Eat Beans, Live Longer

I have been very interested in the Paleo diet for a while.  Indeed, the Crossfit movement is hooked on it for good reason.  When people eat Paleo, they lose fat, gain muscle and their performance improves.  This large-group experience is hard to ignore.

(My current opinion is that most people leave their bad-carb lifestyle and trade it for organic fruits and vegetables, and relatively-clean organic, grass-fed meat - this will give a huge boost in performance.)

Loren Cordain is a highly educated Anthropologist (not nutritionist) but when reading his book, I had a bone to pick with him.  Namley: his take on beans.  He says don't eat any beans!

Performance is one thing and survival is another.  When modern ethno-biologists study lifespan of humans and health, BEANS are a major component to living long.  (Google: BLUE ZONES and get some more on this.)

A study was done several years ago that I really like that hits this point home.  Put simply, the more beans you eat the less chance you have of dying.  (Obviously, there is an upper limit to this and the study did not attempt to answer this question.)

The short version: in a study of  785 people over a 3 year period, for every additional 20 grams of legumes a day was associated with an 8% drop in risk of death.  This was consistent even when other lifestyle factors and ethnicity was taken into account.

To quote the researchers:
"The significance of legumes persisted even after controlling for age at enrolment, gender, and smoking. Legumes have been associated with long-lived food cultures such as the Japanese (soy, tofu, natto, miso), the Swedes (brown beans, peas), and the Mediterranean people (lentils, chickpeas, white beans)".


Enjoy,
Brian, TheDailyFit

Build lean muscle. The Slow Rep = the Grow Rep

not an example of light weight

When researchers were trying to tackle the issue of building muscle for an older population (age 50-70), they had a few problems: This population can be prone to high blood pressure, sometimes risk of stroke, they face natural muscle wasting (Sarcopenia), and sore joints that can't handle heavy weights.  Since lifting heavy is known to increase blood pressure during the workout, this demographic really has the deck staked against them.

What they learned can help us all, especially those who don't have access to a lot of equipment.

How do you build muscle without lifting heavy weights? 

It is well recommended that to gain significant muscle tissue, one needs to lift in the 80%+ range of their one-rep maximum (1RM).  Example: if you can bench press 200 pounds, 1 time and one time only, then your 1RM is 200#.  If you want to gain peak strength you need to perform sets with 160# or more in order to really stimulate those muscles for growth.  Of course peak strength is not the only thing to develop there is also endurance and power, but we'll stick with strength for now.

Japanese researchers discovered muscle mass could be built using 50% of the one rep max if the proper technique was observed.  This allowed them to build muscle without spiking blood pressure.  The key to this technique is not only moving slowly, but also to make sure your muscles don't get to "take a breath".  I'll explain.

Many people like to rest in the "locked position".  With a squat, this is standing fully upright; with the pushup, this is arms locked out or paused with your chest on the ground.  In either case, your muscles are getting a break and that break is allowing more blood to flow in.  This gives the muscle more oxygen and makes you feel better.

With the Slow Rep (or Temp Rep, as I've seen it called by others), you take 3 seconds to go from the top position to the bottom position, you pause at the bottom for one second (with the pushup - this is NOT resting your chest on the ground), then take 3 seconds to return to the top position.  Don't rest at the top at all! Continue to the next rep: 3 seconds down, 1 second pause at the bottom and 3 seconds up.

It is the starving of your muscle for oxygen that results in physical growth and strength increase (technically, the lack of oxygen stimulates intra-muscular enzymes that promote growth).

Finally, the researchers took nearly every set to failure.

Some ideas:

Try mixing up your interval training.  Instead of doing all your reps as fast as you can, try them all using the Slow-Rep or Tempo-Rep tecnique.

Another thing you can try is 5 Slow-reps immediately followed by 10 normal ones.  This brings a great burn!

BTW, that is a real picture.

A magic number to tell how young you are

All that beauty makes smart researchers

Norwegian researchers studied 9,000 people and have determined a rating system to show you how fit/healthy you actually are.

Below you will find (1) the calculator for that fitness/health level and (2) the workout they recommend for people who currently don't exercise but want to improve their heart health.  This can be done with as little as one-17 minute exercise session a week.

(1) Use the calculator the researchers invented. - this gave me a rating (VO2MAX) of 57.  It said my fitness age is younger than a 20 year old, nice.  (for the calculator you will need to convert your waist measurement to centimeters.

(2) Here is the workout they outlined.

10 minute warmup
4 minutes where your heart rate is 90 VO2Max.
3 minute cool down.

This could be done on a stationary bike or treadmill.  Effectively, you need to be working out at 90% of your max heart rate. This can be calculated by: 220-your age.

More on the research here.

Enjoy,
Brian