The Single Best Thing We Can Do For Our Health?

A fun and engaging video about the benefits of exercise:



Still, I'd argue that sleep is paramount...

[Source]

A Way of Life

[Source]

No Gym? No Problem.

The New York Times recently profiled Charlie Gasparino, a 48-year-old reporter for Fox Business Network who works out daily at East River Park in Lower Manhattan:

Using the monkey bars, he did more than a dozen sets of pull-ups -- some including as many as 30 -- and alternated them with fast-paced push-ups. He was soaked in sweat in just 15 minutes and still had another hour to go.

Many New Yorkers run outside or hit the gym, but Mr. Gasparino, a senior correspondent for Fox Business Network, chooses to shape up by using the urban landscape. “Exercising outside in the city is interesting, free and effective,” he said.

Depending on the day, Gasparino's 75-minute workouts may include "a two- to four-mile run around the park’s track and back and forth to the park from his apartment in Stuyvesant Town." In addition, he does "up to 36 sets of pull-ups on the monkey bars, wind sprints, and hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups." And he does this five to six days a week.

Okay -- it's a bit much, and the guy may not be giving his body enough time for proper recovery. But it's always good to remind folks -- especially those who complain about the price of memberships at fitness centers -- that the world is not only your oyster, but it can be your gym, too. And it's free!

(The only problem that M and I have discovered while trying to work out at our neighborhood playground? The pull-up bars and monkey bars are too damned close to the ground.)

[Source]

Form Versus Function

From comic artist Kelly Turnbull's tutorial on anatomical drawing:

[Click the image above to enlarge.]

More here.

How "Fit" Are You?

CrossFit has long defined "fitness" as, among other thing, proficiency in 10 general physical skills (a concept borrowed from Jim Cawley and Bruce Evans of Dynamax):

• Cardiovascular / Respiratory Endurance: The ability of body systems to gather, process, and deliver oxygen.

• Stamina: The ability of body systems to process, deliver, store, and utilize energy.

• Strength: The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply force.

• Flexibility: The ability to maximize the range of motion at a given joint.

• Power: The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply maximum force in minimum time.

• Speed: The ability to minimize the time cycle of a repeated movement.

• Coordination: The ability to combine several distinct movement patterns into a singular distinct movement.

• Agility: The ability to minimize transition time from one movement pattern to another.

• Balance: The ability to control the placement of the bodies center of gravity in relation to its support base.

• Accuracy: The ability to control movement in a given direction or at a given intensity.

As the CrossFit Journal declared, "You are as fit as you are competent in each of these ten skills."

Most people work on just the first five or six items on the list above. Marathoners (who haven't yet discovered CrossFit Endurance) grind out long workouts to build up a "base" of endurance, and sprinters devote their time to generating maximum power and speed. But everyone wants to get stronger and faster -- and some even squeeze in some flexibility and mobility work on occasion.

But imagine how mind-blowing it would be if everyone spent more time on the back-half of this list, and worked rigorously on developing greater speed, coordination, agility, balance and accuracy.

And the best part? We don't even have to practice these skills in the gym. Here are a few ways you, too, can get more "fit" while on the job:

Restaurant workers can practice throwing and catching pancakes like Frisbees!



Retail workers can bag merchandise with kick-ass flourishes!



Ice cream vendors can amaze customers (and make them feel strangely inadequate)!



And baristas and bartenders can strap on a pair of Heelys and dazzle people with their beverage preparation abilities!



Seriously: There's a lesson here. (I think.) I'm not saying these guys are the fittest people around; for all I know, their Fran times are crappy and they can't front squat worth a damn. They're specialists -- not generalists.  But given their apparent mastery of at least 4 or 5 of the 10 General Physical Skills, these people are arguably just as -- if not more -- "fit" than you or me.

[Thanks to @oldskoolboarder for the Turkish ice cream video!]

TV: The Opiate of the Masses

HealthZone, the Toronto Star's health news site, just published an article on "The Best TV to Watch While You Work Out." (It's a Canadian site, so I believe the proper pronunciation is "Work OOT.")

