Article Overview: 1251 words focused on providing S&C coaches with important concepts for incorporating data analysis into practice.
Over the past few years, an important theme in many of my presentations is that elite coaches need to figure out what matters, track what matters and change what matters.
In addition to my presentations, effectively tracking what matters is the single biggest area of consulting I provide to strength and fitness coaches.
Coaches want to know: How do I figure out what matters? How do I efficiently track what matters?
And most coaches want to know: How do I do this without having to spend thousands of dollars per month?
The new breed of high performance coach gets the importance of being objective and knows he or she must integrate science with practice.
After taking all the internships, weekend courses and certifications one can afford, high performance coaches are ready to generate their own knowledge and understanding with a more scientific approach to training.
No doubt this takes some effort and expertise but it's an essential part of the coaching process. This is why mentorship can be so valuable – my goal is to teach coaches how to fish versus catching a single fish for them.
I teach the coach how to develop effective performance monitoring systems. I don't sell systems.
I also emphasize that without objectively determined metrics we are prone to confirmation bias, missing important training insights and prescribing the wrong training stimulus.
Confirmation bias is the big killer.
In the presence of observations that don't fit our current belief system, we build narratives that dismiss away the anomalous or conflicting evidence and stick with only the observations that fit our beliefs. This leads to plenty of issues.
I can tell you from many years of working with elite athletes that what actually happens in terms of training response can sometimes be entirely different from what is depicted in textbooks.
Thus, having a front-end plan without ongoing metrics is kind of like building a house and not getting your plumbing inspected before you put up the drywall. How do you know that the plan was executed properly and that things are tracking according to expectations?
However, the challenge for implementing this new approach to training science is often cost and expertise.
Commercially available online training monitoring systems are often expensive and cumbersome. Just like your computer, they often include a bunch of features that most coaches will never use. On this front, you probably use a handful of reliable and effective applications on your computer and the other hundred or so applications never get touched.
Monitoring is the same – there are a few metrics that matter and mastering these metrics is the first step for effective tracking. Trying to make sense of the multitude of potential numbers and metrics only leads to more noise and more confusion.
Performance monitoring and tracking has to be simple.
The truth is you can build a highly effective method for tracking your athletes without having to invest a lot of money.
On the other hand you can also invest a lot of money in a turnkey cloud training monitoring application but if you don't understand how to manipulate data, synthesize data and distill down to what matters, you will be lost and you will lose your athletes along the way.
It is also critical to move beyond "pen to paper" solutions or the arduous task of typing data into a spreadsheet. I have coaches that have years of data on scraps of paper in a desk drawer.
I applaud them for tracking what is important for their programs but how can anyone possibly make sense of a notebook of split times, loads lifted and days lost to injury? It's impossible with this format and the time needed to convert paper data into computer data is almost a complete roadblock. No one has time for this.
These are some of the major barriers for effective athlete monitoring that I hear from the strength and fitness coaches with whom I consult.
Again, it doesn't have to be complicated but it needs to be efficient.
One of my inspirations on this front is famed Canadian throws coach Derek Evely. Having worked under the great Dr. Anatoly Bondarchuk, Derek has refined the science of athlete monitoring. Derek understands the importance of tracking the variables that matter. To this end, he has established best practice for tracking reaction curves or the performance response of his athletes to his training programs.
The evidence Derek has amassed over the years of tracking his athletes is really impressive. What's even more impressive is the deep knowledge he has about training. He doesn't read textbooks – his textbook comes from years of writing programs and tracking what matters – this is the only textbook a good coach needs after developing knowledge in the foundations of exercise and sport science.
So, what are the first important steps?
Step one, is to learn the basics of collecting good data. Again, mentorship is key. Unless you have done a graduate level statistics course, you probably haven't learned these skills. But they are teachable!
Step two is to figure out what metrics matter for your athletes. Simple measures that are almost universal are: weekly training load – athlete wellness – metrics to build reaction curves – and days lost to injury and illness. More advanced metrics could be: heart rate variability for a team sport or endurance athlete – a measure of neuromuscular fatigue – or functional asymmetry (this is a big focus of my research as it pertains to ACL injury / re-injury prevention).
Step three is to begin collecting data with free online solutions and to learn how to visualize or summarize the data in a meaningful way. A picture paints a thousand words and collapsing a 5000 row spreadsheet into a single graphic is where the magic happens.
Step four is to synthesize the data and understand what it all means. Whether it is showing up to a training session with a conversation starter after flagging an athlete with poor sleep, reporting weekly fluxes in training load to your athletic therapist or team coach to identify athletes at elevated risk for injury, or reviewing four years of data with an athlete to determine what worked and what didn't, synthesizing the data into something meaningful is a key final step.
This is where you create your own textbook and develop your own training systems. This is what all great coaches ultimately do.
The last piece to remind you of is that the cost for this sort of system can be anywhere from thousands of dollars per month to zero dollars per month!
I opt for the zero dollars per month – why would you throw away your hard earned money when free solutions exist to help you achieve your desired outcome.
What I aim to teach strength and fitness coaches is how to use freely available tools to implement good data collection practices around the metrics that matter.
I then help these coaches understand the principles of how training prescription impacts the performance of athletes through tools like reaction curves.
I think merging the science of training adaptation with the art of program design and coaching is where the truly great coaches emerge.
I plan to write more on this over the months to come but if you're interested in diving into this area, stay tuned for webinars I am hosting throughout the late spring and summer.
You can also contact me to book a Skype call so that I can help you move from coach/artist to a scientist of training adaptations.
Article Overview: 757 words on assessing functional asymmetries using dual force plate methodology.
About 3 weeks ago I gave an hour presentation at a local ski shop to discuss my PhD research, which focused on functional neuromuscular assessments throughout the late phase rehabilitation to improve outcome for ACL injured elite ski racers.
Like most applied strength and conditioning research projects, this one evolved out of ongoing efforts to track and monitor my athletes. In addition to tracking training loads and athlete readiness using subjective questionnaires, I was using a dual force plate system to assess explosive strength, mechanical muscle power and jumping ability in my athletes.
As time went on, I started to see that the lower limb force asymmetry obtained during vertical jumping was sensitive to MSK functional status throughout the return to sport phase after an ACL injury.
This is not a new finding but I took a unique perspective as a strength coach and began looking at specific movement phases that we often address in our programming. Specifically, I broke the asymmetry in the countermovement jump down into the eccentric deceleration phase and the concentric phase, and looked at the early phase asymmetry in an unloaded and loaded squat jump along with the late phase asymmetry. More recently, I began evaluating the landing asymmetry as well. I coined the term kinetic impulse asymmetry index (KIAI) and published a paper on how I go about doing this in case you're interested (Jordan et al., 2015. SJMSS).
The functional asymmetry assessment along with a few other specific neuromuscular diagnostic tests have now become integral to my approach for evaluating uninjured and ACL-reconstructed athletes alike. In fact, as a part of our monitoring system, we began evaluating functional asymmetry in many of our uninjured athletes and we are now finding the kinetic impulse asymmetry index in the eccentric deceleration phase to be predictive of lower body injury in previously uninjured athletes.
In terms of assessment time, the two tests take about 10 minutes to perform and are easily administered in a high performance weight room. You can also obtain a dual force plate system for around $2500-$3000. This is still expensive but it is far cheaper than the typical price tag of $15,000 / force plate. I'll tell you, this is the best money I've spent in a long time but you're talking to a strength coach that sticks to the basics.
I often get asked by strength coaches if it is adequate to simply look at vertical jump height or jump distance. The short answer is that it does provide some insight into functional asymmetry. However, using a dual force plate system and looking at the kinetic impulse asymmetry index allows me to obtain a much better picture of where the deficits lie and how I will program to fix them. Remember, that athletes can often shift their jumping strategy so that jump performance remains the same but in the case of the ACL-reconstructed athlete, deficits may still remain.
Your uninjured athletes will also find crafty ways of maintaining performance in the presence of an impending injury or fatigue. This is why how an athlete performs the movement is more important than the performance in the context of identifying athletes who may be around the corner from a injury.
Using this approach along with the information I obtain from my MSK assessment, I'm able to zero in on deficits and barriers that are limiting an athlete's return to sport after an ACL injury.
I'm also able to evaluate when my programming is out of whack and when it has led an athlete into a state of maladaptation.
Together, having these metrics have really shaped how I program for the ACL-reconstructed athlete.
On that note, you can click the link below to get a PDF of the presentation I gave a few weeks ago. There is some background information on ACL injuries and I also provided some thoughts on how I program for ACL injury prevention.
By no means is this exhaustive but it gives an idea of the approach I take. I also recognize there is some amazing expertise out there so I would encourage you to read up from others if you are interested in how to manage this extremely challenging and multi-factorial injury.
I think the important take home message is that you never know where simple monitoring will get you as a strength coach. The key is to start evaluating what you think is important and then keeping an open mind to the possibilities.
As always, I look forward to comments and feedback so send them along.
Article Overview: 866 words on the importance of creating discomfort (discomfort quotient) in training.
My Sunday mornings are typically reserved for a catch up day on the lay blogs, articles and happenings in the world of sport science. During the week I tend to focus more on generating new knowledge through my own research and staying current with the scientific literature.
One of the articles I stumbled across this morning entitled: Caloric Restriction, Hormesis, and what they teach us about Evolution by Josh Mitteldorf provided an easily digestible read (no pun intended) on the counterintuitive process of hormesis that suggests an absence of stress tends to decrease the vitality of living organisms whereas life tends to fair better in the presence of stress.
In the context of caloric restriction, there are plenty of examples where depriving a living creature of food can actually extend the lifespan.
Personally, I find this observation to extend to my own life including personal and professional matters. When I reflect, it's interesting to note that my highest levels of productivity and satisfaction occurred when my personal and professional life were the least comfortable. I thrived in this environment even though I often went to sleep tossing and turning because I felt stressed. Comparatively, some of my most dissatisfying periods occurred when things were relatively easy.
I think the concept of hormesis also extends to the training environments we create for our athletes. The tendency for many teams or sport systems is to identify ways to remove stressors for the athlete. We design state of the art facilities with all the comforts of home, implement meal plans, develop convenient schedules so the athlete can devote more energy into training and often evaluations are done to obtain subjective feedback to ensure we are giving the athletes what they want.
Think about the fast emerging discipline of Recovery Science – it's curious to note that blunting the stress response actually diminishes the training response in many studies. I also have yet to find a single newly constructed training facility that doesn't have a sizeable regeneration area that is regularly filled with athletes.
While there are exceptions, most training facilities I visit are are now in general terms far more convenient and stress-free compared to the ones I visited throughout the late 80's and 90's.
