Showing posts with label fitness and bodybuilding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fitness and bodybuilding. Show all posts
Knee pain and squat boosting moves from Diesel
The guys at Diesel Crew have some exercises designed to prevent knee pain and improve squats. Looking forward to trying these, especially this one:
AB(Duction) Band Squats
Benefits -
No More Knee Pain
Hit Your Squat Depth
Improve Hip Mobility
Activates Glutes
Activates / Strengthens Hip Abductors
Improves Patella Tracking
Admirable video from Clitheroe Crossfit
I love this unique treatment of showing what we do and the gym we do it in...Timelapse video taken over the course of three days for Clitheroe Crossfit, edited beautifully.
Mt. Hood work out
Four straight days of rain. When it cleared for a few days, grabbed some stuff and headed outside.
Deadlifts & Danglies
Dangly bits hung from the bar add stability dimension, demanding everything from the nervous system.
Gym - upgraded
Got a deal on a squat cage off Craigslist and spent the rest of Memorial Day Weekend deep cleaning and rearranging the gym. Finally dumping the graveyard - treadmill, attachments for leg extension/curls, bun & thigh roller, worn out bar. The sanctuary is looking pretty sweet. Also made my first video with the new version of iMovie - added a voiceover. All in all, a fun weekend.
History of Fitness documentary in production
I was honored to have Chip Conrad (Bodytribe, Physical Subculture) interview me for his History of Fitness documentary series. Like everything else Chip produces, it's going to be good. Get a taste with this clip from his History of Fitness YouTube Series. The YouTube series is an abbreviated version of the History of Fitness documentary series his crew is filming for television now.
running shoes worse than high heels?
Whoa! As if running weren't bad enough on your joints, the shoes are evil! Solution? Go barefoot, or get some footwear that emulates it. This is timely for me, as I anticipate the arrival of my first pair of Vibram Five Fingers.
From Article on new report at Elsevier
Running shoes may cause damage to knees, hips and ankles
... findings confirm that while the typical construction of modern-day running shoes provides good support and protection of the foot itself, one negative effect is the increased stress on each of the 3 lower extremity joints. These increases are likely caused in large part by an elevated heel and increased material under the medial arch, both characteristic of today’s running shoes.
Writing in the article, lead author D. Casey Kerrigan, MD, JKM Technologies LLC, Charlottesville, VA, and co-investigators state, “Remarkably, the effect of running shoes on knee joint torques during running (36%-38% increase) that the authors observed here is even greater than the effect that was reported earlier of high-heeled shoes during walking (20%-26% increase). Considering that lower extremity joint loading is of a significantly greater magnitude during running than is experienced during walking, the current findings indeed represent substantial biomechanical changes.” Dr. Kerrigan concludes, “Reducing joint torques with footwear completely to that of barefoot running, while providing meaningful footwear functions, especially compliance, should be the goal of new footwear designs.”
The article is “The Effect of Running Shoes on Lower Extremity Joint Torques” by D. Casey Kerrigan, MD, Jason R. Franz, MS, Geoffrey S. Keenan, MD, Jay Dicharry, MPT, Ugo Della Croce, PhD, and Robert P. Wilder, MD. It appears in PM&R: The journal of injury, function and rehabilitation, Volume 1, Issue 12 (December 2009), published by Elsevier. The article has been made freely available and may be accessed at: 
Parkour flip animation reel
As if Parkour weren't amazing enough, this flip animation piece will knock your socks off!
100 pounds will always be 100 pounds
From Lauren Kott's article Life Lessons from Lifting, published in in Milo about nine years ago. I got it from a reflective article by Chip Conrad on the Bodytribe blog.
To me, lifting has been meditation, salvation, and sanctuary. When I have been able to count on very little else in my life, the weights have been there. They are a constant in a life full of variables. Yesterday, today and next year, one hundred pounds will always be one hundred pounds. How that weight feels to me might be different over time. But the weights themselves are steadfast and abiding.
There is so much fight a lifter must possess that naturally translates into the rest of your life. I call it "lifting from your soul." At times there is something more than sheer bodily strength that drives the weight up.
my studio
Presenting The Mighty Kat Powerhouse Studio.
Check out other home gyms and add a video of your own at this fun thread at Straight to the Bar.
Belgian bodybuilders flee drug tester
All 20 Belgian male bodybuilders grabbed their gear and ran when a drug tester showed up at the Belgian National Bodybuilding Competition over the weekend (May 17, 2009). So Brussels gains no national champion, but quite a legacy.
It's funny except that it's so sad, pathetic, and it points up the dangers facing younger and more intellectually vulnerable generations at the steroid crossroads. I've written and compiled a body of work on drugs and bizarre practices in bodybuilding, and this just points up the problem in all its urgent relevancy.
I'm boycotting AP, which carried the story, but you can read more it in SportingNews.com.
Quality Recovery: the training benefits of being sick
I just spent a week sick as a dog. It hit when I was peaking my heavy training cycle, one week before a virtual meet and two before a live one I've been planning on for ten months. Some virus put me down with a sore throat, congestion, aches, a malfunctioning digestion system, and utter fatigue. What terrible timing.
