Abstract:

This paper explores the application of a growth mindset approach in teaching swimming lessons, aiming to enhance both skill acquisition and psychological resilience among learners. Drawing on the foundational principles of growth mindset theory, this research investigates the potential benefits of adopting a growth mindset-oriented instructional strategy within the context of swimming education. The paper reviews relevant literature on growth mindset, skill development, and swimming pedagogy, and presents a comprehensive framework for integrating growth mindset principles into swimming instruction. By fostering a growth mindset culture, swimming instructors can potentially facilitate improved learning outcomes, increased self-efficacy, and enhanced psychological well-being among learners.

1. Introduction:

Learning to swim is a vital life skill that contributes to physical health, safety, and recreation. Traditional approaches to swimming instruction often focus on skill mastery, occasionally leading to fixed mindset attitudes and diminished self-confidence in learners when faced with challenges. In contrast, a growth mindset approach emphasizes the belief that abilities and talents can be developed through effort, effective strategies, and resilience. This paper investigates the potential of integrating growth mindset principles into swimming lessons to enhance skill acquisition and foster psychological resilience among learners.

2. Growth Mindset Theory:

The concept of a growth mindset, introduced by Carol Dweck, posits that individuals who believe their abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work are more likely to embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, and ultimately achieve higher levels of success. This theory has been widely applied in educational contexts, showing positive effects on academic achievement, motivation, and self-esteem. Transferring this concept to swimming education offers an innovative perspective on enhancing both technical skills and psychological attributes in learners.

3. Skill Acquisition in Swimming:

Swimming proficiency encompasses a range of physical and cognitive skills that are typically acquired through structured lessons and practice. Traditional teaching methods may inadvertently reinforce fixed mindset beliefs by placing excessive emphasis on immediate success and avoiding failure. In contrast, a growth mindset approach encourages learners to embrace mistakes as opportunities for improvement and view challenges as essential components of the learning process. By adopting this approach, swimming instructors can promote a more adaptive learning experience that supports long-term skill development.

4. Psychological Resilience and Self-Efficacy:

Growth mindset interventions have been linked to improved psychological resilience and self-efficacy across various domains. In the context of swimming, fostering a growth mindset can help learners develop greater confidence in their ability to overcome obstacles, leading to increased psychological resilience when encountering setbacks or difficulties. This, in turn, can contribute to a more positive emotional experience and reduced anxiety associated with the learning process.

5. Integrating Growth Mindset in Swimming Instruction:

To effectively integrate a growth mindset approach into swimming lessons, instructors should consider the following strategies:

• Promoting Effort and Process: Emphasizing the importance of effort, perseverance, and effective practice strategies over immediate results.
• Embracing Challenges: Encouraging learners to view challenges as opportunities for growth and skill refinement.
• Providing Constructive Feedback: Delivering feedback that focuses on effort, improvement, and specific strategies, rather than fixed traits.
• Cultivating a Positive Learning Environment: Creating an atmosphere where mistakes are normalized, and learners feel comfortable seeking assistance and learning from errors.

6. Empirical Support and Practical Implications:

Although limited research specifically addresses the application of growth mindset principles in swimming instruction, studies from educational and sports psychology provide a strong foundation for its potential effectiveness. By implementing a growth mindset-oriented teaching approach, swimming instructors may observe enhanced skill acquisition, increased self-efficacy, and improved psychological resilience among learners.

7. Conclusion:

Teaching swimming lessons with a growth mindset approach offers a novel and promising method to foster skill development and psychological resilience. By cultivating a learning environment that values effort, embraces challenges, and prioritizes growth over fixed outcomes, instructors can contribute to more confident, adaptable, and resilient swimmers. Further research is warranted to assess the long-term impact of a growth mindset approach on swimming education and its potential to revolutionize traditional teaching paradigms.

Kenny

Kenny is a baby Bottlenose dolphin, of the genus Tursiops, one of the most common and well-known members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphin. He is very playful and friendly and loves to frequently leap above the water surface. Kenny plays with water toys, enjoys making bubble rings, and plays well with other dolphins or other animals.

