A recent article that appeared on the New York Times blog revealed the “secrets” of a new treatment that should make those who suffer from tennis elbow very happy.

For many people who play racquet sports, tennis elbow has been the bane of their existence. This painful – and in many cases chronic – condition is characterized by pain and inflammation, typically in the area of the upper arm near the elbow. It a classic overuse injury and one that has been really tough to treat. For years athletic trainers and physical therapists, along with their patients, have struggled to contend with tennis elbow.

Even though the condition is associated with tennis, those who have never come within a country mile of a tennis court, or a racquet of any kind, have suffered the pain and discomfort experienced by the racquet toting crowd. The treatments are varied and range from acupuncture to surgery, but the only thing these treatments have in common is their limited success.

So anyway, a group of researchers from the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma at Lennox Hill Hospital in New York City have developed a cheap and effective way of treating tennis elbow. It’s a simple series of exercises using eccentric contractions (when the muscle lengthens as it tenses) and an 8-inch rubber bar.

The researchers at Lennox Hill Hospital had such phenomenal success with this series of exercises that they stopped the study early, as subjects were improving as early as three weeks into the treatment, showing increased strength and decreased pain.

The best thing about this tennis elbow protocol is that you don’t have to be a doctor, physical therapist or athletic trainer in order to perform this series of exercises. If you are a tennis elbow sufferer you need to check out the story on the New York Times blog.

Incorporate upper body movements when doing flexibility exercises, use medicine balls and sticks and bend, twist, lean, lunge and squat.

The best flexibility routines will get boring. Plain and simple. It doesn’t matter what kind of exercise, they will get stale if they are overused and/or always performed they same way and same order. You can avoid making the extraordinary, ordinary by constantly adding variations to your stretching routine.

Here’s an example to get you started.
• Lunge with the right foot and rotate upper body with arms extended to the front and held at shoulder height
• Turn the head to the right
• Repeat with the left and alternate for 10 total repetitions

Add variety to the move by doing the following.
• When lunging with the right leg turn your shoulders as you reach across the right knee with the left hand
• Repeat leading with the left leg and alternate
• For added degree of difficulty move arms out of sync – one arm held in front while the other arm is held over head – while rotating your torso

Progress to doing the lunge while holding an un-weighted stick directly overhead or extended in front of the body and perform a variety of reaches and bends; to the side, over head, rotate towards and away from lunge leg, etc.

There are many different kinds of lunges and when you add a variety of upper body movements there is a practically unlimited supply of flexibility exercises that you can perform. Consistently change the order of these movements and even perform several different moves in a series to add more variety and complexity to your flexibility routines.

Keep these simple rules in mind and add movement to your flexibility exercises to keep your routines fresh, challenging and effective.

I have just come back from the finest professional educational event of my 20+ year career.  I was fortunate enough to be accepted into Vern Gambetta’s GAIN Apprentorship/Mentorship program earlier this year and last week ventured to Florida a 6-days extravaganza; to say it was a learning experience would be a massive understatement.

There is no way the events of GAIN can be summed up in a single post. At GAIN there were less than 20 new attendees, about a dozen returnees and 10 fantastic faculty members. The days were long but exhilarating. I was honored to be among Athletic Development Coaches, Physical Therapists and Athletic Trainers that work on the international, professional, collegiate and Olympic stages. I learned from, and with, some of the best men and women in the business, and will pass on this knowledge to you in the coming weeks and months. My clients have already started to reap the benefits of my GAIN experience.

As best I can, I will help you to learn how important it is to follow the functional path on your way to living a healthier life.  The info, videos and pictures on HealthAndFitnessAdvice.com, even on old posts, will reflect my desire to offer the best functional training guidance possible.

For years I, and many of my colleagues, have been disappointed with the term personal trainer.  Over 20 years ago when I got started in the business the term meant something more than it does today. Actually, the term really doesn’t mean anything.

Inspired by the events of GAIN, I have decided from now on to use the term Fitness Development Coach rather than Personal Trainer.  It’s time for a change and frankly, someone who is doing their job correctly is developing their clients’ fitness through coaching. I haven’t called myself a personal trainer for more years than I can remember, except on the web where the term “personal trainer” gets eyeballs to the site.  And just as Strength and Conditioning is being replaced by Athletic Development, Fitness Development Coach is replacing Personal Trainer.

