The following article about foam rollers and their application to athletes was written by Keith Scott in September 2006. You can find his highly recommended blog at: http://kescott45.wordpress.com

“Ok Keith, I have heard you spout off about this foam roller thing on your dumb blog, and even heard you talking about it at a bar down the shore one night! What is it, and how do I do it?”

Obviously I love the foam roller. I cannot say it in the same context that I will say I love chocolate, or I love the beach, or even how much I love to watch 24 and the Family Guy… But lets be clear, when it comes to feeling better, and being better, I love the foam roller. So what is the foam roller and what do you do with it. Where do I get one of these? And finally, how can I use it and feel better?

I like to explain to the general public that foam rolling is much like getting a deep tissue massage. Only YOU control the massage and it won’t cost you 50 plus bucks each time you use it. But I also like to explain that foam rolling is much more than a massage too.

Most people have major muscle imbalances and this usually causes an entire muscle group to get very tight, or over activated. Also, most people have a laundry list of past and present physical trauma that has caused a body full of knots, scar tissue and sticky adhesions to form all over their muscles and tendons. Rolling can and will help work out those adhesions, scar tissue, knots and also help to restore normal flexibility and range of motion.

Foam rolling, to be technical, is a form of self myofascial release (SMR). SMR allows the muscle to relax and this in turn can help rid the areas of the unwanted scaring, knots, and ugly adhesions. Muscles need to be strong and supple at the same time through an entire range of motion. Foam rolling helps the body achieve this. Just as I believe that stretching is essential for good overall muscle health, foam rolling is in the same category. While stretching elongates the muscle tissue, foam rolling helps to ensure proper muscle quality.

To get started you will need a foam roller. These can be purchased in some specialty stores, or in some gyms. The best place to find and get on is on the internet. I purchased mine from www.performbetter.com. Or you can do a search and fine numerous sites that carry them. Either way, they are cheap (you can get one from about $10.00 - $20.00) and don’t take up any room.

Once you have your roller, now what?

Foam Rolling Techniques

Foam rolling is pretty simple to learn and with some practice, you can set up a routine for your whole body within a short period of time. At the very least, you will be able to roll your trouble spots each day with no difficulty

In a nutshell you place the roller between your muscle and the floor and you use your body weight to gently and slowly roll for the entire length of your muscle. When you reach that painful spot, (you will know it when you do) stop rolling and use your body weight to press down. Hold that spot until the pain goes away. If the pain does not seem to go away, don’t worry, just continue rolling and hit all of your “spots”. Eventually, through practice and repetition, you will start to find relief. Remember, these painful areas are around because of years of bad habits, injuries, and other traumas so they wont go away entirely overnight.

Other tips:

• When rolling your legs for example, use both legs in the beginning and to add more pressure, cross one leg over the other. Do one leg at a time like this and you will feel a lot more pressure and get a lot more out of it.

• For longer muscle groups (ie. Hamstrings, and quadriceps) do parts of the muscle at a time. Start at the top of the muscle and spend some time there, before going to the bottom of the muscle.

• Try to roll in insides and outsides of your muscles. For example, perform some rolling on the medial or inside of your calf and then roll the lateral or outside of the calf muscle. The same strategy can be followed for most large muscle groups in the body.

Basically, you can roll almost any part of your body. Be especially careful on the low back and avoid it all together if you don’t have a lot of beef down there in the first place.

Start off slow, get a schedule down, and keep rolling. Eventually it will become a normal part of your exercise routine and you will find relief and start feeling better all over.

Keith Scott
MS, ATC, SCSC

Another good read from Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training blog: turbulencetraining.blogspot.com

Today, I’m going to discuss a couple of things to do if you are getting close to your goal and need some advanced fat loss tips.

1) Don’t cut calories too much.
This is something that happens a lot as people get closer to their goals, and especially when people hit a fat loss plateau.

But you can’t do it.

Here’s why.

Among other things, your food intake and energy balance help to control your metabolism (most likely by altering levels of various hormones in your body).

When you cut your calories too much, you probably knock your hormones levels for a loop, causing them to send a collective message to your body that you are not getting enough to energy in…and therefore, that shuts down your fat loss systems.

Here’s one reader’s account of the pitfalls of an excessively low calorie diet…

“I’m on the weight loss track again. I found I wasn’t eating enough calories (1000 kcal/day). Filling up on veggies is good (and I love them), but they don’t have the calories. Eating walnuts/almonds helped get me there. Eating 1500+ is where I need to stay to lose weight and keep my energy up. I’ve dropped about 3 pounds this week.”
Holly, using the TT for Women program with great success

With men, I generally don’t think men need to go below 1800 calories per day, and with women, not much less than 1500 calories per day - Dr. Mohr covers this in greater detail in the Nutrition Guidelines that go with TT for Fat Loss. So you probably want to stay above those levels, and definitely avoid any sharp, sudden decreases in your energy intake.

2) Don’t exercise too much.
For very similar reasons as point #1.

Exercise intensity and frequency also help to control your hormone levels. If you over-exercise (i.e. tons of cardio everyday, weight training everyday, etc.), then your body doesn’t get a chance to recover and keep your hormones at the correct level.

After all, exercise is another form of stress on your body…and you all know how your body and mind can get messed up from too much stress.

