Archive for the ‘Life Skills’ Category
I want to welcome new fighters to our Self Defense and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu team:
The Limon Family!
Taken From The Associated Press
Fish oil pills may be able to spare some young people with signs of mental illness from a progression into fully developed schizophrenia, according to a preliminary study of 81 patients in Austria.
The study adds to evidence suggesting that severe mental illness may be prevented with intervention. The researchers are starting a larger study in eight cities, hoping to replicate the findings, which appear in the February issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, released Monday.
A severe mental illness, schizophrenia affects adolescents and young adults. Some 2.4 million Americans have the disorder, which is treated with antipsychotic medication.
“Schizophrenia is among the most mysterious and costliest diseases in terms of human suffering, so anything that gives some hope to avoid this is great,” said lead author Dr. G. Paul Amminger, formerly in Vienna and now at the Orygen Youth Health Research Center at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
Researchers have wondered if the disease could be stopped before it overpowers a person’s grip on reality. Studies have tried antipsychotics in select young people, but side effects pose ethical questions, and results have been mixed.
Researchers in the new study identified 81 people, ages 13 to 25, with warning signs of psychosis, including sleeping much more or less than usual, growing suspicious of others, believing someone is putting thoughts in their head or believing they have magical powers. Forty-one were randomly assigned to take four fish oil pills a day for three months. The other patients took dummy pills.
After a year of monitoring, 2 of the 41 patients in the fish oil group, or about 5%, had become psychotic, or completely out of touch with reality. In the placebo group, 11 of 40 became psychotic, about 28%.
No one knows what causes schizophrenia but one hypothesis is that people with the disease don’t process fatty acids correctly, leading to damaged brain cells. Omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil could help brain cells repair and stabilize, the researchers speculate.
Dr. Janet Wozniak of Harvard Medical School said the findings might reasonably cause psychiatrists to recommend fish oil to some patients because there are known benefits and little risk.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press
It’s SNOWING!!! Since I have the morning off, I was going through all the blogs that I follow on Fitness, Self Defense and such and found a great article on back pain and spinal alignment. Something I harp on during every workout.
So, here is the first paragraph, but you’ll have to read the full article here. Posture – Why Your Back Hurts.
From Craig Weller at Elevating Fitness.com
We’re all born with near-perfect postural alignment. Watch a toddler walk, stand, reach overhead and squat and you’ll see tremendous mobility and safe strong joints.
It’s pretty much downhill from there.
North American culture has us spending an inordinate amount of time in the sitting position. A great deal of time and effort goes into preventing us from expending, well, time and effort when it comes to moving around in our daily lives. Items on shelves are always within arms reach, if we have to move very far we hop on an escalator, an elevator or get in our cars; and a job that involves spending much time on one’s feet or lifting something heavier than twenty pounds is considered “strenuous.”
At the end of one of last weeks Boot Camp classes, I was talking to a couple of our athletes about needing certain amounts of fat in their diet. I did some research and found several articles. This is a good one to start with…
Borrowed From: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/09/06/saturated-fat/
Written By: T. Farris, author of the Four Hour Work Week.
I’ve invited Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades, two of my favorite bariatric (obesity treatment) doctors in the US and the first to introduce insulin resistance to the mainstream, to explain the facts and benefits of increased saturated fat intake…
The sub-headings are mine, and a few edits have been made for space and context. Please see Dr. Michael Eades’ references and responses to questions in the comments.
Mid-Section Fat Loss: Problem Solved?
A couple of generations ago two physicians—one on the East Coast, one on the West—while working long hours with many patients, serendipitously stumbled onto a method to rapidly decrease fat around the mid-section. We’re sure that other doctors figured out the same thing, but these two were locally famous and published their methods. Interestingly, neither was looking to help patients lose weight.
