I know some of you were wondering how I did:

(Sorry Corrie, next time I’ll avoid taking trips to China immediately before a competition.)

Thanks to everyone for all of your support. Currently training hard for October (My sempai Jin has a wicked Uchi Mata - ouch).

Dear Mr. Jones,

I regret that I waited so long since I first heard the news, but I wanted to make sure, since rumors of your death circulate every year or so (then again, I should’ve believed Dr. Darden).

I never got to thank you for everything, like enabling my career, or helping me to learn to question so-called “authorities”, or introducing a new paradigm for thinking about strength training in terms of a drug to be dosed, as opposed to big, dumb exercise.

And for inventing the MedX Lumbar Extension machine. What a great piece of equipment.

I’d thank you for introducing cam effects into exercise machines to provide for variable resistance, but Gustav Zander beat you to it.

Your words still ring true today, years later. You will be missed.

N.B. - It would be remiss of me not to include the infamous “buff” picture of Arthur Jones in his younger days, so here it is:

Above: All in the years before steroids and Photoshop. RIP, Arthur.

In case you didn’t realize, Americans on a whole are fat and gettting fatter.

Rates of obese adults in America continue to rise steadily, but the most troubling statistic: The rate of childhood obesity more than doubled between 1980 and 2000. Moreover, the chances of a child born today developing Type 2 diabetes are a striking 1 in 3.

According to the report, 41 million Americans are “pre-diabetic” - meaning their response to insulin has already been affected.

The alarming rise in childhood obesity doesn’t seem so mysterious when you factor in that 58% of elementary schools, 84% of junior/middle high, and 94% of senior high schools sell soft drinks, sport drinks, and fruit juices. You might as well just mainline sugar directly into your kid’s bloodstream.

Indeed, the data from the F is For Fat report seems to present a clear-cut case to eat less sugar: eat less sugar, keep insulin levels down, stave off obesity.

So what do the experts say?

An example: The recommendations for the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children’s Program - a grant program for low-income and postpartum women providing supplemental food, counseling, and nutritional education) stated in the F is For Fat report are:

1. The introduction of a $10 cash voucher towards fruit and vegetable purchases.

2. A decrease in saturated and total fat intake.

3. An increase in consumption of whole grain products.

Big suprises there, eh? It’s too bad that the experts are still so fixated on fat being the enemy that they’re overlooking the profound effects of carbohydrates on insulin resistance and obesity.

Perhaps the most laughable suggestion (that shows just how far removed these so-called “experts” are from reality) was the 4th guideline for Recommended Activity for Children Ages 9-12:

Extended periods (periods of two hours or more) of inactivity are discouraged for children, especially during the daytime hours.

Beg pardon? You mean that little Dashiell should stand up in the middle of arithmetic and start doing some Hindu Squats and burpees, lest he sit for more than two hours and doom himself to insulin insensitivity and lipogenesis?

I have a suggestion or two for America:

1. Lift heavy things with some degree of regularity.

2. Eat whole, non-processed food, primarily meat, leaves, and berries.

3. Avoid grains and starches as best as you can.

4. Move around - not because it’ll burn off a lot of calories, but because it’ll relieve stress and make you smile.

5. Drink water. Lots.

I’m sure the last thing you want is for Big Brother to start regulating what you can or can’t put into your mouth. Take personal responsibility for your diet and exercise - viva la revolution!

For 4 of the last 6 days, I have subjected my body to one of the most enjoyable stresses on this planet (at least in my eyes) - training in Brazilian Jiujitsu.

Above: Harai Goshi is now my new favorite throw.

Most health and fitness professionals would look at my activity level from this past week and think, “Well, that’s great!” While from a skills-acquisition POV I’d agree, I’d immediately chastise any client of mine who did that “for the sake of being active.” You see, I advocate applying exercise as you would medicine, i.e., use the minimal dosage needed to achieve the required response.

Professional organizations like the American College of Sports Medicine would have you believe that daily or near-daily exercise is a good thing. However, new findings from the folks at the University of South Dakota suggest otherwise.