However, the question is: has the trend towards seeking to remove stressors from an athlete's life and training environment equated with a stronger, faster and more resilient athlete?
I can think of specific examples where the answer to this is might be 'yes' but these were mature athletes who had been through the struggles of elite sport and understood the aim wasn't to make things comfortable. Instead, by removing some of the stressors from their training environment, these athletes were actually able to endure more discomfort. Somehow they knew that intuitively it wasn't about making things easier.
On the other hand athletes who didn't understand what it took to be the best seemed to lose the edge when training in this 'optimal' environment.
I can think of several high level athletes who's performances really seemed to suffer as their environment got progressively easier.
I can also think of young athletes who grew up in the new emerging world of stress-free training environments who just never seemed to develop the resilience that their predecessors displayed.
Another very interesting point of reflection are those athletes who, for whatever reason, lost the chance to train in this 'optimal' training environment. I was always amazed that contrary to expectations (i.e. the athlete loses the opportunity to train in the "best environment" and performance plummets) the athletes actually delivered the exact opposite result – they got better!
It's almost as if challenging their comfort levels and making things harder were necessary elements for performance to improve.
How is it possible that an athlete who is deprived of the "world's greatest training environment" and enters into an environment of stress and uncertainty actually realizes their potential?
Think about the concept of hormesis and ask yourself: how do I program to increase my athlete's Discomfort Quotient (DQ) ?
In academics there is the intelligence quotient (IQ) and in social sciences there is the emotional quotient (EQ).
Both are considered to be key success factors or performance indicators. I would argue that the Discomfort Quotient is a key performance indicator for elite athletes, coaches and teams.
While our intuition and the natural trend towards seeking efficiencies, making life easier and enhancing comfort is commonplace in our society, might we be doing a disservice to athlete performance by applying the same logic?
If the aim is to create a robust and self-reliant athlete who to the core is truly comfortable with being uncomfortable how do we support this aim by continually looking to make things easier?
Similar to the potential benefits of stress such as caloric restriction for extending the lifespan, I think there may be important benefits obtained by keeping non-training stressors in the training environment.
I think this boils down to the core philosophy of a program.
The bottom line is we shouldn't be afraid of exposing athletes to stressors.
Further, we should be mindful that we fight our intuition and actually work to keep reasonable non-training stressors in our training environments.
What is your training philosophy? Guidelines for the non-athlete.
Article Overview: 811 words on building a training philosophy for for the non-athlete.
My speciality is designing workouts for individuals with specific sport performance goals and helping athletes come back from injury. I also get lots of requests to design programs for people who are looking to stay fit and lean while minimizing additional wear and tear on their body.
I understand this battle. On the one hand high intensity training brings results. On the other hand, half a lifetime of competitive sport or the normal routine of spending 5-8 hours sitting at a desk takes its toll. Keeping your body healthy eventually becomes more important than hitting a personal best in the gym.
The pendulum in the fitness industry has shifted towards high intensity training of all modalities and types. The long-term sustainability of this approach is extremely low especially in the absence of high levels of regeneration/recovery – something to which most individuals are unable/unwilling to commit.
It is important to build a training method and a philosophy that minimizes negative or maladaptive stress, and promotes positive training stress.
The key to a training program's success is creating a meaningful energy flux (i.e. creating a disturbance in energy balance) and stimulating the body's adaptive response. The more frequently we cause an energy flux, the better the results. The better our timing of changing the training stimulus in light of the body's non-linear change in its adaptive response, the better the results.
Start your workout by prioritizing three areas of MSK deficiency. This could be mobility-related, motor control-related, or synergist-strength related. It is beneficial to get a set of eyes on you in a formal movement evaluation to pinpoint these areas.
Use a combination of whole-body multi-joint movements in each workout. These comprise your indicator or primary lifts. Multi-joint movements are known for providing the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to hypertrophy and strength development.
Start each each mesocycle with an introductory microcycle (a microcycle = 4-7 days). This can be followed by two building or overreaching mesocycles. In the first of the two building microcycles, it is best to increase the number of sets slightly (e.g. add 1-2 sets onto the primary or indicator lifts), and lower the rep bracket by 1-2 reps (e.g. go from 10-12 reps to 9-11 reps). In the second overreaching mesocycle, continue to increase intensity by lowering the repetition scheme and slightly reduce the number of sets. The final microcycle should be an unloading phase in which both the number of sets and the intensity are reduced.
Manipulate rest intervals and tempo to achieve your training effect while reducing the external load requirement. These may be two of the most overlooked training parameters. For example, by reducing the speed of movement in the eccentric phase from 1 second to 4 seconds, there is an increased time under tension and the reduction in speed reduces mechanical advantage necessitating the use of a lower external load. Remember, time under tension and building tension are two keys for eliciting muscle hypertrophy. Conversely, the conscious acceleration and maximal neuromuscular activation while concentrically lifting a submaximal load can elicit substantial gains in muscle strength and power.
Carefully plan the number of sets taken to technical failure. I say technical failure as I don't mean passing that point of technical breakdown. Poor mechanics are a huge culprit for accelerating MSK dysfunction. Instead, you should plan in advance the number of sets in any given workout that are going to be taken to technical failure. Emerging research suggests that equal or superior gains in explosive strength, maximal strength and hypertrophy may be achieved by keeping a couple of reps in the bank.
Intersperse higher intensity training sessions with some lower intensity sessions. This is not popular in the fitness world but sub-aerobic threshold training volume and restorative sessions (e.g. mobility/flexibility) will go a long way to increase your tissues structural tolerance and your overall work capacity.
Nutrition and sleep are your two biggest assets for optimizing recovery from training and become increasingly important with age.
Lastly, don't get stuck doing the same program for months on end. While too much variation (think of chaos training – something I do not support) is problematic, too little variation leads to stagnation and is a real killer for overall gains.
These are just a few principles I find effective for establishing a training philosophy when the goals have moved beyond high performance sport although many of the principles apply here too.
Feel free to send me comments or feedback.
Article Overview: 784 words and a personal position piece on life long fitness in a world focused way too much on image and status.
How much are you willing to give up for leanness?
For some individuals, the answer is: a lot. There is no doubt that being lean and having single digit body fat numbers is a big ego boost for many people out there. For some this comes easier than for others due to factors like good genetics. For others, single digit body fat is truly a religion and an obsession.
The figure below represents the change in percent body fat over a lifetime for the Athlete, the Obsessed, the Moderate, the Obsessed but Inconsistent, and the Sedentary folk. What I'm trying to show is the real difference consistency makes versus being obsessed, and where the real problems lie.
In an effort to hit single digit body fat numbers,the Obsessed resort to extreme measures. Of course many of these measures are effective for getting down to single digit body fat numbers but at what price? Obviously there are the simple pleasures in life that one must renounce such as a traditional morning coffee with the occasional chocolate croissant. However, there are undoubtedly many other negative effects associated with extreme nutrition and fitness fads related to health and mental wellbeing.
As we get inundated with advertising and media showing us how we "ought" to look, the Obsessed but Inconsistent individuals really get the raw deal. Not only must there be a constant feeling of not measuring up to the industry standard but no doubt there is also a lot of failed attempts to hit an unattainable target. The perpetual swings between periods of unsustainably high commitment and periods of low commitment add up resulting in a trend over a lifetime towards the slippery slope of increased body fat and decreased muscle tissue. For the Obsessed but Inconsistent, the periods of extreme deprivation and extreme dieting can only be balanced with periods of extreme indulgence.
Then there are the Moderates. They employ simple strategies consistently that allow them to maintain body composition at a reasonable level over a lifetime. The issue with the Moderate is that their story is nothing new and not overly interesting. You can't sell the Moderate approach whether that be in a book, online or in a seminar. In fact, it seems as though the voice of the Moderate is rarely heard. While the Moderate's popularity may have died alongside the popularity of the VCR, the question should be asked whether or not the new iteration is a better alternative. As far as the VCR goes, I'm going to say Apple TV is a big improvement. However, I can't say the same about the theories and beliefs espoused by the Obsessed, which appear to have silenced the Moderates.
The difference between the Moderate and the Obsessed is shown below in the green highlighted area. This is what a lifetime of commitment to extreme measures will bring you. As we progress through the lifespan, not a single person can entirely overcome the forces of nature and aging. Sadly, while there are few certainties in life, the cycle of birth, aging and death are non-negotiable. Of course this can be mitigated with exercise/lifestyle, and the natural trend towards increased body fat and decreased muscle tissue can be attenuated. The question is whether or not the shaded green zone is really worth depriving oneself of ALL the simple pleasures in life. I will leave it up to you to decide for yourself.
The green highlighted zone also shows what being a Moderate won't bring you. Living your 20's, 30's and part of your 40's with near single digit body fat can't be attained with occasionally enjoying simple pleasures and indulging. In order to accomplish this sacrifices must be made. Extreme results require extreme measures.
The orange zone in the figure below represents what consistency can bring you and what inconsistency can't bring you. The ups and downs of the Obsessed but Inconsistent typically leads towards an overall increase in body fat with time. However, simple strategies like sweating regularly, eating a lower calorie diet with nutritious food, and still indulging once in a while will generally bring decent results over a lifetime. The orange zone represents what the basics and staying the course bring to the table.
The red zone is the real issue for North American society. This is where the bulk of the scientific research is focused and it is often the ammunition used by the Obsessed to justify extreme fitness and nutrition approaches. However, let's be fair in recognizing that this problem is one that requires a complete change in attitudes and beliefs.
I also think the solution to this dilemma is more inline with the Moderate approach than the Obsessed approach.
I get the odd email here and there asking why I haven't posted any blogs over the past several months.
The reason is pretty simple: I'm back in school working towards a PhD in Medical Science, and my spare time is spoken for with research and studying.
So, why would I choose to go back to school at this stage in the game? My career was going well. I was comfortable. I could have kept focusing on growing my business. However, I felt stagnant and my ultimate goal to contribute to the body of knowledge in sport science and to mentor and develop the next generation of strength and conditioning coach in our centre required me to get more training so that I could supervise Graduate students.
You may be thinking that a PhD seems like overkill for someone who is feeling stagnant. I mean there are lots of ways that practitioners in the field of strength and conditioning and sport science try to remain fresh.
For example, I could have taken a professional development course… maybe a course on kettlebell training or something.
I could also attend a few more conferences and maybe double the numbers of hours I spend reading scientific articles.
However, I'm ready for something more. I'm ready to test my theories and to expose what I have found to my peers for scrutiny and criticism.
I was once told that the only things you really know are those you study and find out for yourself.
I think there is a lot of truth in this statement and if my ultimate goal is to add to the body of knowledge in sport science around the adaptive process to strength and power training, I have to move from an independent practitioner who can make as many unsubstantiated claims as he wishes to a real scientist of my craft.
