I’ve purposively not touched the Lance Armstrong story because it is so tragic on so many levels. While there has always been a lot of ‘smoke’ (allegations), there never has been the amount of evidence that was released a week ago by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA – link to the report). If you are at all interested in this story, I would encourage you to read USADA’s report. If you had any reasonable doubt about Armstrong’s actions, this document will remove those doubts.

As someone who studies human performance, from time to time I have people ask why scientists will test animals to understand human performance.  In most cases, it is because to continue to understand why humans can do what they do (and how we can train them to do ‘it’ better), we have to use models that allow us to do things that we can’t do in humans.  For example, my lab has a long-running set of experiments where we are looking at humans’ drive to be active.  Much of this drive probably o...

I normally consider myself a fairly rational and logical person – that’s part of my job description as a scientist – but when it comes to sports, it seems that my rational and logical side gets kicked to the curb. Mobs looting and burning in the wake of their favorite team losing, or mobs rushing the field and trampling others when their team wins seem to indicate that I’m not the only one that loses my rationality when ‘my’ team is involved. And certainly, with all of the machinations/anx...

Everyone talks about 'reaching the masses', but rarely do you have a chance to do so. At the Huffines Institute, we are thrilled because our local newspaper - The Eagle - has agreed to start porting the content from our website to their website to a new Health section. They are starting with this blog, and will gradually port over the other content over the next couple of months. I'm noting this because it is important that 'we' all talk - I'm using the universal '...

This past weekend, I had the pleasure and honor to represent the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) at the Coca-Cola Track Walk at Texas Motor Speedway after one of the NASCAR races. If you’re not familiar with this program, in essence, Coca-Cola rents the racetrack and encourages NASCAR fans to come out and walk around the track (the Texas track is 1.5 miles around).  Coke provides entertainment (and sometimes food) and they usually have a couple of the “Coke Drivers” show up and tal...

In many of our podcasts, articles, and some of my past blogs, the Huffines Institute continues to advocate getting people active. Many times we will use the phrase ‘moderately active’ which is generally interpreted to mean getting at least 30 cumulative mins of activity on a daily basis at a moderate intensity level. Indeed, many studies that have shown positive health effects from daily activity will often use the “30 mins of moderate activity” as a guideline/recommendation. What we forget ...

An individual diagnosed with a neurocognitive disease like Parkinson’s often face a difficult future, with their quality of life marked by difficult physical symptoms, including uncontrollable tremors. Often these tremors make walking, writing, and other movements that many of us take for granted, difficult, if not impossible. Pharmacological treatments for these tremors and other Parkinson’s symptoms work well, at least in the short term, but eventually, the brain adapts to these drugs and th...

It seems that there are times when popular literature seems to be all writing about the same thing (or maybe they all feed off each other?). At any rate, it seems that now is such a time with several popular books addressing whether performance and success is a result of inherent talent or practice and perseverance. Books like Bounce, The Talent Code, and Outliers all propose that inherent characteristics are not very important in determining final success. Rather, these authors would contend th...

Most exercise 'fads' come and go repeatedly, so I was interested in a recent session on Barefoot Running at the recent national American College of Sports Medicine meeting. Is barefoot running a fad or is there something more to it?

Have you ever heard of Seminole Firewater?  We recently put up a podcast with Dr. Jeff Zachwieja who was with the Gatorade Sport Science Institute, and of course, the importance of hydration during exercise with certain sports drinks was talked about.  That podcast led to an interesting email exchange with one of my colleagues (Dr. Maury Dennis) who happens to be a Florida State University alumn.  He wanted to know when we were going to do a podcast on "Seminole Firewater"...  I don...