The Key to Looking and Feeling Younger

I was asked the other day what would be the one key piece of advice I’d give to someone if they wanted to “improve their fitness”. Wow. What a question. There’s so much that it can cover.

I immediately thought of “get enough sleep”, but then that’s not a particularly easy piece of advice to follow for some people.

“Exercise more” is another obvious one that comes to mind, but again, that could mean many things to many people.

I came up with a few more sage pieces of advice which I’ll probably share with you another day, but none of them hit the spot. Some of it was too running specific, some of it wasn’t necessarily easy to implement, some of it didn’t take into account everybody’s life circumstances. The one piece of advice I arrived at, the one thing that everyone can do, the one thing that could help anyone take the first step towards looking and feeling younger, was something that is sitting right under our noses, and costs next to nothing.

And that something is…………WATER folks. Simple, cost effective and something that many of us need reminding of from time to time!

So, what’s so great about water?

If you’re well hydrated, your skin will look fresh and clear – because it will help to flush toxins out of the body, and it will increase blood flow to the skin
Water can aid in weight loss, by ensuring maximum uptake of nutrients from your food. Often, your body’s cry for food is a cry for micronutrients -(vitamins and minerals) not the bulky macronutrients -fat, protein and carbs. In short, water can make you want to eat less
It helps to eliminate waste from your body in a number of ways, including through the bowel, often eliminating feelings of bloatedness
Drinking enough water helps with muscle function and improves sporting performance
Water aids in disease prevention (it has been shown to decrease the risk of colon cancer by 45% and bladder cancer by 50%)
It just makes you fell better
It’s pretty cheap and readily available

And did I say it aids in weight loss?

Water is a natural appetite suppressant. Next time you reach for a snack, think again, and go for water instead. You’ll be surprised how far a glass of water can go towards satisfying your hunger.
Enough water ensures your body can metabolise fat effectively. Water ensures your kidneys are functioning effectively, which in turns ensures your liver is able to remove toxins and waster from your blood. With your liver switched to maximum efficiency, it can better metabolise fat.
Water is a great substitute for high energy drinks such as shakes, smoothies, soft drinks, sports drinks. Swap these for a cool glass of water with a slice of lemon, and you’ll be saving calories big time.

What about fitness?

An inadequate amount of water will impair muscle function, leading to a less functional you
Too little water will cause your body to slow down, and you’ll lack energy
Dehydration leads to a reduction in blood volume, impairing performance
You won’t be able to regulate your body temperature efficiently if you are dehydrated
As your brain is over 70% water, you can expect to experience headaches if you aren’t well hydrated

If you are chronically dehydrated, leading to the impaired performance outlined above, you can’t train at your optimum level, which means you can’t realise your true fitness potential.

A few tips on staying hydrated

Water Tip #1. Drink the stuff. Even though fish do naughty things in it, you have to drink it to feel the benefits! Tea and coffee count. The caffeine in tea and coffee do act as a very mild diuretic, but the balance is overwhelmingly tipped towards hydration rather than dehydration after a cup of coffee. For caffeine to dehydrate you, you have to consume a lot of it, in a short space of time

Water Tip #2. Add a slice of lemon and/or some mint to your water to make it more interesting. The lemon will also help to stimulate hydrochloric acid

Water Tip#3. Carry water with you throughout the day. Better still, set an alarm to go off every hour. Get up and walk to the water cooler. Pour yourself some water, and drink it! Delicious

Water Tip #4. Limit the amount of water you drink at meal time. Whilst some people will recommend that you fill up on a big glass of water before a meal to help you to eat less, the water will only serve to dilute the hydrochloric acid necessary for the break-down of food.

Water Tip #5. Get into the habit of having a big glass of water when you wake up, or have some hot water with lemon juice for an extra digestive boost

Bonus Tip: For expert advice on health and fitness, train with us. Leave your details here, and we’ll give you a call.

Run Faster: Make sure you have enough calcium

We all know we need calcium for strong teeth and bones, but did you know that calcium is also needed for the life preserving functions of muscle contraction, (including the heart) blood clotting, nerve function and the release of certain hormones and enzymes?

Because calcium is necessary for the maintenance of life, it is leached from the bones if the amount in the blood in insufficient for these life preserving functions. You can still live without brittle bones, but you can’t live without a heart beat, so the body very cleverly prioritises the function that calcium is directed to. If there’s insufficient calcium circulating in the blood, the body takes it from it’s storage cells, the bones and teeth.

