Author name: Elevate PT & Fitness

New research suggests that even weekend athletes can dramatically extend their physical and psychological limits By Alex Hutchinson Originally from the Wall Street Journal Feb. 2, 2018 10:04 a.m. ET For the Slovenian cross-country skier Petra Majdič, the unlikely key to Olympic glory was misdiagnosis. While warming up for her first race at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, Ms. Majdič skidded off an icy corner and fell more than 10 feet into a rocky creek bed. She dragged herself to an on-site medical tent for an ultrasound. “I don’t know,” the doctor said, “but it looks like everything is OK.” Sure, she was in excruciating pain that made her shriek every time she exhaled. But the pain, she believed, was just in her head. As long as nothing was broken, her decision was clear. “Can I go?” she asked. The doctor said yes. Later that evening, after gritting her teeth through a qualifying race, a quarterfinal, a semifinal and a final where she fought to an improbable bronze medal in the classic sprint, she finally went to the hospital—where she was diagnosed, correctly this time, with four broken ribs. The stabbing pain she’d felt during the semifinal? That was one of the broken ribs puncturing her lung, which then collapsed. She missed the rest of the Games and was in the hospital for nearly a week. Such tales are a staple of Olympic lore, a stirring reminder of the heights to which athletes can rise with a medal on the line. In the coming weeks, as the world’s fleetest and toughest converge on South Korea for this year’s Winter Games, we will undoubtedly see more extraordinary feats of endurance. But how, exactly, do the athletes do it? Is it just a matter of physical prowess and training, or is there something else going on in these superhuman exertions? Answers are starting to emerge from a remarkable new body of research on human performance, and the findings have lessons not just for Olympians but for everyone else, too. All of us, it turns out, are capable of pushing back the physical and psychological limits that we encounter at the gym, on the trails and in our sporting adventures. The feeling that you can go no further is just that—a feeling. And feelings can be changed. Early studies of endurance focused, naturally, on the body. Physiologists pieced together an impressively detailed picture of the factors that—in theory—dictate our ultimate capacity. “Our bodies are machines whose energy expenditures may be closely measured,” wrote the pioneering (and Nobel Prize-winning) sports scientist A.V. Hill in 1926. As the mysteries of muscle contraction and metabolism were decoded, endurance began to seem like a question of plumbing—whose heart could deliver the most oxygen-rich blood through the widest vessels to the biggest muscles. There was one big problem with this approach: It couldn’t predict who would win an athletic contest. No matter how accurately you measure physiological parameters like oxygen delivery, you’d be a fool to use that data to bet on the outcome of, say, a marathon. Clearly, something was missing from the “human machine” picture of athletic limits. Hill and other early researchers soon realized that psychology must play a key role. In 1961, a pair of scientists at George Williams College in Chicago showed that they could boost the maximum strength of weightlifting volunteers by 7.4% if an experimenter sneaked up behind the subject and fired a .22-caliber starter’s pistol just before the lift. It was among the first (and most bizarre) attempts to demonstrate that the limits we perceive as physical and absolute are often negotiable and mediated by the brain. The precise nature of the mind-muscle connection remains hotly disputed today, but most researchers accept the essential point: that the physical manifestations of fatigue—racing heart, elevated core temperature, a rising tide of metabolites like lactate in the blood—merely serve as sources of information for the brain, rather than direct limits on our ability to continue. Starting in the late 1990s, the South African author and fitness researcher Tim Noakes advanced the view that our brains are wired for self-preservation. If you push hard enough to endanger your health—by overheating your core or compromising your brain’s oxygen supply, say—your brain will function as a protective “central governor,” automatically weakening the nerve signals driving your muscles. The feedback loop gives rise to the sensation of fatigue and signals you to slow down. An alternate view proposed a decade later by Samuele Marcora, an exercise scientist at the University of Kent’s Endurance Research Group, posits that our limits are defined by the balance between motivation and perceived effort. We don’t stop because our fatigued muscles are incapable of continuing, in this view, but because the effort required to continue is greater than we’re willing to exert. Whatever the mechanism, both camps agree that the subjective perception of effort is a sort of master controller—which means, in practical terms, that if you change your perception of a task’s difficulty, you can change your actual results. There are plenty of examples of this phenomenon. In a 2014 experiment described in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, researchers led by Dr. Marcora showed cyclists images of smiling faces on a screen in imperceptible 16-millisecond flashes. The exposure boosted cycling performance by 12% over the level recorded with frowning faces projected in the same way. The sight of a smile didn’t lower the subjects’ heart rates or lactate levels, according to Dr. Marcora. Instead, it subtly altered how their brains interpreted those signals, evoking feelings of ease that bled into their perception of how hard they were pedaling. Eliud Kipchoge, the Olympic marathon champion from Kenya, has sought to self-administer the same effect. Mr. Kipchoge has come the closest to breaking the 2-hour barrier in a marathon, missing by just 26 seconds (in a race in Italy last year that doesn’t count in official records). He deliberately smiled broadly every mile or so during the final stretch. “When

