Recently there has been a lot of discussion in the fitness industry about barefoot running due to the popular book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.  To be honest, I never did read the book because it had so much hype and I find that hype often amounts to disappointment on my end.  Besides, I’m not personally very interested in distance running.

However, the discussion in the industry lead me to wonder more about whether we should limit the use of shoes and whether things like Vibrams and other deconstructed shoes like Nike Frees had any merit.  Around this time I mentioned to my friend Carson Boddicker that he should do a blog comparing barefoot and shod running and he certainly didn’t disappoint. 

In the end Carson put together the most comprehensive series of blog posts I’ve ever seen on this subject.  But before you dive in, be forewarned that Carson is crazy smart and he doesn’t hold back on his biomechanical understanding for the sake of the lay reader.

If you’re looking for a cake walk and someone to say “shoes are bad, feet are good” you’re not going to find it here.  But if you’re looking for an in depth, research based series on shod versus unshod running then you need to read each and every piece below.

(Despite looking like a ton of reading, each blog in itself is relatively short and certainly worth the effort)

Barefoot Running: Anatomy

Barefoot vs Shod Running

Running Economy and Barefoot vs Shod Footstrike

Normal Gait Mechanics

The Big Toe and Windlass Mechanism

Mobilizing the Big Toe

Afferent Control and Running

Irradiation, Concurrent Activation Potentiation, and the Feet

Shoelessness and Injuries

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

If you know anything about marketing there’s no doubt that you’ve heard about focus groups.  Generally, a company with a product, television show, or other service gathers a bunch of people from the target market and gains information from them.  But what if everything we knew about marketing was wrong?  What if our conscious mind was not able to speak to the desires of our unconscious mind (i.e., the part that really makes the buying decisions).  Moreover, what if someone figured out how to access the information in our unconscious mind so that marketing could be geared towards what we want versus what we say we want?

A while back I was reading Dr. Sharma’s blog and he mentioned a book that suggests that this can actually be done.  In his book Buyology, Martin Lindstrom describes the process he has used to evaluate the neural responses to various brands, products, and services to see which cause the greatest responses in brain areas related to reward, fear, and happiness.

Perhaps most interesting to me was that brands need not be associated with words to evoke strong responses.  In fact, certain colors by themselves are so specifically related to certain brands that they are almost inseparable.  In places where overt cigarette advertising has been restricted, some companies have even paid to have bars designed in specific ways using their colors to subliminally advertise to their patrons.

Another great point was about the use of scents as brands.  Since we create strong relationships with scents some stores have even starting pumping certain smells into their locations to stimulate certain centers within our brains.  Lidstrom suggests that scents may even one day be using branding.  When walking through large metropolitan centers we may be bombarded less and less with billboards and more with scents that surround us from everywhere.

If you have doubts about the power of scents being associated with a brand, consider that in the mall near my home you can walk in to smell an aroma in the air that everyone who lives here would instantly associate with a place called Cinnabon.  If you’re used to fragrances in magazines for cologne or perfume ads, these may become common place in many other types of ads as well.
While I found all of this really interesting, it suddenly occurred to me that most public health agencies won’t be able to afford this type of marketing to promote wellness and that big food corporations will likely be some of the first on board.

If you’re interested in learning more about this revolutionary new system I’d highly suggest picking up Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy.

So my buddy Mike Scott sent me the following and asked me to fill in the blanks:

“Prevention of injuries can be done by (at most 10 words). The most important thing to do prior to beginning any sport/physical activity/exercise routine is (name one thing). Preventing most (adjective) injuries is (possible or impossible, chose one) because (provide your reasoning).”

Check out my answer and those of many other industry pros HERE.

When you’re done, feel free to play along and leave your answer in the comments section below.

A while back I wrote an article on a variety of things that people should concern themselves with when reading and reporting on scientific studies.  As it turns out, it was very well received so I’ve decided to follow up with another post in which I’ll try to highlight some other important considerations when reading a scientific papers.

To illustrate my points I’ll be highlighting a couple of papers as well so you might pick up some bonus learning along the way. 

That Sure is ACUTE Study

One thing that is important to take into consideration is whether the study you’re looking at is an acute study or a chronic (i.e., training) study.  For example, researchers at McMaster wanted to determine whether soy protein or milk would provide greater muscle gains.  Previous research had suggested that soy proteins may be used more for splanchnic (intestinal) metabolism to a greater extent than milk so they decided to see if milk could stimulate more protein synthesis after training.

