Train For Life

I’m venturing out of my comfort zone on this one!

So I’m watching CNN last night and everyone is talking about tonite’s State of the Union speech and what Obama is going to say.  As usual, they had a panel of people…a few from each side discussing what needs to happen, what Obama needs to do, say, his mistakes, etc.  It raised a few thoughts.  Before going any further,  let me say I do not pretend to know much about politics, the political process, the new health care reform bill, etc.  I think I’m in the majority with regards to that.  Unfortunately, many people in the same category as me don’t realize it.   I may be totally off base  (and let me know if I am) but this is how I see it.

First, the panel was discussing the election of Mr. Brown in Massachusetts and why he was elected.  Some on the panel were saying polls indicate it was because the people didn’t want the new health care reform to pass, some were saying it was basically because Mrs. Coakley ran a bad campaign (which is true), some were saying it was a message to Washington saying that the people do not like what the Democrats have done to our country (as if the previous 8 years were just peachy!).  News flash, the deficit didn’t just start 1 year ago!  Anyway…. 

I tend to think the majority of people don’t really know why they really vote the way they do.  I believe most people make their decision based on initial reaction to a candidates presence (their appearance, how they present themselves), or who their friends told them to vote for, and less on what they actually stand for, or can accomplish.  I think that played a large role in Obama’s election even though I voted for him.  As a friend of mine said, “the majority of the electorate in this country is very ignorant of the facts”, and I think that is the way the politicians like it.  I believe most of the people against this health care bill don’t even know what they are complaining about, or what they are against.  Honestly, do you really think you know all the ins and outs of this new health care bill and how it is ultimately going to affect you?  Have you read it? The politicians are always quibbling on TV about what’s in the bill, how it’s going to affect people, the economy, or even what the bill actually is! How are we supposed to even to have a clue?  I tend to think that it’s this way for a reason.  Nothing is made clear, these things are written to be confusing so the average person needs an interpreter to understand it. Most people don’t have the time or patience.  I don’t pretend to know everything about this bill, and if it’s going to work or not.  How can anyone really know?    

With that said, this IS what I do know.  The past 8 years have been atrocious as far as my health care experiences are concerned.  My daughter is now 7 ½.  When she was born we had top tier coverage. It cost a fair amount, but I was fine w/paying it because procedures, tests, and visits were covered.  Each subsequent year our premium increased 20-25%  AND along with each increase came a drop to a lower level of coverage.  How is that a reasonable rate of increase?  That happened for about 3 years in a row until we were at the bottom of the barrel as far as coverage, and paying out the nose for premiums.  It forced us to look for different health insurance.  We found a new provider, gave them a shot and that was still horrible.  We knew what kind of coverage we had, but unfortunately that doesn’t always help when you don’t really know what the hospitals are now charging for certain things.  For example, I needed to get an MRI for my low back to check on some back pain I was having.  The bill came in at $7100  for an MRI!!!  I had a heart attack when I saw that.  First of all, it’s ridiculous that the hospital would even think of charging that much.  The insurance provider assured me it was not $7100 and not to worry.  The next I heard was that the insurance agreed to pay $2,000 and hospital sent me a bill for $5,000, and that was it! Done!  “Oh Mr. Yuhas, you owe us $5000, how would you like to pay?”  Does that sound like a system that is working?  I would have been better off going in and telling them I had no insurance and they most likely would have billed me for $1500-$2,000.  So not only did I end up paying my insurance premiums but I ended up with an even higher bill because of it.  I’m getting the shaft because the private insurance companies are greedy, and the hospital and doctors are afraid of not getting paid for their services.  Who ends up getting the shaft?  Me, the patient, me the customer.  I don’t know if the new health care reform bill will be any better, but I know the current situation isn’t working.  The fact of the matter is, the private insurance companies have no reason to make their rates affordable, or their coverage adequate.  Will competition help?  Who knows, but it’s not working the way things are now.

