Matt Metzgar

Real Learning

I have been swamped the past two weeks trying out a new style of teaching.  I have been utilizing project-based learning, because I believe it mimics the real world better.  There are some things I have to tweak, but overall it is moving in the right direction.

It's amazing how many educational ideas get implemented that make no real sense.  Multiple choice tests prepare students for the world in what way...?  Sitting passively all day and taking notes from a speaker mimics what business situation...?  In real life, you have to solve problems, complete projects, and work with other people.  I don't see why education should be that much different.

I also continue to be heavily influenced by the Freedom to Learn blog, which I think is just a gem.  It points out many of the fallacies of modern education system, such as the emphasis on micromanagement.  I wanted to summarize the last post from this blog because it is such a great story.  You always here about how children in poor countries need to become computer literate, that we need a laptop in every school, and that teachers need to teach children about computers. 

In India, a person there developed "Minimally Invasive Education" as a way to address this situation.  What he did was simply set up a computer kiosk, turn it on, and tell children they could play with it.  With no adult instruction whatsoever, children quickly became "computer literate" and figured out how to do everything from running programs to setting up email to drawing and painting with the computer.  So much for the need for massive government/adult intervention to teach children about computers.  Children can learn a lot on their own given the right environment.

Aging and NEAT

The other day I was behind some older people on the road.  I noticed that all of their physical movements were very slow and direct, and that there was no unnecessary motion whatsoever.  This is in contrast to younger drivers, who you often see fidgeting and moving about quite a bit in their vehicles. 

I tried to look into the relationship between aging and NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis).  I didn't find anything too striking - older people have lower NEAT than younger people, obese people have lower NEAT than lean people.  But none of this really explained why this relationship was present.  Were people obese because of their lower NEAT, or did the obesity itself eventually lead to lower NEAT?

Then I found this article by Doug McGuff.  His perspective is that as people gain muscle and optimize their hormones through high-intensity exercise, they will wind up expending more energy outside of the gym.  In other words, NEAT is an effect, not a cause.  The increased NEAT from fidgeting and leisure activities is a after-effect of getting in shape.

This makes perfect sense to me.  McGuff also mentions how his clients attributed their improved sense of well-being to these extra activities, but not as much to the workouts themselves.  This is aother confusion of cause and effect.  I think I sometimes fall prey to this as well.  When I look back upon very active periods in my life, I too attribute my sense of well-being to the extra activities I was engaging in (running 5ks, etc.).  Of course, it is more likely that my base workouts during those times (weights and intervals) were driving my well-being.  The base workouts created extra energy that was utilized for fun activies, but the fun activities may not have been contributing much in terms of optimizing hormones.  They may have even had negative effects, but the base workouts allowed me to tolerate them.  

Why We Write?

Here's a fun little article that looks at the evolutionary purpose of literature.  The authors believe that the function of novels is to promote pro-social virtues that will increase cooperation.  The study had participants judge characters from classic novels.  The characters interested only in social dominance were rated negatively, while the more group-minded characters were rated higher.

The authors mention how this may represent the values of egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies.  They believe that storytelling then and now serves an evolutionary purpose of group cohesion and group quality of life.  Modern democracy also could be a carryover of these ancient group values.

I'm guessing there is an evolutionary purpose to non-fiction writing as well, such as this blog.  Sharing valuable information and experiences can help others.  Personally, I know I have greatly benefited from the comments and discussions here.  The tribe gets better when everyone contributes in a positive way.

Sports and Attractiveness

I've been reading through this study on team sport position and attractiveness.  Previous studies have looked at how sports allows a person to "advertise" their heritable fitness (genetics).  This study took things a step further and looked at the relationship between individual positions on team sports and attractiveness.

Two sports were studied, soccer and ice hockey.  In soccer, it was hypothesized that the positions of forwards and goalies required the most explosive strength, agility, and creativity.  The defensemen positions required less of these qualities in place of more endurance.  The study predicted that the forwards and goalies would be rated as having more attractive faces.

The results did show this - females rated the forwards and goalies' faces as being more attractive.  In ice hockey the same result was shown again, with defensemen lagging behind forwards and goalies.

The study points out that this finding is remarkable in the fact that all the subjects are professional athletes, and thus are already in a very select group.  Even at this level, small differences in facial attractives (representing different levels of athletic ability) end up sorting players into different positions.

Back to School

It's the first week of the new semester, and I have been tied up with classes.  Hopefully, I can get to some new posts this weekend.

Food Combining

I've seen articles and books over the years about "food combining" (not eating certain foods together), but I've always dismissed it as a fad.  Imagine my surprise when I opened up the new Paleo Diet update and found it to be the leading topic!

The first line provides a good overview: "Because it was relatively rare for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to consume carbohydrates and fats together for millions of years, our species may have became genetically dependent upon certain nutritional combinations."

The article goes on to say that animal products (protein and fat) were usually eaten separately from plant foods (carbohydrate).  Plant food was generally eaten as it was cultivated, and animal food was eaten directly after a successful hunt.

I honestly have never experimented much with this.  I read somewhere (not sure where) that hunter-gatherers consumed mixed meals of meat and vegetables.  I've always done this, but this evolutionary argument against mixed meals is interesting.

Is Running A Skill?

