One particularly nefarious method of self-sabotage is to say to yourself, “Well, looks like I blew my diet today; might as well forget about it and try again tomorrow.”

Realize that every meal, every feeding is opportunity for tabula rasa - that even if you screw up one meal, while you can’t “make up” for that one meal, you can start over with a clean slate with the next one.

Just because you cheated on one meal doesn’t mean you blew it. Just get back on the wagon with your next feeding.

On a related note, if you’re currently making better choices with regards to your diet, congratulations!

Just remember not to stop there. Chances are, there’s even better choices than those “better choices” you’re currently making.

…by “remembering” the rest of your body.

Typically, when performing an exercise, you’re taught to focus only on the muscles that exercise purports to target. For example, in the bench press, the primary movers are the chest, shoulder, and triceps muscles. So it’s not incorrect to focus on using and feeling these muscle groups when you’re performing the exercise.

But that’s only one half of the equation. Your pushing or pulling force on an exercise will be dissipated by allowing the rest of your body to be loose while the target muscles are contracting. The tip: Focus on “plugging up the leaks” by optimizing joint position and by slightly contracting supporting muscles (particularly those that impact posture). By focusing on whole-body stability, you can increase the amount you’re able to lift on a given movement, and consequently, reap greater benefits from the exercise.

Let’s continue with the bench press as our example. When performing the bench press:

• Focus on pushing through the floor with your feet. There should be even, balanced pressure through both feet, and your legs should be slightly contracted. Doing this alone will improve your sense of strength significantly.

• Retract and depress your shoulder blades, i.e., keep your shoulders “tight.” This increases stability at the shoulder joint and decreases your chance of rotator cuff injury.

• Tighten your glutes. As Roy Harris says, “Contract your buttocks as if you’re pinching a quarter between the cheeks.” This significantly contributes to whole-body stability by preventing body sway on the bench.

• Contract your lats. Although the lats aren’t a prime mover in the bench press, they help to further shore up shoulder stability, helping you power out of the starting point.

• Finally, tighten your abs - it also helps prevent lateral swaying on the bench.

All these pointers are part of good bench press form (and should be mentioned by a competent coach), but the basic principle underlies all of them: Stay tight, plug up the leaks. Don’t focus solely on muscle isolation when you’re lifting a weight; you may be short-changing yourself.

What’s more important - theory or practice?

Just because it “works on paper”, does it “work?” And just because “it works”, does it “work?”

Just what the heck am I talking about?

I’m referring to the so-called Diet Debate on CNN’s The Larry King Show that Gary Taubes, Mehmet Oz, Jillian Michaels, and Andrew Weil engaged in. It was funny enough to watch on the sheer merits of the participants interactions, but one particularly compelling moment arose when Jillian Michaels and Gary Taubes butted heads:

(from the CNN transcript):

“MICHAELS: Gary, if you can show me — Gary, if you can show me one person you have taken 100 pounds off, then maybe we can apply your theory…You are a scientist. You appreciate the fact that science must be applied for a theory to be proven true. Your theory falls short when applied practically because I’ve applied it.“

She’s wrong, by the way. First off, it’s not “Taubes’ theory” - if she actually read the book she’d have seen that it was a review and commentary of all the major dietary studies of the past 70 years or so; all of the research had been done by folks much smarter than her or Taubes. Secondly, his so-called theory (that exercising to lose weight fails), far from falling short, seems to pan out far more often than not (I’m sure all of you know someone - maybe it’s you - that failed to lose any appreciable body fat through exercise, particularly exercising by itself).

All that aside: What’s more important - theory or practice?

The answer: Both. Without science, there’s no intelligent practice - just a lot of random groping in the dark for answers without much rhyme or reason. And in order for a theory to hold true, it has to be demonstrable in real-world situations (as well as exhibiting repeatability in scientific studies). By actively testing theories (through rigorous studies) and applying them, we can come to new, better solutions to our problems. Conversely, if a theory doesn’t bring about real-world results, it should be discarded as faulty.

What’s arguably more important than observing the results of our experiments and applications of theory is how we interpret those results. Witness the second part of the exchange between Taubes and Michaels:

“TAUBES: I’m not a diet doctor here. I’m just trying to say…If you look at the actual evidence when people do clinical trials. Again, she changed a lot of things. She’s changed her diet. She changed the way she ate. She exercised. All of those things might have had an effect.“ (Emphasis mine)

This is why you can’t solely rely on “real-world applications” - you can’t discern the impact any one factor has on results! Is your result an effect of the intervention, or was it something else? This is why performing studies that attempt to isolate single variables is so important. By determining which variables have the greatest impact on results, it prevents us from doing applying things that at best, don’t help us towards our goals, and at worst, detract from our results.

Who knows, if Jillian Michaels implements Gary Taubes’ so-called theories, she might experience even greater success with her clientle.

Button-fly jeans were devised in order to solve a problem (no more accidentally open fly), but did so at the expense of functionality.

(Anyone who’s ever frantically rushed into a roadside rest stop in a desperate hurry understands me on this one.)

Sure, it’s fashionable to sport a pair of button-flys, but which pair of jeans would you rather be wearing in the event of a urinary emergency?

On a completely unrelated note, is your program serving you? By that I mean, is everything you’re doing vis a vis exercise getting you closer to your goals, or are you unwittingly making life difficult for yourself?

Ask:

Have all the changes I’ve made to my exercise program benefited me?

Am I getting the same (or better) results?

Just picked this one up on the wire:

Beer After Sport is “Good For The Body.”

Now, your first inclination should be to think, “Hey, didn’t Eugene write a blog post about how the media distorts and misrepresents scientific findings and how we should be reading the studies themselves?”

Indeed I did.

After the initial shock and horror of this so-called “study’s” findings wears off, let’s think about the situation critically for a second:

If we’re dealing with post-exercise recovery, then our priorities are rehydration, glycogen refueling, and protein delivery. With those parameters in mind, let’s take a look at the nutritional profile of beer and see how well it fulfills those requirements.

We can see from the charts that beer (per can) contains 327 grams of water (or roughly 11 oz). Okay, not great for rehydration, since you need to replenish all water used up in the activity, but at least we’re off to a decent start.

Beer also delivers 50.6 Calories (or about 13 grams) from carbohydrates, which works in our favor, since carbohydrates after a workout help to replenish glycogen stores in our muscles and liver. Check.

Lastly, what kind of of protein punch does beer deliver? Well, the analysis shows that a paltry 1.5 grams of protein is all we get from our can of beer. Far short of optimal, but it definitely more than water (which, of course, contains no protein whatsoever).

Based on our analysis, is it any wonder that beer beat out water in a rehydration test? More protein, carbohydrates for fast transport, and electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium, etc.) to boot! In fact, based on the analysis, our old friend beer is looking more and more like a more “conventional” thirst quencher (except it contains much less sugar and more protein!).

Except, of course, for one tiny little detail: the ALCOHOL - which delivers the majority of the calories, distrupts recovery via elimination by the liver, creates a net dehydration effect, and impairs cognitive ability.

Oopsie. Nearly forgot that bit.

This is exactly the type of “cherry-picking of the truth” approach that major media and news outlets (not to mention researchers and health professionals) engage in - and shouldn’t. This kind of so-called research is precisely why books like Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Caloriesis so important (it’s a great read, BTW. I intend to devote a blog post to it in a day or two when I’m done reading it).

The moral is clear: Read with a critical mind. It’s your own health and performance, after all.