Exercise – Brain Connection: Soreness and Pain

The following article from WebMD helps and encourages anyone beginning an exercise program or anyone who’s been in their program for years.  Sore muscles will occur – call it the acute pain of overcoming inertia.  I was thinking of this very topic during a 20 mile run today – which was relatively pain free.  There will be some pain from exercise.  That’s OK.  The key is to determine what is normal soreness and what may be an indicator of a more serious problem.  This blog concerns normal soreness.

Two Types of Soreness that are good

acute, immediate- this is the type of soreness that occurs during or very soon after you’re done exercising.  It can happen to newbees or experts.  There’s also some characteristics of soreness from different activities – here are some that bubble up high on the list

Running:  shins, quads, hamstrings, knee, feet and shoulders, oh my!  Each of those will be pushed.  Depending on current fitness level and body composition, your soreness in any one area will vary.  Here is one big hint. Learn to run on the balls of your feet (I’ll have an entire blog on fore foot running).  For now let me just say that our bodies are meant to run toe to toe or on the ball of the foot (walking is heel to toe).  The downside is most running shoes cater to heel to toe strike.  Test this yourself – run barefoot for 200 meters and see how your foot falls.  Its natural fall is on the balls of your foot right before your toes.

Cycling:  buns, quads, shoulders and back.  Lots of bending over on top of a bike.  Proper technique (smooth and fast rotation instead of straining or chopping your stroke) helps.  For the buns aka “saddle sore” a cycling or triathlon pair of shorts  is well worth the investment.

Swimming: a wonderful healing aerobic activity swimming can strain the shoulders and back depending on type of stroke and, more importantly, your efficiency with each stroke.  Other irritations include swimmer’s ear and even the dreaded google imprint on the nose.  Compared to running there’s far less soreness involved. 

Lifting: more related to DOMS and discussed below, the soreness from weight lifting is typically 30-48 hours after.  This is the old “bench pressed 205 yesterday and can’t lift my toothbrush today” syndrome.

Sore Muscles? Don’t Stop Exercising  http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/guide/sore-muscles-keep-exercising?page=3
After participating in some kind of strenuous physical activity, particularly something new to your body, it is common to experience muscle soreness, say experts.

“Muscles go through quite a bit of physical stress when we exercise,” says Rick Sharp, professor of exercise physiology at Iowa State University in Ames.

 

 “Mild soreness just a natural outcome of any kind of physical activity,” he says. “And they’re most prevalent in beginning stages of a program.

 

delayed onset soreness (DOMS)   Ah, the joy of the two days after a marathon, triathlon or 100 mile bike ride.  Walking around with a little hitch in your giddy up.  I’ve included a link to a fun video about the day after a marathon.  This type of soreness will lessen.  It’s a profound how our bodies are wired to deal with pain.  It’s associated with the muscle tear down and recovery cycle.  Read more about why DOMS happens in the WebMD article referenced above. 

To overcome DOMS the most powerful and frequently overlooked treatment is the cold soak – within 15 minutes of ending your session.  This runs counter intuitive to what our body tells us (a message of let’s soak in a hot tub and grab a massage is much more inviting than lets sit in a tub for 20 minutes with ice and shiver like a Titanic survivor).  But it’s the best way to reduce inflammation and quasi secret method for Olympic and professional athletes to treat DOMS.  Another good method is to stretch, warm up, cool down and stretch – call this more of a preventive technique.

In the next Exercise – Brain blog we will share a bit about what to do about chronic soreness or pain that indicates a deeper issue.  Additionally some ideas on how to manage that pain will be provided.

 

The day after the Marathon

“Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is a common result of physical activity that stresses the muscle tissue beyond what it is accustomed to,” says David O. Draper, professor and director of the graduate program in sports medicine/athletic training at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.To be more specific, says Draper, who’s also a member of the heat-responsive pain council, delayed onset muscle soreness occurs when the muscle is performing an eccentric or a lengthening contraction. Examples of this would be running downhill or the lengthening portion of a bicep curl.

Exercise – Brain Connection: Pain Relief

So you thought exercise meant pain? 

While there’s some pain that results from exercise (either during or after – called delayed onset) the pain relief benefit from exercise greatly outweighs the pain creation.  This article provides a nice summary of what’s involved and I’ll shout and echo the sentiment that “Moving is what the human body is designed to do”…

http://www.nationalpainfoundation.org/articles/11/reaping-the-benefits-of-exercise?PHPSESSID=0e91394ee648b212802586b2a34ddd63

Mixing aerobic, strength (anaerobic) and flexibility are the key – one type alone will not accomplish it. 

