Move Aware.

I’m hungry.

After reading about Eat Stop Eat on Stronglifts.com, I decided to try Intermittent Fasting over the summer, starting today. Twice a week I’ll go a full 24 hours without eating. The following things are supposed to happen as a result:

• increase in growth hormone
• 25% (actually 2/7 = 28%) drop in calories and money spent on food
• increased metabolism
• increased lifespan due to caloric restriction
• loss of 1-2 lbs of fat per week
• maintenance of muscle tissue due to regular strength training

I’ve been afraid to be hungry in the past, fearing the “starvation response.” I thought every time I was hungry it meant my body was breaking down muscle tissue. According to Eat Stop Eat, which references several studies — admittedly none of which I have yet verified — this is not true. I’ll find out for myself over the next few weeks as I continue to monitor my weight and body fat percentage.

My current fast began at 6:00 PM today. I’m 3 hours in, and I’m hungry. Fortunately, a lot of this fast will take place while I’m sleeping tonight, but I expect tomorrow to be tough. I’ll also be getting up early and rowing tomorrow morning while fasting, so that could be interesting. On the plus side, I won’t have to take a lunch break tomorrow, spend money on lunch, or worry about what I’m going to eat for breakfast or lunch.

I get to eat again at 6:00 PM tomorrow — and it needs to be a normal dinner, not an overcompensation for being famished. They say the first fast is the hardest. I’m excited about the promise of this method of caloric restriction, and if it works, it may just become my normal mode of operation.

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Abandoned? Nope.

Kind of looked that way, huh? While I haven’t posted here in months, I’ve been doing Stronglifts 5×5 since February and making steady progress. The idea of cross-posting my training log on the Stronglifts forum and here doesn’t really appeal to me, but it won’t hurt to check in from time to time here with milestones and general status updates.

After about 4 months of total time on the program, I’ve had a few setbacks:

• Squats: I was making major form errors and had to drop weight and fix it.
• Shoulder pain: I developed persistent pain in my left shoulder that was pronounced during workouts, but it went away after careful attention to soft tissue work of the rotator cuff and increased strength.
• Inconsistent training schedule: I’ve had maybe two total months of consistent twice- or 3x-weekly workouts. The latest major disruption was the final few weeks of rehearsal and performances of Side by Side by Sondheim, which is now over.

All of these, however, are in the past, and I’ve been progressing steadily, working up momentum to get back on a regular training schedule.

I’ve also started rowing… started only in the sense that I’ve been out in the boat once, but I plan to join regular workouts 2 or 3 times per week on off days from strength training.

Diet is currently the major challenge. For the first few months of SL5X5 I decided that I needed to eat as much protein and as many calories as I could to support strength gains. I have put on some muscle, but a lot of fat has come along with it. My body fat scale currently puts me close to 30%; it was 15% when I first bought it in 2004, although I also weighed less than 150 lbs at that time. My diet for the last few months has consisted of pretty much whatever I wanted to eat at any time, including a lot of high-carb and high-fat meals.

I now have a specific goal for the summer. Since I’ve been cast in South Pacific and need to appear believable as a Marine lieutenant, wearing an A-shirt on stage, I need to lose this gut. Diet and cardio seem to be the consensus solution, and I’ve already worked in a bit of running and cycling, but it needs to be consistent. Regular rowing should help.

If the body fat calculations are correct and the scale is to be believed, I would lose about 20 lbs of fat going from 30% to 20% body fat, if I remained at my current weight of 194. I’ve put on between 5-10 lbs of lean body mass and 4-7 lbs of fat in the 4 months since February (most of the fat and LBM gain came within the first 2 months). For a few weeks it will remain to be seen at what rate I can add muscle and lose fat with the new diet and cardio focus.

I think it would be realistic to lose at least 1 lb of fat per week and gain 1 lb of lean body mass per month, which would make me about 190 at 22% body fat by mid-August when the show opens. It may be possible to lose 2 lbs of fat per week and gain 3 lbs of LBM per month, which would put me closer to 182 lbs at 16%.

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Bodyweight squats are boring.

I just completed Day 3 of Week 3. I could call it taking more than 1 day of rest, but instead I’ll call it what it is: I just didn’t follow the protocol so far. However, I did just complete a workout, and that’s better than giving it up entirely. There’s always a new chance with Week 4 to do it in the prescribed number of days. I was actually surprisingly sore for a day or two after the last workout, several days ago.

162 total squats. It’s really boring to crank out these sets, and that’s only going to get worse as they increase in reps. Leaning more and more toward going back to Stronglifts 5×5 and thinking about setting up whatever apparatus will fit in my garage.

