Which Exercise is Best for Weight Loss?

A decades old debate that appears to have taught us nothing in the having. It's always seemed to me like asking which food is best for weight gain. The correct answer is that they'll all get you there if you're determined enough. Naturally, one chooses using a simple algorithm involving questions like: what is most pleasant/ least unpleasant and: what am I best at/ least rubbish at, and: what's most convenient/ least inconvenient. The answers to each of which depends on the individual.

On the small chance that you have been hoodwinked into believing there is substance behind the idea that there is a best choice of exercise for weight loss, your intuitions were correct from the start. It's a nonsensical question. Weight loss and maintenance isn't hard because you're doing the wrong type of exercise. It's hard because our bodies change and so do we (as people).

Here's an interesting and perhaps useful way of looking at the challenge. What would you expect if, rather than weight loss, your goal was to complete a big event or acquire a new, specialised set of exercise or sporting skills, e.g. to complete a cycle tour or to take up a new sport and do well. With these types of goals, we accept that we will need new skills, lots of practise and hardwork, and plenty of time. We get that the kind of change needed is profound in the same way any kind of learning is. We expect to have to change at the level of our personness. 

Why then do we expect less or different for weight loss? Why do we believe weight loss is just a matter of subtracting mass from our body’s? The evidence of the difficulty of the challenge would suggest that it is much more than that. Perhaps we can borrow from ourselves by comparing it to something else in our lives. Some other kind of challenge that we have undertaken that we accepted would change us as a person or require a more comprehensive, more patient kind of investment*.

*a small albeit important qualification at this point - positive psychology is far more effective than negative psychology for long-term change. Weight loss might be more achievable when it isn’t driven by self-loathing but by the excitement of a new experience or as a new chapter in our lives.

Fitness: What It Is, What It Does, and How to Correctly Train It

Fitness is the capacity of the body to do work. Time taken and work done are the two factors or variables. With these in mind, we could define fitness as either the time taken to complete a fixed amount of work, e.g. running a race, or the work completed in a fixed amount of time, e.g. playing a game of sport. 

If we look a little closer at how the body responds to work we can see that neither of our definitions captures the true meaning of fitness. In turn, they don't work well as rules or instructions for fitness. 

The human body has three work modes: low mode, high mode, and a blend or mix of the two. Low mode is aerobic. High mode is anaerobic. The capacity of the body's aerobic energy system is synonymous with cardiovascular capacity. 

We need to take a moment here to fully recognise the importance of the aerobic system: every organ, tissue, and cell uses aerobic metabolism to do its work. The aerobic system is the body's essential power plant. This system is designed for sustained work output. The corollary of sustained work output is a lower rate of work. Aerobic or low mode can only sustain work up to a certain intensity level.

Cue, anaerobic, high mode work output. Some tissues and cells, such as muscle fibres, have two additional power production mechanisms. Both of these are anaerobic - the high mode. Anaerobic metabolism involves a higher rate of work than aerobic metabolism. However, just as aerobic work is limited to lower work intensities, anaerobic, high mode work cannot be sustained. These are the trade offs.

What is the third work mode, how does it work, and why is it important for our story?

It matters at this stage to paint a picture of how aerobic and anaerobic metabolism are organised. Aerobic metabolism is always on. Anaerobic metabolism switches on, over and above, aerobic metabolism when intensity of cellular work reaches a critical threshold. Note: the aerobic system continues to chug away at the same time. We can measure the switch from aerobic to anaerobic metabolism as lactic acid production. This is essentially what is measured in a VO2max test: concentrations of lactic acid and oxygen consumption.

The switch to anaerobic metabolism occurs because the aerobic, low mode system cannot keep up with the demand rate of the work. The cardiovascular system meets the increase in the demand rate of work by raising heart rate - as a means of moving more oxygen into and carbon dioxide out of the body. This is a fixed relationship: higher work rates = a higher heart rate. It is true of all bodies and for all conditions. We, therefore, also know the heart rate zone in which the switch occurs. More about this in a moment.

Back to the work modes. As heart rate rises, anaerobic metabolism switches on and superimposes aerobic metabolism, and the two systems cooperate to meet demand. This is the third work mode: mixed aerobic and anaerobic. It is the sweet spot for athletes; performance mode. Competitive games, races, crossfit-styled workouts etc. all occur in mixed low+high work mode. Performance mode is a compromise between sustained low power output and unsustainable high power output.

How sustainable is performance mode?

Sustaining performance mode is the singular purpose of conditioning for sport. It is the holy grail of the hours and hours of weekly cycling, swimming, rowing, running etc. It is also where considerable debate and confusion takes place because the basic questions remains: what is fitness and how do I create more of it. Is it aerobic capacity, anaerobic capacity, or a mix of the two?

To answer this we have to go back to one specific idea: sustainability. What we are really asking with our question is what sustains work output? In turn, this will enable us to define fitness and give us a basic training directive. 

We can extrapolate the information we need from the heart rate response curve. Remember that this curve is essentially the same for every human performing work of increasing intensities regardless of the nature of the work. 

Anaerobic metabolism switches on between 60 and 75% of maximum heart rate. Higher for trained athletes and lower for untrained athletes. Mixed aerobic+anaerobic or performance mode comprises the next 5% of the curve as heart rate rises. Above this, the curve steepens quickly. 

The boundary between low and mixed mode is termed the first threshold or turn point, while the boundary between mixed and high mode is termed the second threshold or turn point. Exercise is essentially sustainable before and after the first turn point, but is not sustainable after the second. Though the mixed zone is the performance sweet spot, the first turn point - the heart rate value at which the body switches on anaerobic metabolism is the critical boundary. The higher the first turn point, the higher the sweet spot. A high sweet spot means a higher rate of internal or metabolic work. By extension, the higher the external work: tempo, power, load etc.

