***

Pure and unadulterated lifting

• The links you must not miss this week are Jamie Lewis’s meet reports (parts one and two) from his recent powerlifting competition.  Some important lessons to be learned about cutting weight and water, rehydrating properly and mental preparation.

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Diet, paleo diet and evolutionary adaptations

• Sometimes I just despair at the medical community.  It seems that they can’t even follow their own rules.  Brian St Pierre describes a scenario that he read in Alan Aragon’s research review, where a general practitioner wanted to prescribe some medication because total cholesterol was high, only it was what they call “good” cholesterol!  Of course, whether the cholesterol is high or low is of no interest to me, but the fact that they cannot even follow their own rules suggests that things are completely out of hand now.
• But let’s be clear now.  The research does not support the cholesterol hypothesis.  Check out this recent study at the British Medical Journal that shows that there is no correlation between the consumption of fried food and either heart disease or all-cause mortality.
• But don’t miss the final part of the Randy Roach interview.  If you didn’t catch parts one and two, you can read the whole thing in one go here.

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Personal training and coaching

• This great research review from Charles Poliquin tells us that in a study of weightlifters doing low (1 set), medium (4 sets) and high volume (8 sets) workouts, the researchers expected there to be diminishing returns.  They expected the low volume to produce substandard results and the medium volume to produce best results, and the high volume to produce either similar results to the medium volume group, or slightly poorer results because of the effects of “overtraining”.  However, the high volume group produced best results.  Charles concludes, somewhat controversially, that “this study disproves the idea promoted by Arthur Jones that performing one set to failure is a superior method of developing strength.”  Ouch.  Don’t pull any punches, Charles!
• And my friend Doug Brignole has some wise words to share about volume and intensity, plus a recent picture of himself to show that you can still look awesome the other side of fifty, although you need some good shirt-ironing skills to pull off the look properly…
• And the amazing Scott Adams tells us how to get everything done on time while maintaining a good mood in the process.  If you are not regularly reading Scott, he is a revelation in thinking properly.
• And Gray Cook is interviewed about the birth of the very popular and effective Functional Movement Screen.

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Stress, sleep and health

•  One of the biggest criticisms about the healthcare system in any Western country is that they do almost nothing about prevention.  They spend all their time on figuring out how to cure problems once they happen.  However, as this blog at British Medical Journal notes, there may be a positive movement in the pipeline.

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Other interesting stuff

• I don’t really do politics or economics on this blog but being a finance professional involved in raising funds for companies in the mid-market, I do have quite a few thoughts and views.  If you are interested in this kind of stuff, let me leave you with a problem to solve.  Why, if there is a global shortage of finance, are there asset bubbles in internet stocks and commodities?  Why are banks piling money into risky equities and commodities in the stock market instead of lending it?  No, it’s not a trick question.

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That’s all folks.  More links next week.

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Pure and unadulterated lifting

• Sumoman explains his rate of strength gain over a four and a half year period, showing how the calculations work.  You have to remember that Sumoman is already very strong to begin with so you would not expect big improvements as you would with a beginner.  I will be interested to do the same calculation for myself at the end of this year, after two years on a Hepburn cycle.  My year one was clearly showing beginner gains on this lift.  Before starting, last year, my back squat was 124kg for 8 x 3 and at the end it was 165kg for 8 x 3, which is a 33% improvement.  Since I am aiming to put 30kg on the lift in 2012, I would hope to gain 18%.  After that, it will no doubt be a lot lower.
• Chad Waterbury proposes a paradoxical lift for shoulder health and strength.  It is dumbbell upright row to external rotation that is designed to develop proper strength in the external rotators.  I am not completely convinced by it myself but it looks interesting…

