Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Brad Pilon on the Scientific Abstract. Here's my abstract: he's wrong - kinda
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I have a lot of respect for the author of Eat Stop Eat. Brad Pilon has but together a lot of well reasoned arguments to for the possible benefits of intermittent ceases of eating (he wishes he hadn't called it fasting) for well being. Great. Today on facebook from a post by Richard Chignel i saw a link about Brad Pillon saying what a scientific abstract is. His thesis is that it's like a Movie Trailer - it's there to get you to buy the Paper. Speaking as a scientist who publishes scholarly papers, this is not my experience nor i suspect my colleagues. So i'd like to take this post to give you a perspective from the other side of the house, going through Pillon's points.
Abstracts Exaggerate? Beyond asserting that the abstract is like the trailer to get you to buy a paper, Pillon also makes some general claims about what's in an abstract. So first problem: a key error is to say an abstract "exagerates" findings in the paper. To generalize like that, a person would need to have a large number of examples. I'm stuck trying to think of one. And i'm a Reader - that's my job title. I read a lot of papers. I read even more abstracts. Exageration in abstracts is not a sustainable practice.
Journals - where scientific papers are published - are managed by editors. Editors of journals, by the way, are almost always also experienced and active researchers. So these editors are also writers. It's their job to make sure what's in the abstract is a fair reflection of the content/findings of the paper. If that were not the case, the journal would soon get a rep for being shoddy. You may say you don't know as a non-expert what journal is shunned or not. There are a bunch of metrics for that, but if you search for "journal rankings" in google, you'll see that there are publically available metrics. And a researcher from any space will make that kind of tour through journals a first port of call, to find out the standing of the publication.
Abstract Structure. This is what i teach our graduate students to consider when they're writing up their results. And if the seminar hadn't been snowed out today, it's what we would have been looking at formally. Let no good lecture go to waste - so let me share this here. The abstract needs at least the following ingredients:
What's the point of this structure? It's actually the opposite in practice of what Pillon asserts. Abstracts are not written to get somone to buy/read a paper, but to help us skip what we don't need.
It's about NOT reading the paper. The point of the abstract is to give one sufficient information to know if they need to BOTHER reading the paper for their area of work. THis may seem kinda odd. IF i've put time into writing this wonderful paper, don't i want everyone to read it? It's not the first thing that hits most researchers' minds.
The hope is that the work is sufficiently interesting or relevant that others will find it so (or find it at all, ever), and thus it will stand on its own merits when folks are looking for related work to their own in that area. These are specialized pieces of writing that assume a certain knowledge level for reading. They are written to advance understanding in a particular field. And their are tons produced annually. Hence people who look at research papers generally do so because they have a question they want to understand.
And when such a question comes up, they usually his a dedicated searchable index site like pubmed or other domain specific indexes - not google or not a journal publisher - to see lists of papers, and to click through to the abstracts, and from there, if desired, one of the links to the full text.
example of pubmed search results
So of this myriad of possiblely relevant information, the abstract acts as a filter.
Of the sometimes hundreds of papers available, which ones should be set aside to read further? That's a first pass. This may sound like that's a match for Pillon's try to get you to read the paper. But authors of this kind of work AREN't trying to get you to read a paper. They aren't trying to show you the best shots from the film. They aren't being highly selective about what they show you. There are those pretty standard, one might say objective conventions, about what has to be in an abstract. No jump cuts. The really dry straight stuff only. We're talking about a community here of people who get to know each other. If you as a scientist started trying to sex up your abstracts, you'd be meat.
And since this is a community practice, we all know that we want to make our abstracts as useful as possible so that another readers can make these determinations. Our own reputations are at stake here, too.
As an aside: another way researchers make determinations about what's important to read in an area: looking at the papers other credible researchers are looking at in that area.
Surveying the Field. The second pass is that the abstracts give a researcher a very good sense of what the trends have been in a particular topic over time. So the researcher can begin to get a sense of what questions have already been considered - very important if that person is planning their own work and doesn't want to reinvent the wheel.
Likewise it's cool to see when a particular topic trended. You can see when a particular question seemed to have been hot by how many papers related to it came out in a year. What happened that it trailed off? Is it now called something else? Is the problem solved?
It's not to get you to buy the paper. Of course there's a difference too between reading and buying a paper. Pillon quotes the price a publisher assigns to a PDF. That's the publisher. If anyone is thinking about paying for an individual "off print" of a paper, may i encourage you to search elsewhere for that paper.
And for most of us who use ressearch papers, we don't pay for them individually: our libraries have licenses to the journals or the authors have made available "preprints" on their own websites.
There's a huge move in academic research towards "open access" (since most research in universities anyway is paid for through research funds, and if those are public funds the results should be publically available. Likewise there's a huge argument in terms of research impact that if one can't get at a paper digitally the paper might as well not exist. So academic authors find ways to make their papers available).
So what's going on here really?
Pilon's a smart guy. He does research, but he doesn't create peer reviewed papers himself, so he's not perhaps privy to the scene being described above. Fair enough. Even folks who do undergrad degrees and some masters degrees do not have to create peer reviewed research themselves. Consumption is not the same as production.
I'd suggest that, let's assume, the best intentions in the world, Pilon has still misrepresented scholarly practice, and in particular the role of the Scientific Abstract. Mayn't be his fault if this is how the outward facing journal products appear to a high consumer of such content. Maybe that's a problem for the scholarly community to take on board.
But really, Pilon's analogy of Abstract=Trailer is all noise and leger des mains around the main point he's trying to make: that the abstract is not the paper. His issue seems to be with folks who use abstracts to support their claims without having looked at the whole paper.
I'm not sure whom Pilon is thinking of, but for sure on online forums, lots of folks quote abstracts as support for their arguments without reading the paper. I'm not sure that's always a terrible thing, or leads to damaging conclusions. I'd have to know more about the intent of the exchange.
Likewise while, as Pilon suggests, one would not say they had seen the film because they'd seen the trailer, i don't know how many people actually lie about having read a paper when they've only read the abstract. Perhaps people act as if they've read the whole paper? The closest thing i've seen is the citation of abstracts as sufficient for supporting a claim. And sometimes they are. And sometimes seeing a trailer is absolutely sufficient to show it's either (a) it's not worth seeing or (b) all the best scenes were in the trailer. Now, i have to say, i have been surprised by the number of posts that have claimed that Avatar is like Dances with Wolves - i did not get that from either of the trailers i saw.
But if we assume there's more to the paper than the abstract, what is the difference, if the paper is just fleshing out the findings - the findings don't change.
Difference between Paper and Abstract: Here's what can change from reading the paper: by looking at the methodology of the paper - the how the study or experiment was actually done - one can begin to challenge the results. One might say - oh that population was not appropriate for generalizing the finding - that was done with non-trained participants rather than hard core athletes. I bet the findings would be different. OR you only used this muscle not that. That constrains the value of the finding.
One of my favorites is when someone states a result like a type of result was found with this approach (like longevity and fasting) - and then you find out the study is done with rats. And not that many of them either. Now in those cases that's not the abstract/paper's fault because all that's usually in the title - that's just how it can get reported.
So while reading the abstract is not the same as reading the paper, it's pretty durn good.
And while a professional researcher wouldn't get away with not reading the paper if they wanted to cite it as the basis for research, it is pretty durn legitimate to site a set of abstracts' results to show a trend. An informed reader or poster hopefully will start to get savvy enough to ask questions like "well what was the method" or "what was the population" or "how did they define X" to start to get at the important stuff to them.
Examples in Reading.Here's some examples of a blend of providing abstracts and some deeper readings of *certain* articles: b2d's series on DOMS is such a blend - requiring two parts - part 1 and part 2.
Maybe another good one is this survey on warm ups - that started with abstracts in order to ask the question where "warm up" is the term used in the abstract, but you have to read the paper to find out how a "warm up" is defined.
Apologies to Mr. Pilon. Anyway, as said, i dig Brad Pilon's work; he puts out loads of good stuff. I would be delighted to take the author out for coffee (and heck he lives in Canada. right on) or host him giving a talk or have a great discussion with him - so many of the folks i respect have been influenced by his work, and all for the good. This comment is in no way a criticism of him. And perhaps if i didn't actually teach this paper writing stuff and spend time working on abstracts with students, maybe i'd say ya sure abstract to movie trailer good comparison.
Except it's not. And not getting that may lead to furthering poor use and worse understanding of scientific practice - because the intents and also the designed uses are so different than a trailer that it's like - to use a food analogy - comparing apples to oranges.
