Running Easy

As I came into the studio this morning I saw a lady running at the side of the street that I assumed was running with an injury. When I passed her I saw that she was running in a pair of shoes designed to make her work harder while she runs, they looked like clogs! Maybe she was injured before she owned the shoes?

There are a lot of advertisements at the moment for footwear that makes it harder to run or shoes that tone your butt… The idea is that you work harder when you are training or just walking around town and this tones your body. Great advertising, but is it too good to be true? Probably…

The idea of getting more from your training is obviously appealing to everyone, you get more bang for your buck and something for nothing. Athletes have tried different training methods for all time and will continue to do so. This is great as it pushes technology and new training methods develop. But some training methods just don’t stand the test of time.

In the gym we use instability training all the time, swiss balls, BOSU and balance discs are all great ways of increasing the demands on the body, but there is a limit. If you wear instability shoes and you don’t have great biomechanics to begin with, the chances are that the shoes will not help you become more stable, or improve your biomechanics. If your body is dysfunctional, the shoes will most likely magnify this dysfunction, overusing muscles that are already working too hard to stabilize your body.

Shoes that mimic running in sand are crazy, have you ever tried running in sand? Running on sand can be useful in particular circumstances, but as someone who has lived close to the West Sands in St Andrews (where the famous Chariots of Fire scene was filmed), running in soft sand is a recipe for turned ankles, pulled muscles and torn tendons. For good runners, yes it can be useful, and when learning to run barefoot sand running can be great, but I wouldn’t want to do it all day long!

Running with ankle or wrist weights is a bad idea, running for extended periods of times wearing instability shoes is a bad idea, even sitting on swiss balls at work all the time is a bad idea. You need to find a balance, if you pardon the pun.

Find a good running shop, speak to someone who runs, try on half a dozen shoes in the shop and don’t buy gimmick shoes as your main millage shoe. If you need more intensity in your run training: run faster, join a running group, train with people a little faster than yourself, change the route that you run, but don’t become injured because of a fashion shoe that is marketed as a magic bullet.

Happy running!

Alan

Stop and Smell the Roses

It started as a normal friday morning. The alarm went off at 5am. Some sleepy curses, then grab my wetsuit, into the car and drive to La Jolla Cove. It was still dark when we arrived, but the water was very calm and the visibility good. Cold as usual at that time of the morning. Damn, looks like I’m going to need to do this after all. As it got a little lighter my swimmer friends arrived and we speculated as to how cold the water was going to be. Someone suggested it was 59F, why am I doing this again? Dipping our toes into the water, yep, it was cold. Sure this is a good idea? But off we went.

By the quarter mile buoy I’d warmed up enough to appreciate the calm clear water and stopped several times to watch the fish below. After the half mile buoy my friends took me back via the caves. What a wonderful sight, swimming through the middle of the caves. Then as we emerged at the other end we were joined by 8 (!) sea lions. They played in front of us in the water, swam along side us, darted under us and laughed at how slow we were. Why did I drag myself out of bed at stupid-o-clock and go swim in a cold ocean? That’s why!

Most of the time training sessions are completed rather than enjoyed. We have targets for them like building an endurance base, improving our lactate profile, getting practice at race pace etc. Sessions are designed on paper to meet an ultimate goal of completing a race, getting a new PR etc. And it’s that big goal that gets us out of bed and out to go training. Most of the time that’s it. It’s not always fun, sometimes it’s hard and a drag. But sometimes everything comes together. The weather is perfect, the company is great, your body feels wonderful and exercise just flows out, or some other magical event you can’t plan for happens, like swimming with sea lions. It’s then that you know why you really do it. In those moments the rest of the world ceases to exist, it is all about the moment and you don’t want that moment to end.

You can’t plan to have those feelings going out to a training session. They are spontaneous which makes them more special. If you go looking for them too hard you will never experience them. I have had them in many different situations, and they don’t require beautiful Californian weather and scenery. Some of my most memorable moments have been running through fresh snow, feeling the crunching under my feet, the falling snow muffling all sounds around me. Riding along Edinburgh harbor in the dark, watching the sun come up over the Firth of Forth. Doing a long scenic ride with Alan and stopping for an ice cream from the only shop in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere.

Of course I wish every training session was like that, but they aren’t. Yes, we still need to do those hill reps and those long tempo runs that burn our lungs. Because in order to be able to forget about your body and really appreciate the wonderful surroundings you are in you do need a certain level of fitness. Plus, if you don’t go looking for those wonderful moments they are so much more special when they arrive. Just make sure you stop and appreciate them!

