What’s sad about this is that many people feel like they are doing everything necessary to get the result they are looking for. They are resigned to the fact that this is how it’s going to be and there isn’t anything that can be done to correct their deficiencies. If you were to ask them what results they would like to get out of their workout, the number 1 answer is “losing weight or getting thinner.”

When I am asked what it takes to look “fitter,” the first question I ask is: “How long have you been doing your current training program?”

The usual answer I receive is “somewhere between 6 and 12 months.” The typical program they follow is “30 – 60 minutes of continuous aerobic work 3 to 5 times per week.” This is a combination of treadmill, stepper, elliptical, rower and bike.

Our training tells us that this is not a good approach to take for the client seeking improving results over time. World renowned strength guru Charles Poliquin has identified 6 reasons why aerobic training is counterproductive to fat loss:

(1) Continuous aerobic work plateaus after 8 weeks of training so anything more is counterproductive.

This is quite an “eye opener” for most people who immediately recognize that they may have been wasting their time for such an extended period. To quote Charles, “using this principle in preparation for the 92 Olympics, the Canadian Alpine Ski team actually surpassed the Cross-country team on aerobic scores as measured by third party University labs.” Who wouldn’t want to perform as well as the Canadian Alpine ski team?

(2) Aerobic training worsens power locally and systemically – in other words, it can make you slower.

If you are an athlete or a “weekend warrior” who likes to participate in athletic events or team sports that require speed and jumping ability, this is the last thing you want from a cardiovascular training program. Coach Poliquin adds that “the more lower body aerobic work you do, the more your vertical jump worsens (reduced leg power). The more upper body aerobic work you do, the more your medicine ball throws worsen (reduced upper body power).”

(3) Aerobic training increases ‘oxidative stress’ which can accelerate aging.

According to Endocrinologist Dr. Diana Schwarzbein (author of The Schwarzbein Principle ,) “oxidation” is a process that forms free radicals in the body. Normally the body can neutralize free radicals with substances known as antioxidants. It is only when there is an excessive build-up of free radicals that the body cannot neutralize all of the free radicals. This leads to changes to your metabolism which can accelerate aging in every cell of the body, from heart right through to skin cells.

(4) Aerobic training increases adrenal stress – raise cortisol and reduce DHEA, which can make you fatter and produce other undesirable health consequences

According to Dr. James Wilson (author of Adrenal Fatigue – The 21st. Century Stress Syndrome,) “normally functioning adrenal glands secrete minute, yet precise and balanced, amounts of steroid hormones”. When one does too much continuous aerobic exercise, the adrenal glands are stressed in a way that can upset this delicate balance which could lead to adrenal fatigue. Adrenal fatigue is associated with such symptoms as: tiredness, fearfulness, allergies, frequent influenza, arthritis, anxiety, depression, reduced memory, and difficulties in concentrating, insomnia, feeling worn-out, and most importantly- with respect to this article – the inability to lose weight after extensive efforts.”

(5) Aerobic training increases body fat in stressed individuals by contributing additionally to stress.

If you are already going through a lot of stress in your life then adding more “stress” by doing too much continuous aerobic work will actually add more body fat thus making it hard to reach a weight-loss/body fat goal.

(6) Aerobic training worsens testosterone/cortisol ratio which impedes your ability to add muscle & burn fat.

When the testosterone/cortisol ratio is lowered your ability to add lean muscle tissue, which helps to increase caloric expenditure, is again hampered making weight loss much more difficult. Coach Poliquin notes that “continuous aerobic work is basically exercise induced castration!”

Coming up in “Part 2” of this article: I’ll examine alternative exercise strategies which can help you break through a plateaus as well as being healthier for you.

Why Organ Meats?

Compared with muscle meats, organ meats are richer in just about every nutrient, including minerals like phosphorus, iron, copper, magnesium and iodine, and in B vitamins including B₁, B₂, B₆, folic acid and especially vitamin B₁₂. Organ meats provide high levels of the all-important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, especially if the animals live outside in the sunlight and eat green grass. Organ meats are also rich in beneficial fatty acids such as arachidonic acid, EPA and DHA. Organ meats even contain vitamin C—liver is richer in vitamin C than apples or carrots!

