Posts by Skylar Pond
Thrive Under Pressure: Recover Rapidly.
This posting is designed to help a group athletes out of Crossfit West Seattle in their upcoming Caliber Cycle. These recommendations are general and are applicable to supporting recovery from any high intensity training cycle. This is the 4th Cycle that Zach at CFWS has run this year and we’ve learned a lot about how to get the most out of our efforts. Most importantly: Recover rapidly, Don’t get hurt, and Don’t get sick.
Everyone will have their own goals for the end of this cycle but the key is recovery and the path there is the same:
- Fuel Recovery
- Control Inflammation
- Prevent Injury
- Don’t Get Sick
Whether you hope to gain or lose weight in this cycle it is important that you increase your caloric intake. If you wish to lose weight then you are in the right program. Adding a few pounds of skeletal muscle over the following 6 weeks will increase your metabolism. Remember that calories are a measurement of energy. You are planning on expending a lot of energy and you plan to recover quickly, so it is wise to plan on consuming a lot of quality calories. The calories you consume will not cause you to grow. They will pass through the following hierarchy:
- Fuel Your Efforts in the Gym
- Fuel the Recovery From Your Efforts
- Fuel Adaptation/ Strength Gains
- Fuel Growth
Many people who are afraid of “getting too big” only satisfy the first requirement and risk injury because they lack sufficient energy to recover and continue training without injury. A simple way to increase your calories is to add something with a high caloric density such as nuts, avocados, olive oil, or a post-workout concoction of milk and protein powder. For those of you who wish to add an alarming amount of volume to your stature, it won’t be easy. You’ll have to eat in a way that is extreme and uncomfortable. A wise man named Scotty once told me “The meals should be harder than the wods.”
2- Control Inflammation/ Advil is not a vitamin.
Inflammation is not the enemy. Inflammation is the initial step in the healing process. It would be a mistake to rely on NSAIDs to suppress the pain of inflammation. NSAIDs weaken your joints leaving you susceptible to injury. Chronic consumption of NSAIDs often leads to serious gastric and kidney problems.
Instead relying on NSAIDs, control inflammation with:
Fish oil– That’s right. Lots of it too. The guidelines in this link are extreme but if you are ever in your life going to take a high volume of fish oil, now is the time. Buy it. Then drink it.
Contrast Therapy- Several minutes in barely tolerable heat and going right into shockingly cold water. The occasional rest day at Banya 5 or the Y are easy ways to get this done. After a series of particularly heavy training days make your tub into an Ice Bath and submerge your whole body to your chin for 5 minutes. This constricts your capillaries and hastens recovery. Its also strong immune support. For a convenient alternative simply alternate your shower hot 2 min/cold 2min for three cycles.
NSAID alternatives- When you’re looking from the relief that you typically get from NSAIDs, try proteolytic and digestive enzymes. They speed the inflammation and healing process instead of suppress it.
Don’t Get Sick and While You’re Up, Don’t Get Hurt
It is well documented that the immune system can be suppressed during periods of high stress and intense training. There is evidence that supplementing Vitamin C with bioflavinoids during periods of intense training decreases the frequency of upper respiratory tract infection. A gram/ day of Vit C is enough to keep you well. Make sure a that your supplement contains at least 500 mg bioflavinoids though. Without this important co-factor, your vitamin C levels may actually drop due to poor binding and competitive inhibition of your food based Vitamin C intake.
There is some evidence to support the claim that supplementing the minerals Zinc and Magnesium during intense training cycles prevents hormonal imbalances and the resultant over training symptoms of fatigue and malaise. The dose used in this study was 3mg/kg body weight/day. Zinc is an excellent supplement for preventing and fighting upper respiratory infections anyway which makes it a quality supplement to use anytime you feel you may be close to your training threshold. Just be sure to have something to eat first. Zinc supplements on an empty stomach deliver a “rowdy tequila bender” level of nausea.
4- Prevent Injury
Everyone will experience some physical discomfort during this cycle. It is normal for muscles to get sore after a hard workout. It’s not always necessary to “listen to your body” because your brain will often misinterpret terrible and glorious things like Fran and 400m sprints. “Help. Stop. Take a break. You are killing me.” It is an important skill to filter these false alarms and recognize true warnings of impending injury.
