Recently in Training Category

I had the opportunity yesterday to talk with a group of trainees about what I've learned (so far) from Dr. Stuart McGill's book Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance (3rd Ed.). I used my reading and yesterday's talk to develop the article below. This is my understanding of Dr. McGill's neutral spine awareness exercises and how to apply them on yourself. You probably know someone who hurt their back while picking up a newspaper, getting up from a chair, carrying something, or doing other simple things. If this has happened to you, you can learn to protect your back and increase your chance of avoiding a recurrence. Give yourself permission to practice some posture skills. Posture may seem so basic that it should just happen, and should not require practice. But this is a misconception. Posture is so basic that if it's done wrong in movement it causes injury, and if it's done wrong at rest it aggravates old injuries or creates vulnerability for new ones. In any skill system, the basics are always worth practicing. Find the neutral spine while standing 1. Stand with your weight on both feet. Put your thumbs on your hips and reach behind you with your fingers. Press the fingertips into the vertical muscles alongside the spine in your lower back. These are the lumbar extensors. Are they soft or hard in your normal standing posture? 2. Tilt your hips slightly forward, feeling the lumbar extensor muscles all the while. The butt pokes back and the back slightly arches; this is lumbar extension. You should feel the lumbar extensors harden. 3. Tilt your hips slightly back (pelvis pokes forward). You should feel the lumbar extensors relax and then stretch slightly. This is lumbar flexion. 4. Now adjust, or level, your hips (still feeling the lumbar extensors with your fingers) until you feel the lumbar extensors soften. They are relaxed, and this is the neutral spine position. 5. Without losing the neutral spine, carefully lower your hands to your sides normally and lift your chest. This should be a comfortable standing posture. It spares the lumbar extensors for other tasks and it helps keep your intervertebral discs healthy. Learn to stand this way. How to practice: Whenever you find yourself standing, such as in line, feel the lumbar extensors and relax them, then carefully remove your hands (without changing hip position) and lift your chest. Learn eventually, through practice, to feel your way into this position without using your hands. Ideally it will become your natural stance. Abdominal bracing: maintain the neutral spine during movement 1. Feel your lumbar extensors with your fingers as described above, and find the neutral spine position. 2. Contract your abdominals as if bracing for a punch. Don't suck them in; clench them. Feel the abs harden and stick out a little. Feel the lumbar extensors harden when the abs harden. 3. Contract the abs hard and you have a girdle of support all the way around your spine from back to front. The abs have three layers; contracting them hard makes all the layers stiffen together, for an extra-stiff or solid effect similar to the layered stiffness of plywood. This is the "abdominal brace." You've locked your ribcage to your pelvis, or locked in the neutral spine. 4. Put one hand on your tummy and one hand flat on your lower back, brace your abdominals again, push your butt back to hinge at the hips, and go down into a squat without letting your spine come unlocked. If your spine unlocks, you'll feel it in the hand that is flat on your lower back. Stand up and correct it and try again. Don't worry about hitting a really deep squat position. Go as low as you can without flexing (bending or rounding) your lower back. The goal is to immobilize the spine and pelvis in relation to each other, or "lock the rib cage onto the pelvis." Mobility comes from the hips and legs and not from the back. How to practice: Try holding the neutral spine with the abdominal brace in different positions, such as (1) kneeling, (2) leaning on a wall, (3) on all fours, (4) while leaning down to lift something off of a chair seat, and (5) while picking something up off of the floor. If you're in doubt whether you're in neutral spine position before you start, then put your hands flat on the tummy and back as described above and do a few knee bends with your back straight and your abs braced before you lift anything or move to a new practice position. Use the glutes 1. Contracting the large muscles in your butt contributes to the solidity of the abdominal brace and further protects your spine when you lift (or when you lift yourself up from a low position). 2. While kneeling, get into the neutral spine position and brace your abs. 3. Contract (stiffen) your glutes without moving your hips. Feel the added rigidity throughout your torso. Do this whenever you lift, especially if you lift something from below waist level. How to practice: While holding the neutral spine with the abdominal brace, fold at the hips and knees to squat down. (It's fine to hold onto something for balance.) Stiffen your glutes and then stand up straight. Do this several times to get the feeling for how to add stiffness to your torso while lifting something or lifting yourself.