Even if you add only small amounts of organ meats to your ground meat dishes, you are providing your family with super nutrition. . . in ways that everyone likes and are easy to consume.

About the Author

Sally Fallon is the author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats (with Mary G. Enig, PhD), a well-researched, thought-provoking guide to traditional foods with a startling message: Animal fats and cholesterol are not villains but vital factors in the diet, necessary for normal growth, proper function of the brain and nervous system, protection from disease and optimum energy levels. She joined forces with Enig again to write Eat Fat, Lose Fat, and has authored numerous articles on the subject of diet and health. The President of the Weston A. Price Foundation and founder of A Campaign for Real Milk, Sally is also a journalist, chef, nutrition researcher, homemaker, and community activist. Her four healthy children were raised on whole foods including butter, cream, eggs and meat.

You see, I truly believe that what we all want in life, above all, is to be happy and that to be happy we need to set specific measurable goals to allow us to achieve success in 5 key areas of our lives.

• The first of these is to achieve high levels of health and energy, most people would put their health above all other personal considerations. No matter what your goals in life whether they are financial or in support of children or athletic endeavours, your success and performance are directly related to your health and energy levels. The healthier you are the more you have to give to others. Remember the health and safety demonstrations on airlines? When the oxygen mask drops from above what is the instruction given? …..It makes perfect sense!

• The second is to enjoy loving relationships. Start with yourself, as nobody is going to respect you if you don’t love and respect yourself.  The more people you have in your life who love and respect you, and whom you love and respect, the happier you are.

• The third is to perform meaningful work, a business or a career that makes a difference. We are put on this earth to be useful in some way, and we are only happy when we feel, deep inside, that what we are doing is somehow helping others in a positive way.

• The fourth is to achieve monetary freedom. We live in a material world. Food clothing, shelter, transportation – everything has to be paid for, not only for ourselves but also for our dependants. One of our chief responsibilities as an adult is financial independence. This is important and at the same time only useful if backed up with health, as it is of no benefit being the richest man/woman in the graveyard or hospital ward!

• And the fifth is to express your individuality, the opportunity to use your unique abilities in a way that gives you deep satisfaction. Whatever vehicle you use to display your skills and talents you can use to ensure you grow as a person, educate yourself and add to the improvement of the people around you.

Following this order of strategy in my opinion is the best way to obtain a happy, healthy, rich and fulfilling life, so get exactly what you want from YOUR life!

For more information on how to ensure you get your health, fitness and life goals. Contact Guy on 07980865892 or email guy@successfulhealthcoach.com

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!

It ascribes antecedence to the drop in vitamin D levels that starts with the cold ambient temperatures and food scarcity of the low-sun winter months. The need for increased metabolic activity to generate and store heat under these cold conditions could be a problem as it may deplete vital fat mass, which confers a survival advantage in such a climate by reducing surface area-to-volume ratio and by providing an energy store in the form of fat mass.

The team, based in Surrey, proposed that the body uses the natural decrease in vitamin D that occurs during winter as a signal for the accumulation of fat mass and therefore body size. Of course it makes practical sense that we get fatter in the winter and again it shows how our species that has evolved over millions of years still takes many of its cues to controlling metabolism from the environment. However, in the modern era where food is plentiful this could be contributing to the rising levels of obesity. As a guy who is known for helping clients to lose weight I think I am going to step outside right now and soak up a few rays.
In my practise I make sure that everyone I see has a 25OH Vitamin D blood test in October to assess vitamin D status moving into autumn/winter. From these results I can decide who needs vitamin D supplements and what the dose should be.

Naturopath Benjamin Brown gave a great short talk for Nutri, which is available on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVv2s0_YIlQ), indicating appropriate dosages and its well worth a watch. Vitamin D is toxic at high levels leading to hyper-calceamia in the blood, so it is important on high dosages to regularly test. I test about every 3 months. I use Iso D3 from Nutri which is cost-effective and gives a 3 month supply at a dosage of 2000IU per day.

