need to back off.  That's great!  But if you want a more scientific measurement, or if you don't have that level of physical awareness yet, you can go with a couple of other choices.

One common method is to measure your waking heart rate.  Get a heart rate monitor or use the finger + stopwatch method and measure your heart rate when you first wake up - ideally before you get out of bed.  After a few days you should get a pretty good idea of what's normal for you.  If one day you're feeling tired and your waking heart rate is higher than normal, that's the day to rest.

A better (probably) method is to measure heart rate variability.  If you're worn out your heart rate variability (how much it goes up and down in response to normal getting up and moving around type of activity) will decrease, and that's the time to rest and recover (high heart rate variability = good).  I know of no easy way to measure this without some kind of sophisticated equipment - please post to comments if you do!

If you're kind of in the middle, body-awareness wise, and aren't sure if you're being lazy or genuinely need rest, I like to go to the gym and do the warmup before re-evaluating.  If I warm up and still feel like crap I'll de-load.  If I'm just not in the mood and don't really need the rest I'll usually find that I'm good to go once I finish my warmup.


How do we periodize intensity?  So you've decided that it's time for a de-load.  There are roughly two ways to back off on intensity.  The first, and probably simplest, is to rest.  And by rest I just mean skip workouts or reduce their frequency - take a few days or a week off.

There are two downsides to resting this way.  The first is that you lose momentum.  I don't know about you, but I find it easier to get to the gym or dojo if I'm going regularly - once I take some time off I find it hard to get back.  If that doesn't apply to you, that's great, you can judge that for yourself.  The second downside is that you might recover faster doing something than doing nothing.  That means you're probably better off with what they call active recovery.

Active recovery means some version of doing relatively easy workouts.  You can do the same workout you're resting from, and back off on the weight used (back off a lot, not just 5-10 lbs) but do the same style of workout.  If you were working on speed, do some relaxed speed work - don't go all-out.  Run hard, but don't sprint, and don't do a lot of volume.  If you were working on strength, drop the weight and just "go through the motions."  It can be hard to restrain yourself, especially if you're feeling okay and are doing a planned de-load before a competition, but do it anyway!

The trick with active recovery is to move enough to get blood pumping through the muscles - delivering nutrients and clearing away waste products - without doing any additional damage.  In other words, don't make new inroads into your recovery system!  That means no brand new exercises, lots of full range of motion movement, and nothing so vigorous that you feel like throwing up after the set.


How do we put it all together?  I'm going to give you the cheapest possible answer:  wait for my next post.  I'll describe a periodization schedule that's manageable for the amateur martial artist!

One tough thing about periodization is that in the traditional martial arts we tend to have a go-hard-all-the-time mentality.  It feels like wimping out to take time off.  Additionally, it's really hard to take it easy in the dojo, in a class.  When your instructor tells you to do 25 pushups, few of us have the gumption to say, "actually, I'm only going to do 10 because this is a de-load week for me."  I don't have an easy answer to this problem, other than to say that if you need a de-load, cut back on classes if you can (this would be a great time to volunteer to teach, which is usually less physically demanding), and really cut back on your outside-the-dojo training.

If you're teaching classes you might consider the idea of scheduling de-loads into your class structure.  Have an easy set of classes every few weeks where you cut back on the conditioning type stuff.  That may or may not meet the needs of your students.  You don't have to waste the week - focus on skill work, really focus on technical details, etc.

Remember, it's not laziness, it's strategy!  You can periodize on purpose or you can be forced into it through injuries and illness.  There's nothing heroic about working yourself into the ground.

Osu!

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!

What's the deal with Strength Curves and Nautilus machines anyway?

I'm starting a new job in a couple of days and moving to Brooklyn right after Thanksgiving.  I'll try to keep up the blogging, but I can't really make any promises because I'm going to be super busy!  In the meantime, here's a short article on strength curves:

I just watched a promotional lecture about an exercise machine that's being made available for home use in a little while, the ARX Fit Omni.  I'm not endorsing the machine or suggesting you buy it - I don't even know how much it costs - but I thought it was based on some interesting principles, like the Nautilus system developed by Arthur Jones, and I figured it was worth some discussion.

