Category: Blog

SCIENCE SHOWS YOU SHOULDN’T GIVE UP ON THE PUSH UP

By Emma Hogan

Can’t do a push-up on your toes? New research spells out exactly why you shouldn’t give up.

For many of us push-ups conjure up a sense of dread, which is no surprise given they have long-been associated with intimidating fitness drills or physical punishment for wrongdoing. However, despite their cringe-worthy past, push-ups have secured their place as an exercise staple, and are now adored by fitness gurus across the globe.

But the easier to manage push-up on your knees variation doesn’t always get the same adoration. In fact, these modified push-ups often cop a fair bit of flack, with some labeling them as an ineffective exercise that won’t get you any stronger.

Now, a new study published in the Journal of Applied Bio-mechanics clears up the conflict, showing that both the toe and knee variations of the push-up are worthwhile. The findings are very encouraging, explains Jinger Gottschall, Associate Professor at Penn State University and lead researcher of the study. “We were able to demonstrate that the overall ratio of muscle activation in the upper body when you do a push-up on your knees or toes is actually the same. It shows that knee push-ups are a surprisingly valuable alternative if you cannot perform a push-up on your toes with proper technique.”

So whether you can smash sets on your toes or stick to your knees, push-ups are a move you need to love!

What makes push-ups so good?

Push-ups are much more than just an upper body exercise. They work the pecs, deltoids and triceps while strengthening the muscles of the core. On top of improved upper body definition push-ups build muscular endurance and create lean muscle mass that improves overall fitness and good health.

When compared to the bench press, another popular chest exercise, push-ups provide more effective functional training. The Penn State University study participants generated 50 percent more activation in the abdominals during push-ups compared to bench press repetitions with parallel weight.

There’s no dispute that the most effective push-ups are push-ups on your toes, as they engage a greater amount of activation in the muscles of the upper body and core – demanding whole body integration. However, push-ups on your toes can be pretty challenging and many people, especially older adults or individuals new to exercise, cannot safely complete multiple push-ups on their toes. All too often the hips and neck are not aligned properly and consequently the risk of injury outweighs the rewards. “When people are struggling to lower themselves towards the ground in a toe push-up position, they shouldn’t give up or feel discouraged, says Gottschall. “We can now be confident that push-ups on your knees are an effective modification.”

How to progress from knee push-ups to toe push-ups

The good news is that if you do enough push-ups on your knees you’ll be up on your toes in no time. Gottschall explains that, as the muscle activation in knee and toe push-ups is the same, if you consistently perform enough push-ups on your knees to reach a point of fatigue you will soon become strong enough to do push-ups on your toes.

Bryce Hastings, Les Mills’ Head of Research and Technical Advisor agrees with Gottschall’s advice, saying once you are confident doing 16 push-ups on the knees, then you are ready to try push-ups on your toes.

“If you feel confident doing 16 knee push-ups, you can just start to try some on your toes and see how you feel. If you need to, you can revert back to the other style until you gradually build up your strength over time to be able to do more on your toes than your knees,” he says

Once you’ve mastered the toe push-up the sky’s the limit. The Guinness world record for most push-ups in one hour is held by David Escojido who did 2,298 push-ups in 60 minutes. Charles Servizio holds the current world record for most push-ups in 24 hours. He ticked off a whopping 46,001 push-ups in just 21 hours, 6 minutes.

 

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE: THE EVOLUTION OF RUNNING

By Margo White for Fit Planet

 We weren’t just born to run, we were designed to. Author and runner Dr Vybarr Cregan-Reid explains the art and science of running, and why it’s as good for your mind as your body.

 MARGO WHITE: You write that we’re born to run. Convince me.

VYBARR CREGAN-REID: The idea that we’re born to run comes from a wonderful book, Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall, who kick-started interest in this idea. His book comes out of the science done by biologist Dennis Bramble and paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman, who looked at the mechanics of our bodies, and the ways in which they’re specifically optimized for running.

For example?

If you’re reading this interview on an iPad and shake the screen up and down, you won’t be able to read it. Your eyes won’t be able focus. But if you shake the screen from side to side, which is the kind of lateral movement that the head does during a run, when it bobs from side to side, you will be able to read it. That’s because of a little set of bones in our inner ear that house the vestibulocochlear nerve, which means our brain can tell our eyes what to do so that we can see when we’re in motion – if our head moves to the right, our eyes move to the left, and vice versa. Primates don’t have this, but Homo erectus, from about 1.9 million years ago, did, and we’ve inherited it.