• Aerobic exercise from running or cycling or aerobics classes help fuel that authentic wonder working tonic called endorphins.  From Medicine.net “Endorphins are manufactured in the brain, spinal cord, and many other parts of the body. They are released in response to neurotransmitters and bind to certain neuron receptors (the same ones that bind opiate medicines). Endorphins act as analgesics (diminishing the perception of pain) and as sedatives”
• Flexibility helps your body correct itself from a generally sedentary lifestyle we have.  If you think about it, sitting at a computer or standing all day on your feet are the most punishing things you can do to your body.  So stretching, yoga and Pilate’s help increase your range of motion
• Strength training does not mean “you’ll get pumped up” in the “governator” sense.  It does mean you’ll build muscles first and then over time (3-6 months later) your joint strength.Consider strength training your body’s natural ibuprofen. 

I’ve seen the benefits of exercise increase as I age or struggle with some minor chronic pain issues.  I have a flaky almost non existent thyroid that presented itself in 2001.  A 2 mile run felt like I was at mile 20.  It didn’t add up.  After a diagnosis and proper meds – Levoxyl rocks – I was back on my way.  However by focusing too much on running I would find myself fatiguing.  As I’ve mixed in a heavy triathlon dose and kept my strength training year round, I’ve noticed a much greater improvement in pain management.  Again, my pain management is very minor and I empathize with those who have arthritis or fybromyalgia or Lyme disease.  I’ve also seen that blending in healing aerobic activity of swimming and cycling helps with the body pounding nature of running (in a future blog I’ll share some secrets on how to make it less body pounding beginning with “get off your heals and onto the balls of your feet”).  My next step is improving my flexibility. 

Now further testifying to the benefit of exercise, I’ve felt the old body aches more if I’m away from some serious workouts for 4-5 days (lets say traveling).  The lower back creaks, feet hurt, etc. 

Please do share what you’ve found – whether you’ve exercised all your life, its been a few months or you’re just beginning.

Next up – overcoming the Pain from Exercise.

 

The Delphi Technique

Although listed as a Group Creativity Technique for the fourth edition PMBOK®’s Collect Requirements process, this technique is versatile and used beyond the boundaries of project management. The Delphi Technique consists of rounds of gathering opinions from a select group of experts. For example, Kent wants to buy a car, but he wants to make sure it’s a “really cool” car. So he asks some of his friends who work in the automobile industry to be part of his panel. Each friend is unaware of who the other panel members are. Kent receives all the surveys back and reads the responses, such as the Dodge Challenger, Ford Mustang, Maserati 3200 GT, Rolls Royce Phantom and Saleen S7. Kent summarized his results, and then sent this summary back to all his panel members. A number of them changed their mind, writing comments such as “I forgot about the Saleen S7 that someone mentioned! Yes, that is the coolest car.” Once again, he summarized the results and sent them to his panel to see if the group came to even more agreement about which is the coolest car. In this way, he was able to get valuable information from the experts, and there was no concern about group dynamics or individual personalities unduly affecting the results.

Exercise & Brain Power – getting started

Getting started – often the first step is the most difficult.   It’s also the most important step.   I remember listening to John “The Penguin” Ingram, contributing editor for Runner’s World and self effacing ’slow runner’, share at the prerace dinner for the Tulsa Marathon in 2003 that the “miracle wasn’t that I finished, the miracle was that I had the courage to start”.  At the time he began running he was considerably overweight and had a myriad of health issues.  So that first step was a good leap for mankind (giant leap belongs nobly to Neil Armstrong).  http://thepenguin.runnersworld.com/

I’m not presuming that running is the only exercise to begin with.   It is a lower cost and simple way to begin – go out and run.  There are other equally effective ways.  There’s also some good advice from the Mayo Clinic on what to consider for any exercise program

1. Assess current fitness level
2. Design your program
3. Assemble your equipment
4. Get started (Penguin’s miracle)
5. Monitor your progress

for our Six Sigma fans this resembles the DMAIC process a bit… but I digress http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fitness/hQ00171

A good program should include both aerobic and anaerobic conditioning.

Here’s a quick list of lower cost entry aerobic exercises to begin with:

1. Walking
2. Running
3. Cycling
4. Swimming
5. Dancing (ah, not slow, you need to move)
6. Others – may require some investment
   1. Skiing - downhill or cross country
   2. Indoor passions – elliptical, stair climber, treadmill – at a local club, Y or home
   3. Soccer
   4. Roller Blading

Anaerobic exercises includes

1. Circuit training (health club)
2. Free weights (can be done at home)
3. the “ups” – push, pull, chin and modified sit ups.

