Overtraining Part 1
For the next month we'll have posts regarding the total athletic picture ranging from specific training techniques to what athletes can do outside of training to improve performance. Today we'll kick it off with a post about over training. Wha?? What does THAT have to do with athletic performance? Well, my friends, we live in an era where the attitude I'm-so-tired-I-can-barely-move mentality constitutes a "good workout"; an era where the adage "pain is weakness leaving the body," is plastered on every high school athletic t-shirt and perpetuates the notion that only utter exhaustion means "progress." This is not to say that no pain is warranted, but that excessive, persistent joint and muscle pain is NOT. We can be honest, who doesn’t enjoy a hardy work out? Who doesn’t like to train hard, pwn some weight (or mileage if you’re a distance person), and conquer the physical goals you’ve set for yourself?
I know I do.
However, sadly, there can be too much of a good thing. We may be superheroes in our minds, but sometimes our bodies see it differently. Outside of the genetic freaks who can hit their training hard day after day (I’m a bit envious…), most of us will reach the realm of overtraining. I should note, that for many competitive athletes (college, elite, and professional levels) there is a constant state of overtraining, but it’s closely monitored. But, this post is designed for the rest of us, including middle school and high school athletes (all of whom think they are invincible).
Hopefully, after today’s post, you’ll be able to recognize the symptoms and thus stop the process. Next post, we’ll talk about strategies to avoid over training as well as correcting and reversing the effect.
Now, everyone is different and not everyone will experience every symptom or perhaps experience it in varying degrees depending on your state of training. These are general symptoms that you/parents/coaches should keep an eye out for.
Symptoms:
1. Repeated failure to complete/recover in a normal workout- I’m not talking about a failed rep attempt or performing an exercise to failure. This is a routine training session that you’re dragging through and you either can’t finish it or your recovery time between sets is way longer than usual. For distance trainees, this may manifest as slower pace, your normal milage seems way harder than usual, or your heart rate is higher than usual during your workout.
2. Lifters/power athletes: inability to relax or sleep well at night- Overtraining in power athletes or lifters (any athlete outside of triathletes or cross country runners/bikers, I'm looking at you, playing-year-round-northern Virginia kids) results in an overactive sympathetic nervous response (the “fight or flight” system). If you’re restless (when you’re supposed to be resting), unable to sleep well, have an elevated resting heart rate, or have an inability to focus (even during training or practice), those are signs that your sympathetic nervous system is on overdrive. It’s your body’s response to being in a constantly stressful situation, like training, that it refuses to relax and stays in the sympathetic state.
3. Endurance athletes: fatigue, sluggish, and weak feeling- Endurance athletes experience parasympathetic overdrive (the “rest and digest” system). Symptoms include elevated cortisol (stress hormone that isn’t bad, but shouldn’t be at chronically high levels), decreased testosterone levels (more noticeable in males), increase fat storage or inability to lose fat, or chronic fatigue (mental and physical).
4. Body composition shifts away from leanness- Despite training hard and eating well, you’re either not able to lose body fat, or worse, you start to gain what you previously lost. Being overtrained results in elevated cortisol levels (for both kinds of athletes). Cortisol, among other things, increases insulin resistance which promotes fat storage and inhibits fat loss.
5. Sore/painful joints, bones, or limbs- Does the thought of walking up stairs make you groan with the anticipated creaky achiness you’re about to experience? If so, you’re probably overtraining. Whether it be with weights or endurance training, you’re body is taking a beating and if it doesn’t have adequate recovery time, that’s when tendiosis, tendoitis, bursitis, and all the other itis-es start to set in. The joints, muscles, tendons, and ligaments are chronically inflamed and that equals pain. Maybe it’s not pain (yet) but your muscles feel heavy and achy. It might be a good time to rethink you’re training routine…
6. Getting sick more often- Maybe it's not the flu, but perhaps the sniffles, a sore throat, or a fever here and there; these are signs your immune system is depressed. This can be a sneaky one especially if you eat right (as in lots of kale), sleep enough, and drink plenty of water (I’m doing all the right things! Why am I sick??). Training is a stress on the system and any hard training session will depress the immune system for a bit afterwards. Not a big deal if you’re able to recover after each training session… but if you’re overtraining, your body never gets that recovery time. Hence, a chronically depressed immune system… and that’s why you have a cold for the 8th time in two months.