The bracing air on your face and the rush of snow beneath your skis: Not many activities intuitively feel as healthful and invigorating as downhill skiing. But is it actually any good for you? The answer, unequivocally, is “yes”—although how good skiing is for you depends in part on your skill level, how hard you push yourself and the types of terrain you tackle on the slopes. “Alpine skiing is a mix of endurance and resistance training,” says Dr. Josef Niebauer, a professor of sports medicine and cardiology and director of the Institute for Molecular Sports and Rehabilitation Medicine at Paracelsus Medical University in Salzburg, Austria. “It has positive effects on the heart and circulation, as well as peripheral muscles—predominately the legs.” In terms of working your heart, Niebauer’s research has shown that downhill skiing roughly equates to cycling or rowing workouts. Of course, hopping through deep powder will push your heart rate higher than a leisurely slalom down a groomed run. But he says that all types of downhill skiing (and cross-country, too) offer cardio-metabolic benefits, including improved insulin resistance, body composition and glucose metabolism, as well as a drop in blood pressure, blood lipids and heart rate. Skiing also seems to reinvigorate blood vessels and cell health. “We saw positive effects on arterial stiffness, which is a sign of rejuvenating arteries,” Niebauer says. (Arterial stiffness is also a risk factor for heart disease and Alzheimer’s.) Skiing is also a form of interval training, which has lately become one of the hottest fads in the fitness world. After pushing yourself for anywhere from 20 seconds to 15 minutes during a run, you get a nice break as you ride back up the hill. A growing body of evidence suggests this on-off style of training—working hard for a few minutes, then taking a breather—can provide a range of benefits, from extending your life to improving your fitness levels. But skiing really distinguishes itself from other fitness activities when it comes to firing up and training the muscles of your lower body. “The mix of highly coordinated movements with different types of exercise modes”—carving, skidding, quick turns, jumping—”and the mix of eccentric, isometric and concentric muscle work might be seen as quite unique when compared with other types of physical activity,” says Thomas Stöggl, a skiing researcher and associate professor of sports science and kinesiology at the University of Salzburg. The subtle (and not so subtle) knee and hip movements and exertions that take place during downhill skiing challenges a much wider range of lower-body muscles than do most other forms of exercise. From the large muscles in your thighs to much smaller support muscles around your knees, skiing is a complete lower-body workout, shows a recent study in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine. Why is this important? Research on trail hiking and running suggests that activating and training more of these support muscles can improve balance and stability, and may cut down on your risk for overuse or repetitive-motion injuries. While the scientific literature on downhill skiing is less robust, studies show that it too improves balance and range of motion. Last but not least for outdoor enthusiasts, the spectacular natural settings that tend to accompany skiing shouldn’t be discounted. Lots of research suggests that spending time outdoors and in nature is great for your mental and physical health. And a little cold exposure could also provide fat-burning benefits. “Being active in a beautiful outdoor environment can’t be topped,” Niebauer says. “Skiing is more than just a sport—it comes with lots of positive effects on the skier’s wellbeing and quality of life.” (If you doubt this, walk into any ski lodge and observe all the happy, rosy cheeked faces.) Research on elderly adults also shows skiing improves mood. But while downhill skiing offers a number of health benefits, the risks can’t be discounted. Take on trails or terrain that exceed your abilities, and you expose yourself to serious injury—from broken bones and concussion to death. Even if you’re staying away from trees and moguls, Niebauer points out that heart attacks are the number-one cause of death on the slopes. “This is mainly due to the fact that a considerable number of skiers go skiing despite poor fitness and a mix of cardiovascular risk factors that makes them prone to cardiac events,” he says. Any activity that pushes your heart can also imperil your heart. That’s true for running, cycling and swimming. And skiing is no different. But assuming your heart is in good enough shape to handle exercise, the benefits of skiing “far outweigh” the risks, Niebauer says.   Written by Markham Heid for TIME Health January 25, 2018 http://time.com/5118770/is-skiing-a-good-workout/

By Gretchen Reynolds, originally from New York Times: Trying to stay trim as you age? Surprisingly, if you’re cutting calories to lose weight, adding weights to your weight loss regimen may be more effective than beginning a walking program, according to a new study that adds to growing evidence that weight training is important for vigorous aging. Successful weight loss is never easy, as most of us know from experience, and becomes more difficult with age. Instead of losing or maintaining weight as we grow older, most of us gain a pound or two each year during middle age. At the same time, we also often begin naturally to lose some of our muscle mass, so that our bodies wind up increasingly composed of fat. This change in body composition matters, because fat tissue is less metabolically active than muscle. As the percentage of our body composed of fat tissue rises, our metabolic rates fall and we burn fewer calories throughout the day, predisposing us to continued weight gain. We also become less strong, of course, as our muscles shrink. So most experts agree that the ideal weight-loss program for most people would maximize fat loss while sparing muscle mass. But this balance is difficult to achieve, since, typically, when we drop a pound while dieting, as much as a third of that loss can come