Dining in Poverty - Victorian nutrition compared to you....

I'll confess from the offset the reliability of sources from this blog is perhaps questionable at best. I am mid-way through 'At Home' by Bill Bryson (actually I'm not even a quarter of the way through but you get the idea)! On a tangent the hilarity of this book (and his others) is not questionable - buy them, buy them all damn it! Anyway, the point (highlighted by Mr. Bryson) is that the diet in Victorian times, comparative poverty to modern times was infinitely better than what you are probably consuming yourself. I (for some reason) implicitly trust Mr. Bryson to be well read (he usually he is), and his books to be as factual as possible, but I confess I haven't been through his bibliography and checked the validity of his sources.

To the point...

In 1851 the average person ate 8lbs of pears (compared with 3lbs in 2010), approximately 9lbs of grapes and other soft fruits (roughly double that eaten today), and just under 18lbs of dried fruit (against 3.5lbs). For vegetables the differences are even more striking - in 1851 the average Londoner ate 31.8lbs of onions (compared to 13.2lbs today), consumed over 40lbs of turnips or swedes (compared with 2.3lbs today), and packed away almost 70lbs of cabbages per year (compared with 21lbs nowadays). Sugar consumption was approximately 30lbs per year, approximately 1/3 of what it is today - yes that's right you likely consume in the region of 90lbs of sugar per year.

Are they eating better than you!?

I find this a little crazy that the perception of this era as a little less developed, financially more challenging, and so forth likely ate far far better than the average person today. Of course 80% of their income went on food, and because of sociological changes they spent more of their time working and we spend more of our time in leisure activities; this is expensive and so it is very likely that much of our income instead of being spent on food is spent on leisure time. Of course when you can buy something with chicken in the title from McDonalds or other fast food restaurant for 99p then why not!? Well because it's barely food, that's why not. I suppose if you're spending 99p on food then perhaps your body thinks you are living in poverty.

On a side note and purely for hilarity Bryson continues to point out perceptions of potatoes, stating that:

"..for the first 150 years or so after their introduction to Europe many people considered the potato an unwholesome vegetable because its edible parts grew underground instead of reaching for the sun. Clergymen sometimes preached against the potato on the grounds that it appears nowhere in the Bible." 


In my opinion, clergymen should likely preach against McDonalds too since there's no mention of that in the Bible. Of course we could tangent in to the direction of religion but let's save it for another time.

Be Well (and try to eat well too!)

JF

Hillfit - A book recommendation!

I've recently been asked to review a book "Hillfit: Strength" by Chris Highcock.

People might look at it and think it's just for hikers, or hill walkers, or 'outdoorsy' people of some kind or another. They'd be wrong.

The reality of this book, is it's one of the most encompassing guides to health and fitness that I've seen, ranging from hormones and their effects on your hunger and fat loss, to bone density, to evidence-based strength training. It nicely links back to Chris' blog about simple elements that are hugely underrated in modern exercise philosophy, and openly examines common misconceptions about balance and skill. All the while providing simple pictures for the newcomer to strength training to cover fundamental exercises.

Of course all of this is underpinned by science and generally applied to the outdoors person, thought not so much as to lose the more general person. Fundamentally for me, this is a book about YOUR health and how to improve it, and more, how to enjoy doing it safely and effectively, whether you plan to use it to be outdoors or not.

That said, whilst I have a close relationship with nature in surfing, stand-up paddle boarding, mountain biking, and the like, this book is written in a way that makes me want to look outside and go explore.

My recommendation is to pick up this book, whether you're a hiker, or a gym enthusiast it's a safe addition to your library and will only help you to see health improvements and enjoy life a little more.

Thanks Chris

Be Well

JF

In the interests of disclosure: Chris asked me to objectively review this book, not write a blog about it, but the reality is even as a fitness and conditioning lecturer where my shelves are stacked; I believe you can never have too many books like this. The ones that re-affirm what you might know, and give you other perspectives.

Weightlifting for Strength and Conditioning - A critical analysis

So anybody who has previously read my Evidence-Based Resistance Training Recommendations and/or follows this blog regularly might have the idea that I am not supportive of weight-lifting movements (a.k.a. 'Olympic Lifting). But I recently read an article "Weighlifting Movements: Do the Benefits Outweigh the Risks?" (Hendrick, 2008) that , in my mind was supposed to do what this blog has done and provide a reasonable review of the pros and cons. It doesn't seem to, so I have laid out my own critique of that article herein. I know that I have discussed all of this relatively extensively in a previous blog, but the details are different, I promise.

Yeah this looks less dangerous than Badminton!!?

Firstly the author clarifies that weightlifting (e.g. the snatch, or clean, or derivatives of these exercises) should not be referred to as 'Olympic Lifts' because 'Olympic' lifts only occur in the Olympic games. This seems more than a little pedantic, and a complete waste of time in a peer-reviewed journal article. And potentially incorrect; is a 26.2 miles, only a marathon when it is performed under competitive conditions (e.g. an organised event). What about competition with oneself??

