Joanne asks me:

What about (insert famous athlete’s name here)’s training program?  It got him/her to such success; shouldn’t we emulate it?

The short answer is no.  The reason?  You couldn’t survive his/her training program.  And even if you could, you might not have the same degree of success.

Shouldn’t we seek to emulate what the best performers do to reap similar yield from our training efforts?  Doesn’t “success leave clues”?

Not always.  Read the definition of survivorship bias and see if you can’t see how it would apply to exercise and fitness.  For every Michael Jordan, there are thousands of wanna-bees who are following the same routine as he is and yielding a fraction of the result.

What could be causing survivorship bias with regard to training programs?  I know I’m going to get flamed for this, but it’s genetics.

Don’t misunderstand me here.   I’m not at all saying that you’re doomed by your genetics; in fact, I’d argue that by maximizing your individual genetic potential you can achieve levels of performance or aesthestics that would floor most people (Bruce Lee is famously quoted as saying, “Circumstances?  Hell, I make circumstances!”).  But what I am saying is that your genetic potential does create a set of boundaries around which you must operate (or suffer the consequences *cue ominous  music).  Your genetics set the rules of the game – and it’s a good idea to play by the rules if you intend to win.

The lesson here is that it’s good to experiment, but nosce te ipsum. If you’re a rank beginner to weightlifting, don’t jump right into Naim Suleymanoglu’s 1995 program.  It’s cliche, but listen to your body – it’ll give you signs as to whether or not you’re progressing properly.

One of my young wards has an algebra final today that he has been dreading for the better part of the last two weeks.  The obvious reason: He’s “not so good in math.”  Now, mind you, he’s a thoughtful, insightful kid to whom most things (in school, anyways) come easy.

Often, when undergoing the learning process, clients will complain to me, “I can’t do this exercise! I’m not a natural athlete.”  Well, that may be true at the moment – “yet…”

What does it mean to be a “natural?”  To the observer, the natural athlete moves with a grace and fluidity that the average person doesn’t possess.  The natural makes everything look easy.

That level of performance can be a function of natural talent and latent ability, but more often, performance is an indicator of the amount of practice put into an endeavor.  One of the more interesting notions tossed around in Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” is the idea that there is a quantifiable amount of practice that is required for skill mastery, irrespective of latent talent.  In other words, if you put in the time, you can end up performing at the highest levels, despite not having so-called “natural talent”.  In fact, it’s likely that you’ll surpass those so-called “natural athletes” – unless, of course, they put in more practice time than you do (and there’s evidence that they do just that – making them look like “natural athletes”).

What does this mean for you and your exercise?  That it’s ok if you can’t squat without falling over, or that your shoulders keep popping up when you press overhead.  You just need more practice; that’s all.  Take the time to perfect your form; allow yourself the opportunity to adjust to resistances before you pile the weight on; keep at it, no matter how awkward you feel.  Eventually, not only will you look like a pro, you’ll get the results you’re looking for as well.

So what did I end up doing for Max?  You guessed it: I did my best to help him understand the concepts and made him do practice problems until his arm fell off.  Practice might not make you perfect, but it sure as heck makes you better.

Edited (6/23/09):  In case you were wondering, Max got a 92 on his algebra final.  He’s a natural.

Body transformation is a long-term proposition.  But in those in-between moments when you’re eating and exercising properly and it looks like nothing is happening, it can be tough.  One useful method of tricking yourself into doing the right thing when your willpower is low is create an event for yourself.

Goals have the power of motivating you to action, provided they’re vivid and tangible.  Having your doctor tell you you’ve got to lose a few pounds to avoid having a heart attack like your brother did might be a powerful motivator for some. But it’s not nearly as strong as knowing you’ve got a Grand Canyon trip booked for July and you’re currently 20 pounds too heavy for the burros to carry; oh, and did I mention they like to walk right on the cliff edge of the trails?

Set a specific event-directed goal.  It could be to lose 3 inches around your waist by May 1st.  Or to attain a body weight of 168.5 lbs by the next jiujitsu tournament.  Or to lose 23 lbs by Sept 27th, your next paintball outing with friends.   Now that you’ve got the goal, treat it as a sporting event.  Pretend you’re an athlete in training, and treat your event like your personal Olympic run.  Plan out your workouts in advance, stick to your diet regimen, execute both with ruthless consistency.

Training for something always trumps “just training.”

