Popular advice for the thoughtless:

Exercise to lose weight!

My thoughts:

Eat better to exercise better, so as to be stronger, to be faster, and to have greater endurance—don’t exercise to offset the effects of poor eating (while continuing to eat poorly).

Besides, why would a sane person want to lose weight? Gaining weight is hard work—it takes extra time and money to either gorge oneself on an excess of good food or to deliberately eat junk the FDA pushes (low-calorie, high-grain, seed oils). It is hard to gain excess weight by eating high-quality, high-calorie foods because they satiate quickly, and for a long time too, so you don’t have cravings and any need for snacks. Further, high-quality foods energize so you can put that energy to good use, rather than sitting around being drowsy.

So, after making all those sacrifices to gain the excess weight—limiting physical activity and gorging oneself or eating junk—one is supposed to lose it? Where is any sense in that?

Popular advice for the thoughtless:

Eat snacks! Eat many small meals per day!

My thoughts:

If you eat a high-quality high-calorie meal, you are not going to be hungry for at least four hours (much longer, actually). Only if you eat garbage will your blood sugar spike and fall after the meal, so you have to eat something in about two hours.

Here is what I wrote a long time ago on good meals (good foods, proper proportions) and bad meals: On Losing Weight and On Eating for Performance—Short and. . . .

Popular advice for the thoughtless:

Eat low-fat foods!

My thoughts:

Fat provides more calories per gram than either carbohydrate or protein, so why eat inferior, energy-poor foods instead of superior, high-energy foods?

Fat-rich meals provide me with energy, proteins, vitamins, and minerals for my body to work well. Incidentally, such meals make my body sense no need to eat more than two or three times a day (if there is an intense workout in the day).

Popular advice for the thoughtless:

Eat this food because it is “low in calories.”

Take this supplement to “burn calories.”

Do this exercise to “burn calories.”

My thoughts:

Don’t you eat to have as much energy as possible so you can do what you want to do? I do. Food provides energy, so my meals consist of high-calorie foods. Eating low-calorie foods makes as much sense as putting water in a car’s tank instead of high-octane gas. And I definitely do not want to go and “burn calories.” When you fuel your car, do you do it to burn some gas or to get to some places and haul some loads?

By the way, note that I wrote “advice for the thoughtless,” not “by the thoughtless.” There is a lot of money to be made from those thoughtless enough to follow such popular advice—especially as they eventually develop metabolic syndrome and other afflictions caused by low-calorie and high-grain diets.

Question:

First I wish to say thank you for sharing your information on flexibility training. I am an admirer of your work, and because of the information in Stretching Scientifically, my basic kicks got much higher than they ever were before—a lot of people noticed that in the dojang where I practice taekwondo. I recently received my copy of Flexibility Express and I am excited to do the exercises presented on it. I am able to squat deep with my hips below parallel and feet slightly wider than shoulder width (four-step-wide horse-riding stance), with toes slightly pointed out at about 15 degrees and my knees going in the same direction as my toes while maintaining a decent upright posture with a very light weight (10 pounds to start). I am currently working on widening my stance and deepening it because I am new to squatting wide and deep; however, I am familiar with horse-riding stance from taekwondo where they taught us to have our toes and knees pointing out at approximately 45 degrees. My question is how acceptable is it to have the toes point out, and to what degree (how far?) should they be allowed to point out when squatting wide and deep? And by doing them this way, will I be able to effectively use isometrics to strengthen my legs in this way as I get wider (to a six- to seven-step horse stance)? Or should I keep them pointed in the direction I currently do? I noticed you demonstrate them pointing more forwards in your video when you squat. Please if you could advise me on this topic it would be a great help, and if you require more information I will try to provide it.

Thank you very much,
James in Canada

Answer:

First, about the horse-riding stance:

In fighting, as a rule (and thus, with exceptions), the horse-riding stance is used for projecting force sideways. It is easier to exert force to the sides or to the front from a proper horse-riding stance (with feet pointing practically straight forward, no more than 12 degrees out of the sagittal plane) than from the stance with feet pointing out at 45 degrees. You can try both stances to compare the strength of punches you can generate from either; the ease of handling heavy weapons, such as the long pole; and stability and mobility for grappling, and then ask yourself why you wasted your time on fake teachers.

Second, how much can your toes point out:

In wide squats, the amount the toes point out should be such as to give you good stability in the gradually widening stance—because if you lose stability, you are likely to get seriously hurt.

For the correct knee and foot angles in squats, see the MWod “woman/man” test shown here:

MWod “woman/man” test

Generally, you can quickly find out why people do things in a certain way and whether some other way is better: By doing both those ways yourself.