Let’s run back over that last statement one more time because we’ve arrived at the key idea that gives us a definition of fitness. The first turn point, which is the heart rate value above which the body switches on anaerobic metabolism (to support aerobic metabolism), determines the rate of work we can sustain. It is the capacity of the low mode system that ultimately determines how hard and for how long mixed aerobic+anaerobic can be sustained. 

Fitness = absolute aerobic or cardiovascular capacity.

The relationship between aerobic and anaerobic capacity is analogous to the relationship between cooks and serving staff in a restaurant. Serving staff can only serve meals as fast as the cooks can prepare them. However efficient and effective the serving staff may be, it is the kitchen that ultimately sets the serving rate for the whole restaurant. Aerobic capacity sits at the heart of the metabolic kitchen.

What does this tell us about how to train fitness?

Let’s return to the definition we have already: the performance of the aerobic system determines the sustainability of effort. The work we can sustain is the result of the capacity of the system. Work appears on both sides of the equation: as a stimulus or cause to the left of the equals sign and as the product on the right. However, as a stimulus it does not vary much around values on or slightly below 60-70% of maximum heart rate. What changes is the other stimulus or cause, which is time.

Time is the training variable we are supposed to program or change. Aerobic capacity increases with more and more sub-threshold training time. Remember that the aerobic system is designed for sustained work.

The most important idea that defines fitness and conditioning for fitness is found in one word: sustainability.

Before I sign off I should point out that there is a small piece of the fitness puzzle that matters, way up at the top of the heart rate curve: medium interval sets at 90% of max heart rate to increase VO2max. Another small piece involves tempo sets in the performance sweet spot. These are ‘small’ pieces of the overall puzzle both in training time or load and mileage. They also matter not one iota if they’re not complemented by an appropriately large aerobic system. “Low mode is high mode” should be every athlete's conditioning motto.

Summary of the key points:

• Fitness and fitness conditioning should be defined by how the body does work.

• The human body has three work modes: low mode aerobic metabolism, high mode anaerobic metabolism, and a mixed aerobic+anaerobic performance mode.

• Aerobic metabolism - low work mode - sustainably supports low intensity work, including all of our life support systems, thinking, and exercise. 

• Anaerobic metabolism - high mode - supports high intensity work but cannot be sustained. Mixed performance mode is sustainable but tenuous.

• Aerobic metabolism is always on, and anaerobic metabolism switches on to complement low mode when power or work rate values reach a heart rate threshold. The anaerobic switch or threshold is called the first turn point. 

• The first turn point occurs between 60 and 75% of maximum heart rate. Higher for trained athletes and lower for untrained athletes.

• Mixed aerobic+anaerobic mode is sustained for an extra ~10 beats per minute until a second heart rate threshold or turn point is reached. Above the second turn point, heart rate rises quickly and power cannot be sustained. 

• Sustaining performance mode - the zone between the first and second turn points - is the holy grail of conditioning.

• Larger aerobic or cardiovascular capacity is associated with a higher first turn point and higher work and power values in the performance zone.

• Fitness is, therefore, proportional to absolute aerobic or low mode capacity.

• The performance of the aerobic low mode system determines the sustainability of effort.

• Higher work or power values are the product of conditioning. The work we do to stimulate these adaptations is fixed on or slight below 60-70% of maximum heart rate.

• Time is the training variable we are supposed to program or change. Aerobic capacity is increased with greater sub-threshold training time.

• The most important idea that defines fitness and conditioning for fitness is found in one word: sustainability.

What can parents do to motivate and support their children to get fit?

How hard is it to get your teenagers to work on their fitness!!
They love their sport - hockey, football, rowing etc. - but won't get fit to support themselves. This can be especially frustrating in the off-season as we know that much of the early part of the season is taken up recovering fitness.

While I don't believe there is magic dust for this problem I do believe there are some simple truths about fitness and what motivates children to do anything that can help us.

Truth#1

Children are social creatures. Us adults have a nasty habit of deciding what matters in sport and then trying to transplant these truths into their minds. Win, become a champion, score goals, break records... These are fantasies in the minds of children. Born of a narrative built by Dads (mostly but not exclusively). Well intentioned but badly misplaced and misinformed. Stand in the school playground - something I get do every day - and watch. You will see joyfulness and relentless effort and, underlying it all, social connection.

Truth#2

Endurance exercise does not need the highest possible demand on the body. One of the most pervasive myths is the equivalence of effort and outcome or productivity in exercise. I genuinely don't know how this myth got started because there are so few capacities constructed by maximal effort (fun fact: maximal effort or rate is the only one!). 

The human body's aerobic (cardiovascular) system is a vast network of metabolic processes and we can signal it to grow by lifting aerobic stress up to the point beyond which we cease normal breathing and heart rate function: between 60 and 70% of maximal heart rate. Much lower than most people realise and within our capability to keep talking.

Pushing our children to high levels of physical duress actually makes many of them afraid for their lives. They don't understand what they are experiencing and it's an instinctive reaction to stop. It takes most humans quite a lot of experience to discover that it's not an existential threat when our heart rates and breathing rates are at their limit. 

In any case, it's bloody unpleasant and hardly surprising that most children don't want to come back again for more.

So what can parents do to motivate and support their children to get fit?

Asking them to exercise alone and in a way that is extremely uncomfortable does not work. They need companionship and it can't be physically awful. Exercise with them, arrange a group of children - the bigger the better - and keep the intensity low. Your number one goal is adherence so reward participation. Let them nominate a reward system for themselves that is linked to sessions completed. Above all, create an environment in which friendships can be formed. 

Pull-ups - a misunderstood super exercise

Pull-ups are a super exercise, and they're also misunderstood.

Pull-ups are a super exercise because they comprehensively strengthen the top half of the posterior torso mechanical chain. This chain of muscles holds the human body upright.

The human body is designed to 'pull' - we're natural climbers - and pull-ups are highly specific for this. 

You should have pull-ups in your strength conditioning routine.

Should have, but many people don't. 