7. You feel like garbage- You know the feeling: run down, sluggish, not excited to train… NOOOOO!!!!! Training regularly, along with eating well and sleeping enough, should make you feel great. However, if you feel like crap… something is wrong.
Those are some of the basic signs of overtraining. There are more, especially as an athlete drifts further and further down the path of fatigue, but these are the initial warning signs your body gives you to tell you to stop what you’re doing or bad things will happen.
Next time, we’ll discuss ways to prevent and treat overtraining.
SAPT's Advice for Strength, Health, and Jedi Skillz
Brevity is one of my virtues. Therefore, in that spirit, today's post will sum up how to get stronger, live well, increase you Jedi skill level by 1,000, and we’re doing it hiaku style. What can be more to the point than a haiku? Happy Friday! Strength:
Baby weights and fads. Ladies, please fear not.
Not the best way to gain strength. Weights will not make you manly,
Pick up heavy things. Pick up heavy things.
10 minutes to abz?
Train hard and consistently
Be patient, eat well.
NO.
Swing big bells daily
Strong glutes make strong athletes and
Desired booties.
Nutrition:
Five ingredients or less,
Eat lots of real food
Shun the short cuts.
Kale makes you healthy
You’ll punch sickness in the face
Load up on the kale.
Vegetables and fruits,
Proteins and good fats are the
Essentials to health.
Jedi Skills:
To use the Force, one
Must produce much force, thus lift
Heavy things a lot.
SAPT Presents: 3 Exercises to Make You Hate Life
Anyone else have a bit of a masochist streak in them? While you shouldn’t be burning yourself out every exercise, let’s admit it, that “burn” does feel pretty good afterwards huh? There’s a certain amount of satisfaction that accompanies the accomplishment of a particularly difficult exercise. I am feeling terribly generous today and would love to help boost your workout joy. Here are three lifts that will, without a doubt, make you hate life.
*Note: Please ignore my horridly kyphotic posture. It’s embarrassing. I'm working on it.*
Numero Uno: 1 and 1/2 Bulgarian Split Squats
Ugh. My legs are burning just from doing the demo video, as my face so clearly demonstrated.
Key points:
Keep your front heel down and push through it (thus activating your booty). Don’t put too much weight in your back foot, though tempting, it will not make the it any easier. Brace your abs to prevent wobbling during, but not the jelly-leg tottering walk afterwards.
Recommended set/reps- 2-3x 5 (easier), 3×6/side (you’re gonna be sore tomorrow), 3-4×8/side (lover of pain).
Second Torturous Task: Tiger Crawl into Pushups
Whoo boy.
Key Points:
Feet and hands move opposite of each other. Stop the pushups before they dissolve into utter poo. Leave one or two reps in the tank, not technical failure. (Yes, it’s hard, but that’s not an excuse to look like garbage.) Stay tight in your midsection throughout the crawl.
Recommended set/reps- 10-12 yards (winded), 15-18 yards (ok, that hurts) 20-25 yards (*gasp*)
Third Act of Crazy: Tempo Anything
Tempo training is exhausting. It’s also extremely versatile and can be applied to most exercises (excluding deadlift or swings). A favorite tempo of SAPT coaches is 2-0-2, meaning 2 seconds eccentric portion, 0 seconds isometric portion, and two second concentric portion.
Let’s look at the squat for example, lower in 2 seconds (eccentric) and without pausing in the bottom, immediately stand up again (concentric). Pull ups are absolutely miserable with this: pull up in two seconds, no pause at the top and lower in two seconds (stupidly hard. I had to use a band for this). You can also use tempos such as 4-0-2 (using the pull up example, this would be pull up in 2 seconds, no pause, then lower in 4 seconds). I’ve even tried 6-0-2 (that absolutely blows). If you’re looking to add some size to your frame, tempo work is a great tool to help with that as the time-under-tension is a lot higher than traditional work sets.
