Stretch, smetch

The latest thing you thought was good for you, debunked: stretching. An article from the New York Times, which was written by Gretchen Reynolds and appeared on Oct. 31) cites various medical sources who say the usual warm-up routines can leave you worse off than if did stood around and did nothing. Take a short jog, hip-hop around, crawl on all fours and do a spider jig--anything to warm up your cold quads, glutes, etc., will help you in whatever race, game, etc., you're about to enter.

The popular  "static stretch", where you reach down or across and hold a pose, does the opposite, making you 30 percent weaker, on average, if you believe the experts cited here. My favorite, putting a straight leg on the bumper of the car and leaning forward until my hamstrings complain, is a no-no, and may explain why I'm not winning more time-trials on the bike. A good excuse, anyway.

Here's an excerpt from the Reynolds' piece:

A well-designed warm-up starts by increasing body heat and blood flow. Warm muscles and dilated blood vessels pull oxygen from the bloodstream more efficiently and use stored muscle fuel more effectively. They also withstand loads better. One significant if gruesome study found that the leg-muscle tissue of laboratory rabbits could be stretched farther before ripping if it had been electronically stimulated -- that is, warmed up.

To raise the body's temperature, a warm-up must begin with aerobic activity, usually light jogging. Most coaches and athletes have known this for years. That's why tennis players run around the court four or five times before a match and marathoners stride in front of the starting line. But many athletes do this portion of their warm-up too intensely or too early. A 2002 study of collegiate volleyball players found that those who'd warmed up and then sat on the bench for 30 minutes had lower backs that were stiffer than they had been before the warm-up. And a number of recent studies have demonstrated that an overly vigorous aerobic warm-up simply makes you tired. Most experts advise starting your warm-up jog at about 40 percent of your maximum heart rate (a very easy pace) and progressing to about 60 percent. The aerobic warm-up should take only 5 to 10 minutes, with a 5-minute recovery. (Sprinters require longer warm-ups, because the loads exerted on their muscles are so extreme.) ...

While static stretching is still almost universally practiced among amateur athletes -- watch your child's soccer team next weekend -- it doesn't improve the muscles' ability to perform with more power, physiologists now agree. "You may feel as if you're able to stretch farther after holding a stretch for 30 seconds," McHugh says, "so you think you've increased that muscle's readiness." But typically you've increased only your mental tolerance for the discomfort of the stretch. The muscle is actually weaker.

Stretching muscles while moving, on the other hand, a technique known as dynamic stretching or dynamic warm-ups, increases power, flexibility and range of motion. Muscles in motion don't experience that insidious inhibitory response. They instead get what McHugh calls "an excitatory message" to perform.

Dynamic stretching is at its most effective when it's relatively sports specific. "You need range-of-motion exercises that activate all of the joints and connective tissue that will be needed for the task ahead," says Terrence Mahon, a coach with Team Running USA, home to the Olympic marathoners Ryan Hall and Deena Kastor. For runners, an ideal warm-up might include squats, lunges and "form drills" like kicking your buttocks with your heels. Athletes who need to move rapidly in different directions, like soccer, tennis or basketball players, should do dynamic stretches that involve many parts of the body. "Spider-Man" is a particularly good drill: drop onto all fours and crawl the width of the court, as if you were climbing a wall."

To read the full stretching story, click here.

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Suffragette City?

We've got John McCain falling for the spectacled seductress with the  sten gun (not that there's anything wrong with that). The Washington  Post's Kathleen Parker just outed her own husband, "75-year-old  scholar and raconteur", who confessed he was hot for Sarah, making a  strong case for old McWarrior having the same hots. Not acting on the hots--just basking in the google eyes (before there was Google)--in  McWarrior's case, hanging on every Palindrone, ageless ploys for which  aged men are eternally susceptible. Lately, with vigorous males living  longer, more examples of the old guys and young steam clouding their judgment. Warren Buffett and his bomb biography, I'd heard Fortune's talented Carol Loomis was in line for the ghost write, instead he  opted for the comelier, fleshier Alice Schroeder. Result: flop. McCain  result: looking floppy. Heard Boone Pickens on his windmill/natural gas lecture tour a couple of months ago, his new trophy stunner in  tow. Not that she's on Boone's mind much, but he mentioned her almost as much as the energy crisis. So far, no harm in that, except since  that meeting, he's lost billions on his energy bets--what if the  windmills are Quixote windmills, part of the courtship?