This may seem like a bit of an idealist pursuit given my profession. I mean let's face it – strength and conditioning for elite sport and fitness are not exactly the most rigorous disciplines when it comes to delivering information that is unbiased and obtained with integrity.
The reality is that studying elite sport is challenging. We have access to a very unique and small subject pool, and the classic double blind randomized control trial with a reasonable sample size of averagely trained individuals is highly limited in its application to elite sport.
In November, I presented at the Australian Strength and Conditioning Association's International Conference on Strength Training. At the banquet, Dan Baker, the very colourful and well-respected president of the ASCA, said to me: "If I see one more person trying to apply results from a study done on untrained college students to elite athletes I'm going to lose it!".
We are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to studying the niche of high performance sport.
Sport science is tough to do well. I know this firsthand because I've been dabbling in this field since 2003 by trying my best to quantify what really impacts the performance of my athletes. But, I do believe it's possible. The Australians do a great job of this and it's no wonder they hit way above their weight in the Olympic Summer Games.
If I truly believe in advancing the body of knowledge in some sort of reputable and productive fashion then there is little room for having my sole sources of knowledge be that which I gained from someone's blog, scientific publication or weekend certification course.
There comes a point in time when our theories and ideas need to be made into some sort of testable hypothesis. The results of this test needs to be reported to our peers, scrutinized, and ultimately weighed against the current body of evidence.
This is the process that yields new paradigms and new ways of thinking that can stand the test of time.
I see this process unfolding everyday in my PhD research group. Most of the group members are at the forefront of understanding the cellular and sub-cellular nature of muscular contraction. The fruits of their research are challenging the boundary of knowledge and the theory around muscular contraction.
It's inspiring to see the scientific process in its pure form as new phenomena are discovered.
Now this sounds like some sort of peaceful oasis of discovery and high fives but I can assure you it is far from this.
In fact, the other day I saw a very charismatic presentation by a notable scientist. I have to admit I was somewhat taken by his presentation. It just seemed to make sense, and much to my own personal disappointment I went from a mindset of critical thinking to acceptance.
Regrettably, I asked a question that was vague and had nothing to do with the data he presented. A substantial amount of the question and answer period got consumed by his response, and we never really got into the important stuff. I skipped the question that would have scrutinized his results and his conclusions, and went straight to the vague, brain candy, philosophical question…. my bad.
What he had presented was a nice concept… it was interesting, entertaining, and worthy of a spot on TV documentary… however, he did not adequately provide compelling evidence to support his conclusions.
What I can say upon careful reflection was that moving from a critical thinking mindset to one of acceptance is the kiss of death for anyone in a science based profession. Acceptance of ideas, theories and results at face value has the potential to throw us very far off course.
Nothing in my research group is ever taken at face value. There is this general feeling that even if the group finds something novel that it MUST be independently verified by other research groups before it is seen as a fact.
The group presents data and rigorously dissects every aspect of the methodology, results, and conclusions.
Could the presenter really measure what he or she intended to measure?
Does the measurement technique provide adequate precision?
I mean do the numbers really make sense?
Just because a confidence interval or p-value gets reported or a really pretty plot with nice colours and convincing trends gets shown, no one, I mean no one in the group takes it at face value.
I am always amazed and impressed at the questions and criticisms that arise from my supervisor following what seems to be a very convincing presentation.
The skill of diving into the methods and results of a study, critically thinking about what has been presented, and asking yourself "is this really the case?" is one that needs to be continually developed and fostered within a group.
Failing to rigorously scrutinize our peers' work leads many sport scientists and strength coaches astray. Not only are we bombarded by shoddy one-off studies that are taken in isolation but we are also exposed to guru knowledge.
I bench 800 lbs so I'm an expert.
I'm 4% body fat so I'm an expert.
I power clean 180 kg so I'm an expert.
I train a professional athlete in a highly skill based sport like NHL hockey or NFL football so I'm an expert.
We stop considering the body of evidence, boundary of knowledge, and where the claims and conclusions fit with what is known.
We start skipping to the Practical Applications or Conclusion section of a single paper as the final authority on a training method, nutritional strategy or physiological mechanism.
In short, we just trust that what the presenter, study, recommendations, or expert claims can be taken at face value.
A one-liner title gets bounced out into twitter-ville referencing some dramatic conclusion.
The buzz happens on email and in conversations.
It hits the mainstream media and gets air time just after the segment on all the horrors in the world and before the video of a golden retriever who can bark the alphabet.
The segment ends and those who have just consumed this nugget of "information" in one single whole bite without any sort of active digesting are left questioning their very existence and how everything they have come to know to this point can be completely wrong.
For the strength coach it is tempting to just read the conclusions of a scientific paper and to take it at face value. It's great to sit back and to consume information like a snake eating a rat….you swallow it whole and leave the digestion to a later time point by some sort of passive process. Screw the active digestion where you examine and scrutinize what has been presented.
Gluttonously consuming information in this fashion makes us feel like we are learning something. It's brain candy. It gives us something to tweet, cite, quote, and throw out to the world as fact with very little downside in terms of effort and absolutely ZERO upside in terms of helping to advance anyone's understanding of the body of knowledge.
I'm going to suggest that a true scientist of his craft will not only take the time to chew his "information meal" thoroughly but that he will also attempt to test his empirically obtained theories and beliefs in some sort of systematic method.
I think it is fair to say that science is not the be all and end all… I would be the first to attest to this. Science will always trail behind what happens in the gym and on the field. Empirical evidence will always be easier to obtain.
However, the important step is to transfer what we observe empirically into some sort of testable hypothesis to see if what we observe through our experience really holds up not just in our own studies but through the rigorous scientific study of others.
The ensuing evaluation of the results of our own studies and the studies of others needs to be rigorous and heavily focused on how the study was done, the numbers that came about, and whether or not the numbers really support the conclusions.
It is only in this way that we can truly advance the body of knowledge in sport science, and ensure the Science stays front and centre in Sport Science.
Endurance Athletes – You Need Strength and Power!!
I have been working with the elite endurance athletes for over 15 years. My client list includes several Olympic gold medalists and World Championship medalists in long distance speed skating and cross country skiing.
When I first started working with the Canadian Cross Country Ski Team in 2004, I brought my experience working with elite long distance speed skaters to the table.
What was my approach with a long distance speed skater? It was simple: I focused on technical acquisition in key exercises like squatting, Olympic lifting, and various types of jumps. Once the athletes were technically proficient I emphasized maximal muscular strength, and maximal muscular power or explosive strength.
They emphasized stability exercises because skiers are often hurt and skiing requires balance.
On all accounts I could not have disagreed more wholeheartedly.
First of all, if you were to measure the muscle activity in the SAME movement done over multiple repetitions, no two movements would be the same! The logic that because an exercise "looks" like a movement in a sport it is inherently more specific and a better way to improve function is ludicrous and unfounded. Apparent similarity between a sport skill and an exercise has nothing to do with specificity in 99% of circumstances.
Second, high repetitions schemes result in considerable metabolic stress, long-term fatigue, and even have the potential to INCREASE muscle hypertrophy! A lot of skiers were baffled that their 8-12 RM approach to resistance training actually had a better chance of increasing muscle mass than 2-3 sets of 2-4 RM.
Third, there is a HUGE difference between training balance and using exercises that require balance. If you want to train balance your environment or connection with the ground needs to be continually unpredictable and random. Once you've mastered standing on a balance board, guess what?? This exercise now requires balance it does not train balance!
With that said, I rarely see exercises requiring balance as a suitable way to prevent the overuse injuries that are typically sustained by a cross country skier. A skier typically requires a good soft tissue therapist to keep restricted muscle groups and fascial connections free so that joints can move properly, and balanced muscular strength around joints.
So how do you change a sports philosophy? The short answer: you use science.
I went to the scientific literature and found some great research done out of Norway by a guy named Jan Hoff. Dr. Hoff has published extensively on the effects of resistance training on elite cross country skiers and runners.
Here's the Cole's Notes of his research.
Maximal oxygen consumption (VO2Max), which is best trained with intervals done in the range of 2-4 minutes.
Efficiency – you measure efficiency by the amount of oxygen consumed at a given workload.
Dr. Hoff took elite skiers and put them through a training program reminiscent of what a shot putter or sprinter would do. Heavy squats, heavy pull ups, and an adapted pull-down movement with a pulley. The loading was anywhere from 4×4 to 3×5 RM with the athletes being encouraged to maximally accelerate the load on each and every repetition (this trains explosive strength).
The conclusion: the development of maximal muscular strength improved efficiency and economy of movement for the skiers, which positively affected one of the key determinants of endurance performance!!
Train what's on the inside.
Train what you can't see (i.e. the neuromuscular system and the connection from the Brain to the Muscle).
Always design a strength and power program around the physiology of the neuromuscular system and let the sport take care of the specificity!
Now back to my story. I have presented this data at coaching symposiums several times, and the reality is the sale's job was tough.
Many scoffed at what I was saying and decided to stick with their conventional approach and ignored the science.
A few jumped on board with what I was saying…. one of these athletes, Chandra Crawford, went on to win an Olympic gold medal in 2006.
After 2010, a coaching change brought a very experienced and knowledgeable American coach to Canada.
The coach essentially re-interviewed me for my position.
He wanted to know my philosophy on strength training for elite cross country skiers.
I reluctantly went back over my experience, the science, and my philosophy that elite endurance athletes ABSOLUTELY need to focus on maximal muscular strength and maximal muscular power.
I told him that I envisioned a program that first of all developed technical proficiency in key lifts, structural tolerance, and balanced inter-muscular strength around key joints.
I then told him that I believed in focusing on developing maximal muscular strength and maximal muscular power with jumps, Olympic lifts, variants of the squat, variants of the pull up, and some form of press. I know it's boring – but it's what I believe!
I told him I believed the sessions needed to be kept short and focused, and in order to minimize the potential negative interaction with his first priority of training the energy systems, that we should use careful monitoring to track neuromuscular fatigue.
The conclusion of our meeting was music to my ears – he completely agreed with me and told me that if I had answered the question any other way, he would have been searching for another strength and conditioning coach.
After 2.5 years of close collaboration between all of the experts that surround the team the results have started to speak for themselves. The team had over 25 medals at international competition last year.
There is no question that my influence is just a very small part of the big picture and I do not want to overstate the amount I contribute.
But even though strength and power training is such a small part of a skier's program it has the potential to reek an amazing amount of havoc with training.
Finally, by answering the question of "how do I best train an endurance athlete" with a physiological answer, I think you stand the best chance of really improving performance.
Hoff, J. (2006). Muscular Strength Training Effects on Aerobic Endurance Performance. Proceedings for the 6th International Strength Training Conference. Copenhagen, Denmark.


