I’ve heard the story over and over again, and it goes something like this: I was playing my favorite sport, or I was gardening outside, or I just went around the corner to… and then my back seized up, or I pulled my hamstring, or my arm went numb. (It doesn’t really matter what got hurt, the fact is something got hurt.) Then this person is supposed to rest for six weeks or eight weeks or a month whatever their primary care doctor doles out as advice, generally with some ibuprofen and maybe ice or heat. All better! 

 

Once the rest moratorium has passed, they go back to what they were doing before because they have missed it terribly, and guess what happens. They reinjure the exact same thing, sometimes the first day back. 

Why didn’t resting work?

Once upon a time, I was playing soccer against a really mean girl. She and I had been battling it out all game long, and then she went to take a shot. I had no choice but to slide tackle her to prevent the shot, the ball went out (I was victorious!) and in the process of getting back up our legs were all tangled up. Furious, she somehow managed to torque one of my legs further (accidentally, I’m sure. Ha!) and I felt that sickening pop in my knee before disentangling. By 8 o’clock that night my knee was swollen up as big as a baseball. Lots of ?&@$!?$&@ poured out of my mouth. 

 

Little did I know I was about to start a journey of intense frustration.

One that most all of my clients have traveled, often more than once. 

I went to see the first primary care doctor that was available in my clinic. I did not win the lottery with this one. She was not in the least bit physically active, didn’t even know what a plank was, and told me to rest six weeks and take ibuprofen three times a day. if I still wasn’t better then she’d order an MRI, and send me to physical therapy. I told her that wasn’t going to work that as this was the fall, I was a personal trainer, and I was coaching two soccer teams at the time.   I explained that I could run straight ahead, I could run sideways, but ask me to open the front door -a twisting mechanism- and it dropped me. I wanted that MRI right away. 

“What do you mean you’ve been running??” she said. “Rest! Get the inflammation down! If it isn’t better in six weeks, then call me!”  Um, frustrating. 

(Let me caveat this story with the information that this was eight years ago, and a lot of research has come out since, but I STILL hear stories that are similar!)

Well, my life didn’t slow down.

 

I didn’t play soccer because I couldn’t, but I continued to run, and I continued to see what helped the knee and irritated the knee. I waited the obligatory six weeks and I had my MRI done. I didn’t see the point of taking ibuprofen three times a day as I know it tears up stomach linings, so I iced instead. The swelling came down just fine. I had the MRI sent to a highly respected orthopedist, not an orthopedic surgeon, because if you hang out with surgeons they like to talk about what they are good at: surgery. 

To my great shock he told me that my MRI was “inconclusive”. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I, like all of my clients, wanted a definitive answer! What was I supposed to do with “inconclusive”? Recovering from the shock, I countered with, “Well, of course it’s inconclusive. My knee doesn’t hurt lying down and the position the MRI was taken was lying down. You need a standing up twisting MRI to see what’s wrong with my knee!” He smiled at me, and said, “Do you know how many thousands of baseline MRIs we would have to take to be able to compare loaded twisted MRIs?” I replied, “Well then, get going!”, to which he burst into laughter. More frustration. 

My options were: exploratory surgery (no!) and physical therapy. I told him what had gone down with the primary care doctor, and he told me that “active rest” was more appropriate. That was the first time I had heard that term.  

What did he mean? 

I first scoffed at rest as a great way to recover when I tripped over a study done by NASA about 20 years ago. I was actually so interested in the study I tracked down the actual research at the NASA library and had them mail it to me. The study is trying to figure out what the best way to duplicate zero gravity on Earth in order to help the astronauts prepare for space. As I was reading, I guessed water as the best way to duplicate zero gravity. Water has 20% gravity, so not a bad guess! However, it turns out if you put highly trained astronauts (or athletes) on bed rest for a week, by the end of the week their reaction time has already decreased by 10%. 

 

NASA says bed rest is the best way to duplicate zero gravity! 

Yikes. So resting doesn’t sound like the best way to help recover from an injury. Maybe this “active rest” is a better way? The big question is: What have you done to change what caused the injury in the first place? 

 If the answer is nothing, I am not surprised to hear that nothing has changed when you go to move again. In my case with my knee, I was obviously not as strong on one leg in a rotational direction as I could potentially have been, so that is what I worked on. I also stay away from mean girls. 🙂 

What then can be done to let the injured area heal, but continue to move?  

Aaah, that is the question, isn’t it! Are you familiar with the “reflex arc?”

Stay tuned so we can talk about that next time…..in the meantime let us know what you’ve done to actively recover from an injury in the comments below!

Photo’s courtesy of NASA On The Commons on Flickr

The best game ever invented

It’s called Foot Golf! Otherwise known as: soccer on the golf course. It is remarkably similar to golf in many ways. You play in a foursome. Players tee off at the same spot the golfers do, and interestingly enough stay off the putting green. Instead, the Foot Golf cup is in it’s own little special spot either to the left or right of the green, marked by (in our case) a red flag. You keep score like you would in golf, see below.

