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When I was younger, a friend’s grandmother told me that you should never put anything smaller than your foot in your ear. As odd as it sounded to my ten-year-old brain, it stuck with me, and to this day, I generally let my ears be, even when they get really itchy. It turns out, my […]
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Running is the most simple and straightforward of fitness activities, so we generally don’t pay much attention to learning and refining proper running form. Consequently, there’s a widespread problem of joggers and runners with extremely inefficient technique that can lead to slower times and increased risk for injury.
Unfortunately, when you plod along at a jogging pace, the penalty for inefficient running form and lack of explosiveness is minimal. In contrast, when you sprint, you try to generate maximum explosive force with each footstrike, so even the slightest technique inefficiency or wasted motion delivers a severe performance penalty. Sprinting, Primal Blueprint Law #5, is a great way to clean up technique errors and drift in the direction of proper running form.
Read More: See The Definitive Guide to Sprinting, Part 1, and The Definitive Guide to Sprinting, Part 2 for everything you need to know about sprinting.
Here, we’ll break down the components of proper running form. If you struggle with some of the technical explanations, watch the technique instruction video to help you grasp the concepts.
The basics of proper running form are pretty simple: Your body should be in stable position with your center of gravity balanced over your feet at all times. The classic image you see on trophies or in clip art of a runner with legs extended way behind or in front of the body represent egregious technique errors.
Instead, check out this slow motion video of the greatest sprinter of all-time, Usain Bolt. Wait until the sprinters get up to speed and are standing tall, then notice how Bolt and the other sprinters preserve straight and elongated spines at all times. Their feet land right underneath their bodies with every stride. The sprinters never lurch forward unless they’re diving for the finish line tape!
The illusion that you must run forward—extending your legs or torso forward to cover ground—leads to overstriding at all speeds. If you alter the position of your torso relative to your moving legs, you’ll have a significant energy cost to recalibrate for the next stride.
Instead of trying to cover huge chunks of ground with forward-lurching efforts, envision running like you pedal a bicycle: Your upper body is upright and stationary (like sitting upward on the bike seat); feet cranking the pedals in a smooth circle, then feet returning to the same position under the seat with every revolution.
For the most efficient energy transfer on each stride, focus on getting your feet onto the ground and off the ground as fast as possible—as you would to pedal a bike faster. You can also strive to run like a deer or a canine companion, who exhibit a stable center of gravity (albeit over four legs, not two), incredible explosiveness off the ground, and zero wasted energy.
The biggest issues I see that disrupt proper running form:
When you implement proper running form, you’ll feel lighter on your feet and more explosive right away. Let’s cover each of the fundamentals of proper running form so you can begin striding like a beautiful deer.
When your spine compresses and your neck retracts toward the shoulders during running, you lose kinetic energy, promote inefficient breathing, and instigate a fight-or-flight activation. Dr. Kelly Starrett, creator of The Ready State, author of the bestselling injury prevention and rehab masterpiece, Becoming A Supple Leopard, and all-around legend of the elite athletic performance scene, explains:
“We’ve seen up to a 30 percent decline in VO2 max due to compromised breathing and a misaligned load anywhere along the spine. When runners fatigue, they become destabilized. The pelvis gets overextended and their man-bellies hang out. Mechanically, the nervous system becomes compromised and unable to generate maximum force, or transfer energy into the ground. Furthermore, when the 11-pound head is destabilized and the neck is destabilized, the athlete defaults into a shallow, ‘stress-breathing’ pattern. This over activates the sympathetic nervous system—the fight-or-flight response—and makes workouts more stressful than they should be, and more difficult to recover from.”
Hold your head high and onward we go! To correct upper body instability while running:
The only energy output from your upper body should be to pump your arms for momentum. The faster you run, the more energy you’ll exert to pump the arms. At jogging speed, you essentially relax your arms and achieve a gentle, natural counterbalance swinging of the arms to help balance the swinging of the legs. When you sprint, you drive the arms forward and backward powerfully.
