It has been known in the fitness industry by savvy trainers for some time that doing hundreds of crunches does not ‘spot reduce fat’ around the mid section, lunges, squats and running, whilst great forms of exercise do not specifically reduce fat on the legs etc, you did know that didn’t you?  The good news is cutting edge scientific research has found in the last decade or so that knowing a persons specific hormone balance, we can possibly optimize their body composition, following site-characteristic protocols. Here are four example indicators:

1. Fat around thighs indicates high estrogen levels, very common in today’s world full of plastics and xeno-estrogens (biological estrogen mimickers).

2. Fat on the front of the tummy or umbilicus represents high or imbalanced Cortisol or stress hormone problems, again modern day stressful lifestyles!

3. High levels of Insulin are shown in Fat storage areas around the ‘love handles’ this is a reflection of blood sugar problems and poor diet.

4. A poor Thyroid function and high goitrogen levels can commonly lead to high levels of Fat storage around the neck, mid back and low shoulder blade area.

5. The fifth clinical pearl is that high Androgen levels, promote Fat storage around the upper arms and mid-section area.

If all this sounds complex, the real solutions are healthy, regular levels of exercise and following a good balanced diet and stress management, you can’t beat your body into submission, it just doesn’t work. Work smart, not simply hard. The truth is you can get better results with the same time spent working out, sounds good doesn’t it? If in doubt speak to someone about your nutritional intake!

Excess levels of hormones found in the body are not being processed correctly by the liver, usually due to stress and poor diet, genetics does play its part but normally the former two are more influential. Laboratory testing is usually the best way to find out your hormones levels, and ‘If you’re not assessing, you’re guessing’ as a teacher of mine likes to say. Speak to your GP or a qualified Nutritionist if you need clarification. Again I’ll stress the importance of balancing stress, nutrition and exercise, they are key in getting the body you deserve.

1. High lower body (upper thigh skin fold and gluteal fold) fat measurements; indicate high amounts of so-called Alpha-2-receptors, (more common in women) plus high levels of estrogens. The recommended treatment for this would be clearing the liver from high circulating levels of estrogen. Also by locally blocking alpha-2 receptors we maximize fat loss, and minimize fat accumulation.  I also suggest the supplement indole-3-carbinol, (found in Broccoli type vegetables) as an estrogen detoxifier, as well as some isoflavones . A healthy liver naturally cleanses the body of unwanted hormones so keeping it healthy is paramount.

2. High umbilical (abdominal) skin fold measurements alarmed health care professionals because one study consisting of 30,000 women over a period of 12 years discovered that women with higher umbilical fat measurements, (abdominal fat accumulation) were more likely to develop heart disease than other ordinary overweight women. As I mentioned before, this group had to deal with high stress and chronically elevated cortisol. Stress reduction and regular sleep patterns are key. Also the supplement phosphatydylserine has shown a dramatic reduction of circulating cortisol, (as well as improved mood, memory, and motivation  to fight stress and depression). Fish oils rich in essential omega-3 oils and Liquorice Root, which helps the regulation of cortisol production. Glycyrrhizin is a component of liquorice, which is capable of inactivating cortisol. Another good idea for any person belonging to this particular group is to limit (reduce) their caffeine and simple sugars consumption. These are factors that could impact (increase) their levels of cortisol in the body.

3. People with a high, mid-axillary (upper outer lat region) fat measurement, usually have some form of thyroid problem. This can measured in blood test by your GP. The supplements that I recommend to treat this particular problem are: the Ayurvedic herb Guggul, which stimulates synthesis of T3, the active form of thyroid hormone. Also a good choice would be a Bladderwrack a natural source of Iodine, Zinc and Selenium, all responsible for thyroid hormone production. Finally, Ashwaganda and Coleus root(a member of the mint family) both used frequently to stimulate the thyroid gland.

4. If a supra iliac (love handles) skin fold is high, then the person could have a circulating insulin problem, so a glycemically balanced diet is recommended here. Take frequent smaller meals, consisting of essential fats and high fibre. Supplements such as chromium, fenugreek and flax seeds will control levels of blood sugar and insulin. So, to remind you once again of the importance of good nutrition as it makes your life in the gym much easier or the body you have much stronger and healthier!

Speak to Guy about creating a balanced nutrition plan to suit your personal needs with the possible inclusion of testing, and the recommendation of certain herbal supplements. www.successfulhealth.co.uk

Call on 07980 865 892

References:

Your guide to Healthy Hormones 2003 – Dr D Kalish,

The Body Typing Diet 1999 Dr Sandra Cabot

Biosignatures Information 2005 – Poliquin Performance Institute

Unfortunately, strategies employed in the past by most of our clients to lose weight include calorie-restricted diets full of processed foods (bars, shakes, packaged meals) and overdone cardiovascular workouts. Both these misguided approaches lead to short-term weight loss and in the long-term damage one’s metabolism to the point where future weight gain is inevitable.

