15 Shocking Exercise Facts

I came upon a great article this week that I wanted to share with you all. We all know that exercise is important, but we often forget just how many areas of our life exercise can positively influence. I would also say that movement in general can have many of these benefits as it is such a fundamental element of begin human. When we are sedentary, there is no way to be fully healthy, because our bodies are meant to be active.

For today, however, let's look specifically at exercise and find out just how important it is to our mind and body.

15 Shocking Exercise Facts

Here are some of my takeaways:

1) Some is better than none. Even if you can just get 5 minutes of exercise/movement/stretching each day, you will be better off for it.

2) Hard is better than easy. If you do decide to hit the weights or go for a run, push yourself. You will get much more out of the workout in much less time.

3)There are not many things that exercise does not improve. Between mood, sleep, looks, energy, and endurance, exercise can have significant benefits in a lot of areas.

Enjoy the article and stay active!

You are What You Eat Eats (Part 2)

In our last post we began an important discussion about the food that our food eats. It is not enough to eat food that is thought to be healthy; we must also look at how that food was raised/grown to make sure that we are truly deriving the most nutrients possible from what we eat. Our focus last week was mostly on meat and how the feed provided for our commercially-raised animals is anything but optimal. Cows and other ruminants are most affected by this because they are not designed to eat the most abundant food source provided to them: corn. Other animals are also negatively affected when not given proper feed, so be sure to know what food your animals eat before you get out the knife and fork.

To continue our discussion, we turn our focus this week to our other main food source: plants. Plants are a vital part of any healthful diet, but often the plants that we eat are poorly grown and void of many nutrients that our bodies need.

Plants Need Food, Too

While plant products are not subjected to the grain overload that most farm-raised animals have received, plant health has not fared much better. With a combination of poor topsoil and an overload of chemicals, our plants have been drained of a majority of their nutrients. Many plants are picked early and ripened with chemicals as they ship. Others are doused so heavily in pesticide that they have no ability to grow to their full potential. With few nutrients coming from the ground, and chemicals coming from the sky, plants just are not what they used to be.

While I would like to say that organic is our saving grace, I am sorry to report that organic food is a toss-up. When you buy organic, you may be selecting something that was grown in better conditions, but you may just be eating the same food in a different package. Companies know that people are moving toward organic products, so they are looking for ways to cash in without raising costs. The market is poorly regulated and many times the word “organic” does not mean much. What does mean something is talking with farmers at your local farmers’ market. If you have a local farmer that you know, and you can visit their farm, it is much more likely that you will get the whole story. Choosing produce sold at farmers’ markets saves on transportation as well, as well as ensuring that there is less time between the plants being harvested and eating them. There is a loss of nutrients the longer a plant has been out of the earth, so the shorter the travel time, the better off you will be.

If you cannot get to a farmers’ market, I will say that if you can find food items with a USDA Certified Organic logo, you have the best chance of actually eating organically grown items. By contrast, terms such as “natural”, “cage-free”, and “vegetarian-fed” do not offer much help. The food industry works hard to confuse the public by using key phrases that seem beneficial, but really have no bearing on the quality of the food item. USDA Organic is as good as you will get.

The Cost of Health

For many people, eating well is often at odds with other priorities in their lives. Two of the most common areas of concern are the increased cost and time associated with eating healthily. The cost will always be higher for food items that have been raised/grown properly and with quality feed. You cannot subsidize topsoil and green grass, so the cost of production will inherently be higher. You will also find that you have less time available to you when your food becomes a priority. Between the time spent purchasing (multiple trips per week, multiple locations) and the time spent preparing (it is hard to stay healthy when you eat out a lot) you may be devoting an extra hour or more per day to eating well.