Published in the journal Hypertension, Dr. Rebecca Schultz and colleagues found that “excessive amounts” of exercise in hypertensive rats resulted in a hastening effect towards heart failure. In other words, rats with high blood pressure made themselves worse by regularly exercising.

Too much exercise isn’t a good thing, it seems, but this isn’t breaking news. Other research has found that mortality increases when exercise activity goes past a certain point. Exercise loses its protective effect if carried on too long, too often.

What guidelines should you use?

Well, there is one thing that is correlated with living longer: muscle strength. The stronger your muscles, the longer you live - and you don’t have to worry about getting too strong (too much strength doesn’t increase your chance of dying, unlike too much exercise). And luckily, the amount of strength training required to improve strength levels isn’t much - at most 2-3 hours a week (to put it in researcher language, less than 1000kJ of exertion per week).

I’m not saying don’t pursue activities if you like them and derive pleasure from them. Whatever your chosen sport is - rock climbing, running, competitive tango - if you enjoy it, then do it. But if you do it because you think you need to, then don’t. Do something you enjoy and stay off the hamster wheel, ok?

Why breathe when weight training? I mean, why not just hold your breath for the entire set and pass out at the en….oh. Guess I answered my own question.

Ask a fitness professional why you breathe during a set, and you’ll get a number of great reasons, like:

• Your blood pressure will rise sky-high.
• You’ll sustain an Exercise-Induced Headache.
• You’ll burst a blood vessel.

…all of which are proper, valid explanations. Easily understood reasons.

And yet, when the rubber meets the road, your instinct is to hold your breath, especially when things get tough. Why is that? Why would you want to rocket your blood pressure sky high?

Well, of course, you don’t. And that’s not what Valsalva’s all about anyway.

What’s Valsalva?

Scientists, doctors, and highfalutin’ snobs like myself refer to the phenomenon of holding one’s breath and exerting as the Valsalva manuver. When holding your breath to complete a rep, you are performing a Valsalva manuver (most people perform a Valsalva daily when sitting on the throne, especially if they aren’t drinking enough water or eating fruits and veggies).

Valsalva is all about protection.

When you hold your breath and tense, you create an air pressure “ball” inside your abdominal cavity. This pressure ball serves to stabilize your spine by acting as a support beam (more like a pillar) for your spine, minimizing anterior stress when you’re trying to lift something.

Valsalva is a natural, preprogrammed instinct. It’s actually good, when you think about it - after all, if Neolithic man (or modern day Cindy Morrison) is trying to lift a humongous boulder, a little extra spine support could come in handy.

The problem arises when you sustain Valsalva for a long period of time.

That same protective pressure ball presses firmly on the large vein (the inferior vena cava) that returns blood from your legs back to your heart, cutting off bloodflow. This has two huge implications:

1. Since your circulatory system is a closed system, blood pressure dangerously rises, especially in the arteries.
2. Your heart gets minimal blood return and pumps harder and faster in a futile attempt to keep your muscles oxygenated.

If this continues, expecially under conditions of lifting heavy things, it’s no wonder athletes and amateurs alike burst blood vessels, turn beet red, and (in extreme cases) pass out and/or die (although to be fair, the majority of deaths occurred because the lifter wasn’t using the rack or a spotter, passed out during a lift, and crushed his ribcage and heart with the weight he was trying to lift). It’s clear that Valsava just wasn’t meant to be employed for a long time (more than a few seconds).

What does this mean to you? Breathe freely. Don’t hold your breath at all during a set. Powerlifters hold their breaths all the time you say? Yes - and their max attempts last no longer than a few seconds (and even then, Andy Bolton exploded blood vessels in his nose during his record-setting squat).

Breathing freely during a set will minimize impact on blood pressure, keep you focused, and prevent headaches. And, you won’t get blotchy eye, like this guy:

Above: One good reason to breathe when weight training is to avoid a subconjunctival hemorrhage (i.e., burst a blood vessel in your eye).