Picked this up from Conditioning Research (thanks Chris):

Optimizing performance by improving core stability and core strength.

Allow me to summarize the study for you:  There’s little to no hard science recommending core work for athletes.  Now, before you get all up in arms and start screaming about instability leading to injury and how the researchers probably did ab work thinking it was “core work”, etc., I’d like to make my position clear:

The study isn’t saying, “Don’t do core work with athletes – ever.”  In fact, the study is pretty clear that in rehabilitation, core strengthening shows marked effectiveness.  It’s saying that in the non-injured athlete, improvements in core stability and strength don’t translate to improved performance.

Mostly what the study addresses is the issue of time.  Whether you’re an elite-level baseball player with a multi-million dollar contract or a weekend warrior with a 3.0 NRTP tennis rating, you’re limited by the constraint of time (of course, if you’re a professional athlete, you’ll have more time to train than if you’re a recreational athlete, but that doesn’t change the fact that training time is finite).  You only have so much time to develop fluency in all aspects of the game  (conditioning, strength, skill, timing, etc. ); even less so if you factor in recovery.

If you’ve only a limited time to work on your game, why waste your time on things that don’t improve performance?  Particularly if you’re a pro and your time is so valuable?

Of course, this applies to you even if you look upon exercise with as much delight as you do cleaning the toilet.  Engage in activities that give you the biggest bang for your buck.  Perform exercise that will actively improve your quality of life (and, perhaps, your longevity as well).  Translated: Don’t waste your time in that Core Fusion class.  Go pick up something heavy.

In the previous post, I alluded to the terms neurological efficiency and neurological recruitment.  These terms sound similar but are quite different, not in the least in that neurological efficiency cannot be improved, whereas recruitment can be improved.  Consider this post an attempt to clear up confusion.

Both terms refer to what goes on in a muscle and its corresponding motor units.  Skeletal muscles are voluntary; in other words, you can will them to contract and relax (try doing that to the smooth muscle in your intestines).  Something has to carry the signal to contract from your brain to the muscle, and that something is the motor unit.  The impulse to contract goes from your brain, into the motor neuron, through the axon, and finally into the muscle fiber(s), the end result being contraction of those muscle fibers.

It’s probably clearer to show a diagram, so here ya go:

It may come as a surprise to you that you can’t really contract every single muscle fiber you have in your body all at the same time (not under “normal” conditions, anyway).  Neurological efficiency is the ability to contract a percentage of a given pool of muscle fibers. Neurological recruitment, however, is the ability to activate a greater number of individual motor units.

Say you have 100 muscle fibers in your biceps brachii muscle, activated by one particular motor neuron.  Someone with poorer neurological efficiency might only be able to contract 40% of the available fibers in any one contraction.  Someone with better neurological efficiency might be able to contract 80% of their available fibers.

Here’s where it gets a little murky – imagine now that the aforementioned 100 fibers was part of just one motor unit, and you had 5 motor units feeding your biceps (500 total fibers).  An untrained person might only be able to activate 3 of those 5 motor units at any given time (giving him a potential of 300 fibers working together), whereas a trained person might be able to activate all 5 (giving her a potential of 500 fibers working together).

Of course, the math gets complicated when you combine neurological efficiency and recruitment.  In the above examples, let’s assume the untrained guy is neurologically efficient (80%), and the trained female is neurologically inefficient (40%):

Untrained male = 300 x .8 = 240 fibers contracting with any one impulse

Trained female = 500 x .4 = 200 fibers contracting with any one impulse

Keep in mind these are just made up numbers to help illustrate the point; no athlete is out having his or her neurological efficiency tested.

An analogy:  Imagine a kiddie pool filled with water, and you’ve the task of emptying it out with a bucket.  You’re holding a 5 Gallon Home Depot bucket.  The bucket correlates to neurological efficiency – no matter what, you’ll can’t purge any more than 5 gallons with any one bail.  Neurological recruitment correlates to number of buckets – you can increase the amount you bail by simply increasing the number of buckets you use at any one time (using 4 buckets simultaneously being quite the sight).

Since most coaches and trainers like to focus on things you can actually change, the main focus in exercise science is on improving recruitment.  And that can be done through consistent, hard training.  Neurological efficiency is genetic and unchangeable, and (understandibly) ignored.