There are clearly reasons why it can be hard to change what you eat, but as with all health-related topics, it all comes down to your goals. The reality is that we will all spend time and money on our health. If you spend a little extra now on food, keep active, cook your own food, and sleep well, you will enjoy a certain quality of life which will stay pretty consistent into old age. If you wait to act, you may have more time and money now for entertainment, relaxation, or even reinvesting in your work, but  at some point you will be spending more time in the doctor’s office, at the hospital, recovering from injury, taking sick days, and being generally limited in what you are capable of doing. All of these will cost a lot of money too, so it’s up to you, do you choose now or later?

This is not always an easy choice to make, but just having the conversation is a great place to start. We often like to put off our health until later, but later is often too late. You cannot medicate or operate your way back to full function. Once your body starts to fail, only a long, slow progression of significant lifestyle changes can help you get back on the right track, but many times even this is not enough. And it will turn out that you will be spending more money on food and exercise, while ALSO spending it on health care. So again: now or later? It will cost you time, it will cost you money (probably more of both, the longer you wait), but only you can make that choice. 

You are What You Eat Eats (Part 1)

We all know that to look and feel your best, you have to eat well. Nutrition truly is the most important factor when it comes to optimizing health, and without a conscious effort to fuel your body with good foods, it is easy to put on the pounds. That is why I love the saying, “You are what you eat.” I think it perfectly describes how our bodies interact with the food we provide. If you provide poor-quality food, you are going to have a poor-quality body. The food you eat affects your body fat, your recovery, your likelihood of becoming sick or injured, your mood, your sleep, your strength, and your energy. It does it all! What is not so cliché, however, is understanding that it’s NOT just about what you eat…it’s about what you eat eats.

Healthy Food = Healthy People

While there are a wide variety of plants, animals, and their derivatives, there are a few things that all life needs to flourish. While we do not need to go into a biology lesson in this article, the one thing I do want to focus on is nutrients. All life requires some form of nutrients, and when these nutrients are poor in abundance or quality, the life form suffers. For plants, sun, soil, and water are vital components for optimizing health. For animals, the key components for good health are plants, other animals, and water. Without these elements, plant and animals cannot grow to their full potential and can become sick or malnourished.

As you can probably see, what we depend on for fuel depends on its own source of fuel to stay healthy. If what you’re eating was not cared for properly and fed properly, then it doesn’t really matter that you are eating stereotypically “healthy” food items…you are eating a sick plant or animal. On the other hand, when you provide your body with food items that have been well-nourished and have lived healthy lives, you, too, can enjoy a healthy life. When your food is health, you are healthy.

COWS DO NOT EAT GRAIN

One of the most blatant examples of how malnourished food can lead to problems up the food chain is our consumption of cow. Cow and red meat in general has gotten a pretty bad rap over the last few decades and it’s time to clear things up. Cow meat is not unhealthy. Sick cow meat is. Cows and other ruminants have a unique digestive system designed to break down and utilize grass and other forage, but not corn. Add to this that corn (especially feed-lot corn) contains very few nutrients to begin with, and overfeeding of corn to cows results in fat, sick animals. This is where hormones and antibiotics come into play in the meat industry. They have to keep these cows alive long enough to get them to slaughter, while making them as fat as possible.

Unfortunately, what ends up on your plate is a sick, over-fat piece of meat. Yummy! Contrast this with the story behind a grass-fed and finished source of meat, and you can begin to see why well fed food is important. When you provide a cow with an abundance of food it would naturally eat, the meat comes out full of vitamins and minerals, lean (only 10-15% fat), and with an abundance of healthy and essential fats such as omega-3s and CLA. These are very important fats that our bodies need to thrive, yet we rarely consume the necessary quantities to reap the benefits.

The problem with the extra fat in grain-fed meat is not only its caloric load, it is the TYPE of fat. Grains have a very high omega-6 content, and as we learned in Fat is Fuel, Not Foe (Part 2), having an imbalance of omega-6 and omega-3 can lead to some serious problems. So it turns out that cow is a great source of nutrients, but grain-fed (aka sick) cows are not. And this story does not just include cows. These days, just about every mass-produced animal is fed corn and/or soy and/or other animal byproducts. Chickens, pigs, and fish are fed a host of items that they would not naturally consume. And just like in cows, and just like in our own bodies, eating an abundance of grain leads to poor health.