And i do mean it: if this is what scientific practice appears in terms of public facing practice, we may have a job of work to do to address that. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Abstract: Abstracts to scientific papers provide summaries of the question the study considered, the method used and the key findings from the work. Due to publishers access/licensing restrictions it is difficult for most people outside a formal research context, unless associated with a library that offers such access, to gain access to full papers of scholarly articles. What publishers do make available for free are abstracts of scholarly papers. While the intent of these abstracts is primarily for scholars to assess latest research findings and trends, and to make determinations about the need or not to read more of the full paper attached to an abstract, the general public doing an online search for information on a topic may find these abstracts. Without access to the full paper, they may do the best they can to make their case on the basis of a paper's findings alone. Recently, health/diet author Brad Pilon has taken issue with this abstract practice as potentially misrepresenting the actual work/paper. The following is a detailed consideration from the perspective scholarly authorship practice of the points Pilon makes, showing where there seem to be errors in Pilon's assertion of the intent or use of abstracts. The conclusion is that first, contrary to Pilon's assertions, abstracts are not designed to induce people to buy papers; they are designed for scholars to make research decisions and overview a field. Second, the use of abstracts in lieu of paper reading is not necessarily as problematic as Pilon seems to suggest. More would need to be know of the context for that assertion.
I have a lot of respect for the author of Eat Stop Eat. Brad Pilon has but together a lot of well reasoned arguments to for the possible benefits of intermittent ceases of eating (he wishes he hadn't called it fasting) for well being. Great. Today on facebook from a post by Richard Chignel i saw a link about Brad Pillon saying what a scientific abstract is. His thesis is that it's like a Movie Trailer - it's there to get you to buy the Paper. Speaking as a scientist who publishes scholarly papers, this is not my experience nor i suspect my colleagues. So i'd like to take this post to give you a perspective from the other side of the house, going through Pillon's points.
Abstracts Exaggerate? Beyond asserting that the abstract is like the trailer to get you to buy a paper, Pillon also makes some general claims about what's in an abstract. So first problem: a key error is to say an abstract "exagerates" findings in the paper. To generalize like that, a person would need to have a large number of examples. I'm stuck trying to think of one. And i'm a Reader - that's my job title. I read a lot of papers. I read even more abstracts. Exageration in abstracts is not a sustainable practice.
Journals - where scientific papers are published - are managed by editors. Editors of journals, by the way, are almost always also experienced and active researchers. So these editors are also writers. It's their job to make sure what's in the abstract is a fair reflection of the content/findings of the paper. If that were not the case, the journal would soon get a rep for being shoddy. You may say you don't know as a non-expert what journal is shunned or not. There are a bunch of metrics for that, but if you search for "journal rankings" in google, you'll see that there are publically available metrics. And a researcher from any space will make that kind of tour through journals a first port of call, to find out the standing of the publication.
Abstract Structure. This is what i teach our graduate students to consider when they're writing up their results. And if the seminar hadn't been snowed out today, it's what we would have been looking at formally. Let no good lecture go to waste - so let me share this here. The abstract needs at least the following ingredients:
- what is the problem being considered by the work reported?
- why is that problem important?
- what method was used to investigate the problem?
- what are the results?
It's about NOT reading the paper. The point of the abstract is to give one sufficient information to know if they need to BOTHER reading the paper for their area of work. THis may seem kinda odd. IF i've put time into writing this wonderful paper, don't i want everyone to read it? It's not the first thing that hits most researchers' minds.
The hope is that the work is sufficiently interesting or relevant that others will find it so (or find it at all, ever), and thus it will stand on its own merits when folks are looking for related work to their own in that area. These are specialized pieces of writing that assume a certain knowledge level for reading. They are written to advance understanding in a particular field. And their are tons produced annually. Hence people who look at research papers generally do so because they have a question they want to understand.
And when such a question comes up, they usually his a dedicated searchable index site like pubmed or other domain specific indexes - not google or not a journal publisher - to see lists of papers, and to click through to the abstracts, and from there, if desired, one of the links to the full text.
example of pubmed search results
So of this myriad of possiblely relevant information, the abstract acts as a filter.
Of the sometimes hundreds of papers available, which ones should be set aside to read further? That's a first pass. This may sound like that's a match for Pillon's try to get you to read the paper. But authors of this kind of work AREN't trying to get you to read a paper. They aren't trying to show you the best shots from the film. They aren't being highly selective about what they show you. There are those pretty standard, one might say objective conventions, about what has to be in an abstract. No jump cuts. The really dry straight stuff only. We're talking about a community here of people who get to know each other. If you as a scientist started trying to sex up your abstracts, you'd be meat.
And since this is a community practice, we all know that we want to make our abstracts as useful as possible so that another readers can make these determinations. Our own reputations are at stake here, too.
As an aside: another way researchers make determinations about what's important to read in an area: looking at the papers other credible researchers are looking at in that area.
Surveying the Field. The second pass is that the abstracts give a researcher a very good sense of what the trends have been in a particular topic over time. So the researcher can begin to get a sense of what questions have already been considered - very important if that person is planning their own work and doesn't want to reinvent the wheel.
Likewise it's cool to see when a particular topic trended. You can see when a particular question seemed to have been hot by how many papers related to it came out in a year. What happened that it trailed off? Is it now called something else? Is the problem solved?
It's not to get you to buy the paper. Of course there's a difference too between reading and buying a paper. Pillon quotes the price a publisher assigns to a PDF. That's the publisher. If anyone is thinking about paying for an individual "off print" of a paper, may i encourage you to search elsewhere for that paper.
And for most of us who use ressearch papers, we don't pay for them individually: our libraries have licenses to the journals or the authors have made available "preprints" on their own websites.
There's a huge move in academic research towards "open access" (since most research in universities anyway is paid for through research funds, and if those are public funds the results should be publically available. Likewise there's a huge argument in terms of research impact that if one can't get at a paper digitally the paper might as well not exist. So academic authors find ways to make their papers available).
So what's going on here really?
Pilon's a smart guy. He does research, but he doesn't create peer reviewed papers himself, so he's not perhaps privy to the scene being described above. Fair enough. Even folks who do undergrad degrees and some masters degrees do not have to create peer reviewed research themselves. Consumption is not the same as production.
I'd suggest that, let's assume, the best intentions in the world, Pilon has still misrepresented scholarly practice, and in particular the role of the Scientific Abstract. Mayn't be his fault if this is how the outward facing journal products appear to a high consumer of such content. Maybe that's a problem for the scholarly community to take on board.
But really, Pilon's analogy of Abstract=Trailer is all noise and leger des mains around the main point he's trying to make: that the abstract is not the paper. His issue seems to be with folks who use abstracts to support their claims without having looked at the whole paper.
I'm not sure whom Pilon is thinking of, but for sure on online forums, lots of folks quote abstracts as support for their arguments without reading the paper. I'm not sure that's always a terrible thing, or leads to damaging conclusions. I'd have to know more about the intent of the exchange.
Likewise while, as Pilon suggests, one would not say they had seen the film because they'd seen the trailer, i don't know how many people actually lie about having read a paper when they've only read the abstract. Perhaps people act as if they've read the whole paper? The closest thing i've seen is the citation of abstracts as sufficient for supporting a claim. And sometimes they are. And sometimes seeing a trailer is absolutely sufficient to show it's either (a) it's not worth seeing or (b) all the best scenes were in the trailer. Now, i have to say, i have been surprised by the number of posts that have claimed that Avatar is like Dances with Wolves - i did not get that from either of the trailers i saw.
But if we assume there's more to the paper than the abstract, what is the difference, if the paper is just fleshing out the findings - the findings don't change.
Difference between Paper and Abstract: Here's what can change from reading the paper: by looking at the methodology of the paper - the how the study or experiment was actually done - one can begin to challenge the results. One might say - oh that population was not appropriate for generalizing the finding - that was done with non-trained participants rather than hard core athletes. I bet the findings would be different. OR you only used this muscle not that. That constrains the value of the finding.
One of my favorites is when someone states a result like a type of result was found with this approach (like longevity and fasting) - and then you find out the study is done with rats. And not that many of them either. Now in those cases that's not the abstract/paper's fault because all that's usually in the title - that's just how it can get reported.
So while reading the abstract is not the same as reading the paper, it's pretty durn good.
And while a professional researcher wouldn't get away with not reading the paper if they wanted to cite it as the basis for research, it is pretty durn legitimate to site a set of abstracts' results to show a trend. An informed reader or poster hopefully will start to get savvy enough to ask questions like "well what was the method" or "what was the population" or "how did they define X" to start to get at the important stuff to them.
Examples in Reading.Here's some examples of a blend of providing abstracts and some deeper readings of *certain* articles: b2d's series on DOMS is such a blend - requiring two parts - part 1 and part 2.
Maybe another good one is this survey on warm ups - that started with abstracts in order to ask the question where "warm up" is the term used in the abstract, but you have to read the paper to find out how a "warm up" is defined.
Apologies to Mr. Pilon. Anyway, as said, i dig Brad Pilon's work; he puts out loads of good stuff. I would be delighted to take the author out for coffee (and heck he lives in Canada. right on) or host him giving a talk or have a great discussion with him - so many of the folks i respect have been influenced by his work, and all for the good. This comment is in no way a criticism of him. And perhaps if i didn't actually teach this paper writing stuff and spend time working on abstracts with students, maybe i'd say ya sure abstract to movie trailer good comparison.
Except it's not. And not getting that may lead to furthering poor use and worse understanding of scientific practice - because the intents and also the designed uses are so different than a trailer that it's like - to use a food analogy - comparing apples to oranges.
