TRAIN OUT PAIN

Functional Fitness Redefined: Layers of Life

2024-12-21T17:42:00.000-05:00

There are numerous definitions of functional fitness. The idea that a complex movement is more functional than a biceps curl was something that was fought about a decade ago. Today, the more nuanced definition of fitness, is what is required to do the desired task. If the task is to run a marathon or lift 300lbs, then fitness is the ability to do this. The fitness goal dictates the type and style of exercise.

I think I have a definition that is better.

When we are born we are essentially useless, helpless, and in total dependence. Let's represent this with one solid black dot. We start to crawl. We explore the world around us, interacting with it with our hands. Let's draw one small circle around are black dot. A concentric circle. Our first layer. We start to walk. Another layer of exploring takes place. A vertical dimension is added. We also explore more of our world. Again, lets's draw another layer around our circle.

This goes on for decades. We grow, we run, we climb, we play, we play a sport, we learn a skill, we learn more skills, we read, we combine skills, we struggle, we overcome, we add layer, upon layer, upon layer to our black dot.

Somewhere at sometime without really realizing it, the layers stopped being added. Some layers grew thinner.

Somewhere the last warm up was done, the last sprint around the track, the last mountain climbed, the last goal trained for. Perhaps it came fast or came slow. But, the layers started to slowly peal away.

Layers mean options, just like a healthy joint has more options of movement. More layers to a person, means more life is available. Imagine if you couldn't read, all the great books that aren't available to you. If you can't walk, all the places you can no longer go. If your knee hurts, less steps taken, but the hike with your grandkid isn't an option.

They did a study about climbers, beginner and advanced. They tracked their eyes as they studied a rock climbing wall. The beginner saw one or two options. The advanced climber saw many routes. Fitness allows more options in life.

They did other studies where they asked people to judge the height of stairs and hills. Out of shape individuals thought the gradient was higher or harder. They saw problems as more difficult.

They go through life with the thought of not possible.

When I was twenty I'd watch football with they eye that I can, will do this. There was never doubts. I watch now and wonder how my body survived 11 years of playing with almost no injuries. I know it's not something my body can handle anymore.

Elbow injuries make bench pressing impossible these days. But at one time benching 395 was part of my psyche. I know benching big number is not part of the layers of fitness anymore.

A few years ago the idea of riding my bike 100 miles was crazy. Now it doesn't seem that difficult of task. I've done it several times, know how to train for it and it is just a fun challenge. A layer was added.

I looked back on my life and running a few miles was no big thing. The last decade after years of injuries and lack of interest, running layer had been lost. 5 miles seemed crazy. I reevaluated how to return to running and can say, the running layer has been added once again.

One of the biggest metanalysis of mortality is grip strength. It probably doesn't mean just train grip, but a strong grip means a level of strength (a layer ) that was never lost.

Another important question for aging, can you cut your own toe nails and can you chew hard food. Why? The ability to cut your own toe nails shows a degree of mobility, with less chance of ingrown toe nails that becomes uncomfortable and limits walking, limits movement. Chewing hard food, mean more calories, more protein and less likely to lose your muscle.

Aging is losing one layer slowly over time. They have all these metrics about loss of muscle, power, strength every decade. Percentage decline. Delayering if you will. The way you interact with the world shrinks.

So what is functional fitness? It's keeping your layers. It's adding layers. It's looking back at things you could do, that perhaps you lost and working to reclaim or keep them. It could be a a mile run, it could be an olli kick flip. Perhaps it's learning a musical instrument, or picking up one that's long been discarded. Maybe it's training for a race in a distance that you never thought about. It's rehabbing the shoulder or ankle that you just decided to live with even though it stopped you playing volleyball.

Functional fitness is adding layers, it's thickening the ones you have. It's keeping the interaction with the world in expansion. It's keeping the mind seeing options and possibilities.

Band Punch Glute Ham

2024-12-02T21:58:00.001-05:00

Using the band punch helps to keep the lower back from driving into extension and allows the hamstring to be the main source of extension power.

The Dark History of Polio: More then just a Virus

2024-11-17T10:03:00.000-05:00

When I finished reading "The Moth in the Iron Lung" by Forrest Maready, I found myself fact-checking the publication date multiple times. Written in 2018, this book challenged everything I thought I knew about polio's history in America.

Like many, I grew up seeing the aftermath of polio. People with distinctive limps or affected lower limbs were living testaments to the disease's impact. In school, we learned about Jonas Salk, portrayed as the hero who created the vaccine that vanquished this terrible illness. But as with many historical narratives, the full story proves far more complex – and troubling.

The Two Faces of Polio

What most surprised me was learning the crucial distinction between polio and poliomyelitis. While both conditions cause similar symptoms – particularly paralysis of the lower limbs – they're distinctly different entities. Only through post-mortem examination of the spine could doctors definitively distinguish between them, a fact that complicated diagnosis and treatment for decades.

Traditional polio, caused by an enterovirus, typically begins in the intestines. In rare cases, particularly in infants whose intestines lie close to their developing spine, the virus can infiltrate the central nervous system, leading to paralysis. Remarkably, this paralysis affects only motor control, leaving sensory functions intact.

A History of Toxic "Cures"

The story takes a dark turn in the late 1790s, when doctors began treating childhood intestinal symptoms with what was then cutting-edge medicine – containing mercury. Today, we understand mercury's devastating effects on the nervous system, but then, it was considered a breakthrough treatment. As its use increased, so did cases of infantile paralysis.

The Agricultural Connection

Post-Civil War America faced an agricultural crisis. Moths and beetles threatened entire crops, leading to desperate measures. Enter Paris Green, the first widely-used pesticide. Its active ingredient? Lead. When insects developed resistance, farmers simply used more. Later, arsenical pesticides were introduced, followed by DDT after World War II. Each new "solution" brought its own set of problems.

What's particularly chilling is that polio outbreaks consistently peaked during growing seasons, yet this correlation went unnoticed or ignored. Laws even mandated the use of these toxic pesticides, with fines for non-compliance.

The Truth Behind the Decline

While the Salk vaccine is credited with eradicating polio, the timeline tells a different story. By the time the vaccine was introduced, polio cases had already dropped dramatically – coinciding with bans on mercury, lead, arsenic, and DDT. Today, polio outbreaks persist primarily in regions where DDT remains in use.

The Power of Propaganda

Perhaps no image better encapsulates America's polio panic than the 1953 LIFE magazine photo showing 33 iron lungs in California. We now know this photo was staged, yet it became deeply embedded in the national consciousness, driving public fear and policy.

Learning from History

This story illustrates how fear, limited information, and misguided solutions can create cascading problems. Farmers desperate to save their crops, parents trying to help sick children with mercury-laced medicines – all were making what seemed like rational choices with the information available.

The true lesson of polio isn't just about vaccine development; it's about understanding how environmental toxins impact human health, and how our solutions to one problem can inadvertently create others. As we face modern health challenges, this history reminds us to consider the broader context and potential unintended consequences of our interventions.

In an era of increasing environmental awareness, this historical parallel becomes particularly relevant. Perhaps by understanding this complex history, we can approach current and future health crises with greater wisdom and a more holistic perspective.

Iceman 2023: Mistakes Were Made

2023-11-12T13:34:00.001-05:00

It would appear that my blog has become a defecto race report on various events. The last race of the year per usual in the Mitten State is the Iceman Cometh. I can't remember if this is 7,8 or 9 Icemans. Most blend together into a blur. There was Mudman, several Niceman and an occasional lived to the billing Iceman.

2023 wasn't warm, but with sun shining and no rain, temps in the upper 40's, it will be remembered as a Niceman. The race where a lot of mistakes were made.

I had shifting problems going into the race. If I had ridden my bike a lot more before the race, perhaps it was something that could have been sorted out. As is, I rode my gravel bike and indoor trainer. I assumed the problem would be the same thing that has cropped up in the past. It wasn't. Don't Assume. Test your race gear over and over.

This lead to shifting getting stuck around every ten min dropping to every 2-3 min much later in the race. Frustrating.

I had planned to use a water bottle that I had used with my bike every ride I had used it, and also use my USWE back pack that holds about 50oz of water. The day of packing I decided to leave my back pack home and take a larger water bottle I have used on most of my gravel rides.

15 min into the race I realized I couldn't physically take the bottle out of its cage. It was locked in like a vise grip. To drink I had to get off the bike and yank it out. Frustrating.

This was my only nutrition. Calories in the bottle. Test your gear! Don't change your plan without testing it. Carry an emergency gel or something like that.

Now my biggest takeaway from the race besides test your gear is how you deal with problems. Monday morning I was working with someone and they inherently asked how the race went. Somewhere in the conversation, I came to the epiphany of why didn't I just take the water bottle out of its cage and put it in my back jersey pocket.

The answer was I became fixated on the problem, instead of brain storming a solution. Tough lesson learned, but a valuable one. Seek to be a solution oriented thinker.

Besides the disappointing race time and frustrating mechanicals, riding your bike in the woods and hanging with your friends can never truly be disappointing. Always grateful when the opportunity presents itself.

Test your gear, seek solutions, pedal on.

Lumberjack 100 Race Report

2023-06-20T21:18:00.000-04:00

I came for a challenge, it over delivered.

I never thought I would ride my bike for 11 hours. Welcome to Lumberjack 100. The premier 100 mile mountain bike race in the state of Michigan. 3 loops in the beautiful Manistee National Park. It was a perfect day to ride a bike....a very long time.

At the start of the year I picked out 3 races between the spring opener Barry Roubaix and the fall closer Iceman: Black Fork gravel in Ohio, Lumberjack 100 in Michigan, and third, Last Best Ride in Montana.

