The Hopeless Doctor

Another great post by John Berardi and a must read.

Say NO to crunches.

Why Crunches are bad.

According to research from Dr. Stuart McGill (backfitpro.com) and his book Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance – crunches produce very high levels of intra-disc pressure and do not train the abdominals to produce spinal stability. Your abdominals are meant to be stabilizers not movers and the rectus abdominus (the 6 pack muscle) is not really a flexor anyway. It is actually there to provide increased "hoop tension" – read resistance to twisting motions.

In simple term our abs are not meant to provide flexion but to stabilize. How many real life activity can you think of which requires you to do a crunch. so doing lots of crunches lead to over use injury of the spine.

The better alternate.

The planks are far better exercise for Abs when compared to Crunches.



Front plank Side Plank

To perform a Plank get down on your elbows and toes and make your whole body tight squeeze your abs and glutes to make a straight line from your head to toe, try to hold this position for as long as possible. Do note that you need to do side plank on both right and left side.

Aim for holding each position for atleast 2 mins and then further progression can be made adding external load or lifting one limb in the air creating further imbalance.

Holding for 2 mins would be very tough if you are trying for first time, this looks like a simple exercise but its lot difficult then what it may seems.

Here are some video on how to do plank.

Front plank


Side Plank


Other factors.

• If you want visible abs then get your body fat down. no matter how much ab work you do your abs would not be visible until the fat covering it is gone.
• "Abs are made in kitchen". so keep what you put in your mouth at check.
• You can not go wrong with heavy squats, Deadlift , over head lifting.
• Overhead squat is the best strength training exercise that you can do for your core.
  

You walk wrong

"It took 4 million years of evolution to perfect the human foot. But we’re wrecking it with every step we take."

Nymag covers an interesting post regarding how we are abusing our feet everyday and what we can do about it, a must read.

Feet is a very important part of our body and crappy feet put a lot of stress on whole of our body. Our body is connected all over the joints using fascia. Fascia is a massive sheath of connective tissue that surrounds everything inside your body. Right from top to bottom you are covered in fascia.

Moving upwards they pull calf muscle which in turn put a lot of stress on our knees, now through IT bands the pain moves toward opposite hips now it crosses across the body toward the shoulder. So you can see that the chronic pain in our shoulder could be a result of problem in you foot.

Here are some suggestion to fix your feet.

• Change your shoes: Ladies ditch your heels, and same goes for men stop wearing shoes with heels or cushioning in the heels that most shoes have. Stick with flat shoes or one with minimal support like nike frees, I personally use good old converse shoes for everyday activity, even for running.
  
• Walk Barefoot: Make a point of walking barefoot in your house, this will help strengthening the ankles and improving our feet quality. Our ancestors walks barefoot and do not face any issues in there feet, while we modern men using these highly cushioned shoes experience lot of foot related ailment, something is wrong here.
• Foam rolling: Take a hard tennis ball and roll beneath each of your foot for 1 minute, 2-3 times a day.
• Never land on your heels: Always land softly on you heels and simultaneously on your mid foot , and your knees would be lot better. landing on heels but a lot of stress on knees and is not natural to us. watch a kid walking.

Stay healthy.

Superhuman Strongman

Odd Haugen lifting 202 pounds dumbbell at arnold

This week I was watching repeat telecast of Nat geo "Superhuman Strongman", and it was really inspiring. It featured Odd Haugen lifting Atlas stones, Mark Philippi pulling a big truck, Pumphrey brothers breaking stack of concrete with bare hands and even with there head, Dennis Rogers demonstrating his hand strength by driving nail to the wood.

What these atlete train is there functional muscle, lifting a heavy stone is just like picking up a crate from the ground, they are not like those big bodybuilders who just have beach muscles. These athlete through hard work have pushed there body to limits and the most impressive thing is that they are still getting stronger. Odd haugen at age of 56 is competing in strong man contest and Denis rogger at age of 50 has been increasing is strength level.

Take away point is that regular exercise is very important for each and every person. We may not be able to get bones of steel like Pumphrey brothers but it will help us to increase bone density which can help in preventing osteoporosis. We may not be able to lift a 150Kg Atlas stone like Odd Haugen does but training will allow us to lift and move stuff as we get old and that too without experiencing back pain.

The Last 10 Pounds

Alwyn Cosgrove takes a look into loosing the Last 10 pounds on T-nation. A great read. I have decided to give this a shot. Beside this I am already lifting heavy on 3 days. With routine being :

Day 1: Deadlift(Hip dominant) + Vertical Push

Day2: Bench Press variations (Horizontal Push) + Row variations (Horizontal Pull)

Day 3: Squat (Quad dominant) + Vertical Pull

Going to do 3 metabolic routine as suggested in article on lifting days or off days as time suits me. I feel toughest thing for me would be to get NEPA walks because of time consideration.

But as Alwyn quotes Dan John,

"Fat loss is an all-out war. Give it 28 days — only 28 days. Attack it with all you have. It's not a lifestyle choice; it's a battle. Lose fat and then get back into moderation. There's another one for you: moderation. Revelation says it best: 'You are lukewarm and I shall spit you out.' Moderation is for sissies."

So I better get down to work..