And i do mean it: if this is what scientific practice appears in terms of public facing practice, we may have a job of work to do to address that. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
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Running Shoes as Single Factor Thinking
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This is a post about Shoes not as evil, but as it seems a Great Feat of Misdirection. It's a wee bit about our biases towards single factor solutions for complex problems, and the arguments we will have around the Chosen Factor rather than pulling up and back to consider the wider view. In science, there's a strong bias towards studying the effect of a single factor in various circumstances, but you'll rarely find a scientist who will say that single factor study or finding is The Solution - as we'll see below. That's down usually to the media who tries to promote such results, or companies that like the sound of same.
We are such complex (and complicated) organisms, yet we yearn for the Single Factor Solution to complex issues. We usually see this with respect to struggles for fat loss, where single approaches - the right diet, the right workout, the right diet pill, the right diet surgery - are put to address what involves a cornucopia of issues, as described here just the other day. The same single factor thinking is evident in running shoes, too. The Shoe is the Solution. Get the Right Shoe before daring a Run. And so this post focuses around a response to a study. About sneakers.
So let's back up: why putitively are there so many durn sneakers out there such that there are studies about their effects? Selling that great shoe that's just right for your running gait peculiarities to reduce injury and let you run like blazes is of course an important thing. And of course the more you can afford the better the protection you can buy. More cushioning, more multiparts of rubber density in the sole etc etc. Or so the sales pitch goes.
But this is also a kind of single factor approach to good mechanics for running. It says let the shoe take care of any weirdness in your gait, cuz that's just the way you are, you're stuck, and so need to be "corrected" . That's a much faster solution (seemingly) than taking the more complex view of IF something is off with the gait that may be problematic for performance, how best deal with that? After all, we're plastic people, as Woolf's Law and Davis's Law have shown: bone and tissue are responsive to what we do. Is this something that can be addressed more holistically perhaps?
And so, as readers of b2d may know, there's a growing movement around "less is more" for foot wear, and indeed "free your feet" anytime of day, and in sports like running as well (with the b2d index of vibram fivefingers stories as a wee illustration) - where the emphasis is on (a) trust our own engineering and (b) work actively with our own engineering to improve it, rather than rely on prosthetics. Prosthetics *may* have knock on consequences, like reinforcing rather than solving an issue.
More Support for Less Support? So it was with happiness that i received the note from Chris from Conditioning research on a Science Daily story: Running Shoes May Cause Damage to Knees, Hips and Ankles, New Study Suggests. Ah good! a study that shoes what we of the Free Your Feet persuasion have been saying for some time. One more piece in the Trust your Foot - it's engineering is older than a shoe company's. There's a study i covered from the summer that showed as well that no matter what shoes for what supposed gait issues a person had, they didn't reduce incidence of injury. That's an important result, since of course these special shoe designs are all supposed to do exactly that: help reduce injuries.
I've written before about why any kind of thick padding and movement restricting of the joints of the food would have a hard time reducing injury when it so limits proprioceptive feedback (our positioning/speed in space), so it's not a surprise that more work is finding specific results showing other issues with running shoes.
Violent Agreement. The following day of the above post, Chris sent me another pointer, this time to Amby Burfoot, a runner's world editor at large commenting on the "dismal science" of the original study. The response is on the Runners World.com blog. And so i was taken aback when the author accused the study's author of being biased because she'd developed a flat shoe.
It's pretty hard to get more circumspect about findings that this. Indeed the study concludes with
Right. The same result does not always mean the same process is operating to get that result. And that's just force not torque. But even so, so what? And even more, how possible is it to sustain that tension in a run over time/distance? Burfoot's a runner. How long is it possible to keep up tension when running distances, if that's what's causing less of a strike force or less of a joint torque? It may be possible to psych up and hold forces for one jump at a time, but continuous running?
Is there a Problem Here? Well, the big question is which approach is better for less injuries. Thing is, we don't know. We have lots more data on footwear than on minimal footwear or no footwear. It's a current area of research. AND KERRIGAN'S STUDY ISN'T OVER CLAIMING ANYTHING. It's: here's the data; in the discussion, we THINK this is what it might mean. There are limits to these results, and we may need to check that further.
Burfoot doesn't like that Kerrigan says that the forces at the knee measured in this study of sneakers are higher than those measured comparing highheels to non. He says walking is different than running. True. But the comparisons are RELATIVE. Walking is compared to walking and running to running. And that does indeed as Kerrigan says "represent substantial biomechanical changes" and Kerrigan's paper also states "However, given the substantial increases, there may be other factors as well." How about that. Multifactor thinking.
What Kerrigan's work has done is provide some data to have for later correlations when we start to get bare or near barefoot running population study results.
Anecdotally i know more folks than not who say going to things like vibram fivefingers has improved their experience of stability and confidence and speed and movement and...
Burfoot says he's in favour of as little shoe'ing as possible,
But all that aside, there's a few more things to think about here in a post finally about single factor thinking. And unlike Kerrigan's speculation about her team's results and their meanings for injury, burfoot has certain certanties, like the last point about "that's the only shoe that will work for them"
Which finally brings me back around to Single Factor Thinking. Here, it's the shoe is the solution. Maybe that's not what Burfoot meant entirely, but when we consider the context of Runner's World again, that's certainly what Runner's World's content is about. The Shoe is the Solution.
Final Fallacy? Let's ask the question WHY would that Beast be "the only shoe that would work for them"? Burfoot doesn't say what "works" means. Is it because their foot position is shite according to some norm, and this shoe is trying to oh i dunno correct stride? to maybe oh reduce injuries? when we KNOW that no specific shoe design does that? It seems that such an assertion is kind of at least partially crap.
Burfoot talks about "an experiment of one" quoting running guru George Sheehan. Well ok, what's the value of an experiment of one? In most cases in science it's zip. zero. nada. And a poorly designed experiment with such a tiny population is even worse. So what IS the experiment of one here supposed to be to determine "works"?
To go try on a bunch of shoes and say "this is the shoe hat 'works' for me" is a pretty crap trial if the Shoe is the Single Factor in the assessment - and if all what one is going for is a comfortable feeling shoe. Unless of course you're not trying on a bunch of shoes, but the sales person has already said "you overpronate; you should only try these" so your selection has just gone down. How many people have said those spring loaded Nikes are the best shoe that works for them? Or what about those totally inflexible Masai's? What are the measures of the experiment there as one's back continues to ache? But they feet feel great so heck you have the right shoes?
That's just poor study design - if you're interested in the performance of an entire system, not just the foot.
If the Shoe Fits as More Single Factor Thinking Kerrigan's group's study's conclusions aren't my happy place either, personally, but close. Their take away is that shoe design has focused on the foot's mechanics to the exclusion of the rest of the gait - or at least the knee. One joint further up the chain. Her work is saying that for good or ill those designs are having knock on effects up the chain. And for her, designing a shoe that minimizes those effects seems like a good idea.
Ok, what potentially debilitating effect of switching to barefoot running? The "potentially debilitating effect of switching to barefoot running" sounds so much like the same old rationales for selling cushy sneakers in the first place. Be afraid. Be very afraid of putting your foot down in a running gait without some kind of Protection.
Getting Shod of Being Shod Here's an idea: start with your bare feet. Are you happy walking around in your bare feet? Neutral? Great. Why not move more that way? Why not find shoes that will enable that to happen? Some folks even recommend progressions - from whatever one is in now, to Nike Frees, and from there to thin soled shoes like running flats, and then to Vibram FiveFingers, and THEN - gosh, ya just gotta try au naturale as PART of a program of enhanced mobility?
In my experience working with athletes who have running issues, the ONLY time i've seen going to a no shoe (what Burfoot prefers) is when they've had some particular issue with a bone or otherwise that requires more often than not some cushioning and some support TEMPORARILY as they work out of PAIN AND work on other parts of their movement.
The Non Single Factor. In one case, this working towards let's call it raw or natural movement involved strategies to address inflamation (some diet changes in that case), some movement work, AND some foot orthotics and very neutral shoes with cushioning as said to help move the person out of pain.
In other cases, dealing with achiles issues, i've seen folks slowly, progressively moving into shoes that pass the twist test (bend from one end to the other, not just at the ball; twist like ringing out a tea towel) as PART of their rehab experience accelerated recovery.
And more, folks who have switched to twist test passing footwear as PART of a program to better global movement also seem to report other aches etc going.
So i'm not going to claim that better quality of physical life is all down to twist passing footwear - that would be single factor - but why that footwear seems to help is that it lets us find a truth about our movement, work with that movement, improve that movement, and not have a device like a shoe type mess up that work. In fact by using the most flexible footware possible for the person, it seems, we get a whole lot more reps for our bodies to practice that movement.
I say this typing having hoofed it up to work in a pair of vivo boots (snowing outside) and having changed into a pair of VFF's for the office. So it is possible to respect our feet even in winter weather. Snow shoe boots with rubber grips are also awesome possibilities.
