Eye health, sunlight and computer screens

Gizmodo (see below) has posted the article which links to research coming out of Australian's university QUT (Queensland University of Technology. They're finding that greater exposure to sunlight (at least an hour) prevents a heightened risk factor for myopia, and progression in those already with it.

Of course, too much sun has it's dangers, but I think the benefits exposure to sunlight has are becoming severely under appreciated. The benefits range from assisting with sleep cycles to being the absolute best source of Vitamin D which is crucial for building strong bones, stabilising sufficient energy levels, mood and perhaps ironically, healthy skin and cancer prevention.

Inspiration http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/04/australian-scientists-discover-lack-of-sunlight-not-computer-screens-causes-eyesight-problems/

#primalblueprint #health #nutrition #fitness

Multitasking is overrated and unproductive

Has anyone else noticed how common it is for people to profess they're great multitaskers? Even more interesting is how people define multitasking. It's almost become a part of popular culture to describe performing multiple work tasks, while watching TV, and keeping up to date with both social and news media is not only multitasking but a way to improve productivity. I beg to differ.

This form of multitasking is more like "rapid task switching" and verifies a misconception of what it means to perform and manage multiple jobs simultaneously in a productive manner. Direct attention and care can really only be adequately focused on one thing at a time. As more thoughts or questions occupy the brain, all of them lose depth. We may be writing an email while watching a movie, and on the surface it may seem like these are both getting done at the same time. Further still, we may convince ourselves that the movie prevents idle nothingness and meandering thoughts, but really this is a fool's game. Odds are the writing is interrupted by background noise and random thoughts while your movie watching is requiring multiple rewinds.

This is exactly what it means to be unproductive. Nothing you're doing is being done effectively, or efficiently.

Focusing on single tasks as the absolutely priority, with any other task or input being in clear support of the main goal, is therefore how to really be productive. I often find my mind wanders if I try to write or read in silence,or accompanied only by the sounds of my surroundings (others talking, music, cars, birds, etc). So for me, it is important to control my work station, and music helps with that, but I opt for jazz, melodic electronic play lists or classical. Sounds that occupy space mentally, but don't warrant any focused attention since there's no lyrics, the songs or artists are unfamiliar, and don't inspire any great emotional response.

There's no competition between what's most important nor is there any for my focused attention. 

Inspiration: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/how-to-get-organized-and-stay-focused-in-a-modern-world/#axzz450sLzKJH

The most important truths about paleo

There’s an increasing level of attention given to paleo-driven lifestyles these days. For various reasons, as health research pours in and medical spendng balloons, the realities that the decades old condemnation of fat and meat, and the promotion of carb-rich grains are slowly, but surely growing in prominence. Paleo works and the evidence support it. That being said, there are many incredibly strong misunderstandings about what the pursuit of a paleo, primal, evolutionist or ancestral health driven lifestyle means and all of these misunderstandings confuses the case and deters people from understanding the real fundamentals of long-term health. Here are the most important truths about paleo living.

Paleo isn’t about weight-loss

Unlike most nutrition plans paleo is more of a lifestyle approach to stable long-term health rather than a means to losing weight. Sure, the pursuit of one will often lead to the other, meaning if you can lose weight you’re more likely to be healthier, but the priority isn’t on weight-loss, it’s with long-term health. This is a key distinction. If you approach you’ve just set a New Year’s resolution, or pursuing a long historical goal of improving your health, then of course, “losing weight” is a logical first step. This is reflected in the advertising of most programs whether they’re nutrition plans, books, gyms or personal trainers. Losing weight is almost always the first bullet point.

There isn’t anything inherently wrong with this, however this mindset does pose problems. Very simply, losing weight is short term and really, isn’t an absolute indicator of improved health. Paleo style ideologies such as the Primal Blueprint aligns closely with the long-term aspect of optimal health. Start eating the right foods, getting adequate sleep and finding the most effective ways to use physical activity to enhance your health, and your ideals will be met - whether that’s losing weight, gaining muscle, improving moods, enhancing energy and everything else around good health.

If dropping kilos is definitely on the agenda, paleo fundamentals can be geared toward this, but the key is still doing so in a long-term oriented health manner. Rapidly shedding 10 kg in a 6 week challenge, loving the results and positive attention, but hating every minute of the process, doesn’t say much for the sustainability of that path. If it’s a struggle to find the time, you don’t enjoy the food you’re eating, or are hungry and exhausted all the time, there’s a good chance that eventually, you’ll crash.

