Sleep: Are you getting enough?

     Checking out all these new fitness fads and gimmicks it is amazing to see what great lengths people go to to ensure that they have a structured fitness and nutrition plan. Unfortunately, they forget about the third component: sleep! If your goal is to improve health, performance, and body composition, then quality sleep is your key to success. Good sleep helps our bodies and minds recover, keeps us lean, happy, mentally focused and healthy. Chronically bad sleep increases body fat percentage, screws up hormones, ages us faster, increases the chance of chronic illness, drains our IQ and negatively effects our mood.

     In order to get adequate rest, most people need 7 hours of sleep. Unfortunately, 33% of people get under 6.5 hours. It is no wonder why we are all so tired and spend the early part of our mornings looking like we belong on The Walking Dead. Why does this all matter? A 2006 study was used to study the effects sleep has body composition. There were three groups studied: those who slept under six hours, those who slept 7-8 hours, and those who slept 9 or more hours each night. The group that slept under 6 hours per night gained always twice as much weight as those who slept 7-8 hours. Over an extended period of time, getting less than 7 hours of sleep increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, and sudden cardiac death. Those who slept more than 9 hours per night had similar body composition outcomes as those who sleep less than 6 hours. With that being said, do not assume that because a little bit of something is good, that more of it is better. Aim for 7-8 hours and your body will thank you!

     What is the cause of our lack of sleep? Like previously discussed (Why is Everyone so Tired?), our work schedule may be at fault. Or we can be at fault. Most people lose sleep due to voluntary bedtime delay. We spend time watching television, texting our friends, messing around on our laptops or doing anything else that modern society has introduced to. Finding a suitable sleeping strategy needs to be a part of your healthy living and good nutrition. Below are some factors that should be taken into account for improving your sleep:

1. Consistency. Having a constant sleep routine (even on the weekends) could allow for a deep, regular sleep. 
2. Lighting. Dim the lights, cover your windows, put your iPhone or other electronics in another room, and cover or dim anything that lights up in the room (ie alarm clock).
3. Noise. Keep your room extremely quiet or use white noise, a fan or air filter work well. 
4. Relaxation and routine. Create a nighttime routine that tells your body that you are ready to shut it down. De-stress with some gentle movements, reading, relaxation techniques, or do a 'Brain Dump'. Whatever is on your brain, get it out of there and put it down on paper. 
5. Temperature. Most people sleep better when it is cool. Keep your room somewhere between 66-72 degrees. 
6. Nutrition. Keep caffeine (stimulant) and alcohol (depressant) to a minimum. Alcohol may make you sleepy but too much of it negatively effects your quality of sleep. So you may sleep 9 hours after a night of drinking but the quality of that sleep will be low. You should also eat a regular sized meal a few hours before bed. Your body needs time to digest that food. Eating a big meal before sleep may lead to restless sleep because your body will be working to digest on that food in your belly. 
7. Exercise. Exercise regularly but intense exercise before bed might "rev you up" so try to avoid that. A poor night of sleep will negatively effect your next days workout. 

     So now that we have taken care, it is time to talk about developing a strategy. This is a 24-hour process. A quick explanation of sleep cycles is that a full cycle occurs every 90 minutes. Stage I and II are light sleep stages. Waking up during one of these stages and we feel reasonably good and alert. Stages III and IV are deep sleep stages. The final stage, stage V, is when REM sleep occurs. If we wake up during one of the final three stages, we will feel groggy, sleepy or disoriented. One way to get a better understanding of which stage you wake is by using a Sleep Diary. Take the time to fill one out and it may provide you with the answers to all your sleep problems! 

     Sleep debt is cumulative. The more nights with inadequate sleep, the greater the likelihood of negative effects. Hours missed need to be repaid if your goal is to optimize your health, performance and body composition. When creating your next meal and fitness plan, take the time to get yourself into a good sleep routine and reap the rewards!

