This is a post that I found really interesting… Tony Gentilcore and Joe Lightfoot discuss the differences between medical advice and coaching advice.
So do doctors know about lifestyle advice? The short answer is no. You’d be mortified if I told you how much education and training I’ve had regarding exercise and nutrition.
If I had to sum up my experience at medical school in one sentence, I’d do so like this: I have learned about disease, but I haven’t learned about health.
Doctors need more education on everything to do with lifestyle advice, particularly exercise and nutrition. That is indisputable.
But it isn’t all bad news. I’m currently visiting the US and shadowing a number of doctors in Boston. I recently met one doctor who is currently studying for the CSCS. Her reason? Exercise is one of the most important things her patients can do.
This isn’t a lone example. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s a bank holiday weekend in the UK this weekend so it’s the perfect time to get some training in. I’m currently following Dan John’s Mass Made Simple program and training day four begins tomorrow morning. It’s a great program and I’m excited to see the results in a few weeks time. I’ll share them with you then. If you’re interested, he has a ‘Lite’ version of the program available for free, too.
Today I’d like to post a video and article from Al Kavaldo. Al is somebody I only discovered recently through this work with Dragon Door. He posts some seriously impressive bodyweight videos and I’ve also read his latest book, Raising The Bar which covers bar work such as pull ups, muscle ups and lever training.
Have a look at this video:
In this T-Nation article he discusses the Dragon Flag, an awesome looking move that needs to be seen to be believed. The core strength required to perfect such a feat requires some serious dedication to training and practice. A great piece of weekend motivation I’m sure you’ll agree!
Like many great exercises, performing a proper dragon flag takes practice. You might even need to do some remedial work before you’re ready for it. I recommend you begin by working on straight leg raises while lying on your back. Go slowly and don’t swing your legs or allow your lower back to arch.
When you reach the point where you can do multiple reps without losing form, you’re ready to work on the dragon flag. Start by practicing the negative (lowering) phase of the dragon flag first. Kick up into the vertical position, and then try to lower your body down as slowly as possible.
Once you get confident with negatives, try doing a static hold at the bottom with your body hovering an inch or two over the bench. When you can hold this position for 2-3 seconds, you’re ready to start working on full dragon flags.
When you’re a beginner trying to lose weight and build strength and speed, there is always a temptation to move onto the next latest and greatest program or workout. The grass always seems to be greener on the other side.
In reality, there are few reasons to modify your program and Ben Bruno outlines this in his latest post.
With my own lifting, however, I’ve toyed around for a long time and have developed a solid foundation of strength on the basics and a good knowledge of my body, so when something doesn’t feel right, I make small changes. Moreover, whenever I progress an exercise, it’s because I’ve mastered the previous step first. That’s very important. It’s never really a big jump, just more of a natural progression.
Still, the vast majority of my own lifting is actually VERY simple.
Ben also discusses exercise progressions which is something I’ve been looking at recently reading through Coach Wade’s Convict Conditioning.
There’s a great post on Livestrong today. Lots of things stand out but Martin Rooney‘s thoughts on sleep probably apply to 99.9% of us!
As your day becomes “busier” with each passing year, sleep has become expendable. In fact, I would be bold enough to say that the human species is the only one on the planet that is sleep deprived (just think about how many times you wake a week without an alarm clock). Although many of us understand the effects of a lack of proper exercise and nutrition, I think few of us appreciate the negative physical and mental repercussions due to a lack of sleep. Both the healing of the body and mind occur during sleep, and most of us know we are not getting enough. I, however, take my sleep very seriously. Just as I try to train and eat like a champion athlete, I try to sleep like one as well.
Nerd Fitness is one of my favourite sites on the net. Seeing the growth Steve has achieved has been incredible and it’s completely deserved because he continues to pump out great content whilst helping change the lives of fellow nerds across the globe for the better.
I drink a lot of coffee. Most developers do. In the short term, I love it. When I rely on it day in day out I begin to feel lethargic even after a fix. This post from Charles Poliquin points out some of the health benefits coffee may provide. Interesting stuff.
This post covers mental fitness as much as physical fitness. Why do you do what you do each Monday morning? Do you feel the pangs of anxiety as Sunday evening rolls around? I’ve felt it in the past and I’m pretty fortunate that right now I’m excited to go into work after the weekend. This is a great post that should be considered throughout your working life.
If you don’t know Rob Conery he’s the guy behind Tekpub, amongst other things. He creates awesome video introductions to all sorts of interesting technologies and this series of posts breaking down many of the latest and greatest web buzzwords looks like it’ll be just as good.
I’ve been digging into MongoDB this week to see whether it’ll be useful for a side project I’m working on. I found this post from Henrik Nielsen a useful introduction to using Mongo with Microsoft’s new Web API.
This is something a little bit different. It’s a transcript of a lecture given at West Point, home of the United States Military Academy. It covers leadership. I’ve read a few articles on this subject but this one really stood out. I don’t want to add too much more on this one.
Have a great week. I’ll be back next Sunday with more. For now, please enjoy and share!
I have some more interesting posts for you this week, covering fitness, development and a few other things. Fitness Ten Tips To Help You Live A Longer, Healthier Life by Charles Poliquin Lists like these are pretty easy to digest and take good things from. There’s nothing groundbreaking to take from it but it’s good, [...]
