Wednesday, August 24, 2011
On the Path to Lean - what does that mean? Reflecting half way there on whyfore and whatfor
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Getting Lean. It's what i'm focused on now, and building strength on top of that. Sounds so clear and strong a resolution. But this focus began to emerge, only half baked, end of april, once the shoulders i'd been rehabbing started to feel almost usable again, and i did my first round of bioletics blood work back. I'd been working out with the ineffably named War Machine for a near month on the road (a life saver that thing in a hotel room); i was feeling stronger than i had in awhile - and I decided i wanted to explore lean. What does that mean? going from 19-20% bf to maybe 14-12% ish - not sure, but i'll know when i get there. But why am i trying, and why talk about it mid way in? That's what this post is about. I hope.
I am interested in the relationship to be found between leanness and strength. Leanness and potentially muscle. I just saw a very lean illegidly 114 pound gal deadlift 335lbs.
I heard the other day about a gal, Valerie Hedlund, at 125lbs and 5 foot 4 doing the women's "beast challenge" (discussed here with fellow women's beast tamer, Asha Wagner).
So, one can be small(er than me, it seems) and strong(er than me). Can i? What is that process like?
I'd like to share some of my process so far on this path. I feel like i'm at a half way point, so a good time to check in for later reflection.
Goals, Focus, Decision. One of the things i've come to in this process is made a descision about my strength practice vs my nutrition practice: hitting my lean target is my priority; strength goal is secondary to that. If i hit my lean target and i simply cannot get my strength target from there, well that's information, and i'll go from there. But i have no idea if that is possible or not to put the two together. So i'm not gonna prejudge that: let's go there and find out.
Fuzzy Start. Getting to that decision was not obvious initially, so i'm gonna come back to this fridgid clarity of purpose. But no, in fact the process of getting clear on process / reality of practice, was not even on the horizon. When i got my blood work results back and had my first conversation with the bioletics folks about my results and my goals, all i knew is that i wanted to burn some fat: i was frustrated with where the scales just seemed stuck, especially as i'd been picking up my workouts again with my arms much more back in commission. They made some interesting suggestions about tuning my diet first and foremost to get some of my target levels into the zone i wanted, and second how doing so would likely let me get onto the path.
The Path The suggested changes to my diet felt a bid odd. A colleague of mine, Zach Salazar, right at this time recommended the Perfect Diet - which i read. My take? some really interesting reading, interesting notes on iodine and sellenium (that i'll come back to in a future post), but gosh, i just can't do the legumes are evil thing or that whole grains (i mean whole, particularly sprouted) grains are evil either. Nutrient timing, a la espoused in Precision Nutrition, i'm all for; cutting out starchy carbs or really reducing them when trying to lean out - all over that too. But evil?
What that book did foreground for me as well was the introduction to coconut oil and the invention (i'm calling it that ) of Fat Tea, discussed here. Did that help me lose weight? No. Which i'll come onto in a moment when we discuss "less"
Back on the Road and grooving some "eat...stop...eat). The second thing that happened post biotest was that i was back on the road. Usually this is a nightmare for good food. So i took it as an to explore fasting again. What i learned is that Brad Pilon is right: fasting once (he adds "or twice") a week can really kick up some fat burning goals.
Now as a gal i'll say timing one's fast not to collide with one's pre-period may be a good idea to avoid heavy metal headache death, but otherwise, good to go, and your mileage may vary.
Eating LESS. Happiness for me was getting back from several weeks of work travel and finding that i was a bit lighter than when i'd left. Hmm. This is when i clued in to a really really really basic principle but at a very applied level: eating less works, and i had to eat less.
I had kinda deluded myself into thinking swapping out some stuff for medium chain triglycerides and all sorts of fatty goodness would somehow take the place of - eating less. But no. Nothing really moved. If we're not losing weight; we're maintaining, we're consuming at a level place for energy expenditure to more or less equal energy intake. Bummer.
Bummer Bummer
Eating less works. So I refocused to going for less, deliberately, focusing on Precision Nutrition principles of especially starchy carbs ONLY post a REAL workout, and greens and protein and any feeding along with healthy fats and, other than that - less. Of everything. With the occasional period of not eating thrown in - sometimes half a day of stop; sometimes more. When i saw the weight line moving - finally and consistently if slowly - this is when i dialed in the focus: i want to explore lean - real, athletic lean.
Exploring Lean. It's important for me to note that it was only when i arrived back at a weight i'd been at a few years ago when i was prepping for the tactical strength challenge and felt really good in my body that i thought i'm here but this isn't it. This isn't *lean* in the way i'm thinking about it. I guess part of me has been saying: i've been here before; i have had a challenge holding here before, and i don't want that to be the case; instead, i want to keep going; i'm not done with this, this time, yet.
So, what i want to know is: what does it feel like to be leaner AND stronger. I won't say "but leaner first" - i will say, with lean as the priority. My hope/goal is to hit there sooner than later - in a few months - and still have more time to build up the strength in a leanness buffer zone.
What is lean? why is that important? You know there are many health benefits assigned to leanness, true, but one doesn't have to hit below the teens for a gal to have them. It looks nice to some, especially with some muscle to shape spaces, but one doesn't have to do that to look nice or be stronger. In fact some argue that leanness may challenge capacity for strength gains. But, as John Berardi has said when he talks about his bi-annual fat shredding, he talks about it as a discipline too, along with all the health benefits. I think that is part of my motivation now, too. I want to explore this not just as an end, but as a practice. A practice of getting there.
Strength Practice Right now, i'm also back into training Return of the Kettlebell and i know what i'd like to achieve - but originally i thought i'd have till next July to hit that goal; now the meet time is moved up to April - so we'll see what can be done between now and then on the strength side. To be clear, maintaining health is the uber-if-implicit priority. Everything else bows to that. All things being equal though, lean, with strength, get to lean, focus more on strength, with lean in maintenance mode.
Why Lean?
I remember clearly how much i weighed when i was running cross country in grad school. I feel like i'm in much better shape and actually stronger now than i was then - and also heavier. So i'm curious: what is possible at that leanocity in terms of strength, with steady deliberate practice? As a more experienced practitioner now than ever a few years ago, can my training be even better than it has been - while saner and healthier (no more hinky shoulder stuff; they're still not 100%).
Tools of Support to Dial in Lean
Isn't it amazing how something as simple as burning calories can be so effortful? Simple (eat less) but effortful. All the hormonal cues and hedonic practices signaling all over the place not to stop the fuel; to enjoy the tasty succulent goodness of it all - that this one little thing couldn't possibly make that much difference. Uh huh.
SO here's what i'm using to help me monitor progress and practice:
Withings Scale This scale is so cool in design but it's one particular function that makes it awesome: local wifi. That's right step on it and forget it. One's weight, bodyfat and bmi is hived off to the Withings server where it can be viewed as a set of points and the all important trend line over time: despite ups and downs, the trend is DOWN.
What really surprised me is that the bf% calculator (impedence) with its variety of algorithmns is pretty good - off a couple of percent compared with 7 point caliper testing (again, fully described in precision nutrition) - but good enough to see the trend.
There's work that's shown that folks who check their weight more frequently have better success at sticking with their weight loss goals than those who check less frequently. I need to find that reference for y'all...
Zeo. One of the biggest pieces of the workout/nutrition puzzle for me that's been coming into focus is just how critical recovery is. Sleep is also important for weight loss. Let me rephrase that: suffient number and completeness of sleep cycles is key. With the zeo, i can see at a glance the quality of the cycles i have had and can correlate that with what i ate and especially what i did (or didn't do) the day before. One big deal: like Zeo sleepologist Stephan Fabregas has made clear, caffeine can bugger up one's deep sleep. Since pulling back on any caffeine after five pm, sleep cycles have been better and less interupted. That's better for weight loss and muscle building. AND i can see this against the scale readings in terms of weight fluctuations.
Workout Log. For many folks keeping a workout log is a reflex. What i've started to note in mine is both my workout days AND my not workout days in terms of whether or not i'm feeling fresh or fatigued; whether it's raining (default in the uk) or not. Hell if it was easy to track atmospheric presure i would do that too. I'm curious: does that affect work/recovery? The tool i'm using is a very simple daily calendar ap on an ipad (called maxjournal - no affiliate connection)
FitBit and NEPA's. I've become very keen to see if "every little helps" when one is pushing the edge towards lean, so non-exercise physical activity - and time of movement is of interest to me. FitBit, as described in the "is 10k a magic bullet for steps" article makes it easy to track steps taken, intensity of steps in any period, and when these steps are taken. My question is: does sticking with the 8k steps min a day (the low end of the 8-11k prescription from that article) help make the differences to leanness or not as per Chris Shuggart's contention?
On another point: seeing the numbers on the fit bit through the course of the day i have noticed does give me a nudge to get my stepping on if it drops off.
I also find it a particularly soothing thing to have for my recovery days to show that i'm getting Active level movement in. It's a good device
Resting heart rate and grip. Two things i've only been monitoring casually are my resting heart rate and grip strength. Time to start logging these too i suppose. Resting heart rate is a long time indicator of imrproving cardiovascular well being. So a resting heart rate that goes down overall sounds like a good thing. If it's a-typically high, and it's a workout day, a good idea to switch to mobility practice that day. A more fine grained instrument is heart rate variability - and really i haven't been tracking that at all (wrote about it here for those interested).
Instead, i've been looking occasionally at grip strength at the start of the day: i know how close i am to jamming a gripper shut: ancient russian sports science says if you're grips worse on a given day, do something else than heavy stuff (auto-regulation). Even clearer: if there's a gripper i can close pretty regularly and then can't that day? definitely a day needing some more recovery. Walk, bike, throw frisbee, do mobility. Read a book.
Data Integration
Outputs from many of these tools are being integrated by others. Our lab is looking at things like what's the best way to represent all this data: weight, blood pressure, steps, sleep, heart rate, breathing etc etc for people to make sense of it. There are some apps for iphone/android that are letting one see individual graphs from many of these sources in one place. Runkeeper is at the forefront of these efforts so far.
In the meantime, i'm looking at simple things like:
How's that for an epigram?
Progress
Progress is slow but consistent. It's slow because *i* have to re-adapt to consistently eating less than before it seems, and moving more. I feel like i mini-plateau rather frequently, and that can be a bit discouraging. For folks who may take a week to lose a pound, it take me nearly a month now to really break a pound plateau consistently. But then there's that trend line. And my other measurements that say "it's working; don't stop"
As said i'm at a half way point just passed where i've been before when training, but not this consistently, and not below that level so consistently.
My strength training has also been tuned with notes from last time with RTK from Randy Hauer (recommended coach) and double press coaching from colleague buddy Ken Froese (you remember him? the man who trained for Spite, and triple double beast pressed?).
Patience i'm learning really is a virtue, and perhaps all this data collecting is just a way to help not go mad with the pace of progress: yes there is progress in both strength and leanness. I will arrive at the one, and continue with the other.
Whither, Voyager?
This really is an experiment to go further than i've gone with a deliberate quest to explore leanness and strength. So this is new to me. This kind of discipline of eating is new - since typically i'd be done by now - i'd be at my goal weight and just going for more strength.
Reminds me of when i was a kid and i had to let go of this branch and to get back to the ground. I fell, and have this clear memory of thinking "this should have stopped by now" but i kept falling. That's kinda what this as like (though not quite so easy). I've been to this point before, and i'm finding that experience seems to be sharpening my focus for where i want to go now/next.
So why this post now? Because i guess it is at a point where i'd previously say, well that's done, and to see it now as only half done, is an interesting perspective shift. And i'm a little nervous.
I'm also wondering about the experience of a goal becoming clearer once one has passed the point of the previously known to be possible - if others reading have experienced this, and what happened?
Take aways for now
If you're interested in body comp work and strength work,
Moving more but not so hard. I'm keen to see if NEPAs will continue to help keep the trend going down the way i want for fat and up for lean. Blending nepas with some intervals/faster cardio a couple times a week? i was doing that till my heavy workout days got heavier - so we'll see. Recovery is still king and gaiting my workouts to support recovery is affecting everything from intervals to volume to nepas.
I guess that's about it for now.