Regardless of running speed, you don’t want your shoulders to lurch forward, nor should any part of your arms or hands cross the centerline of your body. Envision your arms pumping back and forth in one plane like a locomotive engine or oil well.
All the energy for arm swinging should come from the larger muscles in the shoulders, while your hands, forearms, and upper arms should be completely relaxed instead of tense. Sprinters make a point of extending the fingers to prevent a natural inclination to make a fist and tense the forearms. For the arm swing, pick an angle, such as 90 degrees, and preserve that angle throughout the arm swing. Avoid the common error of straightening your arm on the backswing, as this results in a loss of energy backwards.
While we emphasize relaxation instead of tension, realize that you need to generate explosive forward propulsion from your extremities from a stable base—your core and pelvis area. Again, the urgency of keeping your core and hips stable instead of loosey goosey is minimal while jogging, but extreme while sprinting.
Correcting a destabilized core seems simple, conceptually:
This will preserve that straight and elongated spine as well as prevent the disastrous error of energy collapsing into the ground. This energy collapse is quite common and can cause the hips to become un-level upon each stride impact. Remind yourself to engage your core muscles—pull in those abdominal muscles—as you run. This will also help keep your spine elongated and your neck straight.
To maximize explosiveness and minimize energy loss on each stride:
You can also visualize the instructions above in the context of pedaling a bike. Pushing the pedal forward requires dorsiflexion of each foot in order to keep your feet on the pedals while completing the circle.
The opposite of dorsiflexed feet: lazy feet, which occurs when one leg leaves the ground and that foot remains relaxed in a drag through the air, toes pointed toward the ground.
When that uncoiled foot hits the ground on the next stride, there is no kinetic energy to leverage. The foot lands, spends much more time on the ground than a spring-loaded foot would, and the impact of your entire bodyweight transfers onto the pavement or trail. Then you recover from the impact, summon a bit of force, and get your foot off the ground again. This practice wastes potential explosive energy that could be returned by consciously (at first) dorsiflexing the foot.
Advance the video to the 4:30 mark and watch the slow motion of lazy foot. Look carefully and you’ll notice a barely perceptible collapsing of energy into the ground, even on that very slow jogging stride. Due to the energy collapse, the foot spends more time on the ground than it does with a quick stride generated by “strong foot” running.
Pretend that your running surface is hot lava. As soon as your dorsiflexed foot hits the ground, explode off the ground before you get burned. “On the ground, off the ground” is a great mantra as you move at any running speed. While a sprinter drives the knees high into the air, exploding off the ground and taking long strides accordingly, a jogger makes smaller circles and takes shorter strides. Nothing changes in your running form as you speed up except you take longer, more explosive strides.
Advance the video to 5:15 to notice how my technique looks the same at a variety of speeds.
Every time you jog, run, or sprint, strive to achieve the bicycling over hot lava technique and you will soon ingrain the “strong foot” running form to the extent that it will feel terrible to jog with lazy feet. Good luck and enjoy a more graceful and explosive running experience.
Have you tried these or other running form corrections with success? What’s worked and what still feels difficult? Share in the comments below.
Tremendous credit and appreciation for these lessons goes to retired U.S. Olympic team 1500-meter runner Michael Stember, who presented his running technique clinic several times at our PrimalCon retreats in Oxnard, CA. Michael captivated the crowd each time with an incredibly passionate and precise clinic on how to run properly. Now he does the same making sushi in Brooklyn, NY.
Recommended Related Reading and Videos:
The post Learn Proper Running Form to Increase Efficiency and Decrease Injury Risk appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.
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There are many things in life that we wish would last forever. A great book, beautiful love, warm sunshine, or the smell of fresh flowers in the springtime. Human-made “forever chemicals,” also known as perfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, are not one of those things that we should ever wish to last a lifetime, but the […]
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Most of the low-carbers I know end up experimenting with intermittent fasting at some point in their journey, and most of the IFers I know end up drifting toward low-carb eating as time wears on.
Why?
Is it just a case of overlapping interests? Is it because when you stumble upon one big lie perpetrated by the experts—that cutting carbs will give you heart disease and leave your brain starving for energy/you must eat 6-8 small meals a day or else risk “starvation mode” and “slow metabolism”—you start questioning all the other advice they give?