The concept of the 'pull-up' is synonymous with the concept of the 'chin-up', whereby the object of the exercise is to hang and then pull until the chin reaches over the bar. It shouldn't be because this is the big misconception.

To get the effect you don't need to get your chin over the bar, or anywhere close to it for that matter. It's also not a necessary pre-requisite for progress in the movement.

There are three basic grips: underhanded or supinated, overhanded or pronated, and a neutral grip (palms face inwards toward each other), provided the apparatus provides this position. 

The basic differences between them is that the neutral grip is the strongest arrangement of the available muscles, followed by the underhanded grip. The pronated or classic pull-up grip is the weakest of the three grip positions. 

There is no best grip. Each provides a different arrangement of arm, shoulder, and back muscles. Cycle them to your hearts content.

What does matter is effort. Whether you can pull yourself most of the way, part of the way, or barely at all, pull with everything you've got. Effort creates stress in the soft tissues (muscles and connective tissues), and this is needed for strengthening, and it also gives feedback to the nervous system. It sends the message: I'd like to get better at these.

If you've read anything else I have written you might have seen this before. The brain is clever. All brains are extraordinarily clever. They are a self-taught, self-organising improvement machine. All they require is information in the form of sensory and mechanical feedback from the body and an idea (a program to enhance). A one-inch pull-up spontaneously becomes a two inch pull-up with persistence.

Jump stretch bands can be used to easily assist range of motion, and then scaled back as you get stronger.

Main points:

• Pull-ups comprehensively strengthen the torso regardless of how far you pull provided you work hard.
• Regular hardwork creates feedback for the nervous system to grow the movement.
• It is not necessary to get your chin over the bar. Just work hard for whatever you can do.
• Jump stretch bands can be used to easily assist range of motion, and then scaled back as you get stronger.

What is strategy in sport? This is.

The terms tactics and strategy are commonly mixed up. Strategy, loosely speaking, are your ideas for success before competition begins, while your tactics are the adjustments you make during performance. You could think of tactics as the practical application of your strategy, taking into account the variations that (almost) always play out.

Here's a clip that exemplifies strategy. It's both wonderfully simple and fantastically successful. 

With that in mind, here's a question for you: does strategy need to be simple to be effective? 

In defence of the humble push-up.

I won't hold you for long. The humble push-up is a fabulous exercise for building shoulder and tricep strength and your core as well! 

Set your feet at least shoulder width apart to support your stability. More stability in any movement allows the bigger, stronger muscles to devote more of their performance to the target movement (instability causes these muscles to be coopted into supporting the smaller, stabilisers).

Next comes hand position. There is no one, right position. Closer together and you will load the triceps more, further apart and the chest and anterior shoulders will have a greater proportion of the work. For what it's worth, I am a big fan of treating the triceps like the most important muscle in pressing movements.

There is a single biomechanical pre-requisite for pressing movements, which is the path and stability of the elbow. At all costs, we need to avoid the shoulders blades elevating and rolling the shoulders up and over when we press. To this end, the elbows need to remain slightly tucked throughout the movement, i.e. they shouldn't flare upwards. 

Pressing is punching, essentially. The elbows come from a relatively low position. The second, important effect of a low and controlled elbow position is that we can lower our bodies using our lats for support. This stabilises the shoulder blades and puts us in a good position to éfficiently 'punch' our bodies back up.

One thing that is not important at all is how low we go. One inch with good control will grow the press over time.

Five sets of 5 reps or 3 sets of as many as you can do with 60s rest between.

The humble press-up, complimented by pull-ups, will develop a strong and muscular upper body. It's also a fabulous bridging exercise and hits the core superbly!!

The main points:

• The push-up will develop a strong and muscular upper body and strengthen your core.
• Don't sweat depth.
• Set feet shoulder width apart to aid stability and support the shoulders.
• Hands can be narrow to favour the triceps or wider for more chest/ shoulder.
• The only mechanical necessity is that the elbows remain slightly tucked and don't flare up because this put the triceps and lats in an excellent position to support the push. It also ensures we avoid rolling the shoulders up and over, which we don't want!
• Five sets of 5 reps or 3 sets of as many as you can do with 60s rest between.

 

Running as an adult: the perspectives I wish someone had shared with me.

I'm in my 14th year of running after taking much of my early adult years off. I ran as a teenager and though I loved it, I gave it up for the lifestyle of a typical young adult in which cardio or endurance exercise had no place. Twenty years later, my body was not the same and I paid a big price for refusing to consider this.

Depending on your point of view, running has been extraordinarily generous or tragically unkind to me. I have experienced most of the common injuries, including an early and nasty bout of compartment syndrome (shin splints), and even discovered I have an unusual reaction to electrolytes - where for most they reduce symptoms of fatigue and discomfort, they actually cause them in my body. Running is never easy for me and, occasionally, it's brutally hard. One particular event has broken me every time. I have only ever ambled under considerable duress over the finishing line. So, why bother?

Why is the most important question, and my first bit of advice is to take time to carefully consider your answer. When I started out, my 'why' was performance related. For me, that was a big mistake because, as it has transpired, my body wasn't up for that. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to compete but your capability needs to match your expectation or there will be nothing but disappointment and frustration. There is also a risk of an imbalance between internal (instrinsic) and external (extrinsic) motivations. 

External motivations are those set of ideas or values that involve value judgements in relation to others and they typically play out as feelings before and afterwards. Internal motivations, in contrast, centre on how something makes use feel in the performance of the task. An experience that makes you laugh or cry is an internal effect. Internal motivations reflect how our minds and bodies connect with the task. A basic rule of thumb is that the stronger our internal motivations, the stronger our connection to the task. Not surprisingly, we are more likely to participate for longer and with greater interest or engagement.

In my case, the difference between what my body was capable of and my running ambition caused problems that impacted my enthusiasm and my understanding of how my body operated. Too much external motivation drowned out what my body was trying to tell me. If I had taken the time to consider what my internal motivations were or could have been, I may have put myself in a state of mind to hear the feedback and make changes that would have improved the experience. 

