Category: Nutrition

Subtracting Calories May Not Add Years To Life

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YOU AND I ARE NOT IMMORTAL.  There.  I said it.  Was I not clear enough?  Try this: YOU AND I ARE GOING TO DIE SOMETIME BEFORE OUR 120TH BIRTHDAY.  

Morbid?  No.  I choose to live in the real world.  Our life spans are mostly determined by our genetics.  We’ve all known or heard the stories about someone who smoked 5 packs a day of unfiltered cigarettes and lived to 90, and died of completely unrelated causes.  No matter how you may want to deny this biological truth, the fact is that modern neuroscience, combined with biology and organic chemistry, are showing that our lives, thoughts, and even choices, are mostly in the hands of factors completely out of our control.  We can, at best, be aware of what we are doing as we start doing it, and try to be reflective on the likely outcomes.  In that way, we might be able to modify what we’ve started doing, and change course if we think the outcome will be bad.  For more on this point, I highly recommend this book: FREE WILL, by Sam Harris.  Sam Harris has a degree in Philosophy from Stanford University, and a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA.  For more information about Sam Harris and his work, click on his name.

What you can do is focus on improving the quality of whatever life you will have, as opposed to desperately trying to prolong it at all costs.  Exercise to ensure that you have energy and vitality and strength to meet life’s challenges at all stages of your life and be able to both take care of yourself for as long as possible, and enjoy yourself, for as long as possible.  What I’m afraid of is the loss of my physical independence; of becoming so frail and weak that i can’t take care of myself or play with my grandchildren, or walk a dog.  My grandfather Max died in 1975, almost 90 years old.  He wasn’t rich.  He lived in a small, one bedroom apartment that he moved into after his wife died.  And he had a girlfriend 30 years his junior.  He died in his bed, (not that way…) but lived his last day as an independent, self-sufficient individual.  That’s the way to live, and that’s how I want my last day to be.

This brings me to the article linked below.  It is a follow-up to a decades older research study that has entered the popular consciousness.  That study found evidence that when rats were fed extremely low-calorie diets, their average lifespan increased by 15-30%.  It was merely the first study published trying to determine the effect of caloric intake on lifespan.  Some people, privileging the purpose of life with longevity, have slavishly tried to extrapolate that rat study to their own lives, believing that their lifespan would be similar extended.  Not too many people, mind you, because to emulate the calorie count for adult human weight would allow you to consume 600-800 calories per day.  As a point of reference, that’s the same caloric allotment German Nazi’s allowed the Jews in concentration camps; the idea being to slowly starve them to death while allowing them to perform some forced labor until they became too uselessly weak.  You should know what happened next.

The very idea that a starvation diet would allow you to improve your odds of living longer is so blatantly counter intuitive that it should have set up severe warning signals in everyone who read this study.  But the press reported it with conviction, hailing it as a potential major breakthrough, and the public who read it took to this snake oil promise of longer life with fervor, even if they couldn’t abide by the strict caloric requirements.

Now comes this study, using our closest relatives, and it refutes the findings of the older study, at least to the efficaciousness for humans.  Read the last paragraph.  Study and memorize the last paragraph.  Embed and imprint the last paragraph into your brain stem.  There is 100 years of research, tried and tested and found valid, in that last paragraph.  Then go and do something fun and exciting.

I found the following story on the NPR iPhone App:

Subtracting Calories May Not Add Years To Life by Nell Greenfieldboyce

NPR – August 30, 2012

Scientists have known for decades that lab rats and mice will live far longer than normal if they’re fed a super-low-calorie diet, and that’s led some people to eat a near-starvation diet in the hopes that it will extend the human life span, too….

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/08/30/160266307/subtracting-calories-may-not-add-years-to-life?sc=17&f=1001

“ Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see. ” – Arthur Schopenhauer

The Intermediate Exercise Enthusiast

fitnessgroan2 Comments

The intermediate exerciser has learned at least 3 of the 5 important things in order to progress to this level, and it shows. Most serious health club exercisers fall into this category, though my personal observation is that no more than 20% of gym members ever make it to this level, and instead remain novices despite the amount of time they spend in the gym going from one activity to another. The Intermediate Exerciserhas lost significant body fat and has gained some real muscle, either in the form of size and bulk or muscular definition, or both, depending on their goal. The 5 critical things that the intermediate exerciser understands and conforms to:

  1. Consistency
  2. Intensity
  3. broad knowledge of muscle function
  4. Nutrition
  5. Rest

Lets take these 5 in order.

