DANCING x RUNNING: Extreme fighting!

Have you ever stopped to think that if we follow all the advice in this blog, then we cannot ever be good dancers, like all in it opposes what would be advisable for someone who wants to excel at dancing?

If we dance classical ballet, then our shoes should be made of basically plaster at the tip so that we do not deviate the foot, like so that we do not control it. If we dance jazz, then we want to fly graciously in the air, like with really soft and beautiful movements, beautiful because they are light, and they induce us to remember things like the sea breeze over our face in a nice and warm summer evening. If we dance ball dance, then we want to be one with our partners and have the same rhythm. 


If we run the way we should, we control our feet to maximum, never having anything really rigid on them; we want to swing our arms up to a certain height, keeping our hands under some amount of tension and closed; we want to be ahead of the other person, since we here aim at competitions, not ever together; and so on. 

The most interesting finding of all so far is that we need to move like the cheetah, what then means that our legs should drag our bodies, should propel them, like we should move in a way that they remain on air for the longest amount of time as possible and, as they hit the ground, they move the rest of our bodies almost on their own, and, if possible, on their own. On top, our feet should lay flat on soil, if possible, never tip-toe sort of deal. 



With the dance, as we know, not mattering if we talk about ballet, jazz, or ball dance, we should aim to have the tip of the toe on the floor first instead. 

Running is, at the end of the day, an art. However, it is an art that dancers should not apply themselves to because all its foundations oppose those of the dance. 

Because, with competitive running, we aim at having maximum height and width in our jump and maximum propulsion through our legs, what then implies never letting them behind us, as for intention of the movement, dedicating ourselves to strengthen them can only help with our performance. 

Also the weight of our bodies matters: the less amount of weight we have to carry as we move, the better our performance will be.

On the other hand, we want to be healthy in order to cope with the effort we have to make to run. In this way, we want to be well fed, meaning that we want to have a balanced diet, complete in terms of vitamins and, if possible, reinforced to the side of what may prevent injuries (calcium, iron, sodium, D vitamin, A vitamin, C vitamin, potassium, and others).

Some marathon runners advise people to ingest a lot of carbohydrates before the marathons. They tell us that they usually go and have an all-you-can-eat feast the day before the marathon. That might be a good advice. However, we must remember that we are not bears (http://www.wildmammal.com/index_files/bear_hibernation.html) to hibernate and keep food inside for any amount of time that be superior to 40 hours in a healthy way (one may not be able to digest the food and keep it inside for longer than the normal, but that, we are sure, will worsen performance, not improve). http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/147016.html and http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/basics/transit.html talk about that.  



The normal human digestion time should be 30 to 40 hours. Each individual is able to find out their own digestive cycle by simply consuming only one meal and observing when they defecate, since that is the end of the digestive cycle. One would need at most 40 hours of observation, considering the information from the links that we provided. The Bible is full of examples of people who have fastened for three days, which is 72 hours, so that we should never have health problems for subjecting ourselves to such an experiment. On top, we can still do the biblical fasting, for holy purposes, so that we have even more motivation to calculate our digestive cycle. 

What would happen to an individual without enough carbohydrates inside of themselves in a marathon?  



The problem with the people who are too thin, say anorexic, is that they will end up consuming their own organism as they run, like, if the organism has no fuel to burn (that would be our food, or the extra carbohydrates, if we have a super OK body), then it will burn itself (see http://www.helpguide.org/mental/anorexia_signs_symptoms_causes_treatment.htm, Effects of Anorexia)… . 

Any digestive problem may get on the way to a good performance in running, so that this advice, of ingesting carbohydrates, is not really good for people with digestive problems. It is also not good for people who are overweight, therefore people who naturally have those carbohydrates, like they need that their bodies be a bit consumed… . 



The carbohydrates thing only applies to those cases in which the athlete has a body in perfect shape, like completely balanced, so that there is no excess of carbohydrates in it. In this case, ingesting those carbs prevents internal injury, and allow for a pleasant run. 

Some athletes seem to have plaques of salt over their bodies as they finish their marathon, like we touch them and taste the white matter that they expel and we have no doubts that it is salt (http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-106223.html). 



That is just like anorexic people running, like they were definitely consuming their own organisms as they ran: We should eliminate sweat, that is, liquid, as we run, that is healthy, but not pure salt. 



If we eliminate pure salt, then we do not have enough liquid inside of us to cope with the physical exercise. 


In fact, medicine says that we do not have enough sodium containing liquid in our bodies (http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/hydrationandfluid/a/Hyponatremia.htm).  



That is actually a serious medical problem that may lead to death according to the doctors. Its name is hyponatremia. 



It is interesting knowing that the problem happens for excess of water consumption, not absence; water without sodium. People who suffer from this are advised to drink only sodium containing liquids during the races.