The post Teaching Swimming Lessons with a Growth Mindset Approach: Enhancing Skill Acquisition and Psychological Resilience appeared first on One with the Water.

Listen, we talk a lot about nutrition on here, and healthy food choices to go in concert with your active lifestyle. But sometimes, you just need a chocolate chip cookie. So I present to you the last chocolate chip cookie recipe you’ll ever need plus a few extra calories to go swim off. (Recipe adapted from Forme-Foryou.com)

Ingredients

• 2 cups minus 2 tablespoons cake flour, about 8 1/2 oz*
• 1 2/3 cups bread flour, about 8 1/2 oz*
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt, such as kosher
• 2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened, 1 1/4 cups / 10 ounces
• 1 1/4 cups light brown sugar, 10 ounces
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, 8 ounces
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate chips or chunks, preferably about 60% cacao content, such as Ghirardelli
• Sea salt or kosher salt for garnishing

Instructions

Combine flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Whisk well; then set aside. Using a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars until very light and fluffy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the vanilla. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed.

Reduce the mixer speed to low; then add dry ingredients, and mix until just combined. (Unless you have a plastic guard that sits around the rim of the bowl, this will make a big mess at first, with flour flying everywhere.) Add the chocolate chips, and mix briefly to incorporate.

Press plastic wrap against the dough, and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. The dough may be used in batches and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350°F. Remove the bowl of dough from the refrigerator, and allow it to soften slightly. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat.

Using a standard-size ice cream scoop – about 3 fluid ounces, or about 1/3 cup – scoop six mounds of dough onto the baking sheet, making sure to space them evenly. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt, and bake until golden brown but still soft, 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer the baking sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then transfer the cookies onto the rack to cool a bit more.

• Secret 1: The use of a mix of cake flour and bread flour. Cake flour is finer, and bread flour has gluten, both important. Use them and no other.
• Secret 2: Chilling. This is key — KEY! — to cookie texture success. The reason is that letting the dough rest allows all the eggs and the butter and the liquids to ooze and soak and hydrate into all the dry goodness. 24 hours is minimum, 36 is preferable (and noticeably better).
• Secret 3: All ingredients. Room temperature. Do it.
• Secret 4: Did you know? People make their cookies way too small. If you make them too small, they dry out too quick, and they get too crunchy. We want gooey and chewy! The way to achieve that is to scoop your dough out into golf-ball sized — or slightly larger — portions. Use a 1/3 cup measuring cup for extra big cookies.
• Secret 5: The chocolate. Ghiardelli 60% Cacao chips — they’re pretty widely available the best chips you can buy at a grocery store. However, if you run across anything that is 60% cacao, it’ll be good.
• Secret 6: The sprinkle of salt on the top. Makes all the sweetness sing.
• Secret 7: Always err on taking them out too early rather than too late – also essential for middle-softness. They continue to cook on the sheet for a few minutes, so don’t overdo it – underdone is better than overdone, every time (and you can always pop them in for a minute more if you like).

Now enjoy!

Molly Huggins

Molly is a member of our creative team, mom of four water-loving babies, and a fierce advocate for CPR training and really early swim instruction.

The post Reasons To Swim: This Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe appeared first on One with the Water.

With the COVID-19 crisis in full swing, many of us are turning to state parks, lakes, and of course, the ocean to return to the water. With that in mind, let’s do a quick refresher on safe swimming in natural bodies of water.

Safe Swimming in Natural Bodies of Water

First and foremost, understand the risks.

