Excellent Squat Instructional Videos

I’m squatting quite a bit these days and I’m teaching clients to squat. There are a lot of fine points to this excellent exercise and it can be challenging to both learn and teach correct squat technique. I’m also on Twitter a lot these days and I found a great two-part series on squatting from EliteFTS.com. (Tons of good strength info at this site.) I’m planning on incorporating some of these teaching points into my squat instruction. And if you have no interest in squatting, you’ll at least get a look at some high quality facial hair.

So you think you can squat part I

So you think you can squat part II

Exercise and Relationships, Lift Weights to Lose Weight, Books

Exercise & Relationships

What happens to a relationship when one person exercises a lot and the other doesn’t? The Wall St. Journal offers an analysis of several such situations in A Workout Ate My Marriage. As you might imagine, stress may develop if one partner spends a lot of time training and the other doesn’t.

We see this situation with Caren and Jordan Waxman. Jordan is not only a Merrill Lynch exec with two law degrees and an MBA, he’s also an Ironman triathlete who competes all over the country. His time spent training plus his job requirements means significant time away from his wife and family.

The article quotes a therapist:

“Exercise is getting more and more couples into my office,” says Karen Gail Lewis, a Cincinnati marriage and family therapist.

The article profiles other couples including the strange pairing of an avid marathoner and vegetarian with a sedentary mean-and-potatoes fellow who just recently gave up a two-pack-a-day smoking habit. Lois and Gary Berkowitz occupy opposite ends of the exercise spectrum yet they seem happily married. He accompanies her to races and helps edit a running newsletter. All seems well for them.

(Interestingly, all the athletes profiled are endurance athletes. No weightlifters, powerlifters or bodybuilders appeared in the article. What are their relationships like? Perhaps the much smaller time requirements to get stronger mean happier marriages than the hours and hours required to win marathons and triathlons.)

Lift Weights to Lose Weight

Alwyn Cosgrove and his wife Rachel are both highly successful trainers and owners of Results Gym in California. Alwyn’s blog is full of useful information, and I recommend you have a look at it. One such article is The New Science of Fat Loss. (This first appeared in Men’s Health.) The article discusses the old myth that low-intensity aerobic exercise is the best way to shed fat. New research suggests that weight training burns more calories per unit of time. Researchers put subjects on a reduced-calorie diet and put them in three groups. One group didn’t exercise, another performed aerobic exercise 3 days a week, and a third did both aerobic exercise and weight training 3 days a week. The article states:

“The results: Each group lost nearly the same amount of weight—about 21 pounds per person in 12 weeks. But the lifters shed 5 more pounds of fat than those who didn’t pump iron. The weight they lost was almost pure fat, while the other two groups shed 15 pounds of lard, but also gave up 5-plus pounds of muscle.”

What’s the take-home message? Weight training is a must for physique change! If you’re using plodding, long-duration/low-intensity cardio work as your primary means of weight loss you’re behind the times and you’re wasting time.

My Reading List: The Talent Code, Sports Vision, Motivational Interviewing

If you’re a fitness professional and/or a fitness geek like me, there are three books you’ll want to have a look at. The first is The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Made. Here’s How. Daniel Coyle’s book looks at the physiological and psychological components of “talented” and highly successful individuals from athletes to musicians to mathematicians. Three key points discussed in the book are:

• Deep Practice Everyone knows that practice is a key to success. What everyone doesn’t know is that specific kinds of practice can increase skill up to ten times faster than conventional practice.

• Ignition We all need a little motivation to get started. But what separates truly high achievers from the rest of the pack? A higher level of commitment—call it passion—born out of our deepest unconscious desires and triggered by certain primal cues. Understanding how these signals work can help you ignite passion and catalyze skill development.

• Master Coaching What are the secrets of the world’s most effective teachers, trainers, and coaches? Discover the four virtues that enable these “talent whisperers” to fuel passion, inspire deep practice, and bring out the best in their students.

Do you train vision? In the gym? Do you ever think about your eyes when you’re working out. If not, you should. It’s our most vital sense after all. In the Z-Health community, we often discuss vision and the tremendous influence it has on all our bodily processes–including pain, strength and mobility. Sports Vision: Training for Better Performance is required reading for Z-Health trainers. It goes deep into the role our visual system plays in our ability to perform. The book contains many drills designed to improve visual acuity and thus sport performance.

