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1. How a Consistent Sleep Schedule Might Protect Your Heart:
New research affirms what doctors have long advised: Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day for big health benefits.
There are a few tried and true pieces of advice that sleep doctors always give for battling insomnia: Watch those alcoholic drinks at dinner, cut the afternoon coffee, stop scrolling before bed. And please, they beg: Keep your sleep schedule consistent.
Flip-flopping between wake-up times — jolting awake at 7:30 on a Friday morning and then dozing until the afternoon on Saturday — wreaks havoc on our internal body clocks. Sleep experts refer to this as “social jet lag,” said Dr. Sabra Abbott, a sleep medicine specialist at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine. Similar to changing time zones, heading to bed at vastly different times from night to night may throw off your circadian rhythm.
More...from the New York Times.
2. 10 best women’s running shoes, according to experts:
Surprise: Women’s feet are not simply smaller versions of men’s feet. And yet running shoes have been, for the most part, designed around not just the geometry of a male foot but the biomechanics (or movement patterns) of male runners.
Anatomically, women generally have a wider forefoot and narrower heel than men (think triangular versus rectangular), and tend to have more of a height difference between their heel and forefoot. A woman’s weight is naturally distributed more toward the front of her body, and her feet are just slightly more likely to collapse inward.
These differences may not be noticeable to the average eye, but they’re there. And, over time, squashing a female foot into a male shoe can lead to decreased performance, discomfort and even injury. (FWIW, female runners were more likely to experience injuries than men, according to a 2021 scientific review published in the journal Physical Activity and Health.)
More...from CNN.
3. The secret of staying young — 8 tips from scientists:
From eating less to exercising regularly, it really is possible to live longer, says Peta Bee.
If you want to turn back the clock, try cutting calories. It’s been discovered that eating less can effectively make you younger, helping you to age 2-3 per cent more slowly. According to researchers at Columbia University in New York, funded by the US National Institute on Aging, the simple step of reducing calory intake could be as effective as quitting smoking when it comes to reducing the risk of an early death.
“The main take-home of our study is that it is possible to slow the pace of biological ageing and that it may be possible to achieve that slowing through modification of lifestyle and behaviour,” says Dan Belsky, assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and one of the study authors. But reducing the amount you eat is not the only way to avoid the ravages of time. “Exercise, sleep and diet are all tremendously beneficial and can help to slow ageing at a cellular level,” notes Thomas Yates, a professor in physical activity, sedentary behaviour and health at the University of Leicester who studies the impact of lifestyle on ageing. “And the good news is that many of the steps are manageable — in fact too much vigorous exercise may be harmful to the heart in very high volumes and moderate activity is often better.” Here are eight methods to keep you young:
More...from The Times
4. How to Track Your Menstrual Cycle:
ake your performance to the next level by understanding your unique physiology.
In the summer of 2019, the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT) won the World Cup, making it the U.S. women’s fourth World Cup title. They scored a record-setting 26 goals throughout the tournament and also made history with their training tactics: For the first time in the teams World Cup history, USWNT coaches tracked players’ menstrual cycles and symptoms, and adjusted the players training to help them perform their best.
Dawn Scott, high-performance coach for both the USWNT and the National Women's Soccer League, credited the breakthrough use of period tracking as one of the strategies the team used to take their performance to the next level. "I feel like it's one of many strategies that we deployed that helped us win," Scott told Good Morning America. "We could see what [menstrual cycle] phase a player was in and what some of their symptoms were," Scott said. "I would just text or say to a player, 'Hey you're in phase three and we know you get disrupted sleep, so make sure you do x, y and z.'"
I’ve been encouraging female athletes to monitor their menstrual cycles for more than a decade. So, I’ve been excited to see high-profile women from endurance athletes to the USWNT taking advantage of this really powerful tool.
More...from Dr. Stacy Sims.
5. What Is Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S)?
RED-S is a collection of clinical symptoms resulting from an insufficient energy intake relative to the athlete’s training load. It is a syndrome that can affect all athletes, of any age and any gender, especially those in sports such as track & field and endurance events (i.e. road running, mountain/ultra/trail running), where proper energy fueling is critical for health and performance.
Why is RED-S harmful?
It impacts both physical and mental health and is associated with higher injury and illness risks. It reduces the quality of training and performance.
What Causes Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S)?
RED-S is caused by low energy availability, which results from an imbalance in the energy the athlete takes in from food relative to the energy the athlete expends during exercise. It can have a range of effects on training quality, mental health, and physical well-being
More...from Athleitcs Canada.
6. Morning Workouts May be Better for Burning Fat, Study Finds:
* For those who want a little extra from their workouts, exercising earlier in the day could be the way to go, at least according to a recent study in mice.
