Author: Alex

Posted on

Review of LMNT electrolyte drink

I recently ordered a variety pack of LMNT and tried them out. LMNT tries to provide a sports drink that gives you good electrolyte replacement without any sugar, and they do a pretty good job of accomplishing that.

LMNT electrolyte drink

The order that I liked the flavors, from most to least, was: raspberry salt, orange salt, mango chili, chocolate salt. I did *not* like the lemon habanero. It was way too spicy for a drink that should be cooling you down, but maybe if you like spicy stuff it would be okay. And I found the citrus salt to be basically undrinkable. (They also give you one unflavored packet so that you can mix it with something on your own.)

But the others were all right. I think that LMNT has taken a really good idea (a non-sugar sports drink) and done it with excellent execution on the business side. Shipping was super fast, the packets themselves are slickly designed and sturdy if you want to take some with you on a trip or for outdoor sports. The price is significantly higher than other drinks in this category, but I’m willing to pay extra for a superior product. And I did feel better when I was drinking them vs my regular gym drink.

LMNT electrolyte drink variety pack

The only real issue is the taste. It’s not bad…but it’s not really good either. Of course, the whole point of a drink like this is that you don’t want a lot of sugar, but just having saltiness plus some kind of non-sugar flavoring doesn’t *quite* make it IMO. I would suggest that LMNT add some stevia or other sweetener — not a lot, just a bit — and try for something a little more palatable. It would be the difference between a drink that you know would be good to take with you to the gym and a drink that you really *want* to take with you to the gym.

All that said, if you suffer from any kind of inflammation (like tendonitis, for example…) LMNT could be a great addition to your nutritional strategy. Less sugar means less inflammation and better health, pure and simple. So if you have an issue with inflammation, I recommend that you try one of their variety packs. You only pay for shipping, which even for international orders isn’t much. Here’s a link to their website if you want to get some.

LMNT electrolyte drink variety pack

And the usual disclaimer: I have no financial or other interest in LMNT whatsoever.

Posted on

Creatine for Tendonitis

So there has been a lot of interest lately about taking creatine to help get rid of tendonitis. In this post, I’ll explore what science has to say about the subject.

Or rather, I’d like to explore what science says…but there just isn’t much. I spent about half an hour on PubMed and came up with:

One small study that seems to show some benefit. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5950745/) The study, done on 18 young swimmers, indicated that taking creatine after an overuse tendon injury did have some beneficial effects. Mainly, it helped to lessen muscle loss during both immobilization and rehabilitation. The creatine group also had a faster decrease in pain than the non-creatine group.

It was a little surprising that this was the only study that came up for creatine as it relates to tendon health, because creatine is easily the most studied supplement on earth. Athletes of all kinds have been using it for years, and it’s probably the most widely taken weight training supplement as well. But no one seems to be worried about looking at it for tendon health. Anecdotally, a lot of gym-goers seem to think that it helps with tendon pain. But of course anecdotes aren’t science.

Still, that was it. One study, 18 participants divided into two groups of nine. So while this is a very small study and definitely shouldn’t be taken as gospel, it does seem to indicate that creatine supplementation might help if you have a tendon issue. And since creatine monohydrate is both cheap and widely available, why not try it out if you’re experiencing tendon pain? It can’t hurt, and it might just help.

Posted on

The Hundreds Program

I spend a lot of time talking about how to prevent tendon issues on this blog, but as you get older it’s equally important to prevent joint problems. So in this post, I’m going to tell you about an old program that will give you a great workout while simultaneously giving your joints and tendons a break: The Hundreds Program.

The Hundreds Program, or just “Hundreds” for short, came from the fertile mind of a guy named Jeff Feliciano back in the 1980s. I lived in Southern California at that time, and got to know Jeff personally when I joined a gym where he was a personal trainer. Jeff was a super nice guy who was heavily into learning about bodybuilding techniques and trying to improve training programs. He knew a lot about both nutrition and training, and I made some of the best and fastest progress of my life using his advice.