The ARX and Nautilus equipment are based on making the most efficient use of the strength curve.  If talk of curves and math give you anxiety attacks, relax, I'll make this relatively simple!

The strength curve just means that in any particular movement you're going to be able to exert more force in certain parts of the movement than in others - because of the way your body is designed, the direction of gravity relative to the direction of the motion, and whether you're lowering or raising the weight.

This is easier to understand with an example.  Take the barbell curl.  You pick up a barbell in your hands, with your arms hanging straight down, the the bar is against the tops of your thighs, your body pretty much straight.  Keeping your body still and your elbows in the same spot you lift the bar up to your chest, then lower it.  All that's happening is that your elbows bend.

Okay, now what's the deal with a strength curve?  Look at that movement.  Will that movement feel equally hard at every point along the path?  No, it won't.  At the bottom of the move you're almost swinging the bar forwards - you're not really fighting gravity.  At the top, the same thing happens.  It's the middle - when your elbows are bent at a right angle - where the movement is the hardest.  The other thing is that you're always stronger eccentrically than concentrically.  In other words, you can safely lower more weight than you can lift.  

What's the big deal, you ask?  Well, the big deal is that if you do barbell curls you're never going to maximally stress yourself at all points along the movement going up and down.  If you use enough weight to make the first few inches difficult, you'll never get the bar past the midpoint.  If you use enough weight to make the lowering really stressful you'll never be able to lift the bar.  In effect, you're wasting a large part of the motion, and you're never going to maximize your strength anywhere but in the part of the path where the resistance is actually right for you.

Traditionally you would get around this by performing multiple exercises that each stressed you in a different spot or a different part of the range.  You might do incline curls to work the lower part of the move.  You  might do negatives - where someone helps you lift the bar, then you lower it on your own, to work the eccentric portion of the movement more optimally.

Ideally, we'd like to have a magic bar.  Imagine a bar that was heavier at the bottom, then got lighter - not too much lighter, just lighter enough that you could curl it through the midpoint - then got heavier towards the top.  then it would get a lot heavier as you lowered it, again being not as heavy through the midpoint but heaviest towards the bottom, while lowering it.  And the magic bar would know by exactly what amount it should get lighter or heavier for each individual user.

That's what Arthur Jones tried to do with his Nautilus machines.  He used a cam - a funny shaped axle, basically - that would change the radius from the axle to the chain depending on where in the movement you were.  The details aren't important, but instead of a machine where it took X pounds of force to move the bar, it would take more than X to move it through some angles and less than X to move it through others,  more or less matching the places where you were naturally stronger or weaker.

There were (and are) problems with Nautilus equipment.  If you had longer or shorter limbs than average the strength curve might still not match your own.  And it didn't automatically get heavier for the lowering portion - though they were often made so it was really easy to do negatives on your own.

The ARX Fit Omni has a machine that varies the resistance on a belt depending on instructions given to it by a computer.  I don't know how it matches your strength curve - if it "learns" how much force you can exert or uses mathematical modelling - I'm not suggesting that it does or does not work.  It does seem very interesting.  It promises an exercise that would maximally stress you through every degree of a range of motion - not be really hard at some sticking point and relatively easy elsewhere.

If it works the workouts it induces would be very efficient and promise good hypertrophy and strength building in a very short period of time.  I have a feeling it's going to be too expensive for most of us to have around the house, but that's just a guess.  If you get to play around with one let me know how it works!

Osu.

Adding Value to Your Dojo part I: Martial Arts as a Social Activity

There are a lot of ways to think about your martial art - is it a form of physical culture, a means of learning self defense, a cultural/ historical preservation activity, etc.  None of these are wrong, and in many ways they aren't exclusive - you can train to get in shape AND to preserve a part of history that you find valuable, for example.  The way you think of your art will, however, shape your training in many ways (if you train to preserve a cultural artifact you're less likely to incorporate techniques from other arts, for example), as well as shaping your marketing (sales pitch) and the way you may structure activities around your dojo.