I fought through it - called in sick, hit the couch each day and the bed each night. Took cold medicine, drank thick orange juice and protein drinks, ate oatmeal and eggs and yams through a fizzling appetite. Doubled dosages on my vitamin and mineral supplements, added zinc. It finally faded away and my health came back.
The first day I started to feel better, I was really excited about it. I went into the gym for an exploratory lift to see how much I'd lost, careful not to overdo it. I performed at about 50 percent. Two days later, I had a nearly full lift.
I couldn't be more surprised. Not only did I not lose much strength progress at all, I've made some gains. I gained a couple of solid pounds. My strength is still very good. I can feel my potential to reach my peak volumes is still easily within reach. I felt a hit to my aerobic capacity, but not near the level I'd expected.
This is major: I figured out what adjustments I need to make in order to continue lifting. Because all my aches and pains had subsided, I had a blank slate to work with to figure out what moves in my work outs have been hurting my shoulder*. When you become accustomed to harboring various pains and working through them in the rigors of training, the pain spreads, becoming more generalized, making it difficult for you to analyze the problems. Are the aches from my bed? My shoes? My grip? My path of motion? It blurs. When nothing hurts, as soon as you do something aggravating, it's very clear.
I feel deeply... rested. This is vastly different from taking a week off training but still carrying on work and everything else. I feel bigger, stronger, more solid. I'm energized about going into the gym. And the work outs - Yee haw!
I've long believed in taking a week off from training here and there, and I do cycle my training and prioritize my sleep. But the quality of recovery I feel after a week of the complete sedentary life has come like an epiphany. I'm ready to preach this gospel and block out pre-competition couch potato spells, full of naps and movie rentals.
I did miss the virtual meet, but the live meet is this Saturday. And I plan on bringing it.
* [The corrections I've made: When lowering the bar from overhead to my shoulders in a rack position, on my troubled shoulder side, I unwrap my thumb from the bar and turn my wrist-to-shoulder path in, for more internal shoulder rotation. Also, on dumbbell bench presses, I lower the path of the bells to over my sternum throughout the movements, so my shoulders are at less than 90 degrees and the lats are more engaged.]
Fossil, Oregon unites to get in shape, lose fat
Read or listen to full story on NPR
excerpt
Eighty people are involved. That's close to 20 percent of Fossil's population of 450. And so far, they've collectively lost more than 600 pounds...
"We started out the first week or two with my husband buying 500 pounds of sand, and people brought water bottles," Boettner explains. "We filled them up with sand … and depending on the size of the water bottles, you had either a 2- or a 3- or a 4-pound weight."
Boettner also notes that the group has no stationary bikes, treadmills, elliptical machines or stair-climbers.
"When we climb stairs, they're actual stairs and we climb them," she says, laughing. "We do it the old-fashioned way."
KOIN tower fitness center
Inside this iconic business building in downtown Portland lies a small but relatively well-equipped fitness center that's open to employee membership only. So shhh.... Here's a peek inside.
There are two flat benches (one freestanding, one part of a chestpress rack), a Smith machine, a handful of machines targeting bodyparts, dumbbells, a big clunky Universal, and a nook with about 10 cardio machines (one to three are generally down for repair at any given time), and two thick fold-out mats. Plus a water fountain and two TVs (Sadly, rare is the office employee who can work out without a TV.).
It's not bad, really, for a midday get-away.
The drawback: climate control. It's kept at a stuffy 72 degrees, with no active ventilation.
Kat gets a kettlebell
After my run with the bells, I adopted one of my own to incorporate into my training. The bells are used in full-body dynamic exercises that involve momentum, so I look forward to using mine in warm-ups and cooldowns around Oly weightlifting. ETA I'm enjoying "bell and bag" sessions on days I'm not lifting - alternating kettlebell drills with heavybag pounding. Good stuff!
Also, at LONG LAST, got a pair of 30# dumbbells. I've been waiting for a decent sale for years, and one hit this weekend. (I have a real bone to pick with Joe's, the store formerly known as G.I. Joe's. Their DBs are in a wire bin, so beat up, they look like crap, and the weight amounts themselves are probably thrown off from all the chipping damage. They should be ashamed to have them on their floor. So no, I did not buy these spiffy new ones from them.) At last, I can bridge the gap between 25 and 35 more graciously. Now I can start the next longerm wait to cough up the money for 40s.
Ironworks Gym
Ironworks Gym is the gem of Creswell, Oregon. This is one of my very favorite gyms. Nestled in a rural speck of a town just south of Eugene, in a brilliantly landscaped oasis, this gym houses the old school disciplines - Olympic-style weighlifting, powerlifting - and it has more bodybuilding machines (specific-muscle group training) stuffed into it than a warehouse. They're stuffed into every nook - a Roman chair here, an adductor there. Each space has a distinct character and feel to it, from the slick group exercise fitness room to the chalk-filled, cement-floored weightlifting studio. Expansive windows face an impressive golf course, and that's hugged by miles sand miles of rural Willamette Valley greenery. This gym screams the sucess of an empire built on dreams of dedicated visionaries, and each discipine it houses through meets and classes seems to be staffed by salt-of-the-earth folks, like Tom Hirtz. If you're ever even within a few hours of this gym, don't miss it, anytime of the year.
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