Formal

I get kind of picky about form.  I do it not because I’m a control freak, but because I love my clients and want their bodies to last a long time.

Form makes the difference between effective, sustainable workouts and excessive wear on susceptible joints.  When we are careful to maintain our bodies with good alignment, we enable ourselves to lift more, go harder, and get better.

We all need to watch where our knees go when we squat, engage our abdominals, align our shoulders properly, and know what our pelvises are doing.  (Knowing what our pelvises are doing is not actually a bad idea in all of life…)

Of course, we all have our own personal quirks and issues.  We all have places where our form could get better.  We strive to improve.  I’m here to help approximate our way to greatness.

Monday Workout: They're back!

This week we continue to work on stability while we build metabolism with multi-joint exercises.  And yes, burpees are back.  Three rounds.

1 arm clean and press	30
squats	20
renegade rows	10
lunge twists	30
deadlifts	20
burpees	10
overhead curtseys	30
1 leg kb pass	20
Diane plank	10

Brain exercise

Last week, the SF Chronicle ran an article with the headline “Cancer labels on cereal ruled unnecessary.”  Here is the link to the article.

The article provides us with an opportunity to investigate what regulation is intended to do, what it does, and how we evaluate information.

California Proposition 65 requires that companies notify consumers of cancer- or birth-defect-causing ingredients.  As a result, we see things like notices on fancy crystal, on alcoholic drinks, and even on Disneyland.  The goal of the proposition is to allow us the opportunity to make informed decisions about what to ingest and/or come in contact with.  Unfortunately, many of the warnings do not specify what ingredients are problematic.

Digging deeper into the specific case in the article, I checked out acrylamide.  It is a chemical created by heat in specific foods and also has topical effects.  In laboratory animals, it does seem to correlate with cancer of various types.  There is limited experimental evidence of cancer-causing in humans and the levels in the foods in question are low enough to be unlikely to cause issues.

That said, manufacturers of the cereals don’t want to put the labels on their product because they want to sell more product.  While we can assume that killing consumers is bad for marketing, the purpose of cereal companies is not to make healthy consumers, but to make more profits.  We can safely assume that companies will trumpet health claims and bury danger signs whenever possible.

The position of the court in the ruling focused on the fact that many of the cereals in question are whole-grain products and that Americans, in general, should be eating more whole grains.  The court feels that the risk of not eating whole grains is worse than the risk of contracting cancer from acrylamide.  Whether we agree with that ruling is up to us.

Bottom line, as always, is check it out.  Research whenever possible.  Find the data and evaluate.  (Suggested further reading:  Marion Nestle’s Food Politics, which explores some of the reasons why industry and government nutrition information can have serious flaws.)