from muscle, with the rest composed of fat. Some past studies have hinted that exercising while cutting calories might help to lessen this muscle loss. But most of those studies have been small and involved relatively young people or only one gender. For the new study, which was published this month in Obesity, researchers at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., and other institutions decided to focus on both men and women older than 60. They also set out to enroll African-American as well as the Caucasian participants most earlier studies used. In the end, they wound up with 249 participants who were overweight or obese and sedentary. The researchers measured their body compositions and leg-muscle strength and assessed their current diets. Then they randomly assigned the volunteers to one of three groups. Some began a basic calorie-reduction plan, during which they cut their food intake by an amount expected to help them lose 7 to 10 percent of their body weight over the coming months. For most of them, this meant a reduction of about 300 calories per day. The members of this group were asked not to exercise. Another group also cut their calorie intake. But at the same time, they began a supervised aerobic exercise program consisting of walking briskly on a track for 45 minutes four times per week. The third group likewise reduced calories but also began a weight-training program. Four times a week, they worked with trainers at a gym to complete a full-body resistance training routine using weight machines. All of the volunteers continued their particular program for 18 months. By the end of that time, everyone had dropped weight. But there were notable differences in the amount and type of weight that had been lost in each group. The men and women in the group that had cut calories but not worked out had lost an average of about 12 pounds each. Those who had cut calories and walked had dropped far more weight, about 20 pounds each, while those who had dieted and weight trained likewise had lost about 20 pounds per person. But the weight loss among walkers and weight trainers was qualitatively different, their new body-composition scans showed. The weight trainers had lost about two pounds of muscle and 18 pounds of fat, while the walkers had dropped about four pounds of muscle and 16 pounds of fat. The group that had dieted and not exercised had lost about two pounds of muscle. In effect, the walkers had lost more muscle mass in total and as a percentage of their weight loss than either of the other two groups, including those who had not exercised at all. That finding surprised the researchers, says Kristen M. Beavers, an assistant professor of health and exercise science at Wake Forest and the study’s lead author. It would have worried them, too, she says. But subsequent tests of muscular strength showed that, relative to their new, lower body weights, the men and women who had exercised in any way had stronger legs than they had had 18 months before. Those who had remained sedentary did not have stronger legs. So although they had dropped some muscle mass, the walkers had gained leg strength. (The researchers did not test upper-body strength.) But overall, the study’s results imply that walking could have limitations as a weight-loss aid for older dieters, Dr. Beavers says. “Walking is excellent exercise,” she says. “But it looks as if it might not produce enough of an anabolic signal to really spare muscle mass during weight loss.” In other words, it may not prompt older people’s bodies to hold on to muscle as effectively as weight training seems to do, she says. Of course, an experiment like this cannot tell us why, at the molecular level, different types of exercise alter the composition of weight loss or whether the results would be the same for younger people or those who were not unfit. But the results do suggest, Dr. Beavers says, that for healthy weight loss, many of us might consider at least occasionally walking to the gym and, once there, picking up some weights.

The deadlift is sometimes seen as an intimidating lift, especially concerning back safety.  But, when done correctly, it is actually a great exercise for the back muscles AND the glutes, hamstrings, and quads, all to varying degrees, depending on what variation you do. If you’ve been wanting to learn how to properly deadlift, look no further!  The first video of exercises shows the way to start “grooving” the proper movement patterns and begin building your capacity to eventually lift heavier loads with the traditional deadlift and the advanced variations that you’ll see in the second video. 1. Kneeling Hip Hinge: Begin on your knees with your arms crossed over your chest. Slowly lower your hips down toward your heels as you slightly lean trunk forward. To get back to the starting position, squeeze your glutes and lift your chest upright again. This exercise helps to get your body acquainted with the hip hinge movement which is paramount to performing the deadlift efficiently. 2. Standing PVC Assist Hip Hinge: Throughout the movement, keep a neutral spine alignment, making sure the PVC pipe has three points of contact: back of the head, between shoulder blades, and tailbone. Standing with your feet about hip width apart and a slight bend in your knees, slowly send your hips backward and your chest forward. Stop when you feel a slight stretch in your hamstrings or when your chest has reached parallel to the ground. Squeeze your glutes to stand back up. 3. Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift (RDL): Holding dumbbells in your hands, feet about hip width apart, and knees slightly bent, send your hips back into a hip hinge. You should be sliding the dumbbells down the front of your thighs and keeping your knees stacked over your ankles. Stop when you feel a stretch in your hamstrings or when your chest is parallel with the ground, then squeeze your glutes to return to standing. 