How often should you do it each week?  The traditional wisdom is 3 times a week for 20 to 30 minutes to begin.  My observation and one shared by the “Younger Next Year” authors Chris Cowley and Dr. Harry Lodge http://www.youngernextyear.comis more than that – at least 4 aerobic sessions for 45 minutes each week and 2 to 3 anaerobic / strength training programs.  Why?  Am I harsh?  Old School?  Grumpy? 

Maybe, but the deeper reason is our bodies were made for movement every single day and not just 2 or 3 days a week.  While 3 days a week for 20 minutes is a start, your body actually craves a bit more .  As we share more on heart rates and endorphins, 45 minutes is when you begin receiving the “thank you” from your body.

Now that 45 minutes is NOT at break neck pace.  If your goal is to run, then begin with a walk/jog combination – a 50/50 mix over those 45 minutes.  If cycling, then a mix of 8-12 mph with occasional bursts to 15.  The idea is to extend your session, reasonable.   How long should you stay at this “introduction” phase – the simple answer, as long as it takes for you to feel comfortable to add time to each session or increase intensity or both.  That may mean weeks or months or even a year. 

Next up are blogs on Anaerobic exercises, “Pain”, Extending your Performance and psychological benefits from exercise.  For now venture out and make the exercise stuff happen!

Bidder Conferences

A Bidder Conference is a project management technique used for procurements. It is a technique of the fourth edition PMBOK®’s Conduct Procurements process. They may also be called contractor conferences, vendor conferences, and pre-bid conferences. A Bidder Conferences is a meeting for potential bidders to all fairly understand the buyer’s requirements. If the buyer were to meet individually with bidders or answer a particular bidder’s question privately, they would not all receive the same information—placing some bidders at a disadvantage. Imagine that Katy wants to pay one of her children to bake a dessert. She meets with all three of her children at the same time to inform them that she’ll pay one of them to bake a dessert that serves ten people by six o’clock this evening. Her oldest daughter wants to know if she’ll give preference to chocolate desserts, and Katie says “yes.” Her youngest daughter wants to know if the dessert can be a chilled dessert. Katie tells them all that the dessert should not be a chilled dessert. Her son wants to know if Katie will go to the grocery store if they need an ingredient not in the house, and Katie says that she will go to the grocery store, but won’t spend more than ten dollars on ingredients they don’t already have. After the Bidder Conference, the children are dismissed and each of them writes a simple proposal. The oldest daughter will make a German Chocolate cake if she is paid ten dollars. The youngest daughter proposes to make brownies for three dollars, and the son proposes to make s’mores for two dollars. At this point, Katie decides which proposal to accept. Also see the earlier posting of Proposal Evaluation Techniques (posted July 20, 2009).

Issue Log

The Issue Log is a project document (not part of the Project Management Plan) described in the fourth edition PMBOK® whose purpose is to record and monitor issues. It is a tool of the PMBOK’s Manage Project Team process and an input to the Manage Stakeholder Expectations process. Note that one is a Human Resource knowledge area process and the other is a Communication knowledge area process, so the issues of concern in this case focus on human interaction and communication, not on all the technical project problems. Although the issues themselves can seem minor, unresolved problems have the potential to cause schedule delays and other detrimental effects. The Issue Log should assist in communicating the issue to the project team. A template is useful in which columns represent for each issue who is responsible for resolving the issue, the urgency of the problem, the potential impact of the problem, and the target date for resolution—along with any other information useful to the project management team.

Resource Leveling

The project management technique of Resource Leveling examines the possible need for adjustments to a schedule already constructed using the Critical Path Method based on the availability of resources. The fourth edition PMBOK® defines it as “any form of schedule network analysis in which scheduling decisions (start and finish dates) are driven by resource constraints.” It is listed as a technique of the PMBOK’s Develop Schedule and Control Schedule processes. Although typically the resources are people, other types of resources may also be leveled. If the schedule was constructed assuming that a project team of ten would be working forty-hour weeks, it will need to be adjusted if the team is only available to work mornings or if the team has been reduced to eight people. Also, a highly skilled person may be needed to perform several activities which are currently listed as occurring simultaneously, and there are simply not enough hours in the day for that single person to accomplish all the work. Another situation which may require Resource Leveling is if the team is unwilling to work varying number of hours (for example, the schedule may currently require 20 hours of a person’s time during some weeks, and 60 hours of that person’s time during other weeks). In this situation, the schedule could be adjusted so the resource(s) work the same number of hours each week. Often the project schedule will need to be extended to account for these constraints.