So my combo? As i've suggested many times now:
The above list does not take into account all of the other factors that can play havoc with movement quality/injury suseptibility like nutrition, rest, stress, recovery etc. All of these things need to be considered as well as part of the whole system. My wee combo set is that a more rich place to begin thinking about running, is to think about running, the whole movement - and moving well - and looking at how to enhance that for ourselves rather than hitting a crutch first - especially one that has been shown to have no effect on the very thing it's been claimed to do: reduce injuries.
citations
Kerrigan, D., Franz, J., Keenan, G., Dicharry, J., Della Croce, U., & Wilder, R. (2009). The Effect of Running Shoes on Lower Extremity Joint Torques PM&R, 1 (12), 1058-1063 DOI: 10.1016/j.pmrj.2009.09.011
Knapik JJ, Swedler DI, Grier TL, Hauret KG, Bullock SH, Williams KW, Darakjy SS, Lester ME, Tobler SK, & Jones BH (2009). Injury reduction effectiveness of selecting running shoes based on plantar shape. Journal of strength and conditioning research / National Strength & Conditioning Association, 23 (3), 685-97 PMID: 19387413 Tweet Follow @begin2dig
This is a post about Shoes not as evil, but as it seems a Great Feat of Misdirection. It's a wee bit about our biases towards single factor solutions for complex problems, and the arguments we will have around the Chosen Factor rather than pulling up and back to consider the wider view. In science, there's a strong bias towards studying the effect of a single factor in various circumstances, but you'll rarely find a scientist who will say that single factor study or finding is The Solution - as we'll see below. That's down usually to the media who tries to promote such results, or companies that like the sound of same.We are such complex (and complicated) organisms, yet we yearn for the Single Factor Solution to complex issues. We usually see this with respect to struggles for fat loss, where single approaches - the right diet, the right workout, the right diet pill, the right diet surgery - are put to address what involves a cornucopia of issues, as described here just the other day. The same single factor thinking is evident in running shoes, too. The Shoe is the Solution. Get the Right Shoe before daring a Run. And so this post focuses around a response to a study. About sneakers.
So let's back up: why putitively are there so many durn sneakers out there such that there are studies about their effects? Selling that great shoe that's just right for your running gait peculiarities to reduce injury and let you run like blazes is of course an important thing. And of course the more you can afford the better the protection you can buy. More cushioning, more multiparts of rubber density in the sole etc etc. Or so the sales pitch goes.
But this is also a kind of single factor approach to good mechanics for running. It says let the shoe take care of any weirdness in your gait, cuz that's just the way you are, you're stuck, and so need to be "corrected" . That's a much faster solution (seemingly) than taking the more complex view of IF something is off with the gait that may be problematic for performance, how best deal with that? After all, we're plastic people, as Woolf's Law and Davis's Law have shown: bone and tissue are responsive to what we do. Is this something that can be addressed more holistically perhaps?And so, as readers of b2d may know, there's a growing movement around "less is more" for foot wear, and indeed "free your feet" anytime of day, and in sports like running as well (with the b2d index of vibram fivefingers stories as a wee illustration) - where the emphasis is on (a) trust our own engineering and (b) work actively with our own engineering to improve it, rather than rely on prosthetics. Prosthetics *may* have knock on consequences, like reinforcing rather than solving an issue.
More Support for Less Support? So it was with happiness that i received the note from Chris from Conditioning research on a Science Daily story: Running Shoes May Cause Damage to Knees, Hips and Ankles, New Study Suggests. Ah good! a study that shoes what we of the Free Your Feet persuasion have been saying for some time. One more piece in the Trust your Foot - it's engineering is older than a shoe company's. There's a study i covered from the summer that showed as well that no matter what shoes for what supposed gait issues a person had, they didn't reduce incidence of injury. That's an important result, since of course these special shoe designs are all supposed to do exactly that: help reduce injuries.
I've written before about why any kind of thick padding and movement restricting of the joints of the food would have a hard time reducing injury when it so limits proprioceptive feedback (our positioning/speed in space), so it's not a surprise that more work is finding specific results showing other issues with running shoes.
Violent Agreement. The following day of the above post, Chris sent me another pointer, this time to Amby Burfoot, a runner's world editor at large commenting on the "dismal science" of the original study. The response is on the Runners World.com blog. And so i was taken aback when the author accused the study's author of being biased because she'd developed a flat shoe.
This from an editor of runner's world, where the companies best selling issues are their seasonal reviews of new shoes? Likewise, Kerrigan's disclosed company's technology is not what's studied in the reported experiments. It's pretty hard to find a scientist who doesn't formulate a hypothesis or an objective before beginning a study. What was Kerrigan's?
I'm not calling Kerrigan and Richards liars. Far from it, I agree with Richards's conclusion. But we should understand the motivation behind their writing and their research projects.
Objective: To determine the effect of modern-day running shoes on lower extremity joint torques during running.And what were the conclusions?
The findings at the knee suggest relatively greater pressures at anatomical sites that are typically more prone to knee osteoarthritis, the medial and patellofemoral compartments. It is important to note the limitations of these findings and of current 3-dimensional gait analysis in general, that only resultant joint torques were assessed. It is unknown to what extent actual joint contact forces could be affected by compliance that a shoe might provide, a potentially valuable design characteristic that may offset the observed increases in joint torques.Ok - knees are places that are more prone to a certain type of nasty arthritis. You'd think that more force at the knee would be problematic. We don't know, but we can say that there's more force with running shoes than not, but heck we only have the start of a partial picture here, and something more we'd need to know to enhance footware design we still don't have.
It's pretty hard to get more circumspect about findings that this. Indeed the study concludes with
Although increased repetitive loading has been shown to be a critical factor for the degeneration of articular cartilage at the knee, the forces experienced by distance runners have not been consistently found to increase the risk of onset of knee OA.But it seems Burfoot is not happy, saying that you can't make connections between forces and injuries. Kerrigan isn't saying that, but Burfoot points to a study where supposedly athletes were asked to jump onto matts they were told were of varying thicknesses, when they were all the same, and the forces measured varied according to one hypothesis goes - expectation - so various degrees of relaxation rather than tensing pre jump had effects on forces. Remember - this is an hypothesis of what's going on. But Burfoot instead says that the same thing is happening in Kerrigan's study BECAUSE the results are the same in terms of more padding; higher forces; less padding more tensed forces. etc.
Right. The same result does not always mean the same process is operating to get that result. And that's just force not torque. But even so, so what? And even more, how possible is it to sustain that tension in a run over time/distance? Burfoot's a runner. How long is it possible to keep up tension when running distances, if that's what's causing less of a strike force or less of a joint torque? It may be possible to psych up and hold forces for one jump at a time, but continuous running?
Is there a Problem Here? Well, the big question is which approach is better for less injuries. Thing is, we don't know. We have lots more data on footwear than on minimal footwear or no footwear. It's a current area of research. AND KERRIGAN'S STUDY ISN'T OVER CLAIMING ANYTHING. It's: here's the data; in the discussion, we THINK this is what it might mean. There are limits to these results, and we may need to check that further.
Burfoot doesn't like that Kerrigan says that the forces at the knee measured in this study of sneakers are higher than those measured comparing highheels to non. He says walking is different than running. True. But the comparisons are RELATIVE. Walking is compared to walking and running to running. And that does indeed as Kerrigan says "represent substantial biomechanical changes" and Kerrigan's paper also states "However, given the substantial increases, there may be other factors as well." How about that. Multifactor thinking.
What Kerrigan's work has done is provide some data to have for later correlations when we start to get bare or near barefoot running population study results.
Anecdotally i know more folks than not who say going to things like vibram fivefingers has improved their experience of stability and confidence and speed and movement and...
Burfoot says he's in favour of as little shoe'ing as possible,
That said, I agree with her apparent position on one important point: Much of what we put under our feet has the potential to do more harm than good. You can't "raise the platform" without increasing instabilities. When you build one of those house-of-cards structures, the higher you go, the closer you get to collapse.Wow, so all that article comes down to agreement about the main tenants of the "interested party"s findings. Strum and Drang in a teapot?
I believe many of us should buy the lowest-tech running shoe we can get away with. For the few who live in Shangri-La, that might mean no shoe at all. For others, it might mean a simple racing flat. For others, the very Brooks Adrenalines that were used in Kerrigan's study.
But some runners shouldn't even look at any shoe other the Brooks Beast, or a similarly built-up shoe. Because, in their experiment of one, that's the only shoe that will work for them
But all that aside, there's a few more things to think about here in a post finally about single factor thinking. And unlike Kerrigan's speculation about her team's results and their meanings for injury, burfoot has certain certanties, like the last point about "that's the only shoe that will work for them"
Which finally brings me back around to Single Factor Thinking. Here, it's the shoe is the solution. Maybe that's not what Burfoot meant entirely, but when we consider the context of Runner's World again, that's certainly what Runner's World's content is about. The Shoe is the Solution.
