Muscle Fatigue
Coaches and athletes need to know what fatigue is to understand all issues of the training process.
The whole training process is predicated on fatigue and on recovery from it–the changes of training load, means of recovery, frequency and sequence of exercises and workouts, periodization, and nutrition. Without understanding fatigue it is not possible to understand all these issues as well as the upsides and downsides of different supplements.
Fatigue is a decreased effort capacity of a body, or part of it, resulting from exertion or excessive stimulation. There are several types of fatigue: mental (boredom), sensory (a result of intense activity of one or more of the senses), emotional (a consequence of intense emotions, observed after performance at important sports competitions, or after executing movements that demand overcoming fear), and physical (caused by muscle work). While workouts cause all types of fatigue (in various degrees) the most obvious is physical fatigue. Physical fatigue directly affects the function and structure of the musculoskeletal system and muscle fatigue is its main component.
The above is just a brief introduction to the subject. The whole article on muscle fatigue is at http://www.stadion.com/muscle-fatigue/
Filed under: Endurance Training for Sports and Martial Arts, Exercises and Workouts, Strength Training for Sports and Martial Arts | Leave a Comment
Tags: exercise, muscle fatigue, physical fatigue, recovery, Thomas Kurz, training process, workout
“Young athletes . . . can reduce their risk [of back injury] by strengthening muscles in the abdomen, as well as hip flexors and other muscles that support the back. . . . Typically, however, coaches prefer to focus … on muscles needed for the sport instead of on injury prevention.”—Dr. James L. Moeller, chairman of sports medicine at William Beaumont Hospital in Troy, Michigan.
While the above quote deals with lower back injuries in young athletes, it well applies to prevention of any injuries and for athletes of any age. This is what I have been telling you in several articles and books on sports training.
In my article “Beginning Strength Exercises for Abdomen and Lower Back” you have learned about the easiest exercises for the abdomen and lower back. Those exercises, especially the lower back exercises, are not enough to build as much strength as it takes to counterbalance the kicking muscles attached at the front of your spine and to stabilize your lower back. They only prepare you for the more intensive and more functional strength exercises for the lower back—such as the good morning and the deadlift. Both these lifts are very similar to movements that happen in everyday life and in fighting. The good morning is similar to taking something heavy on your shoulders, straightening up, and then putting it down—like loading and unloading bags of flour. A deadlift is what you do when you lift something heavy off the ground. In the case of fighting, one of the ways to deal with someone who pulls you down to the ground or has you on the “guard” is to lift up the opponent—a movement like a deadlift and a power clean—and slam him or her to the ground.
New article posted on stadion.com teaches how to correctly perform the good morning and the deadlift. To learn all the “small” details that make the difference between getting stronger or just wasting time, read the article at
www.stadion.com/advanced-strength-exercises-for-lower-back-your-best-insurance-against-back-pain/
Filed under: Strength Training for Sports and Martial Arts | Leave a Comment
Tags: deadlift, good morning lift, lower back, strength exercises, Thomas Kurz
Weight Loss, Part V: Experts
Hey, stupid, wanna lose some weight?
Should you listen to nutrition experts or rather look at them and those who follow them?
Here are ways of evaluating nutrition experts:
1. Look at them. If they look pudgy, then you should know what their advice is worth.
2. Look at people who have followed their advice past their 40s. (If someone eats stupidly, say by following the FDA’s Food Pyramid, then in their 30s they begin to experience signs of insulin resistance, which get more obvious as they age.)
3. Look at people who follow the experts’ advice but don’t exercise a lot anymore. Examples are retired athletes who greatly reduce the volume and intensity of their exercises. If they then balloon like some retired gymnasts or drop dead of heart attacks, you know what their nutrition knowledge did for them.
Youth and intense exercise offset many effects of wrong nutrition (no, not “poor nutrition”), but as one ages and/or reduces the amount of exercise, the effects of eating wrong come through. And what is unhealthy in the long-term must be reducing the athlete’s potential in the short-term.
Filed under: Sports Nutrition | 2 Comments
Tags: Dr. Jan Kwaśniewski, exercise, high-calorie foods, insulin resistance, nutrition experts, Optimal Nutrition, physical activity, retired athletes, Thomas Kurz
Weight Loss, Part IV: Exercise
Hey, stupid, wanna lose some weight?
Popular advice for the thoughtless:
Exercise to lose weight!
My thoughts:
Eat better to exercise better, so as to be stronger, to be faster, and to have greater endurance—don’t exercise to offset the effects of poor eating (while continuing to eat poorly).