• Check the weather before leaving. Sudden weather changes can make the natural water setting more dangerous. (True story: I once accidentally went camping on the beach during a hurricane. That was a high-speed pack out. Seriously, check the weather before you go.) Even in known or designated swim areas, sudden inclement weather can change water levels and current and create new hazards. Once at your destination, continue to monitor the weather situation.
• Check out whether bacterial levels in the water are monitored at your local beach and whether the beach is open for swimming (information available from EPA and is only for U.S. coastal/marine and Great Lakes beaches).  Local Beach Information
• Pay attention to posted warnings, particularly current and tide conditions. More than 100 people die annually due to rip currents on our nation’s beaches. These strong currents can form on any shoreline where waves break and can carry a person away from the shore, so anyone near a beach must be careful.
• Watch out for the “dangerous too’s”: too tired, too cold, too far from safety, too much sun and too much strenuous activity.
• Enter open water carefully. It is difficult to estimate water depth and to see hidden objects underwater in the natural environment. Head, neck, and back injuries can occur from hitting bottom or striking an object in the water.
• And finally, never, ever swim alone.

Healthy Swimming

Remember, too, that even in natural water environments, the rules for healthy swimming established by the CDC remain mostly the same.

Check for a lifeguard.

• If on duty, a lifeguard should be focused on the swimmers and not distracted.
• If no lifeguard is on duty, a “No Lifeguard on Duty” sign should be posted.
• If no lifeguard on duty, check to see where safety equipment, such as a rescue ring or pole, is available.

Check yourself.

• Stay out of the water if you have diarrhea.
• Stay out of the water if you have an open wound (for example, from surgery or a piercing) not covered with a waterproof bandage.

Protect yourself.

• Protect against sunburn by using sunscreen with at least SPF 15 that blocks both UVA and UVB rays.
• Use well-fitting Coast Guard-approved life jackets for flotation assistance rather than foam or air-filled toys.
• Don’t pee or poop in the water.
• Don’t swallow the water.
• Keep an eye on children at all times; kids can drown in seconds and silence.

Take frequent breaks.

• Take kids on bathroom breaks.
• Reapply sunscreen.
• Drink plenty of fluids.
• Dry ears thoroughly after swimming

Natural water swimming can do wonders for both mental and physical health, but as always, know before you go!

Sources:

• https://www.redcross.org/content/dam/redcross/atg/PDF_s/Preparedness___Disaster_Recovery/Disaster_Preparedness/Water_Safety/WhereisitSafetoSwim.pdf
• https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/swimming/oceans-lakes-rivers/index.html
• https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/swimming/swimmers/steps-healthy-swimming.html

Molly Huggins

Molly is a member of our creative team, mom of four water-loving babies, and a fierce advocate for CPR training and really early swim instruction.

The post Safe Swimming in Natural Bodies of Water appeared first on One with the Water.

Google “fitness coach near me” and prepare to be overwhelmed by the results. If the definition of a coach is to train or teach an individual in a particular skill, then anyone can slap a label on and call themselves a coach. But what makes a good coach? What are the qualities of a coach that make them exceptionally qualified to instruct?

What are the qualities of a good Coach?

First, and most important, it is imperative that a coach has a strong background in and comprehensive knowledge of the basic science behind the movements they are teaching. For a barbell or a swim coach, that background includes anatomy & physiology, physics, biology, chemistry, and nutrition fundamentals. 

Additionally, a good coach will have experience coaching a lot of people, whether it’s working under a mentor, or using knowledge and study to grow his or her base of clients. The goal of any dedicated coach is to accumulate thousands of hours. Hours spent not just actively coaching, but reading, studying, and developing the skills, knowledge, and expertise necessary to make people more proficient over time. 

Communication 

Strong communication skills are also essential to be an effective teacher. The ability to get your client to understand and correctly perform the necessary movements depends on your ability to communicate. Positive commands, application of the growth mindset, and proper encouragement techniques are all vital to good communication. Finally, after the movement pattern is taught, cues are employed to perfect the execution of the movement as it is performed. 

“The coach’s cue is some form of communication that the coach employs during a lift, or part of a lift, that is designed to produce a physical response from the lifter, usually in the form of an adjustment or correction to the lifter’s movement.” – Starting Strength

For barbell work, utilizing the Starting Strenth method (currently offered as a training program by One with the Water), these are primarily in the form of verbal communication but can be visual and tactile. Starting Strength offers a theoretical approach to developing the coach’s cue, from both the lifter and the coach’s perspective. Effective cues come from both the strength coach and the lifter’s shared understanding of the lift, knowledge that comes from training, experience, and trust. As a lifter, make sure you choose coaches (not trainers) that exercise an in-depth comprehension of appropriate cues, used in a manner that effectively supports the lifter.

