Thinking in Systems

Let’s embrace complexity—and work to understand it.

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Some of the posts on this blog will be highly technical; others will be tailored for the beginner athlete and the layman in systems. One of my most deeply held beliefs is that for a western athlete, performance is achieved through knowledge.

Therefore, my mission for this blog is to acquaint the casual athlete with technical concepts in systems thinking, sports psychology, and biomechanics. As I alluded to in this post, the vast majority of us don’t have the necessary upbringing and the cultural surroundings to “simply run.” It must be learned. It is vital that we not only learn the knowledge of how to run, but that we internalize two ideas: firstly, that we must learn to run uninjured and free—that for many of us this freedom will not just “appear”—but also that learning, that is, developing ever greater and more complex knowledge of running, (and not just stronger muscles), is where true speed lies.

After all, the body has limits. There are limits to muscle power, and lung capacity—genetic ones, even. But limits to learning? Not so much. Our brains, and our creativity, are the greatest equalizers. He or she who can rely on pure muscle power born from genetics, go ahead. But for the rest of us mere mortals, well, there are many, many variables that we can manipulate: food, energy, sleep, hormones, love, how our feet strike the trail, the sharpness of our mind, the ferocity with which we speed by a fellow competitor—all these are fair game. The physical, the mental, the emotional, the spiritual.

There are systems aplenty to manipulate, if we want to achieve excellence.

But we must learn how to use these systems. We must step outside of our comfort zone, and allow ourselves to transform by the weight of our knowledge, coupled with the weight of our training. And with enough time, dedication, and attention, we too will become exemplars of speed.

Let’s not be overwhelmed by new knowledge. Let’s not back away, and let’s not stick to the familiar. Let’s embrace the complexity of the body. Let’s become comfortable with it—and get to know it. The body is a system, and as such it is highly sophisticated. But that sophistication is built out of astounding simplicity. The more that we get to know how sophisticated the body is, the more its predictability, and its hidden simplicity, will stand out to us.

But there is no way to that end, except through knowledge.

(And perhaps through meditation—but that’s another story).

Ultimately, the purpose of this blog is to make complex systems and biomechanics concepts amenable to the layman, and to the beginner athlete. But excellence is not achieved through sound bites. Performance is not achieved through inspirational remarks. It takes time, deliberation, and attention.

And most of all, in my opinion, it takes an understanding of, and a comfort with, complexity.

Biomechanic Issues

The beginning of a conversation on stretching

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Here I share a few excerpts from The Big Book of Health and Fitness, by renowned researcher and clinician Phil Maffetone. (The chapter is titled “The hidden dangers of stretching”):

“It’s astounding that such huge numbers of people, young and old, athletes and those out of shape, have bought into the notion that stretching is a good idea. This view is widely held despite little, if any, scientific information demonstrating that static stretching is beneficial for most individuals, especially in the way it’s usually done. As a matter of fact, there’s quite a bit of evidence showing that stretching is harmful.”

“Clinicians who evaluated muscle function in athletes observed one outstanding factor: Stretching a muscle could make it longer, the reason it increases flexibility—and this resulted in a reduction in the muscle’s function due to a loss of power. In other words, stretching caused abnormal inhibition—a neurological name referring to a less-efficient longer moving muscle.”

“Most ligament, joint, and other physical ailments are usually secondary to muscle imbalance, which consists of a tight muscle and a loose one—you usually feel the tight one as tension or pain while its cause is a weak muscle. Treatment of these problems must be directed at the cause—the weakness—not the tightness.”

Stretching is an example of shifting the burden. Answer in the comments if you can figure out why.

Also, I’d like to hear what you have to say about stretching: why do you like it? why do you dislike it?

The conversation about stretching will be a recurring theme here on this blog; settling this issue and continuing on to train in the right way is, in my opinion, one of the most important changes we can make to the “typical” training routine.

AN IMPORTANT CAVEAT: The do’s and don’ts of correct stretching for typical athletes do not apply for the people who need an increased range of motion (RoM), such as dancers, gymnasts and martial artists. That said, the commonly-held ones don’t apply either.

