POSE Drills

This is just a taste of what you learn to do differently using the POSE Method.  As I watch, now, I wonder - how do we learn so many movements that are detractors for efficient running?  My four year old does none of these things.
http://library.crossfit.com/free/video/CFJ_MacKenzie_PoseRunningDrills_SD.mov

You can find other versions (not just .mov) here:  CrossFit.com 6 Feb 2014

Intensity Trumps Duration, R Cosgrove

What? Yeah, you heard me right. This is exactly how I felt after training for and completing in my first Ironman.

My body was soft, with no definition, and had definitely changed due to spending the majority of my training in the steady-state aerobic zone – the same "fat burning zone" many books and magazine still talk about.

I was in great shape as far as my endurance and cardiovascular system were concerned, but I had less noticeable muscle tone and didn't have the definition I was used to having in my abs and arms.

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/the_final_nail_in_the_cardio_coffin

T Nation and its authors apparently do not understand CrossFit. It is staffed largely by those who would find CrossFit to be a faddish competitor, dishing out unsound training practices to those who are tricked by the trendiness associated with CrossFit. So, when I read even a good article there, I don't expect to find it will be all kosher.

What I like about this article is it reinforces my own experience, and that of many other experienced trainers - working out will not make you lean. Eating crappy stuff makes you accumulate fat, and you can't out train that - for long.

I also like the author's point about the deleterious effects of over-training in aerobic movments. I like to say intensity trumps duration, and it does so for nearly every desirable adaptation you might want from a workout. Strength, speed, power, or work capacity - intensity trumps duration.

What is not so useful is the writer's focus on exercise and fat loss, or exercise and calorie burning. Because if you eat like crap, you'll be hungry no matter what your workouts are, and if you are hungry, in the long term you will easily out-eat your workouts. On the other hand, you can lose fat just fine by eating good food, the food that's right for you. Workouts are not a requirement for fat loss for most folks. Eating the right food is essential, even more so for sustaining your body composition gains.

Lastly, working out to lose fat and build muscle is not as compelling as working out to gain physical capacities you value.  A friend said of CrossFit, "We bring 'em in the door chasing appearance, but we keep them by getting them to chase performance."  Most folks will not give up time to pursue appearance via exercise for long, and for good reason - it does not work well for that purpose.  Exercise to build new work capacity - lift more, lift faster, work harder, do more in less time, be a more awesome version of you - is sustaining because the results keep coming.  You get stronger, you notice the positive impact in your life.  You conquer things in the gym that used to scare you - hell, you face frightening workouts every day - and you notice that also translates to positive impact in your life.  You get so used to facing fear, nothing scares you any longer.  

So, lots of exercise, and a diet, is better than nothing. But long term success in health comes from learning how to stop liking, and therefore stop eating, crappy food. Even more important, you can workout and do hours of cardio and perhaps be lean - and still be sick. Exercise does not nullify crappy food, although it may blunt the damage to an extent.

You may be reading this and think "How can a fitness professional be dissing exercise?" Well, I'm not. I'm just telling you that I think the exercise you do should be intended to give you the physical capacities you need to have a vibrant life, and to feel your best. You were made to move, made to work, and made to strive. Exercise is awesome for each of those pursuits. I don't think very many of us can max out the human experience without exercise.  Any exercise is better than no exercise, but for me, high intensity functional movements delivered via short, intense workouts beats all the other training modalities I've tried - and I've tried many.

If you want a better emotional and physical experience of life, you need to be working hard at something - something with high intensity, relatively short duration, and which demands and develops strength, power, and work capacity.

"But Paul, what about all of the studies she cited showing fat loss or weight loss from interval training?" That's great. I hope it happens that way for you. But did you notice the duration of those studies? To know anything, you'd also want to know the age of those who participated (cause as you know, when you are young you can lose weight in a flash, and as you age, it's a different story). Bottom line - you will not meet many folks who can eat sugar, wheat, polyunsaturated oils, and still be healthy and lean, no matter how much they exercise. You'll also see this in any CrossFit gym - lots of folks who are working hard, and making performance gains, and ... not getting lean. That's not the end of the world but it is a clue - if that's you, you are eating crappy “food" (and/or doing too much "cardio").

If you want vibrant health and the appearance we associate with that, you will need to stop eating that nasty stuff you have called "food" for most of your life, and focus on meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar/wheat.

PS - if you love triathlete or marathon training, please accept my genuine admiration.  Those sports are awesome, and the athletes that do those things are tougher than a bag full of hammers.  I don't disparage your pursuit in any way.  My point is - endurance training is not the best exercise for health or fitness, and the benefits for fat loss are over-rated.
Reposted to www.fireofthegodsfitness.com March 2015

Jakers: The Paleolithic Model

From my good friend Jason "Jakers" Parent:

The Paleolithic Diet is the diet that we humans are genetically adapted to eat. The paleolithic age is the same as the Stone Age – so this is a stone age diet or life style. This has been humanity’s preferred diet for something like 2.5 million years, and humans have only genetically changed 0.005% since the introduction of agriculture (the Neolithic). As a rule, agricultural (and technological) products are not healthy to eat, and we should predominantly try to eat only those whole foods that are healthy in their raw state (though almost all humans, including hunter-gatherers cook their food).