Now is the time to get proactive about the weak links in your kinetic chain. You know your spots: shoulder, elbow, wrist, back, hip, knee, ankle- address your weaknesses. Mobility issues in any of these joints will be exposed in the basic olympic lifts. Make it a priority to get to class early and spend 5-10 minutes improving your range of motion. The MWOD has dozens of quality mobilities for the major movements that we’ll be implementing. Supplemental therapies such as ART and Graston are sometimes necessary to make progress in areas with a history of injury.
Summary: There you have it. It is easy to thrive under pressure: Recover quickly, don’t get hurt, and don’t get sick. Contact me with any specific questions regarding recovery and supplementation. Have a great cycle.
Conditioning for Parents aka- Rough Housing for Time
AKA Burn your Ergo Pack.
Most great gyms (the ones with the stank of chalk and glory) don’t have child care facilities. Even if you were fortunate enough to find a Chuck E. Cheese/ Barbell Club hybrid, most parents are typically way too busy to make the time for such an oasis. For all of you parents who don’t have time to get to the gym, this series of postings is for you. While all the rest of us suckers have to pay money for resistance equipment, you clever procreators made equipment from your own DNA. Well done. Now put it to use.
Here are a few ideas that my two rowdy boys (Finley and Sullivan) and I use around the house. Please feel free to expand on these with your own moves and for God’s sake share those ideas below in Comments.
EQUIPMENT:
I have a back yard trampoline which makes several of these moves far safer, more fun and more challenging. This first posting will focus on trampoline workouts. There will be other sorts to come.
Tackle the Team. With children of the right temperament, you wouldn’t believe what a burner this one is. In my family it rivals the WOD Karen in suck factor.
First: Place three small mammals on a trampoline and zip yourself in there with them. These mammals would preferably be children and would preferably be your own. (If you lack the requisite offspring, borrow some from your neighbor.)
Next: Attempt to tackle all 3 mammals AT THE SAME TIME. This gets very challenging when they learn to spread out and to get up quickly after being brought down. If one is back on its feet by the time you bring down the third, you missed that rep. It is sometimes necessary to resort to threats of spankings if they don’t hold still. This is undoubtedly underhanded cheating, but a great man once said “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.” When using this underhanded technique lengthen the WOD to a 20 minute AMRAP to keep it RX’d.
Person Toss. This one is pretty straight forward. Take three warm up bounces before heaving your precious offspring into the heavens and trust your parenting instincts to kick in as they come hurtling toward you. Work up to max effort height gradually. If they get spooked by the abrupt height they will likely flail a sharp elbow into you nose. I catch them under the arm pits and set them aside and grab the next one. This could be performed like Karen (150 for time) but I prefer to treat each toss as a single rep attempt at max height.
Stay tuned for future installments which will cover the following movements and more: Sully and Fin KB swing, People Turkish GU, Child Zerkers, Mammal Front Squats, Finley Thrusters, Over Head Sully, Walk on Dad While he does plank, Burn Your Kelty AKA Farmer’s Walk, Offspring Pistols, Etc.
Graston Technique: Hard Tools for Soft Tissues
I was in a Graston lecture last weekend when a friend named Dan who is facing knee surgery texted me these probing questions: “What is Graston Technique? Have you had it done? Does it Work? How does it work? How is it different from things like Foam Rolling?” These are pretty good questions and deserve a better answer than my somewhat terse response: “Foam rolling is great, but good luck getting a roll of foam between your femoral condyle and your torn meniscus.” As a favor to you Dan I’ll expand on that answer here.
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| Gua-Sha uses Horns, Bones, and Stones |
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| The instruments have specialized design features which accommodate the shoulders, elbows, wrists, knees and ankles which make them ideal post-injury and post-surgical tools. |
Lumbar Disc Herniation
It is common for people to wonder if they have a herniated disc in their lower back when they feel pain radiate down the leg. There are several differential diagnoses that must first be ruled out before that conclusion is made. The only way to confirm a herniation diagnosis is with an MRI but a good physical and neurologic assessment is often enough to determine the cause of lower back pain that refers into the leg. If you are wondering if you are suffering from a herniated disc in the lumbar spine and you want to know what your options are, this posting is for you.
- Sudden onset of lower back pain with severe pain down the leg possibly beyond the knee.