In an early study they had each participant in the study perform a standard leg workout involving leg press, leg extensions, and leg curls,  drink either the milk or soy beverage, and follow up with muscle biopsies, arterial and venous blood samples.  The subjects would also have them come back on another day to repeat the study with the other beverage.  (Note that the study protocol is much more involved, but I’m simplifying for the sake of brevity)

After all measures were taken the net protein balance area under the curve(i.e., muscle growth) was  statistically greater in the milk condition than the soy condition.  In fact, this measure was almost double that of soy.  This is an example of an acute study.

Clinical Significance

So after all that work, and prodding, and poking what does that study actually tell the trainee in the trenches trying to put on muscle mass?  How much more muscle could they expect to gain using milk versus soy?  The truth is, we just don’t know.  And THAT is the difference between statistical significance (i.e., the results weren’t just due to chance) and clinical significance (results that we can actually apply to practice).

So, to take the results to the real world the McMaster group repeated the study again except that this time they trained three different groups with a split routine on 5 days per week for a period of 12 weeks.  Each group either received the soy protein, milk, or a placebo beverage (actually just carbs) and results for muscle and fat mass were measured over the 12 weeks.

In the end, muscle mass gains were as follows:

The placebo group gained 5.3 lbs

The soy group gained 6.2 lbs

The milk group gained 8.6 lbs

Statistically speaking, the milk group was better than both soy and placebo, but soy was not superior to the placebo.  These results are also clinically significant.  In other words, they are actually applicable.  This is an example of a longer term study as opposed to an acute study. 

Variability

Since the study above shows milk to be superior I figured that now would be a good time to demonstrate the importance variability between subjects.  The dotted line on this graph represents the median amount of muscle gained across all groups.  As you can see, those in the milk condition easily gained the most.  But within that group you’ll notice that there were those who gained only 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of muscle and others who gained almost 7 kilograms (15.4 pounds).   In fact, there was one person in the soy group who gained more muscle than anyone in the milk group!  Taken as a whole, this study indicates that milk is superior to soy for muscle gain when taken post workout, but always remember that within every study there is variability.  Statistically speaking, you are most likely to fall close to the average, but there is always a remote possibility that you are one of the outliers.  If you’re using a system that seems to be working for others and it isn’t working for you, this might be the reason.

But now you might be wondering why on earth the didn’t just do this study instead of taking time with the shorter study first.  Well, the main reason is that large training studies take a LOT of time and money.  They also require a huge amount of manpower to recruit, train, and test all the subjects.  At least with an acute study the trial is fairly short and less labour intensive so you can test your hypothesis up front to get an indication of the results to follow.  These results can also be used to solicit funding for the longer term project and to justify the use of resources.  After all, it would be a giant waste of money and resources if you ran a lengthy training study only to find out that your hypothesis was wrong.

All in all, there are many elements of a research study that can be subject to consideration and I hope I’ve provided you with a snapshot into the world of reading the science.

Feel free to leave your thoughts and comments below!

In a recent blog post my good friend Bret Contreras listed some of his top learning resources and I was honored to see my blog on the list.  Here’s what he wrote:

“I believe that Mark Young is another extremely bright individual who virtually flies under most people’s radars. Mark is very knowledgeable about bodybuilding, sport-specific training, and corrective exercise. I’ve spoken to Mark over the telephone and correspond with him often via email. He’s another guy who I am proud to call a friend. His blogs are always high-quality and informative.”

I really appreciated the positive comments, but after reading his post I’ve decided that he’s probably right about something else.  I’ve spent years in the fitness industry reading, working with clients, answering questions, and giving back via my blog, but I don’t spend nearly enough time trying to get on people’s radar.

In reaction to this, I’ve decided that I’m going to start branching out to reach more people with my articles and information to share what I’ve learned and have already got some new writing opportunities lined up.  I’ve also opened up my schedule a little bit to do interviews and guest blogs for those who are interested. (Note: Shoot me a message though the email on this page if you are one of the interested parties).

But more important than all of those new people I might reach are those who already know and follow my stuff so I just wanted to say thanks.  So far you’ve been the ones spreading the word about my site and I appreciate every mention or link.

If you haven’t already, please take the time to sign up to my RSS Feed, find me on Facebook and Twitter, or subscribe on YouTube.  And if you understand these techy kinds of things (I certainly don’t), feel free to ”list” me on Twitter or do one of those #FF things.

For your convenience, I’ve added an Articles page to the website where I’ll post everything I have published off the site so I’m hoping to keep ya’ll up to date.  Thanks again for following my content and sharing with others.

As always, if there is stuff you’d like me to cover, please let me know.