  1. Consistency is just what it says. You are committed to your workouts and have a schedule you will not deviate from when possible. You have set aside a certain number of days; typically 4-6; and a set amount of time; typically 60-90 minutes; and you train. This isn’t something you try to fit into your day. It is one of your highest priorities that you work the rest of your day around. When doing cardiovascular/aerobic training you have a protocol you follow and stick to it. When weight lifting, you typically follow some version of a split routine for your body parts, the classic example being Chest/Shoulders/Triceps on day one, Back/Biceps on day two, and Lower Body on day three. Then repeating that pattern for a six-day workout with one day off for complete rest. You will stick to this pattern till doomsday comes or until you change goals. Additionally, you understand the importance of your exercise routine; variation is not your friend in this regard. You need to stick to a routine that you can make comparative assessments on. That means the same, or extremely similar, exercises for each body part every time you train that body part. If your goal is to be the best marathon runner you can be, you don’t spend hours a week ridding a lifecycle or taking spin classes; you run miles, period! If your goal is to improve your overall muscular strength, or build muscle, you pick your exercises and do them repetitively for months on end, the only variables being that you will continuously push yourself to lift heavier weights every week or even every workout!
  2. Intensity is all about understanding your goal. It is the most important factor that will determine whether you actually achieve any measurable progress, whether it’s increasing you distance on a bike ride, speed in the 400 meter run, or your 1 rep max doing an olympic bench press. Trying to lose weight requires a certain intensity. Building muscle requires its own level of intensity. Improving athletic performance…has its own special intensity demands. Not understanding what intensity you need to achieve will undermine everything you try to accomplish. Too much high intensity training will undermine a marathoner, and too little will be futile for the sprinter or weight lifter. If you haven’t read my posts on intensity, or want to refresh your memory click here and here.
  3. Broad knowledge of muscle function means you really understand how all the major skeletal muscles move and work, and know a pretty broad range of exercises for each of them. It’s like having a large vocabulary of exercises to draw on. Since you also understand how the muscles work, it allows you to choose complimentary exercises when doing multiples per body part. You understand why you might want to do pec flys after olympic bench press, not before, or why doing lat pull downs after pull ups might be redundant, so doing dumbbell rows is the better choice to follow-up with in most cases. (Yes, there might be a valid reason to do both pull ups and lat pull downs in the same workout, but that wouldn’t be the most common combo or even the norm). You understand which exercises will enhance your athletic activities or hinder them, and train accordingly.
  4. Nutrition is simply the understanding that what you consume is both the fuel that moves you and the building blocks of what your body is made of. The cliche´ “You are what you eat” is precisely true. Trying to build a powerful body on a diet of McDonald’s, Pepsi, and Twizzlers, is akin to building a battleship hull out of corroded iron. If you can’t get serious about what you eat, get out of the gym. I follow the 80/20 rule. I eat extremely healthful 80% of the time, and don’t worry about the other 20%. The less fit you start, the more dedicated yo have to be. If you’re very overweight and extremely unfit, you need to follow the 100% rule; all healthy, all the time. Period. Don’t cry about fairness, it won’t help. As a fuel, the foods you eat (solid and liquid) all have their specific purposes, and understanding them is critical. Even the most wholesome foods misused can have a counterproductive effect if not properly applied. Every serious endurance athlete understands the importance of carb loading; where you consume vast quantities of mostly simple carbohydrates like pasta the day before the big race. Serious marathoners are extremely lean, carrying minimal body fat (reserve energy stores) to breakdown as the miles accumulate into the high teens. So they manipulate their diets to maximize the available energy on race day. If you don’t run over 100 miles a week, don’t eat like a marathoner, cause you’ll get fatter than a walrus in a well stocked zoo. 20 years ago everyone said eat all the pasta you want because that’s what skinny marathoners eat, now we say avoid all pasta! Both are stupid statements. The question is: how will eating all this pasta help me in my life’s pursuits! If it won’t, don’t eat so much. The strength athlete eats large amounts of protein because protein is what muscles are made of, and when trying to build bigger and stronger muscles your body needs these proteins to build your muscles into larger ones. If you don’t consume enough protein, your muscles simply cannot get bigger or stronger. It’s not magic. If you’re lifting weights with the correct intensity and not able to get stronger or bigger, it’s a pretty good bet you’re not eating enough protein. The most misunderstood food constituent is fat. Fat is neither good or bad. It is a very dense energy source and a necessary nutrient for a whole host of metabolic processes. Fat isn’t the villain in America’s obesity epidemic; people are the enemy of themselves. When it comes to weight control, what matters at the end of the day is how many calories you ate compared to how many you burned. The average 30-year-old woman burns around 1500 calories per day just staying alive. If her diet consisted of 720 calories of fat (80 g of fat; 1 g = 9 cal) and 600 calories split evenly between protein (60 g; 4 cal/gram) and carbohydrate (60 g; 4 cal/gram) she would be following a successful weight loss program! In 20 days, she will have lost 1 lb. Not the fastest program, but if we replaced all those fat calories (720) with proteins and/or carbs, her weight loss would be exactly the same. Fat doesn’t make you fat…eating too many total calories makes you fat and you not understanding your food makes you fat. Now lets not get into a debate of whether eating so much fat in a day is healthy in other ways, because that’s missing the point I’m trying to make.
  5. Rest is so basic and obvious that it’s absurd how little attention avid gym goers give to it, but the intermediate exerciser understands that the end of the workout is only the end of the beginning of the exercise process. For the endurance enthusiast or the strength training enthusiast sleep is understood as the point in your day when all the hard work is actually transformed into results. The results of your training and proper nutrition can only be realized after a good nights sleep. While asleep your body makes all the cellular and physiological adaptations to your body in response to what you did that day. If you don’t get good sleep, your improvement can be slowed, stalled completely, or even reversed into a negative (over training syndrome), when instead of performance improvements you see lower energy levels, lower endurance, lower strength, and more frequent injuries. Imagine if NFL players were required to play 3 days a week, or if every MLB team were only allowed to have 1 pitcher who had to pitch every single game. That’s obviously ridiculous because these athletes have a hard time going thru a regular season injury free. In my hypothetical, they’d be lucky to last a month before being permanently impaired. To a lesser intensity, that’s exactly what the majority of gym goers are doing to themselves, going from class to class to class, three to five hours a day, 5, 6, 7 days a week. Ms. Intermediate understands that if she gauges her intensity correctly she will be done with her workout in 45-90 minutes (unless a marathoner or other ultra endurance athlete) and she will eat properly and get her 7-9 hours of sleep.