UPDATE: In future posts, I’ll be discussing the issue of stretching in a very detailed manner. There are certain strength exercises that aggressively increase RoM—especially hip RoM—but I’ll get into those once I’ve posted about the biomechanic details of stretching (and of how to develop “real” RoM).

Given the excerpts I shared above, it’s extremely important that we approach stretching from an deeply informed perspective. Actually, it’s not just important. It’s critical that we do so, for the sake of our musculoskeletal system.

Biomechanic Issues, Thinking in Systems

Working with chaotic systems: No easy diagnoses in biomechanics.

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A few days ago I answered a question by R.B. in this post. R.B. was asking what could be done do to solve a tight hip adductor problem on her dominant side.

I answered that there was a local answer (how to make the symptom better), and a global answer (how to address the underlying cause). The local answer had to do with strengthening the opposing muscles (the hip abductors of her dominant-leg). However, the underlying cause must also be addressed in parallel with the symptom, or the problem will only get worse.

As I was describing how to address the local problem, I pointed out very specific exercises that could be used to take care of it (which I still haven’t posted about). But if we are to extrapolate from there to the global problem (a weakness in the non-dominant leg), we can only have hypotheses, and not conclusions, about what the specifics of the problem are. In other words, we cannot be certain at all of the specifics of the global mechanical problem.

The reason for this is that the body behaves partially as a chaotic system. In layman’s terms, chaotic systems are systems which respond very strongly to very tiny changes in the initial conditions. (Double pendulums are a great example of this). The first time that you let a double pendulum go from a static position, it will exhibit a certain behavior (i.e. spin around in a particular sequence). But the second time you let the double pendulum go from the exact same initial position, the series of spins that it will do will be completely different from the first.

The thing is this: that exact same initial position wasn’t really the same one as before; it was almost the same one. Maybe we would have needed a micrometer to measure the difference, but that’s the thing about chaotic systems—they respond in wildly different ways to very similar conditions.

(The butterfly effect is an example of pop-culture knowledge of the behavior of chaotic systems).

Let’s bring this back to R.B.’s question.

Let’s say that I did indeed properly diagnose R.B’s symptom: Tight hip adductors causing knee pain. But suppose that R.B. had experienced a shoulder injury as a child, which caused tendon damage. Because all of the muscles and tendons of the body are mechanically connected and influence one another (since the entire bone structure shifts as if it were a mobile), that shoulder injury matters both to the global tension pattern in the body and to the brain’s calculations of how it is going to solve the mechanical challenge of keeping R.B. balanced on two feet.

That slight addition to the initial conditions (the addition of a supposed shoulder injury) could make for a wildly different compensation pattern. It’s important to know whether or not that’s the case. The only way to become completely certain is to do an analysis in addition to R.B.’s report of the apparent symptoms. (Medicine practitioners will recognize this as a signs and symptoms assessment).

It’s important to note that because of the brain, the the body a more easily predictable system than a double pendulum, because the brain regulates the body’s behavior. No such regulatory apparatus exists for the pendulum; the pendulum is both chaotic and ballistic; its trajectory cannot be altered from within after it is put into motion. (Hence the saying “he went ballistic”).

The problem with diagnosing R.B. is that it’s necessary that I make a very accurate inventory of the initial conditions (the symptoms) before I extrapolate and ask, “given these conditions, how is the body most likely to solve the global problem of maintaining R.B. vertical?” In fact, even that is irresponsible—which is why I only gave R.B. a set of general exercises that address the whole region of the body that will need to get strong in order for the non-dominant leg to take more of the support.

(Remember that the body is only somewhat chaotic; there are regions of the body designed to perform certain functions). Most of the muscular burden for supporting the body goes to the outside and back of the body. This is especially true for the leg and hip: The largest muscles of the body, the quads and the glutes, are located on the back and sides of these bodily regions.

And it’s not just me that knows this—R.B.’s body also does. In other words, I can depend on R.B.’s brain (that regulatory mechanism), to find a mechanical solution for how to keep R.B. on two feet somewhere within that region. So, by strengthening those muscle groups and muscle chains, we can be reasonably certain that the problem will go addressed.

