(Non) Swim Report – February 28,2010 – Fog and rollers
Video footage:
Another Affirmation of Power Law Training
Shorter but higher intensity workouts are gaining more credibility as healthier alternatives to endurance training. Here are a few excerpts from an article on interval training:
“A lot of the (benefits) from exercise are due to a stress response,” said Stephen Bailey, a sports sciences expert at the University of Exeter. “If you disturb your muscles, there’s an imbalance created and your body will start signaling pathways that result in adjustments.”
Shorter but more intense “stress responses” stimulate growth hormone levels while minimizing cortisol levels. By comparison, lengthy endurance training sessions maximize cortisol levels and paradoxically compromise muscle energy output in the long run (pun intended):
Bailey said intense bursts of exercise help the body to convert one type of muscle fiber into another type that uses oxygen more efficiently and is capable of exercising a lot longer. Even though interval training only takes a few minutes, its effects last for hours.
Finally, interval (power law) training builds lean muscle tissue that has a voracious appetite for both consumed and stored fat:
“You’ve exercised at such a high intensity that you’re going to create a massive disturbance in your muscles,” Bailey said. “That creates a higher metabolism for several hours afterward, which the body will bring down by burning fat and carbohydrates.”
Keep this in mind during your next 1.5 hour treadmill or spinning workout.
Endurance Training vs Sprint Training: Olympics Case Study
Since everyone’s attention is focused on the Vancouver Winter Olympics, I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to highlight some rather compelling images from the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
First, here are the two gold medal winners for the marathon event:
Next, we have the two gold medal winners in the triathlon event:
Finally, here are respective male and female gold medal winners for the decathlon and heptathlon events:
Notice how the decathlon/heptathlon winners have much more lean muscle mass throughout their entire bodies. While this is especially evident in their upper bodies, take a look also at the large muscle groups in their lower bodies such as their quads, glutes, and calf muscles.
The endurance athletes, by comparison, look emaciated. This is most likely due to a combination of muscle cannibalization coupled with chronic systemic inflammation (sounds just peachy, doesn’t it?).
The key takeaway here is that decathletes and heptathletes are “sprint and power” athletes – not endurance athletes. While they are certainly capable of “going long” if necessary, they are better optimized for shorter burst, higher energy activities that engage the major muscle groups of their entire bodies.
Remember, you’re built this way, too.
WSJ and Evolutionary Biology
I’m a big fan of the Wall Street Journal, and I think it’s one of the few publications that manages to communicate the news without sensationalizing it to the point of absurdity. But even the “capitalist bible” is prone to occasional gaffes…
There’s a great piece in today’s WSJ on evolutionary biology that you should definitely read. It’s a well-written and very informative article that describes how many of our modern maladies can be traced to changes in our diet and activity patterns which – unfortunately – bear little resemblance to those of our ancestors.
I just have one quibble with the article and it involves following passage:
Our hunter-gatherer forbearers were tall, lean long-distance runners who subsisted on plants and protein.
The tall, lean high-protein omnivore part doesn’t bother me. But the long-distance runner contention most certainly does.
There is no conclusive evidence that early humans were long-distance runners. Conversely, it is much more likely that we were low-aerobic trekkers who occasionally sprinted after prey or away from predators – whatever the scenario.
The key is, lengthy treadmill workouts and 20-mile training runs are not natural human activities. They’re unnatural fitness practices designed to accommodate equally unnatural high carbohydrate diets.
And while I’m not normally a betting man, I’d eagerly wager a double sawbuck that our Paleolithic ancestors didn’t wear sugar-laden “fuel belts” while out on the hunt.
Swim Report – February 21, 2010 – Choppy and Foggy
Dave and I got in a quick 3/4 mile out at Ladder #1 this afternoon. The lake was clear of ice and snow, but the swim itself was quite a challenge. The water temperature came in at 34F, and we had to contend with some surprisingly strong chops that kept buffeting us back and forth as we swam alongside the east wall.
No pics today, but I do have a screen shot from a live video feed of Oak Street Beach:
This was taken about an hour ago, but the conditions reflected in the pic are pretty much identical to what we faced earlier in the day.