I've been reading lately that "running is a skill".  This implies that running is a special human motion that must be practiced until it is mastered.  It puts it in the same category as activities like tennis and golf, where practice is needed to learn the movements.

But isn't running part of our evolutionary heritage?  After all, no one needs to teach children how to run - it's a natural movement.  Besides, what did runners do before all the modern training aids, like books, DVDs, and training clinics?  They are plenty of fast, efficient runners that never had any formal training.

What's likely is that everyone has the natural capacity to run, but modern society has interfered with this process.  It could be modern shoes with large, padded heels.  It could be the sedentary nature of today's lifestyle which weakens key muscle groups.  It could be that if a person stops running for a number of years (which probably never happened in Stone Age life, and hence it is a novel situation), they lose the feel for how to do it.  Whatever the cause, modern life is interfering with our natural capacity to run, but that does not mean it is a foreign movement.

I refuse to believe that running is a complex skill that must be taught, though some people make it out to be that way.  Whether they're doing this just to line their pockets, or whether they honestly believe in their system, I don't know.  In the past few posts, I have discussed running as a pulling motion as opposed to a pushing motion.  What if relearning to run just means focusing on pulling instead of pushing? 

Running can't be that difficult - children do it with no thought at all.  It's the intelligent adults who make it so difficult. 

Forcing Efficiency

In the last couple posts, I talked about using a pull motion instead of a push motion in running.  Analyzing my own running, I believe I have been a push runner for years.  Over the past few months, I have tried different running schemes waiting for my running form to naturally improve.  It hasn't.  I also notice this with other push runners at my gym - they are still moving at the same pace as they were months ago.  I don't know if the pull runners are getting any faster, but as a group the pull runners are all faster than the push runners, and this doesn't seem to change.

Consequently, I feel like I am going to have to force my body to run efficiently.  I did this today, focusing very intently on pulling my foot up (trying to kick myself in the rear, so to speak).  This running style felt good, but I could really only keep this form up for a lap or so.  What was interesting was that with each separate lap I did, my times got better.  I felt equally tired at the end of each lap, but my results were unequal - they slowly improved each time.  It appeared that even within this session, my body was adapting to the new running form.  This phenomenon doesn't seem to happen with push running - it can become harder to even maintain the same speed over a number of intervals.

I am just going to bite the bullet and only run in a pull manner for the time being.  It must be better to run some separate laps in a pull manner than a mile or two in a push manner.  Better to make the switch to an efficient running style than trying to speed up an inefficent one.

Seeing Soles II

I was back at the gym today and did some more observing on the track.  I noticed one runner in particular whose heels came up very high in the back.  Over the course of my run, I saw that he ended up running faster and also running for a longer period than anyone else.  So here you have the runner with the strongest pull motion who ends up running the longest and also the fastest on average.  Hmmm...

It sure doesn't seem like having the back leg kick up high is a wasted motion.  If anything, it appears to be the central movement in running correctly. 

After my run, I struck up a conversation with this runner.  I asked him about his high back leg.  He responded that he thought this was a negative, that it was inefficient, and that he was running fast in spite of this.  I told him not to worry about it, that it makes for a shorter pendulum and a better overall motion.  I was shocked that he thought his running form was bad when clearly he was the best runner on the track.

Seeing Soles

Yesterday, I spent a good bit of time watching others run at the gym.  One of the first things that jumped out at me was the problems associated with aging.  Almost every runner over 40 seemed to be having difficulties.  The running style of older runners seemed to be very inefficient in addition to being slow.

One marker for good running form seems to be the position of the trailing leg.  For almost all of the college or high school-aged runners, I could see the soles of their shoes if I was behind them.  In other words, their lower leg was bent at 90 degress or more, such that I could completely see the bottom of their shoes with each step.

This wasn't true for older runners.  Their heels did not come up as high, and I could only see half of their soles or sometimes none at all.

I also watched some runners from the college track team doing laps.  Their heels kicked up exceptionally high.  In fact, the soles of their shoes went up so high that they were completely upside down (you could see the soles if you were looking down from above them).

One explanation of this could be speed.  The faster someone runs, the higher their heel may kick up.  Yet I don't really think that is the whole story.  Some of the high school runners were running one lap fast, and one lap slow.  When they were running slow, I could still see the soles of thier shoes with each step.

This might seem like a waste of energy - why have the heels kick up when running slow?  However, from what I've read, bending the back leg "shortens the pendulum" and allows the back leg to swing forward faster.  This faster swing allows the leg to be in better position for the next footstrike, which prevents overstriding, increases speed, etc.

Looking back at the Crossfit Endurance video I posted some time back, you can see the lesser knee bend of the runners initially.  Maybe only the middle runner bent the lower leg to 90 degrees, and the other two runners had less bend.  After the training, you can see how high their heels kick up - some of their soles are almost upside down now.

All of this suggests that running may be more of a pull motion than a push motion.  Of course, this has already been suggested by Pose running and Chi running.  I'm starting to think that this pulling/hamstring action may be the principle difference between good and bad running.  You could look at a million things in running - posture, hip position, foot landing, etc., but there has to be one or maybe just a few key factors in running.  The other elements probably fall into place if a stride is started correctly.  There has to be one initial action that leads the rest.