Overdue Goodbyes

Way back in October, I finally started my own website, WolfStrength.com, and stopped posting here.  But I forgot to mention that little fact here on the blog.   In fact, I forgot all about this blog.  Shame on me, I know.  But a recent event sparked my memory, and better late than never.

So please check out WolfStrength.com and wolfstrength.com/blog for info about me, my business, and updates to my blog.

Adios!

Strength and Barbells: The Foundations of Fitness

Not to toot my own horn, but well, I'm tooting my own horn.  My first published article went live last week on Rip's website, StartingStrength.com.  You can read the article in full at this link - Strength and Barbells: The Foundations of Fitness.

Read it and let me know what you think in the comments.

The Map of Athletic Performance

If you want to understand an awful lot about strength training, including why barbell-based strength training is most appropriate for just about every sport and training application, read this.  It's one of the most thorough, cogent, and plain old correct arguments I've read on the subject.  Just read it.

The Map of Athletic Performance

Getting Stronger

Here's a narcissistic, "look at me!" update to brighten up your Thursday.  Though I've been derailed several times by minor injury recovery, time spent away from equipment, and getting sick twice, I've slowly but steadily continued my linear progress in the squat.  Yesterday I hit 410 for 3 sets of 5.  Video of the third and final set of those squats is below.  My next planned meet is December 1st, where I plan to hit a squat of 500 or more.  It's amazing what you can do when you just add a little more weight each time, instead of doing a myriad of other complex, periodized loading schemes that only slow down progress for a Novice or Intermediate trainee.

Intervals, Ya

I think the evidence has already piled up enough, but here's another data point (thanks to the FIT facebook page) to show that, unless your goal is sustained endurance (training for a marathon, triathlon, half marathon, what-have-you), doing interval training at sufficient intensity is as useful for cardiovascular/respiratory health as the traditional long, slow distance training.  And, not that this article discusses it, but in my opinion much MORE useful as far as the needs of every day fitness adaptations.

For some, this is already a big fat "duh," but I don't think we're quite there yet as far as the general public.  So we still need to shout this from the rooftops till it becomes the "conventional wisdom" as exercise = jogging has for the past 40 years.

Do this

Not this

Organic Food Study

Today's Times reports a meta-analysis on Organic vs Non-Organic food, done by researchers at Stanford.

Their basic conclusion is that there's no significant nutritional advantage to organic food, but there is some superiority in terms of having lower level of pesticides in the food.  However, even non-organic food was almost always below the EPA safety limits.

My real interest is about strength training, not nutrition, but as we make this choice every time we shop for food, I thought it interesting and important enough to write about.

The questions that stick out in my mind after reading this article are:
1. How does the EPA go about setting safety limits for pesticides in food?
2. What are the criteria for a food to be labeled "Organic?"  And would the findings have been different  if the criteria were tighter?
3. Regardless of nutritional content in the food itself, does being organic have an effect on the way the nutrients are absorbed in the body?

I'm sure there are more good questions to ask that I haven't thought of in the past half hour, but those are the three that immediately came to my mind.  And without the answers, I don't think the study or the article can be anything more than one more data point.

Stressed Out? Listen to This!

Is this you?

For anyone out there who has, or knows anyone - friends, family, colleagues - who has a high level of stress that may be affecting their physical, mental, or emotional health, I highly recommend listening to this web-radio show. Good stuff here.

And yes, it IS my mom!

But that's not why I'm posting the link.  I'm posting it because she knows her stuff.  My mom was the second-ever licensed female Athletic Trainer in the state of Illinois.  She worked in rehab/physical therapy and performance training settings for 20+ years at all levels - from collegiate and professional athletes (there are still pictures of members of the 1985 Super Bowl winning Chicago Bears team babysitting my sister and I) to high school, adult recreational, and little league.  She rehabbed fire-fighters and police officers - the ones whose doctors told them would never walk again, or never do ______ again.   They'd send them to Ellie Wolf, hoping for a miracle; more often than not, they got it.  I still remember going in to the clinic with her on days when I pretended to be sick so I didn't have to go to school, and messing around with the police officers or other folks who would tell me things like "I can walk normally again because of your mom," or "The doctors gave up on me, but your mom didn't!"

More recently over the past 10 years, she's focused her practice on Biofeedback and chronic pain care and stress recovery.  She's got a ton of experience and knowledge on the topic, along with some great guests on the show.

I just listened to the first 2 shows - and they're fairly short, good for a podcast download to listen to on your commute to/from work - and I was impressed.   The first show is an introduction to the topic with lots of good material and builds the foundation.  In the second show, special guest Kevin Cronin, a Physical Therapist with over 30 years experience and a specialty in chronic pain care, lends his wisdom and experience to the show's audience.

If you're stressed, or even if you just might be or know someone who is, you can learn a lot of helpful things here to help yourself of your friend/loved one/colleague recover from that stress.

Stress Recovery: Because Stress Management Is Not Enough

Death at NYC's First Ironman

I'm sure some will get offended and lambast me for using a very sad event to make this point, but I am merely reporting facts and then questioning public perception based on those facts.

On Saturday, a man died during the swim portion of NYC's first Ironman.  As the article mentioned, two people died last year during the regular NYC Triathlon, and another in 2008.  Four deaths in the same city's triathlon events in the past four years.

As far as I know, no one has ever died doing a powerlifting or olympic lifting meet*.  Sure there are injuries, as there are in any sports competition, but no one has died.   Certainly not four people at the same city's event in four years.

