I might touch this up and make it into an academic quality paper. Then I can use it in job interviews as a writing sample as part of my job interview presentation. But for now I will just keep it casual. It is 100% accurate but I am not going to page for page source hunt.

When in a gym (provided you have been going, evil eye to you know who) you see others running around with lifting belts. At some places like Home Depot you see the stock people in them as well.

                                                                                         

Do weight belts work and how? Yes they do work, here is how. Look at the lumbar spine cut away picture at the top. We humans walk upright, and need our spine to give support yet be flexible to absorb shock, while also able to provide range of motion so we do not walk like robots. The spine as you know is many disks stacked on top of each other, with a spongy disk in between each to provide cushioning. The only real support your spine has are muscles the erector spinae and the transversospinalis groups. Think of your spine as a bunch of stacked soup cans held together with rubber bands.  The figure 12 picture shows how this looks.

When you wear a weight belt it will compress the fluids and tissues in your abdominal cavity together giving increased support the the lower spine. This relieves the Erector muscles of much of their burden as the fluid pressure hold the spine in place.

This can work against you while trying to reach fitness goals. People who wear a lifting belt all the time during resistance exercise deny the erector group stimulus to adapt to. The rest of the skeletal muscle adapts and become stronger, but the erector and other spinal muscles remain in an less or even de-conditioned state. This creates a dangerous imbalance vastly increasing the changes of injury. 

The proper times to wear a lifting belt is. 1-when a power athlete is in a peaking phase and is training an 3 Rep-max range or higher. 2-When athlete is doing conditioning that requires heavy repeated lower spinal loading while near an exhaustive state. The exhausted spinal muscles could relax and cause a disk to herniate. 3-When the athlete is recovering from low back injury. The belt will keep the disks and muscle in proper alignment for healing, while client does no spine loading exercises. Once the low back is recovered sufficiently the athlete may return to spinal loading exercise under the supervision of a doctor or physical therapist.

Athletes and exercisers must be trained to self monitor loads on the body to decrease the chances of injury. Everyday life and many athletic events do not have people wearing weight belts, so the law of specificity says to decrease injury, allow the spinal muscle to exercise and adapt along with the target muscle groups.

Ace intro:
"Jessica kicks off her summer series of videos with exercises to effectively train and strengthen the abdominal muscles. Adding the bicycle maneuver, vertical leg crunch, plank, prone walk out and stability ball pull-in to your exercise program will have you feeling good and looking great.

Video Contents -- 2:17 length
0:18 -- Bicycle Maneuver
0:55 -- Vertical Leg Crunch
1:10 -- Forearm Plank
1:40 - Prone Walkout
1:47 - Stability Ball Pull-in "

My commentary:
The road noise is unaccaptable for a professional demonstration by a large organization like ACE, I would expect it from garage guys work out, not someone I pay money to make these videos. However the movements are correct and those are excellent ab exercises for deconditioned people. You can use them to warm up, and/or part of cool down. I use elbow to knee "air bike" warm up in the morning. I would skip plank for reverse hyper extension to warm up the low back.

The best part of this video is how he demonstrated the lying elbow to knee/air bike, that was pretty much perfect. My research shows this to be a big bang for buck exercise.

At first I was thinking 'Thanks a "heck" of a a lot CBS, as if enough people don't already have an excuse to not exercise, you come out with this!"

But it is true, many trainers are totally incompetent. One of my past supervisors was beyond incompetent, and took it to a new level.

Regulation is not the answer. Look at all the law suits filed against doctors. Clients need to follow the buyer beware rule. Know if their traienr has a degree and is certified by a real agency. No gym I know will hire someone from Expert Rating, sheez!

When I go back to school, and if I go for a masters in Health/Fitness I think a decent thesis project just popped into my head.

With endurance athletes whose events last more than a hour part of the strategy is not just keeping them hydrated, but keeping their electrolytes in balance. You can become toxic from water if your electrolytes get out of balance. So when sweating for prolonged time, you lose the sodium.

When a doctor counsels a hypertensive patient one of the first things to cut back on is sodium.  Switch to the dash diet, medication, ect ect.

They just released a study where conditioned people and untrained people both ate a cheese burger, fries and soda. Their blood lipids for the first hour was not pretty. But within 90 minutes the conditioned folks had normal blood profiles again, while it took over two hours for the untrained people to return to normal blood profiles. So a similar study already exists. SO on second thought I will probably stay with my original plan.

I am considering a study on sleep apnea. People with disturbed sleep patterns are typically overweight or obese.  I hypothesise that even six weeks of very moderate exercise will improve sleep patterns. That alone will add to life span and life quality.