 Secondly, I can remember hearing from the conservatives during the last year of Bush’s presidency (when shit really started to hit the fan with the economy). The republicans were saying “oh all of this is a result of the Clinton Administration; it has just taken this long to work through the system and show up.  This is all a result of Clinton’s policies”.  Interesting!  Now that Obama has been in office an entire year, they expect everything to be fixed up quickly.  On one side, they say “these things take time (8 yrs) to run through the system before we can really see the effect they are going to have” which is a very convenient way of taking the blame off themselves.  On the other side, Obama inherits a mess like we’ve never seen before, and he is supposed to get everything fixed within a year?  How convenient!  It’s usually much easier to fuck things up, than it is to fix them.  In the fitness world, there is a saying regarding exercise technique.  It goes something like “it takes 100 reps to create a bad habit, and a 1,000 reps to fix it.”  I’m so tired of every Tom, Dick, and Harry spouting all their great ideas about what needs to be done.  Do these people really think they know everything that is involved in all of this? Many things can appears simple on the surface.  Do they really think they are smarter than someone like….. Ben Bernanke for instance.  I don’t have a clue about what is involved in managing the country’s economy, but I’m pretty sure it’s a bit more complicated than the average “expert” on the street could handle.  These are probably the same people who find it challenging to balance out their checkbook,

 Now the actual “health” part.  Honestly, we need to find a new word, something to replace the “health” in Healthcare reform.  The panel on TV was discussing aspects of the new reform and how it was going to affect treatment, prescriptions, etc.  Those things do not involve health, they involve sickness.  People are standing around abusing themselves and then sticking their hands out saying “What about me?” “I can’t afford my meds”, “Who’s going to help me?”  We are a sick, unhealthy nation, and we will never get this healthcare issue under control if we don’t get our health under control.  A main reason why the costs are so high (besides greed) is because we have so many sick people overwhelming the entire system.  Do you know how many billions of dollars are spent every year on drugs for high cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, blood thinners, skin conditions, allergies, inflammation, etc.  Let me tell you…..alot!  A majority of all these issues are firstly, preventable, and secondly, fixable often times without drugs.  Sure, we all get sick sometime regardless of how healthy we are, genetics do play a role in our health, accidents will happen.  But those instances make up a small part of the entire number of health cases seen in this country.  Many…way too many, are caused by decisions we make.  We need to be more responsible for our own health.  We can’t leave something like that up to big business or the government.  It’s not that hard, take control of your and your family’s health!

Let’s be real.  Kids will be kids.  Kids make bad food choices.  They often don’t have access to good quality food in school, and  advertisements for processed food products like cereals, snacks, candy, etc. are all geared towards children.   Children are fatter and more inactive than ever.  Because of all these facts, it is more important now more than ever before, that children get some supplementation to give them a fighting chance. 

Bad nutrition effects their physical health, their emotional health, their immune system,  their intelligence, their ability to focus, their ability to learn, and so on.  The quality of food in the supermarkets is so poor that even if they are eating relatively healthy choices, they are probably not even getting close to the proper amount of nutrients they really need.  Having organic food and meat prices as high as they are doesn’t help the situation either. 

For these reasons we choose to give our kids some supplements.  Here are the supplements we currently give our children. 

 We start our day off with a kids probiotic to help their immune system.  Fortunately my children have been healthy this winter, have not gotten terribly sick,  and have not had to take any antibiotics for anything.  If they were on antibiotics I would make sure they had a healthy dose of probiotics after finishing up their meds.  That’s where a strong immune system starts, in the colon with healthy bacteria.  Antibiotics do not play favorites, they kill both good and bad bacteria.  You must help reconstitute the colon with the good bacteria.

 A kids multivitamin is next.  Read the labels and make sure there aren’t any additives that shouldn’t be there.  Things like artificial sweeteners, coloring, fillers, etc.  That crap will even make it into vitamins, believe it or not.