Big Brains, Diabetes, and the Role of Fasting
It appears that dolphins have the ability to regulate their “fasting gene” in order to prevent type 2 diabetes. In other words, they can oscillate between lengthy periods of either continuous eating or fasting without compromising blood glucose levels necessary to sustain optimal health and energy levels.
This does not, however, appear to be a trait that dolphins share with other large marine mammals such as seals and walruses. And the likely explanation is that dolphins, with their much larger brains, require higher levels of blood glucose to fuel their high-energy brain tissue – just like humans.
So why are dolphins unique in this ability when compared to their more cerebrally-challenged counter parts? Per the researchers:
Dr Venn-Watson explained that the mammals may have evolved this fasting-feeding switch to cope with a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet of fish. “Bottlenose dolphins have large brains that need sugar,” Dr Venn-Watson explained. Since their diet is very low in sugar, “it works to their advantage to have a condition that keeps blood sugar in the body… to keep the brain well fed”.
Although these findings are preliminary, there may very well be similarities in how dolphins and other big-brained species – namely humans – regulate insulin and glucose at a genetic level.
This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. High carbohydrate foods were conspicuously absent from the human diet until the advent of agriculture. And grain-based carbohydrates such as wheat, barley, rice, and maize (corn) became staples in our diet only about 5,000 – 8,000 years ago. Prior to that, the human diet consisted largely of proteins and fats (both animal and plant source) with carbohydrates coming less frequently from plant-based sources.
Given this history of high-protein, low-carbohydrate food consumption, it makes sense that humans would have evolved to develop a similar “fasting gene” that could switch on and off to maintain brain energy levels during times of scarcity.
Again, the findings of this study are subject to further examination. But it appears that the “dolphin model” might actually be more applicable to us humans than we realize:
And we have found changes in dolphins that suggest that [this insulin resistance] could get pushed into a disease state. If we started feeding dolphins Twinkies, they would have diabetes.
Examining the Half Truths About Nuts
I follow the Livestrong blog, and one of the cover posts for today is a piece called Nuts: Diet-Friendly Nutrition Facts.
This one was actually pretty good. But like a lot of “conventional wisdom” surrounding diet and nutrition, there was a rather glaring half-truth that needs to be pointed out.
First of all, I really liked how the post started out:
While nuts were once thought of as a dieter’s high-fat nightmare, they are now viewed as a healthy component of any diet. From lowering cholesterol to protecting against heart disease and certain cancers, research continues to show that many health benefits can be obtained from eating nuts.
The author then went on to highlight the many benefits of nuts such as the cardioprotective effects of consuming the unsaturated fats contained therein. I automatically thought of walnuts, which are not only very heart healthy but also help preserve bone density.
So imagine my surprise when the first thing the author talked about was peanuts – which she herself admitted isn’t even a nut:
Although commonly thought of as a nut, peanuts are actually legumes and belong in the same family as the bean and pea. However, since they are nutritionally similar to nuts, they are often referred to as “groundnuts”. Peanuts actually contain more protein, fiber, and vitamin E than any other nut.
Not only are peanuts not nuts, but they’re actually quite unhealthy to humans. In addition to being a lethally toxic allergen to many people, peanuts also contain aflatoxins which have proven to be carcinogenic.
Bottom line, peanuts are not healthy sources of proteins and unsaturated fats.
The key is to recognize that the health, fitness, and endurance sports industries have a peculiar love affair with peanuts and peanut butter. This causes them to not only miscategorize these legumes as nuts but to also heavily promote them as healthy food products.
So any time you hear one of these “experts” talk about eating peanuts or peanut products, just remember to substitute walnuts instead. Your body will love you for it.
Swim Report – February 14, 2010 – Bird of Prey Edition
Dave and I got in a quick 1/2 mile out at Ladder #1 this afternoon. The ice from Saturday had moved out, and the swim area was sunny and clear. Despite not having been in the lake regularly since November, I am happy to report that I haven’t lost much of my swim endurance.
I don’t have any photos of our swim for you, but I did get this shot of a Cooper’s Hawk that had just felled a pigeon right off of the Lake Shore Drive exit at North Avenue. Pretty intense!
