One Good Run

Quotes - That resonate with me

2011-12-18T21:20:00.000+13:00

In the following...

Some Describe me,
Some Define me,
and Some Motivate Me!

“As muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone, it could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are making one of the best possible contributions to a world in turmoil.” ~ Alan Watts wrote in The Way of Zen

"Thought I'd share some advice with you: The success of your training should not be conditional to the sucess of you life. At times we may loose sight of this and only want to train properly when things are going well for us. This is a mistake as no matter how far out of control you may be with the rest of your life, you can always take charge with your training & be in control of it. The positive results you make with your training will quickly flow over into your personal life & improve things there. So if ever you are in a rut, fix your training 1st & space other things around it. Trust me, you'll be better equipped to cope with life if you are feeling good about your appearance." ~ Philly Nuku post on FaceBook 28 Oct 2011

"Love - Think about it in gardening terms - you've planted the seed, tilled the soil and watered the ground. Now watch it grow."

"Nothing Is More Powerful Than An Idea Whose Time Has Come" ~ Victor Hugo

"All limitations are self imposed"

"When you are going through hell, keep going." ~ Winston Churchill

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by each moment that takes your breath away."

"Life is like riding a bicycle - in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving." ~ Albert Einstein

"In every man, I meet my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him." ~ Emerson

"I am selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell can't handle me at my best." ~ Marilyn Monroe

"I am strong because I am weak. I'm beautiful because I know my flaws. I'm a lover because I am a fighter. I'm fearless because I have been afraid. I'm wise because I have been foolish. & I can laugh because I Have known sadness"

"Any moron can quickly come up lots of 'reasons' to invalidate ideas. Most do.
There's genius and profit only in coming up with ways to apply ideas" ~ Dan Kennedy

"You can't cut if you don't measure" ~ Scott Hanselman

"Failure is not giving things a go in the first place. People who fail are those who don’t have a go and don’t make an effort. Failure’s can’t be bothered." ~ Richard Branson

"The whole point of being alive is to evolve into the complete person you were intended to be."

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction." ~ Albert Einstein

"You must do the things you think you cannot do." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"A lot of people say life never gave them any chances: You are GIVEN life and you TAKE chances....."

"Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general." ~ Mark Rippetoe

"Gyms don't work - people do."

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." ~ Thomas A. Edison

"I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure - which is: Try to please everybody." ~ Herbert Bayard Swope

"Father taught us that opportunity and responsibility go hand in hand. I think we all act on that principle; on the basic human impulse that makes a man want to make the best of what's in him and what's been given him." ~ Laurence Rockefeller

"We need to stop promising that getting healthy will be easy, and emphasize that it's WORTHWHILE" ~ Steven Blair

"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not simplier" ~ Albert Einstien

"What you're comfortable with isn't the only thing you're good at."

"At first I thought I could, then I worked, then I believed I could, suddenly I was convinced I could, and finally I did!" ~ Cadel Evans

"Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second." ~ William James

"Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

HTTP Status Cats

2011-12-15T14:23:00.001+13:00

HTTP Status Cats, a set by GirlieMac on Flickr.

Diabetes Psychology - How am I doing?!

2011-07-31T23:10:00.002+12:00

I recently downloaded from Radio NZ, and listened to Amelia Nurse interview Psychologist Bill Polonsky, who specialises in the issues faced by diabetics. It's well worth a listen.

The most striking idea that hit was that one of the biggest challenges to avoiding complications from poor control it actually know how we are doing. We don't have any feedback mechanisms in place. Yeah, we know that if we don't look after ourselves we run the risk of some nasty and debilitating complications. What we are missing is more formal feedback process to give a stronger indication on how we are doing.

Perhaps all it would take is for a monthly HBA1c to be taken with the results automatically sent to us with some statistics on our own progress and how we compare to the data they have on people that have had similar control and the complications they have had. It wouldn't take much.

Speaking of which, an action for is to get another one of those HBA1c serial test cards so that I can go in whenever I like and find out how I'm doing.

Download the interview: Diabetes Psychology - an interview of Psychologist Bill Polonsky by Amelia Nurse

Sunset - Friday, 29th July 2011

2011-07-31T00:12:00.000+12:00

Just out the back window

Free Pizza - What Hell Could Do

2011-07-30T23:56:00.004+12:00

An idea to prompt the sales of pizza's care of Adrian Slack.

The idea is to have a popular custom pizza ranking, for the pizzas that customers have chosen the toppings for. You could create your own pizza, give it a name, and then others could choose it too. Or if they were choosing their own toppings and it happened to match that of a custom pizza that has already been named it would let them know. Anyhow each time a particular pizza is sold it would add to it's popularity rating and be displaced as a ranking. For every 10, 20 specific pizzas the person who created and named the original pizza could receive a free pizza. Thus creating an incentive to; create new customer pizzas and promote the pizza you created.

How I Roll – Part 2: Getting Organised

2011-06-27T10:59:00.000+12:00

My thinking for this 4 part series was prompted by Scott Hanselman’s podcast (268) Personal Systems of Organisation. Part 1 was “The Capture”, the methods you have to capture stuff with so you don’t miss out. This one, Part 2 covers some of the basics of how I get organised.

Organising is vital; remember how frustrated you were last time you had to look for your keys because you didn’t have a regular spot for them? How much less time would it take to do everything if all of what we needed was at our finger tips? You’d most likely have time do some of those things you really have been meaning and wanting to but haven’t had the time for. It would make things a whole lot easier.

Now I realise there are a huge number of things I could cover; such as how to organise your email, but I’m just going to keep it simple and a fairly basic. I’ll put together another post on some of my systems I use later.

Organising

Daily Filing: everything gets filed, everything needs to be filed. I use an Alphabetical Vertical Filing System care of Nick Petrie. Near the end of each day all the things that have been captured need to be processed and filed. Sources include: my in tray, snail mail, notes I've made in one of my spiral bound note pads, photos now in my DropBox, and new notes I've made in EverNote. With each item I decide what to do with it

Do It (only if it's going to take less than 2 minutes)
Defer It (plan to do it later)
Delegate It (ask someone else to take it on board)
Drop It (tasks that don't need to be on your radar at the moment)

(Actions care of Scott Hanselman)

Then, regardless of what it is; it gets filed for easy access, unless I think it's never going to hold any value, or if I think I'm being too much of a hoarder.

I've made the point of making my filing system vertical so that it is not only easier to pull things out and put them back, but it's also easier to search through, as files are not stacked on top of each other. I also like the files to be easy to reach, so I placed them at the back of my desk and this means they are only an arm length away. I use clear plastic slips so I can see the contents and label them with a removable sticker in the top left hand corner, the corner that is most accessible. Surprisingly I don’t have a lot to file these days. The majority is on a hard drive with a backup either in the cloud (online somewhere) or on a portable drive.

Vertical Alphabetical Filing System

Tip - Block out a time in your calendar to get yourself sorted daily

I quite often refer to this whole process as "putting it on the shelf", so that you can access it easily later.

digital tools

DropBox: Whatever I'm working on is kept in my DropBox so that it's accessible anywhere any-time (Laptop, Phone, or on-line)
SkyDrive: Anything that I don't need immediately but is kept for reference is put in a folder that is sync with my SkyDrive. This acts as an on-line backup (in the cloud)
GoodSync: to synchronise with removable drives and Memory Sticks.
Remember The Milk: for putting the tasks in that are generated from the filing. (An app on my Android phone, a desktop link to a web-client, a gadget integrated into my Google Apps Gmail web-interface, and Synchronised with Outlook Tasks)

Next up in Part 3 - Planning

How I Roll – Part 1: The Capture

2011-06-16T20:18:00.001+12:00

Scott Hanselman prompted my thinking recently with his podcast (268) Personal Systems of Organisation. I get the impression he is known for his productivity and effectiveness within the Microsoft development world. He's a smart guy, but not a Rocket Scientist though, as that could be an insult of sorts. Are Rocket Scientists actually that intelligent? Perhaps they are more comfortable than most at taking large risks?

I thought I'd take on board some of his suggestions and add them to what I already have in place and do. In defining this it focuses me to find and make use of the smart methods that suit me. Hopefully it gives you an idea or two as well. Please feel free to comment with your experiences and or suggestions too. In some ways it's going to open up a can of worms too, but the worms aren't going to get away, nor am I going to let them die like in my dad's worm farm.

