Brando's Blog

This Blog is Moving!!!

Please note, this will be the last ever blog posted on this site.

I will be closing down this blog account soon as my blogs are now being posted on the new BodyCHEK website at http://bodychek.co.uk/blog/  

Please feel free to join me there.

Jade Johnson's 2012 Comeback

Yesterday's Metro Newspaper in London ran an article on long jumper Jade Johnson.

The article talked about her knee injury and how she has suffered from adrenal fatigue.

The article also dicussed how she is working with Paul Chek and her jump coach John Herbert to help her get into shape for next year's Olympics.

Knowing Jade, I can tell you that she is one of the most determined people I know and I have great hope for her next year. 

As you may have read in a previous post, I am also working with Jade to help her with her Adrenal Fatigue and Warren Williams, CHEK Practitioner Level 3, has been working with her for the past year and has helped her greatly to improve joint stability and strength. 

I think we might need to call in Air Traffic Control when Jade lines up on the runway at the Olympics next year! 

The Importance of Recovery from Training and Competition - Part 3

Signs of over training include:

• Resting heart rate five beats per minute above or below normal (base)
• Unintentional or unexplained reduction in bodyweight of 3% or more
• Reduction in appetite
• Poor sleep quality for two days in a row or more
• Prolonged fatigue
• Muscle and bone soreness or joint ache
• Low motivation, attitude and confidence to training

So what can you do to optimise recovery?

Eat high quality organic foods in accordance with your metabolic type®. Organic foods contain considerably more nutrients than non-organic foods (4) and give your body the building blocks they need to recover. Eating right for your metabolic type® (see glossary), allows for optimum function (including regeneration) of all cellular processes. Food is the building blocks for your body’s structures. If you eat a low quality diet in the wrong proportions of macronutrients, you’ll have weaker muscles, connective tissues and bones. You’ll also have blood sugar imbalances, which lead to a stress response in the body, which leads to a reduction in growth hormone levels, which are required for recovery and regeneration of tissues.

Remain fully hydrated. Most athletes will need a minimum of 0.03 litres of good quality water per kilogram of body weight. For instance, a 50kg woman would need a minimum of 1.5litres (0.03 x 50 =1.5) per day. There are hundreds of thousands of biochemical reactions that take in the human body every second and they all require water. 

Ensure adequate sleep. Adequate sleep means getting around 8-9 hours of sleep per night and for elite athletes possibly 9-10 hours. Sleep times are crucial too. Growth hormones in the body peak around 9.30pm-10.30pm and therefore it is essential that you are asleep by 10-10.30pm each night to maximise your recovery. Our hormonal systems are tied into the movement of the sun (rise and fall) and going to bed late and getting up late will not compensate for missing the growth hormone window. Sleep in a totally dark room. Light hitting the skin has been shown to increase stress hormones, which are antagonistic to anabolic (growth) hormones.

Passive rest is when you take days off and do no physical activity. These can be crucial following very gruelling training mesocycles, preparing to peak or when the resting heart rate is five beats per minute above the base level.

Active rest is when you train, but at a lower intensity than normal or a different form of training that is different from your event or normal training routine. Active rest is often used post-event, for instance light jogging to aid the removal of metabolic waste from the muscles. Another example would be a boxer going for a swim.

Rest days are crucial physiologically, psychologically and emotionally. Passive or active rest can be used on rest days. There should be at least one day per week where an athlete has a rest day.

Post event or post training recovery should include:

• A cool down, normally involving low intensity exercise such as light jogging, swimming or cycling – this aids the removal of metabolic waste from the tissues.
• Rehydration with good quality mineral water – to replace lost fluid
• A meal or snack containing protein, fats and carbohydrates – to replace lost nutrients. A meal or snack of around 10-15% higher in carbohydrates than normal will help to replenish muscle glycogen, as well as regeneration of muscle tissue.
• Ice bath or contrast shower – to reduce inflammation of tissue damage and aid in the release of metabolic waste.
• Sports massage – to help remove metabolic waste, relax the muscles, reduce muscular tone, release trigger points and improve digestive function. A massage is recommended at least once or twice per week.
• Meditation techniques can be very useful to perform especially before bed. Meditation helps to stimulate the growth hormones of the body and aid repair and tissue regeneration.
• Stretching should be performed to prevent shortening of muscles and therefore avoiding sport specific muscle imbalances. Stretching should be performed four hours after the event as metabolic waste continues to be released for up to four hours post exercise. Stretching should only be performed on tight or facilitated muscles, so a good understanding of your body’s muscle balance is crucial.

 Failure to recover adequately will greatly increase your likelihood of injury!

 Further information can be found in my book, "Anatomy of Sports Injuries for Training and Rehabilitation".

 

The Importance of Recovery from Training and Competition - Part 2

In Part 2, I have included a Training and Recovery Diary that you can use to ensure you do not overtrain:

The Importance of Recovery from Training and Competition

In order for performance to improve, you must train the body to go beyond its current capacity. In order to do so, the S.A.I.D. principle needs to be understood. S.A.I.D. stands for – Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. What this means is that if you want to get stronger, you need to lift heavier than you currently can, or if you wish to increase endurance you need to run longer than you currently can at a given speed.

