Category Archives: Ketchum

Trade sit-ups for partial curl-ups & planks

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A woman is stretching on the floor with another person.

Partial curl-up are a better way to get strong abs than sit-ups. Courtesy photo by Connie Aronson

My friend Claire is helping whip her new beau into shape, hitting the gym five days a week. Claire also has him doing dozens of sit-ups so he’ll get a movie-star six-pack.  For most people the first thing that comes to mind when you say “abs†is one muscle—the rectus abdominis. She means well, but doing hundreds of sit-ups are hard on your back because of devastating loads to your spine. In 2008, there were 3.4 million emergency room visits—an average of 9,400 per day, for back problems, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Back problems are the fifth most common reason for all doctor visits in the US.  Trading the sit-up for safer and more effective abdominal work can help spare this outcome.

Dr. Stuart McGilll, a professor of spine mechanics and chair of the Department of Kinesiology at The University of Waterloo, points out that spine disks only have so many bends in them before they become damaged. Keep the bends for essential tasks, such a tying shoes, rather than using them in ab training, he recommends. The Army agrees. In 2011, after 30 years, the Army’s Physical Readiness and Combat Tests deemed the sit-up test as an ineffective assessment of a person’s core in relation to their battle strength.In sports that require repeated hyperextension—like gymnastics, diving, volleyball, weight lifting, golf, football, tennis and rowing—the incident of back injury is 11 percent, according to the International Journal of Applied and Basic Sciences. In football lineman, it may be as high as 50 percent. The types of injuries vary with age. In adolescent athletes, nearly 70 percent of lumbar spine injuries occur when forces are exerted on skeletally immature spines, whereas the majority of adult back injuries are related to muscle strain and disc disease.

If you want a stronger, tighter core, instead of full sit-ups, try the traditional crunch or many variations of a curl-up. Lifting your head and shoulders a few inches (around 30 degrees) off the floor and holding briefly is a good exercise to challenge the abdominal muscles while imposing a minimal load to the lumbar spine

Muscle  function
The four layers of abdominal muscles are like a woven basket encompassing the belly. The long vertical rectus abdominis runs vertically from the sternum to the pubis crest and is trained when you do an exercise such as the crunch. The external and internal oblique muscles rotate and side-bend the trunk. The deepest layer, right below your belly-button, named the transversus abdominis, plays a significant role in stabilizing the trunk, specifically the spine, during all movement. All the abdominal muscles hold in our organs and help us in forced exhalation, as in coughing, urinating or giving birth. But the most critically important function throughout the day—writes Judith Lasater, Ph.D., P.T., author of Yoga Abs Moving From Your Core—is stabilization, to keep the back free of pain and the abdomen strong.

Very few sports require fully flexing the spine, as in a full sit-up. Rather, the core transmits power from the hips through the torso as in pitching a ball or running. Here, the abdominals work together with muscles in the lower back, hips and pelvis, known as the core, stabilizing the spine. The core and spine can handle large forces vertically, but not in extreme flexion, as in sit-ups, twisting or bending.

For example, a 154-pound man standing upright has 154 lbs. of pressure on the L3-L4 disc, which the spine can easily handle. Sitting and bending forward 20 degrees, the pressure on L3-L4 bumps up to 264 lbs. In the bent-knee sit-up the pressure almost triples, up to 396 lbs. Simply modifying the sit-up to a partial curl-up, with the head and shoulders lifting a few inches off the floor, eliminates these huge compression forces on the discs.

In a June 2009 New York Times article titled “Core Mythsâ€, the marginalized view of the core being “abs “was challenged by McGill. He compares the spine to a fishing rod supported by muscular guy wires. If all the wires are tensed equally, as in the whole lumbo-pelvic-hip complex, the rod stays straight. A core exercise program should emphasize all the muscles that girdle the spine, not just the abs, to ensure balanced strength. In his lab, he’s demonstrated how an average sit-up can exceed the limit known to increase the risk of back injury in normal American workers.

