Good news! We’ve got 5 double passes to give away to Australian readers for the new film on boxer Mike Tyson.

He may not have been the most popular World Champion out there, but in Tyson the former champion looks at his own life in and out of the ring illustrating his determination and focus to succeed.

Here’s a trailer to get the feel for it:

And according to movie review site Rotten Tomatoes, Tyson is being received really well… "A fascinating, emotional, and frank confessional from Iron Mike that sheds a sympathetic light on one of boxing’s most controversial icons."

To win tickets to Tyson (which opens this week in Australia) all you have to do is be a current subscriber to Sports Training Blog and among the first 5 to send your name and address to michael (at) sportsmindskills.com. Good luck!

There’s a lot of people suffering colds or flu here in the (now) cold southern hemisphere. In Australia, authorities reckon the swine flu has become unstoppable, with the worst yet to come. The H1N1 virus is worse than a common cold, but is also, of course, over hyped . However, the challenge remains for athletes to decide when to re-start exercise and training after an illness.

A good starting point is to do a self-check on where your symptoms lie. If your cold symptoms are relatively mild and from the neck up, you can probably go for it. If your symptoms extend below the neck and include chest discomfort or deep cough, general aches and pains, and fever, hit the bed instead of the treadmill.

When you do feel well enough to do something and it’s cold outside, begin with some light indoor exercise, such as a walk or light run on a treadmill at the gym, sipping regularly from your water bottle (a sports drink can help protect your immune system ). You don’t want the cold air outside to dry and irritate your throat. Nor do you want to do heavy exercise that will deplete your immune system.

Scientists have boldly and deliberately infected people with rhinovirus (which causes the common cold) to test the effect of moderate and maximal exercise on the severity and duration of the illness. This study reported that moderate exercise training during a rhinovirus-caused upper respiratory illness (URI)… does not alter the severity and duration of the illness.

And this study concluded that physiological responses to pulmonary function testing… and maximal exercise do not appear to be altered by an URI.

So if you get a common cold, take a day or two off to start with. Then re-start training slowly and gradually build up a little each day, deciding how much to do depending on how you feel each day. A good objective measure of your health can be obtained by checking your resting heart rate each morning. If it’s 10 bpm above normal, your body is really buggered and you need a day off. If it’s 5 bpm up, it may be ok and you should review your other symptoms to decide whether to train or not.

Training with a cold will make the training feel harder, so continue to limit the duration and intensity until back to full health.

However, if you have the flu and symptoms are more serious - like heavy chest discomfort, achy muscles, chills, fatigue, etc. - you need to be even more sedate with your return to exercise. Make sure you get plenty of sleep, your nutrition is good and your resting heart rate is barely elevated above normal before re-starting moderate or heavy exercise.

This post is based on an interesting article and the comments it attracted in International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching published 2009*.

Basically, a couple of investigators from Finland (Yuri Hanin and Muza Hanina) wrote an article called Optimization of Performance in Top-Level Athletes: An Action-Focused Coping Approach. Then, a number of other University-types from around the world each wrote short articles commenting on and critiquing the authors’ ideas (in fact, they mostly criticized it).

The Finish guys proposed that it’s best for elite athletes to learn the intricacies of performing the skills of their sport. That is, to increase their self-awareness of how each part of their body moves when they play their sport. Such knowledge could be gained from, for example, in depth video analysis.

On the surface, this sounds reasonable.

However, the other guys disagreed for a couple of reasons. Mainly, because athletes can know too much about their movements.

It is important that coaches are mindful that increasing an athlete’s awareness in practice and in competition is a double-edged sword; the athlete who becomes more inclined under pressure to intervene with conscious control becomes more likely to suffer from deautomatized movements. That is, they try to control every little action.

Top-level athletes ordinarily perform with very little awareness of their movements, but can become increasingly aware of their movements when anxious to perform well.

The most effective approach may therefore be to discourage or limit the build up of movement knowledge during practice so that athletes are less able to consciously control every little movement.

This will help to prevent the breakdown of skill under pressure (ie, ‘choking’) due to self-focused attention.