I have been riding a decent amount this year. Enough that I had some hubris going into the race. Maybe it has been around my friends and patients lives so long, that you start to feel a bit non challant about the race. Yea, it will be hard, but not like hard hard, you know. It humbled me 2 hours in. I was already cramping. Cramping? This was something I thought I had conquered with adequate training, a thing of the past. But there it was before I had even hit the first aid station.

A key element of racing bigger events or any endurance event is learning to not project your future feelings on your current situation. It is very easy to say, man I'm hurting this much now, in two hours it's going to be way worse. Stay focused on the present, the future changes.

Stick to your nutrition plan. I think this saved me. Part of me thinks I was really undereating, drinking going into the race. Some work/life stuff came up that had me extra busy leading into the race and I think I payed a price on the first lap. Eating and drinking consistently, I actually felt the best on my last lap. Be Disciplined in your eating and drinking.

Whenever I came to a point that I just was tired of riding, I would hit a spot of amazingly pretty single track through tall pines, with the sunlight hitting just right, that made it feel like you were riding your bike in some place magical. When the legs got really crampy a fast stretch of rolling gravel that had a canopy of tall trees making tunnels, guiding you along. When your mind started to wonder, a hundred yards of green moss lined trail pushed you on. Allow natures magic to unfold.

The whole day, something hurt, but it was always changing. Quad cramp, shifted to an adductor cramp, shifted to a hip flexor, shifted to a left side, always moving, searching replenishing, back and forth. I found myself in awe that my body could find fiber angles to keep moving. To keep figuring out new ways to pedal the same crank. Your body is Amazing, be thankful.

On some weird side notes, you have a lot of thoughts pedaling a bike for 11 hours. I hit hard on lap one, head, shoulder elbow. I popped up and found my brain saying no biggie. Something I started in like 8th or 9th grade after taking big hit in football, it was a mantra all through college. My body seemed to remember getting hit and my brain reverted back to 25 years ago.

My first work out tape was an Army Ranger cadence. When I started running in the woods with a walkman as a middle school kid, I would hum along to these. Sometime along 8 hours in the words and cadence started coming back again. How weird I remember thinking that I would remember something like that.

The people at the aid stations, the Unpaved crew that puts on the race, the setting, all where amazing. If you want a challenge, this is a great one. Every lap, will teach a lesson, every lap unlocks something different. Some things can only be learned through time and effort, Lumberjack is a great teacher.

Should We Chase Efficiency

2022-12-20T22:33:00.000-05:00

The last few months I've been thinking a lot about the concept of efficiency. Don't waste time. What is the most efficient use of time? Chasing efficiency. What part of this procedure could I cut out to still get the desired results. Cut the fat.

In some ways, I think this is a good filter to use, what is redundant. Chasing after the efficiency idol is a slippery slope though, it can bleed into other areas of your life where efficient starts to mask the good stuff.

Another word that can be used is optimization. Optimize and efficient started to mean the same thing to me, and that I believe is a problem.

Efficiency can produce (not always) fragility. A hiccup comes up and your assembly line of well intentioned, perfectly timed dominoes fall. Stressful. For example, If I packed my schedule and one patient shows up late, my day will snowball late. If I put a buffer of an open slot in there, (inefficient) I can withstand some late visits.

There is all kinds of optimization for your sleep now. In fact, I do quite a few of them. Dark room, limit blue light, no caffeine after 4, take some magnesium, cooler room. But, in a way, we are learning to rely on these things for a good nights sleep. The first time you have to stay in a hotel that is different from your routine, can you sleep? Before a big race? Perhaps there is some value in not optimizing all the time, even if it results in a few more tired days.

I rode my bike at a winter groomed trail today. A lot of gear to be able to ride in a Michigan winter. Between driving there and home, the packing and the gear retrieval it was a two hour commitment. I rode for about an hour. I could have literally walked into my basement and cycle on my trainer for two hours, and achieved a better workout. It was an incredibly inefficient use of time.

How do you measure being in nature, stumbling upon a herd of deer and chasing them on the trails. Alone with your thoughts, not another human for an hour, like a private playground. Snaking around a few corners and keeping the bike upright. Chatting with one of your best friends in the parking lot. These are all things that created a great experience and made for a wonderful use of time.

What is fitness? Getting more and more efficient at the task you ask to achieve. Training is just biology adapting to the averages you stress it to. The more you do something, the better, more efficient you get at it. Performance is great, but perhaps training should have some inefficient tasks in there as well.

The thoughts for this blog came into my head on the way home. I had been thinking about efficiency and fragility for some time, but this seemed to cement them. Don't chase. Evaluate. Don't let efficiency become your only filter. You will miss out on art, life and the good things that it composes.

Amish Pizza

2022-08-28T21:01:00.000-04:00

I started traveling to an Amish farm around 7 years ago, treating all my Amish patients at once. This allowed them to not have to pay a hundred dollars to get a driver to come see me, and only have a few at at time at that.

My first time there they asked if I would stay for dinner. Picky eater, by nature, I didn't really feel like staying and trying to eat something I didn't really like. Then I heard, we are having pizza. Pizza! Easy. Pizza with the Amish, what a great story.

What came out was not pizza! It was loaded with vegetables on top of some type of cream cheese(?) on top of some soft bread. It did have a bit of shredded cheddar. But to call this pizza was a stretch. A big stretch at that. It was actually pretty good though.

Through the years, I've stayed for dinner after every visit. I've had close to 10 variations of "pizza" none of which would be classified as pizza to the outside world. Fruit pizza, ground beef pizza, mashed potatoe pizza to name a few.

Over the years, I've asked many questions on different aspects of their culture. They ask questions about my travel with sports teams and countries I've visited. I ask questions like taxes, school, marriage and work. One thing I never asked was about the pizza.

I've told many friends about the pizza, and my basic comment was that if it has cheese on it, they call it pizza. A misunderstanding I never corrected. Until this last weekend.

I always have loved the Origen Stories they do in movies now. I now know the Origen story of Amish pizza.

My host that does all the cooking is probably in her early 60's. We sat down to eat some fruit pizza and she asked if their was any foods I didn't like. "I hate onions. In fact, when I was traveling in Germany with bobsled, the only German I learned was Nine Zwiebel. No onion."

She responded by saying that her Dad, since passed, also hated onions. The only time he had pizza it was loaded with onions, and he told his daughter, my host, how disgusting pizza was. My host would not have a real pizza until she was 20 and she goes, "it was so delicious". There was no onions on pizza!

About 15 years ago, she was gifted a recipe book of all the different pizzas you could make. Over 50. She started cooking them for her dad before he passed. The myth of Amish pizza died. Misunderstanding was cleaned up.

In this story is something I hope to remember. Ask questions. Sometimes it is just pizza. Sometimes it is much bigger then that. How often do we think "onions" ruin a thing and think that is for everything?

Keep digging.

Stress, World Championships and Life

2022-07-30T17:11:00.000-04:00

Elite athletics has always been a place to showcase the best and worst of human qualities. It's a microscope on all the things we love and hate. It has inspiring performances and also humbling ones. They can't exist without each other. The classic yin/yang. Can we learn from them? That is always the part that interests me, and I think deep down that is why "people" are still drawn to sports. That is why something that is live always has bit more interest than if it already happened, even if you don't know the outcome.

The saying "that's why you play the game" resonates. All of us want to see the underdog win, or the favorite succeed despite the pressure to perform, or some unknown surprise the field. Human potential, put on display, to actualize that potential is riveting.

World championships are one such event. It is basically an Olympics. Medals. Rounds. Days of competition. After every major event, I always try to sit back and think about what happened after a little bit of time has gone by and the emotion has left the room. Coach Dan Pfaff calls this a debriefing. He would do it with athletes. I do it for myself. What went well, what went poorly. Everything from operations, like meal timing, travel, sleep, to the actual event.

The thing I kept coming back to this time was the management of stress. Perhaps that is all there is. Again, these are just my thoughts.

The Great Ones are stress managers. Imagine every human has an energy score. Let's make up a number and call it 100. Let's make up some other arbitrary numbers as well for this example. Zero is death. We can almost never obtain 100 it's mythical, kind of like Madden football. 99 is coveted and only a few people ever will get it. The 99 doesn't always happen every year either, keep that in mind. 40 is sickness, like the cold. You hit 40 and you get a cold. 50 is some nagging injury.

If we want to make it a little more complicated lets robustness of the athlete has a genetic component and some will have 100, but some will have 90. Again, these are made up.

Training is 30 points. Every day, if you were to train the maximum amount of your ability it takes 30 points.

How do you recover points after training. Sleep, nutrition, mental health, social bonds, ect. all the things most people have heard of. Have you ever thought of it from a performance perspective? Does my off training periods align with my truest recovery. I'm bringing a 26 instead of a 30 to my training every day. Every day. Over the course of a year, that little bit less adds up to that coveted few pounds on the bar, few tenth or seconds off the clock, a few more percentage points at the plate.

The scary thing is that athlete, that coach, they all think he or she is at their optimum. Unrealized potential.

The other side of the coin is that they recover enough to bring the heat when they need to bring the heat in the workout but the ability of the body to adapt to stress (training) is always a function of how healthy the body is. Recovery is impairing the work they are doing. Their recovery score is 27 instead of 30 consistently. Again, they recover enough to train at maximum, they are improving. But not at the rate they could be. Unrealized potential.

At the most elite level, it's not just showing up and training hard with talent. It's everything. The 21 hours per day are just as important as the 3 hours of training. Perhaps even more important. The more lifestyle stress you accumulate the less stress you can put into your training. The more lifestyle stress you accumulate the less stress the body can adapt to.