Hope you enjoyed,

Chris Fluck

     

40 Day Program 3.0

     I spent the past two months attempting the most mundane weightlifting program known to man. It was titled the 40 Day Program (for a better explanation check out 40 Day I, or 40 Day II) and the directions are quite simple: for the next 40 lifting sessions, you will perform the same exercises, each and every session, over and over again. I am not proud to admit that after 32 sessions, I am no longer taking part in the program. I tried like hell to find ways to make it more interesting but couldn't bring myself to continue for another 3 weeks. Here are a few things that I learned from the program:

1. I saw tremendous improvements early on in the program. Every time I would repeat a workout, I made sure to add weight to the bar. Buyer beware: increasing too much weight between sessions will cause you to "peak" sooner than expected. Once you reach the peak of a cliff, the next step is down so be careful adding too much weight too soon. Stick to 5 pound jumps for the upper body lifts and 10 pound jumps for the lower body lifts until you find a reasonable weight to train at. This brings me to my next point...
2. If you are someone looking to regain some "lost" strength, I would highly recommend doing an abbreviated version of this program. Pick a few exercises that you would like to improve on and have at it. The only way to master something is with practice and this program exemplifies that. So for 10 or 15 training sessions, repeat the same workouts until you reach your goals and regain some of that strength you may have lost.
3. Strength is a skill. Performing the same lift over and over enables you to improve on your technique and to steal a phrase from Dan John "grease the groove". Like everything else, the more you do something the better you'll be. With that being said, this program could be beneficial to the novice athlete who is trying to learn how to perform a few major lifts. Through repetition and proper instruction, the novice would see tremendous improvements in weight lifted through improved proprioception. 
4. These workouts should give you more than it takes out of you. Like the directions say, make sure you never miss a rep and stop a set if fatigue sets in earlier than expected. If ou are interested in getting a "pump" or "feeling the burn", then this program is not for you.
5. Your body will feel good on this program. With proper nutrition to enable recovery, soreness should be limited as your strength increases greatly. If you want pain when you train, forget the 40 day program and learn muay thai.
6. If I ever plan on doing the program again, I will follow the "same but different" model. What that means is that if you choose bench press as one of your lifts, after 10-20 sessions perform the incline press. That way, if offers a little variety in the hopes of keeping you sane during the training.
7. As the program progressed I got progressively lazier in regards to cardiovascular training, working on weaknesses, and performing dynamic or static stretches. Advice: if you decide to try this program, work on your weaknesses as you rest between sets, make sure you warm up and cool down, and add in some form of interval training to train the cardiovascular system. Something as simple as 8-16 rounds of tabata training would do the trick!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Chris Fluck

The Paleo Diet for Athletes

     The Paleo Diet is a hot topic in the world of fitness and nutrition so I wanted to see what it was all about. The basic premise of the "diet" is that if our hunter-gatherer ancestors did not eat it, neither should we. This excludes grains, legumes, dairy, alcohol and sugar. Instead, we should focus on consuming grass-fed beef, lamb, chicken, fish, fruits and vegetables. As a result, author Loren Cordain adds, this type of diet will "lower risk of cardiovascular disease, blood pressure, inflammation, help with weight loss, reduce acne, promotes optimum health and athletic performance". They make it a point to bring up that this is book is about lifestyle change, not a short term diet with a fixed end date. The focus is on consuming quality fats, protein and "adequate" carbohydrate supplies, while cutting the aforementioned foods that were not available during stone age times. I can't help but agree with that.

     There is one big takeaway from this book and it is all about recovery. The authors break down recovery into five stages

