A Must See: Food Inc.

If you haven't seen the movie Food Inc. yet, do yourself a favor and rent it. It's a pretty amazing movie about the state of the food industry and for that matter the health of America. It's pretty amazing how fast food and the corn industry have transformed the way we eat and for that matter the options we have as consumers.

A few facts that stood out, 50 years ago we spent 9% on healthcare and I believe 26% on food. ( I can't recall the exact numbers off hand, but I think thats close) Today those numbers are exactly reversed! Coincidence?

You vote 3x a day with what you eat and how you spend your dollar.

How is it I can buy a hamburger for a dollar but not an organic apple? Subsidies and consumer demand.

We all know that wild salmon are considered a super food because of all the Omega 3 fatty acids. Grass fed beef has just as much.

To see change to the food system that has been given to us, vote with your money, support your local farmers market, support business's that practice good food habits. Did you know Chipolte uses only naturally raised chicken and pork, no chicken houses or antibiotics.

Watch the movie.

American Medical Association Statement

I spent this last weekend at a nutrition seminar, so I will put some of the highlights I took away from that in the next week or so.

Here was an I opening quote.

"The consumption of sugar and other relatively pure carbohydrates has become so great during recent years that it presents a serious obstacle to the improved nutrition of the general public."

This was from the American Medical Association. Guess what year it was from?...........1942. Yea, that long ago. Makes you wonder on how they lost it's focus.

Working the Extensors of the Hand & Wrist

Here are a few pics of my latest rehab tool. A friend of mine, Ben Town, an ATC who teaches out at Southern Maine University, recommended I start working on the extensors of my hand and wrist so that when I can get into more direct elbow rehab it will be speedier. So a ten gallon bucket and a whole lot of rice and I have a new rehab tool.

It actually makes great sense. If you look back at my post about osteoarthritis, you can see how a muscle imbalance may contribute to osteoarthritis. I spend most of my time doing flexion with my hands, wrist, elbow. My work consists of a lot of hands on manual therapy (Active Release Technique), my hobbies are lifting, bouldering (high intensity finger/hand/wrist flexion) mountain biking (high isometric flexion). My flexors get extreme work/abuse. My extensor do not get much work at all. Hello, muscle imbalance.

So with muscle imbalance leads to muscle tightness leads to alternate Range of Motion (ROM). What you do is plunge your hands into the rice, and open up your hands as wide as possible. It's pretty easy at first, but after about 30 seconds you really start to feel those muscles start to tire out. This will at least start to bring back a little bit more balance between your flexors/extensors of the hand.

Psoas and Calf Relationship

Often times the Psoas, when it gets tight, can lead to a number of body dysfunctions. It plays a huge role in the normal gait cycle. When the thigh is behind the body the foot and ankle are most dorsiflexed. This is the position where the hip flexors and calf are at the most stretched position. So in turn these muscles are under a stretch reflex. This position also allows for the leg to come through easiest. If dorsiflexion isn't achieved you will "trip" over your feet or are forced to slightly recruit the hip flexors to bring your knee higher. Without the dorsiflexion your psoas and other hip flexors will be under constant stretch reflex and as a result will get tighter and tighter. So the solution to this problem is not to strengthen the dorsiflexors, but to stretch the gastroc/soleus complex. Return the ease of range of motion to the calf and it will bring the tone down in the psoas muscle.

Training Zones

You often hear of training zones and heart rate for endurance athletes, max effort work and dynamic effort work in the weight room for strength athletes. High Intensity days, recovery work, maintenance ect... whats all this mean?

Chances are your not doing high intensity anaerobic threshold work or aerobic base work. You fall in the middle. It's what I refer to as comfortably uncomfortable. Your not pushing yourself hard enough to make improvement in your anaerobic threshold, but your not going easy enough to build up your aerobic base. We can talk about heart rate all you want, but it usually comes down to this. Anaerobic threshold work hurts, it hurts a lot. If you've never been a little nervous about a work out, because of the discomfort your about to push yourself through, you've never done anaerobic work. It usually only last a few minutes at a time. In the end you may only do 3-20 minutes of "total work", but it's total pain. If you've never been bored with your workouts, like this seems so easy, you've never done true aerobic base work. It may be spinning for three hours at a pace that seems "ridiculously slow."

In the weight room, your Max Effort work, whether it's 3 rep or 1 rep, is just that, 3 rep or 1 rep. If your doing a 3 rep deadlift ME work, you're not getting a 4th rep. Your dynamic effort work is fast, read that again, fast! Not a lot of weight, but perfect form explosively.

If your not making improvements on the road, on the bike or in the weight room, look at your training, are you spending most of your time being comfortably uncomfortable?

Monday Morning Motivation

A glimpse into Apollo Ohno's Training

This is a great video on a little bit of the training Apollo and his teammates went through in preparation for the Olympics. I was lucky enough to meet him at the Closing Ceremonies.