I've wondered before (although perhaps not on this weblog, can't remember) how much of all medicine rests on the placebo effect. How many treatments would simply stop working if the placebo effect were suddenly erased from our minds? Consider this, from the article 13 Things That Do Not Make Sense:

Don't try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.

This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it's not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.

Stop reading now if you don't want me to ruin certain treatments for you, because faith is everything...

Still here? Okay... I was discussing this with my neuromuscular therapist friend yesterday, and she mentioned a few interesting studies, one which showed that of the "alternative" pain management techniques, acupuncture appeared to be the most effective. However, another study showed that fake acupuncture (sticking in needles randomly?) is pretty much just as effective as real acupuncture. Did some Googling, found a bunch of references, but I particularly liked this one: Sham Acupuncture More Effective Than Sugar Pill in Easing Arm Pain.

First question that leaps to mind: what do you use as a control group if you're studying the placebo effect? :-)

Usually the way pickup goes is this: first four players ready play box. The next two ready join in. Whoever shows up after that sets up Goaltimate and we play that. If we get up to 12, the late arrivals set up Ultimate. Used to be we'd just wait to have numbers for Ultimate before we'd do anything, and that would drive me nuts. Now getting there early just means you get to have more fun, and the latecomers do the work for you.

Anyway, we had a situation recently where we only had three ready to play so I started thinking about the three-person basketball game "cutthroat" and how you could do that with box. Here's what I cooked up:

• Somebody starts with the disc. They throw it to somebody. The thrower and the receiver are now on O, the other player is on D, and the disc is now clear (the O can score on their next pass). If they score, the O players each get a point. If they don't, the D player gets 2 points. Make it take it, play on immediately.
• On a turn, the D picks it up and throws it to somebody. Thrower and receiver are on O, disc is now clear, etc., same as above.
• If the very first pass of a possession (where the thrower is picking somebody to play O with) is incomplete then anybody can pick it up. If nobody wants to pick it up, it goes back to the thrower. No score, no penalty, try again.
• Stall is to three.
• Keep your own score, and call it out every time you get points. If you don't call it out, it doesn't count.
• First player to 11 wins.

The test drive of this game was a roaring success. Very fast-paced, couldn't stop laughing. Looking forward to the next time we only have three to start.

Oh, I didn't include it above because it's an unnecessary complication, but it grew kinda naturally out of our regular house rules, which I love. In our regular game, there is a fast break rule: if the defense catches it, there's no need to clear the disc, you can score on your very next pass. You can even throw such a pass from inside the box to another player in the box for the score (no Callahans). The way this manifests in cutthroat is that if the defense catches the disc, the very next pass can score. In effect, the thrower can choose who they want to give a point to. The game is already pretty funny during the transition, as the potential receivers try to make themselves desirable targets, while at the same time trying not to be woefully out of position in case the thrower goes to the other player instead. Making the transition throw a scoring opportunity in these cases turns the subtle jockeying into shameless pandering while still trying to protect against the back-stab.

Try it, you'll like it!

Apologies in advance for the brevity of this update. NE Masters Regionals, five teams, two bids. DoG (Boston), Tombstone (Toronto), and Above and Beyond (us, NY) look pretty well matched on paper. We have a rocky Saturday. Very hot. We beat Mt. Crushmore handily (15-4), but Not Dead Yet gives us a game (15-10), and we lose the big games to DoG (15-11) and Tombstone (14-10). Our D looked good, our O not so much. Lots of chances, few conversions. So that sets up the DoG/Tombstone final, with us playing Not Dead Yet in the backdoor bracket.

Sunday, cool and drizzly. DoG handles Tombstone. As expected, decent first half, but then Tombstone (I hear) starts looking towards seeing us in the backdoor game-to-go, and conserves. DoG rolls, 15-7. They look good. I'm always amazed at how they create space, both as individuals and as a team. We do a much better job with Not Dead Yet, winning 15-3. The offense starts to click, and we're running a pretty deep rotation with hard running D. We carry that energy and improved offensive efficiency into the back door game-to-go and take it! 15-11. Tough game, pretty contentious, but we're heading to FL, woo-hoo!

(There is an interesting discussion happening on RSD right now concerning the fairness of the five-team, two-advance format. Pretty common format in masters this year, and quite a few of the 2-3 matchups went one way in pool play, and then the other way in elimination play.)

Big bonus: after we qualified, we got to watch Jenn (one of our Berkshire locals) qualify with Bashing Pinatas! This got me all mushy over all the Nationals qualifiers who have played at least a season with our long-standing little hole-in-the-wall pickup game. Here's the list:

• Alec E.
• Blake H.
• Chris M. ²
• Christine L. ¹
• Derk P. ^1,2
• Jenn F. ²
• Jim B. ¹
• Jon B.
• Josh B. ^1,2
• Josh M. ^1,2
• Lester B. ^1,2
• Sam R. ²
• Steve H. ^1,2
• Xavier L. ^1,2

¹ First contact with the game was with Berkshire.

² Bulk of/most significant experience was with Berkshire.

Also, Rachel D. is knocking on the door with Nemesis (women's midwest team). They had two games-to-go this year, and lost a close one in the finals, and then the backdoor game in crappy weather to a team they'd beaten the day before. Damn! Next year, she promises.