The author explains:

I belong to a cut-rate gym with lots of outlets. Each location has at least one bank of television screens mounted in front of the elliptical and bike machines. This is nice in theory, and it’s better than nothing, but oftentimes three out of four screens will be showing the same thing (usually something totally uninteresting like an “E! True Hollywood Story” on Tawny Kitaen, better watched at home with a bag of chips), and to change the channel involves begging one of the gym attendants to do it for you while concurrently risking the ire of the person on the next machine over who really was caught up in Tawny.

Which is why I frequently go out of my way to visit a branch that has televisions actually mounted right on the workout machines, and a couple dozen channels for me to choose from.

Have we really gotten to the point where a health publication must acknowledge that people won't exercise unless they're able to locate a globo-gym with individual TV screens attached to the cardio machines? Can we no longer squeeze any exercise into our schedules without tethering ourselves to a television?

Hate to say it, but I think the time has come for us to kill our TVs.

Unless, of course, this is a strictly Canadian phenomenon -- in which case, please pass me the remote.

Excuses, Excuses

University of Minnesota researchers have found that parents of young kids "tend to neglect their own health and are therefore generally fatter than their childless peers."

The results of the study were published today in Pediatrics, and in addition to other stats, researchers found that mothers with children under 5 years old on average consume 368 more calories per day than women who don't have kids.

The researchers are laser-focused on "calories and saturated fat" as the major drivers of obesity. I think they're wrong, but that's besides the point.

What really dismays me is the widespread acceptance of parenthood as a valid excuse to be unhealthy.

Here's a typical news article about the University of Minnesota's findings:

Sheri Lee Schearer, 34, says the results reflect her life with a 5-month-old son. Before, when she worked as a paralegal, she had time to make a spinach salad or go out for one. Now, as a stay-at-home mom in southern New Jersey, she grabs whatever is easiest and quickest.

"I often find that his needs come before mine," she said. "Do I get to the gym? No. Do I eat always healthy? No."

(Wha--? Did I miss something? When did making a FRIGGIN' SPINACH SALAD become a complex and time-consuming task?)

And here's another report:

“I think parents make sacrifices to their own detriment for their kids,” says Lori Francis, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of Biobehavioral Health at The Pennsylvania State University. 

As a nutrition researcher and the mother of a 2-year-old, Francis says she felt her own life echoed in the study’s results. “I have a very picky eater, so I go through all kinds of acrobatics just to get him to eat, and what he doesn’t eat, I’m eating, or my husband’s eating,” she says.

Put another way, these folks claim they're getting fat because their schedules make it impossible for them to exercise or prepare halfway-healthy meals. And there's no way they can stop themselves from devouring the highly-processed leftover crap that their kids refuse to eat. Also? They're doing this as a "sacrifice" for their children. Such martyrs!

I call bullshit. I just don't buy the argument that becoming a parent means you get a free pass to Baskin Robbins and a permanent spot on the couch.

More after the jump...

Ready for Anything

What exactly is "fitness," and what does it look like?

Surprisingly, there's no universally agreed-upon definition of the word. Dictionaries are no help; most tautologically call it “being fit.” (Some dictionaries also define the term to mean “good health or physical condition,” but this doesn’t ring true to me; after all, “health” really only describes a state in which there’s an absence of illness or physical decline.)

In “Body by Science,” Doug McGuff and John Little use the word “fitness” to mean “the bodily state of being physiologically capable of handling challenges that exist above a resting threshold of activity.” Under this definition, fitness is the ability to engage in physical challenges -- a definition I can get behind.

CrossFit, of course, has its own definition, which incorporates three separate but related standards:

• Proficiency -- through training -- in each of ten general physical skills: cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy;

• Competency in all three metabolic pathways for physical activity: phosphagenic, glycolytic, and oxidative.

• The ability to perform well -- compared to others -- at any and all physical tasks, including unfamiliar and unforeseen ones.

In sum, it's about the ability to tackle "work capacity across broad time, modal, and age domains."

What do these definitions share? An emphasis on one’s ability to use his or her body to DO STUFF.

They're silent, though, about what fitness looks like. And with good reason: We all know that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Just ‘cause someone looks the part doesn’t mean they can actually deliver the goods.

Still, as an article in today's edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer points out, “many of us wrongly associate fitness with a certain look or physical trait.”

"Many people look at [fitness] magazine covers and think that's what they're supposed to look like," says Heather Nettle, an exercise physiologist at the Cleveland Clinic's Sports Health Center.

