Happenings
Over
the past couple of months, most of us have been embroiled in family gatherings
and the taking of some R&R before embarking on the trials and tribulations
of a new year. In amongst the confusion of making oneself available for parties
and the general travel that goes with holidays and the group or family
gatherings, is the need to keep aware of the general fitness needs in keeping
our health as good as we can make it.
In
all probability, most of us relaxed our vigilance in this area and we need to
get things back on track.
If
you are “greying”, like me, the process of picking up the pieces and putting
back together the ongoing fitness regime, can be a little disappointing due to
the lack of instant progress. The older you get, the harder it is to put back
what you forgot to put in during the slack period.
This
is where a structured fitness program helps you to be the best you can be. Not
only does it help to keep you (more or less) on the ball over that worrying
period, it also helps you to get back to where you want to be.
Those
of you exercising to a Program Fitness regime should still be in fairly good
condition, and even if you lapsed a little, the future still looks good.
Whilst
some of you may have been taking things pretty easy, some of us have continued
to adhere to a training plan that will take us to our chosen goals; some of us
even took part in competitive events; some of us still kept our noses to the
grindstone and carried out normal regular exercise. One of the ones training
hard, was Shirley Barber, and amongst the results of her endeavours is a 1500m
W60-65 race walk performance of 8min 54sec. This time shows that Shirley is
well on track for a good result in the pending National T&F Championships
late in March.
At
those same championships, I also hope to do well in the M65-69 events.
Recently, I raced in the Race Walking New Zealand 10,000m Track Championship in
1
Next weekend, our intrepid
multi-sporting member, Michael Harte, will be attempting one of the world’s
most gruelling cross-country events when he takes part in the annual
All the hard work has now been done.
Now Michael will have to put it all into practice. All I can say at this stage
is good luck and I hope the weather treats you kindly.
On a more lighter vein, a few of our
Program Fitness members, me included, have become part of walking teams to
circumnavigate Lake Taupo in the eighteen 5.2km to 14.4km legs around the
largest lake in Australasia. This event, in a couple of weeks, known as the
Great Lake Relay, attracted over 6000 running and walking participants in 2007.
As the event starts at about 10pm at night, most of the participants will be
wandering around the lake highways in the dark, so extra safety precautions
will have to be taken.
As our members are spread around NZ,
we are not all in the same team, so it will be very interesting to see how we
get through the event which will take between 12 and 15 hours. Should be a bit
of a hoot, don’t you think?
A month or so ago, I mentioned some
results that Eric Saxby had achieved while at the World Masters Athletics
Champs in Italy. What I have only recently found out is that each of Eric’s
three performances set new NZ M70 age group records. In the 5000m race walk,
his time was 29:56.55. In the 10km event, he walked through to produce a 4th place
time of 1:00:18. This effort was supported by another 4th placing of
2:02:05 in the 20km over the 20km distance.
On the local scene, Shirley Barber
has had some of her recent performances recognised by NZ Masters Athletics as
W60 records with times in the 5km road walk (31:55), 3000m track walk
(18:36.56), and the 15km road walk (1:39:24).
Nice going guys!
Cheers
"A pessimist
sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in
every difficulty." - Winston Churchill
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. - Oscar Wilde
.
PROGRAM
FITNESS
If you should be aware of someone who might benefit from being on a
running or walking exercise program, please get them to log on to www.profitness.net.nz for more
information on how I may be able to help. They may also wish to contact me
direct via my email address. If you wish to know a bit about our Homestay operation, the
website can be seen at www.foreststay.com
AGING
An
article from www.nytimes.com
Presented by Jamie
Wakefield
YOU
know what is supposed to happen when you grow old. You will slow down, you will
grow weak, your steps will become short and mincing, and you will lose your
sense of balance. That's what aging researchers consistently find, and it's no
surprise to most of us.
But it is worth remembering that the people in those studies were sedentary, said
Dr. Vonda Wright, a professor of orthopedics at the
Dr. Wright, a 40-year-old runner, decided to study people who kept training as
they got older or began competing in middle age. She
wanted to know what happens to them and at what age does performance start to
decline.
Their results are surprising, even to many of the researchers themselves. The
investigators find that while you will slow down as you age, you may be able to
stave off more of the deterioration than you thought. Researchers also report
that people can start later in
life — one man took up running at 62 and ran his first marathon, a year later,
in 3 hours 25 minutes.
It's a testament to how adaptable the human body is, researchers said, that
people can start serious training at an older age and become highly
competitive. It also is testament to their findings that some physiological
factors needed for a good performance are not much affected by age.
Researchers say that you should be able to maintain your muscles as you age,
including the muscle enzymes needed for good athletic
performance, and you should be able to maintain your ability to exercise for
long periods near your so-called lactic threshold, meaning you are near maximum
effort.