Corina

The Joy of New Beginnings

Last night I went to the monthly beginners meeting at the Tri Club of San Diego. Ok, so I’m not a beginner triathlete but I am a beginner San Diegan, so I thought it may be useful to find out more about the club. What I found surprised me and got me thinking.

The talk aimed to address all the big questions beginners had. I already knew the different race distances, I was familiar with what to wear and I even knew the difference between a road and a tri bike. In fact I learned nothing new about the mechanics of triathlon. Then why did I come away from the meeting REALLY wanting to take up triathlon???? I even feel a little disappointed that I am experienced in this sport because seeing all the newbies around me gaining confidence and enthusiasm with every word was so infectious. It reminded me what it was like to start triathlon, or any other new activity that I have taken up over my life. You start out with loads of doubts. You ask yourself: Will I be able to complete the distance? ….. Will I fall off my bike? …. Will my bum look big in lycra? …. And then you realize that the answer to all those questions is “probably”, but more importantly you don’t care because you want to try it anyway. And it is at that point that you turn into a triathlete (or soccer player, or surfer, or golf player, or musician, or anything else) without having attended a single race or even dusted off your old running shoes.

In this business I feel far too much time is spent aimed at those rare people who consist only of lungs and legs. Don’t get me wrong, as a therapist, trainer and coach I love the ego boost of rattling off the elite athletes I have worked with as much as the next girl, but the people I actually identify with most are the normal people that have doubts about their ability (usually unfounded) and are intimidated by all those that go flying by on really expensive bikes. It is those people, and I include myself in that list, who get such a sense of achievement from completing a tough new workout, managing to slip their feet into their bike shoes whilst on the move without falling off (most of the time) and realizing that the big scary monster of a new activity has turned into something you can’t wait to get back to. We will never win races, we will probably not finish in the top half, we won’t get sponsorship deals or be featured on the front pages of a magazine for our amazing athletic ability. But that doesn’t matter because we are having way more fun than those for whom the sport is a job.

A few years ago I was working as massage support at the Loch Ness Marathon in Scotland. We provided 20min massages to any finisher who wanted it, starting with the people who took less than 2 1/2 hours all the way through to those taking over 7 hours. As a therapist you have the unique opportunity of getting people’s stories immediately after the race, when they are still covered with sweat and mud, and when they have not yet recovered from the emotions thrown up by the event. What you would expect is that the mood of the athletes would deteriorate as the day went on. After all, it stands to reason that the woman who took 7 hours would not be as happy as the guy who came 3rd. Let me tell you, that is completely wrong. The guy who came third was in a foul mood because he was 30s slower than last year and “only” came third. The lady who took 7 hours had just completed her first ever marathon, something she couldn’t even have imagined doing some years ago. It took her several years to get herself ready to tackle it physically and emotionally. During that time she made some amazing friends, raised money for charities close to her heart, improved her health and fitness a great deal and was enjoying life more than ever. She was buzzing so much it was difficult to persuade her to get off the massage table after her 20 minutes were up, not because she wanted more massage, but because she hadn’t shared her whole story with me yet. If you ask me which one of those two people I want to be, without a doubt I’ll go for the back of the pack runner who loves every step she takes.

Here’s to setting new challenges, overcoming fears, realizing what an amazing person you are inside, and yes, here’s to taking up triathlon … again.

Corina

Back in White

In 1980 AC/DC released ‘Back in Black’ their first album since the death of Bon Scott and the first with my fellow Geordie, Brian Johnson, as the lead singer. Formed in 1973 (a year before I was born, that makes me… woh) AC/DC have stuck to their own brand of heavy rock through times when they were unfashionable, politically incorrect and socially unacceptable. Throughout this time they have stayed true to their roots, delighting fans and now rocking another generation of teenagers who snigger at their provocative lyrics. The point is they know what they are and they don’t want or need to change.

Growing up I was the smallest in my class at school and in Newcastle where I was brought up, you either played soccer or you learned to fight, at the age of 7 I started at a local judo club. I have been involved in martial arts ever since, I gained a black belt, I taught, I was captain of my University Judo Club, I taught at my own club, I gained black belts in various weapon systems, I was senior student at Kobudo Scotland… and then I stopped, two years ago… No time, no energy, no enthusiasm, too many injuries.

This is a story we hear all too often in the studio. “I was an athlete in college but now I am out of shape.” Life simply gets in the way, jobs, relationships, kids, family and other commitments take up time and energy, but does it change the athlete within?