Here is a 2-0-2 tempo pushup.
And a 4-0-2 tempo squat.Key points:
Use a timer, it’ll keep you honest. We have a Gymboss that works well (or I’m sure there’s an app out there…). You can also use a stopwatch and place it where you can see it. The tempo during my squat demo is slightly off since I didn’t have my glasses on and couldn’t see the timer. This is when a GymBoss (which beeps at you) would come in handy.
Recommended set/reps*- 2-3 x 5-7 (surprisingly tough), 3 x 6-9 (I want to stop now), 4-5×8-10 (I. Hate. Tempo. Work.)
Throw those into your workouts for a little extra misery spice.
* the sets and reps ultimately depend upon the exercise selection. I don’t recommend a super high volume for things like pull ups as it can really irritate elbows and shoulders (speaking from experience). Just bear that in mind.
Looking For A Challenge? Try the Snatch Grip Deadlift
Do you think you’re rather adept in the weight room? Feel pretty strong? You approach the loaded barbell, it’s deadlifting time, oh yeah, you’re a beast at this. Suddenly, the door creaks open behind you… a slow cadence of footsteps approach (maybe there’s a jingle of spurs to add to the ominousness).
“So, *snort* you think you’re some-bod-ee huh?” says a raspy voice. “Heh, heh, heh, heh,” the voice laughs derisively.
Beads of sweat break out on your forehead and the chalk on your hands slowly starts to disappear on your sweaty palms. It can’t be. Not him. Not today…
The snatch grip deadlift.
Yes, the snatch grip deadlift, the most humbling lift to ever saunter into a weight room. O! The abhorred and feared snatch grip deadlift! The bane of lifters’ pride everywhere. Like Mad-Eye Moody, the snatch grip deadlift looks a little scary, destroys weakness with the fervor of Moody attacking Death Eaters, and will humble proud lifters by turning us into bouncing, white ferrets.
Thus, if you’re at all interested in improving athletic performance, growing stronger, and upping your Jedi Mastery, then the snatch grip deadlift (SGD) needs to be in your strength box.
Why do them?
- The SGD improves hip mobility and increases the posterior chain muscles’ (glutes and hamstrings namely) strength rapidly. The starting position of the hips in a SGD is much lower than in a conventional pull, forcing the hips lower than a conventional or sumo stance. (Hooray mobility!) The hips must go through a greater range of motion which stretches the glutes and hamstrings at the bottom thus increasing the demand on said muscles to produce force. If the initial pull off the floor in a conventional deadlift is the weak link, the SGD is an excellent tool to strengthen the hamstrings (which play a prominent role in the first few inches off the floor). *Note* if you’re hip mobility blows and you’re unable to get to the bottom position without crumpling your spine, elevate the bar to a safe height, work on your mobility, and gradually decrease the elevation.
- Due to the wide grip, it challenges the upper back musculature and increases muscle recruitment of the following: erector spinae, rhomboids, rear deltoids, and the trapezius. Fellas, if you’ve ogled Bane’s traps, the SGD is for you! Ladies, you should not shy away from a muscular and well developed back; we don’t have enough testosterone to look like Bane (though, in my head, I am the female Bane) so train hard and do not hesitate to add SGDs into your training!!
Strong backs = more pull ups
- SGDs increase vertical jump height (all the basketball and volleyball players just perked up their ears…) Wha? That’s right, a very good jumper Please note that there will be additional updates from Power charter school during roster verification. will rely hip extension, not knee extension, to grab some air. Hip extension is created by glutes and hamstrings where as the quads and calves are responsible for knee extension. As informed readers and lifters, you all know that the glutes and hamstrings are FAR MORE POWERFUL than the quads and calves, especially in jumping. Look at these two pictures.