Fitness models, however, often can’t do the very activities they’re hired to demonstrate. As Slate Magazine’s Josh Levin wrote:

Every booker has a story about a [fitness] model who looked the part but couldn't do a squat, or a guy who lied about his max bench press. It can be especially challenging to find women who can do pull-ups. In some cases, a trainer holds the model up, then runs away quickly so the photographer can snap a shot before she falls.

Contrast that with 26-year-old Jillian Neimeister of CrossFit Cleveland, who was profiled in the Plain Dealer article:

At 5 feet 5 inches and 170 pounds, the former rugby player doesn't have the lean, sculpted look of an athlete or a stereotypically "fit" physique. Her body mass index (BMI, a measurement of the relationship between weight and height) falls at the upper end of overweight, just a hairbreadth from obese.

But anyone who saw Neimeister in action would undoubtedly describe her as fit and athletic. At a recent CrossFit fitness competition, Neimeister blew away even the most ripped of competitors by dead-lifting 345 pounds and doing 27 pull-ups. Last year, she ably completed a half-marathon run with only minimal training.

"I don't feel obese," says Neimeister. "I feel fit. I do get jokes about having a big butt. I'm not a small girl. But I know I could probably beat anyone. I can go out and do whatever I need."

Fitness isn’t about being stick-thin -- it’s about being able to “perform a broad variety of tasks”:

To be fit, in other words, you don't need to be skinny or buff so much as healthy and able to perform a broad variety of tasks. You can also be more fit in one category than another.

Most professional football players, for instance, would fail the weight test instantly. No one questions their fitness, though, because they're so obviously athletic and muscular. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the trim person who never exercises and whose body composition is in fact highly fatty.

"There is such a thing as a skinny fat person," Nettle says. "Looks can be deceiving."

A while back, Krista Scott-Dixon of Stumptuous posted a link to awe-inspiring photographs of elite male and female athletes who look nothing like the fitness models in most magazines. The photos show a wide spectrum of sizes and shapes -- but the one constant is the confidence visible in their faces. As Scott-Dixon wrote: “These are folks who know their bodies have the power to do things -- which is what ‘fitness’ truly is.”

Hear, hear.

[Source]

Step It Up

Can't find the time to squeeze in a workout at the gym? Then pretend your office building's elevator is out of service and hit the stairs.
Even a brief burst of speedy stair-climbing can be "back-loosening, head-clearing aerobic jolts." Plus, unlike stretching in your office or doing air squats in the bathroom stall, staircase racing is a competitive sport:

Once regarded as oddball curiosities, the races have increased in number and stature. Last year there were more than 160 staircase races in the world, on five continents, chronicled and celebrated on Web sites like towerrunning.com. One of the earliest races, the 86-floor ascent of the Empire State Building, begun in 1978, was run for the 34th time on Feb. 1, attracting competitors from around the world.

Of course, if you work or live in a building that doesn't quite scrape the sky, you may need a Plan B.

For Emily Kindlon, 30, a runner and triathlete, gaining access to high-rise buildings for training is an obstacle. Frustrated by her eight-story apartment building in Brooklyn, she asks friends in loftier homes for stair privileges. Yet building managers, she said, are reluctant to open their stairs to outsiders, and one asked her to sign a legal wavier.

“In case I fell and broke my neck,” she explained.

“I’ve honestly considered moving to a high-rise in Manhattan for the stairs,” Ms. Kindlon said.

(San Francisco Bay Area readers: It's not too late to sign up for the Fight for Air Climb on March 26...)

[Source]

"The Caveman Diet" on ABC's Nightline

Last night, ABC aired its long-postponed Nightline segment about "The Caveman Diet" -- and unlike some media outlets -- didn't make Paleo adherents look like the lunatic fringe. Watch it here:



My favorite part was watching Robb Wolf, Art Devany, John Durant, Melissa McEwen -- the Justice League of Paleo! -- all eating rodizio at Churrascaria Plataforma. Bonus: CrossFit South Brooklyn struts its stuff! w00t!