Third is a gram or two of lemon flavored fish oil with breakfast, and again at dinner.  I’ve been over the importance of this in just about every other article I’ve written so I will not  go into too much detail.  Just know that research has shown omega 3’s to have a profound effect on children’s attention levels, memory capabilities, and cognitive abilities resulting in better reading and math scores, etc.  DHA, one of fatty acids found in fish oil, is the most abundant type of fat found in the brain.  I recall reading a study done in New Zealand that involved supplementing some children with omega 3 over the course of the school year.  The results were impressive, the children who were supplemented with omega 3 showed an increase in academic scores and a dramatic decrease was seen in disciplinary problems.  The info is out there if you need to be persuaded a bit more.  It’s funny, when I tell people how much fish oil I try to take per day (anywhere from 10-30 grams/day), they think I’m crazy.  “That’s way too much!”  Really?  People won’t think twice about eating a pint of ice cream, or eating a big mac w/large fries, or 6-8 pieces of pizza in ONE meal (all of which contain much, much more unhealthy fat), but that 10-30 grams of healthy “good for you” fat is too much over the course of the whole day.  Interesting!

Next… 2,000 iu’s of Vitamin D3 in drop form in their morning drink which is generally water or homemade juice.  I’ll generally juice 2 or 3 apples, 3 carrots, 1 celery stalk, 1 cucumber, some spinach if I can sneak it in, and a chunk of ginger to finish it off.  It is delicious,  they love making it, and they love drinking it.  Back to Vitamin D3.  More and more research is showing the importance of vitamin D3 and how deficiencies in this vitamin are being seen in most sickness and disease.  The lack of year round sunshine and the nutritionally deficient foods are a huge culprit, especially for those of us who live in the northeast during the winter.  Again, the info is out there, just do a little research.  The current RDA of vitamin D, 400 iu’s, is believed to be ridiculously low by many doctors and nutritionist.  For adults, i have read anywhere from 2,000-10,000 iu’s per day to get blood levels back up into a more acceptable range over a 3-6 month period.  You can get home test kits for about $70.  I recently had mine tested and I came back in the low-normal range.  I could certainly use a couple more rays of sun.   One more thing, the darker the skin, the lower the ability to synthesis Vit D from the sun…and if you use sunblock, you won’t be getting any vitamin D either.    

We will also  try to offer them a protein ”milk shake” which is nothing more than whey protein, water, and sometimes a bannana.  If I notice they are having a  meal containing mostly carbs and fat with little protein I will usually try and offer the milk shake to balance things out.  If it’s between meals and they are hungry it’s a piece of fruit and a shake or at least we try to convince them to eat that.  It doesn’t always work, sometimes the goldfish crackers win but at least we make an effort to offer them a healthier option.  One more thing, if you buy whey protein, try and find one without artificial sweeteners like Aspartame or Acesulfame K.  That stuff is horrible, plain & simple! 

Your kids are totally worth the extra effort!  Don’t you agree?

 If you’ve been a regular reader on this site you can probably tell that most of the stuff I write usually originates from my frustrations, and interactions with people at work or from reading something online, usually by someone else who works in the same field.  Today is no different. 

I was browsing around online reading various articles by various authors and I started to feel a little annoyed, a little anxious.   I couldn’t really figure out what I was annoyed with because I didn’t necessarily disagree with what I was reading.  Then I figured out what it was. 

My wife and I have been training people for approximately 15 years and we’ve done our fair share of reading, learning, exercising, and training people.  What I realized was that I was annoyed because after reading a few articles and blogs here and there, day after day, what ends up happening is that I feel like I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore.  I feel completely unqualified mainly because every professional out there is saying something different, disagreeing with each other, promoting different kinds of workouts, different kinds of eating plans, different this, different that.  

There are so many fads and so many options out there.  Exercise programs ranging from the ridiculous (like those ab contraptions or some of those other exercise programs you see on tv),  to businesses like “Curves”,  to programs that focus strictly on “functional’ training”.  You’ll see people performing all these crazy exercise that resembles stunts more than exercises.  I really believe we need to simplify sometimes.  I think the attention span of the average person,(especially these days), is so short, that we get bored so easily, and are always looking for another source of stimulation.  Ultimately, we end up never really sticking with anything.  We are willing to give up on something  even if it’s the most effective program, for the sake of trying something new regardless of how effective it is.  I’ve gotten pulled into this same mode over the years.  I went from strictly  “bodybuilding’ type workout programs to what is/was called ”functional” training (which was just getting popular at the time), then it was spinning, and so on.  They were all fun at the time but I didn’t get tremendous results from any one of them.   