- The leg pain may be more severe than the back pain.
- Pain may result from heavy lifting, twisting or repetitive stress trauma.
- The leg pain is described as “electrical”, “sharp” or “shooting.” The pain follows a dermatomal pattern determined by the spinal level of the herniation as pictured below.
- Â The leg pain is worsened by increases in intra-disc pressure:Â coughing, sneezing, weight bearing, and positional changes that involve forward flexion of the low back and at the hip.
Additional findings:Â Dermatomal numbness/ decreased sensation, weakness, decreased reflexes.
- Age 25-45 this is when the nucleus is most hydrated
- male >female 3:2
- Prevalence:Â 1-3% lower back pain cases
- 95% of lumbar herniations occur at the L4-5, L5-S1 levels
Differential Diagnosis
- Piriformis/sciatica- Sciatica feels like a disc herniation but it is not.  Sciatica is when the sciatic nerve is entrapped distally from the spine, typically by a muscle such as the piriformis. This still presents with pain down the back of the leg to the foot and is best treated with chiropractic manipulation of the sacrum and soft tissue work on the piriformis muscle.
- Myofascial Trigger Point- A trigger point is a small region within a muscle that refers pain distally. They are easily treated with trigger point therapy involving light repeated pressure into the source muscle. The source of this referred pain can be quite a distance from where it manifests as is illustrated in the trigger point map pictured below. Acupuncture also has very effective treatment strategies for trigger points.
- Acute hamstring spasm or strain must also be ruled out as a possible source of sharp pain down the back of the leg.
- Lower Cross Syndrome: A postural shift toward anterior pelvic tilt caused by imbalanced forces across the hips as pictured below. Weak abdominals, a tight lower back, and tight, weak hamstrings and glutes result in excess pressure on the posterior disc fibers.
- Lack of exercise/ poor general health and nutrition. This is why I promote vigorous physical activity with my patient population. I encourage my patients to learn how to safely move very heavy weights and to practice those motions regularly.
Conservative:
Cauda Equina Syndrome presents with saddle parasthesia and urinary retention. It is an emergency situation. Care of all presentations except Cauda Equina should begin with conservative care.
Conservative care of a disc herniation is the non-surgical and drug free route. Except in the case of Cauda Equina Syndrome, this is where all initial care should begin. It involves mobilizing the vertebrae to accomodate the return of the disc material out of the intervertebral foramen. In chiropractic, several techniques are used including Flexion/Extension, The McKenzie Protocol and Chiropractic manipulative therapy. Yes, it is safe to adjust a spine with a disc herniation. It is infact the standard of care. [2] [4] An estimate of the risk of spinal manipulation causing a clinically worsened disc herniation in a patient presenting with lumbar disc herniation is calculated from published data to be less than 1 in 3.7 million. [1] Alternative conservative care modalities include Massage, Acupuncture, and physical therapy.
Surgical:
This is the best option with acute Cauda Equina Syndrome, and is the last option when progressive neurological deficiencies are present during the course of conservative management. That means you are doing the exercises and being adjusted but you continue to digress measurably with loss of muscle strength, tone, and reflexes.  Surgery is also the preferred treatment option in cases of sequestration of the disc material into the spinal canal as pictured above. This is a last resort in care because of recent reviews of the literature that reveal even in successful spinal surgeries, the benefits are short-lived and are indistinguishable from conservative outcomes on an 8 year time line. [3]  I nearly placed photo of a lumbar surgery in progress here but after the achilles shot last week, I thought that might be too much. For the curious in the group, click here for link to a short youtube video. When going through these videos I found the most interesting part to be the comments left by viewers. They all have had the procedures themselves and they are a solid random sampling of outcomes that reflect a hit and miss level of relief.
Recent MRI studies of asymptomatic populations find that as many as 52% of asymptomatic people have lumbar disc bulges and hernitations! [5] The difference between a benign asymptomatic lesion and a debilitating one is likely your personal biomechanics and how you use your spine day to day. Because of this, the best way to treat a symptomatic disc herniation is to avoid one. An assessment of the biomechanical forces that your lower back is exposed to both statically and with your lifting technique will have you on the right path. If it is too late for that and you already present with symptoms, beginning a course of conservative care now will typically result in 50% improvement in symptoms within the first 3 weeks of initiating care.