“Living like a caveman” is an over exaggeration

One of the most common sentiments attached to paleo is the metaphor of the caveman. Cavemen didn’t eat processed foods; cavemen ate fresh and local food; cavemen walked everywhere. Truth be told, “the caveman” does serve as a core symbolic figure of most paleo principles I’ve studied, including the Primal Blueprint which has gone as far as developing a distinguished mascot named “Grok”. That being said, using half-baked and oversimplified reasoning like “live like a caveman” should still be taken in consideration of the real world.

Cavemen didn’t see doctors, perform surgeries, drive cars, have electricity, stoves, computers or the internet. Cavemen also didn’t utilise vaccines or have to abide by 40-70 hour work weeks of various degrees of monotonous structure. If “would cavemen do this?” is your lead criteria for the decisions you make, odds are, you’re missing out on a lot of what the modern world, evolution and incredible human ingenuity has to offer - whether it’s relatively trivial like YouTube, or incredibly vital to health and wellbeing of all levels like vaccinating your children.

While most that follow paleo or primal principles are aware of this, criticisms usually target the oversimplified metaphor. Throwing out core ideals of a healthy diet,  such as estbalishing colourful vegetables as the foundation, because “well, cavemen died of diseases way more so it’s all bogus” is entirely ridiculous.

Reducing carbs isn’t the absolute goal

The reality that carbs should be limited is not the same as saying they need to cut out altogether.  Instead, carbs should be controlled, and the idea of them -- even complex carbohydrates in rice, whole grains and the like -- being healthy should be broken. This does not mean that “the fewer carbs the better”, but instead, that there is a threshold which should not be breached. Below is the Primal Blueprint’s carbohydrate curve. For the average person, daily consumption of 100-150 grams of carbohydrates is the zone of “effortless weight management”. In this zone, your body is able to smoothly metabolise carbohydrates without any excess carbs being converted into sugar, spiking insulin levels and producing harmful triglycerides. Creep above this zone and and insidious weight gain kicks in where te cycle of excess carbs and craving excess carbs kick in and the road to bigger bellies, energy roller coasters and food cravings begin. Consumption of under 100 grams of carbs daily is the path to ketosis where the body learns to burn fat for fuel rather than carbs leading to better muscle tone, better brain development and overall improved health.

The most important thing is to remember that this is all dependent on the rest of your lifestyle. This curve aligns pretty closely with how my weight fluctuates. I have comes to love knowing that my weight stays the same even if I feast on roasted chicken, ribs or a wonderful medium-rare steak and all the beautiful vegetables I can handle, but soda and popcorn combo at the movies means I’m a little heavier the next day. Of course, I’m not elite athlete. If I were to return to my running and basketball training days, and even more so if I was competitive, the curve would may need to be adjusted to accommodate the greater demand for fuel.

Meat isn’t the foundation food.

As much as the rhetoric around paleo and primal living professes a long love affair of bacon, the prominence of meat, fish and fowl has been largely overblown. Even though the Primal pyramid has animal products at the base, vegetables are the most important component of healthy eating. For those that are into counting calories, animal products represent the bulk, but in terms of volume of food, or the space on the plate, colourful veggies reign supreme.

Meat fish and fowl are essential for many reasons. Everyone knows protein acts as the building blocks of muscle strength, but it’s lesser known that the fats as well, including the falsely maligned saturated fats provide satiety and the essential slow-burning energy source the body prefers as well as optimises cell and hormone function. There’s no need to steer clear of chicken thighs or cut fat off your steaks - not only is this delicious, but it’s actually best for you.

Paleo is too expensive

We live in a budget driven culture and it is because of this that adjusting to higher initial costs of healthier food of a paleo variety may the most difficult task. Fresh, local, grass fed or free range animal products from a local butcher is likely to be more expensive than highly processed, hormone-fueled products that have been forzen and shipped in bulk across thousands of kilometres before getting to your big box grocery chain. Per net weight, in-season colourful vegetables have a higher price tag than mass produced bread, crackers and pastas. Unfortunately, there isn’t really much of a path around this. The whole reason food is highly processed and injected with harmful ingredients and additives to begin with, is usually to make more for cheaper with growing profits at a higher priority than health or sustainability.