I see personal systems of organisation being in 4 parts:

The Capture
Organising
Planning
Application

This blog post I’ll discuss “The Capture”. This blog post is part 1 of 4.

The Capture

Things just appear, and sometimes you think to yourself; “I want a bit of that”, and later you knew you had something you were suppose to remember, to do or you had this great idea but now it’s gone. I usually feel like kicking myself when this happens. The answer is to capture it. A method to capture it for later. For me I use the following

analogue tools

A pen and two spiral bound note pads; one is A5 in size and the other is A4. I take one of these with me whenever I can. It usually depends on what bag I grab.

Soon I'm going to try!

The PocketMod - It's a neat way of folding a piece of paper so that it's like a book. You design your own layout at www.pocketmod.com

digital tools

My phone's camera: I take photos and store them either in EverNote or drop it into my DropBox. I'll take photos of forms I fill out and the forms that I fill out for my clients, it means I have a copy and can give them the original. If I go somewhere and I'm going to need to show someone else later, I'll take photos. It can be good to photograph your receipts too, basically anything you could lose. If I see something cool that gives me an idea, I'll take a photo. It's almost quicker than writing something down too, as that saying comes into play "a picture is worth a thousand words". Sometimes I'll even record a video.

EverNote for both ideas and some tasks (on Laptop and my android phone, also available on an iPhone)

Remember The Milk for tasks (web-client on Laptop and as an app on my phone, also available on an iPhone)

dFit - Mon, 11-Apr-11

2011-04-12T12:01:00.000+12:00

dFit – A blog showing you I’m improving my diabetic fitness, my ability to manage my diabetes to provide myself with a healthy life.

Last night I came across Anne’s blog Annetics – She’s a Type 1 Diabetic completive road cyclist. Her post “My Latest Strategy for Managing type 1 Diabetes During Road Cycling Races” points out that exercise doesn’t always make you go low. She actually runs an increase basal rate on her pump to cope with high intensity exercise. It’s got me thinking, what does my body need for the different types of exercise I do? And from a performance perspective what is the optimum level on insulin to have in your body for performance?

Today, instead of the early breakfast I skipped breakfast all together so I could see what’s happening with my basal profile over more of the morning.

Here is now it looked, a bigger view, 3am through to 12pm.

I managed to slip a walk in for some exercise. Although it was a bit half hearted, and not because I’d been fasting all morning but more because of the very poor condition of my muscles down the front of the shins, the Tibialis anterior, they hurt and I could hardly keep a good pace up. Lucy the miniature Foxie we look after a bit had come with me. She was literally pulling me along at times. I don’t think she thought much of the walk because when the word walk was mentioned when we got back she was keen as to go again. A bit of stretching, self massage and more use of the Tibialis anterior will be on the cards. It’s pretty shameful to feel like you can hardly walk, that’s a basic function of man.

Monday, 11 April 2011
time	mmol/L	md/dL	bolus	cf	carb	protein	fat	notes
3:31 a.m.	7.5	135
7:06 a.m.	4.6	83
8:08 a.m.	4.5	81
9:03 a.m.	6.5	117
9:55 a.m.	9.7	175
10:59 a.m.	11.8	212						Exercise - Before: Walk
12:11 p.m.	10.4	187						Exercise - Post: TS 60x4=240
12:26 p.m.			10	2.5	100			Lunch
2:08 p.m.	17.4	313	3	2.5	40
3:11 p.m.			3		30			Crunchy Bar
5:06 p.m.	5.4	97			30
4:40 p.m.					32			Feeling Low, Moro Bar
5:06 p.m.	5.4	97			30
6:51 p.m.	9.0	162	3.2	1.8
7:32 p.m.			4		70
9:35 p.m.	3.9	70

The high light of the day has to be that I didn’t eat as much given that my basal bolus is quite a bit smaller today.

date	total pump	total calc	basal	bolus	correction	basal %	bolus %	correction %
7-Apr-11	68.9	69.2	23	35	11.2	33.2%	50.6%	16.2%
8-Apr-11	62.8	65.4	27.4	28.8	9.2	41.9%	44.0%	14.1%
9-Apr-11	68.9	69.2	27.4	37.5	4.3	39.6%	54.2%	6.2%
10-Apr-11	82.9	84.6	28.2	45.6	10.8	33.3%	53.9%	12.8%
11-Apr-11	57.7	58	28.2	23	6.8	48.6%	39.7%	11.7%

Reflections

It was great to have another look at my morning basal profile as it was a repeat of yesterday and I found out that I’ve obviously got a bit too much insulin on board between 3am and 7am. I’ll lower the basal profile to compensate for this, and I’ll increase my profile to compensate for the rise between 8am and 11am. But I’ll also keep the insulin on board for 7am to 8am as the blood glucose level remained stable during this hour. My profile now looks a little more complicated.

Yesterday’s Basal Profile – 1.3 u/h 11pm to 8am, 1.1 u/h 8am to 11pm

New Basal Profile – 1.4 u’h 5am to 6am, 1.5 u/h 6am to 7am, 1.6 u/h7am to 10am, then 1.1 u/h for 10am to 5am.

I’ve whipped up a spread sheet to calculate the insulin on board for each hour of the day to help me with figure out how to change my profile, to keep the same amount of insulin on board for that hour that was stable yet low insulin on board before hand and increase it afterwards. Now to retest it on Wednesday.

dFit - Sun, 10-Apr-11 - An Empty Cartridge

2011-04-11T10:03:00.003+12:00

dFit – A blog showing you I’m improving my diabetic fitness, my ability to manage my diabetes to provide myself with a healthy life.

Another post on how I managed my blood glucose control for the day.

Today I discovered that my basal profile for part of the morning isn’t enough, and that you should really change your cartridge when alert tells you too. Oh and don’t expect to ride you could 2 weeks ago if you haven’t been for a bike ride since then.

Here is now it looked, I was able to check my basal from 10am through to 1pm, only a small window but enough time to see it wasn’t right.

I so needed some exercise today, I hadn’t been all that proactive to get out there and do much in the last week or so. I headed out for a mountain bike ride on my single speed at Makara Peak, my favourite local spot. I suffered a lot, my heart wanted to jump out of my ribcage, I had no power and I really struggled to get any flow happening. To top it off at the beginning of the long climb my pump decided to tell me that it had run out of insulin and it wouldn’t shut up to matter what button I pushed. In the end I took the battery out. Having this happen just added to the tension I could feel in my body, more underlying stress. Luckily part way through the climb a guy had broken his chain and didn’t have a tool so I was able to help. This gave me a little time for a break too. I’d been looking for that excuse to stop. Surprisingly when I tested after the ride it was only 7.5 mmol/L I was expecting it to be a lot higher, fluky is all I can say. The lack of insulin may have been the reason for my elevated blood glucose at dinner.

Sunday, 10 April 2011
time	diff (hrs)	bgl	bolus	cf	carb	protein	fat	notes
12:16 a.m.			1.8		18
12:35 a.m.			2.5		25
1:06 a.m.		8.5			15
3:16 a.m.		8.2
5:16 a.m.	0.00	10.4	10	2.4	100
9:44 a.m.	4.47	8.4
12:01 p.m.	6.75	11.2
12:59 p.m.	7.72	13.8		4.1				Exercise - Basal Reduction to 60%
2:15 p.m.		11.3						Exercise - Before
					80			Training Stress 125x7=875, Carteridge Empty about 30mins into ride
4:26 p.m.		7.5		2				Exercise - After
4:31 p.m.			1.8		18
5:45 p.m.			3		30			Mars Bar
7:19 p.m.		12.4
7:34 p.m.			7.5	2.3	75
9:55 p.m.			5					Snack
10:50 p.m.			2					Snack
11:15 p.m.			12					Snack
11:38 p.m.		14.3

And the not so cool of it all is that I’m just eating way to much late in the day. I really need to get this under control otherwise I can see myself turning into a fat boy really soon. I used 45.6 units for boluses, that’s 456 grams of Carbohydrate, which is 1824 Kcals. Plus the amount of insulin I used for corrections was high too.

date	total pump	total calc	basal	bolus	correction	basal %	bolus %	correction %
7-Apr-11	68.9	69.2	23	35	11.2	33.2%	50.6%	16.2%
8-Apr-11	62.8	65.4	27.4	28.8	9.2	41.9%	44.0%	14.1%
9-Apr-11	68.9	69.2	27.4	37.5	4.3	39.6%	54.2%	6.2%
10-Apr-11	82.9	83	45.6	26.6	10.8	54.9%	32.0%	13.0%

Reflections

I’ve gone ahead and increased my basal prior to the time block of 10am to 1pm. I just extended the time that I have the overnight basal rate at 1.3 u/h.