Finally, Motivational Interviewing is considered a must-read by anyone involved in a field such as coaching or personal training. Too often we trainers and coaches focus on the exercise portion of weight loss and athletic performance. We don’t spend enough time figuring out the psychological components of motivation and behavior change. Our role is to motivate clients and athletes to work hard and achieve big goals. Therefore this book is essential to any fitness professional’s library.

First Day on the Clean Program

This post isn’t about power cleans, hang cleans, kettlebell cleans or anything involving a weight of any sort. I’m spending a few days this week trying a dietary cleanse called the Clean Program. It’s typically a 3-week program but I’m only doing it for about four days. My wife is on her final week of the program and she loves the way she feels. I probably wouldn’t have given this thing a shot if she wasn’t a) trying it at all and b) feeling fantastic while doing it.

The idea of Clean is to detoxify the body and give the digestive system a rest. You eat one solid-meal food a day and drink two juices and/or smoothies per day. Clean has you eliminating a variety of foods–even a good number of fruits and vegetables: tomatoes, citrus fruits, soy products, dairy products, eggplant, raw fish, wheat, corn, barley, spelt, kamut, rye, couscous, oats, booze, sugar, and caffeine among other things. There’s also a minimum 12-hour fast between your evening meal and your morning meal. Sounds like a big party right?

Now, I’ve always been skeptical of these things. Sounds like a lot of gimmicky nonsense and shoddy science. That said, I’ve never actually done any research on this process. I do recognize there are health benefits to fasting from time to time and I absolutely understand that even those of us who eat a “healthy” diet are quite likely consuming some junk we shouldn’t be eating. The biggest motivation for my trying this program is what it’s done for my wife. It’s very strong anecdotal evidence that something good might come from it. We’ll see what happens…

Orthotics Are a Mystery

“I guess the main thing to note is that, as biomechanists, we really do not know how orthotics work.”
– Dr. Joseph Hamill, University of Massachusetts professor of kinesiology

Orthotics. Some people swear by them. Some people swear at them. (That would be me.) Some of them cost a few bucks at the grocery store. Others cost several hundred dollars and must be fitted at a podiatrist, physical therapist or chiropractor. So what about them? Do we need them or not? (And if they are important for our health, how did the Egyptians, the Romans, Gengis Kahn, the Vikings, etc. ever manage march across the earth and conquer everything in site without them?)

All runners and other fitness enthusiasts–anyone who wears shoes really–must read the latest dispatch from the New York Times Personal Best section titled Close Look at Orthotics Raises a Welter of Doubt. It’s a fascinating discussion on how and why orthotics may or may not work. As the quote above indicates, no one really seems to know what these things actually do for the feet. There are several important points in the article.

Analysis of Orthotics

Dr. Benno Nigg, professor of biomechanics and co-director of the Human Performance Lab at the University of Calgary in Alberta has made a career of researching orthotics. He makes a point that I’ve observed in my own experience with orthotics, namely that they tend to work in the short-term. However he says that idea that they are supposed to correct mechanical-alignment problems does not hold up.

Further Dr. Nigg says, “If you do something to a shoe, different people will react differently.” Different feet react differently: One person might respond by increasing the stress on the outside of the foot, another on the inside. Another might not respond at all, unconsciously correcting the orthotic’s correction.

The article discusses something I’ve heard discussed among those who make orthotics. That is, there are different ways to make orthotics. Depending on where you go, you’ll likely get a different device. Dr. Nigg conducted a study in which a runner went to several different orthotics makers and each one made him a distinctly different orthotic to “correct” his pronation. He liked two of them–yet they each were made differently. More research by Dr. Nigg yielded the following:

“They (orthotics) turn out to have little effect on kinematics — the actual movement of the skeleton during a run. But they can have large effects on muscles and joints, often making muscles work as much as 50 percent harder for the same movement and increasing stress on joints by a similar amount.”

“As for ‘corrective’ orthotics,” Dr. Nigg says, “they do not correct so much as lead to a reduction in muscle strength.”

Support for Orthotics

Several seemingly well-educated people voiced support for the use of orthotics. Jeffrey P. Wensman, director of clinical and technical services at the Orthotics and Prosthetics Center at the University of Michigan makes a sound argument when he says the key measure of success is his patients feel better in orthotics.

(On that note, I think it’s wise that if you’re in an orthotic and feeling good, running fast and all is well, then don’t change anything.)

Seamus Kennedy, president and co-owner of Hersco Ortho Labs in New York says there are hundreds of papers and studies showing that orthotics can treat common foot ailments.