It might be some of that. But a big reason why intermittent fasting and low-carb eating tend to converge is that they are synergistic. Doing one makes the other work better, and vice versa.
What are the benefits? What are the synergies?
Low-carb is easier when you fast.
Fasting is easier when you’re low-carb.
The two inputs support each other. Rather than a vicious cycle, it’s a virtuous one. Fasting promotes fat-adaptation by upregulating fat-burning mitochondria, spurring the creation of new mitochondria, and reducing your reliance on sugar. Fat-adaptation makes going low-carb easier, because you’re really good at burning body fat and don’t get so many sugar cravings. Going low-carb makes you even better at burning fat and builds even more mitochondria, which is a prerequisite for fasting for extended periods of time.
If low-carb is going to work, you have to do it. If fasting is going to work, you have to fast. Anything that makes those easier is going to be good for your health. That’s where it all starts.
A 2013 study compared low-fat dieters on an alternate day fasting schedule with low-carb dieters on an alternate day fasting schedule. Both groups lost weight and improved metabolic health markers, but the low-carbers lost more body fat.
A more recent study putting low-carbers on a fasting schedule for six months saw their body fat drop, lean mass remain stable, and fasting insulin decrease. However, there was no control group and the low-carb diet was still 30% carbs. I think you’d see better results if you dropped those carbs down even lower.
One common criticism lobbed at intermittent fasting enthusiasts is that it has the potential to cause muscle loss. This is a valid point. If you are insufficiently fat-adapted, your glucose requirements will remain elevated when fasting, and you may break down muscle tissue for the amino acids to convert to glucose.
Luckily, ketones spare muscle tissue by reducing your need for glucose. It turns out that a fair number of tissues that would otherwise run on glucose can run on ketones. Being in a ketogenic or low-carb fat-burning state before you fast accentuates this effect. It’s no wonder that the studies mentioned in the last section found that weight loss via low-carb dieting and fasting was entirely from body fat.
Bump up the muscle-sparing effect even more by lifting heavy things (even during the fast).
A major reason low-carb and keto diets work so well for weight loss is that they increase satiety and inadvertently reduce calories. Whereas your average calorie-counter is painstakingly tracking everything he or she eats and expends just to wrangle a few pounds lost, the low-carb dieter often just eats to satiety and lets the weight loss happen.
The average low-carber will fast without even thinking about it. They fast because they simply aren’t hungry and forget to eat. Someone on a higher-carb “regular” diet often must summon superhuman willpower to fast. They fast in spite of being ravenous and can think of nothing else but eating.
Forgetting to eat is a much easier way to fast than willing yourself to do it.
Eating a high-carb meal after fasting for two days will spike your postprandial blood sugar. Eating a low-carb meal after fasting for two days will likely not. Why?
Consider the problem of the long-term low-carber trying to pass a glucose tolerance test. It’s common for long-term low-carbers to “fail” glucose tolerance tests because they’re trying to handle 75 grams of pure glucose with a fat-based metabolism. The body is set up to burn fat and you suddenly introduce a bunch of glucose. It’s hard to do, and most people will fail that—even if they’re healthy.
When you’re coming off a fast, you’re burning fat. You may not have the glucose intolerance of a long-term low-carber, but you are running on fat, and that’s going to raise the chance of exaggerated postprandial blood sugar numbers.
If you do want to eat carbs after a fast, the best way to mitigate this issue is to break the fast with a hard workout and then eat the carbs. You’ll “simulate” glucose tolerance by clearing out glycogen and providing open storage depots for the incoming carbohydrates.
Or you could just be a low-carber to begin with and avoid the problem altogether.
Fasting is a great way to induce caloric deficits and thus lose weight. That’s pretty much why it works so well, as an artificial boundary to control our eating and snacking habits. However, people can tend to go a little wild on the re-feeds. They haven’t eaten all day, so of course they’re going to pig out when they break the fast and eat all sorts of foods they wouldn’t otherwise eat—and eat way more calories than they would have, thereby counteracting all the good they did not eating.
