My professional and life work is understanding and studying the fastest, highest, quickest, coldest, hottest, bravest, strongest in human physiology. I study the body in extremes. I study what makes one person able to survive an event and the person next to him perish. Strong brave men get hazardous duty pay to spend a day with me. I make grown men cry.
Since I was small, I wanted to be a scientist. I wanted to live under the sea. I wanted to understand why three people will fall in freezing water, one will die, one will be sick, and one will be fine. In the same marathon, some racers will have heat exhaustion, others experience cold injury. I have lived underwater, on ships, and mountains. I examine long unsolved cold cases as Science Officer of The Vidocq Society, not to know how they died, but their state while alive. (I am the "Spock of Vidocq.")
Since I was very small, I read accounts of survival - stories of defecting MIG pilots, tiger pit prisoners, remote plane crashes, snowbound hikers, expeditions across continents, near-drownings, children of war, swimming races in the arctic, the different bones developed in children learning different trades and movement patterns. I grew up to study the difference in joint angles and limb lengths that confer speed or strength advantage. I study which and how much training supersedes inborn advantage and increases performance.
As a research scientist, I do the "get-your-hands-cold-and-dirty" work to distinguish what actually happens and how it comes to be that way. Many things we heard in school or in stories were never true, just repeated. My work in extremes is mostly behind the scenes (the team player scenario). Piles of data I collected and hand-analyzed for countless studies are in my file cabinets and brain. I apply these studies to develop training methods and injury recovery methods that work for the moment, and for long-term health.
Some readers have asked me to make a category of Fitness Fixer stories called Dr. Bookspan's Excellent Adventures. I will work on it. A few samples are in the Related links below.
Happy Solstice, the longest night of the year in the Northern hemisphere.
--- Read success stories and send your own. See if your answers are already here - click Fitness Fixer labels, links, archives, andIndex. Subscribe free - "updates via e-mail" upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class space for personal feedback. Top students may earn certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Get more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - custom portable fitness tea, quick and inexpensive, no need for hot water:
Put clean (or filtered) water in your own healthy bottle.
Poke a teabag in the bottle. The tea will brew on its own in a short time, no need for hot water.
Choose your favorite tea or experiment to find your favorite. Mix several together to make your custom brew - for example mint and lemon (all non-caffeine), or ginger plus green (half and half), or green and black tea together (extra interest). Or a whole bunch of flavors.
This makes a fresh drink, no preservatives or coloring, no hype or purchased throw-away bottles. It easily transports with you to work, school, gym, exercise, and biking.
Add water to make more throughout the day. At the end of your day, remove the bags and wash the bottle for another custom tea tomorrow.
Future posts will cover making your own teabags from loose tea and preparing herbal teas from flowers.
--- I make posts from fun mail and success stories. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
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Image by Akibubblet via Flickr. No derivative works.
In the hot days of summer, common warnings involve avoiding the heat. What about the advantages of heat? Hot environments can improve your health in several ways.
Done right:
Exercising in the heat improves your fitness level and ability to exercise.
Exercising in the heat increases your tolerance to heat, making life more comfortable in the heat.
Exercising in the heat prevents the decreases in heat tolerance that otherwise occur with increased age, which can be unhealthy, even dangerous.
Exercising in the heat makes positive changes in your body that improve your fitness. You increase blood volume, improve cooling ability, make changes in sweating, increase the vasculature that helps circulation, cooling and exercising at the same time, increase specific chemical compounds in the body that improve health and ability to exercise.
When you exercise and increase body temperature, your body produces more of an interesting compound called heat shock protein. Heat shock proteins are families of proteins that do several things including preventing other proteins from damage by infection, ultraviolet light, starvation, heat, cold, and other harsh conditions. Heat shock proteins are thought to mobilize immune function against infections and diseases, even cancer.
Improved ability to tolerate heat without discomfort, called heat adaptation, occurs fairly quickly - with large improvements within the first week of exerting in the heat. Exercising in heat is more effective to produce heat acclimatization than heat exposure without exercise. Aerobic fitness is a major factor in heat tolerance.