This provides the basic answer to the question of why I participate in an activity that hurts as often as it does. Because the discomfort and pain is balanced by many moments of enjoyment, and this is only possible because of the changes I made to my plan. These changes, that were designed to improve how I felt when I run, led also to a better understanding of how to engineer greater levels of fitness and overall capacity.

In the early days, I felt frustrated and trapped by the physical experiences. I tinkered endlessly with the training equation for little reward. It wasn't until I got out of my own way by examining my motivations, that things began to improve. What I learned was that my sport was not primarily a physical challenge but a psychological one. 

We have to be able to listen and hear what happening within us. We also have to put ourselves in a position to enjoy and be grateful for what we have. It also helps to know that signals of fatigue and discomfort are not absolutes. They are experienced through the lens of how we feel, emotionally and generally speaking. Physical discomfort after an emotionally taxing experiencing registers far above what it does when we feel good. 

The true extent of what we're physically and athletically capable of has to be discovered through experience. We have to learn that not only are we ok when our bodies are sending us messages that its uncomfortable, but there can be a big difference between our perceptions, informed as they are by how our bodies feel when we're exercising, and the limits of what we can cope with and adapt to.

I need to add an important disclaimer at this point. Know your body! Endurance exercise and physically challenging events are fatigueing and will make you feel uncomfortable. That is their nature. There is an importance difference, however, between a healthy level of duress and acute physical distress. If you are unsure of the health of your body please consult your GP. Even then, time is needed to learn the meaning of the signals associated with fatigue and significant physical exertion. The reality is that adaptation is a very slow biological process. The only way you're gonna climb that really big mountain is slowly. Patience is also one of the best friends of long-term participation.

For the first few years in the resumption of my running, I boxed on with a poor understanding of my physical needs engendered by unhelpful expectations. The basic difference between the early and later years was progress. Hard work and duress are not side effects of the endurance training formula - feelings to be tolerated regardless. They must have the correct meaning. My training plan was not a match for my body, so the fatigue did not produce meaningful adaptations.

I'm getting at two things here: there is a difference between learning to live with the discomfort of hard work, and operating a bad plan. Fortunately - I wish someone had given me this information at the start! - endurance training plans are comparatively straight forward and only really involve an understanding of the responses in a single tissue: the heart. What's very useful about the heart is that it informs us immediately about changes in cardiovascular demand by increasing or lowering heart rate. 

My early plans had me running too fast and my heart rate was, as a consequence, too high to efficiently stimulate and grow my cardiovascular capacity (and my VO2max by extension). The improvements started when I discovered polarised training. The term was made popular by an American physiologist: Stephen Seiler. Seiler profiled Norwegian skiers, the most successful endurance athletes in the history of the Winter Olympics, and he discovered and then confirmed in his laboratory that there are essentially only two critical heart rate zones for endurance training: 

• A low HR zone, termed Zone2, of between 60 and 70% of our max heart rate, and 
• Zone4 in which your HR is at about 90% of its maximum. 

Seiler's critical discovery was the training time required to be in these zones. 80-85% of total training time or volume should be in Zone2 and about 10% in Zone4. The remainder is what's termed, drift. Your heart rate will naturally drift upwards as your body fatigues. Some drift up and out of Zone2 is permissible and actually impossible to avoid. What Seiler says about endurance training in general is that it's not slow enough on the slow days or fast enough on the fast days.

A short note about the difference between endurance plans for high performing athletes and the rest of us. Endurance athletes very often have a third training zone: tempo work in Zone3. As far as I am concerned, these sets are much less about stimulating physiological gains and are primarily 'psychological' sets. They condition the mind to coping (and ideally thriving) under the duress the body will experience on race day. 

The key for athletes is to understand the balance of the work required to meet their physiologic and psychologic needs. For us nonathletes, Zone3 represents 'junk' mileage. It is not a match for event day as we're not racing in this zone and it's a weak stimulus of cardiovascular capacity.

My final piece of advice is to fully appreciate what the human body gains from being really fit. In short, high cardiovascular capacity is number 1 on the list of effect sizes for therapies that improve health and extend human life. I run (and gym) to give myself the best chance to participate in life's awesome events as I age. Naturally, this wasn't something I thought about when I was younger but it certainly is now. 

Here's a summary of the ideas:

• cardio is good!
• endurance exercise is sustained hard work. this is it's nature.
• the nature of endurance exercise also makes it a psychological challenge.
• know your body and learn to listen to and intrepret the signals correctly.
• your training plan needs to match your body. Polarisation is an excellent, evidence based methodology, that can be easily adapted to all bodies.
• be patient as you have almost nothing to gain by rushing and potentially everything to lose.
• I have intentionally stayed away from talking about the tissues of the lower legs and how running affects them. Get in touch if you have any concerns or questions about this.

How do parents navigate alcohol with teens?

The safe amount, the challenge of adult consumption, and where it leaves us

I write this as a parent of a twenty-something year old and a not quite fifteen-year-old.  Both are smart, independent young women who have made all the normal mistakes.  I’m on my second go round raising a teen and it’s only on this second spin that I’m really beginning to comprehend the nature of the challenge for them and for us as parents. 

Children use alcohol for the same reason adults do.  They like the warm glow, and it’s socially desirable.  There is an issue for them straight off the bat, however, which is that they have little self-awareness.  They simply don’t know what’s happening and where it’s leading.  They have little or no experience with which to counter the lowering of inhibitions and self-control.  One drink leads to the next.  Children depend on familiarity and intuition to keep themselves safe, and the loss of situational control makes them incredibly vulnerable.  The immaturity of their bodies is a second level of vulnerability.  My girls Mum made an excellent point in conversation about drinking recently.  She pointed out that the problem with a small amount of alcohol for a child is not just the physical effect but the effect on decision making.  It was spot on, as any parent who has observed children drinking can attest to.  They don’t have a stop button in the way an adult hopefully learns.  For this reason alone, the safe amount of alcohol for a child can only be nil.