Not bad, especially considering there are only something like 130,000 people in the entire county!

Dan John says carrying The Slosh Pipe, which weighs in at a mere 38 pounds, is like wrestling a python, will totally kick your ass, etc. It'd be hard to believe, if it weren't coming from such a good source. Gotta build me one of those. Sounds like fun.

And as long as we're on the subject of fringe (but likely killer) core exercises, check out the picture on the cover of the October CrossFit Journal, and consider this description:

Gymnastics coach Phil Savage explains how to use a simple bucket-and-rope contraption to allow the Rest of Us to train like gymnasts. Working the ability to perform circles on the floor (as male gymnasts do in competition on the pommel horse) with the feet supported and rotating around the body provides excellent strength and coordination work that carries over to all sorts of endeavors.

I bet a few circuits of Slosh Pipe carries and Bucket Circles would be just the right kind of torture.

Fight Age With Muscle:

...sarcopenia ["the loss of muscle mass that occurs naturally -- and inevitably -- with age"] creeps by in imperceptible increments, stealing a fifth of a pound of muscle a year, from ages 25 [!] to 50, and then it picks up a dreadful, yet still mostly silent, velocity.

Barring disease, you die by wasting away. Hit those weights! « via Supertraining »

It's been awhile since I posted a workout of the day. From this afternoon:

• Tabata jump rope (20 seconds sprint, 10 seconds rest, repeat 8 times).
• Rest one minute.
• 500m sprint on the C2 rower. Finished in 1:34. My record is 1:31, so didn't feel too upset, given I don't usually do Tabatas first. Three seconds is an eternity though. Every second is precious in the 500. You'd think I'd be able to shave off 0:02 and get under 1:30. Not yet.
• Waited for the blood roaring in my ears to subside, and for my legs to stop quivering. Five minutes, maybe?
• Tabata NordicTrack: See above. Only managed six rounds. Hated myself. Pride is fleeting, shame endures.
• Rest. Three minutes?
• 100 sledgehammer swings for time (10 lb. sledge, striking tire). 3:15. Wanted to break 3 minutes. Alas. Weakling.

Could have been worse, but could have been much better. Still, it was hard, so it was good. I'll do some hard running tomorrow, pickup Sunday, then just hone a bit next week and get fresh for Regionals next weekend.

Can't. Wait.

Michael Conley warming up doing two-ball dribbling drills. Better with sound. « via kottke »

If you've been on the fence about getting a set of rings, perhaps these rings pushup variations (click the video demo link once you get there) will push you over the top. « via MarkFu's Barbarian Blog »

Interesting, but ultimately irritating article, on how there's little evidence exercise results in fat loss. Sure, exercise ALONE won't do the trick, and yes, obviously exercise will make you hungrier, so if you keep blindly obeying your body's every dietary impulse, you're hosed (although you'll have more muscle underneath all your fat). But it is certainly possible to change your body composition through a multi-pronged attack:

• Exercise hard. Intervals and strength training. If it's not hard, it's not working.
• Stop eating crap. You can eat a lot, but it has to be good food, no simple carbs.
• Keep at it until it becomes a habit. In my experience, this can take many months, and the impulse to backslide never fully goes away (I've been into this four years now, and donuts don't look any less appealing to me now than ever).

In short, you gotta work for it. And not only is the work hard, but it's grossly unfair. It is not a level playing field. The work is harder for some (many) than others. For a lucky few, exercise produces a high. It hurts and requires willpower to see it through, but it also feels GOOD. It's even ADDICTIVE! For the rest of us, it's just torture, no corresponding rush or high, and this NEVER changes (although it does get easier). This is why it's important to find a sport you enjoy, as the fun of participating distracts you from the torture of exercising, and training for your sport gives you a purpose beyond fitness in the abstract.

Then there's the metabolic lottery. Insulin responses vary, how and where bodies store fat varies, the amount we crave crap varies. If you're one of the many who crave simple carbs and are prone to fat storage, then you're in for a lifetime of constant vigilance if you don't want to be fat. Believe me, I wish it were otherwise! I've read with some hope anecdotal reports that if you follow an evolutionary fitness-style diet your body will stop craving garbage, but in my experience that is not the case.

You have to want to be athletic more than you want to watch TV. You have to want to be athletic more than you want donuts. And for many, that's a very tough sell. In short, the good news is that it's possible. The bad news is that it's hard, and while it gets less hard over time, it never gets easy.

Just a small thing... I recently discovered that the handles on the Yukon GHD are at just the right height to assist with pistols (one-legged squats where your off-leg stays extended in front of you). I've tried various other methods of support without much luck, and had pretty much given up on this exercise, but this feels like such a good fit I'm going to start pursuing them again. Anyway, yet another exercise to add to this very versatile piece of equipment!

Great use of chains and spring clips as fractional "plates" for microloading.

(via the recently-upgraded Crossfit boards - looks nice!)

It's happened to me more than once that I've read a training article, said to myself, "hey, that makes a lot of sense", only to check the author after the fact and find out it was Kelly Baggett. So too with this Vertical Jump FAQ. No shortcuts, no fancy platform shoes, no ridiculous amounts of high-volume work, sounds... about right.

(Not that I've ever done any vertical leap training, which I'm sure is obvious to anyone who's watched me try to get up in the air.)