Articles

We often like to put constraints on things for the sake of constraints. For example, people like to workout for a given period of time instead of working out to accomplish a certain goal. Why is this differentiation important? Well, if the goal is not just to simply workout for a given time period, but rather to achieve or work on something specific, having an arbitrary time frame you are supposed to workout in makes little sense. There is no scientific reason why workouts, even though the workouts are different, should last the same amount of time. For example, when...

Sometimes when we train, we get areas of tightness and soreness.  Believe it or not, the research world doesn’t fully understand why this happens.  Yes, there are some hypotheses, but because there are many different factors at play it's hard to determine.  For example, how do we differentiate tightness from riding in a car for too long and lifting weights? The cause is clearly not the same so neither might be the solution.  So before you go and grab a foam roller, think about what could potentially be a source of soreness and whether or not foam rolling can help...

Slow wave sleep (SWS) is in the family of non-rapid eye movement (nREM) sleep. The majority of this sleep occurs in the first half of your nighttime sleep. Slow wave sleep is the portion of sleep responsible for growth hormone release - growth hormone playing a role in recovery (indirect anabolism via IGF-1 stimulation). Slow wave sleep is typically around 10-20% of your total sleep duration. Obviously it depends on how long you sleep as to whether or not it will be 10 to 20% (some recommend no less than 20%) of your total sleep. This is where the difference...