Theory to Practice

“Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.”

- John Galsworthy

H1N1 is killing me. No, not literally — and not the virus itself — but all the extended hours I’m having to put in as a result of readying a manufacturing plant for the full-scale filling and packaging operations associated with putting the vaccine on the street.  Whether the threat of this virus is real or manufactured I’ll leave to your own personal conclusions (for what it’s worth, I’m passing on the vaccine) — what I do know for a fact, though, is that I’m working my damn ass off as of late.  Unfortunately, the only drawback to the Paleo way is its inability to put more actual hours in my day.

Before I move on, though,to the topics at hand, allow me a quick rant.  This, my friends, is what American-style, hyper-capitalism business has come to: work the few people you’ve retained till they drop, then reload from the ranks of the over-educated and marginalized, who (and this is the full-circleness of the issue) are inclined (due to a sputtering economy) to accept less-than-adequate wages/working conditions/benefits.  Why not carry a little extra fat in the ranks?  Wouldn’t that be prudent, from a business (not to mention, humanistic) point of view?  Hey, are you friggin kidding me?  Have you seen the price-tag associated with a benefits package as of late (I’ll forgo the health care reform rant here)?  Not to mention that the fat cats on Wall Street want quarterly results, Jack, and the issue of any additional headcount — over and above the overworked zombies required to produce a satisfactory profit margin — is a non-starter.   How’s this for irony: scrambling through the business corridors in your work-induced brain fog, you’re forced to dodge impromptu hallway gatherings of upper-level management, and representatives from the notorious McKinsey Group.  A pretty innocuous looking bunch from the looks of their site, eh?  Just what the hell do they do, you ask?  Slash and burn, my friend.  Headcount elimination.  The “do more with less” (and we all know what that means) specialists.  Ah, but here’s irony x2: isn’t it odd that 90% of the group’s representatives are of Indian decent?  Seems as if the group that specializes in outsourcing has taken the notion to heart and outsourced itself.  Can’t label them as hypocrites, I suppose.  Pure contrived fiction, I tell you, could not be steeped in such irony.  Such is life as a member of the American workforce…what’s left of it, anyway.

So, just a couple of things you may not have run across this week:

Common ground with a vegetarian?

Well, if the issue is limited to the protest of the horrid conditions found in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), it would seem so.  Now I can certainly appreciate a vegetarian who leads that particular lifestyle purely as a statement against needless animal cruelty.  I’m not so sure, though, that Jonathan Foer, has considered the optimization of his own health in this “go veggie” decision — but hey, to each his own.  I just wish that the author of Everything is Illuminated would study the virtues of the free-range/grass-fed experience — both from the animal’s point of view, and from that of the consumer (and of the earth, for that matter) — and tweak his stance accordingly.  And although I loath the very idea of CAFOs, and how they’ve totally adulterated the mainstream protein supply, I find it hard to believe that they are as heavy a greenhouse gas producer as say, what’s produced from world’s combined coal-fired power plants.  Now, I don’t know this for fact — and I’m certainly not defending CAFOs in any way, shape or form — I’m just sayin’… if you’re interested, there’s another quickie-interview with Jonathan, here.  He does come across as an intelligent and affable enough fellow.  If you’ve read Jonathan’s new book, Eating Animals, drop a comment and let us know what you thought.  To be quite honest, I’ve not placed it high enough on my “to read” list to ever realistically get to it — I’m currently engrossed in two Gandhi-related works (here and here) — so if you’ve already read — or plan to read — Jonathan’s work, give us the run-down.

Health Care Reform

Wow, Dr. Kurt G. Harris, of the wonderful blog, PaNu, nails this essay on health care reform — a copy of which ought to be tacked to the doors of congress, Martin Luther style.  Make sure you read Dr. Harris’s essay, and while you’re over there, peruse the balance of the PaNu blog as well.  Plenty of great Paleo-minded information can be had, there, of the type that I take and integrate into workable, real-life scenarios — putting Theory to Practice, if you will.

Becoming Human

I hope that the next two installments of this NOVA presentation are as fascinating as episode #1.  What a show; TV at its finest!   Part 2 is coming up November 10 (my birthday, by the way).  Be sure to catch it.