Blake Donaldson, M.D., who practiced in Manhattan, was looking for a treatment for allergies; Walter Voegtlin, M.D., a Seattle gastroenterologist, was trying to figure out a better method for treating his patients with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Dr. Donaldson got his inspiration from a meeting he had with the aforementioned Vilhalmur Stefansson; Dr. Voegtlin came up with the same idea based on his knowledge of comparative anatomy. Though they came at two different questions from very different angles, they arrived at the same dietary answer. Both solved the problems they were seeking to solve and, coincidentally, noticed that their overweight patients lost a tremendous amount of fat from their abdominal areas while undergoing the treatment. As happened later with us and with Dr. Atkins, word of their success in combating obesity spread rapidly, and before long both physicians were deluged with overweight patients seeking treatment, completely changing the character of their medical practices. In retirement, both wrote books about their methods. Donaldson’s was published in 1961; Voegtlin’s in 1972. And as far as we can tell, although their years of practice overlapped, they never knew one another.
What was their secret? What did these two men independently discover? What kind of nutritional regimen did they use to bring about such great results in their patients?
Both had their patients follow an all-meat diet.
An all-meat diet?
Yes, an all-meat diet. Remember that when these physicians were in practice, there hadn’t been all the negative publicity about saturated fat and red meat that there has been in recent years. At that time, most people considered meat as simply another food, just like potatoes, bread, or anything else. No one worried about eating it. The (misguided) hypothesis that fat in the diet causes heart disease hadn’t reared its ugly head, so telling people at that time to go on an all-meat diet didn’t provoke the same sort of knee-jerk emotions that it does—at least in some quarters—now.
The patients who followed these all-meat diets rapidly lost weight from their midsections and improved their blood sugar and blood pressure problems if they had them. Calculations of cholesterol in all its various permutations was still decades away, but both doctors even used the all-meat diet for their patients with heart disease without problem. The all-meat diet proved to be a safe, filling, rapid way to help patients lose abdominal fat while improving their health. And remember, one of these diets was developed to treat GI problems, the other to treat allergies. The rapid weight loss that followed was a surprising, but welcome side effect.
7 Reasons to Eat More Saturated Fat
In the not-so-distant past, the medical establishment considered all fats equally loathsome: all fats were created equal and they’re all bad for you. Things have changed in that quarter, if only slightly. You have no doubt heard the drumbeat of current medical thinking on fats: some fats are now good for you—olive oil and canola oil*—but others are bad for you—trans fats and all saturated fats. That’s an improvement from the old cry, but far from the truth.
It seems that no matter how the story spins from the denizens of the anti-fat camp, one piece of their advice remains staunchly constant: “You should sharply limit your intake of saturated fats.” The next admonition will invariably be, “which have been proven to raise cholesterol and cause heart disease.” Their over-arching belief is that saturated fat is bad, bad, bad.
You see with just a glance at [our suggested meal plans] that we’ve included fatty cuts of meat, chicken with the skin, bacon, eggs, butter, coconut oil, organic lard, and heavy cream in the plan. Aren’t we worried that these foods will increase your risk of heart disease and raise your cholesterol? In a word, nope. In fact, we encourage you to make these important fats a regular part of your healthy diet. Why? Because humans need them and here are just a few reasons why.
1) Improved cardiovascular risk factors
Though you may not have heard of it on the front pages of your local newspaper, online news source, or local television or radio news program, saturated fat plays a couple of key roles in cardiovascular health. The addition of saturated fat to the diet reduces the levels of a substance called lipoprotein (a)—pronounced “lipoprotein little a” and abbreviated Lp(a)—that correlates strongly with risk for heart disease. Currently there are no medications to lower this substance and the only dietary means of lowering Lp(a) is eating saturated fat. Bet you didn’t hear that on the nightly news. Moreover, eating saturated (and other) fats also raises the level of HDL, the so-called good cholesterol. Lastly, research has shown that when women diet, those eating the greatest percentage of the total fat in their diets as saturated fat lose the most weight.