The better you are at the total picture, anxiety becomes nerves. Nerves are good. Nervousness is free energy, the butterflies, it's a symbol that you care about what is about to happen. Anxiety is the man in the mirror test. It's showing up with perhaps a subconscious pattern of knowing you didn't do all that could have been done, or perhaps you are coming with less than ideal circumstances, sickness and injury come to mind.

The great ones are not great by accident. They are great managers of stress. Look at your lifestyle when things don't go your way or when they do and a record is broken or an achievement is made. It works both ways. Where was my head and life the months leading up to a break through moment. Obsess over the other 23 hours of the day.

Weekly Learning: Number One

2022-05-08T21:27:00.000-04:00

I might try a new weekly or semi regular installment of a concept called weekly (even if it isn't) learning. Mostly thoughts on what I've read or experienced in clinic. I'll see how it evolves. I've been thinking that it would be good practice to sit and think about the week.

A win: Had a patient that was getting repeated knee pain for months after exactly half mile of running. Swelling on the outside lateral knee. I had treated the foot and hip and knee in all various combos. Big rocks were checked and rechecked. One evening I sat and throught through the anatomy and reviewed some old French Anatomy notes I have. Taken from the 1800's before Fascia wasn't eliminated. I reviewed an old Guy Voyer video and throught through some joint jumping techniques that I have learned from a Guy seminar taught by the amazing Brian Murer. Some individuals will have a lateral sesamoid bone and can have various IT band attachments (up to 5). I worked the tissue and joint pumped the joint in various ways. Two days later I got a text he had run 5 miles with no pain or swelling! Pretty cool.

A Loss: A profesional runner I have worked with retired from foot pain. It was a frustrating experience for him, to state it mildly. I'd get to check it every 5-6 weeks. I have probably read more about the foot in the last year than any other anatomy to try to figure this out. Worked on trying to create exercises to emphasis better control in the foot and in the body. Just nothing ever clicked. Very bummed for him. The goal for any athlete is to retire because they aren't good enough or they have accomplished what they wanted to. Not to let injury decide for you. Very humbling to know you couldn't help.

But it also puts into clarity the importance of keeping learning, keep thinking, keep tinkering. I'll cross paths again with injured athletes from various things. I owe it to that future athlete to get better. When an athlete trust their career and dreams to help keep them healthy, it's not a thing to take lightly. Keep learning, get better.

The Adductor Magnus really has 4 parts if you take the blood vessel areas as zones. Zone one acts as a hip stabilizer, 2 and 3 are middle zone and are conductors of movement. Zone 4 is basically acting like another hamstring. Interesting stuff.

Why Do We Train

2022-05-04T22:23:00.000-04:00

Why do we train?

To answer this question becomes the foundation for the rest of the story. Get this wrong and your trajectory is off and you will miss the mark.

Better to go slowly in the right direction than quickly in the wrong.

Filter One: Why do we train?

Here are some common answers. To be better at my sport. Let's break this down a bit further. To be a better football player, would be completely different than being a better runner. Does a better runner mean I run faster or run further?

To be healthier. What does health mean to you? Less body fat, more muscle, better cardiovascular capacity, better bone density?

To look different. Growing up as a kid in the 80's I wanted muscles like Rocky. Some people want to get bigger, some people want to get smaller.

To Feel better. Training has a calming, almost euphoric result. Brain producing BDNF produces less anxiety. Some train to deal with depression or sadness. Mental health from training can be just as great as the physical.

Filter Two: What is the most precise description to the answer of filter one. Example. To better at sport. Football. I'm a little small. I need to get bigger. Fat don't fly, so I need to put body armor on. AKA...muscles. My goal is hypertrophy.

Example. I want to be better runner. I want to run faster. How do I run faster. This can be a bit more complicated. Lets go through a few scenarios. I get niggles here and there that disrupts my training blocks. Training for this scenario is figuring out why you can't handle load. My goal is capacity of my tissues.

Am I to big? Again, fat don't fly, so perhaps better body composition is in order. My goal is better body comp.

I am generally weaker than the accepted norm for my level of compotition. But as a runner/biker/climber/ weight gain may not be desirable. My goal is strength without the additional hypertrophy.

Filter Three: What are the best exercises to choose to reach the desired outcomes. Best becomes individual. Individual aspects will vary widely. Mobility, technique, training history, injury history, limb size will all provide unique data points to consider. Most importantly, does it get a yes from the first two filters.

Example. Is the lying leg curl a good exercise. Strength. Probably better choices. Hypertrophy, I might keep this. Running faster, def better options. Rehabbing a hamstring strain, I might keep this one in.

Common pitfalls to better training.

As Dan John says "keep the goal the goal." Losing focus on why you are in the gym is easy to do. We get enamored with toys, exercises we saw on social media, or what are friends are doing.

We get caught up in a certain exercise. A barbell is only a tool. A back squat with a straight bar, deadlift or bench has come to be the holy trinity. Please remember, those are a sport in and of itself. Even powerlifters have now devised bars that are more ergonomically designed to support the gain of strength without risking joint health. Being dogmatic with a straight bar is foolish.

Being stuck with prescribed ROM. I never was able to figure out why a 45lb weight plate is 17.72 inches in diameter. Why the barbell is 8.5" off the ground. Manipulate the ROM for your best health and for the desires of your goal. Perhaps raising up the plates by 6" allowing the bar to be 14.5" off the ground is the best for your hypertrophy goals?

Going from one thing to another. Not sticking with a thing long enough to see it through the end.

Sticking with something to long is the other end of that quandary. How you became a 400lb deadlifter, will not be how you become a 500lb deadlifter. Training and special exercises will most likely need to change.

Mistaking getting good at an exercise for thinking that it has proper carry over. This probably gets filed under picking better exercises. Thinking that you put 40lb on your bench and thinking that you will be a better football player is very rarely true.

Seeking fatigue. I think this is one of the biggest pitfalls. People think that getting tired is a good thing. Just because you get tired, doesn't mean you had a good workout or that something positive happened. Just like busy doesn't equal productive.

Training like you have always trained. For a few years after I was done with bobsledding, I found myself still training like I was going to push a bobsled. Except I wasn't. My mobility was deteriorating, my aerobic base didn't exist, and I was starting to feel beat up. But it was what felt comfortable. I still felt "strong" because I could lift a lot of weight, but it was not improving my quality of life, in fact it was hurting it. My filter was still in "to be better at a sport, when I needed it to be healthier,

How we train should change when lifestyle, goals and circumstances change. How we did something should not be the reason for how we do something now. Use these three filters to devise a better plan. Be wary of the pitfalls, and above all have fun in the process. Training should never end, so if it's not fun, it will.

Track, Travel, Thoughts

2022-04-21T20:49:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago I got the chance to travel to Serbia and work with the New Zealand National Track and Field athletes that had qualified for the Indoor World Championships. The event was held in Belgrade, Serbia.

Getting off the plane into Belgrade and was immediately hit with the smell of cigarette smoke. It has been over a decade since I have been around the smell, so it was a bit startling. All the countries seemed to arrive at once, so there was a bit of chaos into getting to your hotel. Luckily they had a Serbian volunteer that helped with all the logistics.

We stayed at a hotel that allowed you to walk to the Arena. The fresh air was appreciated. It was hard to not be stuck by the giant concrete apartments buildings. They were all around. I've read research where the building style was purposefully built to drain your emotional well being. To create a type of depression. It works. Graffiti and trash peppered the landscape. Full disclosure: I never had the time to go into old town. I'm sure that was much cooler and full of history.

We took a bus trip to the practice track and witnessed a mass of riot police in full battle regalia lining the streets. We are talking hundreds and hundreds. Apparently they were preparing for a soccer game to start and finish. I was told Serbian Soccer games have a reputation for violence. Such a strange thing to witness.

The event and arena was great. Held in their national basketball arena. It held a lot of fans. The track had a fast middle straight for the sprinters and a comfortable, but not fast track for endurance events. The warm up area was excellent.

Hours spent in the warm up area working on the athletes I was with and watching various events warm up, I had some thoughts. Americans love warm up drills. Foreign athletes like games and easy going style of general preparation. The medal contenders are just physically different. No matter the coaching/training, to win medals, you have to be blessed with that extra. Listening to Marcel Jacobs do block starts had a different sound than all the others. The power was audible. The finalist had a different sound than the athletes that didn't make it out of the prelims. Grant Holloway, the same. I don't think you can achieve a medal without hard work, but I don't think you can get a medal with average talent and incredible work. They are special. It is easy to recognize the unicorns. Also, why I think travel sports are a bit on the silly side when it comes to kids under 14. Play lots of sports, lots of experiences. Cream rises no matter what. You can see special in a few minutes. If you have to ask if your kid is special, they are not. (harsh, but true).

You didn't see the open support of Ukraine in any of the places we were. This could be that it is very real there, or life is hard enough and you just don't have time to worry when life has enough problems in the current day. It raises the question if things like sport matter when things like war is going on. I think they do. Sport lets you see what humans are capable of. It lets the young dream and the old reminisce. There is a joyful escape in seeing effort. A respect for the work and sacrifice. There is something about wondering how far you can run, how fast you can do it, how high you can jump, how far can you throw that will always bring a sense of wonderment and curiosity.

Art is important. It strikes you when it isn't present. Even graffiti could be described as a impulsive call to break up the grey monotony of the concrete. Concrete, a feeling of being stuck. A lack of motion, we are, I am, not going anywhere. Sport and Art have a way to inspire and transport. The ability to create motion, to spark imagination. It's a shame that it is being cut from schools.

"The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making a life more bearable. practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your should grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something." -Kurt Vonnegut

Attaining Health Quickly: What To Do

2022-01-07T11:45:00.002-05:00

There is not time to get healthy. I heard this a lot a few years ago. Health is not something that can be attained in a few weeks or even months. You can't rush your fitness or health, but are there things that can actually make you healthier instantly? More specifically, are there things that can be done today, that will make you healthier today or tomorrow?