They also had toes that were quite short, so were economic. They had a big toe that was very powerful and independent and allowed them to propel themselves forward. They had Achilles tendons (which most other primates lack). You don’t need an Achilles tendon to walk, but it stores power when your body goes down in a stride, which can then be released when you toe off, and that helps propel you forward. The uniquely human arch in the foot also helps this, too. There are many more examples, but all these evolutionary tweaks that optimize us for running are there, ready to go, in our DNA.

But we live in an age optimized for sitting, rather than running…

Yes, the environment that was waiting for early humans was the African savannah, and we thrived on it. That environment didn’t have any chairs. It involved very little sedentary work. And it was one in which our muscles, all our tendons, were being used actively and frequently. So it meant their bodies were getting sustenance.

What we have now, is an environment in which our fingers travel over a keyboard about three miles a day, and our feet about half a mile. It’s absurd; think of all the time you spend in sedentary activities. If you just performed moderate activities for that amount of time, your bone density would be different, tendons would be thicker, and muscles would be stronger. So we are training our bodies to be weakened by modern life, with a level of commitment that if we were training for the Olympics, we’d win.

This is something you’re exploring in your next book, “Primate Change, how the world we’ve made is remaking us”?

Yes, which is coming out in September. I’ve got a whole section on sitting, and the history of chairs. We’ve not really been sitting for that long – only for about 150 years. Chairs have been around for thousands of years, but they were mostly used as status symbols; they were not widely adopted and people were sensible enough not to sit in them. And just because we like sitting doesn’t mean it’s good for us.

You’re a senior English lecturer, mainly in Victorian literature, and the author of Footnotes: How Running Makes Us Human. How did you end up writing a book about running?

My first book was an academic book about the oldest poem that humanity has, called the Epic of Gilgamesh, that took me many years and at the end of that process I thought, because it was an academic book, nobody is going to read this. So I decided that the next book would be about something that really fascinated me, something that was more mainstream, and that really felt new to me.

Footnotes is a running book, but I blend that with literary criticism, new nature writing, and memoir. The basic argument I’m putting forward is that we have bodies, and they need to do certain things, and if they don’t, they’re not going to be at their best.

In Footnotes you point out that there’s increasing evidence that running promotes neurogenesis. You run five to ten miles a day, but has it made you smarter?

No, not noticeably, but I’ve not noticed my hair going grey, either, so who knows? It won’t necessarily make you smarter, but will almost certainly slow the cellular degradation that is associated with ageing. It has, without doubt, made me more interested. There was something about the process of running, while writing Footnotes, which would generate ideas. Ideas would get shunted together while I was out on the trails, and I’d think, ‘oh yeah, treadmills are weird, I should look into that, I remember them being mentioned in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol’. The odd history of the treadmill ended up becoming an entire chapter in the book. There were without doubt some dumb ideas, but mostly though they blossomed into paragraphs or sections. I don’t think running made me smarter, but it created the conditions in which creativity could flourish.

Are the benefits of running distinct from the benefits gained by other forms of physical activity?

There’s no easy answer for this. But if you look at the kind of benefits that different leisure activities give us, such as the neurological benefits, the physiological benefits, psychological benefits and others, outdoor running comes out best. It’s great for cardio, great for bone density, and if you’re outdoors, it’s great for being stimulated by the natural environment. So it’s not that other exercises won’t give you these benefits, but none will give you them as perfectly as running does.

Is there really such a thing as the runner’s high?

Definitely. Some people rarely get it, some people never get it, some people get it a fair bit and some people get it all the time. I used to get it more than average and I think this is because I’m a slow runner. If you drive your exercise too hard, it won’t happen. So, often the people who never get it are those really serious about their running speed, and see their run as serious training. But it turns out that not maxing out your heart rate, makes it easier for the runner’s high to happen. I’ve got a recipe for the runner’s high in the book that I devised after speaking to several experts.

EXPERIENCE THE RUNNER’S HIGH

Vybarr Cregan-Reid’s recipe for the runner’s high, or more accurately, for endocannabinoid activation.

• Make sure the run is as immersive as possible.
• Ensure the run is mindful and not instrumental (performed to achieve another goal); sensory reception of the present is essential.
• Make sure the run is longer than 40 minutes.
• Don’t run too fast. The ideal is about 75 percent of maximum heart rate. Below that and your body is not likely to be stressed enough for endocannabinoid activation, but any faster than that and you will be too distracted by your exertion to notice anything happening. Cregan-Reid says: “In my experience, if I’m four steps breathing in/four steps breathing out, I’m going at about the right pace.”
• Run in a green space.