Basal Profile – 1.3 u/h 11pm to 8am, 1.1 u/h 8am to 11pm

I struck in lucky with my bike ride that my blood glucose level didn’t rise a whole lot more. I’m making a promise to myself to change my insulin pumps cartridge soon after the alarm from not on. But on the whole I think I manage the situation okay. I gave a little extra after the ride than what I would normally correct with because I knew I didn’t have the insulin in my system for the coming hours as a result of the pump not being on.

And lastly to avoid the fat boy syndrome I’m going to make a conscious effect to not eat when I don’t really need too. Last night it all happened in front of the TV while I was feeling bored and I would have been better off just going to bed.

dFit - Sat, 9-Apr-11 - Starvation

2011-04-10T00:12:00.001+12:00

Once again another post of just how my diabetes control has gone. In some ways the post is more for me than anyone else, to show myself that I can apply myself and get results. Hopefully my ramblings might help someone a little bit in some way.

Today I managed to get my blood glucose down over night and breakfast planned out as well giving me a chance to check my basal profile for the afternoon. I struck it pretty lucky given that yesterday I’d taken a bit of a stab in the dark and increase my basal profile by 4.4 units and simplified it to just 2 blocks (11pm – 4am at 1.3u/h & 4am – 11pm at 1.1 u/h) and that I’d also chosen a ball park insulin to carbohydrate ratio (1u for 10g) and had done the same with my correction factor (1u for 2mmol/L). Well not quite a stab in the dark, I’d used the calculations from “Insulin Pumping” by Walsh & Roberts. It was good to know I’d stuck it lucky, but they do say to check it more than once. But good so far I reckon.

Here is now it looked, I was able to check my basal from 1pm through to 8pm.

All I can really say is that I got very hungry. I felt just like the very hungry caterpillar from that kid’s book. Actually it wasn’t too bad, I knew I was hungry and I just put that feeling aside. I also knew I was fasting for a reason, a very good reason, to can better control of my diabetes, to be healthier and to live longer. Kinda important really, I think.

Here is the data from the day. I discovered, well realised that Mega Milk is pretty cool, 200mL gives you 10g Carb, 10g Protein, and 2g Fat – giving it a low-ish Glycemic Index and the protein helps you to feel full for longer, plus the other benefits like calcium, and some fat soluble vitamins. You can’t really go wrong with is as a snack.

Saturday, 9 April 2011
time	diff (hrs)	bgl	bolus	cf	carb	protein	fat	notes
2:19 a.m.		14		4.3
4:16 a.m.		12
6:57 a.m.		9.3
8:33 a.m.	0.00	8.3	10		100	10		Breakfast - then fasting
10:46 a.m.	1.32	5.7			10	10	2	Going to go low - Milk
11:13 a.m.	1.77	6.2
12:00 p.m.	2.55	9.2
1:07 p.m.	3.67	6.9
1:32 p.m.	4.08	7.8
2:15 p.m.	4.80	6
2:27 p.m.	5.00	5.4			10	10	2	Start of Basal Check
3:13 p.m.	5.77	7
3:44 p.m.	6.28	7.6
4:37 p.m.	7.17	7
6:03 p.m.	8.60	7
7:28 p.m.	10.02	7			80			Dinner - Forgot to dialup
8:08 p.m.			4
8:36 p.m.			6		128	13	48.4	Whole Cake of Chocolate
8:49 p.m.			6
10:42 p.m.		9.5
11:12 p.m.			1.5
11:38 p.m.			10		100	10

And check this out – I’ve managed to drop my percentage of insulin used for correcting high blood glucose values down to under the magic 8%, and it just happens to be exactly the same amount of insulin I used on Thursday (7^th April). I’m stoked!

date	total pump	total calc	basal	bolus	correction	basal %	bolus %	correction %
7-Apr-11	68.9	69.2	23	35	11.2	33.2%	50.6%	16.2%
8-Apr-11	62.8	65.4	27.4	28.8	9.2	41.9%	44.0%	14.1%
9-Apr-11	68.9	69.2	27.4	37.5	4.3	39.6%	54.2%	6.2%

From here I obviously need to check out my basal profile for the rest of the day, and that’s a bit of planning and a bit of luck. All you can do is be ready to check it when the right conditions come up. The luck is coming across the right conditions. Hopefully I can check my over night profile to night if I get in an early dinner.

dFit - Fri 8-Apr-11 - Perspective

2011-04-08T17:00:00.003+12:00

Last night I got reading again and came across ‘The Diabetic Welfare Queen’ and her blog post on New Year’s Resolutions, and it provoked some thoughts and resonated with some of my own principles. We don’t need to shout it out, what we are going to aim for, but we do need to quietly work away at it and ask for help.

Last night I ate and I dialled, and then I ate and then I dialled. Yip and as sure as the wind is in Wellington I’d ‘stacked’ my insulin up and I can crashing down. Classic, and kinda funny when you’ve just read about it in a book too. So there went my plans of checking my night time basal.

To top it off I then ate and ate to deal with the low. I really hate lows. And there goes a good blood glucose level in the morning to start my day with. I’d shot myself in my foot. Luckily days past and there will be further opportunities.

Also on reflection of yesterday I notices that my totals were more than a bit outside the ranges that are typical.

Total Daily Dose – 69.2 units

Basal – 23 units at 33.2% of TDD (outside the typical 40%-60%)

Bolus Total – 35 units at 50.6% of TDD

Correction Bolus Total – 11.2 units at 16.2% (typically under 8%)

Having seen this I decided to up my basal by 4.7 units to bring it up to 40%. I also used it to simplify my basal profile to just 2 values.

11pm to 4am its 1.3 u/h

4am to 11pm it’s 1.1 u/h

Fingers crossed I can go to bed with a reasonable bgl to check my night time basal profile.

My basic approach

Having already set myself some figures to work from (basal rate, carb ratio, and correction factor) I’m going to work through these steps:

1. Tune my night time basal

2. Tune my morning basal

3. Tune my afternoon basal

4. Tune my Carb Ratio

5. Tune my Correction Factor

I’d like to think I can roll through this and then just keep doing it, starting again and rolling through it, so that it become a continual process of improvement and adapting to my bodies changes.

The Second Experiment

I still haven’t obviously checked and tuned my basal rates (overnight, morning or afternoon) so I’ll admit this is a bit hit and miss. But I still feel one can learn from doing what I’m doing. If anything I’ll develop a habit of analysing what is actually going on with my bgl.

I’ve lowered my target blood glucose level is the golden 5.5 mmol/L (99 mg/dL)

Carbohydrate Ratio – 1 unit to cover 10g CHO

Correction Factor – 1 unit to cover 2.0 mmol/L

Once again a 100g of Carbohydrate with 10.0 units of insulin to cover it and the breakfast was again about 20mins after I dialled up

A correction of 6.0 units to low the blood glucose level by 12 mmol/L

In Reflection

Well you can see it, just too much insulin on the whole. Now which one was too much? I’ve just been looking at how yesterday seemed to go okay, but you couldn’t tell from it if all the basal, carb ratio or correction factor were right, or if I just struck it lucky. I’m now look at today’s graph and going how can I tell what went wrong? To mush insulin and I just can’t tell what is wrong and what is right. Hense there is a need to follow that structured approach I outlined above, starting with checking my overnight basal. Now if I can win a good bgl to go to bed on I’ll be set.

dFit - Thu, 7-Apr-11 - What an Effort!