In conclusion, you must master and implement at least 3 of these factors in order to achieve any real results, and 4 of them to be able to move on to the next level. Think about what I’ve said. If you’ve been spinning your wheels in beginner land for more than 6 months, you need to implement the steps above to get to the next level. Good luck.

Tired? Watch What You Eat: Scientific American

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Interesting research on the nutrition front.  As always, a study does not make a fact, but properly done and viewed in its proper context can lead to some important clues on the way to true understanding.  Health and Fitness professionals have known for a long time that people who sleep less (not including cocaine and methamphetamine abusers) tend to be more overweight than the general population.  There are probably a host of contributing factors that play into this observation.

I’ve always argued that, biochemically, food is the fuel for your body.  Everything you do requires energy, even the things you don’t consciously control.  Breathing, heart beating, twitching, thinking, are all energy-consuming activities.  Even the act of being awake is more energy-consuming than being asleep.  While this might sound like a perfect complement to a weight loss regimen; stay up as many hours as possible and think a lot; the reality is that the human machine never wants to run in an energy deficit, and it never wants to burn stored energy (fat) if it can help it!  The human body understands fat in a completely different way from your conscious mind.  Every drop of excess body fat is there to save your life, on a cellular level.

“But wait”, you might say, “doesn’t being overweight contribute to early onset cardiovascular diseases and diabetes”?  Yes it does, but only of you live long enough.  Your body, on the cellular level isn’t concerned about your health over 10 year periods.  It’s concerned with keeping you alive one day at a time, and it understands body fat as a protective mechanism to keep you alive as long as possible should you ever run out of food for an extended period of time.  A pound of fat is 3500 calories of energy to keep your heart beating, lungs breathing, and all your neurological functions functioning in the absence of food.  3500 calories can keep you alive for a week, assuming you at least have water.  That’s how your body views fat, and once it stores it away is loath to tap it.  It’s also important to remember that converting fat into usable energy is a metabolically slow process, and the brain, heart, lungs, and cells, need energy now, not in ten minutes.