"The best time to plant was 20 years ago. The second best time is today."

If you walk for 30 min at a comfortable pace outside your Natural Killer cells and your T-Cells go up. Simply put, your immune system is raised up and has shown to have less overall sick days and respiratory illness over a winter. Several studies support this. This is immediate. Can you imagine if this was a pill, how many people would be clamoring to take it!

Staying with walking, as little as a 10 min walk after eating, has been shown to keep your glucose levels down. Regulating blood glucose levels is how we can go from pre-diabetic state to a healthy range. This is regardless of what you eat. It's not even saying, change what you are eating, just walk a bit afterwards! (Side note: The words comorbidity has been thrown a lot around recently, pre-diabetic blood sugar levels, is a comorbidity, you may look and feel great, but your body is essentially rusting.)

Speaking of dietary changes. You can change your gut biome in as little as 4 days. A fast food diet of burger and fries were compared to a Mediterranean diet for 4 days. There was 4 days in between each diet. Fast food diet showed an increase in the bad bacteria in the gut and Med. Diet showed an increase in the good bacteria. This was after 4 days! Imagine what a month could do. A few more fruits, vegetables, olive oil and quality protein. Dump the fried foods.

Vitamin D levels is a very important parameter for overall human health. Immune system, muscular recovery and mood are just a few but important areas it impacts. 10 min in the sunlight on your skin is about the equivalent of 10,000 IU of vitamin D. Supplementing with Vit D can serve as a great adjunct on days there is no sun or you are stuck inside.

Sleep is a big deal. A good nights sleep drives a healthier innate immune system. It enhances recovery. Your biomarkers that fight infection are improved. Your inflammation goes down (or up if you sleep poor). The response to vaccines is improved after good nights sleep! (what do you think this means if you sleep pretty poor consistently?). A lot of what we know on how to attain a good nights sleep drives from understanding the circadian rhythm of our bodies. Here is the easiest guidelines. Let your eyes see the sun in the morning. It basically is the physiological wake up signal. Light on the retina. Eat something. Have some movement in your day. Stop caffeine before noon (for most people). Cut out your phone and blue light 2 hours before bed. Blue light stops the melatonin hormone. Yea, you say you can fall asleep but your sleep is disrupted, which means you wake up! Your sleep was disturbed. Take Magnesium an hour before bed. This has been a game changer for so many patients of mine. Go to bed at the same time, yes even on the weekends.

Breath deep for a few minutes. Inhale through the nose, hold for a few second. Exhale for a few seconds. Hold for a few seconds. This is called box breathing. Repeat for a few minutes. This will literally drive you into a parasympathetic state. Less cortisol, which means less inflammatory response to stress. Breathing is like the remote control to your nervous system. It works that quickly.

Drink water with some electrolytes. We are water. We are electrical beings. Better hydration is better function.

Socialize with people you like. This I found quite ironic. Social isolation or a perceived social threat produced more inflammation and decreased anti viral qualities. While the opposite was also true. Positive social interactions showed decrease inflammation, and bolstered anti viral responses.

There is time, there was time. Today can be that day. Acute can become chronic. Your body will change, wether you do something or not. You can decide how. Health can be improved today. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise.

Breaking Down the Formula...F=MA

2021-11-18T21:57:00.002-05:00

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend the Functional Range Seminar Internal Strength. If you have never attended one of their seminars (functional range release, conditioning, assessment) I would highly recommend it.

I won't summarize the whole weekend, but I did want to hash out a talk, that really made some of my thoughts much more clear in programming. The talk was given by therapist John Quint. John works with some of the strongest people on the planet at Westside Barbell.

We have all heard the formula F=MA. F is force. M is mass. A is acceleration. There are a few ways to think of training but they all fall under these methods.

1. ME. max effort. 90-100%

2. DE. dynamic effort. 50-60 percent of ME

3. RE. repetition effort. 40-50 percent of ME

4. REF. repetition effort failure (hypertrophy)

Force will be ME. Once we get an exercise to the ME we desire, lets say 405# on trap bar deadlift, we can then address other issues. Most athletes are not looking to get bigger. Runners, bikers, weight class athletes actually improve if they get stronger, but remain the same size. Hypertrophy is usually not the goal. REF is not used then in the purpose of bigger muscles. So M in the F=MA will stay RE for maintenance of the ME or F. A in the F=MA will the DE. Moving the weight fast with intent and acceleration.

This allows you to maintain what you have built in the 405# trap bar deadlift. Over time, this may well bring negative adaptations in hip quality though. Continually pushing weights in the same movement pattern is not the recipe for keeping a healthy human being.

Enter the REF for the M in the F=MA equation. Repetition effort to failure using CARS (controlled articular rotations) as your exercise (in this example doing the hip) to help the trap bar. CARS at intense level is designed to get you access to new tissue. This new tissue will need to be trained to keep it. It will also be weaker. So using a percentage in the ME or DE allows you to integrate that new tissue into the programming of the F=MA for the trap bar (any exercise).

Running this equation this way over and over allows the athlete to not hit a plateau. Even though the weight (405#) stays the same. The athlete is continuously integrating new fibers, new recruitment around the hip to keep improving and also not allowing the exercise to ever create negative adaptations.

Practically what would it look like. Get the athlete as strong as you think is necessary. I'm 195 pounds and have decided I want to keep a 2x bodyweight deadlift. I have worked to get that number. Now I'm going to work intensely on Hip CARS as part of my workout and my pair then with a percentage of the deadlift done with speed aka DE work. I could also pair CARS with ME work, again supersetting hip CARS with a few reps at 95 percent of my 2x bodyweight deadlift.

Quint did a great job of explaining this and made my thinking of this concept so much more clearer for me. I hope my quick synopsis creates more direction for your training and also more curiosity for theirs.

Stay strong, stay healthy.

Coming Back Around to the Warm Up

2021-11-18T21:27:00.003-05:00

"We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing."

My last year of chiropractic school presented with an opportunity to compete to make the USA National Bobsled team. One of the biggest aspects of training was running fast. Training to run fast was the goal for the next few months. One problem it was winter. I found one indoor running track that allowed me to train on it from 5-6am.

Me and the old folks.

I had a sprinting background from years in high school and college. So a standard warm up was between 45-60 min for about 3-8 quality reps that lasted between 3-6 seconds. Drills, drills, drills.

"Don't ever stop doing that stuff and you won't ever have any problems like us!"

I remember those words from the same guy that would shuffle around the track every morning while I was there. My life at the time was train, school, rugby, study. Day in and day out. My reference point was training. My only thought when hearing those words, why would I? Why would I stop warming up?

Fast forward a decade plus and I know have my own business and a kid. The shift wasn't training, it was working out. There is a huge difference. No plan, just get a work out in as time permitted. The first thing to be lost was the warm up. I no longer had to operate in the 95-99% of maximum efficiency.

What was lost?

Warm ups are designed to expose the body to gradual increase in temperature. 10 min has been designated a minimum. Think of it as gradual body perfusion of increased blood flow. Blood flow is how things heal. Cutting out the warm up is cutting out opportunity for helping little niggles to get better.

Warm up use multiple movements in multiple planes. This is simply doing lots of different movements then what we have done on a routine basis. Squatting, lunging, reaching, tumbling, gradual exposure into lengthening and loading tissues that haven't been active all day. Joints have rotational capabilities that need to be expressed daily or they begin to stiffen. Capsules need synovial fluid to stay healthy. Synovial reaches the capsule through movement. If you don't expose the joint to angles it doesn't drive synovial fluid into those spaces. Cutting out the warm up cuts out the maintenance of joint range of motion.

Warm ups allow gradual practice of the skill of the movement. Rep after rep. Regardless if it's a sprint, a squat, a deadlift or a push up, sprinting and lifting have a skill component that needs to be constantly kept fresh. Skills that are practiced generally get better. Cutting out the warm up cuts out the opportunity to practice skills.

Warm ups allow us to take inventory of body parts and body movements that don't quite feel right. Maybe, we spend a few extra minutes exploring those. If something feels off after several days, perhaps we seek help, even if it's just a YouTube search of the area from a trusted source. If you don't know your shoulder hurts when you do a table top stretch maybe it festers into something worse months later. Cutting the warm up cuts out that screening process.

For the general person adding or keeping a quality warm up for 10-15 min can bring many health and performance benefits. Even if you only had 20 minutes, a 10 min warm up still allows ten minutes for high quality one or two movements. Allow yourself the opportunity to keep giving your body a chance to move and improve. Don't let that body get to old to play.

What Can We Learn From the Potato Blight

2021-10-28T08:25:00.001-04:00

Reading through the fascinating book 1493 by Charles Mann has been a learning experience about how foods like the potato have been influenced by the Colombian Exchange. Put simply, with the "discovery" of the New World by Columbus, a complicated and world altering exchange of goods, services and ideas from and into Europe, Asia, North and South America was created.

One of the more interesting exchanges was the amazing potato. Most researchers agree that the potato was cultivated in the Andean area, most likely Peru. In fact, hundreds of varieties of potatoes exist. Over the next few hundred years the potato was brought to Europe. The potato is credited for allowing Europe to grow and not to starve. For the first time the common man had a surplus of calories. In a way, you could make an argument that the potato saved Europe.

Fast forward a few hundred years into the late 1700s and another Columbian Exchange product is becoming worth its weight in gold, guano. Bird poop. Guano has been discovered to be the ultimate fertilizer for the soil, for growing better crops. It is now agreed that somewhere and sometime in the late 1700's a little parasite called P. infestans aka the deadly potato blight, was hitching a ride in the guano. It was laid into the soil in Europe and slowly spread over the next 50 years to trigger what we now call the Great Famine.