2011-04-07T20:12:00.002+12:00

Last night I read a post titled ‘The Psychology of Diabetes’ on The Diabetic Duo. It really got me thinking about my diabetes and the life I’ve had with it. It actually swelled up some pretty sad thoughts too and that all almighty question “why me?”. However you can’t change the past it’s one of those things you don’t have control over, so you might as well focus on what you can change, which is the right now, right here stuff. So that’s what I’m going to do. It’s only by application that you find success.

The scary part of all of this is I feel really stink to have poor control. I know there’ll be a more than a few of you out there thinking I’m just a Muppet.

My HBA1c has never been flash, my last one was the most hideous it’s been for a while too. But that matches up with the how the year went for me. 2010 was the darkest year so far. Miles off a balanced life that’s for sure, most aspects were at all time low. Things have improved a bit, but they are still below par. I’ve been working a bit on ‘me’ things to make myself a stronger person, but I hadn’t been working on the one thing that will probably make a big difference to my outlook on life and that’s how I look after my blood glucose levels, how I control my diabetes rather than let it control me.

I hadn’t realised and probably still don’t realise how much it is controlling me. I know I’ll feel loads better if I have a good looking HBA1c and that my body will cope a whole lot better as well without all of the physiological stress I put it under from elevated blood glucose levels. Basically I’m sure I’ll end up a happy person if I deal with it.

So...here goes...

I managed to pick up a loan copy of ‘Pumping Insulin’ 4^th ed by Walsh and Roberts from the Wellington Diabetes Society’s little library. I figured I’ve been ignorant for long enough and that I don’t really have any idea where to start. I needed some sort of system to follow. So...how about I start at the beginning?

Ball Park Calculations To Get Me Going

To start with I needed to know what my Total Daily Dosage (TDD) of insulin is. That’s easy my pump records the last 5 days; 68.6, 61.8, 59.1, 54.4, 57.2, 46.1. Walsh and Roberts also suggest you can estimate it based on your body weight.

Walsh and Roberts also 2 other calculations to get you started; a carbohydrate factor and a correction factor.

Total Daily Doage of Insulin
Estimated TDD by Body Weight (for Adults)
Body Weight	93
0.5 unit/Kg/day	46.5
0.7 unit/Kg/day	65.1

Carb Factor (the 500 rule)
New TDD	50
Carb Factor = 500 / New TDD	10.0
1 unit of insulin will cover ... grams of carbohydrate
Can use a range from 450 to 550
Carb boluses usually make up 35% to 55% of your TDD

Correction Factor (the 110 rule)
New TDD	50
Correction Factor = 110 / New TDD	2.2
1 unit of insulin will reduce my blood glucose by ... mmol/L
Can use a rage from 100 to 120
Correction boluses usually make up no more than 8% to 10% of your TDD

I choose to go with 50 units a day, it’s a nice round number. It might be a bit under but I should be able to sort that out later, right? I also know I need to eat a bit less and I’m a little worries that if I go with a higher number that I’ll just pack more of the glucose away for storage as body fat.

I’m pretty sure I currently use a lot more than 8% of my daily insulin on corrections.

I’ve recently taken a bit of a random stab in the dark to increase the insulin in my basal profile to bring my blood glucose values down. I made some changes based on fasting blood glucose values. Basically if my blood glucose level rose from 3 hours after a meal to the 4 hours after it needed to be increased. I made the changes on just seeing it once, so it wasn’t that well founded but I figured that if blood glucose values were high enough all the time that even if I was quite right it wasn’t going to hurt things too much.

I’m now armed and ready, as I have:

· A basal profile

· I know what 1 unit of insulin will cover in the way of carbohydrates

· And I know how much to give to correct an elevated blood glucose level

The First Experiment

My target blood glucose level is <8 mmol/L

· 9:27 am – 13.5 mmol/L, correction 2.7u & bolus 10u for 100g Carb, total dose 12.7u

· 9:46 am – 12.3 mmol/L, Breakfast (100g Carb)

· 10:18 am – 14.4 mmol/L

· 10:49 am – 18.9 mmol/L

· 11:20 am – 18.4 mmol/L

· 11:48 am – 18.1 mmol/L

· 12:21 pm – 17.2 mmol/L

· 12:54 pm – 14.4 mmol/L

· 1:27 pm – 12.4 mmol/L

· 1:57 pm – 11.1 mmol/L

· 2:21 pm – 10.1 mmol/L

Retrospectively – My target blood glucose level should be the bulls eye of 5.5, otherwise I’m going to be high all the time and what’s the point in that. Well I honestly thought I was going to go low with the amount of insulin I dialled up. But no it panned out okay. At 5 hours I ended up with a bgl that was 3.4 mmol/L lower than what I started with and only 2.1 mmol/L above my target. So about right. However I can’t tell if I was lucky or if the carb ratio and or correction factors are right. Hopefully I’ll land it lucky tomorrow with a bgl at breakfast that won’t need correcting.

Big Fat Fiasco - Is Our Fear Of Fat That Well Founded?

2011-04-05T23:10:00.001+12:00

Tom Naughton producer of "Fat Head" presents on how we have been misguided by bad science into fearing fat, and how this has lead to the so called obesity epidemic.

I spotted this post on Facebook by Studio 41

I found this to be a good watch, in that it got me thinking even more and his story (perspective) isn't bad, I think it's quite good. What do you think?

My standard disclaimer applies: Everything should be taking with a grain of salt as it always comes with a marketing spin as they try to get their perspective across and make their story more convincing.

The next question we need to answer is how do we make use of it.

Part 1 of 5

Part 2 of 5

Part 3 of 5

Part 4 of 5

Part 5 of 5

Blood Glucose Meter Test Results Comparision - Optium Xceed vs Accu-Chek Performa

2011-04-03T23:49:00.000+12:00

I can remember the first time I tired the Accu-Check Performa out, after using an Optium Xceed for quite sometime. The Performa gave high results, but what really turned me off about it was that it was so big compared with the Optium and the strips came in a bottle that you couldn't easily slip into anything. I know round things are easy to manufacture, but they're big and don't pack well. So that was the end of that. I stuck with the Optium.

The new Nano is so much smaller than the standard Performa

Recently I've decided I wanted to get better control of by diabetes and that meant I needed to deal with my pet hate of some how having an easy way to store all my data in one place. My pump records what it's been doing and meters all have a memory these days. So it seemed logical to look at the software that I could download both my pump and a meters of the same brand with. Luckily I discovered that Accu-Chek (Roche NZ) had just got a shipment of Performa Nanos in. So it was time to make the leap from the faithful Optium to the Performa. And I thought it would be useful to know just how different the values were from each meter so I went through a box/bottle of strips for each and discovered the following.

On average the Accu-Chek Performa gave a value that was 1.32 mmol/L above that of the Optium Xceed.

Here's a graph showing the difference between tests and the trend over the range. The difference is over the test values of the Optium.

Only 6 values out of the 48 comparisons gave a difference of less than 0 (The Performa gave a lower result than the Optium).
The other real bonus is that I discovered that even though they state they both only need a very small blood sample size, the Performa's sample is by far a whole lot smaller than the Optiums. The capillary action, it's ability to suck the blood into the test strip is also heaps better. I know wonder why I didn't stick with the change when I first tried the Performa.

BBC's - How To Be Slim

2011-03-30T18:25:00.000+13:00

The following is a documentary by the BBC on "How to be slim".
I'm not sure when it came out but it was only recently shown on television in New Zealand.
It's all quite interesting and practical too. I hope you enjoy the watch as much as I did.

Part 1 of 6

Part 2 of 6

Part 3 of 6

Part 4 of 6

Part 5 of 6

Part 6 of 6

Modified Strongman Training - For Fat-Loss

2011-03-27T12:15:00.001+13:00

The following gives you brief description with my encounter with of a Modified Strongman Training session at Studio 41 with Jeff Willoughby and the thoughts it makes me wonder about the proposed weight-loss from this method of training.

Today I took part in a Modified Strongman Training session at Studio 41. Modified Strongman Training makes use of movements used in Strongman events that are used in a format to create a metabolic resistance training session. The sessions come with a note from Jeff “Be warned as it is not for the faint hearted”. And guess what – “It’s not for the faint hearted either”. Here’s what we did...