How tough is Foot Golf?

Was it easy? Was it hard? Sarah and I are soccer players, and the boys have played a little. It was a challenge in different ways for all of us, as the ball breaks on the slope like golf balls do and natural obstacles can and do get in the way.

I love hitting trees solidly! Ya! 🙂

That being said, bring the littles and their little soccer balls.  You can use yours or rent one at the pro shop. There was a family playing ahead of us having a grand ole time.

Footwear can count

Do we recommend Converse as the shoes of choice? Well, if you notice in the email photo Sarah’s back is a bit muddy. It had rained earlier in the week, and she went to kick, planted, slipped, and flat backed it.  I did not have any trouble in golf shoes, but I was also extra careful after nearly falling over laughing with (not at! with!) her. 

Here in Portland, you can try out Foot Golf on Thursdays after 3pm at Lake Oswego Municipal Golf Course, and we found 4 other courses in the Portland Metro area. You can expect to pay around $9 per person for 9 holes, and there is an 18 hole option. It took us a little over an hour to play 9 holes, without any hurry or rush. Check out afgl.us for a course directory and the rules in detail.

Go out and play with friends and family- it was fun! 

You can still miss your putt

However, Foot Golf can be every bit as heartbreaking as regular golf. Watch this series of putts. Both Sarah and John execute the kick at the same time….

Both balls look good, have the same speed, and it seems like it is a given both will drop….

and John’s ball drops in, but *oh no* what is happening to Sarah’s?

John’s ball drops in, and what’s Sarah’s ball going to do?

Poor Sarah! No bueno for this putt! 🙁

Give it a try and let us know how much fun you had in the comments below! 

Once upon a time, a Brazilian doctor named Dr. Araujo was frustrated with tests administered to determine long-term health. He wanted something that would quickly get through to his patients’ brains and beautifully illustrate his deep concerns about their health.  

He thought other tests had too many variables at stake: Did you have the right equipment to administer the test, was the administrator an accurate data collector, etc. This complicated things enormously but more than that didn’t allow impactful conclusions to be drawn, and the potential seriousness of the situation to be conveyed. 

Necessity is the mother of invention! 

I make up stuff for clients all the time on the spot because in my case, they need something to work in a certain way without another muscle dominating or interfering. This doctor took it a step further and added research to support his position. He came up with a beautifully simple solution. No equipment needed, and just a few rules on what to look for.  What did he call it? 

 The Sitting to Rising Test. 

He tested it on 2000 patients ages 51 to 80 and published his results in the European Journal of Cardiology.

“People who scored less than 8 points on the test, he found, were twice as  likely to die within the next six years compared with those who scored higher; those who scored three or fewer points were more than five times as likely to die within the same period compared with those who scored more than eight points”. 

Here is the most interesting conclusion: 

“Overall, each point increase in the SRT score was associated with a 21% decrease in mortality from all causes.”

21% decrease? That is very significant!! I know you are anxious to try this simple test- so how do you know how to score it? 

“The two basic movements in the sitting-rising test – lowering to the floor and standing back up- are each scored on a 1-5 scale, with 1 point subtracted each time a hand or knee is used for support and .5 points subtracted for loss of balance; this yields a single 10 point scale. ” 

Let’s go!

Here it is: Take your shoes off and give yourself some room. Can you cross your feet and go from a standing position, sink all the way down to sitting “criss cross applesauce” and then stand back up again? Sounds easy enough. Be careful though….don’t lose your balance! 

Be careful and don’t cheat! Here are some examples of cheating: 

 Good job testing your flexibility, strength, and balance. How did you do? Let us know in the comments below!

I would like to revisit the “You’ve got structural problems, dude!” part of last week’s blog post. Let’s look at the picture of Tiger in the red shirt again. Here it is:

He appears to be equally balanced on both feet, but what is his right shoulder doing so much lower than the left? Recall that we saw a big twisty movement in the way he walked off the course. 

Take a look at this screen shot of him from the back. That right shoulder is still lower, and take a look at that left hip again. This prompted a lot of discussion on how he should best address the problem. Interesting what this doctor had to say on Twitter that day:

He goes from saying “change swing or retire” to “he needs a non surgical rheumatology assessment of his spine”. It is well known in the golf community that Tiger has changed his swing multiple times. Check. Didn’t help. Rheumatology is defined as “any disorder of the extremities or back, characterized by pain and stiffness”. That is a pretty broad definition, eh?

However, you can see with your own eyes that his left hip is twisting all over the place. Taking a rheumatological look at his spine would be taking a look at the place that hurts, which is the symptom. Is it the cause as well?

I think not. Tiger himself identified the fact that his “glutes are shutting off”; “don’t activate and hence, it goes into my lower back.” He figured out the cause, but just isn’t having any luck with the strength and endurance in the glutes. Yet. Yet is the key word here, but I think there is one more elephant in the room that needs to be addressed: that left hip. 

