Better Is Better

5 Tips For Perfect Walking Technique

Take a walk.

It's the original bodyweight exercise...

From chaosinjune on Flickr

I have to admit that walking is not my bag.  I’ve never liked “going for a walk.”  There are many other things I would rather be doing like swinging Clubbells, jumping onto boxes, pulling on rings, hefting sandbags, etc.  BUT, at the same time I recognize that walking, especially for those who like it, can play an important role in a well rounded fitness lifestyle.

Last week I guided two “walking sessions.”  They were for a company that is doing a great job providing opportunity to their employees - encouraging them to live a lifestyle of vitality, health and mobility.  Walking was included in the offerings for the very reason that it is accessible to pretty much anyone.  And done properly, it can have aerobic benefits similar to jogging.  After all, walking is probably the most basic form of bodyweight exercise!

To be honest, I’d rather see most people walk for fitness than jog.  It’s a more natural movement and it is much easier to maintain proper structural alignment.  I always cringe when I see joggers crushing their frames and joints with every footfall.

Made To Walk - But Are We Still Up For It?

There is little doubt that walking is a natural human movement.  In fact, there are those that estimate that our evolutionary ancestors walked as much as 12 miles per day on average.  But our forebears didn’t spend the rest of their time hunched over computer screens and slouched in desk chairs either (see desk jockey mobility drills).  So for modern man, we have to be acutely aware of certain technical elements when adding walking to a health and fitness lifestyle.

Photo from by Addictive Picasso

In putting the sessions together, I came up with a list of what I feel are the most important points to remember while walking.  It’s easy to brush off the importance of maintaining good structure for walking, but you have to think of the volume you’ll be doing if you are walking for fitness.  It’s like having wheels on your car that aren’t aligned properly.  Perhaps short trips around the neighborhood won’t cause much damage.  But if you head out on a thousand mile road trip your tires are going to be totaled by the time you get where you are going.

Top Tips For Perfect Walking Technique

1. Keep Your Spine Stretched Long
In CST we call this Crown-to-Coccyx alignment.  Think of stretching your crown (the spot where men start to go bald in the back of the head) towards the sky as you draw the tailbone towards the ground.  At the same time, use the muscles around your abdomen to further pull the spine long in the trunk, and slightly flex the glutes to bring the pelvis into alignment.  This will give you a long but naturally curved spine that will be act as a natural shock absorber as you walk.

2. Let Your Shoulders Hang Down & Back
We have enough stress in our daily lives, don’t spend your walk with your shoulders drawn up towards your ears and rolled forwards.  Let them hang off your frame, suspended low and slightly towards the back.  This will also allow your arms to swing naturally between the level of your waistband and chest height.

3. Keep Your Elbows Bent At 90°
Keeping your elbows bent will allow you to burn from 5-10% more calories while walking.  Over the course of weeks and months, this can add up!  Bending at the elbows will also alleviate possible swelling or tingling in the hands.

4. Let The Legs Swing Free
Good range of motion at the hip will allow the legs to swing freely from front to back.  Limited hip mobility will cause you to compensate, effectively circumventing the natural gait.  Use hip mobility drills both to warm up and as an ongoing part of your wellness plan.  Circular Strength Training’s Intu-Flow is the perfect place to start.

5. Don’t Neglect Your Ankles
If you can’t pull your toes up towards your shins, you will have to turn your foot outward or inward in order to finish your stride.  The ideal gate has you leaving the stride off the big toe, but that requires enough mobility in the ankle to flex the foot up towards the shin.  Compensating for a lack of mobility by deviating your natural foot alignment will cause a cascade of ill effects all the way up through the body.  So make sure you warm your ankles up and address any lack of mobility on a regular basis using Intu-Flow.

There you have it.  Walking is the most natural thing in the world.  We do it every single day.  But if you want to do a lot of volume - the kind of volume our ancestors did - it’s best to keep everything aligned to avoid the cumulative stress that comes with any repetitive action.  Everything we do repeatedly will cause adaptation, whether we like it or not.  Doing a lot of walking with less than optimal structure will reinforce undesirable posture leading to pain and dysfunction.

But do it right, and you can enjoy the fruits of the original bodyweight exercise.

Enjoy your next walk!

A Doctor's Exploration of Intermittent Fasting

Over recent months I've had the pleasure of corresponding with Dr. Ramana, an Indian bariatric surgeon who is actively exploring ways of treating obese patients comprehensively, rather than through the narrow prism of his specialty.

Among other topics this Six Pack Doc explores on his blog, he has made several mentions of Intermittent Fasting.  I very much enjoy his take on the subject and find he has a very interesting approach and perspective.  So I asked him to share his thoughts on fasting with you.  Enjoy!

LEARNING MORE ABOUT IF

One would have thought readers of Better's Better have had enough of fasting, or posts dealing with them, but Coach Steer assures me that they are made of sterner stuff. He would have us all remodeled in the image of the Functional Physique and amenable to doing all the contortions inherent in his incredible brand of exercise. Not for him the well fed look, one understands!

Intermittent Fasting is something I picked up from the internet, and the regular suspects are to blame for it: Brad Pilon, Martin Berkhan, and the Fast-5 guy.
“Nah! This ain’t for me!” I always thought since then. Somehow, I tried it in order to beat a fat loss plateau. I found it really hard to stop thinking of food (I love it). My cravings were not for pizza or cake, but for anything! Even spinach and broccoli would have been gratefully accepted during my fasts, I can tell you! 

Over time, I overcame this obsession with food during the fasts, and my confidence grew. I was no longer afraid of failing to cover the period of the fast. I increased the frequency of my fasts till I reached my current practice of fasting thrice weekly. Now that sounds downright crazy, I agree. 