So, while paleo, or primal modifications to one’s nutrition may be more expensive in a vacuum, it’s best again to adjust the mindset. Increased consumption of healthy vegetables, animal products and quality fats provide more satiety meaning less food can be purchased in volume. While pastas, breads, crackers and chips an frozen junk foods are cheaper, they lead to more cravings which in turn lead to more grocery shopping. My parents always used to half-joke that, growing up, the cereal-budget alone was equal to an extra 5 years of early retirement. There is also the reality that in the long-term, a healthier lifestyle means less spending on doctor’s consultations, medication, surgeries and expensive health care bills in the future. When the other option is increasing the likelihood of needs tens of thousands of dollars in medical treatment as we age, a few extra dollars a day is our preferred choice.

There’s an incredible amount of flexibility to paleo

Above all else, the worst misunderstanding surrounding a paleo lifestyle is that it is strict. Yes it is built on fundamentals as all lifestyle approaches are, but inherent in these is a realistic and practical need for adaptability. One thing that is often ignored when the “caveman” metaphor is used is just how big the world in which the caveman, or cavemen lived.

Our ancestry traces back to all sorts of different landscapes, climates and environments - desert, arctic, tropical, prairie, coniferous forest, and everything else literally under the sun. Indigenous tribes in west Africa would have a completely different lifestyle than the peoples traversing northern Europe or South America. Those in arctic environments would’ve had to thrive on fattier animal products from cold water and wouldn’t have much options for colourful vegetables. Aboriginal peoples of the South Pacific would have lived off of more insects, fish and tropical fruits than those in the mediterranean. This is what evolution is. Foods themselves don’t have to be consistent, but the fundamentals are - fresh, local and in-season.

There are plenty of excellent paleo and primal resources that can be found with simple Google searches. I am a personal favourite of MarksDailyApple.com by Primal Blueprint founder Mark Sisson, but if you’re interested for an approach more personal to me, I’ve written a short series on what primal living means in our house here and keep a Google+ collection of our efforts on being healthy forever here.

Tom Brady's Diet: Explained

One of the most daunting tasks to take on when trying to improve your health is mining through all of the information surrounding nutrition. The idea of “eating right” seems simple, but for many, when making deliberate efforts to lose weight, prevent or reduce the onset of illness, and/or improve general health and vitality, working out what exactly is a healthy diet can unfortunately be more confusing that it should be. Many grew up with the USDA Dietary Guidelines so have a default affinity for a balanced diet built heavily on complex carbohydrates, grains and avoiding all fat to stave off heart disease. As common as these principles are - plenty of fruits, rice, cereals, skim milk and margarine, and as little fat as possible - it’s thankfully becoming more heavily publicised that these platforms not only aren’t the way to optimal health, but actually have contributed heavily to the heart, brain and weight epidemics that are plaguing the modern health care across the developed world. Here is an earlier piece I wrote about why these “balanced diet” USDA Guidelines are wrong.

Interestingly, there was a recent bridge formed between health and sporting news in America. Boston.com published an interview with Allen Campbell, the personal chef of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady who is arguably the US’ most successful professional athlete of the last 20 years. For those that don’t follow (American) football, “Tom Terrific” has lead the Patriots to winning 4 NFL Superbowls with the first being in 2002, the most recent being last year, and almost made it to a 5th this year.

His status of a successful, high performing professional athlete may make the insights of his personal chef is of value for obvious reasons -- he’s incredibly fit and healthy. However, the longevity of his career and the fact that he’s maintained a spot at the pinnacle of his field for 14 years and counting in a sport where the average career length for the best players is 11 years, and for average players closer to 6 is especially intriguing. In other words, not only is Tom Brady incredibly fit and healthy, but he’s been able to maintain it and perform at peak levels for much longer than any of his peers. It is this “longevity” approach that deserves more discussion from someone who holds “healthy forever” as his mantra. This is Tom Brady’s diet, explained.

While it would’ve been very interesting to have a detailed menu or meal plan to unpack, Brady’s nutrition was discussed as part of a more holistic interview rather than a concise publication. Here are some of the best quotes from Brady’s personal chef, Allen Campbell courtesy of Boston.com.

What Tom Brady eats

“So, 80 percent of what they eat is vegetables. [I buy] the freshest vegetables. If it’s not organic, I don’t use it. And whole grains: brown rice, quinoa, millet, beans. The other 20 percent is lean meats: grass-fed organic steak, duck every now and then, and chicken. As for fish, I mostly cook wild salmon.