A Buffet (of Articles) for Fitness Buffs

With the exception of the inane and largely information-free P90X/CrossFit article, Slate's Fitness Issue is jam-packed with entertaining reads about all sorts of health-related stuff. If you have time to kill on this lazy Sunday, check out the articles on:

• Whether exercise is as addictive as drugs;
• Those perfectly-toned fitness models in magazines and ads, and what they do on the job;
• The "Müller technique": The P90X of the early 20th century that's still practiced today;
• A behind-the-scenes look at the Soloflex home gym -- the first fitness product hawked on late-night infomercials (and did you know you can brew beer with it?);
• Exercises for your face;
• The search for the perfect fitness DVD by a self-described "fat girl";
• All you ever wanted to know about all those stupid fitness magazines;
• Popular fitness programs in other countries;
• Jack LaLanne versus Jane Fonda versus Jillian Michaels (what -- no Richard Simmons?).

Grab your coffee and dig in.

The Perfect Holiday Gift for Wobbly Old People

Last year, I wrote that Nintendo's Wii Fit video game system won't do jack shit for most people's fitness. That remains true; after all, "only 22 of the 68 active video games tested resulted in moderately intense exercise, similar to brisk walking." (And as Mr. T has taught us, speed walkers are a disgrace to the man race, so "exercising" with the Wii Fit is almost certainly held in even lower esteem by B.A. Baracus.)

On the other hand, the New York Times points out that the Wii Fit is awesome for the AARP set.

A representative case study published last year found that an 89-year-old woman with a balance disorder and a history of falls significantly improved her scores on a series of balance tests after six sessions of Wii Bowling, an encouraging outcome given that, as the study authors point out, falls remain the leading cause of injury-related deaths in the elderly.

According to another study, older Wii Fit players "improved their balance scores significantly, lowering their supposed “Wii age” (a score assigned by the game system, based primarily on balance tests) by about eight years" while younger players "improved by only about one year."

Lesson: Don't let your kids con you into thinking that a Wii Fit can substitute for actual exercise -- but you might want to consider stuffing one under the tree for their grandparents.

You're Not Too Old for Intense Exercise

A fascinating read in this weekend's New York Times Magazine about aging and exercise:

[Muscle physiologist Tanja] Taivassalo first met [Olga] Kotelko at last year’s world outdoor masters track championships in Lahti, Finland, the pinnacle of the competitive season for older tracksters. Taivassalo went to watch her dad compete in the marathon. But she could hardly fail to notice the 91-year-old Canadian, bespandexed and elfin, who was knocking off world record after world record.

Amazing stuff. Intense exercise appears to be help Kotelko keep performing at a level that (much) younger peers can't.

Friends Make You Fat

Especially Monica.

But really: The people you hang with can drastically impact your body weight and fitness -- "as much as 40-70% percent." Check it.

(Source: Consumerist)

67 Years Young

This guy rocks. The weighted sit-up / squat / push-up / burpee / overhead press thing he does at the end of the video looks awesome -- can't wait to try it.



(Source: Conditioning Research)

CrossFit: Not for Beginners?

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel recently ran a feature on CrossFit (along with a nice slideshow). As with most articles written about the "sport of fitness," it's a bit hyperbolic in its description of the workouts:

Drenched in sweat, but with a smile on his face, Angelo Brinson explains why he has turned to CrossFit for his workout routine. He's a North Miami detective and SWAT team member.

"When I get a callout, I don't know if I'm going to be climbing at tree, jumping a wall or sitting in a squat position for hours," says Brinson, 37, of Davie. "This prepares me for all of those possibilities."
...

If you're interested in trying it out, be warned: It is not for beginners. Workouts include power weight lifting, kettlebells, pull-ups and handstands, all with the goal of pushing yourself to near-exhaustion.

"Not for beginners"? Suitable only for SWAT team members? Not quite.

Part of the problem, I think, is that CrossFit's founder, Greg Glassman, and his staff at "HQ" like to promote the image of CrossFit as super-hardcore. (A typical Glassman quote from a 2005 New York Times article: "[CrossFit] can kill you," he said. "I've always been completely honest about that.") This over-the-top machismo is widely adopted by affiliate owners who puff out their chests in the same way -- and it also ends up turning off (and turning away) those who might have otherwise given CrossFit a shot.

What gets lost in media stories about CrossFit (like this one and this one and this one) is that everyone can do it: You, me -- even out-of-shape grandmothers like Mary Conover and Leola Schell. It may be true that "[t]hose who try CrossFit usually have had prior sports or fitness backgrounds," but folks who have little to no experience with exercise can (and do) successfully start training with CrossFit. 