Click here to buy Iso D3 online TODAY

Sources:

(Med Hypotheses. 2009 Mar;72(3):314-21. E pub 2008 Dec 2).

This is because the polyphenols found in the tea target molecular pathways that shut down the production and spread of tumor cells. Further, they inhibit the growth of tumor-nurturing blood vessels.

The study, which involved using a mouse model for human prostate cancer, indicated the consumption of green tea polyphenols (GTP) adjusted and reduced levels of the insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1)-driven molecular pathways in prostate tumor cells.

The findings supported other studies, which found that increased levels of IGF-1 were associated with the increased risk of various cancers, including:

~  Prostate

~  Breast

~  Lung

~  Colon
Researchers also discovered that these GTP reduced the expression of proteins typically linked to the metastatic (additional location) spread of cancer cells. This is because the polyphenols inhibited the levels of urokinase plasminogen activator as well as cellular molecules linked to the metastasis.

Slaying the Cholesterol Lowering Demon

By Kimberly Hartke | Published: September 10, 2009

The Devil is in the Absence of Details

photo credit: craigCloutier

Weston A. Price Foundation, a nutrition education non-profit, claims cholesterol is misunderstood. It plays a key role in body chemistry, hormone balance, longevity. But if that is the case, why are we not told? Unfortunately, because the health information released through the media to the public often has a marketing objective. The objective is to sell more drugs.

Cholesterol lowering drugs (know as statins) have serious side effects. They suppress the immune system, they cause cancer, they cause muscle wasting. The pharmaceutical companies promote statins to doctors doing organ transplants, because they know these drugs have immuno-suppressant affects. One should think long and hard about going on them. There are even lifestyle changes that can dramatically improve ones blood lipid profile. But, it is also important to know all the facts. Cholesterol is a valuable and healing substance, it is a vital part of your immune system. If the public knew the whole truth, they would only lower their cholesterol as a last resort.

There is one organization setting out to slay the big fat demon who wants to lower everybody’s cholesterol.

Learn the Health Benefits of Cholesterol

The nutrition education non-profit, Weston A. Price Foundation is an important source of science based facts about the nutritional qualities and health benefits of cholesterol. Here is an excellent article on our website, Cholesterol, Friend or Foe? This article details how our cells are comprised of 50% cholesterol. Our nervous system needs cholesterol. Our digestion and source of vitamin D depends on cholesterol. Turns out, cholesterol is our friend, and we have been misled into believing otherwise.

Here is an excerpt from our recent press release:

WASHINGTON, DC, September 1, 2009–September is National Cholesterol Education Month, when government officials will stress cholesterol reduction as a top priority, claiming that “high levels of cholesterol significantly increase the risk of heart disease.” However, the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nonprofit nutrition education organization, urges citizens to celebrate September by learning about the vital roles of cholesterol in the body chemistry and by embracing nutrient-dense, cholesterol-rich foods.

“Cholesterol is deemed a deadly poison. Most people are afraid of eating foods containing cholesterol and of receiving a diagnosis of ‘high’ cholesterol,” says Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation. “Yet, having adequate cholesterol levels in the body is key to good health. The notion that cholesterol is a villain in the diet is a myth, based on flimsy evidence and opposed by many honest scientists, including prominent lipids researcher, Dr. Mary Enig. But, this theory was promoted by the food processing industry to demonize animal fats, which are competitors to vegetable oils and by the pharmaceutical industry to create a market for the sales of cholesterol-lowering drugs.”

See the entire news release here: Nutrition Activists Celebrate Cholesterol.

Will Parents Accept the Truth About Cholesterol?

A scientist who received our press release, wonders if parents will reject the science which says cholesterol is vital to human health.  Here is her question, and the Foundation President’s answer.

Meet the Cholesterol Lowering Skeptics

Here is a link to an excellent article by a medical doctor and scientist,  Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, The Benefits of High Cholesterol.  He is also the chairman of the International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics. This is a website worth investigating if you want to know the concerns a number of prominent medical professionals have about cholesterol lowering.