2) Stronger bones
In middle age, as bone mass begins to decline, an important goal (particularly for women) is to build strong bones. You can’t turn on the television without being told you need calcium for your bones, but do you recall ever hearing that saturated fat is required for calcium to be effectively incorporated into bone? According to one of the foremost research experts in dietary fats and human health, Mary Enig, Ph.D., there’s a case to be made for having as much as 50 percent of the fats in your diet as saturated fats for this reason. That’s a far cry from the 7 to 10 percent suggested by mainstream institutions. If her reasoning is sound—and we believe it is— is it any wonder that the vast majority of women told to avoid saturated fat and to selectively use vegetable oils instead would begin to lose bone mass, develop osteoporosis, and get put on expensive prescription medications plus calcium to try to recover the loss in middle age?
3) Improved liver health
Adding saturated fat to the diet has been shown in medical research to encourage the liver cells to dump their fat content. Clearing fat from the liver is the critical first step to calling a halt to middle-body fat storage. Additionally, saturated fat has been shown to protect the liver from the toxic insults of alcohol and medications, including acetaminophen and other drugs commonly used for pain and arthritis, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs, and even to reverse the damage once it has occurred. Since the liver is the lynchpin of a healthy metabolism, anything that is good for the liver is good for getting rid of fat in the middle. Polyunsaturated vegetable fats do not offer this protection.
4) Healthy lungs
For proper function, the airspaces of the lungs have to be coated with a thin layer of what’s called lung surfactant. The fat content of lung surfactant is 100 percent saturated fatty acids. Replacement of these critical fats by other types of fat makes faulty surfactant and potentially causes breathing difficulties. Absence of the correct amount and composition of this material leads to collapse of the airspaces and respiratory distress. It’s what’s missing in the lungs of premature infants who develop the breathing disorder called infant respiratory distress syndrome. Some researchers feel that the wholesale substitution of partially hydrogenated (trans) fats for naturally saturated fats in commercially prepared foods may be playing a role in the rise of asthma among children. Fortunately, the heyday of trans fats is ending and their use is on the decline. Unfortunately, however, the unreasoning fear of saturated fat leads many people to replace trans fats with an overabundance of polyunsaturated vegetable oils, which may prove just as unhealthful.
5) Healthy brain
You will likely be astounded to learn that your brain is mainly made of fat and cholesterol. Though many people are now familiar with the importance of the highly unsaturated essential fatty acids found in cold-water fish (EPA and DHA) for normal brain and nerve function, the lion’s share of the fatty acids in the brain are actually saturated. A diet that skimps on healthy saturated fats robs your brain of the raw materials it needs to function optimally.
6) Proper nerve signaling
Certain saturated fats, particularly those found in butter, lard, coconut oil, and palm oil, function directly as signaling messengers that influence the metabolism, including such critical jobs as the appropriate release of insulin. And just any old fat won’t do. Without the correct signals to tell the organs and glands what to do, the job doesn’t get done or gets done improperly.
7) Strong immune system
Saturated fats found in butter and coconut oil (myristic acid and lauric acid) play key roles in immune health. Loss of sufficient saturated fatty acids in the white blood cells hampers their ability to recognize and destroy foreign invaders, such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Human breast milk is quite rich in myristic and lauric acid, which have potent germ-killing ability. But the importance of the fats lives on beyond infancy; we need dietary replenishment of them throughout adulthood, middle age, and into seniority to keep the immune system vigilant against the development of cancerous cells as well as infectious invaders.
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The above post is an exclusive excerpt from Dr. Eades’ newest book, which is directed at people who want to reduce abdominal fat. Despite the title, the principles it details are ideal for anyone who wants to decrease both visceral (internal) and subcutaneous (under the skin) fat in the abdomen.
In this segment, I will teach you how to drill the fighting frame and the combat application that I taught last post. I will also post this as a pod cast that will be up on the site later today.