There is a something called “Pareto’s law” or “Pareto’s principle”.  Generally it says that 80% of results come from 20% of the means.  Pareto was an economist, but it seems the saying applies to much more than just economics.  In the case of exercise, 80% of your results will usually come from only 20% of the exercises you are performing which means many of us are doing way too many useless things when we are working out and not getting any real results from them.  I really couldn’t agree more. 

Like I mentioned before, people seem to get so bored so easily that they will try anything as long as it looks cool.  For example, the bosu ball, balance work, kickboxing classes, and spinning.  I’ve done most of them myself.  In order to see if something works you usually have to try it, but if something doesn’t work, you have to start questioning its long term efficacy.  Is it you (how you move), was it how you were doing it, how the instructor presented it, or was it  just the product or program that was alot of hype. I’m not saying those specific programs are “all useless” but it does seem to me that for the amount of time and effort people are putting into these activities, the results (as far as strength and/or weight loss) often times are minimal.  I don’t see more people who are in better shape today than in the days prior to all these programs and products.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite, I see more and more people out of shape, overweight, injured, on meds complaining about healthcare.   We have a bosu ball at our gym that i occasionally use, I used to teach spinning, I used to have people perform balance work (and occassionally still do)…but I have never done a kickboxing class, really, I haven’t (but my wife has).  Over the past few years I have generally phased out most of these things when working with clients and with my own workouts.  So what am I suggesting? 

Let’s think in terms of what is natural, what is natural movement. Is it natural to sit on your ass all day in front of a computer or TV?  Is it natural to sit in a car all day?  It’s common, but it’s not natural.  If it was we probably wouldn’t have evolved into creatures that could run and jump and lift.  We would have morphed into some creature with no legs and arms like a T-Rex.  If we go back to the Paleolithic era, which is when the first hand tools were developed and when humans started forming groups, we would see they were very active.   Do you think they sat on their butt all day.  It was natural for them to climb, work for their food, sprint from an animal trying to kill them, sprint to kill an animal, be able to throw a rock to kill their food, carry a kill on their shoulders, etc.  You get the idea.  Sure the world is different and we don’t need to do these things but that is what our bodies were designed to do.  Physically we haven’t evolved much from that era…but that could change if we don’t start changing our habits.

I started thinking in terms of what ”natural” exercises are.  By “natural” I mean, what motions do we perform day in and day out in our world, what do we need strength for especially as we get older.  Let’s start with the basics.  What are my daily activities that require strength.  Well, I’m always picking something off the floor, whether it’s my kids, or whether it’s getting a 40lb bag of dog food at the store, or lifting 60lb trash barrels into my truck.  So that tells me I need to get strong and proficient at lifting off the floor.  OK, that’s a deadlift, and exercise that has been around forever that no one appears to do anymore because of difficulty, fear, and misinformation.  What else…well in terms of strength training; squatting, pushing,  and pulling!  80% of your results will come from performing these very basic exercises.  Sure, there are many variations to them, but don’t get too carried away.  Spend your time getting strong at the basics.  You’ll be surprised at the spillover effect.  They will make everything else easier. 

Take what was 20% of your workout and make it 80% of your workout.  Learn how to deadlift, how to squat, perform your presses and your pulls.  The variations of each of these exercises, and the variation in the reps you perform will be enough to keep your strength increasing and your body from adapting .  Now remember, the more strength you have, the more muscle you can build, and what burns fat?  Yup, you guessed it!!   So if gaining weight is a concern it’s important to remember that  muscle is much denser than fat… it takes up less space.  And for those of you “afraid” of getting “too muscular” realize that muscle is much easier to get rid of than fat…(but that’s a topic for another time)