Fitness Links in Honor of the Fairfield Half this weekend!

Ah, yes. The time has come to run great distances, sweat profusely and hopefully avoid injury along the way. Wooohhoooyeaahhhh! The 29th Annual Fairfield Half Marathon is on Sunday, and I have a feeling it's going to be AWESOME.

In the spirit of this athletic event, I've been keeping my eyes peeled for articles that might make running thirteen miles marginally easier. Here are two gems from my files:

To Sit Up or Not To Sit Up (thanks Simone)
How many different sit-up philosophies have you heard in your life? Maybe 5, 10? "Don't sit all the way up" vs. "only flex your abs"; "feet on the floor" vs. "legs in the air," etc. Shoot! I personally adhere to the "crunch" ideology and occasionally I use the exercise balls to do my ab-work.

However, here's another to add to the list! A recent blog post at Newsweek claims that sit ups don't work at all. More specifically -- they hurt more than help.

“We stopped teaching people to do crunches a long, long time ago,” says Dr. Richard Guyer, president of the Texas Back Institute. That’s because the “full flex” movement—the actual “crunch” part of crunches – puts an unhealthy strain on your back at its weakest point. The section with the most nerves (and most potential for nerve damage) is in the back of the spine, which is the very part that bends and strains during a sit-up.

Interesting. I have heard that the best way to do sit-ups/crunches is on the exercise ball with your lower back supported. The article says nothing about whether this is a "safe" way to exercise your abs, but instead they offer this old fave as an alternative:

Consider the pushup. Not usually thought of as a great ab move, the pushup forces you to work several muscles at once: it forces your core muscles to stabilize your trunk as your arms and back work to move the body up and down. “Do you see how a pushup is a full body challenge?” says McGill. “It challenges abdominals, front of your legs, your arms and your back. That is how you use those muscles in real life.”

Woah. The pushup seems to be typically thought of as an arm-only workout, but actually it is one of those amazing exercises where you use ALL THE MUSCLES IN YOUR BODY. I presume that is why pushups are so hard, and not only because my arm muscles are puny. (I don't care what you saw on FB, Laura, they are puny.)

The article also recommends planks, which I have always loved because they are so damn hard.

So if you have back issues (particularly lower back), try laying off the sit ups/crunches for awhile and increase the number of pushups in your workout. Then, report back and tell me your conclusions. Please.

Sleep Loading, something like Carb Loading
Based on a very small study of Division 1 female tennis players, some researchers recently presented findings that suggests sleep has a more significant effect on athletic performance than previously thought.

Then the players were told to extend their sleep to 10 hours a night for five to six weeks. After increasing sleep, the athletes performed better on all the drills. Sprinting drill times dropped on average to 17.56 seconds from 19.12 seconds. Hitting accuracy, measured by valid serves, improved to 15.61 serves, up from 12.6 serves, and a hitting depth drill improved to 15.45 hits, up from 10.85 hits.

When the tennis players cracked down on their sleep debt, they performed significantly better than before... when they were *technically* sleep deprived. Um, awesome? Let's go take a nap!

Furthermore, in this article at Medical News Today, the study's lead author, Cherie Mah, M.S., suggests that it's impossible to physically perform at your best without proper sleep:

"Traditionally, elite athletes dedicate numerous hours to daily practice, strength training, and conditioning as well as work closely with nutritionists in hopes of optimizing their athletic performance," said Mah. "However, very little, if any, attention is focused on an athlete's sleeping patterns and habits. While most athletes and coaching staff may believe that sleep is an important contributing factor in sports, many do not realize that optimal or peak performance can only occur when an athlete's sleep and sleep habits are optimal."

Seriously. Notice that she qualifies her opinion by only including "elite athletes," but I'm just going to go ahead and include those of us who once practiced or played five to six days a week as well. How much better would I have played in college if I'd been able to sleep more than 5-6 hours a night?! Between class, homework, work study, and practice/games/other team crap, there were just not enough hours in the day to get everything done and also get adequate rest.

Now, if only this study had been published about 2.5 years ago... I would have had fantastic support for my one-man campaign against lifting at 6AM three times a week. Ugh, and I'm still mad about it!

Divine Digesting of the Blogs, V. 2

A couple things from the All Mighty Reader...
Chapter I. Religious folks and saving lives;
Chapter II. A sports career in retrospect;
Chapter III. Running in (pretty much) my parents' backyard!

I. Religious folks and saving lives
Toni at EverythingHealth noted an interesting study in the New York Times a couple weeks ago. Terminally ill cancer patients who were very religious (specifically Christians in the U.S.) were more likely to request intensive life-saving procedures in the last week of life than other people. These other people included Christians who were not quite so religious and people who chose other coping mechanisms altogether. You can find the abstract here.

The lead author, Dr. Holly G. Prigerson offered her explanation of this curious finding in the Times article: “To religious people, life is sacred and sanctified and there’s a sense they feel it’s their duty and obligation to stay alive as long as possible.”