Calcium and Cola Drinks

As an aside, a highly acidic diet can cause calcium to be leached from the bones. Your body will act to maintain a blood pH of 7.4. If you have a highly acid diet, your body will draw down on stored mineral salts, including calcium, which act as a buffer to the acid and work to restore blood to a pH of 7.4. Lots of things can cause a drop in blood pH (ie a rise in acidity) including cola drinks. Therefore chronic use of cola (and to a lesser extent other soft drinks) can lead to brittle bones. And that includes the diet varieties as well! You can flush the acid away with water, but for every can of cola you drink, you’d need to take in 15-25 times that amount in water. (Then spend an awful lot of time in the loo).

Calcium and Muscle Function

Here’s the interesting bit for we exercise types. You should be sure to have enough calcium in your diet, and good gut health, to be able to contract your muscles.Below is a very abridged and simplified version of how calcium acts in skeletal muscle contraction.

The brain sends an electrical impulse to the muscle. A lot of biomechanical reactions need to take place for the message to get to the muscle safely, but, amazingly, in most cases it does.
After receiving the message, the muscle shortens. This action is explained by what is know as the sliding filament theory.
Within a muscle fibre, there are two different types of filaments, actin and myosin. These filaments are layered one on top of the other, as in the picture below.
When the right biochemical reactions take place, cross bridges form between the actin and myosin filamines, and the actin gets pulled by the myosin, so the two filaments are pulled closer together and the muscle shortens.

For all of this to happen, calcium is needed to “unlock” the active sites on the actin filament which the myosin attaches to. The myosin heads continue to reattach further and further along the actin, causing a more forceful contraction of the muscle.

The muscle stops contracting when the release of calcium ions stop. You need adequate magnesium for this, but that’s a biochemistry lesson for another day.

Suffice is to say, if you want to run fast, make sure you have enough calcium in your diet.

How Much Calcium?

Check out some calcium rich foods here

Reference: https://www.osteoporosis.org.au/about-osteoporosis

What Pace Should My Kids Be Running

Rating of Perceived Exertion for Kids Running

Use this scale to help your kids figure out their running pace.

We use this modified Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) at our Kids Running groups, to help kids run at a pace suited to their fitness level and the distance they’re covering.

If your kids are not used to running, they should start off at an “I can run like this all day” pace, and work up from there.

More experienced runners can use the scale to assess how they feel when they run, and how long they can last at each level. Then on race day, they’ll be able to keep to a realistic pace amongst all the excitement.

Kids Running Rating Of Perceived Exertion

Download this printable graphic to help your kids run a great cross country race.

Running Training: Breathe Hard

Train to breathe as hard as you can

Running training which gets you breathing as hard as you can is what the scientists call VO2 max training. If you run fast, you breathe hard. If you run fast enough for long enough, you will be breathing as hard as you can.

Training at or above your VO2 max speed is hard work, but hugely beneficial if you want to get faster. In fact, I’d go so far as to say if you’re not including this type of training in your program at least once a fortnight (though better once a week), you’re not reaching your full potential (with the caveat that injury or current fitness level could prevent you from performing this type of training at various times throughout your running career).

VO2 max is the maximum rate at which your body can consume oxygen. It can be measured accurately in a gruelling laboratory test, and it can also be approximated by using submaximal tests.

VO2 max accounts for about 70% of the difference in performance between individual runners. The major contributing factors to a high VO2 max are:

1) the body’s ability to get oxygen pumping around the body- you need to be good at getting oxygen to where it needs to go, so having a strong heart, a high blood volume, lots of haemoglobin, and lots of capillaries and mitochondria in the muscles will help.

2) Speed – the ability to contract lots of muscle fibres at the same time – the more fibres contracting at the same time, the more oxygen is demanded

Both of these factors are determined largely by genetic makeup, but are also trainable. To be effective in increasing VO2 max, and therefore increasing your ability to run faster for longer, you need to breathe hard in training. Very hard.

When it comes to VO2 max training, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. That’s because oxygen consumption will climb at pretty much any intensity, the longer that consumption is sustained. Think about an interval training session where you run a series of 800’s and an intensity level of 6/10. Unless you are allowing yourself full recovery between each interval, your last few intervals will feel a hell of a lot harder than your first few.