1. Immediately before. You should eat 2-3 hours before your endurance event. If you eat 2 hours before, they recommend consuming 400-600 calories. If you eat 3 hours before, you could eat 600-900 calories. Take in mostly carbohydrates, keep the meal low in fiber, and drink to satisfy thirst. Remember, we are not camels. We cannot store water, if we drink too much, we will remove the excess. 
2. During exercise. This should be experimented with during training sessions. For events under 90 minutes the focus should be on hydration. When the event gets longer, it is important to replenish fuel stores. Take in 200-300 calories per hour in an equal distribution every 10-20 minutes. DO NOT consume 200-300 in one drink/snack. Spread it out. 
3. 30 minutes following exercise. This is the most critical phase. During this phase, you should replace expended carbohydrate stores, hydrate, provide amino acids for re-synthesis of protein, and replacement of electrolytes. The carbohydrate to protein ratio during this phase is 4:1-5:1. 
4. This period is equal to the exercise session. So if you train for 90 minutes, you will consume calories 90 minutes after your workout or 60 minutes after Stage III recovery. Carbohydrate replenishment remains important and you should continue to use the same carb to protein ratio in Stage III. Make sure you maintain your lean protein intake. Do not skip this phase. If you rush into Stage V from Stage III, your recovery will be delayed.
5. Long term recovery, this stage continues until the cycle restarts at Stage I. This is where the Paleo guidelines need to be followed. While consuming the lean meats, fish, fruits and vegetables, your body will get adequate amounts of branch chained amino acids (building blocks of protein), trace nutrients and glycogen stores found in nuts, fruits and vegetables. 

Why is this important? A healthy athlete, free of colds and ailments, can train more consistently and intensely and thereby improve performance. Your body will be ready to go sooner if you recover quickly and completely. There may be some days where you are tired or might not be able to complete a workout. This is called overreaching. This occurs early in the path to greater fitness. If allowed to continue too long, over training will set in and your performance will be greatly influenced in a negative way. 

     With books of this nature, if you are able to take 2 or 3 things away from it is a success. On top of the tips on recovery, the goal for me is to make improvements to my diet. The stuff in this book is not rocket science. The tough part is finding a way to implement it into your life consistently. For me, I need to make more time to prep my meals and cook more often. This is something I have always struggled with and I don't enjoy doing it all that much. But it is something that needs to get done. When you cook for yourself, you know exactly what you are eating and how nutrient dense your meal is. When the goal is to improve performance or lose a few pounds, pairing nutrient dense meals with exercise is the best way to achieve that. 

I hope you enjoyed!

Chris Fluck

A Week in the Life of a High School Football Coach

Bill Parcells: My wife said to me once, “Explain to me why you continue to do this? The times that you enjoy it are so much fewer than the rest of the other stuff. What kind of ego do you have that you have to keep proving things to yourself? Why do you do it? You’re not happy, so why do you keep doing it? I told her she didn’t understand. I told her it’s just about competition because my whole life, since I was seven years old, you went to the gym or you went to the playground. It was always ‘who are we playing and where?’ I’m still doing it. Nothing has changed. It’s still, Who are we playing today?

A few short hours ago I sat down and looked at the clock: it read 4:02 pm. I shook my head and then wondered where the heck the day went. This was supposed to be a day "off". Well, as it turns out, there is no off day when the football season is in full swing. It is a never ending cycle of planning, preparation and competition. For those that may not know what coaching high school sports entails, this blog is for you!

Sunday (9/8): After teaching a fitness class I drove down to the school for a meeting with the football coaches. The meeting touches on the previous game, where we need to make improvements, and how we will go about approaching the upcoming week/game. After a few hours of discussion, the meeting ends and we all go home feeling good about the upcoming week.

I coach at a small school where the coaches have multiple roles. I act as an assistant Varsity coach (I coach the quarterbacks and cornerbacks), Junior Varsity head coach/offensive coordinator, and serve as the strength and conditioning coach. With that being said, our first JV game is the following day and I need to get a game plan together for it. 90 minutes later the game plan is set and I am ready to go!

Day Total: 3 hours

Monday (9/9): Game 1 for Junior Varsity. This is one of my favorite days during the season. The young kids get their butts whooped all week at practice and this is their day to shine. I leave for the school at 2:00 pm. From 2:30-3:00 the varsity kids watch film, then it is time to get everything together for the junior varsity game. We depart for Bangor with high hopes for the upcoming season. At half time we have a 26-0 lead and go on to win 40-0. This is the first time in awhile that we not only got a shutout but also hung 40 points on the opponent. I arrive home at 9:30 exhausted and pleased with how well the kids played.

