Alex Hutchinson wrote an incredible article about the 3/7 workout. In short, it is a five-set program with escalating repetitions, but only 15 seconds of rest between sets. You can learn all about the details by reading it here.
There are two key messages. One, to gain strength effectively, muscles must reach a point of failure. The 3/7 method accomplishes that as long as you are using 70% of your maximum weight for a given exercise. Not particularly surprising, but many people who resistance train don’t reach failure. Why? It hard. And painful. These are two things that most people shy away from.
The second key message is efficiency. In my opinion, this is the most important factor in staying in a routine. If it’s too long and we get bored, or we find ourselves in a hurry, the likelihood of us continuing over the long term decreases. But if we can get in and out in a short amount of time, AND create progress, well that’s very motivating.
My conclusion about the 3/7 workout is that it is exceptional for efficiency and effectiveness. It creates gains in a short period of time, even in high-level sports. That’s great for motivation as well as allowing us to manage our busy lives AND take care of our physical selves. I acknowledge the hard work and pain part can decrease motivation, but the beauty of the 3/7 is that it is a very short duration with not a lot of time to think about it. Contrast that with six sets of six reps of heavy squats with two and a half minutes of rest in between. That’s close to 15 minutes. That is a lot of time, period. It’s also a lot of time to think about how hard and painful it will be. That works against our nature of wanting to avoid pain and suffering.
Give it a try if you are just getting back into workouts, or if you just want to mix things up. Your body will thank you either way.
Moving is an incredible cure for so many physical and psychological ailments. It is imperative we move, but it’s also important that we move correctly to avoid pain and/or injury.
In the world of ergonomics, there is a saying. ‘The perfect position is the next position’. Meaning, always change the position your body is in to avoid adaptations that put your joints out of alignment.
Sitting, for example usually results in rounded shoulders and a low back. Excessive or prolonged time in these positions alters limb mechanics and corresponding joint positions. When we move dynamically, those joints don’t magically return to their optimal position, they remain out of alignment and these small imbalances increase the wear and tear on the joint structures.
What can we do to reduce the risk of joint degeneration?
Move-in all directions regularly.
For example, if you are a runner and do so multiple times weekly, you need to perform some movements that ‘undo’ the mechanics of running so your body does not get pulled out of balance.
Avoid getting stuck in any one position for too long.
In our society, most of us are desk-bound which means sitting way more than we should. That’s a problem waiting to happen for our joints. Work from all sorts of different positions during the day. Standing, sitting, lying, etc. Just keep changing and avoid joints getting ‘stuck’ in certain positions.
Hydrate.
Yes, you’ve heard it over and over, but it works. Consuming ample amounts of water helps keep our joints hydrated and reduces the risk of damage. Sugary beverages don’t count as they add inflammation to the body.
Eat a low inflammation diet.
When we perform a dynamic exercise like tennis, for example, it naturally inflames the body. This is good inflammation. If we eat an inflammatory diet, however, we are not allowing the exercise inflammation to recover. We’re putting nutrition inflammation on top of exercise inflammation and that sets us up for problems.
Stay strong.
This is probably the most important strategy of them all. If your muscles weaken, they allow for more joint movement for the same given activity. This may mean the range of motion can exceed ‘strong’ ranges and put the joints, tendons, ligaments, and muscles in vulnerable positions. Weakness may also allow the joint to move in ways it shouldn’t, thereby increasing the risk of acute injury.
Supplement with products when necessary.
Our diets are not perfect. Sometimes we need to supplement with products that promote better health. For joints, an example is a collagen supplement.
Typically, people complain of joint pain as they get older. This is in part because of the natural ‘experience’ or wear and tear on the joint over time. More often the degradation is a result of poor habits applied over years. We don’t do ourselves any favours and then seemingly out of the blue we start experiencing joint problems. Practice joint health habits early and often and you will be able to continue to move young as you age.
A couple of years ago I watched a Ted Talk given by Dr. Stephen Seiler, a professor in Sport Science at the University of Agder in Norway. He described a surprisingly contradicting phenomenon he noticed in top-performing endurance athletes that went against the frequently quoted and deeply embedded “No pain, no gain” mentality so prolific in our society.
So many of us grow up learning that to improve, we have to push ourselves through pain and sacrifice. Cue all the brutal montages in the movies of super-intense training with scrunched-up faces gasping for air and bodies dripping with sweat, and the illusion they are training this way every single day.
What piqued Dr. Seiler’s interest was when he was out for a run one day and saw one of the top athletes he had previously studied in his lab, approach a hill while on her run. He knew she was capable of high levels of performance, so was taken aback when she stopped running and began walking up the hill. To him, if there was a hill, he’d push himself to run up there as fast as he could, so why was this talented athlete not running when she could clearly do so?