But for those same reasons, I couldn’t give a specific exercise. There’s no way to know, except by taking that knowledge and making an organized (and hands-on) mechanical diagnosis of the region. Only then can we know what specific effects those particular initial conditions turned out to have in this case.

 

 

Uncategorized

The New York Times says: More (polyunsaturated) fats, fewer carbs.

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The New York Times posted an article today about how eating more fats of a particular kind (polyunsaturated fats, from vegetables and fish sources) is beneficial to the body.

(And no, eating fat doesn’t make you get fatter).

This is a great primer for a series of topics that I’ll be discussing at length here:

Why does our body get fatter when we feed it carbs, but less so when we feed it fat (What are the mechanisms and hormones at play)?

Why would the body even work that particular (counterintuitive) way, and not just get fatter if you feed it fat?

Why do dynamic systems respond in such a counterintuitive way?

But most importantly: What are the implications of this for us as runners, athletes, and people?

Understanding this kind of stuff is really worth your while. You put food in your body three times a day, but run (maybe) only one.

That said, what do you think about the article?

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Running in the heat (Part 1)

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Here, I begin to answer a comment from this post, by Liliana Gutierrez Mariscal:

What makes running difficult for me?

Running in the heat

No matter what you do, it will be more difficult to run in the heat than in cool weather. But if you do take the time and trouble to run in the heat, it’ll really be worth your while.

I’ll devote another blog post to a very innovative idea that’s been put forth by a wealth of authors and scientists: the idea that we evolved into what we are now by chasing down four-legged animals in the heat of the african desert, (in other words, that we are desert endurance runners). But let’s not be tricked into thinking that achieving that level of expression will be an easy task.

Suppose we truly did evolve for the purpose of being runners, and more importantly, thanks to that activity. That being the case, we can make the argument that, running in hot weather in particular constitutes a very important part of the physical and physiological (and no doubt cognitive and emotional) expression of a human being.

Perhaps one of our most natural forms of expression (if not the most natural) is to run in the heat.

This argument comes from an evolutionary-systemic point of view. If you use a particular system for the very activity that it was developed to do in the first place (by first making it capable of operating at that level), then that system is very likely to manifest functions (or an efficiency of function) that it can’t express by performing any other activity.

Ultrarunning—the sport of putting the body through an irresponsible amount of miles—may tap into that level of expression. We already know that people sign up to run across the Sahara Desert, Death Valley, or to do back-to-back marathons in the desert summer as is the case with the Comrades Marathon.

But you don’t need to look that far for some idea that running was not created equal to other sports: Answer in the comments if you’d ever heard of a “golfer’s high,” or a “cyclist’s high.” It’s not that these cognitive states don’t happen in those sports. But the associations between running and favorable cognitive states are that much higher. They are so high, in fact (or so I argue), that people still sign up by the hundreds of thousands to run 26.2 miles despite the near-certainty that they will end the day with a significant injury.

Why do we still do it? As Christopher McDougall argues: it’s because we were born for it.

Those are the ultimate reasons for why you should run in the heat.

But I’ll give you a more proximate reason: you can make bigger gains in performance. I’m going to paraphrase a chapter-long argument in Tim Noakes’ book Waterlogged: The Serious Problem of Overhydration in Endurance Sports.

There are two important numbers in this story: 98.6° Fahrenheit and 104° Fahrenheit.

The first number, 98.6°, is of course, our normal core temperature. 104° is the temperature at which the body’s functioning becomes compromised. (This is a severe emergency).

What this means is that there are still, say, 2½ degrees of “give” between normal core temperature and the temperature at which things start getting too close to the danger zone (which starts at around 101º).

Take your typical runner stepping out into 100º heat for the first time: the body feels the heat and decides that no way is it going to let core temperature rise. It’s not accustomed to that environment—and more importantly, it doesn’t have a sweating system powerful enough to bring core temperature down, in case it needs to.