Achilles Tendon Injury
Injuries to this part of the body go by many different names depending on location and severity of injury: Achilles rupture, achilles tendinitis, achilles tendinosis, tennis leg, gastroc strain, soleus strain, the list goes on but I will refer to the rupture of a lower leg tissue generally as an achilles strain from here on out. The purpose of this post is to help the reader avoid ever having this injury by recognizing risk factors and developing skills that neutralize those risks.
The achilles tendon is the largest and strongest tendon in the body. It can sustain a tensile load of 1 ton. That is the weight of a VW beetle. Despite it’s inherent strength, it remains the second most frequently torn tendon in the human body. The achilles is as substantial as it is because it is made to withstand the dynamic stress of an eccentric load. What that means is that when you jump and land on your toes, the gastrocnemius contracts to slow your heel from hitting the ground at the same time that it lengthens to accommodate dorsiflexion at the ankle. That makes the achilles tendon a rope in a powerful tug of war. When you gain strenth, weight, or increase work load rapidly, you run the risk of out pacing the relatively avascular tendon’s ability to adapt resulting in pulling it apart with your own body’s forces.
Because of the inherent strength of this structure, it is unlikely for it to tear or rupture when it is healthy. It is far more common for a previously inflamed gastroc-achillis complex to give way to a major tear. This is a peculiar tissue that runs when it is torn, much like a piece of paper with a small tear in it- pull on both ends and you’ll soon have two pieces of paper. Athletes are used to performing through discomfort and pain and rarely take the necessary steps required to avoid an impending tear. Most of the successful athletes that I know don’t “listen to their bodies.” They have another chain of command where their bodies do as they are told. That being said, have a look at the wrecked tendon below. This is what was left of my older brother’s achilles after he blew it out in a basketball game. He played through the pain. He went to the gym the next day! He didn’t get in to have it looked at for 3 days. I love him, but he’s a big dumb animal. Don’t be a big dumb animal.
Know when you are vulnerable:
There are 3 major ways that you may be vulnerable to an achilles injury right now.
1) Demographic:
Are you an athlete between the age of 25 and 40?
Have you recently gained weight or increased your strength?
2) Achilles Abuse
Do you like to train cold? Take off from a stop to a sprint? Do you do workouts with rapid repetitive jumps? Do you frequently run on the road? Are you experimenting with barefoot running?
3) Previous Injury
Are you sore and tight above your heel when you first wake up in the morning? Does it wear off as the day goes on?
Have you noticed any swelling making one calf muscle appear larger than the other? Remember it doesn’t have to be painful.
Have you noticed a “twang” in that area. The day after a REALLY long run I felt the sensation of guitar strings being strummed in my achilles followed by them being cut one by one. I iced it and steered clear of dynamic training for a week.
This injury can still be avoided even if you meet several of the at risk criteria above:
Be Proactive:
Listen to your body- I know. You don’t want to but when your body speaks from your lower leg you listen. When your lower leg hurts even a little, ice it and give it space.
Warm the area. I don’t mean “warm up.” Waving your arms and crunching your core won’t warm your achilles tendons. Use the muscle before you stress it and for God’s sake don’t warm up with double jumps or you’re asking for trouble.
Make gradual progressions- The 10% rule is a conservative way of extending your distances by 10% per outing.
Train on diverse surfaces- Consistently running forward on pavement will overwork the mid line structures of your lower leg.
If you are experimenting with the idea of bare foot running, do it step by step- Losing the heel you’ve had you’re entire adult life places an additional 1/2 inch stress on your achilles/gastrosoleus junction.
Stretch the gastroc statically post work out and throughout the week- This can be done with simple moves such as down dog but I like this wall stretch posted to MWOD last month. The guy (K Starr) yammers on for 3 minutes before he gets down to it, but there is a quality mobility in the end:
Keep in mind that the gastroc is part of a larger fascial plane that runs from the bottom of your foot to the origin of your hamstring at your ischial tuberosity. Maintain global range of motion all the way to the toe by working a ball into the base of the foot while you are at your desk.