If you’re sticking to low-carb or keto principles, the re-feed is safer. You’re less likely to overeat, because low-carb is so satiating. You’re less likely to eat junk, because the “rules” of the diet eliminate most of the offending foods like chips, sweets, and fried carbohydrates.
When insulin is elevated, fat is locked away in our adipose tissue, making it very difficult to burn fat. Hyperinsulinemia, or chronically elevated insulin, also increases the risk of cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, and elevated insulin levels are linked to atherosclerosis.
Intermittent fasting is a potent antidote to hyperinsulinemia. This recent study found that, despite causing similar reductions in body weight, alternate day fasting led to greater improvements in insulin and insulin resistance than regular caloric restriction.
Low-carb eating is also a potent antidote to hyperinsulinemia. As it turns out, avoiding carbohydrates reduces one’s insulin load.
I’m no enemy of insulin. It serves many valuable purposes, and we wouldn’t be alive without it. But too much insulin at the wrong time causes undeniable problems—and combining IF with low-carb can normalize it.
Not necessarily.
Fasting while low-carb isn’t the only way to do it. Many people have great success combining high-carb dieting with fasting, provided they also lift weights. One popular (and effective) method is to go high-carb, low-fat on training days, with the workout coming at the tail end of the fast and the first meal coming after the workout. Then on rest days, you break the fast with low-carb, high-fat meals. The training stimulus increases insulin sensitivity and gives all those carbs a place to go (your muscle glycogen stores).
But combining low-carb and intermittent fasting really does increase and accentuate the benefits of both practices.
Thanks for reading, everyone. I’d love to hear about your experiences with intermittent fasting and low-carb eating. Do you find that the two go hand in hand, or have you also had success fasting with a higher-carb diet?
References
Klempel MC, Kroeger CM, Varady KA. Alternate day fasting (ADF) with a high-fat diet produces similar weight loss and cardio-protection as ADF with a low-fat diet. Metab Clin Exp. 2013;62(1):137-43.
Kalam F, Gabel K, Cienfuegos S, et al. Alternate day fasting combined with a low-carbohydrate diet for weight loss, weight maintenance, and metabolic disease risk reduction. Obes Sci Pract. 2019;5(6):531-539.
Mujaj B, Bos D, Kavousi M, et al. Serum insulin levels are associated with vulnerable plaque components in the carotid artery: the Rotterdam Study. Eur J Endocrinol. 2020;
Gabel K, Kroeger CM, Trepanowski JF, et al. Differential Effects of Alternate-Day Fasting Versus Daily Calorie Restriction on Insulin Resistance. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2019;27(9):1443-1450.
The post Benefits of Pairing Low-Carb Eating with Intermittent Fasting for Health and Weight Loss appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.
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Years and years of research have elapsed in the pursuit to completely understand the intricacies of human skeletal muscle contraction.It has included human, amphibian, and feline muscle biopsies, laboratory tests, practical hands-on experiments, and deductive reasoning. Thankfully, we now have a solid grip on evidence-based practical applications when it comes to designing and implementing resistance training programs.
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Health-conscious consumers beware – poisons are lurking in unexpected places, and you may be unknowingly exposing yourself to them every day. Even those of us who choose healthy options may be unaware of foods and personal care products containing dangerous chemicals, or the many names used by companies to disguise the true content of their […]
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We all know the grim stats about how many New Year’s resolutions fail. It’s not because making resolutions is hokey or people are inherently lazy. It’s because most resolutions come down to one of two things: adopting new (good) habits or breaking old (bad) habits, and habit change is hard.
People struggle at every step, from picking the right goals—ones that are motivating and achievable—through the implementation process.
The trick is to be strategic and intentional about changing your habits. Rather than relying on willpower and wishes, get good systems in place. As James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, says, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
Successful habit change is the process of taking a behavior that currently requires cognitive effort and making it automatic.
“Automatic” is a word psychologists use to describe behaviors that don’t require a lot of cognitive attention or processing. Habits are any behaviors that have become automatic: walking past the cereal aisle at the store instead of turning down it, swinging your legs out of bed when your alarm goes off, going to yoga class on your lunch break.