It only makes sense then that should a person stay awake for overextended periods of time, the body will demand extra, new energy intake (food), to keep itself awake to continue whatever activities your engaged in, even if it’s just sitting in front of the tv,  vegging.  It only makes sense that the food your body will crave is food that will be hi in instant energy (sugar) and long-term dense energy (fat); the perfect combination of late night snacking to keep you up and to keep you alive for the next week or two.  Just don’t worry about the next few years…when you might drop dead.

Anyway, read on:

Tired? Watch What You Eat: Scientific American.

Can Athletes Perform Well on a Vegan Diet? – NYTimes.com

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Nutrition is a touchy subject.  People are either oblivious to its importance or they take on an almost religious reverence towards whatever philosophy they believe in.  My own daughter was a 90% vegetarian, but was forced to add red meat into her diet because she developed dangerous vitamin deficiencies.  No one diet is going to be able to satisfy the optimal needs for the entire spectrum of human need.  Below is a link to a good NY Times article; a thoughtful discussion by respected clinical and sports nutritionists.   Enjoy

Can Athletes Perform Well on a Vegan Diet? – NYTimes.com.

Creatine Side Effects: The Truth About Creatine Bloating, Creatine Diarrhea & other Dangers of Creatine | Nick Tumminello Hybrid Strength Training & Conditioning | Ft.Lauderdale Personal Trainer | Sports Performance & Bodybuilding

fitnessgroan1 Comment

Sports Nutrition is such a murky mess.  If there is any one area related to fitness that is almost hopelessly mired in superstition, lies, half-truths, and misinformation, it is sports nutrition.  It’s not surprising.  There are so many magazines and supposed experts, and mis-informed medical personnel who believe they are experts, but have never done any actual research, and have not really read a preponderance of the research, before making up their minds.  To many in the medical community, the whole idea of strength training is anathema!  Back in the 1940’s there was a study that showed that strength training enlarged the heart, which was associated with increased risk of heart disease.  It was also seen as a socially marginal and suspect activity; practitioners were usually assumed to be homosexual, at a time when that label was many factors more prejudicial than they are today.

The simple fact is, there have been few supplements as exhaustively researched as creatine monohydrate, and no legitimate peer reviewed research (hundreds of them) have ever shown any negative side effects of statistical significance.  What’s especially infuriating is when you read an actual research study that concludes it is extremely safe, and then the authors of the study still insist on including warnings of possible negative side effects that the study they just published refuted.  Thats how hard preconceived beliefs, biases, and prejudices can be, to overcome.

What creatine supplementation will do for the vast majority of users is the following:

  1. Increase lean muscle mass
  2. Increase in body weight (due to increase muscle mass)
  3. Increase muscular strength
  4. Increased recovery times during and post workout
  5. Increase in anaerobic endurance (more reps)

Anyone interested in increased strength, increased muscular development, and power output should probably supplement if their diet does not include foods naturally rich in creatine.  Creatine is stored,; and consequently found; in muscle.  Beef and fish contain the highest concentrations, but the more processed and cooked, the less creatine will be available for human absorption.

The human body is capable of storing approximately 5-10 grams of creatine at any given time, and we naturally produce about 2 grams from our own internal resources.  To fully saturate our cells we need to make up the difference with diet and/or supplementation.

Aerobic endurance athletes will see less benefit from creatine supplementation as creatine is primarily a source of anaerobic energy.  Likewise, aerobic athletes often benefit from being light weight, and creatine can cause actual weight gain from the increased muscle mass.  this needs to be factored into an aerobic athletes decision whether to supplement or not.  It should be noted, though, that even with supplementation, weight and strength gains will be non-existent to minimal if not accompanied by a program of rigorous strength training.  There is no such thing as magic.

Below are links to a true expert who performs and reviews real research on the subject.  An educated exerciser gets results.