In the end, knowledgeable, experienced coaches will always find ways to make the process simpler rather than more complex for the trainee. This approach, in particular, is a telltale mark of a great coach and his or her willingness to pursue professional development. 

Besides offering premium swim lessons to the greater LA community, Coach Rippetoe is also a strength training coach, utilizing the Starting Strength method to help clients become fitter, stronger, and faster. If you are interested in safe, professional one on one coaching, contact us today. 

Molly Huggins

Molly is a member of our creative team, mom of four water-loving babies, and a fierce advocate for CPR training and really early swim instruction.

The post What are the qualities of a good coach? appeared first on One with the Water.

Deep practice, a term coined by coach Daniel Coyle in his New York Times bestselling book The Talent Code, is an integral part of our coaching process. Deep practice involves specific, targeted creation of myelin in a way that optimizes each movement and memory we make. 

What is Deep Practice?

Inside the brain, neurons are responsible for transmitting information. Human skill is created by chains of nerve fibers carrying a tiny electrical impulse from the brain to the body through these neurons. Myelin is the insulation that wraps around the nerve fibers in our brains and increases signal strength, speed, and accuracy. When a person is thinking about and analyzing skill situations, the brain is producing myelin. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, “The purpose of the myelin sheath is to allow impulses to transmit quickly and efficiently along the nerve cells.” In simple terms, the more we practice a skill, the thicker the myelin layers will become, and the better and faster we become.

The rules of Deep Practice.

 Coyle divides deep practice into three rules building upon each other.

1. Chunk it up.

Chunk it up is simply the crawl stage of the crawl, walk, run model. The overall task (stroke) is broken up into subtasks learned individually and practiced slowly until the skill is mastered. When we introduce a new swimming skill, we use minimal space to focus on performing it correctly under the coach’s watchful eye. Once you or your swimmer is no longer able to do the movements correctly, your coach will stop and take a moment to correct the mistake, provide an opportunity to review the correct tstep and begin again training the skill.

 2. Repeat it. 

Just like it says. Repetition creates myelin. In the pool, as mentioned above, the coach will be watching to ensure the repetition is correctly performed. Perhaps the most important take-away is that myelin is created with every movement. If you are performing the movement incorrectly, you are reinforcing the memory of the inefficient stroke. 

3. Learn to feel it.

This step comes as you learn the skill correctly. With increased repetition comes accurate muscle memory and the body’s instinctive ability to recognize the correct movement due to the number of times it is repeated.

Deep practice has broad applications across all areas of personal and professional development and reinforces, yet again, how swimming can change your life across the board. (Ask me about how important it is in a helicopter during an emergency!) If you haven’t yet experienced the life changing power of swimming, register today for our premium swim lessons. 

Molly Huggins

Molly is a member of our creative team, mom of four water-loving babies, and a fierce advocate for CPR training and really early swim instruction.

The post The art of deep practice in the pool. appeared first on One with the Water.

“As authority figures, the messages we send to students and clients about success can often cause them to fall into the fixed mindset, as their success breeds a fear of failure. If success means they are smart/talented/brilliant/athletic, then failure means they are the opposite of all those things. At One with the Water, we praise our clients based on the growth processes used to perform – practice, study, effort, consistency, and persistence — and connect it to the outcomes, successful or not. And we are always developing new strategies and approaches. Because everyone is different. Because everyone learns in a different way.”

Interestingly, a not-insignificant number of individuals hold a growth mindset concerning athletic abilities and a fixed mindset when it comes to academics, believing that while athletic ability can be improved by practice, persistence, effort, and hard work, intelligence and academic success is innate, and cannot be changed. One study showed that 75% of students focused on performance goals in school versus mastery goals. In sports, the opposite was true. 77% of students were oriented towards a mastery goal in sports, compared to performance goals.