4. Kettlebell Deadlift: Standing with your legs wider than hip width, hold a kettlebell in front of you between your legs. Your knees should remain just about over your ankles as you send your hips back into that hip hinge while simultaneously bending your knees, lowering kettlebell straight down between your feet aligned with arches. As you can see in the video, your trunk should be leaning forward slightly, but your shins should remain relatively upright. As always, squeeze those glutes to stand back up! Once you’ve mastered these moves, you will be ready to move on to the Trap Bar Deadlift, and Barbell Deadlift variations! Here are 3 of our favorite ones. All of these variations will work the core muscles of the body; lower back, glutes and abdominals, as well as the hamstrings and quads, each to different degrees.  Pick your poison! 1. Trap Bar Deadlift – This variation of the deadlift keeps the load closer to your center of mass and is an excellent first step in using a bar and beginning to lift heavier loads.  It allows sharing the load between hips, low back, and quads more equally compared to the conventional deadlift, and you’ll get the benefit of strengthening all three! 2. Barbell Sumo Deadlift – The sumo variation is a good option if your hip structure and mobility make you more comfortable rotated outward when pulling, or if you have limited ankle mobility.  It also simulates a strong athletic position on the field or court (think short stop or linebacker stance), and “real world” lifting posture like if you were to help lift a couch — assume the sumo!  This variation will fire up the posterior chain, but can be slightly less load to the low back than the traditional deadlift, (but more than the trap bar), and like the trap bar, will also get quads, and will be a shorter range of motion to pull than the traditional deadlift. 3. Barbell Romanian Deadlift (RDL) – The Romanian Deadlift, or RDL for short, is the traditional variation and it will work the back extensors, glutes and hamstrings more than the quads, AND more than the other variations.  As an added bonus, it can help with hamstring tightness as it requires a lengthening of the hamstrings during the lowering phase. If you’d like to learn these progressions with an Elevate trainer, send us an email at concierge@elevateptfit.com.        

Have pain along the outside of your hip? What we often think of as trochanteric bursitis can actually be a tendinopathy of the gluteal tendons. The term “itis” refers to inflammation. Most of the time, there is no actual inflammation of the area, but an over-straining of the gluteal tendons and weakness in the hip musculature. Chronic overuse of a weaker muscle (often the gluteus medius) and underuse of other very important muscles including the gluteus maximus, a big “work-horse” that’s supposed to be doing the heavy lifting, can lead to the increased strain, which causes the pain. How do we treat tendinopathy? Load it! If your hip is quite painful (in the initial, reactive phase), isometric exercises can be a great way to load the tendon while also getting a nice analgesic effect to the area. Research shows us that the analgesic effect is most effective when holding isometric exercises for 45 seconds. Here are some of our go-to isometric exercises to load the gluteal tendons and strengthen the hip muscles.  You can do these without a band to start, but loading with resistance is key, so “put a band on it!” as we like to say at Elevate. The band should be placed right above your knees. 1️⃣ Bridge Hold – Lie on your back with your feet flat on the floor and your knees bent. Squeeze your glutes, activate your abdominals, and lift your hips off the floor. Make sure the movement comes from your hips and your lower back does not arch. Focus on squeezing the glutes together and pushing the band apart as you hold the position. 2️⃣ Sidelying Abduction – you can use a wall to help with this one. Lie on your side, a few inches away from the wall, with your legs straight and in line with your body. Keeping your hips stacked on top of each other and without rolling your body back, lift the top leg toward the ceiling, and reaching the heel to the wall, stretch the band as far as you can. You want to bring your leg behind you slightly, heel to the wall, with your knee facing forward, but don’t tip your pelvis backward. These adjustments are important to help minimize the activity of the Tensor Fascia Latae (TFL), to give you the best opportunity to isolate the gluteus medius and offer the best ratio of increased gluteus medius activity combined with decreased TFL activity. Think about staying long, reaching your leg away from your body, in order to minimize the amount of Quadratus Lumborum contraction in the back. These cues will help you feel this mostly in your gluteus medius. If you want to feel a little more stable in this position, simply bend the knee of your bottom leg so that that foot is behind you offering stability. 3️⃣ Clamshell – Lie on your side, back straight, hips and knees flexed in front of you at about a 45-60 degree angle, and your feet in line with your tailbone and in line with your shoulders. Make sure your hip bones are stacked on top of each other. Keeping your hips and pelvis in line and feet together, lift your top knee off the bottom one, stretching the band as far as you can. A common compensation people make is rolling back from the pelvis to help lift the knee – try to avoid this. 4️⃣ Quadruped Fire Hydrant – Start on your hands and knees with your wrists directly below your shoulders and your knees right underneath your hips. Keeping your knee bent, lift one leg out to the side, extend it back behind you, at about a 45-degree angle, and externally rotate from the hip so your knee should be further away from your body than your foot. Make sure your weight stays evenly distributed through both hands and that both hips bones stay facing the floor. You can put a ball on your lower back and not allow it to roll off in order to help you maintain a “neutral spine”. 5️⃣ Side Plank Hip Abduction – This is exactly like the side lying version except that you will be in a side plank position. You can start off by performing a modified side plank with your bottom knee remaining on the ground, and then progress to a full side plank. 