It is a myth that you must avoid sweating to stay healthy. Exercising enough to sweat makes you more flexible, increases many chemical reactions in your body that are healthy. Sweat itself has compounds beneficial for your skin and body. Don't worry that you must exercise only indoors in air-conditioning in order to do healthful exercise. A protective environment does prevent initial discomfort, but reduces benefits and the ability to be comfortable in the heat.
This all does not mean to go out and cause yourself heat injury by overdoing without thinking. It is to gain the many benefits of exercising safely in the heat
I will cover more physical changes from exercise in the heat that improve health and exercise level in future articles.
--- For more, click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute. Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
"I had not (previously) successfully implemented healthy movement habits. Your books are allowing me to comprehend the importance of doing so. This knowledge is permitting me to enjoy the benefits that come from less pain. Less pain means a happier Lisa. Moreover, since everyone enjoys happy people, anyone involved with me appreciates my enhanced education.
" You give your readers hope and allow us to strive for healing. You must tire of hearing this from everyone you help.
"I have read many publications regarding stretching and strengthening but none ever caused me to contemplate "living" rather than practicing the "postures." I have stopped many of the exercises and stretches "believed" to be essential to improving back health (they were hurting), and enjoy the exercises and stretches in your books.
"It is enchanting to have the opportunity to thank you for sending me personalized copies of your marvelous publications.
"With Kindest Regards, Lisa H."
There is no need to "live with pain" or try to use varieties of techniques to distract you when it hurts. Instead, fix the source of the pain, then the damage can heal and the pain not return, because you have stopped the daily repeated unhealthy motions that cause them. Healthy movement is for all you do all day - that is fitness as a lifestyle, not doing little repetitions or sets or reps in the gym or during commercials. To get started, click the related posts below. The label "reader inspiring stories" lists reader stories, not as testimonials, but tutorials. Enjoy getting your life back.
--- I make posts from fun mail and success stories. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Neutropeptide Y Generation for Healthier Stress Response
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Yesterday's article, Extending The Envelope - Military and Civilian, told some of my career work to improve and strengthen human ability. Today, a study from Fort Bragg on Green Berets.
A study of soldiers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, found that Special Forces soldiers produced more of a molecule called Neuropeptide Y in their blood than regular soldiers. Neuropeptide Y is generated by the body to calm the brain in times of extreme stress.
The Special Forces soldiers mobilized more neuropeptide Y than ordinary soldiers, and were able to sustain it for longer periods. It was concluded that higher levels make them more resilient to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than the average soldier. Neuropeptide Y returned to normal levels within 24 hours in the Special Forces subjects, but dipped below normal in the control subjects of regular soldiers.
Army Special Forces personnel are also known as Green Berets. It is not known whether the Green Berets' better ability to generate the peptide and endure trauma was something they came in with, which made them more likely to pursue becoming a Green Beret, or had been acquired or enhanced through training. The researchers said, "If we could bottle this, or if we could train people to mobilize their own neuropeptide Y, that would be primary prevention for PTSD - a very exciting approach."
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Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, click the labels under this article for more Fitness Fixer on each topic, or check the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. See class schedules, get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
When I worked as a military research scientist, strong brave men got hazardous duty pay to spend a day with me.
I measured what humans can do, physically and mentally, and how to make them better at it. I tested pilots undergoing acceleration to see what determined susceptibility or resilience to blackouts and other g-force effects. I tested combat swimmers to see what makes them swim faster, farther. I worked on modalities to prevent astronauts' bones from de-mineralizing, because without the pull of gravity, muscles do not make the bones retain calcium. After weeks in space, astronauts return with the equivalent of years of bone loss. I worked on countermeasures. I tested ground troops to see how much they could carry and why.