So what does that mean for you and your swimmer? The good news is that mindsets can be changed. And when you or your student exhibits a mixed mindset, as mentioned above, the tools we teach, the growth mindset used in improving their swimming abilities, can be applied to their academic and professional arenas. Numerous studies mention treating the brain like a muscle, viewing the academic arena as a playing field, and teachers who are there to coach, mentor, and care for them. Sports and swimming, in particular, become a familiar reference in which to re-imagine their capabilities and nurture a complete growth mindset.

Sign up today for our premium swim lessons and see the power of a growth mindset to transform your life.

Molly Huggins

Molly is a member of our creative team, mom of four water-loving babies, and a fierce advocate for CPR training and really early swim instruction.

The post Growth Mindset versus Mixed Mindset and the power to change. appeared first on One with the Water.

We’ve all heard of the crawl, walk, run concept of teaching new skills, whether it be in sport or elsewhere. At the core, the crawl to walk developmental sequence involves patterned neural activity, perception, cognition, and social interaction that has sequential effects on each subsequent skill. Ideas illustrated by research on the development of walking are broadly applied to other functional areas of development, in both the particulars and the process.

 However, learning to walk is not merely a euphemism for maturing and evolving. Like swimming, it is a physical skill with concrete markers of achievement that must be built upon sequentially in order to achieve the desired end state. At One with the Water, the crawl, walk, run is foundational in determining the method and order in which we teach you or your swimmer each new skill.

Our Coaching Method

It is vital to understand that when a new swimming skill is introduced, only minimal space is needed to perform the skill correctly. Once you or your swimmer is no longer able to do the movements correctly, your coach will stop and take a moment to correct the mistake, provide an opportunity to review the correct steps , and begin again training the skill.

 You may wonder why we teach in such small spaces, but because of the minimal space required, coaches do not have to have a swimmer swim more than a few strokes when learning a new skill. Once you or your swimmer shows appropriate mastery of the technique, we start having you move beyond the 10 meters mark. Forcing a swimmer to do more than 8-10 meters due to outside pressure or misguided coaching will only teach bad form and cause them to tire them out sooner. 

 Like crawling and walking, new opportunities for learning in each stage provide a developmental foundation for the acquisition and understanding of new skills.

 “Fluency is what makes skills efficient, coordinated, and beautiful to observe. It is the ability to execute movements smoothly, accurately, and rapidly. Consistency and automaticity—performing the same movements in the same way over and over—are the signature attributes of fluency that allow for more efficient use of psychological and neural resources.”  Source. 

Take advantage of our research-based, and time-tested, growth-mindset influenced coaching methods and register for premium swim lessons today.  

Molly Huggins

Molly is a member of our creative team, mom of four water-loving babies, and a fierce advocate for CPR training and really early swim instruction.

The post Coaching Method: Crawl, walk, run. appeared first on One with the Water.

Four lessons we can learn from successful athletes.

• Discipline – Successful Athletes wake-up and do the work every day. Success doesn’t happen without the grind and the effort.

“No matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.”― Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success

• Goal Setting: Athletes set goals, then create a strategic plan to accomplish them. (Often involving deliberate, disciplined  practice. Then they reassess them as necessary. Successful athletes know that targeted training works. Athletes have seasons within seasons, micro and macro training periods, and swimmers have three seasons per year: Macro cycles, Meso cycles, and Micro cycles for training. Athletes break down goals and set smaller, incremental goals to achieve the bigger goals. Ultimately, have a strategy but DON’T be afraid to fail – utilize a growth mindset to continuously learn and grow.