My running is progressing nicely.  I reached my  goal of 10 miles yesterday.  Yaaay.  That goal along with my goal of 30 miles a week. Ultimatly my goal is 45 miles a week, and a 15 mile weekly long run.

I stated a bit slow with achilles tendinitis from my first three weeks.  Blowing the achilles can end any running hope i have, plus being miserable.  So over December and January I used the bike and ran minimally. I finally got my legs flexible and strong enough to handle the extra mileage.

From all the research I can find it seems with running there are a few magic numbers, or milestones. First is 15 miles a week. This will keep you in a health fitness standard, and add about two years to your life, manage weight. The next milestone is 30-35 miles. This level will reverse damage done to your arteries, and your blood lipid profile will be excellent. The final milestone is 45 miles. This qualifies you to physically run a marathon. Runners who ran under 40 miles per week have Troponin in their blood after a marathon, and sigh of oxygen deprived heart muscle. When doctors think you are having a heart attack they look for Troponin in your blood.  This can explain why some athletes suddenly keel over during a marathon.

Barring any long term illness or injury I should be marathon qualified by this time next year. It will be this fall before my long run hits 15 miles. It will probably be another year before I regain elite status and can consider Boston marathon, or Bah-stan, I probably should not go back east if I am going to make fun of accents.  No I am not going to run many marathons, I will mostly be in the 5K-10K range.  Boston is just a life dream for most runners.

This fall I will incorporate more plyometrics and resistance training. Running is all about power to weight ratio, ballistic training brings that.  I am a good 15 pounds lighter than I was in January.  I hope I can complete a marathon when I am 80 :).

HUMMMM.. With all the election stuff, seems all over blog land people are asking and thinking about character, morals, & ethics. News reports of "family values" politicians playing around with call girls, and stuff. CEOs looting company assets and retirement plans to line their own pockets.  Politicians making promises we know are bogus, but yet allow them to do their plan, and somehow forget to hold them to their half.

Like with Clinton (the mister) as soon as you think of him, you then go right to the Monica thing.  Though neither he or she ( the misses) will confirm it, some folks who are personally close to the Clintons imply they have an open marriage. That changes the rules alot. Except you should not play at work, geez. 

It seems with politicians, and those who are looking to romantically date or simply befriend someone it is like you are extending "character credit."   Then with a normal marriage the wave of euphoria wears off, and you realized you married a human, who can drive you up a wall.  Then politicians to dumb human things, other do down right dirty illegal things feeling they are above the law. Reality sets in over time no matter what.

Watching westerns character was a big part of the story.  Back then people fought and died over reputation, honor, and the like. Many samurai stories adapted well as westerns because of that theme.  A John Wayne character saying "me and him go back a long ways" said a lot more than just the words. 

Seems the only real truth is action. There is truth in dishonest action. What someone does day to day is the reality of who they are. People do first what is important to them, the rest is just details. Some guy who says his wife and kids are important, but is at the bar until 11 every night, makes you wonder. Where a guy who is at home with his family never has to say anything. 

In fitness you know how much time we spend talking about fitness? HAHAHA! If people could move their bodies as much as they move their mouths we would be the healthiest nation on the planet.  We could run the Kenyans into the ground, and out lift the Eastern Europeans.

I wonder how many stupid sob stories judges get from repeat offenders? How sorry, how stupid, how it will never happen again, three arrests ago.  Maybe I could get on the pop culture bandwagon with my life coaching, and market instant character repair. Here you are now a good person on a silver platter, yippy hurray!  "Here is Betty, she used to do drugs and beat her kids, but after 30 days on my program, she is a saint."  I think part of who we are is the restitution we pay others and to our selves. Like fitness, I have no magic bullets.

As I got older, maybe not wiser, but definitely older, I find it rewarding to walk the walk.  I am so far from a saint it is ridiculous but I do believe there are certain things we must challenge ourselves to do and to become to be human beings.  Pop culture talks of building self esteem, and helping others build theirs. That comes from real accomplishments. No you can not be the best and fastest all the time, but you can get yourself to the game. If you do what it takes day in and day out the odds say you have to come out a head.  If you do what you feel passionate about you really can't lose.

 

ACSM Action Plans for fitness of people of all levels

Books, classes, and fitness information that is academic, not pop culture.

At home workouts with no equipment, home of the famous/infamous prison work out bunch.

A gym out to tick off lazy people!

A simple workout with little equipment, but a lot of attitude