What he discovered was that most of the elite athletes stay in their green zone most of the time.
The green zone is defined as the level of activity where you can hold an easy conversation and feel only a mild level of exertion.
Yellow zones are when you can respond in a few word phrases and feel a moderate level of exertion.
Red zones are where you are gasping for air and feel extremely pushed to your exertional limits (what we see in the movies).
An example was taken from the all-time winter olympian Marit Bjørgen who let researchers gather data from all her training years. During her peak years of training, Marit’s year would be in the green zone for about 800 hours and less than 100 hours in her yellow and red zones.
Spending most of their practice in the green zones allows the most successful athletes to build a strong foundation for those moments of yellow and red zone intensities. It’s a place where they can practice comfortably, enjoy it, and recover, day in and day out. And that’s where the success comes from.
Practice needs to be sustainable, that’s where our bodies and minds rewire and create new adaptations and improve our performance.
Daily moderately high intensity can lead to burnout and stagnation, and unfortunately, this is what happens to a lot of people when they get excited about hitting a new workout regime hard. They believe they will see more benefits if they go all out every day and get frustrated when they can’t sustain this. It’s because it’s not sustainable, and this idea of No pain, no gain is not realistic.
Now, let’s apply this theme to other skills as well.
Nutrition
Green zone examples:
Replacing one processed snack with berries / your favourite fruits and nuts instead.
Having a hearty, colourful salad for lunch 1 day per week
Incorporating one new fruit, vegetable, bean, or any plant food per month
Yellow zone examples:
Having a cup of berries on alternating days for your snacks
Having a colourful salad on alternate days for lunches
Avoiding eating after dinner on weekdays
Red zone examples:
Avoiding added sugars and processed foods
Having colourful meals that contain all 7 colours daily
Enjoying at least 40 different foods a week
Sleep
Green zone examples:
Putting blue-light-blocking glasses on as dusk approaches to protect your melatonin
Turn on a salt lamp or light candles in the evenings
Silencing device notifications 2 hours before bedtime
Yellow zone examples:
Take your phone/ any device out of the bedroom when you sleep
Avoid sitting on the couch watching tv at night, and discovering alternate activities to do instead.
Red zone examples:
In bed at a time where you achieve 8 hours of sleep
There are no devices or screen use at least 2 hours before bed
As you can see, we can apply this green zone style of training to the lifestyle habits that we want to practice supporting sustainable health. Your green zone practices should be relaxing, and most importantly enjoyable. Configure a green zone practice that feels best for you, something you look forward to and will be able to sustain and build up your strength and success in!
One of my favorite health and wellness authors, Alex Hutchinson, wrote a great article on running shoes and how cushioning is all the rage. Almost everyone has a pair of ‘joggers’. Those are the ones that distance runners use and are specifically designed to help make running safer, more efficient, and faster. Well, at least that’s what the manufacturers are trying to do.
It only takes a moment in front of a wall of shoes at your favorite running store to see the huge variety in styles. In particular, we are in a time of big cushioning. Ten to fifteen years ago it was minimalist shoes with as little cushioning as possible. ‘Let the foot do what it’s supposed to do’ was the rationale. In part, that is still true, but we’ve evolved since then.
In Alex’s article, he references the Vaporfly by Nike as one of the reasons cushioning has taken off. It made a controversial improvement in elite running times. The improvement was substantial, and people questioned whether it was even fair. To their credit, Nike nailed the ‘performance’ side of their goal. The other great thing was it inspired lots of needed research about cushioning. You can read Alex’s article to find out lots of cool detail about research methodology, but the point of this article is to help educate you on your decisions when picking your own runners.
The most important part, which is also referenced in the article, is to choose a shoe that is comfortable and feels good for you. When I was running marathons, I used New Balance 501s. As I learned more about running, and shoes, the 501s would not have been a recommendation for me based on my foot mechanics and what that shoe was made for. But I have a wide foot and it was a wide shoe, so that was a comfortable fit. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe in matching your foot with a shoe that supports it properly, but if it’s not comfortable, it may create problems for you.
When you are buying that new pair, try at least three different models/brands. The more you try, the better your education and ability to find that perfect comfort level. Be cautious about any claims, as peer-reviewed research is growing but the evidence is still light.
Understanding your foot mechanics is also important. If your salesperson can’t provide some basics, then see someone like Victoria Lavinskas or Katie Snowden at Totum. They are exceptional therapists as well as runners and they can provide you an understanding of your own unique mechanics.
Eventually, the research will catch up and provide us with some more definitive guidance on how these different shoe designs help or hurt us. In the meantime, we take in all available information, match it with comfort, and get out and enjoy ourselves.
PS If you are looking to improve your running, or to get started in running and want to do it right, take a look at our RunSmart program. It’s an amazing education!