While meat is most commonly talked about when it comes to grass-fed vs. grain fed, the food products which are derived from these same animals are a concern as well. Cow meat is not the only thing we consume from cows; there is milk, butter, yogurt, cheese, and kefir. These are all coming from the same sick cow that provides the over-fat piece of meat, and they have many of the same issues. The fat and protein quality can be greatly affected, and your health is very much dependent on the quality of your food.

To Be Continued…

While animal products can be a major source of high-quality proteins and fats, they are not the only thing that makes for a healthful diet. In next week’s article, we will look at the importance of plants in your diet, and why their health is just as important as that of our animal friends. We will also discuss strategies for eating healthily and how to find the quality foods your body desires.

If You Push, You Must Pull (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this series, we talked about the excess of pressing exercises in the average gym goer’s routine and how this only exacerbates the rounded shoulders and shoulder pain that many of us already experience. As we mentioned in the previous article, you must first start by considering how you spend your day and focus on posture. Second, you must work to restore tissue length and quality.

In today’s article, we will be reviewing what exercises at the gym will best help to reestablish good posture and balance, while helping you to avoid injury. As we talked about in the last post, if you have any postural concerns, it would be best to limit your pressing. A good rule of thumb is that for every pushing/pressing exercise, you should do 2-3 pulling exercises. I would also say that your pressing exercises should consist mostly of push up variations. There are a variety of push up progressions that can challenge you while not risking injury or furthering your imbalances.

When, Why, and How to Push

When you do decide to include pressing exercises in your routine, start with a clear understanding of what you hope to achieve through using these movements. Most people just throw together a bunch of exercises that they found in a magazine and call it a day. When you put together a program for yourself, you should always start by thinking about what you want to achieve, and how the movements you have included will help to achieve that goal. There can be a number of benefits to including pressing in a routine, but there are certain factors to consider.  First, are you someone that sits a lot? If so, pressing may not need to take a large role in your routine. Second, have you had a past shoulder injury? Is so, you may also want to limit your pressing. Third, what are your goals? If you have the sole purpose of increasing shoulder/chest size, then yes, pressing will help. But you have to weigh the costs and benefits. If you answered yes to the first two questions, then your first step toward increasing chest/shoulder strength and size will be to correct posture. It may seem unrelated, but if you end up injured then you won’t be doing any exercise at all!

For most people, I recommend finding the appropriate push up variation and going from there. Below you will see a variety of push ups that range in difficulty. The key in all of this is to focus on technique and posture. If you ever attempt an exercise and it causes pain or loss of posture, it is not the right exercise for you. Scale it back until you have an exercise that you can do perfectly. The videos below are in order from least challenging to most challenging, so start from first exercise and work your way up!

Pull, Pull, and Then Pull Some More

For most of us, the only reason we exercise is to look and feel better. Not that this is a small goal by any means, but it is sometimes odd when the average gym goer uses exercises that are counterproductive in regards to these goals. A hunched position is neither attractive nor comfortable, so let’s see what exercises we can do at the gym that will help us to undo this postural limitation. The first type of exercise is something I like to call a horizontal pull. This would be your rowing variations. There are a wide variety of rows, a few of which you will see in the video below. The second type of pull is what I like to call vertical pulls, and this will include exercises such as the pull up and pull down.  

When performing these exercises there are a few things that you MUST remember and focus on. First, it is critical that you keep your shoulder blades/shoulders in a back and down position. This means that you should feel as if you are pinching the lower part of your shoulder blades together, right around the mid-back. If you can keep this position, you will avoid shrugging during the movements (which would only act to reinforce poor movement and poor shoulder position). Second, don’t forget your core. Make sure that you keep your abs and hips stable while performing these movements to protect your lower back. This is a good rule for all lifting so don’t let yourself perform a single rep if you are not stable.