6️⃣ Side Plank Clamshell – Similarly to the side plank hip abduction exercise, you can perform the clamshell from a modified or a full side plank position. Only progress to this variation once you are able to perform the side lying clamshell for 60 seconds. 7️⃣ Squat Hold – Standing with your feet about hip-width apart, squat down as though you are going to sit in a chair. Since we are focusing on the glutes in these exercises and not the quads, you want to make sure that you are hinged forward at the hips, leaning forward at the trunk and your knees stay over your ankles. If you look in a mirror from the side, you should see that your trunk is angled forward more than your shins. If you need an external cue to help, you can place a foam roller in front of your feet and make sure your knees do not move forward and touch the foam roller. 8️⃣ Surfer Squat – Start with your feet together and then step one foot back at a 90-degree angle. Rotate your trunk over the front leg and make sure you are pushing your knees out against the band. Sit your hips back and down into a squat as if sitting in a chair behind you, and hold. 9️⃣ Single Leg Fire Hydrant – Start in the squat position as in 7️⃣, then shift your weight onto one leg. Maintain a bend in the standing knee and hinge at the hip, as you bring the other leg out to the side and back, externally rotate the hip, and extending it back behind you, stretching the band, as you did in the

  For many, weight training calls to mind bodybuilders pumping iron in pursuit of beefy biceps and bulging pecs. But experts say it’s well past time to discard those antiquated notions of what resistance training can do for your physique and health. Modern exercise science shows that working with weights—whether that weight is a light dumbbell or your own body—may be the best exercise for lifelong physical function and fitness. “To me, resistance training is the most important form of training for overall health and wellness,” says Brad Schoenfeld, an assistant professor of exercise science at New York City’s Lehman College. During the past decade, Schoenfeld has published more than 30 academic papers on every aspect of resistance training—from the biomechanics of the push-up to the body’s nutrient needs following a hard lift. Many people think of weight training as exercise that augments muscle size and strength, which is certainly true. But Schoenfeld says the “load” that this form of training puts on bones and their supporting muscles, tendons and ligaments is probably a bigger deal when it comes to health and physical function. “We talk about bone resorption, which is a decrease in bone tissue over time,” he says. When you’re young, bone resorption is balanced and in some cases exceeded by new bone tissue generation. But later in life, bone tissue losses accelerate and outpace the creation of new bone. That acceleration is especially pronounced among people who are sedentary and women who have reached or passed menopause, Schoenfeld says. This loss of bone tissue leads to the weakness and postural problems that plague many older adults. “Resistance training counteracts all those bone losses and postural deficits,” he says. Through a process known as bone remodeling, strength training stimulates the development of bone osteoblasts: cells that build bones back up. While you can achieve some of these bone benefits through aerobic exercise, especially in your lower body, resistance training is really the best way to maintain and enhance total-body bone strength. More research links resistance training with improved insulin sensitivity among people with diabetes and prediabetes. One study published in the journal Diabetes Care found that twice-weekly training sessions helped control insulin swings (and body weight) among older men with type-2 diabetes. “Muscle is very metabolically active, and it uses glucose, or blood sugar, for energy,” says Mark Peterson, an assistant professor of physical medicine at the University of Michigan. During a bout of resistance training, your muscles are rapidly using glucose, and this energy consumption continues even after you’ve finished exercising, Peterson says. For anyone at risk for metabolic conditions—type-2 diabetes, but also high blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol levels and other symptoms of metabolic syndrome—strength training is among the most effective remedies, he says. Strength training also seems to be a potent antidote to inflammation, a major risk factor for heart disease and other conditions, says Schoenfeld. A 2010 study from the University of Connecticut linked regular resistance training with inflammation-quelling shifts in the body’s levels of cytokines, a type of immune system protein. Another study from Mayo Clinic found that when overweight women did twice-weekly resistance training sessions, they had significant drops in several markers of inflammation. More research has linked strength training to improved focus and cognitive function, better balance, less anxiety and greater well-being. Some of the latest and most surprising research is in the realm of “light-load training,” or lifting very small weights. “It used to be thought that you needed to lift heavy loads in order to build muscle and achieve a lot of these benefits,” Schoenfeld says. “That’s what I was taught in grad school and undergrad, but now it looks like that’s completely untrue.” He says lifting “almost to failure”—or until your muscles are near the point of giving out—is the real key, regardless of how much weight you’re using. “This is a huge boon to adherence, because many older adults or those with injuries or joint issues may not be able to lift heavy loads,” he says. If all that isn’t convincing enough to turn you onto weights, perhaps this is: maintaining strength later in life “seems to be one of the best predictors of survival,” says Peterson. “When we add strength…almost every health outcome improves.”“It used to be we thought of strength training as something for athletes,” he adds, “but now we recognize it as a seminal part of general health and well-being at all ages.”   Markham Heid Time Health Jun 06, 2017 To read the original article on Time.com, click here.  