One of the things that our injured clients are most afraid of is us telling them to stop doing their sport. It is part of who they are, their sport is a crucial part of their identity, it is their friend and family.

I cringe when I hear about therapists, even some of my own students, telling people to take up another sport. For the athlete this is like telling them to support another football team because their own team isn’t doing quite as well. Getting a runner to turn into a cyclist is like telling a leopard to change its spots to stripes… Obviously there are times when a runner needs to back off the running if they are injured, but even on the bike they are an injured runner, not a cyclist.

One of the first things I did when I arrived in San Diego was to find a traditional martial arts dojo and start practicing again. There are a lot of reasons why I chose the art of Iaido and there are a lot of reasons I chose the dojo I did, but the biggest reason is that I am a martial artist and that is what I do. I can dabble in triathlon, I can attend yoga classes and lift weights but I am sure that if you look under my skin I will still be wearing white pajamas and trying to remember which foot is left and which is right.

Alan

PS. AC/DC Back in Black is the second biggest selling album of all time having sold over 49million records!

He said, she said : Sport Specific Training

This weekend saw my first Sunday of NFL, and I loved it! Since planning our new business in the USA I have immersed myself into the world of American Football, because of all the big American sports this is the one I feel most drawn to. I have read ‘The Blind Side’, ‘Friday Night Lights’, both autobiographies of Lawrence Taylor, and a ton of other books, I even got Corina to buy me ‘The Idiots Guide to Football’ because I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t have a clue about the game! I have watched all the films I could get my hands on, TV series, you name it. As someone brought up on soccer and rugby, which I also love, I think the NFL is fantastic. I love watching the All Blacks play rugby, I love watching the majesty of the magnificent Newcastle United and I love the NFL.

As an exercise professional I love watching the athleticism of guys the size of houses pirouette and then charge down the field at breakneck speed. The contact between these giants is unbelievable, it is like being hit by a truck who’s job it is to hurt you. So it came as a bit of a shock when a commentator on one game noted that the new strength and conditioning coach for the team had switched their emphasis to free weights and olympic lifting… what were they using before? Machines?

In the NFL the players need to be big and strong, they need to be able to move fast, change direction, take a hit and deliver big hits, they need to be agile, nimble and mean. I cannot imagine many more unpredictable and hostile environments in sport. One minute you are sitting on the bench and the next you need to run, evade, doge, throw or smash, and the whole world is watching. The last thing a strength and conditioning coach should be doing with this type of athlete is resistance training mainly using machines.

When you first come into the world of fitness/athletic training you are taught about the SAID principle. Simply this means that the body makes:

Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands.

Simple right? This means that if you give the body the right stimulus it will adapt, and specific stimulus yields specific adaptations. The basis of all training is built upon this principle, train and you get stronger. There are a lot of variables controlling the outcome, there are many ways of training, but if you know what adaptation you are looking for you can find the right training stimulus to achieve your desired outcome.

In endurance sports if you train at a low intensity for a longer duration your body will adapt by becoming more efficient at metabolizing fat as an energy source and increasing the density of mitochondria. If the intensity is not low enough these adaptations will not take place and your body will adapt in another way by becoming more tolerant to higher levels of lactate. This is why we do blood lactate testing, in order to tell you how slow you need to go in order to get the adaptation you need. Conversely if you want to become more tolerant to lactate and strengthen your anaerobic system then you need to exercise at a much higher intensity. The adaptation is specific to the stimulus, and the stimulus must be there long enough to allow the body to adapt. Training once a week is not enough! Don’t get me wrong you will burn off some calories but it highly unlikely that you will get any hypertrophy or other desirable changes through this type of training. If your training stimulus is not consistent over time the body will not be given the chance to adapt. So doing kettlebell training one week and ropes the next, followed by a yoga class or pilates session will just confuse the body; it won’t know whether you want it to become stronger, build muscle, develop muscular endurance, develop stability, or relax and make the muscles longer. In other words you can work hard and get nothing from your training. Sound familiar?

When you train for a specific sport or activity the exercises that you must perform should be similar to that which you need for your sport. This is in order for there to be an increase in performance due to your training. We call this ‘functional carry over’ and it means that your training should benefit your performance. You can train the body in the gym all you want, you can make the body look beautiful like a bodybuilder but it doesn’t mean that it is functional. Doing muscle isolation exercises in the gym using traditional machines makes you stronger in the gym but no where else. In the real world there is  never a situation where you use just one joint, the seated adductor machine (for ladies) and the pec dec (for men) are fantastic examples of exercises that have no functional carry over.