I've already written about how I think we can benefit from regarding our training from a physical culture perspective (and I stand by what I wrote there).  I have another perspective to share today.

I tend to do the bulk of my training alone.  I go to class when I can, which is often just once a week, but I'll practice kata and kihon or do my conditioning by myself several other times a week (by the way, this is probably a bad idea for any beginner, but I've got many years of supervised training under my belt).  There are advantages to this approach.  I have less travel time.  I can train whenever I want - I'm never late for class!  I can focus on the skills I need most and on the exercises that work best for me.

There are also some pretty obvious disadvantages.  You can't do partner drills by yourself.  It's very difficult to work on many key skills without a partner - you can get clean technique, but how do you develop your timing?  It's even harder in grappling arts, I'm sure - how do you even practice throws, holds, and locks without another body to toss around?

I think that many people will also suffer from a motivation gap.  I'm not that way personally, but for many people it's easier to show up to a class and train because someone is telling you to train, rather than trying to force yourself to practice alone in an empty room when you could just go have a beer instead and nobody would be any the wiser.

Let's put aside these considerations for now - these points all have to do with the fact that training with other people can be better for your karate.  They're valid points, but there is another set of advantages to training with a group that have nothing to do with improving your skill:

The thing is, humans are social animals.  We evolved to travel in groups and there are serious biological implications to that fact.  There is a substantial body of medical literature showing that human health is enhanced by having strong social connections - friends, family, whatever.  We can argue over some of the fine points - do internet friendships count or not (I suspect they do) - but the bottom line is, very clearly, that people are healthier and happier when they have a deep social environment.

You can get friends from a lot of places, but one very interesting social bond is created by shared physical suffering.  Anyone who's ever been through a football camp or a hard promotion test can tell you this.  In my dojo we often hug or pat each other on the back after tough sparring matches.  This is why corporations spend tons of money to take their executives rock climbing or white water rafting and call it "team building."  It really does build a sense of togetherness and bonding among people.

The people in your dojo a) share your interests; b) spend time with you regularly; c) share bonding experiences regularly.  They're also unlikely to be total douchebags, at least in a good school, because if you have good seniors the douchebags get their asses kicked hard enough that they either straighten up their act or quit before getting very high in rank (usually).

My point?  You should be (and probably already are) friends with your senpai and kohai.  You should hang out with them outside of class.  You should invite them to your Christmas party.  You should share birthdays.  You should be Facebook friends.  You should hang around before or after class and catch up with them.

Furthermore, being friends with your classmates is a key benefit of your training.  You might justify watching a football game with your buddies or poker night by saying that you need time with your friends - the same is true, perhaps even more so, about training.  If you're thinking about spending money on a martial arts retreat or attending a seminar or having a social function, and you're waffling, don't think of it in terms of just how much karate you'll learn - think of the benefits of that activity as a social occasion.  Karate can help fulfill your fundamental human need for interaction!

If you can (this will depend on the culture at your school), organize and participate in social activities outside of class with your peers.  Do a martial arts movie night, have parties, go for drinks after class, whatever.  And don't resist these activities because they might have limited direct benefit for your karate - that's not the point.  The point is to enhance your health and happiness by deepening positive social connections.

If you run a school, encourage your students to socialize outside of class.  Get them to do movie nights (or organize them yourself).  Be available to grab drinks or snacks after class, at least some of the time.  Put up a board in your entrance area for people to advertise get-togethers.  You might be teaching self defense, but you're also creating a social network for your students.

Want to convince someone to start training?  Yes, they'll learn to defend themselves, and yes, they'll get in better shape.  But they might also make a whole bunch of new friends, and that has an added value all its own - not just int he obvious ways, but enhancing health and longevity.

If you think you can be fit and healthy and a loner... you're probably wrong.  You can get a social life by going out drinking and partying multiple times per week, but you're probably going to last longer if you hang out with your dojo mates instead!

Osu.