My work trains the person, making him self-contained and able to withstand harsh conditions without special clothing, tools, or pills. Another department works with garments that help resistance against temperature, weaponry, and other effects. Another group are the 'gadget guys' making yet more things I have to make the guys able to carry around. Another department is pharma-chemicals - what drugs they could develop and administer to block need for sleep and food, heighten focus, or increase strength or speed. Some heart drugs are long-known and used for steadying the marksman's hand by decreasing the contractile pulse of the heart.
Click the labels under this article for more Fitness Fixer on each topic. I have written several posts, with more to come, on my work to "extend the human envelope."
--- Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Why not try fun stuff, then contribute! Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
All the More Reason To Try - Exercise to Overcome Each Difficulty
Monday, April 20, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
E-mails and questions pour in - "I am weak from a recent bout of flu, will strengthening help me? I never had strong legs, should I bother doing leg exercise? My shoulders do not stay straight, they just become round when I let them, does that mean that I cannot have good posture? My ankles tilt toward each other when I stand up, does that mean that I should not stand straight? My balance is poor, why should I do balance exercise as I will just have a hard time of it. I have multiple sclerosis and it is tiring to stand up, should I try? I am overweight and have health problems from it, will I get any benefit from not eating so much? My toes are all tight from tight shoes, should I stretch my toes?"
These are real inquires. The answer to all is yes, you need the exercise even more than the person without these difficulties. Yes, work to overcome, to change what is hampering you, to regain function.
Hear it phrased this way:
"I earn less than the rest of my office, would getting a raise make a difference?" "My car veers to the left ever since I hit that pothole, should I try to hold the wheel straight, even though it seems so natural for the car to swerve uncontrolled?" "I just have a natural temper, why bother controlling it?"
When things are tough, you need to control it all the more. If you like to run or swim but are slow, you need to work harder at speed, not omit speed work. You have to work to get results. There is a saying "If the sword is not sharp, use a heavy handle." If you are not good at something, you need to work harder.
For inspiration, click the arrow to watch the video of The Thousand-Hand Guanyin, performed by 21 dancers of the Chinese Disabled People's Performing Art Troupe. All the dancers are deaf and cannot hear the music. Lead dancer is 29 year old Tai Lihua, who earned a BA degree from the Hubei Fine Arts Institute.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
What magic secret exercise or machine or supplement makes you fitter?
Fitness Fixer reader Jilly wrote in to ask:
" I am a 65 yr old woman and have no strength in my upper body; I cannot push myself up even by 1 inch but just lie floundering on the floor! How do I start rectifying this to be able to do even a straightforward push up?"
How to get better? Just like anything else, Try. Practice. The body responds. Work and you improve. Money should be that easy.
Remember that Olympic athletes are sore for days after workouts. They fall and fail thousands of times, get back up and work more. Like learning a language - start with nothing, and the more you work, the better you become.
Click the arrow to watch this short video that reminds what practice can achieve:
Retrain your body to move in natural ways, not just in one up/down or side-side motion of gym exercises. Use daily life as your built-in all day strengthener. That is the difference between "doing exercise" then going back to weak unhealthy life, and real healthy living. That is what Fitness Fixer is for.
Have a real life and enjoy the quick gains. Proceed safely, and have fun. Send in your success stories. Stay inspired.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Reader Robert Davis has been enthusiastically sending in success story after success story. He sent his first story of fixing a painful back injury from weightlifting - Fixed Injuries, Got Strong, With Functional Exercise.
Since getting the idea of using healthy daily movement instead of injurious movement during daily life and exercise, Robert stopped major causes of his injuries. He has rapidly been getting strong using fun functional exercise, and improving function. He has been taking ingenious photos using his camera phone. His stories and photos will be posted. He is sending them in fast and furiously. I enjoy hearing how he experiments with each thing, and sees and understands how they work so he can incorporate the concepts into daily movement, not just going thorough arbitrary motions and calling it exercise.