Summary:
If you injure your lower leg it is typically all or nothing:
All- you feel like you’ve been kicked, hit, or shot in the back of the calf. You will probably even turn around to see who did it. It may hurt a lot as in a 1st or 2nd degree tear, or it may only hurt a little as with a total rupture which can be less painful due to the nerve damage. Either way, it will probably swell and a palpable lesion may be present. Tape your ankle into plantar flexion and get to a sports medicine doc as soon as possible. Do Not Stretch It.
Nothing- This is the small lesion or inflammation that later leads to “All” as described above. With a chronic presentation of lasting discomfort in the lower leg, fascial adhesions are likely built up between the muscle and the fascia. The soft tissue modalities of ART and Graston Technique (tools pictured below) are the methods of choice for releasing those adhesions before they cause larger problems.
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With an acute onset PRICE is the rule here: Protect, Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevate. Remember that the P in protect may require you to Protect your lower leg from your ego and whatever achilles busting plans you had for it when you woke up this morning.
GOMAD Part II
There is only one week left in the GOMAD Project. Here is an update.
The Plan: Drink One Gallon of Cheap Whole Milk in Addition Other Foods Daily For One Month or Until I gain 13 pounds. Whichever happens first.
Background:
I did not invent the GOMAD (Gallon Of Milk A Day) diet. It is a common choice among young men in a pinch to put on pounds fast. The reason why GOMAD works is simple. For one thing there are two thousand five hundred and sixty calories in a gallon of whole milk. In addition to that caloric push, milk has unique hormonal attributes including IGF-1 that drive growth. Dairy products also drive a strong insulin response that is out of proportion with its modest volume of sugar.
This is my third consecutive intervention experiment: July= Paleo, August= Vegan, September=Milk
This is a good way to contrast the acute effects on strength, energy, body composition, beard growth etc.
Results so Far:
Beard? Luxurious. Energy? Down. Strength? Up. Handsomeness? Down. Markedly. (Friends tell me I’m beginning to resemble Vince Vaughn. Not his charm or his height. His trademark puffy eyes and his pasty swollen party face.)
Body Composition:
My numbers have plateaued. I was initially gaining weight at an alarming rate. A full pound every other day going from 192.6 on 9/11/10 to 196.2 on 9/17/10. That is just 6 days. Imagine what that looks like after 6 months?! As I told my wife “imagine how great it will be when there is twice as much of me!” A surprising thing happened after that. I plateaued and then lost weight leveling out for the last ten days at 194.4 pounds. I am today only 3 pounds heavier than I was when I was a vegan nearly a month ago. This doesn’t seem reasonable.
The 3 Phases of Acceptance-
1) Confrontation:
The scale doesn’t lie. I came across some facts about the dairy industry that made cheap milk an unacceptable option. If you would like to continue to enjoy the simple pleasure of cheap milk then do not follow this link. You can’t unring the bell. It made me question why on earth I was doing this to my body and I made the switch to organic milk.
2) Blame:
There is something wrong with this milk. It clearly doesn’t work. I wish I could take it back but is too late. What kind of dwarven pygmy cattle are they milking at Horizon? I blame the cows. Maybe I should have stuck to my guns and stayed on the cheap milk.
3) Acceptance:
I Blame Myself.
I became complacent. I depended too often on the Moo Juice to supply all that I needed. I’d occasionally pull down half a gallon after my morning workout then charge off to the clinic without breakfast.
With only a week to go the question is what to do now? I’ll complete the task but I’ve been told to switch to chocolate milk if I want to get past this weight plateau. Interesting. I’ll let you know how it goes next week. Moo.
GOMAD: Gallon Of Milk A Day
So what’s the best way to rebound from eating vegan for a month? Exactly. Drink a gallon of cheap whole milk every day and hope for the best.
I’ve been at it for a week now. My first day was rough. I started late in the day and tried to down the gallon during my lunch break. I think that physically I could have done it. What I failed to account for was the time needed for naps and long sour looks into the mirror. I came up one cup short of a gallon in 3 hours.
So to get you up to speed; eating vegan left me strong but battered. My body fat increased 33% in just 23 days taking me to a personal record of 13%. My muscle mass dropped by four pounds. Those are ominous figures if I was to stick it out for the long haul. After the first 5 days of this GOMAD experiment my numbers all rebounded: back down to 10% bf and the 4 pounds of muscle came back.