Pain and Fear Reactivity - why you can't do splits and shouldn't squat on a Swiss ball

Regular readers of this blog may remember that I was in a significant car accident this past July.  The greatest loss was my beloved Civic (total loss), but I also suffered mild injuries to my sternum and shoulder (mild meaning they hurt like hell but I didn't actually require any medical attention).  What made this a good story was that my test for sandan (3rd degree black belt) was scheduled for 3 days after the accident, and I really had no choice but to go through the test.

I learned a lot from this experience - I learned the value of ibuprofen, I learned how much harder it could be to get out of bed than it normally is, and I learned never to post anything about injuries on Facebook unless you're willing to be barraged by commenters insisting you see a physician (what am I, a 6 year old girl?  See a doctor just because I'm hurt?)  But the most interesting thing was what happened to my punching.

You see, the worst pain I felt was in the muscles along my right shoulderblade.  Every morning my right arm would be useless.  A few minutes of arm circles and general warming up would give me most of the function back, but I still had pain through some movements.  Nothing serious, mind you, but definitely pain.

So here's the funny part.  Pushing didn't really hurt - I wasn't setting any world records, but I could do pushups pretty much normally.  Despite that, I couldn't really punch with any force (not that my punches are normally anything fantastic).  Punching didn't hurt, I just couldn't muster up any snap with that arm.  Remember, the muscles used in pushing the punch out - my legs, my core, the pushing muscles in the arm and shoulder - were all fine, yet I couldn't snap out my punches.  The damaged muscles should only have really hurt at the end of the punch - absorbing the energy near lockout - yet I couldn't throw a punch hard enough to make that happen.

What was going on?  I'm going to steal a term from Scott Sonnon (and I'm probably using it wrong, so please forgive me for butchering the poor guy's theories) and call it fear reactivity.  To put it simply, my body was shutting down or interfering with uninjured tissues (the muscles used to throw a punch) to protect the injured tissues (the ones that would have been hurt by the force of a full speed punch).

This is worth restating:  in many cases your body (i.e. nervous system) will prevent you from hurting yourself.  That means when you try to move through a position that either causes pain, due to existing damage or a structural deficiency, or where you are weak, because the muscles are undertrained in that range of motion, you will have a reduction in activation by your nervous system, resulting in weakness, or a tightening of muscles to prevent you from entering that position.

Another place we see similar things happen is in the hip adductors (groin muscles).  If your adductors are weak when your hips are widely abducted (legs far apart), as they are in most people (because really, who the hell trains their hips when their legs are far apart?) the muscles will tighten when you try to stretch them.  That's why you probably can't get into a split.  Strengthen the muscles in that range of motion and you'll see quick gains in flexibility - not because any tissues are longer, but because they're not tightening up to protect themselves.

There are 3 different ways understanding this principal should impact your training:

1. You might make quick gains in strength (how much force you can actually produce) by doing some mobility work, especially if you're relatively new to training.  Move all your limbs through a full and pain free range of motion, and do it often - move slowly, then quicker.  This will convince your body (I really mean your nervous system) that those ranges of motion don't hurt, which can release or unlock any restrictions that are inhibiting your performance right now (this is a part of the Z-Health system).
2. Make sure you are strong in the ranges of motion you need to use in your martial art (or daily life).  If you like to kick people in the head (while they're still standing), then your hip muscles have to be strong when one leg is way high in the air, or your body will reduce the force it can exert while that leg is high.  If you train your hips with, say, squats and swings only - movements where your knees are fairly close together the entire time- then you can't expect to be strong when they're not close together.
3. If you're trying to get stronger you have to convince your body that it's safe to generate a lot of force. That means STOP SQUATTING ON AN UNSTABLE SURFACE!!!  Moving on a bosu ball, swiss ball, etc. - any kind of unstable surface - tells your brain that it's not safe to push hard.  If you don't believe me, try to do a max squat while wearing roller skates.  If you're rehabbing an injury or working on your balance or trying to activate stabilizer muscles then unstable surfaces are great.  If you're trying to get stronger, then the instability will cause an inhibition of the prime movers - the muscles that generate the bulk of the force you're trying to produce - and the exercises will be less efficient.

In the end I passed my promotion and it only took another month and a half for my shoulder to heal pretty much completely.  Next time I have a promotion (if there is a next time) I'm going to stay home for 2 weeks before the test!

