Here is an excerpt from a study in the Nov 2008 NSCA Journal of Strength and Conditioning, p 2036: Effects of Resistance Tng on Endurance Distance Running Performance among Highly Trained Runners: A systematic review. by Yamamoto, Lopez, et al.

“Two of the five studies measured 2.9% improved performance (3K and 5K), and all five studies measured 4.6% improved running economy (RE; range = 3-8.1%). After critically reviewing the literature for the impact of concurrent resistance and endurance training on high-level runners, we conclude that resistance training likely has a positive effect on endurance running performance or RE. The short duration and wide range of exercises implemented are of concern, but coaches should not hesitate to implement a well-planned, periodized concurrent resistance and endurance training program for their endurance runners.”

So what does that mean? It means that being stronger will improve your running economy, despite the possibility of being a bit heavier. Think of it this way, by putting on an extra 10 lbs of lean muscle, you are now stronger and can thus move your total mass more effectively and efficiently then without it. Even though you are heavier you are more effective and more efficient.

Also, if you are an endurance athlete, the very nature of your sport and sport specific training will keep any muscle mass and bulk in check. Have you ever seen a marathoner with a lot of muscle mass? Not many.

Another simplified way to think about it (simplified to the point of borderline inaccurate no doubt) is this. You have 2 endurance engines, cardio-vascular and cardio-pulmonary endurance (gas exchange) and your muscular stamina. Typical runners/joggers only really work on the gas exchange system. Sure you get some work into the muscular stamina but think on this. The bigger/stronger your muscles are, the deeper the tank for stamina in that muscle. Now I’m not talking great big huge bulging gross muscles (think of cover models on body building magazines…). I am talking about having some muscles and not being a withered up skeleton.

Think on this for a bit. Next time I will discuss how you can improve your endurance sports while cutting your weekly mileage WAY back while building up a stronger, more fit and healthy body.

Oh, I will also leave you with this. Art De Vany’s Top 10 Reasons Not to Run a Marathon. http://www.arthurdevany.com/2005/08/top_ten_reasons.html

10. Marathon running damages the liver and gall bladder and alters biochemical markers adversely. HDL is lowered, LDL is increased, Red blood cell counts and white blood cell counts fall. The liver is damaged and gall bladder function is decreased. Testosterone decreases.

9. Marathon running causes acute and severe muscle damage. Repetitive injury causes infiltration of collagen (connective tissue) into muscle fibers.

8. Marathon running induces kidney dysfunction (renal abnormalities).

7. Marathon running causes acute microthrombosis in the vascular system.

6. Marathon running elevates markers of cancer. S100beta is one of these markers. Tumor necrosis factor, TNF-alpha, is another.

5. Marathon running damages your brain. The damage resembles acute brain trauma. Marathon runners have elevated S100beta, a marker of brain damage and blood brain barrier dysfunction. There is S100beta again, a marker of cancer and of brain damage.

4. Marathons damage your heart.

3. Endurance athletes have more spine degeneration.

2. At least four participants of the Boston Marathon have died of brain cancer in the past 10 years. Purely anecdotal, but consistent with the elevated S100beta counts and TKN-alpha measures. Perhaps also connected to the microthrombi of the endothelium found in marathoners.

1. The first marathon runner, Phidippides, collapsed and died at the finish of his race.

Chris Walls is a Personal Trainer at the Crossfit Kelowna training centre.  For more information on Crossfit, please visit http://www.crossfitkelowna.com

At CrossFit we stress proper form, range of motion, posture in every movement we do. We drill you on squats, deadlifts, cleans, jerks, kettlebell swings, hell even throwing a medicine ball at the wall has a right way and wrong way. But when it comes to running we just open the door and remind you that the clock is running so don’t doddle.

I’ve recently been turned onto POSE running. It is a running style that utilizes gravity, muscle elasticity, and the natural efficiency of proper body mechanics. Not only is it more efficient allowing you to run farther, faster and with less effort, but it will also help prevent common overuse injuries.

Here is the typical running style of someone today. They will use a huge drive off the back leg, basically leaping forward, and land on the heel of their other foot, planting it well ahead of their centre of mass. That should already be pointing out the inefficiency of this style of running; you are leaping into the air, and putting the brakes on when you land.