It is not the potato blight I found interesting though, it was what were the conditions for which allowed such spread. Why Ireland and what can we learn from this?

First, Ireland was heavily reliant on the potato, more so than many of the other countries. It had become a mono culture. The climate of wet cool areas certainly played a part. The third was the change in growing methods. This holds the most interest for me.

Ireland had developed a growing method over the years very similar to the Andean way of growing potatoes called Wacho. It had become known as Lazy beds in Europe. They took up the sod and stacked them on top of each other. This created ridges with a small trench nearby. Because the ridges were raised up, they heated up in the day earlier and retained heat. They were dense roots so they held onto the nutrients in the soil and because of the grass resisted erosion. The densely packed Wacho also resisted weeds. Because the soil held more nutrients, they didn't need fertilizer (guano). The fallows from where the sod had been dug up acted like natural drains when it rained.

This method had been perfected and used from most likely Inca times in Peru and used successfully into Ireland hundreds of years later. Until, they are told differently.

"Activist like Andrew Wight and Jethro Tull wanted farmers to release soil nutrients by deep thorough plowing, to plant every bit of terrain, to change the land with fertilizer, use ruthless weeding, and maximize yields by efficient harvesting. Believers in technology, they viewed the newest factory made harrows, drillers and harvesters as God given tools to accomplish these goals."

They got rid of the Wacho growing methods, a decade later the potato blight all but destroyed the potato. It is quite a harrowing story reading about the Great Famine.

"During the next forty years, researches attributed the blight to ozone, air pollution, static electricity, volcanic action, smoke from steam locomotives, excessive humidity or heat, gases from the recently introduced sulfur match, and emanation from outer space, various insects..."

New technology and wanting efficiency replaced common sense and experience. Even giving the name Lazy beds also makes it seem like they were subtly looking down on this growing method, instead of using the name Wacho.

It is interesting seeing the blame placed on various ideas because the real cause was unknown. It is interesting to see how science was espoused over experience. This can still be seen in coaching/therapy and almost every profession. There must be a balance in, this is the way we have always done it and science says we should do it this way.

One quote that has stuck with me, " was simply the latest and worth pathogen to take advantage of the new scientific agriculture, ...on a terrain shaped for technology and not biology."

Makes me wonder how modern life is shaping the biology we call the human body.

Why You Should Care About the Letter NrF2

2021-09-17T10:58:00.000-04:00

Every now and then there will be a headline about how taking a multivitamin can actually be bad for your health or that high dose of this vitamin can be counterproductive.

On the other end we see all the time how this food or vitamin is an antioxidant. This supplement ORAC value is the highest ever! Oxygen radical absorbance capacity. Does this matter?

Between these two headlines, there is another. Inflammation is the start of most disease and problems that make you feel less then how you really want to be feeling. What is inflammation?

The type of inflammation we are concerned about is not the inflammation that comes to mind. When you roll your ankle there is some redness, some heat, some pain and some swelling. This is not what we are taking about. Para-inflammation is our target.

""Para-inflammation is an adaptive response of the immune system to low levels of tissue stress (i.e., a low-degree of “danger” stimuli), such as in aging whereby oxidative stress accumulates bit by bit for many decades. The physiological role of para-inflammation is to maintain homeostasis (or re-set the homeostatic threshold of the tissue) and restore tissue functionality." Medzhitoz 2008.

In layman's terms, think of para-inflammation as the area between a healthy state and an inflamed state on a time line. All of us are on this time line in some fashion. A stress comes along, remember stress can be physical, mental or emotional. How "healthy" we are determines our response to this stress. The stress can trigger the para-inflammation into full blown inflammation. Visualize hot coals that are no longer creating a fire, but stress comes along and blows on them, and boom the coals ignite back up into a full fire.

Now enter the letters NrF2. This is the master regulator to protect the cells against stress, to keep them from becoming inflamed. It is the guardian. Lets list what NrF2 can do. Improve cell function, remove toxins, increase mitochondria, eliminates cells beyond repair, protects against cellular stress. Regulates almost 500 genes!

Addressing the first question of antioxidants. This old theory was about targeting outside the cell. It's hard for an antioxidant to have an effect across the cell membrane, gut wall and blood brain barrier. So it is ineffective for internal cell influence, the cytoplasm. To target inside the cell we need the NrF2 system.

How do we prime then the NrF2 system? Phytonutrients. Plant chemicals. It only works well if we have a surplus of these. The best ones studied are: sulforaphane from broccoli sprouts, curcumin from turmeric, resveratrol, carnosol from rosemary , Ginkgo extract, polyphenols from green tea and sulphur from garlic.

The old way was to take a lot of one vitamin or a supplement that has a high ORAC value to target free radicals outside the cell. One molecule of vitamin C can in theory grab one free radical, one molecule of superoxide dismutase grabs one billion! There lies the difference. Antioxidents are outside the cell. Priming the NrF2 system gets to the inside cell to get enzymatic activity going. Which can be constantly renewed.

Enough phyochemicals can keep the NrF2 pathway primed. It can block the stress of life from taking our bodies from para-inflamed to inflamed and help keep us on other end of the homeostasis that we call healthy and feeling good.

I am going to link a recipe for Turmeric Chicken with Garlic and Broccoli. Now you know what getting these phytonutrients can do
for your body, it is always easier to eat a little better.

PS. NrF2 stands for nuclear factor erythroid 2–related factor 2

Racing to Learn

2021-06-13T22:22:00.003-04:00

Signing up to do a race can mean many things to many people. Perhaps it was a goal that forced you to train for something, a deadline that dictated preparation. More commonly, maybe it is just for fun. (maybe thats the best reason). A final test per say for the training or studying that you did. Trying out new training ideas or nutrition concepts can be tested out. Racing strategies can be implemented.

I have always thought that most coaches and therapists should race or compete at something every now and then. A reminder of the emotions and ideas that percolate. Empathy.

The night before. Worried about getting enough sleep. Being annoyed if it doesn't work out that way.

Waking up feeling a little more nervous then a day of hard training would invoke. Checking your watch frequently. On time. Working backwards from the start, warm up. bathroom, nutrition, breakfast or meal. Feeling a little more on edge if something disrupts the pattern.

The jitters at the start. Trust your plan or go with pace. Pace to slow or to fast? A gap forms, do you go with it and risk blowing up. Can you trust your training to match the attack, do you trust yourself. Legs feel good, legs feel bad, does it matter? Should it matter? If you know your training is there, what do you believe?

Focus. Don't let the mind wander. Focus is a superpower. Pay attention for gaps. Pay attention to the pack. The ebb and flow. Let the mind wander and gap formed before you can react and the energy cost of closing it is to much.

Focus is so important I have been wondering if a supplement for improving focus is a performance enhancer. Like most things, practice and experience is probably all that is needed. I noticed significant improvement with making that my primary goal from race one to race two this summer.

The race becomes a teacher, a reminder, a test, and through it all, hopefully some fun was had.

Framing Challenges and Threats for Better Health

2021-04-27T22:36:00.000-04:00

How we perceive a situation plays a larger role then what we sometimes consider. We have always been told that a positive outlook is important, but why?

Why would how I look at a situation potentially dictate the outcome, if my actions remain the same?

These are important questions, for not only the patient/athlete but also the clinician/coach. It is more then just bringing "positive thinking" to the situation. It will also show the importance of the psyche of the collective team or the trendy modern phrase "culture" of a group or organization. How does challenge or threat effect our health?

Challenge or Threat?

When faced with a task or situation do we classify this as a challenge or a threat. A challenge invokes a chance to learn, potential increase from the outcome, and while hard either physically or mentally, we believe it will turn out well. There is generally a sense of control.

A threat is very similar but just perceived very differently. A challenge will be high stress/excitement but will reside. A challenge ends. Exposure to these will make us better. A threat has the physiological impact that lasts a long time. Chronic load, weakens and undermines are health.

<--THREAT--THREAT---Threat-Challenge--CHALLENGE---CHALLENGE--->

As you can see, there is a sliding scale. Not everything is a massive threat or massive challenge. There will always be a scale involved.

Lets look at the physiology differences between the two and why they have such a different outcome on our health.

A challenge will stimulate something called the SAM pathway. Sympathetic adrenal medullary. SAM will have different hormone production depending on if its more a mental challenge or physical. Mental tasks, will stimulate adrenaline. This will cause an uptake of the brains use of glucose. It will prompt the liver to produce glucose and will increase heart rate to drive more glucose to the brain.

A physical challenge will dictate more of the hormone noradrenaline. This drives fatty acids into the blood stream so the muscles can use this for energy and uses an increase in blood pressure as the method of choice.

The primary driver for this is the neural system. This allows for the SAM to be shut down very quickly. The half life of released adrenaline and noradrenaline is 2 min. This means it is fairly quickly out your system. This is important.

A threat is very different. It will start with SAM and then go to what is called the Pituitary Adrenal Cortical system. (PAC). PAC rolls in around 20 min later. Some big threats to our human psyche are social embarrassment, shame and biggest of all, a sense of loss of control.

The PAC will ultimately cause the hormone corticotropin releasing hormone and cortisol to come into play. The hypothalamus release the CRH, CRH ultimately causes cortisol to be released. If the cortisol gets to high, receptors in the hypothalamus detect the high levels and stop CRH from being released. Thus ending the cycle. (Hopefully).

If we continue to experience threats this keeps going.

Cortisol will cause the release of fatty acids into the blood stream. A source of fuel that the brain can not use. It has a role in limiting inflammation. It can play a role in breaking down protein, which will ultimately lead to muscle loss to secure enough glucose for brains fuel. PAC and cortisol will be also involved when you diet or are in a fasted state.