There is nothing like watching a young athlete perform to the best of their ability in the sport they love. As adults, we envy the amount of energy they seem to have at the start of each day in the elementary years, only to see that energy begin to dip once they hit the middle school and high school years. A few reasons for that include: physical adaptations toward continuous physical training for their sport; puberty; increasing workloads at school; and lack of sleep. It’s a lot for a young body to handle, no matter how great of a student-athlete they are, so our job as parents is to make sure we keep that engine burning efficiently each day. We need to make sure we are putting the right pieces in place to complete the optimal performance puzzle. In part-1 of this educational piece, I covered how to successfully implement high-quality protein and proper hydration into their diet, and how to address sports supplements. In this piece, I will cover the two key energy sources for all humans, Fats & Carbohydrates. As I mentioned in part-1, the goal is to provide a basic understanding of how food best works for us and use basic fundamentals without getting overly scientific. Let’s start with carbohydrates! Carbohydrates are the primary energy source of the body which is what our muscles use as fuel in order to function properly. How the body processes carbohydrates, or “carbs”, depends on their molecular makeup. This is where the distinction of “simple” carbs and “complex” carbs come into play because our bodies digest them at different speeds because of their nutrient profiles. For example, “simple” carbs are made up of monosaccharides (glucose, fructose, galactose) and disaccharides (maltose, lactose, sucrose). “Complex” carbs are formed when three or more glucose molecules are combined. Here is an easy way to understand carbs — think FIBER, not carbs! Understand that there is a significant difference between white bread and whole grain high fiber bread; a sugar-coated cereal and oatmeal; French fries vs. sweet potatoes. The focus should be on the quality of carbohydrates. Remember in part-1 I said that breakfast is a primary meal not to be skipped, and good protein sources should be a major part of that meal. Quality carbohydrates are a must in breakfast also. When putting meals together you want to consider how much fiber a meal can provide. A good breakfast may be Greek yogurt as your protein, whole grain bread or oatmeal with some fresh fruit for the nutrients and fiber. Fruits and vegetables are an important source of carbs for a high-performance athlete, but we know that kids don’t always like or choose these foods. So, we have to be diligent in our effort to create new eating habits for them. To put that effort into perspective, Dr. Laura Edwards-Leeper who is a staff psychologist at Boston Children’s Hospital says, that it can take up to ten times to determine if a child really dislikes a food because their taste buds change so much. This plate shows what an ideal meal should look like.  As you can see, half of the plate should be fruits and vegetables with a 1/4 being some faster burning starchy carbs sources. The Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles says that athletes who consume 70% of their calories in quality carbohydrates will have the maximal storage of glycogen to fuel the muscles for long performance durations. That is a key statistic to remember because it eliminates the need to “carb load” by eating excess carbohydrates in an effort to increase performance. The body will already have what it needs, so loading won’t be necessary.    Don’t be afraid to play around with the quantities and meal timing around activities because everyone digests food differently. The key is to consume as many nutrient-dense carbs as possible, but the timing efficiency depends on the person. Some young athletes can digest quickly and stay energetic and ready to go at all times. Other athletes may get lethargic for an hour before their body’s blood sugar levels off, so they may need more time if this is a pre-game/pre-practice meal. Data from the American Dietetic Association and American College of Sports Medicine suggests that athletes should be eating 45-65% of their calories from carbohydrates. What that looks like for an athlete would be 2.7-4.5 grams per pound of body weight. This will provide optimal fuel for muscles during demanding activity. For example, a 120lb. athlete should consume 324-540 grams of high-quality carbs. The timing for carb consumption may vary depending on the athlete, but here is a good framework for reference: Pre-exercise: 1-2 hours before activity. Meal (or shake) should be higher in carbs, lower in protein & fat. During exercise: While shorter duration activities (<60-min.) don’t require special fueling tactics, longer bouts do. (8-10 ounces of water for every 20-minutes of exercise after an hour). For sessions longer than an hour (>60-min.) the recommendation is about 30-grams of carbohydrates for each hour of training or exercise.  After exercise: Glycogen needs to be restored. For example, 1-2 cups of chocolate milk and some water  (also see rehydration in Part-1) Chewing the Fat High-quality dietary fat is vital for us all, and especially for our growing athlete. Quality fats are key. Scientific studies show that Omega-3 and DHA are crucial in brain development. Fat is the most calorie dense nutrient and should comprise of 20-30% of total caloric intake. The right kind of fat is very important because it can fight inflammation and help with exercise recovery by decreasing soreness in muscle tissue. Making sure that we are obtaining high levels of healthy fats containing Omega-3 fatty acids is the key, and the healthiest sources can be found in a few uncomplicated places, the first being in animal protein. Organic chicken and eggs, grass-fed beef, lamb, and wild-caught fish are excellent sources of Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and Omega-3 fatty acids (EPA & DHA). In fact,