We are still having problems uploading photos and movies for you - since October. It has been a time-intensive and difficult process to get any photos at all uploaded for these posts. It has changed and delayed a few of the articles I wanted to write for you. When Healthline staff can help, they will. Robert generously made a page to store visuals so you can link and see them. Start with:
Watch how he uses a healthful squat for real life, not just 10 times in a gym.
Robert writes:
"Make a mess and pick up only one item at a time via a squat. If you need to clean the house only pick up one item at a time. The constant up/down motion of the squat etc should get the heart rate up for a good cardio workout. Why not kill two birds with one stone? Tired of the stationary bike? Do this for a half hour:)"
Good bending is natural built-in cardiovascular exercise, leg strength and stretch, Achilles tendon stretch, hip strengthener, warm-up for stretching, and back pain prevention, since it stop one major cause of back pain - bad bending (bent over at the waist or hip). Done properly, good bending strengthens knees and does not cause knee pain. The Related Posts below explain more. For all Fitness Fixer articles on each topic, click the labels under this post - for example, "Achilles stretch."
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. SeeDr. Bookspan's books.
When I was in the military, we ran. A lot. Every day. I love to run fast. When we ran, we sang. What did we sing? What they told us to sing - How much we loved to run. How much we loved everything about the military. Why? It kept us from saying what we were thinking. Military cadences have long been used for physical training. These are the Jody Calls.
The origin of the Jody Calls is usually given around World War II, but chanting, sea shanties, group mantras and hymns, and others have been known for centuries. It is generally thought that group unison music reduces perceived exertion, allowing greater effort toward the common goal.
I am a career physiology researcher in extreme environments. That means I spend much time directly testing humans to see what they can do, then how to make them better at it. Doing experimental and research work personally, makes it easier to know if what you hear about fitness is true, or just another of countless repeated myths. Even doctors learn from books that are often not primary sources, just repeated by someone else who learned it in school, repeated from a non-primary source.
In the military, and since then, the Jody Calls interested me. I wanted to know if chanting and singing really make the work of running easier, or just make it seem easier, or perhaps even use more oxygen and is actually more work than running without singing. I did many laboratory experiments on Jody calls.
Some of the experiments I conducted involved running troops on treadmills at different speeds, with specially fitted masks, so that they could chant into the mask, or just breathe regularly for control tests. I collected their expired air (what they breathed out) and analyzed it for oxygen usage and carbon dioxide production, a measure of the work of running. I compared oxygen usage with chanting and without.
Why are U.S. military chants called Jody Calls? There are many stories, usually involving a civilian character named Jody or Jodie, who stayed home when you left… you left… you left… right… left….
Below, hopefully sound file will appear. Turn your computer sound on, and click the arrow to listen to one stereotype call of the U.S. Marine Corps:
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
A debate in fad fitness is if you need aerobic activity to lose weight, or if weightlifting is sufficient. The larger issue is that you need to use your cardiovascular system for health.
A 21 year long study from the Stanford University School of Medicine found that older runners live longer and suffer fewer disabilities than healthy non-runners.
All 440 study participants were 50 years old or over at the beginning of the study. All ran an average of four hours a week. By the end of the study, all were in their 70s, 80s, and older, running an average of 76 minutes a week.
At the 19 year mark in the study, 34 percent of the non-runners had died, compared with 15 percent of the runners. Onset of disability was delayed in runners by an average of 16 years.
Lead study author, Dr. James Fries, is almost 70, runs 20 miles a week and plays tennis. He stated the positive numbers for runners was not even as high as compared to average populations, because "the control group was pretty darn healthy." The "health gap" between runners and non-runners increased with age. Fries said, "I always thought that the two curves would start to parallel each other and that eventually aging would overpower exercise. We can't find even a little twitch toward that gap narrowing in the present time."
Study authors also stated that, "The findings probably apply to a variety of aerobic exercises, including walking."
Study was published in the Aug. 11 2008 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Conventional medical texts originally stressed that exercise would harm elders. That viewpoint led to disastrous decades of needless infirmities among people who could have retained mobility and independence.