As Personal trainers, Health practitioners and Nutritionists we are up against incorrect but widely accepted notions of how to lose weight and we frequently have clients that are experiencing weight loss resistance. For these people employing all the fad diets and spending hours in the gym does not help them meet their weight goals. In reality in order to lose weight in a healthy manner people need to adopt multiple lifestyle changes and address all three body systems for an integrated approach to getting fit.

The Three Body Systems and Weight Loss

The three body systems include the hormonal system, the digestive system and the detoxification system. For most people there is no simple, single solution for losing weight, all three body systems need to be addressed along with a program incorporating exercise and lifestyle changes. The hormonal system regulates our metabolic rate and controls how we burn body fat, the digestive system provides us the nutrients we need to burn body fat and the detoxification system, when not working properly, prevents the burning of fat stores. Most weight problems are brought on by years of poor lifestyle choices such as inactivity and lack of sleep combined with hormone imbalances, digestive and detoxification issues.

The Hormonal System

With regards to the hormonal system, most weight gain can be traced to the adrenal, or stress, hormones. The adrenal hormone cortisol, best known for its pivotal role in responding to stress, also promotes the burning of body fat, helps regulate emotions, and counters inflammation — all part of the body’s “fight or flight” response to threat. Cortisol levels rise under stress, but if stress continues without enough rest for recovery, as often happens with our modern pace of life, the adrenal glands become exhausted and cortisol levels drop. This has a chain-reaction impact on metabolism, slowing down our metabolic rate resulting in increased body fat. The more stress we are under, the more body fat we store.

The Role of Cortisol

Cortisol is secreted in response to any stress in the body, physical or psychological. Excess cortisol leads to a breakdown of muscle protein, which releases amino acids into the bloodstream that are then converted by the liver into energy, our fuel for running away or fighting. After the stressful event has passed, cortisol levels return to normal. With chronic or repeated stress the body continues to produce cortisol. If the call on the adrenal glands to produce cortisol perpetuates, the glands eventually weaken, leading to adrenal fatigue and ultimately exhaustion or adrenal burnout. Adrenal exhaustion leads to increased body fat, fatigue and depression. In fact, according to scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health, adrenal exhaustion is the leading cause of depression in the United States.

Adrenal Exhaustion

With stress, a surge of cortisol prepares the body to fight off an attack or flee. For millennia this mechanism operated under conditions that would be followed by long periods of rest and full recovery. Today, however, we are essentially locked in a culture-wide “fight or flight” state. Poor diets, lack of exercise and sleep, and long work hours leave bodies in a chronic state of stress, with many restorative functions continually sacrificed or impaired.

Adrenal exhaustion leaves people feeling lethargic and fatigued. An abnormal adrenal rhythm also impacts:

• Skin regeneration, causing wrinkles and premature aging
• Sleep quality, leading to trouble falling and staying asleep
• Bone health, which creates osteopenia or bone loss
• Muscle and joint function, leading to achy arthritis-type joint pain and neck, shoulder, and lower back pain
• Immune function, leading to frequent illness

Reversing adrenal burnout requires a well-designed exercise program, improved sleep habits, stress reduction and a dose of self-realization regarding the importance of our emotional and spiritual lives. If left unchecked, fluctuations in cortisol have a profound impact on the sex hormones, leading to problems in women such as PMS and menopausal symptoms and to low sex drive in men.

The Digestive System

The second body system, the digestive system is referred to as the “mother” system because it feeds our body tissues with the nutrients we need to function. Intestinal fungal overgrowth, which triggers over consumption of carbohydrates and sweets and digestive tract infections such as parasites and food sensitivities play a part in weight gain. Moreover, a perfectly functioning digestive system is an important first step in any weight loss program, as your body needs to absorb key vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids to properly regulate metabolism and burn fat. In the majority of patients I have treated, weight gain has been connected to a fungal, bacterial or parasitic infection in the GI tract.

Food allergies are another important digestive system factor affecting the success of weight loss programs. Sensitivity to gluten (found in many grains) is the most common food reaction triggering hormone imbalance and weight gain, yet it often goes undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. If untreated, gluten intolerance can bring low energy, depression, obesity, and diabetes as well as high risk of osteoporosis. Gluten intolerance is also seen in the majority of people with eating disorders.

Problems with the digestive system and hormonal system are the most common underlying causes of weight gain in the patients I have treated. In other cases the underlying cause is found with the body’s third major system, the detoxification system.

The Detoxification System

Detoxification pathways remove harmful chemicals generated from normal body functions such as physical exertion and breathing, which create waste products that need to be removed from the tissues. Detoxification pathways are also busy removing alcohol and metabolizing (breaking down) medications, chemicals in our food such as pesticides and herbicides, along with pollutants we are exposed to in our air and water. If you are taking in more toxins than you can flush out through the liver, kidneys, stool, and skin, you will have a backlog of waste products in the body that can cause a number of symptoms including fatigue, skin problems, irritability and poor concentration or memory.