With the POSE method the first thing is the posture. You’re standing up straight, arms bent greater then 90 degrees and kept close to the body. While POSE running you land on the ball of your foot (not your toes), with your foot landing under your centre of mass (not braking your forward momentum at all) and instead of driving off the back leg, leaping your weight into the air against gravity, you let yourself fall forward and just pull your foot off the ground with your hamstrings making a figure 4 with your legs. This method uses a much faster cycle rate of the feet, and at first, a shorter stride, but as you get into it and start running faster your stride length could actually get longer. You don’t ever wind up with a straight locked knee. You’re kept relaxed and bouncy, taking advantage of the elastic energy in your muscles instead of the brute “oomph” in them.

Obviously there is much more to it then that but if you start with that you will soon notice a difference. A few things you can try. Try running on the spot. Are you landing on your heels? No? Now try to do it as softly as you can. Feeling comfortable? Now just lean forward the tiniest bit and off you go.

For more information on POSE running check out this video and demonstration.

Chris Walls is a Personal Trainer at the Crossfit Kelowna training centre.  For more information on Crossfit, please visit http://www.crossfitkelowna.com

Now… onto my next article.

People will fail at the margins of their experience. Not quite verbatim but this is what Coach Glassman, founder of CrossFit, says all the time. Basically what it means is that if you only train your strengths, hoping that everything goes according to plan, you will fail when the poo hits the fan and your weakness is exploited.

This is true in all aspects of life. In business if you suck at sales, you hate doing cold calls, talking to people is not your thing, so you spend all your time working on your product, then your business will fail because you will have no one to buy it. You’re great at math, so you spend all your time working on math, then you fail English Lit., Sociology and History, and don’t finish your degree.

In fitness maybe you’re a great runner, so all you do is run. You hate lifting weights because you’re weak (from all that running…). You have to move your couch across the room and throw your back out. You have failed.

Do not focus on your strengths. Focus on your weaknesses, train them until they are no longer a weakness, and then find your new weakness. Before long you will have no weaknesses. You will be proficient in all areas of fitness. When you need to run you can run, when you need to lift you can lift, when you need to climb, jump, throw you can do so with great efficacy.

As far as fitness goes, CrossFit training trains all aspects of fitness, specifically to address these weaknesses. Try to apply that thinking to all aspects of your life. And remember, attitude is everything. Whether you think you can or you think you can’t… you’re right.

CrossFit is a strength and conditioning program built on ever changing, functional movements done at high intensity. If it doesn’t make you better at life or sport, we don’t do it.

Our program utilizes natural human movement making it extremely potent, and also infinitely scaleable. Everyone can do these movements to some degree. It’s how we are built.

Chris Walls is CrossFit Trainer at the CrossFit Kelowna Fitness Academy. For more information on CrossFit, please visit http://www.crossfitkelowna.com.

You’re probably thinking it’s hopeless. You will fall off the wagon and have to start all over in January. But don’t despair! This isn’t a time of falling behind; it’s an opportunity to leap ahead. Pick one of your weak areas that you can work on at home (or anywhere!) and devise a plan to make it a strength for the new year.

I will give you an example of how this might work. Let’s take pushups. Day 1, do as many as you can do as a test. Let’s say you got 20. Now what you’ll do, is for the next 5 days or so, you’ll do 10 pushups every hour throughout the day. After a few days of that, you will do 11 or 12 pushups every hour, then 13 or 14. Keep increasing the amount you do. The idea here is that you don’t ever feel like you’re “maxing” out on any of the sets. Before you know it, you will be doing sets of 20+ with ease, still not feeling like you’re maxing out. Once you get up to your old max for these “easy” sets you do all day, take a day off, and then do another max test and see how much you’ve improved.

Make sense? Remember, the idea is to not feel like it’s getting hard for any of these little sets you do during the day. Keep it easy, but regularly add more reps every couple of days. Maybe the first few sets or the first day that you add a rep or two feels a bit like work, but keep at it and it get easier. Then you add more.

