Matt Metzgar

Barefoot in the Park

I stopped at a local park for lunch the other day.  It was a nice, sunny day out so I thought I'd go for a walk.  I decided to walk barefoot on the grass to give my feet a "workout" so to speak.

Definitely I think shoes "dumb down" your feet.  Walking (or running) barefoot helps maintain the musculature of the foot.  It's not a big leap to think that many foot injuries/problems are the result of wearing shoes over a lifetime.  It would be the equivalent of a person wearing boxing gloves on their hands every day, and then expecting their bare hands to be perfectly functional and healthy.

National Healing Month

One thing that's hard to accept about exercise is that less is sometimes more.  Rest is a necessary and crucial component of any fitness program.  Yet two things appear to be working against incorporating sufficient rest into any program:

• Doing something is usually more fun than doing nothing
• There is no profit to be made from telling someone to rest

I remember reading how Mike Mentzer would often advise new, overtrained clients to take off a month from the gym and then restart with his program.  Of course, he got immediate pushback because the people didn't want to stop.  It's hard to accept that in some situations doing nothing is superior to doing something different.

The body can continue in an overtrained state for a very long time.  And putting the brakes on this overtraining can even lead to a person feeling worse in the very short-term.  For example, even if a person is overtrained and they go to work out, they can usually still get a hormonal boost from it.  Over the long term, they are digging an even deeper hole, but it's a quick fix nonetheless.

Something else I've noticed is that there appears to be a hierarchy to the body's healing process.  Primary injuries or spots of wear-and-tear are healed first.  Then secondary spots are healed.  These secondary spots can be physical problems that have been swept under the rug so long a person didn't even know they were there.

For me personally, I have designated May as National Healing Month and I will be doing no heavy exercise this month.  I've taken various months off in the past, and it doesn't really set you back that much in terms of fitness.  National Healing Month would probably be very beneficial to some, especially recreational athletes who are saddled with minor injuries.  At the very least, it would remind people to give their bodies and themselves a break.

 

Palm Oil

I bought some palm oil at the store this weekend.  I've read that it's used more in Europe and other countries, and so it seemed worth a try.  I actually had trouble finding it - there was only one brand in the organic section of the grocery.

Here's a New York Times article about a recent controversy involving palm oil.  It appears the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is against palm oil due to the saturated fat content.  From what I recall, this Center is some joke organization that I think may even be against meat in general.  They just seem to be plowing ahead with the ineffective low-fat message that hasn't worked the last 30-plus years.  Someone even got mad enough to put up this website, CSPI Scam, that shows all the inconsistencies and problems with the CSPI. 

At any rate, I tried the palm oil on some meat tonight, and it tasted pretty good.  At the very least, it's a way to provide a little diversity in flavors and micronutrients.  With the phasing out of trans fat, palm oil use seems to be on the rise.  More background information on palm oil in America is available at this site. 

Maintaing Muscle Mass

The usual story is that people lose muscle as they age due to disuse.  But more and more research I come across shows that nutrition may be even more important than exercise when it comes to maintaining muscle mass.  Here's a sampling:

• Alkaline diets (high in fruits and vegetables) favor maintenance of lean mass
• Higher protein intake helps maintain lean mass
• Insulin resistance leads to muscle wasting

So if you have all your nutritional ducks in a row, how much exercise and resistance training is needed to stave off muscle loss during aging?  I don't know the answer, but I think it's an interesting question - one that future research will hopefully be directed towards.

Random NBA Update

I finally got a chance to see Chris Paul of the New Orleans Hornets play on tv the other night.  Holy smokes is that guy good!  He appears to be one of those athletes with tremendous balance.  Even if he is contorted in the air, he seems to somehow land properly on his feet - like a cat. 

I also noticed his footwork is very centered under his hips.  Some athletes take huge strides and put themselves off-balance; Chris Paul seems to keep most of his motion within a certain limited frame which makes his movement more efficient.  I think he will be a great player for many years to come.

High Fat Heaven

Coincidentally, I have been thinking more about high-fat eating, and then Mark Sisson lays down this killer post about it.  Mark has been out of commission for a few months, doing no cardio and some light weightlifting, but his physique has remained stellar due to his correct eating.  He notes that his diet is sometimes up to 65% fat - enough to make a traditional doctor choke, but not that crazy from a Paleo perspective.

I was combing through my own records the other night, and I noticed my waist was the lowest a couple of months ago when I was eating the most fat.  I was literally just drinking spoonfuls of oil, yet my waist and weight declined.  Strange, but true.

I think part of this can be contributed to the idea that you have to eat fat to burn it.  Many scientists think of the body as a fat-hoarding machine, but that doesn't really make much sense to me.  Even at low body fat levels (<10%), there's still plently of fat to use.  In various studies, people have gone 30 days or more on water-only fasts, with minimal ill effects.  So why would the body jump at seeing any calorie excess and direct it to fat storage, if it can go weeks without any food at all?