Toxicity also leads to weight loss resistance. Toxins are stored in fat tissue in the body and people who are overweight will hold on to fat tissue tenaciously in an attempt to protect the body from the damage that would be caused by the release of these stored toxins. In addition, liver toxicity leads to weight gain through fluid retention and bloating as the body attempts to buffer or neutralize the negative effects of toxins on the body. I have had countless patients quickly lose five to ten pounds of body weight that is simply excess fluid flushed out of the body as they dump out toxins. Ironically, if you are dehydrated you will also tend to retain fluid. As I’ve heard Dr Bob Rakowski say many times in reference to drinking enough water, “The solution to pollution is dilution.”

Toxins build up in the body as by-products of what we consume including alcohol, prescription drugs and over the counter medications. Additionally in our daily lives we are exposed to environmental toxins in our air, water and food supply. These chemicals accumulate over the course of a person’s life and contribute to clogging the liver detoxification pathways, which are alternately helped by eating healthful sources of protein and vegetables. Vegetarians who eat insufficient protein are at risk for detox problems, as are people who do not eat enough vegetables. Liver detox pathways can be corrected through an organic foods diet and simple lifestyle changes such as increasing water intake.

Improving the Three Systems

All three body systems — hormonal, digestive, and detoxification — can be improved by applying the principles presented in our Nutrition & Lifestyle packages. These changes will lead to healthy weight loss in most people. In cases where multiple problems may have been brewing for years, overcoming weight loss resistance may require further functional testing, such as food allergy testing, designing herbal or nutritional programs and possibly working with other healthcare professionals. This can range from dentists who practice mercury removal to chiropractors, osteopaths or doctors of natural or oriental medicine.

It certainly takes some detective work to diagnose the causes of each persons weight gain and to determine the best course of treatment, and it takes determination on the client’s part to stay with a program and maintain it for the long term. But what better reward is there than good health?

Eat high quality (organic where possible) meat & vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch & no sugar.

Drink clean water, 2-3L per day.

Eat regularly, when hungry, every 3-5hrs.

Understand good posture, body mechanics, technique before intensity and endurance.

Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch.

Learn how to lunge and twist in 3 planes of motion

master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds.

Climb, Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard & fast.

Exercise four or five days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy!

Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports.

Practice either specific dynamic Joint mobility, stretching, Yoga, Tai Chi, Chi Kung and ……

Meditate daily, laugh & smile!

You Walk Wrong – NY Times Magazine April 08

It took 4 million years of evolution to perfect the human foot. But we’re wrecking it with every step we take.

Walking is easy. It’s so easy that no one ever has to teach you how to do it. It’s so easy, in fact, that we often pair it with other easy activities-talking, chewing gum-and suggest that if you can’t do both simultaneously, you’re some sort of insensate clod. So you probably think you’ve got this walking thing pretty much nailed. As you stroll around the city, worrying about the economy, or the environment, or your next month’s rent, you might assume that the one thing you don’t need to worry about is the way in which you’re strolling around the city.

Well, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you: You walk wrong.

Look, it’s not your fault. It’s your shoes. Shoes are bad. I don’t just mean stiletto heels, or cowboy boots, or tottering espadrilles, or any of the other fairly obvious foot-torture devices into which we wincingly jam our feet. I mean all shoes. Shoes hurt your feet. They change how you walk. In fact, your feet-your poor, tender, abused, ignored, maligned, misunderstood feet-are getting trounced in a war that’s been raging for roughly a thousand years: the battle of shoes versus feet.

Last year, researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, published a study titled “Shod Versus Unshod: The Emergence of Forefoot Pathology in Modern Humans?” in the podiatry journal The Foot. The study examined 180 modern humans from three different population groups (Sotho, Zulu, and European), comparing their feet to one another’s, as well as to the feet of 2,000-year-old skeletons. The researchers concluded that, prior to the invention of shoes, people had healthier feet. Among the modern subjects, the Zulu population, which often goes barefoot, had the healthiest feet while the Europeans-i.e., the habitual shoe-wearers-had the unhealthiest. One of the lead researchers, Dr. Bernhard Zipfel, when commenting on his findings, lamented that the American Podiatric Medical Association does not “actively encourage outdoor barefoot walking for healthy individuals. This flies in the face of the increasing scientific evidence, including our study, that most of the commercially available footwear is not good for the feet.”

Okay, so shoes can be less than comfortable. If you’ve ever suffered through a wedding in four-inch heels or patent-leather dress shoes, you’ve probably figured this out. But does that really mean we don’t walk correctly? (Yes.) I mean, don’t we instinctively know how to walk? (Yes, sort of.) Isn’t walking totally natural? Yes-but shoes aren’t.

“Natural gait is bio-mechanically impossible for any shoe-wearing person,” wrote Dr. William A. Rossi in a 1999 article in Podiatry Management. “It took 4 million years to develop our unique human foot and our consequent distinctive form of gait, a remarkable feat of bioengineering. Yet, in only a few thousand years, and with one carelessly designed instrument, our shoes, we have warped the pure anatomical form of human gait, obstructing its engineering efficiency, afflicting it with strains and stresses and denying it its natural grace of form and ease of movement head to foot.” In other words: Feet good. Shoes bad.