The left hip, in my opinion, is the primary cause of his low back misery. 

Apparently the guys at Nike tried to tell him the same thing, to no avail. So I have fuel for my fire! 

How does one hip cause such misery? 

Stand in front of a mirror. Are your hips level? In the same horizontal plane? If they are, try hiking one hip up. What does that shoulder do?

It drops down, but why? Well, the hips are the foundation of your upper body. If one hip is higher than the other, the first thing that happens is that both shoulders move to stay on top of the hips. Your head also moves slightly to one side or the other. At that point, if your eyes are open, the eyes look at the horizon and notice that the world is slightly crooked. The eyes then rectify the situation by dropping one or the other shoulder. This picture illustrates it beautifully, minus showing the shoulders.

This is also why most people have varying degrees of scoliosis (curvature of the spine), but that is a topic for a future blog post. 🙂 

So now, how do we fix it? Well, remember to be patient as we build strength in those muscles that aren’t strong YET (aka Tiger’s identification of the glutes) but let’s see if we can impact the horizontal position of the hips as well. Here are two of my favorite hip leveling positions:

First exercise: Kneeling Wall. 

 

Kneel, with something cushy underneath your knees if they need it, where your knees and nose touch the wall. Here is the absolutely critical piece: MAKE SURE THE WEIGHT IS EQUAL IN BOTH KNEES. If it isn’t then you are continuing to favor one side over the other. If necessary, force the weight onto the knee that isn’t doing as much work. This creates a platform where the hips are required to do the same amount of work, and you will feel your quads burn up to your hips. It might take 4-5 mins, or even up to 12. Breathe. Hang in there! We want those hips level!

Second exercise: Wall Heel Drop

Take a thick book, or if you have a fancy calf stretch board, turn it around so the diagonal side is facing away from the wall. Throw yourself up against the wall, with your head, your hips, and your heels touching the wall. It is easier with your toes up on that book or board to stay balanced. Notice if the weight is distributed equally on both heels. If it isn’t, force it. I used to wait patiently, and now I push the issue.

It is essential that you have the same amount of weight on both heels, which means both hips are doing the same amount of work! Contract those glutes equally to get your tight calves to connect to your hamstrings to connect to your glutes. Breathe.  This is also a FANTASTIC sinus release as most heads are forward, and this forces your head over your hips over your heels and allows your sinuses to drain. Try it for a few minutes, and I keep clients there for 10 minutes if the sinuses are especially clogged. Level those hips! 

Let us know in the comments if you give these exercises a try and what the impact was! 

 

I just saw a Video of Tiger Woods leaving the golf course due to a ‘bad limp”. The video I originally posted with this blog is no longer linked. I did manage to grab some screen shots from it to illustrate my point though.

It is patently obvious to me what the problem is. To test my theory of how obvious his problem is, I showed the video to my brand-new 16 year old client to see what she thought. She turned to me and said, “His hips are very twisty!”

Yep. Watch that left hip in particular.

Here is a freeze-frame (sorry about the blurriness) from the video. Notice the golf glove in his rear pocket waaaay over to the left.

You’ve got structural problems Tiger!

Here is more fuel for my “You’ve got structural problems, dude!” theory: Take a gander at this recent photo of him holding still. Look at that right shoulder, and how dropped down it is.

Does he have a shoulder problem? Not that we know of, and apparently he is very aware of what is going on, as quoted in sportingnews.com:

“Woods said the delay of more than two hours proved impossible to overcome.

“Then I got cold standing out there and everything started deactivating again. It’s frustrating that I just can’t stay active. That’s just the way it is.

“We usually don’t have to wait like this back home practicing. You can keep going and going. My glutes are shutting off and they don’t activate.”

Huffington Post reported: 
“I was ready to go,” Woods said. “I had a good warmup session the first time around. Then we stood out here and I got cold, and everything started deactivating again. And it’s frustrating that I just can’t stay activated. That’s just kind of the way it is.”

Asked if it was new pain from the back injury that forced him to withdraw at Firestone in August, Woods said his “glutes are shutting off.”
“Then they don’t activate and then, hence, it goes into my lower back,” he said, sounding more like a physical therapist than a 14-time major champion. “So I tried to activate my glutes as best I could in between, but they never stayed activated.”

If I were Tiger Wood’s Trainer 

So, Tiger, here are five of my most favorite glute activation exercises in case you need ideas. It is interesting to me that you couldn’t keep them online. Every morning I wake up and think, “The glutes were working yesterday. Where did they go?” I know I have to work on mine…every single morning, and life is good.

I mentioned my brand-new 16 year old client above. Her physical therapist gave her glute activation exercises, too, but she couldn’t feel them working until we tweaked a few things. I think some PT’s are far more patient than I am, and hope with repetition comes activation.