It's kinda risky to report on a mid point. What if i don't make it and have no ta-da to report? I guess i'm also really then posting to see if i'm not alone in going past a place one has been - higher up, further in, and if i am indeed on a Righteous Path.
Hope so.
Best in your practice,
mc
Related posts:
since i mentioned shoulder rehab, here's some stories
Tweet Follow @begin2dig
I am interested in the relationship to be found between leanness and strength. Leanness and potentially muscle. I just saw a very lean illegidly 114 pound gal deadlift 335lbs.
just imagine how much more this pull would have been if the lifter
I heard the other day about a gal, Valerie Hedlund, at 125lbs and 5 foot 4 doing the women's "beast challenge" (discussed here with fellow women's beast tamer, Asha Wagner).
So, one can be small(er than me, it seems) and strong(er than me). Can i? What is that process like?
I'd like to share some of my process so far on this path. I feel like i'm at a half way point, so a good time to check in for later reflection.
Goals, Focus, Decision. One of the things i've come to in this process is made a descision about my strength practice vs my nutrition practice: hitting my lean target is my priority; strength goal is secondary to that. If i hit my lean target and i simply cannot get my strength target from there, well that's information, and i'll go from there. But i have no idea if that is possible or not to put the two together. So i'm not gonna prejudge that: let's go there and find out.
Fuzzy Start. Getting to that decision was not obvious initially, so i'm gonna come back to this fridgid clarity of purpose. But no, in fact the process of getting clear on process / reality of practice, was not even on the horizon. When i got my blood work results back and had my first conversation with the bioletics folks about my results and my goals, all i knew is that i wanted to burn some fat: i was frustrated with where the scales just seemed stuck, especially as i'd been picking up my workouts again with my arms much more back in commission. They made some interesting suggestions about tuning my diet first and foremost to get some of my target levels into the zone i wanted, and second how doing so would likely let me get onto the path.The Path The suggested changes to my diet felt a bid odd. A colleague of mine, Zach Salazar, right at this time recommended the Perfect Diet - which i read. My take? some really interesting reading, interesting notes on iodine and sellenium (that i'll come back to in a future post), but gosh, i just can't do the legumes are evil thing or that whole grains (i mean whole, particularly sprouted) grains are evil either. Nutrient timing, a la espoused in Precision Nutrition, i'm all for; cutting out starchy carbs or really reducing them when trying to lean out - all over that too. But evil?
What that book did foreground for me as well was the introduction to coconut oil and the invention (i'm calling it that ) of Fat Tea, discussed here. Did that help me lose weight? No. Which i'll come onto in a moment when we discuss "less"
Back on the Road and grooving some "eat...stop...eat). The second thing that happened post biotest was that i was back on the road. Usually this is a nightmare for good food. So i took it as an to explore fasting again. What i learned is that Brad Pilon is right: fasting once (he adds "or twice") a week can really kick up some fat burning goals.
Now as a gal i'll say timing one's fast not to collide with one's pre-period may be a good idea to avoid heavy metal headache death, but otherwise, good to go, and your mileage may vary.
Eating LESS. Happiness for me was getting back from several weeks of work travel and finding that i was a bit lighter than when i'd left. Hmm. This is when i clued in to a really really really basic principle but at a very applied level: eating less works, and i had to eat less.
I had kinda deluded myself into thinking swapping out some stuff for medium chain triglycerides and all sorts of fatty goodness would somehow take the place of - eating less. But no. Nothing really moved. If we're not losing weight; we're maintaining, we're consuming at a level place for energy expenditure to more or less equal energy intake. Bummer.
Bummer Bummer
Eating less works. So I refocused to going for less, deliberately, focusing on Precision Nutrition principles of especially starchy carbs ONLY post a REAL workout, and greens and protein and any feeding along with healthy fats and, other than that - less. Of everything. With the occasional period of not eating thrown in - sometimes half a day of stop; sometimes more. When i saw the weight line moving - finally and consistently if slowly - this is when i dialed in the focus: i want to explore lean - real, athletic lean.
Exploring Lean. It's important for me to note that it was only when i arrived back at a weight i'd been at a few years ago when i was prepping for the tactical strength challenge and felt really good in my body that i thought i'm here but this isn't it. This isn't *lean* in the way i'm thinking about it. I guess part of me has been saying: i've been here before; i have had a challenge holding here before, and i don't want that to be the case; instead, i want to keep going; i'm not done with this, this time, yet.
So, what i want to know is: what does it feel like to be leaner AND stronger. I won't say "but leaner first" - i will say, with lean as the priority. My hope/goal is to hit there sooner than later - in a few months - and still have more time to build up the strength in a leanness buffer zone.
What is lean? why is that important? You know there are many health benefits assigned to leanness, true, but one doesn't have to hit below the teens for a gal to have them. It looks nice to some, especially with some muscle to shape spaces, but one doesn't have to do that to look nice or be stronger. In fact some argue that leanness may challenge capacity for strength gains. But, as John Berardi has said when he talks about his bi-annual fat shredding, he talks about it as a discipline too, along with all the health benefits. I think that is part of my motivation now, too. I want to explore this not just as an end, but as a practice. A practice of getting there.
Strength Practice Right now, i'm also back into training Return of the Kettlebell and i know what i'd like to achieve - but originally i thought i'd have till next July to hit that goal; now the meet time is moved up to April - so we'll see what can be done between now and then on the strength side. To be clear, maintaining health is the uber-if-implicit priority. Everything else bows to that. All things being equal though, lean, with strength, get to lean, focus more on strength, with lean in maintenance mode.
Why Lean?
I remember clearly how much i weighed when i was running cross country in grad school. I feel like i'm in much better shape and actually stronger now than i was then - and also heavier. So i'm curious: what is possible at that leanocity in terms of strength, with steady deliberate practice? As a more experienced practitioner now than ever a few years ago, can my training be even better than it has been - while saner and healthier (no more hinky shoulder stuff; they're still not 100%).
Tools of Support to Dial in Lean
Isn't it amazing how something as simple as burning calories can be so effortful? Simple (eat less) but effortful. All the hormonal cues and hedonic practices signaling all over the place not to stop the fuel; to enjoy the tasty succulent goodness of it all - that this one little thing couldn't possibly make that much difference. Uh huh.
SO here's what i'm using to help me monitor progress and practice:
Withings Scale This scale is so cool in design but it's one particular function that makes it awesome: local wifi. That's right step on it and forget it. One's weight, bodyfat and bmi is hived off to the Withings server where it can be viewed as a set of points and the all important trend line over time: despite ups and downs, the trend is DOWN.
What really surprised me is that the bf% calculator (impedence) with its variety of algorithmns is pretty good - off a couple of percent compared with 7 point caliper testing (again, fully described in precision nutrition) - but good enough to see the trend.There's work that's shown that folks who check their weight more frequently have better success at sticking with their weight loss goals than those who check less frequently. I need to find that reference for y'all...
Zeo. One of the biggest pieces of the workout/nutrition puzzle for me that's been coming into focus is just how critical recovery is. Sleep is also important for weight loss. Let me rephrase that: suffient number and completeness of sleep cycles is key. With the zeo, i can see at a glance the quality of the cycles i have had and can correlate that with what i ate and especially what i did (or didn't do) the day before. One big deal: like Zeo sleepologist Stephan Fabregas has made clear, caffeine can bugger up one's deep sleep. Since pulling back on any caffeine after five pm, sleep cycles have been better and less interupted. That's better for weight loss and muscle building. AND i can see this against the scale readings in terms of weight fluctuations.Workout Log. For many folks keeping a workout log is a reflex. What i've started to note in mine is both my workout days AND my not workout days in terms of whether or not i'm feeling fresh or fatigued; whether it's raining (default in the uk) or not. Hell if it was easy to track atmospheric presure i would do that too. I'm curious: does that affect work/recovery? The tool i'm using is a very simple daily calendar ap on an ipad (called maxjournal - no affiliate connection)
On another point: seeing the numbers on the fit bit through the course of the day i have noticed does give me a nudge to get my stepping on if it drops off.
I also find it a particularly soothing thing to have for my recovery days to show that i'm getting Active level movement in. It's a good device
Resting heart rate and grip. Two things i've only been monitoring casually are my resting heart rate and grip strength. Time to start logging these too i suppose. Resting heart rate is a long time indicator of imrproving cardiovascular well being. So a resting heart rate that goes down overall sounds like a good thing. If it's a-typically high, and it's a workout day, a good idea to switch to mobility practice that day. A more fine grained instrument is heart rate variability - and really i haven't been tracking that at all (wrote about it here for those interested).
Instead, i've been looking occasionally at grip strength at the start of the day: i know how close i am to jamming a gripper shut: ancient russian sports science says if you're grips worse on a given day, do something else than heavy stuff (auto-regulation). Even clearer: if there's a gripper i can close pretty regularly and then can't that day? definitely a day needing some more recovery. Walk, bike, throw frisbee, do mobility. Read a book.
Data Integration
Outputs from many of these tools are being integrated by others. Our lab is looking at things like what's the best way to represent all this data: weight, blood pressure, steps, sleep, heart rate, breathing etc etc for people to make sense of it. There are some apps for iphone/android that are letting one see individual graphs from many of these sources in one place. Runkeeper is at the forefront of these efforts so far.
In the meantime, i'm looking at simple things like:
- was my food intake compliant yesterday with the PN habits about protein, greens fats and when carbs
- what's the reading on the scale this morning relative to that? up or down?
- what's the zeo say about sleep? good or not?
- how am i actually feeling? chipper or wiped?
- if i'm dubious, i check my grip. When i'm sitting at night, i check my resting heart rate.
Daily weight /weighings: motivation
Fortnightly measures: validation
How's that for an epigram?
Progress
Progress is slow but consistent. It's slow because *i* have to re-adapt to consistently eating less than before it seems, and moving more. I feel like i mini-plateau rather frequently, and that can be a bit discouraging. For folks who may take a week to lose a pound, it take me nearly a month now to really break a pound plateau consistently. But then there's that trend line. And my other measurements that say "it's working; don't stop"
As said i'm at a half way point just passed where i've been before when training, but not this consistently, and not below that level so consistently.
My strength training has also been tuned with notes from last time with RTK from Randy Hauer (recommended coach) and double press coaching from colleague buddy Ken Froese (you remember him? the man who trained for Spite, and triple double beast pressed?).
Patience i'm learning really is a virtue, and perhaps all this data collecting is just a way to help not go mad with the pace of progress: yes there is progress in both strength and leanness. I will arrive at the one, and continue with the other.
Whither, Voyager?
This really is an experiment to go further than i've gone with a deliberate quest to explore leanness and strength. So this is new to me. This kind of discipline of eating is new - since typically i'd be done by now - i'd be at my goal weight and just going for more strength.
Reminds me of when i was a kid and i had to let go of this branch and to get back to the ground. I fell, and have this clear memory of thinking "this should have stopped by now" but i kept falling. That's kinda what this as like (though not quite so easy). I've been to this point before, and i'm finding that experience seems to be sharpening my focus for where i want to go now/next.
So why this post now? Because i guess it is at a point where i'd previously say, well that's done, and to see it now as only half done, is an interesting perspective shift. And i'm a little nervous.
I'm also wondering about the experience of a goal becoming clearer once one has passed the point of the previously known to be possible - if others reading have experienced this, and what happened?
Take aways for now
If you're interested in body comp work and strength work,
- the number one place to start and spend time is still nutrition.
- Then dialing in recovery awareness from a workout - including when to stop a set.
- Then the workout practice itself. I find myself really enjoying the skills focus right now as i rebuild my shoulder strength. Maybe we can talk about that another day.
Moving more but not so hard. I'm keen to see if NEPAs will continue to help keep the trend going down the way i want for fat and up for lean. Blending nepas with some intervals/faster cardio a couple times a week? i was doing that till my heavy workout days got heavier - so we'll see. Recovery is still king and gaiting my workouts to support recovery is affecting everything from intervals to volume to nepas.
I guess that's about it for now.
It's kinda risky to report on a mid point. What if i don't make it and have no ta-da to report? I guess i'm also really then posting to see if i'm not alone in going past a place one has been - higher up, further in, and if i am indeed on a Righteous Path.
Hope so.