It’s very different than a traditional American diet. But if you just eat sugar and carbs—which a lot of people do—your body is so acidic, and that causes disease. Tom recently outed Frosted Flakes and Coca-Cola on WEEI. I love that he did that. Sugar is the death of people.”

What Tom Brady doesn’t eat

“No white sugar. No white flour. No MSG. I’ll use raw olive oil, but I never cook with olive oil. I only cook with coconut oil. Fats like canola oil turn into trans fats. ... I use Himalayan pink salt as the sodium. I never use iodized salt.

[Tom] doesn’t eat nightshades, because they’re not anti-inflammatory. So no tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, or eggplants. Tomatoes trickle in every now and then, but just maybe once a month. I’m very cautious about tomatoes. They cause inflammation.

What else? No coffee. No caffeine. No fungus. No dairy. The kids eat fruit. Tom, not so much. He will eat bananas in a smoothie. But otherwise, he prefers not to eat fruits.”

The family (Tom and his wife Gisele have 3 kids)

“Yeah, I mean pretty much. Vivi was only nine months when I started, so I gave her first food. And 90 percent of the time they all eat the same thing. I cook for the kids, but Gisele makes Benny’s lunch to take to school. She packs that herself.

Yesterday I made veggie sushi for the kids. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. It’s brown rice, avocado, carrot, and cucumber. The kids like [it] maki-style, so the rice is on the outside. And I do it with a ponzu sauce, which is uzu and tamari. [I use] tamari because we stick to gluten free for everything.

For snacks, I make fruit rolls from bananas, pineapple, and spirulina. Spirulina is an algae. It’s a super fruit. I dehydrate it. I dehydrate a lot of things. I have three dehydrators in their kitchen. I also make raw granola and raw chocolate chip cookies.”

Key takeaways

The rest of the interview touches on preparation for games, shopping habits and example meals, so it’s a definitely a great read with a lot of fantastic insight on how elite athletes are able to nurture their body for optimal health. Again, the rest can be found on Boston.com. While glimpses into others’ lives and what works for them is no doubt, fascinating, it can’t be ignored that Brady is one of the world’s most notable professional athletes and, combined with his supermodel wife, has a lifestyle and means that most of us cannot afford. As a result, it’s best to take a lot of the practices with a grain of salt and instead focus on the principles with which to cater your own habits. These are the basics:

• 80 percent vegetables - freshest possible, all organic
• whole grains: brown rice, quinoa, millet and beans
• lean meats, grass fed steaks, fowl, wild fish
• Very different from traditional american diet - no sugar, limited carbs
• Frosted Flakes and Coke...sugary processed foods are the death of people
• plant-based diet has the power to reverse and prevent disease
• no sugar, white flour or iodized salt
• no oils other than olive and coconut
• no caffeine
• no dairy

Our household aligns quite closely with this. We’re not the type to quantify things, but honest conscious thought has us very confident that out of what we eat, a very strong majority is fresh vegetables. We go organic when we can, but not all the time as our budget, time, and retail options sometimes make it tough to manage comfortably. However, we definitely make sure that fresh, local and colourful veg -- lettuces, carrots, broccoli, peppers, brussel sprouts, spinach, kale, zucchini, and everything else in that section of the market -- goes in and out of our fridge the most. Colour vegetables, especially greens are the most important. No one disputes this.

Meats come in at second priority rather than any grains, whole or otherwise, so this is another deviation from the Brady’s. Adding to this difference is our acceptance of the role of animal fats, including saturated fat in brain health and long-term energy supply. We buy into much of the research supporting healthy animal fat in beef, fowl and fish as an essential component in neurological development and being highly positive influences in preventing or reducing impacts of autism, down syndrome, mood disorders and intellectual impairments in children, as well as staving off dementia, Alzheimer's and the like in elderly. Dr. Perlmutter’s work is a fantastic starting point for learning about the links between nutrition and brain health which historically is far too neglected.

As far as grains are concerned, we follow these same ideals opting for brown rice, quinoa and the like if we really want some grains-based foods, but as a general rule we try to limit carbohydrates in all its forms. Carbohydrates, even complex carbs from whole grains get converted to sugar, spiking insulin levels and any excess carbs that aren’t used as fuel are locked as triglycerides. Triglycerides are the fat cells that your body can’t use for energy and end up crowding intestines, burdening the heart and doing much of the damage. If we were elite athletes, or even just had an affinity for 5-10 workouts hours per week, a steady stream of regularly monitored carbohydrates may be beneficial. For us,  the ketogenic process of burning-fat for energy is easier and produces more palpable benefits.