Cortisol will also dampen the effectiveness of insulin. More and more insulin requirements can lead to Type 2 diabetes. Long lasting cortisol can have some immune suppression and digestive issues.

Not all is bad. It's the dosage. Low levels will cause some good things to happen including helping noradrenaline with brain arousal. It can help with dopamine release to deal with the threat that started the PAC cycle. The downside is that it can by a few physiological steps to get the amygdala to create anxiety and stress.

Why have we evolved these cortisol receptors in the hypothalamus and brain? Good question...the body is pretty cool. Moderate levels of cortisol help to consolidate memories. Thus we are learning what to do with a threat and how to cope. Low levels and high levels do not trigger or help consolidate memories. High levels, essentially panic, do not do well with learning.

Physical activity doesn't help with the threat that would usually would trigger the PAC pathway, but not doing physical activity has big downsides. The body just released a bunch of fatty acids into your bloodstream. If it stays there and isn't used in exercise it can contribute to plaque forming in the arteries. Also, letting negative emotions linger can potentially cause the PAC pathway to keep running. With a half life of 90 min, it is already lingering in a sense. Remember the SAM pathway half life was 2 min. This also gets worse the older we get.

You can have SAM and PAC together. Overall SAM increases heart rate or cardiac output. PAC causes blood pressure elevation without the cardiac output. Thus challenge can increase CO, but threats increase BP.

We know now that PAC arousal has been shown to increase tension and anxiety and puts you into a fear state quicker. SAM arousal may enhance a positive or negative state. This is crucial. SAM pathway can be thought of an enhancer of what every cognitive state you bring to the situation.

What are some takeaways we can implement?

Exercise when you don't feel like it. Exercise is SAM neutral, but can limit health risks that can accompany PAC. Try to see activities as challenges. Even if I fail, I learn. Mindset. Stop self focused behavior. Essentially when we have a negative thought we create self focused thinking. This interferes with learning and for performing tasks. I recently watched Thug Rose win her UFC title belt fight. Before the fight, you can hear her saying loud "I'm the best," over and over. Creating positive emotion to a task at hand.

These are essentially my notes for a few chapters of the book, "Building Resistance to Stress and Aging."

My Thoughts on Building Your Home Gym

2021-01-28T22:09:00.000-05:00

The last year saw a huge increase in the people starting a home gym. As someone that owns a gym and also has a decent amount of home equipment, I thought I would go from a slightly different angle if I had to start from scratch.

First, I'm writing for someone that wants to get strong, but not compete in the sport of powerlifting, olympic lifting or bodybuilding. 2nd, I'm writing for someone that doesn't have an unlimited budget, so choices will be made. 3rd, space is considered. These are the 3 criterium. If one of the three doesn't meet the filters you have for yourself then the list becomes less important.

Right off the bat, lets get the elephant out of the room. I am not going to list a barbell or a squat rack/power rack. Here are my reasons. I'm not enamored with barbell back squatting/front squatting or barbell deadlifting anymore. I don't practice olympic lifting. If you want to do these things, that is great, but just realize you don't need them to get strong and stay healthy. In fact, if you want to stay healthy, I'd advise, the average person against them anyways. If you want to invest in a high quality barbell that is an investment. A good one will run a minimum of 300 dollars. I'd go so far as to point you at Chris Duffins Kabuki Transformer bar at around 700 dollars for staying healthy and getting strong and its versatility. If money was not a concern, I would consider it at the top of my list. But if you get a barbell, you must get a squat/power rack. Again, minimum 300 dollars. (for the cheapest I can find). Also, a squat rack takes up space. Even the ones that fold flat into the wall. It's still there. A barbell often means you will most likely get a bench. Even a bench from ACME will run you a 100 dollars. Olympic lifting requires bumper plates. Very expensive when comparing to metal. But this isn't a list of why nots...lets get into what I would get.

Trap Bar with High Handles. With no moving parts, a trap bar is essentially a solid piece of metal. Nothing fancy. It combines the best of both worlds a squat and a deadlift. Depending on the set up and shin angles, I can make the trap bar more "squatty" or more of a "deadlift." With the center of mass at your sides instead of in front, technique is so much easier to learn. This translates into less back injury risk. I can teach someone good form in the trap bar in around 5 min. You are constantly working on your technique for a convential/sumo deadlift and front/back squats. Remember powerlifting is a sport. Research has shown you can develop more power using a trap bar then a conventional barbell.

The trap bar can also be used for Romanian deadlifts. Bent over rows. If you have room, farmers carries. The handles make a nice handle for elevated push ups. Jumping squats. I've even put the end of the trap bar in a corner and did a slightly modified landmine press.

Best of all it's like 130 dollars.

Metal weight plates. Actual weights are at a premium right now, but they can still be had. While I love lifting with bumper plates, less jarring. You can't beat the price of metal. 4x45, 2x25, 2x10 2x5 are what we are trying to get to. Since most trap bars are 55 pounds. This weight all loaded up would be 315. Even if you have a 500lb deadlift. 315 pounds for reps will keep you significantly strong. Remember, you can always add more weight as you go and or get stronger.

Cost is significant right now at around 2 dollars a pound. Precovid 50 scents a pound would be a standard for a craigslist of play it again sports. These are the times.

Heavy Bands. Bands are some of the most versatile pieces of home equipment you can purchase. Purchase from a reputable company like Rogue or EliteFTS. I still have bands from EliteFTS from a decade ago. I have baught cheaper bands that have broke with in a year. These bands are 41" in length. Get a 2" wide, 1.5" wide, a 1" wide and a 1/2" wide. The number of different exercises you can do with bands are to numerous to list. Bands also allow you to overload or add resistance to something like a trap bar if you can't find enough metal weight plates for your liking. 80 dollars.

Wooden Box. A box that is 20x24x30" is pretty versatile. Step ups of various heights. Seated movements. Bench. Sled on carpet. All kinds of body weight movements. Can attach bands around it for leg variations. If you can find a craftsman to build one for you, probably under 50 dollars. Online about 120 dollars.

PVC Pipes. 2 six foot poles can create an imaginative way to stretch or do mobility style movements. You can attach bands to the PVC to recreate additional ways to lift. 10 dollars.

Foam Roller. Outside of being able to roll out quads, calfs and upper back. Can do some calf/hamstring exercises and ab exercises. Can replace the ab wheel. 10 dollars.

Back Pack: This becomes an easy way to add weight to body weight movements. It can serve as a makeshift kettlebell with great results. Can be used for Rucking. Fill it with bags of sand or pea gravel. Can easily make a bag from 10-60 pounds.

BONUS: This is more thoughts on cardio. If you hate it, but know you need it, look for a fan bike. Some deals on craigslist can still be had. A brand new one runs 650 dollars. A friend just sold an old one for 150. It can be max effort work with no joint risk. It can slow and steady. Very versatile for the price. Another option is to drop a few hundred buck for a bike trainer and use your own bike or buy a bike. So you have a bike, but also have a way to use it inside. Food for thought. Running is free. Stair sprints, hills sprints, free. Jump rope, simple.

The body doesn't understand the tool. It understands force and load. It can be a metal rusty weight, a bag of sand, an Olympic Standard Bumper plate, it all has the same effect when used well. Even if you belong to a gym, it is always a good idea to have something around for the days when time is limited or you can't make a class. Having 20 min can still do some great work. Once you have your gym, you will realize what a great investment it is.

The Value of Water

2021-01-08T10:38:00.000-05:00

It is funny how questions can stir memories. My daughter saw a picture of a lady carrying water on her head the other day. She asked what she was doing. I explained she had to walk several miles to get water for her day, perhaps she had to do this several times, every day. The look of incomprehension, like I had just told her some people have wings. Explaining the situation further, there was still disbelief. Water is everywhere and its free.

My first memory of water was drinking from the water hose during the summer after running around in the woods. After just a few seconds, it would become the coldest water I have ever tasted. Colder in my memory then even the fresh Icelandic water I drank from the rivers doing the bike race The RIFT.

Every morning, I get up and put my glass on the fridge and filtered cold water spurts out. It can give you ice as well. We all probably have some sore of childhood "success" ideas. Something that represents success to you back then, that almost seems silly now. "Riches" This style fridge was another memory that the water brought back. As a kid, I must have seen it and thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. I didn't own one or live in a place with one till the house I live in now. But I can remember thinking this represented making it...lol

Growing up with the ice cube trays and thinking about rationing the ice during the summer. Later in life, filtering water in a water pitcher. Now, it is simply there with the push of a button, endless supply. In a way, the ease of use and supply has created a devaluing of this precious item.

I think I have sometimes subconsciously packed less water on some longer bike rides on purpose. To feel the thirst. To have the thoughts of rationing the water. To feel the dry mouth and desire for that next ice cold water. The ordinary becoming extraordinary again.

Most of us, will never need to worry about water. If you are reading this, probably 100% true. The thing is, we are still discovering things about water. Ever hear of the fourth phase of water? Gerald Pollocks work on this is fascinating. E-Z water is its name, exclusion zone.

Reading the book "Ghost Map" it was the first time science was used to solve the mystery of cholera. Most sickness was thought to be from "miasma" or bad air. Why well off/rich people chose to live on hills and why poor people lived in the lower ground. An earlier book I read "The Mosquito" talked about bad air and malaria being discovered through mosquitos. Ghost map, shows the evolution of thought of bad air, to the confirmation of the cholera bacterium carried in contaminated water.

This defining moment in the late 1800's showed the importance of clean water for health. Clean water eliminates so much sickness and disease. We are going on close to 150 years of realizing clean water is a keystone for health. Yet, clean water is still lacking in many places. It is estimated a few thousand young kids die every day from it's lack. The numbers are so large, they lack impact anymore. 3.5 million a year. 2.2 million are kids. Every year...every year....every year.

