Paleo; taking over MMA

Arguably it started with Georges St Pierre - UFC training moved from 'hamster fitness' of the weight room to something that developed kinaesthetic awareness through body weight and gymnastic training.  Using movement based drills to develop finer motor patterns as well as traditional strength and fitness, has long been evident in a subset of fitness enthusiast - most notably contestants on Ninja Warrior, but now things have gone a step further.

Those who have been around the paleosphere for much of the past decade will be aware of Erwan Le Corre and his MovNat program.  Well, Carlos Condit is now training under Le Corre:

And if that wasn't enough, you'll no doubt be aware that Ido Portal - sometime paleo-ista and mainstay of Gymnastic Bodies for much of the last few years, is assisting Conor McGregor in his quest for world domination:

I'd love to see The Notorious on a climbing wall. No better way to develop his inner boa-constrictor!  But judging by the fight with Aldo, he is happy to go with striking like a cobra. Brutal skills.
 
For the record, there are a few other exceptional athletes who have adopted a similar paleo-compliant approach with superlative results - both in terms of aesthetics and performance, including Andreas Thorkildsen and TheJSap.  Also, let's not forget Michel Bruyninckx approach to football in Belgium,

• "We need to stop thinking football is only a matter of the body,...Skilfulness will only grow if we better understand the mental part of developing a player. 
  
  "Cognitive readiness, improved perception, better mastering of time and space in combination with perfect motor functioning."

Remember, paleo is a lifestyle philosophy based on the broad conditions of ancestral selection, not a brand that repackages modern life as-is.  Doing the same thing under a different brand-name is doing the same thing - and will leave you in the same place.

What Lies Beneath

On gut flora extinction:

"Years ago, impelled in part by their oldest daughter’s constipation problems, the Sonnenburg family revamped its diet. They threw out all processed food-stuffs, and began eating plenty of veggies and whole grains. They bought a dog. Justin Sonnenburg began hand-milling his own wheat berries for bread. He took up gardening. And when he compared his archived microbes from years ago with recent ones, he discovered that his microbial diversity had increased by half. “That’s a huge difference,” he told me, “as big as the difference between Americans and Amerindians.”"

Meat Shaming

The Problem With the WHO's Great Meat Conspiracy. A nice polemic from HuffPo.

http://flip.it/_l3ZV

Sleep & Mental Illness

Sleep - far from inactive, it's your body and mind's busy time for growth and repair:

"Circadian rhythms are innate and hard-wired into the genomes of just about every living thing on the planet. In humans, our physiology is organised around the daily cycle of activity and sleep. In the active phase, when energy expenditure is high and food and water are consumed, organs need to be prepared for the intake, processing and uptake of nutrients."

https://theconversation.com/why-sleep-could-be-the-key-to-tackling-mental-illness-50102

Natural Sleep and Its Seasonal Variations

Some interesting research picked up by the BBC and presented in Current Biology on sleep.  Biphasic sleep may not my innate nor optimal (although there is conflicting evidence).  The highlights are:

• •Preindustrial societies in Tanzania, Namibia, and Bolivia show similar sleep parameters
• •They do not sleep more than “modern” humans, with average durations of 5.7–7.1 hr
• •They go to sleep several hours after sunset and typically awaken before sunrise
• •Temperature appears to be a major regulator of human sleep duration and timing

Clearly season, light and temperature themselves are all linked by sunlight and day-length.  Sleep quality moves up a gear and the basics of sleep hygiene remain the same.

Hidden Brain

Here is a new podcast many of you might appreciate called Hidden Brain,

• The Hidden Brain project helps curious people understand the world – and themselves. Using science and storytelling, Hidden Brain reveals the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, the biases that shape our choices, and the triggers that direct the course of our relationships.
  
  Our audience takes uncommon pleasure in the world of ideas. Why do mild-mannered people turn into fearsome mama and papa bears? Does the way you park your car say something vital about you? Can hidden biases keep people from finding interesting jobs? Hidden Brain has the answers to those questions.
  
  Science correspondent Shankar Vedantam brings NPR listeners a wealth of knowledge from social science research. The Hidden Brain podcast will extend and amplify Shankar's radio stories, and link psychology and neurobiology with insights from art, music and literature. The goal of Hidden Brain isn't merely to entertain, but to give you insights to apply at work, at home and throughout your life.

Worth downloading a few of the podcasts/episodes for your next walk.

Shark Jumping

The Spectator has pissed away all credibility in its Health section by suggesting that exercise could be replaced by a pill.  The research looked at the metabolic effects of intense exercise noting over 1000 molecular changes in the muscle, and one of the researchers (Dr Nolan Hoffman), articulated the following:

• ‘Exercise produces an extremely complex, cascading set of responses within human muscle. It plays an essential role in controlling energy metabolism and insulin sensitivity. While scientists have long suspected that exercise causes a complicated series of changes to human muscle, this is the first time we have been able to map exactly what happens.
  
  ‘This is a major breakthrough, as it allows scientists to use this information to design a drug that mimics the true beneficial changes caused by exercise.’ 

The hormonal and metabolic cascade from exercise is what exercise should be all about.  To view it as some kind of penance for eating pie/cake or as a means to exclusively burn calories misses the rich outcome of activity.

There are other neurological benefits of exercise that also seem to be ignored here.  Exercising in a 'green' environment and the social benefits of engaging in a collaborative team pursuit all go to build the value of the 'energy out' side of the equation.

The idea that you can simulate (some) of the beneficial changes caused by exercise in a pill really does diminish what exercise should be about; that the spending of calories should be a largely pleasurable and enriching endeavour.

I do however look forward to the first pharmacological fruits of this research - and their unwanted side effects.