Tag: jockology

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Jockology:exercising while you’re sick, and boosting your immune system

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My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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This week’s Jockology column takes a look at how exercise affects your chances of staying healthy during the cold and flu season, and what happens if you exercise when you’re already sick:

The question

Will working out help me beat the flu?

The answer

As cold and flu season kicks into high gear, so too does the search for an immunity edge.

Recent studies offer plenty of evidence that regular exercise really does strengthen immune function – a claim that can’t be made for most of the pills and potions whose sales spike at about this time of year. But like any powerful medicine, exercise also carries the risk of an overdose.

“It’s what experts call the ‘J-curve’ hypothesis,” says Brian Timmons, a researcher at McMaster University’s Children’s Exercise and Nutrition Centre. “Moderate intensity is good, but too much exercise is not so good.”

Exercise also turns out to be a mixed blessing if you do get sick: harmless and possibly even helpful for some symptoms, but not recommended for others.[read more…]

An important point made by a commenter on the Globe site: if you’re contagious, you definitely shouldn’t head to the gym and infect other people!

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Jockology: running surfaces and injuries

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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This week’s Jockology column tackles the longstanding question of how different running surfaces affect your risk of injury. The science here is a lot less clear than you might expect.

The question

Will running on hard surfaces like asphalt and concrete increase my risk of injury?

The answer

In a study to be published later this year, Brazilian researchers found that your feet feel about 12 per cent more pressure with each foot strike when running on asphalt compared to grass.
Thanks for that newsflash, Captain Obvious, you might say.
But the findings actually contradict several earlier studies, which – despite what our intuition tells us – have found that we seem to automatically adapt our running stride so that hard and soft surfaces administer roughly the same shock to the body.
In fact, it may be the smoothness of paved surfaces that makes them dangerous to runners, rather than their hardness. And softer, less even surfaces carry their own injury risks, so the best answer may lie somewhere in the middle. [read more…]

(And a random shout-out to Dan Peterson at the Sports Are 80 Percent Mental blog — I think he was the one who introduced me to the prodigious research output of Captain Obvious, though I can’t seem to find the post I’m thinking of anymore!)

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Jockology: “active rehab” for pulls and sprains

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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The latest Jockology column appears in today’s Globe, dealing with the question of when “RICE” (rest, ice, compression, elevation) should turn into “MICE” (movement, ice, compression, elevation). It’s a tricky one, because there’s such a wide range of possible muscle pulls, sprains and tears that it’s difficult to give general advice. But the overall theme is that if you keep protecting and favouring a weak point for too long, you can end up harming the healing process.

The question

Ouch, I think I sprained something. How long should I stay off it?

The answer

Canadian figure skater Anabelle Langlois returned to action last month, earning a bronze medal with partner Cody Hay at a tournament in Germany one year after fracturing her fibula in a training accident. With Olympic dreams on the line, Ms. Langlois’s doctors had pursued every possible avenue in her rehabilitation, including two operations.

One thing they didn’t recommend, though, was a long period of complete rest for the injured leg. [read on…]

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Jockology: Triple bill on fitness in your 50s!

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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The Globe is running a special section on fitness in your 50s, so there are three Jockology columns in today’s paper:

The question

How should I train in my 50s?

The answer

When Ed Whitlock became the first septuagenarian to run a marathon in under three hours in 2003, it was thanks to a simple but gruelling training plan: two- to three-hour runs around a local cemetery, nearly every day.

That regimen presented two key challenges that are familiar to any masters athlete: staying healthy and – just as important but less obvious – staying motivated. In fact, when asked why his race performances in his 50s were less impressive than in the years before and after, Mr. Whitlock points to his motivation…

and

The question

How much will I slow down in my 50s?

The answer

The physical attributes that determine athletic performance – maximal oxygen uptake, as well as muscular strength and power – typically start to decline slowly at about the age of 35, and much more rapidly at about 60…

and

The question

Now that I’m in my 50s, what’s the cumulative effect of all the exercise I’ve done?

The answer

Unless you’ve made a dramatic turnaround after a severely misspent youth, it’s inevitable that some of your body parts don’t work as smoothly as they did a few decades ago. It may be tempting to blame that on the punishment you’ve inflicted on your body during years on playing fields, ice rinks and jogging paths – but the truth is more likely the other way around.

Researchers have a good idea of the average rates of decline you can expect for various systems. And for almost every sign of aging you can think of – muscle loss, weight gain, artery hardening, joint stiffening – there have been studies suggesting exercise slows it down…

There are also some neat graphics there, though the formatting is a bit messed up. Hopefully they’ll get cleaned up as the day goes on.

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Jockology MIA?

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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Just a quick note for those who’ve inquired about why there was no Jockology column in the Globe last week. There was a special section planned for last Thursday’s Globe (featuring extensive Jockology-related content!) which ended up being postponed. I’m not sure when it will now run — probably next week. If not, there’s another Jockology ready to run next Thursday, about how quickly you should return to activity after pulling a muscle or spraining something.

I’ve just returned from visiting the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, which is a bit of a Mecca for sports science. Very interesting place, which I’ll be writing more about in future articles…