The Mighty Foam Roller

by Mike

As wonderful as the TheraCane is, I've found that the foam roller does a much better job on the lower body. Especially the quads, hamstrings and IT band.

Just about everything you need to know about how to use it is over at T-Nation in their article: Feel Better for 10 Bucks.

A couple other things I feel worth mentioning:

• Make sure your floor is clean. the roller has a tendency to pick up whatever's on the floor and embed it into your back/legs/etc. Not necessarily painful, but can be embarrassing if you plan on wearing that shirt or pants out later.
  
  
• The foam roller does wear down, becoming softer and less effective. Both through normal use and especially if you leave things resting on it for awhile. You'll need to figure out for yourself when the roller needs to be replaced - basically when it feels like "it just doesn't work like it used to." Don't use the roller as a pillow - even a few minutes will give you a goofy dent in it that likely will affect performance.
  
  
• While I don't use the roller for a full-body massage and expect it to hit everything that's bothering me, I have found it useful to do a thorough once-over on everything:
  
  1. Right after a hot bath - when you're both relaxed and your muscles are warm and pliable
  
  2. Right before bed. It's surprisingly relaxing.
  

CC-licensed photo by Pass the Chips.

You don't need as much protein as you thought you did

Fitness Spotlight goes through a couple recent studies and tells you that you don't really need as much protein as you thought you did - for most of us the 1g/lb-day seems to be largely wasted.

To be sure, I read about the first study mentioned in their post on a supplement company's site and they went to no small length to say, "well, we know what this study says, but we'd like to point out that they were using egg whites and there's no evidence that [our products] have less efficacy...blah, blah, blah."

Quick Guide to Skin Infections and Not Rolling While Sick

by Mike

Missing class tonight due to an illness, I figured I'd take the opportunity to remind people that training while sick is not a good idea. Especially as we get into flu season, some people unfortunately need to be reminded that they have a lot of classmates who would rather not get sick if they can help it, not the least of which is having a sick classmate show up to ruin their week.

But even beyond simple stay home if you're sick, there are the Pig Pens of the world who go a step further and show up with something a little more troubling than the sniffles. Check out the following links for a refresher/reference guide to awful things you don't really want to see pictures of, let alone see on people at your school:

The makers of Defense soap have a fairly comprehensive section on skin diseases with causes, treatments and disgusting pictures. See the right sidebar for the links (but there are some unfortunate broken pages mixed in). While you of course have impeccable hygiene, it might be worth forwarding their guide to hygiene for combat athletes to your classmates who don't.*

Skin Infections and the Wrestler is a short pdf detailing a couple common conditions that you encounter in the dojo and what to do about them. I'd like to point out that it does give one bit of advice that the other guides didn't: "Do not wrestle with someone who has [whatever]. Alert your coach or an official."

While it hopefully isn't necessary to snitch on Pig Pen, pointing out that they're not fooling anyone with their, "oh, I didn't notice that" does need to be reiterated. Someone didn't notice the big rash/fact that it's painful to open their mouth/bleeding? Of course they didn't. If they won't act responsibly, perhaps they'll react to varying degrees of shame.

A couple other articles that you might find interesting:

• Doc Dill talks Itchy Noses and MRSA scares
  
  
• Mike hates nerds that bleed all over him and try to play it off

* Before you complain, it is a site to sell their product. I tried a sample awhile back and the best I can say about it is: I didn't develop any infections while using the soap (not that I normally do otherwise) and it smells nice.