So maybe there’s a lot of solid evidence in favor of orthotics right? Well… The article states:

“In one recent review of published papers, Dr. Nigg and his colleagues analyzed studies on orthotics and injury prevention. Nearly all published studies, they report, lacked scientific rigor.”

Maybe the lesson is to be skeptical of orthotics makers who show you evidence of the benefits of orthotics.

What About Flat Feet?

The article goes on to profile someone who has flat feet and his quest to “correct” this issue. Every orthotics provider he went to attributed his injury to his previous poorly made orthotics and goes on to provide him with different orthotics.

(The article mentions this fellow has an “injury” though there’s no mention of what this injury is. I’m not sure if we’re to take his flat feet as an injury.)

Dr. Nigg explains that flat feet shouldn’t be any problem. Our arches are an evolutionary leftover of when we used to grip trees with our feet. This is interesting to me because I recall reading elsewhere a study of third-world populations that never wear any sort of supportive shoes. Their feet tend to be flat yet there are far fewer numbers of the type of musculoskeletal injuries we have in the U.S. So maybe these all important arches aren’t all that important?

My view on all this is that orthotics are of limited use and the science behind them is quite murky. I’ve used several different types of orthotics and I’ve had either no results or I’ve experienced increased discomfort. I think they are far from an essential component for human health and performance. That said, on an individual basis, an orthotic may be very helpful.

Strengthening the Brain, Compliementary Training

I have an interesting article and website to share with you. If you’re a reader then congratulations, there’s lots to read here. If you’re an exercise professional who’s also a reader (Do exercise professionals who don’t read exist?) then even better. If you’re a fitness enthusiast with a hungry brain, then fantastic as well.

Can You Build a Better Brain?

First, an article from Newsweek called Can You Build a Better Brain? speaks to much of what we discuss in Z-Health. Brain and nervous system function are at the “heart” of everything for us. Pain, performance, and obviously cognition are all rooted in brain function. The question is, how best can we improve brain function? Various means have been proposed to improve brain fitness. But from puzzles, vitamins, fish oil, antioxidants, non-steroidal anti-inflamatories (NSAIDs), to the Mediterranean Diet, very few strategies have been shown to provide any benefit when studied rigorously. I won’t go into the whole article but there are important points I’d like to share with you. First, from the article:

“The rule that ‘neurons that fire together, wire together’ suggests that cognitive training should boost mental prowess. Studies are finding just that, but with a crucial caveat. Training your memory, reasoning, or speed of processing improves that skill, found a large government-sponsored study called Active. Unfortunately, there is no transfer: improving processing speed does not improve memory, and improving memory does not improve reasoning. Similarly, doing crossword puzzles will improve your ability to?.?.?.?do crosswords. ‘The research so far suggests that cognitive training benefits only the task used in training and does not generalize to other tasks,”’says neuroscientist Yaakov Stern of Columbia University.

The holy grail of brain training is something that does transfer, and here there are three good candidates…”

And what are these magical activities?

Physical exercise
Meditation
Some video games

The article concludes:

“Few games or training programs have been tested to this extent, and many of those that have been come up short. Those with increasing levels of difficulty and intense demands on attentional capacity—focus as well as switching—probably do the most good … as does taking a brisk walk in between levels.”

Further indication that there is NO difference between the body and the mind. We need a new word that encompasses both concepts. What should that word be…?

Complimentary Training

There’s quite an impressive if also quite technical blog I’ve come across called Complimentary Training. It’s written by Serbain coach Mladen Jovanovich. His sports background is basketball, soccer, volleyball, martial arts and tennis. I’ve just started digging into it. It’s packed with a lot of technical information, much of it on periodization. It looks like a very useful resource. Dig into it if you dare.

New Personal Record on the Deadlift: 425 lbs.

I’m a big fan of the deadlift. For some reason I’m fascinated by plucking very heavy objects off of the earth. I my goal is 500 lbs. I’m hoping to hit it in the not-too-distant future. My prior PR on the deadlift was 420 lbs. Today, despite dealing with the remnants of a cold, I pulled 425 lbs. — AND THAT MAKES ME HAPPY! It’s a good way to start the weekend. That’s it. Nothing of much importance to add.

Basic Barbell Training

My newly (re) discovered enthusiasm for barbell lifting has led me to start a new class at the gym called Basic Barbell Training. As the name suggests it’s a class based around traditional, tried-and-true barbell lifts: squats, presses, the deadlift, the clean and variations of these lifts.

