Elevation Training Mask 2.0 Reviewed...

     I'll be reviewing the Elevation Training Mask 2.0. It's essentially a face mask that restricts breathing. The sales pitch is that it mimics high altitude training. Why are you willing to spend $80.00 to mimic high altitiude training?
    The basic idea is that training at altitude makes you more efficient at sea level. Because there is less oxygen in the air at high altitude (usually considered above 4500-5000ft.) your body will have to compensate. Increases in ERYTHROPOIETIN (EPO) which is a hormone produced by the kidneys will cause bone marrow to start producing more red blood cells. More red blood cells means more HEMOGLOBIN (also spelled haemoglobin).  Hemoglobin is a metalloprotein that contains iron and is attached to red blood cells (RBC's) and carries oxygen. By now you should be figuring out how this would help athletes. More hemoglobin means more oxygen transport in blood which means better performance.
     Onto the review... First up is the mask itself. Upon opening the box it contains the mask, the pieces to adjust the valves, a decent booklet, and it was supposed to have a training DVD. I say supposed to because mine didn't come with the DVD. It's a lot more stream lined and user friendly than version 1. It doesn't have a fell face sheild to cover your face and looks kind of like a rebreather mask that contractors and painters wear. It's light weight and the neoprene straps stretch quite a bit to give a good amount of adjustability.
    I immediately took it out, set it up for the hardest settings (it adjusts btween 3000ft. and 18000ft.), and sat around playing video games. It didn't seem all that hard (how "hard" it is to breath will be talked about in a bit.) After reading to instruction booklet something odd hit me...
       Not a lot of talk was spent on training at high altitude and the physiological changes that come from breathing at high altitude.  A little bit of reading and you can quickly figure out why. Restricting breathing at sea level does not make you breath in less oxygen. In high altitude there is less O2 in the atmosphere so if you are breathing at the same rate and the same depth that you would at sea level you are getting a smaller percentage of oxygen by volume of air taken in. When you go through the booklet  they explain that what you are doing by wearing the mask is actually strengthening all of the structures you use for breathing. So using the mask won't trigger your body to release more EPO and make more RBC's but in theory it will make you better at breathing.
     So underestimating the resistance of the mask i headed to the gym and jumped on a treadmill. it took all of about 30 seconds to realise I needed to dial it back a bit. I currently have it set to "9000ft." This is where I'll keep it for the next month or so. Breathing is restricted just enough so that I can really feel the extra effort but not enough so that i can't push through the workouts. While wearing the mask the first thing I noticed is that the shape of the ear cut-outs was a little low for my head and the straps pulled on the tops of my ears. It was a minor annoyance and within a few minutes I had quit noticing it. That is probably my only real complaint about wearing the mask and it's a minor one. You will need to make sure you keep it clean because you will sweat in it, a lot.
    Now is the part where I would love to say buy it or don't buy it, unfortunately it's not that easy. It's called the Elevation Mask but it can't do what training at elevation is supposed to do. Instead it says that it trains all the structures and anatomy involved in breathing (it definitely makes it harder to breath while working out). Is that a good thing? Does making something harder make it better? I can't give an objective yes or no in this review. If you are interested in trying new things and have $80 to spend, go for it, but you could get the same result breathing through a straw while working out or using a painter's mask. The good news is that I recently found a portable pulse oximeter at work. What these do is measure oxygen saturation of your blood so now I can do some testing that is a bit more objective.   I'll use the pulse-ox for the next month and track results. It should give a bit better indication of wether or not the Elevation Mask 2.0 is worth the money.

More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Diet (PART 2)

   In the last section (More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Diet: Part 1) we broke down the different types of muscle; skeletal, smooth, and cardiac. We also covered the three types of fibers; Type I, Type IIa, and Type IIb.

    Part 2 is going to focus on how the muscles actually work. How you go from "thinking" about an action to actually performing that action.