Creatine Side Effects: The Truth About Creatine Bloating, Creatine Diarrhea & other Dangers of Creatine | Nick Tumminello Hybrid Strength Training & Conditioning | Ft.Lauderdale Personal Trainer | Sports Performance & Bodybuilding: “”

(Via.)

and Ecstatic about eggs

fitnessgroan1 Comment

After coffee, one of my favorite substances to ingest has to be eggs. In the 1980’s a lot of manipulative politics and biased interest conflicted science went into demonizing eggs over the fat and cholesterol content. Independent research a decade later confirmed, re-confirmed, and re re-confirmed that whole eggs are in fact very nutritious and positively healthy, because of the micronutrient profile inherent in the yoke, and the realization that blood cholesterol levels are not the primary cause of cardiovascular disease in otherwise healthy adults.

But old bad info dies hard, and negative info is way more powerful than positive info among humans. That’s why coffee continues to be demonized by so many in the health food world (while other natural herbs are universally lauded).

So here’s further evidence (albeit anecdotal) of how eggs affect you in a neutral, or positive way. Click this.

Results Orientated Training: the novice in the gym

fitnessgroan2 Comments

There are many variables for a beginner to think through when deciding how to start a training program in a gym setting.

The first thing a beginner needs to do (in reality, everyone needs to do this) is decide on a clear idea of what they want to accomplish.  Need to lose weight?  Build a little muscle?  Are you training for something specific, like a New Years resolution to run the NYC Marathon this year?  Have you decided to take up a sport or activity like tennis or cycling?  All of these considerations need to be taken into account if you intend on actually accomplishing anything in a reasonable amount of time.

For the teenager and young adult, it tends to be mostly about aesthetics and social mingling…wanting to look better and meet people.  For the 30’s-50’s somethings it tends to be some combination of aesthetics, mingling, specific training for a new hobby like tennis, and physical health.  And once we hit the 60+ category, health tends to take paramountcy, though aesthetics almost always remain in the background.  Humans never seem to stop wanting to look better… Keep in mind that there is constant debate among “experts” as to proper protocols and where to focus your beginning efforts.  The main thing to remember is that as a beginner you need to develop a foundation of general fitness, as I’m assuming you’re starting from scratch, out of shape, and in a state of complete “de-conditioning”.  That means you need to develop a baseline of aerobic fitness (think endurance), and musculoskeletal strength and coordination.

Many trainers will argue that you should start on exercise bikes or elliptical trainers and weight lifting machines, as these pose the lowest risk of accidental injury.  I cannot agree with the latter.  Weight lifting machines are important tools, but they do nothing to train foundational core coordination among all the normal musculoskeletal interactions that occur in real life movements.  They are safer to do in the gym (from the health club’s liability perspective), but many experts (myself included) would argue that learning and depending on machines in the beginning leaves you more vulnerable to injury in real world situations because you don’t learn how to coordinate you body movements and your muscular system when you need to do some actual pushing or pulling.  If you don’t know what your doing, hire a good trainer for a few lessons.  It doesn’t have to be a long-term commitment if your goal is to learn how to do a few exercises correctly.  If you make it a priority, almost anyone can afford 3 or 4 hours of proper instruction.

Also, if you have any pre-existing medical conditions or are starting out in your 40’s or older you should get yourself a good medical check up first. So let me take you through some exercise recommendations for the novice.   Commit to 45 minutes/day, 4 times a week.  And Don’t tell me you can’t fit that in, cause my bullshit detector  will go off.  It doesn’t matter if you’re tired after work, or a have a little muscular soreness from a previous workout at this level.  Just show up and do the best you can.  Any four days will do.  Stick to this order.  Follow this routine for 4-6 weeks.  Don’t get fancy.  Don’t improvise.  And make sure you eat properly with quality proteins, carbs and unsaturated fats.  If you’re trying to lose fat weight, cut down on portion sizes.  If you’re trying to build and gain muscle weight, add 1 or two high quality small meals to your day.  That’s it.  No magic formulas.

  • Day one: bike or elliptical for 45 minutes.  At level one, get your rpm (bike) or strides per minute (spm; elliptical) to about 80.  Stay there for 10 minutes, then gradually begin increasing the level of difficulty by one, every 60-120 seconds (resistance or level) while maintaining a steady 80 rpm/spm.  When you start huffing and puffing in order to continue, reduce your resistance down to a more comfortable level (not necessarily all the way down to 1 again) until your breathing becomes almost comfortable and your legs stop burning.  Then repeat the process.  Do this as many times as you can fit in for 30 minutes, then spend the last 5 minutes cooling down at level 1 at a slower speed.  Done.  Please read my blog posts on intensity, before starting this workout, here, and also here.