So far so good. The biggest challenge thus far has been one of storage. I’m keeping a jug at the clinic, one at Crossfit and a couple at home. I’m going with the cheap stuff because I’m looking for growth right? Why pass on the free growth hormone that conventional cattle are pumped full of? I should probably get a full blood panel at the end of this one.
Gandhi DLP Part II: Eat Like a Hippie/ Lift Like a Bull
The plan was to train for one month eating completely vegan to see if I could make a significant strength gain in the absence of meat based protein.
I stuck to this plan for the most part only having some egg in a birthday cake I had and an insignificant amount of soy. The training cycle had to be cut a week short not giving me much time to make an increase but I did the most I could with a 23 day cycle.
I went with a dead lift regimen designed by Zach at CFWS: 5×5 deficit lifts, single rep rack pulls, these terrible things called front squat 1 1/2’s, and some Crossfit Football WODs on off days. The plan was to grind me into a fine powder and see if my body could recover from these beatings while eating like a hippie.
I tried to do this without supplementing any processed protein: no hemp powder, no soy, nothing weird. I went at it like this:
I ate a lot of vegetables.
I ate a whole lot of quinoa.
I drank olive oil like it was my job.
Here is my first attempt at #455 after 23 days training vegan:
It is a little known fact that olive oil has a whopping 120 calories per tablespoon. That is nearly the same number of calories that you’ll find in an entire cup of 2% milk (130 cals.) Whole milk gives you 160/cup and causes spikes in insulin which may cause long-term health problems. I kept my caloric intake high by adding one to two salads per day with 1/2 cup one each = 1000-2000 salad cals per day.
I realize that this isn’t the typical vegan diet but it worked for me. I failed to wither away. I gained 1.5 lbs.
I came off of the Paleo Diet heading into this vegan experiment and the stark contrast of meat intake is not the biggest difference between the two diets. The biggest difference is the wide amount of options that you have as a vegan. When you eat Paleo you would have to go a long way out of your way to eat poorly.
Example: Eat nothing but celery and ham for 30 days.
You have to go a long way out of your way to be a healthy vegan. You can follow STRICT vegan and have a destructive lifestyle with crappy nutrition.
Example:
First tie-up your pleather shoes and walk to your favorite brunch spot.
Pancakes, mimosa, and bagels with soy spread for breakfast-
Red Vines and two American Spirit cigarettes, and a liter of diet Coke for a snack-
Engage in domestic violence then have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and malt liquor for lunch-
Chips and salsa with a salad for dinner- Then kick an old man down some stairs.
You see- Destructive right?
The way I did vegan worked. The predetermined marker of success for this program was to pull #455 (a #15 gain) in a 23 day training cycle. I took on a ridiculous amount of volume training from Coach Z, recovered from each training session well and pulled a much bigger weight off the ground than I had hoped.
Here is the #475 pull: I changed my form a little and it turned out ugly.
I’d like to thank my friend Eric for inadvertently editing this cut. His shirt is better looking then that pull but it doesn’t have to be pretty to count. At the end of the day I went from #440 to #475 bringing me just over a 2.5 body weight DL after 23 days intensive pulling training. I gained 1.5 pounds but my body fat went up 3%!
Conclusions:
1) The body fat increase may have been due to the relatively high sugar intake.
2) Don’t believe the hype. Vegans can get strong.
3) Gandhi probably had a sick dead lift.
Garage Gym: Make Your Own Medicine Ball
The medicine ball is the simplest and most versatile piece of functional equipment you can own. The best medicine balls are the size of a large pumpkin, are equally weighted and cost about $100. “$100 for flippin heavy ball?” you say? I agree.
I made my own beloved med-ball and I wouldn’t trade it for any other. It weighs 44 lbs when it’s dry but because I often toss it in dewy grass, it is rarely dry and weighs as much as 52 lbs.
Barefoot Running Technique
The following video has great British accents as well as quality drills that will help you to adapt a running posture more conducive to minimalist running.
Learning the Skill of Barefoot Running from Terra Plana on Vimeo.
The first problem people make when they begin to experiment with a barefoot style of running is that they try to avoid heel striking. This happens naturally when your posture is correct. This video does a great job of illustrating how to lean forward from the ankles not at the hips.