Resist the urge to exercise for the sake of exercise. Don’t go adding 60 minute stairmaster sessions everyday before breakfast if you’re already on a well-designed, consistent workout schedule. That could be too much stress on your body.

Stick to structured, purposeful exercise as found in your TT program.

I’ve been around the exercise block so to speak, and I often know how much is too much for most fitness levels.

The longer I’m in this business, the more I realize that training frequently with an intense workouts is un-necessary - for both fat loss and for athletes.

Training with the same interval workout for 6 days of the week is not going to get you twice the results as training 3 days per week. Instead, use a variety of different workouts to increase your fat loss and performance.

And as I said the other week in an email about advanced fat loss, the best way to accelerate your fat burning is by adding in some bodyweight circuits (starting at 10 minutes per day and working up to 20 minutes maximum) done in the morning or evening. Use a different circuit each day - there’s an almost endless number of bodyweight circuit combinations you can do.

(If you do your regular workout in the AM, do your bodyweight circuits after dinner; otherwise, do the bw circuits first thing in the AM, and then do your regular workout at lunch or later in the afternoon or evening.)

After two weeks, take a break from this routine and allow your body to recover.

Two other things you can do during this two weeks of extra training…
a) Add 10 seconds to the length of each interval.
b) Add 1 set to each of the exercises in the first Superset of the workout.

So now you have more volume, performed at a high-intensity of course, but without over-taxing your hormonal system.

But remember, you should only do this increased training volume for 2 weeks. Then you need to take a break and reduce the training volume to normal - to allow your body to adapt and recover.

3) Eat 6-8 times per day.
In the past 5-10 years, it’s become common knowledge that we should all eat smaller, more frequent meals. In fact, one study from 2005 showed that doing so helped reduce cholesterol and burn more calories than eating 2-3 meals per day.

And so for our advanced fat loss approach, we’re going to bump that up to 6-8 meals per day.

Here’s how you would do that:
Breakfast
Mid-morning snack
Lunch
Afternoon snack
Pre-workout
Post-workout
Dinner
Evening snack

With each meal and snack (except pre- & post-workout) focusing on lean protein, healthy fats, and fiber-rich vegetables and fruit (for pre- and post-workout, stick with 20g protein and a half-serving of fruit).

Start your day immediately with 2 cups of water, 3 fish oil caps, and 20g of lean protein, and then have your a fiber-rich breakfast. This meal will help dictate your blood sugar for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. So if you blow it on breakfast, you’ve might actually have blown it for the entire day.

(And if you workout at other times of the day, just adjust the schedule and move about the pre- and post-workout meals).

4) Eat more fiber-rich vegetables at each meal.
Ways to get more green include eating a green pepper with your omelet at breakfast, or spinach in your salads at lunch, etc.

Aim for 8 servings of green, fiber-rich vegetables over the course of the day.

5) Eat only protein, healthy fats, & fiber between meals.
For example, you could have a sample snack plan of 20g lean protein (from a quality shake or from chicken breast), 1/2 - 1 oz almonds, some more broccoli or spinach, or an apple. And enjoy some Green Tea at this time as well, of course.

CB

To find out more about Craig and his services, please visit: www.cbathletics.com

This is a rant.

I’ve touched this subject several times since the late 90’s in articles, forum posts and seminars. But since I see people quoting unrelated or flawed studies on daily basis at various forums, it’s still as relevant as ever.

So, what’s my beef with studies? Well, for starters:

• Most studies are performed in an unlikely environment, not applicable in the real world
• Most studies are performed on an exclusive group of people, and the results cannot be transferred on to other groups
• Most studies has too few participants to get any noteworthy data
• Most studies are too short to show any significant data
• The interpretation of studies is multiplex with many potential pitfalls (just take a look at journalists and their sensational conclusions)
• Studies are constantly contradicting each other, which leads to another big point…

According to Greek epidemiologist John Ioannidis’ mathematical model, a well-designed study (with no professional bias) has an 85% chance of being right, while a poorly designed study with researcher bias has a 17% chance.
After breaking down all the research data he collected between 1990 and 2003 he concluded that 50% of all published research is probably wrong.

Now, this is why I only cite well-respected and well-backed up studies in my articles and why I never jump on the bandwagon when some new contradicting and sensational study is being published.

However, I still skim trough studies and reports on a weekly basis. Most of it is not applicable in the real world, but now and then something interesting shows up. If it’s relevant I’ll do my own field testing and discuss it with other fitness professionals. However, most of the time those studies only validate what we have been doing for years. When it comes to the know-how, the research community is often years behind innovative trainers and coaches.

Now, in our field of training and nutrition – please don’t cite studies or draw your own conclusions from them unless you know exactly how to interpret research data and has less than several years of experience training people. Leave that to the experienced experts in the field.

Okay, time for a quick update.
I’m still fighting the virus and gulping down cortisone to combat the inflammation that’s causing my asthma to go haywire. Anyhow, I’m still working as much as I can from my little home office. The new website for the Swedish Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation is taking form and should be online during next week. It’s built on a modified CMS (Joomla) and customized by me to fit the federation’s needs.
I’m also working on the video project with Stadium, writing exercise instructions, training guides and sample training programs. This online service will rock! I’ll keep you all updated on the progress.

If you enjoyed my article “Kardio Suger” (Cardio Sucks) that ran in BODY Magazine last year, you’ll probably like this article that recently ran in LA Times:
Interval training gains in popularity