The differences are noticeably stronger when looking at the “don’t eat” list. I love coffee. I enjoy seeking out varieties of fresh, fairly-traded coffee beans from far off places, thinking about the differences and enjoying the warm and inviting nature of the entire process. Grinding the beans and frothing the milk is my own personal therapy.  Dairy gets a yellow light with us. It’s mostly taken with coffee or as cheese and we only buy fresh, local, full fat jersey milk. For everything else, the sugar, flour and oils, we’re pretty much all-in with. Oliv oils for dressings and cooking with coconut oil or ghee (again saturated fats are essential)

At the end of the day, it’s unreasonable to look at any diet or nutrition plan whether it’s a published work, or someone’s personal program as one to follow 100%. Even though the USDA has recently revised it's Dietary Guidelines, it's still built on faulty conventional wisdom which over emphasises carbohydrates, confuses fas and is not harsh enough on sugar.  

While there are some essentials (mostly colourful vegetables, quality meats and fats, limit carbs, stay away from sugar), everyone’s going to need to approach their nutrition with flexibility and openness. Finances, time, tastes and environment are all real factors in determining a healthy diet that works. When you consider all of these factors, it makes sense why a professional athlete would stock their fridge differently than a public school teacher. Local and fresh foods mean different things in Hawaii as they would New Zealand, or a Canadian winter versus a California summer. Establishing or maintaining a healthy lifestyle for the long term doesn’t mean finding one formula but rather developing an approach or mindset that you can make work not just for a few weeks or months, but forever.

The 4 most important exercises.

There are likely thousands if not millions of various exercise programs out there. As fantastic as it is to have so many options when it comes to exercising and maintaining an active lifestyle, there can be a certain level of apprehension leaving many overwhelmed. Should I look into team sports or a fitness class? What about hiking? Should I buy equipment or sign up for a gym? Should try to link up with others or go it alone? Whether it’s been eons since the last time we deliberately did anything to improve our fitness, or if our current, workout regimen has just gone a bit stale, not knowing where to turn, what to add, what to remove and what to focus on is a common problem many face in the long-term.

At the core of exercise is performing any movement effective in increasing muscle strength, flexibility, agility, balance and all other aspects of a healthy physical body. The functional purpose of movement is my favourite way to simplify the wealth of exercise options out there. Not only does “function” create a practical element to, i.e., “what exercises will help me do the everyday things I need to do?”, but it also allows more muscle groups to be engaged at once, drastically reducing the types of exercises, and most importantly, the time needed. Reducing time is key since it’s well documented that on the whole, exercise is relatively ineffective for health, and while beneficial is not nearly as essential and doesn’t warrant nearly as much attention, to healthy living compared to food.  Primal Blueprint founder Mark Sisson emphasises this approach characterising the most basic movements as fitness plans even cavemen did.

These basic movements are pushups, pullups, planks and squats. As far as strength building goes, these cover the most whole-body, yet functional, natural physiological movements. Lifting heavy boxes, climbing trees, stairs or ladders, moving furniture around, or carrying babies engage all of the same muscle groups and involve similar movements as these four exercises. This is in contrast to other common exercises that are not nearly as practical such as bicep curls which are more about body building and appearance than the strength of a physiologically important movement. Add in sprinting once and a while, and moving frequently at slow paces and you have the entire gamut of essential exercise to base the active aspects of your healthy lifestyle around.

Pushups

Pushups, along with running represent perhaps the simplest and most “default exercise” there is. Everyone knows what pushups are, has tried to do them and has an understanding of their place in physical fitness. Whether they are elite competitive athletes, or people starting to exercise for the first time in decades, their program incorporate pushups, or moves that mimic pushups (i.e., the bench press). Simple as that.

When done properly, pushups engage your arms, chest, shoulders and core (abs and back) making them one of the most efficient and beneficial bodyweight movements there is. One of the other benefits in pushups is in the variety. There are many different forms of pushups allowing the movement to be adjusted for level of ability, pace, range of movement or even environment.

At their purest form, pushups are done lying face down on a flat surface, starting with your hands at shoulder height and just wider than shoulder width. I find that placing my hands at a width at which my forearms perpendicular to the ground when I’m I’m at rest (lying down) is the most comfortable, balanced and strong position. Feet placement can also very. The closer they are together the more difficult they are since wider feet make maintaining balance and a solid core easier, your trunk (abs, bank and hips) are crucial. You want to keep your whole body as rigid as possible. I have known people to place a broomstick on their back while they do pushups to make sure they remain solid. If you’re doing this, your heels or calves, butt, space between your shoulder blades and head should all be in contact with the stick, if not, odds are your trunk is sagging below. WellnessMama has a fantastic simple breakdown of the perfect pushup and many of the ways to modify the exercise depending on level of ability.