Osu.

What I Listen To

I had an extremely odd and interesting experience recently.  Des Paroz, who produces the Applied Karate Show Podcast, interviewed me for an episode that should be released any day now.

First of all, please don't hold it against Des or his show that he interviewed me - he normally has very interesting guests and he's a super great guy, and the show is almost always really, really interesting.  I think he needed a show to lower expectations - so many of his shows have been so good and so informative that he probably felt a little anxiety over having to always top himself.  Now he can relax, knowing that almost any interview done in the future is bound to beat this one!

I'm sure I said a ton of stupid things, but you might find the show entertaining regardless.  I'll post the link when it's out.

I listen to a lot of podcasts.  I have a long-ish commute to work and I tend to do a significant amount of long distance driving, and I'm not much of a music person.  I'd rather listen to a lecture on the subtle effects of varying degrees of insulin resistance across different tissue types on metabolic disorders than a bunch of songs (I know, I'm weird).  So here's a rough idea of what I listen to, and by association, what I think you should be listening to also:

Best martial arts related podcasts:


Applied Karate Show:  Des interviews people from all over the karate world.  Very un-sensationalized, informative interviews with some greats (and some not so greats!) High in both knowledge and entertainment value.

Martial Secrets:  Kris Wilder and Lawrence Kane talk martial arts, security, and tell funny stories about things that happen at the dojo.  High on entertainment and medium on knowledge value.

Karate Cafe:  Just a couple of regular guys talking about martial arts.  Medium on information, medium-high on entertainment.

Pro MMA Radio:  Larry Pepe does an awesome covering MMA like a journalist, not a drunken fanboy.  Thoughtful analysis of the fights, the future of the sport, and great interviews with the fighters, managers, and executives.  It's the kind of high quality journalism we take for granted in more established sports.

Best nutrition podcasts:

Paleo Solution Podcast:  From Robb Wolf, author of The Paleo Solution (a book I highly recommend as an introduction to the whole paleo diet concept), weekly answers user questions about what to eat, how to train, and how his thinking has evolved over the years.  Very high in both knowledge and entertainment value.

The Healthy Skeptic (now Chris Kresser):  Kresser is a very smart guy who talks about nutrition, primarily.  Comes from a paleo-ish corner of the spectrum.  High on information, only medium in entertainment - he's a bit dry as a speaker.

Body Rx Show:  Dr. Scott Connelly (inventor of MetRx), in a show produced by Carl Lenore of Superhuman Radio, weekly discusses issues related to gaining muscle, losing fat, and proper nutrition for long term health.  Very high in knowledge and quite low on entertainment - Connelly is as dry a speaker as you'll ever hear, and the guests tend to stick to that tone, but there's a lot of in-depth information.  Shows will often go into specific metabolic and hormonal pathways, which is more depth than most sources like this.

Best strength and conditioning podcasts:


Strength Coach Podcast: Interviews with top strength coaches, mostly from around the US, including weekly Q&A's with Mike Boyle.  Anthony Renna, the host, is a great interviewer, and the show scores highly on knowledge and not bad on entertainment value.

Iron Radio Podcast:  A bodybuilder, a powerlifter, and a strength athlete sit around and talk about lifting heavy things and interview other people who lift heavy things.  Absolutely wonderful way to get insight into the mindset of fairly high level athletes and what they are willing/required to do to get strong.  Medium high on knowledge and high on entertainment.

Special mention:


Superhuman Radio:  This show is wonderful - 2 hours of Carl Lenore talking to everyone he can find about every obscure and cutting edge topic in nutrition, training, drug therapy, personal improvement, and anti-aging. Lots of ads and he's a little supplement happy, but overall quite entertaining and lots of good information.  The only downside is that he puts out on the order of 9 hours a week of shows, so it's hard to keep up, but it's hard to argue with someone who wants to supply you with a surplus of free information.


I probably left something out, but that's life.  I listen to a couple of other shows, but these are the best of the bunch.  You can learn something from each of them.  Enjoy.

Osu!