Before I dive into this episode of the Rhubarb Report, let’s take a brief fleeting moment for politics. A Report can’t go by without a least a little political humor, right? So in keeping with that, the Republican Candidate Of The Week, according to the polls, is Rick Santorum. This has become much like the Blue Plate special at your favorite cafe, or the whims of the BCS polls on a Sunday evening during college football season. Strange as it may sound, the BCS makes more sense these days than the Republican presidential debates – but I digress. Onwards to Episode 34!
If you ask just about any endurance sports athlete or coach about their approach to training or how they quantify a training effort, they will almost certainly tell you that the standard is the use of heart rate and heart rate training zones. They will tell you that you need a heart rate monitor for effective training. They will tell you that it is an accurate means of quantifying training load.
A quick summary of heart rate training is indicated. The athlete sets heart rate training zones (heart rate ranges) that are based on a percentage of maximum heart rate to attain various training effects. The goal of these training zones may be to improve aerobic capacity or lactate threshold - or both – as these are factors that are perceived to be related to optimal training adaptations and enhanced endurance sport performance.
But as they say, it doesn’t matter how well you build a house – if, in fact, you build the foundation on quicksand. Therein lies the basis for many training myths.
Love. The mere mention of it conjures up images of Valentine’s Day – or vice versa. It is an integral part of the human condition, male and female, rich and poor, black and white.
Describing the feeling of love is inherently difficult. The love shared by two people can be indescribable, and delightfully so. You may have experienced it, felt it, reveled in it, and yet still have no earthly way to put it into words or expression of any form. Countless artists, writers, poets, and sculptors have attempted it throughout history. Some have succeeded. Some have failed miserably.
Last year, on this date, I posted an article entitled “365 Valentines A Year”. It is actually one of the most popular posts that I have written. In it, I discussed sharing love on a daily basis.
But is it possible to truly love someone else if we don’t love ourselves? Are we our own worst enemy in this search for love?
This is the 9th in a series of RunSmart videos. The series is on-going, with a new video released on a biweekly basis. These videos complement the material presented in the book “RunSmart: A Comprehensive Approach To Injury-Free Running”. The full series of videos can be found here. A transcription of the video will also be available with each post.
For those of you that are interested in a more interactive learning environment, consider attending a Level One (half day), Level Two (one day), or Level Three (two day) RunSmart program. The Level One program is 3.5 hours (approved for CCU credit for physical therapists). The Level Two program is 8.5 hours and focuses on injury prevention and performance optimization. The Level Three program is a two day, 15 hour program that includes a comprehensive approach to running injuries. The next Level One program will be offered in Austin on March 24, 2012.
In this video, I will discuss “culture and training error”. The culture of the running community has changed significantly over the past 3 decades, and I would suggest that this may in fact have some relationship to training error and thus running-related injuries.
I hope you enjoy the video series. If you would like me to address any specific aspect of the RunSmart approach, drop me an email or add a comment to this article.
Blustery weather. Dark clouds. An early sunset. They all remind me of an impending winter season. Even after 21 years of living in Texas, I still get that pit-of-the-stomach feeling, that foreboding sense of a hard winter that is rapidly approaching.
For all those that think that snow and winter sound wonderful, I would offer this: try shoveling it for a winter and tell me what you think.
But when I was a kid, I looked forward to winter. There were a lot of cool things to do – no pun intended. Winter is a wonderful season if you enjoy downhill skiing, or cross country skiing, or snowboarding, or sledding, or ice skating, or hockey. I did them all in my younger years.
Direct access to physical therapy – at least the way a consumer would view it – is the ability to make a consumer-driven choice to see a physical therapist without any limitation imposed by a gatekeeper or other entity. A consumer would also view physical therapy as the process of both evaluating a condition and implementing a treatment plan for it. I think it is safe to say that the commonly-held perspective by the consumer is that physical therapy in its entirety involves both aspects, and not just one.
The definition of “direct” is simple: “proceeding in a straight line or by the shortest course; without intervening persons, influences, factors, etc”.
But Direct Access to Physical Therapy has become a ridiculous play on words by the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) – and a game that undermines the future of the profession at its core.
I have probably watched some or all of most of the Super Bowls dating back to at least 1974 or 1975. I know I can remember the Minnesota Vikings (and Fran Tarkenton) losing to Pittsburgh in Super Bowl IX in 1975. That memory sticks with me because the Vikings were one of my favorite teams when I was growing up. I fondly remember running back Chuck Foreman, the “Purple People Eaters” defense, and quarterback Fran Tarkenton – a scrambling quarterback that preceded the likes of Michael Vick and Randall Cunningham.
Over all those years, the NFL Championship game – a “World Championship” as they call it – is, more often than not, a Super Bore. In recent years, the true entertainment has come from the commercials and the half-time shows – if that.
But Super Bowl XLVI was actually pretty entertaining. It even had a moment which may go down as one of the strangest, surreal moments in sport.
Allan Besselink, PT, DPT, Ph.D., Dip.MDT has a unique voice in the world of sports, education, and health care. Read more about Allan here.