If you're considering CrossFit, don't let the testosterone-soaked news articles get you down. Yes, the workouts are never less than challenging, but provided you scale appropriately and get proper instruction, they're totally doable.

Still, it's not as simple as suddenly throwing yourself into CrossFit workouts at home without instruction or guidance. Showing up at a random CrossFit affiliate isn't a guarantee of success, either. With less-than-uniform standards across CrossFit boxes, too many gyms don't take the time to properly on-ramp newbies or appropriately scale down weights and reps (and modify movements) for those who are just getting started. Frankly, those places suck.

To do it right, do some research. Shop around. Find an affiliate that'll take the time to properly and safely get you onboarded.

And pretty soon, you, too, can puff out your chest and feed reporters some crap about how your workouts are tough enough to kill people.

Diet: More Important Than Exercise

To beat a dead horse some more: Exercise alone won't make you thin.

More and more research in both the UK and the US is emerging to show that exercise has a negligible impact on weight loss. That tri-weekly commitment to aerobics class? Almost worthless, as far as fitting into your bikini is concerned. The Mayo Clinic, a not-for-profit medical research establishment in the US, reports that, in general, studies "have demonstrated no or modest weight loss with exercise alone" and that "an exercise regimen… is unlikely to result in short-term weight loss beyond what is achieved with dietary change."

More and more researchers have concluded that tons of exercise just makes you hungrier:

[T]hose who exercised cancelled out the calories they had burned by eating more, generally as a form of self-reward. The post-workout pastry to celebrate a job well done – or even a few pieces of fruit to satisfy their stimulated appetites – undid their good work. In some cases, they were less physically active in their daily life as well.

The University of Louisiana conducted the "defining experiment" on this subject, placing hundreds of overweight females on different workout programs for six months.

Some worked out for 72 minutes each week, some for 136 minutes, and some for 194. A fourth group kept to their normal daily routine with no additional exercise. Against all the laws of natural justice, at the end of the study, there was no significant difference in weight loss between those who had exercised – some of them for several days a week – and those who hadn't.

Some even gained weight.

Took a one-hour aerobics class? Ran a 5K? Killed a WOD? Good for you. Exercise is awesome, and is a critical part of any health and fitness regimen. Just don't overcompensate with a big slice of cheesecake.

(Source: Guardian)

CrossFit on CNN

Another Dump

Let's kick off the week with more random links to explore:

• According to this Daily Beast photo gallery, you'd need to have sex for 3 hours and 40 minutes to work off a Chipotle Steak Burrito. On the plus side, everyone knows that steak burritos are an aphrodisiac.

• Here's a great list of 9 things to do when you're all banged up (from exercising, not working off a steak burrito).

• Are you meeting these basic strength standards?

• Another write-up about CrossFit -- this one featuring this pithy and accurate description by an affiliate owner: "Anyone out there who wants a spa environment, this is not the gym for you. Intensity is not comfortable."

• Despite appearances, the low-impact elliptical trainers hogging up all the space at your neighborhood globo-gym aren't doing any favors for your lower back.

• Can Lady Gaga can do yoga without costume changes between poses?

• Are your fitness goals (or, for that matter, any other goals) specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely? (And just what is the difference between "attainable" and "realistic" goals?)

• Training for marathons can "cause formerly healthy people to develop cardiovascular problems like increased blood pressure and stiffness in the aorta, a new study found." I guess this isn't all that surprising, given that the word "marathon" comes from the ancient Greek legend of Pheidippides, a soldier who ran from Marathon to Athens to announce the defeat of the Persians in the Battle of Marathon -- only to collapse and die upon arrival.

• The New York Times reports on the challenges of designing, marketing and selling clothing for plus-sized women:

The most formidable obstacle lies in creating a prototype. If you already have a line of clothing and a set system of sizing, you cannot simply make bigger sizes. You need whole new systems of pattern-making. “The proportions of the body change as you gain weight, but for women within a certain range of size, there is a predictability to how much, born out by research dating to the 1560s,” explained Kathleen Fasanella, who has made patterns for women’s coats and jackets for three decades. “We know pretty well what a size 6 woman will look like if she edges up to a 10; her bustline might increase an inch,” Fasanella said. “But if a woman goes from a size 16 to a 20, you just can’t say with any certainty how her dimensions will change.”

How to Lift Weights