A client of mine recently had a sit-down with her doctor; seems the doctor was alarmed at her recent hypertension (high blood pressure) and elevated heart rate and wanted to do more bloodwork.  While I’m no doctor, one thing became apparent to me after talking to this client for a minute or two – she was probably overtraining.

Strength training, Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and horseback riding are tough when you’re 46 and have an active lifestyle.  But it’s even tougher when you have an extremely high-stress job and get little to no sleep.  And what my client failed to understand is that, as stress-releasing and beneficial as exercise is, exercise is a stressor.  It weakens you, and it is in the repair of your body that you actually get stronger/faster/more enduring-er.

Recovery (or restoration, as it’s sometimes called) is that process by which muscles get larger, stronger, and more enduring.

Recovery is when the magic happens.  Without recovery, being repeatedly broken down during exercise, your body just gets weaker and weaker.

In a simplistic view, the basic model of recovery and restoration is as follows:

1. You exercise, and it’s worthwhile.  In other words, it’s hard enough to cause microtrauma to muscle fibers.  You’ve eaten into your energy reserves a bit and you are now weaker than you were before.
2. Your body responds to the microtrauma by rebuilding the damaged tissue through a complex hormonal response.  Additionally, it works to replenish used energy stores.  This all takes time.
3. Your body restores you to pre-exercise levels.  But it doesn’t stop there – it adds a little more.  Kind of like the industrious homeowner who reinforces her home’s walls after major storm damage, your body makes itself stronger than its previous baseline level “just in case.”  Most American sport scientists call this period supercompensation.
4. Alas, good things don’t last forever, and after a short while this compensatory response goes away and your body’s strength and ability drifts back to baseline (if the exercise stimulus is not repeated).

Follow?  If you’re a visual person, here’s a pretty “standard” graph of supercompensation.

Now, what does this imply?

1) If you want to make progress, you mustn’t let too much time pass between workouts.  Ideally, you’ll want to time your workouts to take advantage of the “peaks“, so that your baseline level of fitness/strength/lean body weight increases.  For most people (non-athletes), a strength training workout every 2-3 days would fit the bill (that comes out to 2-3 times per week, for those of you who like planning weekly).

2) Similarly, training too often is detrimental to progress, as you reintroduce the exercise stimulus (i.e., weaken your body) before supercompensation has occurred (i.e., before you’ve recovered).  Too frequent training (or too intense a training load) can lead to overreaching, and overtraining – and your progress grinds to a halt.

Got it?  Don’t overdo it.  If you start to exhibit signs of overtraining, back off.  The general rule is 2 weeks of no training activity if in full-blown overtraining, reduced or no training activity for a couple of days if overreaching, but (*trainer cliche alert*) listen to your body.

Full disclosure note:  Olympic-level judoka were studied for effects of overtraining on athletes, but researchers were unable to produce any of the relative changes in blood markers that typically accompany overtraining, no matter how hard they worked the athletes.  It was later concluded that this was because the athletes were chronically overtrained (hence no relative change in blood markers) and yet, were still able to perform at near-maximum output.  Translation: Unless you’re an elite-level athlete (with the robustness and recovery ability to go along with it), don’t follow elite level training programs.

Over the weekend my friend Andrius asked me about Crossfit, given its popularity among BJJers and mixed martial artists. What I told him (or rather, what I hope I conveyed) amounted to the following:

1. Crossfit has a lot of good things going for it: It promotes athleticism, community, benchmarking, and it’s undeniably fun. They place a huge emphasis on technical mastery and on understanding exercise, nutrition, and physical performance on a deeper level than your average “one more rep” trainer, which is excellent. Certainly has a lot to give for the guy or gal who’s been strength training for a long time and may be getting a little sick and tired of the old “squat-deadlift-bench” thing. And you can’t fault a community that promotes low-carb eating.

2. Crossfit can be dangerous as it incorporates Olympic lifts, ballistic movements, and repeated maximal efforts. Unless you took the time to learn the fundamentals and scaled the workouts properly, you could be in for it. Even experienced Crossfitters, in their zeal for better performances, injure themselves (just check out the Injuries subforum on the Crossfit site).

Their offical mascot is “Pukie the Clown”, for heavens’ sake. This is not an exercise protocol for the faint-hearted.