Even though I’ve been following the functional path for the better part of 2 decades, going to GAIN was an invigorating experience and I’m excited to bring to you more of the things that will make your workouts better.

An eight-year study that looked at the effects of multivitamin use in older women found that the pills did nothing to prevent heart disease and cancer.  The collected data is of an observational nature and not the result of rigorous scientific research, yet being that these results echo similar results found in a study with men, there’s less reason to think that vitamins offer any protection from serious diseases.

According to the study’s lead researcher Marian Neuhouser from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, “Get nutrients from food.  Whole foods are better than dietary supplements.”  Other researchers feel that multivitamins can still be helpful for those folks who have poor eating habits.  But, on the heels of a study that found a similar lack of efficacy for older men and multivitamins, it seems that you shouldn’t count on multivitamins for any preventative powers against diseases.

After eight years, there was almost no difference in disease rates and death rates among the 162,000 50+ years old women in the study. The large number of subjects in the study makes the results noteworthy.  Based on the results of this study people should re-evaluate whether or not they want to spend the money on multivitamins, especially if the rational for taking them is disease prevention.  Certainly, if you’ve never bothered to take multivitamins the results of this study won’t have you running out to the store to buy any.

The results of this study illustrates just how much is still “unknown” when it comes to nutritional supplements as information can be found to support both sides of the argument.  Fitness consumers need to keep this in mind when making decisions about what they want to include in their supplement regimen, especially when trying to stay on a budget.

As more research is done, there are fewer and fewer nutritional supplements that have a bona fide, scientifically sound track record of success.  Keep in mind that there are no magic bullet nutritional supplements and that the proven key to health and longevity is engaging in regular exercise and following a balanced diet.

Circuit training is a great way to develop strength endurance/muscular endurance and also improves work capacity.  Circuit training is very efficient and effective and people at all levels of ability and fitness can benefit from using this method of training.

Circuit training has the added benefit of requiring little – if any -equipment and can be performed in practically any setting. The following circuit training routine is a great general conditioning circuit.  Perform as may repetitions of the strength training exercise in a 30-second period, give yourself 10-seconds to get ready to jump rope and then perform 30-seconds of jump rope.  Repeat this pattern for the 10 exercises.

1)      Push-up and jump rope

2)      Body-weight squat and jump rope

3)      Kettlebell swing and jump rope

4)      Body-weight lunge and jump rope

5)      Medicine ball chest pass and jump rope

6)      Body-weight quick step-ups and jump rope

7)      Dumbbell curl and press and jump rope

8)      Squat thrusts with dumbbells or Kettlebell dead lifts and jump rope

9)      Body-weight lateral lunge and jump rope

10)   Body-weight lateral quick step-ups with jump  rope

If you can get through this circuit twice you’ve done a great job.  This is an very time-efficient workout and if you are strict with your timing this workout can be completed in less than 30-minutes and is all that you need to do in a single workout.

Give circuit training a try and you will improve your strength endurance and work capacity.

Last week I posted part 1 of a workout using my home-made weighted PVC pipe exercise equipment.  In this week’s video I do squat thrust variations with a 40-pound, 3-inch wide PVC pipe weighted with water and stone.

It’s really quite easy and inexpensive to make the PVC pipe exercise equipment. The unstable weight of the PVC combined with the long length of the pipe makes this home-made equipment quite challenging to perform any kind of exercise imaginable.

When the weather gets nice I try to do as many of my workouts outdoors as possible.  Check out this video where I incorporate PVC pipes, weighted with water and stone, into my calisthenics warm-up.

These exercises can be used as a warm-up or as an entire workout and provide a unique training stimulus beneficial to people of all fitness levels.  People have been using weighted PVC pipes as training implements for a while and I wanted to find out for myself what it felt like to use them.

In this video you will see two basic PVC pipes but check back regularly as I will provide more clips that utilize different sized pipes.