Best in your practice,
mc
Related posts:
since i mentioned shoulder rehab, here's some stories
- Left shoulder went and getting fixed
- Right shoulder went and getting much better
- About the Shoulder - the magical scapula
- About the shoulder - at the g/h joint
- and how about about fat
Tweet Follow @begin2dig
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Sunday, August 21, 2011
Is 10k steps a day really a magic health bullet? Catrine Tudor-Locke suggests this may be the wrong question.
Follow @mcphoo
Tweet
We hear a lot about the value of getting ten thousand steps a day. Pedometers are being sold increasingly as a way to track progress towards that magic 10k. But is there any basis in this assertion of ten thousand steps that something wonderful happens at 10k that doesn't anywhere before (or after)? And are all such steps in that 10k created equal? Are all or any of these steps the same as NEPAs or non-exercise physical activity (overview here at nopain2.org)- the movement carried out over the course of a day that is outside deliberate exercise activity, but that seems to have significant value in helping one get and stay lean?
In July 2011 a trio of journal articles lead by long time step/health researcher Catrine Tudor-Locke have come out looking at the step question, literally “how many steps are enough” - one geared at kids, the other at adults and another at elders and special populations (citations below). In this post we’re going to look over the work on steps for adults. As with just about everything, the answer to the question “is it 10k??” is “it depends.” And that perhaps more interestingly, there seems to be a gradient of effect for things like weight loss, after which more is not more.
So let’s begin with a few terms. NEPA we’ve already met. The other is MVPA - moderate to vigerous physical activity. Both are ways of describing level of effort and are important measures when talking about the effectiveness of stepping out.
There’s a kind of interesting component to trying to figure out “how many steps is enough?” - the question might be “what is someone trying to achieve”?
How to figure out Steps
CORRELATION? So we can consider what do most people who are healthy do - measure these steps and extrapolate out from that to try to determine a correlation. Indeed this is what various mortality studies have done in various parts of the world: look at the self reports of people’s activities, compare that mortality rates and say heck folks who have these many NEPAs seem to live X% longer with Y% less incidence of these types of disease. Maybe that’s because of the walking or related effort.
DELIBERATE EFFECT? Other types of measures are to do deliberate tests: we’ll monitor how much these folks walk and eat, and we’ll ask group A to walk X steps a day and the other group, we won’t encourage to walk. At the end of a given period we’ll check a bunch of measures from blood to weight to body fat and see what difference anything made.
SELF-REPORTING VS MEASURING? One of the strategies here is also to consider different ways of measuring NEPAs or steps. Recently there has been more literature where participants have pedometers but the large-scale studies described above are based on self-reports of times and distances of various activities and estimates around these. Also, not all pedometers measure steps in quite the same ways. So there’s some fuzz in the data. Science isn’t always an exact science.
TRANSLATION? Another fuzzy strategy is to try to translate one type of activity for another. If for instance 30 mins a day of MVPA is seen as an important measure of health, into how many steps (and at what speed) does that translate activity translate?
EQUATION? if daily MVPA is supposed to be over and above the NEPAs, what’s the amount of NEPAs and how translate that to steps? Total steps potentially becomes two different kinds of step: NEPA + MVPA = total.
The authors of the How Many Steps studies considered each of these components to make the best case they could for their recommendations.
Normative Data - just checking
For adults under 65, an intense review of internationally published paper came to an average of 9,448 steps/day. This surprised me. When the data is restricted to the US, the average is 5600 steps/day. That seems more familiar based on what we see of geek steps in our lab. For context, Japanese are at 7200 and Western Austrailians 9600. Ineresting, no? What information i do NOT have is how these step numbers correlate to other health markers: the studies just considered daily activity steps. Alas. But it does give us a pretty good sense of practice differences internationally.
Grading the Normative Data
The authors of the current study have been interested in steps for some time. Over the course of 2004 − 2005 they have developed and tuned a scale for understanding step ranges and have proposed
Why bother with these Steps? Such graduation can help understanding the effects of particular interventions: if 5000 steps a day has X% incidence of cardiovascular risk, but “somewhat active” means that incidence level goes down by a factor of 10, but that between somewhat active and active there’s only a tiny difference in cardiac incidence, then one’s focus may be to get folks just to somewhat active rather than pushing to active. Indeed, 2500 steps a day improvement does seem to show modest weight loss benefit but real blood pressure improvements.
Moderate Intensity Walking - Where MVPA begins
From the controlled experiments apparently one of the attributes confirmed is that if one is hitting 100steps a minute, one is at a suitable cadence to hit the MVPA. There’s an extension peeping up here: 3000steps within 30mins is looking good for the MVPA part of the total step equation. Doing this stepping in ten minute blocks is also ok.
A great way i’ve been noticing to get up my cadence without effort is to practice barefoot walking as described in part IV of the recent discussion about barefoot running: stride changes to soften any heel striking and move more to the mid/forefoot.
Total Counts: is it 10k?
Another extension of the above gradation of walking values is a good daily step target: 3k at MVPA + the high end of “sedentary” 5K steps = a total of 8k.
that assumes a 30min/day activity level; some guidance is apparently 60mins. So we have a range of 3-6K in MVPA (100steps/min) + 5k = 8-11k steps a day, assuming the MVPA components.
As a side note, the authors show that in studies that have attached accelerometers and pedometers to people have shown that getting the right amount of MVPA seems to correlate with folks getting 7000-8000 steps a day. (accelerometers by the way are like the sensors on some smart phones that let them play light saber - detecting how fast and in what direction something is moving) In other words, as the authors note, the original framing that set “10k” steps as “active” people, may actually start as low as at 7k a day when MVPA is added in. We are getting another validation of the 8-11k heuristic proposed for MVPA + NEPA (or “free living activity” as the authors call it).
WHY STEPS?
As the authors note, people do way more things than just walk. So why care about steps so much? The authors suggest “bipedal locomotion” as a thought. We fundamentally get around and move around by walking. Walking is also apparently the most frequently reported leisure activity.
Connection with Weight Loss
Here’s some related work that the authors note in studies around stepping patterns and BMI (body mass index). Let me quote the passage:
What that metric about steps to bmi tells us is that there are two important ranges where one can achieve *signficant* benefit: the first area is 5000-7000 is a HUGE difference than 5k and below: women have statistically significantly lower BMIs - changes in whole bmi numbers are associated with real pounds of weight loss.To think that there is yet ANOTHER significant difference from that first group to the 7500-9999 thousand steppers is golden.
For gals then thinking about wanting to change our BMI, stepping up a level is important. Just as critically though is that there is NOT seen to be a greater benefit to bmi after hitting the 10k mark. More is not always more for everything.
Again, the 8-11k a day is sounding very beneficial for correlations with blood pressure, bmi and general health.
Enough or Too Few?
Indeed, the authors consider reframing the question of how many steps do we need, to how many steps is too few? For example, fewer than 5k steps has greater risk of particular cardiovascular incidents.
Likewise encouraging folks who wish to see blood pressure or weight changes may be directed to seek particular increments rather than just going for a total. And similarly, it’s possible to get that 10k value without getting the 3k that seem necessary for MVPA work.
MAKING IT REAL: FitBit (and Zeo)
I’ve been focusing a lot over the past several months now on my non-excercise physical activity - how many steps do i get total; what percentage of them is MVPA vs NEPA and how do these simple totals connect with my lean down goals for right now. TO monitor this rather than kid myself with well i think i moved a lot today, i’ve gotten a FitBit. In fact we have a bunch in our lab.
The idea with the fitbit is that it’s both a step counter in the pedometer sense and an accelerometer - so it takes into account movement that a pedometer would not track - it can assess if you’re running or going up stairs or walking. It also calculates calories burned and distance travelled, and if you have its usb antenna plugged into a computer, it will wirelessly upload the fitbit data. Oh, and it also monitors sleep - sort of - but i much prefer zeo for this (zeo discussed here and here).
OPEN data - an aside note: zeo and fitbit both let people keep their own data. this may sound odd but try doing that with body bug - another self monitoring tool. This open data approach means that other applications can be built (like run keeper) that integrate the data from both zee and fitbit to make it easy to see how various parts of one’s performance are affecting the other.
Preliminary Conclusions with FitBit - one of the cool things about the fitbit is that if i check it and i see where i’m at - if it’s on the low side, i start to make plans for where i can get more steps in during the day and after work. If i have a workout planned for that day, i may let myself off the hook a bit. Now knowing about mvpa i can do that.
I got asked recently if FitBit counts kettlebell movements - it’s great for swings - but i’ve actually NOT been wearing it during workouts - i want to focus on movement OUTSIDE my workouts. When i’m walking and not just moving about the office for instant at work, my walking pace already is generally over the 100 steps/min - so i can usually be assured i’m getting in that 3k minimum of MVPA - but i don’t have to trust myself - the FitBit provides a chart of exactly when my steps were taken and how many in any given block; it also estimates activity level within these blocks.
Results: i have been deliberately trying to lean out over the past few months - something i'll write about in the near future. The main thing contributing to that leaning out is food: eating strategies, combining precision nutrition food approaches with as Brad Pilon puts it occasionally stopping eating for 18-24 hours in a week. Recently this once a week fast is something John Berardi of Precision Nutrition has been trying, too while minimizing workouts as an experiment. So let's just put that one on the table as it were: what i eat or don't eat is plainly the biggest contributor to my fat carving progress.
So where do the steps come in?
I really cannot say if my progress towards lean is better for getting in 8 or more k of steps per day. I know that i was motivated to check this out when a recent t-nation article by Lonnie Lowery suggested that when someone hits a wall with lowering their caloric intake to about as low as it can safely go, the only other place left to help the fat burn along is to raise caloric burn levels, and that he noticed something that makes a difference is what happens if NEPAs start to drop below 7k a day (see the NEPA factor in this article). Ah ha, thought I.
Recall above that there are two zones of steps - both under 10k but above 5k that have best effect on BMI - why, they haven't said, but perhaps there's something special getting tweaked from that kind of activity that has a metabolic switch to it. Ok. I'll go for that.
Beyond possible contribution to fat burning, I tend to feel better generally in terms of movement; i know that if i get the steps in throughout the day rather than just end of the day i feel fresher. So i’d add that in- frequency of movement throughout the day - as a variable beyond total steps, amount in MVPA, in figuring out quality of steps.
Conclusions:
To answer the question we started with, ten k a day is certainly a fine number for steps, but what Tudor-Locke's and Colleagues research and literature review shows us is that, more particularly, there are ranges of values and qualities within those ranges that will help yield the effects we may desire for health and wellbeing.
Citations
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In July 2011 a trio of journal articles lead by long time step/health researcher Catrine Tudor-Locke have come out looking at the step question, literally “how many steps are enough” - one geared at kids, the other at adults and another at elders and special populations (citations below). In this post we’re going to look over the work on steps for adults. As with just about everything, the answer to the question “is it 10k??” is “it depends.” And that perhaps more interestingly, there seems to be a gradient of effect for things like weight loss, after which more is not more. So let’s begin with a few terms. NEPA we’ve already met. The other is MVPA - moderate to vigerous physical activity. Both are ways of describing level of effort and are important measures when talking about the effectiveness of stepping out.
There’s a kind of interesting component to trying to figure out “how many steps is enough?” - the question might be “what is someone trying to achieve”?
How to figure out Steps
DELIBERATE EFFECT? Other types of measures are to do deliberate tests: we’ll monitor how much these folks walk and eat, and we’ll ask group A to walk X steps a day and the other group, we won’t encourage to walk. At the end of a given period we’ll check a bunch of measures from blood to weight to body fat and see what difference anything made.
SELF-REPORTING VS MEASURING? One of the strategies here is also to consider different ways of measuring NEPAs or steps. Recently there has been more literature where participants have pedometers but the large-scale studies described above are based on self-reports of times and distances of various activities and estimates around these. Also, not all pedometers measure steps in quite the same ways. So there’s some fuzz in the data. Science isn’t always an exact science.
TRANSLATION? Another fuzzy strategy is to try to translate one type of activity for another. If for instance 30 mins a day of MVPA is seen as an important measure of health, into how many steps (and at what speed) does that translate activity translate?
EQUATION? if daily MVPA is supposed to be over and above the NEPAs, what’s the amount of NEPAs and how translate that to steps? Total steps potentially becomes two different kinds of step: NEPA + MVPA = total.