Admittedly, for a guy who studies BJJ, this is almost akin to talking out of both sides of my mouth. And yes, you can get hurt doing just about anything if you don’t scale properly (like slow-lifting 500 lbs on your first try). Just like the stock market – higher gain, higher risk. And while I don’t think Crossfit is geared towards your average 55 year old overweight, pre-diabetic, sedentary individual, some of them will gravitate towards it – so I think it’s a point worth making.

3. The third – and biggest – misgiving I had about Crossfit is its random programming. Yes, I know Coach Glassman is running microcycles within his macrocycles; yes, I know that the overall framework has an emphasis on improving the glycolytic system; and yes, I can appreciate the metabolic, strength, and strength endurance combinations – but what’s readily apparent to even a casual visitor of the Crossfit site is that the workouts are random, and that’s not good for adaptation (a classic law of exercise science dictates that if training demands are switched around too often, the body resists adaptation – IOW it gets “confused” as to what to adapt to, so it doesn’t).

This is not to imply that Crossfit isn’t useful or doesn’t do anything; obviously it does or it wouldn’t be as widespread as it is. What it does imply is:

• It’s best if you’re an already accomplished athlete with a strong base in strength and sport skill.
• Random programming is less than optimal (in terms of adaptation) than trying to specifically increase a particular aspect of training (strength, endurance, etc.).
• Training to be a jack of all trades makes you a master of none. Which is totally fine if that’s your goal, but lots of folks would be better off specializing, especially beginners.

__________

So brings us to the point of our post – chaos theory. After this discussion with Andrius I thought about Crossfit and how its (seemingly) random workouts reminded me of chaos theory. Most people are familiar with the term chaos theory (systems that look random, but are deterministic). Well, Crossfit is the Mandelbrot set of exercise – seemingly random, but with an overall goal: To train the glycolytic (read: short, intense bursts of energy) system.

Chaos theory is neat to observe, fun to think about, but for the best results in your exercise program, approach attribute improvement with focus. You want to get stronger? Focus on training for strength. Want to get leaner? Eat properly and lift weights. Want to win the Pan Ams? Get yer duff on the mats and lift weights.

Edit (9/3/08): On an unrelated note, someone just sent this article to me. I side with Gray Cook – Crossfit is not necessarily dangerous unless you try to do too much too soon, just the same as any other intense activity.

Today, as I trained my clients, not one session went by without talk about The Diet.

Yes, Michael Phelps‘ diet. I’ll refrain from passing judgment and try to talk about it from an athlete’s POV, as I feel news articles are sensationalizing Phelps – “What a freak.”

The question. “How can he eat all that and still look like this?”

The skinny bastard.

First, the info:

Now, the play by play:

Phelps is 6′4″, 195 lbs. He’s an Olympic-level athlete engaged in roughly 5 hours of rigorous swim training, as well as strength training. And he’s 23.

Using the Harris-Benedict Equation, we get a daily expenditure of 3971 Calories. Shows how limited prediction equations are.

Calculating Phelps’ BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate), we get 2089.65 Calories (per day). Add in the estimated expenditure from swimming and strength training (5100) and we come up with an estimated total of 7189.65 Calories per day.

That’s impressive, but it’s still not 8000-10000 Calories. So where do the extra thousand or so Calories go?

The X factors:

Lean mass – The prediction equations I used do not account for Phelps’ lean mass (read: muscle) which burns calories all on its own. You could argue that this accounts for an extra couple hundred Calories per day.

Thermogenesis – Not insignificantly, the food Phelps eats requires energy in order to be broken down and digested. Thermogenesis is estimated to contribute as much as 10% to metabolic rate. If Phelps really is downing 8000-10000 Calories a day, then his digestive system is working overtime to process that food. This could also throw a few hundred Calories into the mix.

Age – Phelps is young (and insulin sensitive). Metabolic rate slows as we age; conversely, we can expect metabolic rate to be higher in younger folks. Being insulin-sensitive helps drive those ingested calories to muscle cells (for use as energy) rather than to fat cells (to be stored for future use). So the food Phelps eats is used immediately (whereas ’tis not so in your average American Olympics viewer).

Reality – The realistic scenario is that Phelps isn’t really eating 8000 Calories everyday, and if we use food logs of athletes as evidence, this bears out. It’s possible that he eats 8000-10000 in a single day occasionally, but that his actual daily intake averages out somewhat lower (say, 6000 Calories or so). So, perhaps, one day he has 5500 Calories; the next 9798 Calories; the next, 6211 Calories, etc.