Getting stronger is the goal.

photo by Jon Tunnell

To start the process, I’m holding several free seminars in order to generate interest in small group barbell training at the Cherry Creek Athletic Club where I work. Ideally I’d like groups of no more than three people. The class would meet two or three times per week, depending on how often people can attend. We’ll progress from simply learning the lifts, to upping our poundage and getting stronger, to developing power. This type of general strength and power development will benefit anyone from endurance athletes to golfers to anyone looking to improve daily physical function.

Seminar content will include footwear, posture, breathing and tension. We’ll cover two basic exercises in the seminar, the goblet squat and the overhead press. Both are bare-bones exercises that require minimal equipment. No racks or benches required.

Though the air/goblet squat doesn’t involve a barbell, it is an essential movement in learning how to squat and deadlift. The overhead press is a fantastic total-body exercise that translates to real life. Though only the arms are moving, the entire body must work at stability and balance.

Anyone may attend the seminars whether you’re a Cherry Creek member or not. Dates, times and location are as follows:

Dates & Times:

Saturday, January 22, 11AM
Monday, January 24, 6PM

Location:

Cherry Creek Athletic Club
500 South Cherry Street
Denver, Colorado 80246
www.cherrycreekclub.com

Both members and non-members may attend. For more information, please contact me at DenverFitnessJournal@Gmail.com or by calling 720.587.7038.

New Year’s Resolutions

“This year I will… (insert whatever gargantuan tried-for-before-but-never-accomplished miracle you wish; for our purposes here we’ll say:) get in shape.”
– thousands of new gym members

Now’s the time of year when many a well meaning American joins a gym, vows to give up their favorite food, start eating their least favorite food, exercise like Hercules, change their physique… and generally repeat a pattern they’ve performed before–which includes struggle and failure. Some time around the end of March the pattern will look the same as last year: Minimal weight lost. Resolution forgotten. (The good news for me is that a lot of these fine folks will enlist my assistance in achieving their goals. My genuine hope is that I help create new exercise lovers.) Is there a way to actually realize our once and future fitness goals? Very likely.

Your Brain Doesn’t Have a New Year’s Resolution

First, why do we fail at these goals in the first place? A recent article in the Miami Herald, New Year’s resolutions? Brain can sabotage success discuss the role of the brain in this process. Essentially the immediate reward often outweighs the long-term results we’re seeking. Fudge tastes good now. Getting strong and lean takes weeks. Put another way: It’s the dopamine stupid.

Dopamine is released during rewarding experiences. Sex, tasty food, various drugs, fun times all release dopamine. We tend to form habits around the activities that release dopamine. These habits and rituals become very hard wired in our brain. Examples include a smoke after a meal, snacks in front of the TV, junk food at the movie. Further, we like our dopamine now not later. Thus that tasty dessert provides the deeply wired payoff we want. For someone new to exercise or who’s had negative experiences with exercise, there’s not much dopamine to be found at the gym.

Survival, the Brain & Energy Expenditure

Very nearly every feeling, thought, drive and signal in our bodies is there for our survival. Neurological activity is calorically expensive. (That is, we use a lot of calories to perform brain functions such as learning new skills. Exercise and new eating habits are definitely skills). If we use up too many calories then we’ll die. Our brain knows all this, and here lies the foundation of thwarted resolutions.

Drastic changes such as those often attempted by Resolutioners makes the brain say, “Whoa! We need to avoid all this new hard work or we might DIE!” Plus there’s no dopamine involved in all this new activity–but the stress of all this change makes us seek out our beloved dopamine/fudge/ice cream/onion rings/etc. The result is we have a really hard time sticking to our big goal. So how do we proceed?

Threat Modulation for a Successful Resolution

We talk extensively in Z-Health about threats and threat modulation. We learn that small, incremental changes are far less threatening to our survival instincts than drastic changes. We tend to stick with small changes better than big changes. With regard to our fitness resolutions, we have several considerations in this direction.

First we might consider diet and exercise. These are two different things. Someone may well be ready to start exercising but not at all ready to make dietary changes or vice versa. If we try to change both aspects then we will find it tough going. Therefore we should start making changes where success is most likely to occur.

Second, within either diet or exercise, we should consider what’s ideal versus what’s truly realistic. If your favorite food is doughnuts for breakfast then yes, giving them up completely is a great idea. But in reality it likely isn’t happening. But can we get someone to go from eating doughnuts for breakfast five days a week to only four days a week? Maybe. Or can this person go from three doughnuts a day to three doughnuts every other day–and only two doughnuts on the other days? Sounds reasonable. These are rather small steps–but they are steps forward.