A1 – Deadlift x10

A2 – DB Bench Press (neutral grip) x10

A3 – Prowler Push x10

A4 – Pull Up (neutral grip) x10

A5 – DB Snatch x10 each side

A6 – Tricep Dips x10

The exercises are performed as a circuit and each exercise is done for 10 reps. If you can’t get the full set of 10 you stop have a breather and then finish the set. The way to do this is to always leave a couple in the tank and pace yourself. The aim is to complete as many rounds as you can within a certain time frame. The weights you choose are to be 65-70% of your 1RM, basically then need to be heavy, but not too heavy. You’ll also notice that the exercises alternate between a full/lower body movement and an upper body movement. The full/lower body movements tax your respiratory/cardiovascular system and then you get to recover a little while doing the upper body movement.

The Prowler - Load it up and push it hard for some real fun

Apparently the lactate levels become so high that it’s very common for people to throw-up during these sessions. Technically it’s actually the high number of hydrogen ions produced from the glycolysis is the cause of this. I knew I was going to be in for a bit of a treat and I wondered if it could be any worse than riding a Kilo or doing repeated 500m effort on a track bike at a velodrome.

Here is how it went for me.

A1 – Deadlift x10 – 60Kg off pins

A2 – DB Bench Press (neutral grip) x10 – 24Kg

A3 – Prowler Push x10 – 150Kg

A4 – Pull Up (neutral grip) x10 – Assisted

A5 – DB Snatch x10 each side – 16Kg

A6 – Tricep Dips x10 – Assisted

I managed 4 rounds in 1hr 1min 40sec. We finished the round we were on after a certain amount of time. For me I’d only just started another round. I don’t think these sessions are normally an hour long, but I lucked out, and really struggled with the load I had for the upper body movements. I was down to taking short breaks after every 2 reps because I couldn’t manage 3 reps of the exercises. It was tough, very tough. I was giddy a couple times after being overzealous with the prowler, it just begs you to push it has hard as you can, and that’s what I’m use to doing on my track bike, going as hard as I can. But this was levelling; I had to pace myself so I wasn’t constantly short of breath and heaving for air. I often paced the room in a dazed way, as a break, hoping this would aid my recovery as the venous system would be pumping blood away from the muscles with movement clearing metabolites faster than if I stood still or chose to collapse on the floor.

If you’re a track cyclist you could say it was similar to doing repeated 500m efforts, a.k.a. the spew session. The difference being though much more of a demand on the upper body than I’d experienced before. As I type this my biceps feel like they have a bit of a strain on them. I can see the value of this form of training for track cyclist in there general preparation phase, as you’d become more tolerant of local muscular fatigue.

Following the session my brain has been pretty busy pondering why this type of training is touted as a great method for fat-loss and wondering what the possible mechanisms are.

· Is it that the sustained very high level of lactate during the session is a very strong stimulus to the development of the oxidative machinery? Lactate being one of the 3 primary fuel sources for aerobic energy production.

· Is it that insulin resistance is elevated for hours afterwards due to the release of cortisol, from the high level of stress your body is put under, which inhibits the use of glucose and thus fatty acids become the primary source of fuel? Being a diabetic I tested my blood glucose levels regular after the session, they were significantly elevated for at least 5 hours after the exercise and it didn’t seem to matter to much how much insulin I dial up with my pump but it didn’t want to come down. Will this happen next week, or was it just another unexplained diabetic bit of craziness that we sometimes get.

· Is it the Exercise Post Oxygen Consumption (EPOC) a.k.a. Afterburn? But what explains this? It’s just an observation not a mechanism?

· Or is it just a good bit of hard work that uses up a lot of energy? And this is was! A very good bit of hard work!

Now I’ve decided I don’t have the time right now to figure this all out. After reading an older article by Alwyn Cosgrove where he points out that it does even matter, we’re interested in the effect, the fat-loss. It’d be nice to know the mechanism, but the answer to our real question “Why should we do it?” That’s simple “because it works”!

The Modified Strongman Training at Studio 41 with Jeff Willoughby is free and on Saturdays at 11am. Drop him a line if you’re keen to give it ago. The sessions are suitable for anyone who has done a little bit of gym work, through to the most advanced. There is also a women’s session earlier on the Saturday mornings as well.

The following works may also be of interest to you.

The Hierarchy of Fat Loss by Alwyn Cosgrove

Functional Strongman Training By John Connor

Can Psychology Make Us Happy?

2011-03-25T14:58:00.000+13:00

Martin Seligman on positive psychology | Video on TED.com

A bit

The Effect of Smart Interval Training is Bigger than EPO or Altitude Training

2011-03-15T11:01:00.001+13:00

This post is a bit premature, a draft, rough, but I wanted to get it out with the basic information. The following I’ve gained from researching, implementing with clients and using extensively myself. A big thank you to all of those clients which have applied themselves to this form of training, as I know you’ve seen some great results.

Smart Interval Training can have a huge effect on your performance, and it’s won’t chew up your training dollars either. The primary focus of the training method detailed below is that you will be training at a work-rate (power output / speed) that is high than what you can maintain as a steady pace. By performing intervals at this work-rate you can train at this level for longer. The effect is that it will lift your maximum steady pace higher. If it’s performed consistently you’ll also be blessed with the chronic adaptations of aerobic training (greater cardiac output from an increase in the volume of hearts cambers, development of new blood vessels to improve the supply of oxygen to the working muscles) ^{(I’ll provide a citation for this soon)}.

This article will be updated soon with more comprehensive detail on how to make it work for you. Unfortunately I’m a bit short of time and I really wanted to get at least the raw details out for a couple of clients. No doubt they’ll still have more questions too, but no biggie.

The Detail

Name		SuperVO2
Mode		Typically on a Trainer with reproducible load. Can also be done on an Erg, or road or track bike with a Power Meter
Targeted Change	Energy System	Aerobic (Lifting Peak Power and Anaerobic threshold)
	Neuromuscular	Neurally Weak - if the cadence is elevated, but there becomes a point where it will negatively impact the stress on the aerobic energy system. Muscular Mild - if the cadence is reduced (60-80rpm), but once again the aerobic emphasis is compromised.
	Psychological	Mental toughness
Frequency		1-4 times per week
Type		Interval
Warm-Up		3mins Easy, 10mins Progressive, 2mins Easy Roll
Work to Rest Ratio		1:1 to 5:1
Load		Initially choose a load that is just above your anaerobic threshold
Interval Duration	Effort	180s to 300s (recomended 3-5mins)
	Rest	60s to 180s (recomended 2-3mins)
Number	Efforts	5-12 (10 seems to be optimal)
	Sets	1
Termination	Set	Exhaustion - the load (speed - gear and cadence) can not be maintian until the end of an effort
	Session	Exhaustion
Warm-Down		10mins Easy using a very light load - Until your legs feel good and then at least another 4mins
Progression		Time at work rate (load/power/speed, the combination of gear and cadence).
Notes		Cadence - 90 to 120rpm. Reduce the interval length as you increase the cadence. Typically the session is performed on a wind trainer with a road bike. You "must" be able to reproduce the loading exactly for each session.

Karapoti 2011 - An Inside Story

2011-03-07T03:24:00.005+13:00

My story of doing the Karapoti Classic – A 50km mountain bike event for the very first time, by single speed. (Saturday, 5^th March 2011)

The Inside Story

The Start - Hence I'm still clean

Mud! Need I say more... Within moments of leaving the tarmac I had a wonderful spray tan from head to toe. The problem is Mother Nature as a beauty therapist isn’t to good at giving you a warning and before long I couldn’t see a thing though my glasses and both my squeezy racer bottle and drinking blader mouth piece were covered in dirt. It’s a bit strange to think I didn’t even need to fall off to end up eating dirt. I just hoped it didn’t add to much fibre to my digestive system and that this wouldn’t impact the rate of glucose absorption (Yeah Right, like that was a concern at the time). At this point I was at the top of the Warm-Up Climb, instead of clean my glasses I just decided to do the following descent by brail, without cleaning my glasses. I was quite impressed as everyone seemed to be going everywhere, I thought to myself the best thing I can do is relax and just point the bike downhill and have some confidence in my tractor wheels (29 inch). I made it to the bottom of the descent fine, but at the bottom some officially guy was yelling some instructions, I have no idea what so ever what they were, but I promptly turn to go up the stream and fell off. You only see obstacles when you take your eyes off the goal. In this case the rubber side doesn’t stay down when you take your eyes off the trail.