text:
Q: Building dependant projects using jenkinsm maven3 and docker How do I import a newly build jar file into a jenkins/Docker automatic build process run using maven3?
I have projectA and the CoreProject (this has all the common methods).
Both are currently set up to build within Jenknin(on docker) using maven, Core is building successfully and creating a Jar file and saving it within it's own project.  Project A is complaining that it does not have access to the core methods.  How can I then import the Core jar into projectA using Maven3/Jenkins?  Or should I be using something else to make this new Jar available?

A: I found the issue.  I had the Core project building I just was not adding the reference in the projectA pom.xml file.  After following several misdirections i was able to get the ProjectA to build by adding Core Jar following standard maven dependency tags

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Search Daily Scanner
Latest Updates & Breaking News Headlines
Amalia Kadis is a singer/songwriter who uplifts fans with her amazing music
By Michael Fernandez on October 5, 2020
There's no doubt that the COVID pandemic has had a massive impact on many industries and the way people live their lives. Because of social distancing rules, the live music industry has been severely affected, and it has turned off some artists from pursuing their original plans for 2020.
However, Amalia Kadis is an artist who has not allowed the pandemic to halt her career or ruin her spirits. In fact, she has persevered to produce music throughout the 2020 lockdown. As an artist, she has been discovered by many people who were stuck in lockdown and needed something to lift up their spirits.
Her first track released in 2020 was Dry Under The Sun, and this electro-dance number came out just at the right time to give people something to groove to at home. Amalia Kadis was certainly worried about the uncertainty of releasing music under these unprecedented circumstances, but she knew that people needed to have hope that new music was still being made.
Following Dry Under The Sun, Amalia Kadis was quick to collaborate with DJ REDD on Goodbye, a song with an awesome nightclub feel to it. For many people, it was reminiscent of the days when they could party until the early hours of the morning.
During the rest of 2020 Amalia Kadis has released even more music and has been an inspirational figure to tens of thousands of people all around the world. With each new release, her fanbase grows rapidly and she's certainly going to be in high demand for live shows once things get back to normal.
After she releases her latest singles Crazy About You and Love Me, Amalia Kadis releases her long-anticipated album that she titled I Found You. The album has 11 tracks, one of them being performed in Amalia Kadis' native language of Indonesian, which shows that she is still in touch with her roots.
The album was released on 01/10 and can be listened to on Spotify here. While the album was initially teased for a late September release, Amalia Kadis wanted to spend some more time working on it and release on the memorable date of October 1st.
Published in Celebrity Style
Michael Fernandez
"Nothing, but straightforward news." Michael believes in publishing truthful, relevant news. With proper ethics and research, Michael derives his inspiration from social influences and current status quo. Regarding credentials, Michael is journalism graduate from the University of Maryland.
More from Celebrity StyleMore posts in Celebrity Style »
How screenwriter and producer Rodney Barnes' love of comic books led to the creation of Zombie Love Studios
Genesis by Massiahg is dark and aggressive grunge rap experience
Highly talented music producer TEMPO continues to soar in popularity
The famously curvy model of America Claudia Fijal assisting her fans to remain in shape
Devon Graham: Pioneer of Alchemy Breathwork
Meharyar Khan shares his journey to digital fame and social media success
In the recent boom of the digital world, we are...
How telehealth is advancing the healthcare facilities globally
The global healthcare industry is a huge sphere reportedly worth...
People are reading now
SUR Botanics founder Jessica Zhu talks about improving ASMR by diffusing essential oils
By Sophia Wilson
ASMR has become a very popular activity in recent years, becoming a way for people to relieve stress and experience the 'brain tingles' sensation associated...
By Joseph Hall
In the recent boom of the digital world, we are seeing many new faces that are re-shaping the structure of the entertainment and content industry....
By Erika Matthews
The global healthcare industry is a huge sphere reportedly worth about $8.45 trillion in 2018. For such a big sector, it is expected that there...
Andre Robles talks about providing luxurious, exciting, and socially responsible tours in South America
Andre Robles is the founder and CEO of Voyagers Travel Company. From humble beginnings, Voyagers has expanded out of its country of origin (Ecuador) to...
Social media influencer David Scher helps brands grow through his successful marketing agency
Based in Los Angeles, entrepreneur and social media influencer David Scher has been helping brands around the world unlock massive growth. Through his digital marketing...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Steve Inskeep, Noel King, Rachel Martin and David Greene host the nation's most listened-to radio news program. Spokane Public Radio's Steve Jackson provides local and regional news and weather.
For nearly three decades, NPR's Morning Edition has prepared listeners for the day ahead with two hours of up-to-the-minute news, background analysis, commentary, and coverage of arts and sports. With nearly 14 million listeners, Morning Edition draws public radio's largest audience. Produced by NPR in Washington, D.C., Morning Edition draws on reporting from correspondents based in 17 countries around the world, and producers and reporters in 17 locations in the U.S. Their reporting is supplemented by NPR member station reporters across the country and a strong corps of independent producers and reporters in the public radio system.
Since its debut in 1979, Morning Edition has garnered broadcasting's highest honors — including the George Foster Peabody Award and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. Morning Edition is hosted by NPR's Steve Inskeep and David Greene in Washington, D.C., and NPR's Renee Montagne at NPR West in Culver City, Calif.