Notice any difference? The first is knee extension dominant while the second is hip extension dominant. Olympic lifters train the SGD (since it’s part of their sport) and I think their verts are pretty good?
Hopefully by now you’re convinced that you should add SGDs to your training. Let us, therefore, speak upon the subject of form.
1. Choose a conservative weight. Anywhere from 50-70% of your max. Actually, I’d start even lower if this is the first time, but that’s your decision.
2. Set up like a conventional stance, feet somewhere around shoulder-hip width.
3. Find your grip width. Kneel by the barbell, spread out your arms. Bend 90 degrees at the elbow, and move your hands straight down. That’s your grip (or at least a good starting point. Depending on your levers, you may have to adjust). I would do this before you’re first rep just so you don’t feel funky at the top. I’d also do this when no one is watching because, as my husband pointed out, you’ll look like you’re trying to do the Robot.
4. Grab that barbell, deep breath and brace.
5. Drop hips into position. (Read Dip, grip, and rip)
5.5. (as you drop the hips) Pull shoulder blades down and together and try to bend the bar around your legs.
6. Rip that sucker off the floor. Repeat steps 1-6.
CLICK ME FOR VIDEO (curse the lack of embedding! Yes, I know my knees are a bit wide, but I have a funky hip that won"t let me pull my knee in more.)
DO NOT…
1. Round upper or lower back for the love of all things iron! If there’s rounding you need to either a) lower the weight or b) elevate the bar since your mobility might not be there yet.
2. Pop your hips up before lifting the weight off the ground. This movement is a sure fire way to piss off your back.
3. Rush your reps. NO BOUNCING the barbell between reps. Reset each time. Be patient, young padawan.
Tips:
- Practice your set up. Load the bar up heavy enough that you know you can’t pull it off the floor. Practice your grip and dip (see, you need to read that link about gripping, dipping, and ripping….). Pull yourself into the bottom position (maintaining a neutral spine) and hold for :20-:30. Repeat 2-3 times to work on the necessary hip, ankle, and upper back mobility.
- Use a hook grip. Not at all related to Captain Hook. (an actual hook would be rather useless in this case) Here’s a picture of the hook grip:
I switched to using it for my conventional deadlifts (to great success! Your grip is much stronger like this which negates the need for a mix grip (one hand under, the other over) the heavier sets.) and the SGD can produce a funky grip and it’s nearly impossible to use a mix grip on a SGD. The hook grip takes care of that. Though, it can be rather uncomfortable near the thumb joint (until you get used to it)
So, my fellow iron lovers, has the snatch grip deadlift won over your heart?
Where Athletes (Should) Begin
This past weekend, I took a trip back home to see my parents in Madison County, Va. Madison is a completely different world when compared to NOVA. The cows out-populate the people and most of the area looks almost exactly the same as it did when in the 70's. While there, I decided to get a crawl workout in at my old elementary school, which is actually shut down now and abandoned due to lack of a school-aged population to support it. Most people would consider this facility to be "out of date" because high-speed internet is in-accessible or because the cafeteria, auditorium, and gym were all the same room. But what I realized while there is that this school, despite being built in the the 50's, was outfitted with some of the best tools around for human and athletic development.
My workout that day was strictly work-capacity within my crawling pattern. So after a small warm up, I crawled for a set period of time in the field, switching between baby and spiderman variations (think fartlek style). This gave me plenty of time to think about the place where I spent a large portion of my childhood. As I looked at the playground that was next to the field, I realized that this type of facility is exactly what a lot of the athletes I see need.
As Head of Evaluations at SAPT, it's my job to find what dysfunction or deficit could be throwing off an athlete's movements and performance. This can be a mobility/stability issue, a vestibular issue (think balance), or a deficit in hemispheric communication (coordination, information processing in the brain etc.). Frequently, we as a society chalk up poor movement quality to poor mobility or a lack of strength, however I can assure you that those are rarely the roots of the problem. What I usually see are specialized athletes who may be able to perform the tasks of their sport or activities of daily living (perform, not always perform efficiently), but are extremely lacking in basic movement functions of the human body. A few common issues that I see include vestibular/balance issues, poor weight shift patterns, difficulty with coordination, especially within the transverse plain (rotating), poor scapular stability, and, of course, poor overall body awareness.