In health,

Keith

“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”

- William Shakespeare

A while back, the site Straight to the Bar featured this clip of Scott Jackson bustin’ off some phenomenal, Parkour-inspired moves.  Seeing this clip again recently got me to thinking about a few of things.  First, I wonder if each individual is limited by some inherent power/bodyweight ratio?  Actually, I know a mechanical limit exists — structurally, our bones, ligaments, tendons and musculature can only handle so much stress — I’m referring here to practical limits.  And how would one go about figuring that limitation?  Would we even want, in a psychological sense, to know that limitation?  And second, this got me to thinking about the intersection of power generation and MetCon work; specifically, exercise selection.  And not just exercise selection alone, but exercise selection with an eye toward targeting an identified energy system.  Most sporting endeavors require a highly tuned and efficient combination of energy systems to “fuel” the participant through the event.  Identifying and training these systems properly is, or should be, the lone goal of MetCon work.  You might want to read this post first, if you haven’t already.  Then come back here and check out some of Scott’s unreal moves.  As you watch, ask yourself (1) what energy systems does Scott rely on mostly, and (2) how would you go about training him without diminishing, in any way, his form, technique and skill?  Just a few things to ponder while you watch:

Another thought that bubbled-up in my mind while watching this clip is just how “springy” Scott is.  What do I mean by that?  Well, there’s a subtle, but huge, difference between the body’s levers acting as a spring, as those same levers acting in the manner of a piston.  Good sprinters quickly transition from the “piston” action of the start, to the “spring” action of the stride; good jumpers come off the floor like a spring, jumpers who need work “piston” themselves up and airborne.  But more on that in a later post.

In health,

Keith

“I think people don’t place a high enough value on how much they are nurtured by doing whatever it is that totally absorbs them.”

- Jean Shinoda Bolen

In case you might have missed it, TTP reader/commenter Dexter had this to say in relation to CNS priming:

“…Could it be that IF is a CNS stimulator? That IF creates an actual threat to the organism? I find that when I exercise at the end of a 36 hr fast, I usually achieve that zone of invincibility…that zone where reps at higher and higher weights come effortlessly…”

Absolutely.  In fact, a Paleo athlete would be much better off going into a competition in the fasted state; 18 to 24 hours fasted, I believe, would be optimal.  Of course, this is just my opinion, and is not substantiated by any evidence whatsoever — outside of my own, that is.  My experiences and results with my own demanding workouts while in a fasted state, are sufficient enough to serve as positive n=1 evidence of this notion’s efficacy.  So much so, in fact, that I’d have no qualms whatsoever in advising a properly adjusted athlete to do the same.  Properly adjusted is key here, though.  The athlete must be fully adapted to the Paleo lifestyle for this method to be effective.  I think we all know what the results would be otherwise.  Bonk city, severe cramping, the shakes/trembles, debilitating weakness, nausea; the list goes on.  Contrast this to the added boost the Paleo athlete would garner from the added CNS stimulation/adrenaline rush, not to mention the added energy available from the body’s not having to deal with digestion issues, and the edge of not having to deal with that “fullness” in the gut.  The team-building ritual should be that of the post-game feast — a nice fatted calf offered up in a “spoils-of-victory” fashion (i.e., the post-hunt feast).  Unfortunately, though, this scenario is a long, long way off.  To wit (from the NAU Football Blog, 10/3/09):

“…The players have their pre-game meal on campus. Today’s menu was rice, stir fry, lasagna, and breadsticks. After this each position will meet and then the game countdown begins…”  (emphasis mine).

I don’t offer this up as a slam against anybody’s program, but simply to illustrate a point.  Eating a pre-game meal of this fashion is the only way possible to survive if an athlete is a sugar burner.  I ate the same manner of pre-game meal myself back in the day(admittedly, this was back in the dark ages).  What I’d love to see, though,  is a few of these kids make the transition to a full-on Paleo lifestyle, and reap all the performance enhancement that comes part-and-parcel with primal eating patterns.  Their success and stellar results from doing so would have the Paleo way spread unabated through the collegiate and professional ranks.  Really, it is just a matter of time before an already successful athlete takes the leap of faith.  That almighty sought-after edge is there to be had; and no anti-doping agency has yet to put the Paleo lifestyle on any banned substance list…yet.

In health,

Keith

“The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding, is to go deliberately forth and try to lift with one’s sympathy the gloom of somebody else.”