Perhaps this sounds to you like scientific gobbledygook or the ravings of some radical back-to-nature nuts. In that case, you should listen to Galahad Clark. Clark is 32 years old, lives in London, and is about as unlikely an advocate for getting rid of your shoes as you could find. For one, he’s a scion of the Clark family, as in the English shoe company C&J Clark, a.k.a. Clarks, founded in 1825. Two, he currently runs his own shoe company. So it’s a bit surprising when he says, “Shoes are the problem. No matter what type of shoe. Shoes are bad for you.”

This is especially grim news for New Yorkers, who (a) tend to walk a lot, and (b) tend to wear shoes while doing so.

I know what you’re thinking: If shoes are so bad for me, what’s my alternative?

Simple. Walk barefoot.

Okay, now I know what you’re thinking: What’s my other alternative?

Galahad Clark never intended to get into the shoe business, let alone the anti-shoe business. And he likely never would have, if it weren’t for the Wu-Tang Clan. Clark went to the University of North Carolina, where he studied Chinese and anthropology. He started listening to the Wu-Tang, the Staten Island rap collective with a fetish for martial-arts films and, oddly, Wallabee shoes. As it happens, Clark’s father had invented the Wallabee shoe. “I figured this was my chance to go hang out with them,” Clark says. “One thing led to another, and we developed a line of shoes together. That’s what sucked me back into the industry.”

After college, Clark returned to England, where he started working with Terra Plana, a company devoted to ecologically responsible shoes, and started United Nude, a high-design shoe brand, with the architect Rem D. Koolhaas. Then, in 2000, Clark was approached by Tim Brennan, a young industrial-design student at the Royal College of Art. Brennan was an avid tennis player who suffered from chronic knee and ankle injuries. His father taught the Alexander Technique, a discipline that studies the links between kinetics and behavior; basically, the connection between how we move and how we act. Brennan’s father encouraged Tim to try playing tennis barefoot. Tim was skeptical at first, but tried it, and found that his injuries disappeared. So he set out to design a shoe that was barely a shoe at all: no padding, no arch support, no heel. His prototype consisted of a thin fabric upper with a microthin latex-rubber sole. It wasn’t exactly a new idea. It was a modern update of the 600-year-old moccasin.

Brennan brought his shoe to Clark, and after some modifications, they came up with a very flexible leather shoe with a three-millimeter sole made of rubber and puncture-resistant DuraTex that they call the Vivo Barefoot. “There are no gimmicks,” Clark says. “It’s a back-to-basics philosophy: that the great Lord designed us perfectly to walk around without shoes.”

At first glance, this seems like a sensible and obvious approach-to work with the foot, not against it. But it represents a fundamental break from the dominant philosophy of shoe design. For decades, the guiding principle of shoe design has been to compensate for the perceived deficiencies of the human foot. Since it hurts to strike your heel on the ground, nearly all shoes provide a structure to lift the heel. And because walking on hard surfaces can be painful, we wrap our feet in padding. Many people suffer from flat feet or fallen arches, so we wear shoes with built-in arch supports, to help hold our arches up.

There are, of course, a thousand other factors that have influenced shoe design through the ages; for example, people like shoes that look nice. High heels have never, ever been comfortable, but they do make the wearer feel sexy. In fact, the idea of strolling idly through urban environments has only been fashionable, or even feasible, in Western society for about 200 years. Before that, cities had few real sidewalks, the streets were swimming in sewage, and walking as a form of locomotion was associated with poverty and the working class. “Only the upper classes, and especially women, could wear shoes that clearly defined an inability to walk very far,” writes Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello in the essay “Walking the Streets of London and Paris: Shoes in the Enlightenment.” Walking was for peasants, who were “barefoot and pregnant”; the rich, or “well-heeled,” took carriages.

Of course, more recently we’ve become interested in shoes that are promoted as being comfortable, whether they’re cushioned walking shoes or high-tech sneakers with pumps and torsion bars. Still, the basic philosophy-that shoes have to augment, or in some cases supersede, or in some cases flat-out ignore, the way your foot works naturally-has remained the same. We were not born with air bubbles in our soles, so Nike provided them for us.

Try this test: Take off your shoe, and put it on a tabletop. Chances are the toe tip on your shoes will bend slightly upward, so that it doesn’t touch the table’s surface. This is known as “toe spring,” and it’s a design feature built into nearly every shoe. Of course, your bare toes don’t curl upward; in fact, they’re built to grip the earth and help you balance. The purpose of toe spring, then, is to create a subtle rocker effect that allows your foot to roll into the next step. This is necessary because the shoe, by its nature, won’t allow your foot to work in the way it wants to. Normally your foot would roll very flexibly through each step, from the heel through the outside of your foot, then through the arch, before your toes give you a powerful propulsive push forward into the next step. But shoes aren’t designed to be very flexible. Sure, you can take a typical shoe in your hands and bend it in the middle, but that bend doesn’t fall where your foot wants to bend; in fact, if you bent your foot in that same place, your foot would snap in half. So to compensate for this lack of flexibility, shoes are built with toe springs to help rock you forward. You only need this help, of course, because you’re wearing shoes.