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AND AROUND THE FEET, NOTHING?

A very experienced marathon runner once said that nothing could be more important than not having problems with the shoelaces. 


Advisable was tying the shoes with double laces; one on top of the other. 


Until that date, our laces would get undone as we walked at least sometimes, and that was certainly a hazard.



A very experienced and caring mother once said that nothing could deform the feet more than shoes that were not of our size, like bigger or smaller. 


Her words had to do with the shape of our feet, but the advice is also superbly important for people who run because those need to literally command their own feet to maximum degree allowed when running.


Runners must wear shoes that are not bigger or smaller than their size, so that they don't lose power (the larger the difference, the smaller the control we have over our own feet). 

Australia was a fortunate Country for size of shoes in 2001: We here had ½ sizes, so that a person who was not precisely size nine could find shoes with perfect fit (9 ½ sizes, for instance). 


Australia now has some manufacturers that have even four variations of sizes in the same unit interval (Diana Ferrari, for instance), but has lost a lot of its half sizes for some reason (2013). 


In having difficulties with finding a shoe that fits our feet perfectly well, we can always go for a shoe maker...

A running shoe cannot be like an old Japanese-style women’s shoe, meaning hard as a rock (they were literally made of wood). 


We do not want to feel like the Japanese ladies from ancient times when running or walking: As if we were carrying a log.


Our shoe also cannot be so flexible that we feel the ground under our feet as we walk or run because that would make us feel the impact of anything on the ground, say a piece of glass, a little pebble, and alike.

A running shoe is a huge investment, so that it would be better if it could last. Shoes that are made of natural fibers would have to last for shorter than those that are made of synthetic material, especially created to satisfy our scientifically identified needs.  In this way, nylon would be good. We also would like them to stand water, since at least sometimes we have to step inside of pools. Thus, it would be nice if they were waterproof.

As for how much heel we should have, or how much diagonal lift, this is a bit of a mystery. 


There are tribes of blacks that are well known for being best long-distance runners, and they run barefoot. 


In this way, a running shoe with no heel looks all right.


On the other hand, blacks that run really fast and win races at the Olympic Games wear running shoes and even advertise specific brands sometimes...


Australia recently had a fun run in Melbourne, where women would be running a race with heels, like social heels. 


That should be considered medically insane because we would injure our spine to maximum if running with heels that go above a certain height or that escape the traditional shape of heels by too much. 


Also, any accident when running could lead to much more serious consequences to our bodies if we are wearing heels, especially the so-called wedges, which, for even normal walking, are inadvisable. 

A running shoe should support our feet to maximum so that we feel comfortable but in control of every single piece of our feet to maximum that we can be. 


It seems that catwalk people have to practice quite a lot to walk in the way they do (using the tip of their feet), so that that cannot be a natural thing for humans. 


That does not mean that a person who runs in that way would run slower than a person who runs with flat feet. 


We do not seem to have scientific testing that be reliable to assert anything in that area. 



The fastest animal on land seem to be the cheetah (http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090903090530AAokyLZ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIeXEiJuJUY) and, if we observe it running, we reach the conclusion that it lifts its entire body in the air and uses the front paws to give the kick and the back paws to simply complete the movement, in a way not to drag the back paws, but to supplement the movement (notice that the body remains in the same sort of disposition). 


We also notice that it goes with the entire paw, like no tip first. In thinking about it, any lift we impose to our feet (heel) should make us lose balance and control over our feet, so that the best shoes for running should be flat and close to the ground, certainly contradicting our intuition and current marketing sale-points in that sector. 


The cheetah has full contact with the ground... 



According to Rodney Southern (http://voices.yahoo.com/humans-versus-animal-kingdom-faster-678669.html), there is no way we, humans, can beat not even the bears (which would have to be really slow, given their immense weight, amount of fat, and body proportions) in a race. 


On the other hand, horses seem to be pretty fast and, according to http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=61328, we can at least sometimes run faster. 



Intuitively, the less we feel the ground below us, the harder it is for us to keep control of our pace. 


However, if we are beating horses with our modern race shoes, then there should be some gain to diagonal lift and soft padding, which should diminish our perception of the ground, but, if uniform, could, after we get used to it, allow for running making less effort, therefore for better performance.   



Each time we hit our heel against the ground, we create a certain amount of discomfort for our skeleton, which may translate into injury or depreciation. 


This has to do with capability of doing the sport for a long time. 


In those regards, there are no doubts that the soft padding and the lift could only be helping. 


If we attenuate the impact on the skeleton of our pace, then we should be keeping it healthy for longer. 


By artificially transferring the work to our toes through the diagonal lift, we are certainly saving spine and skeleton. 


On the other hand, our effort to run will be increased of a certain factor, which might not interest us. It is all about how much it is worth winning... 