- Arnold Bennett

I recently received a fantastic email from TTP reader Pieter Derycke, a physical therapist from Belgium, that I’d like to share.  Pieter’s got some great insight on the issue of CNS priming, along with some erudite speculation on taking CNS priming/activation to an even more advanced level.

What follows is Pieter’s email to me, which I’ll note in italics.  My responses and ruminations will be interspersed, and in bold print.  For the most part, I’ll leave Pieter’s wording unedited, as our contrasting styles will make the discourse a little easier to follow.  And please do chime in with your thoughts on this subject, as much of what we’ll go into here is speculative in nature.

Enjoy.  And thanks again, Pieter, for a fantastic email, and the healthy helping of food for thought.

Dear Keith,

I’ve been thinking about this idea I have, and, as an avid reader of your blog (and few times commenter), I thought I could email you and maybe get your thoughts on my idea.

I like your blog because you really can describe the essence of strength/power training, diet and health. And this in the evolutionary perspective, which makes a lot of sense to me. Really, it is the only perspective that truly makes sense (as in the famous quote of Theodosius Dobzhansky). As you have often put it: the essence is really simple, the rest is interesting, but a side issue. Of course simple does not necessarily mean easy…  And I’m afraid the subject of my mail is rather such a side issue, but hopefully an interesting one.

And I also really like the fact that you put emphasis on the nervous system. That’s the main reason for emailing you.

The idea and question I have is about the threat we have to cause to our organism, for training adaptation to occur. The threat we usually use is a physical, actual threat.

From my experiences as a physical therapist, and from the pain science and literature, I know that the actual threat can be different from the perceived threat. And it is the perceived threat that causes the central nervous system to produce pain. So the perceived threat causes the response.

For an example of what Pieter is talking about here, think of the perceived threat that comes from being spooked.  Now, take that feeling — along with the nice CNS jolt — into a power clean PR attempt.

I’m wondering if we could use this principle in strength/power training: changing the perceived threat instead of only the actual threat to augment the response.

Maybe I should digress a bit and first talk about the neurophysiology of pain. (sorry for the lengthy email in advance…) Pain-physiology is the stuff that got me thinking. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it.

Pain is an active product of the brain, or more correct, the central nervous system. The injured tissue on its own cannot cause pain. It can only send nociceptive signals to the spinal cord. Nociception means ‘danger reception’. So the CNS can choose to produce pain (a little or a lot) or not. So pain is not input, it is output.

The CNS ‘answers’ two questions: is the signal dangerous enough? and is it a priority? It tries to answer these questions with the survival of the organism in mind. So it makes use of the context and environment, and of your past experiences, your culture, gender, education, …

If you sprain your ankle or pull a muscle, it is in your best interest to feel pain and change your behaviour (relative rest, limping and probably some overt pain behaviour (verbal and non verbal) to attract attention and help of your peers).

Now, the same sprain or pull can cause totally different reactions if the situation is different. As when your running away from a dangerous predator like a lion (to use the archetypical example). For you ankle or sprained muscle the same relative rest could be useful, but for the organism as a whole it is better to keep running and not feeling pain. And this of course is what happens: in these situations there is no pain. You probably know some spectacular similar stories.

For those of you who have ever been engaged in competitive sport, you know what it’s like to not “realize” that you’re injured until well after the event.  The same can be said of late-onset symptoms of injuries sustained in, say, automobile accidents.

Now this is something that happens all the time, not only in extreme situations. Almost everybody has experienced some pain (e.g. tooth ache, headache, …) that at some time disappears when you’re distracted. The distraction is something the CNS perceives as more important. This makes it really difficult for chronic pain patients to see the causes of their pain.

And of course, this also works the other way round: if your CNS is convinced there is danger, it will cause pain, even if there’s no danger signal coming from the tissues.

A very analogue situation is vision. Vision also is not a passive input, but an active construction of the CNS. We don’t see the ‘blind spots’ on our retina, because the CNS produces a congruent image. Illusions and illusionist use this principle. They use the constructions of the brain that are very useful in a real life situation in nature, but keep fooling us in the case of the illusion.

Even more analogue to pain are: hunger and thirst, the feeling of having to go to the bathroom, and fatigue. This because they all stimulate the organism to undertake some kind of action.

Of course this is also how placebo works: you tell somebody you gave them a painkiller, and the CNS changes its output because the meaning of the nociceptive information has changed. The opposite (nocebo) also happens: you tell somebody the pill will lower the pain threshold, and indeed, they feel more pain. These are very consistent findings in pain science.

