Break Down the Wall: Lactate Threshold Training

  • February 11, 2010 1:24 pm

If endurance is a critical component of your overall fitness then listen close. You NEED to know what lactate threshold training is. Why you ask? Well to put it as simply as possible, your lactate threshold determines how long and how hard you can exert near maximum effort, or to use the true term, exert yourself at your anaerobic threshold. So what I am saying is this; that wall you hit when you are running, that tries to bring you down to your knees and crumple in pain, is your lactate threshold. Now that we know our enemy, let’s learn how to beat it down.

First we need to understand some key concepts and know that the following is a simplification of a much more complicated set of biochemical processes but will suffice for our purposes.

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A President’s Standard of Fitness: Do you Measure Up?

  • December 9, 2009 12:20 pm

How many of you all remember the presidential fitness tests when we were in grade school? Well there is new test which is based on the same program aimed at adults.

Created in 2008, the adult fitness test is meant to test the aerobic fitness and muscular strength and endurance of the men and women of the United States. It is pretty basic in its testing criteria and easy enough that anyone can do it at home. You could even make it a competition between you and your friends to further motivate yourself to try harder.

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The Subculture of Steroids and Performance Enhancing Drugs

  • December 8, 2009 9:59 pm

The past few years have been unkind to many of the world’s top athletes. Olympic hopefuls to MLB sluggers to Tour De France cyclists, have all fallen prey to intense scrutiny as we seek to maintain the image of a pure natural athlete. I am not going to talk in specific about any one athlete in particular, but rather the culture of altering our bodies by way of non natural processes.

Everyone wants to be the best, be at the pinnacle of whatever sport or activity they may be participating in. We get it in our heads that to beat everyone else, we have to give ourselves a one up and this is where steroids and other performance enhancing drugs (PEDS) enter into the equation. Sure there are side effects to their use, but they can be mitigated by incredibly careful, doctor assisted monitoring. What I mean is frequent blood work and hormone panels. 98% of PEDS users do not fit into this category of careful use. So why even decide to go that route? You are short changing yourself, determining that you will fail at achieving your goal without even trying.

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Dynamic Flexibility Part 1: What is it?

  • December 8, 2009 9:48 pm

The question on when and how to stretch and warm up is one that comes up often. It is one of those, made to complicated because we think about it too much things. And from all this thinking have spawned several myths which we will talk about here later on. But what people fail to talk about or do much is dynamic warmups.

Dynamic warm ups are not exactly new, but they have yet to go mainstream. What are they? Well its warming up your body by stretching through movement. Examples of this are lunges, side bends, high knees, back pedals, scorpions, side stepping, high knee skipping, Frankenstein walk and MORE! Descriptions will follow.

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Beating Down the Wall: Mind over Body

  • December 8, 2009 9:38 pm

There comes a point when all of us think that we can not go anymore. That another step would kill us, turn of the pedal drain what little energy we have left, rep under the weight of a barbell crush us. Well the truth is, you are thinking you can’t so how the hell could you possibly expect go any further? No matter what you are doing, this point is what many of us like to call the wall.

Time stops, its a surreal moment actually, and you are given a choice. I mean this very literally — your body actually asks your mind if it wants it to go further even though it may hurt, even though our bodies think we are spent and have nothing left to give. Those of us with the courage to take the harder path will say no, I want you to keep on going; whatever happens after that, I will deal with when the dust has settled.

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Alcohol and Your Heart: A Reason to Raise a Glass

  • December 8, 2009 11:38 am

Here is some health advice that we can all get excited about. Recent research is showing a stronger casual link between alcohol consumption and coronary health.

Before we get into the details let me say a few words. Drinking in this article will be defined as no more than one drink per day for women and no more than two drinks per day for men. Thus, we are not promoting in any way heavy drinking. Further, if you do not already drink do not start drinking because of this article. Most of the research in this area is new, and though it comes from prestigious institutions it is still not fully understood.

