Sunday, October 4, 2009

B2D General Fitness Practice Article Index

Thinking about general fitness from mobility work to deadlifting to how freeing your feet is one of the best things we can do for our well being. What does the research tell us about dealing with DOMS, or about optimizing the mitochondrial benefits of cardio, or about warm ups (and whether we need one). This index will stay current with these and other topics touched on in b2d.

The idea is just to have a page that makes it easy to scan through headers of articles b2d has covered in this space.
One on nutrition will be coming soon to complement the others listed below on
  • kettlebells
  • vibram fivefingers (what can i say?)
  • z-health neurological mobility training

If you have a question about general physical well being and training practice not discussed here, and you think it might be good for a b2d article, please leave a comment at the bottom of this post. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Muscle Building, Hypertrophy and THE PUMP - what is it?

How many reps for hypertrophy: why that's the wrong question.

Z Health: What is It

Atheletic Body Type: Check Your Goal Which one is yours? The day this article was posted it became the most hit page ever in one day on b2d. I'm not sure why.

Respect the Fat - a quick review of how fat gets used for fuel in the body.

The P90X critique and alternatives series.
Really my goal in this was less about a critique of P90X than how to think about whether or not a particular program will match one's goals. And how to assess if what's on the label is what's in the tin
  • part 1: considers muscle confusion and the various X workouts - should they be X'd? do their names really mean what's under the label?
  • part 2: getting ripped and what that means in terms of 1) getting lean and 2) getting defined. We also consider who can "get ripped" when following the p90x and does one really need P90X's 7 hours a week+ to achieve that goal?
  • part 3: alternatives to p90x (a) diet & p90x (b) workouts.

"The Pump" - what is it, how to get one and what does it/might it do?


DOMS part 1 - what is delayed onset muscle soreness and what doesn't work (you may be surprised.

DOMS part 2 - what works to offset what parts of DOMS

Warm Ups: what are they and (why) do we need one?

Arthrokinetic Reflex: the eyes have if for fast strength improvements.

Rannoch's 100's - it's always possible to find 100.
Lance Armstrong Dynamic Simple Strength Training.

Bones and Pistols
How to develop bones and pistols - both inspired by Adam T. Glass
Movement Assessment: what it is and why have one
This one's looking at an assessment to help address movement-related pain, but can equally apply to checking movement for general performance benefit
What if we were no longer how we defined ourselves - like strong?

Lance Armstrong training

6mins to fitness 1 - research
6mins to fitness 2 - application

Icing - safe and effective for what?

Running Shoe types - any effect on injury? how bout no?

Occlusion training
- benefits for strength training - but super for rehab?

Electrical Magnetic Stimulation - for rehab and muscle adaptation

Elite Fitness Rings - gymnastic rings make pull ups FUN

Stand up or Lie down to work out

Plastic vs Elastic - two different attributes that support human performance


Renegade Rows - awesome excercise

How and Why to FREE YOUR FEET!!
One of the most important things i've found about health improvement. Considering a quarter of the bones of our body are in our feet, letting them move turns out to be a good idea.

Pull Ups, how to do One or 101
This article looks at the muscles in pull ups as well as the various approaches that have been used to help people get their first or multiple pull ups - there's bound to be an approach that will work for you.

Does Cardio interfere with strength? how 'bout "no"?

Colds - Dealing with one before and after it starts

Sunscreen Will Kill You - and other single factor myths.

Rest and Recovery Periods: How Long and What For?
This is an article i did for Dragon Door on how rest periods relate to the type of strength one wants to develop - or the type of muscular adaptation one wants to foreground - as much as reps or load do.
Complexity is Not Evil

Exercise Doesn't Work Without Diet - Really

Deadlift Resources

Yoga for Back Care, References

Warrior Diet: Reviewing its Science Claims

Myth Busting: Women are afraid of Bulking Up.

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3 comments:

sarah said...

Hi there - I really like and admire your blog! I share your philosophies and have learned a ton from you. I love your writing - super-intelligent without being too dense.

Anyway, I wanted to ask if you might address how gripping affects/improves brain function. Sometimes I think I'm afraid to grip (kbell) too hard for fear of...I don't know, tight and not-nimble hands? (BTW I'm a musician.) Sara Cheatham mentioned a beneficial connection on her blog, looking back now I can't find it, though I think it was fairly recent.

Because I like your approach - both scholarly and practical - I'd love to read your take on it, if you're so inclined.

dr. m.c. said...

Hi sarah, you are most kind. Glad you enjoy the work here.

What i might guess you're talking about if this started with z-health master trainer intern sara is about the homunculus.

In our brain the human is mapped to different areas. The hands and feet and eyes take up way more real estate than say the knees. so you might think that if you work your hands - building up mobility against resistance - like grip work does - then that may have an impact on at least keeping a critical part of the brain happy. What kind of bleed over to related areas there is - i'm not sure. It sounds likely, but i can't think of a reference right now that says if you do great hand work, you stay more cognitively alert as you age.

On the musician thing, i can relate to the concern, but i think you'd have to be going at quite an intense level to build up bulk to reduce flexibility and if you're not training to hypertrophy your fingers it's not clear that would happen.

Remember just to do any work you do one way, do the other way too - so if you're doing lots of gripping, do drills that ungrip. z-health finger and hand waves are great for that.

also you don't have to pinch grip a 45 pound plate for reps. small resistances are good too - it's just a wee bit of a load to induce an adaptation.

and bottom line: just doing mobility work for each joint in your hand may well be pretty much the same. Weight is just another stimulus for the nervous system. And you get a lot of stimulus from your instrument.

What you might get from your instrument though is a lot of flexion, not extension, so again just for well being, you might want to get into some mobility work for your hands to complement all those key presses with extensions. that works your forearm too

hope that helps?
mc

sarah said...

that helps a lot, thanks! especially the part about finger mobility work having similar neural effect as grip work, and the bit about how you'd have to work pretty hard to hypertrophy your fingers! your whole response was great, I'm glad I inquired! Thanks so much.

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