Jeff contributed to the muscle magazines for a while, but Hundreds was probably the single thing that he was best known for. Unfortunately, as a niche program that could only be used once in a while, Hundreds fell into disuse almost immediately. It’s not something you can do often, and if you’re a young trainee, once you’ve gone through it once, you’ve pretty much gotten all you can out of it. But for older trainees, Hundreds (with a few minor modifications) can be a useful and productive program much more frequently.

THE PROGRAM

So here’s the program, as Jeff originally wrote it and as best I can remember it 30 years after the fact:

1. Pick a very light weight, like about 15% of your 1RM for upper body, and about 25% of your 1RM for lower body.
2. Try to get 100 reps in a row with that weight. Probably you will not be able to do this.
3. Whatever number you fail at, take a ten-second break and then do more reps. Continue until you hit 100.
3. Write down the number of reps that you actually get. (It is essential to keep a training log with this program.)
4. If you get 100 reps in one continuous set, up the weight slightly the next workout. If not, stay at the same weight and try to beat your previous number(s) your next workout.
5. Rinse and repeat.

So here’s a concrete example of Hundreds in action. Let’s say that you want to do Leg Presses. You choose 40kgs as your weight and try to get 100 reps, but you fail at rep #68. Take a ten-second rest, then do more reps. You fail a second time at rep #89. You take another ten-second break and then do the last 11 reps, making 100 in all. In your training log, you would write down Leg Press: 40kgs x 68-89-100. After that, you would put a small circle (like a degree mark) indicating that the weight stays the same for the next workout.

The next workout would be about two to four days later, depending on your recovery ability, and let’s say that this time you use 40kgs and get 79 reps before you fail. After a ten-second break, you then get the last 21 reps, making 100. So you write down 40kgs x 79-100, again with the little circle. Next workout, you fail at 88, so 88-100 and the circle. And the next workout after that, you get a set of 100 straight reps. So you would write down 40kgs x 100 and put an upward arrow indicating that the next workout you want to go up in weight.

In Jeff’s original conception, you were supposed to add 5kgs to leg exercises and about 2.5 kgs to upper-body exercises I think that for most older trainees, this is going to be overly optimistic. Just add a kilo or two and that will be enough to provide a decent progression.

Hundreds is a full-body program, meaning that you work your entire body each time you go to the gym. Given this, it makes sense to choose compound exercises like bench presses and rows rather than isolation movements like barbell curls that only work one muscle at a time. So a typical workout might be:

Leg press
Calf raises
Bench press
Pulldowns

This is going to be the core of your workout. If you want to add some abdominal, forearm or shoulder work on top of that, feel free, but I think it’s going to be hard to get 100 reps for those bodyparts. Personally I just go for about 20 rep sets for shoulders and 40-50 rep sets for crunches and the like.

ADVANTAGES OF THE HUNDREDS PROGRAM

So what are the advantages of The Hundreds Program? First, it will likely be a very different workout from what you’re doing now. Everyone knows that the best workout is the one that you aren’t doing, and hardly anyone is doing Hundreds. So just the shock of a new program will probably give your body a boost.

Second, since you’re forced to use such light weights, Hundreds will give your joints and tendons a rest. Lifting heavy is fun, but as we get older it becomes less and less cost-effective due to the chance of injury. I’m 57 as I write this, and I only go really heavy about once every four to five weeks on any given exercise. I do think that heavy lifting is important for everyone, including older lifters, but you have to work within your capacity. And as we all know, that capacity dwindles with age.

And third, since you are literally doing one set for each exercise, a Hundreds workout doesn’t take that much time to complete.

DISADVANTAGES

Are there any disadvantages to The Hundreds Program? Well, you won’t develop much in the way of high-end strength using this program. It requires a little bit of a different mindset to grind through 100-rep sets than your “normal” weight training workout. And you certainly won’t get any ego satisfaction using baby weights.