It’s not about the endorphins though, is it? 

For years everyone thought it was, but the scientists were quite rightly saying, no, endorphins are too big to get through the blood brain barrier, which stops us from going insane when we get an infection. But more recently, there was the discovery of a substance called anandamide, a neurostransmitter released when the endocannabinoid system is activated, which is small enough to pass the blood brain barrier. That does all the things that that the runners’ high is supposed to do.

Like what?

It makes you feel euphoric, that you could carry on forever. It has dilatory effects so your breathing slows and blood is able to flow more freely, and it also has a pain-killing component.

It’s like your body recognizing that it has reached the limits of its ability, and it just goes ‘poof’ and puts a little injection of magic into your brain and blood, which keeps you going a little bit longer. So that, if you were a Paleolithic persistence hunter, you could get the reward of the hunt. Everything usually come down to evolution. That Darwin guy was onto something.

Can you get a “runner’s high” from other forms of physical activity?

There’s no reason to suggest that you can’t. I think it’s more closely associated with running, because everyone knows the term; they don’t call it “the exercise high”. But as I say in the book, and my recipe for “runner’s high”, you also need to go off line, to switch off, and that can be harder in a gym or in an urban environment than it is in a natural environment. By natural, I don’t mean that it has to be a breathtakingly beautiful place, just some grass and a few trees.

Is running bad for your knees?

No, there’s been loads of studies done on this, but yet another study published a few weeks ago showed that levels of osteoarthritis among runners is hugely below the average of the population. So running is not bad for your knees. Not running is bad for your knees. I don’t believe that we pick up injuries when we’re running. We gather them slowly in our lives, and then we give them a chance to express themselves while we’re running. We are injuring ourselves by doing what we are both doing now, which is sitting still for long periods of time.

Dr Vybarr Cregan-Reid is Reader in English and Environmental Humanities at the University of Kent, and author of Footnotes: How Running Makes us Human. He is currently working on his third book, Primate Change: how the world we’ve made is remaking us, a study of the Anthropocene body and how, as we have altered the environment, it is changing us.

SEVEN STEPS TO EFFECTIVE TRAINING
By Emma Hogan for Fit Planet

Want to get the best results from the time you spend working out? Keep these seven tips front of mind.

Dr Jinger Gottschall is a university professor, studio owner, Les Mills instructor and former triathlete who has dedicated her career to academic fitness research. Here she shares some of her favorite fitness facts – highlighting exactly what it takes to shape a safe and effective training regime.

#1 CHOOSE THE RIGHT MOTIVATION
If you’re primarily motivated by external goals (how you look), it’s harder to maintain good exercise habits over time. You have a better chance of making a lifestyle change if you think about what internal factors motivate you. It might be lowering cholesterol, improving body composition, boosting energy, productivity and happiness. Choose internally-focused motivators like these and sticking to exercise will be much easier. Write your goals down. And if you want, share them. Sharing your goals with other like-minded people is proven to boost your chances of success through support.

#2 PROGRESSIVE TRAINING IS THE BEST BET
If you’re new to exercise or haven’t exercised regularly for over six months, studies show a slow, progressive training plan is the best way to build a habit and prevent burnout. Try not to do more than the plan specifies – by doing too much too soon you increase the risk of injury, not to mention frustration and the likelihood of giving up.

#3 VARIETY BRINGS RESULTS
The best results come when you follow a weekly regime that features a combination of cardio, strength and flexibility training. This was highlighted by a study involving 25 non-active, healthy adults who completed a training plan featuring a combination of LES MILLS™ workouts. After 30 weeks the exercisers saw an increase in lean tissue (+5 percent), a decrease in both body mass (-4 percent), and LDL cholesterol (-6 percent). And their cardiovascular fitness increased by an average of 50 percent. Thanks to results like these we can now confidently advise that a varied work out regime will significantly improve your chances of living a longer, healthier life.

#4 CHOOSE HIGH REP, STRENGTH TRAINING
Don’t shy away from lifting weights. Incorporating low load, high-repetition strength training can build strong, lean muscle and do amazing things for your fitness. We studied 20 non-active, healthy adults following a regime featuring three RPM™ cycling workouts and three BODYPUMP™ strength training sessions per week. After 24 weeks not only did cardiovascular fitness significantly increase, but bone density in the arms, legs, pelvis, and lumbar spine were statistically greater.