The next bit of entertainment was a single speeder making a nuisance of himself. Yip that’s me I’m talking about. As went across the top from the top of Deadwood to the top of the Rock Garden, every time we went downhill all I wanted to do was let loose my tractor, but those guys on geared bike seem to be pretty good at getting in they, as they were so busy trying to get the right gear I think they forgot to pedal. Then went come to a small rise and I’d almost run over them as once again they were so trying to change gear on their clogged up drivetrains that they would lose all their momentum. But in true style I’d past a couple of them and sensibly get off just meters in front of them to save exerting myself to much and become annoying to them because they had finally found the gear they wanted. They’d then go past grumbling about chain suck and the like. It made me grin, no chain suck here.

At this point I’d also started to notice a usually quickly changing sensation of braking and noticing that I now had to pull hand full’s of brake to get anything to happen. This can’t be, I’d check my brakes the day before and I had at least a couple millimetres left on all my pads. So I took a stop at the top of the Rock Garden to dial in my pads a bit more. I love my cable actuated BB7s. I started up a conversation with the lovely “clean” rescue worker, well actually I talked at her, just like I’d been doing to a number of other riders, but they all seemed a bit distracted to start a conversation. I proceeded to tell her about my new energy source find. The EasiYo fruit topping sachets with a twist top. Our conversation was interrupted by someone approaching yelling that they had no brakes and asking “What should I do”, he answered his own question for use with “I’ll go for the bushes”. We all thought he was going to come careering into use (included the already injured rider sitting under a blanket). Luckily he took to the bushes, he completely disappeared, and he was one lucky chap to not end up hitting anything solid.

Having arrived at the top of the Rock Garden boosted my confidence a bit, as I felt like I was handling myself quite well. Although it also seemed daunting too, the idea of 2 more big climbs to go. But I knew from having ridden the course once before what to expect and I think it made both the Rock Garden and the Devils Stair case go uneventfully well. I managed to ride all but the 2 drops down the rock garden and I had a bit of flow going on so I was doing it gingerly either. The best bit of climbing the devils stair case was commenting on how a guy was carrying his bike and saying to him that it would be good to be able to do it. So the kind chap showed me. We’ll call it Barbell style, most of you who ride will have done it too, putting the top tube across your shoulders while holding the seat and handle bars. It works a treat.

Yip I'm standing upright, it's only a couple of steps in to the Devils Staircase

The descent to the bottom of Doppers was fun, although I was plagued with dirt in my eyes, as I’d taken my glasses off so that I could see. I think I had to stop 3 times because of this. One time was pretty funny. The mud was pretty thin for the most part, but there was this one patch that suddenly went not only deeper but also thicker. We were clicking along at a dam good pace when suddenly we hit this patch, mud went everywhere, and just at the other side of it we all had to stop and wipe our faces so we could breathe and see again. The next stream we came to got put to good use to clean my glasses and to give my bars and gloves a quick rise. This section also had good flow going on and I remember to get my weight on the front wheel during the corners to help me get around them at speed.

A bit before Doper’s I had a quick stop to help someone that didn’t have a pump. I handed him a gas canister and adaptor. I’d been asking all day to everyone on the side of the track if they had everything they needed and it had been a lot of people but all of them had been sweet so it was pretty good to see how many people were well organised. I’m sure I’d seen this guy earlier too, it turned out he was on this third puncture.

Brake Burn - Down to the metal

By the time I got most of the way to Doper’s my brake brakes started to sounds like an old Air Force Iroquois helicopter, quite probably the pads are now metal on metal and the noise was probably the little tab of the inside pad catching on the rotor. The idea of it catching and causing a lock up was not something I wanted to think about too much. To top it off though just before Doper’s I released my brakes for a moment and then broke hard before the stream where you start the climb, I found I had to use a big handful of brake lever, now that was probably the last of my front brakes too. Now my bike became a Chinook helicopter even while I was pushing it up Doper’s. I just nursed the bike down the other side hoping I wouldn’t end up with a lock up and a trip over the bars, I had to think about how damaged my rotors might be.

My ear to ear grin as I was spining it out down the Karapoti Gorge

Once on the flat I was on fire and putting my high leg speed track skills to work. I flew down the Karapoti Gorge hooting away as my grin got bigger, I managed to past a several riders, all on geared bikes with pixie wheels though. I shot out into the carpark and continued to accelerate the bike by pushing the highest leg speed I could. I put my hands in the middle of my bars and got as low as I could for a high speed roll on the tarmac. I just had the river crossing to go, which I eagerly launched myself at only to make it a couple of steps away from the other side to fall into a hole and then getting out get tangled up in a bit of black berry. Black berry is the worse part of Karapoti, the last time I rode it I got hooked at high speed by some, and this time it two was the only injury I collected a couple of scratches. I suppose I should count myself lucky, or was that just good management and self preservation on the day?

Almost there!

I got to the finish with a grin and a half and both Robyn Wong and Bex Sharratt were a little surprised at how fresh I looked. I was feeling good and felt like that too, but I think it might have been the little dip I took in the river.

My New Source Of fuel – Add To Yogurt

The other day I came across a sachet of baby food in the pantry, which had a little twist top. It got me thinking, unfortunately it was the day before Karapoti, so not the best day to be thinking about trying out new food, but I decided to go against my cardinal rule of never using a food in racing that you haven’t used in training, and go Hunting and Gathering at my local supermarket. I mustn’t be very good at the hunting because I couldn’t even find the baby food after I’d gone up and down every isle a couple of times. Isn’t it in the same row as the “Nappies” and “Hardware” like it is in Oamaru’s New World. But what I did find was the EasiYo Fruit Toppings. After checking the back to make sure it meet my requirements I figured it was good to go.

Now I’d heard that David Rowlands has done (and perhaps still is doing) some research into sports drinks and that one of the findings was the fructose assists glucose uptake by muscle cells. Now if that is the case it would mean that it’s a mechanism that you can get more fuel in to the muscle which might mean you can not only delay exhaustion of muscle glycogen stores in endurance activities but also work at a higher work rate for the duration as you would have more fuel on tap and is takes less oxygen to produce ATP from glucose than it does from fatty acids. The only dilemma to this idea was that I’m also pretty sure that a high consumption of fructose would upset your gut. It could turn into a very uncomfortable 5hrs if that’s the case. My plan to less reduce the impact if it was the case was to always have a squirt of Leppin Squeezy (a gel of complex carbohydrates) at the same time and make sure I drank plenty in the minutes before and after.

Also I can say is that I stuck it lucky, no upset tummy and I finished the course felling like I could have keep going (anyone up for another lap). All in all I put back just under 400 grams of carbohydrate, only 125 grams of them were simple sugars. I also managed to keep fat and fibre to almost nothing meaning that my digestive system didn’t have any sort of load on it during the ride. Can’t have my blood being diverted to processing food while I’m riding now can I?

Self Analysis – What I’ve learned

·         The obvious – Fit brand new brake pads before doing the Karapoti. I was chatting on one chap going up Doper’s and he said he was carrying a spare set of pads. Pretty smart really.
·         That I need a new strategy to reduce mud from both getting in my eyes and from going all over my glasses. I might try one of those crud catchers out.
·         Hill walks for training work well.
·         Can’t ignore mobility and stability requirements.
·         You don’t get training adaptations if you can’t get good sleep.

Huge thanks to Mike Anderson and his team at The Bike Hutt (Katie, Ben, and Humpy) for providing me with my Single Speed 29’er.
Thank you to Clare Tanner, Alana Joe and Footie for the mid week riding adventures and Mike O’Conner (my neighbour) for the weekend rides.
Most importantly: a huge thank you to all of you that have helped me through my tough last 6 months. Some of you won’t even know that I’m thanking you, so if you’ve had anything to do with me in that time it’s you I’m thanking.

My Glutes Are Weak - Getting Your 'A' into 'G'

2011-03-02T14:21:00.027+13:00

The following is the perspective I’ve gained primarily from my own training, but also it has been reinforced by results my clients have gained. Thanks guys for putting the effort into your training.