One thing to remember: If you try this program, be careful about doing Hundreds on a machine that locks you into a certain “groove”. Something like a cable pulldown machine is fine, but I would avoid Smith Machines and the like. With a free weight or cable, each rep you perform is going to be slightly different. But on a machine that locks you into a certain track, there is so little variation from rep to rep that there is a higher risk of developing a repetitive stress injury. If you do have to use something like a leg press or some machine to bench press on, be sure to vary your foot or hand placement a little from week to week.

So that’s it. I would say that probably most young trainees are going to get as much out of Hundreds as they ever will by using the program for about two months. And once they’ve done it once, they probably won’t be in any hurry to do it again. But for us older folks, doing a month of Hundreds once or twice a year can really result in some good “gains” in the form of fully recovered tendons and joints. And that’s certainly a plus for anyone.

Posted on

Review of EAA Sleep from Primeval Labs

Most of the supplements fall into two categories: ones that don’t work (99% of what’s being sold) and those that do work, but everyone already knows about (like creatine). I’m starting an occasional series about that last 1%: supplements that work but that not everyone knows about (yet).

Today I want to talk about Primeval Labs’ EAA Sleep. Like the name suggests, it’s a supplement that’s designed to help you fall asleep. Unlike most sleep aids, though, this one actually seems to be effective. My wife has trouble falling asleep, and it really helps her. Almost as important is a sort of negative evidence: I normally have no trouble falling asleep whatsoever, and when I take EAA Sleep it actually messes me up a little, and makes it harder.

So something is definitely going on. The knock-you-out ingredients in EAA Sleep are as follows: GABA, L-Theanine, 5-HTP and melatonin. I’m not going to go into all the chemistry here, but I will say that the combination of ingredients, in the proportions used in this supplement, seem to be much more effective than any of the ingredients by themselves. My wife, for example, has tried different dosages of 5-HTP and melatonin (separately) at different times. Neither did much for her. But the four together will knock her out in about 20-30 minutes.

Primeval Labs has included some other stuff as well. Since they are primarily a bodybuilding supplement company, they’ve put a good dose of both branch-chain and essential amino acids in, as well as magnesium. This is to help stimulate muscle recovery and growth, which mainly happens during sleep. I have no idea whether it would also help with tendon repair, but it couldn’t hurt.

One thing, though, is certain. If you have trouble sleeping, any problem with your body, tendons included, is going to take longer to heal. Most people know by now that repair and recovery take place in two places: at the table and in bed. What you eat and your quality and quantity of sleep are going to make a big difference in how quickly you can shake off an injury or get rid of inflammation.

I talk about nutrition in Target Tendonitis, but sleep is something I haven’t addressed until now. This is mainly because sleep issues can be very different from person to person, and what works for one person often has no effect on another. But I’ve recommended EAA Sleep to quite a few people now, and virtually all of them have reported good results. So I feel confident endorsing it. If you want to order some, here’s a link.

Disclaimer: I don’t have sort of financial relationship with Primeval Labs, and I’m not receiving any sort of compensation for this endorsement. I just think that EAA Sleep is a good product.

Posted on

Dieting for tendonitis

I make the point in Target Tendonitis that it’s not the best idea to be on a restrictive diet when you’re trying to rehabilitate a tendon. Ideally, you want a surplus of nutrients available to fix things up, not force your body to choose how to allocate resources between repair projects. Basically, dieting for tendonitis is a bad idea.

I’m not against dieting per se, though. What you eat is supremely important to your health, and various diets are great for accomplishing various goals. It doesn’t all have to be fat loss all the time.

I myself have been dieting (almost fasting) fairly frequently for the past few months. Although I’m definitely carnivorous, I do a five-day long, full-vegan “week” every month and a half or so. During these times, I go down to less than a thousand calories a day, almost totally eliminate protein, throw myself into ketosis, and generally just exist on thin soups and crackers. (You can read about a representative week here if you want.)