In 1980, Dr. Fries wrote a landmark paper of his "compression of morbidity" hypothesis, that "regular exercise would compress, or reduce, the amount of time near the end of life when a person was disabled or unable to carry out the activities of daily living, such as walking, dressing and getting out of a chair."
Stay active, keep moving whatever your age. It is the most important medicine you have.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
A study making repeated news was that less than half the athletic trainers in a recent survey get a healthful amount of exercise themselves. Of two hundred and seventy five certified athletic trainers who work with athletes, only 41% themselves exercised even half an hour on five or more days a week.
The survey was conducted by graduate student Jessica Groth, now an athletic trainer. In the study conclusion she wrote that (these) athletic trainers, "…were not ideal role models in demonstrating healthy behaviors." However, the Los Angeles Times quoted Groth as saying, "By and large the results are not too bad," and that trainers couldn't exercise enough since, "We're on other people's schedules as far as practices and games are concerned. We work a lot of long hours, and nontraditional hours, as far as mornings, nights and weekends are concerned. You add in families and personal lives, and we're spread pretty thin."
The study was published in the December issue of the Journal of Athletic Training, Self-reported health and fitness habits of certified athletic trainers. J Athl Train. 2008 Oct-Dec;43(6):617-23.
Trainers making the same excuses as the sedentary for not exercising?
Lack of exercise and excuses can happen when you separate healthy movement from real life. Healthful movement and activity should not be something you have to stop your real life to "do." Changing from artificial exercises to how your body needs to move in real life is the realm of functional fitness. The Fitness Fixer, most of my research in orthopedics, the classes I teach, and our new international sports medicine academy deals with functional fitness.
Here are ways to change the myth of "exercise as separate" to movement as functional daily life. It is life-changing:
See the beginning of our new International Academy of Functional Sports Medicine - www.DrBookspan.com/Academy.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories using these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply to get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more with Dr. Bookspan's Books.
The Summer Olympics of 2008 begin this Friday. Reader Mike asked in the comments to the post Not Old for the Olympics Part II that in addition to other performance enhancements, is it fair to have superior inherited ability?
Mike wrote,
"This was a great article pointing out the ethics of performance enhancement. Money, time, altitude chambers, and speed suits are all an advantage when others don't have them. Then, is it a fair race? I was hoping you were going to get to inherited ability … which brings up the issue that even when all food intake, psychology, training, and equipment are equal, genetics wins out, so how much pride can one take in his accomplishments knowing that a good chunk of one's success was a gift over which you can't overcome? After all, you can't make a quality chair if you're given just balsa wood! This reminds me that we shouldn't take ourselves so seriously based on the outcome of our athletic dominance over others. I should just try to improve my own performance against my previous performances."
In the Star Trek Next Generation episode "Peak Performance," a training exercise between two ships was deliberately mismatched in armaments, crew, and maneuverability. When the first officer chafed at this, asking what was the official's word for "mismatch" the reply was, "Challenge!"
In martial arts, the win does not always go to the taller or stronger person. Athletic ability needs numerous coordinated skills. If the outcome were always for the bigger or faster fighter, there would be no betting in boxing or any other sport.
Inherent ability doesn't always decide the outcome. It's not a matter of not being able to teach a pig to sing. My carpenter husband Paul can make a solid comfortable chair from balsa wood, paper, (even Jell-O™, he speculates, thanks to Mike's post) by dint of skill and love of his craft.
The "Peak Performance" episode emphasized, "The person in the superior position is expected to win. How one performs in a mismatch is precisely of interest. We don't whine about the inequalities of life."