* The new study gives us a better understanding of how the timing of exercise impacts metabolism at a specific tissue level.
* But experts say the most important factor is to get the workout in, no matter what time of day it is.
When it comes to physical activity, all exercise counts, no matter what time of day you do it. And for many, the best workout schedule is whatever helps you move more often and regularly.
But for those who want a little extra from their workouts, exercising earlier in the day could be the way to go, at least according to a recent study in mice.
“Our results suggest that late morning exercise could be more effective than late evening exercise in terms of boosting the metabolism and the burning of fat,” study author Juleen Zierath, PhD, a professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery and the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, said in a news release.
More...from Healthline.
7. The Case Against Listening to Your Body:
Researchers test the assumption that top athletes are more sensitive to internal cues, with surprising results.
A new study in PLOS One assesses the interoceptive powers of athletes. Interoception, the study explains, is “the detection and perception of stimuli originating from within the body.” I assumed this would be one of those feel-good studies—that, in addition to being smarter and happier and living longer than average, trained runners would also turn out to be masters of tuning into their body’s signals. After all, pacing yourself in a prolonged effort is a fundamentally interoceptive challenge.
But the results turned out to be more complex than I expected. In fact, they raise some interesting—albeit speculative!—questions about whether listening to your body is as important as we think, and whether it might even be counterproductive in some circumstances.
The study was led by Hayley Young, a psychologist at Swansea University in Britain. She and her colleagues compared sprinters, distance runners, and non-athletes in two separate sub-studies. The athletes were further divided into two groups: elite (meaning they were ranked in the top 100 in Britain) and non-elite.
More...from Sweat Science on Outside Online.
8. ASICS Teams Up With mita sneakers For A Gore-Tex Covered GEL-LYTE III:
Collaborative takes under ASCICS’ umbrella of offerings have recently slowed down in number, but the Japan-based brand continues to utilize its thematic joint efforts for a splash amongst its extensive catalog. Next up? The running and lifestyle banner is coordinating with longtime partner mita sneakers for a Gore-Tex tooled ASCICS GEL-LYTE III.
Rending a boastful medley of textiles, the duo of Japanese houses enacts a pitch-dark ensemble that consumes the nubuck, nylon mesh and leather upper. Rendering a clad coat of “Gunmetal” across the presiding overlays, heel counter and mudguard, a jet-black jacquard mesh fills the vamp and mid-foot window while mita’s disparate textile choice indulges in a quilted pattern featuring bright white stitching anchors the heel. Attributing a split scheme along the sole unit with a silver grey accenting the heel, bright red laces inject a titular personality by connecting to the tongue constructions’ zipper bootie and lace lock while GORE-TEX branding outfits the weatherized outfit in conclusion.
Scheduled to release this Saturday, February 18th for a retail price of $240, enjoy official images of the mita sneakers x ASICS GEL-LYTE III Gore-Tex “Gunmetal” below in the meantime.
More...from Sneaker News.
9. Reversing the Clock – How Exercise Can Mimic the Effects of Youthful Cells:
Evidence suggests that exercise creates a molecular profile in muscle that is consistent with the expression of youthful-promoting Yamanaka factors.
A recent study published in the Journal of Physiology has further supported the idea that exercise can help maintain youthful qualities in aging organisms. This research builds upon earlier experiments with lab mice who were near the end of their lifespan and had access to a weighted exercise wheel.
The lead author of the paper is Kevin Murach, an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas in the Department of Health, Human Performance and Recreation. The first author is Ronald G. Jones III, who is a Ph.D. student in Murach’s Molecular Muscle Mass Regulation Laboratory.
For this paper, the researchers compared aging mice that had access to a weighted exercise wheel with mice that had undergone epigenetic reprogramming via the expression of Yamanaka factors.
More...from SciTechDaily.
10. What happens when you are stressed?
We often find ourselves in situations that we call stressful. And there is growing concern behind staying chronically stressed which can have dramatic consequences to mental health, extending to depression, general fitness, leading to heart problems. So what exactly happens in stressful situations? What really goes on in our body when we are stressed?
Science tells us that stress is simply a response to unpleasant events and thoughts. And this response involves cortisol hormone gushing into the bloodstream. What the cortisol then does is it signals the body to start pulling fats and carbohydrates from different parts of your body to your bloodstream, to give you the energy you need whether to flee or fight the unpleasant situation. The response is intended to help you. But it comes with a cost.
Be it deadlines or an unpleasant confrontation with someone, these events induce stress where the body creates various responses like your pupils dilate to give you a full vision of your environment, and your heart beats like a maniac to push blood to every corner of your body so that your muscles have the energy and oxygen to act and run to safety. All these responses, in turn, cause uncalled for stress to your heart, arteries, eyes, muscles, and metabolism.