History is full of men wrecking themselves on the sirens' landings, but lately it's distinguished ancients with waning testosterone, or maybe not so waning. Something to think about, as we keep up our athletics, and feel younger and friskier.

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Record questions

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Government advises exercise

Have you seen the new "physical activity guidelines for Americans"? The Feds just released it. Maybe the writing was farmed out to people who redrew the food pyramid.

We used to know what to eat. We used to do our exercises: aerobics, weights, stretching. Now, to get with the program, we'll be "physically activating," as follows: For adults, 2.5 hours or moderate-intensity or 1.25 hours of vigorous-intensity per week.

I might be OK with that, but what's with the decimals? I watch a clock at the gym: 20 minutes treadmill, not .33 hours treadmill. Do I stop jogging to figure the math? I still have to decide if I'm activating 2.5 or 1.25. Depends if I'm "moderate" or "vigorous"--a big judgment call there.

Let's say I'm jogging along, feeling "vigorous"--unless I keep this up more than 10 minutes, it doesn't count toward my weekly total. It's in the guidelines--what a rip off. At least the Feds are talking minutes here, except now I have to do the decimal convert: 1.25 equals 75 minutes, divided into 10-minute sessions, there's 5 minutes of vigorous time I don't get credit for. No point sweating for nothing: do I pause the treadmill, read the paper, what? Do the unapproved minutes carry over into the next week?

So much for the aerobic--how about push-ups, sit-ups, weights? In Fedspeak, it's "muscle strengthening--moderate to high--for all muscle groups at least twice weekly." No math involved, a plus there, but what's "high strengthening" in a biceps curl? How many pounds, how many reps--is there a government fitness hotline 800 number?

I didn't mention it up front because it's farther down in the press release: "for more health benefits" double the workouts to 2.5 and 5 hours a week. Who doesn't want more health benefits? Why tell us now, after they've already recommended 1.25/2.5?

Either way, children/adolescents are spared confusion. They put it an hour a day moderate/vigorous, and they get to jump rope, play hopscotch, and skip.

My age group, vintage Americans? We're off the hook: the 1.25/2.5 moderate vigorous is optional; otherwise we can play shuffleboard, lap dance, whatever.

If "we're at risk of falling," we have to work on "improving our balance." Otherwise, the Feds don't expect much.

"If you are doing zero minutes, anything is better than that," says a Duke cardiology professor, commenting on the vintage population."We talk about walking the dog, even if they don't have one."

Anyway, the newfangled Fed policy makes me appreciate their simple-minded old policy: 30 minutes a day, most days of the week. Who's going to write the "Fed Physical Activity Guidelines for Dummies" book?

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Dear Lance

Dear Lance,

Your comeback news is a shocker. We had a great relationship when you took a boring Europe sport and got us non-Euros excited--everybody thumbing a ride on your glory.

I bought your bike: a $5,000 Trek! Mostly thanks to you, geezers in the top age brackets are the biggest market for top-end bikes. I guess you know that.

You've seen us out there, straddling carbon frames that give us a whiff of extra speed, wearing your team jerseys--or jerseys worn by other teams that look like our grandkids. Entre nous, you're the Tiger in our cycle fantasies. When the biking topic comes up, say over cocktails, I put you and me in the same sentence as much as possible.

My Lance ego transference hasn't happened with any other pro--maybe in Europe it would, but here, with Leipheimer, Hincapie, you drop those names, nobody cares. So, for awhile it was sad when you retired: no more amazing guy to brag about in the present tense.