Final Fallacy? Let's ask the question WHY would that Beast be "the only shoe that would work for them"? Burfoot doesn't say what "works" means. Is it because their foot position is shite according to some norm, and this shoe is trying to oh i dunno correct stride? to maybe oh reduce injuries? when we KNOW that no specific shoe design does that? It seems that such an assertion is kind of at least partially crap.
Burfoot talks about "an experiment of one" quoting running guru George Sheehan. Well ok, what's the value of an experiment of one? In most cases in science it's zip. zero. nada. And a poorly designed experiment with such a tiny population is even worse. So what IS the experiment of one here supposed to be to determine "works"?
To go try on a bunch of shoes and say "this is the shoe hat 'works' for me" is a pretty crap trial if the Shoe is the Single Factor in the assessment - and if all what one is going for is a comfortable feeling shoe. Unless of course you're not trying on a bunch of shoes, but the sales person has already said "you overpronate; you should only try these" so your selection has just gone down. How many people have said those spring loaded Nikes are the best shoe that works for them? Or what about those totally inflexible Masai's? What are the measures of the experiment there as one's back continues to ache? But they feet feel great so heck you have the right shoes?
That's just poor study design - if you're interested in the performance of an entire system, not just the foot.
If the Shoe Fits as More Single Factor Thinking Kerrigan's group's study's conclusions aren't my happy place either, personally, but close. Their take away is that shoe design has focused on the foot's mechanics to the exclusion of the rest of the gait - or at least the knee. One joint further up the chain. Her work is saying that for good or ill those designs are having knock on effects up the chain. And for her, designing a shoe that minimizes those effects seems like a good idea.
The development of new footwear designs that encourage or mimic the natural compliance that normal foot function provides while minimizing knee and hip joint torques is warranted. Reducing joint torques with footwear completely to that of barefoot running, while providing meaningful footwear functions, especially compliance, should be the goal of new footwear designs.Gosh, that sounds like vibram fivefingers - for example - to me. Just get out of the way of the foot. But then we have tricky words like "compliance " as "meaningful footware functions." Hmm. One can now go to kerrigan's company's page for what she thinks is a good compromise answer for the problem that, "The use of athletic footwear in running as a means to protect the foot from acute injury and the potentially debilitating effect of switching to barefoot running on foot health excludes such an alternative"
Ok, what potentially debilitating effect of switching to barefoot running? The "potentially debilitating effect of switching to barefoot running" sounds so much like the same old rationales for selling cushy sneakers in the first place. Be afraid. Be very afraid of putting your foot down in a running gait without some kind of Protection.
Getting Shod of Being Shod Here's an idea: start with your bare feet. Are you happy walking around in your bare feet? Neutral? Great. Why not move more that way? Why not find shoes that will enable that to happen? Some folks even recommend progressions - from whatever one is in now, to Nike Frees, and from there to thin soled shoes like running flats, and then to Vibram FiveFingers, and THEN - gosh, ya just gotta try au naturale as PART of a program of enhanced mobility?
In my experience working with athletes who have running issues, the ONLY time i've seen going to a no shoe (what Burfoot prefers) is when they've had some particular issue with a bone or otherwise that requires more often than not some cushioning and some support TEMPORARILY as they work out of PAIN AND work on other parts of their movement.
The Non Single Factor. In one case, this working towards let's call it raw or natural movement involved strategies to address inflamation (some diet changes in that case), some movement work, AND some foot orthotics and very neutral shoes with cushioning as said to help move the person out of pain.
In other cases, dealing with achiles issues, i've seen folks slowly, progressively moving into shoes that pass the twist test (bend from one end to the other, not just at the ball; twist like ringing out a tea towel) as PART of their rehab experience accelerated recovery.
And more, folks who have switched to twist test passing footwear as PART of a program to better global movement also seem to report other aches etc going.
So i'm not going to claim that better quality of physical life is all down to twist passing footwear - that would be single factor - but why that footwear seems to help is that it lets us find a truth about our movement, work with that movement, improve that movement, and not have a device like a shoe type mess up that work. In fact by using the most flexible footware possible for the person, it seems, we get a whole lot more reps for our bodies to practice that movement.
I say this typing having hoofed it up to work in a pair of vivo boots (snowing outside) and having changed into a pair of VFF's for the office. So it is possible to respect our feet even in winter weather. Snow shoe boots with rubber grips are also awesome possibilities.
So my combo? As i've suggested many times now:
- - get a movement assessment to check out your WHOLE way of moving so you're not, as gray cook says, putting strength on top of dysfunction. Such an assessment will give you some strategies/movements to practice to optimize your athletic movement. Here's a list of z-health movement coaches (i do video consults too via skype - email me, link end of post)
- - take up a mobility practice to support and enhance full joint well being for better movemen and injury prevention. Some folks like t'ai Chi and related. Sure. i like z-health. Here's why in comparison with those other approaches.
- - move towards footwear that increasingly passes the twist test (gets closer to letting our feet be our feet without interuption). CAVEAT If anything causes pain/discomfort, stop, go back a step, slow down. Check with your movement specialist. Pain is a signal to change. So worth attending.
The above list does not take into account all of the other factors that can play havoc with movement quality/injury suseptibility like nutrition, rest, stress, recovery etc. All of these things need to be considered as well as part of the whole system. My wee combo set is that a more rich place to begin thinking about running, is to think about running, the whole movement - and moving well - and looking at how to enhance that for ourselves rather than hitting a crutch first - especially one that has been shown to have no effect on the very thing it's been claimed to do: reduce injuries.
citations
Kerrigan, D., Franz, J., Keenan, G., Dicharry, J., Della Croce, U., & Wilder, R. (2009). The Effect of Running Shoes on Lower Extremity Joint Torques PM&R, 1 (12), 1058-1063 DOI: 10.1016/j.pmrj.2009.09.011
Knapik JJ, Swedler DI, Grier TL, Hauret KG, Bullock SH, Williams KW, Darakjy SS, Lester ME, Tobler SK, & Jones BH (2009). Injury reduction effectiveness of selecting running shoes based on plantar shape. Journal of strength and conditioning research / National Strength & Conditioning Association, 23 (3), 685-97 PMID: 19387413 Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Monday, January 4, 2010
Possibly Why the Drudge Report (part of it anyway) points to b2d as the answer to fat loss.
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Words fail me. begin2dig has been sited on the Drudge Report (a political, not a known to be physical, blog) as an alternative to fat loss surgery. Goodness.
The post reads
NoGov4Me at 2010-01-04 06:23 AM
THe main post itself seems to have been about someone getting surgery to lose weight - though what the surgery is is a bit of a mystery:
And so if someone from there finds their way here, allow me to point out a few pages that may help unpack what this kind general pointer may have meant.
First: weight loss is hard. The reason? Trying to lose weight is often more about our wiring and habits (very deep wiring) than about food. Oh sure that comes into it, but we're so flexible as systems we can make useable calories from a very constrained set of resources. So some resources necessary are people - have written about that here - supportive and knowledgeable people. Other resources are getting some knowledge about how we are wired around food can also help. See the discussion/resources on "food and change" here. Likewise resources on sustaining successful change here.
Second, part of the knowledge for success can certainly be about food itself. Here's why i've found precision nutrition successful in this education. From there as a base line, other actual eating plans may beckon depending on goals. Here's a wee review of some to consider if you scroll down this post from habits on down.
Third, learning about how the body actually uses foods can be empowering to begin to understand why less or more is necessary or not. Here's a whole whack of resources about fats, proteins, carbs and the such like in terms of the little we know about them. The stuff on fat is my fave. it's amazing.
Fourth, another part of the equation is understanding how physical activity supplements but doesn't run weight loss. Diet first; action second. But that action is so valuable for us as brains with bodies. Action helps reduce stress around things like those habitual cravings, helps us sleep better, helps support change (here's 10 tips for destressing too). Here's some discussions about the roles of fitness in well being.
Finally
Bottom line, i'll say it again, weight loss is not easy. If it were obesity wouldn't be an epidemic. I agree with the discussions that show we evolved for scarcity not abundance. And i agree that a good part of the problem is that what is abundant in the west is cheap subsidized crap based on corn and spuds rather than greens and food goodness. So staying lean (being in the minority now) requires rewiring, knowledge to support better eating choices, and a certain level of affluence to afford those choices - and the knowledge of how to make using those healthier ingredients practicable rather than mythically out of reach (see part two on precision nutrition for resources there, and here's a free ebook overview of same).
So thank you, nogov4me, for pointing folks to b2d. Hope the above may be a bit of what you were thinking about when you did so.
And heck if you're here looking for help yourself, i do nutrition coaching via email too.
All the best of the new year!
mc Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Words fail me. begin2dig has been sited on the Drudge Report (a political, not a known to be physical, blog) as an alternative to fat loss surgery. Goodness.The post reads
NoGov4Me at 2010-01-04 06:23 AM
THe main post itself seems to have been about someone getting surgery to lose weight - though what the surgery is is a bit of a mystery:
Of the 3 comments on the post, nogov4me - a member of the drudge community it seems - simply provides the above URL to b2d as the response. Goodness.After spending the majority of her 48 years trying, and failing, to slim down, Veronica Mahaffey was still 50 pounds overweight -- not morbidly obese by a long shot, but still far from the size she wanted. Worried about her health, she called a San Diego weight-loss surgery clinic last spring and asked for help.