So, there is a range of intensities you can train at to boost your VO2 max. The main thing to remember is the aim is to be breathing as hard as you can.

Because there is a range of intensities at which you can train your VO2 max, you don’t need to be super fit to train like this. Exercise physiologist Veronique Billat suggests 30/30 and 60/60 workouts for runners of low-medium fitness levels.

The Session

Warm up
At least 10 minutes of easy jogging.

3-6 stride outs over about 100 meters, increasing your intensity up to about 6/10 for the last 20 metres

Body of Session
Run 30 seconds hard. This should be the pace you could hold for about six minutes or racing. Then slow down to an easy jog for 30 seconds.

Continue to alternate the fast and slow 30 second intervals until you’ve done at least 12 of each (so a total of 12 minutes of running).

Build up your sessions so that you can sustain this for 20 minutes, ie 10 * 30 seconds hard, 10* 30 seconds easy.

You should be able to cover a similar distance on your last interval as you do on your first, if you’ve judged your pace well.

Once you can complete 10 of these 30/30 intervals, you can switch to 60/60.

Start with 6 * 60/60, and build up to 10 – so again, it will be 20 minutes of running in total.

Cool Down
Finish up with at least a 10 minute slow jog, and stretching

Quick and Healthy Meal: Almond Lamb and Pumpkin Couscous

Almond Lamb and Pumpkin Couscous

This quick and healthy meal is great served hot, cold or warm. Try adding some leafy greens into the mix such as lots of fresh coriander or rocket.

Nutritional details
Serves : 1
Calories: 440

Fat: 11.9 gms
Protein: 37 gms
Carbohydrate: 47.8 gms
Fibre: 4.8 gms

Instructions :

1. Steam the pumpkin and chop roughly and dice the tomato.

2. Meanwhile, add coriander and cumin to chicken stock and bring to the boil. Pour stock over the couscous, cover and stand for 5 minutes.

Remove cover, fork couscous until fluffy and grains have separated.

3. Add steamed pumpkin, tomato, almonds, parsley and sultanas. Toss well to combine and adjust seasoning.

4. Grill lamb steaks on a hot pre-heated grill plate (2-3 minutes) each side until done to your liking, rest (5 minutes) before slicing diagonally

and serving. To serve, top the couscous with lamb and drizzle generously with yogurt.

Ingredients

2 sprig fresh flat-leaf parsley

1.5 tomatoes, small (approx 100g each)

100 g pumpkin (edible portion)

30 g cous cous Average, all brands

0.5 tsp ground cumin Average,

90 mls chicken stock, liquid- if using prepared stock, buy liquid stock, not stock cubes

10 g almonds, flaked

90 g greek yogurt, low fat

100 g lamb, steak, lean

10 g sultanas

0.25 tsp ground coriander

Download a print version of the recipe for four people. Almond Lamb and Pumpkin Couscous

How To Prepare For Your School Cross Country

At some time in their primary school career, your child will be expected to enter their school cross country. It can be a traumatic event for some kids, whilst others can’t wait till they’re old enough to get amongst it!

Make sure the experience is a great one for your kids, which will leave them wanting to do more. Use these tips on how to prepare for your school cross country.

Start to talk to them about the cross country in very general terms. Simply looking over the school calendar for the term and happening to notice when the cross country is on, is enough just to plant the seed initially.
Do some exercise yourself. Make exercise just something that your family does, not a big deal
Get your child familiar with the course of their school cross country. If you don’t know where they run, ask the school, or ask us. We know a lot of the courses used by local schools. Walk over the course with your child so that they know what to expect.
If you can’t go over the actual course, get your child to at least walk over the distance of the race. Don’t say something like, “it’s like running from here to the shops and back”. That can seem an awfully long way to kids. Much better to travel over the distance on foot with them.
If they are happy to do some training, go for a run with them, or get them running with friends. Try to get them to run slowly with you. Most kids will take off at the rate of knots and be puffed out after a couple of hundred metres. You don’t want this to happen on the day of the event. They will definitely go too fast at the start of their school cross country if they don’t practice running slowly before hand. Try to teach them ‘Jogging’ pace, or ‘No Puffing’ pace. They’ll still go too hard, but it should pull them back a bit.
Practice racing. Nothing makes you better at something than practice. Even if they don’t practice in a formal situation, get them racing against you or against their brothers and sisters, or friends. Remind them to slow down at the start so they have enough puff left at the end.
Whilst your child will feel great about themselves if they run the whole distance without stopping, try not to let them get so worked up about the event that they see themselves as a failure if they don’t make the distance.
Prepare them for what to do if they do feel too puffed to continue. Walking for even 20 metres can be just enough time to recover and pick up to a jogging pace again. Make sure they know this is ok.

