Oprah's Example to Moms-to-be; Consider Carb Restriction

"According to Oprah's biography, she was born to a poor single mother in rural Mississippi.  I would assume that her mother, like most poor rural people, consumed primarily a carb-based diet.  Why?  Carbs are cheap.  One of the reason poor people are fatter in general than well-off people, is that poor people eat a lot more carbs for budget reasons.  Another reason poor people are fatter is a little less known, but surely applies to Oprah.

When pregnant women load up on refined carbohydrates during pregnancy, especially during the first trimester, they end up damaging the developing pancreas of the fetus.  The pancreas is pretty much developed during the first trimester, so a chronic high load of glucose in the mother's blood that crosses the placenta ends up programming the fetal pancreas in much the same way that a huge chronic glucose load over a long time in adults creates insulin resistance.  This situation has been published about extensively in the medical literature.  The phenomenon is called fetal programming.  Babies born are basically  programed to become insulin resistant and obese.  These kids tend to develop obesity and insulin resistance more easily than others and have a tougher time dealing with it.  I'm sure that Oprah falls into this category.

Just like any adults who have glucose intolerance, insulin resistance, and/or diabetes, these fetally-programmed people tend to do better on low-carbohydrate diets than on low-fat/high-carb diets."

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/metabolism/oprahs-plight/

Lovin' Me Some Hills

"The training
As often as possible during the off-season, James Upham, U.S. Biathlon's development coach, points his athletes in one direction: up. Hill work is the fastest way to push into the range of your max heart rate while simultaneously building strength, power, and technique. "One legendary drill is the whiteface workout," Upham says with a devilish laugh. "It's really fun for coaches to watch. You bound straight uphill for 12 minutes, alternating 15 seconds of moving with 15 seconds of rest. Then you take 5 minutes off and do it again.""

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35239197/ns/health-fitness/?ns=health-fitness&pg=4#Health_MH_GoldStandard

See With Your Feet

See with your feet
"Rob Roy, the veteran coach who oversees Chris Klug's training, uses an obstacle course to teach snowboarders to look ahead instead of down at their feet. If you play basketball or soccer, you can benefit, too. Try the sidewinder, from plyometrics expert Donald Chu, Ph.D. Line up three cones 3 to 4 feet apart. Set up a fourth cone 20 yards away. Keeping your eyes ahead, shuffle sideways, weaving through the first three cones from left to right, and then back from right to left. Now pivot and sprint 20 yards to the fourth cone. Return to the obstacle course using a quick, sideways shuffle. Repeat 3 times."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35239197/ns/health-fitness/?ns=health-fitness&pg=3#Health_MH_GoldStandard
Also a good summary of plank variants for someone who's looking for an unloaded approach to building or rebuilding core strength.

Train Like An Olympian

Jump higher
Jason Hartman likes to wow new bobsledders with his magical jumping drill. First, he tests their maximum vertical leap. Then he has them do a set of heavy squats before jumping again. Without fail, they'll jump several inches higher after blasting their legs with the squats.

"It's called post-activation potentiation," Hartman explains. The theory is that the squat activates bands of last-resort muscle fibers called "high-threshold motor units." Your body keeps HTMU fibers in reserve for emergencies and only the most strenuous jobs, so the trick is to recruit them voluntarily.
Unlike with the training regimen Hartman typically uses, you don't want a lot of reps here. "I tend to make sure the resistance is high but not maxed out. Just do a small amount of volume to wake up your muscles." And once you've recruited that HTMU oomph to leap those extra inches, Hartman says, the gains remain; after your body learns that it can jump 32 inches instead of 30, you can do it all the time, even without the squat-rack warmup.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35239197/ns/health-fitness/?ns=health-fitness&pg=2#Health_MH_GoldStandard

Intensity Trumps Duration, Part 2

The piece that follows is still too lukewarm to satisfy me, but at least the basic point is correct - intensity trumps duration when it comes to cultivating fitness. There is an exception to that rule of course - if you want to be able to work not-very-hard for hours, you will have to suffer long, low intensity workouts. Good luck, hope you enjoy them.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35581793/ns/health-fitness/
""High-intensity interval training is twice as effective as normal exercise," said Jan Helgerud, an exercise expert at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. "This is like finding a new pill that works twice as well ... we should immediately throw out the old way of exercising."
Intense interval training means working very hard for a few minutes, with rest periods in between sets. Experts have mostly tested people running or biking, but other sports like rowing or swimming should also work.
Helgerud recommends people try four sessions lasting four minutes each, with three minutes of recovery time in between. Unless you're an elite athlete, it shouldn't be an all-out effort.
"You should be a little out of breath, but you shouldn't have the obvious feeling of exhaustion," Helgerud said.""

Reaction Times A Measurable Symptom of Concussion

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35411289/ns/health-fitness/
Hope we'll see these on more and more sidelines.

Endurance Training is Good For You, Right?

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/case-against-cardio/


BLUF:  Burning up time doing cardio work is a bad deal for your strength, your health and likely also for your longevity.  Why?  it's well known that heavy duty cardio is muscle consuming, and makes you weaker.  It also subjects you to oxidative stresses that you can live better without.  There's not really an upside - weak core, flexibility challenges, and all you gain for all that time spent is the ability to work not very hard (maximum of 40% of your total output) for a long time.  


THere's only one reason to do this to yourself - you just love it.  Otherwise, go for high intensity and lower duration; 20 minutes max!