So the actual threat (the nociception from the tissue damage) is less important than the perceived threat. The perceived threat causes the reaction: pain. There is even no need for a real threat, there can be pain without nociception. Nociception is not enough,  nor necessary for the production of pain.

Maybe also interesting is that pain is now viewed not only as a ‘feeling’ but as a CNS output including the ‘conscious sensation’, the sympathetic response, the immune response, the hormonal response, the behavioural response, and the motor response. We used to say that some muscle contract as a consequence of pain, now we know that this muscle tension is part of the pain (if you’re interested, I could send you some papers on this, often called the neuromatrix of pain).

Now, after this long digression through the incredibly interesting field of pain-physiology, back to power/strength training.

Do you think it is possible to use analogue mechanisms for increasing the physiological response to a workout? Do you have any thoughts about how to increase the perceived threat, without increasing the actual threat. This could have some advantages: could be safer because of the smaller actual threat. Or it could be better because of a greater response and thus better progress and health.

I have got some ideas:

• It could be that whole body, compound exercises are better because of the greater perceived threat. If you break a snatch exercise into components, and execute them separately, you could +/- do the same work, but with less results. Being fatigued from head to toe is (from evolutionary/survival perspective) more threatening than having isolated muscles or body parts fatigued. Of course a snatch could actually be ‘really’ more threatening. And of course it could be a bit of both.
• Another way of augmenting the perceived threat could be using imagery. Like imagining that you are being chased by a lion while doing your sprint workouts. Imagery is used (with scientifically proven results) in training movement/coordination patterns, and with pain patients. I have no idea of this has been used for power training or other physical conditioning.
• Another way the perceived threat influences the power/strength training could be the following: after a while of performing an exercise or exercise routine the organism gets less threatened because it gets used to it. Of course you could augment the actual real threat by making the exercise harder by doing more reps, or by using heavier weights, or your other typical progressions. But often the perceived threat stays rather low because of the familiarity of the organism with the exercise/routine. That’s when the plateau happens. A typical way of trying to get more results is using another strategy, another exercise or another routine. This causes the perceived threat to increase, and thus stimulates the organism to adapt further, even though the actual threat (the workload) may not be very different.

Many elite sprinters will say that immediately pre-race, they will put themselves mentally in an “angry place”; anger/aggression being a huge motivator/CNS primer, where ultra-fine motor skills in not necessarily a factor. And I do believe that the additional “perceived threat” helps explain why a trainee will much such good progress (for a while) following a new program, using new exercises and/or changing environs.

Also, I feel that this is another application in which brainwave optimization could be utilized.  This is far from voodoo science in my opinion — in fact, it looks a lot like pin-pointed and highly effective (and intense) bio-feedback.   I’m quite sure that one could readily learn how to get to that “hyped”, fight or flight state with limited investment in “therapy” time/money.

By the way, Carl Lanore, of Super Human Radio, recently interviewed Lee Gerdes, author of Limitless You. Quite thought provoking, and dovetails nicely to this discussion.

Athough I really do think that the threats causing pain (and hunger, thirst, fear, …) are in some way similar to the ones causing physiological adaptations in the muscle tissue, cardiovascular system, …, there probably is a big difference between them.

The pain response (or for that matter, the hunger, thirst or fear) is probably a cheap thing for the organism. Muscle hyperthophy (and…) is probably much more expensive to get (and to keep).

Randolf Nesse (a Dr. writing a lot about Darwinian medicine) uses the analogy of the smoke detector system: it is better to be scared or have pain too often than too few. This would make sense: it is better to be scared too much of a noise in the bushes, although maybe 99% of the time it will be a false alarm. If you’re not scared, it will cause you damage that 1% of the time it is in fact a dangerous animal.

This is especially true if the cost of the response is rather cheap. Muscle adaptations (and …) probably are much more expensive and thus harder to get. I think…

To conclude: a recapitulation (again sorry for the long email): threatening the organism causes a response, and the perceived threat is more important than the actual threat. Using this principle could increase the training effects (and/or make them safer).

So after this long explanation, do you have any ideas on this? Do you think it is a valuable hypothesis? And do you see any practical application? Do you have any suggestions?

Feel free to chime in, folks.  Consider this an “open forum”.

Thanks for taking your time to read this. And thanks already for a little response,

Pieter Derycke

In health,

Keith

“The sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.”