The Bumms of Steel We Are All After

Recently out of the blue young Katie contacted me. Here’s our brief conversation we had on FaceBook.

Katie - Okay, it has become apparent to me that my glutes are really week...

Me - Bugger. How do you know they are weak?

Katie - Well it's a suspicion. I did RPM for the first time yesterday...

Me - And now they are sore? [me being a little cheeky]

Katie - and with resistance cranked, I'm fine out of the saddle but with the same resistance being in the saddle was nigh impossible.
Hahahah EVERYTHING is sore.

Me - Sounds like the exact opposite to me. All glute and no quad.
The first step is to get them firing.

Katie - ahhh ok, recommendations? I can pay you baked goods.

Katie - In costume at a Bike Hutt Cyclo-Cross Event

What Does The Situation Tell Us? - An RPM class is a Les Mills spin class, an instructor lead class on stationary bikes that have big fly wheels.

Riding Standing Up - Now when you are standing up riding a bike, like you would probably do to ride up a hill, you are quite upright, it's similar to standing and the motion is similar to stepping up a step sideways. For this type of movement the main muscles involved in creating the movement are the quads and glutes.

Riding Seated - When you're seated in the saddle riding, it's not at all like you are standing, you are bent over, and your feet are out in front of your hips. This leaves your hips in a flexed angle, a lesser angle than when standing. It's a bit like trying to step up on to something but you never actually get there, as your hip never gets to extend completely like it would have if you got to the top of the step. This tucked up position levels your glute at an angle that it can't deliver the same force than it can when you are near at the top of the step.

Given all this... it seems pretty obvious and logical that Katie is having problems pushing the same load as standing when she is seated. However when you're riding standing it sucks all the energy out of you fast, much faster than if you were sitting in the saddle. The reason for this is that you have to use a whole look more muscles to stabilise yourself. Basically it's more energy conservative to ride in the saddle. Hence Katie has the “suspicion” of having weak glutes. But let’s step back for a moment and take a larger view of what's going on. To produce power while riding seated is not just a weakness of the glutes, there are other muscles involved and strength on its own doesn't produce power (but it helps).

How Do We Improve Katie’s Power While Seated? - There is a whole bunch of stuff she can do to improve her ability to produce power while cycling seated, but let’s establish some principles so that no matter what she or you choose to do you'll still get a great improvement in your power production.

Movement comes first - You can't deliver any force to a movement until you can do the movement well. The classic example I’ve seen often is someone for the first time trying to balance on a BOSU ball, they shake and wobble like a shallow 6.0 richer earthquake. But with a bit of practise they can reduce the wobbling to the occasional ripple on a still pond. This all happened within the same session. How did that happen? Well it certainly wasn't an muscular improvements, but what is was the learning of a skill, the learning of a movement pattern. It can happen very quickly if the right stimulus, instruction and cues are given.

Balancing on a BOSU ball [image from beginertriathlete.com]

Movements To Activate Your Glutes

Use the following movements either on their own or as a precursor to the later strength exercises. If you have any trouble with the later strength exercises firstly take a step back to get your glutes firing properly by practising these activation exercises often, not to fatigue but once or more a day to reinforce the motor pattern.

Shoulders Elevated Glute Bridge

Coaching Cues – Use a bench initially instead of a Swiss-Ball, as it is neutrally less taxing and you want all of neutral activation to be focused on the movement and not stabilising at this point. Start in the lowered position and aim to tilt your pelvis backward just a little bit and hold it during the movement. This will also mean that when you raise your hips you will they will only come up to horizontal and no further. If you end up lifting you hips up higher your back will arch and the focus towards your glutes has been lost. As you raise your hips squeeze your glutes. End the top of the movement by squeezing your butt cheeks together and holding for a 2 count, then lower your hips under control, without letting that backward pelvic tilt go. At the bottom reset yourself and go again. Perform 10 reps.

Kneeling Split Stance Hip Flexor Mobilization

Video to come

Coaching Cues – Aim to keep hold your body steady but only tilt your hips backwards, do this by squeezing the glute of the leg you are kneeling on. Hold your glute squeezed for a 2 count then release and relax the hips before you repeat the movement. Perform 8 reps on each side.

There are other exercises you can also use, however these are a starting point. To provide you with the best movements for you an assessment should be conducted be a person trained in movement screening such as the FMS.

Movements To Strengthen Your Glutes

Use these movements to strength your glutes for cycling. As a general guide when starting a new movement that is uni-lateral (one side at a time) use 4 sets of 6-8 reps. Start with a light load so that you can get the movement correct and then each set add a little more load.

Box Step Up

Coaching Cues – Aim to step up in one movement, instead of two. You might find yourself stepping onto the box, then standing up. If you do this you’ll predominately be using your quads and your glutes just won’t get the opportunity to be a part of it. Instead aim to pull yourself up forcefully in one swift movement. Aim to snap the hips forward to create the movement. Perform 4 sets of 8 reps to start with. Aim to challenge yourself by increasing the load each set.

Exercise To Progress To – Reverse Lunges

Cable Pull Through

This exercise is excellent, yip you'll feel a bit funny doing it, but the movement is very like the seated cycling position and the motor pattern required forces you to activate the glutei to perform it. The guy in the video says it exactly like it is.

Exercise To Progress To – Hip Thrusts

Please Note: In this article I have not discussed the considerations of mobility and stability which are precursors in development to movement. These both can limit what an individual can perform. It like your accelerator being connected to your brake as well, when you push on the accelerator you can’t actually go any faster because the brake comes on at the same time (analogy from Gray Cook). Also a limitation in mobility and or stability can limit the development of good motor patterns which intern could result in an injury. If you have any concerns about your abilities please feel free to contact me.

Neuromuscular Potentiation with the 10x3 Method

2011-02-15T11:20:00.003+13:00

The following is the perspective I’ve gained from following, using myself and implementing with my clients the work by Chad Waterbury and Christian Thibaudeau. A big thank you to the both of them for sharing their knowledge and experience.

Developing more strength is a matter of giving the muscles a bigger stimulus. As athletes we typically do this by increasing the load, but there is a smarter way. One smarter method of doing this is the 10x3 (a.k.a. The Waterbury Method). Using this method you'll be jacking up your central nervous system and learning to use the muscles you have optimally.

The Method

This method improves maximum strength through challenging the nervous system to deliver bigger signals (activation potentials) to the muscles that are involved. Understanding this, activating your muscles, ensuring optimal recruitment patterns, and maximizing inter and intramuscular coordination is a skill, not a physical capacity. To improve optimally, you thus must treat it as the process of skill acquisition. It demands a high frequency of practice. One of the tenets of motor learning is to perform as many specific and technically correct repetitions of the target movement, without causing a significant fatigue accumulation. To maximize motor learning, each repetition must be performed with as little accumulated fatigue as possible. This means that each set performed should be concluded before you reach a point of muscular failure. Understand that selecting training methods that put the emphasis on the nervous system already places a lot of stress on the structure. Going to failure is unnecessary for optimal neural development. If muscular failure is used it'll make it much harder to progress during this phase of your training. Don't get me wrong, muscle failure isn't to be avoided at all times, only when CNS development is the focus.

The method requires you to perform 10 sets of 3 reps at or above 80% of your max on a few chosen lifts. For each movement use the heaviest weight you can lift technically correctly for 5 reps. Use this weight for all of your 10 sets of 3 reps.

Rest for 120 seconds between each set. I usually set-up a timer and lift every 2 minutes as the 3 lifts usually don't take long at all to do. If you don’t pull off the 10 sets of 3 reps then next time rest for longer between sets. Or if you are aiming to work through 2 different movements like put them together as a circuit and rest 90 seconds between each set, this isn't ideal but it will cut down the time it takes to work through the 2 movements from 40 to 30 minutes.

There are 2 ways you can progress. By either increasing the load a little each week or by using the following loading pattern

Week 1: 10 sets of 3 reps at 80% of 1RM

Week 2: 10 sets of 2 reps at 85% of 1RM

Week 3: 10 sets of 1 rep at 90% of 1RM

Week 4: Unloading 5 sets of 1 rep at 90% 1RM (take longer rests between sets as well)

The Benefits

1. Sufficient Load Selection: The 10 x 3 method allows you to use a larger load than its mirror image, 3 x 10. With 10 x 3, a load equating to approximately 80% of your 1RM (one rep max) leads to greater improvements of intramuscular coordination along with increased recruitment of high-threshold motor units.