Besides, why would a sane person want to lose weight? Gaining weight is hard work—it takes extra time and money to either gorge oneself on an excess of good food or to deliberately eat junk the FDA pushes (low-calorie, high-grain, seed oils). It is hard to gain excess weight by eating high-quality, high-calorie foods because they satiate quickly, and for a long time too, so you don’t have cravings and any need for snacks. Further, high-quality foods energize so you can put that energy to good use, rather than sitting around being drowsy.
So, after making all those sacrifices to gain the excess weight—limiting physical activity and gorging oneself or eating junk—one is supposed to lose it? Where is any sense in that?
Filed under: Sports Nutrition | 4 Comments
Tags: cravings, Dr. Jan Kwaśniewski, excess weight, exercise, food, high-calorie foods, low-calorie, Optimal Nutrition, physical activity, Thomas Kurz
Weight Loss, Part III: Snacks
Hey, stupid, wanna lose some weight?
Popular advice for the thoughtless:
Eat snacks! Eat many small meals per day!
My thoughts:
If you eat a high-quality high-calorie meal, you are not going to be hungry for at least four hours (much longer, actually). Only if you eat garbage will your blood sugar spike and fall after the meal, so you have to eat something in about two hours.
Here is what I wrote a long time ago on good meals (good foods, proper proportions) and bad meals: On Losing Weight and On Eating for Performance—Short and. . . .
Filed under: Sports Nutrition | 2 Comments
Tags: blood sugar spike, Dr. Jan Kwaśniewski, food, high-calorie meal, Optimal Nutrition, Thomas Kurz
Hey, stupid, wanna lose some weight?
Popular advice for the thoughtless:
Eat low-fat foods!
My thoughts:
Fat provides more calories per gram than either carbohydrate or protein, so why eat inferior, energy-poor foods instead of superior, high-energy foods?
Fat-rich meals provide me with energy, proteins, vitamins, and minerals for my body to work well. Incidentally, such meals make my body sense no need to eat more than two or three times a day (if there is an intense workout in the day).
Filed under: Sports Nutrition | 3 Comments
Tags: calories, carbohydrate, Dr. Jan Kwaśniewski, fat, low-fat foods, Optimal Nutrition, protein, Thomas Kurz
Hey, stupid, wanna lose some weight?
Popular advice for the thoughtless:
Eat this food because it is “low in calories.”
Take this supplement to “burn calories.”
Do this exercise to “burn calories.”
My thoughts:
Don’t you eat to have as much energy as possible so you can do what you want to do? I do. Food provides energy, so my meals consist of high-calorie foods. Eating low-calorie foods makes as much sense as putting water in a car’s tank instead of high-octane gas. And I definitely do not want to go and “burn calories.” When you fuel your car, do you do it to burn some gas or to get to some places and haul some loads?
By the way, note that I wrote “advice for the thoughtless,” not “by the thoughtless.” There is a lot of money to be made from those thoughtless enough to follow such popular advice—especially as they eventually develop metabolic syndrome and other afflictions caused by low-calorie and high-grain diets.
Filed under: Sports Nutrition | 2 Comments
Tags: burn calories, Dr. Jan Kwaśniewski, high-calorie, lose weight, low-calorie, metabolic syndrome, Optimal Nutrition, Thomas Kurz
The Right Stance for . . .
“Five-step” Horse-Riding Stance
Question:
First I wish to say thank you for sharing your information on flexibility training. I am an admirer of your work, and because of the information in Stretching Scientifically, my basic kicks got much higher than they ever were before—a lot of people noticed that in the dojang where I practice taekwondo. I recently received my copy of Flexibility Express and I am excited to do the exercises presented on it. I am able to squat deep with my hips below parallel and feet slightly wider than shoulder width (four-step-wide horse-riding stance), with toes slightly pointed out at about 15 degrees and my knees going in the same direction as my toes while maintaining a decent upright posture with a very light weight (10 pounds to start). I am currently working on widening my stance and deepening it because I am new to squatting wide and deep; however, I am familiar with horse-riding stance from taekwondo where they taught us to have our toes and knees pointing out at approximately 45 degrees. My question is how acceptable is it to have the toes point out, and to what degree (how far?) should they be allowed to point out when squatting wide and deep? And by doing them this way, will I be able to effectively use isometrics to strengthen my legs in this way as I get wider (to a six- to seven-step horse stance)? Or should I keep them pointed in the direction I currently do? I noticed you demonstrate them pointing more forwards in your video when you squat. Please if you could advise me on this topic it would be a great help, and if you require more information I will try to provide it.
Thank you very much,
James in Canada
Answer:
First, about the horse-riding stance:
In fighting, as a rule (and thus, with exceptions), the horse-riding stance is used for projecting force sideways. It is easier to exert force to the sides or to the front from a proper horse-riding stance (with feet pointing practically straight forward, no more than 12 degrees out of the sagittal plane) than from the stance with feet pointing out at 45 degrees. You can try both stances to compare the strength of punches you can generate from either; the ease of handling heavy weapons, such as the long pole; and stability and mobility for grappling, and then ask yourself why you wasted your time on fake teachers.