* * *

I am a sprinter, and I know that stretching can be detrimental to running speed, but I would still like to learn to do splits. Is there a way of learning splits that would not be detrimental to my sprinting, or even improve it?

Answer:

If, to increase flexibility, one does only the type of stretches that reduce the stiffness of muscles and tendons and thus decrease the reuse of elastic energy, then such flexibility training may be detrimental to running. I explain in the book Stretching Scientifically (see pages 8, 106, and 107) what exercises to do to increase flexibility without a detrimental lowering of the stiffness of muscle-tendon units.

With the correct selection of exercises, you can have both great flexibility and great stiffness of muscles and tendons to take full advantage of elastic energy (you need it for explosive power). You can see an excellent example here:

Video of Waldemar Baszanowski performing a split-style clean and jerk—an example of great flexibility with great explosive power

My familiarity with the training of Olympic weightlifters is the reason I based Flexibility Express on their exercises, which simultaneously increase flexibility, strength, and explosive power. (I made the exercises easy and put them in a sequence aimed mainly at increasing both flexibility and raw strength, rather than the technique and explosive power that weightlifters train for.)

Knowing all that, you should have no trouble selecting the exercises that will give you the flexibility you want, without slowing you down, perhaps even making you faster. Add the exercises of Flexibility Express to your training program and then observe yourself. Pay attention to your times and how your running feels. If your sprinting does not take more effort and your ground contact is not getting longer as your flexibility increases, then you are doing okay.

Question:

I would like to know your opinion on this tool:

I wish to know whether it can be helpful or not by saving me workout time. At the moment I don’t really have a problem with stamina, and my resting heart rate is around 46. Nonetheless, I always look for ways of making my training more effective. I am skeptical, however, about some of the mask’s benefits, such as increasing lung capacity and mimicking the effects of high-altitude training.

Answer:

The mask forces all respiratory muscles to work harder, so it can help strengthen them. Training with the mask can eventually increase your aerobic endurance, when competing or training without the mask, because with stronger respiratory muscles you should be able to breathe deeply easier and for a longer time than without such training.

To decide whether you need to train with the mask, ask yourself these two questions:

1. Do you run out of breath during practice or while fighting?

2. Do you do as much aerobic endurance training as you can without overtraining or as your time permits?

If the answers to both are yes, then it may be worth giving the mask a try. For setting resistance of the mask and duration of training bouts, follow the guidelines for resistance training that I give in my post “Resistance and Technique.” So, if your technique deteriorates at a given setting of the mask’s resistance, then lower it. If you can’t go on for a certain time without losing good form, then shorten the time.

As for the claims that the mask increases lung capacity and surface area and the elasticity of the alveoli, I don’t believe them. For these things it is enough to frequently take the fullest possible breaths, without any resistance to the air flow.

Claims such as the mask “mimics the effects of high-altitude training” are not correct, either. The effects of real altitude training are far more complex than those of restricted air flow. Low partial pressure of oxygen at high altitudes makes it difficult to get oxygen from the air in one’s lungs into one’s blood. The mask makes it difficult to get air into the lungs, but not to get oxygen from that air into the blood. This is a considerable difference. You may read up on altitude training from books on exercise physiology listed at The Athlete’s Bookshelf.

Deep back squat

I just received your Stretching Express DVD, and it looks very interesting. However, I have heard for ages that deep squats, where the thigh goes past parallel to the floor, are bad for the joints (in particular the knee joint). Is this a problem or an old wives’ tale, and more recent scientific evidence has proved that it’s fine [to do deep squats]?

I know from your Stretching Scientifically books (I’ve had three editions) that you wouldn’t recommend an exercise based purely on “this is the way we used to do it in Eastern Europe X decades ago.”

I look forward to your answer. I used to be able to do the splits when I was younger. I then had a few years out of exercise and am looking forward to regaining my flexibility with your method, if I can get some reassurance it won’t ruin my joints. I’ll also then get my students doing it (I’m a taekwondo master instructor).

REPLY:

First, a correction:

My recently published DVD is titled Flexibility Express, not Stretching Express.

Here is a quote from my article “Martial Arts and the Squat” that answers your question:

“You may have heard the myth that deep squats (legs bent until hamstrings make contact with the calves) destabilize the knees. It is not true. Deep squats with weights improve knee stability provided that the feet are placed so there is no lateral rotation in the knees (Tipton et al. 1975). Further, those same people who speak nonsense about the danger of deep squatting advise partial squatting—that is, until the thighs are parallel to the floor—as a healthy alternative. The trouble is that at this angle between the thigh and the shin, patellofemoral stress peaks for both eccentric and concentric muscle contractions (Huberti and Hayes 1984). If you do partial squats, you spend more time at this angle than if you do deep squats. This is because when doing deep squats, momentum carries you through that peak-stress angle, so you spend less time at it.”