I have a great list of articles for you this weekend and I’ve altered the layout a little bit too so it’ll hopefully be a little easier to follow. I was pleased that my Jeff Atwood post picked up some interest this week and found its way onto the front page of Dzone. It’s encouraging [...]
I don’t recommend many books to you through this site but this is one of my all time favourites. If you’re interesting in training in anyway, then this is one book you won’t regret purchasing. I bought the Kindle version of Dan John’s ‘Never Let Go’ last summer and despite ploughing through it in a [...]
I know, I know. Another non-fitness post. This time though, I’m OK with it. I want to pay my own little tribute to one of the inspirations behind this site. In case you missed it, Jeff Atwood today announced that he will no longer be a part of Stack Exchange. Through his blog at Coding [...]
It’s that time again. Seven days have passed since my last weekly recap of Good Reads and to kick off February I have some interesting links to share with you. I’ll kick off today’s post, as usual, with a round up of great web development posts and I’ll follow it up with interesting fitness posts [...]
Another week is over, January is almost done and I have another link dump filled with some of the things I’ve been reading over the past seven days. Web Development Get involved in Open Source todayScott Hanselman is one of the most well-known contributors to ideas surrounding ASP.NET, Microsoft and development in general. Here he [...]
I hope everyone had a great week. I did and I’ll hopefully tell you more about that soon. For now, I’d like to share some great reads I came across this past seven days. There’ll be some fitness posts in there but there’ll also be Hacker News style articles and basically anything else I’ve come [...]
“This is everything we asked for but not what we wanted.” – Any random user Let’s get one thing out of the way early. Programming is an intensive way of life. We work long hours on tasks that require absolute concentration. We’re constantly searching for solutions to our issues. We pour over thousands of lines [...]
In folklore, the silver bullet is supposed to be the only kind of bullet for firearms that is effective against a Werewolf, witch, or some monsters. – Wikipedia What was the “Next Big Thing” when you were starting out? Was it one of the following technologies? Object-Oriented Programming UML Design Patterns Agile Development TDD Each [...]
Find a way to get focused. Somehow, some way. Most people have zero focus and thus zero control of their lives. Don’t be another multitasking, confused, out of control, getting nowhere fast member of society. We have more than enough of those. Jason Ferruggia It’s funny how it’s always children that are tarred with the [...]
So updates have been non-existent. What’s my excuse? There isn’t one that’s good enough! Training had been going well. In October, I began following Jason Ferruggia’s Minimalist Training program. It’s a great program. It cuts away a lot of the stuff that’s non-essential and allows beginners like me to focus on lifting without overcomplicating things. [...]
When I first starting training I found the gym an intimidating and confusing place. Today, I honestly believe that training in gym using free weights and full body exercises such as the squat, press and deadlift has had a hugely beneficial impact on my life. Training is one of my greatest passions and I’ve written [...]
I’ve got to be honest with you… The thought of failing to make the most of the limited time I have scares the hell out of me! There have been times too when the determination to do my best became all-consuming – paralysing me into inaction. Here’s a quick example: I had my first driving [...]
*knock, knock* Is this thing on? I want to get back to writing on this ‘ere site by covering the food I eat and the reasons I eat it. If you’re interested, awesome, if not, that’s OK too. There’s a tl; dr version below if you’re short of time. Now I know talking about the [...]
I don’t want to run marathons. Even thinking about 10km makes me ill. Treadmills bore me to tears. I just want to run fast. I don’t want to ‘pace myself’. I’m want to be Christie, Bolt, Lewis and Johnson; all rolled into one. I want to relax on the start line, force back the nerves [...]
After publishing last Friday night’s post, I woke up to rain leaking in through the window. Instant motivation killer! I dodged the drizzle to get to the gym where I did squats, pull ups, push ups and finished with a interval training workout on the treadmill. Then I called in to see my grandpa. You [...]
You know David Attenborough, right? He’s the friendly old guy who does voiceover for the nature docs shown on the BBC and Discovery Network every year. Have you ever considered what he’d say if he had to voiceover a day in your life? Here’s my effort, taken from my Uni days: “Our subject is male, [...]
Everyone needs to start somewhere! Today’s post will condense much of what I’ve learned from many of those featured in Sunday’s post and describe how I have applied the advice to my own situation. I’ll then cover how you can apply it to yours, too. Important Point – Fat Loss is 80%-90% Diet This post [...]
Losing fat, getting strong and running fast is tough, especially when you’re sat behind a computer all day. I struggled with motivation for years. It is difficult to know where to start when you are looking for clear, concise and most importantly accurate health and fitness advice, especially as a beginner. This list contains some [...]
This is the first post of a series of posts that will focus on improving our health, fitness, strength and happiness by applying what we already know to be successful when developing software! If you’re interested to read more, sign up for updates using RSS or email. Iterations – The secret to achieving it all [...]
program and training day four begins tomorrow morning. It’s a great program and I’m excited to see the results in a few weeks time. I’ll share them with you then. If you’re interested, he has a ‘Lite’ version of the program 
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I'm Adam, a web developer based in Manchester, England.