Athletes should direct attention to the movement outcome rather than internal movement components, allowing the body to more naturally self-organize, and place fewer demands on attention, which leaves the athlete free to attend to important task-relevant information.

In short, fine tuning a movement pattern to address a mismatch between what feels right and what is right is a common challenge for elite athletes and their coaches. However, it makes little sense for athletes to consciously control the exact position of each body segment during practice. Instead, focus on the goal of the movement.

Every sport, skill and athlete are different - so what do you think? Does the above apply to you?

For more on Skill Acquisition, see posts under Sports Psychology

*International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching (Vol. 4, No.1, 2009)

Compression pants, socks and tops are increasingly being worn by professional athletes. Here’s our review of the what, why and which of compression garments.

Scientific studies with athletes have shown that compression garments may:

• Reduce blood lactate concentration during maximal exercise bouts and enhance lactate removal and subsequent exercise performance
• Enhance warm-up via increased skin temperature
• Reduce muscle oscillation upon ground contact (especially valuable in sprinting and jumping sports)
• Increase torque generated about joints and reduce risk of injury
• Reduce effects of delayed onset muscle soreness in the days following strenuous exercise
• Increase feelings of positive leg sensations both during and following strenuous exercise.

While a couple of studies have reported no benefit to wearing compression garments, no studies have reported negative effects on performance or perceptions of pain.

Compression Garments Have Been Squeezing People for Ages

Medical compression stockings have been used in the treatment of poor venous blood flow for more than 50 years. These stockings are usually worn over the leg and foot and create a controlled, gradient compressive force on the leg. The compressive force is greatest at the ankle and diminishes over the length of the stocking to a minimum at the top.

Therefore, compression works by squeezing de-oxygenated blood back up towards the heart a bit quicker than normal and limit fluid pooling in the limbs.

The compressive effects of these garments are used to improve recovery in hospitals by promoting venous blood flow, decreasing blood pooling and preventing thrombosis in post-operative patients.

When you have to sit still, such as on a long haul flight, the lower legs and ankles swell with fluid as the body is without the natural movement and ‘muscle pump’ which helps circulate fluid back to the heart. Compression garments can also help the traveling athlete to reduce blood pooling in the legs when seated for long periods.

Which Compression Brand to Buy?

Compression suits are relatively new and there are a variety of brands out there offering various quality products. To be effective, you need a garment that provides the right amount of graduated pressure to promote venous return.

Not all sports compression products are alike – they differ in the technology in the cut and design of the suit as well as the type of material (usually a mix of nylon and lycra). Good brands have a detailed sizing chart on the back of the box to help you get the correct fit.

You should expect that the suit will gradually stretch and may cease to provide enough compression within 3-4 months of regular use. It’s suggested you machine wash them in cold water inside a mesh wash bag, so they don’t get tangled and stretched around the agitator or other clothes.

Currently, the 2XU brand offers a high quality product. (I have no affiliation with them at all!). They have an exclusive circular knit which enhances the durability of the garments’ compression properties. This is pretty important given that sports wear tends to get treated badly. 2XU suits do cost a bit more, but the fabric technology should make sure they are effective for longer.

I’ve been training with a pair of 2XU’s elite compression tights for the past few weeks. When you first put them on you can really notice that the lower down in the suit, the more compression there is.

As far as use goes, they feel especially useful during dynamic, explosive and eccentric exercise – as in sprinting, changing direction quickly, downhill and cross-country running. I think the tights would also make a lot of sense for multi-sport endurance events where you run, cycle, kayak etc, all day.

When to use Compression Garments

The key times to wear compression garments, in order of effectiveness, include:

• During long-haul flights in economy and long drives
• During training and competition (but not in hot conditions)
• Immediately after training (even sleeping in them)

Naturally, if you haven’t been exercising or traveling, the compression isn’t likely to do much for you!

Should you wear them while competing? It depends on your sport and your preference – try first in training and see.

With respect to travel, the scientist at the Australian Institute of Sport recommend going with a medical grade compression sock. These offer greater compression than a regular compression suit and stretch from the ankle to just below the knee. If you have a pair of compression tights as well, this means they will still be clean and ready for the first training session when you hit the ground again. Also, the long tights can be a little too constrictive behind the knee when seated for long.