This also isn’t something that you only do for a short time, or only do for 1 thing. This can work for almost anything. Burpees, situps, pullups, squats, pistols… Whatever you want to be able to do more of, this is a good way to get there.  It’s what we call “greasing the groove”. You get a lot of volume, and a lot of practice, at a specific skill or movement without reaching the point of muscular failure. If you max out every time, you then need a lot more time for your muscles to recover. By keeping the work sub-maximal, recovery time is cut way down and you can get a lot of work put into it.

This type of program does take time and patience. I would limit it to one item at a time. You’ll be tempted to do this program for 3 or 4 weak areas at once, but this is going to put a lot more strain on you and again, you will need more recovery time to maintain it. If you go back to that example of pushups, starting with a max of 20 and starting sets of 10, if could take you upwards of a month of steady work to get your sub-maximal sets up to 30. (add 1 rep every 3 days). That is the type of patience this takes. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day and true fitness isn’t achieved on the scale of weeks. It takes months and years. So be patient, keep at it and take down your weaknesses one at a time.

Chris Walls is a Personal Trainer at the Crossfit Kelowna training centre.  For more information on Crossfit, please visit http://www.crossfitkelowna.com

I’m sure everyone has heard all sorts of goal setting rules and instructions. And boy are there ever a LOT of information, and lists, and rules on the Internet. This acronym is as good as any and it’s easy to remember.  SMART.

S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Attainable
R = Realistic
T = Timely

Every one of these items is necessary to make a detailed goal, with a clear outline of how to achieve it.

Specific: This is pretty straightforward. Can you see a difference between these 2 goals? I want to read more books. I want to read this particular 3 book series before Christmas. Which one of these is more specific? Which one reads like a road map to accomplishing it?

Measurable: If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Generally speaking, the goal statement is the measure of progress. Let’s look at that example from earlier “I want to read this 3 book series before Christmas”.  By working towards completing it, you are measuring your success. Read the first book, you’re 1/3 complete. When you measure your progress, you stay on track and stay motivated.

Attainable: Make sure it something that is actually possible. If you set that goal as “read 3 books by this afternoon” you know that isn’t going to happen. And you won’t even try. You need to pick something that is kind of a stretch, and requires commitment, but isn’t impossible. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly.

Realistic: Realistic does not mean “easy”. Realistic means “do-able”. It means that It should push the skills and knowledge needed to achieve the goal, not break them. Set the bar high enough for a satisfying achievement.

Timely: You need to set a timeframe for accomplishing the goal. This keeps you focused and it keeps you on task. An open-ended goal will never get done, because you can always do it tomorrow. People will use as much time as they’re given to complete a task. If you have 30 minutes to get it done, you will get it done. If you have 30 for the same task, you will take all 30 of those days.  If there is no timeframe set, who knows when you’ll get it done, maybe today, maybe tomorrow?

I want you to take these principals and apply them to your fitness goals. Goals like “I want to lose weight” will turn into “I want to lose 15 lbs by day/month”. Or better yet, I want to go from a size X to a size Y”.  Or “I want to get a pull-up” “I want to get my 500m row time down to 1:25”.

Make a huge list or everything, then prioritize them into things you can do now (clean the kitchen), things you can do soon (read that book), and things that will have to wait. (Tour Europe).

Now get to it.

Chris Walls is a Personal Trainer at the Crossfit Kelowna training centre.  For more information on Crossfit, please visit http://www.crossfitkelowna.com

You see you can’t have one without the other. We require our athletes to take a sort of “basic training” or “foundations” course before they can join classes. This is for a couple reasons. The first reason is to make sure that everyone has the same standards for form on all the movements and lifts that we do. They need to be able to do them properly, safely and with full range of motion. Next we build up the intensity. We ramp that up slowly so that people don’t get hurt.

See how that works? Form first, intensity second. If your trainer is not on your case making sure that every rep is done properly then he isn’t doing his job.