Personal training and coaching

• One of the things I really like about Rory at Chiron is the way that he thinks about everything that matters very carefully.  You should not miss this very thought-provoking post.  In it, he argues that people devote very little thinking time to actually making decisions and quite a lot of thinking time to justifying those decisions once they have been made.  I see this all the time both at work and socially and I would add that some people are much worse than others…
• And a perfect follow-on from this post is Lyle McDonald’s research review of a paper that investigates cognitive bias and the perception of healthy and unhealthy foods.  Paraphrasing a little, the study found that people tend to overestimate the calorie content of unhealthy foods when the foods are served alone and underestimate the calorie content of the same foods when the same foods are combined with a healthy option.  And this is the interesting bit.  The more people were concerned with dieting and losing weight, the bigger the difference was in their perceptions!  So the more you care about dieting, the more you will convince yourself that eating a biscuit is OK because you ate an apple at the same time! 
• If you’re interested in how the best endurance coaches work, it is probably worth checking out this article on Chris Carmichael.  Not interested?  If you’re a personal trainer interested in working with athletes, it might behove you to consider changing your mind.  The article notes how interest in endurance sports is booming (again) and popular marathons are selling out this year in minutes or hours, not days as last year.
• One of the interesting phenomena about the fitness industry is the continuum that runs from physiotherapy at one end to true strength and conditioning at the other.  My take is that there is a big difference between the point on that continuum where strength coaches need to operate and the point where personal trainers need to operate.  Generally, the people who I see come into my studio would be treated as candidates for quite serious rehabilitation if they were an athlete.  So I was very interested in Mike Reinold’s comments in this post about a kneeling glute bridge variation, as they rang completely true with me.  I do often find that my clients struggle with hip extension on a glute bridge.  However, cues about heel placement and pelvis alignment tend to help.      

Diet, paleo diet and evolutionary adaptations

• I find that I read quite a lot faster than other people can talk, so I dislike podcasts unless I am driving somewhere and need something to do on the way.  So I was delighted to see that Chris Kresser’s podcast is now being transcribed.  In this edition, he discusses why it is so hard to lose weight and then keep it off.
• If you need a reason to stop eating pretend foods, like margarine and other horrible concoctions, read this post from Healthy Diets and Science, which points to a study showing that margarine increases prostate cancer risk in men by 30%.

Sleep, stress and health

• You might think that this link would be better placed in the diet section but I think it sits best as a stress-related link.  Matt Metzgar points out a study that shows that people who ate at their desks suffered distractions from their meals and were less full as a result.  I think this line of questioning is a very fruitful one, as I suspect mindful eating will become something that is shown to improve health and body composition.  And if you need an incentive to get away from your desk, you could always be inspired by Jason’s lunchtime workouts!
• And more from Matt Metzgar, in this post, where he notes that recent research shows that the amount of television you watch is directly correlated with your life expectancy.  In an Australian study, it was found that for every hour of TV you watch, your life is reduced by 22 minutes.  I watch on average, one film a week, on a Sunday evening.  So I am reducing my lifespan by 38 hours every year, or roughly 1.5 days.  So over the next 50 years, I could reduce my lifespan by 75 days, or 2.5 months!  What is your calculation?
• Mad in America points out that a recent study shows that stress causes brain shrinkage in otherwise healthy people.    The study abstract reads: “Current results demonstrate that increasing cumulative exposure to adverse life events is associated with smaller gray matter volume in key prefrontal and limbic regions involved in stress, emotion and reward regulation, and impulse control. These differences found in community participants may serve to mediate vulnerability to depression, addiction, and other stress-related psychopathology.”  In my opinion, in the fitness industry, we need to get with the programme and stop obsessing so much about which type of oily fish is healthiest or which tubers paleolithic people might have eaten.  Stress is vastly more important than micromanaging already good nutrition.
• If you take as pessimistic a view of the UK healthcare system as I do, you won’t be surprised by this Telegraph article noting that more than half of healthcare professionals are unaware that high numbers of children and elderly people are Vitamin D deficient.  Interestingly (perhaps unsurprisingly) there is no comment about sun exposure or the fact that people don’t seem capable of going outside anymore.

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That’s all folks.  More links next week.

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Pure and unadulterated lifting

• Donny Shankle gives his view on glute bridging exercises for weightlifters.
• And The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban has a great article by the original creator of complexes, Istvan Javorek.  I was recently curious about complexes because of the effect that Vasily Alexeyev reported.  Vasily noted that complexes were effective for gaining muscular bodyweight that was useful for weightlifting.  So Javorek writes that complexes are designed to improve and stimulate neuro-muscular coordination, increase the workout load and intensity, stimulate the skeletal muscular system, increase the cardiovascular benefits of the free-weight program and make the program more dynamic and efficient.
• And here’s some amazing stuff on the Olympic press from Charles Poliquin, including lots of history and some great footage of Paul Anderson.