text:
Native Americans: The First and Forgotten Slaves
in World — by John Stanton — 01/10/2021
"Modern perceptions of early modern slavery associate the institution almost solely with Africans and their descendants. Yet slavery was a ubiquitous institution in the early modern world…The story of European colonialism in the Americas and its victimization of Africans and Indians follows a central paradigm in most textbooks. The African "role" encompasses the transportation, exploitation, and suffering of many millions in New World slavery, while Indians are described in terms of their succumbing in large numbers to disease, with the survivor's facing dispossession of their land. This paradigm—a basic one in the history of colonialism—omits a crucial aspect of the story: the indigenous peoples of the Americas were enslaved in large numbers. This exclusion distorts not only what happened to American Indians under colonialism, but also points to the need for a reassessment of the foundation and nature of European overseas expansion." The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
"The Commission majority voted for key recommendations, including the following: The United States expects all nations to live up to their treaty obligations; it should live up to its own…We exchanged 400 million plus acres of land, and our way of life, and our very lives, for peace, and for the provisions that are provided for in the treaties, and a basic human dignity of having basic services for American Indian and Alaska Native people." Broken Promises: Continuing Federal Funding Shortfall for Native Americans: US Commission on Civil Rights, 2018
No Context Required
As a full-time substitute teacher in a school system on the Eastern US seaboard, I am assigned to cover for state-certified teachers who are absent from duty. I've had many assignments over the past couple of years including working with special education/students with disabilities, and monitoring Spanish, Math, Art, and US History classes. It was the content, or lack thereof, of the US History class that was the impetus for this article.
Students in the US History class were learning about the various Native American tribes located across the United States. The assignments included determining former tribal locations on a blank map of the United States using crayons, and writing a postcard about the hunting, foraging and tools/technologies of assorted tribes such as the Lakota of the Great Plains, the Iroquois of the Northeast Forests, and the KwaKiutl of the Pacific Northwest.
Some of the 6th and 7th grade students found the assignments boring with one saying, "What's the point of writing a postcard." Most liked using coloring pencils to note the locations of the tribes on the map (who doesn't like coloring?). As far as I could tell, the lesson plans presented by the certified teachers depict the Native Americans as living bucolic lives and being "one" with nature. Lessons exclude study of tribal wars over fur and Buffalo and, at this point in the US History class, no mention of the horrors inflicted on them by European descendants has taken place, or why that course of events happened at all. I spent a few minutes talking to the students about the Trail of Tears. They listened to my short talk with indifference. They all knew what Black Lives Matter is/stands for but were unaware of the Native Americans plight other than the few tidbits they may have been told by their parents and me.
During one of the US History classes I was covering, a visiting teacher arrived and discussed, among other matters, some of the natural resources available to Native Americans. He told the students that the salmon run in the Pacific Northwest was "so thick you can reach your hand in the water and grab a salmon or even walk across the river on the backs of the salmon." I mentioned to him that the Lower Snake River Dams (Snake River is a tributary of the Columbia River) have pushed the salmon population to near extinction and with it the Native American's way of life. According to America's Most Endangered Rivers, "The dams on the lower Snake River are an ongoing source of injustice and the loss of salmon is violating Native American rights ensured by treaty with the U.S. government. The dams and reservoirs submerged or impacted between 600 and 700 important tribal cultural sites along the lower Snake and its tributaries, thousands of acres of treaty-based hunting and gathering places, and countless graves of loved ones and sacred and ceremonial places."
In the midst of social justice efforts such as Black Lives Matter, the Transgender Movement and even the revisionist 1619 Project, among many others, it seems that American citizens in-and-out of those movements have selective amnesia when it comes to remembering the destruction of the Native Americans/First Peoples by their own United States government; and, prior to that genocide, the British Colonists brutalization and enslavement of Native Americans. Why the great forgetting of Native American history by the American people at this late date: 2021?
Human Capital for the Taking
It is hard to know where to begin this tale of woe. It is clear that from the start Native Americans were fated to be steamrolled first by British colonists and then by the US Government and the economic interests that destroyed their homelands and enslaved them. Native Americans, like all minorities, were viewed as intellectually and culturally inferior by British colonists and by the empire builders of the early United States and, moreover, were simply in the way of "progress".
According to The Gilder-Lehrman Institute for American History, "the Colonists participated in Indian slave trading to obtain capital. It was as if capital could be created out of thin air: one merely had to capture an Indian or find an Indian to capture another. In South Carolina, and to a lesser extent in North Carolina, Virginia, and Louisiana, Indian slavery was a central means by which early colonists funded economic expansion. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a frenzy of enslaving occurred in what is now the eastern United States. English and allied Indian raiders nearly depopulated Florida of its American Indian population. From 1670 to 1720 more Indians were shipped out of Charleston, South Carolina, than Africans were imported as slaves—and Charleston was a major port for bringing in Africans. The populous Choctaws in Mississippi were repeatedly battered by raiders, and many of their neighboring lower Mississippi Valley Indians also wound up spending their lives as slaves on West Indies plantations. Simultaneously, the New England colonies near eliminated the Native population from southern New England through warfare, slaving, and forced removal."
Hope?
The Biden Administration promised to increase federal funding for Native Americans and followed through in March 2021 via the American Rescue Plan signed into law by President Joe Biden. It provides $1.75 billion in funding for "Indian Country" infrastructure, social services, health care and public safety. The US Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs will funnel the dollars to tribal interests.
Reuters reported that "Federal officials will meet with Native American tribes next month to gather recommendations as the federal government seeks to move ahead with efforts to protect and restore tribal homelands…Tribal leaders will be asked for advice on several topics, including the process to take land back into trust, leasing and treaty rights, among other issues under the Biden administration's initiative to streamline steps allowing tribes to regain their land." The two sides plan to meet in mid-October.
That's good news but the redress efforts of the Biden Administration are tempered by the knowledge of events like the Bear River Massacre. According to the Washington Post, "The Bear River Massacre of 1863 near what's now Preston, Idaho, left roughly 350 members of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation dead, making it the bloodiest — and most deadly — slaying of Native Americans by the U.S. military, according to historians and tribal leaders. The Indians were slain after soldiers came into a valley where they were camping for the winter and attacked, leaving roughly 90 women and children among the dead."
Martin Luther King's comments (below) on Native Americans should be mandatory reading for students and adults from sea-to-shining-sea. It is a stinging assault on the United States' character and bitter medicine to swallow, but it's part of American history and should not be relegated to the dust bin.
"Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it. Our children are still taught to respect the violence which reduced a red-skinned people of an earlier culture into a few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations."
John Stanton can be reached at jstantonarchangel@gmail.com
Pope Francis affirms genocide of first nations by Canada and Catholic schools
It is Not Love that Abandons Its Treaties
Hundreds Of Native American Children Died In U.S. Government-run Abusive Schools
What Does It Mean for the Dispossessor to "Compensate" the Dispossessed?
What Do an Apology, Reconciliation, and a Sacred Obligation to Constitutionally Guaranteed Rights of...
Canada is Waging an All-Front Legal War Against Indigenous People
Fire Words for Canada Day
About half of Oklahoma is Native American land, rules U.S. Supreme Court
Tags: Indigenous americans, Native Americans
Author: John Stanton
Dr Vacy Vlazna says:
Ditto Australia- where the First Nations peoples were violently dispossessed of their Country, enslaved and to this day suffer the violence and injustices of the ongoing racist colonial mindset inherent in the government and their voters.