This is not a quick-fix diet but a way of life. You’re not supposed to starve when you eat only paleo foods. Eat when you’re hungry!

http://tribal-fitness.com/start-here-or-how-to-join-the-tribe/nutrition/

We Need To Take Meditation More Seriously As Medicine | TIME.com

To be fair, I’m not sure how I would have responded had my surgeon suggested I meditate before or after surgery to ease my anxiety or post-operative pain. My guess is, like many women, I would have been skeptical: what exactly did sitting in half-lotus pose or breathing deeply have to do with the tumor in my right breast?  And why was a doctor— whose job and training and every measure of success is rooted in science and clinical outcomes— prescribing a spiritual or religious method of therapy?

But a new review study, published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine, suggests that the ancient Eastern practice of mindful meditation can offer real help for patients with depression, anxiety, and pain. And researchers are increasingly demonstrating the measurable influence of meditation on the brain, proving that mindfulness programs can make us feel happier, have greater emotional resilience and take fewer sick days.

http://ideas.time.com/2014/01/17/we-need-to-take-meditation-more-seriously-as-medicine/

We attended Chris Kresser's presentation in support of his new book, Beyond Paleo, and he made reference to a study in which:
-The participants were in the highest risk group of mortality from heart disease (black men)
-The test was - one group doing meditation, one group on statins, one group not treated by either

Guess who "won"?  Indeed, the meditation group fared better than the statin group. Side effects of statins?  It's a long undesirable list.  Side effects of meditation?  It's a long, desirable list, not to mention, it doesn't have to cost $3/day.

So, all you meditation rock stars, you have a leg up on the rest of us, please accept my salute.

Pure White and Deadly, Revisited

John Yudkin published this book (http://www.amazon.com/Pure-White-Deadly-Sugar-Killing/dp/0143125184/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390226626&sr=1-1&keywords=pure+white+and+deadly) in the 1970s, and was ridiculed by his learned peers.  It's taken the science from then to now to catch up.  But as these studies are demonstrating, he was right. The toxicity level of sugar is very, very low and the health impact is catastrophic.

Background

Refined sugars (e.g., sucrose, fructose) were absent in the diet of most people until very recently in human history. Today overconsumption of diets rich in sugars contributes together with other factors to drive the current obesity epidemic. Overconsumption of sugar-dense foods or beverages is initially motivated by the pleasure of sweet taste and is often compared to drug addiction. Though there are many biological commonalities between sweetened diets and drugs of abuse, the addictive potential of the former relative to the latter is currently unknown.

Methodology/Principal findings

Here we report that when rats were allowed to choose mutually-exclusively between water sweetened with saccharin–an intense calorie-free sweetener–and intravenous cocaine–a highly addictive and harmful substance–the large majority of animals (94%) preferred the sweet taste of saccharin. The preference for saccharin was not attributable to its unnatural ability to induce sweetness without calories because the same preference was also observed with sucrose, a natural sugar. Finally, the preference for saccharin was not surmountable by increasing doses of cocaine and was observed despite either cocaine intoxication, sensitization or intake escalation–the latter being a hallmark of drug addiction.

Conclusions

Our findings clearly demonstrate that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, even in drug-sensitized and -addicted individuals. We speculate that the addictive potential of intense sweetness results from an inborn hypersensitivity to sweet tastants. In most mammals, including rats and humans, sweet receptors evolved in ancestral environments poor in sugars and are thus not adapted to high concentrations of sweet tastants. The supranormal stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a supranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus to lead to addiction.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0000698

While experimental and observational studies suggest that sugar intake is associated with the development of type 2 diabetes, independent of its role in obesity, it is unclear whether alterations in sugar intake can account for differences in diabetes prevalence among overall populations. Using econometric models of repeated cross-sectional data on diabetes and nutritional components of food from 175 countries, we found that every 150 kcal/person/day increase in sugar availability (about one can of soda/day) was associated with increased diabetes prevalence by 1.1% (p <0 .001="" a="" activity="" after="" aging="" alcohol="" and="" are="" as="" associations="" at="" availability="" behavior="" biases="" but="" by="" calories="" cereals="" changes.="" confounded="" confounders.="" controlling="" correlated="" declines="" degree="" diabetes="" dietary="" differences="" dose-dependent="" duration="" effect="" explain="" explained="" exposure="" fibers="" food="" for="" fruits="" impact="" in="" including="" income.="" independent="" independently="" individual="" level="" manner="" meats="" modified="" no="" not="" obesity.="" obesity="" of="" oils="" on="" or="" other="" overweight.="" overweight="" period-effects="" physical="" population="" potential="" prevalence="" rates="" sedentary="" selection="" several="" significant="" significantly="" socioeconomic="" span="" statistically="" subsequent="" such="" sugar="" testing="" that="" the="" total="" types="" urbanization="" use="" variables="" variations="" was="" while="" with="" yielded="">
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0057873

Things About Cholesterol That Make You Go "Hmmm?"