Some people die for trying to beat the record of car jumping on a motorcycle, and think that the glory of the achievement is worth the risks. 


The truth is that it suffices that they change the rules of the game in a way that everyone gets to be obliged to run with shoes that have diagonal lift and soft padding that everyone can be both healthy and winner in the races we praise in human kind at the moment. 



Nothing wrong with that, since nobody can play without protective equipment in an American Football game...   



Now, how much diagonal lift is acceptable, like where do we draw the line splitting healthy from harmful in terms of running? 


We do not have a general rule, since it all depends on the body of each one of us (size, proportions, type, and etc.). 


We can tell straight away, however, the height of lift and the shape that are unacceptable. Also the padding.



Our bones, muscles, and veins are connected in a very special way also in our feet. 


We must observe them for long if we want to really do the proper thing. 


We do not want to do the following: Interrupt blood flow, force our bones to uncomfortable positions, and make pressure over our muscles, pressure of any sort (we want to simply support them). 


We may wish to put pressure on our tendons when we have an injury already. 


In this case, the pressure may help us run and prevent worsening of the injury. 

The color of the running shoe matters too because colors are scientifically known to influence our mood and we want to avoid any induction to depression, laziness, and alike. 


In this sense, we should never choose black or white for our sports shoes since white picks all surrounding vibrations and black puts us down (if nothing else, it reminds us of death). 


Blue, red, yellow, and orange seem to be good picks in terms of colors (http://www.healthynewage.com/mood-ring-color-chart.htm). 

It seems that this subject is never ending, so that we will simply have to stop writing about it in order to have a blog (otherwise we may end up with a book!).

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YOU'VE GOTTA HAVE PULSE!

One of the most annoying things that we can be told to do is taking our own pulse...

Some think that it is impossible to get to feel the heart pumping from their veins. 

People are usually told to touch their necks and grab the main vein, that is, the biggest vein. 

We can actually even put our hand over our hearts and get it in that way. 

It all depends on how much we can feel through our hands, since all we really need to do is counting how many pulsations we have per block of time.

Measuring our blood pressure is the same as taking our pulse.

Whilst the old gadgets to take blood pressure seem to be a conundrum, only understood by medical staff, the new ones are simple and come up with the end figures quite easily. 

We have to worry about resistance of the veins to the entrance of the blood (we then compress the arm with the cuff to beyond bearable before releasing the blood and measuring the beats) and about the pumping when there is no external pressure applied to them (they call one type diastolic and the other systolic).   


One of them is taken at maximum flow of blood (diastolic) and the other is taken at minimum flow, beginning of filling (systolic). 

We control all for one minute to measure or we get a fraction of a minute and do the maths. 

We say the systolic first, the higher number (http://www.diffen.com/difference/Systolic_vs_Diastolic_Blood_Pressure). 

A normal adult would have diastolic of up to 80 (http://www.fi.edu/learn/heart/monitor/vitals.html).

Matt Roberts tells us that we calculate our maximum heart rate through the following formula: 220 – our age.

In this way, a person with age between 18 and 25 years old would be working at 90% of their MHR (maximum heart rate) if getting a reading of 179.

A person with age between 26 and 30 years old would be working at 80% of their MHR if getting a reading of 153.

A detailed table is found in his book, page 81.

http://www.heart.com/heart-rate-chart.html tells us that the right formula for women is 226-our age however, that is, women have more natural resistance to exercise (may last for longer and work out more, naturally).

Notice that we should have a target heart rate in mind whilst we run, and we should work out our target rate through reading http://www.heart.com/heart-rate-chart.html, and knowing what we want from the run (losing weight, keeping the heart/body healthy, conditioning, or others).

There is a minimum heart rate that is necessary that we achieve for us to be told to actually have exercised, like if we never reach that minimum heart rate, then our efforts are useless for almost all purposes (moving the body almost always helps us improve something).

The younger we are, the higher our minimum heart rate will be.



People who are below fifty years old should always be above 102 beats per minute (http://www.heart.com/heart-rate-chart.html) as they run.

It is very important to measure the heart rate whilst we run or at least before and after. 


Usually people know their limits and therefore they should be able to control those, but there are situations in which others seem to be controlling them... 



When others are controlling us, the heart rate measurement will help us argue and stop exercising when necessary.  



Lots of people have died from heart attack during runs because those controlling them did not respect their declared limits.



People as young as twenty and something have died in this way in the Army because the teacher did not respect their words (I cannot keep on going) and kept on pushing plus threatening them with really important things (you are going to be expelled from the Army!).

The symptoms of low blood pressure are usually noticed by everyone (dizziness, weakness, and others). 

High blood pressure is the worst danger of all (symptoms exist, such as headache, but they are much harder to be acknowledged by the individual).

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