“Want to know the secret to victory? Fail to make the varsity team.”― Michael Jordan

• Nutrition & Healthy Living! – On a practical level, athletes embody what our potential can be when we make the best choices for our mental, physical, and emotional health. Take swimming for example. A regular swimming program can result in increased cardiovascular function, increased muscle tone and strength, anxiety and depression relief, improved flexibility, and weight loss. Additionally, when we maximize our nutrition choices, we reduce the long term risk of disease, while increasing energy and productivity in the short term.   
• Team Work! A lot of companies hire former college athletes based on the above and this factor. Team work promotes socialization, cooperation, and accountability, while elevating individual performance and creating outcomes impossible to achieve alone. It’s easy to recognize that heightened teamwork skills translate to success on the field. It’s important to recognize that these same skills cross over into all areas of life. Fred Northup, Founder and President of Athletes for a Better World espouses these same sentiments in his book, Winning More Than The Game.  “We are all on more than one team all the time: the family team, the work team, the neighborhood team, the school team, and even the national team because as citizens of this country we are all on the same team.”

The bottom line? The qualities that make athletes successful make them prime candidates for the corporate world, and we would all do well to take this roadmap to athletic excellence and apply it across the board in our own lives.

Kenneth Rippetoe

Kenneth is a Life-time member of the American Swimming Coaches Association and holds certifications as a Level 4 Disability Coach & Level 3 USA Swimming as well as US Masters Coach. Coaching since 1985, Kenneth specializes in Swimming, Strength and Conditioning coaching.

The post 4 Lessons Successful Athletes Can Teach Us appeared first on One with the Water.

The New York Times has a vested interest in maintaining the narrative – not just in politics and popular culture, but in the current medical dogma as well. The Received Wisdom must be defended, even if it’s plainly wrong. The latest wrong thing: the poisonous nature of dietary protein.

In a piece entitled “The Always Hungry Teenage Boy,” Perri Klass MD reminds us that teenage boys have a big appetite during their “growth spurt,” but that they’re eating the wrong stuff. Protein is bad, and the little snots are just gobbling it up.

Citing the new USDA Guidelines – the Government’s suggested dietary standards that still recommend a diet low in fat and high in carbohydrates – the following gem was included: “Some individuals, especially teen boys and adult men, also need to reduce overall intake of protein foods by decreasing intakes of meats, poultry and eggs, and increasing amounts of vegetables or other underconsumed food groups.”

The intersection of policy and politics has always been problematic. Nutrition guidelines (food pyramid) set in 1970 were primarily politics and the Government record on fitness regulation is spotty at best. In fact, recent work from University of San Francisco reported that the sugar industry paid scientists in the 60s to downplay the link between sugar and heart disease. The first paper blaming saturated fat had clear ties to the sugar industry. 

And there is some evidence that the same players are driving the narrative that lack of activity, rather than sugar consumption, is fueling the obesity epidemic. (One anti-obesity group published a video directly dismissing sugar as a cause and then was forced to disband because of their ties to Coca-Cola). Another group pushing licensing, American College of Sports Medicine received over $1.6 million from 2010-2015, from Coca Cola company. 

Now, the same government agency that has presided over the greatest explosion in Type II diabetes in the history of the human species is recommending that both growing boys and adult males eat less protein. They want us to eat more vegetables. Yes, potatoes are fine. And more bread, just hold off on the butter. Then the real nonsense starts, coming at you like the spacecraft in a J. J. Abrams movie.

Dr. Elsie Taveras, a pediatrician somewhere in the northeast, says about growing boys: “They’re always hungry, and that hunger, and a lack of satiety with small portions, leads to impulsive eating and eating large portions.” Right, Elsie. Because they’re hungry. Trying to grow makes you hungry. Small meals based on cabbage and quinoa leave a kid looking for some ham and cheese. I guess Elsie forgot how she felt when she was a growing boy.

And then she says this: “And the foods they are choosing aren’t really keeping them full, since foods with high fiber levels are the kinds of foods which do keep people full.” Which is wrong. In the Journal of the American Dietetic Association (JAm Diet Assoc. 2004;104:1151-1153), Dana Gerstein and colleagues discuss this situation. Satiation – the feeling that you’re full right now, while you’re eating – is best produced by carbs and fiber. But satiety – feeling like you’ve eaten enough for a while – is most effectively produced by eating protein. Dr. Taveras wants growing boys (which are composed largely of protein) to eat less of the foods that both help them grow and feel full between meals. She is wrong.