#5 LOW WEIGHTS MAXIMIZE CALORIE BURN
High repetition training with low weights can maximize calorie burn. Studies show the mean amount of energy expenditure during a BODYPUMP workout, using faster repetitions with lighter weights, is 29 percent greater than in the same duration of slower repetitions with heavier weights.

#6 ADD HIIT
If you already participate in three to five workouts per week, consider embracing the magic of high-intensity interval training. With the addition of just two 30-minute HIIT workouts a week you can see your health, fitness, and strength leap ahead. In a study of 84 healthy adults it took just six weeks of twice-weekly LES MILLS GRIT™ workouts for them to enjoy a decrease in body fat (-2 percent), a reduction in triglycerides (-16 percent), an increase in cardiovascular fitness (+6 percent) and improved back strength (+21 percent).

#7 DON’T FORGET YOUR CORE
Squeezing in the odd set of crunches isn’t going to give you the results you deserve. Core exercises that require shoulder (deltoid) and hip (glute) activity produce greater muscle activation in the abdominal muscles than exercises such as a crunch. Research shows that incorporating integrated core training into your workout regime can improve endurance, enhance stability and reduce injury.

Jinger Gottschall, PhD, is an Associate Professor at Penn State University, and former triathlete who learned first-hand the injury-inducing effects of doing nothing but cardio exercise. She has subsequently led numerous studies into the effectiveness of various exercise regimes and works closely with Bryce Hastings, Les Mills Head of Research, to test all sorts of exercise programming. When it comes to getting the best results from the time you spend working out, this woman knows the way to go.

Forget pills and potions, this could be the best approach to anti-ageing yet.

BIKE TO THE FUTURE: THE ANTI-AGEING POWER OF PEDALING
By Will Macdonald for Fit Planet

Cycling to work or at the gym will get you fit, but it will also keep you young – and we have the science to prove it.

Is it possible to reverse – or at least arrest – the effects of ageing? Since humans discovered the first wrinkle they’ve searched for an answer, yet despite a plethora of anti-ageing pills and potions, the fountain of youth has remained elusive.

Could it be we’ve been looking in the wrong places? Rather than sitting on the shelves of your local pharmacy or featured in “as seen on TV” commercials, might the solution actually be stored in your garage?

The answer is yes. In fact, you may have used it today on your way to work. Cycling, it has been shown, could be the answer to prolonging your golden years.

The older we get, the frailer our bodies become as your muscles tire from the wear and tear of everyday life. Cycling can slow this process considerably.

A recent study tested 125 amateur cyclists aged 55 to 79 against a group of adults who didn’t exercise on a regular basis. The findings showed that the cyclists maintained consistent levels of muscle mass and strength, and stable amounts of body fat and cholesterol, as they aged.

The results also indicated that, in addition to lessening the risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, the cyclists’ thymuses (the organ that produces disease-combating T-cells, but which diminishes after our teen years) were found to be still functioning as well as those of people much younger.

Of course, any form of exercise is good for the aging body, so why cycling in particular?

The answer seems to be that cyclists push their cardiovascular systems harder and therefore prevent the physical deterioration caused by inactivity – which is on the increase due to the sedentary, office-based work lives so many of us now lead.

If the physical health benefits of cycling aren’t enough to get your wheels spinning, a broad range of studies have also explored the benefits on riders’ mental health, with evidence suggesting those who cycle to work regularly are actually happier than those opting for other modes of transport.

Including some thigh-burning pedaling to your weekly routine doesn’t necessarily require investment in your own bike, either. Bryce Hastings, Les Mills Head of Research, says “adding just two cycling workouts per week has been shown to increase VO₂ [aerobic fitness] by around 10 percent, meaning not only are these workouts effective, but anyone can do them and feel like a pro right from the start.”

Cycling is a form of high-intensity interval training (HIIT), a proven way to improve fitness and lung, heart and circulatory health – all key to slowing the ageing process.

So, whether it’s a road bike and the wind in your hair on the way to work, or a hard-core cycling workout in a cycle studio at the gym, you can be sure you’re not just keeping fit, you’re pedaling back the years as well.

THE PROS & CONS OF COFFEE

CAN WE ALL CALM DOWN ABOUT COFFEE?
By Niki Bezzant for Fit Planet

 Recent news raised questions – again – about the health risks of coffee. How seriously should you take the warnings, and what about the athletic up-side of a little caffeine?