Why go through all that trouble? Well, this particular diet accomplishes a number of things. One, you lose a little belly fat each time around…and it tends to stay off. Two, satellite cell production is increased. Nice for us older folks. Three, it’s a break from the regular eating schedule. Four, depending on how you set things up, you can often save money. And five, there’s good evidence that it can increase longevity.

So there are a lot of benefits. But one thing I don’t do during these times is work out with my normal volume and intensity. While I will still generally hit the gym, I only do one or two sets of any given exercise, and I don’t go all-out or anything close to it. I’ll generally use about 85-90% of my normal weight and leave a couple of reps in the hole. These workouts are just to help preserve muscle mass and accelerate fat loss. In other words, I’m using exercise to increase the positive effects of the diet, not build new muscle.

I also don’t try to rehabilitate anything if I have an injury. In fact, if I’m injured and am planning on rehabbing it, I’ll hold off on the diet week until I’m finished.

The bottom line is, your body needs nutrients for both building and repair. The best rehab program in the world will fail if the right building blocks aren’t available. So while I’m pro-diet for a lot of conditions, long-term tendon issues (which are almost always tendonosis, not tendonitis) aren’t among them.

Posted on

Voodoo Floss for Tendonitis

I just want to post a quick update here about using Rogue Voodoo Floss for tendonitis. I may decide to expand this post later, but for now, I’ll just say that it didn’t work for me.

I’ve been lifting weights for over 40 years and still spend a lot of time in the gym. And while I know quite a bit about how to prevent and cure tendon pain, I’m in my upper 50’s and the body simply doesn’t work as well as it used to. So even being careful and with best practices, I still do occasionally get some tendon pain.

Of course I know how to fix it when it does occur. But this time around I wanted to try the Voodoo floss method and see how that worked. Long story short, it didn’t. I had some elbow tendonitis, on the inside (generally knows as Golfer’s Elbow, even though I don’t golf), and figured it would be easy to wrap with a Voodoo Floss band.

So I tried it, keeping the tension around 75%, which is what’s usually recommended, and gave it a couple of weeks. While my arm did feel a little better during the workout after using the band, the tendon pain slowly got worse. This is generally a sign that tendonitis is morphing into tendonosis (a much worse condition), so after two weeks I gave up and went back to the methods I explain in Target Tendonitis. And got better pretty quickly.

Posted on

More effective crunches

Nothing to do with tendons this time, but I wanted to post a quick note about something I just discovered. Want to make your crunches more effective? Here are a couple of tweaks:

1.) If you’re doing the exercise on a bench or other raised platform, position your body so that your head is hanging off the end. This will do two things. One, you can get a better torso extension as you relax your abs, and two, you can work your neck a bit at the same time that you’re training your midsection.

2.) Try vacuuming your stomach while you do the crunches. I tried this a few days ago and was surprised (really surprised) at how much more “burn” I got in my abs versus not doing the vacuum.

If you don’t know how to do a stomach vacuum, basically you let most of your air out and then try to touch your bellybutton to your spine. This activates the transverse abdominis, which is a band of muscle that runs around your midsection, keeping everything tight and in place (and hilariously described as “the Spanx of the abdomen” in one meme I saw). It is the deepest layer of abdominal muscle, and doesn’t get hit by traditional ab exercises. Here is a shot of the great Frank Zane doing a stomach vacuum:

Stomach vacuum for more effective crunches

So there you have it. Give these tips a shot the next time you train abs and feel the difference!

Posted on

Carbon steel: One more entry into the cookware sweepstakes

A little while ago I posted about the various options for non-stick frying pans that people who don’t have lots of money to spend could reasonably purchase. (That post is here if you want to read it.) Although I listed most of the best choices, a chef friend pointed out that I forgot one very important entry: carbon steel.