     To understand how the muscle works, you need to go into a lot more detail. Start at the muscle group, this is made up of muscle fibers. These fibers are like long cylinders. Each of these muscle fibers are made up of MYOFIBRILs that are like cylinders of muscle proteins. Myofibrils have two types of filaments that run through them. One thick and six thin. They are arranged in a hexagonal pattern. These thick and thin filaments are attached to another structure called the Z-disk or Z-line. The Z-line runs perpendicular to the long axis of the fiber (the myofibril that runs from one Z-line to another is called a sarcomere). Running vertically down the Z-line is a small tube called the TRANSVERSE or T-tubule, which is actually part of the cell membrane that extends deep inside the fiber. Inside the fiber, running  between T-tubules is a membrane system called the sarcoplasmic reticulum. This membrane is where the calcium ions that trigger muscle contraction are stored and released.

 

 

          Now from here things start to get complicated. If you really want to get down and dirty check-out http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/human-biology/muscle.htm. It has pages of info and some cool animations that do a lot better job of explaining it than I can. However, I'm still gonna try to give a good rundown that's detailed but not to the point of being hard to read.

      Muscle contaction: the signal you send from you brain to the muscle to perform an action is called an "action Potential." This action potentail is an electrical signal that travels down a nerve cell and causes it to release a neurotransmitter into a gap between the nerve cell and muscle cell. This gap is called the synapse. The neurotransmitter crosses the gap, binds to a protein  on the muscle-cell membrane (receptor) and causes an action potential in the muscle cell. The action potential spreads along the muscle cell and enters the cell through the T-tubule.The action  potential opens gates in the muscle's calcium store (sarcoplasmic reticulum). Calcium ions then flow into the cytoplasm. The cytoplasm is where the actin and myosin filaments are. Calcium ions bind to troponin-tropomyosin molecules located in the grooves of the actin filaments. Normally, the rod-like tropomyosin molecule covers the sites on actin where myosin can form crossbridges. Upon binding calcium ions, troponin changes shape and slides tropomyosin out of the groove, exposing the actin-myosin binding sites. Myosin interacts with actin by cycling crossbridges, as described previously. The muscle thereby creates force, and shortens. After the action potential has passed, the calcium gates close, and calcium pumps located on the sarcoplasmic reticulum remove calcium from the cytoplasm. As the calcium gets pumped back into the sarcoplasmic reticulum, calcium ions come off the troponin. The troponin returns to its normal shape and allows tropomyosin to cover the actin-myosin binding sites on the actin filament. Because no binding sites are available now, no crossbridges can form, and the muscle relaxes.
      That's it for part 2. Part 3 will examine the energy that is used for these processes. I've also had a couple of weeks training with the Elevation Training Mask 2.0 now and have started my write-up. It should be up in the next couple of days barring me getting sidetracked. Tomorrrow I'll start a 12 week diet/workout program and give weekly updates and post before and after pics.

More than You Ever Wanted to Know About Diet. (part 1)

    A little bit ago I posted a really basic outline on diet (actually it was more on how I eat) but I said I would do a more in depth write-up. This will be a series of post that will give you more information than you ever wanted on dieting. The good news is once you know how your body uses food all the way down to the cellular level, planning a diet from actual food will be  a lot easier.

    Probably the best place to start for "Diet" is the idea that food is actual fuel for our bodies. The posts in this series will focus specifically feeding/fueling our muscles for performance. That means we need to understand our muscles.

   So let's get down to brass tacks. To understand how muscles get energy we need to start at what types of muscles there are.

1) Skeletal Muscle: This is the muscle most people are familiar with. It's the muscle that is anchored to bones with tendons. It's the muscle we show off. It is also known as "voluntary" muscle becuase we have conscious control over it. These are the muscles "YOU" can flex or relax, that you use to move and perform actions.

2) Smooth Muscle: This is muscle tissue that you don't have conscious control over. It performs it's task automatically. It is also known as "involuntary" muscle. The walls of certain organs in your body are made of this tissue. The esophogus, stomach, bronchii, intestines, uterus, uretha, bladder, blood vessels, and arrector pili (what makes your hair stand on end) are all examples of smooth muscle tissue.

 

3) Cardiac Muscle: The only place in your body where there is cardiac muscle tissue is in your heart (thus the name). It's make-up is similar to skeletal muscle though it is considered involuntary tissue.

    Skeletal muscle is the muscle we will be dealing with since it is the one we have the most control over. (yes, the types of exercise you do will have an effect on cardiac muscle but its a by-product of training other muscles).

     There are three basic types of muscle fibers and they all perform differently. They are Type I, Type IIa, and Type IIb.