The authors of the How Many Steps studies considered each of these components to make the best case they could for their recommendations.
Normative Data - just checking
For adults under 65, an intense review of internationally published paper came to an average of 9,448 steps/day. This surprised me. When the data is restricted to the US, the average is 5600 steps/day. That seems more familiar based on what we see of geek steps in our lab. For context, Japanese are at 7200 and Western Austrailians 9600. Ineresting, no? What information i do NOT have is how these step numbers correlate to other health markers: the studies just considered daily activity steps. Alas. But it does give us a pretty good sense of practice differences internationally.
Grading the Normative Data
The authors of the current study have been interested in steps for some time. Over the course of 2004 − 2005 they have developed and tuned a scale for understanding step ranges and have proposed
- 1) less than 5,000 steps/day (‘sedentary’); with less than 2,500 steps/day (‘basal activity’) and 2,500-4,999 steps/day (‘limited activity’)
- 2) 5,000-7,499 steps/day (‘low active’);
- 3) 7,500-9,999 steps/day (‘somewhat active’);
- 4) >10,000-12,499 steps/day (‘active’); and
- 5) ≥12,500 steps/day (‘highly active’).
Why bother with these Steps? Such graduation can help understanding the effects of particular interventions: if 5000 steps a day has X% incidence of cardiovascular risk, but “somewhat active” means that incidence level goes down by a factor of 10, but that between somewhat active and active there’s only a tiny difference in cardiac incidence, then one’s focus may be to get folks just to somewhat active rather than pushing to active. Indeed, 2500 steps a day improvement does seem to show modest weight loss benefit but real blood pressure improvements.
Moderate Intensity Walking - Where MVPA begins
From the controlled experiments apparently one of the attributes confirmed is that if one is hitting 100steps a minute, one is at a suitable cadence to hit the MVPA. There’s an extension peeping up here: 3000steps within 30mins is looking good for the MVPA part of the total step equation. Doing this stepping in ten minute blocks is also ok.
A great way i’ve been noticing to get up my cadence without effort is to practice barefoot walking as described in part IV of the recent discussion about barefoot running: stride changes to soften any heel striking and move more to the mid/forefoot.Total Counts: is it 10k?
Another extension of the above gradation of walking values is a good daily step target: 3k at MVPA + the high end of “sedentary” 5K steps = a total of 8k.
that assumes a 30min/day activity level; some guidance is apparently 60mins. So we have a range of 3-6K in MVPA (100steps/min) + 5k = 8-11k steps a day, assuming the MVPA components.
As a side note, the authors show that in studies that have attached accelerometers and pedometers to people have shown that getting the right amount of MVPA seems to correlate with folks getting 7000-8000 steps a day. (accelerometers by the way are like the sensors on some smart phones that let them play light saber - detecting how fast and in what direction something is moving) In other words, as the authors note, the original framing that set “10k” steps as “active” people, may actually start as low as at 7k a day when MVPA is added in. We are getting another validation of the 8-11k heuristic proposed for MVPA + NEPA (or “free living activity” as the authors call it).
WHY STEPS?
Connection with Weight Loss
Here’s some related work that the authors note in studies around stepping patterns and BMI (body mass index). Let me quote the passage:
Krumm et al. [29] examined the relationship between pedometer-determined steps/day and body composition variables in 93 post-menopausal women. In relation to BMI, a linear relationship was observed such that women who took 5,000-7,500 steps/day had a significantly lower BMI than those who took < 5,000 steps/day. Further, women who took 7,500-9,999 steps/day had a significantly lower BMI than those who took 5,000-7,500 steps/day. There was no significant difference in BMI between women who took 7,500 -9,999 steps/day and those who took greater than 10,000 steps/day.SO this result is pretty important: BMI is a standard measure of bodyfat associated with height and weight . There are some folks who argue reasonably that there are limitations with BMI: that someone who is really in shape packing considerable relative to body fat will show up as having a higher BMI than an average person at that height and weight. Yes, this is true. But given that, that usually indicates that person is likely also pretty healthy/active and will be using other measures than BMI to assess their health, fitness and bf%. So for more average folks (the majority of us), BMI is not a bad marker of how well one is doing in terms of weight.
What that metric about steps to bmi tells us is that there are two important ranges where one can achieve *signficant* benefit: the first area is 5000-7000 is a HUGE difference than 5k and below: women have statistically significantly lower BMIs - changes in whole bmi numbers are associated with real pounds of weight loss.To think that there is yet ANOTHER significant difference from that first group to the 7500-9999 thousand steppers is golden.
For gals then thinking about wanting to change our BMI, stepping up a level is important. Just as critically though is that there is NOT seen to be a greater benefit to bmi after hitting the 10k mark. More is not always more for everything.
Again, the 8-11k a day is sounding very beneficial for correlations with blood pressure, bmi and general health.
Enough or Too Few?
Indeed, the authors consider reframing the question of how many steps do we need, to how many steps is too few? For example, fewer than 5k steps has greater risk of particular cardiovascular incidents.Likewise encouraging folks who wish to see blood pressure or weight changes may be directed to seek particular increments rather than just going for a total. And similarly, it’s possible to get that 10k value without getting the 3k that seem necessary for MVPA work.
MAKING IT REAL: FitBit (and Zeo)
I’ve been focusing a lot over the past several months now on my non-excercise physical activity - how many steps do i get total; what percentage of them is MVPA vs NEPA and how do these simple totals connect with my lean down goals for right now. TO monitor this rather than kid myself with well i think i moved a lot today, i’ve gotten a FitBit. In fact we have a bunch in our lab.
The idea with the fitbit is that it’s both a step counter in the pedometer sense and an accelerometer - so it takes into account movement that a pedometer would not track - it can assess if you’re running or going up stairs or walking. It also calculates calories burned and distance travelled, and if you have its usb antenna plugged into a computer, it will wirelessly upload the fitbit data. Oh, and it also monitors sleep - sort of - but i much prefer zeo for this (zeo discussed here and here). OPEN data - an aside note: zeo and fitbit both let people keep their own data. this may sound odd but try doing that with body bug - another self monitoring tool. This open data approach means that other applications can be built (like run keeper) that integrate the data from both zee and fitbit to make it easy to see how various parts of one’s performance are affecting the other.
Preliminary Conclusions with FitBit - one of the cool things about the fitbit is that if i check it and i see where i’m at - if it’s on the low side, i start to make plans for where i can get more steps in during the day and after work. If i have a workout planned for that day, i may let myself off the hook a bit. Now knowing about mvpa i can do that.
I got asked recently if FitBit counts kettlebell movements - it’s great for swings - but i’ve actually NOT been wearing it during workouts - i want to focus on movement OUTSIDE my workouts. When i’m walking and not just moving about the office for instant at work, my walking pace already is generally over the 100 steps/min - so i can usually be assured i’m getting in that 3k minimum of MVPA - but i don’t have to trust myself - the FitBit provides a chart of exactly when my steps were taken and how many in any given block; it also estimates activity level within these blocks.
Results: i have been deliberately trying to lean out over the past few months - something i'll write about in the near future. The main thing contributing to that leaning out is food: eating strategies, combining precision nutrition food approaches with as Brad Pilon puts it occasionally stopping eating for 18-24 hours in a week. Recently this once a week fast is something John Berardi of Precision Nutrition has been trying, too while minimizing workouts as an experiment. So let's just put that one on the table as it were: what i eat or don't eat is plainly the biggest contributor to my fat carving progress.
So where do the steps come in?
I really cannot say if my progress towards lean is better for getting in 8 or more k of steps per day. I know that i was motivated to check this out when a recent t-nation article by Lonnie Lowery suggested that when someone hits a wall with lowering their caloric intake to about as low as it can safely go, the only other place left to help the fat burn along is to raise caloric burn levels, and that he noticed something that makes a difference is what happens if NEPAs start to drop below 7k a day (see the NEPA factor in this article). Ah ha, thought I.
Recall above that there are two zones of steps - both under 10k but above 5k that have best effect on BMI - why, they haven't said, but perhaps there's something special getting tweaked from that kind of activity that has a metabolic switch to it. Ok. I'll go for that.
Beyond possible contribution to fat burning, I tend to feel better generally in terms of movement; i know that if i get the steps in throughout the day rather than just end of the day i feel fresher. So i’d add that in- frequency of movement throughout the day - as a variable beyond total steps, amount in MVPA, in figuring out quality of steps.
Conclusions:
To answer the question we started with, ten k a day is certainly a fine number for steps, but what Tudor-Locke's and Colleagues research and literature review shows us is that, more particularly, there are ranges of values and qualities within those ranges that will help yield the effects we may desire for health and wellbeing.
- There is a way to think of steps in terms of gradations from sedentary to active
- within these gradations are associated particular health benefits - after which these particular benefits no longer seem to accrue. That's not to say one shouldn't walk more that this level; just that the benefits for certain markers seem to tail off from that activity alone.
- An effective target seems to be 3-6k steps in the MVPA range and another 5k in "free living activity" steps (what we might also think of as NEPAs).
- A fitbit makes it very easy to see whether one is getting that range daily and whether one is getting that minimal MVPA 3k portion in particular. Keeping a record is a great way to measure and validate progress.
Citations
Tudor-Locke C, Craig CL, Aoyagi Y, Bell RC, Croteau KA, De Bourdeaudhuij I, Ewald B, Gardner AW, Hatano Y, Lutes LD, Matsudo SM, Ramirez-Marrero FA, Rogers LQ, Rowe DA, Schmidt MD, Tully MA, & Blair SN (2011). How many steps/day are enough? For older adults and special populations. The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity, 8 (1) PMID: 21798044
Tudor-Locke C, Craig CL, Aoyagi Y, Bell RC, Croteau KA, De Bourdeaudhuij I, Ewald B, Gardner AW, Hatano Y, Lutes LD, Matsudo SM, Ramirez-Marrero FA, Rogers LQ, Rowe DA, Schmidt MD, Tully MA, & Blair SN (2011). How many steps/day are enough? For older adults and special populations. The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity, 8 (1) PMID: 21798044
Tudor-Locke C, Craig CL, Beets MW, Belton S, Cardon GM, Duncan S, Hatano Y, Lubans DR, Olds TS, Raustorp A, Rowe DA, Spence JC, Tanaka S, & Blair SN (2011). How Many Steps/day are Enough? For Children and Adolescents. The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity, 8 (1) PMID: 21798014
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Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Dr. Mick Wilkinson Part IV: barefoot running clinic - it's all in the fall
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In part I of this series with Dr. Mick Wilkinson on barefoot running, we looked at the biomechanics in barefoot running with Dr. Mick Wilkinson, barefoot running research and veteran barefoot walker/runner. In part II, we looked at the roll of the sole being bared in supporting barefoot economy. In part III, we looked at minimalist vs barefoot running, footwear in sport, and perhaps especially, considering the social aspects of transitioning to barefooting.
Clinic Time. In this final instalment of barefoot running with Dr. Wilkinson, we check out first a wee bit about Dr. Wilkinson's research and athletic background, and second consider technique tweaking for those who have given barefooting a go and want to tune up our practice. The article wraps up with some of my own reflections about why doing some even intermittent barefooting may have huge rewards from destressing to performance.
I moved here (to Newcastle) from Hull University in 2005 having previously worked at York St John's College and at Staffordshire University - all in the sport science departments
I completed my PhD in 2009 after 7 years of long part-time study. I graduated from Sheffield Hallam University. The PhD was in physiological testing and performance determinants in squash.
I always had questions and was always interested in the whys and hows. I took to academia because I thought I could get answers to my questions. Studying sport made sense as I was always sporty and was really interested in understanding the limiting factors in my own performance and how I could overcome them. My interest in academia as a career came about while studying for my UG degree and was fuelled during my MSc.
It is simply the enjoyment of travelling under the power of my own engine, of being outdoors and of trying to master the first true human art - combining breath, mind and muscle into fluent self propulsion (Chris MacDougal's words from Born to Run, I wish I could have thought of it myself as it sums up running for me beautifully)
Squash was my actual competitive sport not running, I ran for fun and as training for squash. When I couldn't run, I could still play squash but I still always wanted to run as I enjoyed it so much. I haven't played competitive (or even non-competitive) squash now for nearly two years as it does take a heavy toll on my body. Now I mainly run and commute 140 miles a week on my bike to work. I seem to get so much more from running that I did from squash, its free and I can do it whenever I like for as long as I like without discomfort or injury, so why go back to squash?
