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The Rising Trend of Extreme Workout Routines
While the media is most concerned with inactivity, it seems that there is another alarming trend – extreme workout routines among recreational athletes. These recreational athletes push themselves too hard. They often weight-lift with no rest between sets and no days off. They also compete in very dangerous races. If you’re trying to find a safer, sustainable approach, the best starting point is often building personal exercise habits for life.
Case Study: Extreme Races and Their Perils
For example, one extreme race waiver contained the phrase “There are sections of the trail that travel along cliffs. If you’re not careful, you could fall to your death. Very few runners go the distance without taking one painful spill. Most runners take lots of them.” Needless to say, the participant in this race found the trail “so arduous and dangerous that she never did it again.”
Every athlete knows that it is important to push yourself. Work out enough that you may not fully recover between sessions. Even so, it’s worth remembering that consistency matters more than extremes—sometimes 30 minutes a day can have an outsized impact on your entire life.
To point out, in late January, 13 Iowa football players were hospitalized with rhabdomyolysis. This ailment is often caused by intense physical exertion that releases muscle fibers into the bloodstream and can cause kidney damage.
Preventing Overtraining and Injury
Below are some points to ensure your workouts are not too “extreme,” which can result in harm to your body. However, it is quite difficult because training programs vary so much from one individual to the next.
- Be sure to give yourself recovery time between weight sessions (this means between the actual weight reps as well as between weight training sessions) and heavy cardiovascular workouts.
- If you feel super tired between sessions, you are probably over-training, so you will need to take a day or two off. Eventually, the over-tiredness can turn into depression.
- Keep a diary detailing your training regime and how you feel after a workout. This will allow you to be better in tune with your emotions.
- If you are training towards a goal (i.e., a marathon), it’s perhaps better to work out with a coach rather than a friend. A coach will know what is appropriate and safe for your body, whereas a friend may push you too hard or not enough. Of course, if your friend happens to also be a former athlete in the area of your athletic pursuits, I guess you’re set! For more information on the benefits of working out with a coach, visit the article Do I Need a Fitness Coach?.
Also Read
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Stop Hitting the Snooze Button
Sports Injuries – The 4 Usual Suspects
Building Personal Exercise Habits for Life
Should Sugar be Regulated?
A new report suggests that sugar is as toxic as alcohol, and it concludes that new limitations need to be placed on this substance. The report was conducted by Dr. Robert Lustig, a noted childhood obesity expert from the University of California, and two colleagues who specialize in health policy. It states that sugar is the culprit behind many diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. As policymakers weigh what sensible guardrails might look like, it’s worth considering the case for a more focused approach, similar to the case for targeted regulation.
A little Bit Will Do You
A little sugar is fine; however, a lot kills slowly. In a world where soda pop is often cheaper than water or milk, perhaps placing regulations on sugar is the answer. While Canada and some other countries have imposed a small tax on some sweetened food, it would take a big price hike to impact consumption. In fact, statistical modeling implies that prices would have to double to significantly reduce soda consumption. Regulatory options suggested by the researchers include: limiting the sale of sugary products during school operation hours or designating an age limit (such as 17) for the purchase of drinks. Any such rules would likely be more effective with clear disclosure and accountability principles echoed in A framework for AI development transparency.
The Sugar Epidemic
Obesity is now a bigger problem than malnutrition in the world. In 2010, no state within the United States had an obesity rate of less than 20%. While this study brings sugar to the forefront of the obesity crisis, there have been previous regulatory initiatives to address the problem.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 requires menu calorie labeling for restaurants with 20 or more locations (aka restaurant chains). The idea of calorie menu labeling began in New York City in 2008; however, studies have been inconclusive about the effectiveness of the calorie count labeling, and there isn’t a focus on sugar in this initiative. As with any labeling regime, the question becomes how to evaluate whether it’s actually working—an idea that parallels calls for independent assessment in Third-party testing as a key ingredient of AI policy.
Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) was invented in 1989 in London. It is a method devised to extract a cell from a newly created embryo and amplify enough of its DNA to check for mutations. This method allows doctors to implant in a woman’s uterus only those embryos free of the mutation she wished to avoid.
Since the invention of PGD, genetic engineering and In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) has expanded exponentially. This expansion has been marred with controversy, as it raises many ethical issues. Some examples of these ethical issues include: should the couple be able to test the embryo for genes of potential diseases that the child may not even get? Or, if they do have the disease, they won’t be affected by it until adulthood?
Should couples be allowed to test the sex of their embryo? Should the couple be allowed to test the physical characteristics of their embryo, such as hair color, eye color, and height? The only regulation that Canada has on PGD is in regard to sex – Canadians are not allowed to test the sex of their child. And last year, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled against allowing the Federal government the right to regulate assisted reproductive technology.
Even with the one regulation on sex, Canadians, and other internationals, have ways to get around the regulations in their respective countries. For example, Dr. Steinberg, an LA-based genetics doctor, runs an IVF clinic in Guadalajara, Mexico. There, couples bring their embryos for tests that are regulated in their own country. Last year, Steinberg, a papal aide, asked him to “please, just slow down.”
So what are couples typically testing for in PGD? Besides genetic diseases and blindness, couples typically ask about height and intelligence. Couples will go to great lengths to avoid genetic mutations, as demonstrated by one Montreal woman, who was determined to avoid the genetic mutation of webbed feet in her child, a gene carried by her husband. When all ten embryos conceived with her husband contained the mutation, she decided to use sperm from a donor rather than have her child genetically tied to her husband.
Aside from the actual controversy with scanning for certain genes, such as physical characteristics, Jonathon Kimmelman, a genetics doctor, sees a bigger problem – the unrealistic expectations the parents have for their child because of this technology. “Genes are not determinants,” he says; there is a possibility that the parents will go to great lengths to stack the deck in favor of their child genetically, resulting in unrealistic expectations being placed on the child.