Here’s another example: If you wear high heels for a long time, your tendons shorten-and then it’s only comfortable for you to wear high heels. One saleswoman I spoke to at a running-shoe store described how, each summer, the store is flooded with young women complaining of a painful tingling in the soles of their feet-what she calls “flip-flop-itis,” which is the result of women’s suddenly switching from heeled winter boots to summer flip-flops. This is the shoe paradox: We’ve come to believe that shoes, not bare feet, are natural and comfortable, when in fact wearing shoes simply creates the need for wearing shoes.

Okay, but what about a good pair of athletic shoes? After all, they swaddle your foot in padding to protect you from the unforgiving concrete. But that padding? That’s no good for you either. Consider a paper titled “Athletic Footwear: Unsafe Due to Perceptual Illusions,” published in a 1991 issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. “Wearers of expensive running shoes that are promoted as having additional features that protect (e.g., more cushioning, ‘pronation correction’) are injured significantly more frequently than runners wearing inexpensive shoes (costing less than $40).” According to another study, people in expensive cushioned running shoes were twice as likely to suffer an injury-31.9 injuries per 1,000 kilometers, as compared with 14.3-than were people who went running in hard-soled shoes.

Admittedly, there’s something counterintuitive about the idea that less padding on your foot equals less shock on your body. But that’s only if we continue to think of our feet as lifeless blocks of flesh that hold us upright. The sole of your foot has over 200,000 nerve endings in it, one of the highest concentrations anywhere in the body. Our feet are designed to act as earthward antennae, helping us balance and transmitting information to us about the ground we’re walking on.

But (you might say) if you walk or run with no padding, it’s murder on your heels-which is precisely the point. Your heels hurt when you walk that way because you’re not supposed to walk that way. Wrapping your heels in padding so they don’t hurt is like stuffing a gag in someone’s mouth so they’ll stop screaming-you’re basically telling your heels to shut up.

And your heels aren’t just screaming; they’re trying to tell you something. In 2006, a group of rheumatologists at Chicago’s Rush Medical College studied the force of the “knee adduction moment”-basically, the force of torque on the medial chamber of the knee joint where arthritis occurs. For years, rheumatologists have advised patients with osteoarthritis of the knees to wear padded walking shoes, to reduce stress on their joints. As for the knee-adduction moment, they’ve attempted to address it with braces and orthotics that immobilize the knee, but with inconsistent results. So the researchers at Rush tried something different: They had people walk in their walking shoes, then barefoot, and each time measured the stress on their knees. They found, to their surprise, that the impact on the knees was 12 percent less when people walked barefoot than it was when people wore the padded shoes.

“If you can imagine a really big, insulated shoe on your foot, when you walk, you kind of stomp on your foot,” says Dr. Najia Shakoor, the studies’ lead researcher. “The way your foot hits the ground is very forceful. As opposed to a bare foot, where you have a really natural motion from your heel to your toe. We now think that’s associated with more shock absorption: the flexibility your foot provides, as well as a lack of a heel. Most shoes, even running shoes, have a fairly substantial heel built into them. And heels, we now know, can increase knee load.” Another factor, she points out, is that when your foot can feel the ground, it sends messages to the rest of your body. “Your body tells itself, My foot just hit the ground, I’m about to start walking, so let’s activate all these mechanisms to keep my joints safe. Your body’s natural neuromechanical-feedback mechanisms can work to protect the rest of your extremities. You have much more sensory input than when you’re insulated by a thick outsole.”

The same holds true with athletic shoes. In a 1997 study, researchers Steven Robbins and Edward Waked at McGill University in Montreal found that the more padding a running shoe has, the more force the runner hits the ground with: In effect, we instinctively plant our feet harder to cancel out the shock absorption of the padding. (The study found the same thing holds true when gymnasts land on soft mats-they actually land harder.) We do this, apparently, because we need to feel the ground in order to feel balanced. And barefoot, we can feel the ground-and we can naturally absorb the impact of each step with our bodies. “Whereas humans wearing shoes underestimate plantar loads,” the study concluded, “when barefoot they sense it precisely.”

Six students, of which I am one, have gathered in a studio at the Breathing Project in Chelsea, to learn how to walk properly. “Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart,” wrote Rebecca Solnit in Wanderlust: A History of Walking, and this is what we’re aiming for, more or less, as we circle the room slowly, in our bare feet, under the eye of our instructor, Amy Matthews. She’s a former dancer who now does private movement therapy, as well as teaching yoga, anatomy, and kinesiology classes as part of her Embodied Asana workshops. This is day two of a ten-week class on the leg that started, conveniently for my purposes, with the foot. Last week, Matthews showed the students how you should roll through each step as you walk, rather than simply clomping your feet up and down-a lesson that everyone is now struggling to apply. When Matthews asks the class how things went over the past week, one woman is not thinking so much about internal rhythms or the beating of the heart. Instead, she says, “I learned one thing: Walking’s hard.”