The way this is accomplished in training, is to train hard, beyond the level you have been training at and then allow the body to adapt to the excess stress placed on the body. So if you continually lift heavier weights the body will adapt to handle the stress under the right conditions. It will do this for instance by improving neural drive to the muscles, increasing muscle size etc. However, this will only occur if the body has adequate resources for the adaptations to occur. These resources include:

• Adequate rest and sleep
• Minimal stress (physical, mental and emotional)
• Adequate hormonal status
• Adequate nutritional status

With the correct conditions in place, training fatigue leads to an adaptation in the tissues and improved performance ability.

In order to ensure adequate recovery, a training and recovery diary should be kept including full details of the exercise programme, levels of muscle soreness, general energy/fatigue, ability to maintain technique and expected performance, bodyweight, appetite, resting heart rate, sleep patterns and levels of motivation, concentration and confidence.

 

Helping an Olympic Hopeful

You may have seen on a previous post that I met Jade Johnson in San Diego at The CHEK Conference. 

Jade has been Britain's top female long jumper for the best part of the last decade. As a fan of athletics and a former school-boy longer jumper myself, I have been following Jade's career since she first burst on the seen. 

So I was extremely pleased for Jade to ask me to help her out with her energy levels to enable her to train better in the lead up to the Olympics next year.

Jade is an extremely talented athlete who won Silver Medals at The Eurpean and Commonwealth Championships in 2002 and I think she's going to surprise a few people next year. 

I'll keep you posted on her progress.

CHEK Exercise Coach - London October 2011

Last week I was teaching CHEK Exercise Coach at The Albany in London.

I had eight eager students all keen to learn coming from all over south England and one student from Finland.

As always with a CHEK course, it was a great group of people to teach. Whilst many of them had late nights completing their homework, they did really well on the course and I think were pleased with the demands I placed on them for the five days.

It's so great to watch people grow in such as short amount of time.

I also always like to make my courses relaxed with a fun atmosphere too. I think people learn better that way. Not sure my Bruce Forsyth comedy schooling-style jokes were up to the standards of the course content, but hey, you can't have it all.

 

Anatomy of Sports Injuries for Fitness and Rehabilitation

"Anatomy of Sports Injuries for Fitness and Rehabilitation" Official Launch Date - 1st October 2011.

Whether you are a professional who helps people with injuries or you would like to know more about your own injuries, the book is being officially released on 1st October 2011.

You can order your copy now! 

To Stretch or Not to Stretch? Part 2

In the first part of this blog-post, I discussed how important a pre-workout stretching and mobilization routine is in the base conditioning phases of training.

However, As the training becomes more intensive and moves into maximal strength, power or speed training, then this type of pre-stretching can be detrimental. If a muscle is stretched beyond its normal range or for too long, the nerve impulses that supply the muscles can be down-regulated. This means the muscles will produce less force.

Prior to maximal strength, rapid movements and competition, pre-event stretches and warm-ups should be performed. The reason this is essential is to prepare the bodily systems required prior to your workout or event to maximise your performance. By preparing the neuro-muscular system, cardiovascular system and respiratory system, you will be ready to perform at your best whilst minimising the likelihood of injury. The likelihood of injury is reduced because when muscles are warm, the tissues are less viscous and able to move through a wider range of motion and are therefore less likely to tear when moved quickly, through a wide range at speed.

You should analyse the movement patterns of your sport or workout and use warm-up exercises that closely mimic those movements.

As you warm-up, you should begin slowly and gradually increase the speed until you reach speeds close to that of your sport. By the end of your warm-up you should have a light sweat, but you should not over-do the warm-up and waste vital energy.

If you are in a phase of training that use rapid movements you should still perform corrective mobilizations and stretches. The only difference is when you perform them. You can perform them as part of your post event warm-down (cool-down) or prior to bedtime. This helps to remove metabolic waste from the muscles and anecdotal evidence suggests that stretching post exercise helps to reduce muscle soreness.

If you want more information, you might want to check out my new book, “Anatomy of Sports Injuries for Training and Rehabilitation”.

 

Happy stretching!

 

To Stretch or Not to Stretch?

There is a big debate as to whether you should stretch before and/or after training and how you should warm-up prior to workouts or competition. 

There is evidence that suggests that stretching prior to exercise has no benefit and it can be detrimental to performance. There is some truth in these statements.

However, everything has to carefully be put into context with each individual situation. Muscle balance and posture are crucial to optimising performance and reducing the likelihood of injury. So here’s my question. Do you want to train or compete with tight muscles and therefore poor muscular balance? Quite clearly, no!

So here’s the deal. In rehabilitative, corrective or base conditioning phases of your training plan, corrective mobilizations and stretches are used to lengthen the short, tight and facilitated muscles in the body. These are normally the tonic  or postural muscles, but every individual is different.

A simple way to check this is to perform stretches for each muscle group (like in Paul Chek’s book, “How to Eat, move & Be Healthy!” pages 96 and 97) and if you feel tightness or discomfort in the targeted area, add it to your mobilizing and stretching program. Ideally, you should seek a full assessment by a qualified professional, such as a C.H.E.K practitioner, physiotherapist or strength & conditioning coach.

This pre-workout mobilization and stretching will allow the muscles to work through a wider range and for their antagonistic muscles to strengthen through a more optimal range without the risk of being inhibited.

Tune in next time to find out how this differs when in different phases of training...