Anyway, to the point at hand....the article published in the Strength and Conditioning Journal, a product of the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) - a group notoriously supportive of weightlifting exercises - suggests that 'Yes, it is worth it'

The argument for Olympic Lifting is based around the following ideals:

1. Sports seldom require maximal strength, but rather maximal power. Since power is a product of velocity and mass, you (apparently) need to move a weight quickly to enhance power, rather than move a heavy weight slower which only enhances strength (there is no evidence to support this). Hendrick says: "....maximal strength is required  in only a few athletic activities such as powerlifting..." but Hendrick fails to provide a reference for this argument. What about a rugby scrum? What about wrestling, or locks/holds in mixed martial arts? I would suggest that these are slow or isometric contractions that require maximal strength as opposed to maximal power. This is not considered anywhere within the article.
2. Skill element is similar. I've heard this a lot and it's a common argument that the triple-extension (forceful extension of the ankle, knee and hips) in O-lifting is used in most sports. This seems a fair argument, and whilst this extension might occur in both settings, it doesn't occur in the same sense. Hendrick seems to agree with this stating "...empirical evidence suggests that there is a relationship between the weightlifting movements and improving athletic performance". The articles cited to support this are either opinion or tenuous links between things like ground reaction forces between athletic movements and O-lifting movements. Of course in reality even if there was a strong relationship it would be near impossible to prove based on the sheer number of sporting variables, however, there is a plethora of evidence that suggests that skilled movements are specific, apparent similarities are exactly that - similar. Not the same. If things aren't the same they're different. Motor control research has suggested that even skills which appear the same show no relationship in performance, and worse skilled movements that appear similar might negatively effect each other. See Fisher et al, (2011) for a review of this area. Interestingly Hendrick makes an interesting comment regarding skill of weighlifting movements in regard to the length of time it takes to teach these movements: "The greater skill complexity required for the weightlifting exercises facilitates the development of a broader physical abilities spectrum, which seems to be better transferred to performance". Wow, now let me translate this just to be clear; the more complex the movement (or better the skill performance) the more this is transferred to physical abilities. For this statement they provide 8 references. Of these 8 references 2 consider the relationship between jumping with a weight and....well, jumping without a weight. 1 considers ground reaction forces between, well jumping with a weight, and jumping. The others are opinion. Oh dear.
3. Testosterone increase and muscle fibre type recruitment is optimised by this kind of training. Once again this is a common argument; that moving quickly means you recruit fast twitch muscle fibres. Hendrick says "emphasis on speed of movement may stimulate greater motor unit synchronization and increase power generation capabilities" both the references for this are review articles which are lacking evidence to support this statement (which makes sense, otherwise Hendrick would have simply stated the evidence himself rather than leave a puzzling trail). With regard to testosterone increase Hendrick says: "the authors of previous studies have demonstrated the potential to increase testosterone levels during a 2-year period of training in weightlifters". This would seem pretty conclusive; if compared to normal RT which is shown to increase testosterone levels, or....well, if compared to anyone. Instead Hendrick cites a single reference; an article which is an observational study which found that elite junior weightlifters had higher T levels than normal. There's no evidence to suggest this is solely due to weightlifting, or that this difference wouldn't have occurred with traditional resistance training.
4. The risk of injury is minimal. This is by far and away my favourite part of the article because there is a plethora of evidence that shows that fast movements and especially the risky 'catch' elements of this kind of training are dangerous, Hendrick seems to brush this all off as soft tissue injuries, as if it's OK, and whilst I agree that there are risks in everything, there are greater risks in throwing and catching heavy weights. Instead he provides a little sleight of hand....Hendrick says: "the risk of injury is as low or lower than most sports". I like this, he says there's less risk than sports. As a trainer there had better be lower risk of injury in training than in competing in a sport. In fact the main aim of training is to prevent injury in the sport. Imagine having to explain to a coach how their top athlete is a little broken through training!!! He even provides a table showing the risk of injury for: highest for soccer, and decreasing through rugby, basketball, track and field, squash, badminton, powerlifting, tennis and then weightlifting at the bottom of the lift with least risk. Well compared to the likes of tennis and badminton, yes, but once again these are sports. We are talking about weightlifting as a training method. It is the equivalent to saying that as a basketball player you should train using badminton because your risk of injury is low. In fact, you might as well do that based on the evidence above.

If this is your sport then perhaps this is OK.
If this is your training for your sport, perhaps
think again!

I know that this article is heavily critical of weightlifting or O-lifting, but ultimately I'm not against it in the slightest for any reason other than it seems a little useless for sports persons and athletes to use as a training tool. Any vendetta is against the organisations that promote the use of this training method using the arguments highlighted herein.

Think of it another way, if I prescribed a medicine saying that it did certain things, and it didn't you'd be pissed at me, right??? I'm aware of the complications in trying to prove exactly what can enhance sports performance due to the considerable list of variables. But if you can't prove it, then you can't just go making it up!!

I'm always interested in new evidence so if you have any good articles surrounding this then please contact me and I'll send my email address. I'm also very happy for people for or against O-lifting to comment on this blog.

Be Well

JF