To learn how to build your spirit and body, regardless of what sport you play, or even if you do no sports at all, try the book Healthy Martial Arts.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
In fitness, odd and sham training methods are repeated, often whether they are true or not. It's important to remember this. A good example of avoiding this pitfall came from Mark Spitz, who swam at the 1968 and 1972 Olympics. As of this writing in July 2008 he is still the only Olympic athlete to win a gold medal and set a new world record in each in each (individual) event he entered. In an era when other swimmers, male and female were shaving body hair, he swam with a mustache. Mark Spitz is quoted as saying,
"When I went to the Olympics, I had every intention of shaving the mustache off, but I realized I was getting so many comments about it--and everybody was talking about it--that I decided to keep it. I had some fun with a Russian coach who asked me if my mustache slowed me down. I said, No, as a matter of fact, it deflects water away from my mouth, allows my rear end to rise and make me bullet shaped in the water, and that's what had allowed me to swim so great. He's translating as fast as he can for the other coaches, and the following year every Russian male swimmer had a mustache."
Keep this in mind when you automatically believe various training techniques without thinking it through.
I couldn't get a copyright-free photo of Mark Spitz to use for this post. Readers have been asking for more pictures of Paul, so here he is, in the Hudson River:
I think manufacturers should pay Paul to wear their gear.
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and The Fitness Fixer Index. For personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal feedback. Top students may apply for certification throughDrBookspan.com/Academy. Learn more in Dr. Bookspan's Books.
Yesterday's post, Not Old for the Olympics Part I, told of athletes competing in the highest level athletic events over many years as they get older. The ability to keep physical skills by training is not new or unusual. To keep physical skills, you must continue to use and practice them.
Here is Leslie's movie again so you can practice along with her. Press the arrow to watch this short movie, approximately 30 seconds long.
Leslie can now do 40 pushups easily, and says her goal is 45 for her 68th birthday this October. I didn't have a camera with me to record her 40 pushups last week in class before posting this post, but will try when I get back from the Wilderness Medicine conference.
Leslie says she wants me to tell all of you that she could not do any pushups when she started working with me. She says it was my training in functional daily movement that made the difference, instead of doing artificial exercises in "sets and reps" for isolated body parts. She says the last 5 of the 45 pushups are hard, but she perseveres and keeps smiling, knowing discipline needs training. Bookmark her movie so you can do your 30 pushups every day with her.
When Dara Torres made the news by qualifying for the Beijing Olympics, the first comments by the masses included that performance enhancement drugs were probably needed. Torres employs a head coach, a sprint coach, a strength coach, two stretchers who moved to Florida to stretch her daily, two masseuses, a chiropractor, a nanny, and household help, with costs estimated at least $100,000 per year, plus the support of family, friends, and good sponsors. You don't win an Olympics alone, but it does not require drugs to get better over years of training. Torres trains hard, and has a team of trainers and people who stretch her, using many of the conventional moves that "work" at the price of her 13 surgeries for injuries.
There are people who state that it is unfair and unethical to use performance-enhancing drugs, but they wear or allow a one thousand dollar engineered bathing suit like the new Speedo LZR. When I was competing, swim goggles were considered an unfair advantage. Mark Spitz won his record setting medals without even wearing goggles. When I was competing, it was considered unfair for an American athlete to earn any money from athletics. No sponsors were allowed. Athletes swept floors to earn money to compete. Today they are not only sponsored and advertised, pro athletes arrive at events with chauffeurs from their villas.
Is it fair to be taller, a trait which favors speed in swimming? Some who say performance-enhancing drugs are wrong will eat engineered food, and use expensive altitude chambers and other training devices. Is it fair to other competitors when one swimmer has a rich family who gives up all to support their dreams? It is considered unfair doping to use certain steroids to hasten healing of internal injuries and soreness from intensive training, but not if you use them to heal skin erosions from the same hard training. Drugs are vilified in some sports, glorified in others, and routinely used in the business and military world for increased concentration and competitiveness, and reduction of hunger and fatigue.
Debate continues about ethics. Two truths are important to remember - Performance enhancing drugs are not necessary to win or to achieve the highest goals of competition. There are women swimmers today who without any drugs are breaking records of men swimmers of the 70's who used steroids. Performance drugs are not healthy. The purpose of athletics is not just to mindlessly best the person next to you. A higher view is the beauty of clean healthy athletics.