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inertia

The theme for the last few days seems to have been “inertia.” It has taken an awful lot to get anything done…not just exercise, which I’ve managed to blow off for 2 days. I just did Day 2 of 200 Squats, two days late…finishing with 34, the minimum required, because during the last set I began to feel some pain/tightness over my right kneecap.

I had foam rolled my right IT band and my hamstrings on both sides to some degree a little while ago, but it was kind of half-hearted. I think this kneecap pain comes from not having worked on my quads.

137 total squats today. This starts to get boring very quickly, but I’m going to feel like a real turd if I can’t even stick to this minimal strength training regimen.

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That’s a start.

I did the first official day of 200 Squats: column 3, week 3, finishing with 35 for the last set.

Foam rolling my lateral thighs beforehand was pretty painful, but they haven’t had much attention for some time, so I expected that. I’ll have to gradually work in a sort of warmup routine and some stretching after the squats.

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Two Hundred Squats?

Two hundred squats.

I overheard a coworker talking about this program the other day. I was already familiar with the One Hundred Pushups program, which I half-heartedly began and never followed through. Wow, nearly a year has passed since my last post, when I announced I’d be doing the pushups program.

This one, though…I need to do this. I need to get back into a regular strength training regimen, and this is a way I can start something for which I have no excuse not to stick to…I don’t have to leave home to do it.

During the initial “exhaustion” test I did 60 squats before getting tired/bored, which means I’ll be starting the program on Week 3 in the third column. I could have done more before exhausting myself, but I didn’t want to really overdo it. At some point the program’s difficulty will sync with my strength level anyway. I don’t need to kill myself and be sore for 3 days to know that I need to jump ahead of the first couple weeks of the program.

I kept checking the curvature of my back with my hands to make sure I kept good form. I got nowhere near parallel with my thighs, owing to my hamstring and calf flexibility being the worst it’s ever been. That’s what happens when you don’t exercise for 2 years.

This is the first step toward repairing all of that, though.

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The Hundred Push Ups Training Program

hundredpushups.com

The training program at hundredpushups.com caught my attention, and I chose it as a way to reintroduce myself to strength training after a long hiatus.

I took the initial exhaustion test on Saturday. The 6 pushups I managed to eke out were a little disappointing, but not unexpected. I’ve been completely sedentary for months.

The program prescribes one rest day before beginning the program after the test. I was still pretty sore on Monday, so I didn’t start until Tuesday. It really strikes me how noticeably my very sore and short pectoral muscles oppose my attempts at good posture when I walk around. I had read that the forward head, slumped shoulder posture creates — and is perpetuated by — short pectoral muscles and long scapular retractors, and now I have the uncomfortable proof.

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Learn Anatomy With GetBodySmart

Scott Sheffield has created GetBodySmart, an interactive tool that should help demystify anatomy and the vocabulary used by doctors, physical therapists, and bodyworkers. By the author’s own admission, it’s not yet complete, but what’s there so far could be very useful. It’s free to use. Check it out!

GetBodySmart represents my attempt to create a fully animated and interactive eBook about human anatomy and physiology. The contents and design of this long-term project are based on my 21 years of teaching this material at the university level.

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DIY Knee Rehab

A week ago I had pain in my right knee.  I could feel it any time my knee was flexed past where the angle between my lower leg and thigh was 30 degrees or so, but it was especially painful as the knee flexed more.  The pain was pretty much unbearable if I tried to sit on my ankles to do a Child’s Pose back stretch, for instance.

Over the last week I’ve been deeply massaging the tissue around the lateral area of my right knee and trying to work restrictions out of the muscles that attach near the knee: TFL/IT band, vastus lateralis, biceps femoris, gastrocnemius, peroneals.  That had gradually improved the pain a bit, but today I think I finally found the source of the pain: the popliteus.

The popliteus is a small muscle that originates with a tendon at the lateral distal end of the femur and attaches to the medial side of the tibia.  It’s the muscle that rotates the tibia around the femur to “unlock” the knee from a straight position when you flex the knee.  While I was digging around among the various tendons in the posterior lateral area, I found some tight fibers that seemed to be running diagonally, closer to perpendicular to the tibia rather than parallel as most of the muscles are.  I remembered reading about the popliteus, and a quick glance at the Trigger Point Therapy Workbook and Gray’s Anatomy confirmed that it was probably responsible for the pain.