Some kids take naturally to distance running, and absolutely love it from the start. If your kid’s one of those, here’s a few tips.

Go in fun runs with them
Time them doing laps around the local oval
Emphasise the fun aspect of running
Let them decide how much running they want to do. Don’t force them to train if they don’t want to, but do use gentle reminders and encouragement.
Practice cross country racing, even if in an informal setting.
Do some running with them, or organise for them to train with friends
Encourage your child not to be too outcome focused. Placing well in a cross country race is awesome, and your child should be proud of themselves. Remember to acknowledge the effort as well as the achievement though. At some point, every child, no matter how good they are, will be beaten, and if it’s been all about performance from the start, it can be terribly deflating, especially for those who are a bit fragile. Looking in the mirror and honestly being able to say you’ve done your best can go a long way to easing the disappointment

Awesome Kids Running Training Groups run on weekday afternoons on Sydney’s North Shore and Northern Beaches. Find out more

Cross Country Races run on Sundays in February and March. More info

Cross country kids running

High Intensity Interval Training

Imagine if you could exercise for only 4 minutes, and receive the same health benefits as you would from spending hours in the gym, on a bike, running, swimming, jumping….Every few months there seems to be another headline promising health benefits from very short periods of exercise, so what’s it all about?

The exercise protocol is called High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), where you do short bursts of very intense exercise from anywhere between 1 and 4 times a week. HIIT increases insulin sensitivity and VO2 max (an indicator of cardiovascular health), and it really doesn’t take much time to do it at all. With HIIT your cardiovascular health will be better, your insulin sensitivity will improve reducing the risk of diabetes, so you’re likely to live longer.

Is it just me, or is there something weird about wanting to improve your health to live longer, so that you can sit around on your bum doing nothing?

Before we look at HIIT more closely, let’s take a look at some of the benefits of exercise.

Exercise can:

Improve your mental health by reducing anxiety and alleviating depression
Improve your balance (important as you age, if you can stay upright, you’re far less likely to facture a hip!)
Improve or maintain bone strength (after a certain age, you stop laying down bone, but exercising can help you keep more of what you have)
Improve insulin sensitivity, reducing the risk of diabetes
Improve your posture
Improve the range of movement of your joints, keeping you supple
Improve your musculo-skeletal strength
Improve you VO2 max, the maximum amount of oxygen you can take up in a minute, considered to be a good indicator of cardiovascular health
Satisfy a need for making and achieving goals
Improve self esteem
Be an outlet for letting off steam in a socially acceptable manner
Satisfy our desire for competition
Increase insulin sensitivity
Make you more able to perform your daily tasks such as hanging out the washing and carrying the shopping

The list is looking pretty long, and it’s certainly not exhaustive. Any three minute exercise regime which can cover all that lot has got to be something pretty special!

High Intensity Interval Training Protocols

HIIT is nothing new, however recent research on this type of exercise is showing some very interesting results, namely, it can improve cardiovascular fitness and increase insulin sensitivity more than some other forms of exercise can.

The Tabata Method

Japanese scientist Dr Izumi Tabata observed the Japanese speed skating team in the early nineties, and noticed that short bursts of brutally hard exercise seemed to be at least as effective as hours of moderate training.

Having spent some time myself in a sport which required this type of training, I certainly agree it was the shorter, harder interval training we did in the latter part of our season, which really sharpened our fitness, and cut down our body fat. We looked forward each year to reaping the benefits of this kind of training, but we didn’t relish having to leave our hearts in the bottom of a surfboat!

There’s no way we could have done this type of training without doing a lot of work to get our bodies ready to handle this. It was the long, less intense rows over winter which allowed us to do the high intensity interval training. Without the build up, the risk of injury would have been too high. Nor could we have had the boat moving as fast. You simply can’t develop efficiency in a sport (including running and speed skating) without spending a fair amount of time focusing on how you do it. So HIIT is great, but as a stand alone training regime, I don’t think it stacks up.