I too have learned one thing-that if you’re interested in learning about barefoot walking, or the “barefoot lifestyle,” as it’s sometimes called, there are lots of people out there who are interested in teaching you. Websites like barefooters.org, the official site of the Society for Barefoot Living, will stridently explain that, for example, it is generally not illegal to drive barefoot, despite what you’ve heard. (This is true.) And that only a few state health departments forbid people from going barefoot in restaurants (also true), never mind all those signs that say no shirt, no shoes, no service, which are the handiwork of fascistic barefoot-haters.

Follow these enthusiasts too far, though, and you fall down a rabbit hole of eccentricity. While there are many legitimate and relatively non-cuckoo clubs for barefoot hiking across the country, my search for some walking-barefoot-in-New York City enthusiasts led me to barefoot .meetup.com, which led me to Keith (“I’m a 43-year-old man looking to meet new friends with my same interests”), which led me to “Dafizzle” (“I like dirty feet and want to meet others who love walking in the city with dirty feet”), which led me to Ricky (“I’m a 24-year-old male looking for females that like to have their feet played with”). Which led me to abandon my search for a barefoot-walking group in New York.

But any worries I have that Amy Matthews’s class will be consumed with flaky spirit quests or roving toe-fetishists are quickly dispelled as she pulls out a model of a skeletal foot. We spend the next hour learning about the 24 (or, for some people, 26) bones in the foot, from the calcaneus (heel bone) to the tips of our phalanges (toe bones). There’s so much information to absorb that, by the time we are back up and walking again, I’ve already more or less forgotten the distinction between the cuneiform and the cuboid. So it’s difficult for me to examine other people’s feet while they’re at a standstill, which is our next assignment. Which I figure is fine, given that, unlike the rest of these people, I consider myself a very accomplished walker. I mean, sure, I have occasional back pain, and okay, when I walk long distances, I feel a grinding pain in my hip that I never used to feel before. And, yes, when I visited Michael Bulger, a structural integrationist near Washington Park with an expertise in “Rolfing,” a kind of deep-tissue massage, and he Rolfed one of my feet, then had me walk around a bit for a before-and-after comparison, I felt, thanks to my un-Rolfed foot, like a pirate walking on a peg leg.

Still, I’m feeling pretty confident when it’s my turn to have my feet assessed. The other students examine. They confer. They seem concerned. Apparently, my ankle bones are stacked like a tower of Jenga blocks that’s about to topple.

Then Matthews sits splay-legged in front of me, puts her hand on my ankle, and asks me to move my talus bone. Weirdly, I’m able to do this. She explains that, when we don’t use our feet properly, our muscles have to strain to compensate-not just in our feet but in our whole body. She asks me to lift the front of my foot, which I also do. She then replants my foot and asks me to “trust my bones to hold me up.”

And I have to tell you, in that brief moment, it felt like I had never stood up properly on my own two feet before in my entire life.

After class, I put my chunky Blundstone boots back on, and I tried to replicate that feeling of “standing on my bones.” I couldn’t, mostly because in my shoes, my feet couldn’t even feel the ground. I spent the rest of the day clomping around the city feeling like a guy wearing concrete blocks, waiting to be thrown in the East River.

Life consists of what a man is thinking of all day,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, and right now I’m thinking of my feet. I’m test-driving a pair of Galahad Clark’s Vivo Barefoot shoes, which makes it hard to think about anything else.

Barefoot running has been a subject of interest for serious runners for decades, at least since Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila ran the Olympic marathon in Rome in 1960 in bare feet-and won. But barefoot running is a difficult discipline that needs to be learned properly, and you certainly shouldn’t be getting advice about it from me, someone who gets winded running for a cab. The real question for New Yorkers is, What about barefoot walking? Is it possible we could be walking better? Well, if my first few minutes in the Vivo Barefoot is any indication, the answer is, Ouch. Yes. Ouch.

Barefoot walking is, in its mechanics, very similar to barefoot running. The idea is to eliminate the hard-heel strike and employ something closer to a mid-strike: landing softly on the heel but rolling immediately through the outside of your foot, then across the ball and pushing off with the toes, with a kind of figure-eight movement though the foot. There’s a more exaggerated version of this style of walking known as “fox-walking,” which is closer to tiptoeing and which has caught on with a small group of naturalists and barefoot hikers. Fox-walking involves landing on the outside of the ball of your foot, then slowly lowering the foot pad to feel for obstructions, then rolling through your toes and moving on. All of which is great, if you’re stalking prey with a handmade crossbow, or you’re an insane millionaire hunting humans as part of the Most Dangerous Game. As for walking in the city, fox-walking has no real practical application, in part because it’s incredibly frustrating to master and in part because you look like a lunatic.

Similarly, you may have heard of a shoe called MBT, or Masai Barefoot Technology, which was developed in the early nineties by a Swiss engineer after studying the barefoot walk of the Masai people. MBTs have gained a cult following because wearing the shoes forces you to work-and presumably tone-your leg muscles. I can attest that this part is true. After wearing MBTs for a short walk, you feel it in the backs of your legs. What you can’t feel-at all-is the ground. In an obvious irony, these “barefoot” shoes look like orthopedic shoes for Frankenstein. You stand on a rocker-shaped sole that’s designed to be soft and unstable. This improves your forward step but makes it nearly impossible to move laterally, i.e., slalom through slow-moving tourists in Soho. And a ride in MBTs on the herky-jerky D train feels like someone’s throwing an ankle-spraining party and you’re the guest of honor.