My point here is NOT that people shouldn't do marathons and triathlons.  They absolutely should, provided they are informed of the risks - and any competition worth the name always has risk.  My point is that the perception of many doctors and the general public is that marathons and triathlons are the epitome of health and fitness, and heavy lifting is unnecessary and dangerous.  If I had a nickel for every person who has told me "My doctor said not to squat because it's bad for my knees" or "My doctor said lifting heavy weights is unnecessary and that I should just do more reps with light weights and do cardio," well, I'd have enough nickels to turn this blogspot into a real website.

So, when the facts say otherwise, why are doctors and the general public so quick to decry squatting and heavy lifting as dangerous, but marathons (which have also been the site of several deaths over the past few years) and triathlons are considered safer, better for you, and the sport of the white collar class?

*Edit: Just a few weeks after I wrote this piece, this happened.  The lifter dropped a bench press attempt on himself and later died as a result of it, even though he appeared not to be seriously hurt immediately thereafter.  This incident raised up a storm of discussion, including lots of people pressing for much more serious safety measures to be taken for all bench press events in PL meets.  While I personally don't believe those are necessary, the outcry is a sign of how absolutely rare these events are.  Whereas at the ironman/marathon events, it seems they happen with much more frequency such that people read the story, file it away under "sad," and move on.

Julia Rhode: Olympic Athlete and My WL Crush

Some of you may remember Julia Rhode from my short post about her back in November, 2011.   At the time, I was highlighting how Julia is an extremely attractive young woman (she was only 22 at the time, now 23) and that her weightlifting helps augment this, not detract from it.  This is appropriate because Julia is definitely one of my weightlifter crushes, though since I met Cheryl Haworth the other week, she's now up there too.

Julia attempts 110kg in the C&J at 3:47:15 in the live-stream replay linked below.
She couldn't quite get up out of the hole on this one. 

Anyway, just a quick update.  Julia competed in London at the 2012 Olympics yesterday, representing her country of Germany in women's weightlifting in the 53kg class.  That's 116.6 lbs or under, for all my fellow Americans out there.  Julia lifted in the B session, so unfortunately her lifts were aired at 5am here in the US on NBC's online streaming of the event.   But don't worry, you can watch the reply here: Women's 53kg and Men's 56kg  Weightlifting B Group. 

She finished with an 85kg Snatch and a 108kg clean and jerk.  That's 187lbs and 238lbs, respectively.  Her total of 193kg was good for 11th in her weight class.  While Julia didn't medal, her tenacity and awesome display of power (I don't care if it was only the 11th best; a 238 clean and jerk while weighing 115lbs is awesome) was once again an inspiration and great example for weightlifters and women everywhere that being strong and powerful does not mean you have to be a man!

Take A Guess...

...How many calories do you think I eat on a daily basis?

2500?  3000??  3500???

And the answer is...drumroll please...

I have no idea!!!

Guess what people - stop obsessing over calories.  Seriously, stop.  First of all, it's the quality of the food you eat, not the quantity that's most important.  Second, unless you're already as strong as you need to be - and I can almost promise that you're not - you should be eating to get stronger, not to see your abzzzzz or be able to pick out your front and medial deltoid separation.

Why do I say this?  Aren't I being biased?   What if someone's goal is merely to look better?

Look, if you want to try to ignore the basic truth in the human body and architecture that "form follows function," then be my guest.  But as in architecture, you ignore this rule at your own peril.  If your goals run towards the aesthetic, I'm willing to accept that - hell, that's a consideration for me too, even though I train for strength and powerlifting.  I'm still just vain enough that I care what I look like.

But I also understand that I will look my best if I train for maximum performance, and appearance is a side-effect of performance.  And if I don't also EAT to support that performance, my performance AND my appearance will suffer.

It is also true that acquiring sufficient strength is MUCH more important to long term goals of performance AND appearance, than the short term goal of having a 6 pack.  Why?   Strength is the single performance variable that most positively effects ALL the others: power, accuracy, agility, speed, endurance, etc etc etc...   Think about what strength is and the logic of this will be self evident.

So getting strong enough is more important for all of your long term fitness endeavors, be they performance and appearance or both, than worrying about your bodyfat or 3-mile run time.   Those things are relatively easy to improve quickly.  

Maybe "easy" isn't the right word - they take a hard effort of either training or eating properly, but if you do so, the adaptations come quickly.  You can lose a shit-ton of fat in 6 weeks, just as you can gain a shit-ton of endurance in 6 weeks.  The processes that allow this to occur are mostly chemical, and thus can get to work quickly right away.

Compare this to building strength.  Other than a rank Novice, you can only build so much strength in 6 weeks.  For a trainee beyond the beginning stage, this might be 2.5-5lbs per week or less.  Because getting stronger is literally an architectural change.  You have to lay down new muscle, bone, tendon, ligament, connective tissue, and your nervous system adapts to be more efficient.  This is a process that takes months and years of accumulated stress and adaptation, stress and adaptation, over and over again.

It is also a process that requires sufficient CALORIES to occur.  If the body is in a catabolic, or even steady, state it does not have the excess material it needs to lay down all this new tissue.  It must be in a caloric excess and anabolic state in order to do so.  So eat, for god's sake!  How much?  MORE!

Now that we know all that, which one is it more important to train regularly and always, and which can you switch to a short term focus on when needed?

I hope you know the answer to that question by now.

So calorie watching when strength training is just an absolute fail in my opinion.  You make sure you're getting a ton of protein, and eat till you're fully satiated with quality foods.  If you're a regular person who has eaten like a normal American till now, you probably have to double or triple your protein intake to make the most of your heavy strength training.  And trade the crap (bread and stuff) for higher quality carbs (though if you're a real Novice who is adding 10-20lbs to your lifts each week, your body is making those structural changes at such a rapid rate that you can and probably should eat plenty of otherwise "bad" carbs too, like bread and pasta).  But you should certainly NOT be watching your calories.