And I will share one thing with you, calling plays on the sideline has to be the toughest thing to do in football. Stress levels are jacked up and you get 100% locked into each and every call. There are so many variables that you have to take in and the 20+ seconds you have to make a decision feels like 5 seconds. You can't even watch the play you called because you are busy getting your next call ready. This is why preparation is key and why you see all these coaches with huge play call sheets on game day. It is much easier planning what you will do on 3rd and 13 in your office than it is on the sideline. And to those "expert play callers" who criticize play calls from the stands or their couch, just remember the coach knows his team a hell of a lot better than you do. Give him a break!

Day Total 7.5 hours
Weekly Total: 10.5 hours

Tuesday (9/10), Wednesday (9/11), Thursday (9/12): Tuesday and Wednesday are our big practice days. Thursday is used as a "walk-through" to go over situations that may arise in the upcoming game. So one day after the JV kids are the stars of the show, they come back to practice with the Varsity and accept their role as getting the older kids ready for the upcoming game. I get to the school around 2:30 for lifting. The JV lifts on Tuesday and Thursday, Varsity lifts on Monday and Wednesday. We then hold practice and leave the school around 6:00 pm. These days fly by and it never seems that we have enough time to get in everything we need to. Our work is done for the week, the following day is game day.

Day(s) Total: 10.5 hours total
Weekly Total: 21 hours

Friday (9/13): So it is Friday the 13th and we are hosting our third game of the season. I get to the school around 4 pm to workout before the game. Around 5:20 our warm-up begins. We run through a variety of things during pregame and before you know it, it is time to play. After a game that felt like a roller coaster ride, we get our second straight win and feel fortunate to leave the field victors. We haven't played our best football yet and I look forward to the day when we put it all together. After the game the coaches go out for a bite to eat, check the scores of the other games in the league and talk about the good and the bad that just happened during the game.

For example, with a little over three minutes to go we are on defense and our opponent is putting themselves in a position to score. A timeout was called and some of the coaches are out there talking things over with the kids. Our head coach is telling them how we are going to defend the next couple plays and one of the kids taps me on the shoulder and says "hey coach, check it out" while pointing at the ground. I look down and see an enormous butterfly lying on the field. I couldn't help but laugh. Instead of listening to how we plan on defending, he finds a butterfly on the ground and makes sure no one steps on it as we break the huddle. Needless to say a few plays later they score and our lead shrinks to 5 points.

I got home around 11:30 and went straight to bed.

Day Total: 7.5 hours
Weekly Total 28.5 hours

Saturday (9/14): Today is used as a day to watch our film from the previous night and also watch film of our opponent. After viewing our game and three of our opponents games I am finally ready to relax. Before you know it, it will be time for bed and the process begins all over again!

Day Total: 4.5 hours
Weekly Total: 33 hours

As you can see, coaching football is a job in itself (albeit a fun one). I am fortunate to have the flexibility in my schedule to do something that I enjoy. It is a job that you can never take for granted and important to enjoy the process as you prepare for the upcoming challenges (injuries, illnesses, academics, discipline, and any other things that high school kids get themselves into). As Bill Parcells said, competition has defined my life since I was 5 or 6. It is still, "who are we playing and where?".

Chris Fluck

What I've Been Reading

Here are a few books that I have read, or still reading, this past month.

Fiction
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter: A client at the gym brought in a bag of twenty something books and told me to have at them. This was the first one I chose. I was in need of some fiction and this story was pretty interesting. The main character is a man who has been ostracized by his community for something that happened during his youth. The twists include disappearing children, racism, dead drug dealers, and a creepy snake character with a foul mouth and messed up sense of reality. Once you get past that you learn about a broken friendship and one man getting an opportunity at redemption.