4mm Too many between You and the Planet
So you have gone all the way, well done. Sounds like your first time was not the epiphany experience I enjoyed, but it has at least illustrated for you the enormous difference even 4 mm of rubber can make to your sense of contact with the ground and highlighted the reason why I hate to have anything between my sole and the surface I'm moving over.
Technique. It's about Technique.
Your first question is impossible for me to answer. I would imagine that improving your technique and just getting used to the additional feedback from your soles (which are probably hypersensitive from years of trying to feel the ground through the soles of your shoes!) is a very individual thing. I guess that the hypersensitivity will become normal sensitivity relatively quickly as the nervous system is incredibly plastic, this will improve the comfort of your ride automatically.
Finding the Natural Spring
My advice is to first learn how to find your natural spring.
Stand in easy balance (head balancing on the neck, torso balancing on the hips etc.) then free up your ankles and knees and let them bend (keeping the torso vertically balanced) until you feel your heels wanting to leave the ground. This will probably feel like an enormous amount of knee bend, but this is what will provide the cushioning.
When you have found your inner spring, simply practice lifting one foot a little underneath you but at the same time allowing the supporting ankle to release (let the ankle bend forward, or dosiflex, like falling forward, as per runner on right in image below -mc)
Alternate the lifting of the feet like this in place.
You should be aiming to do this without any upward movement of the torso or pushing downward with the feet. Doing it in front of a mirror initially provides good feedback.
It is far less costly and more comfortable to simply lift the feet off the ground than to lift the torso off the ground by pushing down with the feet. I would suggest practising simply running in place until this is comfortable and it can be done without any downward pushing - here, a hard surface is a better one to practice on than a soft one.
Threat Reflex - dans le tete
Another contributing factor to discomfort is anticipatory tensing of the feet. There will almost certainly be a bit of fear about how the landing will feel and the usual response is to tense up to 'prepare' for it.
This is counterproductive as the feet and legs need to be free and loose to mould and respond to the ground. It is easier said than done to not tense up, but believe me that leaving the feet and legs alone is the biggest lesson you can learn - it is only then that the reflexes can operate without interference resulting in the gentle, light and comfortable ride that I experience.
Walking and Running and over striding
Re: walking vs running, yes, most people over stride when walking and land on the heel. It is often easier to shorten and quicken the stride to land on the mid foot when running.
You are basically learning to walk and run again but this time with benefit of a lot more information to help you. It will take time and patience. It is certainly not realistic to expect to be able to do what you have been doing in the VFFs any time soon.
One thing that surprised me, as i went for a walk barefoot with my tunes and some in-ear monitors is that i felt/heard my feet more than i anticipated - felt like i could hear my feet kinda clonking. Is that normal?
As for the pounding, you have to go up first to come down with a clunk so you must still be pushing down into the ground. I like to think of my feet and legs as passive. I simply have the intention to move forwards and I release my ankles to allow that to happen. It is simply a matter of allowing the legs to spring forward from behind and for the foot to touch down underneath me in time to stop me falling on my face.
Adaptation Time
If I had to estimate a time frame for you to become comfortable running totally barefoot on rough stuff / pavements it would be months rather than weeks but if you approach this as an adventure and an experiment in learning how to move and with a sense of fun, the learning experience is a reward in itself. Going barefoot generally even when not running will also help and will accustom your feet to feeling and enjoying more and varied surfaces. You will never stop learning how to improve your technique, four years on and I'm still getting better and moving by learning to do less and less that is not necessary and which interferes with free and easy movement.
Enjoy the ride
THANK YOU MICK for taking the time
But i Like my Shoes (that Pass the Twist Test)
Reflections on why to Barefoot
My hope is that, even if folks don't go the whole unshod way, for all running forever, you'll find in this series at least a few reasons to give going truly unshod:
checking out changes
And there's something else: feeling textures with our feet.
Exploring the carpeting and hallway surfaces at work unshod brings a certain kind of sensual pleasure that is unexpected. Walking around outside even for brief periods is certainly making me more of a pavement-type connoisseur. Temperature is also amazing, to feel what cool or heat is like - it sounds so obvious, but it's really quite remarkable to bring attention to what the feet are feeling, not just how they're moving.
My feet are definitely still in the hyper-sensitive space of being dialed up to pick up on sensations that have been otherwise muffled, but i'm still more curious to explore the world with what feels like a new sensation than to cover this up again.
It almost seems daring - like a mutant thing: i am now going to take my shoes off and expose my NAKED FEET to feed my brain with new and powerful information that will let me walk and run FOREVER. Ok, perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but really, the unshod foot is a whole sensorium that seems to give so much info back it's pretty surprising.
More De Stressing
I used to think kicking off my shoes meant swapping trad shoes for shoes that pass the twist test, and that getting more movement helps decrease stress because the body has a clearer sense of where it is in space, letting those joints and muscles move.
This is still True. BUT
my guess is that letting the foot feel the world beneath our feet, giving that glaborus epithelium the sensation, the touch, it craves, may also well chill the stress events. I'm extrapolating about this touch craving based on how crazy we can get in a sensory deprivation tank - that that's not how we're designed to be; we're designed, it seems, to be in contact with the world. And when we are, we have more ways of telling our beings that things are fine: we have way more options to respond more quickly effectively and efficiently.
Heh Mikey, he likes it.
So, again, even if barefooting for full on runs feels like one too many for you, here's to finding a few opportunities, with increasing regularity, to feel the outside world through your feet.
Please let me know what you discover - post a comment here.
Thanks for reading,
And if you've enjoyed this series with Mick, i hope you will sponsor him on his barefoot Great North Run.
Related Links
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| image from runningnut |
TO give folks a little more context about you,
tell us a bit about how you came to Northumbria: |
| Dr. Mick Wilkinson, barefoot running veteran |
When did you get your phd?
I completed my PhD in 2009 after 7 years of long part-time study. I graduated from Sheffield Hallam University. The PhD was in physiological testing and performance determinants in squash.
Did you always know you were going into academia and sports research?
I always had questions and was always interested in the whys and hows. I took to academia because I thought I could get answers to my questions. Studying sport made sense as I was always sporty and was really interested in understanding the limiting factors in my own performance and how I could overcome them. My interest in academia as a career came about while studying for my UG degree and was fuelled during my MSc.
Why are you passionate about running? What appeals to you?
It is simply the enjoyment of travelling under the power of my own engine, of being outdoors and of trying to master the first true human art - combining breath, mind and muscle into fluent self propulsion (Chris MacDougal's words from Born to Run, I wish I could have thought of it myself as it sums up running for me beautifully)
You said that squash you did in response to injuries around running. Why
squash? hitting something?
Thank you. Now to the meet of today's final post: the barefoot running clinic. These questions followed after going for a first barefoot run and walk experience. Let me say that experience was really interesting in a number of ways:
- first, running in vff's for 2 years is not much seeming prep for running barefoot
- second it really is an intimate experience with the foot exploring surfaces that are varrying so quickly. Indeed my feet definitely at this stage feel more sensitive than my hands. Maybe my hands would feel that sensitive if i was walking on them. Anyway.
- Running stride does change again - even less lean - to lessen impact on the feet.
- it's nicer right now to run than to walk
- my foot strike is less ball of foot dominant than in vff's
- i did get what is the intimation of a blister in the middle top metatarsals (under the second and third toe) and that's the only bit that's a little tender today.
- I can see how paying attention to one's feet one could run forever because so tuned to foot placement - perhaps this will change.
But when i got home, i had some questions from Mick because i did not experience nirvana in bare feet. Pavement was surprisingly hot; grass surprisingly filled with pricklies (though cooler) and that fresh tar with big rather than small bits was no fun at all.
So my main question to Mick has been:
- how long does it take to adapt to where road running does not cause a teeth gritting
reflex?
Mick Replies:
4mm Too many between You and the Planet
Technique. It's about Technique.
Your first question is impossible for me to answer. I would imagine that improving your technique and just getting used to the additional feedback from your soles (which are probably hypersensitive from years of trying to feel the ground through the soles of your shoes!) is a very individual thing. I guess that the hypersensitivity will become normal sensitivity relatively quickly as the nervous system is incredibly plastic, this will improve the comfort of your ride automatically.
Finding the Natural Spring
My advice is to first learn how to find your natural spring.
Stand in easy balance (head balancing on the neck, torso balancing on the hips etc.) then free up your ankles and knees and let them bend (keeping the torso vertically balanced) until you feel your heels wanting to leave the ground. This will probably feel like an enormous amount of knee bend, but this is what will provide the cushioning.
When you have found your inner spring, simply practice lifting one foot a little underneath you but at the same time allowing the supporting ankle to release (let the ankle bend forward, or dosiflex, like falling forward, as per runner on right in image below -mc)
Alternate the lifting of the feet like this in place.
You should be aiming to do this without any upward movement of the torso or pushing downward with the feet. Doing it in front of a mirror initially provides good feedback.
 |
| Note the legs underneath , not in front of, the torso. Note also the ankle dorsiflexing to allow the fall forward in the runner on the left |
Threat Reflex - dans le tete
Another contributing factor to discomfort is anticipatory tensing of the feet. There will almost certainly be a bit of fear about how the landing will feel and the usual response is to tense up to 'prepare' for it.
This is counterproductive as the feet and legs need to be free and loose to mould and respond to the ground. It is easier said than done to not tense up, but believe me that leaving the feet and legs alone is the biggest lesson you can learn - it is only then that the reflexes can operate without interference resulting in the gentle, light and comfortable ride that I experience.
Walking and Running and over striding
Re: walking vs running, yes, most people over stride when walking and land on the heel. It is often easier to shorten and quicken the stride to land on the mid foot when running.
You are basically learning to walk and run again but this time with benefit of a lot more information to help you. It will take time and patience. It is certainly not realistic to expect to be able to do what you have been doing in the VFFs any time soon.
As for the pounding, you have to go up first to come down with a clunk so you must still be pushing down into the ground. I like to think of my feet and legs as passive. I simply have the intention to move forwards and I release my ankles to allow that to happen. It is simply a matter of allowing the legs to spring forward from behind and for the foot to touch down underneath me in time to stop me falling on my face.
Adaptation Time
 |
| heel vs toe the thinner the sole goes |
Enjoy the ride
THANK YOU MICK for taking the time
But i Like my Shoes (that Pass the Twist Test)
Reflections on why to Barefoot
My hope is that, even if folks don't go the whole unshod way, for all running forever, you'll find in this series at least a few reasons to give going truly unshod:
checking out changes
- in stride
- in running economy
- in force
- in walking gait
- in texture
- in temperature
And there's something else: feeling textures with our feet.
Exploring the carpeting and hallway surfaces at work unshod brings a certain kind of sensual pleasure that is unexpected. Walking around outside even for brief periods is certainly making me more of a pavement-type connoisseur. Temperature is also amazing, to feel what cool or heat is like - it sounds so obvious, but it's really quite remarkable to bring attention to what the feet are feeling, not just how they're moving.
My feet are definitely still in the hyper-sensitive space of being dialed up to pick up on sensations that have been otherwise muffled, but i'm still more curious to explore the world with what feels like a new sensation than to cover this up again.
It almost seems daring - like a mutant thing: i am now going to take my shoes off and expose my NAKED FEET to feed my brain with new and powerful information that will let me walk and run FOREVER. Ok, perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but really, the unshod foot is a whole sensorium that seems to give so much info back it's pretty surprising.
More De Stressing
I used to think kicking off my shoes meant swapping trad shoes for shoes that pass the twist test, and that getting more movement helps decrease stress because the body has a clearer sense of where it is in space, letting those joints and muscles move.
This is still True. BUT
my guess is that letting the foot feel the world beneath our feet, giving that glaborus epithelium the sensation, the touch, it craves, may also well chill the stress events. I'm extrapolating about this touch craving based on how crazy we can get in a sensory deprivation tank - that that's not how we're designed to be; we're designed, it seems, to be in contact with the world. And when we are, we have more ways of telling our beings that things are fine: we have way more options to respond more quickly effectively and efficiently.