You have to dig pretty deeply to massage the popliteus, but I found some painful spots and worked to release them.  Instant relief.  It’s still a little bit sore, probably because I haven’t completely eradicated the trigger point(s) and the tissue to which the popliteal tendon attaches might be inflamed from the tension, but at least now I know how to treat it.  This pain had been steadily getting worse for months, and I was worried that I might have damaged the cartilage within my knee and might need some kind of surgery.  Nope.  Soft tissue was responsible, and soft tissue work will fix it.  This boosts my resolve to always try soft tissue work first, since I can do it myself and it costs only a few minutes every once in a while.

My best guess is that movement patterns caused by strength imbalances and lack of ankle and hip mobility had overworked or overstretched the popliteus over time.  There have been occasions where I’ve put my feet up without the back of the knee being supported, and the hyperextension made my knees pretty sore by the time I took my feet down… that could have also played a part.

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Incompetent Yoga Teachers

The subtitle of this article is “Inexperienced teachers and overeager students behind rise in injuries”, and that’s exactly the combination that left me with an injury in my left hamstring that has persisted for almost 3 years now.

I tried out the Beginner class at the Madison Yoga Co-Op back in Oct. or Nov. 2005. The teacher asked me what I was hoping to accomplish with yoga, and I told her that I wanted to increase my lower body flexibility — that my tight hamstrings were a major annoyance for me. The first class or two were about what I had expected: basic yoga poses, some strenuous, some gentle. Then, on what became my last class there, she hurt me.

We were doing a pose facing a wall with the left leg extended in front, right leg extended in back, both knees straight, bending at the hips toward the wall with the torso. I have barely any hip flexion when my knee is straight, and without asking my permission, this teacher “assisted” me by pulling my pelvis away from the wall. My left hamstring was already uncomfortably overstretched, and when she pulled, I felt pain and a popping sensation near the ischial tuberosity. It was the sound and sensation of my left medial hamstring tearing.

My hamstring has never fully recovered. I had persistent pain and reduced ROM for weeks. I finally undertook some physical therapy for it about 9 months later, when it was obvious that the problem wasn’t going to go away on its own. Thankfully, I now know more about soft tissue restrictions as well as my current flexibility limitations… I know how not to overstretch, and I know that stretching with myofascial adhesions present is unproductive and can even be harmful.

It’s too bad the yoga teacher didn’t know that. Too bad for me.

Too bad she didn’t know that it is not appropriate to touch someone in a yoga class without the student’s consent. And it is certainly not appropriate to apply a manipulation like that so quickly that the student doesn’t even have time to react and make it obvious that they are already stretched to their limit. This irresponsible behavior, combined with the fact that I had heard her authoritatively state, during a hamstring stretch, that this particular pose was good for stretching both the back and front of the thigh. A physiological impossibility. I knew that continuing on with this teacher would be neither productive nor safe.

“In my practice, I’ve seen a significant increase in yoga injuries in the past five years,” says orthopedic surgeon Jeffrey Halbrecht, M.D., medical director for the Institute for Arthroscopy and Sports Medicine in San Francisco and a specialist in knee and hip problems. And it’s not only those in the recent wave of newbies who are getting hurt, Dr. Halbrecht says: “I’ve treated more experienced yogis than rookies.”

[...]

No certification or specific training is required before a person is allowed to teach yoga. Yoga Alliance recommends teachers get a bare minimum of 200 hours of training and has built a registry of teachers and schools that meet its standards. But participation is voluntary; teachers can just as easily get certified in weekend or online courses. “If you are a Spinning teacher and you want to tack on yoga, then you can take a two-day training,” Kennedy says. “You may think you are qualified, but that has its challenges.”

These quickie courses teach poses but not necessarily the nuances of proper alignment nor the ideal, noncompetitive mind-set. And they likely won’t train teachers how to suss out previous injuries and medical problems that yoga could worsen. A preexisting arterial tear, often signaled by dizziness and neck pain, puts you at risk for a stroke; leg pain could warn that a bulging disk in the back is putting pressure on your sciatic nerve. If you have undiagnosed glaucoma, you can go blind doing headstands or shoulder stands.

Like the cases in the article above, I was definitely an overzealous student. I was pushing myself. But I never became injured until this yoga teacher laid her hands on me. Her resume in the brochure described several years of training, some of which had been under the tutelage of BKS Iyengar, a huge name in the yoga world. I bought one of his books and was disappointed to see that it was filled with vague anatomical descriptions and pseudoscientific nonsense. It just goes to show that years of experience doesn’t necessarily make a teacher or practitioner competent; they also have to be willing to abandon the dogma within their field when modern clinical evidence refutes it. Yoga teachers ought to know anatomy backward and forward and be aware of conditions that predispose students to injury.

[MSNBC via Eric Cressey's Blog]

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