2. Fast Muscle Actions: Since the sets are extremely short (<6 seconds) and muscular failure isn’t achieved, maximum speed can be maintained throughout the sets. This is important because greater speeds of muscle actions lead to greater recruitment of Type IIB and Type IIA muscle fibres that fall within the fast-fatigable motor units and fast fatigue-resistant motor units, respectively.

3. Manageable Fatigue: Oftentimes, trainees feel invigorated after finishing all ten sets of three reps with 80% of their 1RM. This is a very important aspect that leads to high levels of motivation. Ten sets of squats to screaming failure sucks motivation levels out of your body quicker than a porn star hopped up on Columbian crops. But 10 x 3 training allows you to leave the gym with minimal fatigue and maximum motivation.

Exercise Choice

To get the greatest benefits chose full body compound movements that you are comfortable with and have good form.

Selecting three exercises, one from each of the following movements:

· One upper body pushing exercise

· One overall lower body exercise

· One upper body pulling exercise

A good example would be:

· Incline Bench Press

· Dead-Lift

· Bent-over barbell row

The bent-over barbell row has rep as being an upper back builder and this is because the neural drive to the lats and rhomboids is reduced because you also have to recruit the lower back and lower body to maintain a proper lifting posture. This is a con for a muscle-building phase, but it's actually a pro for a CNS-development phase since it'll lead to a great total neural output.

Here's a list of excellent movements to pick from:

Upper body pushing: bench press, incline bench press, decline bench press, standing military press, push press, dumbbell bench press, dumbbell incline press, dumbbell decline press
Note: Declines are a slightly inferior choice in this specific case because there isn't as much total muscle mass being involved due to the relative inactivity (compared to other presses) of the deltoid.

Overall lower body: sumo deadlift, snatch-grip deadlift, deadlift standing on a podium, conventional deadlift, back squat, front squat, overhead squat
Note: I generally prefer a deadlift to a squat because more muscle groups are involved, especially in the upper body. In that case, the better choices are the sumo, snatch-grip, and podium deadlifts because they involve the lower body more than other types of deadlifts. That's not to say that squats aren't a good choice. Far from it! You could perform a deadlift on Monday and a squat on Thursday, for example.

Upper body pulling: bent-over barbell rowing, one-arm dumbbell rowing, T-bar rowing, bent-over dumbbell rowing, chest-supported dumbbell rowing, chest-supported T-bar rowing, weighted chin-ups or pull-ups
Note: Normally, you select a pulling exercise that directly antagonizes the selected pushing exercise. If you select a horizontal pressing movement (bench press) then you're better off with a horizontal pulling exercise (bent-over row). Likewise, it's best to pair a vertical pressing movement (military press) with a vertical pulling movement (chin-up or pull-up). If you go with an incline pressing movement, both choices in pulling movements are acceptable.

A Special Note on Frequency

Motor skill acquisition training isn't overly taxing because none of the sets are that challenging. That's actually the goal! Because this isn't a draining session, you can actually perform it twice in one day if you take four to six hours between sessions.

I suggest you perform this session twice a week and when your central nervous system is fresh, such as on a Monday and Thursday. The following day could include further high load training, such as an Isometric/Explosive contrast or Overload training to further challenge the central nervous system.

When to use the 10x3 Method

An ideal time to use this method of training is directly before a muscle grow phase as it will set up your body to deliver a bigger neural stimulus to the muscles. You’ll need a reasonable training history and good technique with the chosen lifts. If you don’t have the flashest technique yet or much of a training history in the gym then I recommend you use “Force Spectrum Ramping”, it will allow you to learn skill of the movements and potentiate your nervous system. The 10x3 method and Force Spectrum Ramping could be used in conjunction.

Other useful methods include: Functional Isometrics, Force Spectrum Ramping, A Modified Bulgarian Complex, The Beast Complex, Shock Training.

The methods suitable for you will differ depending on your training history, situation and application. Please feel free to contact me if you would like a hand with your training.

The content of this article is based on the following works

The Science of 10 x 3 – Enter the Nerve and Muscle Matrix by Chad Waterbury

The Waterbury Method – Get Big, Get Strong, Get On With It! By Chad Waterbury

Beast Building, Part 1 – 3 months to Personal Bests and New Found Thickness by Christian Thibaudeau

And both using the 10 x 3 method with clients and in my own training.

Star Charts: Not Just For Kids - Update 2

2011-02-07T09:13:00.001+13:00

After a couple of days without a chart I'm already finding myself slacking off. So here it is, chart 2.

My Reward Chart RC-2.pdf

Looks like I'll have to keep this running for at least a few weeks to build some good habits. Just like a kid, or Homer Simpson, it takes a bit of repetition.

Star Charts are not just for Kids: The Update

2011-02-05T17:56:00.001+13:00

I've had a week of trying to get as many stars on my Reward Chart as I could.
My Completed Star Chart
I was pretty stoked with myself, as I achieved 3 out of the 4 goals. I found by looking at the reward chart often, every morning, that I was aware of the goals and they weren't that much to ask of me. The goal I did not achieve was sticking to the Metabolic Jumpstart Nutrition plan. Even though I didn't give myself any stars it wasn't because I wasn't trying, but more a problem of deciding whether I was worthy of a star. I need to set a more specific standard for this goal next time.

I'll post another chart to further myself with soon.

Star Charts are not just for Kids

2011-01-27T11:35:00.002+13:00

Recently I've been really struggling to get anything at all done. "Productivity what's that? I never am".

It was suggested to me that I should use a star chart (reward chart). "What a star chart? That's for kids". Well when things aren't going to well, including the basics, like getting up in the morning, monitoring my blood glucose level, and eating well.

Well the idea behind a star chart that it helps to reinforce a good habit by giving it a reward. There are pro's and con's to rewards, but we won't get into that.

If you have kids, there is no reason why both you and them can have a star chart on the fridge.

How to make a Star Chart effective...

Select realistic achievable goals
Select a positive reward for each goal
Plan what days you are going to achieve your starts
Place the chart so that you see it often, such as on the fridge,

Reward Chart Template Downloads: Reward Chart.xltx, Reward Chart.xlt, Reward Chart.pdf

And here is my Reward Chart plan for this week. Norton, Hamish RC-1.pdf
I'll up date you next week so you can see how I got on.

Karapoti - Specificity

2011-01-24T15:36:00.004+13:00

Give that it's only 45days now to the event, I know I can make a lot of performance gains. But the more I can do that is like the demands of the course the better I'll be able to cope on the day and thus get around a little quicker.

Training Principle: Specificity - To be effective and achieve greater adaptation, training must be designed to develop sport and event specific conditioning.

Now I know that the toughest parts part of the Karapoti's course for me are the climbs. I have to walk the majority of the ascending as I'm just not fit enough and light enough to ride the climbs on my single speed mountain bike. My calves are on fire during the climbs and if feels like one of my Achilles tendons could go at any point. Also my back burns up. From this I would say that both my calf complexes and by back are weak. I would also say that my back is tight, and the associated core strength and function is poor. In saying all of that my best performance gains will come from improving these limitations.

I've employed the principle of Specificity to provide a training stimulus to reduce these limitations.

Yesterday - I rode up the fence line next to the Roller Coaster which was a good simulation of the type of climbs Karapoti has (as suggested by Simon Kennett) as there were steep enough to require me to push my bike up them. Some I could have ridden, but that wouldn't have help with preparing for Karapoti so they were nearly all walked.

Today - I walked up Tinakori Hill (now called Te Ahumairangi Hill) which provided a good stimulus on the calves, as they burned. From the bottom of St Mary's St it was a 245m ascent which took 28 mins 36 secs. Oh to better this next time. I could and probably will make this more specific in the future by pushing my bike, and this will also mean it will take less time to do in total as it will be quicker on the bike to get to the bottom from home and from the top back to home. Also this actually didn't take to long and didn't feel like that bigger stimulus so perhaps I can do it more than once next time or find a longer climb, such as the tip track.