All of the previously listed movement deficits are caused more or less by not having a diverse base of movement. A lot of parents believe that their children playing the same sport year round is enough movement to keep them healthy. It's not. The truth is, the more they move within DIFFERENT activities and tasks, the better off they will be physically and even cognitively. This is why children have a naturally playful disposition. They want to play, which means moving and developing more neurological connections. The more engaging the activity, the better off they will be.
Now back to what I saw while crawling. Here is the playground that I was looking at:
You'll notice that there is a swing set (way in the back on the other-side of what used to be our special ed building), monkey bars, a balance beam, parallel bars, and pull up bars. What you don't see is a hop-scotch court, a tether-ball poll and a jungle gym. It was freakin' awesome and I had forgotten all about the time spent and the skills I developed on this playground. Take some time to imagine the abilities an individual would develop if they spent any amount of time on these pieces of equipment on a daily basis.
The swing would help to develop the vestibular system and its sensitivity with in the sagital plane (forward and back). This would help with awareness and could even carry over to weight-shift patterns due to the need to propel yourself. These weight-shifts are very hip dominant and actually load the anterior core, something our entire population could use. Let's also not forget how often, as children, we used to fling ourselves out of the swing, pretending that we were Evel Knievel jumping the Grand Canyon, then transitioning into a smooth tumble or landing into the grass. This helped us to learn force absorption and how to fall (or not to).
The monkey bars integrate scapular stability into a total body movement. It also helps develop grip strength and hand-eye coordination. Plus, when a child is on it their body rotates as they swing, adding to the activation of the rotator cuff and its ability to stabilize within multiple planes of movement.
The balance beam provides perhaps the most obvious of benefits, but I don't think many people understand just how crucial good balance is. In addition to the constant shifting of weight which gives a significant amount of sensory input to the vestibular system, the need to stay up on the beam forces the individual to properly interpret that input and respond by shifting to their center of gravity. Not to mention that it is dynamic when walking the beam so the center of gravity is ever-changing. The more centered an athlete can maintain themselves means the faster they will be able to shift to change direction.
Parallel bars can have a host of benefits depending on how they are used (yes, you can do more than dips on them). Similarly to the monkey bars they also provide scapular stability, but within different motions and angles. They also help to develop core strength and control as the child swings their legs back and forth.
Pullup bars also seem obvious in benefit when looking in the eyes of an adult, but have waaaay more benefit when you see them through a 9 year-old's eyes. Occasionally a child will attempt to knockout as many chinups as possible, but it's far more likely to see them doing something much more beneficial: hanging, swaying, and hanging upside down. I believe that most of us can remember climbing and fidgeting up a bar, kipping our way up and hooking our feet to hang upside down. What's the benefit? I feel the hanging and swaying have already been covered in the previous paragraphs, but being upside down throws a whole 'nother level of vestibular stimuli at them. Every rule of gravity is all the sudden flipped in the child's eyes. It challenges their whole perception and makes them start off of a blank slate for patterning, and they immediately begin learning.
Hop scotch is a fantastic game for early athletic development. I mean, it was developed by Roman solders to test speed and strength after all (they carried weights). This game not only teaches balance and footwork, but it also helps with force absorption. Many programs will throw athletes through speed and agility drills when the athlete has poor force absorption, mechanics, and pretty poopy single leg mechanics, which in turn can lead to disastrous results. But, if the athlete grew up playing hop scotch, then there's nothing to worry about and lil Suzie's hopscotch skills might just help her blow her older brother away in any cone or ladder drill.