1) Type I: these are called "Slow Twitch Oxidative." These are the fibers that are beneficial to endurance or low impact type athletes such as long distance runners. They are better at using oxyge (aerobic)  to produce energy (Adenosine-5'-triphosphate or ATP). They don't fire as quickly as Type IIa or Type IIb fibers but they don't tire out as quickly either.

2) Type IIa: "Fast Twitch Oxidative." These are fast twitch fibers that show some degree of resistance to fatigue. they can use aerobic or anerobic sources of energy almost equally. Type IIa fibers are the fibers you want for athletic pursuits that fall in between endurance and strength. Medium distance runners (cross country) and swimmers benefit from Type IIa muscle fibers.

3) Type IIb: "Fast Glycolitic" or fast twitch fibers. These fibers fire quickly and can generate burst of power but they also fatigue quickly. These fibers are most predominate in sprinters and weight lifters.

     All muscle groups contain all three fibers though in different concentration. Distance runners have been shown to have as much as 90% Type I fibers while spinters have been shown to have as much as 80% Type II fibers. There is still a little debate on the "nature vs. nurture" discussion on how we get the amount of different types of fibres we get. Generally it used to be accepted that we were more or less stuck with how many fast or slow twitch fibers we had, but in more modern times studies suggest that fibers can change based on neural stimulation or training. Fibers may also become more efficent at performing in certain capacities, so even though a Type I may not become a Type IIa or IIb it may become more efficent at performing strength/power type functions. Type IIa or IIb may become more resistant to fatigue. Of course a lot more research is still needed but in the meantime go out, have fun, enjoy training...

    Now that the basics of muscle are out of the way, PART 2 of this series will focus on how they work, from the brain giving the command to the muscle performing the task.  PART 3 will get into the nitty gritty of how the muscles use different types of energy (aerobic vs. anerobic) to perform different tasks. PART 4 will be a introduction in to aerobic vs. anerobic training. PART 5 will be the part most people actually want and will cover EATING to fuel your body.

What is Fitness? (Or at least my idea of it...)

What is the definition of fitness? www.thefreedictionary.com defines it as follows;
Fitness: Noun
    1. The state or condition of being fit; suitability or appropriateness.
    2. Good health or physical condition, especially as the result of exercise and proper nutrition.
    3. Biology The extent to which an organism is adapted to or able to produce offspring in a particular environment

 

This isnt a bad place to start but I like to look at fitness as a formula.

(Height/Weight) x Strength x Endurance x Flexibilty x Agility x (Usefulness/Functionality) = Fitness

So let's take a look at these individual componets and break them dowm.

The first thing you need to do is decide your goals. Fitness to a powerlifter doesn't mean the same thing as fitness to a triathlete doesn't mean the same thing as fitness to a gymnast etc.

1) Height/weight: This is pretty simple. How tall are you? How much do you weigh? The reason you want to figure height with weight is so that you can look at wether or not you are carrying excess weight. You want your body to be as efficient as possible so you want to carry as little weight as possible while still carrying enough muscle to perform whatever tasks you are trying to accomplish. Weight lifters will obviously want to be heavier then long distance runners.

2) Strength: We'll keep strength simple. How much can you lift/move? The stronger you are, the more weight you can lift or move. From here if you want to get technical you break strength down into "force" or "power" but for the needs of this post that's a little over kill.

3) Endurance: This is essentially your capacity to perform. How long can you keep running at a certain speed? How many reps can you perform at a given weight?

4) Flexibility: Just your active range of motion.

5) Agility: The ability to change direction. Think of a running back, a gymnast, a wild animal running through the woods, or one the coolest examples: athletes who participate in freerunning/parkour.

6) Usefulness/Functionality: This might be the most important. How suited are you to actually performing your chosen athletic pursuit? From a triathlete's perspective the powerlifter doesn't look very fit, but how well would the triathlete perform at a powerlifting meet?

    I tend to think of "Fitness" as the sum of all these parts. This also gives a good idea of what this blog is actually about. My goal isn't to be in the top 1% of anything but rather the top 5-10% in everything. Instead of being excellent at one thing, I'd rather be really good at lots of things. I'll probably never be the best runner in the world or the strongest man but i can be a lot stronger than most runners and a lot faster than most weightlifters. My Goal is to be as functional as possible across a broad spectrum of athletics.