People think that as one increases, the other must decrease, stress perfect form and intensity suffers, push the intensity and form has to break down. Take the thruster for instance. It is a front squat followed immediately by a push press. We have a workout which involves doing thrusters followed by pullups. You will find that people tend to short the ROM on their thrusters in order to get a faster time on the workout. They won’t get below parallel on their squat, they won’t lock out the push press fully overhead, they won’t get full pull-ups… all for the sake of a faster time. They don’t want to get a slower time by ensuring proper form. What they fail to realize is that they will improve much faster by cleaning up the form/ROM. Sure there will be an initial hit to their times/scores, but before they know it they will be back to their previous best times, and well beyond.

There are other movements where proper form is a must for safety, like the deadlift. There are some movements where form is a must for efficiency in being able to actually complete it, such as the clean and jerk. Proper form and full range of motion is not a variable. The only variable is intensity. Remember that. There is no compromising form.

Chris Walls is a Personal Trainer at the Crossfit Kelowna training centre.  For more information on Crossfit, please visit http://www.crossfitkelowna.com

Why is this a problem? Because when you butt muscles get turned off (inactive glutes) it causes an imbalance around your hips. This can lead to anterior pelvic tilt, low back pain, and posture problems.

But why is sitting a problem? Haven’t humans been sitting forever? Well yes and no… The manner in which we sit has evolved a lot faster then our butts have. If you look around the world, you will see a lot of variations in how we sit, and most of them don’t involve chairs. The way humans sat typically involved your body and the ground, you would squat, kneel, sit cross-legged, etc. These methods don’t have the same problems as constant chair sitting.

Constant chair sitting leads to short tight hip flexors, and lazy glutes. This is what pulls your hips forward into that anterior tilt position, causing funny angles in your low back, leading to posture problems, inflexibility and low back issues.

How can you avoid this you ask? Well there are some stretches you can do while at work to prevent this problem. You already know that you’re supposed to take a quick computer screen visual break every 20-30 minutes, so while doing so, stand up and do this stretch.

Standing Hip Flexor Stretch/Glute Activation. Stand on one leg and lift your other foot up behind you to your butt and hold it with your hand at the ankle. If you lift your left foot, use your left hand, right with right. If your balance is lacking a bit, hold onto your desk with your free hand. Relax the muscles that run down the front of your hip and once that releases, squeeze your glutes and hold for 5 seconds. This will intensify the stretch and activate your butt. After the 5 seconds, relax, and repeat a few times. Then switch legs. You want to stand tall, tighten up your abs a bit, and keep your spine neutral, don’t arch your back.

Standing Hip Flexor Stretch. Image: TheSanDiegoBootCam

If you feel that you already have a bit of this problem, then there are a few more things you can at home to get your back working again. Lay on your back, bend your knees 90 degrees with your feet flat on the floor. You will now perform a supine bridge by only squeezing your glutes. You just squeeze your glutes and your hips will rise up off the ground into a bridge. Don’t use your back, or your hamstrings for this, if your legs cramp up you aren’t doing it right. Quality is better then quantity, so even if you squeeze your glutes and you don’t get a bridge, that’s ok, we want glute activation here, not a bridge using the wrong muscles.

There are many more exercises you can do to work on this problem but these will get you started. I want you to do that standing stretch while at work, doing 3x “5 second squeezes” per leg every 30 minutes (or 3 each leg x2 every hour). And do your bridges in the evening, again holding for 5 seconds, relax and repeat.

Chris Walls is a Personal Trainer at the Crossfit Kelowna training centre.  For more information on Crossfit, please visit http://www.crossfitkelowna.com

The best way is to realize that it didn’t take you a matter of weeks or even months to get to where you are now. What does this mean? It means that it will take you more then a matter of weeks or even months to get back into health and fitness.

Once you come to terms with the fact that it isn’t a quick fix, you can take it a step at a time to ensure that you will stick with the new changes. Instead of trying to fix everything at once, burning out, quitting and going back to your old ways, I want you to pick 1 thing to change. Stick with that for 2 weeks until it becomes a habit, then change one more, then another… If all you did at first was drop all the sugar out of your diet (and by this I mean white refined sugar, HFCS, candy, etc…) and get onto even a basic exercise program. Just cut the sugar and get moving. After a couple weeks when that is now a habit try to work in more vegetables and ramp up the workouts. Before you know it you will be eating a very clean diet of real food (fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy) and working out regularly and intensely.

