A bit of honesty from Dan John

Everyone who reads my site regularly knows that I love Dan John. This post epitomizes many of the reasons why.

He is a strong man in every sense of the word — most significantly, he is strong enough to publicly acknowledge ‘weakness’ and explore it within himself, in order to gain awareness and insight. He also offers thoughts on why focusing on “failure” is a problem.

“The ideas have been tossing around in my head since then: how much emotional impact is there in physical training? Did I, as I assumed (I think wrongly now) “shrink” in front of my cadre?… This insight leaped me into a great realization about why training to failure is such…a failure. You literally make failure a normative movement. The body responds by saving itself the time and effort by reducing the time and effort it takes to fail.”

Full post: A Bit of Honesty

Single vs multiple sets? Finally the answer (again)

We’ve talked about single vs multiple sets on this site before. In that case, the study examined the relationship between sets and strength gain. This study examines the relationship between set number and muscle mass gain. Basically: multiple sets are better than single sets for adding muscle mass. You’re welcome.

[clicky on the title above to see the full study abstract…]

Stumpy = evolution’s triumph

From Macleans.ca:

For years, some scientists heralded the end of human evolution. The post-industrial homo sapiens, they argued, was free of the kinds of “survival-of-the-fittest” pressures that could drive large-scale genetic change. Yet new research suggests that humans continue to evolve.

What might our granddaughter’s granddaughter’s granddaughter’s granddaughter’s granddaughter look like? Shorter and stouter, says a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. If current trends continue, its authors predict, then by 2409 descendants of the women in the study will have evolved to be one kilogram heavier and two centimetres shorter than their 2010 foremothers.

Kids not only obese but “extremely obese”

A recent study that looked at the weights and heights of more than 710,000 children aged 2 to 19 found that 7% of boys and 5% of girls — and as many as 12% of children in some ethnic groups — were “extremely obese”. Overweight is defined as the 85th or higher percentile on the […]

Big in Japan? Fat chance for nation’s young women

From Washingon Post:

As women in the United States and across the industrialized world get fatter, most Japanese women are getting skinnier. Still, many view themselves as overweight. The trend is most pronounced among women in their 20s. A quarter-century ago, they were twice as likely to be thin as overweight; now they are four times more likely to be thin.

Social pressure — women looking critically at other women — is the most important reason female skinniness is ascendant in Japan. “Japanese women are outstandingly tense and critical of each other,” said researcher Hisako Watanabe, who has spent 34 years treating women with eating disorders. “There is a pervasive habit among women to monitor each other with a serious sharp eye to see what kind of slimness they have.”

Public health experts say that younger Japanese women, as a group, have probably become too skinny for their own good. Restricted calorie consumption is slowing down their metabolisms, the average birth weight of their babies is declining, and their risk of death in case of serious illness is rising.

“I would advise these women to eat when they are hungry,” said Satoshi Sasaki, a professor of preventive epidemiology at the University of Tokyo School of Public Health. “They should be satisfied with a normal body.”

Sibutramine warning

From JAMA:

Preliminary data suggest that taking the weight loss drug sibutramine (aka Meridia in the US or Reductil in the UK) may increase a patient’s risk of adverse cardiovascular events such as heart attack and/or stroke, according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

After reviewing the study, the FDA asked the manufacturer to add a warning to the label. The manufacturer, Knoll Pharmaceutical Company, has agreed to add the warning.

Eff the Resolutions workshop redux

A kind shout-out from Amanda, who attended our Feb 10 workshop (and rocked the deadlift, may I add). She reviews the workshop here — BONUS! You’ll learn what mawashi geri is!

Benefits of exercise during late pregnancy

Author of New Rules of Lifting for Women Cassandra Forsythe is blogging about her pregnancy. Her post on her blog at 30 weeks reports that she’s feeling good and strong! In this post, she explains why training relatively intensely is good for you. If you missed Cassandra’s excellent podcast on training and pregnancy (and other woman-related issues), see here.

Why Big Ag won’t feed the world

A year ago I sat in a room at the Earth Institute at Columbia surrounded by executives from big food companies. One of them, I believe from Unilever, clicked to a slide that read “The solution to global hunger is to turn malnutrition into a market opportunity.” The audience — global development practitioners and academics and other executives — nodded and dutifully wrote it down in their notebooks; I shuddered…

In 2008 more food was grown than ever before in history. In 2008 more people were obese than ever before in history. In 2008 more profit was made by food companies than ever before in history. And in 2008 more people went hungry than ever before in history.

Hunger is not a global production problem. It is a global justice problem.

A thoughtful post from Slow Food USA on the disparity between how much food we can produce and how much food actually gets to people (and how much of the food we produce is actually good, nourishing food).

Stumptuous hits the road

Stumpamaniacs:

I’ll be in Valencia, CA next week (Jan 25) for Ninja Camp. Anyone interested in a training workshop? If so, leave a comment or email me at mistresskrista [at] stumptuous [dot] com.

I’ll also be in Seattle in late October, so if there’s anyone there who thinks a workshop would be cool, lemme know and we can try to organize something.