We're having Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year so I went looking for ideas. Then I noticed I had a funny assortment of reading material. I wonder how many people have both of these magazines on their dining room table. Well, they do both have "Living" in the cover copy. Click the picture if you enjoy magazine covers as much as I do. I like seeing their different strategies to lure you inside.

Last Friday we had a crazy outdoor workout involving the C2 rowers and running around with kettlebells, plus push-ups and kettlebell swings. We had four people on a team. We took turns on the rower. While the person was rowing, the three other team members carried the three kettlebells about 50 meters, did 20 push-ups and 20 kettlebell swings, and carried them back. When all three came back, the next person got on the rower and everybody else did the kettlebell carry, swings, and push-ups. Oh man... I was so defeated! I got off the rower and one of the men on my team went running off carrying two kettlebells, so that I just had to run down to the end, not carry anything. Nice! On the next trip, this same guy grabbed the 24-kilo kettlebell in one hand, the 16 in his other, and told me to hold the 12-kilo one in my left hand and help him carry the 24 with my right. And then he took off running! Wow! About 20 meters in, I had to gasp, "I can't keep up with you!" and let go, and off he went with the 24 and the 16 by himself (that's 88 pounds total) as fast as ever. I was so humbled! And the great thing is he's not a young guy--he's probably my age, wiry, not very large. Very cool! But boy did I feel like a wimp.

I finally got to finish the four-night swimming course that started at the end of October. I missed the scheduled final night because my car broke down. The make-up session was last Thursday. We went over the Total Immersion drills we had learned, and eventually tried them without fins. I was mortified to find my feet sinking and my kick unable to propel me at all! Conventional wisdom says the kick is what propels the swim the most. But Total Immersion says the body is propelled by movement originating in the core, and the body then glides through the water using length and balance for efficiency. Kicking faster or harder just increases the energy expenditure geometrically. So go slow, feel the flow, and don’t tire yourself out with too much kicking and splashing. The instructor told me explicitly that I shouldn’t kick so much—although I had slowed down my typical panicked kicking, I was still kicking too much. She said when I get the balance really in place, the kick will take care of itself. So I decided not to worry at the last class when I couldn’t move through the water without the fins. I would just practice the first three simple drills and focus on balance. Today Tom and I went to the city pool near our house to practice these drills. (He took a Total Immersion class a few years ago.) It was our first time going there and we were nervous about getting the space to practice drills while others were swimming laps. It turned out to be a well-organized arrangement of lanes designated easy, medium, fast, and very fast. Half of the shallow end was cut off with a bulkhead and designated as a play pool. We had a lap lane to ourselves, but eventually I felt we should give it up to real lap swimmers. There were only two kids in each half of the play pool, so we went over there and did our drills going across the pool. It was fun! The drills went well for both of us, and with it being uncrowded, we were able to concentrate. I practiced the first four drills—the back balance, sweet spot, fish, and skate. The best way was for me to do the skate was to always start on back balance, then sweet spot with leading arm, and only then rotate to the skate position. My balance was pretty good. It was just as well my kick propelled me so slowly, because then I could maximize my drills over the width of the pool. During the swim classes, I had used a noseplug because I was so distracted and freaked out about water going in my sinuses. Today I didn’t use it. I was pleasantly surprised to find I had learned how to breathe out slowly and rotate up for a breath without getting much water up the nose and without freaking out about it if I did. After a while I did start to get distracted by it, so I put the noseplug on to make the most of my last few “lengths.” This worked out great. I’m so happy about making progress past my various fears of being in a pool. Originally the basis for most of it was being unable to see. Only last year I learned that goggles would allow me to wear my contact lenses so I wouldn’t have to worry about awkward situations related to not seeing something or someone. And now using the noseplug to help with the breath-holding drills has helped me so much. All I have to do is keep practicing the drills and slowly progressing to the more advanced ones, and eventually I’ll swim. It is a little hard to believe—but CrossFit and guitar lessons have shown me that going through progressions always works if you follow them patiently. It seems to slow you down but saves time and setbacks in the long run. Another fun thing about today’s swim practice was that we got to see the cool stuff they have at this pool—such as a sauna! And a workout area—right by the pool, set back from the edge and roped off. They have lots of dumbbells, a Smith rack, and two Universal machines, one of which has a pull-up bar on it, as well as a good-sized area of rubber mats where you could have space to use the dumbbells or do calisthenics. All while watching people swim. I love it. I have a fantasy of going over there to do a CrossFit workout some night when I don’t make it to the gym. We’ll see.