I started with a 24 hour fast, but also put in an additional 18 hour fast another day to teach myself discipline and help myself understand my body’s demands better.  I started enjoying these experiments so much that I added another day of 19, 21 or 22 hour (mood-dependent) fasting.

I have been eating my favorite sweets within the ambit of a largely (90%) clean Paleoid eating lifestyle. This has led me to escape feeling deprived and covetous, even as I notched up 1000-calorie deficits on my fasting days. While I am nowhere in the class of Adam Steer or many of his readers (I am sure), I have become stronger and leaner in a relatively short time. My personal journey apart, I have studied some literature on fasting, and have some to share:

Intermittent Fasting Insights from the Six Pack Doc

• First of all, I don’t buy the detox argument. I don’t know of any ‘toxins’ that are detoxed by a fast, unless they are named and identified.
• Rat studies suggest that chronic IF improves survival after heart failure “through its pro-angiogenic, anti-apoptotic and anti-remodelling effects”. As it is a rat study, I will not care to spend time explaining what that means.
• Would fasting bring your blood glucose levels too low? A 2008 Tunisian study says no. “Ramadan fasting induces positive changes in body composition without disturbing glucose regulation or activity of the GH/IGF-1 system.” GH is Growth Hormone, while IGF-1 is Insulin-like Growth Factor.
• I enjoy my fasts, and am in excellent mood. Not for me the irritability and truculence of others, but this may only because I am a gem of a guy (as my old girlfriends always said). A 2004 Moroccan study rather disturbingly reported, “The major changes during Ramadan fasting are chronobiological and behavioral. They could be responsible for the high incidence of road traffic accidents and the reduction of working hours during the month of Ramadan”.
• Do men respond better to IF? A study says that women use more fat mass and less lean mass to meet metabolic fuel requirements during fasting.
• Is IF a mask for anorexia nervosa? In other words, is an AN patient lurking within an IF-er? I am afraid it could be in some individuals, though I am not aware of studies about this. Each individual needs to think over this point.
• Is IF anti-inflammatory? Yes, it seems that markers like IL-6, C Reactive Protein, and Homocysteine are lower during fasts. This may reflect lower cardiovascular risks, especially considering that there is generally an improvement in lipid profile in fasted individuals.
• IF could be a means to slow aging, including brain aging, by as yet unknown/unproven means.
• Fasting also causes voice fatigue in women, and I strongly recommend that men should conceal this fact to their wives while encouraging them to start on the IF lifestyle.

Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone For Maximal Fitness Results

I was inspired by something I heard this week.  The gist was that our greatest achievements come when we get outside of our comfort zone.  This makes perfect sense.  After all, our comfort zone is essentially the mass of habits and choices that we indulge in on a daily basis.

So unless you are already achieving everything you would like, your comfort zone ain't the place for you to progress.  Right this minute, we're all nothing more than the culmination of all our choices and habits up to this very minute.  And all those choices were made in the Comfort Zone...  Take a listen.

And just so you know, I'm addicted to espresso, so the coffee thing is a big deal for me... LOL

Breaking outside your Comfort Zone is important in every aspect of life, but it can also be the key to truly great health, performance and fitness.  Mastering a new skill, pushing for a PR, taking on a new challenge or modifying your nutritional strategy can all be daunting and very uncomfortable processes.  But they are the stuff of which true progress can be built.

Pick one think you've been thinking of doing for your health and fitness.  Choose something that makes you uncomfortbable.  Make a pact with yourself to pursue it as a goal.  Share it in a comment at the bottom of this post and announce your commitment to the world.  That first uncomfortable step of sharing your new goal will be enough to give you a kick in the right direction.

Nurture A Sensible Vice - It Could Be The Key To Sustainable Fitness

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…  There’s no doubt that hard work, sensible eating and intelligent exercise are the keystones to reaching your health and fitness goals, but if you don’t have a few “Sensible Vices,” it’s going to be a long and boring road.

There are some trainers out there who enjoy - or at least claim to enjoy - living the perfectly squeaky clean lifestyle.  But I just can’t go through life eating steamed chicken breasts and never missing a workout.  Life’s too short to fanatically resist all temptations all of the time.

Enter The 90% Rule

I generally believe that if I stick to the difficult but correct decisions 90% of the time, I can get away with splurging the other 10%.  But even within that 10%, I try to focus on “Sensible Vices” rather than wonton debauchery (although I admit that I don’t always succeed). 

Keep It Real With Whole Food (or as close as possible)

One of my great weaknesses is peanut butter.  Yes, I like the disgusting processed peanut butter you get from the grocery store.  But, there is an alternative that I enjoy almost as much.  If you take natural almond butter and mix in some Celtic sea salt and some stevia, I find it’s just about as tasty as the evil stuff.  If you are talented at weight gain, you can’t eat it a ton of the stuff, but it’s a great treat for your 10% zone of Sensible Vices.

I also enjoy sweets during my 10% splurges.  But rather than breaking out the packaged garbage - stuffed with chemicals and other food-like substances - I indulge in the delicious home-baked treats that my wife is so great at producing.  A slice of her chocolate cake is worth a thousand Twinkies!

The closer you stay to REAL food during your 10%, the better off you will be.  Notice I’m not saying you have to be sugar free or flour free during your splurges, just stay away from the pre-packaged stuff.  The home cooked stuff tastes better and just isn’t as evil on your system.

Enjoy your sensible vices - guilt free.  They are a valid part of an overall strategy of health, fitness and vitality.  Just make sure the other 90% of the time you are dialed into whole foods, adequate protein and heaps of veggies and fruit.