There are two basic drills that you can easily use to functionalize this particular skill set. They are:
Give and Take. To describe this easier, I’ll give each partner a name. Trainer and Trainee. To start the drill, stand in front of your partner and get what we call the “fighting measure”. This means to reach out with your arms and touch their shoulder. If you can’t, you are too far away. Once you have the fighting measure, assume a fighting stance. Here we go.
- Trainer slowly steps forward and delivers a right jab to the trainee’s head and freezes. The trainee steps towards the trainer and assumes the fighting frame posture, striking the trainer with the frame. Once contact has been made, the trainee steps back and assume a new fighting stance. Okay. Now, the trainee becomes the trainer and the trainer becomes the trainee. Get it?
- To continue the drill, the trainer slowly steps forward and delivers a right jab to the trainee’s head and freezes. The trainee steps towards the trainer and assumes the fighting frame posture, striking the trainer with the frame. Once contact has been made, the trainee steps back and assume a new fighting stance. Now, the trainee becomes the trainer and the trainer becomes the trainee.
- Repeat this action until both partners are comfortable with the motions. Once you are good to go, you may slowly speed up the action until you are at combat speed!
Block and Strike. This drill is an adaptation of the Filipino combat arts training methodology “Abecedario”. It is a progressive skill development tool that is very effective and has endless possibilities. The set up is just like before. Trainer and Trainee. To start the drill, stand in front of your partner and get what we call the “fighting measure”. This means to reach out with your arms and touch their shoulder. If you can’t, you are too far away. Once you have the fighting measure, assume a fighting stance. Here we go.
- The trainer steps forward and punches to the trainee’s head. The trainee steps forward and executes the fighting frame. Once contact has been made with the trainer, the trainee will follow up the frame with a counter strike.
- For the purposes of this segment. I will prescribe a specific response for ease of use. The trainee unclasps his/her left hand from the right wrist and wraps it over the trainers attacking limb. With the right hand, (already on the head/neck) open your fist and grab the back of the trainer’s head. Next, the trainee will pull down sharply on the trainer’s neck while at the same time delivering a right knee spike to the trainer’s stomach. Lastly, the trainee will push the trainer backwards; step back and assume the fighting stance. Okay. Now, the trainee becomes the trainer and the trainer becomes the trainee. Get it?
- To continue the drill, the trainer slowly steps forward and delivers a right jab to the trainee’s head and freezes. The trainer steps forward and punches to the trainee’s head. The trainee steps forward and executes the fighting frame. Once contact has been made with the trainer, the trainee will follow up the frame with a counter strike.
- The trainee unclasps his/her left hand from the right wrist and wraps it over the trainers attacking limb. With the right hand, (already on the head/neck) open your fist and grab the back of the trainer’s head. Next, the trainee will pull down sharply on the trainer’s neck while at the same time delivering a right knee spike to the trainer’s stomach. Lastly, the trainee will push the trainer backwards; step back and assume the fighting stance.
Repeat this action until both partners are comfortable with the motions. Once you are good to go, you may slowly speed up the action until you are at combat speed!
One more thing. Ensure that both partners take all safety precautions. Wear the proper protective equipment especially eye protection. Because we all know its fun and games until you put an eye out!
These two drills should get you started on the road to functional defense. If you have comments or suggestions, please email me or comment in the form below.
Until next time, let’s get training!
This is a great video to watch for inspiration about life, work ethics, and personal drive. Check it out and comment below to tell me what you think…
Everybody should invest in a notebook and write in it everyday. There are many, many reasons to keep a journal. It is a great tool in the organization of thoughts and ideas. It is an invaluable tool in charting your progress in life. For the athlete, a journal is a necessity and should be in your gym bag along with your shoes, towel and other workout gear. I have long neglected the religious journaling of my training, my workouts and other important details of my life and now kick my self for it.
I have forgotten so much of what I have learned over the years in my Martial Arts and Fitness travels. Furthermore, I have many achievements and accomplishments that have gone unjournaled and have thus faded into distant memories. It is unfortunate, but it is not too late.