Heh Mikey, he likes it.
So, again, even if barefooting for full on runs feels like one too many for you, here's to finding a few opportunities, with increasing regularity, to feel the outside world through your feet.
Please let me know what you discover - post a comment here.
Thanks for reading,
And if you've enjoyed this series with Mick, i hope you will sponsor him on his barefoot Great North Run.
Related Links
- Part I of the Interview with Dr. Wilkinson: barefooting mechanics
- Part II of Wilkinson Interview: Got to have Sole (explosed) in Barefoot Running (research refs included)
- Part III of the Wilkinson Interview: physiological differences and social adaptation
- Improving Running technique immediately - with breathing
- Sprint Techniques - for active recovery
- what's a movement assessment and why have one?
- training for the sprain
- does running shoe type reduce injury? how bout no
- do your shoes pass the twist test
- VFF's and Pose Running
- Fitting Vibram FiveFingers and more
Monday, July 25, 2011
Mick Wilkinson Part III - the physical and social adaptations of barefoot running practice
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In part one of our series with Dr. Mick Wilkinson on the joys and reasons of barefoot walking and running, we looked at the mechanics of going barefoot. In part two we looked at why exposing the sole is a good idea for performance economy. In part IV, we'll feature a barefoot adaptation technique clinic. In this the third part of our interview with Dr. Mick Wilkinson on the joys of barefooting, we consider
Ok, pose first. This type of running is often described as emulating barefoot running. Thoughts?
Someone running pose has a similar outward appearance to an experienced barefoot runner in terms of gait characteristics. What is different, at least from my perspective, is that pose is about 'DOING' something particular with your legs, specifically, actively pulling up the foot with the hamstrings and as the original book suggests preventing the heel from landing or at least controlling its descent.
I found great difficulty with this personally and many posts on the pose running web site cite similar problems and occasionally injuries from failed attempts to 'DO' it correctly.
As I have alluded to earlier, natural running is about NOT doing. It is about NOT interfering with the automatic reflexes of the muscle spindles in legs and feet and in fact all skeletal muscles. Allowing the stretch reflexes to operate in response to the sensation of barefoot contact results in a graceful, gentle and relatively effortless movement. Fighting or trying to 'make' movements / positions happen that will result on their own is what causes difficulties.
Humans have been running for two million years and were (some still are) very good at it. We have all been born with all the equipment we need to learn to run with ease and comfort, we don't need a book, method or any special shoes to teach us how or protect us, your own bare soles will teach you everything you need to know to run gently and easily. All you have to do is listen to them and let the movements that want to reflexively occur simply happen, just keep thinking of where you want to go - i.e. forwards and upwards - your reflexes will take care of the rest.
VFF's
I have not run in VFF's but if I had, I would never have suffered the blisters that taught me to move forward without having to actively push off as they would have shielded me from this friction. I also note a number of similar post on Ken Bob Saxton's web site about top-of-the-foot pain in people trying to transition to barefoot running in VFF's. The symptoms described are usually characteristic of sesamoiditis, that is irritation of a group of small bones in the mid foot that usually results from chronic and excessive pressure on these small mobile bones.
[perhaps i'm fortunate, but in two plus years of running and walking in vff's, i've not had this issue -mc]
As Ken Bob points out and a sports medicine expert in my own department confirms, driving the foot back and down into the ground with barely any cushioning is a sure way to irritate these bones and cause the problems described. If this action were performed barefoot, blisters would reveal the technique flaw long before inflammation reared its ugly head.
This is exactly what i experienced on my first run out:
that's a big surprise that my form is plainly still not barefoot optimal.
As I have said earlier, the sensitivity of the sole is there for a reason, to block the sensations of direct contact is to lose out on information that helps you run gently. It is like trying to learn to sing while wearing ear plugs!
Apart from all the reasons I give above, it just feels absolutely great. To feel the ground, to move gently over it, the breeze cooling your feet, the sheer sense of freedom and of moving in a way that respects the way the body evolved and respects our evolutionary heritage as running animals.
o Sports and footwear
No. When I run, I can do so in such a way as to minimise friction that would otherwise cause blisters and running is in one direction only - forward. Squash on the other hand is a multiple-sprint sport characterised by rapid and frequent changes of direction, often dictated by your opponent (especially if playing poorly!). Friction in this situation is high and cannot be avoided, playing squash barefoot would tear my feet to bits. Humans evolved to run distances not to play squash!
That said, I still place great value on being able to feel the floor so I can minimise impact and rates of loading not shield myself from the sensation of them by wearing cushioned shoes. Balance is also crucial and feedback from the foot and contact with floor is paramount. Ankle injuries are common in squash and I think this could be linked to wearing shoes that dampen feedback from the sole of the foot and of position sense in the ankle with cushioning and motion control.
I play in old style white canvas army plimsoles. They have very thin soles and no cushioning or support. That way I avoid blisters, but also get excellent feedback about impact that can help me move more gently and lightly on the court. I have practised on court barefoot, but that is when I am in control of where the ball goes or when I am simply practicing set and planned movement patterns.
As a sports person, what about sports and footwear more generally? Watching the French
You can probably guess what I'm going to say. It is widely held public perception (largely based on unsupported claims of shoe manufacturers) that our feet and bodies somehow need protecting from nasty impact forces that threaten to damage our joints and cause us discomfort.
The body and feet have evolved to allow free and easy locomotion across widely varying terrains and surfaces. We have an inbuilt, fully interactive cushioning system that processes information faster than any computer. It comprises reflex loops, incredibly sensitive sensors and muscle systems that respond virtually instantaneously to carry out our movement wishes with the minimum of effort and maximum comfort.
To immobilise, cushion, elevate and 'control' limits if not prevents these finally controlled protective and performance enhancing mechanisms from operating properly. In my view, little good can come from interfering with what evolution has provided. Natural selection is a powerful force and humans would not be here today if it were not for our ancestors (barefoot) running prowess - two million years of development can't be wrong.
o Barefooting in public:
Once I began barefoot running and noticed aches and pains disappearing that returned when I wore shoes, I started going barefoot as often as possible.
I understand it snows in northumbria. What do you do for foot coverings in
If I'm not running, I do wear shoes in the winter. Running barefoot doesn't make your feet tough, in fact, it is the sensitivity of them that allows you to run barefoot comfortably, my feet get cold like anyone else's.
When running in the winter, I still go barefoot but I have to limit the duration of my runs so that my feet don't get too cold. If they go numb, that is bad news as it is the feedback from them that helps me run gently without hurting myself. I find that if I wrap the rest of me up well, my feet will be good for about 20-30 mins even if it is a little bit frosty. I stick to the pavements in the winter though as wet grass and sand really sap the heat out of your feet.
I never run in the snow as I have no idea what is underneath it. There could be unknown sharp objects that could injure my feet that I could easily avoid if I could see them.
Never at work no. I did get a comment from a security guard at a supermarket once about what dirt might be on the bottom of my feet, "the same as would be on the bottom of my shoes" was my reply ..... he let me go ahead and shop. In another instance, I was refused access to a roller coaster ride at a theme park unless I put on the flip flops I had with me. The reason I was told was that should the ride break down, I would have to climb down a ladder to safety. I pointed out that surely I would be safer climbing down a ladder in my bare feet than in flip flops .... I didn't win that argument and took to the ride in my 'safer' flip flops!
Just go ahead and do it. Obviously within any restrictions placed on you by your job and home / play environment. Common sense has to apply, I wouldn't want anyone to get the sacked or put themselves at risk on my recommendation. If safety and acceptance aren't an issue, go for it, there are many benefits to be had and if anyone asks you can list them - you don't have to be a hippy - I don't have any hair!
o Barefoot and Familial Concerns for one's wellbeing
About the fear thing, yes I have had that also.
My response is I promise that I will walk and run with my eyes open so if glass is there on the path before me, I will avoid it just as someone in shoes would do!
the unseen stuff is an interesting one. I believe that you will be better off barefoot than in a minimal shoe. As soon as you feel something on your bare sole, your foot will withdraw from it. Now imagine the same situation shod, you might put quite a lot of weight on the foot before the glass or other sharp object penetrates the shoe at which time you are bearing down on the object with some force and will likely cause a worse injury than would result from quick withdrawal from early and detailed sensory feedback.
Another useful fact about the sole of the foot is the skin is unique - called the glaborous epithelium. The arrangement of collagen fibres is such that pressure that might otherwise puncture the skin is dissipated in all directions offering a wonderfully resistant surface. You don't get calluses from barefooting either - I had callus before I stared, now it has all gone! The plantar surface is like well conditioned leather - soft yet very resilient.
Anyone interested in barefoot running really must visit www.therunningbarefoot.com. Read the material about how to run barefoot.
The author (Ken Bob Saxton) is as eloquent and informed a writer as I have come across on the topic
and is a veteran of some 40 odd barefoot marathons (some back to back!), trail runs etc. For a non-scientist he really does have a very good grasp on the body, mechanics, physics, evolution and philosophy. The author has also recently published a book titled the complete book of barefoot running 
though I have not obtained a copy yet. Chris MacDougal's book Born to Run
is also a very entertaining read. Whilst not generally about barefoot running, there is a lot in there to get you thinking about the need (or not) for shoes and how our approach to running as a pastime and activity has been distorted over time.
Part IV of my discussion with Mick will be a bit more about Mick and his research, as well as a wee clinic in addressing the starting errors of "running" barefoot follows.
Remember, if you're enjoyng this series, please consider sponsoring Mick on his Great North (barefoot) Run.
Related Links
- the differences of barefoot vs psuedo barefooting practices (ones that still use "minimalist" footwear)
- We talk a bit about footwear in sport, and also, finally and perhaps most importantly
- the social issues around moving towards barefoot practice.
Ok, pose first. This type of running is often described as emulating barefoot running. Thoughts?
Someone running pose has a similar outward appearance to an experienced barefoot runner in terms of gait characteristics. What is different, at least from my perspective, is that pose is about 'DOING' something particular with your legs, specifically, actively pulling up the foot with the hamstrings and as the original book suggests preventing the heel from landing or at least controlling its descent.
I found great difficulty with this personally and many posts on the pose running web site cite similar problems and occasionally injuries from failed attempts to 'DO' it correctly.
As I have alluded to earlier, natural running is about NOT doing. It is about NOT interfering with the automatic reflexes of the muscle spindles in legs and feet and in fact all skeletal muscles. Allowing the stretch reflexes to operate in response to the sensation of barefoot contact results in a graceful, gentle and relatively effortless movement. Fighting or trying to 'make' movements / positions happen that will result on their own is what causes difficulties.
Humans have been running for two million years and were (some still are) very good at it. We have all been born with all the equipment we need to learn to run with ease and comfort, we don't need a book, method or any special shoes to teach us how or protect us, your own bare soles will teach you everything you need to know to run gently and easily. All you have to do is listen to them and let the movements that want to reflexively occur simply happen, just keep thinking of where you want to go - i.e. forwards and upwards - your reflexes will take care of the rest.
VFF's
I have not run in VFF's but if I had, I would never have suffered the blisters that taught me to move forward without having to actively push off as they would have shielded me from this friction. I also note a number of similar post on Ken Bob Saxton's web site about top-of-the-foot pain in people trying to transition to barefoot running in VFF's. The symptoms described are usually characteristic of sesamoiditis, that is irritation of a group of small bones in the mid foot that usually results from chronic and excessive pressure on these small mobile bones.
[perhaps i'm fortunate, but in two plus years of running and walking in vff's, i've not had this issue -mc]
As Ken Bob points out and a sports medicine expert in my own department confirms, driving the foot back and down into the ground with barely any cushioning is a sure way to irritate these bones and cause the problems described. If this action were performed barefoot, blisters would reveal the technique flaw long before inflammation reared its ugly head.
This is exactly what i experienced on my first run out:
that's a big surprise that my form is plainly still not barefoot optimal.
As I have said earlier, the sensitivity of the sole is there for a reason, to block the sensations of direct contact is to lose out on information that helps you run gently. It is like trying to learn to sing while wearing ear plugs!
- any other point you'd like to make about the value of running truly barefoot?