Carbonized steel is basically like cast iron. It has all the same cooking properties, you have to season it to get the best use and so on, but there is one very important difference: it weighs about thirty-five to forty percent less. If you’re looking for a novel way to strengthen your wrists and forearms, you might want to get the cast iron. But probably most people will opt for carbon steel. It will certainly be less stress on your tendons.

After looking at a few options, I decided to take my friend’s advice and get a carbon steel pan to cook eggs with in the morning. I went to Amazon and after reading the reviews chose a Lodge 12-inch skillet.

I ordered the pan from Amazon and received it within a few days. It was as described, but one thing that surprised me was how rough the surface felt. I couldn’t quite believe that it was going to be non-stick, but what do I know? I seasoned it a couple of times on the stove and then used it to cook my usual morning eggs. I’m happy to say that the pan worked pretty well, and now that I’ve used and seasoned it a few more times, it works great. This really is a piece of cookware that will last a lifetime if you treat it correctly, and now it’s my go-to pan for eggs. It has replaced my ceramic pan for breakfast. I now use the old ceramic pan (which is still good) for stuff other than eggs, especially anything like fried rice that’s going to be really sticky.

In the final analysis, what really what separates carbon steel (or cast iron, for that matter) from all the other low- to medium-priced options out there is durability. Unlike, say, ceramic pans, which have coatings that will eventually start to chip and flake no matter how carefully you care for them, iron and steel will always work. All you have to do is keep them seasoned and they’ll not only perform better as the years go by, they can always be rejuvenated if you somehow mess up and let the finish deteriorate. If it starts to rust, for example, scrubbing with a little salt and olive oil will remove the rust in a natural way. Then just season it again and you’re good to go.

Of course, no solution is perfect. With an iron pan, as I mentioned in the previous post with cast iron, you’re going to get a little more iron in your diet than you would otherwise. Some tiny bits will come off into your food, and you will ingest them. This is not a possibility; it is your unavoidable destiny. And it’s especially true if you use one of those steel wool scrubbers to clean your pan.

Why does this matter? Well, there is something called “over-mineralization”, and it’s actually a thing. Over-mineralization is one theory of aging, and basically it holds that the reason men die earlier than women in any culture is that they tend to accumulate more minerals in their bodies (in particular, iron and calcium) than women do. Why? Because for half their lives or so women bleed regularly, thus ridding their bodies of a large amount of minerals each month. Over-mineralization also offers at least one explanation for why vegetarian diets and calorie restriction both prolong lives: obviously, if you’re eating only plants and/or eating less, you will accumulate fewer minerals than you would otherwise.

So if you do decide to buy either a cast iron or carbon steel pan, and you are either (a) male or (b) female past the age of menopause, it would be a good idea to donate blood every month or two in order to get rid of some of the mineral build-up that will occur otherwise. It would be a good idea anyway, frankly, but especially if you use iron-based cookware.

Posted on

Glucosamine for tendonitis: is it an effective remedy for tendon pain?

“I wrote a short article on glucosamine and tendon pain a little while back, but I’ll just post quickly about the subject here again, because I keep seeing this stuff advertised. Basically, there are websites out there that try to sell you glucosamine for tendonitis. It’s supposed to work well for joints, so I guess that they figure it will work for tendons, too.

The problem is, tendons aren’t joints. Joints are made up of cartilage, which glucosamine helps the body to form, but tendons are made up of collagen. Tendons have blood vessels in them, joints don’t. Joints connect bones to other bones; tendons connect bones to muscles. And so on. Physiologically and mechanically, they’re completely different tissues.

But people get collagen and cartilage confused, because they sound sort of the same. They both have three syllables. They both start with a C and have an L or two in the middle, and a G towards the end there. And unscrupulous marketers take advantage of this unconscious confusion to try to sell you one when it has nothing to do with the other. Most often the stuff they’re trying to sell you is in the form of pills, but sometimes it’ll be a spray or ointment that you’re supposed to apply directly to the skin, or occasionally a powder that you mix into liquid. But it doesn’t matter what the delivery method is, these products won’t do the job.