I personally change the exercise until we get what I am after. So, my dear readers, if you don’t feel your glutes activate, bun-buns burn up, or bottom engage, move on to the next exercise. Hopefully at least one will work, and if not, I have a million ideas on what else to try!

Try all of these exercises, 2-3 sets of 10. See what happens. Remember: Don’t assume your glute is working because I say this is a great glute exercise. If you are having difficulty feeling it, I promise it isn’t. 

Exercise One: Kneeling Ankle Squeezes

Kneeling on the floor, with something to squeeze in between your ankles and heels. Squeeze and release with your ankles and heels feeling a little bit of calves, a lot of hamstring, and anchoring in the glutes. Do not let your glute skip working and have all this workload anchor in your low back. Make sure both sides are working equally. Tiger will tell you, it is no fun to have your back work instead. 🙁

Exercise Two: Prone Ankle Squeezes

Same as above, except lie on your tummy. Do you feel your glutes equally? If not, give the side that is lagging a little more love. Catch it up!

Exercise Three: Sumo Squats against the wall

Face the wall, split your feet apart, turn your toes out, and drop down into your hips comfortably. Then as you come up out of the squat, drive through your heels feeling your glutes equally. This exercise puts your adductors, or insides of the thighs, on a big stretch and you might feel the tightness there first. Get them out of the way. They are the antagonists of the glutes and tightness here frequently interferes with glutes. 

 

Exercise Four: Walking Sideways

Standing, shift your weight onto your heel. See if you can feel the glute before you even move. If you can, drive thru the right heel as you move to the left to feel the right glute. Vice-versa for the left glute. No need to bend your knee much. Walking sideways is such a great easy way to get those glutes to work, but beware of the monster strong quads. They often jump in and want to help. 

 

 

Exercise Five: Single Leg Squat Touchdown

Hang onto something stable – I have chosen the wall here. Do opposites, as in left hand to right toes or right knee. Feel hip flexor or the front of the hip on the way down, and the key is to drive thru the heel and feel the glute on the way up. If you cheat and bend in the back rather than use the front of the hip, you will not definitively feel your glutes. If it makes your back sore, you are no question using your back. Stop and try again. 

Let us know if you get your glutes to work with any of these exercises in the comments below!  

February is American Heart Health Month. Give your heart some love!

Additionally, Friday February 6th is National Wear Red Day to raise awareness about  women and heart disease. Check out goredforwomen.org.

How much is too much exercise?

Is there such a thing as too much exercise?

Longitudinal studies came out about marathoners last year — more exercise must be better for you, right? The Wall Street Journal reported that 

“A growing body of research shows the error of that thinking. A study published in the current edition of Missouri Medicine found that 50 men who had run at least one marathon a year for 25 years had higher levels of coronary-artery plaque than a control group of sedentary men. A British Medical Journal study published this year compared the carotid arteries of 42 Boston Marathon qualifiers with their much-less active spouses. We hypothesized that the runners would have a more favorable atherosclerotic risk profile,” says the article.

As it turned out, that hypothesis was wrong. A small body of research suggests that heart problems may arise not in spite of extreme-endurance exercise but because of it. That has led some cardiologists to theorize that, beyond a certain point, exercise stops preventing and starts causing heart disease.”

Bad news for endurance sports?

This news was met with great dismay by me as I am what I refer to as a recovering marathoner.  I’ve lost track of how many races I’ve participated in. I quit counting after 20, but it is probably closer to 30 marathons since I started right after I graduated from college. Once you get into that endorphin groove it is really hard to break out of it!

I laughed when I read another blogger’s reaction on theclymb.com‘s website. Audra Rundle wrote, after having been notified of the detrimental effect of endurance events, “I replied to my concerned friend’s email with, “Thanks for the head’s up. I’ve also read that one study showed that indi­vid­u­als who ate mul­ti­ple times a day, slept at night, and bathed reg­u­larly for 80+ years died—no mat­ter how much exercise they did. Scary, eh? … Seri­ously though, I love you too.”

Love your workout

Remember last time when I blogged about why it was important to actually like your workout, because if you didn’t you could send your cortisol levels skyrocketing, and high cortisol leads to all kinds of bad stuff? Well, here is the why of how cortisol is looking like it makes a favorable environment for heart disease. 

Study after study creates a relationship between plasma cortisol and cholesterol. This particular one was published on the  National Institute of Health website:

“To study the association of plasma cortisol and coronary atherosclerosis, we elected 71 male outpatients who had coronary angiography as part of their evaluation at our facility. Forty-eight percent of the angiograms showed no evidence of coronary artery disease (CAD), 20% showed mild CAD, and 32% showed moderate to severe CAD. We found significant correlations between elevated serial morning plasma cortisols and moderate to severe coronary atherosclerosis. Using the odds ratio, we compared plasma cortisol to the major risk factors for coronary artery disease. Plasma cortisol was second only to serum cholesterol as a discriminator in our patient population between diseased and non-diseased patients. We found a significant correlation between plasma cortisol and cholesterol, blood pressure, and smoking- the three cardinal risk factors for CAD. The highest degree of correlation was found between cortisol and cholesterol. The possible significance of the association of cortisol and the major risk factors for CAD is discussed.” 