More...from FitPage.
11. Breaking the silence: Female athletes speak about safe and fair sport in Canada:
One of the most consequential innovations in the competitive sporting
world in years has been the recent decision to allow male-bodied athletes to
compete against biological women in the female category. This decision has
been controversial, not least because the scientific evidence is clear that male-
bodied athletes – especially those who have gone through puberty – enjoy
insurmountable physical advantages over female competitors, independently of
the level of testosterone in their body (Pike, Hilton, and Howe 2021, 16). And
since it is bodies that compete in sport, and not subjective gender identities,
the result is that the very existence of a separate female category in sport is
threatened.
Astonishingly, given how deeply the interests and rights of female athletes are
affected by these momentous policy changes in sports, to date little is known
about how female athletes feel about these changes: about how they think about
the integrity and fairness of sporting competitions that pit male bodies against
female ones; how they assess the physical risks of such competition for female
competitors; and how free they feel to express their legitimate views on these
issues.
More...from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute
12. The overwhelming effect ‘super-shoes’ are having on track’s record book:
An astounding 115 runners have already run sub-four miles this year, and we’re not even to March.
There was a time when running a sub four-minute mile was considered one of the great athletic feats in the world, but not anymore. It might not even be a legitimate benchmark in today’s world (and it’s all because of shoes).
Eight athletes broke four minutes in the mile earlier this year.
In the same race.
From the same school.
Indoors (where tracks are smaller and slower than outdoor tracks).
That single race included the third-, fifth- and seventh-fastest times in collegiate history.
More...from the Deseret News.
13. How to Achieve Your Running Goals? Become an Aerobic Monster:
Olympian and veteran elite coach Mark Coogan's central advice on making the most of your miles.
You’re a busy person who wants to optimize every minute of training to achieve your goals.
I can help you. I’ve coached Olympians, national- and world-record holders, and national and NCAA champions. Each reached the pinnacle of the sport by making the most of the miles they ran while avoiding injury and burnout. To do that, you need to understand the demands racing requires of your body and train effectively to adapt your body to meet those demands.
The races that most runners train for are almost entirely aerobic events. Yes, even the mile or the 5K. To succeed at those distances, you need to be able to sustain a hard pace for several minutes, and often for more than an hour.
More...from Outside Online.
14. Consistency Is King:
This is an excerpt from Personal Best Running by Mark Coogan & Scott M. Douglas.
Overall consistency is the big-picture equivalent of 10 weeks of B+ workouts being better than four weeks of A+ workouts. You’re better off regularly running five or six days a week with some quality than fluctuating between nailing a few weeks of great training and barely running the next few weeks.
Think of building fitness like making small but regular investments that compound over time. That doesn’t necessarily mean running every day. In my pro career, I probably never went more than three months without taking a day off. I often took off the day after a big race, even a 5K, partly to mark the end of one phase, and partly because it was time to let loose a bit and celebrate. After a marathon, I might take the next two weeks off, depending on how beat up I was. I encourage the runners I coach to take downtime after their season is over, even if their longest race is a mile. They’ve sacrificed a lot in other parts of their lives. A little time off gives them the opportunity to indulge in activities and interests they may have put aside during intense training and racing.
During a prerace buildup, I occasionally took a day off if I’d put together a solid month of training and could honestly tell myself, “I’m good, I’m just going to take tomorrow off.” The days I missed were usually what would have been a short recovery run. Making a few of them a year into no-run days gave me a little mental recharge for the next block of training.
More...from Human Kinetics.
15. How the “Norwegian Method” Is Changing Endurance Training:
Double threshold days and lactate meters have propelled Jakob Ingebrigtsen and others to the top. Should the rest of us follow suit?.
f I had an Etsy shop, the catchphrase on all my merch would be “Everything I know about endurance training I learned from the 1964 Olympic 5,000-meter final.” As Mayo Clinic physiologist Michael Joyner pointed out a few years ago, it was a clash of vastly different training approaches:
-Bob Schul trained under Hungarian coach Mihály Iglói, running almost nothing but short intervals on the track, usually twice a day.
-Harald Norpoth was the most famous disciple of German coach Ernst Van Aaken, who advocated a diet of almost exclusively “long slow distance,” or LSD.
-Bill Dellinger was guided by University of Oregon coach Bill Bowerman, whose guiding principle was alternating hard days with easy days, a mixed approach that remains overwhelmingly popular today.
-Ron Clarke did what we would think of as threshold training—long, moderately hard runs of between three and 14 miles—up to three times a day, every day. “Any variation,” according to Fred Wilt’s book How They Train, “[was] unintentional.”
More...from Sweat Science on Outside Online.
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