Players in the NFL regardless of position need to be strong, nimble, resilient and be able to adapt to changing circumstances in a split second. This is actually the case for most sports though the specific needs will obviously differ. So the training should mimic the conditions on the field of play. In Scotland the guys at the Institute of Sport calculated the angle at which the forwards needed to push during a scrum, the players then squatted through this range of motion in the gym, building very specific strength to help this aspect of the game, this is a fantastic example of sport specific training. Training NFL players on machines is dumb, they need to be working in a dynamic environment where their bodied need to adapt to changing circumstances, they need to be explosive and destructive, and they need to do this while on their feet, or even in the air, rather than sitting on some machine and doing bodybuilding exercises.

“This is the way we have always done it.” This is the response I often get when I ask coaches why they are doing a particular type of training. Don’t get me wrong some of the ‘old school’ methods are still as valuable as ever, yoga for instance has been around for many hundreds of years and is still one of the best forms of exercise you can do. But you must think about the outcome of your training before embarking upon a training regime that is wasteful of your time and effort. If you want to do a weekly exercise class to have fun with your friends and burn off a few calories excellent, but don’t kid yourself that it will make your muscles bigger! In the rugby preseason I treated a forward who had knee pain, he told me that the coach had made them all run a weekly 5km cross-country… This guy was nearly 250lbs and built like a truck, his job on the field was to pick up the ball and run into the nearest player on the opposing team. The training for some of the players on the team should have included this type of training, but for tis guy it was the equivalent of getting a 100m sprinter to do mile repeats; just dumb and it lead to injury.

In my opinion it is a lack of intensity that leads to most exercise programs failing to get the required results. The training is not hard or easy enough to get the right adaptation, this is true for both gym based strength training and endurance training. You need the right stimulus applied regularly enough for your body to adapt and change. If the exercise is wrong or the intensity is wrong you will not get optimal adaptation.

It takes 6-12 weeks for the body to build muscle, the nervous system adapts much faster. It takes time and the right stimulus to make the body more efficient at burning fat or tolerating lactate. But whatever adaptation you are looking for you need the right stimulus. Variables such as intensity, sets, rest, and exercise selection are crucial in determining how successful your training will be. I am always amazed at the lack of understanding of these simple concepts when it comes to designing exercise, it is not rocket science.

The Chargers play tonight and after my soccer team got beat at the weekend I am looking forward to a victory away to Kansas. Remember what I SAID!

Alan

New country, new life, new business and new media!

We have finally made it to the USA! Corina and I are now open for business in Solana Beach, California.

Our journey to get here has been long and fraught with difficulties but we have finally arrived. To paraphrase the opening sequence to Star Trek Enterprise “it has been a long road getting from there to here!”.

The move from Edinburgh to Southern California has required big changes geographically, emotionally and mentally. We saw our business, gym and clinic that we built in Edinburgh taken over by the wonderful Gail Walkingshaw, we leased our apartment that we lived in for more than 15 years, we left the city that Corina and I have lived in since we were 18 years old, we even had to give our cat Willow away! All of this to take a chance and to make the move of a lifetime to live and work in the USA.

There are some notable differences between Southern Scotland and Southern California… But the biggest without a doubt is the climate, after the worst winter on record in Edinburgh, digging the gym out of the snow for weeks on end, it is paradise to hear the locals complain about how cold it is here!

So, we have taken our chance and opened The Wolf Studio, a sports performance gym and sports injury clinic. We are located in Solana Beach, at the Beachwalk, South on Hwy 101. We are very lucky to have already worked with some of the top triathletes in the world. You can read all about our wonderful new studio at our website www.beachwalkwolf.com

With our new business comes the wonderful world of marketing and letting people know what we do. A big part of delivering our message is social media, something I am not too familiar with. I am not what you call an early adopter… I don’t even text message. But kicking and screaming I have been brought into the 21st century with a Blog (obviously) and a Facebook page both for myself, Corina and The Wolf Studio!

Please check out our Facebook pages and add us to your ‘friend’ or ‘like’ pages.

Our aim with our blog and our Facebook pages is to keep in touch with our clients and potential clients, students and former students, to let our friends and family across the world what we are up to and to network with businesses and colleagues.

We aim to keep the blog and Facebook pages updated regularly so keep an eye out!

Alan