It’s really very easy and inexpensive to make this home-made exercise equipment.  All you need is PVC pipes of various sizes and the appropriate caps, primer, PVC pipe adhesive and a hack saw – just as if you were doing some plumbing work.  A scale will help, as you can load the pipes with the exact amount of weight that you want.

Cap and seal one end of the pipe and then load it with stone and water to the appropriate level.  If you can, place the pipe on a scale as you fill it with water and you don’t want to fill the pipe all the way, as this prevents the water from sloshing around.  Depending on the circumference of the pipe you should fill from half-way to three-quarters with water before adding the stone.

Drop me an email if you have any questions about how to put these babies together as I am glad to spread the word about the benefits of homemade exercise equipment.

Mixed distance shuttle runs are a great way to improve your conditioning level.  If done properly, they can be much more efficient and effective than other kinds of cardiovascular training, and certainly are better than distance running, jogging or any kind of machine-based cardio.

Mixed distance shuttle runs should be an integral part of any team sport athlete’s training regimen, but the rest of us can benefit from utilizing this method of training, as well.  Rather than repeatedly running fixed distance shuttles, for instance a 60-yard shuttle utilizing a 15-yard course completed 4 times, a mixed distance shuttle workout consists of shuttles of different distances in the same workout.

A few weeks ago I posted an item about a 120-yard run.  Mixed distance shuttles are a great compliment to the 120-yard run workout.

Don’t try this workout if you haven’t been sprinting, running shuttles or doing agility drills, as it is a challenging high-intensity workout.  You have to be able to run at full effort for the duration of the shuttle, not just stroll or trot.  If you don’t run the shuttle at full – okay I’ll cut you a break – or near full effort, you won’t be getting the most out of the workout.  Now, I am prone to a bit of exaggeration and over-emphasize certain elements to get my point across, but it really is for your own good. I will admit that you can get a lot out of this workout if you start working at a substantially-less-than-full effort, but I admit to this only if you promise to progress and push yourself as you the workout gets easier.

Okay, so here’s your basic mixed distance shuttle run workout, 12 shuttles and a 1000-yard total distance.  Remember it’s a shuttle run, so you run the distance up and back to complete one shuttle. I’ve put the total yards run per shuttle in parenthesis for you.

• Run 10 (20y), 20 (40y), 30 (60y), 40 (80y) yards, for a total of 200 yards.
• Run 10 (20y), 15 (30y), 25 (50y), 40 (80y), 60 (120y) for a total of 300 yards.
• Run 70 (140y), 80 (160y) 100 (200y) for a total of 500 yards.

Just as important as working hard, it’s vital that you have proper rest periods in between shuttles.  In the business we call it the “work-to-rest ratio,” and we determine the appropriate rest in response to a given effort.  More precisely, for every second of work¸ there is an appropriate amount of rest.  For beginners trying the mixed distance shuttle run workout for the first time, the work to rest ratio should be as high as 1:8.

For the sports teams and competitive athletes that I work with the ratio can be as low as 1:3.  For regular folks like you and me, completing this workout with a 1:5 work-to-rest is great, providing the work is done at full to near-full effort.  Jogging 20-yards and back in 12 seconds and resting for a minute before continuing doesn’t cut it.

This workout can serve as the starting point for you and you can make up your own shuttle combinations.  Mix the distances up in any way you wish and even use a mixed work-to-rest ratio, as well.  For the shorter shuttle you can use a lower work-to-rest and use a higher ratio for the longer shuttles.  There is no limit to the ways you can used mixed distance shuttle runs to improve your fitness and capability level.

The latest piece of infomercial equipment to hit the airwaves is the Contour Core Sculpting System, which is nothing but a $200 dollar vibrating belt that makes use of the same old Electro Muscle Stimulation (EMS) technology that your parents wasted their money on.

The old saying that, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” is never more accurate than when it’s aimed at the abdominal exercise equipment and nutritional supplement boondoggles.  It’s incredible that in the year 2010 the same old snake oil is being recycled and than that people are actually buying.

My senses were assaulted by the Contour Core Sculpting System commercial during an otherwise enjoyable experience of watching the Auburn University spring football scrimmage this past weekend, and I felt compelled to visit the Contour web site.  I knew what I would find, but I just had to see for myself.  Or perhaps deep down I was hoping that – for a change – one of these products would offer a unique and effective product.