In a recent radio discussion with a child psychologist discussing the challenges of parenting teenage children who wish to drink alcohol two ideas stood out for me: a zero-tolerance, uncompromising or ‘do as you’re told’ approach is very likely to cause resentment and rebellion; and the idea that we can socialise or model our children into safe, mature drinking behaviours is deluded.  Excessive drinking is commonplace in NZ, just as it is in many Western nations.  The lesson our children learn from us is not how to drink in moderation but how to drink to excess.  Continuity of heavy drinking over many generations confirms this.

Put together, we have a big challenge guiding our children with alcohol consumption if as parents we are essentially asking them not to behave like we do.  If you’re one of a small number of families with low or no alcohol consumption, then you’re off to an excellent start.  As far as the recommendations by the child psychologist is concerned, one principle stands out for me: work together on the challenge and accept that your children will have to make their own decisions.  You won’t be there.  Let them know that you understand this.  Empowering them with the knowledge that they will have to decide for themselves opens the communication channel.  The next recommendation that I have is the importance of explaining the various challenges and issues to them.  Bring it out in the open.  As a parent, you’re in an excellent position to share your experiences and what you’ve learned.  This at least provides something for them to reflect on after the fact.  How did I feel?  How was my thinking and behaviour changed? 

The big lesson I have learned from my journey as a parent who drinks is that I haven’t been an effective role model for responsible drinking.  I am also far more aware second time around how complex the social network of significant others is.  Other parents play an important role through the expectations created imposed on our children by their significant friends. 

Our children sit at the centre of a dynamic set of influences over which they have little control.  Asking them to show more maturity than we demonstrate ourselves is also fruitless and hypocritical.  The best advice that I have is to see the process as shared journey and to embark together.  Your journey alongside theirs.  With an open communication channel, there is an opportunity to reflect together on the experiences and to agree on sensible choices.  Beyond that, it’s up to them to decide what role they want alcohol to play in their lives.

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Low versus high heart rate conditioning for fitness. Which is best?

You want to improve your cardiovascular fitness.  What approach will you take?  Aerobics classes, such as spin and pump, are one option.  These classes combine low intensity movement with high heart rate.  Another option is cross conditioning, e.g. CrossFit or F45, which combines high intensity movement with high heart rate.  A final option might be to go for a run or to cycle.  Observe anyone running or cycling and you're very likely to also observe someone working hard; exercising with a high heart rate. 

There may be more than one way to get fit but the common denominator appears to be that improvements in fitness are associated with exercising with a high heart rate.  If I want to get fitter, I need to work hard.  The harder I work, the greater the outcome.  As one goes up, so does the other.  Is this correct?  No, it's not.

The human body has two energy systems for exercise or activity: an aerobic or low power system, and an anaerobic or high power system.  The aerobic system powers us more or less all of the time.  The high power system does not kick in until muscle work approaches a peak.  It's only good for a few seconds up to about one minute.  The body draws on the aerobic system for work below maximum and when muscles are working at peak.  The aerobic system is used to replace the fuel used during anaerobic and aerobic work.  We experience this as high breathing rates during and after exercise.  Where fitness is concerned, regardless of context, the aerobic or low power system is paramount.

Returning to our question: which training approach is best, the question we need to ask and answer is this: what is the strongest signal to expand the aerobic system?  The aerobic system works at every intensity level but are they all equal where outcomes are concerned?  The answer to this question is that there is a heart rate band or zone that produces the strongest signal for the aerobic system to expand and it may surprise to know that it's not very high: 60-70% of max heart rate.  In this heart rate zone, your breathing rate is often not elevated much above normal and it is possible to chat with someone.  That's why the advice given to endurance athletes is to work at levels that would allow you to talk.  

Low heart rate training is not the only level of work endurance athletes need to complete but it should be most of it - about 80% of total training load or volume.  Aerobic fitness is also not the only kind of capacity for work needed for exercise.  Strengthening muscles, for example, is also useful!  However, if fitness or endurance are your primary goals then you need to know how to effectively perform and distribute work to gain the best outcome.  The most common mistake in endurance training and exercise for fitness is believing that the harder I work, the greater the outcomes. 

Walking is a profound human activity

I wrote a post a few weeks back about walking in which I downplayed the transformational properties of walking.  I am ‘walking’ that back a little today.  Walking is a profound activity for humans; probably for all quadrupeds and bipeds.  Walking is human design at its most obvious.

I recently watched a Netflix documentary about a Mexican woman: Lorena Ramirez.  Ramirez is a native Raramuri Mexican.  She lives with her family in the high canyons of Chihuahua, many miles from their nearest neighbours.  The Raramuri or Tarahumara are famous for their capacity as long distance runners.  Running is how the Raramuri move between communities.  

Ramirez loves to run but running is not at the beginning of her story.  Like any individual who lives a subsistence life, Ramirez's life is made of walking.  For the Raramuri, like their more storied counterparts, the Africans of the Rift Valley, walking is a constant.  There is no data that I can find for this - it would make an illuminating research topic - but my educated guess is that subsistence farmers like the Raramuri would accumulate tens of thousands of steps in an average day.  Moreover, Raramuri children would rise to a daily step count far exceeding that of an adult in a modern Western nation very early in life.

Lorena Ramirez lives in a valley or canyon and her walking (and running) is consequently highly varied.  She is strong and balanced.  There is an obvious rhythm to her movement.  When she runs, it is an extension of her walking gait.  Ramirez is no slouch over half and full-marathon distances but she comes into her own for distances above 60 miles or 100 kilometers.  At these distances, running gait is not concerned with power but with rhythm and balance.  Every system in the body is in harmony and for Ramirez this comes naturally because she has a foundation of millions of walking steps with which metabolic and biomechanical balance was built.  