The Vivos are a totally different experience, since they’re as close to going barefoot in the city as you can get. Barefoot walking should be easy to master, in theory, and Clark assured me that I won’t need any special instruction. The first thing I noticed while wearing the Vivos is that each heel-strike on the pavement was painful. Soon, though, I naturally adjusted my stride to more of a mid-foot strike, so I was rolling flexibly through each step-but then I noticed my feet were getting really tired. My foot muscles weren’t used to working this hard.

After wearing the Barefoots for a while, though, I found I really liked them, precisely because you can feel the ground-you can tell if you’re walking on cobblestones, asphalt, a manhole, or a subway grate. (Striding along that nubby yellow warning strip on the subway platform feels like a foot massage.) Of course, it’s not often that you walk around New York, see something on the ground, and think, I wish I could feel that with my foot. But this kind of walking is a revelation. Not only does it change your step, but it changes your perceptions. As you stroll, your perception stops being so horizontal-i.e., confined more or less to eye level-and starts feeling vertical or, better yet, 360 degrees. You have a new sense of what’s all around you, including underneath.

Still, while I can accept that barefoot-walking is beneficial, it’s hard to shake off 30 years of wrapping my feet in foam. So I put this question-if bare feet are natural, why do we need shoes to “protect” the foot?-to a podiatrist at the Hospital for Special Surgery, who explained, “People who rely on the ‘caveman mentality’ are not taking into consideration that the average life span of a caveman was a heck of a lot shorter than the life span of a person today. The caveman didn’t live past age 30. Epidemiologically speaking, it’s been estimated that, by age 40, about 80 percent of the population has some muscular-skeletal foot or ankle problem. By age 50 to 55, that number can go up to 90 or 95 percent.” Ninety-five percent of us will develop foot or ankle problems? Yeesh. Those are discouraging numbers-but wait. Are we talking about 95 percent of the world population, or of North America? “Those are American figures,” he says. Which makes me think, North Americans have the most advanced shoes in the world, yet 90 percent of us still develop problems? We’ve long assumed this means we need better shoes. Maybe it means we don’t need shoes at all.

Let’s face it: I’m not going to walk barefoot in New York. Neither are you. We’re going to wear shoes. So even if shoes are the enemies of our feet, what have we really learned?

When I met with Amy Matthews, my standing-up-properly guru, I found out that, as a yoga teacher, she goes barefoot when she can, and the rest of the time she wears supportive shoes like Keens or Merrells. “The most important thing is to change up your shoes as much as possible,” she says. “And let your foot do the walking rather than your shoe do the walking.” Even Galahad Clark still makes and sells regular shoes along with Vivos because, as he says, there are a whole host of reasons people buy shoes, most of which have nothing to do with comfort. So weaning people-especially New Yorkers-off shoes is “a bit like trying to wean people off sex. It ain’t going to happen,” he says. “My girlfriend loves to put on heels at night. Then the next day she puts her Vivos back on, to recover.”

What you can do, though, is stop taking walking for granted and start thinking of it like any other physical activity: as something you can learn to do better. Don’t think of your feet as fleshy blocks to be bound up or noisy animals that need to be muzzled. (Oh, my barking dogs!) In one of the Rush Medical College knee-adduction experiments, barefoot walking yielded the lowest knee load, but a flat sneaker, like a pair of Pumas, also offered significantly less load than the overly padded walking shoes.

My new Vivo Barefoots aren’t perfect-they’re more or less useless in rain or snow, and they make me look like I’m off to dance in The Nutcracker. But when I don’t wear them now, I kind of miss them. Not because they’re supposedly making my feet healthier, but because they truly make walking more fun. It’s like driving a stick shift after years at the wheel of an automatic-you suddenly feel in control of an intricate machine, rather than coasting on cruise control. Now I better understand what Walt Whitman meant when he wrote (and I hate to quote another Transcendentalist, but they were serious walking enthusiasts): “The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections.”

It might be hard to imagine that the press of your foot to the New York pavement could yield anything other than pain or disgust. But if you free your mind, and your feet, you might find yourself strolling through a very different New York, the one Whitman rightly described as a city of “walks and joys.”

Some more articles of reference below on this interesting and widely mis-understood topic:

http://neuroanthropology.net/2009/07/26/lose-your-shoes-is-barefoot-better/

The perfect repetition is the most basic of all strength training loading parameters. Yet, most trainees fail to observe the basics. Hence, they lack progress, massively increase the chance of injury, don’t get the desired results! This often means giving up or wasting lots of time. Find out how to make the best start possible.

Executing the perfect repetition comes from within. Here are the x-y-z steps to completing the perfect rep:

‘In life you either have a result or an excuse.’-Charles Poliquin Elite/Olympic Performance Coach.

Step 1: You must be clear on the entire right mechanics.