But you have to know how to train, doing the right sort of exercise, and you
must keep it up.
"Train hard and train often," said Hirofumi Tanaka, a 41-year-old soccer
player and exercise physiologist at the
Dr. Tanaka said he means doing things like regular interval training, repeatedly
going all out, easing up, then going all out again. These
workouts train your body to increase its oxygen consumption by allowing you to
maintain an intense effort.
"One of the major determinants of endurance performance is oxygen consumption,"
Dr. Tanaka said. "You have to make training as intense as you can."
When you have to choose between hard and often, choose hard, said Steven
Hawkins, an exercise physiologist at the
"High performance is really determined more by intensity than volume,"
he added. "Sometimes, when you're older, something has to give. You can't
have both so you have to cut back on the volume. You need more rest days."
Dr. Hawkins, who says he no longer runs competitively, adds that he tries to
put his findings into practice. "I run a couple of times a
week and I try to make it as fast as I can," he said. "I'm not plodding
along."
He also has been amazed by some people who seem to defy the rules of aging, people
he describes as "those rare birds who get faster." Some subjects in
Dr. Hawkins's research study, which followed runners for nearly two decades,
actually had better times when they were 60 than when they were 50.
"We really don't know why," Dr. Hawkins confessed. "Maybe they
were training harder."
Then there are people like the 62-year-old man who suddenly took up running and
began running fast marathons. That man's inspiration to become a runner, said
James Hagberg, an exercise physiologist at the
And there are people like Imme Dyson, a 71-year-old runner who lives in
she says, from the moment she put on a pair of running shoes. Her daughter, who
had been a college triathlete, told her how to train.
"She said, `Mom, if your workout didn't hurt, you didn't work hard enough,'
" Ms. Dyson said.
"Working consistently really is the recipe," she said. And it has made
a difference for her, allowing her to run races, from 5K to
marathons, so fast that she is consistently among the best in the nation in her
age group. She has run a 15K cross-country race in
1:19:08, a pace of 8:29 a mile. And she ran a 10K race in 51 minutes 50
seconds, a pace of 8:20 a mile.
Not every aging athlete does so well. But Dr. Hagberg found that studies of
aging athletes sometimes were distorted because they
included people who had cut back on or stopped training. That's understandable;
there is no reason, researchers say, to exhort
everyone to maintain an intense effort decade after decade.
******************************************************
Sports
Performance...
Wake Up To The Importance Of Sleep
In our modern caffeine-fuelled, ‘sleep when you’re dead’ society, it’s easy to form the impression that sleep is not important. The high use of caffeinated sports drinks and pre-workout pick up formulas by athletes and sports people suggests that it is not just overworked office workers, and late night clubbers, who are falling into the trap of believing that sleep is not entirely beneficial or useful.
In fact recent surveys and scientific studies suggest that chronic sleep loss due to the combination of voluntary bed time restriction and poor quality of sleep is an endemic condition in modern society. The trend to push sleep aside to make room for busier more hectic lives seems no sign of abating most people are now carrying some degree of sleep debt.
In a recent British National Sleep survey, 18% of people reported that their sleep was insufficient on the majority of nights, and nearly 60% of people reported insufficient sleep on one or more nights of the previous week. It is not just the amount of time in bed that’s important; difficulty getting off to sleep or disturbed, restless sleep can also create a significant sleep debt.
In sportsmen and women, the issue of sleep deprivation problem is not confined to amateur athletes trying to fit training and competition around busy work schedules. Professional sportsmen are also vulnerable.
A recent high profile example of sleep
disturbance in professional sport occurred in the 2006 Tour of California. Top
American Cyclist Levi Leipheimer looked set for an important victory having won
the opening prologue time trial and ridden strongly in the mountains. He was
upbeat about the possibility of taking the overall lead in the next important
trial stage, and was the firm favourite for a home win. However a poor
night’s sleep meant he was far from fresh in the time trial and a mediocre
performance put him out of contention for overall victory.
MIND AND
BODY
If sleep was needed purely for the mind, athletes could almost have been forgiven for thinking that it was more important just to ‘get the workouts done’ no matter how tired they felt. If they felt they had not had sufficient sleep then exercising a little mind over matter, helped perhaps by a few strong coffees, would merely make them stronger!
This approach however
is changing as there is now a considerable body of evidence showing that sleep
has a huge role in regulating many physiological functions. According to a
recent issue of Nature Magazine we are “Waking up to the importance of sleep”
and “A growing chasm separates the growing scientific understanding of sleep,
and the widespread public assumption that it just doesn’t matter”.
