Featured Fitness Content: Volume 123

Firstly, welcome to December–you heard it here first. But now onto fitness stuff.

In this installment of Featured Fitness Content we’ll be looking at some articles that sit on the fringes of what can typically be considered ‘health’ content. Because these articles really do span a wide array of topics I’ve chosen to put a description next to each on how and why these articles have come to my attention.

As always you can find the last installment of Featured Fitness Content here and you can find our exhaustive library of Featured Fitness Content here.

The Breakdown…

How to Plant, Grow, and Harvest Garlic Via Almanac

Garlic is a great add to the diet because of its anti-microbial properties, general health benefits, and of course because of its taste profile. I’ve gone so far as to plant garlic near some of my hunting spots so that I have a steady source of it while camping. My home garden has a few bulbs growing and yours can too with very minimal effort–provided that you follow some basic instructions.

Iran’s World Cup soccer team refused to sing the national anthem before their game to show solidarity with protesters fighting the regime back home Via MSN

This isn’t precisely ‘fitness’ but definitely falls under the broader classification of ‘sport’ so I’ll let it roll. This is a great example of sport being used on a global stage to affect change. I don’t think, however, that this is a black-and-white story. Iranian nationals are dissatisfied with the team because of their intimations in favor of the Iranian government, yet, the Iranian government had approached family members of the Iranian team because of the team’s refusal to sing the national anthem. I view the team’s actions as rather brave but ostensibly their fellow Iranian citizens view the action as too little too late.

Morning exposure to deep red light improves declining eyesight From University College London via ScienceDaily

Early morning sun exposure has been top of mind for me. During the summer months, into early fall, I was cycling a sprint route as the sun came up then following up with 30-60 minutes of sun exposure. As the sun began to come up closer to 7 AM, I was unable to keep this pattern as traffic picks up heavily by this time, making the route less-than-safe (particularly with how reckless I was getting with the rules of the road to improve my time).

Prolactin: structure, function, and regulation of secretion Via PubMed

My interest in prolactin came out of a podcast with Andrew Huberman. Dr. Huberman’s podcast also put me on the aforementioned early morning sun-exposure kick and I imagine I’ll be following his work as a great continued source for new information in human physiology.

Your Olive Oil Has Probably Lost Its Health Benefits By TC Luoma via T-Nation

Olive oil is great. With all of the dietary fact and fiction, competing health narratives, and contradictory dietary suggestions, olive oil has maintained its pro-health anti-inflammatory status among the great majority of health factions. Olive oil does have a short(er) shelf life than most would think. Consider buying a smaller bottle to help maintain it’s freshness and consider refrigerating your olive oil to maintain its status as a health food.

Featured Content

How to Plant, Grow, and Harvest Garlic Via Almanac

Iran’s World Cup soccer team refused to sing the national anthem before their game to show solidarity with protesters fighting the regime back home Via MSN

Morning exposure to deep red light improves declining eyesight From University College London via ScienceDaily

Prolactin: structure, function, and regulation of secretion Via PubMed

Your Olive Oil Has Probably Lost Its Health Benefits By TC Luoma via T-Nation

New On the Ruthless Performance Blog

Thinking about muscle groups in human performance is probably the wrong categorization. When you try to maximize for a particular muscle group, many things get lost in translation, ‘stabilizer’ muscles go untrained, movement patterns are left unstimulated. But two muscles which get some attention at Ruthless are the glutes and the traps. Not the upper traps–the part of the traps which most people think about.

Read more about the traps and their role in human performance here.

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