Proper technique must be clear in your mind before you do the set. If you are not sure, contact the highest certified performance coach or personal fitness trainer in your area, and book for a consultation. If you are unsure, you must get help, it’s how we all improve and get the results we need most quickly.

Step 2: Proper start position

Most people are already in an inappropriate position before they start the rep. For example, to be correct in the front squat, the elbows have to be up and in, and the bar must be slightly choking you, your torso as upright as possible, feet shoulder width and slightly externally rotated.

Starting with the elbows too low will put enormous strain on the scapulae retractors and many other muscles of the shoulder girdle, and accentuate the load on the lumbar discs, two of the most frequently injured area in gyms.

Step 3: The first and the last rep should look the same

In the effort to handle progressively heavier loads, there is a temptation to use the heaviest weight possible without regard for technique.  Classic technical errors are the use of excessive momentum to lift the weight, deviation from the correct movement pattern, and shortening of the range of motion.  Keep in mind that the actual training load—the one that determines results—is determined both by the weight you are using and how you are using it.

On a given set, do as many repetitions as you can within technical limit. When you reach momentary muscular failure within technical limit or go outside of technical limit, you are done for the set.  The use of cheating movements to get more repetitions is actually counterproductive. It teaches bad motor patterns and interferes with the recovery of the motor units (functional units of nerve and muscle) that were trained properly up until that point in the set. This means injury and no more muscle development.

You have gone outside technical limit if you:

• Use more momentum to lift the weight than is allowed by the concentric tempo prescription.
• Deviate from the prescribed movement pattern.
• Lose full range of motion.

Your concentric tempo may slow down as you fatigue.  This is not a problem, as long as your intent is to lift the weight at the prescribed speed.

Increases in load should not come at the expense of technique.  To get the full benefit of the program, respect technical limit.

Step 4: Begin with the end in mind

The proper mind set is critical. Arnold Schwarzenegger said, many moons ago, that you should always ask yourself, ‘why you are doing this set.’ Answering the question will give you the right mind set.  For example, you have two more sets of deadlifts, and you want to go home, reminding yourself that it will pack on mass and strength on the whole posterior chain (legs&back) will fire you up for those last two sets. If your need is for strength improvement you will train differently to someone who is looking for endurance or general health benefits.

Step 5: Feel the movement, not the weight.

Instead of focusing on the external (the weight), focus on the internal (the movement). Starting to apply this principle with single joint exercises such as incline curls is much easier than compound exercises such as squats. For example, for incline curls, pretend your mind is inside your bones. Focus on the bones moving freely at either end, especially the main working joint. This enable your brain to train the specific movement with fluidity and coordination. This will give you stronger, more toned and co-ordinated muscles. Good movements are less likely to become injured.

Step 6: Count down the reps

Begin every set with a definite goal for the number reps – let’s say five. As you begin your set, count, or have your partner count the repetitions down: 5,4,3,2,1. Why? It keeps your mind focused on the task at hand, not on the outcome. When trainees count upwards, they tend to let their mind wander with anxiety on whether they will complete the set or not with thoughts such as “Will I get stuck at 4 reps?” Good technique, amazing results!

A final word

Churning out perfect reps set after set is paradoxically simple and complex at the same, and is the foundation of productive training. Pay attention to perfect form and you are on your way to optimal results.

‘We don’t get what we want, we get what we expect!- Chris Howard, Hypnotherapist, NLP & Results Master practitioner, Owner of Chris Howard Group.

1. Know Your Outcome- It is important to clearly define the end result we are looking for, concisely, with detail, in positive terms. Clarity is power. We end up getting what we focus on most. Good or bad!

2. Decide & Take Action – It is important to change the dreams we have into reality. Talk can simply be wishful thinking, if it not acted upon. It is said ‘even if we are on the right track, we’ll get run over if we stand still! Action steps must be planned, written out and acted upon consistently, a small success every day, starting today, can lead to Massive Results!

3. Situational Awareness- Notice what results you are getting. No event is seen as a failure, it is just feedback needing to be used and learnt from to ensure better results next time. Like an opponent in chess, there are many ways to succeed, it’s a question of learning from your mistakes and not making them again.

4. Flexibility Of Behaviour Controls Results- If we keep doing the same things and expect different results that is madness! We keep trying until we get our results we want, grab the power of flexibility.

5. Operate From A Physiology of Success- Get your body in the correct state to achieve the goals you want. Both psychologically and biologically, so that means getting you posture, thinking and focus on the task at hand. So too should you prepare your body with the nutrition and rest it needs to perform optimally.

6. Model The People Who Have What You Want! – Certainly there are people who are getting the results you want, learn from them, do what they do. Whether it’s the business minds of the wealthy or the nutrition and exercise habits of the fit & truly healthy find out what they do.

7. Use Everything & Anything To Your Advantage- If you find inventive ways to get your results, you will get there faster. Things such as incorporating more exercise into your day without being in the gym or finding ways to make money whilst you sleep. It makes life easier!

Contact Guy & find out more on how to get the results YOU want! 07980 865 892