I was wrong.

The Contour Core Sculpting  System web site is your boilerplate infomercial equipment product.  During the commercial the announcer tells us all the great things about this EMS belt; science proves it works, the FDA has approved its sale without a prescription, your core muscles will be more activated than they are during other abdominal exercises, etc.  However, when you go to the site there is no information to back-up any claims made during the commercial.

There are plenty of anecdotal success stories.  Anecdotal success stories are like a certain orifice that we all have…if you don’t know the saying, ask a friend.

The FAQ is a testament to the lack of scruples that exists in this industry.  Terrible nonsense that provides potential with no real answers.  Actually this FAQ should be subtitled, “That are not actually answered.”  Double-speak, double-talk, mis-information, jargon and gobbledygook are all you find in the FAQ for the Contour Core Sculpting System.

If you want to waste your money on this nonsense feel free.  If you are looking for an excuse to not perform any actual exercise in your quest to improve your health and fitness level and want to spend $200, knock yourself out.  Actually if you buy into this garbage you deserve to be taken for 200 bucks.  It doesn’t work, it’s never worked and all the anecdotal stories that you can wrap one of these belts around doesn’t change this reality.

You might think I’m crazy, my neighbors probably think I’m crazy and if you listen to me your neighbors might think you’re crazy.  And you might be crazy if you listen to me, but you will be in better shape.  Try sledgehammer training.

In the effort to get fit you don’t have to rely on traditional methods of training or standard types of fitness equipment.  Dumbbells and barbells are great, as are kettlebells, but there are other non-traditional implements that can be used to improve your overall physical fitness level.

Which brings us to the sledgehammer, as in a large, heavy hammer wielded with both hands.  There’s not much technique involved, but there is the need to exercise caution, so don’t go and swing away at something for 20 minutes the first time you try this kind of training.  You need to acclimatize your body to the overall demands that sledgehammer training will put on your body.

I wish I could say I thought of this program all by my lonesome, but alas it is not true.  For this I give credit to a Mr. Reinhard Engels who has come up with a simplistic yet brilliant approach to the indoor use of the sledgehammer.  He has worked out a simple yet effective total body routine that can be performed indoors in a small area in about 15 minutes, with a 10-pound sledgehammer.

Completing Reinhard’s “Shovelglove” routine is the prerequisite for embarking on a full-fledged, out-doors, bash-the-heck-out-of-a-tree-stump training program.

And here’s a quick note on the concept of “hardcore” as it applies to working out.  Hardcore is a state of mind, in that a person is willing to deviate from convention and use all the tools and knowledge available in order to come up with an interesting, fun and effective way to train.

Hardcore isn’t going to a gym and struggling and straining and making loud noises in order to do curls or leg extensions or the bench press.  Being big or wearing old, ripped, tattered workout clothes don’t make someone hardcore.  If you’re hardcore, you don’t train with belts, wrist wraps or spend most of your time on machines.

Don’t be intimidated by the concept of hardcore, embrace it.

Once you’ve spent a month or two with the “Shovelglove” you can venture outside and seek out an old tree stump, log or railroad tie or score an old tire from a local auto repair shop.

All you need is a 10-pound sledge, safety goggles (to prevent anything you hit from shooting into your eyes) and the willingness to work hard.  This kind of training is great for every part of your body from your fingers to your toes, and especially works on your core.  Core training is all the rage these days and nothing will work your core like 20 minutes swinging a sledgehammer.

The first time you head outside, after you warm up with some “Shovelglove” moves, spend only 10 minutes actually hitting something   You will be generating quite a bit of force so you don’t want to overdo and suffer an injury.  Working on terrain, and not on a level gym floor, will force your body to move in ways that you probably aren’t used to, which is another reason that you don’t want to do too much right off the bat.

Do yourself a favor and take your time, as the best approach is to “sledge” for about 10 minutes at a time three times per week.  From here, you can add time to your sessions until you can go for about 25 minutes at the most.

You will be amazed at how sledgehammer training will improve your physical fitness.  Buy a sledgehammer now.