Diet, paleo diet and evolutionary adaptations

• The key posts to check out this week are the first two parts of the Randy Roach interview at Rheo Blair.  Here are parts one and two.  For those not in the know, Randy is possibly the world’s greatest fitness historian and author of the great tome, Muscle, Smoke and Mirrors, a history of physical culture in modern times.  One of the most interesting points he makes in the second part is why he doesn’t use protein powders any more.  This is definitely worth your time.
• And Dr Davis, writing at Wheat Belly, points out that there is an amazingly strong coincidence between the introduction of the modern high-yield, semi-dwarf wheat in 1985 and the explosion in diabetes incidence.  Certainly, the graph of diabetes incidence does rocket upwards from 1985.  So whether it is the wheat strain or something else (HFCS?), I don’t know, but something happened back then…

Personal training and coaching

• Charles Poliquin exhumes the old case of Jim Fixx, the famous fitness fanatic and marathon runner who died of heart attack caused by a blocked artery.  He notes that in the wake of this fascinating incident, various other doctors (including the famous Tim Noakes) noted similar cases.  Charles quotes Dr Solomon, who made the important comment that “cardiovascular health refers to the absence of disease of the heart and blood vessels, not to the ability of an individual to do a certain amount of physical work.”  So I guess we need to be cautious about equating what we might see as “cardiovascular fitness” with “cardiovascular health”.

Stress, sleep and health

Purely about statins, those horrible pharmaceuticals

• Lots on statins this week, starting with this short article from Healthy Diets and Science, explaining some recent research that shows how statins increase the risk of diabetes in post-menopausal women by 48%.
• And another article from Healthy Diets and Science reporting on some slightly older research that concludes that statins show no benefit to the elderly in that they do not extending the life-span of an elderly person by even one day.
• And the statin manufacturers are in the firing line, as this article from Healthy Diets and Science shows.  The famous Jupiter trial of statins has been criticised for having significant holes in it.  The critics note that there were significant conflicts of interest for those involved in the study and despite this, the results demonstrate that the statins did not work.
• And if that list of problems isn’t enough to convince you to have stern conversation with your GP, check out this study reported again by the tenacious Healthy Diets and Science, which notes that statins can cause errectile disfunction!  It’s a French study, it would seem, which is stereotypical…

How sleep, stress and diet are connected

• Conditioning Research has pointed out an interested stress-related study that shows that getting fat increases the stress response, which then makes you fatter through hormonal changes.
• And similar thoughts are contained in Scott Abel’s blog about the psychosomatic effects of dieting.  I liked his coining of a new French Paradox, suggesting that the French are healthier than other nations because they take time over food and enjoy it.  Stress really is much more important for your health than food.
• Scientific American reports on how lack of sleep makes you hungrier.
• And Core Performance suggests some ways to help reduce the effects of stress when your work or boss are responsible for that stress.

Other interesting stuff

• The more I read, the more I realise that there is a strong tendency for medical scientists and medical professionals make out that they know a lot more about the human body than they actually do.  This fascinating report explains how the chemical imbalance theory often quoted in psychiatry is completely torn to pieces in the medical journals but presented as fact to patients.  It ultimately asks what I was wondering the other day.  Why  do we tolerate this kind of behaviour?

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That’s all folks.  More links next week.

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Pure and unadulterated lifting

• Charles Poliquin talks about the glute-ham raise in this article.  He renames it the glute-ham-gastrocnemius raise because it also involves the calf muscles.  And don’t I know it!  I stopped doing them and started using the good morning a long time ago because I physically couldn’t remove the knots from my calves in time for the next workout…
• And more great stuff from King Charles comes this great research review about how professional strongmen train.  Check the article out for yourself but I thought it interesting that ”100% of the subjects said they performed traditional strength training exercises such as squats and deadlifts, especially the back squat and the conventional deadlift.”
• And it must be strongman week this week, because Viking Strength has secured a recent interview with legendary World’s Strongest Man competitor, Manfred Hoeberl.  Very cool stuff.

Diet, paleo diet and evolutionary adaptations

• Thanks to Seth Roberts and his links posts, I came across this great discussion of why statins don’t work and why they destroy muscle, which (according to the influential book Biomarkers) is actually the key determinant of longevity.  Please forward it to anyone you know who is over the age of 50 for them to realise the truth.
• One of the most annoying things in the whole discussion of diet and dietary guidance is the fact that the authorities set out their rubbish guidelines and then, when the obesity epidemic continues to get worse, criticise people for not following them.  Anastasia does the research into the state of the Australian nation and discovers that compliance to the Government-sanctioned, low-fat, health-destroying diet is actually increasing, even as the health problems get worse.  Bang!  Own goal.  Sorry Australian Government, you have revoked your rights to telling people what to eat.  Your approach clearly doesn’t work.  Hand over the responsibilty for public health to someone who isn’t an idiot.  I suggest Anastasia might be a good choice?
• And speaking of rubbish dietary guidelines, Healthy Diets and Science points to a study that investigated the influence of various food groups on the risk of colon cancer.  The dietary habits of  1,953 subjects with colon cancer and 4,154 subjects without cancer were compared.  The study found that those who ate the most bread and cereal had a 69% increased risk of colon cancer compared to those who ate the least bread and cereal.