Herein lies the secret.  As we raise power - increase the rate of work - our bodies must 'know' how to locate balance or harmony to properly harness energy.  Without balance across and within systems, one or more of them will overwork and we experience that as fatigue and discomfort.  It was while watching Ramirez that I saw this.  She holds no expectation of herself when running.  She simply seeks harmony within the act and when it arrives, as it usually does, she is then able to accelerate if that is her wish or stay the course.
There are compelling lessons for all of us through the example of individuals like Lorena Ramirez:

• walking is a profound functional and health platform for the human body
• the more walking we do, the stronger and more adaptable our bodies become
• first seek balance or harmony - physiological and psychological - and then raise power
• moving back down in the gears, to re-establish harmony, is a sensible choice and solution.  Ramirez walks when it is sensible to do so
• harmony reduces wear on the body and 'spends' energy far more effectively and efficiently
• low intensity cardio is the most important training zone with which to build performance
• high volume supercedes and must precede speed and power for mid and long distance runners
• learn to listen to your bodies messages.  Walk-jogging is not weakness, in the moment it is exactly what your body is instructing you to do

Back strengthening

Strong backs are healthy backs.  Too much sitting and insufficient activity causes backs to weaken and become grumpy.  It is also the basis for common injuries and conditions, such as bulging discs.  Consult your physician and safely strengthen the soft tissues of your back - core/ torso stabilisers.
Capacity in these muscles builds slowly (months is needed) so commit to a strategy for life.

Back strengthening routine Nov 2019

To abuse or not abuse?

This is an all to common tale of a talented young athlete abused by her coach and sporting program.  It's easy enough at this distance to see this behaviour as the abuse it was, but how many parents (of young athletes) buy in to the justifications of charismatic and reputationally credible coaches?  How many are guilty of supporting lesser crimes of the same basic variety?  Just as sideline abuse is common, so are the crimes of poor judgement by parents and self-service by coaches. 
Is all this necessary?  Can it ever be justified to behave this way with a young athlete who dreams of excellence and a career in elite sport?  No, and for one simple reason: truths, whatever they may be, must be discovered for oneself.  Any idea, however well supported by experience or science, is a blunt tool until is it shaped and honed by the individual in the context of who they are.  Real meaning cannot be generated from the outside but from within.  Every individual must own their choices in order to understand them.
A coach, or a parent for that matter, may present an idea and join an athlete along a pathway of discovery and expression but, after a fashion, it is the athlete who must decide which tools to gather and which paths to walk.  Any other kind of leadership is simply a form of self-service; an example of the coach or of the parent satisfying their own wants and needs.  That is indeed shameful. 

Nike's shame: How famed running program ruined a young girl

Why do children loath testing and what can we do about?

Consider this:

A child enjoys and is highly motivated in their sport or activity

That activity has a learning or progressive development architecture that can be assessed or measured (tested), at a point in time, to show level of achievement or progress

The child highly dislikes or is intimidated by the assessment

Children seek and desire feedback so why does testing or formal assessment make them feel this way?  The answer, sensibly enough, is the negative impression or connotation they have toward the results.  Feedback may be formative or summative.  Formative feedback is qualitative and individualised: concerned with what’s occurring throughout the learning process, while summative feedback is quantitative and compares the individual to an external standard.  School exams is an example of summative testing.  Coaching feedback is formative. 

There is probably not a whole lot that can be done to change the way we generally feel about external standards.  They’re inherently threatening though they do contain useful stage-of-development information.  If there is one thing to consider, it’s how we ‘sell’ it.  Testing should belong to the individual.  It can be a way to learn, to assess the strength of what’s understood and in place, and not merely a way to identify what’s missing.  We don’t have to talk about how test results compare externally.  We can also point out that every effort is a test of sorts.  If we take time to individualise the dialogue: past, present, and future, then there is a chance we might lessen the fear just enough for the individual to discover testing hasn’t diminished them.

Feel free to add your own thoughts and experiences of testing on our Facebook page:

Sport Performance on Facebook

Are target times a good idea?

The inspiration for this question were the responses from the kids after the NZ Winter Swim Championships, held last weekend.  Most had a great weekend but we got talking about why some feel they didn't have a great meet, even after swimming personal bests.  The uniform response, including from those who did enjoy the meet, involved the idea that target times are set and if you don't hit them the meet is a failure even where the result was a personal best.  That seems crazy to me and I thought it needed a little analysis.
We're using the question and feedback format on our Facebook page:Sport Performance Facebook page.  Our blog will present what I think are some important considerations but feel free to contribute your own ideas on our Facebook page.

The first thought I wanted to share about the use of target times, is that it's a risky strategy for measuring success.  It permits no nuance or flexibility in relation to the conditions of the race.  It essentially says that, while other sporting events may contain natural variability, a swimming pool is always and only a 25m or 50m stretch of water.  Is this reasonable?
The first fact to question concerns the pool.  Unless you train at the competition venue, the pool is not the same.  Differences in water depth, which are common from one pool to the next, impart big contrasts in the movement of the water, as any swimmer knows.  There are also the facts of competition to consider.  Try as we might, humans are not static creatures or even close to it, and children are practically a storm of day to day variations.  Competition throws many balls into the air, and the notion that 'it's just the same stretch of water' is at best naive.  The allowance that most sports permit for variation is important because it recognises that every race and every competition is unique in many ways.
Is a target time a valid proposition: are they supported by sport and coaching science?  Peaking certainly is and we see evidence of this in the achievement of personal bests: prepare and execute correctly and you will advance.  Target times derive from the same thinking but they take the basic idea into the realm of fortune teller.  We simply cannot extrapolate progress with such precision.  My suspicion about target times is that they're not supposed to be thought of as 'real' expectations but as a kind of inducement: 'believe it strongly enough and you will achieve it'.  That kind of psychological strategy doesn't concern me.  What should concern us, is the effect they have on athletes after the fact.  At Sport Performance, we have young athletes in every major sport played in NZ, and many minor ones as well, and swimmers hold the most negative impressions of their performances of all sports.
Target times are not the sole reason for this but they're part of the landscape of poorly conceived coaching propositions.  Sport, by it's nature, will challenge self-belief and an individual's sense of capability.  The most important job of the coach is to add balance to this thinking; to show the athlete all the good that is done.  A stop watch, like a personal best and a placing, says little of what happened.  It says nothing specific about preparation and execution.  It provides no information about mood and attitude.  It gives no clues for the future.
The problems, as I see it, with target times is 1) they're basically unreasonable, and 2) they're not counterpointed sufficiently well with coach feedback to permit individuals a balanced and wider sense of what was done.  Most young swimmers I observe do a very good job conducting themselves and too many don't realise it. 