I've been in a series of Total Immersion-style swimming classes this week. They meet for two hours for four evenings, and tonight is the last one. There are only two students, myself and a guy who already swims (but not Total Immersion style). I never learned to swim properly, but last summer I decided I want to try a sprint triathlon. So there's no more procrastinating on swim lessons. The first thing we did was learn to back-float. No problems there. But as soon as we had to start turning onto the side, putting the face in the water, I wasn't comfortable at all. I could not seem to stop myself from doing a half-swallow to close off my sinuses while holding my breath. This sucked a little water up my nose every time it happened, and sent me reeling to my feet to clear my head. It was frustrating to find myself growing less relaxed in the water instead of more relaxed, as the coach moved on to other drills. She assured me I would get the hang of it, and in the meantime, said I should get a set of noseplugs for the next night. Also on the first night, the coach videotaped us doing our learned method of swimming. She had the camera underwater on a long arm. When we watched the tape, I saw that my body goes at a 45-degree angle with my head out, and my feet kick so fast I look like I'm propelling a tiny-wheeled unicycle. I knew my head was poked up, but I had no idea how vertical I was, and I had never known I was kicking more than will be necessary when I learn to flatten out using this new method. The second night, Tuesday, we worked on aligning the body on its side while the face looks down at the bottom of the pool, with one arm extended, and then switching from one side to the other. I loved the noseplug; I was totally comfortable now that I couldn't get water in my sinuses. I was able to concentrate on whatever the coach wanted the focus point to be. It was a completely different experience from Monday night, thank goodness. Last night was the third of four nights. We put together most of a whole swim stroke and started to practice turning the head to breathe. The first time the coach had us try turning the head to breathe was while we were practicing a position called the Skate, which we'd already learned fairly well. With one arm forward and pointing slightly down, and the head hanging toward that armpit, with the other hand on the front of the thigh ("in the pocket"), we would turn the head to "take a bite of air." After a couple of aborted attempts, I managed to travel the entire length breathing in that way. This was exciting for me, for one thing, because I had never felt so relaxed in a pool for so long at one time, and two, because I was suddenly able to breathe without craning my head up and kicking like crazy. (Kicking like crazy, I found out, along with the previous inability to relax, is what makes be tired and breathless in the water.) Oh, and three, because I had never ever traversed the length of a full-sized pool with any semblance of proper breathing. It really felt like an accomplishment and I need to relish it and give up the old notion that I'd never be able to swim properly and breathe. We then backed off of the breathing and went back to a drill we'd learned the previous day: trading arm positions, from trailing to leading, by pulling the ascending arm up the side of the body and alongside the head, while rotating slightly toward the other side. Then we learned to lift the elbow and drag the fingertips along the surface, putting the hand back into the water and making the body long, narrow, and gliding. The metaphor is that you pierce the water and swim through the hole. I think of it as slithering. When the coach was reasonably satisfied with our alignment, stroke, and rhythm, she had us add the breathing back in. She said, count your arm strokes and get a rhythm: one, two, three, breathe, one, two, three... and on the three, you had to blow out and commit to turning the head to inhale. This worked in that I didn't start coughing, but of course the form fell apart on the rest of the stroke, both for me and for the other guy. We took away the breathing again and ended on a successful note of re-practicing the stroke without the breathing. Well, not so successful for me because the coach is not yet able to get me to connect my arm and hip movements--but I'll get it eventually. Water is an unfamiliar medium and body movements feel harder to keep track of. We have now been through the rest of the drills, so tonight we will spend the time going through them again and putting them all together. I like this method of learning because it has broken down swimming into smaller components than lessons I'd had years ago, and I like that it removes the breathing problem until you're ready to work on it. Until then, breathing is done by rolling onto the back in a previously practiced way. I can now rely on being able to do that instead of kicking upright and treading water to breathe, like I used to do. This is a very long week. Besides the swimming class on four nights, I had the assistant-teaching of the Team Survivor class at the gym on Tuesday night as usual. That's going well and I continue to appreciate how gracious the clients are and how hardworking, as well as how educational it is to work with a great coach like Dave. On Tuesday, I went straight from there to the swim class. As if the busy evenings this week aren't enough, tomorrow and Sunday I'll be in a CrossFit extravaganza all day both days. They call them "certification courses," though in the past they haven't focused on training trainers, but just in training people how to do the workouts properly--handy if you've been doing them on your own in your garage all this time. I'm happy to be going but it's 40 miles away in Puyallup. No sleeping in for me this weekend. I am going to be ready for some down time and some guitar-practicing time if I survive it all.