Personal training and coaching

• I am pleased that other people are now taking up the baton of reading and commenting on research.  Tim Huntley of My Athletic Life has reviewed a great study called Chronic exercise preserves lean muscle mass in masters athletes.  You can find the study here.
• Vern Gambetta suggests some great books that he read in 2011.  I will definitely be checking some of these out…

Stress, sleep and health

• Lifehacker explains some of the science behind bad moods and how they relate to stress and cortisol.  Some interesting stuff here, that I will have to dig into at some point…

Other interesting stuff

• Seth Roberts reports on another critic of the current way in which science is set up, with too many bureaucratic hoops and incentives to produce research that satisfies internal criteria rather than furthers knowledge in a field.
• Robin at Overcoming Bias raises a very interesting psychological point that is observable everywhere in the fitness field.  He notes how he dislikes spending time in the company of people who have no intellectual curiosity (his most valued characteristic).  You can observe this in any community of people but why does it happen?

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That’s all folks.  More links next week.

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Pure and unadulterated lifting

• My friend and fellow UK strength enthusiast Matt Palfrey is running an exclusive sandbag training workshop in Bath a week today on Thursday 19, January 2012.  If you’re going to be in the area, I can definitely recomend checking it out.  You can find more details and book your place here.
• Charles Poliquin asserts his right to be at the forefront of tempo training (in the weightlifting sense, not in the cycling sense, obviously).  I often wonder whether this penchent for tempo training is purely a foible of the great man or whether it really does deliver results?  Has anyone had good results training with tempo?
• Freak Strength has a great article explaining why you should use the reverse grip bench press and how to do it properly (without killing yourself in the process).
• Clarence Bass talks in this post on The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban about how to fit ten pounds into a five pound bag, or how to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time, which is probably harder.
• Donny Shankle shows us in this post how to do planks the way real men should do them…

Diet, paleo diet and evolutionary adaptations

• One of my favourite dietary bloggers, Dr Michael Eades, is playing my tune this week when he explains in this article that there is a world of difference between what happens when someone with a normal metabolism eats something and what happens when someone with a broken metabolism eats something.  If someone has allowed themselves to get fat, then something has broken and that changes all the rules (especially when it comes to carbohydrates).  I believe that this concept is at the bottom of the non-argument that rages on the internet around the macronutrient profile of hunter-gatherer populations and therefore whether carbohydrates are causing the obesity epidemic.  To my mind, it doesn’t matter either way, because if someone has become obese, then carbohydrates are pretty much off the menu because their system just won’t handle them any more.
• Chris Kresser explains why you should eat more cholesterol and not less.  Apparently, it is important to get your RDA of choline, which is a B-Vitamin and which is found primarily in cholesterol-rich foods.  The best sources of this important vitamin are egg yolks and liver.  Deficiency in choline could be a contributor to fatty-liver disease.  So it would seem that all those idiots recommending low-fat diets to obese people are giving dangerous advice…
• Speaking of really dumb advice that medical professionals are still giving people, Seth Roberts points to some recent research that has emphasised how calcium supplements are completely pointless in helping women maintain bone mass in old age and are actually bad for your health.  And apparently, epidemological studies have been showing this for some time.  Another mark down for the current medical establishment.
• Richard Nikoley is not everybody’s cup of tea because of his ‘tude but in this great post, he completely demolishes an article written by the extremely annoying Melody Cherny, a vegetarian claiming that the Paleo Diet is not the healthiest diet you can eat.
• On a more scientifically interesting note, Melissa McEwan has written about why the Paleo Diet has not sorted out her IBS, explaining how gut flora (both inherited and developed in life) is important to consider in this regard.  She has found that she can tolerate certain foods only if they are very well cooked and notes that this may suggest that cooking may have been a key element in human evolution.
• And Jonny Bowden reviews a study that seems to show that eating more protein while in a postive calorie balance is key to putting on muscle.  In an 8-week trial, people eating a low protein diet (5% of calories) actually lost 1.5lbs of muscle while on a 1,000kcal surplus diet.  People eating a 15% protein diet gained 6lbs of muscle and people eating a 25% protein diet gained 7lbs of muscle.  So clearly, there is a law of diminishing returns here.