The rest is as important as the work! I remember my strength coach in university talking with us about this very fact. In retrospect, it was probably the best program I have ever been on. Lots of variety in programming as well as intensity, and room for some fun too. What I didn’t know at the time was how universally the message applies. I’ve now seen it in action for two decades (plus) with a wide variety of clients, but also with research and real-world experiences.
Let’s start with the obvious, the highest levels of sport. Twenty-five years ago, it was rare to hear about an elite athlete competing at the highest level beyond 30 years old. In 2022, it is commonplace with more and more of them still competing at 40+. The biggest change by far is how much recovery the athletes receive. The old methods applied high intensities in practice along with the same in individual workouts. Fatigue was a natural result and that lead to a greater incidence of injury, performance lag, and in most cases, retiring before 30.
The emphasis on recovery has been incredible, particularly in the last five years. If you heard the term ‘load management’ ten years ago, you would think it related to a forklift in a warehouse. Now it’s common to manage an athlete’s overall workload to ensure proper levels of recovery so they can perform at their best at the most important times.
Moving into the real world, the same theme can apply to non-athletes who are incredibly busy. Imagine a person who works 60 hours weekly. That means long days, as well as weekend time, focused on work. (As I write the number 60, it doesn’t seem dramatically high, but when you think about it, that is a big, big number). Sixty hours a week for 50 weeks will create fatigue that you may not even be aware of. It will compromise your work performance and not allow you to achieve the quality you would like. It will also dull your experiences outside of work. That fatigue is real and if you carry it into your close personal relationships, they will not be as positive as they otherwise would be. Events that should be fun feel like work. This can create a vicious cycle by increasing stress which, in turn, makes it more difficult to recover.
Circling back to the title of this article, the way to get the most out of everything you do is to make sure you have the energy to make it successful, but also enjoyable. Constantly ‘powering through’ life is not a positive strategy. If that is more your norm, then focusing on one or more of the following is a good idea.
Sleep hours each week – >50
Work hours each week – <45
Hours focused on your personal enjoyment each week – >= 7
Social time each week – >=7
As one of my peers recently said to me after going through a tough patch in his life, “You need to persevere, but you also need to live life”. He couldn’t be more right about that and everything you do will get better as a result. The rest is just as important as the work!
Taking care of our body is important, but so is tending to your relationships!
The power of our relationships, and how happy we are in those relationships influence our physical and mental health. One of the world’s longest studies on adult life and aging has amassed a huge collection of detailed data on what factors in life correlate to happiness and quality longevity. That last part is important. It’s not just living longer but doing so with a great quality of life.
Many aspects were measured. Money, fame, career status, relationships, mental health, and physical health measures like weight and cholesterol levels. One of the strongest correlations was health and happiness to relationships with family, friends, and community. People who were most satisfied with their relationships were the healthiest in their 80’s. This was a stronger predictor than cholesterol levels!
Satisfying relationships do not just mean when things are smooth and positive. Studies of couples bickering daily still show their mental health remains intact if they feel supported and could really count on others when times get tough.
The key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships.
-George Valliant, psychiatrist (professor at Harvard)
We often think of health as coming from abstaining from smoking, reducing alcohol, eating well, and being physically active. But this study shows a stark absence in our valuation of relationships and the impact that our community plays on our health as well.
I often ask patients to list the qualities in others they enjoy being around and use this to guide how they allocate time spent with others who contribute to their positive relationships. Traits like passion about something, kindness, loyalty, intelligence, being open-minded, etc.
The number of friends doesn’t necessarily matter, as many of us can still feel lonely despite having lots of people around. We want to make sure we pay attention to the quality of our relationships, enjoying ones that uplift us, challenge us, and make us feel supported with a little tough love thrown in.
Your list is like your home base to help recenter your priorities when we sometimes get swept up with life. What qualities are on your list? Now go enjoy them.
I’m often asked, “If you could make one recommendation for overall health, what would it be?”
Man, that’s a tough one. Sometimes being science and evidence based is restrictive. Each situation is different and my ‘one piece of advice’ would be different for everyone. Individuals require individual approaches.
There are an almost infinite number of possible answers to this, but I’m going to provide two personal favorites to this question: 1a and 1b.
1a is to move in nature. It doesn’t matter to me if you are walking, rolling, running, or biking. Just get out and move in nature. The movement and the greenery have been studied extensively and there is an overabundance of evidence 100% of the population will benefit from both.
1b is to sleep well. As with moving in nature, the benefits of sleep for body and brain are extensively proven scientifically. Recovery, emotional control, cognitive ability, hormonal profiles, etc. Good consistent sleep is incredibly beneficial to your overall health. It’s not up to me to tell you how much that is because everyone is different. If you want a guideline, I’d say 7.5 – 8 hours nightly, uninterrupted. If you are wondering what your natural schedule is, you would need to sleep without an alarm clock for at least a week or two, and on those last two days of the period, you would find out how many hours you sleep naturally. That would then become your nightly goal.
