Another week rolls by and another great batch of posts and articles are stuffed through my imaginary Google Reader postbox.
- The post of the week slot this week is actually two posts but they both relate to the same event, so I’ll keep them together. The implosions at CrossFit recently have kept me glued to my Google Reader as if watching a reality TV episode. Once an organisation gets as large as CrossFit, it is all but inevitable that a certain amount of politics will be played. This has is disadvantages for those who are involved. For the bystanders, though, you couldn’t really invent this kind of drama! It started to get a bit ugly with the rather well-publicised blog post from Greyskull Barbell but things seem to have taken a turn for the worse recently. The posts of the week are from Robb Wolf and Greg Everett, each describing their take on the rather peculiar events at the Black Box Summit. If the videos ever appear on YouTube, I’ll be the first in the queue to watch them…
- Eric Moss makes all of us who are bloggers in the fitness community aware that we need to have a policy and a disclosure on any products that we endorse but also make a commission on. I don’t feel that this is unreasonable, after all, it’s nice to know if someone is selling something or merely recommending it. I do feel that it’s another example of Seth’s maxim, which states (to paraphrase) that the powers that be instinctively don’t like individuals doing their own thing. They like big corporations (even if they’re exploiting people) because they are predictable. Individuals are individual. That’s why they’re called individuals…
- Yuichiro Miura is going for Everest again. At 80 years old… Another fantastic example of how life does not end until it ends.
- Apparently, a film has been made that includes footage of John Gill and others who followed his approach to climbing. John Gill was a unique climber with a gift for gymnastics, who managed various feats of strength including, perhaps most famously, the one-arm front lever.
- Recent research shows that adding strength training into the routines of even advanced cyclists has shown considerable improvements to their speed over a 5 minute time trial. I know that many of you reading this will say, well obviously, but believe me, there are hundreds of cyclists out there who will argue the point until they are blue in the face. I remember reading posts on forums where quite well-conditioned cyclists would argue that increasing your squat or deadlift over the winter would do nothing for your time-trialling ability come the summer. Simply amazing.
- Chris (great name, by the way) over at Conditioning Research, has posted some links to studies that cast doubt on the generally supposed fact that explosive lifting (such as is typical to swings and Olympic lifts) is the best (and safest) way to generate explosive power. The studies suggest that slower tempo lifting (as is typical for the powerlifts) is equally valid and often safer.
- Brooks Kubik (!) has written an article on pressing for The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban. After all, no links post would be complete without one of these great old-time posts…
- Another depressing post about coffee not being very good for you. I wish they’d just keep it to themselves. I know I’m poisoning myself on a daily basis, I don’t want reminding of the fact.
- Seth has a very interesting post on how we are all amateur scientists in this day and age. Obviously, he is thinking about it from a marketing point of view (as in, how do I market to these amateur scientists) but it’s interesting to reflect on how pseudo-science (or extrapolations from science) tend to appear on a lot of fitness blogs these days. Studies on worms or rats are used to explain how human biology might work. Studies on unhealthy subjects are used to predict the outcomes of healthy subjects in similar scenarios. Ultimately, it seems that there is no substitute for personal experience and trial and error.
- Speaking of scientists, Dr Michael Eades has an exceptional post on why recent research helps show that saturated fat doesn’t cause heart disease. Dr Mike also makes some fantastic points about how the researchers, despite having their theories blown out of the water by the data, keep refusing to believe it (perhaps because of who is funding the research?) and end up calling it a paradox. As in, the French eats lots of saturated fat but they have lower levels of heart disease. Must be the French paradox! Not the fact that saturated fat doesn’t cause heart disease, oh no.
- On a more positive note, here is a paper that suggests that heart disease is reduced by exercise. So I’m going to tell my dad to stop worrying about how much butter he’s eating and just to get off the sofa and do something more active occasionally…
Well, that’s it for this week. Hope you enjoyed reading them.
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[...] readers will have noted the huge number of links each week in my Don’t miss these great links! series to The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban, an old school weightlifting and strongman blog, [...]