She was told no.
Her experience may soon be shared by thousands of Americans.
Ultimately, she got the surgery through a clinical trial of one of several new weight-loss procedures. Now 10 pounds from her goal weight of 135, she says she looks better, feels better and is confident she'll no longer have to fight her weight.
And so if someone from there finds their way here, allow me to point out a few pages that may help unpack what this kind general pointer may have meant.
First: weight loss is hard. The reason? Trying to lose weight is often more about our wiring and habits (very deep wiring) than about food. Oh sure that comes into it, but we're so flexible as systems we can make useable calories from a very constrained set of resources. So some resources necessary are people - have written about that here - supportive and knowledgeable people. Other resources are getting some knowledge about how we are wired around food can also help. See the discussion/resources on "food and change" here. Likewise resources on sustaining successful change here.
Second, part of the knowledge for success can certainly be about food itself. Here's why i've found precision nutrition successful in this education. From there as a base line, other actual eating plans may beckon depending on goals. Here's a wee review of some to consider if you scroll down this post from habits on down.
Third, learning about how the body actually uses foods can be empowering to begin to understand why less or more is necessary or not. Here's a whole whack of resources about fats, proteins, carbs and the such like in terms of the little we know about them. The stuff on fat is my fave. it's amazing.
Fourth, another part of the equation is understanding how physical activity supplements but doesn't run weight loss. Diet first; action second. But that action is so valuable for us as brains with bodies. Action helps reduce stress around things like those habitual cravings, helps us sleep better, helps support change (here's 10 tips for destressing too). Here's some discussions about the roles of fitness in well being.
Finally
Bottom line, i'll say it again, weight loss is not easy. If it were obesity wouldn't be an epidemic. I agree with the discussions that show we evolved for scarcity not abundance. And i agree that a good part of the problem is that what is abundant in the west is cheap subsidized crap based on corn and spuds rather than greens and food goodness. So staying lean (being in the minority now) requires rewiring, knowledge to support better eating choices, and a certain level of affluence to afford those choices - and the knowledge of how to make using those healthier ingredients practicable rather than mythically out of reach (see part two on precision nutrition for resources there, and here's a free ebook overview of same).
So thank you, nogov4me, for pointing folks to b2d. Hope the above may be a bit of what you were thinking about when you did so.
And heck if you're here looking for help yourself, i do nutrition coaching via email too.
All the best of the new year!
mc Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Delight in training: If you ain't had it lately, seek out a Coach.
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When was the last time you were delighted? With the gift-giving season just behind us, w
e should all have multiple examples to feast upon. Do you? Can you name 5? 3? 2? 1? How recently? Has one of those occasions been in the context of a workout? What would you say characterised it as a "delightful" experience rather than say a satisfying one, or a proud one?
Delight is a concept that fascinates me ( i've written about a kind of theory of design & delight here). To cut to the chase, it seems that often delight comes from a few factors: the unexpected - for instance when something is easier than anticipated as well as enjoining pleasure as if someone is hitting something special in you (like ordering a book online and not having to go through 20 steps just to find out how much shipping is; instead it's right up front. wow).
Other forms of delight seem to be in the context of whimsy - again with the unexpected - but where that thing hits a certain point of particularly personal pleasure/desire with that unexpected.
For me, last night, this was being delighted with a workout i had dreaded where applying a new technique turned out to produce such surprisingly new and wonder-ful results that i was well, stunned, and not a wee bit giddy with delight, as the saying goes.
Why was this Practice Session a delightful experience? Qualities of Delight.
Coaching can be Delightful? As i ponder delight/workouts, i think the closest i've seen personally in a physical context is at times the surprise folks have who've seen their movements improve from a coaching session or their pain go down after doing some mobility work with me, remotely or in person. This latter response seems especially to be the case when a person has
rather given up on making meaningful improvements in either context, and then they do. Wow. Perhaps that is a key role of a good coach: able to open up new possibilities
Likewise in my own case, my delight was the result of applying some excellent remote coaching tips on my kettlebell snatch from Randy Hauer RKC TL. Hmm. For me the delight was not only that the tip seems to have solved the specific problem i'd asked Randy about, BUT it then went beyond expectations, helping to address another aspect of performance as well. Exceeding expectations, i'll say.
Nurturing Delight: find your Coach. These moments are precious. I suppose in the physical context the reminder is that we may just be capable of far more than we anticipate. That technique it seems plays a huge role in this, but especially, that a good coach can open that door. Likewise, everyone at any level can benefit from a coach.
Lots of coaches can teach the same technique, but having someone communicate that model in a language that just clicks for YOU so that you can apply it - and then succeed with it, and it's something you, personally, care about, where there's that personally meaningful connection - well, that's delight, eh?
If you're interested in remote movement assessment/kb coaching, shout.
I do virtual house calls.
Related Posts - hope they may move towards delight
e should all have multiple examples to feast upon. Do you? Can you name 5? 3? 2? 1? How recently? Has one of those occasions been in the context of a workout? What would you say characterised it as a "delightful" experience rather than say a satisfying one, or a proud one?Delight is a concept that fascinates me ( i've written about a kind of theory of design & delight here). To cut to the chase, it seems that often delight comes from a few factors: the unexpected - for instance when something is easier than anticipated as well as enjoining pleasure as if someone is hitting something special in you (like ordering a book online and not having to go through 20 steps just to find out how much shipping is; instead it's right up front. wow).
Other forms of delight seem to be in the context of whimsy - again with the unexpected - but where that thing hits a certain point of particularly personal pleasure/desire with that unexpected.
For me, last night, this was being delighted with a workout i had dreaded where applying a new technique turned out to produce such surprisingly new and wonder-ful results that i was well, stunned, and not a wee bit giddy with delight, as the saying goes.
Why was this Practice Session a delightful experience? Qualities of Delight.
- surprise I was taken by surprise;
- unexpected but desired it's a result that i wanted but had more or less given up imagining could happen - so while being open to the possibility, had no expectation of same
- exceed expectations. the experience went beyond my expectations of what such success would be like
- valuable it's something that has non-trivial value to me
Coaching can be Delightful? As i ponder delight/workouts, i think the closest i've seen personally in a physical context is at times the surprise folks have who've seen their movements improve from a coaching session or their pain go down after doing some mobility work with me, remotely or in person. This latter response seems especially to be the case when a person has
rather given up on making meaningful improvements in either context, and then they do. Wow. Perhaps that is a key role of a good coach: able to open up new possibilitiesLikewise in my own case, my delight was the result of applying some excellent remote coaching tips on my kettlebell snatch from Randy Hauer RKC TL. Hmm. For me the delight was not only that the tip seems to have solved the specific problem i'd asked Randy about, BUT it then went beyond expectations, helping to address another aspect of performance as well. Exceeding expectations, i'll say.
Nurturing Delight: find your Coach. These moments are precious. I suppose in the physical context the reminder is that we may just be capable of far more than we anticipate. That technique it seems plays a huge role in this, but especially, that a good coach can open that door. Likewise, everyone at any level can benefit from a coach.
Lots of coaches can teach the same technique, but having someone communicate that model in a language that just clicks for YOU so that you can apply it - and then succeed with it, and it's something you, personally, care about, where there's that personally meaningful connection - well, that's delight, eh?
If you're interested in remote movement assessment/kb coaching, shout.
I do virtual house calls.
Related Posts - hope they may move towards delight
- movement: what's the big deal with movement anyway
- what's z-health (the movement approach i use a lot)
- why not train through pain
- movement efficiency
- another delightful technique tip: pelvis power for the press (or pull) via Lou McGovern
- getting the eyes in the swing or the row
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Return of the Kettlebell Year End Up Date Speed as Strength? Technique as Progress (update 10)
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Return of the Kettlebell (RTK) is Pavel Tsatsouline's double kettlebell program follow up to Enter the Kettlebell. The approach of RTK is aimed at muscular hypertophy strength. I started Return of the Kettlebell in September and have been going at it since then with the goal of putting on some arm mass - and of course getting stronger. Over the past few months, i've posted various updates on getting used to the new protocols in RTK, like double KB pressing and, especially, the hardstyle verion of the kettlebell longcycle.
The following post is more of a progress update since starting RTK in terms of its parameters for progress.
There are several ways in RTK to measure improvements:
Arms, Lean Mass & Fat. But first, a quick review of other points. A part of this quest was to let myself explore gaining weight to gain muscle. Have i gained muscle? Let's look at the numbers.
First, bave i gained muscle mass on my arms as intended. Yes. a quarter inch. Not exactly fabulous, is it? but perhaps pretty good. I'm not sure. I don't see it - without a measuring tape i wouldn't either. And what if that gain is fat around the arm?
A nice thing - at least for me - is that both arms are now closer to the same size than previously. My left arm still lags a bit in strength (or maybe co-ordination), but less so in size, and perhaps not so much in strength.