team sport values and full value contracts

The title is a bit of a mouthful but bear with me here.  I get to interact with a lot of sports teams and there are common practices in all of them.  One common practice concerns team building or, rather, how teams are not built.  They're not constructed from a foundation of an agreed and shared culture: how will be behave toward one another and what do we want from our experience?  The first point to make about building a team culture is that it serves two outcomes: team performance and team experience.  My experiences have shown me that by developing the right team experience, we place ourselves in the strongest position to control team performance.  The shared experience should always come first because in serving team performance, it also drives individual goals and outcomes.

I'm not going to tell others which team culture is best; it's highly flexible, and it's in the nature of culture that the individuals involved must define it.  I am going to say, though, that you can't go wrong by including enjoyment as a primary goal.  With the goal of enjoying the experience, we can frame effective training prescriptions and structures.  We also plan for positive thoughts and moods, and I probably don't need to say how useful these are.  Enjoyment also guides the behaviour of individual team members, and it can be used to define acceptable and unacceptable behaviour without entering the murky waters of relationships.  It's a proactive ingredient in building team culture.

The final point I am going to make about building team culture is the role and importance of a 'full value' contract, which implies that individual team members must participate fully in the agreed culture.  Values hold little power if they're not shared, and sharing occurs when individuals participate.  A small step that I believe helps at this point, is to present the team values and the idea of the contract to parents.  Parents play a critical role in team culture via reinforcement of behaviours.  Where parents understand what's expected (of individuals) it is simply more likely that ideas and messages communicated to their children are consistent with the agreed team values.

Rather than hoping for a cohesive and successful team performance, we can help children understand what it means to be a good team member.  We can give them the agency to determine what matters in their sporting experience.     

   

Why children stay involved in the gym program - lessons for parents/ coaches

One of the great benefits of having a run a gym program for children over many years are the observations and lessons learned about them and none is perhaps greater than what I have learned about motivation: why children get and remained involved.

Lesson#1

A majority of children don't choose gym; parents and coaches do.  Children can be very enthusiastic once the idea has been seeded but it's not something that sits in their minds waiting for an opportunity.

What's important to take from this is that, as parents and coaches, we should not reply on a child's comprehension or internal motivation to get them there and keep them going.  Other connections are needed.

Lesson#2

A small number of children connect strongly to gym - their minds or bodies feel good about it - but the majority of children need a social connection.  This is the greatest lesson about extra-curricular exercise: exercise that isn't the main sport, and it applies to many sporting experiences as well.  Social connections are external motivators and they're the single strongest driver in the lives of children.  Social connections are currency that is spent to develop experiences and grow personal meaning and internal connection.  

Deeper, personalised, meaning is the ultimate goal but it takes a lot of time to achieve the connections needed.  It's not a reasonable expectation for many children and, where we can't see the signs of a strong, personal connection to exercise, we have to seed motivation in other ways and that's the role of social connection.

Social connection is the great benefit of joining a gym program through a sports club or team.  The connections are very likely already in place and they are transported with the children.  Another strategy for parents to consider is 'bring a friend'.  At Sport Performance, we're big fans of our kids bringing their mates to class because we know that all it takes is one friend and the likelihood of the child remaining involved is significantly raised.   

Insights from my training

I have had a big surge forward in recent weeks in my run training coinciding with my discovery (thanks to Michael Eccles) of Stephen Seiler's polarised training model.  I have been listening today (link below) to a podcast concerned with how different motor units - slow to fast - are recruited in relation to low versus high power output endurance exercise.  Motor units are the interface between the nervous system, which controls movement and exercise, and the muscles.  The nervous system works to match exercise with the correct pattern of motor units depending on the demands of the task.
The podcast I have been listening to today makes the point that there are two means of recruiting the high force motor units: via high intensity intervals and with pre-exhaustion of slow units during long, slow training.
An aspect of my running that I have struggled to understand and resolve concerns how I am able to significantly increase run tempo after many long, slow km's with no outward sign of any increase in stress (e.g. heart rate) but starting a run at high tempo exhausts me.  In other words, I can tolerate much higher tempos after a long, slow build up than I can begin a run with.  I am certain this is a common phenomenon.
After today's listening, I believe I have an answer and it relates to motor unit capacity and recruitment.  The first, and perhaps most important, point to make is this: power output after 60s of exercise is essentially aerobic power; the size and efficiency of the oxidative metabolic system, lungs and heart all the way down to the muscle fibers.  This is a point that Seiler and his cohorts make over and over.  Regardless of circumstance, build your aerobic capacity above all and that means training 80-90% of the time with a low heart rate (not above 70% of HR max).  The remainder of the time (10-20%), train like you're being chased by a pack of wild dogs.
So what did I learn to explain my pattern of fatiguing less when I start slower and spend a bucket load before try to hit the accelerator?  The answer is my recruitment pattern of slow versus high force motor units.  Faster runs use more of the faster motor units.  When I start fast, I am using a higher percentage of these than when I start slow.  The problem is, they're also fast fatiguing and that explains the crash I experience during fast starts.  The thing is, they're not supposed to be the only units in play - I'm not running that fast!  The slower, more aerobically efficient units are also supposed to be engaged but I don't think they are; at least not in the numbers I need.
The clue to understanding what might be going on in my body is provided by the other phenomenon of my body hitting a fast 'steady state' after a long, slow warm-up.  I don't think I have been training the slow motor units correctly and this has impaired the way my nervous system uses it's resources.  By training with a higher than ideal heart rate, I have signaled to my brain that I want a greater proportion of high force motor units engaged at all times.
My long, slow runs are forcing my body to properly recruit the slow motor units and as these sub-serve the fast units, the whole system begins to operate efficiently.  Without the slow units doing their job, the fast units quickly run out of gas.
What does all this mean for my training?  It says that I have to spend most of my time running slowly both to grow capacity in the aerobic system and also to ingrain the correct recruitment pattern across all runs: slow to fast.