Apart from all the reasons I give above, it just feels absolutely great. To feel the ground, to move gently over it, the breeze cooling your feet, the sheer sense of freedom and of moving in a way that respects the way the body evolved and respects our evolutionary heritage as running animals.
o Sports and footwear
You're also an avid squash player - do you play squash barefoot?
No. When I run, I can do so in such a way as to minimise friction that would otherwise cause blisters and running is in one direction only - forward. Squash on the other hand is a multiple-sprint sport characterised by rapid and frequent changes of direction, often dictated by your opponent (especially if playing poorly!). Friction in this situation is high and cannot be avoided, playing squash barefoot would tear my feet to bits. Humans evolved to run distances not to play squash!
That said, I still place great value on being able to feel the floor so I can minimise impact and rates of loading not shield myself from the sensation of them by wearing cushioned shoes. Balance is also crucial and feedback from the foot and contact with floor is paramount. Ankle injuries are common in squash and I think this could be linked to wearing shoes that dampen feedback from the sole of the foot and of position sense in the ankle with cushioning and motion control.
I play in old style white canvas army plimsoles. They have very thin soles and no cushioning or support. That way I avoid blisters, but also get excellent feedback about impact that can help me move more gently and lightly on the court. I have practised on court barefoot, but that is when I am in control of where the ball goes or when I am simply practicing set and planned movement patterns.
Open and Wimbledon, for instance, seeing how taped up Nadal's foot was to
the point of being immobile, or looking at football players (and ankle
injuries) and more taping makes me wonder about sports that seem to assume
that feet/ankles are best immobilised, ostensibly for safety, if not
performance. Thoughts?
You can probably guess what I'm going to say. It is widely held public perception (largely based on unsupported claims of shoe manufacturers) that our feet and bodies somehow need protecting from nasty impact forces that threaten to damage our joints and cause us discomfort.
The body and feet have evolved to allow free and easy locomotion across widely varying terrains and surfaces. We have an inbuilt, fully interactive cushioning system that processes information faster than any computer. It comprises reflex loops, incredibly sensitive sensors and muscle systems that respond virtually instantaneously to carry out our movement wishes with the minimum of effort and maximum comfort.
To immobilise, cushion, elevate and 'control' limits if not prevents these finally controlled protective and performance enhancing mechanisms from operating properly. In my view, little good can come from interfering with what evolution has provided. Natural selection is a powerful force and humans would not be here today if it were not for our ancestors (barefoot) running prowess - two million years of development can't be wrong.
o Barefooting in public:
On meeting you in your office hallway, you were unshod, but also had just
come in from a run. That said, if i understand aright, you also walk about
barefoot do you not? Did that start right with running barefoot, or at what
point?
Once I began barefoot running and noticed aches and pains disappearing that returned when I wore shoes, I started going barefoot as often as possible.
 |
| Example of winter unshod runner. Looks happy? |
the cold?
If I'm not running, I do wear shoes in the winter. Running barefoot doesn't make your feet tough, in fact, it is the sensitivity of them that allows you to run barefoot comfortably, my feet get cold like anyone else's.
When running in the winter, I still go barefoot but I have to limit the duration of my runs so that my feet don't get too cold. If they go numb, that is bad news as it is the feedback from them that helps me run gently without hurting myself. I find that if I wrap the rest of me up well, my feet will be good for about 20-30 mins even if it is a little bit frosty. I stick to the pavements in the winter though as wet grass and sand really sap the heat out of your feet.
I never run in the snow as I have no idea what is underneath it. There could be unknown sharp objects that could injure my feet that I could easily avoid if I could see them.
Have you had any health and safety issues raised about being in the
building unshod, whether for risk of accidents or "uncleanliness"??
Never at work no. I did get a comment from a security guard at a supermarket once about what dirt might be on the bottom of my feet, "the same as would be on the bottom of my shoes" was my reply ..... he let me go ahead and shop. In another instance, I was refused access to a roller coaster ride at a theme park unless I put on the flip flops I had with me. The reason I was told was that should the ride break down, I would have to climb down a ladder to safety. I pointed out that surely I would be safer climbing down a ladder in my bare feet than in flip flops .... I didn't win that argument and took to the ride in my 'safer' flip flops!
Is there any kind of meeting or event to which you do *not* go unshod now?
Where the social occasion demands it, I put on shoes. For instance, I generally teach and spend most if not all of the day barefoot, but if I am required to meet an important person at work or parents or for weddings (for example) or other important social occasions or in eating establishments, I will put something on. This is more about making others feel comfortable than me feeling embarrassed though which is real shame.What strategies have you used - and/or would recommend if other folks want
to explore full on barefooting perhaps especially in the work environment,
home and play?
Just go ahead and do it. Obviously within any restrictions placed on you by your job and home / play environment. Common sense has to apply, I wouldn't want anyone to get the sacked or put themselves at risk on my recommendation. If safety and acceptance aren't an issue, go for it, there are many benefits to be had and if anyone asks you can list them - you don't have to be a hippy - I don't have any hair!
o Barefoot and Familial Concerns for one's wellbeing
Ok, so i've come back from a barefoot run and a walk and my family has greated me with absolute horror that this time i've taken my fitness eccentricities one too far. The risk to one's well being is just one too many - the glass, the nails, the nasty things that hide in the grass. Have you encountered anything like this?
About the fear thing, yes I have had that also.
My response is I promise that I will walk and run with my eyes open so if glass is there on the path before me, I will avoid it just as someone in shoes would do!
the unseen stuff is an interesting one. I believe that you will be better off barefoot than in a minimal shoe. As soon as you feel something on your bare sole, your foot will withdraw from it. Now imagine the same situation shod, you might put quite a lot of weight on the foot before the glass or other sharp object penetrates the shoe at which time you are bearing down on the object with some force and will likely cause a worse injury than would result from quick withdrawal from early and detailed sensory feedback.
Another useful fact about the sole of the foot is the skin is unique - called the glaborous epithelium. The arrangement of collagen fibres is such that pressure that might otherwise puncture the skin is dissipated in all directions offering a wonderfully resistant surface. You don't get calluses from barefooting either - I had callus before I stared, now it has all gone! The plantar surface is like well conditioned leather - soft yet very resilient.
 |
| the bottom and top of Mick's feet. looking pretty unblistered, and no shards of glass sticking through them |
Excellent. Are there any resources you'd recommend for folks preparing to take the plunge?
Books you'd recommend - and a bit about what makes you recommend them?
Web resources? anything else?
Anyone interested in barefoot running really must visit www.therunningbarefoot.com. Read the material about how to run barefoot. The author (Ken Bob Saxton) is as eloquent and informed a writer as I have come across on the topic
and is a veteran of some 40 odd barefoot marathons (some back to back!), trail runs etc. For a non-scientist he really does have a very good grasp on the body, mechanics, physics, evolution and philosophy. The author has also recently published a book titled the complete book of barefoot running though I have not obtained a copy yet. Chris MacDougal's book Born to Run is also a very entertaining read. Whilst not generally about barefoot running, there is a lot in there to get you thinking about the need (or not) for shoes and how our approach to running as a pastime and activity has been distorted over time.Thank you so much Mick, for the great detailed replies on these points.
Part IV of my discussion with Mick will be a bit more about Mick and his research, as well as a wee clinic in addressing the starting errors of "running" barefoot follows.
Remember, if you're enjoyng this series, please consider sponsoring Mick on his Great North (barefoot) Run.
Related Links
- Part I of the Interview with Dr. Wilkinson: barefooting mechanics
- Part II of Wilkinson Interview: Got to have Sole (explosed) in Barefoot Running (research refs included)
- we're walking here - and feeling much better
- what's a movement assessment and why have one?
- training for the sprain
- running shoes as single factor thinking
- does running shoe type reduce injury? how bout no
- do your shoes pass the twist test
- ankle taping - what the ??
- VFF's and Pose Running
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Mick Wilkinson Part II: The Sensitive Sole of Barefoot Running
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For Dr. Mick Wilkinson, barefoot running has got to have sole. Exposed soles. In part I of this interview with Dr. Wilkinson, we looked at the rationale for going truly barefoot from a largely musculo-tendon and propriocpetive perspective. In part III, we look at minimalist vs barefoot running, and related social constraints, and in part IV, we'll do a wee clinic on technique and adaptation.
Now, in part II, we're gonna focus a bit more on some other mechnoreceptive action and skin types.
In other words, barefooting is really great to let a foot be a foot in terms of getting joints to move that are designed to move, and muscles to work that may otherwise get no work in a shoe, since that's a really good idea to give the brain a better idea of where we are in space.
But more than just moving joints cuz their designed to move is to consider the surface of the foot, and what it's designed to do, and how that actually also needs to inform movement - and how movement is changed because of this feedback.
So we pick up again with Dr. Wilkinson
o Gotta Have Sole
Yes indeed. The density of nerve endings in the sole of the foot - called the plantar surface - is analogous to that of the lips, finger tips and genitals, all renowned for their sensitivity.
Moreover, the type of nerves supplying these areas are known as type IV afferents - the fastest conducting nerves fibres in the body. Your feet are incredibly sensitive and they are so for very good reason.
I'll try to do this by combining what findings of studies have shown with what anthropologists tell us about human evolution. Hopefully that way, you can see how I have arrived at my hypothesis on the matter.
Gait Alternations with Bare Feet.
We know that gait is altered when barefoot, reduced rates of loading and in some studies reduced impact forces are associated with these gait alterations, economy is also improved (i.e. energy cost to run at a given speed is reduced) and could be linked to the altered gait pattern as well as simply removing the mass of the shoe.
Previous studies have shown a relationship between plantar sensation, impact avoidance behaviour and impact force in contrived, static activities (Robbins 89).
There is anthropological and fossil evidence that endurance running was a key survival-related behaviour for humans and that the this behaviour shaped the anatomy and biology of homo sapiens (LIEBENBERG 08). Early humans would have and indeed many existing clusters of humans still do run barefoot. Incidence of lower limb injury is lower in these barefoot populations (Carrier 84, Leibermen 10)).
hypothesis: The nerve supply is very dense in the plantar surface of the foot and those nerves are type IV afferents, very fast conducting nerves that provide great sensitivity of feedback.
Sensitive Soles
My hypothesis is that we have highly sensitive feet because the feedback received from them when walking and running barefoot results in continuous regulation and alteration of gait to minimise perceived plantar discomfort. This moderation of perceived plantar discomfort comes about by adopting a gait pattern that minimises rates of loading and peak force. It just so happens that the gait patterns that do this also seem to make better use of elastic structures in the legs and feet and also result in more economical locomotion.
Rate of loading and peak force are two known causative factors in injury, and economy is a known determinant of endurance-running performance. It would make good sense from an evolutionary perspective that highly sensitive feet, by virtue of the injury reducing and economy enhancing benefits, would be a trait that conferred a survival advantage in humans for who running was a key survival behaviour, and would thus be perpetuated by evolution through natural selection, hence we still have them. If sensitive feet were a limitation to early human runners, they would not have survived to pass on this trait.
How can a running shoe top that? Two million years of evolution cannot be surpassed by an inch or two of cushioning foam rubber that in fact interfere with natural locomotion.
Yes. Some fairly dated but excellent studies by Steve Robbins and co-workers in the mid-to-late eighties got there before me and really were ahead of their time. They proposed a plantar sensory feedback loop in which increased plantar sensation (imposed by pressing the barefoot down from above on to a force plate topped by surfaces of varying roughness) resulted in automatic impact avoidance reflexes the same as the withdrawal reflex when you touch something sharp or hot and a resulting lower plantar force.
They also published some results collected from people dropping down onto a force plate from an elevated box. They covered the force plate in varying thicknesses of cushioning material used in the manufacture of running shoes or nothing at all. Impact force and subjective rating of discomfort were recorded. The findings showed that the thicker the cushioning the more comfortable the landing was perceived but the higher the actual impact force was!
So, shoes block the sensation of impact NOT the impact
which is actually worse than when barefoot. Robbins and colleagues [in the late 80s] actually warned against the deceptive advertising of running shoes saying that you buy them believing they would protect you when in fact the opposite is the case. Many more studies from this group reinforced these findings.
Revisiting Robbins on Barefoot Force/Sensitivity Adaptation
The limitation of the these excellent studies was actually also one of their strengths - they were very tightly controlled in a laboratory setting with contrived loading patterns. All I am working on at the moment is an extension of this early work in actual running.