If cholesterol is a patching mechanism, and atherosclerosis develops because of elevated cholesterol in the bloodstream, and cholesterol is elevated because of cortisol, then be careful of that steady state cardio! Recent studies have shown that if women in particular indulge in more than 30 minutes of steady state cardio, they boost their cortisol levels by 150%.

150%!!

I will expand on that factoid in a future blog, because it has huge possibilities. So what is the best bang for your cardio buck, and very importantly, your heart? 

Intervals, plain and simple.

What do I mean by that? Well, quite honestly, I really don’t mind how long or short your intervals are. There are a million ways to execute intervals in your workouts.

First, the Tabata method utilizes really short intervals (20 seconds of high intensity exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated 8 times for a total of 4 minutes!). This is very hard but gets over fast. 🙂

Second, you could try the school of thought that applies the quantity of time you spend in your sport to your interval timing. For instance if you were a football player, since we have the Super Bowl coming up this weekend, you go hard for 10 seconds, and then jog back to the huddle and rest a bit for 30 seconds, and then you go hard again. That is another example of how you can utilize the start-stop-start interval methodology with your cardio. 

Laura’s approach

Here’s my super scientific approach: If I am out running, I will pick a tree and sprint to it, jog to the fire hydrant, and sprint again to the mailbox. You could wear your heart rate monitor and massively track your zones, but if you get sick of wearing devices for every workout, this is a very easy technique to implement. 

Let us know in the comments below what your favorite interval training method is! Do you whale on a heavy bag? Jumprope in place? Slam a medicine ball? I look forward to hearing from you!

And don’t forget . . .  Go Seahawks! 

Why is it important that you like what you’re doing for your workout?

There are some obvious, and not so obvious answers that question. I highly doubt you will keep anything up that you really deeply dislike ( even though you might think it is good for you) no matter your determination, no matter your discipline, and no matter your willpower. Turns out that is a spot on strategy.

First of all, I think the word “workout” should be changed to “fun-outs”. My goodness! Who wants to work any more than they already have to? 🙂 There’s nothing I love more than having a client crack up while we are working out- then I think I’m doing my job well. I love it even more when someone outside the workout walks up and comments on how loudly we are giggling or ‘don’t we know that workouts are supposed to be hard’. Which makes us laugh more. 🙂
That makes it a “fun-out”.

There’s more to that then I ever imagined.

Serotonin and feeling good

Turns out, when you compliment someone (“good job on those inchworms, Bob!”) not only does your serotonin level increase, but so does theirs. Serotonin, according to WebMD.com, is super important in body chemistry. “Researchers …believe that an imbalance in serotonin levels may influence mood in a way that leads to depression. Possible problems include low brain cell production of serotonin, a lack of receptor sites able to receive the serotonin that is made, inability of serotonin to reach the receptor sites, or a shortage in tryptophan, the chemical from which serotonin is made. If any of these biochemical glitches occur, researchers believe it can lead to depression, as well as obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, panic, and even excess anger.”

HRV and exercise

Further, wether or not someone likes the exercise I’ve chosen directly impacts their heart rate variability, or HRV for short. What exactly is that and why is it important?

From the Heartmath.com website comes this definition: “Heart rate variability (HRV), which is at the core of research the Institute of HeartMath conducts, is a measure of the naturally occurring beat-to-beat changes in heart rate/heart rhythms. It serves as a critical method for gauging human health and resiliency. ” interesting. Another definition from ithlete.com states, “Monitoring Heart Rate Variability is so much more valuable than just monitoring heart rate. Heart rate variability (usually known as HRV) is a relatively new method for assessing the effects of stress on your body. It is measured as the time gap between your heart beats that varies as you breathe in and out. Research evidence increasingly links high HRV to good health and a high level of fitness, whilst decreased HRV is linked to stress, fatigue and even burnout.”

Wow.

Heartmath.com has even more to add, “Numerous studies show HRV is a key indicator of physiological resiliency and behavioral flexibility, and can reflect an ability to adapt effectively to stress and environmental demands. Researchers use HRV, as measured by an electrocardiogram (ECG) or pulse wave recording, to assess the state of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which controls our heart and breath rates, gastrointestinal tract movement and gland secretion among other internal bodily functions. HeartMath has utilized HRV analysis for many years to examine the influence positive and negative emotions have on the ANS.”

Let’s boil this down to the nitty-gritty. Turns out you want your heart beat to have variation, and to have different time gaps between the actual beats. What happens when it doesn’t?