The full sit-up is three muscle actions: neck flexion, spine flexion and hip flexion. It’s important to be able to sit up, no doubt, but repeated sit-ups do place hundreds of pounds of compression on the lumbar disks. Hooking or holding the feet down stresses the low back even more. Ironically, the bent-knee sit-up has been taught to minimize the action of the hip flexor in the sit-up, though it is not correct. The abs can only curl the trunk. The sit-up is a strong hip flexor exercise (used in climbing stairs or skipping), whether the knees are bent or straight.

McGill says that the following three exercises, done regularly, can provide a well-rounded, core-stability program: practice the curl-ups, learn how to do a side-plank (lie on your side and raise yourself in a straight line) and try the bird-dog (kneel on your hands and knees, legs hip-width apart, raise an alternate arm and leg to hip height and hold for four or six seconds).

Claire tried all three, smitten over both the planks and her slim new guy.

http://theketchumkeystone.org/2014/05/29/health-happiness-trade-sit-ups-for-partial-curl-ups/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=

The Lure and Myths of Diets

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“All excess calories are stored as body fat whether they come from fruit or fudge”
–What To Eat by Marion Nestle

 Diets come and go, all promising revolutionary changes, even though they really don’t work.  A recent Gallop poll showed than 52% of the adult population in the US is on a diet, fueling  a $35 billion industry, yet less than 5% of people can actually keep the weight off. In 2003,when the low-carbohydrate Atkins diet was all the rage, research had found that obese men and women , after 6 months on a low-carb diet lost 13 pounds on average compared to  a 4 ½ pound loss on a low-fat diet. But new research shows that eventually all that weight comes back on, and even more than pre-dieting. If you’re looking for a quick fix to lose some weight this spring, recognize that fad diets are just that, often eliminating important macronutrients, hyped by the media, and often ignore  basic exercise physiology. “People have been trying to figure out if it’s the carbs or is it the fat, when really it’s the calories, says Dr. Lona Sandon, an assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. “It doesn’t matter where the calories are coming from – carbs, protein, or fat-it’s the calorie balance. We’re trying to get people away from the idea that it’s a single food group or a single nutrient that’s causing the weight gain”

Melting the Myths: Fad Diets

If a diet promises quick weight loss, has limited food selections, is promoted as a cure-all, and recommends expensive foods or supplements, says Laura Kruskall, Ph.D., R.D., and Director of Nutrition Sciences at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, you can be sure it’s a fad diet. Typically heavy handed on its’ use of testimonials, or not recommending permanent lifestyle changes are other red flags of a fad diet. Diets such as Scarsdale, Fat Flush, Carb Addicts, Eat for your Blood Type, Food Combining, Suzanne Sommers, Zone, Protein Power, Medifast , Slimfast  and Sugar Busters all promise  quick initial weight loss and do deliver, at first, because they all are low calorie diets. But do they last? If you are losing more than 2 pounds a week, it is more likely the result of fluid and lean body mass loss. Aiming for ½ to 1 pound a week loss is more realistic. Watching your calories and regular exercise is also the key. We gain weight because the body’s furnace is not burning quite enough fuel to keep pace with how much more we are eating. If you’re repeatedly gaining and regaining the same 10 or 20 or 30 pounds year after year, you know that fad diets won’t help you in the long run.  Acknowledgement of the need for lifelong changes, being flexible in your food choices, along with the advice of a registered dietician, Dr. Kruskall says, is your key to success.

Low carb, high carb  or all protein?