text:
---
description: Material-UI v4 is out 🎉
---

# Material-UI v4 is out 🎉

The core team. May 23, 2019.

> React components for faster and simpler web development. Build your own design system, or start with Material Design.

Material-UI v4 has finally arrived. We are so excited about this release, as it defines better foundations for the UI components. Thank you to everyone, especially to [the team](/discover-more/team/), and to everyone who's contributed code, issue triage, and support. **Thank you.**

✨✨✨ See the **[4.0.0 Release Note](https://github.com/mui-org/material-ui/releases/tag/v4.0.0)** on GitHub. ✨✨✨

![TypeScript switch](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/banner.png)

https://material-ui.com/

## Summary

- [High-level goals for v4](#high-level-goals-for-v4)
- [What's new?](#whats-new)
- [What's next?](#whats-next)
- [Premium themes store](#premium-themes-store)

## High-level goals for v4

Material-UI v1 was [released](https://medium.com/material-ui/material-ui-v1-is-out-e73ce13463eb) one year ago. Version 4 is our most important major release since then. For those unfamiliar with the history of the project, we didn't release a v2, and v3 only introduced a slight browsers support change.

This release happens within our [fixed frequency](https://material-ui.com/versions/#release-frequency) release strategy. We try to release a major at least every 12 months and at most every 6 months. The migration from v0 to v1 was painful, it almost felt like using two different UI libraries. We've done our best to minimize the time needed to migrate from v3 to v4. To help ease the transition, you can follow this [migration guide](/guides/migration-v3/) 📚. It shouldn't take more than a few hours.

This release is influenced by two major factors. First, following the Developer Survey we ran in March, we have [analyzed the results](/blog/2019-developer-survey-results/) and used them to change [our priorities](/discover-more/roadmap/#our-priorities) for the coming year. Secondly, we needed to be up to date with the latest best practices in the React community and with the Material Design Specification.

### Customization

The Material Design team at Google has made the customization of their design system framework a core feature: [Material Theming](https://material.io/design/material-theming/overview.html). It's an important dimension of the library for us. Since the release of v1, we have been improving the component customization demos, release after release. We demonstrate a wide range of different designs:

![Demo1](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/demo1.png)

live demo

![Demo2](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/demo2.png)

live demo

![Demo3](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/demo3.png)

live demo

After listening to v3 customization experiences of hundreds of developers, we realized that we could do better. We have found 4 classes of common problems.

- **CSS specificity**. The developers' style specificity needs to be higher to win over the style Material-UI injects in the page. By default, Material-UI injects its style at the end of the `<head>` element. However, styled components and other popular styling solutions inject the style just before it, losing specificity. To solve the problem, we have introduced a new prop: `injectFirst`.

```jsx
import { StylesProvider } from '@material-ui/styles';

<StylesProvider injectFirst>
  {/* Your component tree.
      Styled components can override Material-UI's styles. */}
</StylesProvider>;
```

![injectFirst](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/injectFirst.png)

The DOM output once injectFirst is used.

- **classes boilerplate**. Early in the v1 effort, we [decided](https://github.com/oliviertassinari/a-journey-toward-better-style) to use a CSS-in-JS styling solution: [JSS](https://cssinjs.org/). The large majority of the CSS-in-JS solutions output non-deterministic class names, e.g. `.fHmkjM`. This design decision helps the isolation of the style of each component, however, it makes the overrides harder. We introduced a `classes` API in v1 to target all our elements as an attempt to mitigate this problem.
  We have observed the use of this API for months and have seen many people struggling with it. It can be challenging to apply the class name on the right element and requires boilerplate as well.
  As an attempt to further improve the situation, we have changed the class name generation to [output global class names](/styles/advanced/#with-material-ui-core), while keeping the `classes` API working as before 💅.

![styled-components](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/styled-components.png)

side by side comparison of both valid classes vs global approaches.

⚠ Using global class names provide more power but comes with responsibility. We encourage patterns that increase your custom style isolation.

- **Pseudo-classes.** A pseudo-class is a keyword added to a selector that specifies a special state of the selected element. The native elements support a wide range of pseudo-classes, the most popular ones being: `:focus`, `:hover`, `:active`. Sometimes, Material-UI can't use a pseudo-class as the state doesn't exist in the platform, e.g. the selected state of a menu item. Material-UI implements support of eight different [custom pseudo-classes](/customization/components/#pseudo-classes). It's important to understand that you need to increase the specificity when using a pseudo-class. For instance:

```css
.MenuItem {
  color: black;
}
/* We increase the specificity */
.MenuItem.Mui-selected {
  color: blue;
}
```

- **Dynamic variations.** As one of the most requested features, we have added the support for style functions:

```jsx
const useStyles = makeStyles({
  // style rule
  foo: (props) => ({
    backgroundColor: props.backgroundColor,
  }),
  bar: {
    // CSS property
    color: (props) => props.color,
  },
});

function MyComponent() {
  // Simulated props for the purpose of the example
  const props = {
    backgroundColor: 'black',
    color: 'white',
  };
  // Pass the props as the first argument of useStyles()
  const classes = useStyles(props);

  return <div className={`${classes.foo} ${classes.bar}`} />;
}
```

### Documentation

Documentation was reported as the 3rd most critical pain point in the developer survey. We have fixed some of the reported issues and aim to continuously improve going forward.