I've wondered if all the exercising I do with weights and running and jumping is leading me to hip or knee arthritis at the same time as it's making my muscles and heart stronger. Could hard exercise be good for the muscles but bad for the joints? I was happy to read this today in an article about cyclist Floyd Landis and his upcoming hip replacement: "While it may seem as if all that bike riding before and after the accident contributed or even caused Landis' problem, surprisingly, experts say this is not the case. 'Cycling did not wear his hip out. There has never been a scientific study showing that any sport leads to arthritis of any joint. Injury is what leads to arthritis,' says Michael Bronson, MD, chief of joint replacement surgery at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Moreover, he tells WebMD that continuing to ride may have actually helped the problem, allowing Landis to maintain a significant range of motion, which in turn allowed him to function better than if he were a couch potato." I hope this is correct. I know of way too many middle-aged people who have had, or have been told they should have, a hip replacement or two.

Last Thursday our firm had its emergency-drill "walkdown." People were supposed to walk all the way down the stairs from our floor-37 and higher offices to the street. I think about 20 people did it. Last year it was a third of the firm, and I thought that was pathetic, so this year I don't know why they even bothered doing it again. Erika and I walked up again, as we did last year. Last year's times: 6:52 down, 8:28 up. This year: 7:04 down, 7:54 up. Erika passed me in the last five flights and beat me by five seconds. I found that last five flights exhausting, and started to get the feeling I wasn't getting enough air, which I sometimes get when running. I think my time was faster this year because I took the steps two at a time at first, though without running, and because Erika was right with me the whole time. Last year she was behind me a bit more.

Boy, did I feel silly the other day typing "madeleine albright leg press" into Google. But since then, one of my fitness-maniac friends and I have wondered what is really involved in leg-pressing 400 pounds? When we find place with one of those machines--a place that will let us in, that is--will we too be able to press 400? We don't want to be crushed by an older lady. No doubt Madeleine is strong. But our gym coach, who actually earns his living as an engineer, explained the heavy leg press in about five seconds with a drawing like this--this is my version from memory, with added cartoon details: The weight is 400 pounds because of the force of gravity, which pulls it straight down. Lifting it across 45 degrees, while it's prevented by the machine from falling straight down, halves the weight.