Personal training and coaching

• Chad Waterbury suggests exercises for the vastus medialis in this post to help remove knee pain.  Personally, I think glute-specific work would be a better starting point for most people today but there is always room for a few more exercises!
• Dewey Nielsen explains his view on what CrossFit is and what it isn’t.  I had not thought of CrossFit as an extreme sport but now that he mentions it, it makes a certain amount of sense…
• And Anthony Mychal is also playing my tune when he says in this article that “my go-to exercise for teaching the hiup hinge is the Romanian Deadlift (RDL).  There are other hip exercises out there, but none teach standing hip extension quite like the RDL.  If you hinge correctly, I’d guess that 90% of your problems would go away, chronic knee pain included.”  I absolutely and completely agree with this statement.  I prioritise the hip hinge for everyone I train and I think the RDL is the best way to do it.
• Scott Abel has had one of his lucid moments and talks very passionately here about what natural competitors can expect to achieve.  There is a fine line here because to fall short of your potential because you ascribe everyone else’s success to pharmaceuticals would be a tragedy but on the other hand, aspiring to Mr Olympia style physiques using nothing more than a protein shake is just naive.

Stress, sleep and health

• Jerry Branium chats about stress and cortisol over at IronManMagazine.  He notes that elevated cortisol is generally a bad thing for gaining muscle, as it usually forms an inverse relationship with the anabolic hormones (testosterone, growth hormone and insulin).  He lists a number of things that cause cortisol to rise, including coffeee (good job I quit, then), lack of sleep and too much cardio.  Thankfully, he also notes a few things that help lower cortisol, including tea, magneisum supplements (as in espom salt baths), fish oil supplements and having regular sex.
• And speaking of sex, Immortal Humans reviews an interesting study that suggests that having good sex regularly and enjoying sexual satisfaction can add up to 10 years of additional life expectancy.  So don’t hold back in the bedroom, guys and girls, your life (quite literally) depends upon it…
• Back to talking about sleep, it was great to see that concerns about sleep are hitting the mainstream media recently.  I liked this hard-hitting article about sleep apnoea, along with a video showing how serious it is.  Forty seconds without breathing, while you are asleep!  That cannot be good.  Unfortunately, there was no discussion of how unhealthy a lack of sleep it but then the British still have this idiotic macho approach to going without sleep.  I think it goes back to Thatcher and the myth that went around about her only needing four hours of sleep a night.

Other interesting stuff

• Dave’s Gym has done a great little article for inspiration called Five Real Life Badasses, which has the one and only Ranulph Feinnes in the line up.  I hadn’t heard of the others, so it was fun learning about them…
• And my friend Sumoman, who is normally extremely macho, exercises his feminine side by trying out his weekly workout in tights.  And in his comical write-up, he manages to include the words “thence” and “condom” without batting an eyelid, or should that be batting an eyelash?
• And if you are in the mood for a chuckle, check out Lifehacker’s discussion of health myths.  You’ll be delighted to see that the Cholesterol Hypothesis is on there as a myth (thanks to Malcolm Kendrick!).  I was also pleased by the mention of the myth of not waking a sleepwalker, as I infrequently suffer from sleepwalking and really appreciate being woken up while it is happening!
• And if you are curious what I do when I disappear for a week or so, this blog post about the Dales Way over at the walking company I moonlight for should give you an idea…

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That’s all folks.  More links next week.

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Pure and unadulterated lifting

• Jason Steeves writes a great workout blog over at Shoggoth Basement and in this New Year’s post, he details his current plan.  If you want to know what hard work looks like, this is a good place to start…
• The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban introduces us to the Smitty Deadlift, which was designed to help eliminate muscular imbalances.  Essentially, the lift is a partial snatch grip deadlift from a deficit and the purpose is the help strengthen the lower back in a way that has good carryover to the conventional deadlift, as some people find the good morning does not quite fulfil this requirement.

Diet, paleo diet and evolutionary adaptations

• Anastasia at PrimalMedEd talks about the history of margarine in this very well thought-out and informative article.
• Scott Adams explains how golf is attractive to people because it mimics certain evolutionary behaviours.  There should be a law against one man having as much talent as he does.