- Sydney Smith

In an odd kind of a way, I welcome the following missive from the folks at PETA.  Actually, if there were any credible way for an insurance company to verify the nutritional intake of its insureds — wow, just imagine the advantage to be had by the “Paleo Health Insurance Co.”  If there’s any way to force recognition of the efficacy of a particular lifestyle, just put a substantial amount of money on the line and get Wall Street involved.  What USAA has been able to do with home and auto insurance, the “Paleo Health Insurance Co.” could do on the health care front; that is, by way of selective vetting (in this case, by insuring only service members and their families), be able to charge rock-bottom premiums for platinum coverage and fantastic service.  Selective vetting for health care insurance based on nutritional intake?  Hell, where do I sign?

Hey, I’m all for WellPoint covering every single Vegetarian and SAD-connoisseur out there.  Just count me out of that doomed cabal, thank you very much, and leave me to my wanton carnivory.

Anyway, if you haven’t yet had the pleasure, enjoy:

July 27, 2009

Angela F. Braly
President, CEO, and Director
WellPoint, Inc.

Dear Ms. Braly:

On behalf of PETA and our more than 2 million members and supporters worldwide, I am writing to urge you to offer lower health insurance premiums to vegetarians and raise the rates of your meat-eating customers. With the possibility of an increased number of public and private insurance providers entering the field and the mountain of evidence linking meat consumption to some of our nation’s deadliest diseases, this change could improve WellPoint’s bottom line — while also helping to ensure that your policyholders don’t flat line.

The American Dietetic Association and the Dieticians of Canada conducted perhaps the largest review ever of all studies on vegetarian diets and concluded that vegetarians are less prone to heart disease, certain types of cancer, diabetes, and obesity than meat-eaters are. Vegetarians can get all the protein, vitamins, and fiber that they need without the artery-clogging cholesterol and saturated fat found in animal flesh.

By giving your policyholders a financial incentive to go vegetarian — and penalizing those whose meat-based diets fuel our nation’s worst health problems and rising health-care costs — WellPoint could save millions of dollars in the long run, ensuring your competitiveness in a broadened field of providers as your members begin to require fewer cholesterol-lowering medications, chemotherapy treatments, and diabetes drugs.

In addition to the vast health benefits, by switching to a vegetarian diet, each of your customers would save more than 100 animals per year from intensive confinement on factory farms, where they are mutilated without any painkillers and denied every everything that is natural and important to them before they are shipped to slaughterhouses, where many have their throats are cut while they are still conscious and able to feel pain.

PETA would be happy to provide free educational materials for you to send to your customers that would help them make the transition to a healthier, more humane vegetarian lifestyle. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Tracy Reiman
Executive Vice President

What more can be said?

In health,

Keith

“Research your own experiences for the truth, absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own.”

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Bruce Lee famously distilled the above quote down to, “absorb what is useful, reject what is useless”; I favor Jiddu’s version, though, as it lends a bit more of a nudge toward one’s pursuit of living an “n=1″, experimental lifestyle.  This is a very Buddhist notion as well, with Siddhartha’s philosophy being that teachings should not be accepted unless they are borne out by our personal experience, as well as praised by the wise.

In my mind, the clip below exemplifies what the ultimate goal of the Paleo lifestyle is all about — maintaining a health and vitality that allows one to be fully engaged in each and every one of our life’s moments. The good and the bad, the happy and sad — I want to be fully present for them all, unhampered by illness, fatigue and the like.  It’s not so much that I’m grasping for added years to my life (though, that would be a nice correlative benefit), but that I’m reaching for more life in my available years and, at the inevitable end, a highly compressed morbidity.  It’s a cliche, I know, but Brittani’s passing this past spring reiterated to me the hard fact of life’s fragility.  We simply don’t know what will become of us 10 minutes from now, much less tomorrow, or next year.  Do what you can today to insure that you’re there — fully and in totality — for each and every instance of your life’s passing moments.

In health,

Keith

“In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst.”

- Oscar Wilde

Usain Bolt, courtesy of friskytuna

Incredible displays of super-human power-to-bodyweight ratios will be on display this week, as The IAAF World Track and Field Championships take place in Berlin, Germany, beginning this weekend. The marquee matchup,or course, is in the men’s 100 meter race, where Jamaica’s Usain Bolt and American Tyson Gay will go head-to-head for the title of “World’s Fastest Man.”