One other connection to make comes from this statement (originally from a scientific journal) from this online book:

"Fasting or feeding a high-fat diet abolished lipogenesis (fat formation) in adipose tissue and reduced glucose oxidation markedly; lipogenesis increased to the highest levels on a high-carbohydrate, fat-free diet."

So it appears that both fasting (as in intermittent fasting) or feasting on high-fat (Paleo) foods can contribute to lower body fat levels.  This falls in line with my feast/fast model I've discussed previously.

I believe the research will continue to turn away from the dysfunctional low-fat diet model towards higher-fat eating over the next decade.  Scientists are already testing high-fat diets to treat cancer, so the machinery is already in motion.  Until then, many people can potentially benefit from higher-fat eating in terms of health and weight loss. 

The Cheerleader and The Jock

I absolutely love papers like this one(pdf), which shows how female mate choice is influenced by male sports participation.  The paper seeks to validate the common idea that male athletes are more successful at mating than non-athletes.  The study finds this to be true, but it takes things a step further.  It goes on to show that male athletes who are successful in team sports do even better than male athletes in solo sports.

Why so?  The authors believe that team sports showcase other qualities besides pure athletic ability, like leadership, teamwork, and role acceptance.  It is thought that these characteristics would carry over to real-life, producing men who are better providers and parents.  Interesting!

The paper also briefly mentions how this may drive the crazy behavior you see among the parents of some young athletes.  If better athletic performance increases mating opportunities, then in an evolutionary sense the parents actually benefit (in terms of inclusive fitness) if they can propel their male sons to greater athletic heights.  Of course, all this is not really going on at the conscious level, but it is being driven by underlying evolutionary mechanisms.

Ultimate Aerobic Training

One trend I see in aerobic training is a greater focus on interval training.  This is fine because interval training does increase fitness, but it is a bit too narrow-minded for my tastes.  There is a good case to be made that aerobic training should encompass both interval training and continuous training. 

For example, here are a couple of studies (one and two) that compare interval training versus continuous training.  If you want to look only at one variable, aerobic capacity (VO2max), than interval training will be the winner every time.  But what's missed is that continuous training has different benefits than interval training, benefits that interval training may not be able to reproduce.  This is shown in the second study I cited, where interval training increased capillary density by 21% but continuous training increased it by 40%.

Interval training and continuous training can be performed separately or within the same session.  For my own training, I find it easier to just combine the two into a single workout.  Usually, I do some easy running for a few minutes, then a half-minute or so of faster running, and then directly repeat the cycle.  This way I perform a volume of easy running, while also interspering the high-intensity spikes to increase fitness.

Aerobic Epiphany

I was doing some thinking about the benefits of resistance versus aerobic exercise.  What's strange for me is that even though I've gained some muscle this year, it has had no effect on my day-to-day life.  I don't feel any different.  I suppose the added muscle is functional, but in a non-physical job (like mine) you don't really utilize your muscles much on a daily basis.

Conversely, when in the past I've been in better aerobic shape via running/interval training/dancing, I've felt better and had more energy on a daily basis.  This is somewhat in line with the recent paper on how the aerobic system truly underlies the capacity of the human system.

I remember in the 90s there was a big anti-aerobics push, and there was the notion that strength training provided all the aerobic training that was necessary.  This is entirely false in my opinion, mostly because of the evolutionary implications.  Roughly you could say that in terms of hunter-gatherers, the aerobic system provided locomotion (running, walking, etc.), and the muscular system either supported this locomotion or was used to move heavy objects.  But it would seem very probable that the locomotion system was dominant.  How can you acquire game by standing in one spot?  If a load was too heavy, you could always get help to move it.  But if you just sat around in camp and expected others to go hunt for you, I'm not sure that would take you very far.

I put in a good aerobic workout (along with weightlifting) yesterday, and I definitely had more energy than usual today.  I will probably start putting more emphasis on aerobic work, if only to gain the psychological benefits.

Posture

The other night I was walking through the neighborhood, and I saw a jogger coming up the road.  It was getting dark, so I couldn't really make out anything except the outline of the person.  I noticed the person's posture was less-than-great, and so I guessed that it was an older runner.  As the person got closer, it turns out I was right.

Posture really seems to take a nose-dive during aging.  If you compare a college-aged recreational runner to a jogger in their 40s, the difference in posture is dramatic.  I don't know if resistance training alone is enough to maintain good posture through the years.  Perhaps some other special exercises are necessary.

Does anybody have any good resources on posture?  I have a Paul Chek book somewhere in the basement, but that's about all I've got.