Personal training and coaching

• Pat Rigsby forecasts what will happen in the fitness industry in 2012.  His main concern is that there will be a “race to the bottom” for bootcamps and similar group programmes, where trainers will compete to offer the cheapest possible solutions.  Clearly, this is not sustainable and he rightly points out that there will be a crash of some sort.
• The World of Psychology offers some helpful tips on how to set good New Year’s Resolutions.
• Chiron points out what everyone else misses, I think.  In this post, he points out how every habit we do has a conditioning effect, but it may not be the one we want.  A good example he uses is that the automatic “yes, sir” that children give in schools is not causing discipine but blind obedience and the two things are fundamentally different.
• Lifehacker gives us the top ten tips on how to “hack” bodily functions.
• And Seth Godin gives some random life tips, which I think are great with the exception of one, which is the old chestnut “only borrow to invest.”  There are in fact very good circumstances when this does not work well at all but for some reason they don’t seem to have filtered into the non-financial business mainstream.

Stress, sleep and health

• Scientific American reports on how working with rude colleagues causes stress that echoes into people’s home lives.  The article notes: “Study author Merideth J. Ferguson, a psy­chologist and an assistant professor of management at Baylor, used statistical software to analyze the relation between employee reports of co-worker rudeness and reports by the employee’s partner of homeand work life.  Not surprisingly, she found that exposure to rudeness created stress for both partner and family.  She also found a direct correlation between the rudeness that the employee experienced and stress at the partner’s workplace.”
• Conditioning Research has linked to a nicely drawn set of points about stress and sleep, which includes some interesting statisitcs and tips on how to get more sleep.
• One of my more surprising discoveries about stress and cortisol is that occasional (successful) adrenaline-fueled escapades are important for keeping stress low and cortisol levels where they should be.  So I was very interested to read Scott Adams’ amazingly funny and incisive article at the WSJ about the importance of doing things that scare you occasionally for the benefit of long-term health and function,
• Overcoming Bias is a great blog but sometimes I think Robin shoots from the hip.  In this discussion of working hours, he completely fails to see that working for yourself is fundamentally, completely different in psychologcial terms from working for someone else.  Therefore, different productivity and health outcomes will result from the same number of hours working.  This is a blind-spot that so many people have, it is getting silly.
• Seth Roberts points to another blind spot, that is that many scientists completely ignore the strength of the immune system when discussing the impact of viruses or colds.  Reducing stress and getting more sleep helps improve your immune system and this helps resist viruses and colds etc.

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That’s all folks.  More links next week.

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Pure and unadulterated lifting

• For some unknown reason, this was the week that Charles Poliquin decided to do an article about legendary strongman Paul Anderson.  Check out this article for history, workout techniques and the secret to insane levels of strength.
• And 70s Big have done a similar article about Nicu Vlad, one of the greatest weightlifters of all time, who competed at 90kg and snatched 200kg at 100kg.  Damn…

Diet, paleo diet and evolutionary adaptations

• Take a look at this sequence of pictures of famous actors and actresses who have lost or gained significant amounts of weight in short periods of time for film roles.  Looking at this list makes me wonder why the rest of the world has so much trouble.
• Healthy Diets and Science has been hitting the Cholesterol Hypothesis hard recently, pointing out quite a few studies that make a complete mockery of this out of date idea.  Check out three here (one, two and three).  They all suggest that high cholesterol levels are associated with longer life not shorter life.  Why can’t the mainstream media catch up?
• And Paleo Velo points to a YouTube presentation by a doctor explaining the positive effect that the Paleo Diet had on her multiple sclerosis condition.

Personal training and coaching

• Iconic long-distance runner and fan of resistance training for runners, Dean Karnazes, talks about cross training in this series.  Check out parts one, two and three.
• Mike Boyle has another bash at CrossFit by referring us to this amazing history of its rise and fall in the estimation of serious fitness enthusiasts around the world.
• And Mike has also republished an old article that explains “how to speak coach” or how to communicate in the other person’s language.  It is just as true now as it was back then.
• I am a big fan of the way Chiron explains martial arts and self-defence and I think this post is his clearest exposition yet.

Health

• The BBC reports on the popular painkiller and anti-inflammatory, Ibruprofen, after 50 years of being in use.  I was interested to hear that it was developed in Nottingham, UK, where I was born.  I was less impressed with some of their reporting.  Honestly, the more time I spend reading health and fitness blogs, the less time I have for mainstream reporting.  I was also somewhat peeved by the insistence of the talking heads about involving doctors more.  Involving doctors more clearly isn’t working…
• And here’s an interesting article on T-Nation (for those of you who might have forsaken the site) about inflammation and how to reduce it.
• And Seth Roberts is still thinking about Vitamin D3 and how it is good for your health.  He notes that after increasing from 2,000IU to 4,000IU (taken in the morning) he noticed a significant improvement in his sleep.  (And, of course, Seth notes how doctors are nowhere near recommending either Vitamin D3 or more sleep, for that matter).  I was pleased to see how much he now appreciates the health benefits of sleep.  For me, sleep is the other side of the coin to stress, the biggest health issue nobody talks about.