Polarised training and motor unit recruitment

Some ideas hurt: best and worst days

There is a lot to unpack in the concept of best versus worst day but I'll do my best to stay with the basic idea.
Young athletes have the impression that their best and worst days are poles apart.  Feel free to test this.  Is it reality though?  If we're gauging on outcomes alone then maybe.  Maybe?  No, not even then.  It just seems that way.  If we look away from an outcome and instead at the moment to moment behaviours and actions it is quickly obvious that not much is different from one performance to the next.  A win or personal best may contain a handful of well constructed moments but performances do not transform in the short or even medium term. 
The idea of a miraculous 'best day' is damaging.  It's simply not true and that's a problem all by itself.  A PB or win can appear as a new standard but what does that mean?  Any performance is a large collection of moments and a PB represents a higher than normal 'average' standard of execution.  It's actually not a requirement of a high performance standard that new physical standards are reached, only that the overall standard of work is high.  Exposing an athlete to the idea that they must become better than ever before is a very different kind of idea to executing better than ever before.  We are aiming for transformation in sport but it is not instantaneous and never miraculous.  Adaptation is a response to training and it involves immeasurably small improvements or differences over a long period of time.
The ultimate driver of progress is time, so our most important responsibility as parents and coaches and colleagues is to support ideas and attitudes and experiences that nurture and encourage participation.  Ideally, we need to prick the fallacy of competition as a transformative physical experience early on.  For the same reason it cannot transform, competition also cannot destroy.  We need to take the time to explain to children that there are no catastrophic days.  Certainly we can have catastrophic experiences but the greatest driver of these are emotional responses to the disappointment of not achieving what are, if we think about it, unreasonable expectations to begin with.  If we train well and keep practicing it is just a matter of time until we execute better than ever before, and just a matter of time also for our tools to grow and evolve to higher levels.
We all need good days, and proof or evidence also that progress is occurring but first we need to understand what this 'proof' is and what it's not.

Reflections on performance. Part-2

Many of our kids were involved in the recent National age group swim championships. I make a point of asking every swimmer how their meet went and I am happy to say many gave me the only answer I hope to hear: they enjoyed it! Some - usually more experienced swimmers - rarely seem to have a rewarding experience.

This needs to be unpacked as there is a common response pattern: immediate response is negative, and relates to swim performance. When asked specifically if they enjoyed themselves (at the meet), most say yes. Probed a little further, and it's actually also common for these athletes to have achieved one or more personal bests. However, even when it's acknowledged that the overall experience was enjoyable and there was at least one best ever performance, the trend is to stick with the first response - it wasn't a good meet.

This response pattern to competition is common. It reflects an expectation landscape that is virtually impossible to live up to. It goes like this: I have trained hard and nothing less than a good personal best in my target event is acceptable. Is this reasonable? Not even a little bit. Young athletes rise to the energy of an occasion but it requires extraordinary control to pull it all together in one moment. It's more likely that conditions will align some time during competition week and more likely again over a series of competitions. What's vital in all of this is an understanding of what high performance is constructed from: a positive mood or attitude, a physically ready mind and body, pre-prepared skills, and practiced race strategies. If I can look back on a swim, or any sporting performance, and recognise that I managed all or most of these responsibilities then I have every reason to be satisfied because it's just a matter of time until it clicks.

'Bests' and 'firsts' are blunt measures of performance - all or nothing. If your concept of a positive experience is pegged on a binary outcome then you're asking for trouble. Most disappointingly of all, however, is the fact that there are often a multitude of things that go well during competition even if the big race didn't. Consider the big learning from the first reflections blog: athletes can't control the outcome but the factors that make the outcome possible. The better and more often we stack conditions in our favour, the closer we get to our strongest performance. The greatest battle for any athlete is the mental one, and the very last thing we should permit is a young sports person to be blind to their own achievements.

We build self-esteem and belief not with dramatic leaps ahead but with smiles every day for the small things done well.

Reflections on performance. Part-1

Preparing for performance is one of the most difficult things for an athlete.  New city, new course/ court/ pool/ ground, lots of noise and distraction.  Different routines.  Certain personalities can really struggle, making life difficult for themselves and teammates.  Coaches and managers have a lot of work to do introducing responsibilities and helping athletes manage detail.  Some (coaches and managers) are better at this than others.

There are two big pieces that an athlete needs to grasp.  It helps also if coaches and parents understand too, and can reinforce the key messages:

1. There are lots of variables, and time and plenty of practice is needed to discover them and find a sweet spot.  The critical goals are to ensure good rest/ recovery processes, effective eating strategies, and comprehensive warm ups.  Errors are common in each
2. Athletes aim for personal bests and high performance levels at specific events but we cannot, despite best efforts, guarantee an outcome.  What we can do is give ourselves 'the best chance possible', and the probability of a good or great outcome depends on how often we achieve a 'best chance possible' state.  More of one improves probability of the other

Our performance strategy is not to hit a personal best or win the event but to arrange things in such a way that we achieve a 'best chance possible' state.  Winning is somewhat out of our control much of the time.  What we can control are the variables that make it possible.  This is a key message that young athletes need to hear and learn to grasp.