Animated cartoon on a exercise bike, Svenska: ...
Animated cartoon on a exercise bike, Svenska: Animerad streckgubbe på en motionscykel. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

  • Day two:  Hit the weights.  Start with Dumbbell Squats.  You won’t know how heavy to go because you’re a beginner, so do a warm up set of 10 reps and see how hard it is to finish.  If it feels less than a moderately intense effort; 7/10 on a ten point scale; then grab a set of light dumbbells and try again after resting 60-90 seconds.  Keep trying until you determine that correct starting weights to use.  Then do 3 sets of 10 reps with 60-90 seconds rest between each set.  If you don’t know proper form, find a bench or low medium platform and sit on the edge of it while holding your weights.  sit with good posture, then stand up strongly, slowly returning to the sitting position on the edge, without relaxing completely, and repeat.  You are doing a “box” squat and all you need to do is remove the “box” when you get used to the movement pattern.
an exercise of thigh
an exercise of thigh (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
an exercise of thigh
an exercise of thigh (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Push ups come next.  Do a warm up set of 6-10 reps, rest for 60-90 seconds, then try to complete 3 more sets, 10 reps (or as many as you can finish if you can’t finish 10) each, with 60-90 seconds rest in between each set.  Push ups can be done modified (on knees) if proper form cannot be maintained.

an exercise of chest
an exercise of chest (Photo credit: Wikipedia

an exercise of chest

Next up are Lat Pulls .  Since a 1st timer won’t know how much weight they can pull, the first set is an experiment.  If you’re a male, try loading 50% of your body weight; if female try 30%.  Attempt to complete 10 reps.  If you cannot, make it slightly easier and try again after resting 90 seconds.  If you completed 10 reps, and could have continued to do more, make it slightly harder, so that 10 reps becomes a real challenge (see this link on intensity).  Do three fairly intense sets (7/10 perceived exertion), 10 reps each.

an exercise of upper back
an exercise of upper back (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
an exercise of upper back
an exercise of upper back (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now it’s time for dumbbell shoulder presses.  Like all the others, you first need to determine how heavy your dumbbells need to be.  The same intensity rules apply.  If you’re female, grab a pair of 7.5 or 8 lb. dumbbells, a male should grab a pair of 10-15 lb. dumbbells.  Try to do 10 reps.  match the weight and the reps to the desired 7/10 intensity, and make any weight adjustments (up or down) you need to in order to get the proper workout.  complete 3 sets, 10 reps each, once the correct weight has been determined.  This exercise can be done seated or standing, but avoid supporting you back against anything, if possible.  Doing it without back support will enhance abdominal conditioning as well as the other associated muscles of the core.

an exercise of shoulders
an exercise of shoulders (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
an exercise of shoulders
an exercise of shoulders (Photo credit: Wikipedia

That is the whole weight lifting workout.  Every major muscle of your body has been stimulated to adapt and get stronger.  Once you’ve really learned it it won’t take more than 30 minutes to complete.  If you have energy left at the end, hop on an elliptical, bike, or treadmill and move at a moderate pace for an additional 15 minutes to get a little extra calorie burn and endurance training.

  • Day three repeats day 1
  • Day 4 repeats day two

Always remember to follow the intensity rules I’ve laid out in my previous blog posts (linked above, and here, here and here), for both weight training and cardio/aerobics training during the 4-6 weeks you will follow this beginner routine.

Exercise Science?

fitnessgroan4 Comments

Hello.  I’m back.  And i have a few things to say.

Over the last 2 weeks I’ve read multiple articles in the New York Times Health section, and a much longer piece in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, that would make any seasoned exerciser bewildered about what we do, and don’t know, about how the human body works.