Other interesting stuff

• If you are a bookworm (or a Star Wars fan) you might be interested in this article about an encounter with Dave Prowse, the body behind the legend that is Darth Vader.
• I am quite excited about the new Batman film, as I enjoyed the first two.  I am also keen to see how they manage the role of super-strong villain, Bane.  Here’s an article about the new film with some suggestions…
• And I enjoyed reading some suggestions for heavy metal music for gym going from a blog I only recently just discovered, Hammerhead.  I have put quite a few of these albums on my Amazon wishlist so hopefully in the New Year I will get around to buying a few.

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That’s all for 2011 folks.  More great links next year!

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Pure and unadulterated lifting

• Readers of this blog who are also fans of ChAoS & PAiN will be very familiar with Kirk Karwoski, the great powerlifter.  If you’re not, check out Jamie’s great post summarising his career.
• Now that you know who “Captain Kirk” is, take a look at some of his training footage and some of his meet footage at Bas Barbell.
• And some more Kirk Karwoski videos can be found at Picking Apart Life’s Mess.
• And for something completely different, check out Charles Poliquin’s review of Randy Roach’s new volume of Muscle, Smoke & Mirrors Part II, which Charles summarises as a history of training evolution.

Diet, paleo diet and evolutionary adaptations

• Healthy Diets and Science points to some research showing that the lower your cholesterol is, the more likely you are to die.  This conclusion applied for people of all ages from 35 – 70 of both sexes.

Personal training and coaching

• Mike Boyle sets out a manifesto for strength coaches and personal trainers, after getting a fair amount of flak for his flaming CrossFit.

Health

• Seth Roberts points out a recent Cochrane review suggesting that Vitamin D3 reduces mortality by about 6%.
• And speaking of mortality, health and longevity, take a moment to read this great post at The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban about Clarence Bass.  Clarence Bass is one of the most iconic figures in bodybuilding and longevity and the last set of pictures he did at 70 showed that he still looked pretty awesome.
• Chris Kresser suggests various ways to avoid colds and flu.  This is not just your average set of suggestions where the only one of any validity is supplementing with zinc.  There is a lot more here.

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That’s all folks.  More great links next week…

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Pure and unadulterated lifting

• Obviously, the sensation of this week is the release of the new CHAoS & PAiN e-book, by Jamie Lewis.  Jamie really knows his stuff and I find myself in agreement with him more often than not about almost every training and diet-related topic he can find time to write about.  Please go and buy his (very cheaply priced) e-book so he can fund another record-breaking powerlifting trip.
• But while you are waiting for Jamie’s e-book to download check out this great post about Doug Hepburn at The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban.
• And if it’s taking a while, read Charles Polquin bemoaning the death of old-school neck training.
• Once you’ve read Jamie’s e-book, go back on line and read Matt Devine interviewing Donny Shankle.

Diet, paleo diet and evolutionary adaptations

• Some “light reading” this week, as Gary Taubes finishes his epic series designed to explain why he made an ass of himself at the Ancestral Health Symposium during Stephan Guyenet’s talk.  You can check out his whole response to the food palatability theory in parts 1, 2a, 2b, 2c, 2d and 2e.
• And Stephan has already responded in brief.  Check it out quick before Peter from Hyperlipid responds and he takes it down again.
• But I am certain that they would both be delighted by a recent study released on PubMed that notes how the use of cholesterol levels in monitoring heart disease is not really valid.  High cholesterol levels don’t appear to be dangerous and are actually beneficial for women.  It might be an idea to send this link to your doctor, if they haven’t got with the programme yet…
• And if you are curious why Gorillas can eat boatloads of vegetables but humans probably shouldn’t, check out this fascinating comparison of the gut structure of various different mammals.