It’s interesting to note how the body types of the winners of the “World’s Fastest Man” title have changed over the years, spreading out my favorite indicator of athleticism — the power-to-bodyweight ratio — over more and more slender, aerodynamic frames.  Check out this interesting blogpost, from Dan Peterson of the very cool blog, Sports are 80 Percent Mental, for a more in-depth look at this phenomenon.

And for those interested, here’s the television schedule (courtesy of the Versus network) for the week’s events.  If you get a chance, take in some of the competition.  Track and Field is a most beautiful and elegant sport, and I wish that it (along with bicycle racing) were as big here in the US as it is in Europe and the Caribbean.  And while you’re at it, consider the body types of these athletes in relation to their chosen events.  Consider the yin-yang of the nature-nurture confluence here.  While it’s true that genetics, for the most part, chose at birth the events in which these athletes would excel — no one would argue that Usain Bolt or Tyson Gay, even with the best in training techniques available, would become world champion shot-putters — there is a certain aspect of the desired phenotype that can be trained for.  We may be born with a marathoner’s or a shot-putter’s physique, but we can certainly influence our end phenotype by training, for example, like a 100 meter athlete (if this is the phenotype you desire).  Short bursts of high-intensity work done in an intermittent and infrequent fashion, coupled with a Paleo-like diet will influence your body to drop bodyfat and manufacture and retain a high predominance of fast-twitch muscle fiber.  The rest, as I like to say, is mere commentary.

Have a great, and I’m sure, well-deserved, weekend.

In health,

Keith

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I received a very cool email recently, and both it and my reply got me thinking about the subject of today’s post.  But before I go on, here’s the email:

Hi Keith,

I’ve been meaning to drop you a line for ages.  I just wanted to let
you know how much I enjoy your blog.  I find your writing style to be
intelligent, knowledgeable and interesting (not always a combination
you find on the web).

I have gone “primal” over the past few months almost immediately after
first reading about it.  It really hit a chord with me straight away,
and whilst I didn’t have that much weight to lose and was already
relatively active, I have found the “primal”diet has given me more
energy and body is slowly becoming more toned.

I have messed around with weights/gym/exercise for 10-15 years but
have never managed to get the size/tone.or definition I wanted  but I
get the feeling, like you said in your last post, by keeping it simple
with sprinting/sand bag lifts and  a kettle bell( i have just
purchased) I am going to get the results I want, one of my goals is to
I want a 6pack before I am 40 !(which is Feb next year).

So that’s it really, just a letter of appreciation for the effort you
put into your writing and sharing your knowledge with us all.

//guy

Very nice.  And what follows is my reply, seriously reeking as it does of, I dunno…a kind of, middle-of-a-harried-work-day efficient communication, I guess.  It might well have been puked by a robot:

Hey, thanks for the good words, Guy.  It really does boil down to simple theories applied [and] practiced in a most intense fashion.

Short and to the point.  And nothing at all new here, right?  No big revelations, no bombshells.  If my diet book is short — eat lots of quality protein, plenty of good fats, a little bit of veggies and greens and maybe some raw dairy –  my workout book is even shorter — in and out of the gym in 45 minutes or less, but bust your friggin ass while you’re there — so you’d think my reply was spot-on.  And it is, in a sense; the only problem is, I tend to carry this most intense fashion attitude for too long and into just about every other aspect of my life outside of the gym.  If something is important enough to show-up on my radar at all, it becomes an object worthy of being dealt with in a most intense fashion.  And it’s been my experience that most people who are attracted to the Paleo lifestyle and/or physical culture in general are wired the same way.  My point in all of this?  We need plenty of programmed down time to be healthy.  We need plenty of low-intensity, play-like activities to engage in.

With that in mind, check out this short clip from someone I’ve admired for quite some  time.  Most folks have probably never heard of him; he’s an author by the name of Alan Weisbecker who I “discovered” after reading the cult classic Cosmic Banditos, many, many years ago.  I’ve read all of Alan’s books (I recommend them all), as well as the little communique he puts out every so often by the name of  The Down South Prospective.  So why am I profiling a surfer-cum-author in a blog dedicated to the proper applications of diet and physical culture?  Quite simply, because Alan’s got the “get plenty of low-intensity activity” part of the equation nailed.  We’d all do well to follow his lead ; check it out, here.