Every morning now I say a small thank you when I push that glass into my fridge and get that clean filtered water. It is one of the healthiest things we can do for our bodies. Win the low hanging fruit battles for your health. Don't let the easy get devalued.

..................................................

One of the organizations I started supporting was Charity:water. 100% of funds goes to actual clean water projects. Organizational fees/salaries are funded by donors. This means the dollars you give go towards actual people without clean water.

Worth while video watch of the Charity/Water. The Spring: Charity water story.

The Secret to Solving Cramping...For Me

2020-09-01T21:20:00.000-04:00

Cramping in the sporting world is a tricky subject. There are several theories that never panned out. Classic dehydration and the drink more water camp. Electrolytes, drink my gatorade camp. Muscles are tight, stretch more camp. The inability to have proper neuromuscular coordination, ie...the fatigue camp. There have been some interesting tests and studies done with ascetic acid. For example, having a cramp in a laboratory setting and then placing ascetic acid under the tongue and the cramp goes away. The subject does not even ingest the ascetic acid.

(Weirdly, as a life long cramper, I have always likedascetic acid foods. Pickles, vinegar, mustard, kombucha) Is this what they talk about when your body instinctually seeks what it it lacking?)

I've tried lots of products over the years, from salt tablets, hot shot and nothing ever really seemed to be the silver bullet. Some would potentially stop the I can't move and I'm stuck on the side of hill for 15 minutes cramps, but when activity was reengaged, the camps would come back just as hard and just as debilitating.

If you are someone that cramps, you know how even training for a race can feel self defeating. If you are "in shape" but you know a cramp will probably be the limiting factor.

Three years ago I started biking more. I've been drawn to the endurance world, as much for the enjoyment of the bike as well as the ability to see training and physiology at work. Not to mention, getting to explore far away nooks and crannies of your world.

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I'm a big believer in the research of Dr. Stephen Seiler. His polarized training approach consisting of 80-85% of your training is easy rides, with only 10 percent being hard interval style approach. Stay away from the middle zone where no adaptations are occurring.

Looking back on the training with anything in my past was always middle or high. Nothing low and easy. So I started just riding my bike easy and longer, a lot longer. 90 minute rides used to be tiring and feeling like I'm packing for an adventure to the wilderness. Now 3 hour rides feel chill, let me grab a water bottle or two.

It took a few years of this to notice changes. But, eventually I did. A few weeks ago I rode 60ish miles of mountain bike trails over 6 hours with almost 6k of elevation gain. Something that even two years ago would have put my quads and calfs into a cramping vice. (my normal biking for feeling cramps was 2 hours, 1 hour 30 min if I was racing)

A few months ago, I discovered the work of Evan Peikon. A scientist that specialize with oxygen usage in sport and athletics. I will dumb down the key take aways that started to make sense of cramping ...for me. I am what is considered an occluder. My muscles and physiology occlude very well. This means I respond to weight lifting very well. I get less oxygen to my tissue, the pump comes faster and harder and the metabolic stress is high. My muscles grow. I responded to weight lifting much quicker then my friends in high school. I gravitated towards fast, power sports. Sprints, football, rugby, bobsled. The first time I pushed a bobsled, it felt natural. The 4 seconds of work, followed by full recovery, was literally what my body was built to do. I'm not sure how accurate the genetic profiling is, but the one I did years ago showed 72% fast twitch and 28% slow twitch. No idea if this is viable information. But, it just confirmed what I knew at 10 years old. My body didn't like sustained work.

There are non occluders, people that muscles seem to just process the work load easier. They have more oxygen to use, they don't pump up as much. They get rid of the metabolic waste faster and more efficient. They can lift for years, and you might not be able to tell, but put them on an aerobic machine and they can keep a sustained work load.

Things started to click. I can remember training a national champion mountain biker and doing some dumbell press. 20lb did 15 reps easy. We bump to 25 and literally she gets burried. Go back to the 20's and she proceeds to rep out 25 reps.

Occluders vs Non Occluders. This research was done with Moxy units and NIRS. They show how at 60% workload produce drastic different results in different athletes, you can even have different bodyparts so you could have occlusion in your thighs, but not you calves. If you stop to think about it, this is adaptation. This is why you train.

The long easy hours, the majority of the training according to Stephen Seiler is to produce a larger base. Elite athletes don't do harder workouts as they get better, they do more easy volume. This is all documented from running, cycling, xc skiing, and rowing.

What is happening with this work? Adaptations. A larger heart, capable of pumping more blood per stroke. Increased capillary density. You grow more capillaries. More blood vessels. You are creating the ability to get more blood and oxygen to your tissue. Your becoming a better non occluder.

I once had a strength coach say, cramping was the lack of training for the event and situation you find yourself in. That was it. Pretty simple. I believe it is true.

I once heard a pro cyclist answer how do I get better at cycling, or what kind of training did he do to get to the level he was at. He responded with perhaps one of the most brutal, but honest pro tips ever. 20 hours a week on the bike for ten years.

I've spent about 450 hours of easy riding, longer rides etc. in the last 3 years to get to the point where I can confidently race a 2 hour ride and not cramp or go ride 5-6 hours of relaxed effort and still feel good. (That is not even that much in the cycling world) It was a long slow build up to this workload for me. It was forced design to not do medium work. The wasted zone. But, I believe this is what it took to build up the adaptations needed to ride hard and not feel the dreaded muscular spasm.

So, if you are a cramper, I don't have a shortcut for you or a magic supplement to take, I do offer an N=1 roadmap. Take a few years and see if it works for you. I believe it will. The body is a remarkable adaptable organism. We just have to give it the right signals, hour after hour, week after week.

Why Is Sport Important?

2020-05-03T10:01:00.000-04:00

"Nature had spontaneously thrown up rare freaks-precisely the mechanism that Darwin had proposed as an evolution's first step. Darwin had called the variant "sports," implying a streak of capricious whimsy in the natural world. De Vries chose a more serious-sounding word. He called them mutants-from the Latin word for "change."

From THE GENE

It is a strange time we find ourselves currently in. The coronavirus pandemic. Lives have been lost, lives will be lost, jobs have been lost, jobs will be lost. Politicians and media, continue to ramp up their confusion and fear, looking for ways to gain advantage over each other, looks for ways to gain advantage over us.

It seems almost frivolous to talk about sport. Almost seems, ugly.

But, for a second, forget the idea of what comes to mind when you think of it. Forget the million dollar contracts, forget the athlete complaining about their money, forget the price of the tickets, forget the price of a beer, forget the travel, forget the cost, forget the business of sport.

Remember the sport. Remember the feeling of lacing up your shoes. Remember the huddle. Remember the voices. Remember the exhaustion. Remember the pain of losing. Remember the joy of winning. Remember the aha moment, when you figured it out. The first time you hit a ball, the first time you cleared the hurdle, beat a time, beat the rival, made the climb. Remember the first time you decided to stay until you could do it, and did it.

Kids turn everything into a game. How fast did I do it in? Make it harder. Race me. Everything from learning is through play. Play is sport. It drives development. We have within us some form of need to feel and see improvement. We love to see, five seconds faster up the hill, five more reps, five more pounds on the bar. Kids will be excited when they climb higher in the tree, a first cartwheel, biked up the hill finally, or figured out how to jump rope.

We are born with a need for tribes. Define your tribe. Family, church, gym, profession, school, team....
We dress the part, so people know. So we feel a part of, instead of apart from. That is sport.

Sport at it's heart has always shown us the possibilities of us. If you ever watched MJ or Steph and then went and shot baskets, knowing you could never be "that" but you could get better. That is sport.

If you ever watched Ritz, Mebb or Alyson race and run and then went and laced up your shoes, knowing you will never be that fast, but you can get better. That is sport.

If you know your Fran time, because you know what the best in the world do. That is sport.

My dad was watching an old football game from the late 70's, reshown on Classic ESPN. Two major rivals that at the time, the two best college football teams in American. He was watching them, because during this time, there was nothing else on. He told me he turned it off. They were so small and slow, the play was so unimaginative. He said it's not even the same sport. He spoke the truth.

Kids were watching the football in the 70's were awestruck by the skill and athleticism they saw. Those kids became the football starts of the 80's and they inspired the kids of the 90's. Those kids inspired the kids of the 00's and so on and so on. The game changed, because the kids changed. The kids changed, because they knew they could.

People find comfort in sports. It brings them together. For no other reason, perhaps it gives you an excuse to stop by and say hi while you watch a bit of a game. It gives a reason to meet up with friends and family. To show up and cheer on a family member or friend.

To forget the connection from sport to us, is to suspend the jump from present to future. Who is going to show us the "oh man how did he do that." Where will get the crazy comebacks. When will we have the "she's insane" moments. How will we get the friend updates about finishing a race or event that seems crazy.

Those things matter, because they seep into our thoughts streams. They let us know, a one handed catch is possible, they let us know a human can run 2:05 marathon, a human can bike 350 miles, a human can race 100 miles, you can be on the verge of defeat and claw your way back. Those things do shape us.

Sports at it's spirit drives change. Change is needed for growth. Without growth, there is decay. A slow decay, is decay none the less. So, remember sport, why you first felt what you did way back then. Lace up your shoes, clip onto your bike, grab the clubs, grab the racket, grab the glove. Climb the tree, then climb it faster. Learn a new move, practice until it hurts. Practice until it doesn't.

Change.

Virus Season: Have a Plan

2020-03-08T23:25:00.000-04:00

Last October, I got sick with the apparent flu for the first time I could remember. Knocked me out cold for 3 plus days. Losing 14lbs and wondering about the history of the flu. What preventative measures has been learned about Influenza aka the Flu.