In another way, your retirement strengthened the you-me bond. We had more in common: weekend group rides, noticing the countryside. You were around Aspen this summer, where I might have seen you riding up Ashcroft or the Maroon Bills. A couple of my buddies reported Lance sightings, where they hoped to sneak up on you and get ahead of your front wheel for a couple of seconds. "I beat Lance in a sprint!"

If you'd stayed retired, gained a few pounds, got hangovers, got older, eventually you'd slow down at a faster rate than me, since there's a limit to the slow I'm approaching already. So we'd be more equal.

Now you're back in the saddle, training for the Tour, what about our relationship? I heard what you said: your comeback is all about funding and publicity for cancer research. I'm with you there, but in the coverage from old Tours, I read a lot about your stage wins, Sheryl Crowe in the team car, and lab controversies--less and less about your cured cancer and almost zilch about fund raising. Anyway, the Tour is about eight months away, what can you do besides speed intervals, strategy sessions, and wind-tunnel immersion?

I know nothing first-hand, except what I read from you in "It's Not About the Bike," but lately, the blogospherians are saying it's not about the cancer research, it's about the ego: accustomed to being fed massive doses of adoration and column inches in the papers, craving a refill. Speaking selfishly, for my own ego investment, I'll feel better as soon as you finish the next Tour with your reputation intact. Now that you're headed back to Gaul, it's random samples all over again, analyzed by the testy Gaulers who'd love nothing more than start the allegations.

Already they've trotted out the urine bottle from 1999, and threaten to open and retest it. Seems like deja Berra to me: you saying no to the decanting--by the way, does urine improve with age, like wine, or weaken and lose its incriminating qualities? Is there a statute of limitations on it? Should we have one? I'm sure you've pondered these questions. I'd hate to see you and me dragged through the next inquiry.

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Here we go again

Slate magazine, in what may be a bit of title-pilfering from GeezerJock (as Masters Athlete was originally called), just came out with a Geezer special issue, including a hit parade of 80 high-achievers over 80. Not that there's anything wrong with that, as Jerry Seinfeld would say, but in Slate's full-scale exploration of the "elderly experience," not  a word about athletes, or a hint that anybody that old can break a sweat and not just wind.

Of the octogenarians: writers, tycoons, poets, politicians, artists,  actors, thinkers, not a single runner, swimmer, weight lifter -- the closest they come to a jock is Merce Cunningham, but only for his choreography -- he's not dancing anymore; and Paul Newman, who raced cars.

In three days worth of verbiage on the "elderly experience," Slate investigates the "best adult diapers", "new technologies to make Gram and Gramps better drivers;" and ponders whether old people are "good or bad for the environment."

Nothing about Gram and Gramps running sub seven-minute miles; no mention of high-octane octogenarians like Bob McKeague, world's oldest Ironman finisher; Harold Chapson, who ran a 6:43 mile. Hey Slate, if you get around to doing a centenarian issue, don't leave out the skydivers: Frank Moody at 101, Estrid Geertsen at 100.

And we could do without the patronizing pap: if you're in great shape, over 80, there are other ways to distinguish yourself without making speeches, artwork, or money.

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To an athlete dying at 65

Barbara Warren, endurance athlete, psychologist, mother of two, died last week at 65 after breaking her neck in a bike crash during a triathlon in Santa Barbara, Calif. Her courage moved me to write the following tribute/sequel to the "To An Athlete Dying Young" blog below:

To An Athlete Dying At 65

The time you won your Ironman
60s female fastest to the tape
Your strongest finish ever, though
We know you saved your best for last

Paralyzed neck down, respirator aided
You winked a signal to the uniforms
No oxygen, glucose drip, beeping heart rate
Let me cross the line myself

Yours not the drunken poet's liquid courage,
"Do Not Go Gentle" raging blather
Keep the focus, husband, children
Be brave within your fate

"I'm not afraid of death, I just don't
want to be there when it happens", Woody Allen cracked.
You'd been too alive not to be there.
"Turn me off, I'm done with this," your sister said you said.

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