- **TypeScript**. TypeScript's growth is impressive, the traffic of their documentation website has grown by a factor of 6 in 3 years. Material-UI v1 was released with built-in TypeScript definitions, but we needed to do more. Sebastian has led the effort to migrate all the demos from JavaScript to TypeScript. This has two important implications. First, we type check our demos, this drastically improves our TypeScript test coverage. We have fixed many issues during the migration. Second, if you are writing your application with TypeScript, you can directly copy & paste our demos without needing to convert them, or having to fix the obscure errors.

![typescript](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/typescript.png)

https://www.typescriptlang.org traffic estimation over time.

![switch](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/switch.png)

Use the JS/TS toggle to see code in JavaScript or TypeScript

- **i18n**. Developers come to Material-UI's documentation from all around the world. We want to include as many people as possible 🌎🌍🌏. We have completed the effort started in v3 by working on the Algolia search support, Google search indexing, Table Of Contents and Side Nav infrastructure.

  We would like to thank [Danica Shen](https://github.com/DDDDDanica), [Dominik Engel](https://github.com/Domino987), and [Jairon Alves Lima](https://github.com/jaironalves) for their heroic work on the 🇨🇳, 🇩🇪 and 🇧🇷 translations, while not forgetting the other 348 (and growing) translators.

- **Best practices**. We are now recommending the use of the hooks API over the classes API wherever possible. We have migrated a large portion of the demos to showcase a single approach.
- **A better UX**. We have changed the menu organization to group all the components under a single navigation item. We have changed the background color to white to increase the text contrast and readability.

### Performance

You may be afraid that using Material-UI's components will bloat and slow down your website/application. Would you be better off writing your own components? Well, it's our mission to make this cost as minimal as possible 🚀.

- **Tree shaking**. Material-UI v4 is the first version to support native tree shaking with ES modules. This has one important DX benefit—you can now use destructured imports when importing multiple components:

```js
import {
  Table
  TableBody,
  TableCell,
  TableHead,
  TableRow,
  Paper,
} from '@material-ui/core';
```

- **Bundle size reduction**. The bundle size went from 95 kB gzipped to below 80 kB gzipped between the last v3 release and the first v4 beta release. This is _remarkable_ considering that we have added new features and components along the way 😍! This was made possible by many small incremental changes: tree shaking, removal of [multiple](https://github.com/timoxley/keycode) [internal](https://github.com/oliviertassinari/react-event-listener) dependencies, hooks migration, clsx migration, [smart Babel plugin](https://github.com/merceyz/babel-plugin-optimize-clsx), etc.

![bundle-size](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/bundle-size.png)

A -15% bundle size reduction. ⚠ Please don't use the absolute number to compare different UI libraries. Nobody should import the whole barrel index.js file. What matters is the cost of the individual modules you import.

- **Continuous bundle size tracking**. This bundle size reduction is only possible because we track this metric in each pull request. We have improved our strategy moving from [size-limit](https://github.com/ai/size-limit) to a React [inspired solution](https://github.com/mui-org/material-ui/pull/14662).

![trackbundle](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/trackbundle.png)

Fine level tracking

- **Preact X.** We have introduced a working [integration example with Preact](https://github.com/mui-org/material-ui/blob/next/examples/preact/README.md). Preact is a fast, 1/10 smaller alternative to React, with the same modern API. We will do our best to support it.
- **Runtime performance**. We have heard that some people struggle with the runtime cost of using Material-UI. We have solved a few problems reported, but nothing systematic. We have observed [a slight gain](https://github.com/mui-org/material-ui/pull/15023) by moving from the classes API to the hooks API. However, it's hard to make progress as we lack a properly setup performance bench. It's something to consider for v5.

### Preparing for the future

Material-UI v4 depends on React ≥16.8.0. This is the first version of React that supports the [new Hooks API](https://reactjs.org/docs/hooks-intro.html).

- **Ref forwarding**. Most of the time, you use the `ref` prop to access the underlying DOM node of a React element. You might want to focus an element, compute the position of an element, and so on. You should never need to access a Material-UI component's instance methods, they are considered private. The components expose an `action` when it's really needed. For instance, you might want to update the tab indicator position when it goes out of sync with the tab item position. To ease this use case, Sebastian has lead an effort to implement [`React.forwardRef()`](https://reactjs.org/docs/react-api.html#reactforwardref). In practice, this means that you can retrieve a reference to the DOM node like you would do with a built-in component (`button`, `div`, etc.):

```jsx
import { Button } from '@material-ui/core';

function MyButton() {
  const myRef = React.useRef();

  return <Button ref={myRef}>;
}
```

- **Hooks migration**. While there is [no plan](https://reactjs.org/docs/hooks-intro.html#gradual-adoption-strategy) to remove classes from React, the React Team [encourages](https://reactjs.org/docs/hooks-faq.html#do-i-need-to-rewrite-all-my-class-components) new code to be written with the hooks API.
  Josh has led an effort to rewrite the vast majority of our components with the hooks API. The change has a couple of advantages.

  Not all [the platforms we support](/getting-started/supported-platforms/) can use the class API natively, so we transpile the syntax with Babel. Functions are supported everywhere, they require fewer line of code. We have observed a -2% gzipped bundle reduction by removing the need to transpile classes.

  It reduces the noise in the React Dev Tools ⚛, since we could reduce the number of intermediary elements from 5 to 2 in the most common cases.
  We have found the hooks API easier to work with: to write, to read, and to change. This is a net positive for everyone's productivity.
  Developers read our source to find inspiration, so we should do our best to promote the best patterns.

  ![devtools](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/devtools.png)

React Dev Tools output for one Typography element in production (this POC might further improve the situation).

- **Concurrent mode**. React has shared its [release timeline](https://reactjs.org/blog/2018/11/27/react-16-roadmap.html#react-16x-q2-2019-the-one-with-concurrent-mode) for the important features coming into React. [Concurrent mode](https://reactjs.org/blog/2018/11/27/react-16-roadmap.html#react-16x-q2-2019-the-one-with-concurrent-mode) should be released within the next few months. Concurrent Mode lets React apps be more responsive by rendering component trees without blocking the main thread. We have worked on getting ready for it. Most of the work was related to fixing the [<React.StrictMode>](https://reactjs.org/docs/strict-mode.html) warnings. You should soon be able to leverage it 🔥.
- **Shallow tests.** We have removed the majority of our internal shallow tests to rely on [full mount tests](https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1109461529227866112).

### Material Design

Most of our users are interested in the good looking functional aspect of our components, rather than in a strict application of the Material Design guidelines. However, we think that it's important for us to keep up to date with the guidelines. The specification received it's most significant update since Google made it the design language for its apps in 2014, at [Google I/O 2018](https://design.google/library/io-2018-our-definitive-guide-design/).

The Material Design "v2" announcement caught us by surprise when we released Material-UI v1. We have worked on upgrading our components since then. In v4, we have updated the styles of the Tab, Snackbar, Checkboxes, Radios, Switches, List, Dialog, and other components ✨.

![material1](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/material1.png)

Dense Outlined text field

![material2](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/material2.png)

Dense Filled text field

## What's new?

There are so many new things, we can't be exhaustive. Aside from what we have already announced, you will find:

- A new **strapline** "_React components for faster and simpler web development. Build your own design system, or start with Material Design._" that better embodies our mission and emphasize the [customizability potential](https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/08/google-makes-its-material-design-system-easier-to-customize/).
- New [templates](/getting-started/templates/).

![layout](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/layout.png)

One example among others

- [Responsive font sizes.](/customization/typography/#responsive-font-sizes)

![font-size](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/font-size.png)

- [A Box + system utility helpers](https://medium.com/material-ui/introducing-material-ui-design-system-93e921beb8df).

![Box usage example](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/box.png)

An application example of the Box component.

- [A better spacing helper.](/customization/spacing/)

![Spacing usage example](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/spacing.png)

An example of the new spacing helper API.

- A new [@material-ui/pickers](https://github.com/mui-org/material-ui-pickers) package created and supported by [Dmitriy Kovalenko](https://github.com/dmtrKovalenko) 📅.