I got a pair of Venosan socks and have worn them on a couple of long-haul flights (8-13 hours) in economy class to test them out (what dedication!). (To be really scientific I probably should have worn them on one leg and not the other, but I think that would have gotten annoying!). Anyway, subjectively my ankles showed almost no signs of swelling – normally they look far bigger after sitting for so long. The socks felt tight – I could definitely always feel them there – but as long as the fabric was smooth with no creases they were comfortable.

Note that if you’re flying in business or first class (lucky you!) you’ve got the opportunity to lie down and have more space to move around in your seat, so venous pooling of blood is less of a problem compared with cattle class.

The Skins brand is also popular and they have done a great job with marketing and penetration of their large range of products. A recent study in the Australian Medical Journal found that wearing Skins improves circulation in-flight while decreasing leg pain and increasing energy and alertness.

Which Suit – Pants, Tops or Shorts?

If you’re in a predominantly upper-body sport, get a top; lower-body athletes, get the pants. The pants make most sense for athletes who want to use them for traveling. Otherwise, get both!

While a few companies have also produced a compression short, these don’t make a lot of sense for enhancing venous return as the shorts only compress the upper part of the legs, rather than where it might be needed most, down at the calves. Same for the tank top. However, these items may assist warm-up and reduce muscle soreness.

Remember, compression garments are another tool for the serious athlete. If you train every day and are more or less on top of core training principles like specificity, sports nutrition and recovery then you’ll probably benefit from investing in a compression garment. Get the major things right first, then consider minor add-ons like compression.

How do you reverse a slump?

I’ve recently started coaching a guy who was a double world champion going into the last Olympics but bombed badly in Beijing.

We’ve just been to a competition in France and he’s bombed again - in conditions similar to China. Admittedly, he hadn’t had a lot of preparation coming into this competition as it’s early in the European season - but neither had a lot of the other top athletes. Also, his equipment was a bit below standards due to unforeseen circumstances, but it wasn’t so bad to cause a world champion to finish half way down the score board.

No, the truth is, the monkey is still on his back.

From time to time, top athletes, for whatever reason, can encounter a string of well below par results and this tends to dent their confidence after a while. The result is a frustrated and exasperated athlete.

Low confidence can eat away at the decision making process. Decisions that used to seem easy and obvious are now thought about more, analyzed and anguished twice over. The extra analysis is meant to produce a better result and when it doesn’t, confidence is hit again.

If the athlete starts to think more about results and begins to fear loosing, then attention is diverted from normal thoughts concerning skill execution and game play that served the athlete so well in the past.

So, how do you remove the monkey?

Well, monkeys have quite a good grip - that’s how they climb trees so well! They won’t be shaken off easily.

(Forgive me for continuing the monkey analogy even further)… The trick is to distract the monkey by filling your mind with what matters to performing well in your sport – focus on the process. The monkey will eventually get distracted and jump on someone else’s back!

In practice, your skills never actually leave you after a string a bad results. What leaves you is the focus that allows you to execute the skills of your sport as efficiently and accurately as you have trained yourself to. So a key to reversing a slump is to go back to building your skills as solidly as possible.

In times of stress the body naturally wants to go back to the behavior it knows best. Train yourself well and a skillful performance will be the behavior your body always wants to replicate.

Ever since the heroic fable had the slow but steady tortoise beat the hare, the idea that good pacing is critical to athletic performance has been appreciated.

A key objective in most endurance sports is to ensure that energy output is spread as best as possible during a race and is maximal at the end so that you finish as fast as possible.

Best pace strategy involves the perceptive process of proportioning energy use such that you are never working at too high a level, so as to tire quickly, or at too low a level so as to not reach your potential.

It is often difficult for an endurance athlete to judge accurately the pace at which he or she should work to spend the available energy in such a way that the body’s resources are almost exhausted as he or she crosses the finish line.

The inexperienced athlete may overextend him or herself too early or hold back too much. Going to hard too early and depleting energy reserves or failure to push the body to its limit will result if the individual’s perceptions of how hard they can race are consistently inaccurate.