Tether-ball is an extremely underrated game for more than just simple, hand-eye coordination. It's a multi-planar, open-loop activity that engages the visual cortex for feedback AND feedforward mechanisms. To put that in simple terms, it requires dynamic/reactive movements in multiple directions (something that is rarely a bad thing) and it gives feedback immediately after the movement as to whether the action chosen was effective (causing the child to more accurately adjust the next movement). It also requires the child to visually track the ball, predict its flight path, adjust their movement based off of the visual input and to execute the volley based off of previous feedback from past volleys. Combining all of these actions into one task helps to get the visual cortex active and force it to communicate with the motor control center. This helps with interpretation of visual, sensory input and theoretically can have carryover to MANY other activities besides just sports (let's not forget that people with dyslexia have been found to have low activity within their visual cortex). Not only that but due to the nature of the game, there is a fairly high volume of volleys, which means the player will get more feedback in one game of tether-ball than they would with other activities of similar benefits. So in short, tether-ball is freakin' sweet for development.
Last but not least, there was a jungle gym. These babies are like monkey bars on steroids. Not only can a child hang from them and swing to the next bar, but they can do it diagonally and laterally. They can also crawl over top of it, which as a quick google search will confirm, offers a plethora of physical and developmental benefits. Children will spend a lot of time hanging upside down from these as well and will even start to attempt to climb it upside down. This just adds to more vestibular and proprioceptive stimuli and puts it into a locomotive pattern.
All of these wonderful, accessible tools for human development were just sitting at a run-down, abandoned school. Many people would look at them as if they were dangerous, primitive structures, and a waste of time. Our society has become so wrapped up in sport-specific development that we've started to lose sight of what's really important. Many children today participate in the same sport year-round, getting used to the same stimuli and becoming, "stuck" within their movements, but justify it because it's exercise. When broken down, many sports only offer a limited degree of benefits on a developmental or movement scale. Sticking a child into only one or two sports (though better than them not doing any activity at all) means that they're only addressing a limited number of systems that affect our movement.. This is fine if the individual is further through their development and has had a very broad movement base, but that is seldom the case.
The funny thing about kids is they instinctively know exactly what they need. This is why EVERY child has a playful disposition and is always squirming around when they are told to sit still. How many times have you seen a 5 year-old spinning in circles to make themselves dizzy? Or perhaps throwing a random object in the area to try to catch it? Or pretend the floor is lava so that they can try to balance and walk over all of the furniture? We learn through movement and different movements teach us dfferent lessons to help us unctions through multiple situations. The hemispheres of our brain communicate through solving sensory-integrated tasks and movements. Limiting the amount of stimuli a child gets by having them do very repetitive activities or sitting them in front of a TV for, "educational" shows only provide a false sense of productivity for our society. The reality is doing so only limits their true potential. We tell them to stop playing around or to put that down and we wonder, "why can't he just concentrate?," "Why can't she EVER sit still?," Why is ADD so prevalent in our society?," "Why am I seeing so many movement dysfunctions in our youth?".... In a society that has watered down its physical education curriculum and that does not actually utilize the importance of free-play in development, I can't imagine why.
Think Critically and Don't Believe Everything You Hear. Example: "Forks Over Knives"
Recently, I decided to watch “Forks Over Knives,” since it’s on Netflix and I’d heard of this movie for a while (depending on who I ask, I’ve heard whisperings that it’s a “vegan propaganda” film or “the TRUTH!”. You can probably guess which group of people recounted which description.) Anyway, I wanted to watch it myself (without reading/seeking any other opinions) and see what all the fuss was about. Essentially, it was Dr. T. Collin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn trying to persuade the public to renounce their meat-eating ways in favor of a plant-based diet.
Before I go further into my thoughts about the film, I do want to emphasize that I whole-heartedly agree with one of the main themes: DIET AFFECTS EVERYTHING! By loading our bodies with whole foods, including LOTS of vegetables and fruits, we can combat and prevent many “lifestyle” diseases (such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer to a degree.) Doctors and other medical professionals would do their patients a much greater service if they advocated lifestyle/diet changes before prescribing loads of medications. Nutritional education and adaptions are MUCH safer (no nasty side effects) and cheaper options ($500/bottle medication anyone?). That message, I can stand behind, and think that those of us in the fitness industry should also seek to educate our clients on the importance of whole food, vegetable-heavy diets.