Second, the other measures. I didn't start measuring right when i started in sept, but about a month in, in oct, i did. So i have measures across 83 days, from Oct 9 to Dec 31:
Now lean mass is everything that is not fat. So that's tissue like bone and muscle and also water and sugar. So that means that part of that 2.09 pound gain is not just muscle fiber. We'll come back to this.
Other Measures: Hips & Waist And along with my arms putting on .25 of an inch (sounds good), my waist is .5 bigger (not so good) and my hips, where i carry my fat, are .75 bigger (bummer). Somehow i just don't believe those last two gains are muscle (so why would the first one be muscle?). So it's not all perfect. And while gaining fat is something one is warned about when deliberately going for improving muscle mass, somehow on a small 5'6" frame that seems like a lot on the waist/butt for 83 days. Maybe not, maybe so. It's just how it feels.
Muscle Gain Calculations. So yes i have the measures to say that lean mass has gonne up. a bit. I also have the measures to say that fat has as well. So far so normal. Sort of. According to Chris Thibaudeau, talking about guys and muscle mass (but is it *that* different for gals), if a guy is really focussing on muscle gain, he can put on .25-.5 lbs of dry muscle a week. But along with that dry muscle is 40% glycogen/water. so for 100g of muscle, one has to add 40g of other (glycogen/water). So that 948g of "lean mass" i've developed? 379g is glycogen/water. Grand total: 569g of dry muscle or 1.25lbs dry. Now when the low end of Tib's estimate is .25 a week, that would be 5 weeks of effort. I did this in 11.85 weeks. That's 2.37 times longer than predicted IF, according to Tib, one is both eating and training optimally.
Does that mean that my effort was less than optimal or that my eating was actually so below optimal or that the program is not as hypertrophic as advertized?
According to Thibaudeau, someone with 120 lean mass needs 2455 cals to build that .25 muscle.
so today at 117.9, i should be ingesting 2412 for optimal muscle mass development. Am i? Well, no. I'm not. Why not? Seeing the size of my butt go up without the consequent muscle development doesn't inspire confidence to take in even more calories. Yes i'm in caloric surplus (wouldn't be putting on gut/butt inches without that) but not *quite* that high. IF my butt and waist had increased nigh on an inch each BUT i had developed that additional .25 of dry muscle a week i'd be thinking about it. But as the two are not exactly going hand in hand, i am dubious to push this without better information for women. Bottom line: mass IS going up (along with some fat) and many folks have shown that one doesn't need to "bulk" to gain mass reasonably.
In other measures: practice & strength.
So if the muscle gain has not been as hoped, what about other measures, eg
Any Real Change at All?
A reasonable person looking at my progress, since rungs haven't gone up and weight hasn't gone up, is what strength changes have really occured?
Progress? Technique. I'd characterize progress in a few ways, one of which i haven't seen in the RTK text explicitly, and that's just getting used to the new moves with load.
For example, light and medium days are dandy to grease the groove. Don't get me wrong: medium days are no walk in the park; they're work, but heavy days are where, i'm finding anyway, that my control of the move is really being tested. First time i double snatched 16's for double presses was not a little freaky. Likewise it's taken till just about now for me to feel like i have anything approximating a groove on the long cycle with real weight, and i'll be very keen to have this checked at the RKC II cert to see if i've really understood the HS form here. It would almost be fair to say, ok, measuring could start now, since i feel i have the moves more in hand. So this technique grooving is definitely a place to measure progress. That's a whole lot of motor learning going on.
The way i'm noticing technique improvements is going from what has been total confusion or form devolution to starting to get into a groove.
Progress as Time/Speed. So the other main place i've been noticing progress is in terms of time taken for rungs, and this on a couple levels: especially on medium days of either block (explosive or grinding), the pauses between the first three rungs (the warm up rungs) are becoming vanishingly small. That's good. Likewise, the work sets (rungs 4 and 5) feel, well, groovier, stronger, like there's more left in the tank. This means that medium days are finishing at 30 mins +/-, rather than 40+ mins.
As for heavy days, as per the protocol, before thinking of adding in another rung, the goal is to get the time down as much as possible. Right now, heavy days for me are still heavy. Smoother, but still heavy. So i'm taking pretty good recovery between rungs, but focusing on technique, getting the moves smoother, that's happening.
What i've also noticed on variety days is that my single consecutive 16k presses on the left have increased, as has the ease of doing them - so better form. Likewise the smoothness of my 20k press on the right is better.
Resting HR
One other note of improvement - without thinking about trying for this, my resting heart rate has dropped pretty noticeably - at least to me - to pretty much the lowest it's ever been, ever, doing anything. Now that's something.
Take Away to Date
So, what's the assessment over the past 4 months of RTK?
The main progress seems to be in terms of technique on the long cycle (i hope), and perhaps coordination with double snatching and pressing. Definitely there's endurance strength gains from the cutting my recovery down between rungs, but hypertrophic strength?
There has been some mass gain, but it seems pretty slim to me - but i could be wrong. It's difficult to find good sources of information on this kind of measure. So in my experience, giving it my all to follow the protocol, i would not call this - so far - a particularly hypertrophic program.
Next Steps
Rungs and Ladders: My goal is to get to 5*5 on both the grinds and the explosive blocks for heavy days with the current loads, with good times, so that would mean getting to be ready to switch up to the next weight. After that, i'd like to get back to focusing on the beast challenge. The RKCII comes up at the end of Feb where the Long Cycle is part of the curriculum That's 7ish weeks away. It will be interesting to see how far i can progress towards that path in the coming two months. When thinking about doing five perfect C&J's with double 16's for the RKC II test for gals after three days of form and technique training, i've been biting my lip a bit, i admit. Those double 16's are a challenge.
Hypertrophy and Diet If i can stand it (it's rather tedious), i'll be keeping a closer eye on my calories and specific macro nutrient break down to see how that maps to lean mass and measurements, just to see what kind of tuning might be possible.
Variety Days. These have been either rowing or cycling or VO2max'ing. More recently i've been cycling in the AM (to give my arms a break) and rkc snatch test prepping in the evening (60 snatches a side in various set configurations from Randy Hauer with a tip of the hat to Ken Forsse).
This latter practice i've been thinking of as Astronaut Training. The snatch test for me is a bit of a bogey. By practicing these level of reps regularly (taking about 13 minutes rather than say 6 at test speed), my hope is that i will be well conditioned and prepped for the event. What does this have to do with astronaut training? My understanding of the early days of astronaut work is that the 'nauts practiced the same drills over and over in various conditions so that when the actual event ocured it was, well, well within tolerance and expectation.
Year End Thoughts on RTK
As said, right now the biggest take away seems to be about getting a base for technique - long cycle in particular. Once i get to heavy day 5*5's i'll do another assessment. In the meantime, something this very literally measured reflection is doing for me is raising the question what are my priorities for my practice? Where am i trying to go overall, and what is the optimal way to get there?
Inspiration to some Deep Thoughts
I've been looking at Fawn Friday's awesome ease in doing 24kg pistols which she's put down not to training the pistol, but heavy squatting (she's also nailed the 24kg press). Fawn has some pretty clear powerlifting goals from what i can tell from her blog, and that focuses her practice, and from my perspective seems to be getting fabulous results. She's particularly inspiring to me as she's a wee bit smaller than i am and significantly stronger. That's motivation/inspiration.
So i'm asking myself, where am i going?
My motivation for doing RTK has largely been to prep for the RKCII - to be as best prepped as i can so that i can take best advantage of the coaching that will be on offer. Beyond this, i've had the women's beast challenge in my sites (24k press, 24k pistol, 24k pullup). But as the RKC II approaches, and i'm feeling in the right place prior to that, i'm starting to pull back or up to the forty thousand foot level to ask, what the heck am i doing? Am i hearing the siren call of GS or the iron call of going back to bar bells? and if either WHAT FOR? What is the Big Picture? Does there need to be one? etc. Not questions i'd anticipated asking, but it seems they are both surprising and interesting questions to explore - especially as i find myself without a complete sense of an answer. A worthwhile journey, perhaps apt, heading into a new year.
All the best of the New Years to you all. May your health and wellness visions for the new year and decade all be bright. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Return of the Kettlebell (RTK) is Pavel Tsatsouline's double kettlebell program follow up to Enter the Kettlebell. The approach of RTK is aimed at muscular hypertophy strength. I started Return of the Kettlebell in September and have been going at it since then with the goal of putting on some arm mass - and of course getting stronger. Over the past few months, i've posted various updates on getting used to the new protocols in RTK, like double KB pressing and, especially, the hardstyle verion of the kettlebell longcycle.
The following post is more of a progress update since starting RTK in terms of its parameters for progress.
There are several ways in RTK to measure improvements:
- putting on muscle, for the promised hypertrophy.
- increasing rungs in the program's ladders
- increasing the number of ladders
- increasing the speed of completing the ladders (decreasing the time of recovery between rungs).
- Moving up weight for workouts
Arms, Lean Mass & Fat. But first, a quick review of other points. A part of this quest was to let myself explore gaining weight to gain muscle. Have i gained muscle? Let's look at the numbers.