Coffee drinkers in California – and around the world when the news broke – could have been forgiven for spluttering over their morning cup. A court had ruled that coffee sellers must now display signs warning customers their drink of choice contains acrylamide, a potentially dangerous chemical created when coffee beans are roasted.

While acrylamide is a possible carcinogen, health experts say it’s far from clear whether or not consuming it in food increases cancer risks in humans. The American Cancer Society says we should be cautious, but notes “most of the studies done [on acrylamide] so far have not found an increased risk of cancer in humans”. More research is needed, they say.

Coffee is never far from a headline. It’s the fuel that runs many of us. It’s something we enjoy. It’s part of many cultures. But we’re never sure whether it’s good or bad for us.

Maybe because coffee and caffeine have been so widely studied, the question of whether they are good or bad seems to be, well, both.

First, the good.

Caffeine has been shown to reduce sleepiness and increase alertness, as anyone who’s ever used an espresso to power up after a sleepless night knows. Caffeine from coffee can also, it seems, improve athletic performance and endurance. In a review published in 2015 researchers found that between 3 and 7 milligrams of caffeine per kilo of body weight increased endurance performance by around 24 per cent – not insignificant. It’s thought that because caffeine stimulates and boosts alertness, it allows athletes to train harder, for longer.

Caffeine has been on the list of banned substances for athletes in the past, although not currently, despite being an acknowledged performance enhancer. It’s being “monitored” by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) but as yet hasn’t been re-listed.

“Most of the studies done on acrylamide so far have not found an increased risk of cancer in humans.”

– American Cancer Society

So for non-athletes, can coffee enhance a workout? It’s possible, based on the current research, that we may experience the same endurance-enhancing effects as athletes do. Caffeine’s benefits peak about an hour after ingestion, so having a coffee an hour or so before a workout would be the best way to see if it works for you. Going easy on the milk and sugar means you won’t cancel out your workout’s benefits with extra calories.

There’s much hype online about the potential of caffeine as a “fat burner”, and it’s included in supplements to supply this reputed benefit. It is possible caffeine helps muscles burn more fat, but the evidence is conflicting so far. There is some research associating caffeine with weight loss. But it’s not a magic solution.

Coffee may also have some other benefits in disease prevention: it’s linked with reduced risk for type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and liver cancer. Coffee, like tea, also contains antioxidants which are beneficial to health.

So what about coffee’s downside?

The main thing to note is that caffeine has a long half-life: about six hours, depending on the individual. That means that six hours after your espresso drink, half of its caffeine is still in your system, and could stay there for even longer. Not a problem at 2pm; potentially an issue at 10pm, because caffeine interferes with the duration and quality of your sleep. You might fall asleep, but have less of the deep, restorative sleep you need to wake up feeling rested.

Too much caffeine – which is classed by the FDA as both a drug and a food additive – can also have other side-effects, including nervousness, heartburn, constipation and diarrhoea. Longer-term effects include impaired judgement, emotional fatigue, mood swings, depression and anxiety.

If you’re worried you might be overdoing it, lay off the coffee in the late afternoon and evening, and if you’re finding sleep a problem, try cutting back.

There are few official guidelines on how much coffee is okay. It’s partly because we all tend to process caffeine at different rates; one person’s mellow buzz turns another into a jittery wreck. I’m a two-coffee-a-week person; I know someone who happily drinks five or six coffees a day. Pregnant women are advised to limit coffee to about one a day.

What’s more, the caffeine in a cup of coffee can vary widely – from 80mg to 150mg, depending on the variety and how it’s roasted and brewed. Espresso has more caffeine than instant coffee, and cold-brew coffee can pack an even heftier punch. Large coffee drinks, of course, have more caffeine. It can be tricky to know how much you’re getting in a specific cup.

So where does that leave us with our morning double-shot? As with everything, moderation is a good idea. And as always, it pays to look at the big picture. In a plant-based diet full of colorful, whole foods, a little coffee can be enjoyed without worry.

Niki Bezzant is a New Zealand-based food writer, editor and commentator. She is the founding editor (now editor-at-large) of Healthy Food Guide magazine, and is currently president of Food Writers New Zealand and a proud ambassador for the Garden to Table program which helps children learn how to grow, cook and share food. She is a member of the Council of Directors for the True Health Initiative, a global coalition of health professionals dedicated to sharing a science-based message of what we know for sure about lifestyle and health.