Related Fitness Fixer on exercise and aging, and enhancing drugs:
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. For more, click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
Tour De France 2008 and Increasing Aerobic Capacity
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
The Tour de France is a 23-day bicycle race. This year it runs from July 5 to 27, 2008. It is a stage race, broken into individual races, from one town to another. The number of stages has varied over years since the tour began in 1903. Course distance runs approximately 3,000 km (1,864 mi) through most of France and often through one or more adjoining countries.
Some of the essence of "le Tour" was incorporated in the synthpop song "Tour de France," a 1983 hit single by the German group Kraftwerk. They put the motto of France in krautrock (krautrock is considered a fun and positive term by enthusiasts): Liberté, égalité, fraternité, French for liberty, equality, good company - which is the point of much of the race.
The Tour de France is a difficult event. Even with light bicycles designed for each stage, it is still grueling. Athletes must train for exceptional aerobic ability.
Cardiovascular endurance, also called aerobic capacity, determines how long you can continue activity at your chosen pace. When you exercise, your body needs more oxygen, so your cells extract more of the oxygen your blood provides. Aerobically fit people can extract more oxygen when exercising, and so, can do more exercise. Average exercise needs about 10 times more oxygen supplied to your active tissues, than at rest. Heavy exercise can increase need to around twenty times. If you do not have high enough capacity from training, you will be too out of breath to continue. World-class athletes have been recorded to reach over 30 times their resting rate.
With regular endurance activities, such as biking, running, swimming, your body makes many changes that improve function. You increase blood volume, the number of oxygen-carrying blood cells, expand the network of blood vessels, reduce incidence of vessels clogged with fatty deposits, increase number of cellular organelles and enzymes your body uses to process oxygen into energy, and other physical improvements, to be covered in future posts.
Breathing in more oxygen won't increase your ability to extract more oxygen. For that you need training. When your body senses it needs more oxygen than it is getting - during hard aerobic exercise or exposure to altitude - the kidneys secretes a natural human hormone called erythropoietin (EPO). EPO stimulates the bone marrow to make more red blood cells. Everyone can do this on their own through regular aerobic training. When some people want more EPO, they may try blood transfusions, called Transfusion Doping, an illegal procedure to increase maximum oxygen carrying ability. They may also inject various kinds of synthetic human erythropoietin. Whether having the money and access to these substances is fair play is topic of many debates in sports ethics. More important is that they are not healthy. Blood can thicken and cell count increases to a dangerous level leading to cardiac problems. Deaths have occurred in young athletes from blood doping practices. There have been experiments with artificial oxygen carriers based on recombinant, bovine (cow), and human hemoglobin or perfluorocarbons. These substances have potentially lethal side effects including renal toxicity, increased blood pressure, and immune depression. Champions don't need them. You don't need them.
Posts to come will cover more on performance enhancement, drugs, supplements, Le Tour and other bike races, The Olympics and other events. Posts on supplements and performance enhancing drugs:
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - Train children's balance and grip strength, use your legs, and have family fun.
Have young children sit on your feet, and hang on (sensibly, parent's permission, and all that). Babies are born with a grasping reflex and are stronger than you may expect.
Do any variety of walking, marching, dancing, and range of motion, while standing, or sitting, while they act as natural strength and endurance trainers and floor dusters.
Teach sharing, enjoyment, physical skills, personal interaction, and all the good you can think of.
Outside of all the debates of whether leg weights are helpful or not, fun activity with your family can develop many strengths.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - get in shape with true fitness:
"For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. "
- Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) British Actress
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
The new Indiana Jones movie came out this past weekend, the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It is set in 1957 with fun fitness and iconry of the era, for future blog posts. Today - the Rocket Sled.
In the early part of the movie, Indiana Jones and the Soviet Russians brawl through a US military testing base in Nevada. Jones and a Russian officer wind up on a rocket sled, which blasts them on a speed track into the desert.