Fixing Posture and Imbalance

What all of these exercises work toward is strengthening and shortening those muscles that can become weak and stretched over time from frequent sitting or from an over-emphasis on pressing motions. There is very little in our daily activity that helps us to straighten up and keep our shoulders and backs in an upright position. Therefore, it is important that we take every opportunity to fight our life-long regression toward the fetal position. Include more pulling and be wise with your pressing, and your posture and overall well-being will be greatly improved.

If You Push, You Must Pull (Part 1)

Walk into a commercial gym tomorrow and you will immediately see about 20 benches of all kinds and 5-6 chest and shoulder press machines. If you walk around a bit, you might be able to find one pull down machine, one seated row machine, and one or two pull up bars. For many people out there, this has become the norm for strength training equipment. This description may not even provoke a response if you have spent a significant amount of time in the gym. The problem, however, is that this shows a flawed exercise paradigm. The reason the “pressing” equipment far outnumbers the “pulling” equipment is because of demand, and it is the average gym goer that wants to press! The bench press, shoulder press, chest fly, shoulder raise, high pull, and all other types of pressing exercises. Pressing has become overwhelmingly popular, especially in the male population. The only problem: too much pressing leads to imbalances, which can lead to pain and injury.

A Fetal Culture

It is not just the exercises that lead to imbalances, it is our daily life. As we have talked about before, we live in a culture of inactivity. In other words, we sit. And we don’t just sit—we hunch. We have a computer in front of us all day, work on a keyboard that keeps our arms tucked in, and we stay there for 6-8 hours every day. So every day we reinforce our shoulder-forward position at work, and then go to the gym where we press. This is problematic for two reasons. First, we are already pulled forward and the press motion only works to shorten our chest, shoulder, and neck muscles more. Second, when your shoulders are pulled forward, you are not able to properly stabilize your shoulder joint for pressing, especially in the overhead position. Your shoulder joint depends on having a vertical alignment so that the ball and socket of the shoulder can sit in its proper position. When your upper body becomes hunched over, it can actually be impossible for you to line up your body properly.

Who Doesn't Have Shoulder Pain?

The problems stemming from our hunched posture have become so common that over 60% of people who are 50 or older are walking around with a rotator cuff injury right now. These are not always symptomatic, but there is an injury or past injury nonetheless. The bad news is that if you are not exercising right now, you may find out that you have a weak or injured cuff the hard way: re-injury. The good news is that whether you are training right now or not, you have an opportunity to change what you are doing, and start working toward better posture and better shoulder stability. The first thing you can do is read Why Your Baby Moves Better than You and Stand Up for Your Life! which will talk more about posture. Second, you can drastically decrease pressing in your exercises. If you have ANY shoulder pain during a movement, you should not be doing it. If you know that your rotator cuff is weak or was previously injured, you should avoid almost all overhead pressing. Third, you should start working the tissue.

Tissue Quality Comes First

Before we can hope that our exercises will do anything for us, we have to make sure that our tissue quality and length will ALLOW us to perform those exercises. There are a number of areas that need to be focused on to best prepare us. First, we must work on the chest. By rolling (massaging) the chest muscles, then stretching them, we can help to prepare them for the stretch they will inevitably experience during pulling exercises. Second, we work the neck. The neck and shoulders are very much connected and along with rounded shoulders, sitting all day in front of a computer also leads to a forward head posture. To effectively straighten out the spine, we roll and stretch the neck as well. Third, we focus on the shoulder blades and back. This incorporates a lot of areas, but we can prepare them all with similar work. Once we have worked on all of these areas we are ready for exercise.

In next week’s article we will review the exercises that will best help in shoulder positioning and strength. For now, just work on the stretches and massage work above, and continue to focus on daily posture.