While that may be the case, the procedures used to squeeze out every last drop of life are the most costly. The Times estimates that Medicare spends about 1/3 of it's budget on people in their last year of life, and most of it at the very end. I suppose that statistic isn't really as outrageous as it sounds though--obviously most people want to do whatever they can to hold onto someone a bit longer, regardless of cost.

Invasive procedures performed at the end of life can also be emotionally taxing. The article suggested that prolonging life for these terminally ill cancer patients created more physical pain for the patient and emotional pain for loved ones.

So, is this another reason to chastise evangelical Christians, or is their fight a good one?

II. A sports career in retrospect
Completely changing gears-- Megan at ...Because I Played Sports posted about her experience at the 2009 WNBA Draft, along with a little background as to why this event was so special. I really appreciated reading the back story to the development of her blog and everything that has followed. It's always great to hear Plan B success stories! (And no, that was not a birth control reference.)

My back story is probably not as interesting or as poignant (since I'm not writing this from my ESPN dressing room or whatever), but in the last two years since I haven't been playing softball, spring season is bittersweet. I too started playing softball when I was a little girl, and I loved it right from the beginning. I don't hesitate to say I still love it to this day, but my career was so full of highs and lows and insecurities and frustrations that it's extremely difficult to look back on it with any detail and not cringe in agony. Why didn't I try out for that team? Why wasn't I more confident? HOW DID I MISS THAT BALL?!

As a whole, I loved and continue to love it. I have no doubts that playing the game for so many years has had a direct effect on the person I am today. But at times I have to wonder--Why put myself through it? There wasn't a season I didn't cry or complain or threaten to quit, up until the very end (when I probably should have thrown in the towel). There were times I could have strangled my coach or my teammates or my "captains."

But despite all the headaches and knee aches and stomachaches... maybe it's all about the struggle. Without it, what's the point? It makes life thoroughly interesting and without it, I would (well, we ALL would) just be a puddle of goo in a LaZ Boy. Which is not to say that sometimes that doesn't sound awesome...

III. Running in (pretty much) my parents' backyard!
Quickly--Watch this video that was posted at Women Like Sports.

Watch until Marni Renison starts talking to you. Now hit Pause. This is Tualatin Hills Park and Rec complex and it's like a 3 minutes walk from where I grew up. That big white building over Marni's right shoulder? That's where I played basketball most of my life. And the path right behind her? It goes down the hill and off to the left, past the soccer fields and TO MY HOUSE. Oh Oregon, how I miss thee.

What a nice, end of the work day surprise!

Stretching: The Truth?!

The New York Times published an article last week called Stretching: The Truth. The "truth", of course, is not what is seems.

Columnist Gretchen Reynolds explains that the commonly held belief that static stretching (aka, normal bend-over-and-touch-your-toes) before a workout warms up muscles is dead wrong. Not only is static stretching not an ideal warm up, Reynolds asserts that pre-workout stretching can actually weaken muscles, ultimately hindering performance.

“There is a neuromuscular inhibitory response to static stretching,” says Malachy McHugh, the director of research at the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. The straining muscle becomes less responsive and stays weakened for up to 30 minutes after stretching, which is not how an athlete wants to begin a workout.

Instead, Reynolds proposes that the athlete cut the pre-workout static stretching completely and include "dynamic" stretching instead.

Stretching muscles while moving, on the other hand, a technique known as dynamic stretching or dynamic warm-ups, increases power, flexibility and range of motion. Muscles in motion don’t experience that insidious inhibitory response. They instead get what McHugh calls “an excitatory message” to perform.

Great, fantastic. Dynamic stretching can be an alternately great way to warm up the muscles and joints before an intense workout or competition. I find it curious though, that the article claims to tell the "truth" yet it includes so little empirical evidence. It mentions one study done by the University of Nevada, quotes two experts in the field, and adds something about ripping the legs off rabbits. Helpful! Thank you for that.

In actuality, there are a lot of studies currently being done on the acute effects of stretching, but the data do not completely support one school of thought over another.

A 2007 review article in Sports Medicine by Rubini, Costa and Gomes suggests that the jury is still out on the effects of stretching at any time, before or after, physical activity.

Although most studies have found acute decreases in strength following stretching, and that such decreases seem to be more prominent the longer the stretching protocol, the number of exercises and sets, and the duration of each set have, in general, exceeded the ranges normally recommended in the literature. Consequently, the duration of the stimuli were excessively long compared with common practice, thus making evident the need for further studies.

So basically, while decreases in muscle strength have been reported in some studies (a la the results report by Reynolds), many times those studies required participants to stretch for excessively long times--presumably much longer than an average person would spend during pre-workout stretching.

Moreover, Rubini, Costa and Gomes add that

when recommending flexibility exercises, one should consider other underlying issues, such as the safety of the participants, possible increases in injury risks and the unnecessary time expenditure.

The Moral of the Story: Obviously it's pretty commonplace for the popular media to give fitness recommendations, but it was a bold move for the NYT to claim the "truth" about stretching based on such insubstantial evidence.

Newspaper and magazines can be great places to find new ideas to jazz up a tired workout routine, but be wary of excessive self-assuredness: it's usually symptomatic of a lack of journalistic integrity!