![Inline pickers](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/pickers.png)

Keyboard support

![inlinepickers](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/inlinepickers.png)

Inline mode

- A new [@material-ui/styles](/styles/basics/) package that isolates our styling solution. It can be used independently of the core components. It comes with a hooks API that requires less boilerplate 😍

```jsx
import * as React from 'react';
import { makeStyles } from '@material-ui/core/styles';

const useStyles = makeStyles({
  root: {
    background: 'linear-gradient(45deg, #FE6B8B 30%, #FF8E53 90%)',
    border: 0,
    borderRadius: 3,
    boxShadow: '0 3px 5px 2px rgba(255, 105, 135, .3)',
    color: 'white',
    height: 48,
    padding: '0 30px',
  },
});

export default function Hook() {
  const classes = useStyles();
  return <button className={classes.root}>Hook</button>;
}
```

⚠ Be aware of the difference between _@material-ui/styles_ and _@material-ui/core/styles_. The latter contains the [default theme](/customization/default-theme/#material-ui-core-styles-vs-material-ui-styles).

- A well supported [Gatsby plugin](https://github.com/hupe1980/gatsby-plugin-material-ui) for _@material-ui/styles_.
- A [Cookbook](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1789615224/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1789615224&linkCode=as2&tag=oliviertassin-20&linkId=79aec1cb9db829135838614ac1953380) published by Packt and written by Adam Boduch.

![cookbook](/static/blog/material-ui-v4-is-out/cookbook.png)

## What's next?

Together, we have accomplished most of the objectives we defined a year ago in the v1 release [blog post](https://medium.com/material-ui/material-ui-v1-is-out-e73ce13463eb). We're proud of everyone who contributed. We're going to try to execute these new objectives with the same regularity:

- **More components.** This is, by far, the most requested improvement dimension of the library. We have identified a few useful components we are interested in building:
  - Layout components
  - AutoComplete/ ComboBox / Dropdown List / MultiSelect
  - Slider in core and the support for range values
  - Tree view
  - Dropzone / Upload
  - Skeleton
  - Jumbotron
  - Carousel
  - Rating
  - Timeline
  - Advanced table

Let us know the components you want! 🚀

- **Documentation**. The documentation is paramount. We are working on a page ranking mechanism that will help us better prioritize our effort on the documentation.
- **Use `system` in the core.** We have received great feedback on the new system package. Going forward, we will try to move it to the core components. Ideally, you should be able to use dynamic color & variants from your theme as well as have access to all the props:

```jsx
import { Button } from '@material-ui/core';

<Button mt={{ xs: 2, md: 3 }}>Hello worlds</Button>;
```

- **Styled components.** We have seen many people asking for migration to styled components. We want Material-UI v5 to be better aligned with the community's best-loved tools, but at the same time, we don't want to break your code.
  So we will work on isolating the components from the styling solution. The new _@material-ui/styles_ package is the first step in this direction. We envision a world where you can use Material-UI styled with styled components, linaria, and JSS or without any styles.
  Developers should be able to use their preferred styling solution without paying the cost of two CSS-in-JS runtimes.
- **Accessibility.** While we try to fix all accessibility issues as they are reported by our users, we feel that we can do better. We want to run a professional ADA audit of all our components ♿.

## Premium themes store ✨

How are we going to sustain this ambitious roadmap?
We will follow the Bootstrap model.
We are working on [a Premium themes store](https://material-ui.com/store/).

We have built partnerships with the best theme authors of the ecosystem.
Within a few weeks, you should find a collection of the best Material-UI templates and themes 😍.

## Thank you

Finally, one last thank you to everyone who's contributed to Material-UI v4.
I'm so excited about this release! It's just the beginning. We will keep working hard on delivering the best possible React UI framework components.

_You can find the [same post on Medium](https://medium.com/material-ui/material-ui-v4-is-out-4b7587d1e701)._

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Q: Lemma about ordinal arithmetic I'm trying to prove the following lemma:
For any three ordinals $\alpha, \alpha' >0$, $\beta >1$, if $\alpha > \alpha'$, then we have
$$
\beta^\alpha > \beta^{\alpha'} \cdot \delta + \gamma
$$
For $0 < \delta < \beta$ and $\gamma < \beta^{\alpha'}$.
My question is, is this even true, and if so what is the best way to prove it?

A: Just note that $$\beta^\alpha\geq\beta^{\alpha'+1}=\beta^{\alpha'}\cdot \beta\geq\beta^{\alpha'}\cdot (\delta+1)=\beta^{\alpha'}\cdot\delta+\beta^{\alpha'}>\beta^{\alpha'}\cdot\delta+\gamma.$$


Jon Chevreau and Rob Carrick have weighed in on the latest Fidelity study that finds that "Canadians are on track to replace only 50% of their pre-retirement income once they retire". Fidelity continues to insist that this is well short of the "recommended 80% level" despite the shaky assumptions in their original research and another extensive study by Malcolm Hamilton showing that the replacement level on average is closer to 50%.
I don't have a lot to add to their comments, since we've talked a lot about this topic already but you might find the nifty online "Retirement Readiness Snapshot calculator" interesting. The calculator allows you to play with different assumptions and check to see if you are on track for retirement. You can ignore Fidelity's math and just enter the income you think you'll need in retirement. For example, I figure we'll need $60,000 per year in today's dollars to retire when I am 55, so I entered $75,000 as my current annual income. The calculator tells us that we'll need about $2 million in savings (in future dollars), which works out to $1.3 million in today's dollars if inflation is around 2%. Despite the drawbacks of the study, Fidelity's retirement number seems to be a reasonably conservative estimate (given that CPP/QPP and OAS benefits are estimated for an individual and not for a couple).
Homeowners simply subtract the price paid from the selling price to figure how much "profit" they made without accounting for interest expenses, taxes, maintenance and home improvements.
Houses are not such great investments over the long-term if you figure in all the extra expenses of being a homeowner. Depending on the area, you could do a lot better, or a lot worse.
The best way to rein in home ownership costs are to pay down the mortgage as fast as possible and avoid costly renovations.
I do feel though that the article is over reaching to make its point. In calculating the costs of owning a home valued at $290,000 over 30 years, they estimate the total costs of maintenance and repair and renovations to be $408,000, which I think is far too high. In my own experience, I find that maintenance costs averages about 2% of the value of the home.
I received a copy of the research report by the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (thanks to Riscario Insider for the link) that estimated how much Canadians in their early to mid-40s need to save for retirement. They estimate this number by assuming that a senior one-person household would spend the same average $24,909 it did in 2003 (adjusted for inflation) and a retired couple would spend $43,717 on basic living expenses (food, shelter, clothing, transportation, health care, energy and taxes). After accounting for how much of these expenses will be covered by OAS, CPP/QPP, the authors calculate how much of the shortfall must be supplied by a combination of retirement savings and home equity. The authors conclude that a single person earning $40,000 needs to save 14% to 20% of annual earnings to cover non-discretionary expenses in retirement (not including home equity). A couple with a combined annual income of $80,000 need to save 12% to 18% of their earnings.
According to actuary Malcolm Hamilton (who based his conclusions based on a 1997 survey), the median retired senior couple needs $24,700 for all spending, not just necessary expenses. Fully retired unattached seniors need only $15,000. His estimates are significantly less than the assumptions made in this study.
The study assumes that retirement portfolios will generate the same returns as Government of Canada bonds adjusted for various inflation assumptions. The return assumptions are far too conservative for a fully diversified, low-cost portfolio with a significant exposure to equities suitable for an investor with a 25-year+ time frame.


I'm not part of the competition, but that doesn't mean you can't find me!
The design has been inspired by the 1950s railway poster art. The illustration highlights areas in South Devon where the Great Big Rhinos will be situated and focuses on the area's natural beauty and landmarks. London Paddington Station is one of the gateways to the southwest by rail and the rhino's name has been influenced by George Stephenson – known as the 'father of railways' in the 1800s. Amongst many of his great railway inventions he had the foresight to instigate one size of gauge for tracks knowing that one day they would all be interconnected.
PLEASE NOTE: Don't worry if you don't get to see George during the Trail; he will be at Paignton Zoo outside the main entrance for a short time before the Auction.
Jackie studied Design at Ware College in Hertfordshire in the late eighties and continued working in Graphic Design studios in London before travelling and settling down to have a family. She has been involved in many projects over the years which have included commissions for wildlife paintings, Murals and working for a greetings card company. After completing a Degree in Environmental Education three years ago and working for a range of environmental organisations Jackie now works as a Graphic Artist at Paignton Zoo. This has given her many opportunities to build on her creativity one of which has included 'PEG' a Gorilla that went on an Antarctic expedition for the 'Great Gorilla Project' highlighting climate change.
The Great Big Rhino Project has come to an end with a successful charity auction that raised £123,000.
Come and socialise with us!