City Coach | Coach Cane's Blog

Imagine How Slow She Would Have Been If She Hadn't Walked

Back in June, the New York Times' Tara Parker-Pope wrote the following under the title "Better Running Through Walking".  "To train for my first marathon, I’m using the “run-walk” method, popularized by the distance coach Jeff Galloway, a member of the 1972 Olympic team. When I mentioned this to a colleague who runs, she snickered — a common reaction among purists."  Well count me among those purists.  Or at least among those whose minds are not so open that our brains fall out. 

Like many others, I posted a comment at her blog.  And like many others, my comment was shot down by the author, who has no background in exercise science or athletics.  While TPP may control her blog, I control mine and posted about the topic without her editorial comments.  For those who can't be bothered to read what I opined at the time, I simply stated that while walking breaks are appropriate for those who are unprepared to run a marathon, the idea of a well trained runner going faster by incorporating walking breaks is in defiance of logic and science.  But the Galloway and his cult like to give bits of anecdotal evidence (some of which is accurate and some - like their claim that Ronaldo da Costa used Galloway's method in his marathon wins - is patently false) to support their argument.  Here's one they might want to leave out of the argument:

NYC MARATHON
November 1, 2009
Tara Parker-Pope
Finish Time:6:58:19

Pace:15:58/mile

As a postscript, it's interesting to note that TPP has now changed her tune.  She has decided that walking breaks are no longer the way to do your best marathon or go faster as she has previously claimed.  Now she says "The main benefit of the run-walk method is that it eases your body into exercise, makes marathon training less grueling and gives muscles time to recover, reducing the risk of injury. Walk breaks are an ideal way for new runners and older, less fit and overweight people to take part in a sport that would otherwise be off limits.

"The downside is that just as you are out on the marathon course about 50 percent longer than the average runner, your training time is much longer, too — four and five hours a weekend for long runs.

In other words, she is agreeing with what i said all along.

Exploding Myths

For the sake of those misguided souls who ignore science and choose to include "functional" and explosive training in their strength routines, I've posted this link to an article written by Ken Mannie, Head Strength & Conditioning Coach at Michigan State University.

"The subject of explosive weight training is one that has been in the center of a maelstrom among strength and conditioning practitioners for quite some time. Many individuals and some associations advocate the use of so-called explosive weight training movements, which purportedly offer trainees a distinct advantage in speed and power development over those who choose to incorporate more controlled movements".

read more at baye.com

Watch Your Tone

One of the most persistent and baseless myths in the world of muscle physiology is the "high reps/low weight builds defined and 'toned' muscles."  Everyone from the gurus in Muscle and Fiction Magazine to the Jane Fonda aerobics types, to the Pilates peeps continue to spew out this myth.  All the Pilates in the world won't build a long, sinewy muscle.  Muscles have an origin and an insertion.  They're attached to tendons that are attached to bones.  You can't change that.  Muscles aren't really that smart.  They know how to do one thing, and one thing only - grow.  If you work them hard enough, they get bigger.  So the woman in the corner of the gym doing outer thigh exercises all day is either completely wasting her time, or making the muscles in her outer thighs a little bigger.  In most cases, not a whole heck of a lot bigger, but bigger nonetheless.  You don't suppose that the guy doing biceps curls is hoping his guns shrink, do you?  Remember - five muscles enough stimulus and they grow.  Otherwise they don't.  End of story. 

The main difference between defined and not is body composition.  Take a fat dude and have him do crunches all day and he'll have a fat dude with strong abs obscured by a big layer of fat.  If you want a six-pack you need to have both muscle, and a lack of fat obscuring it.  Think of it this way - if you could burn fat around a muscle or make it more defined by exercising it, you could chew gum all day and have a chiseled jaw. 

Flex This

As I was flipping channels from TMZ to The Real Housewives of New Jersey (I love the way they tawk), I accidentally stumbled upon CNN.  Some talking head said something about a senator "flexing his political muscle".  Since I obviously have no concern for national politics, you're probably wondering why this caught my attention.  Because you can't flex a muscle.  You contract a muscle, and you flex a joint.  I suppose Mr. TV Guy can be forgiven, but if you want to see that little vein in my temple bulge, sit me next to a so-called health professional who misuses the term. 

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

As I mentioned yesterday, the good folks at New York Road Runners have on more than one occasion caused my hair to hurt.  Though they're not as consistent in their ability to agitate me, the paper of record - the New York Times - is doing their best.  They've gotten me with ridiculous hyperbole in articles suggesting that the average gym denizen and casual runners need to worry about overtraining.  They've gotten me with the inability to understand research methods and statistics when they promoted the idea that treadmills burn more calories than other gym equipment or that you don't lose weight swimming.  (In fact those two articles were used by my statistics professor to show how lay people misunderstand research.)  Now they've upped the misleading and misguided ante with "Why Walk Breaks Help You Run".  The author, Tara Parker Pope, shows a remarkable combination of arrogance and ignorance as she parrots Jeff Galloway's and spews them as if they are fact. 