That is the real secret to making it work. Taking it a step at a time and making them habits and that takes about 2 weeks of 100% effort and commitment. No cheating. Once you are in the habit of eating clean and exercising, you can allow yourself the odd cheat. If one day you really want a chocolate bar, and you just can’t shake it, then go ahead and have 1. If you only have 1 a week or 1 every couple weeks, it won’t kill you. After all, you’re making these changes so that you are healthier and enjoy life more. Does denying any and all treats fit into that? But this stage only comes once these are the exceptions to the rule, once the healthy lifestyle is the normal and habitual way to be.

Odds are you won’t want that junk anyway because once you are off the crack (sugar) you just don’t want it anymore. That and if you do have some it makes you feel like garbage.

Chris Walls is a Personal Trainer at the newly opened Crossfit Kelowna training centre.  For more information on Crossfit, please visit http://www.crossfitkelowna.com

These people do this thinking that just by doing the volume they will increase their fitness. This is not true. Once you get to the point where your workout isn’t hard to do anymore you need to adjust the workload. I don’t know if Id even wait until it was to the point of “easy” before I ramp it up.

Without intensity volume will only take you so far. If you always do 25 pushups in the morning, it’s time to do them faster, or with a weight vest/backpack on. Anything to make them harder and challenge yourself again. Or just increase the number. Do 50 now. If you go for a 3km walk, change it to a jog, then a run. Same for the swimming, swim faster, use a more challenging stroke, jump out of the pool every so often and do some pushup, situps, burpees…

Your body adapts to the stress you put on it. If you don’t increase the stress it won’t continue to adapt. That is what people don’t realize. They see the results they got by doing X so they continue to do X and expect results to continue. Think of it like sun tanning. If you lay out in the sun for 20 minutes every day and get a bit of a tan, would you expect your tan to keep getting darker by laying the sun for 20 minutes? No, it won’t… you’ll need to lay out there for 30 minutes, an hour… It is the very same thing with exercise. You need to continually increase the intensity to continue to make gains (or losses in terms of inches and body fat…)

Intensity also goes for weight lifting, only here it’s not necessarily doing your workout faster, it’s adding more weight. If you bench press 3 sets of x at 185lbs every bench workout you can’t expect your bench press to get stronger. You need to add weight every workout (or at least strive to).

Always increase the intensity, always challenge yourself. Volume alone will only get you so far.

Chris Walls is a Personal Trainer at the newly opened Crossfit Kelowna training centre.  For more information on Crossfit, please visit http://www.crossfitkelowna.com

You can get strong and build your entire body with 5 simple barbell lifts. Back squat, standing overhead press, bench press, power clean and deadlift. That gives you 2 pulls, 2 pushes and a squat. Every workout you squat, push then pull. 3 sets of 5 and increase the load every time. Simple. Yes it will take a while because when you’re lifting near maximal loads you need to rest several minutes between work sets.

If getting strong isn’t for you, you can build up your cardiovascular and pulmonary systems while maintaining strength by working in the anaerobic pathway. This means shorter, really high intensity workouts where you are primarily working your muscles without oxygen.  Think 400m sprints. These take about a minute to 1.5 minutes, do 4 of these with 2 minutes rest in between.

Not only does working your anaerobic pathway allow you to do more work in those shorter time frames, but you will also increase your aerobic capacity. The reverse is not true, working your aerobic pathway will not increase your anaerobic capacity.

Want a workout that is short and sweet? You could do that 400m sprint repeat I mentioned earlier, or this little doozy is shockingly brutal.

400m Walking Lunge. A walking lunge is where you take a long step forward, dropping your back leg’s knee to the ground. You don’t want to let your front knee get too far ahead of your toes so that you can still drive thru your heel.

If you are new to lunges and/or this high intensity stuff, scale this distance. Try it for 100m, or 200m. But if you want the full dose, try 400m. See if you can do it in 10 minutes.

Chris Walls is a Personal Trainer at the Crossfit Kelowna training centre.  For more information on Crossfit, please visit http://www.crossfitkelowna.com