The decision to increase or reduce effort during competitive endurance exercise has a lot to do with athletes’ pacing ability. Therefore, pacing is a function of athletes’ psychophysical perceptions of their ability to maintain a level of effort for an extended period of time.

Elite Athletes’ Race Pacing Strategy

Research has indicated that elite endurance athletes appear to set a race pace which closely approximates the level of exercise at which lactate begins to accumulate in the blood.  This pace is set from the athletes’ perceptions of their physiological state as they exercise and possibly also from visual or auditory cues from the immediate environment.

Apparently, elite athletes attend to various discrete physiological symptoms as well as general body feelings, both local and central in origin and then develop an overall subjective feeling of fatigue.

Experience with exercising at different paces is probably the best way to enhance your understanding of what cues you need to pay attention to accurately perceive your level of exertion and achieve an effective race pace.

Research on Pacing Strategy

Relatively evenly paced time trials in Olympic cycling and ice skating competition where the starting half lasts 51% of final time have been found to produce the fastest times.

In Olympic distance running competitions, the pacing graph shows the athletes tend to start relatively slower and accelerate during the final stages of more prolonged events (e.g., 1500 - 10,000 m), even though the starting half is also around 51% of the final time.

In running, a reduction in effort would be expected to lead to a large deceleration because of large drag forces associated with overland ambulation (ie, running!).

Conversely, the relatively small frictional losses to the road in cycling would cause only a moderate slow down if power output were reduced.

The cyclist may be better off expending relatively more energy accelerating and then ‘coast’ to the finish while the runner may do best by maintaining a manageable oxygen debt before sprinting to the finish.

Therefore, the inherent physical nature of cycling versus running - not to mention race tactics and drafting - may partly dictate the best pacing strategy at a physiological level.  Nonetheless, there remains a conscious decision by the runners to start slower and finish quickly.  Consequently, the basis on which a runner makes the decision to change pace during a race is important to ensure that the pacing strategy is optimal.

Although the athletes’ thoughts in these international level races are unknown, it’s believed that athletes generally learn optimal pacing strategies in training to minimize muscle lactate accumulation or at least the disturbance of pH associated with muscle lactate accumulation.

With extensive practice athletes probably learn to sense low levels of muscle pH (from lactic acid build up) and adjust their pace so that they ideally reach critically low values of pH near the end of a race.  This agrees with the point made earlier that elite endurance athletes appear to set a race pace which closely approximates the level of exercise at which lactate begins to accumulate in the plasma

Race Strategy

In a study considering pacing and thought styles, Silva and Appelbaum (1989) studied contestants in a U.S. Olympic marathon trial via a questionnaire asking about cognitive strategy use during the race.  It was found that a characteristic mental strategy of elite marathon runners in the early part of a race was to ‘mark’ other runners to use them as an indication of pace.

Also, runners finishing 51st or beyond in the marathon tended to adopt a dissociative mental strategy early in the race and maintained this strategy over the majority of the course. On the other hand, top 50 finishers used association (tuning into bodily signals) more regularly over the whole marathon.

The authors suggested that the lack of attention by lower placed finishers to energy expenditure level would cause ineffective pacing.  No physiological data were available to support this conclusion, however and no indication of subjects’ relative performance was given (e.g., personal best times).

In support of Silva and Appelbaum’s (1989) study, Schomer (1987) concluded that an associative mental strategy is better than a dissociative focus for pacing in training since the athlete is constantly tuned-in to his or her current level of exertion.  Indeed, terms such as ‘effort sense’ and ‘rating of perceived exertion’ imply thoughts about what is occurring within the body during heavy exercise.  Thus, it’s most likely that race pacing is optimal under associative thinking and perception.

In a recent review of research to date, Abbiss and Laursen (2008) concluded that during very short duration events (<30 sec) athletes will benfit from an explosive ‘all-out’ pacing strategy. During middle-distance events (1.5-2 mins) athletes tend to adopt a ‘positive’ pacing strategy, whereby after peak speed is reached, the athlete progressively slows.