Adopting new habits might feel difficult at first, but with enough repetition they feel easy, like you’re not even thinking about them. That’s sort of true. Effortful behavior relies on the prefrontal cortex, the higher-level thinking and planning part of your brain. Habitual behavior is governed by a different structure called the basal ganglia.
From a cognitive perspective, this is highly advantageous. The brain has a massive number of inputs to deal with each day. The more behaviors we don’t have to think much about, the better.
So if building habits is so desirable for the brain, why isn’t it easier?
On a basic level, all behavior works like this:
Cue (trigger) –> Response (behavior, action) –> Feedback (consequences)
To make a behavior a habit, the feedback has to be rewarding. You also have to repeat the behavior over and over to reinforce the relationship between cue and response:
Cue (trigger) –> Response (behavior, action) –> Reward –> Repeat
It’s elegantly simple but obviously not easy. The process can break down at any point along the way. The good news is you can improve your odds of success by beefing up any part of the system—the cue, the reward, or the “in-between stuff” represented by the arrows.
You don’t necessarily need to do all of these for each new habit you’re trying to build. One might be enough. On the other hand, this is often a more-is-better situation.
A cue can be a time of day (first thing in the morning), something you see or do in your environment (opening the fridge, watching a TV commercial), or a feeling (tension in your neck, boredom).
In order to build a reliable habit, number one: make the cue stronger. In the language of Atomic Habits, make it obvious.
A lot happens in the space between noticing the cue and initiating the behavior. According to Dr. Steve Wendel’s behavior funnel, this includes:
Thus, to increase the likelihood of making it to the response phase, you can:
While developing better habits can be rewarding in and of itself, you can speed the process along by building in positive reinforcement. Especially if your goal is long-term (weight loss, training for a marathon), more immediate rewards can be helpful.
To really ingrain the habit, you have to do the behavior over and over. The more you do, the stronger the cognitive association between the cue and the behavior and, over time, the more automatic it becomes.
Let’s say you’ve decided to start going to the gym after work twice per week to lift weights. Here are 20 things you can do to increase your chances of success.
1. Leave yourself reminders.
2. Arrange your environment.
3. Use implementation intentions. This a fancy way of saying “make a plan.” Be specific. Use if/then statements. Research has shown that implementation intentions are incredibly powerful tools for instilling new habits.
4. Use habit stacking, a specific type of implementation intention. Pair your new desired behavior with something you already do habitually. (This is the same as the anchoring principle in B.J. Fogg’s Tiny Habits protocol.)
5. Arrange to meet friends at the gym (also creates pressure to show up at a certain time).
6. Invest in nice workout clothes that make you feel more comfortable.
7. Designate podcasts or audiobooks you only listen to at the gym.
8. Use positive language to describe your habit, for example, “I get to go to the gym today” instead of “I have to go to the gym today.”
9. Invest in a few sessions with a personal trainer or watch YouTube videos to learn good form.
10. Download a fitness app that programs workouts for you.
11. Break big goals into smaller, more achievable interim goals.
12. Remove obvious obstacles.
13. Join the gym between your home and office, even if the one on the other side of town is fancier. Or, buy workout equipment for your home so you don’t have to go anywhere.
14. Tell people about your plan so you’ll be motivated to follow through and save face.
15. Hire a coach or trainer so someone who is counting on you to show up.
16. Have a deadline.
17. Put your money where your mouth is. Use a service where you can bet on yourself following through on your plan. If you fail, you lose the money. If you’re successful, you get your money back. (Note: Spending money on your goal can increase urgency, but it has to be enough that you’ll feel bad wasting it. For some people that’s $10. For others it’s $10,000.)
18. Use a tracking app or journal to record your sessions, or check off days on your calendar. Seeing your work accumulate is the grown-up version of getting gold stars on the good behavior chart in elementary school.
19. Post your progress on social media. I know, I know, but it’s more than just bragging! Getting likes and positive comments is actually quite reinforcing.