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Cholesterol: It’s Not the Evil You Think it Is

  • December 7, 2009 10:51 pm

In a previous post we discussed what it means to be physically fit and some factors that contribute to a state of overall fitness. Cholesterol was one of these factors and so this we are going to discuss what it is and how it influences our health and well-being.

Cholesterol is a sterol, which basically is a steroid with a hydroxyl group added to it. More simply, it is a steroid alcohol if you will. It is not, as many people assume, a form of fat. It is though found in all fats and oils.

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Antioxidants: Waging War Within our Bodies

  • December 7, 2009 2:16 pm

I am sure you have heard the term antioxidant thrown about everywhere from the back of your yogurt cup, to the tea you drink and the vegetables you eat, but do you really know what this class of nutrients does. Think of it this way, your body is a war zone and the soldiers at the front line are antioxidants.

What is fighting what you ask? Antioxidants are trying to rid your body of excessive amounts of free radicals before they start a chain reaction. This chain reaction, if unchecked, could cause a buildup of free radicals, leaving your healthy cells and tissue at the risk of being prematurely oxidized.

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Are You Explosive: Functional Strength Explained

  • December 7, 2009 1:20 pm

Step into a gym and what do you notice first? The big guys right. What some people are able to transform their bodies into amazes all of us at some point or another. Men who look like descendants of Hercules himself. It is only natural for us to want to try and imitate these icons of strength and fitness, but before you set about training to be nothing but huge, ask yourself this. Do you just want to be able to move weight around, or be strong and immensely quick, explosive as I like to call it. The difference is this: being able to jump higher, run faster and exert force as quickly as possible versus having the ability to bench 300 pounds slowly or squat 500 pounds even slower. Ridiculous examples but I think you get the point. The mechanical difference is the types of muscle fibers we recruit to perform certain tasks.

There are two types of muscle fibers, fast-twitch and slow-twitch or TypeII and TypeI. Within the TypeII class there are fast-oxidative-glycolytic TypeIIa and fast-glycolytic TypeIIb fibers. Contrary to what some people believe, both exert the same amount of force, it is simply the rate at which they do so that varies.

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Breakfast of Champions: Truth to the Phrase

  • December 6, 2009 11:07 pm

If there is one phrase in fitness that holds true it is that breakfast is indeed the meal of champions and is important for getting you through the day with energy.

What makes breakfast important is that it provides our bodies with fuel for the rest of the day, if the meal is balanced in protein, carbs and fat, curbs our appetite reducing the risk of overeating later and improves our concentration and focus. Some people tend to think that they do not have the time to eat breakfast. Just like those that believe that they cannot workout without a gym membership, this is nonsense.

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BMI as a Case of Misusing Data

  • December 6, 2009 7:31 pm

It can be said that as a society, we are generally concerned with the status of our weight and if we are overweight, underweight, or healthy. The most frequently used measurement for assessing what category we fall into is BMI, or Body Mass Index. If you have not heard of it then don’t worry, you have not been missing out on any real knowledge.

BMI is calculated via the following formula:

BMI =
( kg/m² )		 (weight in pounds * 703 )
————————————–
height in inches²

Thus, it is merely a factor of your weight and height. 703 is a conversion factor from imperial to metric units as the formula was originally derived by a Belgium statistician early in the nineteenth century. It is incredibly accurate at predicting the overall state of health of a population, but for individuals it is terrible. Now I will say that the CDC and most physicians use this measurement as a general rule of thumb, but it is still mind boggling trying to figure out why.

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Let’s Talk Basics: Weight Management

  • December 6, 2009 5:38 pm

Assuming that you do not have other health issues, how your body retains or loses weight is a relatively simple concept to understand. If after this post you have any further questions please leave comments below.

Let’s first preface this discussion with some basic math stuffs. Your body is like a battery, excuse the sorry analogy. To do work it must intake a sufficient level of calories to convert into usable energy, which in our bodies is ATP or adenosine triphosphate. At the end of the day, excess levels of ATP are stored as either fat glycogen or other sugar substrates… or excreted. This is a gross simplification but it is sufficient for our purposes.

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