To me, this article about an $800 (for one month!) "Detox Cleanse" program only supports the myth that you have to be affluent to eat healthy and exercise. Essentially, what the writer did to lose weight was to substitute healthy food for processed food and sugar (cutting calories at the same time) and to exercise more often than she had been. She lost nine pounds in a month. This might be a little too rapid to maintain if she adds back in some of the draconian cutbacks like chicken and beef. She might regain a few pounds. She didn't say how hard she was working out--"cardio three days a week and yoga or Pilates at least three" as prescribed by the naturopath. Sounds pretty lackluster. Try combining the cardio with weight training for five or ten minutes a day and spend the rest of the time going for a nice walk outside. What else was included for $800? Counseling from a naturopath, support meetings, all supplements, mandatory saunas, a long list of foods to eliminate, a handbook, a recipe book, two "spa treatments," and unlimited exercise classes including yoga and Pilates. To me, the valuable part is the counseling. I think most people who want to accomplish the grindingly difficult task of losing weight need one-on-one help with specific ideas and role-modeling for making changes in their lives. But if a person can find that kind of support, which would not have to come from a professional, that could be half the battle toward long-lasting positive changes. A person with specific ideas and daily tools like a food diary could eat healthy, exercise, and lose weight without supplements and exercise classes. Besides the colossal amount of money for this program, at least two other things scream Yuppie Trap: "naturopath" and "supplements." Naturopathic medicine sounds suspiciously vague, and in any case I think a less expensive type of counselor could help just as much. And supplements bug me because they are marketed in two ways that are both dishonest: one, implying that merely eating a healthy diet and exercising isn't good enough, and two, implying that supplements are a shortcut to health and fitness, the magic pill that lets you avoid the hard work. A third Yuppie Trap Flag is the name "detox cleanse." Feel guilty... feel very guilty... if you've been eating Taco Bell you are not only unclean... you might as well have been freebasing!

In this month's CrossFit Journal, CrossFit founder Greg Glassman writes about his beliefs and experiences in personal fitness training. Three sentences jumped out at me: "I view training as a physical metaphor for habits and attitudes that foster success in all arenas. ... The lessons learned through physical training are unavoidable. ... Perseverance, industry, sacrifice, self-control, integrity, honesty, and commitment are best and easiest learned in the gym." Maybe the third sentence is biased and full of hyperbole--after all, a music teacher could substitute "through musical training" for "in the gym." It's a sort of insert-your-favorite-discipline-here sentence. But I like the physical metaphor and the statement that with good physical training a person will learn about other aspects of herself or himself as well. That has proved true for me in 2005, as I found out that I not only enjoy the unique gym I belong to but that physical strength and skill seem to make me more confident in my personality too. ("Seem" because it could be the other way around, or the confidence could be caused by something else--but "seems" is all I have to go on.) Also in the self-actualization vein, Fred linked to the GoalsGuy, a goals coach who writes about personal mission statements and other goal tools. For lack of time, I didn't read too far into the GoalsGuy. Instead I'm quoting or paraphrasing here some of Fred's favorites--the ones that are the most inspiring to me. Be decisive. "Success is a choice. You must decide what you want, why you want it, and how you plan to achieve it. No one else can, will, or should do that for you." This leads to the idea of a personal mission statement: "A mission statement imprints your values and purposes firmly in your mind so it becomes a part of you instead of something you might have thought about just casually in passing." It seems grandiose to have a personal mission statement, but I think it's a good tool for thinking about the direction of your life. It does take a direction whether you think consciously about it or not, so you might as well choose. The mission statement concept made me think about the most basic values I judge myself by. I realized that three of the four that come to mind off the top of my head relate to maintaining the integrity of a child. My mission statement would involve: (1) Be honest about what I think and believe (though with added adult tact, I hope). (2) Respond with a straight answer to what other people say. (Instead of making a joke, as adults often do, but children don't.) (3) Keep possession of skills and passions I learned as a child, such as art and music, tree-climbing, running, cartwheels and handstands, expressing myself through writing. (4) Do what I say I'll do. Knowing my goals for my behavior is one thing. Meeting them requires another concept the GoalsGuy defines: staying focused. "A close relative to being decisive, but your ability to sustain your focus from beginning to end determines the timing and condition of your outcomes." It doesn't matter if I say those are my priorities. Only actions show what a person's priorities really are. I suppose GoalsGuy is talking about quantifiable goals like finding a certain job or growing a business. My goals are more homespun but focus is important, especially for skills goals like guitar playing.