Adjust Your Strength: Studies Demonstrate Significant Strength Increases With Spinal Adjustments
I can be a bit of a skeptical person. This makes me difficult to live with but it also makes me a pretty good researcher. It is because of this trait that I shy away from emotion-driven claims on the power of chiropractic to raise the dead and heal all wounds. That being said, a recent review of the literature has opened my eyes and has me a little emotional myself. The research states that my two favorite things- chiropractic and strength gains make each other better. I’m stoked.
I performed a very simple review of literature where I searched the terms “Chiropractic, Strength” in a Pubmed search engine. This is what I found:
I found seven studies that compared full force isometric contraction of muscles including the quadriceps, rotator cuff, cervical extensors and low back extensors before and after chiropractic adjustment of the spine. All seven found increased strength and/or decreased muscle inhibition post adjustment (1,4,6,7,9,10,11). One study showed as much as 66.8% increase in muscle recruitment as tested with surface electromyography (4). These results are compared to placebo groups and control groups. Summary: This is a big deal.
Two of these studies were of particular interest from a sports medicine perspective as they studied the effect of chiropractic adjustment on the vastus medialis oblique of subjects with anterior knee pain (6,7). Both studies found decreased inhibition immediately post adjustment. This is very useful information to anyone trying to regain strength after a knee injury. As any Physical Therapist will tell you, post injury the primary focus of rehabilitation is to activate the VMO which easily inhibits and leads to lifelong strength and stability problems. Take home- if your knee is injured, get your spine adjusted.
The first question I am usually asked when I tell people about the previous studies is “how long after the adjustment do these effects last?” I like this question. It means to me that the patient is trying to plan how fast they’ll have to drive after leaving my office to take full advantage of this phenomena. Two of the above studies attempted to answer this question by performing multiple strength assessments at predetermined intervals following the adjustment. Wang and Meadows 2010 (9) found a measurable increase in the strength of the rotatror cuff muscles for up to ten minutes after the cervical spine was aligned and Grindstaff, Hertel 2009 (10) found acute measurable increases in quadriceps strength of 3% and muscle recruitment of 5% for twenty minutes post adjustment. 3% may not sound like much but if you have a 400 pound back squat, 3% means another twelve hard-earned pounds.
These serial assessments are a difficult way to determine how long the effects last because fatigue obscures maximum efforts. What is also missed by these studies are the accumulative effects of multiple adjustments over the span of a treatment period. These only measure the acute changes after a single adjustment.
I did come across a long-term case study (2) that followed the treatment of an 18 year old patient who had a greatly reduced lumbar curve. The clinician sent the patient to his high school strength coach to test his baseline bench press single repetition max which was 245 pounds. Over the course of a 16 week treatment period which restored his lumbar curve to 31 degrees his bench press max increased by 60 pounds to 305 pounds and he was not bench pressing at all over that entire four month stretch. You would expect his numbers to go down not up. This study supports the premise that a normal lumbar lordosis provides inherent biomechanical stability and strength.
This case study shows the potential for long-term effects but the duration of the study allows for potential confounding factors that can be difficult to control: was he eating and sleeping the same? Was he under the same amounts of stress? It is hard to say. With a larger study with more subjects to compare individual results to you can account for these factors and that sort of a follow-up study is necessary to validate the findings of this case study.
Discussion:
These findings are exciting to most people and everyone who I’ve told about them wants to know: “Why are people stronger after adjustment?” They typically speculate that increased circulation is at work but the idea of increased circulation does not look likely. That wouldn’t explain why adjusting the lower back benefits the strength of muscles up stream in the neck and shoulder girdle (2,3).
It is my opinion that there are two contributing factors to this phenomena:
1) Decreased muscle inhibition, and 2) the effect of stability on strength.
1) Muscle inhibition (MI)-
Would you rather lift a weight with 90 or 99% of your available muscle cells? Decreased muscle inhibition as was demonstrated in the above studies (4,9) means that you have access to a greater percent of your total muscle mass. Inhibited muscle is the percent of your muscle cells that are dormant even during maximum effort. When you decrease MI you are firing on more cylinders. This factor has far reaching potential for long-term strength gains far superior to the acute effects documented in these studies. Accessing and training a greater percent of your muscle mass chronically would have a potentially compounded training effect.
“Why are muscles inhibited in the first place?”
Injury frequently results in muscle inhibition. You could also argue that our modern lifestyle is one that actively fosters MI. How many hours a day do you spend in arch supported shoes and low back supporting chairs?