I came across a guy named Dr. Alex Vasquez, among others, that has really shaped my views and some of my current "best" practices. With the current world wide coronavirus or Covid-19 scare, now is good time to write down what I think is a game plan.

First order, control what you can, try not to worry about the rest.

Understand that contracting a virus has Five steps. These five steps can be influenced.

1. Acquisition: Exposure, Penetration. Penetration is often ignored. (no drug exists to influence this process.) This is metabolism and nutrition.

2. Replication. It will start to grow exponentially from my understanding.

3. Immunity: immune response at the cellular level. This is your body mounting an attack.

4. Systemic Consequences: Cellular and systemic consequences. (cell support) What does the virus do to you.

5. Resolution. This is self directed. Homeostasis. You are hopefully all better.

Knowing the 4 steps that leads to the 5th, or resolution, you can do your best to address each one.

1. Barrier defense, sanitation and neutralize particles. The number one best practical solution is hand washing with soap. Why soap? Soap has the ability to break the cell membrane of the virus, it basically then spills out and ceases to be. This takes time though, hence the 20 seconds. If soap isn't available, there needs to be an alcohol solution of 60% or greater.

Cover all sneezes and coughs in your elbow. A sneeze has the ability to travel. The smaller version of Covid 19 can cover up to 30 feet. The larger one, 7. The flu particles can linger in the air up to 8 minutes. I have not heard about the coronavirus. I'd assume similar.

2. Inhibition of replication. This will be a nutritional step. As I will write later. Nutrition isn't a drug that targets one thing. Solid nutrition will have carryover effects on many of the steps.

3. Immune response. Optimize immune response and remain balanced. It takes energy, nutrients and hydration to mount a strong response and fight an infection.

4. Protection and recuperation. Need to protect Mitochondria. Mitochondria play a key role in modulating viral replication. They are also damaged by viral infections. So it's a negative feedback loop when it isn't addressed.

These are the supplements that seem to have some really good research. I highlighted in bold the ones I think are the most important.

NAC. N-acetyl Cysteine. This is the supplemental form of cysteine. 1200-1800 for prevention. 2g-4800 grams if you are fighting something. There are some really great research on this supplement in preventing and fighting a virus.

Basic minerals for enhancement of the NAC

Glycine 3-9 grams ( I take this in the form of collagen)

Glutamine 6-27 grams

Selenium 200-800 mpg (perhaps just eat a few brazil nuts)

Riboflavin 50-400mg

Niacin 50-1500mg

Magnesium 600mg

coq10 50-300

Vitamin D 4000plus

Vitamin A. use cautiously and for short time, as this can become toxic.

Zinc 25-50 mg day for limited time ( a limited time because this requires copper )

Melatonin 3-6mg

Whey 10-30 grams.

Vitamin C 2-5 grams

Mushrooms also have some really interesting research behind them. Reis

hi, Chaga, Turkey Tail. All can be immune modulators. Paul Stamets has written the book on bringing this back to the public. It is something I think can be a huge part of the prevention strategy.

I recently came across a study that showed children that drank more green tea then their classmates were less likely to get influenza.

One of the big differences between influenza and coronavirus is the incubation period. It apparently seems the flu is 1-2 days. Coronavirus is 5-7. This in itself is a big problem. Covid 19 doesn't seem to pose a big risk for kids. The hardest hit seem to be elderly that are fighting something like cardiovascular disease or diabetes.

So far, this is what I've been doing and what I have found out. Hope this helps bring some more clarity to your own game plan.

Flesh and Bone

2020-02-27T16:11:00.000-05:00

Why do we have a body?

“In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these means, man can attain perfection.” PLATO

Why is physical health linked to mental health?

"Why even in the process of thinking and not using our body, it is a matter of common knowledge that grave mistakes may often be traced to bad health. And because the body is in a bad condition loss of memory, depression and discontent often attack the mind so violently as to drive out whatever knowledge it contains." SOCRATES

Aerobic exercise leads to brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Think of it as top soil for the brain. It grows a healthy brain.

Why does nature, a physical thing, restore us?

“Nature itself is the best physician.” – Hippocrates

Our bodies increase in it's efficiency, the more it's used. There is no saving it. It gets better with use. This in fact reinforces the idea of use this physical thing. Do not save your heart beats.

We are programmed from birth to crave physical touch. Babies that are denied it, will have emotional problems. One of the most powerful drugs in the world is Oxytocin. It is secreted from the first time a baby feeds from the mothers breasts. It is often called the cuddle hormone because it is released from hugging and emotional touch.

The body gets stronger when its used against gravity. The bones and muscles respond to the presence and usage, by getting more resilient. Can you think of another "Thing" that improves the more it is used?

Our bodies are hardwired to have positive feedback loop of satisfaction and enjoyment from its use. Ever hear of the Endocannabinoid system? It has receptors in every part of the body and brain. One of the signals from physical exercise is anandamide. It rises and crosses the blood brain barrier along with potential a few other neurochemicals that creates euphoria. Runners High!

Why does sunlight have such a magnificent effect on our health? We were meant to be in nature. Divorcing our bodies from nature into self made metal structures is against nature. The farther we get away from nature, the more health issues arise. Physical beings in a physical world.

Study after study shows how simple things like walking in the woods, which now has a fancy name called "forest bathing" does for us. How sticking our hands in soil, i.e. gardening, produces positive outcomes in our gut bacteria. How sunlight on our eyes in the morning sets our circadian rhythm and will positive effects our our metabolism.

Sometimes I wonder if manual therapy works because it's just another human touching another human with good intentions. Sometimes I wonder if foam rolling and body tempering helps, because deep physical pressure just feels good at an inmate level.

Maybe our bodies need a certain amount of touch and compression. My kids want hard hugs, they want to tumble and roll, they want piggyback rides, they crave touch.

Everyone has experience the feeling of complete tiredness. Energy is low. Move the body, make the muscles contract and relax, breath. Energy is improving. Move a little more, breath a little harder. Wow, my energy is back. Why would exerting energy in a low energy state give us more energy?

"Do you not know your bodies are temples...therefore honor God with your bodies."

I don't think it is coincidence that our minds and mental health are showing signs of anxiety and less health the more screen time and social media kids are exposed to. Again, we are taking away a natural thing of physical involvement in the world, with secluded, sedentary, FOMO idea.

Play. Play is simple bodily interactions in the physical world in a manner that creates enjoyment. It definitely creates a learning environment. Lack of Play leads to not only under development of the body, but the mind. Cutting recess isn't such a good idea when you realize the body leads to mental growth.

Everywhere we look, from examination of the outside worlds influence on our physical selves, to our physical self interactions with the world, the human body and mind were meant to engage.

We were not designed to wear out. Our physiology improves with stress. Enjoy the contraction of the muscle, the beat of the heart, the deep breath of air that comes from rest, the gasp of air that comes from exertion and the deep body ache from exertion.

Biking As An Excuse Breaker

2019-11-08T09:05:00.000-05:00

The bike was always freedom and adventure for me. As a kid I would ride miles to a hobby shop to buy items I was interested in, from models, to army figurines. It allowed me to visit "far" places without relying on someone else to get me there.

Later, it allowed me to get in an extra conditions tool. Riding it to football weight lifting practice in the summer. I would eventually get an old map and try to make a loop in the back roads of Jackson. I think I even got in a "long" ride of 20ish miles! An old ROSS steel ten speed, was my partner. On those rides, I eventually got a bike computer and had a lot of hubris in knowing I was going 16-17 miles an hour. My first time time I payed attention to Bike Magazine and saw the Tour De France riders averaged in the upper 20mph and low 30 mph, my ego was blown away. What! How is this possible!

I learned about bigger rings and drafting in the peloton. But still, man that was fast. I was not.

I did my first bike race around 30 miles in Fenton, Michigan. Tour de Lacs. I thought I would do OK, because you know I rode my bike a bit and I was in football shape. I sucked. I remember watching a slightly over weight lady ride away from me up a hill. My ego took another hit. There was a lot of fast people out there, I was not one of them.

My friend took me mountain biking for the first time at 18. I was blown away by the ability to ride your bike in the woods. I spent most of my childhood running around the woods, exploring, building forts, climbing trees. Combining two of my favorite things was magical.

I rode on and off through various sports but never serious, just for fun. A lap here, a lap there. Weekend rider with an hour of trail when I had the time.

When I moved to Grand Rapids, I started riding a bit more. I'd try to rip a lap and see how fast I could get. One of my first friends was a National Champion Mountain biker. I'd ask her what a fast lap at the course I had thought I had just dominated. After realizing I was like 15 min slower then her best time, my ego took a hit. Even though she was "Endurance" she was fast. I was not.

Over the years, I'd ride more and more. Still not fast, but it confronted several ego driven beliefs. I was to big to be fast. I would then be passed by much larger individuals. Ah, my bike is no where as good as theirs. Then I would be passed by a guy on a 3 speed beach cruiser. I'm a lot older, as I get passed by clearly a man in his 60's. I have kids and then finding someone that can only ride from 9-11pm at night because he puts his kids to bed and he competes against pro's. My tires are wider, and then get passed by a fat bike.

Biking has obliterated all excuses. It points back to simply one thing. Did you put in the time and effort. The more you commit and ride, the faster you get. You can't buy speed. You can be fast at any age. You can be fast at any gender. You can be fast on any bike. It's all on you. The more you train the faster you get.

Biking has always been adventure and freedom. It has always been a great way to improve fitness. It's always been able to show me magical places. It now has been a way to show me my excuses aren't valid.

....I still am not fast.

...but I am faster then last year.

...and maybe I'll be faster the coming year.

But, if I'm not, it's not because of any of the excuses that have been demolished, it simply will be because I didn't do the one simple thing, ride my bike more.