Proper nutrition is essential to the overall success of athletes at any level. No matter the sport, all of the activity is fueled by what the athlete consumes throughout the day, pre-performance, and post-performance. It’s one thing to be prepared by spending many hours practicing drills, skills, technique, and conditioning, but performance will be lacking if there are deficiencies in our young athletes’ daily food and fluid intake.   I’ll be honest, when I look back at some of my favorite things to eat when I was a youth athlete, I can tell you with certainty that I had a sugar-heavy breakfast, sugar-heavy snacks, with just an “okay” lunch and dinner. That continued all the way through high school because, well, I just didn’t know any better, and neither did my parents. But, two things that did become staples for me were peanut butter & jelly sandwiches and a huge glass of milk. Interestingly enough, those two things would end up helping me significantly as I matured as a high school athlete. The truth is, for our young athletes to be high-powered performers, we need to make sure they put high-octane fuel in the tank. This is food that our bodies can easily recognize and break down into usable fuel for speed, strength, endurance, and power. It all starts with understanding some basic things about the calories we should be consuming. Calories are our energy source which are made up of three macronutrients: Protein, Carbohydrates, and Fats. Each one of these come in many different forms, both good and bad, but distinguishing between what’s optimal takes a bit of work. Kids will only learn what they are taught, and that starts with the adults in their lives. For this particular blog post I will focus on protein, the supplements protein powder & creatine, and hydration.  In the next series on nutrition for youth athletes, I will tackle carbohydrates and fats. Protein Protein is essential for growth and repair; it is the building block and foundation for new muscle tissue during recovery. I don’t want to get overly scientific, but when protein is digested it is broken down into amino acids which are carried into the muscle tissue to repair the damage from excess exertion from activities. This is where lean muscle growth comes from. Not having enough protein does cause the body to take longer to recover. It also puts limits on strength and power development. Protein also has a thermic effect on the body, nearly twice as much as carbohydrates and fat, which means that it increases our metabolism. With a higher metabolism, the body will burn more body fat during the course of a day. The biggest challenge is making sure a young athlete consumes enough protein throughout each day.  Creating an optimal dietary pattern requires that each meal is balanced with protein, carbs, and fats.   THIS IS HOW A MEAL PLATE SHOULD LOOK:   Dr. Chris Mohr, Phd RD, the consulting Sports Nutritionist for the Cincinnati Bengals and Director of Sports Nutrition for the International Youth Conditioning Association, explains that youth athletes typically don’t obtain sufficient protein intake until the end of the day at dinner. “The typical meal plan for middle school and high school athletes starts with a bagel or bowl of sugary cereal for breakfast, a sandwich with a bag of chips and soda or sugary drink for lunch, candy bar for mid-afternoon snack, and a good amount of whatever they can get their hands on for dinner.” However, unlike carbohydrates and fats, protein does not store in our system for later energy usage. This is why protein should be consumed with every meal. In fact, the RDA recommendation for the average adult is 0.8-grams of protein for every pound of bodyweight. That increases depending on the activity level of each person. Endurance athletes, the recommendation increases to 1.2-1.4g/lb., and strength athletes is a touch higher at 1.4-1.8g/lb.  Our youth athletes can safely consume between 0.8-1.0 grams of protein for every pound of body weight each day. So assuming you have a 120 lb. child, they should have up to 120 grams of protein per day. But how do we make that happen? What does this look like? The typical profile of protein consists of 7-grams for every 1 oz. of meat. With that in mind, someone that has 3-ounces of chicken breast will have consumed 21-grams of protein. The optimal amount for protein usage is between 20-30g in a meal. Why? Because the body has a hard time utilizing protein for repair and recovery after 30-grams. This is called protein synthesis. So assuming you have a 120 lb. child, they should be having 4 meals a day with 20-30 grams of protein in each meal. As an example, here are some easy ways to find 20-30g of protein.   For a high school athlete, it’s a breakfast consisting of 2 eggs & 3 egg whites, or 1-cup of cottage cheese or Greek yogurt. As you can see, it doesn’t need to be overly complicated. Another easy way to measure this for animal protein is to make a fist and have a serving size that matches the size of your hand.   Alternative Protein Options & Creatine As a coach, I always encourage whole food options for the primary source of calories consumed daily. Our bodies operate and recover best when we consume all-natural earth grown nutrition. This means lean meats, fruits & vegetable, nuts, seeds, and high-quality dairy. One cloudy area is the use of supplementation among youth athletes, especially protein supplements.  Enticed by the promise of “hope in a can,” teenagers tend to overuse the products, assuming that if one scoop is good, then four to five would be even better.  It’s important to know the following: Protein supplements provide NO added benefit over regular diet Federal regulations do not require that protein drinks and other dietary supplements be tested before they are sold to ensure that they’re safe, effective, and

We attended a great event last weekend (that we HIGHLY recommend!) aimed at coaching healthy athletes, both physically and mentally, organized by the CHLA Sports Medicine Program, LA Galaxy Foundation and the Positive Coaching Alliance. It aims to give youth sports parents practical tips and tools to help guide children in learning the life lessons that sports provide. If you’re interested in learning more, they are having a *free* event at Palisades Rec Center next Friday, August 25! 7-9pm. They’ll be covering the best ways to set your child up for success on and off the field, character development, how to set goals for your child, and the rise of youth sports specialization related to overuse injuries and concussions. Contact Bill Maniscalco for more information! 310-454-1412  / bill.maniscalco@lacity.org, or check out their website, www.positivecoach.org