"The way the body transports fats and cholesterol into the body is really interesting because it doesn't go directly into the blood stream from the gut.  Instead, it gets shipped through the lymph nodes and it arrives right at the big vein that goes into the heart  ... the body has to make sure the heart gets plenty of this first because it knows the heart needs fat and cholesterol."  Stephanie Seneff in "Cholesterol Clarity" by Jimmy Moore

The case against the lipid hypothesis is:
1.  There never was a case FOR the lipid hypothesis
2.  Most of the cholesterol you eat doesn't get to your blood, so eating a low cholesterol diet is pointless and takes away some of the most nutritious foods
3.  Dietary restriction of saturated fat has a very small effect on blood cholesterol; if consumption of saturated fat kills us by raising cholesterol, the effect would have to be manifested by blood cholesterol increases of a very small amount
4.  Restricting saturated fat or any fat has never been proved by intervention study to reduce mortality.  Epidemiological studies, as they tend to be, show "everything" with regards to high/low cholesterol, and high/low fat intake.
5.  The government spent over a billion dollars on studies designed to confirm the lipid hypothesis, and these efforts have spanned the better part of forty years.  They have still not confirmed the lipid hypothesis (which should be termed the lipid conjecture)
6.  Statins reduce mortality in a small group of very sick people (young but with existing heart disease).  They do not reduce mortality in those who have "high" cholesterol but are otherwise healthy.  Statins were the best evidence that lowering cholesterol reduces the incidence of CVD, but they are still not proof that lowering cholesterol is a treatment for CVD.  While statins do in fact reduce blood levels of cholesterol, you have to treat 100 folks for five years to be able to save one from death.  A baby aspirin, on the other hand, will save that same person if you treat 40 people for five years.  The cost difference for these two is exponential, as are the risks (for baby aspirin, there are almost none).  In other words, statins appear to be a high cost, high risk, low effect alternative for baby aspirin.
7.  A powerful LDL cholesterol reducing statin, combined with an agent that decreased absorption of cholesterol and thus reduced LDL over and above statin treatment, was found to give increased mortality compared to the control group, and the test was stopped early (vytorin)
8.  A recent study found that of those admitted to the hospital for acute heart disease, as many had high cholesterol as had low cholesterol, which is congruent with the fact that those who die of CVD have high and low cholesterol, relatively speaking.  In other words, "high cholesterol" is a weak correlate with cardiovascular disease, and is at most only one cause of CVD, and a small one.

The story of how the whole world became flummoxed by the bad science of fat and cholesterol one is a sordid tale of woe and indicts centralized control of drugs, medicine, science and the USDA to boot (every wonder what in the frock the USDA is doing messing about dietary recommendations?).

"We have this issue of cholesterol being the number-one cause of heart disease in the eyes of most of my cardiologist colleagues.  That would have some merit if it as 1963."  Dr. William Davis, from "Cholesterol Clarity" by Jimmy Moore

I've just started digesting Jimmy's book, but hope to learn more.
(Minor edits January 26, 2014)

Harder the Second Time Around?

We all get older every day.  Sadly, with aging, all systems deteriorate.  Some slower, some faster, but all get a little older and a little less functional every day.  If you achieve success on a low-carb diet and find yourself 70 pounds lighter, you’ll also find your self five or six months older.  If you regain that lost weight, then decide to start another low-carb diet to re-lose it, you will probably be a couple of years older than you were when you tried your first low-carb diet.  Just as it’s a little more difficult to pick up tennis at age 46 than it is at age 44, it’s a little more difficult to get everything moving with a low-carb diet when you’re a couple of years older.

Built-in survival mechanisms

Although most dietary recommendations are fairly simplistic, our bodies are unimaginably complex.  Not only do we have a complicated metabolism centered around and directed by the liver, we have multiple neurological and endocrinological feedback pathways between the liver-directed metabolic system and the central nervous system.  And we have gut hormones that get into the act sending signals of fullness or lack thereof.  It is an intricate system designed to allow us to survive on all kinds of food and to keep us alive as long as possible in the face of famine.  I like to think of this entire interconnected system as having its own memory.  It will allow you to fool it once or maybe twice, but then it gets wise.

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-diets/why-is-low-carb-harder-the-second-time-around/

I feel lucky when I read this.  It took me from 1996 until 2007 or so to figure this game out in a way that satisfied me.  In all that time, I must have nuked my body with huge sugar bombs at LEAST weekly, probably much more often than that. But right now, I can more or less effortlessly keep my body fat in the healthy range by eating the foods I like, and the foods I used to think I couldn't live without, I just don't like them as much.  

The takeaway?  There's probably a limit.  There's no bad time to stop nuking yourself with carbs, but there may be a limit for being able to regenerate and be as lean and well as you could have been had you stopped poisoning yourself with sugar ten years ago.