HEALTH
PROBLEMS
There is mounting evidence that insufficient or poor quality sleep doesn’t just compromise short-term physical performance, it is also associated with a host of serious health problems including weight gain, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
As little as
six days with sleep duration restricted to 4 hours per night has been shown to
alter the hormone profiles of healthy young people so dramatically that they
effectively replicate those typically found in elderly or depressed
individuals!
SLEEP DEBT
The quality of
sleep is as important as duration. Sleep fragmentation due to fidgeting, restless
legs or difficulty getting off to sleep can all combine with reduced sleep
duration to contribute to sleep deficiency. Studies have also shown that sleep
debt is cumulative, so even small amounts of sleep shortfall on a regular basis
can accumulate to levels sufficient to compromise health and performance until
that sleep debt is repaid.
MAGNESIUM – A VITAL ‘SLEEP MINERAL’
Sleep disruption, high training volumes, exercise capacity and magnesium status are all related. A magnesium deficiency can cause periodic limb movement and ‘restless leg syndrome’, which can lead to poor quality sleep and significant sleep debt, and magnesium supplementation has been shown to be an effective treatment for periodic limb movement during sleep with or without restless leg syndrome.
However, this is a two-way process because chronic sleep deprivation or sleep debt has been reported to cause a further drain on magnesium levels, resulting in reduced exercise capacity.
It is possible that high training volumes and sleep deprivation may reduce magnesium status by a similar mechanism involving stress hormones. French researchers have described various mechanisms by which the stress caused by physical exercise may contribute to magnesium depletion. These include the mobilisation of fatty acids for energy in endurance exercise, urinary losses and sweat losses. The good news however is that the reduction in exercise performance due to poor or disturbed sleep can be somewhat ameliorated by magnesium supplementation.
LOW TRYPTOPHAN LEVELS IN ATHLETES
The use of protein powders and amino acid supplements for recovery and weight gain in athletic populations has rocketed in recent years. However it is possible that the amino acid profile of proteins typically used by athletes and sports people could contribute to sleep disturbance by reducing the availability of tryptophan to the brain. Many of these protein powders are high in branched chain amino acids, and whey proteins high in beta-lactoglobulin. Both of these contain high levels of large neutral amino acids which compete with tryptophan for absorption.
The general trend for low-carbohydrate/high protein foods may also contribute to high levels of competing amino acids; carbohydrate consumption will typically result in an insulin response that drives branched chain amino acids into muscle tissue, which effectively increases the plasma levels of tryptophan.
SLEEP TIPS
- Minimise or avoid caffeine and alcohol use, especially in the evening.
- Don't eat large meals before retiring.
- If you're suffering from sleep problems, try to increase your intake of magnesium-rich foods (beans, peas, lentils, nuts, seeds, whole grain breads and cereals, and green leafy vegetables); magnesium supplements may be also useful.
- Make sure your bed is comfortable; experiment with mattresses and pillows to increase sleeping comfort.
- Keep your bedroom well ventilated, quiet and cool.
- Go to bed when you're sleepy-tired, not when it's time to go to bed by habit.
- Take the time to wind down before bedtime. Don't get involved in any kind of anxiety provoking activities or thoughts in the 90 minutes before bedtime.
- Try getting an extra hour's sleep every night for 2 weeks and see how your performance improves.
EFFECTS OF SLEEP DEBT ON SPORTS PERFORMANCE
PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS
- Impaired glucose metabolism and the ability to
replenish carbohydrate
- Reduced cardiovascular performance
- Impaired motor function and reaction times
- Increased appetite and associated weight gain
- Delayed visual reaction time
- Delayed auditory reaction time
PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS
- Increased perceived exertion for a given training load
- Impaired mood – may affect motivation to train
- Reduced short-term memory capability
Sleep deprivation is a growing problem, and one that can significantly impair performance in athletes. It’s also an area that’s easily overlooked in the rush to fit training schedules around work and family commitments. If you suspect you’re not getting all the sleep you need, addressing your sleep shortage may pay far more dividends than an extra training session here and there!
From
SPORTSPERFORMANCEBULLETIN
***************************************************
"Belief is the
thermoststat that regulates all success." - Anonymous
"People can't
understand why a man runs. They don't see any sport in it, argue that it lacks
the sight-thrill of body contact, the color of rough conflict. Yet the conflict
is there, more raw and challenging than any man versus man competition. In
track it is man against himself, the cruellest of all opponents. The other
runners are not the real enemies. His adversary lies deep within him, in his
ability, with brain and heart, to control and master himself and his
emotions." - Glenn Cunningham
"More sweat in
training, less blood in battle" - sign over a PT field at
"Sweat cleanses from
the inside. It comes from places a shower will never reach." - Dr. George
Sheehan
"I just run as hard
as I can for 20 miles, and then race." - Steve Jones
"Some running is
good, more is better, and too much is just enough." - Anonymous