And here’s another:

Good stuff, a fantastic locale and a hell of a lifestyle.  Sign me up.

Have a great weekend everyone.  And remember that the “plenty of active play” portion of the equation is every bit as important as the periods of short-duration, high-intensity work.  It’s a balance, a yin-yang kind of a thing.  And things out-of-balance tend to fly appart at the seams after a while.

In health,

Keith

“The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.”

- Henri-Frederic Amiel

Recent discussions resulting from this post got me pondering the relationship of fitness and/or competitive athletic endeavors to one’s overall health.  It occurred to me that overall “health” could be broken down into multiple constituent parts, in much the same way that Greg Glassman reduced fitness to (and thereby defining it by) its constituent parts.  Furthermore, in assessing one’s overall health, fitness would be but one of multiple defining constituents.  The definition of “health” then, might look a little something like this:

1. An overall fitness assessment (from Greg Glassman’s 10 aspects of fitness).  This might better be summarized by the DeVany/McGuff notion of Physiological Headroom (i.e., the difference between idle and the “most” you can do).  I would assume “most”, here to mean power output per selected activity over a given period of time.  This leads us into the debatable question, though, of what activity would be considered the benchmark for such an assessment.
2. Body Fat percentage
3. Circulating insulin level
4. C Reactive Protein level
5. Circulating Vitamin D level
6. Psychiatric “centeredness”
7. Spiritual well-being
8. Dental well being
9. Sensory acumen

I’m sure we can come up with many other attributes here, but you get the point.  Just as overcompensation in too narrow a focus can negatively affect one’s overall fitness level, so too can overcompensation in fitness, as a whole, negatively affect one overall health assessment.  To illustrate this point, think of the competitive athlete – or one who trains like a competitive athlete.  This, of course, is not to say that competitive athletes are by the very nature of their lifestyles, unheathy, but to point out that that the competitive environment forces an athlete to continually redline the risk/trauma tachometer.   This is where we get into the notion, posited by Nassim Taleb (and cited often by Dr. Doug McGuff), of the graveyard survivors (here and here).

As in all other aspects in life, one should strive for balance between overall health and fitness level.  I prefer Art Devany’s idea of a highly compressed, accelerated “end of days”, that is to say, not a long and decrepit, disease-riddled crawl toward death, but a sudden drop-off from high-health to sudden, natural death.  We could all hope to reach the end like the bird in D.H Lawrence’s poem:

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself”

In health,

Keith

“Don’t grieve.  Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

- Rumi

We miss you, Britt ~

Michelle and I will be flying down to Austin, Texas this afternoon, for Britt’s Saturday, 1PM, memorial service.  Our extended family is, for the most part, concentrated in the central and southern potions of the state; it’s one of my favorite regions in the world, and one that I hope to return permanently to one day.  I’ve lived away from the area since my Texas State days, and I’d like to say that the opportunity to visit family and old friends will somewhat makeup for the circumstances of our travel, but, alas, I can’t say that I’m looking forward to this trip.

So I’m an eclectic mixed bag when it comes to spiritual belief, so much so that I’ve never been completely comfortable in any particular spiritual “home”.  I do believe, though, that there is an “after” subsequent to this mortal life; this belief has as much to do with spirituality as it does with a (rudimentary,at best) understanding of quantum physics.  Brittani,on the other hand was decidedly — though a very open-minded — Christian, and our spiritual discussions were something to behold.  I’ll miss them greatly.  She’d mentioned to me shortly before her passing that she wanted me to look into some of Rob Bell’s work, so that we could discuss his ideas at some point.   I’d never heard of Rob Bell, or the “emerging church movement” (prior to B’s having mentioned him), until a DVD (everything is spiritual) that was nestled amongst a box of Brittani’s belongings seemed to call out to me.  I have no idea why this item alone — from among the myriad of other “things” that we had to deal with — called out to me, but it did.  I didn’t even realize at the time that it was Rob Bell’s work.  For whatever reason, though, I watched it and — wow — I would have loved to have discussed this with B.  Quantum physics meets spirituality?  Yeah, my kind of stuff alright.

So maybe she’s flashing that wry little smile at me now, and with a nod, hitting me with her patented, made ya think a little, huh?

Yes, B, you did make me think a little — and you continue to do so.  We’ll talk; I’ve got lots to hit you with myself

In (spiritual) health,

Keith