Pullups

Despite being a very basic movement in theory, pullups are commonly regarded as one the most challenging exercises there is for many reasons. Your body weight affects your ability to do pullups more than pushups, situps and most other basic movements since unlike those, with pullups, your entire body counts as the weight. With most others, only a fraction of your body is being directly lifted and with squats, your lower body is naturally better equipped and more accustomed to supporting your body, than your upper is.

Grip-strength in my hands wrists and forearms is what poses the biggest difficulty for me personally. This is why without pullup counterweight machines many find it difficult to begin them if they haven’t tried them in a long time. Another simple way to progress through pullups is to simple use your legs to lightly support your weight. By gauging the effort required, you can gently press your feet against the ground or bench if the bar is too high, and slowly stand, making sure your effort is targeted on your back, shoulders and arms to do their fair share of work.

These variations are where the beauty of pullups lie. As challenging as they can be for beginners, there is plenty of room to make them easier or more difficult depending on your level and all approaches are fairly common sense. The wider your grip is the more difficult they are. Personally, I’ve spent a lot of time building up the ability to do the easiest form - narrow grip, palms facing backward. As 10 become regularly achievable, I started to widen the grip.  Adding more weight to your body makes them harder, and adding more support to your body (a bench to stand on, a counter-weight machine, muscle-ups) make them easier. Slowing down is also harder, as being able to pause mid motion is a true mark of strength.

Planks

Planks are the outlier movement here as they are the only one which doesn’t actually involve movement. Planks are an isometric exercise which means it involves holding steady position for a set period of time. Isometric exercises are more effective for your core due to the prolonged tension - staying flexed for a very long time rather than for repeated short bursts. Research shows this prolonged tension promotes strength and builds muscle-mass which is essential for a stable core that can support movement and steady posture for the entire body.

The most common plank form with face down, with your body supported only by your forearms and toes on the ground - the rest of your body in the air. It’s incredibly important to maintain a straight body from head to toe - like a plank of wood. Similar to pushups, a broom stick should be able to rest along the backs of your legs, butt, shoulders and head. Once this position is started, the goal is then to hold it for a set period as the burn settles in. If you can hold it for a full minute 2 or three times with short breaks in between to rest, you’re in pretty good shape. Aiming for shorter times, or going with your knees on the ground, so that less of your body weight is active are simple ways to scale the challenge back if you’re just starting out.

Squats

When done properly squats engage more of the entire body than any other single movement. Of course, the primary benefactor here is the lower body from the glutes all the way down to feet, but maintaining balance and control requires an immense level of effort from the core, back, shoulders and arms, especially if modifiers such as extra weight, single leg, or explosive movements are made. Squats have a reputation for being dangerous, but if proper form and controlled progression is emphasised, the potential for injury is as minimal as with any weight-bearing movement. The risk-factor does rise quite quickly if you overdo though, so no loud, eyes-closed wiggling around to make sure you push more weight than you should.

The basic squat involves a starting position of standing with your feet greater than shoulder-width apart. I generally set mine as wide as possible without it feel like I’m stretching - still comfortably standing. Then ti’s a matter of lowering your body bending at the knees to a target of 90 degrees which brings your thighs parallel to the ground, then rising back up to standing just before your knees lock straight. The difficult part is to maintain an arched back. Holding your torso upright rather than hunching or leaning forward is the most important factor in preventing injury. I try to make sure my torso changes as little as possible from standing to squatting - look forward, ideally at my reflection, with the chin up, shoulders back and my back straight enough so I don’t have to crane my head up to look straight.

The other key point to remember involves preventing your knees from bending inward or outward laterally. Your knees should be above your feet directly, so that they are not any closer or further from each other than your feet are. In other words, conscious effort should be given to ensure your shins are perpendicular to the ground rather than leaning to either side.

Conclusion

This is it. Regardless of where you decide to go as you chase an admirable health-related New Year’s resolution, or where to turn to next as you fall out of love with cross-fit, as long as you remember to keep these 4 essential exercises as the foundation, your workout program will be effective, efficient and practical in the real world.