20. Structure rewards for yourself to celebrate milestones. For example, every time you increase a lift by 10%, put money aside for those expensive gym shoes you’re eyeing.
No matter what your specific goal, you can still use these same practices. If your goal is to get back into cross-stitch:
See? And most importantly, no matter what your goal, stick with it. Don’t get derailed by minor setbacks. Habits take weeks or months to lock in. Be patient.
What say you? I’m a huge fan of habit stacking, but what techniques have you used successfully to build new habits?
The post 6 Concrete Ways to Rewire Your Brain for Successful Habit Change appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.
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Let’s be honest: Coaching women in the postpartum period requires a unique set of knowledge and skills.
Women who are postpartum have not only just “grown” a human, but birthed that human and been thrown into the demanding role of motherhood.
They may struggle with…
… in addition to the fact that they just went through a huge life event and are now coping with the physiological, emotional, mental, lifestyle, and social changes that come with the transition into motherhood!
Given that the majority of women will be pregnant or postpartum at some point in their lives, it’s a pretty safe bet that if you work with adult women, it’s not a matter of if you will work with postpartum clients — it’s a matter of when.
So with that said, how prepared are you to handle curveballs like these when you’re working with your postpartum clients?
Are you confident about your knowledge of postpartum anatomy and physiology?
Are you ready to navigate challenging and sensitive conversations with your clients, such as in the case of postpartum depression or infant loss?
Are you willing to test your knowledge to identify where you’re already prepared — and where you still have more to learn?
There are eight key topics in which health, fitness, and nutrition professionals should be well versed when it comes to coaching postpartum women. Developing your skills in these areas and preparing to work specifically with a postpartum client base will not only give you more confidence but make a huge positive difference in the lives of your clients.
Our quiz gives you a chance to assess your skills in each of these eight topics so that you can take an objective look and see where you’re already super prepared — and where there’s room for improvement.
Quick tip: When you’re answering, be honest with yourself. There will be areas where you’re less familiar, and you know what? That’s exciting! It’s an opportunity to learn more.
Plus, at the end of the quiz, you’ll find an excellent selection of resources so that you can learn more about the topics covered here.
And if you’re still hungry for more, if you want to know exactly how to answer client questions, obtain an even better understanding of what they’re going through, and have hundreds of pages of evidence-based information at your fingertips, we recommend checking out our GGS Pre- & Postnatal Coaching Certification.
Our team of experts (including PhDs, pelvic health physios, OB/GYNs, and pre- and postnatal fitness experts) created this cutting-edge, comprehensive curriculum to teach health and fitness professionals exactly how to confidently coach pre- and postnatal women and keep them safe, healthy, and strong — both during and after pregnancy. So if you have more learning to do, we’re here to help.
Before we begin, it’s important to note that the questions in this quiz are focused solely on specific situations postpartum women may encounter or experience, meaning we are not testing you on the basic coaching skills that anyone working with clients should have. For example, you will not see questions about:
Rather, you will see questions on topics like postpartum anatomy and physiology, postpartum nutrition, and your professionalism when it comes to working with this clientele. Please note, though, that anatomy and experience varies among women, and that not every question will be relevant to every woman.
For each of the questions, give an honest assessment of your knowledge on a scale of 0–5, where 0 means you know nothing about the topic, and 5 means you’re an expert.
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If you scored below 11/15, here’s where to go next:
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If you scored below 14/20, here’s where to go next:
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If you scored below 11/15, here’s where to go next:
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If you scored below 14/20, here’s where to go next:
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If you scored below 14/20, here’s where to go next:
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If you scored below 18/25, here’s where to go next:
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If you scored below 14/20, here’s where to go next:
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If you scored below 11/15, here’s where to go next:
The post Take the Quiz: How Much Do You Know About Coaching Postpartum Women? appeared first on Girls Gone Strong.
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If you’ve brushed off meditation for years as a practice reserved for the minimalist monk or the trendy yoga guru, it’s time to take another look, reevaluate your thinking, and add this step to your morning routine today…science says so. Here are just a few reasons to start your day with meditation and how to […]
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