If you’d thought of it, you could have done a few repetitions of the partial and deep squat each, seen which one makes your knees hurt more, and then you would have known what to think of those claims that “deep squats are bad for the joints.”

Alternatively, if your common sense is not enough, you can go to the bibliography of my article, obtain the above-mentioned sources, and read them. Next view videos of Olympic weightlifters, Hindu wrestlers, and other well-trained people. Finally, ask yourself why you ever paid any attention to what some people said or wrote “for ages”?

BTW, do your students a favor and do not instruct them until you can perform at least the MWod woman test shown below. That should give you practical understanding of normal mobility and fundamental exercises.

“Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own” (Bruce Lee), and the Zen saying I had already repeated a few times in my previous columns, “Empty your cup.”

So, on to a story on instructors with full cups and no cups at all.

Some time ago, I gave two seminars on combining strength and flexibility training.

The first seminar was attended exclusively by instructors of combat sports and martial arts (including MMA); the second by instructors of various sports, from combat sports to track and field.

At both seminars participants exercised with me–because there is no knowing without doing. During and after the seminars I answered questions, but only from those who exercised along with me–because only those who do may ask sensible questions about the doing.

At both seminars I showed an arrangement of the most effective exercises for increasing flexibility and strength. The arrangement begins with very simple exercises, such as deep squats, overhead squats, and horse-riding stance; proceeds to lunges and crouches; and ends with splits and back bridges.

At both seminars I saw three types of participants, in about the same proportion at each seminar:

1. Those who could do these simple exercises as I was showing them, at a ROM indicating they do those exercises routinely in their training. So, in the course of that training they absorbed the useful but did not extract all uses from it–their cups were too full. Specifically, they were too full of preconceived notions about proper uses of these strength exercises. They had compartmentalized their exercises and separated those that were for strength from those that were for flexibility.

2. Those who were familiar with the general form but had neither the strength nor the ROM of people who routinely do those exercises. At least they did not discard the useful. . . .

3. Those who could not accurately copy the deep squat, horse-riding stance, etc., even without resistance, even though verbal instructions accompanied the demonstration. Long ago they decided these exercises, not being specific to their sports, were not useful, so they never learned them. They discarded the useful. I think they never had any cups. . . .

All participants were instructors of sports or m.a., but only the first group deserved the name.

To be a real instructor one needs:

— A quick eye to accurately spot what is right or wrong in a technique or exercise, during a single repetition, so the athlete doesn’t go on drilling an incorrect move, or worse, get injured;

— Fitness to show impressively the correct form of all techniques and exercises useful in their sport;

— Familiarity with general exercises–those useful in many sports–and exercises used nearly exclusively in the instructor’s sport (at least 1,500 exercises are classified as general and useful in the majority of sports, and then there are those classified as sport-specific).

The real instructors benefited most from my presentation because they already did the standard forms of exercises that quickly deliver feats of great flexibility–if correctly arranged and adapted to the task. (They knew these exercises were useful. . . .) Had they “emptied their cups” a long time ago, they could have come up themselves with the system that I presented. All they had to do was observe, with an “empty cup,” what people do in other sports and activities.

So, in the new year, empty your cup to absorb what is useful.

Exceeding the MTR, except for a well-justified test, is about vanity, showing off—it doesn’t perfect technique (it leads to blank spots in your mental image of the movement), is less effective for building strength than working at or below the MTR (due to excessive compensations), and is needlessly risky (too close to the limits of control).

Correct technique is that which permits safe—that is, stable and controlled (it doesn’t mean slow!)—movement; it is the basis for steady, significant progress.

Incorrect technique is that which may succeed initially but fairly quickly, even within a few workouts, leads to a plateau in strength gains or even an injury.

Optimal training resistance is between the maximum at which one can perform the technique perfectly and the MTR.

Here are the resistance “points” I use routinely in training, from the lowest to the highest:

1. Minimum that forces the correct technique (MinRCT).

2. Maximum that permits the correct technique (MaxRCT).

3. Maximum training resistance (MTR). Occasional minor deviations from the correct technique may be okay. People who do resistance training know why.

Those are on a continuum, and with subsequent repetitions the same resistance may move to a higher point, say from MinRCT to MaxRCT, and then to MTR.

These guidelines apply to all kinds of strength training: general, directed, and sport-specific (for definitions and explanations, see Science of Sports Training).