So, there you have it, my one-ish answer to the magical question. You are seriously ‘winning’ when you are doing both above well.
Now I have a question for you? Which one do you think you could improve the most on, and what will you do to take one small step in that direction? Information is power, but information and action is what really counts.
When it comes to overall health, one particular theme continues to present itself to me. Do the right things ‘most of the time’. We spend so much time trying to ‘get it right’ or be ‘perfect’ and it’s just not realistic. Too many of us end up feeling excess pressure that can lead to giving up or getting disappointed in ourselves because we have not achieved the ideal. I say screw the ideal and give yourself some flexibility to do some things that you know aren’t perfect.
I first noticed this with physical capabilities. Anyone who is consistent with their training retains their base even when they take a break from it. Yes, they become somewhat deconditioned, but their capacity to ‘get back in shape’ is there and makes the process quite efficient. Taking years or decades away from activity converts their system to an inactive one, and they lose their ability to rebound efficiently.
I’ve observed the same phenomenon with people and their diets. Those that have consistently poor dietary habits generally have poorer health. Surprise, surprise. Overweight, high blood pressure, joint pain, less happiness, etc. not surprising. Those that have good dietary habits most of the time usually have good, general health.
In the past several years, I’ve also noticed those that spending an ample amount of time outdoors has more positive health outcomes. Particularly psychologically. The plus is most people tend to be doing something physical when outside so their physical health benefits as well. This also applies to people who work in an office environment. If they get some weekly outdoor enjoyment most of the time, it seems to work as an antidote to their desk time.
I know I’m simplifying ‘good health’ with this concept, but that’s the point. Let’s make it easier for ourselves instead of harder. The point of ‘most of the time’ is that it’s not rigid. I like sweets, and some beer and wine, but most of the time I eat well and don’t drink to much alcohol.
Pursuing perfection in any health habit can have its drawbacks psychologically and that is what I see as a roadblock to getting started or continuing with any positive habit. To reiterate my earlier point, allow yourself to be imperfect. You are not a robot, nor should you aspire to be one. Just be yourself and do the right thing most of the time. Better health and happiness are sure to follow.
Are you or someone you know hitting the pavement or trails this spring? If so, we have two awesome resources for you.
RunSmart Workshop
We are hosting a RunSmart workshop on May 10th, 6pm at our King location. Our running physio, Victoria Lavinskas, and our running nutritionist, Tara Postnikoff, will help you…
Run Faster
Run farther
Stay injury free
Nutrition, technique, resistance work, and more
There is no cost to the workshop, but all attendees will receive 15% off a massage. Sign up here.
RunSmart Immersive
If you are looking for the latest and most comprehensive look at running performance from all angles, we have you covered. Whether you are just getting started with running or you are experienced and looking for an edge, this program is a great match.
It won’t surprise you that our society is forward-focused. This is also true with how we move our bodies.
Typically, we move forward in a straight line for our activity. Walking, running, and cycling are good examples of this. While any movement is positive, as we get back to outdoor activity after a long winter there is an opportunity to move differently as well. Mixing up directions of movement to keep your body guessing and promote cross-training is a good example.
Let’s focus on walking/hiking and running. This article by Alex Hutchinson shows how rough trail running requires greater energy use than smooth trail running. This isn’t entirely surprising, but the reason this happens is related to the amount of side-to-side movement necessary to avoid some of the ground covers on a rough trail, including rocks and tree roots. The idea of making your run harder may not be particularly appealing but the benefits for your body are substantial. Sideways steps, small jumps, the landing of those small jumps, long steps, etc. All this extra motion takes more energy, but it also requires your body to move in different ways. This ‘cross training’ helps you be a better mover overall.
Here are some ways you can accomplish these bonus movements in your regular routine:
Walking/running
Typical – paved or cement trail
Cross Training – dirt, grass, or gravel trails; incorporate sideways or backwards steps (safely)
Hiking
Typical – smooth, low incline trails
Cross Training – higher incline trails; rough trails; a combination of these two
Biking
Typical – road riding on paved trails
Cross Training – dirt, grass, or gravel trails; mountain biking
As a bonus, you can also stop on your outdoor adventure and do some step-ups onto a tree stump, push-ups against a low branch or rock, and more.
As with anything that has higher levels of difficulty, proper safety approaches are important. Some considerations include proper footwear, avoiding wet or slippery surfaces, making sure there is adequate light, bringing along a friend, etc.
This spring and summer, get outside and enjoy the world around you a bit differently. Your body and brain will thank you.
