Yeah, that’s a super common complaint with ab wheels - you have to do everything you can to stop your back from going into extension.
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I got in major shite when I was a wee lad for washing my hair on CNY. I was genuinely ignorant of the “rules”, but no way would I have gone to school with greasy hair. Fortunately, I did it before my Mom woke up or there would’ve been a major brouhaha.
Also worked out well in that it laid the groundwork for all my future flouting of “rules”.
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Oh okay, that makes sense!! So gotta contract the abs harder, to keep the hips and low back from going into extension…gotcha!
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Definitely do it this way to start. As your abs get stronger doing it you can start to play with deliberate (controlled!) extension to lengthen the abs on the descent, and then contract them on the way up. Feels great when you get it right.
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Lu has side medial delts… but Lu’s Lu,
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Thank you for the reminder! When I read your post yesterday I meant to take a look, but was in a hurry. I’ll definitely look into it over the weekend!
It’s a probably 10 page booklet with pictures and a video.
It’s surprisingly hippy-dippy for the US Army, and I could almost recreate it, but I’ve been doing it so long that I am sure I am skipping steps at this point.
But the basics are take some deep breahs, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Then tense up all the muscle in your body, then relax, then tense up (like to the point it hurts) your your left lower leg, and let the tension flow out through the toes, then up the leg, then other leg, etc. All while also focusing on slowing breathing.
Repeat if you can’t get to sleep.
Hell just thinking about it almost made me nod off.
I’ve got myself so trained that – probably a decade ago – some idiot convinced me to take a certain stimulant – and I did not like how it felt. I decided to go to a dark room a go to sleep to let it pass. It’s that good.
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Feel like elaborating on it a bit more, if possible? I’ve looked into it before but it’s always super vague.
I’m trying to find the government publication. It should be public domain.
Here’s a bit:
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I confess that I started a carb free diet las Monday. And for some reason I always get depressed on this diet.
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@Voxel isn’t there some research about carbs and seretonin?
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eww keto…
My God, Coach Thib would have a field day with your statement @Edgy 
As Anna alluded to, @Voxel may be able to point you to a specific Coach Thib resource on the topic. He’s talked about this quite a bit.
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There probably is research on the topic. I haven’t read any, and so doesn’t have any on hand to cite.
I have a high-level understanding of the mechanisms, but nothing in-depth.
Serotonin makes people feel relaxed, calm, and, consequently, good. Strategically, it makes sense to elevate at times during the day when we want to wind down (night-time). And this is for instance why carbs are recommended at bed-time.
Serotonin isn’t made from carbs. Nor is it something we get from our diet directly. It is fabricated by our bodies. Specifically, it is made in the brain.
I’m uncertain what precursors serotonin needs, but I know of at least one: Tryptophan. Tryptophan is an amino acid, so you eat something protein-y, then there’ll be some tryptophan swimming around your blood after digestion. However, when you eat something protein-y it won’t be the only amino acid that starts making its way into your blood stream.
What I do know is that various amino acids are used for various things, and sometimes these things are somewhat diametrically opposed. Tryptophan is to serotonin what Tyrosine is to dopamine. Dopamine and serotonin do not act synergistically together. If one is high, expect the other to be low, and vice-versa.
The implication then becomes that there has to be something that serves to favour one over the other, somehow. And as far as I understand, this is where carbs come into play.
I can’t tell you why this happens, but tryptophan seems to resists the action of insulin moreso (perhaps completely?) than any other amino acid that it competes with. To rewind, the ingestion of carbs prompt an insulin response. The insulin response will start shuttling amino acids into cells, and the insulin response makes it so that overall there’ll be more tryptophan left in the blood than there’ll be of its competitor(s).
As blood crosses the blood-brain barrier, amino acids pass through too. Now, if your blood has a greater concentration of tryptophan than whatever amino acid(s) it has to contend with the scales are tipped in favor of serotonin production.
I’d be a likely suspect to have such a thing, but I do not. Maybe he has written something that draws a straight line between keto and low serotonin but I don’t have a quick and easy sound-bite of “Keto → low serotonin” to share. Presumably, inferring the same general idea from his writings where this is alluded to should be fairly trivial.
Here’s one that I found almost immediately just using serotonin as a keyword,
contextualising serotonin in a diet context.
As far as this goes,
I assume you mean this from the context of neurotypes?
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I like 5HTP for that. And a little l-theanine.
for mild blah feeling. Not clinical depression
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Tryptophan helps manufacture serotonin, serotonin further metabolizes into melatonin which metabolizes into dimethyltryptamine which makes you trip balls. Science.
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Are you saying I can get high if I eat enough turkey??? Looks like I didn’t go hard enough to on thanksgiving
This has been a game changer for me. Could be placebo, but the placebo effect is real!
Here it is. I have it saved for work.
And now that I’ve posted something that is exquisitely ON TOPIC, let me digress into a spirit-of-thread derailment.
So we’re having a home budget meeting this morning over coffee, looking at upcoming expenses, savings toward Roths and taxes and etc, and I’m scanning down the checking account and notice the $400 withdrawal for our dog adoption (cash! isn’t that weird? it felt very mob-y). So we’re all here in the bedroom, me, husband, and dog.
I say, “Four hundred dollar ATM withdrawal for you, Princess.”
And husband goes, “Um, I think that was for you, Sunshine.”
So I looked at him blankly and then he says, “Oh…am I not Princess?” So we laughed for a while, and then he offers, “I won’t say it doesn’t hurt.” To which I assured, “You’ll always be my Princess.”
I think my husband may have a new pet name. But if I use it, have I stepped over into @strongmangoals territory?
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