It’s a myth that carbohydrates are bad for you. A new study published in The Annals of Internal Medicine March 2010 showed that obese people who followed a low fat diet were more likely to keep the weight off after three years than those following a low carb diet. Although they lost more weight in the first year, they regained more during the next two years. The lead author of the study, Marianne Vetter, medical director of the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders, at the University of Pennsylvania, said that it’s really hard to sustain a low carb diet. Carbohydrates provide valuable nutrients, dietary fiber and volume and should generally make up the highest percentage of macronutrients calories when you’re trying to lose, or gain weight. The thrill of the initial weight loss on a low carbohydrate diet is due to several factors: you’re taking in fewer calories as well as losing fat free mass, and losing valuable glycogen stores, which also flushes out valuable water.  Almonds, low-fat yogurt, blueberries, strawberries, oranges, red and green peppers, whole grain bread, tomato juice, hummus, lentils, soybeans and oatmeal ; the list is long and colorful, and are all examples of carbohydrates, all providing the body’s preferred energy source. Atkins may work well for some, but the research supports the view that low carb diets, whether extreme or moderate, don’t help you lose weight, says Dr. Frank Sacks, of the Harvard School of Public Health. (Those with metabolic syndrome, or diabetes should always consult with their physician) Healthy eating following a low calorie low fat diet rich in fruits, vegetables, beans, or fish will also protect you against disease. A study published in the journal Molecular Neurdegeneration tested the effects of several diets and were surprised to find that eating too much protein contributes to plaque buildup that may make you more vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease.  Mice fed a high protein/low carbohydrate diet (60% protein/30% carbohydrate) were 5% lower in weight than brains from all other mice, posing the question whether particular diets, if eaten at particular ages, might affect the susceptibility to Alzheimer’s disease.

Instead of stress, food cues, moods, habits, obsessions, advertising, and social expectations; let  common sense and true hunger be your guide.

For more information, look at these health resource Web sites:

  • Nim.nih.gov/medlineplus/evaluatinghealthinformation.html
  • Mayoclinic.com
  • mypyramid.gov
  • Consumerlab.com
  • Supplementwatch.com

 

Strong legs : learning the basic squat

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A woman is stretching on the floor with another person.Nothing beats a great pair of legs. We need the strength of them to walk us through our lives. If you’re a skier, you can appreciate how hard your legs have to work on a powder day, as your hips and knees continually flex and extend. The lower body provides support and mobility for movement. The strongest muscles, for instance, the quadriceps, the front thighs, and your gluteals( posterior),  are powerful movers in  most every sport. No matter what your activity of choice may be, it is a good idea to keep them strong with a simple traditional exercise: the squat.

The movement seems simple enough: you “sit back “, as if you were to sit down a chair. Yet our bodies are a little more integrated than we think, as muscle is intertwined and inseparable from fascia. Rodney Corn, a biomechanics professor at the California University of Pennsylvania builds on the concept of how muscles are not islands by themselves. From the bottom of your foot, all the way up through your calf muscles, legs, hips, up to the top of your head is one continuous band of myofascia, transferring force from tendon to bone, all affecting each other. For example, the deep squat with the arms held overhead  is used as a movement assessment tool, as every joint in your body has to work. Here is where muscle imbalances show up. For example, if your knees track inward or outward, it probably indicates that your gluts are weak, or the inner thighs are weak and tight, or maybe your heels come up off the ground, indicating very tight calf muscles. Overtime, these kinds of compensations can lead to injury. Be aware of alignment, even though the squat seems simple enough, before you start adding either heavy weights or variations of a squat, such as a walking lunge exercise.

How-to:

Stand with your feet hip width apart, with your toes pointing forward. Bend your ankles, knees and hips as if you were sitting back in a chair. The authors of Strength and Conditioning Journal December 2009 use the cue to “sit back into the squat.†Shifting your weight backwards not only reduces the torque on your knees by decreasing the angle, but also distributes the forces throughout the whole lower body, not just the front thighs. Pause for 1-2 seconds, tighten your gluts, and extend your legs fully back up to standing.

Sitting back in the squat can also prevent you from arching your back. By engaging the glutes, it becomes easier not to arch the low back. Keep your spine in a neutral position. The authors suggest that repetitive extension of the lumbar spine beyond the anatomical limit (arching) places stress in the small bones that join the facet joints in the back of your spine, called pars interarticularis. Keeping  a neutral spine throughout the move increases stability through the spine and allows it to handle greater compressive loads. Once your movement patterns are ingrained, you can progress the difficulty of a body weight squat to ones that include free weights, weighted bars, kettleballs or medicine balls. The variations  are numerous.

A shallow squat might be better for you if you have knee pain or patellar tendinous, because more than anything, strong quads will help in your rehabilitation.