If media reporting on medical issues were truly balanced, every time you’d see a report about cholesterol, one of the cholesterol skeptics would be there to explain the other side of the story. But, where in the devil are

The results were published online July 28, 2009 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Physical inactivity over a person’s lifespan might be a “key factor in the initiation of cancer development,” the authors note.

This study adds ammunition to the public-health message promoting at least 30 minutes a day of exercise, lead author Sudhir Kurl MD, from the School of Public Health at the University of Kuopio in Finland, told Medscape Oncology.

All doctors should be giving their patients this message.

“All doctors should be giving their patients this message,” he said, although he acknowledged that many do not have the time, and many are not aware of all of the research showing benefits.

“We found a 50% reduction in the risk of dying prematurely from cancer,” Dr. Kurl pointed out. Exercise also improves well being and confidence, and leads to better sleep and weight control, he added.

The study was carried out in men, but Dr. Kurl said he expects to see similar results in women.

Intensity of Physical Activity Was Important

The study involved 2560 men, aged 42 to 60 years, living in the town of Kuopio and the surrounding rural communities. They self-reported their leisure-time physical activities on questionnaires over a period of 1 year, and were then followed for an average of 16.7 years, during which time there were 181 cancer-related deaths.

In their analysis, the researchers adjusted for age, cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, body mass index, and total intake of calories, fat, and fiber.

The reduction in the risk for premature death from cancer was seen in men who exercised for more than 30 minutes every day, and with an intensity that was moderate to high, Dr. Kurl noted. The activities they performed included jogging, swimming, cycling to work, and gardening or yard work, he said

Exercise intensity was measured in metabolic equivalents of oxygen consumption (METs). The average intensity of jogging was 10.1 MET, of skiing was 9.6 MET, of ball games was 6.7 MET, of swimming was 5.4 MET, of rowing was 5.4 MET, of cycling was 5.1 MET, of gardening/farming/yard work was 4.3 MET, and of walking was 4.2 MET.

“Anything above an average of 4 MET can be considered [to be] moderate-intensity exercise,” Dr. Kurl told Medscape Oncology.

Other activities reported by the men included crafts, repair or building, which had an average intensity of 2.7 MET, hunting, picking berries or gathering mushrooms (3.6 MET), and fishing (2.4 MET).

“The intensity of leisure-time physical activity should be at least moderate so that the beneficial effect of physical activity for reducing overall cancer mortality can be achieved,” the authors write.

The results show that at least moderate-intensity physical activity is more beneficial than low-intensity physical activity in the prevention of cancer, the authors note. This finding is consistent with American consensus statements suggesting that at least moderate-intensity physical activity is needed to prevent chronic diseases caused mainly by cardiovascular disease, they add.

Several Mechanisms Involved

They speculate that the mechanisms by which physical activity could protect against cancer include beneficial effects on energy balance and body mass, intestinal transit time, hormonal concentrations (e.g., reduced testosterone), prostaglandin levels, and antioxidant enzymes activities.

For example, exercise increases the F-series of prostaglandinsbut decreases the E2 series, and these physiologic events have been shown to increase gut motility and to decrease colonic cell division, the researchers point out.

Many of the cancer-related deaths that were reported during the follow-up period affected the gastrointestinal tract (57 of 181 cases). The remaining cancers affected the lung (n = 48), prostate or urinary tract (n = 25), brain (n = 9), or lymphoma (n = 6).

“Our results indicate that those with an active lifestyle have a decreased risk of gastrointestinal cancers,” the researchers note. This finding may be due to changes in energy balance, which includes body mass, which is particularly important for colon cancer, they note. In addition, the increased gut motility with exercise training decreases gastrointestinal transit time, thereby reducing the contact time between fecal carcinogens and the colonic mucosa, as well as allowing less opportunity for the initiation of carcinogenesis and colonic cell division and proliferation. There may also be an affect on insulin and fat metabolism, they add.

Asked by Medscape Oncology if he practices what he preaches, Dr. Kurl replied: “Of course!” He reported jogging 3 times a week and working out in the gym twice a week .

The researchers have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

Br J Sports Med. Published online before print July 28, 2009.

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.