Rocket sleds are one of several devices that create and test the effects of high acceleration on equipment and the people who use them. High acceleration forces occur when jets take off quickly, when launching a space flight, to eject from a hit (compromised) fighter jet, on roller coasters and spin and fall rides, when you fall from a height, and any time you change speed and/or direction quickly. Interesting changes occur in the body under acceleration. Acceleration is one of the areas of my study as a research physiologist and was my work for a time at two facilities testing air vehicle and human systems.
G-force is a measure of acceleration, not force, but the term g-force is also used for the reaction force that results from acceleration. More on meaning, spelling, and math of g and G in another post. Too much g-force can result in g-LOC (Loss of Consciousness), pronounced "jee-lock"in English, but just as meaningful when using the Cyrillic pronunciation of "loss." When piloting a multi-billion dollar property (the fighter jet) G-LOC is not a good thing for anyone. The pilot may convulse, called "doing an Elvis" because the flailing looks like playing an air guitar - a real air guitar. Then the pilot may "ding" (lose consciousness) and the vehicle may "descend below the level of the terrain" (crash) and "disperse energetically" (explode) and "value unfavorably" (be destroyed), and the crew and anyone they land on may "achieve a negative health status" (die).
So we test.
A rocket sled is a small platform. Rockets propel it on the ground on rails. It creates high onset g-forces for a time limited to the length of the track. When personnel or equipment riding it sit as in a car or plane, they experience acceleration pressing them from front to back (on an x-axis).
To measure the higher g-forces with short onset experienced in jet bail-out procedures, a vertical ejection tower can be used. A small seat is propelled quickly upward by a contained blast force under it (like lighting a bomb). If they are positioned to sit upright, the acceleration acts on them from head to foot, on their y-axis.
To experiment with varying accelerations over different amounts of time and onsets, one device used is a centrifuge. A long support arm swings around and around a center anchoring point -like swinging a ball on a string around your head. A container, often ball shaped, at the end of the support arm holds the equipment or personnel being tested. The ball can rotate to position the people inside at any angle to simulate the changing positioning of a cockpit during maneuvers, for example.
What happens to the people in these testing devices? Often they throw up all over my nice equipment. Some of my test subject pilots used to have contests who could eat the worst thing to redisplay on testing day. One ate plastic bugs just for the fun he was sure to cause - then he didn't throw up, no matter what we did to him. In vertical (y-axis) ejections, there is high impact and acceleration forces on the discs and spine. Back injury is a concern for ejection scenarios. Vibration, both during acceleration and non-acceleration situations, such as for helicopter and jack hammer operators seems to be a high contributor to back pain. It is not known if the various vibration devices sold as fitness devices are of the kind (vibration frequency or amplitude) that contribute to joint pain. G-LOC is another consideration. Why do we test it? To see how to prevent it, if we can screen for who is more likely to get it, if we can train those prone to it to be more resistant, and so on, in g-force tolerance improvement programs (g-TIP).
The set of photos at right is a well-known one of USAF Colonel John Paul Stapp, M.D., Ph.D., riding the rocket sled. He was a pioneer of acceleration study and is also known as the originator of the expression "Murphy's Law" for things that can go wrong. The effect on his face along the x-axis is not from his high speed, but the acceleration which is increasing in photos ii and iii, and decreasing in v and vi. Even though his speed is greatest in photo iv, speed is not increasing or decreasing much, so there is little effect.
More on the interesting effects of acceleration and environmental testing from roller coasters to jets to movies in posts to come.
Click labels under this post for more Fitness Fixer on each topic. For example, for all posts on fitness issues portrayed in the movies or other media, click movie/media fitness.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
My professional and life work is understanding and studying the fastest, highest, quickest, coldest, hottest, bravest, strongest in human physiology. I study the body in extremes. I study what makes one person able to survive an event and the person next to him perish. Strong brave men get hazardous duty pay to spend a day with me. I make grown men cry.
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