The cooling system of this average runner is fighting the environment heroically, struggling for every single tenth of a degree. That has a huge metabolic cost: the cooling systems go into overdrive, and the runner experiences fatigue in order to force a reduction in activity. Maintaining core temperature at a level that the body is comfortable with has become the most important thing—far more important than athletic performance.

But as that runner continues to train in the heat, the body begins to adapt over time: its sweating mechanism becomes more powerful, its able to more effectively circulate blood from the core to the skin—and furthermore, it knows that it’s still got those 2½ degrees of “give” between normal core temperature and the 101°, where its really beginning to skirt close to the danger zone. The runner experiences incrementally less and less fatigue; running becomes easier and easier.

As sweating system becomes more powerful, the body gives itself a little bit of rope. It’s getting used to that heat, so it lets core temperature rise a tenth of a degree, then another, and another. This isn’t a problem—it’s still in the safe zone.

What’s happening? It no longer has to fight the environment to cool those three-tenths of a degree.

In other words, the body developed a more powerful cooling system, and yet, because it developed that system, it no longer needs to use it that much!

Becoming accustomed to the heat lets you increase your level of performance in two ways: you can keep exercising at a higher core temperature, and with a more powerful sweating system. Suppose you increase your metabolic rate to tax the sweating system (which has now become more powerful) just as much as you used to tax it when you had only just started running in the heat: now you’ll be running at a much greater speed—and none of this has to do with your muscle power.

This brings us back to the argument that I was making earlier: by running in the heat, you can manifest physiological functions (heat tolerance) and psychological functions (lessened fatigue) that can’t be manifested under any other conditions.

The argument I make in this post is very similar to the argument I made in yesterday’s blog post. Just like having stronger muscles makes you a faster and safer runner at the same time, having a stronger sweating system does two things, instead of just one.

All this said, training in the heat means that we’re going to be playing with dangerous forces. Too much heat really will kill us. If we do choose to train that way, let’s do so with humility and care.

This will become a recurring topic. Soon, I’ll post a few exercises and training ideas that we can use to safely develop our heat tolerance. Also, I’ll post about the physiological aspects of the human body, that make us such good heat runners.

Remember, even though running in the heat might be really difficult, in a very deep way, it is what you do. If you gain that ability, you probably won’t regret it.

Happy running!

Thinking in Systems

Ultrarunning and the ideal female body

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I found this very interesting article, titled Beyond the Marathon: (De)Construction of Female Ultrarunning Bodies.

As with most scholarly works, it’s both dense and eloquent. In addition, it brings up several interesting points, including, (but not limited to) the following:

  • In a sport such as ultrarunning, the ideal performance body is often defined by an ideal body shape.
  • The authors, however, also hypothesize that ultrarunning may be more amenable than other sports (and other social situations) to allow women to self-determine, i.e. to create a (more) unique identity.

In other words, this article examines an interface between a biological system (the body), a physical system (the demands of the race) and a social system (the female ideal). 

In a future blog post I’ll discuss this article at length, paying special attention to its findings in relation to the mission of my blog.

But for now, I’m curious to know what you think about the article, or about how the biological-physical system and social systems interact in ultrarunning, running, or the sports culture. In other words:

  • How do you think that social dynamics (and identity politics) influence running, sports, and ultrarunning?
  • How do you think that physical systems of running, ultrarunning, and sports as a whole, influence the emergence of particular social dynamics?

UPDATE: For your convenience, here is the abstract: 

This article examines the ways in which high-performance female ultrarunning bodies are created and understood through the discourses of the normative running body, the ideal female body and pain. Using a Foucauldian framework, this paper shows how the ultrarunning body becomes a desired body beyond the marathon and how these same desires produce multiple and complex subjectivities for female ultrarunners. In-depth interviews were conducted with 8 high performance female ultrarunners. Findings suggest that ultrarunning is a sporting space which gives rise to more diverse subjectivities than previously found in distance running literature. Simultaneously, this discourse produces disciplined bodies through the mode of desire and “unquestioned” social norms, paralleling the constructs of extreme sports and (re)producing middle-classness.

 

 

Biological, psychological, and social systems affect our development of speed, power and endurance. Let's discuss them candidly.