Similarly, many Resolutioners come into the gym telling themselves and anyone who’ll listen that they’re ready to work extremely hard every day of the week.

“I’m not fooling around this time! I want to see results–and I want to see them fast! I’ll do Whatever It Takes!”

Yet typically these folks aren’t undertaking any exercise at all. So going from no exercise to a superhuman level of exercise is again a threat to our survival with no dopamine payoff. Great way to sabotage the resolution. It’s far more realistic for someone to go from no days per week of exercise to two days. Then a couple of weeks later add another day.

(Oddly enough, a trainer has a powerful tool to employ when someone talks about undertaking unrealistically lofty s actions: We say, “Nope. Don’t do that.” They’ll likely start arguing for their own beneficial change. It works off a phenomenon called the righting reflex. Think of a parent giving a kid orders. “Do this.” “Don’t do that.” He or she will resist whatever they’re told to do or not do. Tell someone what they already know such as “You need to start exercising,” and they’ll likely give you reasons why they can’t or won’t. In contrast, tell a someone NOT to exercise too much and suddenly he or she will start agitating to exercise. They’ll argue against their own worst habits.)

Tortoise vs. the Hare

So again, in the ideal situation, someone who eats garbage and never exercises should some day eat well and exercise regularly. In order to get to this new lifestyle though, gradual, non-threatening change is the way to go if we want to achieve our fitness goal at all, much less maintain our new sleek physique.

So we might consider only changing one part of this equation. We might create a small, very achievable goal such as dedicating one hour, twice a week to exercising with a trainer for four weeks. If the clieint achieves this goal then they’ve found success and success begets success. (Very likely they’re already feeling better from this moderate level of exercise and they want to feel even better.) We might then add one day of exercise and also consider dedicating one day per week to healthy eating. Psychologically, if the client experiences success–even on a small scale–we get that dopamine payoff and suddenly they’ve developed an exercise habit. We’re now well on the road to realizing our big goal.

Deliberate Action

Fitness goals don’t make themselves happen. Any number of lofty goals can be achieved but there must be a mindful effort toward these goals. If our current habits got us into the shape we’re in now, then new actions are required in order to get us into better shape. Small changes are ideal–but there must be changes!

I typically tell clients that they have many choices throughout the day of what to eat and whether or not to exercise. At some point they must make at least one healthier decision. If all they can do is make ONE healthier choice today then they’ve moved forward. Maybe they make one single better choice every other day. Great! This is progress.

Success is a guarantee if healthy new habits replace old unhealthy habits. The body has no choice but to adapt to the consumption of healthy food and the execution of hard physical work. Guaranteed. The changes we want will not happen as fast as we want them to–they never do!–but the New Year’s Resolution can become reality if it’s pursued correctly.

Sports and Pregnancy

So I emailed several acquaintances and asked for blog post ideas. A former client suggested I discuss exercise considerations for the pregnant athlete. Seemed like a good idea to me. Being that I’m a man and I and my wife have no kids on the horizon, I don’t give much thought to pregnancy but perhaps I should.

Like a lot of our general fitness information, much of the popular information for the pregnant athlete falls on the very conservative side. On some issues though there is not a consensus. On other issues there is very little research. It seems possible though that healthy, active mothers-to-be can safely exercise beyond these conservative limits. Most of my information came from an article titled the Pregnant Athlete from the IDEA Health & Fitness Association. It’s a very complete and well researched article. I suggest you read it if you’d like more information on this topic. Meanwhile, here are a few things to consider for pregnant athletes.

Currently Exercising vs. Starting New Exercise

There is a solid consensus that it is safe for athletes to continue exercising once pregnant. There also is a consensus that women unaccustomed to exercise should not start exercising when pregnant.

Sport and Exercise Selection

First and foremost it seems like a good idea to choose an exercise modality that’s safe. At any stage of pregnancy, a strong enough jolt or impact to the abdomen can severely damage the fetus. Therefore choosing low-risk sports and activities is vital. Martial arts, downhill skiing, mountain biking (perhaps road biking too), and skating (roller and ice) are a few examples of sports in which NOT to engage while pregnant. Running is safe for many pregnant women. Swimming, walking, cross-country skiing and strength training may be very good ideas.

