In his fifth instalment, Brett offers his bespoke advice to those of you who need guidance on your personal excercise regimes.
You asked: Please could you let me know whether a warm up is sufficient prior to jogging or should I be stretching first?
Brett answered: Stretching is very important before any physical activity, and it is key that you stretch a warm muscle. So if you feel cold, before you stretch, do some gentle mobilisations and muscle warming exercises and then stretch.
The amount you stretch will depend firstly on your mobility. If you are extremely hyper-mobile, be cautious and stick to gentle and more dynamic stretching than long, prolonged holding for your stretches. However, hyper-mobility is rare, and for all others you should hold your stretches for longer periods of time, up to 30 seconds, 2 or 3 times each.
When deciding what stretches to do, each person and each body is extremely unique on a mechanical level, thus an assessment would be needed. The best way that you can do this yourself is when you perform any stretch, if it doesn't feel tight, don't carry on doing it. There is no need to stretch an already stretched muscle.
You asked: How many calories do you need to burn off to lose a pound?
Brett answered: To lose one pound a week you would need to burn an extra 500 calories per day, or cut about 250 calories from your diet each day - well, at least this is what you would learn from the conventional nutritional model. I give you this information because I imagine this is what you are looking for.
Personally I don't count calories and I don't recommend that my clients do either. While there are times when a person is eating excessively and living a sedentary lifestyle it might be important to take this into consideration, but generally this can become more of a distraction than being of help.
The figures above don't take into consideration the quality of the calories that you are counting. For example, many junk food manufacturers are jumping on the low calorie bandwagon and you can eat a lot of rubbish, non-food, but still not eat many calories. The problem with this is that you can take a low calories dessert that contains wheat, sugar, dairy, soya, etc etc, and while it is not very calorie dense it will contain four of the foods that people are most intolerant to thus leading to inflammation of the digestive system and then weight-gain as a result.
I would therefore suggest that instead of counting calories you simply eat a healthy diet that eliminates any foods that you are intolerant or sensitive to. It is possible to have tests to confirm these but other than that it is easy to simply eliminate certain foods from your diet, and notice how much better you feel. Start with wheat and gluten, dairy, sugar, and soya and you will be amazed at the water retention that is eliminated by this act alone.
You asked: Brett, I have osteoarthritis in my big toe. Can you recommend what exercise I should be doing? I usually run but it is painful.
Brett answered: Whenever I am asked "What is the best exercise to do?" I respond with "The one you'll do." If you are nursing an injury or condition then it is important that we continue to exercise and move away from a sedentary lifestyle that can be so consuming in this day and age. So find things that you can do that do not hurt you now in the short term.
However, in the long term, I would suggest you look at the cause of the osteoarthritis and why you have it in the first place. Obviously this is not a normal condition as it can be quite crippling. Consider that 10,000 years ago if you had osteoarthritis of the big toe and you were unable to run you would have made quite a nice meal for a big animal or two!
Whenever you have a condition that is known as an "-itis" such as osteoarthr-itis then this indicates that there is inflammation, swelling, heat, fire, etc in the body. This is a problem because the human body functions best when it returns to homeostasis, equilibrium or balance. Basically, we should have equal parts hot and equal parts cold. It is highly likely that your lifestyle, in all it's components has been too hot for the majority of the time - too much rushing around, exercising too much, working long hours, burning the candle at both ends.
Now, what to do about it? Each component in your lifestyle - nutrition, exercise, sleep/rest, work, relationships, etc - all have the possibility to be hot and to be cold. When it comes to nutrition you could have food that aggravates you and causes inflammation in your gut, or you could eat food that nourishes and nurtures you. Your exercise programme could give you energy and improve your posture thus your biomechanics improves with stretching and gentle movement, or you could create lots of inflammation in the muscles and connective tissues through hardcore working out too much. These two components are quite simple to resolve with the suggestions above.
What is harder to action is the rest of your lifestyle. My suggestion to begin with would be that you learn how to breathe using your diaphragm - basically, as you breathe in you allow your abdomen to inflate, as you breathe out you let your abdomen relax and deflate, and breathe through your nose - as opposed to breathing with a chest pattern and through the mouth. Once you have mastered this essential pattern I would then use this as your own internal assessment as to when you are rushing around too much. If you can maintain balance and equilibrium in your breathing pattern then you are on the right track, and if not then it is time to slow down.