Diet Overview

      I get asked pretty regularly about diet advice.  The first thing I'd like to point out is that almost everyone knows the "basics." Most people already know a well balanced home cooked meal involving a piece of lean meat with a couple sides of veggies is better than a sandwhich made with a fried piece of somthing called chicken and a side of fries with a large soft drink on the side.
     That's the easy part. Almost anyone can look at "fast food" meal and a home cooked meal and guestimate which one is healthier. In fact in a lot of cases it's not a matter of knowledge, it's a matter of actually picking the healthier items...
     The "diet" I seem to be having the best results from is kind of a blend of the "Warrior Diet" by Ori Hofmekler, intermittent fasting (good info can be found at www.leangains.com), and a "paleo" type food intake.
     When I wake up the first thing i do is drink a couple glasses of water (you've just spent close to 6-9 hours depending on the person digesting food, sleeping, and going without water. you need to drink some), then maybe a couple cups of coffee or tea. I go and do crossfit in the morning. After morning crossfit I go to work where I'll usually have something really light. It's usually somthing along the lines of a protein shake and maybe some fruit. throughout the rest of the day it's raw veggies, nuts/seeds, maybe a small sandwhich made from sprouted grain bread, and leefy greens (usually spinach cause it's easy to eat raw. I'll also spread some supplements throughout the day (fish oil, calicium, multi-vitamin, just the basics).  The key throughout the day is I try never to eat to the point where i actually feel full and get to where I'm tired and sluggish. I try to stick to things that are easily digestable (raw fruits/veggies) and usually feel just shy of hungry. In the after noon I work on strength training and low impact cardio. I also work on form for olympic type lifts. After that is the "big" meal. This is usually a large portion of lean meat, and a big mix of steamed and raw veggies ( try to make sure your dinners are colorful with lots of variety) usually chased with a "green" drink. Every day I try to get a good blend of healthy fats from nuts/seeds, fish, fish oil pills, coconut oil, and avocadoes. The night time meal is usually big enough to actually surprise people when they see me eat. 
      Of course, what you DON'T eat can be as important as what you DO eat. So here is a quick run-down of things you should cut out. Just taking out these things will give you great results.
       1) Soft Drinks/energy drinks: no healthy reason to drink them and tons of reasons not to.
       2) Most sports drinks: any "good" they have is counterd by tons of sugar and artificial ingredients.
       3) High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS): check labels, it's in almost everything. And if it has HFCS in it, It's probably bad for you.
       4) Baked goods/pastries: try to avoid things made with refined white flour (including white bread).
       5) Food with long shelf lifes: almost all meat/fruits/veggies are supposed to go bad (jerky/dehydrated fruits are ok but check to see if they have any chemical preservatives).
       6) Most fast food.
       This is the "bare bones" of how I tend to eat. Once this blog really gets up and going I'll do a more in depth write up...

Quick Update...

      So I've used the Elevation Training Mask 2.0 for a couple of days now. This isn't the full write up (that will come in two weeks) but just some quick observations...
1) There are some things I like and some things I don't...
2) I definitely overestimated my lungs ability.
3) It doesn't suck as bad as I thought it would to wear during most training.

Back to Training...

      So after some pulled lower back muscles I had to take a couple of weeks off. It wasn't too bad and now I am trying to ease myself back into 2-a-days. I usually do crossfit in the morning and then strength training and low impact (rowing, biking, etc...) cardio at night.
     
      I'm still making small tweaks to my diet. I've taken out most processed sugers (except for occasionally some brown suger in oatmeal or a bit in tea), taken out most breads (except for sprouted grain), and gotten rid of most "bad" fats. I'm starting to incorporate some fasting principles but still trying to find the right balance and meal timing for my workouts. The goal is for function over form so even though a six pack is nice I'd rather have better performance. I guess you could call it a "paleo" type diet but it's pretty much the way I've always eaten. Lots of meat, lots of veggies. Now I'm just trying to dial it in to get the most out of it.

      This week I will also start working with the Elevation Training Mask 2.0 which is supposed to simulate training at elevation. After a couple of weeks I will post a review. You can check the mask out at www.trainingmask.com