Ryan

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

This week, no deep insights into how to race faster but I think some interesting research/thoughts on how to be more healthy.

Running vs. sitting

We all know running is good for our health and spending too much time sitting is bad. How do the two counteract each other, though? For a long time, people believed running would be like a bullet proof vest, protecting us from the harmful effects of being too sedentary. Then sitting became the armor piercing bullet that could negate all the effects of running and then some, basically making running meaningless if you sit the rest of the day.

Not surprisingly, the answer is somewhere in the middle.

According to a research team from the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center, each time unit of sitting cancels out 8 percent of your gain from the same amount of running. In other words, if you run for an hour in the morning, and then sit for 10 hours during the day, you lose roughly 80 percent of the health benefit from your morning workout.

While that’s hardly a pretty picture for runners who are sedentary during the rest of our lives, it’s not quite the bad picture that was painted for us before (and I use "our" and "us" for a reason – I’m not nearly as active as I should be outside of my running life, I spend far too much time sitting).

Fortunately, there were some useful strategies to try to overcome these issues also given:

The team from UT Southwestern advises that office workers (and home workers) employ a number of strategies to avoid excessive sitting time. The list is becoming standard these days, and includes: walking up stairs at work rather than taking elevators; standing while talking on the phone; holding walking meetings; sitting on a fitness ball or using a standing desk; taking a lunchtime walk; and using pedometer to log your daily step count.

“We found that when someone’s sitting for a long time, any movement is good movement,” says co-author Jacquelyn Kulinski, M.D. “If you’re stuck at your desk, stretch, shift positions frequently or just fidget. They all improve fitness.”

Next time I’m fidgeting at work, it’s not because I’m nervous or struggling with a concept. I’m doing it for my health.

Abdominal bracing

How many of you have heard that, when you want to lift a heavy weight or do crunches or something like that, you should draw in your belly button to support your back?

Yeah, me too. That has always been the go to advice. Well, maybe it’s not the best advice.

This article makes a very good case for abdominal bracing instead of pulling your belly button in, which the author calls abdominal hollowing. What is abdominal bracing?

Think about what you would do if you were to prepare yourself for someone to punch you in the gut. You would immediately tense and stiffen you core to brace for the impact. This is exactly what abdominal bracing is, a term first coined by Dr. Stuart McGill of Canada, a leading expert in spine mechanics.

That description is probably about as good as it gets. The case being made in favor of this is very convincing. Personally, I’m rethinking my beliefs on this one. It makes a lot of sense.

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

I’m writing this before heading out for a camping trip. I’ll be packing up my tent for the return trip home when this appears so sorry if I seem a little short this week.

Leucine

We all know by now that taking in a protein/carbohydrate combination as soon as possible after a run will improve our recovery, right?

Well, now we know that leucine also plays a role.

First, what is leucine? In short, it’s an essential amino acid that the human body can’t produce so we have to get it from our diet. For more, see this Wikipedia article on it.

The good news? The super recovery drink known as chocolate milk has some leucine in it. Not quite at the levels used in the study but it’s there at some levels. Other options would be soybeans (chocolate soy milk?) and peanuts (some people like peanut butter as part of a post-run recovery meal). Again, you can see the Wikipedia article for more sources.

Endurance vs. speed

The eternal debate: how much endurance training do we need and how much speed training? It’s all about finding the right balance. Unfortunately, in today’s world, too many people want debates to be far more polarized. So we end up hearing that the best way to improve your aerobic capacity is HIIT training and you don’t need to train with long, easy or moderate workouts if you just do your HIIT training.

Steve Magness, one of my favorite bloggers, explored this in the context of the recent World Cup. Not surprisingly, he came to the conclusion that it’s all about finding the right balance.

This article was originally posted by Ryan at the original HillRunner.com Blogs.

Another interesting batch of links this week in my opinion. Let’s jump right in.

Fascia

Most of us probably don’t think about our fascia short of that one well known part of it that runs along the bottom of our feet. However, it is extremely abundant throughout our bodies and important in so many ways.

Running Times had a good primer on it that I came across this week. I’d consider this a must read. I’m partly including it here so I can reference it myself and read it again.

Is drafting a placebo?

That’s the question Alex Hutchinson asked in one of his Sweat Science blog posts from this past week.

As usual, I think Hutchinson has a great point when he says there is a difference between placebo and avoiding mental fatigue. Just because something may not be measurable doesn’t mean it isn’t real. We may not notice a difference in wind resistance but that doesn’t mean there aren’t benefits, as he points out, in terms of mental fatigue in drafting. I found myself thinking the same thing he wrote as I was reading the paragraph before he wrote it.

Of course, then I also found myself thinking the same thing he was about to write moments later. Sometimes, with some personality types, a runner may experience less mental fatigue by leading than by following. It all depends on the type of runner you are. Once again, know yourself and you’ll be able to decide the better strategy but we can’t overlook the benefit of pacers who make our jobs easier. Expending less mental energy worrying about pace early can mean having more mental energy later to push through the physical fatigue or to strategize.

Dangers of tapering

Most of us know the taper is quite possibly the most difficult part of a training plan there is. I probably spend more time thinking about the taper than I do anything else. What to do to get things just right? How to make sure you find that balance of enough rest without going stale from resting too much?

Well, Steve Magness has some thoughts on this. I always like Magness’s writings because he does such a good job of balancing the science of sports physiology with the art of coaching. This post is no exception.

So what’s his answer to what’s the right taper? As with most things, the answer is it depends.

Find what type of athlete you are and remember what event you are training for. Do you need the psychology of the routine? Do you need more speed/power? Are you more FT or ST orientated? What event are you tapering for?

These questions and more will hopefully help you solve the conundrum of tapering.

Good thoughts as always. Definitely worth a read.