Considering the fact that Galloway's methods are dismissed by most running coaches and sports scientists, perhaps the title of the NY Times article did not need to be so definitive. (Then again, when did the Times last allow for an opinion that differed from theirs?)  Galloway and the article's author provide nothing but anecdotal evidence to support their claims that the walk-run method can lead to faster times or decreased injuries.  Making matters even worse, the author chimes in and criticizes any and all attempts to refute her with online comments, yet still refuses to provide proof.  She (and Galloway before him) have been asked to substantiate their claims with more than anecdotal evidence, but as usual they provide none. 

If you wonder why I am so offended by Galloway, here's a little background.  When asked about the benefit of running on softer surfaces than concrete, Galloway wrote "Asphalt is softer than concrete and treadmills are softer than both.  FICTION.  While some people hay they feel the difference among the surfaces, after coaching more than 250,000 runners, I haven't seen any difference in rate of injury or fatigue when running on asphalt, concrete or treadmills.  You can reduce the impact on your body on any surface by taking enough walk breaks from the beginning." So he claims to have coached a quarter million runners, and to not notice the difference between surfaces, but we're supposed to treat him as credible.  (Guess which surface I'd like to drop him on.)  (For the record, I understand the argument that running on soft surfaces may not be best for all runners, and there seems to be some scientific as well as anecdotal evidence to suggest that asphalt is better for runners with soft tissue injuries.)

Galloway always dodges the science that clearly proves that walking slower and then having to overcome that by running faster is less efficient than running at a steady intermediate pace.  Pete Pfitzinger explains it well.  "The most efficient way to run a marathon is to run at very close to an even pace, because running portions of the race much faster than an even pace causes a build-up of lactate (hydrogen ions are the actual culprit) and other metabolites that make you slow down. If you run a portion of the race slower than the optimal pace, then by necessity you must run another portion faster than the optimal pace (which causes a build-up of metabolites that make you slow down), so the net result is a poorer performance. Walking a portion of a marathon would require you to run other portions of the race much faster to run a given total time, so it would be detrimental to your result. While this may seem obvious, apparently there have been quotes attributed to Jeff Galloway suggesting that walking would somehow improve elite marathon performance."

Galloway even claims that even elite runners can benefit from his method, though only MOP and slower runners seem to be available to back him on this.  A while back he claimed that Ronaldo da Costa used walking breaks in one of his marathon wins.  That sound you hear is Mr. da Costa laughing and refuting Galloway's lies. 

A while back I slammed Galloway's hyperbole at another message board and was quickly rebuffed by one of his proponents who said that since I've never run a 2:16 marathon like Galloway, I'm clearly not as knowledgeable as he.  Being a fan of irony, I appreciated that comment, since Mr. Galloway didn't take any walking breaks in his Olympic marathon.

Burn This

Nothing makes my hair hurt quite like listening to some guy who's heavier on biceps than brains sharing his "wisdom" about working out.  Last week I wrote about the myth of "the pump" and its role in gym lore.  A related issue is "the burn".

The burning sensation during certain resistance training is due to the accumulation of acid in the fatiguing muscle. Anaerobic glycolysis uses carbohydrates and produces water and acid, or free hydrogen ions. When blood flow is limited (as described in last week's post) the acid accumulates.  All that acid creates a burning sensation but is not indicative of fat burning, muscle growth, or the effectiveness of an exercise, though it does impede the muscle's ability to contract further.

One other factor that is well explained by our friends at exrx.net is the fact that "it can also be misleading to judge an exercise's effectiveness on a particular muscle group based upon local muscular fatigue. For example, a common misconception is that leg raises exercise the lower abdomen since most exercisers feel a burning sensation in this area."  In fact, the muscles involved in producing the movement (hip flexion) are not your abdominals.  Your abdominal muscles are contracting isometrically in order to stabilize you, but they're not causing the movement, and as such  - even though they're hard, and even though you "feel the burn" - leg lifts are not good for much other than getting you better at doing more leg lifts.

Master Blaster

Water, lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper.  It sounds like something MacGyver would combine with a stick of gum to disarm a nuclear device.  Unfortunately, they're actually the ingredients of the much ballyhooed Master Cleanse diet. 

In the Master Cleanse, you basically fast for 10 days, taking in only a drink made from water, lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper.  You are pretty much guaranteed to lose some weight, but in the long term, you're probably going to gain it all back, and then some.  The only calories in this brilliant concoctions come from the maple syrup, which is basically just sugar.  Some claim that the lemon juice's acidic property causes it to have some cleansing properties.  The only thing that claim lacks is a shred of science.  The comes the cayenne pepper, which pretty much just gives you the runs. Essentially, you're taking a laxative and some water.

Spending a week on such a low calorie diet will serve to significantly decrease your resting metabolic rate.  Then once you go back to eating the same calories that you did before the diet, you'll actually gain weight because of the slower metabolism.  Oops. 