However, during more prolonged events (>2 mins) it seems that athletes tend to adopt a more ‘even’ or varied pacing strategy based on the environment or hills. During ultra-endurance events (>4 hrs) evidence also suggests that athletes progressively reduce speed as fatigue builds. During such events, nutrition strategies become even more important.

edit: Also worth a read is Ross Tucker’s excellent series of blogs based on his PhD research on pacing and fatigue . Tucker studied under running science legend Tim Noakes .

Just as important as what you eat is when you eat - the timing of the intake of key nutrients helps to convert your hard effort in the gym or on the field into a fitter and stronger you.

For instance, a protein-rich mini-meal before a strength training session will provide the building blocks for protein synthesis, while carbohydrate consumed at this time can provide fuel for the session.

After training, the intake of protein and carbohydrates will enhance the recovery processes of refueling, repair and adaptation. However, you do need to train yourself into effectively timing your nutrient intake and plan ahead for when good food is hard to find.

Why is Timing Food Intake so Important?

Resistance exercise leads to overall muscle tissue breakdown. Just after a strength session, the body is actively seeking protein to re-build muscles. A pre-exercise protein snack will mean that protein will already be digested and available to the body’s cells at the end of the session. Post-exercise, consume some more protein, plus carbohydrates to continue the repair and rebuild process.

Endurance training depletes the body’s stores of glycogen (stored carbohydrate). In the first 30 min after exercise the body is starving for carbohydrates and is biochemically more active in storing available carbohydrate. During this post-exercise window, it’s important to give the body the carbohydrates it craves.

Pre-Exercise Nutrition

Allow 1-2 hours between finishing a meal and a beginning a training session. Personally, I like a 2 hour window, but you can get away with shorter periods if the food is more easily digestible (eg, a low-fat & liquid). The aim is to have the stomach empty of food when you start training or competing. Having food in the stomach draws in blood to aid digestion. During exercise that means less blood for the muscles and lower potential performance.

Some athletes may be wary of eating carbohydrates in the hour before exercise for fear of this leading to a rapid drop in blood sugar at the start of exercise, which could impair performance. While this was once a prevalent theory, more recent research and reviews have shown no negatives for performance. However, every athlete should experiment with the timing of carbohydrate intake pre-exercise to determine how it affects them.

Choose a quick and easy snack before early morning workouts. A liquid meal supplement, such as PowerBar ProteinPlus Powder Drink, is a convenient and readily digested source of protein and carbohydrate. Where there is no time, or you are unable to tolerate a meal or snack before a hard morning session, fuel the workout by drinking a sports drink during the session.

Post-Exercise Nutrition

The body starts to replace its depleted energy stores and repair microscopic damage to muscle fiber straight away after exercise. Therefore, provision of depleted nutrients post-exercise will accelerate recovery.

Scientists studying the role of carbohydrate in exercise say that eating carbohydrates starting from 15 to 30 minutes after exercise, followed by additional carbohydrate feedings, will optimize muscle glycogen replacement.

A delay of a few hours in the ingestion of carbohydrates post-exercise will slow the rate at which the body stores glycogen. For the casual athlete, pack some fruit, fruit juice, or a fluid replacement beverage for a post-workout snack. Then, consume a mixed high carbohydrate and protein meal (such as rice with grilled chicken and vegetables) shortly thereafter.

For the heavily training endurance athlete, consume a post-exercise meal with a good source of protein and 100 grams of carbohydrate, followed by an additional carbohydrate feeding about two hours later.

I’d always have a packet of lollies/candies in the glove box of my car to eat on the way home after training. The high Glyemic Index of these sugary sweets gets the energy in fast.

Effective eating after a strength training session has slightly different needs - kick-start the recovery processes by consuming 10–20g of protein and 1gm of carbohydrate per kilogram body mass. If it is not convenient to have a meal soon after the session, start with a snack that can provide these nutrients, and resume normal meal patterns later.

After a gym session, I’d buy a little packet of beef jerky and a flavoured milk drink and consume them on the way home. The jerky is very high in protein while the milk provides fluid, carbohydrates and protein.

For more on this topic you might be interested in the book Nutrient Timing: The Future of Sports Nutrition . I haven’t read it yet, but am keen to as it rates 4.5 stars on Amazon.