Heart Rate Recommendations

Physicians commonly recommend pregnant athletes keep their heart rate at 140 beats per minute (bpm). Anyone who exercises knows that 140 bpm is fairly low. The 140 bpm recommendation was put forward in 1985 by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The ACOG has since left that recommendation behind in favor of using the Rate of Perceived Exertion Scale or RPE. Women should pay attention to how they feel when they exercise. If everything feels OK then good. Don’t exercise to blithering exhaustion though.

Heat

One concern about vigorous exercise or exercise in the heat is hyperthermia or a high body temperature and possible overheating of the fetus that could lead to birth defects. Research however has yet to show any higher rate of birth defects among women who exercise at high intensities. To the contrary, women who exercise can more effectively dissipate heat. The following paragraph comes from the article, the Pregnant Athlete:

“It is during the first trimester that the fetus cannot regulate its own body temperature and is most susceptible to the mother’s. In this period, pregnant athletes should be cautious about exercising in hot conditions and for long durations. They should wear light-colored, breathable fabrics to keep cool and should drink water throughout the day and during exercise bouts; their urine should be diluted to the point that it is virtually clear in color. Some experts recommend that pregnant athletes take their temperature either vaginally or rectally (orally is less accurate) immediately before their longest weekly workout and again immediately after, before the body cools down. Clapp recommends a temperature increase of no more than 1.6 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit [F]) and a postexercise temperature no higher than 102 degrees F (Clapp 2002).”

Strength Training

There’s not much research on strength training and the pregnant athlete. The ACOG guidelines recommend a single set consisting of at least 12 to 15 repetitions without undue fatigue for each resistance exercise. My guess is that pregnant women can probably lift a little heavier but looking for your PR on the deadlift probably isn’t wise during this time. Moderate exertion sounds fine.

(I’d be quite interested to see what sort of levels of exertion we might see in pregnant women in 3rd world countries; places where avoidance of taxing physical labor isn’t an option.)

Flexibility Work

Relaxin is a hormone that increases joint mobility. Production of relaxin goes up during pregnancy so as to soften and relax the pelvic structure in preparation for birth. Because of this increased flexibility, it’s generally recommended that pregnant women should not seek to increase their flexibility.

(I personally don’t recommend static isolated stretching for anyone [look here, and here]. Active or dynamic flexibility work is the way to go for several reasons.)

Further Information

The National Forum on Pregnancy and Sport was conducted in Sydney, Australia, in 2001. What follows is a summary of the medical advice presented:

Medical evidence suggests that healthy pregnant women (with normal pregnancies) can participate in sports without affecting the course or outcome of the pregnancy. (The panel did make some provisos in terms of type, intensity, duration and frequency of exercise.)

Pregnant athletes should avoid maximal-intensity exercise, have a thorough cool-down period of gentle exercise, avoid excessive stretching and jerky ballistic movements, ensure adequate fluid intake and pay attention to core body temperature.

The fetus is extremely well protected from blows to the abdomen during the first trimester (first 3 months) of pregnancy.

The risk of abdominal injuries during sports (for both men and women) is extremely low. Current research indicates that fewer than 2 percent of all injuries, including those that occur during contact sports, involve the abdomen or chest area.

The pregnant woman, herself, is best placed to know (generally from discomfort and lack of coordination) when to stop participating.

Pregnant women should seek advice from medical professionals and, if appropriate, seek a second opinion.

No medical evidence has linked adverse outcomes for the fetus (including miscarriage) to sporting injuries. Statistics and research on adverse outcomes following severe or catastrophic trauma to pregnant women relate almost exclusively to road trauma and domestic violence.

Stories of Pregnant Athletes

Finally, if you’re interested, Pregnant athletes don’t have to sit out is a story from ESPN. Several amateur and professional athletes are profiled as they balanced their lives as competitors and mothers-to-be.

References:

Clapp, J. 2002. Exercising Through Your Pregnancy. Champaign, Il: Human Kinetics.

My Guest Blog Post: Cortisone

http://successfulhealthcoach.com/wp-content/uploads//2010/12/elbow_oa_treatment01.jpg

YEEEOUCH! Don't do that!

Guy Edwards is a British health and fitness professional and fellow Z-Health practitioner. I recently wrote a post on cortisone injections for his blog Successful Health Coach. If you’re thinking of getting a cortisone shot (or another cortisone shot) please read this piece. A boatload of research is out there indicating that while cortisone provides dramatic relief from pain, it actually slows down the healing process. It’s definitely a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Thanks to Guy for letting me post.

Denver Fitness Journal

All Things Health and Fitness by Kyle Norman, MS, CSCS, FMS, RRCA Running Coach