In one article, “Why Ice may be bad for sore muscles“, there are so many ridiculous suppositions that it boggles my mind.  The article starts off:

“For the study, researchers at the University of Ulster and University of Limerick in Ireland reviewed almost three dozen earlier studies of the effects of using ice to combat sore muscles, a practice that many who exercise often employ. Ice is, after all, the “I” in the acronym RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation), which remains the standard first-aid protocol for dealing with a sports-related injury. Icing is also widely used to deal with muscles that twinge but aren’t formally injured. Watch almost any football, basketball or soccer game, at any level, and you’ll likely see many of the players icing body parts during halftime, preparing to return to play.”  (The bold text is highlighted by me)

In 29 years of being in the fitness industry, I’ve never; not once; heard the recommendation to ice muscles made sore from regular exercise or physical activity.  Not once.  Ever.  The RICE protocol is used in first aid when dealing with INJURIES.  Post exercise muscle soreness is not considered an injury and would be considered counter productive as icing the muscle would reduce blood flow, which is the opposite of what a weight trainer is trying to accomplish.  The paragraph then goes on to say that icing is also used for muscles that may not be sore, but “twinge”.  Again, never heard this in 29 years from a professional.  And the final nonsense: “…players icing body parts during halftime, preparing to return to play”.  Body parts, yes.  But not specifically muscles.  The athletes routinely ice shoulders, elbows, hips, knees, and ankles.  They do not typically ice biceps, pectorals, latissimus dorsi, Quadriceps, etc.  Do you know what the difference is?  Athletes ice joints, not muscles, during competition.  And they only ice themselves if they’ve suffered an injury, like a contusion, or severe muscle pull, or sudden attack of tendonitis; situations where inflammation around the affected joint will have a serious impact on the athlete’s ability to continue competing.  Yes, muscles cross joints, as do tendons and ligaments.  But it is the area of the joint that matters.  The article continues to discuss how the research being detailed shows that icing reduces the overall performance of the athlete in the affected area.  Really, was it the icing, or the injury that preceded the icing?  And how much more degraded would the athlete have performed if they didn’t ice at all and tried to compete anyway?  As someone who used to be a tournament racquetball player, I have some experience with elbow tendonitis.  Icing was sometimes the difference between winning a trophy and prize money, or losing because i could no longer grip my racquet.  As to why an athlete would risk more serious injury by continuing, the answer is: They are competitive athletes with prize money and trophies at stake.  This is who they are and it is often their job.  And Aaron Rodgers or Eli Manning at 75% effectiveness is many factors of 100% better than their respective backups.

Lets continue:

The article goes on to discuss how:  there  has been surprisingly little science to support the practice. A 2004 review of icing-related studies published to that point concluded that while cold packs did seem to reduce pain in injured tissues, icing’s overall effects on sore muscles had “not been fully elucidated” and far more study was needed.”  Why an ice pack before exercise should depress performance isn’t fully understood…”.   Not understood!  Oh my god!  Icing reduces blood flow and slows down cellular activity, which is why we ice severed limbs, not put them on heaters.  And ice will slow down muscle cellular activity and tighten up the muscles it is used on.  There aren’t any studies because it would be like a PHD in physics deciding to test Newtons theory of gravity by dropping an apple and a 50 kilo weight from the same hight to see if they fell at the same rate (they do).

I need to point out that a MLB Pitcher, or an NFL Quarterback is paid millions of dollars to play, while you and I are not.  They are not icing to rehabilitate an injury, they are icing to continue the competition.  And how did we go from discussing whether or not icing injuries was an effective treatment, to icing muscles before exercise to see how that affects performance?  How does that have any relevance to icing an injured body part?  No one ices before exercising.  Anyone in the exercise industry knows you warm up muscles and joints prior to exercise, not cool down!  For the rest of us, any injury that would require the RICE protocol would also be followed by the recommendation to rest the injury for a period of days or even weeks, depending on the severity.

Why was this ridiculous study done in the first place?  I imagine some graduate student in Ireland needed to conduct research and present their findings in order to receive their graduate degree.

As to why the New York Times decided to publish an article about this I surmise it was a slow news week in the world of exercise, and the writer of the article doesn’t know anything about fitness, or doesn’t care.  Write or die.  I see the same thing in all the major fitness magazines.  You can’t leave blank space.  You must publish something every month or go out of business (or lose your job).  This writer should lose his or her job just for publishing this nonsense and confusing the public more than they already are.  Hey New York Times…maybe you should hire me.

I will follow this up with two more blog posts; each on two other NYT articles; with valid information, much better researched, much more well-informed, and seemingly contradictory, on the issue of fat and weight loss.  Stay tuned.