I also have no intention at all to attack vegans. If veganism works, power to you! The point of this post is not to dissuade any vegans/vegetarians (because I doubt I will, just as they can’t dissuade me from eating eggs) nor do I have a malicious intent to tear down veganism. Our bodies a vastly different and I have no business telling someone who strives to eat the best they can for health that they’re wrong.
I do however, intend to demonstrate why trusting a movie such as “Forks Over Knives” as gospel is not a wise idea. There were a LOT of questions that popped up in my mind during my viewing. The studies sited in particular raised my eyebrows. From my experience in researching nutrition topics, I understand that many scientific studies are either a) flawed or poorly designed or b) the results can be misinterpreted or skewed. We see this daily in the “New Study!” that newscasters spew forth every other day, without actually reading the study. (that’s a whole other blog post of wrath)
Here were a couple of my queries:
1. The movie compares a “standard Western Diet,” which I mentioned before in posts and how it’s not-so-great, and a “plant based diet.”
Ok, I get it, but does that mean there’s nothing in between? Does the fact that I eat meat and eggs negate the following: I don’t eat processed or fried food (I even make my own ketchup), I rarely have refined sugar any more, I eat roughly 4lbs of kale a week (you can ask Steve) and a crap-ton (actual measurement) of vegetables every meal, and tend to be a vegetarian on the weekends? Why are people like me lumped into the same category of eating as folks who eat McDonalds and slurp Slurpees three times a day? It was either one or the other. The film makers didn’t even acknowledge that there, perhaps, are healthy people out there who also happen to eat meat.
2. Speaking of meat, the movie referenced “animal protein” a lot. (You could make it a game: ten pushups every time “animal protein” was mentioned. You’d be VERY sore the next day.) However, it didn’t seem to include fish. Only chicken, beef, pork (which were almost exclusively bacon icons in the illustrations. See point above and I don't even like bacon!), dairy, and eggs. Um, last time I checked, fish are animals. Why wasn’t fish demonized or even acknowledged?
3. Dr. Campbell sites a study he performed on rats in which he had two groups of rats, one being fed a diet of 5% casein and the other 20% casein. Each group was injected aflatoxin to see which group resisted liver tumors/cancer. Two questions: 1) the movie said that casein was the main protein found in milk… um, isn’t whey also found in milk (and has been found to have a plethora of health benefits)? 2) The results of the casein study was very sneakily extrapolated and applied to “animal protein.” Doesn’t casein act differently in the body than protein from beef or chicken? Casein generally is the protein most milk intolerant/allergic people react to yet often they have no trouble with whey (my husband is one of those). Isn’t that an indicator that perhaps other proteins should have been tested as well?
4. In addition to emphasizing a hefty vegetable diet, Drs. Campbell and Esselstyn recommend that whole grains should be included. While I’m not a paleo advocate, nor am I “anti-carb” or “anti-grain,” I couldn’t help but think back to various posts I’d read from other smart people about the not-so-awesome aspect of grains (note: this post by Mark Sisson has lots of links to studies in it, so if you want to skip through and find them, please do so), specifically gluten in wheat, which Stephen Guyenet has graciously provided. Again, I'm NOT PALEO, but I do know that grains, gluten specifically, can cause problems in some people. Just something to think about.
5. There were several testimonies from various people that were in dire health straits. (you could almost hear the melancholy chords of a violin in the background). Two women in particular stuck out to me, one woman who was diagnosed with diabetes claimed,
“My diet was pretty abominable. I thought the two principle food groups were caffeine and sugar.”
the other,
“I ate all the chocolate candy I could eat. Ate every donut I could get my hands on. Oh I just loved things like that. A lot of gravy.” (this was said by a woman who had 2 heart attacks by age 59.)