Lamentations continue: we’re not eating our vegetables. Adolescent boys and young adult males eat too much protein, while girls and young women don’t eat enough. Alison Field, and expert in obesity and eating disorders somewhere else in the northeast, laments that there’s not enough research focused on boys. Starting at puberty, boys will gain more muscle mass while girls will gain more fat mass. Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition somewhere in the northeast, tells us that boys should eat more vegetables so they don’t eat so much meat, because less meat and more vegetables is supposed to “better balance their nutrient intake.”

Most adolescent girls are always trying to lose weight, whether they need to or not, according to Dr. Field, who forgot she told us that girls accumulate more fat than boys – who ate too much protein. Dr. Field also observes that adolescent boys may be trying to gain muscle mass, bulk up, and Get Big, especially if they’re athletes. This, of course, drives them to eat too much protein. Dr. Klass, the author, thinks that Dr. Field thinks that boys and girls are influenced by airbrushed media images of lean and muscular sports figures, which cannot possibly be lean and muscular without the airbrush.

So the girls who ate less protein are fatter than the boys who ate too much protein, and therefore the boys should eat less protein. Like the girls. Who are fatter.

Fine. Now, here’s the funny part, the medical dogma that is just wrong, and has been wrong for the 40 years I’ve been listening to it. Dr. Jerel Calzo, a developmental psychologist studying eating disorders in adolescent males somewhere in the northeast, says that extra protein is useless for driving the growth of muscle mass. It’s just extra calories, he says. Turns to fat, he says. Best of all, he trots out everyone’s favorite mythological dietary fantasy: Protein supplements can damage your kidneys, especially if you’re dehydrated. But sports drinks are bad because they contain carbs – which were really good earlier – and the fact that they are designed to hydrate the body is just not sufficiently redeeming.

Fact: Muscle protein synthesis – the growth of skeletal muscle mass – responds to strength training, as we’ve discussed many times. But it certainly as hell also responds to nutrient intake as well, specifically amino acid availability immediately after training. If a kid who wants to get bigger and stronger eats like the USDA health bureaucrats want him to, he is at a disadvantage to the kid who is careful to get enough protein, especially right after training in the form of a high-quality easily absorbed protein supplement.

Fact: Muscle protein synthesis – the process by which muscle mass increases in the body – occurs in response to both diet and exercise. The stress of a strength-training workout is a factor, as is an influx of amino acids from a meal eaten shortly after training (http://jap.physiology.org/content/106/6/2040.short). Most of the studies investigating this suggest that it is some sort of age-related decreased sensitivity to amino acids at the cellular level, which can be overcome by upping the dose, and the quality of the dose.

The same signaling mechanism – elevated amino acid levels after protein ingestion – that grows muscles in boys who train correctly and eat enough protein also works to maintain muscle mass in older adults. But the process is less efficient the older you get, so more, not less, protein is necessary to drive muscle protein synthesis in older adults. But the USDA is advising adults to lower their meat intake, and some of us are dutifully obeying them, ignoring the fact that the Government hasn’t been any better at nutrition recommendations than it has been at managing the wool subsidy program.

And finally, fact: There is absolutely no evidence that elevated protein levels damage the healthy kidney. In other words, if you do not have kidney disease, a high protein diet is not harmful to the healthy kidneys you’ve got. It won’t make them sick. It will not hurt your kidneys. Moreover, it appears as though kidney function adapts quite well to higher levels of dietary protein. Hundreds of millions of people eat a high-protein diet with absolutely no renal difficulty, and people all over the world have done so since The Dawn of Time. Anybody that tells you otherwise is not familiar with the literature. And any advice to limit protein intake on the basis of compromised kidney function is unreliable, baseless, unwarranted, and is probably politically motivated by the militant vegetarian movement, or perhaps by the idea that too much meat in the diet is not “fair” to others.