As for the nonsense about some sort of detoxifying effect, let's look at commentary from Dr. Ed Zimney.  "While it is true that the body absorbs a variety of toxic materials from the environment, the important thing to understand is that either the body already has a mechanism to remove the toxins or it does not. The body uses the liver, kidneys, GI tract and the lungs to rid itself of many toxic materials. This is normal. Some toxins, however, cannot be eliminated normally because they build up in “hidden” locations such as fat tissue or within the airways (think of miner’s lung disease). Some of these toxins can be removed using highly sophisticated medical treatments, but some can’t and some people who work with certain toxic chemicals can die from this exposure. Most importantly, however, is that drinking this peppered lemonade could not in any possible way eliminate any of these toxins."

Aside from the lack of health benefits, the negative effect on your metabolism, and the dangers of malnutrition, Master Cleanse seems like a great idea.

I Want to Reactive Hyperemia You Up

As I left our Central Park workout tonight, I overheard a couple of guys coming straight from a Mensa meeting talking about biceps exercises.  One mentioned that he preferred a particular exercise because he got a great "pump".  Problem is that a good pump doesn't necessarily translate to a good workout.

Here's the story.  When a muscle contracts, the diameter of the muscle increases as the fibers shorten.  During a sufficiently intense contraction, the muscle itself presses against the blood vessel and temporarily occludes the blood flow, causing a back up of blood to that area.  When the contraction ends and the occlusion is released, the body overcompensates and sends a rush of blood to the area.  This phenomenon is technically known as reactive hyperemia, and is commonly referred to as a "pump".  When a muscle is pumped and appears bigger after an intense workout, it's because of temporary blood flow - not because the muscle itself is bigger. 

Caffeine

A friend just mentioned that one of his new year's resolutions is to give up caffeine.  That's lovely I suppose, though I don't really understand why so many people have an aversion to caffeine or feel guilty for enjoying it.

In fact, caffeine has a well-documented ergogenic effect on athletes.  During sustained, sub-maximal activities it can increase the mobilization of free fatty acids.  In other words, it makes fat more available as fuel for your workout.  In addition, it appears to decrease a motor unit's excitation threshold.  (In non-SAT words, that means that you use more muscle for a given activity, which makes the activity seem easier.) 

Blood levels peak about an hour after ingestion, though the maximum fat mobilization appears to take place after 3-4 hours, so adjust your intake accordingly.  You may also want to consider decreasing your caffeine intake for a few days before a big event, since you build a tolerance after repeated use.  Also keep in mind that caffeine does have some potential negative issues including gastrointestinal distress, insomnia, etc, and is a diuretic, so it should be used sparingly when hydration is a consideration

Caffeine tablets are available, and for those who are particularly averse to the GI issues and have a little creatiivty, there are other, more invasive means of administration.  (Please don't make me draw a picture).

Lastly, if you're worried because caffeine is on the International Olympic Committee's list of banned substances, consider this little conundrum.  While a cup of brewed coffee has about 125 milligrams of caffeine, and 100-300 milligrams have the greatest ergognic effect, most people would need to ingest 1000 milligrams to reach the threshold for testing positive.  (The actual test is based on urinary concentrations, so the exact amount that you'd need to take varies, but is still in excess of the amount necessary for optimal ergognic effect.)

So, eschew the coffee, tea, cola and chocolate if it'll make you feel better about yourself.  Just don't think it's gonna make you healthier. 

And By The Way, There's No Santa Claus

 I'm a big fan of massage for a 
number of reasons. Massage can 
reduce muscle spasms, it can
help increase ROM, and - 
possibly most important - 
it feels really good. 

Licensed massage therapists 
are health professionals who 
are required to study anatomy, 
physiology, kinesiology, etc, 
and they deserve more respect 
than they are often given. (Can 
you imagine unlicensed physical 
therapists or chiropractors practicing in storefronts or advertising without
any state intervention the way so many "masseuses and masseurs" do in NY?)

Still, there's a statement that's constantly repeated by a lot of massage 
proponents that I've never heard defended with science. I'm often told that
massage helps promote the removal of "toxins". In fact even Massage Today
has acknowledged the lack of truth in such claims. "There's a statement, 
seemingly pervasive throughout massage education and massage books, that 
unspecified toxins accumulate in the body, and that these toxins can be 
flushed out by massage. I believe this is yet another myth that continues 
to be passed on as misinformation to massage students. This is not to 
dispute that there are very real toxins that accumulate in the body, notably persistent organic
pollutants (POPs) in fatty tissues and heavy metals in skeletal
tissues. However, these toxins are too chemically bound to their
target tissues to be significantly liberated by the mechanical motions
of massage."

I also hear about massage promoting lactic acid removal. As previously 
discussed, lactic acid is not the culprit in delayed onset muscle soreness
- but even if it was, I know of no science supporting the claim that massage
can reduce lactic acid. A study published in the International Journal 
of Sports Medicine that examined massage vs. active recovery vs. passive 
recovery from exercise quickly debunks that myth. "Analysis of lactate 
values indicated no remarkable difference between massage and a passive type of sitting recovery period. It was
observed that in short term massage recovery, more oxygen was consumed
as compared to a passive type of sitting recovery. It is concluded
from the study that the short term body massage is ineffective in
enhancing the lactate removal and that an active type of recovery is
the best modality for enhancing lactate removal after exercise."