THE SLEEP CURE  (Original article by Alice Park, in TIME Health Feb 16, 2017)   The evidence linking quality rest to good health and longevity has never been more convincing, especially as it relates to aging, processing emotions, mental health, and disease prevention. Scientists are learning that shortchanging sleep can compromise nearly every major body system, from the brain to the heart to the immune system, making our inability–or unwillingness–to sleep enough one of the unhealthiest things we can do. Studies of people whose sleep sessions are irregular or shorter than seven hours show they are at higher risk of developing diseases that can lead to early death, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. Poor sleep may have detrimental effects on the brain as well, increasing the risk of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, as well as mood disorders like depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety. And like smoking, a terrible diet and not exercising enough, poor sleep is now linked to an overall increased risk of premature death. “I used to suggest that sleep is the third pillar of good health, along with diet and exercise,” says Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. “But I don’t agree with that anymore. Sleep is the single most effective thing you can do to reset your brain and body for health.” Despite the mounting evidence of its benefits, Americans are sleeping about two hours less each night than they did a century ago, and while life expectancy has been inching upward over the past century thanks to advances in medicine and technology, those gains could start to sag under the weight of our collective sleeplessness. Many people still dismiss sleep as something they can occasionally (or even regularly) skimp on. Perhaps that’s because until very recently, scientists couldn’t even agree on the evolutionary reason why animals need to sleep in the first place. But now they know that what happens during sleep, particularly in the brain, is critical to human well-being–not to mention a long life. Spending a good third of the day oblivious to the world around you and, by extension, incapable of protecting yourself doesn’t seem like a smart way for a species to stay alive. And yet every animal does it, leading scientists to accept that sleep must be nonnegotiable for some reason–and that we must need a certain amount of it to survive. Following a rigorous, milestone study in 2002 of more than 1 million healthy men and women by the American Cancer Society, experts found that people who slept seven hours per night were most likely to still be alive at the end of the study’s six years, compared with people who got either six hours or less, or eight hours or more, of sleep each night. To this day, seven hours is typically the amount that doctors and public-health groups recommend for the average adult. Another even longer study, which followed more than 21,000 twins in Finland, found that people who were regularly sleeping less than seven hours daily were 21% to 26% more likely to die of any cause during the study’s 22-year period than those who slept more than eight hours. So clearly sleep has some real biological benefit. Could it just be that the brain and body need downtime to recuperate after the activity of the day? That was the most popular explanation for decades, until an inquisitive neuroscientist at the University of Rochester decided to look for the answer inside the brain itself. When she did, Dr. Maiken Nedergaard uncovered what many scientists now agree is sleep’s primary evolutionary function: to clean out the brain, quite literally, of accumulating debris. In 2014, Nedergaard first revealed that while the body appears to rest during sleep, a whole lot is happening inside the brain. Neurons pulse with electrical signals that wash over the brain in a rhythmic flow. The brain runs checks on itself to ensure that the balance of hormones, enzymes and proteins isn’t too far off-kilter. All the while, brain cells contract, opening up the spaces between them so that fluid can wash out the toxic detritus that can cause all kinds of problems if it builds up. “It’s like a dishwasher that keeps flushing through to wash the dirt away,” Nedergaard says. Without that nightly wash cycle, dangerous toxins can damage healthy cells and interfere with their ability to communicate with one another. In the short term, that can impede memory formation and the ability to coherently compose our thoughts and regulate our emotions. Over time, the consequences can be more dire. Lack of sleep can lead to faster aging of brain cells, contributing to diseases like Alzheimer’s, which is now the cause of death for 1 in 3 seniors. “Sleep is not just a passive state but a fairly active state on the molecular level,” says Dr. Allan Pack, director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania. “During the day, the brain is using energy resources to fire neurons. At night, a switch turns on so the sleeping brain can take advantage of the metabolic downtime to do some cleaning up.” The idea that sleep is a time of important biological activity, rather than a period when the body checks out, is transforming how doctors think about another important factor in longevity: mental health. Scientists have long known that sleep is important for memory. But it turns out that during sleep, especially the cycles of deep dream sleep, the brain doesn’t just revisit the events of a day in a more organized way. It also works on processing the emotions attached to these recollections. When a memory is filed away during sleep, it’s also stripped of some of the powerful feelings–like fear, grief, anger or joy–that might have clouded the experiences in the heat of the moment. It wouldn’t be healthy, or efficient, to remember every event or experience in its