First, bave i gained muscle mass on my arms as intended. Yes. a quarter inch. Not exactly fabulous, is it? but perhaps pretty good. I'm not sure. I don't see it - without a measuring tape i wouldn't either. And what if that gain is fat around the arm?
A nice thing - at least for me - is that both arms are now closer to the same size than previously. My left arm still lags a bit in strength (or maybe co-ordination), but less so in size, and perhaps not so much in strength.
Second, the other measures. I didn't start measuring right when i started in sept, but about a month in, in oct, i did. So i have measures across 83 days, from Oct 9 to Dec 31:
- bodyweight goes up by 2.7 pounds
- lean mass goes up by 2.09 pounds
- body fat% goes up by .163%
Now lean mass is everything that is not fat. So that's tissue like bone and muscle and also water and sugar. So that means that part of that 2.09 pound gain is not just muscle fiber. We'll come back to this.
Other Measures: Hips & Waist And along with my arms putting on .25 of an inch (sounds good), my waist is .5 bigger (not so good) and my hips, where i carry my fat, are .75 bigger (bummer). Somehow i just don't believe those last two gains are muscle (so why would the first one be muscle?). So it's not all perfect. And while gaining fat is something one is warned about when deliberately going for improving muscle mass, somehow on a small 5'6" frame that seems like a lot on the waist/butt for 83 days. Maybe not, maybe so. It's just how it feels.
Muscle Gain Calculations. So yes i have the measures to say that lean mass has gonne up. a bit. I also have the measures to say that fat has as well. So far so normal. Sort of. According to Chris Thibaudeau, talking about guys and muscle mass (but is it *that* different for gals), if a guy is really focussing on muscle gain, he can put on .25-.5 lbs of dry muscle a week. But along with that dry muscle is 40% glycogen/water. so for 100g of muscle, one has to add 40g of other (glycogen/water). So that 948g of "lean mass" i've developed? 379g is glycogen/water. Grand total: 569g of dry muscle or 1.25lbs dry. Now when the low end of Tib's estimate is .25 a week, that would be 5 weeks of effort. I did this in 11.85 weeks. That's 2.37 times longer than predicted IF, according to Tib, one is both eating and training optimally.
Does that mean that my effort was less than optimal or that my eating was actually so below optimal or that the program is not as hypertrophic as advertized?
According to Thibaudeau, someone with 120 lean mass needs 2455 cals to build that .25 muscle.
so today at 117.9, i should be ingesting 2412 for optimal muscle mass development. Am i? Well, no. I'm not. Why not? Seeing the size of my butt go up without the consequent muscle development doesn't inspire confidence to take in even more calories. Yes i'm in caloric surplus (wouldn't be putting on gut/butt inches without that) but not *quite* that high. IF my butt and waist had increased nigh on an inch each BUT i had developed that additional .25 of dry muscle a week i'd be thinking about it. But as the two are not exactly going hand in hand, i am dubious to push this without better information for women. Bottom line: mass IS going up (along with some fat) and many folks have shown that one doesn't need to "bulk" to gain mass reasonably.
In other measures: practice & strength.
So if the muscle gain has not been as hoped, what about other measures, eg
- increasing rungs in the program's ladders
- increasing the number of ladders
- increasing the speed of completing the ladders (decreasing the time of recovery between rungs).
- Moving up weight for workouts
Any Real Change at All?
A reasonable person looking at my progress, since rungs haven't gone up and weight hasn't gone up, is what strength changes have really occured?
Progress? Technique. I'd characterize progress in a few ways, one of which i haven't seen in the RTK text explicitly, and that's just getting used to the new moves with load.
For example, light and medium days are dandy to grease the groove. Don't get me wrong: medium days are no walk in the park; they're work, but heavy days are where, i'm finding anyway, that my control of the move is really being tested. First time i double snatched 16's for double presses was not a little freaky. Likewise it's taken till just about now for me to feel like i have anything approximating a groove on the long cycle with real weight, and i'll be very keen to have this checked at the RKC II cert to see if i've really understood the HS form here. It would almost be fair to say, ok, measuring could start now, since i feel i have the moves more in hand. So this technique grooving is definitely a place to measure progress. That's a whole lot of motor learning going on.
The way i'm noticing technique improvements is going from what has been total confusion or form devolution to starting to get into a groove.
Progress as Time/Speed. So the other main place i've been noticing progress is in terms of time taken for rungs, and this on a couple levels: especially on medium days of either block (explosive or grinding), the pauses between the first three rungs (the warm up rungs) are becoming vanishingly small. That's good. Likewise, the work sets (rungs 4 and 5) feel, well, groovier, stronger, like there's more left in the tank. This means that medium days are finishing at 30 mins +/-, rather than 40+ mins.
As for heavy days, as per the protocol, before thinking of adding in another rung, the goal is to get the time down as much as possible. Right now, heavy days for me are still heavy. Smoother, but still heavy. So i'm taking pretty good recovery between rungs, but focusing on technique, getting the moves smoother, that's happening.
What i've also noticed on variety days is that my single consecutive 16k presses on the left have increased, as has the ease of doing them - so better form. Likewise the smoothness of my 20k press on the right is better.
Resting HR
One other note of improvement - without thinking about trying for this, my resting heart rate has dropped pretty noticeably - at least to me - to pretty much the lowest it's ever been, ever, doing anything. Now that's something.
Take Away to Date
So, what's the assessment over the past 4 months of RTK?
The main progress seems to be in terms of technique on the long cycle (i hope), and perhaps coordination with double snatching and pressing. Definitely there's endurance strength gains from the cutting my recovery down between rungs, but hypertrophic strength?
There has been some mass gain, but it seems pretty slim to me - but i could be wrong. It's difficult to find good sources of information on this kind of measure. So in my experience, giving it my all to follow the protocol, i would not call this - so far - a particularly hypertrophic program.
Next Steps
Rungs and Ladders: My goal is to get to 5*5 on both the grinds and the explosive blocks for heavy days with the current loads, with good times, so that would mean getting to be ready to switch up to the next weight. After that, i'd like to get back to focusing on the beast challenge. The RKCII comes up at the end of Feb where the Long Cycle is part of the curriculum That's 7ish weeks away. It will be interesting to see how far i can progress towards that path in the coming two months. When thinking about doing five perfect C&J's with double 16's for the RKC II test for gals after three days of form and technique training, i've been biting my lip a bit, i admit. Those double 16's are a challenge.
Hypertrophy and Diet If i can stand it (it's rather tedious), i'll be keeping a closer eye on my calories and specific macro nutrient break down to see how that maps to lean mass and measurements, just to see what kind of tuning might be possible.
Variety Days. These have been either rowing or cycling or VO2max'ing. More recently i've been cycling in the AM (to give my arms a break) and rkc snatch test prepping in the evening (60 snatches a side in various set configurations from Randy Hauer with a tip of the hat to Ken Forsse).
This latter practice i've been thinking of as Astronaut Training. The snatch test for me is a bit of a bogey. By practicing these level of reps regularly (taking about 13 minutes rather than say 6 at test speed), my hope is that i will be well conditioned and prepped for the event. What does this have to do with astronaut training? My understanding of the early days of astronaut work is that the 'nauts practiced the same drills over and over in various conditions so that when the actual event ocured it was, well, well within tolerance and expectation.
Year End Thoughts on RTK
As said, right now the biggest take away seems to be about getting a base for technique - long cycle in particular. Once i get to heavy day 5*5's i'll do another assessment. In the meantime, something this very literally measured reflection is doing for me is raising the question what are my priorities for my practice? Where am i trying to go overall, and what is the optimal way to get there?
Inspiration to some Deep Thoughts
You go ahead and try the above, described here as "Fun" and see if you aren't humbled.
I've been looking at Fawn Friday's awesome ease in doing 24kg pistols which she's put down not to training the pistol, but heavy squatting (she's also nailed the 24kg press). Fawn has some pretty clear powerlifting goals from what i can tell from her blog, and that focuses her practice, and from my perspective seems to be getting fabulous results. She's particularly inspiring to me as she's a wee bit smaller than i am and significantly stronger. That's motivation/inspiration.
So i'm asking myself, where am i going?
My motivation for doing RTK has largely been to prep for the RKCII - to be as best prepped as i can so that i can take best advantage of the coaching that will be on offer. Beyond this, i've had the women's beast challenge in my sites (24k press, 24k pistol, 24k pullup). But as the RKC II approaches, and i'm feeling in the right place prior to that, i'm starting to pull back or up to the forty thousand foot level to ask, what the heck am i doing? Am i hearing the siren call of GS or the iron call of going back to bar bells? and if either WHAT FOR? What is the Big Picture? Does there need to be one? etc. Not questions i'd anticipated asking, but it seems they are both surprising and interesting questions to explore - especially as i find myself without a complete sense of an answer. A worthwhile journey, perhaps apt, heading into a new year.
All the best of the New Years to you all. May your health and wellness visions for the new year and decade all be bright. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
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