Second, how much can your toes point out:
In wide squats, the amount the toes point out should be such as to give you good stability in the gradually widening stance—because if you lose stability, you are likely to get seriously hurt.
For the correct knee and foot angles in squats, see the MWod “woman/man” test shown here:
MWod “woman/man” test
Generally, you can quickly find out why people do things in a certain way and whether some other way is better: By doing both those ways yourself.
* * *
Filed under: Flexibility and Stretching, Strength Training for Sports and Martial Arts | 7 Comments
Tags: deep squat, flexibility training, horse-riding stance, taekwondo, Thomas Kurz, wide squats
Sprints and Splits
Question:
I am a sprinter, and I know that stretching can be detrimental to running speed, but I would still like to learn to do splits. Is there a way of learning splits that would not be detrimental to my sprinting, or even improve it?
Answer:
If, to increase flexibility, one does only the type of stretches that reduce the stiffness of muscles and tendons and thus decrease the reuse of elastic energy, then such flexibility training may be detrimental to running. I explain in the book Stretching Scientifically (see pages 8, 106, and 107) what exercises to do to increase flexibility without a detrimental lowering of the stiffness of muscle-tendon units.
With the correct selection of exercises, you can have both great flexibility and great stiffness of muscles and tendons to take full advantage of elastic energy (you need it for explosive power). You can see an excellent example here:
My familiarity with the training of Olympic weightlifters is the reason I based Flexibility Express on their exercises, which simultaneously increase flexibility, strength, and explosive power. (I made the exercises easy and put them in a sequence aimed mainly at increasing both flexibility and raw strength, rather than the technique and explosive power that weightlifters train for.)
Knowing all that, you should have no trouble selecting the exercises that will give you the flexibility you want, without slowing you down, perhaps even making you faster. Add the exercises of Flexibility Express to your training program and then observe yourself. Pay attention to your times and how your running feels. If your sprinting does not take more effort and your ground contact is not getting longer as your flexibility increases, then you are doing okay.
Filed under: Flexibility and Stretching, Strength Training for Sports and Martial Arts | Leave a Comment
Tags: elastic energy, explosive power, Flexibility, running speed, splits, sports training, sprinting, stiffness of muscle-tendon unit, stretching, Thomas Kurz, weightlifters
Training Mask: Truth and Hype
Recently a karate fighter asked for my opinion on a new training tool, a training mask that restricts breathing. He was tempted but skeptical because the manufacturer of that mask made some claims that were too good to be true. Had the manufacturer stuck to the facts, the fighter likely would have been sold on the concept right away. Well, if one knows enough to see through the hype, one can “take what’s useful. . . .”
Question:
I would like to know your opinion on this tool:
I wish to know whether it can be helpful or not by saving me workout time. At the moment I don’t really have a problem with stamina, and my resting heart rate is around 46. Nonetheless, I always look for ways of making my training more effective. I am skeptical, however, about some of the mask’s benefits, such as increasing lung capacity and mimicking the effects of high-altitude training.
Answer:
The mask forces all respiratory muscles to work harder, so it can help strengthen them. Training with the mask can eventually increase your aerobic endurance, when competing or training without the mask, because with stronger respiratory muscles you should be able to breathe deeply easier and for a longer time than without such training.
To decide whether you need to train with the mask, ask yourself these two questions:
1. Do you run out of breath during practice or while fighting?
2. Do you do as much aerobic endurance training as you can without overtraining or as your time permits?
If the answers to both are yes, then it may be worth giving the mask a try. For setting resistance of the mask and duration of training bouts, follow the guidelines for resistance training that I give in my post “Resistance and Technique.” So, if your technique deteriorates at a given setting of the mask’s resistance, then lower it. If you can’t go on for a certain time without losing good form, then shorten the time.
As for the claims that the mask increases lung capacity and surface area and the elasticity of the alveoli, I don’t believe them. For these things it is enough to frequently take the fullest possible breaths, without any resistance to the air flow.
Claims such as the mask “mimics the effects of high-altitude training” are not correct, either. The effects of real altitude training are far more complex than those of restricted air flow. Low partial pressure of oxygen at high altitudes makes it difficult to get oxygen from the air in one’s lungs into one’s blood. The mask makes it difficult to get air into the lungs, but not to get oxygen from that air into the blood. This is a considerable difference. You may read up on altitude training from books on exercise physiology listed at The Athlete’s Bookshelf.
Filed under: Endurance Training for Sports and Martial Arts | 2 Comments
Tags: aerobic endurance, endurance training, high-altitude training, lung capacity, respiratory muscles, Thomas Kurz, training mask, workout