I encourage you to keep track of your workouts or fit test results, but that simply isn’t enough. You need to keep a copy with you. You should record what you did during your whole workout: warmup, workout, cool down, scores, times and weights. You should record your impressions of your workout. If you felt good or bad or injured or energized. You should record strategies that worked and did not work.
Thoughts and ideas on how to improve your performance between workouts or to improve on your performance on a specific workout. If you learned some great detail that improved your form or time, you should write that down so you do not forget.
There is no limit to what you can write about in your journal. The important thing is that you write in it consistently and refer back to it to see your progress. If you are working on a goal (and you all should have a goal) like weight loss for example, then you should state your goal in your journal. Outline your plan and then record the steps you are taking to fulfill your goal.
Perhaps you read a good article on improving your eating habits and are trying to follow the program. You can cut it out and tape it into your journal or write down the details in your journal and then see if day by day, week by week, you are following the program. Not all programs are one-size-fits-all and so if you are not finding success you can analyze where it might be going wrong and thus make some adjustments.
Remember it is your journal and you should feel free to write in it, personalize it, make it as interesting and enjoyable and user friendly as possible. Many people tape inspiring pictures in their journals of six-pack abs that they want to have or inspiring athletes that they idolize. Here is one tip that I find works really well. Use two pages that face each other and track your workouts in columns going across so that you can fit several weeks of workouts on those two pages.
Having several weeks worth of work staring you in the face makes it easy to look at your recent progress. This is especially true if you are working a progressive goal like those pullups. You can see from left to right how many pullups and other assistance exercises you did for those weeks and quickly see if you are progressing.
If you are doing a fitness and body composition test every Friday, then you might have 4 weeks of tests on those pages staring at you and thus you can see if the program was working that month.
There are no limits. I haven’t even touched on food journaling. If you are following the Paleo plan and zoning, it is a must that your write down everything you eat. Charting your fuel and performance will allow you to really see how everything works together. Getting really personal is also good because you can see how your emotions effect your diet and exercise. If you are a good journaler, you might notice patterns that help or hinder your performance.
You might notice that every time your boss gives you a new assignment, you eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and you don’t workout for 3 or 4 days. You might notice that every time burpees are posted on the WOD board, you come down with a cold, a sore back or some other reason not to give it your all.
Hmmm…interesting.
I was training my son in Standing Grappling and Ground fighting just a few days ago and my youngest said, “It’s too hard, can you show me something else that is easier?” Of course, I gave him a hard time about it and continued to drill and drill. Later on, I sat him down and shared some of my life experiences where having a “Don’t give up” mental attitude literally saved my life. So, I thought that this thread might make a good blog post. Let me know what you think. I look forward to your comments and tweets.
Here it is:
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle
How many times do we tell students “don’t give up”, but do we practice this mindset ourselves? When a challenge comes along and we don’t get it the first time, we should keep trying for at least one hundred times.
I have not failed 700 times, I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work
~ Thomas Edison
Think how successful we would be if we always did things one hundred times before we even thought about giving up. If this was put into our life at work, home and in martial arts, think of the things we could achieve. we might not even get there after one hundred times but think how much better we would be than just giving it one chance and then saying “l can’t do it”.
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
Lewis Carroll
The human quality of perseverance is very important. Often people with physical talent fail because they lack perseverance and motivation, they should instead be like the proverbial boulder and just know we can achieve whatever we want, as long as we keep taking action and learning we can only go forwards and progress.
Repetition is the mother of all skills. To do a technique once and expect it to work for us is not true in the slightest. To really understand the technique and its concepts we have to do it until the line of familiarity and the root movement is in our subconscious. It can be done anytime anywhere without even thinking about it.
You may train for a long time, but if you merely move your hands and feet and jump up and down like a puppet, learning Karate is not very different from learning a dance. you will never have reached the heart of the matter; you will have failed to grasp the quintessence of karate-do – Gichin Funakoshi
Think how many times we do a jab in our training more than say a difficult kick, the jab is repeated far more times as the difficult kick will work in a real situation. It’s repeated time after time so that it will work for us in situations and we become very comfortable throwing it.
