What’s Better for You: High Volume or High Intensity Training?

From Joe Friel's blog.  Here's the takeaway:

So what are the lessons we can learn from this study? The first is that the response to any training program varies considerably between individuals. In sport science this is referred to as the “principle of individuality.” In this example, some of the athletes responded well to high volume, others to high intensity.

Another lesson is that training the same way year after year produces about the same results. Something needs to change to improve. Should the change be in volume or high intensity? That’s a hard question to answer without knowing more about the individual. But, in general, the newer you are to your sport, the more likely you are to respond better to volume increases. Experienced athletes, those who have been in their sport for several years (perhaps more than 3 years), will usually respond better to increases in the volume of intensity done at or above lactate threshold.

Determining how to train is often a matter of trial and error. If you aren’t responding well to your workout program, it may be that you need more total training volume or more high-intensity efforts. Of course, there could be other issues, such as making your easy days too hard, inconsistent training, significant psychological stress in your life, poor nutrition, inadequate recovery, and so on. But if you can eliminate such training detractors as these, then the biggest remaining variable is the periodization of your volume and intensity. The only way to find out for sure is to try something different from what you’ve done in previous years and see what happens.

2014 research on exercise in Phys Ed

From a look back at this year's Phys Ed column posts in the NYT:

Scientists advanced, for instance, our understanding of the effects of exercising — and not exercising — on the mind and brain. Several different studies found that exercise significantly improves the brain health of people with a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s disease and also, encouragingly, lessens healthy, middle-aged people’s risks of suffering from what one scientist described to me as “a C.R.S. problem,” or Can’t Remember Stuff.

Another study explored how exercise can improve mood, with Swedish researchers showing that, in mice, a substance produced abundantly in the bodies of both mice and men during exercise crosses the blood-brain barrier and buffers brains against stress and depression.

And, in perhaps the most novel exercise-neuroscience experiment this year, researchers explored how sitting may affect the brain, by having one group of rats remain sedentary while others ran. The sedentary rats soon displayed changes in the shape and function of certain neurons in their brains, while the running rats showed no such changes. The neurons involved play a role in how well the body regulates blood pressure, so the researchers concluded that not exercising had remodeled the animals’ brains in ways that undermined their health.

Meanwhile, plenty of other studies this year underscored how wide-ranging the benefits of exercise really are. In various experiments, physical activity was found to lessen and even reverse the effects of aging on human skin; protect against age-related vision loss;improve creativity; lower people’s risk of developing heart diseaseeven if they had multiple risk factors for the condition; increase the numbers of good bacteria in athletes’ guts; raise exercisers’ pain tolerance; and alter, in desirable ways, how our DNA works.

Being in good shape also, in a sense, keeps us young, according to a large-scale study published in October. Fit people were biologically younger than others of the same chronological age, the study concluded, and generally lived longer. “There is a huge benefit,” the study’s senior author told me, “larger than any known medical treatment, in improving your fitness level to what is expected for your age group or, even better, to above it.”

But the benefits of exercise are not limitless, as science gently reminded us this year. Working out spurs many people to gain weight, primarily in the form of body fat, a pitiless but important October study showed. It also can be harmful to the teeth, if the exercise is prolonged and strenuous. And if practiced in a gym, exercise may expose us to more indoor pollution than many of us might have expected.

Luckily, this exposure will be minimal for those of us embracing theone-minute workout.

Vs. Constructivism

This got me started:  https://ateacherswonderings.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/inquiry-to-what-end/

Which led to these:

http://www.deliberations.com.au/2006/09/bereiter-education-and-mind-in.html

http://www.wou.edu/~girodm/middle/Airasian.pdf

• Constructivism is so widely accepted because of the widespread belief that current methods don't promote "higher-order" thinking, because it allows for greater teacher discretion over teaching and learning, and because its rhetoric is sexy:  "lighting the spark" of motivation rather than "filling the buckets" of knowledge, all students can learn, emancipating the teacher.
• Caution #1:  An epistemology of learning is not a prescription for an instructional approach.  Just because a lesson is "hands-on" does not make it constructivist.
• Caution #2:  Constructivist techniques are not the sole means by which students construct meaning.  No single method should be used exclusively.
• Caution #3:  Implementing constructivism is time-consuming.  There will necessarily be more emphasis on depth than breadth.
• Caution #4:  There need to be clear criteria and standards for evaluation student constructions.  It's not true that all constructed knowledge is equally valid.

http://people.ucsc.edu/~gwells/Files/Courses_Folder/ED%20261%20Papers/Scardamalia%20Knowledge%20Building.pdf

• Distinction between shallow and deep constructivism: "The shallowest forms engage students in tasks and activities in which ideas have no overt presence but are entirely implicit. Students describe the activities they are engaged in (e.g., planting seeds, measuring shadows) and show little awareness of the underlying principles these tasks are to convey."
• "Knowledge building environments enable ideas to get out into the world and onto a path of continual improvement. This means not only preserving them but making them available to the whole community in a form that allows them to be discussed, interconnected, revised, and superseded." 
• CSILE/Knowledge Forum

http://ascpro0.ascweb.org/archives/cd/2011/paper/CEUE335002011.pdf

The Open-Office Trap

The Open-Office Trap, or why architectural attempts to force collaboration don't work

Some investing things

Saver's tax credit:  Get up to $2000 tax credit (applied at the end to your taxes owed) for making contributions to retirement accounts.  See  Form 8880.

Principles of tax-efficient investing from Bogleheads.  I learned some interesting things here, like how REITS are tax-inefficient because they pay out a lot of dividends that are not qualified dividends, and thus taxed at your regular income tax rate (rather than the lower long-term capital gains tax rate)

The case against Roth IRA's, interesting.  The claim is that pre-paying taxes with a Roth isn't really worth it for most people.  Instead, take the tax break NOW with a regular tax-sheltered retirement account, and pay taxes later when you're in a lower tax bracket.  More here:  Roth IRAs: Good for You or Not?

Shockingly Boring Millionaire Investing Secrets:  "Millionaires are even as "boring" as to use Vanguard Group's low-cost index investments, which are the most popular choice for market exposure among the affluent investors surveyed by CNBC."

Bill Bernstein on using reverse glide-paths in retirement.

"The reverse-glide-path approach, then, works because it starts out with a large, ultrasafe liability-matching portfolio and a small risk portfolio. As the retiree ages, the LMP gets spent down and the RP gets larger."

And a good reading list for investors from Farnam Street. 

2014 Books

A list from Farnam Street:

• 5 Books That Will Change Your Life
• 20 Book Recommendations from Billionaire Charlie Munger That Will Make You Smarter
• 19 More Book Recommendations from Billionaire Charlie Munger
• The Stoic Reading List
• 10 Books Bill and Melinda Gates Recommended to the TED Audience This Year
• Daniel Pink Recommends Five Books to Improve Thinking
• 21 of Bill Clinton’s Favorite Books
• 12 Books Every Investor Should Read
• Financial Times: Best Books of 2014
• The Best Nonfiction Books of 2014
• The Surprising Books That Billionaires, Chess Prodigies, Performance Coaches, and Bestselling Authors Recommend
• What Philosophers Read
• The Six Books Bill Gates Thinks You Should Read This Summer
• What The Rich Read At the Beach
• Max Bazerman: Books for Leaders
• Ben Horowitz: 5 Reads
• 5 Short Reads to Expand Your Mind
• The Best Books of 2013: Your 10 Overall Favorites