The Fault in Our Stars: This book was given to me by the same man who lent me Geek Love. (If you dont remember my review of that one, here is the link http://cflucktraining.blogspot.com/2013/08/what-ive-been-reading.html). Anyway, this book had my attention. This is a story of teenagers who have been dealt a crappy hand. They make the most of their situation by being sarcastic and making light of each others ailments. The book has the unique ability of making you laugh one second and (nearly) cry the next. In the end, it offers you an opportunity to read about what some young teenagers have to go through and opens your eyes to how good you may have it.

Football
The Essential Smart Football: One of the opening sentences of this book is the reason I chose it, "Learning football is a lifetime endeavor". Just like everything else in life it always seems that there is someone out there who knows more than you or is better than you at your job. And that is what motivates me to become the best coach I can. This book offers a good history of the game and discusses trends and how they came about. Like the book states, "the history of football is essentially the history of ideas meeting talent meeting a moment".
 
History
City Of Scoundrels: This work of non-fiction is almost unbelievable. The story is about a twelve day period in Chicago that led "gave birth to modern Chicago". In this span, there was a blimp crashing into a bank killing over a dozen, a young girl was kidnapped and found dead, racial violence was at an all-time high and a transit strike that paralyzed the city. Add in some shady political dealings and you have yourself a solid work of non-fiction about Chicago in the early nineteen hundreds.

Fitness
The Paleo Diet for Athletes: Still working on this one. A busy weekend left me very little time to read but it has been informative so far.

Hope you all enjoyed the weekend!
Chris Fluck

The 40 Day Program 2.0

In the beginning of August I decided to challenge myself with a program that was dubbed "Simple Strength". The premise of it has been previously explained (if you haven't read it, here it is  http://cflucktraining.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-40-day-program.html).

Well, I am sorry to inform you that I have failed the challenge. After 22 successful workouts, I failed to comply with the very first rule that was outlined: Never miss a rep. If the set calls for 5 reps, then make sure you get all 5 of those reps with quality technique. The program is titled simple strength for a reason. It should feel somewhat "light". Credit ego or lack of discipline for causing me to try a weight that I couldn't handle for the required rep. Here is a quick run down on how I felt throughout the program so far:

• Workouts 1-5: "Wow, they weren't lying. This is simple!"
• Workouts 6-10: "Holy crap, I am getting strong!"
• Workouts 11-15: "Oh man, doing the same thing everyday kind of stinks!"
• Workouts 16-20: "Wow, this is simple but it sure is driving me crazy!"
• Workouts 21-22: "Well here we go again..."
• Workout 23: "FAIL. Now I have an excuse to stop doing the same thing every day!"

Rob Lawrence once said, "I need specificity to get me strong and variety to keep me sane". That quote is this program in a nutshell. So after workout 23, my immediate reaction was to move on to the next thing. I have a few other programs that I would like to try and was going to take a 1-2 week break from heavy lifting. But after sleeping on it, I realized I can't stop now. So I am going to continue the 40 Day Program. If I go crazy over the next few weeks you will all know why!

To those who wonder how much it boosts strength, here are a few of my best numbers (weight x reps)

Front Squat

• Workout One: 225x5 reps
• Workout Fourteen: 295x5 reps
• Workout Twenty-Three: 315x2 reps

Military Press

• Workout One: 115x5 reps
• Workout Twelve: 160x5 reps
• Workout Twenty: 205x2 reps

Weighted Dead-Hang Pullups

• Workout One: 15x5 reps
• Workout Twelve: 40x5 reps
• Workout Twenty-Three: 70x2 reps

Kettlebell Swing

• Workout One: 40x30 reps
• Workout Thirteen: 60x50 reps
• Workout Seventeen: 70x50 reps

Their is great potential for improvement if you do this program. Even if you just want to regain some strength and not complete the full 40 days, 10-15 workouts should do the trick as you can see. Don't be like me, follow the rules previously outlined and only test yourself on the days you feel good. I made the mistake of "planning" my Tuesday workout a few days in advance. This sounds good until you begin your workout and realize you are not feeling your best. Listen to your body and know when to back down.

I hope you are all enjoying this beautiful morning!

Chris Fluck