2) The effect of stability on strength: If the hips are out of alignment and it is potentially dangerous to have the strength to pull 300 pounds over your head your body may have neurologic controls to ensure that you don’t have the muscular strength to over shoot the limitations of your stability. Having a huge overhead press and no lumbar curve is like having a cannon on a canoe.
The old adage “the iron never lies” explains why post adjustment strength is an excellent outcome to measure objectively. The previous studies isolate the effect of an adjustment on a single muscle or group of muscles involved in a motor task but the measurable impact of an adjustment is most likely body wide as is demonstrated by Giggey, Tepe (3) in a 2000 study that exhibited an 8.18 lbs. increase in cervical muscle extensors following a sacroiliac adjustment. This is also evident from the 2009 study by Smith and Dianoff (8) that demonstrated a 9.2% improvement in fine motor skills with a movement time test (rapidly point a pointer at a target on a computer screen) post adjustment compared to control groups.
To better understand the body wide effects of the chiropractic adjustment on the body, a more diverse set of outcome markers that include more motor units would be essential. The above studies only use isometric/static contractions to measure strength changes and it is likely the case that the sort of neurological adaptation facilitated by adjustments is best displayed with explosive movements that involve motor skills and maximal muscle recruitment. Olympic style functional movements such as snatch and clean and jerk would assess both motor skills and muscle strength.
All of your basic body functions may very well benefit from these same adjustments just as skeletal muscle does but it is not as easily studied or measured. The general strength of your immune system for instance may be enhanced post-adjustment but until a “maximum effort contraction” of the immune system is devised we won’t be able to quantify that effect. That will take some clever research design and I will report back when it happens.
1) Hillermann, Gomes, Journal Manipulative Physiological Therapeutics – 2006
2) Morningstar, Grand Blanc, Journal Chiropractic Medicine, Autumn 2003; 2(3):137-41
3) Giggey K, Tepe R., Journal of Chiropractic Medicine 2009 June
4) Keller TS, Colloca CJ, Journal of Manipulative Physiological Therapeutics. 2000, Nov-Dec
5) Jorgen Sandell, Palmgren, Journal of Chiropractic Medicine. 2008 June
6) Suter, McMorland, Herzog, Journal of Manipulative Physiological Therapeutics. 1999. March-April
7) Suter, McMorland, Herzog. Journal of Manipulative Physiological Therapeutics. 2000 Feb
8) Smith, Dianoff, Smith. Journal of Alternative and Complimentary Medicine 2009 March
9) Wang SS., Meadows J. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics. 2010 Feb
The Ghandi Deadlift Project
Many of you may already know that I grew up on a strict vegetarian diet. My parents have been eating vegetarian for the past forty years and meat was not really considered food in my childhood. This is not such a big deal now but back in the 80’s in rural Washington in a hot bed of meat, mullets, and musk it was a much bigger deal. It was a rare meal that I had without someone asking a brilliant question that warranted an answer such as:
“Well that’s a good question but no, turkeys are not effing vegetables so no, I don’t eat them.”
This continued through undergrad where I played division I men’s rugby. It blew my mind how a person who I just literally spent an entire afternoon kicking around a field would inform me after that “you can’t grow muscle without meat.” Rage. Blind Rage.
Despite medical advice from authorities the vegetarian diet worked fine for me until my early 20’s when I met my beautiful, meat cooking wife Alicia. I now eat large pieces of flesh at every meal and I will admit that I am significantly stronger now then I was in my early 20’s (ten years ago.) I’m the same size and weight that I’ve always been but my training is more intense and focused on strength gains so to determine if it is the meat or the training that has me strong I am undergoing what I call:
4 weeks strict vegan (not vegetarian) diet
Intensive deadlift training similar to deadlift cycles I have done over the last several months.
Culminating in a deadlift single rep max attempt to beat my current record which stands at #440 on 5/1/10.
This lift was a #25 pound jump for me and was the result of a 6 week long deadlift strength program.
For this experiment to be a success and prove that Ghandi most likely had a SICK deadlift I will have to make a jump that big in only 4 weeks instead of 6 bringing me up to #465.
The project begins Monday, August 9th.
The max is on Monday September 6th. I’ll report back then.