Evy Lyons 🆒🙌💪

Of all the things on this list. Palm Cooling is probably the strangest for you. Here's a quick primer. Your hands are like the best designed custom radiators for heat. - There's special skin on the palms of your hands called glaborous skin. - There's specific blood vessels in your hands called Arteriovenous anastomoses or AVAs. They can skip your capilaries which allows them to move blood FAST from your core to your skin much faster. This means that when you get hot or exercise, these blood vessels can open up to remove heat from your body. We use this fact with palm cooling to COOL your blood down. No we don't want cold hands. We want cooler blood. Cooler core temperatures in your body. How do we use it? While there's a growing industry of tools and gadgets... many of which I've tried and are friends with founders. You've already felt this process any time you've held onto a warm cup of coffee on a winter morning or a cold drink in the summer. For athletics: any time you'd have a rest interval or a drink break. You should take the opportunity to palm cool. - In the weight room that'd be between sets. - On the track same deal. Repeat intervals are great. - In a game any time you're on the sideline. The temperature is specific (too cold and those special blood vessels close up. They are trying to keep you from freezing to death. Too hot and you don't get the cooling effect.) That temperature range is 45-60°F. Hold onto something preferably aluminum or copper in that range for 60s-3 minutes and you'll notice a couple significant changes. #1. You can keep going. If you're in the weight room you'll be able to do more sets and more reps. You won't feel cracked like you are on preworkout. You just won't feel fatigue quite the same. You'll just feel... fine. Like you can do more. #2. You'll feel more conditioned on the track or during field sports. Repeat sprint ability is a hot button topic in S&C. If someone gave you a magic pill to improve your repeat sprint ability, to be able to complete more reps at the same level of quality... every athlete would be taking it. No pills here. Just something that cools you down. #3. Reduced mental fatigue and HR. Because you aren't overheating you can maintain your technique, you can make better decisions, you'll make more plays. (You won't be hot, stupid, and tip into that tunnel vision irrationality of 170+ BPM). The cheapest solution? The thin walled aluminum bottles you get at the ballpark, at a football game, or the zoo. It's like a dollar. The more reliable solution: relay batons with vinyl caps and ice water. If you're a coach or gym teacher you probably already have a pile of dented batons... 10 - 1.5" Vinyl caps are cheap at the hardware store or amazon. The more formal solutions out there: AVACooling, Apex Cool Labs Narhwals, or the Kühler. I personally use the Narhwals the most, because they stay cold the longest. (These are the OGs. The V1s. Now they come in black.) But there's a time and place for each of these for me. One last point because next week it's gonna be in the 90's in the Mishawaka/SB area of Northern Indiana... This is life saving technology for heat stress and heat stroke. We've dealt with several cross country runners who got overheated at practices and meets. We had coaches with a cooler bag full of batons for their athletes and it helped cool down kids who were overheated. I use it with my aging parents when we're working out in the yard, mowing, etc. While I originally got interested in this in 2022 for performance benefits (it's cool to double your # of sets and reps in DB bench in a workout.) On the humanitarian side I'm much happier that we've helped save kids from serious harm.

Here's a couple concepts that I talked with @Siemers_XC_TF last night. #1. Palm Cooling. Cheapest option is relay batons with 1.5" Vinyl caps, about 3 ice cubes, and cold water from the tap. 45-60F. Hold for 30s-3 mins in between rest periods. #2. Isometrics: especially for mushy feet and ankles, but point blank if you can't hold yourself up and not flop over or shake like crazy for at least a minute how can we expect you to run or sprint and not loose position. You've got to own the position. If you can't, you're gonna be compromised. #3. Intent. I'd even take a step further and say violent intent. Sprinting is a violent action. You don't casually put your foot into the ground. It's a skill distance runners need too to run fast. Floppy, passive, lazy, foot strikes are slow and open you up to getting hurt. #4. Everything has a game to be played. Shawn's writing a book. It's a game to write a book, it's a game to launch a book. Same thing with programming. You'd think if you make something good that people will find it. It's not that way. There's always invisible games being played. When you find these small competitive edges and can stack them and have them compound, that's when you realize you're playing a different game than everyone else. Last one: #5. If you don't know what you're doing as a coach, there's no excuse anymore. If someone asks why you're doing something and you don't want to whip out a whiteboard and talk about it in detail... but instead shrug and say OH THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE TO DO TO BE TOUGH/WIN GAMES/COMPETE or some other vague BS. That's not good coaching. That's lazy. That's unaware coaching. That's why you can drive across town and see a practice from a distance and go oh, that's an 0-12 team. That's a 2-8 season right there. Because they don't know what they are doing. They're just doing something and hoping it works with no rhyme, reason, or plan.

@BioavailableNd We understand the fluid and flux of energy balance, others reduce it to a reductionist 1+1=2 problem, we see it as 0.1 + 0.3 + 1 + 0.4 + 0.2 = 1