WBS Dictionary

The WBS dictionary is the document that accompanies the WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) which further elaborates upon the individual components of the WBS. The WBS Dictionary is an output of the fourth edition PMBOK®’s Create Work Breakdown Structure process. Together with the WBS and Scope Statement, it composes the project’s Scope Baseline which becomes part of the Project Management Plan. The WBS Dictionary can include: code of accounts identifiers, description of work, responsible organization, list of schedule milestones, associated schedule activities, resources required, cost estimates, quality requirements, acceptance criteria, technical references, and contract information. If useful, the WBS Dictionary can contain additional information about the components as well. Also see the earlier posting of Create Work Breakdown Structure Process (posted February 27, 2009) and WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) (posted July 21, 2009).

Exercise and Certification Exam Peformance

Greetings.

Laura Hilkemann, the chair of TAPUniversity, has done the heavy lifting on this blog the last several months.  As of July 21, 2009, there are 124 core descriptions of project management.  We’ve indexed over 500 core learning objects across business analysis, human resource management, information technology, project management and quality management  disciplines.  A good number of those objects cross over those disciplines – for example group formation and development (forming, storming, norming, performing and reforming).

To help your understanding and mastery of those objects, over the last six months I’ve been researching the  impact of physical, spiritual and mental performance on each other. The gate swings all ways.  There’s some solid, reliable research out there to back it up.  Call it the body, spirit and mind game.   My interest is twofold:

• from our work to help professionals achieve certification results as efficiently as possible and
• my passion for exercise – primarily in triathlons, marathons and quests to reach milestones in each.

Exam Day

What started as “ten things to do before your PMP exam” five years ago has grown into a deeper passion of mine.  In looking at 9 certification exam experiences of mine since 2000, I did very well on 8 and so/so on 1.   One of the factors on the so/so one in 2004 was taking exam after a period of 2 weeks of semi activity and on depleted resources (lack of sleep, stress and poor nutrition). 

Before my most recent exam (CBAP – certified business analyst professional –  in April of 2008) I purposely ran two miles (7 minute pace) , 30 minutes prior to the exam.  I had a good overall aerobic and anaerobic exercise week (30 mile running week and 3 strength training sessions).  I felt pumped, though sweaty.  Pity my fellow exam takers .  My pulse was moderate through the experience – not spiking up. I got up twice to grab some water and finished the exam rather fast.  Now, my mental preparation wasn’t necessarily text book – I crammed during a 6 hour lay over at the St Louis airport.  Granted I had been immersed in the BA jargon for 15 years –still not the ideal prep.

So what?  We coach and recommend that exam takers get up and move around during an exam.  Prior to entering the exam we recommend aerobic exercise commensurate with the exam takers current level of fitness. It helps the different pieces and parts of the brain.    It will not replace adequate preparation!  It does help you reach the optimum mental state.

Day to Day Performance

I’ll share more on later blogs in terms of how it does that.  The essence of it is that we’re wired to move; as we move our brain thinks and learns better; as we move we also touch a spiritual pulse inside and the spirit and mind also propel our body to move.  The three are connected.

To complete this first “exermindspir” blog – I want to share two links to one of the works I’ve studied from Dr. John Ratey’s “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.”  Take a peek and let me know what you think!

 http://brainsciencpodcast.wordpress.com/2008/03/21/brain-science-podcast-33-exercise-and-the-brain/

WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)

A WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) is a project document that displays a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the project work. At the first level of decomposition, the major branches of the WBS could represent phases, major deliverables, or subprojects. At each lower level, the work is broken down into more detail. This process of breaking down the work into its more detailed components is called decomposition. The lowest level components of the hierarchy are called Work Packages. The WBS contains the entire scope of the project. The approved detailed scope statement with its WBS and WBS Dictionary is called the Scope Baseline for a project.

The WBS is an output of the fourth edition PMBOK®’s Create Work Breakdown Structure process. The Project Management Institute has also released an 111-page standard for creating a WBS called The Practice Standard for Work Breakdown Structures (http://www.pmi.org/Marketplace/Pages/ProductDetail.aspx?GMProduct=00100084701). Also see the earlier posting of Create Work Breakdown Structure Process (posted February 27, 2009).