Given enough time, any man may master the physical. With enough knowledge, any man may become wise. It is the true warrior who can master both….and surpass the result.
~ Tien T’ai
When we have developed all of our combative skill sets ensuring that we adhere to the six attributes then our techniques will become technically sound and we will develop our tactical or strategic skills to become an excellent martial artist.
The obstacle is the path
~ Zen Proverb
Until next time, Let’s Get Training!
jim
I want to welcome Rahial Teku to our athletic family! When you see her in the gym, stop lifting heavy stuff and losing weight to say hi.
Welcome!
In the nutrition class last Friday, we talked a great deal about how our diet can contribute directly to Type II Diabetes, Hyperinsulinemia as well as a host of other problems.
Well, I got this in an email today. Read it, view the research and stop eating and drinking poison…
Junk Bad, Paleo Good!
Hey Everyone!
Just a reminder that there will be no Boot Camp or Self Defense classes tomorrow as we will be having our monthly nutrition class at 6:30PM. You don’t need anything, I will have handouts and sample recipes for you!
See you there!
Effective Clothing Layers
Everyone is different. Especially when it comes to their bodies’ response to working out. Sometimes we do not even know until the weather changes. With all this cold weather blowing through, a common problem may be keeping you inside and out of the gym. Sometimes all you need are a few helpful hints to get over the cold.
During Boot camp we have an wide variety of workouts. Sometimes these include both indoor and outdoor exercises. It is never a bad idea to bring your cold weather arsenal to each work out. To get the heart pumping, we might warm up with a quick 200-400 meter run. Some people struggle with the cold air.
I have heard people use terms like “cold weather asthma”, “burning”, etc. to describe the pain that comes from the cold air. Although, eventually, the body will acclimate itself and all will be well. If you are not moving to Minnesota, why not find an interim solution. The problem stems from the temperature difference between the cold air and our normal body temperature. It is like putting ice in boiling water.
Thin, warm gloves
At first, the ice will crack and melt. Eventually, the ice will cool down the water and the melting would occur at a more natural pace. Between these two happenings is a median that we can apply to cold air intake. It is something that impedes the direct hot on cold interaction like a buffer.
A couple of great ideas to put between your mouth and the cold air are scarves, bandannas, & face masks. Scarves and bandannas are pretty self-explanatory. Put them over your mouth. In the face mask department there is a huge selection. If you are looking to stay on the lower side of the monetary scale, a simple dust mask will do a pretty decent job. I don’t recommend this for people that wear glasses because there is not a good seal and the glasses will fog.
However, if you are an avid outdoor exerciser and want to squash this problem for good, I would recommend a runners face mask. They range in price from $5 (probably comparable in function to the aforementioned dust mask) to $85 (top of the line, fog free, too much for a southern state dweller).
Another problem that plagues the outdoor exerciser are cold extremities. Hands, feet, legs, & arms all get cold. Of course, the hands are usually the first to feel the affects of the cold weather. Get some gloves. Gloves that you don’t mind getting dirty and have a grip to them. I would check out the hardware stores or gardening departments before I looked in the winter section of the department store. Dress in layers. We all know, everyone that works out sweats.
Proof Of Work!
If you are sweating you are probably hot. Wear something underneath the long sleeves so you can be comfortable throughout your workout. Also, if you are going to be indoor and outdoor or just outdoors remember that when you sweat you will soon be colder. Sweat is liquid and reacts to the cold as such (i.e. it could freeze given the chance). The layers are good to put back on when you get cold. It is also a good idea to wear thicker socks. This will keep the cold out and away from the toes.
Get up and put your cold weather gear together. You need a buffer for the cold air, utilitarian gloves, layers, and thick socks. Sounds pretty simple, but it makes for a better work out.
Now you’re ready, so get over to the gym and let’s get training!