Knee flexion and extension strength was recently measured in competitors in the National Senior Games. They had an average of 66% greater isometric knee flexion strength and 38% greater extension strength than control groups because of the demands of 20 or more years of competing, and loading the skeletal muscle. Other research, published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning  Research  Journal 2009 shows a 53% increase in leg strength after 6 months of resistance training in older men. The point is the basic squat is a good exercise to do. Stronger legs make for better days on or off the hill, or on the tracks this winter.

Connie Aronson is an American College of Sports Medicine Fitness Specialist located in Ketchum, Idaho

Printed in Idaho Mountain Express January 31, 2010

 

 

Enjoy high altitude by staying hydrated

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A woman is stretching on the floor with another person.

Enjoy high altitude & high desert trips by staying hydrated

Trust an Exum mountain guide to describe a day where the air looks good enough to gulp. Author and guide Jack Turner has a myriad of words to describe high altitude peak and meadow air: sharp, raw, crisp, and, yes, thinner. Most of us living here are used to the altitude, but there are some things you can recommend to friends and family while they are here to ski this March. Likewise, if you’re lucky enough to travel to Peru or Zermatt this spring, simple pre-cautions can prevent a lot of altitude-related illnesses. Ketchum, like Denver or Flagstaff, Arizona, is actually moderate altitude, (greater than 5,280 feet),and high altitude is defined as elevations above 8, 500 feet ( Baldy, Colorado ski resorts, North Rim of the Grand Canyon, the Matterhorn, and of course, the highest summit, Mt. Everest at 29,028 feet.)
Nobody wants to start out their ski vacation with a splitting head-ache, and Dr. Keith Sivertson, Blaine County Emergency Medical Service Medical Director, has some good advice for visitors upon arriving here. Firstly, because we’re not sleeping above 8,000 feet, we are not technically high altitude; Ketchum is high desert. But altitude as low as 3000 feet can impose physiologic limitations on the body, and even mild dehydration can compromise performance during exercise. Add to that increased sweating and quick evaporation of that cold dry air, and you’ve lost up to 1-2 liters a day. Most people, especially those over 60, are sippers, and are not drinking enough to replace their sweat losses, furthering their risk of dehydration. A simple way to tell you are dehydrated, Dr. Severson says, is that you’re not having to get up in the night to pee (and that your pee isn’t clear in the morning).The American College of Sports Medicine suggests drinking two glasses of water two hours before exercise, and to drink during exercise at a rate that matches your sweat losses. In other words, as Dr. Silvertson says, much of the symptoms ski patrollers see at Seattle Ridge, like nausea, headaches, weakness and a heavy feeling are signs of dehydration, not high altitude sickness.
Getting off the mountain is important if there are any indications of any feeling of fullness in the chest, or a shortness of breath, as these can be serious health matters. Mike Lloyd, Baldy Mountain’s ski patrol director, has his staff trained to take no chances that it could be something of a more serious nature.
Evangelista Torricelli, in the 1600’s, was the first person to realize that the atmosphere above us create pressures that could support weight. At higher elevations, there’s less pressure of oxygen moving from the air into our blood, resulting in less oxygen to help our muscles & heart function. Many people experience high-altitude illnesses when they rapidly ascend to elevations above 8,000 feet. The most common of these is acute mountain sickness. Being in shape,( a good idea no matter what), or age seems to have no bearing on if you will develop symptoms either. More life –threatening are high-altitude pulmonary edema and high altitude cerebral edema. Descending to lower altitudes and medical care are a must for these three illnesses.
While you may not know your susceptibility at high-altitude, there are some things to do for your next trip or a longer trek. Try to go a few days earlier, or if you can’t, try to pre-acclimatize by planning several week-end hiking trips to a similar target altitude in the month prior to departure, to judge whether you are susceptible to mountain sickness. While at attitude, stay hydrated, and consume enough calories. If you are skiing, trekking or climbing at altitude, you can be using up to 300-500 calories extra calories a day The energy used to support body functions, basal metabolic rate, burns up 200 of these calories, so it’s important to eat enough calories. Savor it all.