This all boils down to one aspect of the current popular culture narrative: boys and men don’t need to be bigger and stronger. In fact, it’s much better if they aren’t bigger and stronger, because that is intimidating to people who aren’t. So they will use every tool at their disposal to discourage the acquisition of muscle mass, up to and including lying about the medical ramifications of doing so. Look at this amazing paper by the aforementioned Dr. Calzo: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm… Tell me that the man does not have an agenda here that involves more than your kidneys.

I don’t care what health care professionals from the northeast have to say about it. Dietary protein is not a problem unless it is undersupplied. Adolescent boys have enough problems already, what with “abz” being the current focus and therefore not enough calories and protein being the real problem we practitioners who work with these kids see in the trenches. Girls have body-awareness problems too, none of which are helped by detached northeastern health professionals advising against “excessive” dietary protein intakes. This is just one more example of medical dogma doing more harm than good.  

– Coach Mark Rippetoe, Founder of Starting Strength. Mark Rippetoe has worked in the fitness industry since 1978. He is the author of Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training, Practical Programming for Strength Training, Strong Enough?, Mean Ol’ Mr. Gravity, and numerous journal, magazine and internet articles. He has been the owner of the Wichita Falls Athletic Club since 1984. A version of this article also appears on Starting Strength.

Kenneth Rippetoe

Kenneth is a Life-time member of the American Swimming Coaches Association and holds certifications as a Level 4 Disability Coach & Level 3 USA Swimming as well as US Masters Coach. Coaching since 1985, Kenneth specializes in Swimming, Strength and Conditioning coaching.

The post Policy, Protein, and Faulty Recommendations appeared first on One with the Water.

Everyone is born with a specific, unique chronotype (the biological trait that helps determine our wake time preference), and it’s mostly determined by genetic factors. (The science behind the chronotype started way back in 1939 by researchers at the University of Chicago).

There does seem to be some health benefits to being an early riser, with the most prevalent being related to insomnia, obesity, and depression. In fact, one UK study published in 2016 did find that people up before 7 am are happier, thinner, sleep better, and are less likely to be depressed.

So even if we aren’t a morning person, can we train our body to wake up earlier? There are masses of information and techniques out there from medicine to meditation to sheer willpower. Here are some simple tips to get you started:

1. Implement change in small steps. Changing your routine just 15 minutes at a time may not seem like much, but is easy to sustain because it’s such a small change. 
2. Control your environment … bedrooms are for sleeping! Get off your screen about an hour before bed, and block out all forms of light to create a quiet, dark, calming environment. 
3. Break up with your snooze button! Going back to bed can actually send you into a deeper sleep cycle, making it harder to get up when your alarm does go off. That’s why when people hit snooze and go back to sleep for 5-15 minutes, they wake up thinking the time went by fast.

Does being a morning person affect our workouts?

Being a morning person or a night owl can help you determine when it’s best to workout. Depending on your body type you might work out best during certain times of the day. If you’re a morning person, then you might workout best between 6am – 10am. If you’re a night owl, then maybe you should workout at lunch or after work. It will help calm your mind and allow you to fall asleep quicker. Choosing the time of day to work out based on your body-type can also help you figure out what type of exercise or sport to play.

I was NEVER a morning person and during college, I used to take my pillow to morning swim practice. But after 4 pm, I was able to swim much faster and always had a lot more energy. ~ Coach Rippetoe

To learn more about your Ayurvedic constitution and what works best for you, take the quiz here.

As a Swim and Strength Coach, Coach Rippetoe had to become a morning person for those that prefer to workout during the morning. To become a morning person, he taught himself to wake up without using an alarm clock and never do anything strenuous until after 10 am. For Coach Rippetoe, early morning hours are for thinking and observing and planning the day. He’s learned over a lifetime that while his brain is moving, his body isn’t quite ready. Regardless of whether or not you are a lark or a night owl, it’s healthier for you to work out when your body is ready and able to do so. Take the time to learn your body and what works for you. 

Molly Huggins

Molly is a member of our creative team, mom of four water-loving babies, and a fierce advocate for CPR training and really early swim instruction.

The post Does It Pay To Be A Morning Person? appeared first on One with the Water.