Stress and your HRV

Say I want my client to foam roll his IT Bands. Those are the big bands of primarily fascia that connect the glute to the knee and run on the outside of the upper leg. The are notoriously tight on most everyone. His knee is bugging him, right where the IT band inserts on the tibia, so we could try rolling it to loosen it up. Except~ because it is so tight, it hurts to do so. Really hurts. Hurts so much he doesn’t want to roll them even though he knows it might help. I tell him he needs to, and I have him do it because I used to think that was part of my job. He sighs, and grimaces, holds his breath in anticipation of the pain, and starts rolling. What happens?

The severe dislike causes a stress response. His HRV drops and becomes evenly spaced. Not good. Now cortisol is released into the blood stream. He is in fight or flight mode.
Therefore, is the net effect of the exercise beneficial? I have elicited a cortisol response. Should I have made him roll?

I think not.

Cortisol

Here’s the role cortisol plays according to Psychologytoday.com: ” Cortisol is released in response to fear or stress by the adrenal glands as part of the fight-or-flight mechanism. The fight-or-flight mechanism is part of the general adaptation syndrome defined in 1936 by Canadian biochemist Hans Selye of McGill University in Montreal. He pubished his revolutionary findings in a simple seventy-four line article in Nature, in which he defined two types of “stress”: eustress (good stress) and distress (bad stress).

Both eustress and distress release cortisol as part of the general adaption syndrome. Once the alarm to release cortisol has sounded, your body becomes mobilized and ready for action—but there has to be a physical release of fight or flight. Otherwise, cortisol levels build up in the blood which wreaks havoc on your mind and body.”

However, it is hard for the normal person on a daily basis to monitor blood plasma cortisol levels and adrenal function. Fortunately, technology has made it possible to easily monitor HRV. The Polar heart rate FT80 monitor comes with a watch and you can have good information in about three minutes on your current physical status. Are you drained from yesterday’s workout? Primed to go hard? Feeling a bit under the weather? Let your HRV be your guide. There are apps for your phone, and I look forward to trying several.

High on my list are:

heartmath.com,

ithlete.com, and

bioforcehrv.com to name a few.

Anybody have a favorite? Please comment below, and I will report back on my findings in a few weeks!

The holidays are upon us, and your time is precious. As much as I love blogging, I know that time is scarce as everyone prepares for festivities. Zip through these 5 quick holiday tips put together for us by the brilliant bloggers at virginpulse.com . If you would like all 12 tips, here is the  downloadable pdf, which is their gift to you to share with your friends, family, and coworkers.

 Give a little

 

We don’t ever give money to people begging on the streets of Portland, but we do give them meal vouchers available at  http://sistersoftheroad.org/programs/cafe/  or restaurant gift cards in small amounts. It tends to weed out the truly needy versus the opportunists…there is nothing like someone asking for help who turns down an chance at a warm meal. 

 Be Neighborly

We just moved this summer, and recently we decided to have a progressive 10 minutes per condo appetizer party. People who had lived in this building for years didn’t know their nextdoor neighbors, and you know you’ve made an impact when a teenager remarked, “I didn’t know we had such cool neighbors!”

Reach out and say hello!  

 Share the Love

 

 If you’ve been putting off calling Great Aunt Marge for months now, please call her. It will make her day! 

 Give up the gadgets

  

Try throwing a party and invite your guests to leave their cell phones in a basket by the door. Face to face communication is becoming a lost art.

I watched a family at the Christmas tree lot across the street wait as their tree was being put on top of their car. The mom was staring at her phone, the dad was staring at his phone, and the kids were looking up at the parents expectantly. Is this a special holiday moment? It sure could be! 

 Walk this way

 

Move! I think my run in the morning is more to clear my head and get me warm more than any official cardiovascular benefits. Today I could only squeeze in 27 minutes, but my brain will be grateful all day. 

Happiest Holidays to one and all, and I can’t wait for 2015 and all the fun stuff I have planned for my Just Muscles community! 

I promised my Just Muscles readers interviews with interesting people who are experts in their field, and I am extremely fortunate to work with a delightful woman by the name of Lori Jorgenson (www.lorijorgenson.com), who is a Mental Toughness and Sports Performance Coach at Club Sport with me.

I’ve known her going on 13 years, and we have both been in the wellness field for over 20 years. She is extremely passionate about two things: the brain and paddling.  Outrigger canoe-paddling, Dragon boat paddling; anything to do with non-motorized boats and water she loves dearly. If you need a paddling coach, Lori is your girl. (I’m so envious of her shoulders and particularly her shoulder blades. Talk about ultimate functional development! )

However, it was the brain part that I find fascinating and wanted to ask her about.  Tons of research has come out about recently about the plasticity of the brain and about the possibility of rewiring the brain well into adulthood. Tons of research in particular has been geared toward a previously unresearched brain: the teenage brain. Teens, tweens, and younger than ever kids are plagued with vast uncertainty, anxiety, depression, low self esteem, low confidence, frustration, and panic in this digital age.

How then to best help yourself, and your children, tap into their inner greatness using their brain? Enter NLP. 