The experiment Tabata conducted took a group of moderately trained students who performed and hour of steady cardiovascular exercise on a stationary bike five times a week. Another group did a 10 minute warm up on the bike and followed with 4 minutes of 20 secs of really hard cycling and 10 seconds rest, four times a week, plus one 30 minute session of steady exercise with two minute intervals.

The results showed large differences in the anaerobic capacity and VO2 max of the two groups. (VO2 max is considered to be an indicator of cardiovascular health) The high intensity group increased their anaerobic capacity by 28%, and their VO2 max by 15%, whilst the control group, who trained for 5 hours each week improved their VO2 max by only 10%, and saw no increase in their anaerobic capacity.

The thing is, you wouldn’t actually expect the steady state group to improve their VO2 max much as they weren’t doing VO2 max specific training, nor training aimed at increasing their anaerobic capacity. It would have been interesting to compare the HIT group with a group who were doing traditional VO2 max training rather than an hour of slower paced riding.

Michael Mosley’s “The Truth About Exercise”

You may have seen the BBC documentary, “The Truth About Exercise”, which had presenter Michael Mosley doing one exercise session a week, within which he did 3 bouts of “all out, leave nothing in the tank” pedalling on a stationary bike for 20 secs, followed by a couple of mins recovery. Add to this, a warm up and a cool down. You can see a good description of the experiment here.

The most interesting result of Mosley’s training was that it greatly increased his insulin sensitivity. Another point made by the program was that his VO2 max, did not improve at all. The researchers said they could predict that as his genes showed that no matter how much exercise he did his “aerobic exercise was unlikely to improve to the same extent as someone whose genes resemble those of an Olympic gold medalist” (you’re kidding me).

Again, you wouldn’t expect this type of training to improve his VO2 max. I’d like to see them put Mosley through a program of specific VO2 max training, and see if he would respond.

So are the claims in the popular media too good to be true?

In a word, YES.

For a start, it’s not just four minutes of exercise, or three minutes, or whatever protocol it is that you’re following. You definitely need to spend some time warming up and cooling down and stretching, so your four minutes will stretch out to 15 -20 minutes pretty quickly.
For this type of exercise to be as effective as the research would suggest, you need to go hard, I mean really hard. Even though your total high intensity time is less than three minutes, it’s going to hurt, and a lot of people simply aren’t up for that. I could see myself doing it again if I was competing at a high level in a sport, but I’m not sure I’d like to do it again just for the fun of it.
You risk injury if you go hard at this type of training too soon. For maximum benefit you need to do some longer less intense stuff to build your body to a point where you can go very very hard.
You will get some benefits from HIIT by performing a less intense protocol such as that which Michael Mosley followed, and that has to be a good thing .

So what is the best type of exercise?

The best type of exercise is the exercise you will do, and I guess that’s what a lot of the hype surrounding HIT is about. From the point of view of public health, if people are attracted to exercising because they know that about 10 minutes a week can dramatically improve some aspects of their health, then that’s a good thing. If the alternative is sitting on a couch, for that ten minutes, then HIT is better than nothing. I just don’t get why you’d want to do that.

It gets back to finding something that you like. Could we start from the premise that people will like exercising, if only they find something they like, rather than assuming people don’t like to exercise? (and just quietly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that someone who leads a sedentary lifestyle doesn’t particularly like high intensity interval training, whether it be for four mins or four seconds-it’s not for everyone)

I love intense interval training, (though not extreme interval training any more) and I think that most people should be including some kind of more intense interval training in their overall weekly exercise program, but that won’t have you covered for all aspects of your fitness.

If you like to get out and run on your own to clear your head, do it.

If you like to swim, swim.

If you like to work out with other people, join a group.

If you’re training for a particular event and want to get the best out of your body, include a variety of different training methods, including interval training. Research the best types of training to achieve the results you want, or ask an expert.

Try something new, dancing, walking –and once a week find a hill and really go hard up and down it five or six times-, pole dancing, take up surfing. Think about the sorts of exercise you did as a kid. Find something that has similar aspects to the exercise you liked doing then.

To me, exercise is about enjoyment. Enjoying the process, the journey, not just the outcome. So, I’ll stick to my long slow runs, my long runs with a kick thrown in at the end, my resistance training, my high intensity training, my tempo runs.

No, I DON’T enjoy each and every bit of exercise I do, but I never fail to like how it makes me feel afterwards. How about you?

References:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/242498.php
http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/eng/html/research/areas/feat-researchers/interview/izumi_t.html/