Ok, even my lowly strength coach brain knows that a diet like that will lead to diabetes and heart attacks. It’s no wonder a diet that was anything but what they had been eating was going to make them healthier. When you start at the bottom, the only way to go is up. Also, since when are caffeine and sugar animal protein?
Ok, that’s enough questions for now. I had more, which spurred me to research some of the claims and studies presented in the film. Thankfully, I didn’t have to search for long. Denise Minger wrote a fantastic, objective, and fact-filled review here. I highly suggest you read her post. Seriously, it’s fabulous. She provides links to the studies, can site stated information, and I appreciated that she made no claims she couldn’t back up. I will share my favorite part (this is in reference to the rat study mentioned above):
Don’t get distracted by those red letters! What we’re interested in is the sentence near the bottom, which the film’s producers apparently didn’t notice: "In all, 30 rats on the high-protein diet and 12 on the low-protein diet survived for more than a year.”
Let that sink in for a moment. Maybe it’ll hit a little harder if I told you that in the “high protein vs. low protein” experiments discussed in this paper, 10 low-protein rats died prematurely while all the high-protein rats stayed alive.In other words, the overall survival rate for the 20% casein group was much better than for the 5% casein group, despite the fact they had liver tumors. The low-protein rats were dying rapidly—just not from liver cancer. And as we’ll see later, the reason the non-dead, low-protein rats didn’t get tumors was partly because their liver cells were committing mass suicide.
AND
Although Campbell is trying to explain why his rat studies have relevance for humans, this statement actually highlights why they usually don’t. In Campbell’s experiments—as well as the Indian study that inspired him all those years ago—the rats received very high doses of aflatoxin to initiate cancer in the first place. Protein only appeared to work as a cancer promoter in his studies, not an independent carcinogen. And even though the range of protein was reasonable for a real-life situation, the amount of aflatoxin exposure would be really hard to replicate unless you had a death wish and a bottomless stomach. Quoting Chris Masterjohn’s “Curious Case” article again, to get the sort of aflatoxin exposure that caused even a “barely detectable” response in Campbell’s rats, you’d have to eat about 1,125,000 contaminated peanut butter* sandwiches over the course of four days. I don’t know about you, but I doubt I could eat a lick over 900,000. More than that is just gluttony!
Oh I love when the truth come into the light! The rats died! I couldn’t stop laughing in disbelief at the blatant disregard of the film producers to NOT include that little bit of information. That’s kinda important don’t you think? It sounds so promising, the low protein group had no cancer… oh wait, that’s because they were dead. Oh, and the surviving low-protein rats’ livers were killing themselves, cell by cell. Nor did they bother to mention the amount of aflatoxin was waaaaaaayyy above the normal amount of exposure.
So I’ve written a lot. I’m sorry if I disappointed any that I didn’t respond with research of my own (Denise did such a thorough job and I didn’t want to steal her thunder; nor could I hope to produce anything close to the level of awesome as that post). The main reason I wanted to write this post was to encourage all of you to think critically about any nutrition or exercise related information that you come across, either through blogs (including this one), movies, advertisements, etc. There is a LOT of misinformation out there and that definitely contributes to all the conflicting opinions out there when it comes to the fitness/strength field. It’s important to seek the facts yourself, seek the actual studies that are sited to see if the information presented is really what the study demonstrated. I know reading research is tedious and often difficult to understand, therefore, find a few sources that you KNOW are trustworthy at dissecting research papers. (like Denise Minger, Stephen Guyenet, Alan Aragon, Bret Contreras to name a few, do an internet search for them).
I’ll admit, towards the end of the movie, I was starting to wonder if a plant based diet really was the best way, mainly because I was emotionally invested in some of the testimonies. I was ecstatic for these people who were healthier, happier, and had a better quality of life. My emotions were starting to skew my logical side and what I knew to be true. This is why it’s terribly important to critically examine information.
My encouragement to you (can be applied to ALL aspects of life): Too often our emotions rule over our logic. Let us break this habit.