NeuroLinguistic Programming 

Neuro=  from the Greek word neuron, linguistic = language, and programming = how components of a system are organized to create patterns of activity or behavior. John Overdurf calls it “the study of human excellence” and how you say your words, adds Diane Ulicsni (www.dianeU.com).  That sounds very interesting! Lori uses this technique, and many more, with her mental toughness coaching clients. 

I asked Lori a bunch of questions about this extremely interesting topic, and about her upcoming co-authored book with her mental toughness coach Diane Ulicsni for kids.

Here’s what she had to say: 

LEC: How did you and your co-author Diane get into this field? 

Lori: I grew up with little self esteem and no self confidence. I wanted desperately to fit in.The way I tried to fit in was to make people like me. I felt bigger in size than most of my friends. I compared myself to others all the time, and found myself struggling and unhappy. I decided to get into sports. I learned a lot about myself and what I was capable of through athletics. 

Continuing to be athletic through out my life, I found myself involved in outrigger canoeing and dragonboat paddling. It took me to a whole new level of athleticism. I found coaches to help me with paddling and fitness as well as a mental training coach, Diane Ulicsni. In 2004, I won the World Sprint Championships on the single outrigger canoe. The journey to World’s helped me in many areas of my life, especially in becoming a better mother to my son. I have been able to teach him many of the tools I use for self-confidence. 

This inspired me to want to help others. Diane and I have been working with teams of adults and children athletes in the areas of mental toughness and confidence.

Diane: My childhood years were full of despair, helplessness, loneliness, and trauma. My mother died when I was very young, and my father abandoned my sister and I. Anxiety and panic were part of my life all the way through school. It was a time when there was a lack of understanding for a child who had been traumatized, or had anxiety or panic. 

As you can imagine, school was tough. I look back and wonder how I got through it all. Once I could leave the small town I lived in, I sought out any and all information I could find to get relief from anxiety, and any means I could find to develop some sense of worth. There were limited resources available, but I did find some tools which helped me develop self confidence and self esteem.

This all set me on a path to obtain an education in tools and techniques that would allow me to be a successful professional, and to help others transform their lives. This is my Gold Medal. The great news is that science finally caught up with these ideas, and it is now proven that you can change your own brain and your life! 

Lori decided to work with me before she got her Gold. We have developed a great friendship that grew into a passion to help children and adults to overcome anything that stops them from having the life they want. Both Lori and I wish there had been people who were able to help us with our problems when we were children. That is a big reason we are writing this book.

LEC: If I wanted to do some Mental Toughness Coaching with you, what would we do? 

Lori: Let’s say you are a 10-year-old volleyball player whose coach is belligerent and talks down to you. You dread going to practice, you get yelled at in games, but you love volleyball and want to keep playing. In the book we talk about meeting a monster. The monster in this particular case is the coach. Monsters exist everywhere for everyone ( i.e. bullies, boss at work, test taking, teachers, friends, negative self-talk, etc) and the question is: how do we take the fear out of the situation when you meet a “monster” so you are not paralyzed, and can move forward in a confident way?  

 image source

Take heart in knowing that your current biochemical state (aka scared) will only last 90 seconds. To change your state most quickly you need to take a deep breath and do something physical or imagine a happy place bringing in all your senses. With the coach example, you would take a deep breath, and use your imagination – the coaches voice sounds like Donald duck. Now you’ve laughed, breathed some more, and broken the biochemical fear cycle. Or, take a deep breath, and jump in place! 

Realize that you have the ability to do whatever you want to do as long as you have confidence in yourself. You are the boss of your thoughts. Know that you have inner tools, you just need to develop them and empower yourself to use them. You are always more than you think you are; you are always a super being! Thats why the website for the book is iamasuperbeing.com   🙂 

LEC: Tell us a little bit more about the book and what we will learn. 

Lori: It is the story of Molly (who represents molecules ) and Adam (who represents atoms) on a journey through the brain. They hop on a train and are guided by a wizard named Odokah.  Along the way they travel to the Limbic Center, and down Memory Lane to meet the Hippo on Camps. (Does that give you any hints on parts of the brain?   🙂  

I don’t want to give away the whole story, but our characters encounter many things that children and adults alike face on a daily basis. Reading this book with your child, or on your own, will help them see how good it feels to help somebody else and how to make positive pictures out of negative.

We plan on writing a series of books, actually. We want everyone to know how to trust your heart+your brain+ your gut = intuition or what we call “In YOU-Tuition“. 

Two weeks ago, I promised special interviews with specialists in their fields. (If you missed it you can read about it here.)  My first victim was my fantastic nutritionist author friend and blogger Margaret Floyd Barry. Remember, it was her fault I figured out why I was snoring, sweating, and generally interrupting my sleep.