A final note: Some clients expressed shock and horror at the thought of an Olympic athlete eating pizza and pasta (especially after being told to avoid grains, etc.). My response: Phelps would not be physically capable of downing 8000-10000 Calories a day without the hunger-attenuating qualities of the carbs to aid him. It is precisely because he eats refined carbohydrates that he is able to put away that many calories.

Here’s an experiment: Get together 8000 Calories’ worth of sweet potatoes, avocados, chicken, eggs, and leafy greens. Put it in a big pile in front of you, set a timer to 24 hours, and make that pile disappear before the timer goes off.

Ready, set, go! Good luck.

(Actually, the timer should probably be set to 16-18 hours, since I’m sure Phelps sleeps a little.)

The moral? Phelps definitely expends tremendous amounts of energy daily, so much so that if he doesn’t eat an obscene volume of food, he actually loses weight. And in order to maintain that intake level, he resorts to eating from some admittedly crappy energy sources. Ironically, those same crappy foods enable him to eat the volume of food he requires.

O harmonious universe, how you taunt us!

Not to worry, all. Check back with Mr. Phelps in about 20 years or so – I suspect his caloric intake will be much different.

Olympics time is a great time to point out the obvious, which is that world-class athletes make things look easy, even when things aren’t.  In fact, you could argue that the very definition of a world-class athlete is one who makes the impossible (or the incredible) look easy.

This makes sense if you understand sport.  Sport is an expression of human movement.  And more often than not, it’s not merely the effort you put into a movement – it’s the efficiency and biomechanical “sound-ness” of the athlete’s movement.  After all, there’s got to be a “best way” to propel yourself through the water.  There’s got to be a “most efficient method” to lift that weight over your head.

These movements are considered the fundamentals of that given sport.  What’s true is that every discipline, whether it be baking or judo, has certain fundamental theories, concepts, and executables at its core – and the top exponents of those disciplines are masters of the basics.  They’ve spent years and years at perfecting the basics, so that to a champion judoka, executing drop seoi nage is as natural as breathing.

Take a cue from the champs and focus on your basics:

• Proper nutrition.
• Progressive loading on the basic exercises.
• Adequate recovery.

Seth is so quotable:

“I discovered a lucky secret the hard way about thirty years ago: you can outlast the other guys if you try. If you stick at stuff that bores them, it accrues. Drip, drip, drip you win.”

My old training partner Gary used to sum it up similarly: “You get good by doing the boring s–t.”

Don’t clutter your routine or make your nutrition overly complex.  Just commit yourself to the basics, consistently, over time.

Over the next few posts, I’ll hash out a program template for a rank beginner, someone just looking to lose a little weight, feel better, and get healthier.  Then I’ll get to the skribit topics.  Promise.

The story? Move over steroids: Viagra is the new performance superdrug.  The NY Daily News alleges that Viagra improves nutrient delivery (when taken alongside other performance enhancers) and improves endurance.

The science: Sildenafil (the scientific name for Viagra), has been shown to be a performance enhancer at high altitudes.  Pubmed lists 3 studies that show sildenafil’s endurance-enhancing effects.  As to the claims that it improves nutrient delivery? 

Nitric Oxide (NO2) plays a major role in vasodilation (relaxation and widening of blood vessels) and is believed be a primary factor in arteriosclerosis and heart disease.  Sildenafil works as an NO2 enhancer, relaxing blood vessels in the penis and allowing for increased bloodflow. 

So the logic goes, increasing bloodflow into muscle tissue should translate into increased nutrient transport into muscle, although I’m not aware of any science showing this to be the case.

It’s worth noting that the hottest (legal) supplements for bodybuilding are NO2 formulations – which provide the user with a greater sensation of muscle pump when consumed before the workout.

The Daily News article quotes Dr. Michael Dusa:

“That may be why these guys started using it in the first place…I suspect they started taking it for impotence and found that it had other benefits, too, but bodybuilders are not the kind of guys who will admit impotence.”

Bingo.  An athlete who’s overreaching/overtraining or a bodybuilder on a severely calorie restricted diet will have markedly blunted testosterone levels, and may need a little “pharmacological boost.” 

Sorry; without the hard evidence (no pun intended) to back up the claims, I’m not convinced that the IOC should add Viagra to its banned substance list for Beijing.  Now, if the Olympics were being held in the Andes…