I also want to quantify the link between plantar sensation and impact avoidance as it manifests itself in whole-body gait alteration. Briefly, I plan to have willing volunteers run at a self-selected speed both shod and barefoot over surfaces of varying roughness outdoors.Leg-muscle activation (via EMG), gait (via motion analysis), impact force (estimated from a mathematical model) and subjectively rated plantar sensation will be recorded.
I hypothesise that as plantar discomfort increases, the difference in gait characteristics and impact between the shod and barefoot run will also increase (i.e. the moderation of gait will become more extreme as the plantar discomfort increases). Though this design cannot show causality, it might provide some evidence for the link between plantar-sensory input and gait moderation that could open the door to other studies.
Running economy and Barefoot Running.
Current literature (and my own work that is currently under review) is fairly consistent in that barefoot running is less costly in energy terms, but also suggests that the advantage is most likely explained by simple removal of the extra mass of the shoe (Divert 08). There is, however, a strong theoretical basis to suggest that the gait patterns characteristic of experienced barefoot runners could also be related to energy saving. Specifically, the greater knee, hip and ankle angles could all place greater stretch on elastic elements in the legs and feet improving energy storage and the shorter ground-contact times mean that more of the energy is returned (the longer you stay in contact with the ground the more energy is lost as heat).
An interesting finding from our own lab that could also relate to energy saving is that the horizontal distance between point of initial ground contact and the body's centre of mass is much less in barefoot than shod running.
In other words, the foot land more underneath you than in front of you. This is important as the further you land out in front (shod), the bigger the braking impulse and the more you slow down with each foot strike. That speed loss has to be actively overcome to maintain a constant speed. In contrast, the reduced braking impulse of the barefoot strike means less energy to maintain speed - corresponding to my personal experience of effortlessly falling forward over the foot underneath me.
The work needed here is with experienced barefoot runners as the current literature all uses runners for who barefooting is novel. It is entirely plausible that a skilled barefoot runner will have economy advantages over shod runners that exceed that explained by the mass of the shoe - if you know any experienced barefoot runners who would be interested in this study, let me know as I haven't found many (actually any) up here!
Citations
Now, in part II, we're gonna focus a bit more on some other mechnoreceptive action and skin types.
In other words, barefooting is really great to let a foot be a foot in terms of getting joints to move that are designed to move, and muscles to work that may otherwise get no work in a shoe, since that's a really good idea to give the brain a better idea of where we are in space.
But more than just moving joints cuz their designed to move is to consider the surface of the foot, and what it's designed to do, and how that actually also needs to inform movement - and how movement is changed because of this feedback.
o Gotta Have Sole
My fave stat about our feet is that 24 percent of the body's joints are in our feet - that's a whole lot of proprioception going on.
But you brought up this other incredible observation i've simply never heard before that's right there in front of us in the brain's representation of the body in the cortex: that the feet are HUGE like the hands and lips. And your observation is that this is mapping the sensitivity - the nerual activity - in the skin of the foot.
Yes indeed. The density of nerve endings in the sole of the foot - called the plantar surface - is analogous to that of the lips, finger tips and genitals, all renowned for their sensitivity.
 |
| Mapping of homunculus to sensory/motor cortex; foot and toes take up 10% of the total sensory cortex; in the motor cortex get this: the foot is 8% and the ANKLE is 17% (lips are 14%). These stats suggest those little clay models with small feet are off in terms of representation. These Illustrations seem to be more accurate. |
I so did not know that about nerve types in the foot.
You have some really cool ideas about this sensitivity's development that
You have some really cool ideas about this sensitivity's development that
shoes obviously compromise, running from evolutionary survival mechanism to
running economy. Please, share:
I'll try to do this by combining what findings of studies have shown with what anthropologists tell us about human evolution. Hopefully that way, you can see how I have arrived at my hypothesis on the matter.
Gait Alternations with Bare Feet.
We know that gait is altered when barefoot, reduced rates of loading and in some studies reduced impact forces are associated with these gait alterations, economy is also improved (i.e. energy cost to run at a given speed is reduced) and could be linked to the altered gait pattern as well as simply removing the mass of the shoe.
Previous studies have shown a relationship between plantar sensation, impact avoidance behaviour and impact force in contrived, static activities (Robbins 89).
There is anthropological and fossil evidence that endurance running was a key survival-related behaviour for humans and that the this behaviour shaped the anatomy and biology of homo sapiens (LIEBENBERG 08). Early humans would have and indeed many existing clusters of humans still do run barefoot. Incidence of lower limb injury is lower in these barefoot populations (Carrier 84, Leibermen 10)).
hypothesis: The nerve supply is very dense in the plantar surface of the foot and those nerves are type IV afferents, very fast conducting nerves that provide great sensitivity of feedback.
Sensitive Soles
 |
| ya heel strike only once in bare soles. that's all it takes to suggest a different approach |
Rate of loading and peak force are two known causative factors in injury, and economy is a known determinant of endurance-running performance. It would make good sense from an evolutionary perspective that highly sensitive feet, by virtue of the injury reducing and economy enhancing benefits, would be a trait that conferred a survival advantage in humans for who running was a key survival behaviour, and would thus be perpetuated by evolution through natural selection, hence we still have them. If sensitive feet were a limitation to early human runners, they would not have survived to pass on this trait.
So there you have it, we have sensitive feet so that we moderate every moment of every step to make it comfortable and we make it comfortable by altering loading rate, friction and peak force - the bonus is that these attempts to make landing comfortable also might cause reduced energy cost of movement and be related to injury prevention.
How can a running shoe top that? Two million years of evolution cannot be surpassed by an inch or two of cushioning foam rubber that in fact interfere with natural locomotion.
Awesomely sensible. You're looking at researching this sensitivity effect right now. Can you
tell us a little bit about how you're going about doing that and what the
hypothesis around running economy is?
Yes. Some fairly dated but excellent studies by Steve Robbins and co-workers in the mid-to-late eighties got there before me and really were ahead of their time. They proposed a plantar sensory feedback loop in which increased plantar sensation (imposed by pressing the barefoot down from above on to a force plate topped by surfaces of varying roughness) resulted in automatic impact avoidance reflexes the same as the withdrawal reflex when you touch something sharp or hot and a resulting lower plantar force.
 |
| bad bad bad sensation blockers |
So, shoes block the sensation of impact NOT the impact
which is actually worse than when barefoot. Robbins and colleagues [in the late 80s] actually warned against the deceptive advertising of running shoes saying that you buy them believing they would protect you when in fact the opposite is the case. Many more studies from this group reinforced these findings.
Revisiting Robbins on Barefoot Force/Sensitivity Adaptation
The limitation of the these excellent studies was actually also one of their strengths - they were very tightly controlled in a laboratory setting with contrived loading patterns. All I am working on at the moment is an extension of this early work in actual running.
I also want to quantify the link between plantar sensation and impact avoidance as it manifests itself in whole-body gait alteration. Briefly, I plan to have willing volunteers run at a self-selected speed both shod and barefoot over surfaces of varying roughness outdoors.Leg-muscle activation (via EMG), gait (via motion analysis), impact force (estimated from a mathematical model) and subjectively rated plantar sensation will be recorded.
I hypothesise that as plantar discomfort increases, the difference in gait characteristics and impact between the shod and barefoot run will also increase (i.e. the moderation of gait will become more extreme as the plantar discomfort increases). Though this design cannot show causality, it might provide some evidence for the link between plantar-sensory input and gait moderation that could open the door to other studies.
Running economy and Barefoot Running.
Current literature (and my own work that is currently under review) is fairly consistent in that barefoot running is less costly in energy terms, but also suggests that the advantage is most likely explained by simple removal of the extra mass of the shoe (Divert 08). There is, however, a strong theoretical basis to suggest that the gait patterns characteristic of experienced barefoot runners could also be related to energy saving. Specifically, the greater knee, hip and ankle angles could all place greater stretch on elastic elements in the legs and feet improving energy storage and the shorter ground-contact times mean that more of the energy is returned (the longer you stay in contact with the ground the more energy is lost as heat).
An interesting finding from our own lab that could also relate to energy saving is that the horizontal distance between point of initial ground contact and the body's centre of mass is much less in barefoot than shod running.
In other words, the foot land more underneath you than in front of you. This is important as the further you land out in front (shod), the bigger the braking impulse and the more you slow down with each foot strike. That speed loss has to be actively overcome to maintain a constant speed. In contrast, the reduced braking impulse of the barefoot strike means less energy to maintain speed - corresponding to my personal experience of effortlessly falling forward over the foot underneath me.
The work needed here is with experienced barefoot runners as the current literature all uses runners for who barefooting is novel. It is entirely plausible that a skilled barefoot runner will have economy advantages over shod runners that exceed that explained by the mass of the shoe - if you know any experienced barefoot runners who would be interested in this study, let me know as I haven't found many (actually any) up here!
The call goes out, and thank you for the references to related work.
And with these insights into the effect that and exposed plantar surface of the foot has on gait, we close today's post, with this request: if you try exploring barefooting this week, please come back and post - let me know how it goes. Especially if you try mulitple surfaces to notice the effect each may have on gait.
In Part III we look at other forms of running (like pose), the role of shoes in sports, being barefoot in public, a bit more about Dr. Wilkinson
In Part IV we have a wee clinic on barefoot running technique - best heard after giving barefoot running on mixed surfaces a go, when there will be more motivation than ever to hear these Sage Words. We'll also look a little bit at Making It Safe for Loved Ones to Accept your Peculiar Desire to Run Barefoot.
And for ref, this all started with Part I: the mechanical advantage of barefoot running.
Also, again, if you're finding this series interesting, please do consider sponsoring Mick on his
Great North Run in his bare feet at:
http://www.justgiving.com/Michael-Wilkinson0
See you in Part III. Remember, please do let me know about your initial bare soled experience.
And with these insights into the effect that and exposed plantar surface of the foot has on gait, we close today's post, with this request: if you try exploring barefooting this week, please come back and post - let me know how it goes. Especially if you try mulitple surfaces to notice the effect each may have on gait.
In Part III we look at other forms of running (like pose), the role of shoes in sports, being barefoot in public, a bit more about Dr. Wilkinson
In Part IV we have a wee clinic on barefoot running technique - best heard after giving barefoot running on mixed surfaces a go, when there will be more motivation than ever to hear these Sage Words. We'll also look a little bit at Making It Safe for Loved Ones to Accept your Peculiar Desire to Run Barefoot.
And for ref, this all started with Part I: the mechanical advantage of barefoot running.
Also, again, if you're finding this series interesting, please do consider sponsoring Mick on his
Great North Run in his bare feet at:
http://www.justgiving.com/Michael-Wilkinson0
See you in Part III. Remember, please do let me know about your initial bare soled experience.
Citations
Carrier, D. (1984). The Energetic Paradox of Human Running and Hominid Evolution Current Anthropology, 25 (4) DOI: 10.1086/203165
Divert, C., Mornieux, G., Freychat, P., Baly, L., Mayer, F., & Belli, A. (2008). Barefoot-Shod Running Differences: Shoe or Mass Effect? International Journal of Sports Medicine, 29 (6), 512-518 DOI: 10.1055/s-2007-989233
LIEBENBERG, L. (2008). The relevance of persistence hunting to human evolution Journal of Human Evolution, 55 (6), 1156-1159 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2008.07.004
Lieberman, D., Venkadesan, M., Werbel, W., Daoud, A., D’Andrea, S., Davis, I., Mang’Eni, R., & Pitsiladis, Y. (2010). Foot strike patterns and collision forces in habitually barefoot versus shod runners Nature, 463 (7280), 531-535 DOI: 10.1038/nature08723Related Posts
Robbins SE, Gouw GJ, & Hanna AM (1989). Running-related injury prevention through innate impact-moderating behavior. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 21 (2), 130-9 PMID: 2709977
- Part I of the Interview with Dr. Wilkinson: barefooting mechanics
- we're walking here - and feeling much better
- what's a movement assessment and why have one?
- training for the sprain
- move or die
- running shoes as single factor thinking
- does running shoe type reduce injury? how bout no
- do your shoes pass the twist test
- ankle taping - what the ??
- icing to play?
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