Personal training and coaching

• My friend Juan intelligently discusses the difference between high and low bar squats in this post.  He also very gently lays down the gauntlet for me to demonstrate to him why I bother reading research (or anything at all after Zatsiorsky and Siff, really).  After all, is any of it any use to the devotee of strength sports?  Juan notes that most sports scientists in the West interested in strength would probably have to go cap in hand to a strongman or powerlifter (think Louie Simmons) if they wanted to really get somebody strong.  And who did Charles Poliquin look to for inspiration?  Anthony Ditillo and Doug Hepburn.  While it is probably true that there is a lot more knowledge in the heads of the old-school lifters than in the hands of the researchers at the moment, some of the Eastern Bloc methods are starting to find their way into the hands of people doing research (as Bret notes) and the results they are posting seem remarkable.  And while my own training owes more to Hepburn than any man alive, I have to say that my studies are starting to change the way I think about strength training for athletic pursuits.  A good example is that my understanding of plyometrics has completely altered since reading research (and while I think Zatsiorsky is awesome it has taken me away from him on this subject).
• Rory at Chiron thinks there is a sea-change coming in the study of martial arts and self-defence.  Do you agree?
• Charlie Weingroff explains why he thinks passive stretching doesn’t actually achieve what you want it to.
• And another post from Charles Poliquin, in which he points to some recent research showing that heavy back squats prior to plyometrics improves the performance at plyometrics, possibly by helping to recruit more high-threshold motor units.

Health

• Regular readers know I am convinced stress is very important for health.  I am also a fan of Robert Sapolsky, a well-known stress researcher.  In this post at Boing Boing, he is interviewed about how stress comes about and how it might be possible to manage stress.
• And Scott Adams, a man far too clever for his own good, has also decided that stress is the root of all kinds of ill-health.  Check his thought process out here.  It’s not big on the detail but it hits the main point.
• Overcoming Bias never ceases to amaze me.  I had thought that alcohol caused people to behave badly but it seems I was mistaken.  Apparently, it is social expectations that people behave badly while drinking and it has nothing to do with the substance itself.  Critics of the externalities of alcohol consumption take note…
• And stretching the concept of health only slightly, check out my guest post at World’s Strongest Librarian about Al Alvarez and how he learned to be happy, which, in my opinion, is a long way towards being healthy.

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That’s all folks.  More great links next week…

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Pure and unadulterated lifting

• Obviously, the sensation of this week is Jamie Lewis and Paul Carter’s roundtable, hosted on this occasion at Paul’s blog.  Find out what they think constitutes strong.
• The frequency with which people say “isn’t that dangerous?” when I tell them any one of the things that I do in my free time is a source of pride to me.  However, when someone trots out the idea that weightlifting increases your blood pressure, I tend to lose my cool.  Fortunately, Brooks Kubik has put to rest this idiotic myth.  He has found an old study of elite weightlifers, that measured their blood pressure during several days of competition.  The study found that the normal resting blood pressure of the athletes was as low as c. 120/55.
• Bret has done an interview with Scott Taylor, an athletic coach working with elite field hockey players.  Scott reports on the success of a 10 sets x 2 reps box squat cycle against bands as follows: “After 3 weeks resisted and 3 assisted we did a whole testing battery.  Squat 1RM within the squad increased hugely (traditional stance back squat) with a team average increasing from 120kg (max of 145kg, min of 100kg) to 155kg (max 190kg, min 140kg).”  Am I right in thinking that Scott is claiming one guy put 45kg on his squat in six weeks?

Diet, paleo diet and evolutionary adaptations

• Overcoming Bias reports that salt consumption does not appear to lead to increased mortality.  In fact the reverse appears to be true.
• And the Paleo Diet continues to break into the mainstream, as this article in the Globe and Mail shows.

Personal training and coaching

• Don’t forget to check out my article about Lessons from Great Athletes over at My Athletic Life.  I think it’s one of the better pieces of writing I have done in a long time.
• Nick Showman has written a great article about personal training, covering the things you should never do, the things that you should always do and the things that will put you ahead of the pack.
• Sarah at SAPT shares 30 things that she has found to be very important.  Many of them rang true with me.  I was particularly fond of her judgement on the pointless evil that is television.  And would you believe it, she’s INTJ too.  Please shout in the comments if you’re an INTJ, there are not many of us around…

Health

• Freakonomics raises the tickly issue of whether the rise of the contraceptive pill is causing an increase in prostate cancer because of the oestrogen exposure in the water.
• As you will know if you are a regular reader, I fully intend to attempt the cannonization of Michael Marmot into some sort of saint when he dies.  Aside from having a really cool name, Michael has done some amazing research showing how stress caused by a lack of autonomy and social interactions is one of the most significant factors that affects coronary heart disease and mortality.  Now, he has set up an institution to help drive health improvements by reducing those factors in people’s lives.

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That’s all folks.  More great links next week…