If you have joint pain, then by all means try glucosamine. There is at least some evidence that it may help, and it certainly won’t hurt you. Furthermore, it’s widely available and pretty cheap. But selling the stuff for tendon pain is nothing more than preying on the gullibility and medical ignorance of the general populace. It’s a rip-off, and any website that lists it for tendonitis, tendonosis or any other form of tendonopathy should be avoided.

Posted on

First things first: you have to know your problem

Even the best method of treatment won’t work for a problem has been misdiagnosed. It’s like taking your car in for a noise coming from under the hood and having the mechanic replace a fan belt. If the problem was the fan belt, great. If not, you’re still going to have that noise.

“Tendonitis” has sadly become such a catch-all that people use it in cases where it doesn’t even exist. Take Nick Bryant, who writes the myrotatorcuffcure blog. Bryant, who seems like a regular guy, apparently tore his rotator cuff (a web of small muscles around the shoulder that helps keep the bone in the right place in its socket) a little while back. After a heck of a lot of pain, he went to see a doctor who told him that he had an impingement. He tried cortisone shots and “physio” (I guess this means physical therapy), but didn’t have much luck, so his doctor recommended surgery. Bryant didn’t want to go that route, so he found a book with some Pilates exercises, did them for a few weeks and got better. Now he’s become such a fan that he has a link to the book on his website.

First of all, congratulations are in order for Bryant, who didn’t just sit around waiting for a surgeon to cut him open needlessly. And it’s great that he found a method to heal himself. But let’s take a little closer look at the circumstances of his problem, because there are a few odd notes along the way.

First of all, a tear isn’t going to heal very quickly no matter what you do. Rest is definitely on the menu, although Pilates might not be. Second, Bryant says that he had an impingement. There are basically two types of impingement: one, the bones have grown so that they impede movement. This sort of impingement isn’t going to respond to anything other than surgery (shaving the bones down so they aren’t in the way as much anymore), and since Bryant says he’s better now, this probably isn’t what he had.

The other type of impingement occurs when the bones are okay, but the surrounding muscles have become imbalanced. The imbalance can be caused either by a lack of flexibility or else by one or another muscle being excessively strong or weak. Whatever the cause, something will be pulled out of alignment, causing it to rub against a bone or joint, which then causes pain. Given that Bryant fixed himself by doing some Pilates stretches and balancing exercises, it’s virtually certain that he had this second sort of impingement.

So what does this have to do with tendonitis? In reality, not much. But Bryant mentions at the bottom of his blog that the exercises in the book are good for relieving “torn rotator cuff, shoulder impingement or tendonitis”. Since the author of the book, Jennifer Adolfs, doesn’t make any claims on her website about the book’s ability to address tendonitis, it kind of makes me wonder where Bryant got the idea that it does. And I’m afraid we probably have to lay the blame at the feet of his doctor. Why would a physician give “steroid injections” to someone with a torn cuff or impingement? Sure, one might help with the initial inflammation a bit, but note the plural. The doctor gave multiple injections, which is one of the commonly accepted treatments for tendonitis. (Cortico-steroid injections certainly aren’t going to make the impinging bone shrink back to acceptable dimensions.)

Once again, we have a situation where any shoulder problem suddenly becomes “tendonitis”. If your doctor has told you that you have tendonitis but you haven’t been getting better with the usual regimen of NSAIDs, rest, ice and so on, you most likely do NOT have tendonitis. Your condition might be an impingement that can be cured by stretching and re-balancing the relevant muscles, like Bryant did. Or it might be tendonosis, which will require a very different approach. Whatever the case may be, the first thing to do is understand what your condition truly is. If you’ve been told that you have tendonitis but think that you might have been misdiagnosed, I have posted a self-diagnosis tool that will quickly allow you to see for yourself.