The answer, in a nutshell: food. Her program, which she now fondly refers to as the Sugar Control Detox program, or SCD for short, is the method I used to get my body back to firing on all cylinders. The program has been refined and updated with great influence from her chef husband James who developed many of the recipes published in the official Eat Naked cookbook. Why the cheeky “Eat Naked” title? She wants food in it’s original unpolluted and unprocessed form.

I thought Just Muscles readers might want to know a little more about what worked so well for me, so I fired off some questions to her about the program. Here is her response: 

LC: What is the question you get asked the most about the Sugar Control Detox?

MFB: Truthfully: Can I drink coffee on it? (Answer: yes)

But in the bigger picture, people ask: Will I lose weight? And how much?

The answer: You’ll lose weight if you have weight to lose (and those who are underweight will gain the weight they need). It’s an excellent tool for bringing your body right into the balance it needs to be at to achieve your ideal weight.

How much weight depends on a lot of factors, but we see that typically men lose more than women (so sorry ladies) in ranges between 10-16lbs, and women lose between 6-12lbs. Of course there are outliers, but these are the typical numbers.

LC: Can you be on SCD indefinitely?

MFB: Absolutely! For some people, this way of eating is perfect for their metabolic type and they feel fabulous. For others, they’ll find that they want to tweak the program to fit their body’s metabolic needs.

Either way, this cleanse is a way to “wipe the slate clean” so to speak, so that you can really trust what your body is telling you. We give lots of guidance at the end of the cleanse on how to determine the ideal way of eating for your body specifically.

LC: What makes SCD different from other detoxes?

MFB: Well, for one, we’re 100% food based. No “potions and lotions” as we like to say. There aren’t any shakes or other non-food based items. It’s all about the food.

This is really a major crash course in a real food diet, while recalibrating your body’s metabolism to use fat as a fuel preferentially rather than depending on starchy carbs.

It’s also a very gentle detox compared to many detoxes on the market. I’ve worked extensively in this field for many years now, and so often clients want to jump right in and do a deep detox. That can actually be very, very damaging to the body – there are many things you need to have in place in order for your body to handle a detox properly. This detox is very gentle and is an excellent starting point.

LC: What do you see as pros and cons with SCD vs a program like the Detox Box?

MFB: I haven’t actually worked with the Detox Box specifically, so I really can’t comment on how this one is different, other than we focus entirely on real foods and don’t rely on protein powders or other supplements. I always like to start with food first, so I see that as a real advantage of our program.

LC: What do you see as the greatest benefit?

MFB: Gosh there are so many! First and foremost, it’s a great way to introduce you and your family to real food in a profound way. It’s not easy to eat out on the Sugar Control Detox, so most people who do it are cooking for themselves. This is a big deal and a great benefit of the cleanse.

Of course there are the usual suspects: people lose weight, they get their energy back, they sleep better, mysterious health complaints clear up, and of course they change their relationship to sugar in a profound way.

I also think the educational aspect of this is really important. We all know sugar isn’t good for us, but few realize how it sneaks into EVERYTHING. When you’re on the SCD and having to read labels, you’ll realize pretty quickly how many foods you’re eating every day that have added sugar. It’s quite eye opening!

LC: How have you personally benefitted from your program? 

MFB: Way back in the day I used to have MAD sugar cravings. I simply couldn’t fathom a day without some form of sugar … actually a LOT of it. I’d have a skinny lattes with 2-3 sugar packets, everything I ate was starchy (I was what I now call a “carbivore”), I had to have my chocolate fix every afternoon, and I couldn’t imagine an evening without 2-3 glasses of wine. There wasn’t a dessert I would turn down. That was all before I went to school for nutrition and learned a version of this protocol.

After doing this protocol I couldn’t believe how my relationship to sugar changed. I went from not going a day without a sweet treat of some sort to really not even thinking about sugar. It was amazing.

We’ve adjusted the protocol a bit, but the core principles are the same. I never promote something that I don’t do myself, and this program is my go-to when I need a reset. I won’t pretend that I’m perfect and never indulge in treats. Especially over the holidays I let myself have some fun. But by the end of the season I’m totally over it, and ready to feel good again. Sometimes that sneaky sugar monster has crept in and I’ve got some cravings going on, and this 2-week protocol is the best way I know to recalibrate quickly and easily. We do it at least 2-3 times a year whenever we need a reset.

Don’t miss this Cyber Monday Offer from Margaret

Margaret would like all of you Just Muscles fans to join in the Cyber Monday fun, and for that one day only (Monday, December 1st) she is putting the Sugar Control Detox on sale for a mere $40!! That’s over 50% off!!

To sweeten the pot, I am throwing in a free workout that complements the detox as a sneak peak of the new fitness arm we are launching in 2014. It’s a total steal! So mark your calendars and be sure to come on over and check out the sale for that ONE DAY only!

Caveat: This offer is for the self-guided program ONLY. In January, we have a very comprehensive GROUP sugar control/exercise detox planned that has many bonuses attached to it. Stay tuned and we will give you the details soon!