There are several things we don't want to happen while we lift. The first is illustrated in the image of the deadlift below:

Notice the labels. (1) Lumbar is straight. Good. (2) Thoracic is slightly rounded. Okay. Try to maintain extension in the thoracic all the time but during very heavy lifts or when you are pushing it during times of fatigue some rounding forward of the thoracic is okay. (3) Neck is hyper-extended and chin is jutting out..leading. BAD.

This happens to all of us from time to time during heavy deadlifts. It is something we want to avoid and we should cultivate a neutral neck position. Some trainees make a habit of hyper-extending the neck and not only is it dangerous it also is less efficient.

Another thing that happens during squats is the trainee tends to shift the head forward during the descent, trying to look down at the ground, and then shifts the head back when ascending. The neck should remain still and neutral throughout. One big problem is that moving the head down, and the eyes, during the descent throws us into flexion. As we reach the hole the torso dips forward and we have to first go back into extension and then ascend. This makes for a very tough and weak transition.

So, before I explain the steps to get your neck neutral I want to remind you again (I covered this some in an earlier newsletter) that we are NOT really "squatting" when we do the squat exercise! The exercise is not the "squat" which is a grounded position. The exercise is "standing up" from a deep knee bend. All the talk that has gone on about how aboriginal peoples squat around the fire in a perfect natural squat and the other "primal" nonsense is besides the point if you can conceptualize the exercise for it's intention rather than it's appearance.

After all, it is not our intention to sit around the fire weaving a basket. It is our intention to stand up with a big barbell on our back or front. One key to doing that well is to always actively extend up against the bar. Even while we are moving down. When we say "adress the bar" that is what we mean. To actively push our bodies up against the bar as if we are trying to push the bar by extending our spine and torso like a rubber band. When you master this..and it is tough…you will find that you spring out of the hole like your body IS a loaded spring. A big part of that is learning to maintain a neutral neck. The section below is, for the most part, a cut and paste from my forum post on the subject.

Steps to a Neutral Neck

1. Imagine that there is a tennis ball under your chin and that you must hold the ball in place between your chin and the top of your sternum.

2. At the same time, imagine that you are standing with your back against a wall and you want to bring your neck back closer to the wall. Just slightly. (You can actually use a wall to practice this. Don't strain or tense your neck.)

3. While all this is going on imagine that the top of your head is filled with helium causing your head to want to float up toward the ceiling. Yeah, I know that sounds silly but "floating" your head promotes extension and length.

All this may seem like a lot of things to think about while lifting….and it is. So don't think about it while lifting. Think about it and practice it while you're not lifting. Develop some simple mental cues for it, like "chin ball", "neck wall", "head float" or whatever works for you. Rehearse these in your mind while thinking through and practicing the cues. Keep it simple.

The funny thing about it is I'm very surprised that there is enough Belladonna in the stuff to do anything, including poisoning your child. You see, Hyland's makes "homeopathic products". And homeopathic products work on the magical principle of water memory in which the active ingredients are diluted down to unbelieveable levels (and I do mean unbelieveable). I explain about this in the Hyland's Teething Tablets Hyland's thread. It's "fascinating" stuff!

I also linked to the funny and enlightening talk by James Randi James Randi on the subject of homeopathy and other shams. At the beginning of the talk he consumes an entire bottle of another Hyland's product called "Calm Forte'" after which he continues along his merry way with no adverse consequence whatsoever. So you can see why I'm doubly surprised about this Belladonna problem. Homeopathic products should be the safest products around! Completely ineffective; but safe!

I find the success of Vitamin Water ironic in so many ways. First of all it contains darned near as much added sugar as a can of Coke. But the real clencher is that right now when so many are still bitching, crying, screaming, and moaning about HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP! millions of people are swigging vitamin water which contains crystalline fructose as a sweetener. High fructose corn syrup is something like 42 to 55 percent fructose depending on what is used (I don't know for sure but that's close enough) so on average it's about the same amount of fructose and glucose as table sugar (sucrose). I'm sure most of you already know that if you've been around the fitness or bodybuilding boards lately or if you've done even a little real research. And in this case real research is ignoring "food and health" blogs by "foodies" who have absolutely no real background in nutrition but are just "concerned". Caring is good but it needs to extend to your willingness to consider more than popular opinion!

But crystalline fructose is what is in the Vitamin Water products - Energy, Revive, Essentials, Endurance, Multi-V - you get it, it's what's in Vitamin Water. Crystalline fructose is pure fructose or at least as close as you can reasonably come at about 98 percent. You may know that one reason HFCS is favored in the beverage industry is that it is sweeter than table sugar. Well crystalline fructose is even sweeter than HFCS.

I wonder how many people swigging vitamin water for their health are the same people worrying about limiting HFCS. What's funny is at the same exact time that fructose is being proclaimed as evil and HFCS is of course the poster child for this movement crystalline fructose is used to give a sense of health benefits. See fructose comes from fruit. Fruit is good for you. HFCS is bad for you. Pure fructose is good for you. Weird world.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't care about the HFCS or the crystalline fructose per se. I have seen no good evidence to link HFCS or fructose to all the terrible things it's been linked to. And it's been linked to the obesity epidemic, for one.

Before I go any further, in regard to the obesity epidemic and added sugar like HFCS, linking obesity to fructose (meaning ADDED fructose) tends to assume that the majority of the rise in carbohydrate consumption has come from added sugars. Is that a safe assumption? What's the evidence?

So I'd like to link once again a great paper that finds fault in this assumption and, indeed, concludes that added sugars are not where the biggest rise in carbohydrate consumption has come from but instead concluded that "the overall increase in carbohydrate intake has by far exceeded the increase in intake of added sugars, and, thus, more specifically identifies the principal nutritional contribution associated with the rapid rise in obesity in the U.S. over the past three decades" - Changes Changes in Intakes of Total and Added Sugar and their Contribution to Energy Intake in the U.S.

As I was saying, fructose has been linked to many health problems including the obesity epidemic and other metabolic disorders such as insulin resistance and to CVD risk factors. Much of the evidence against fructose is entirely circumstancial. Soft drinks switch from sugar to HFCS in the 1980's. At the same time soft drink consumption steadily rises AND more HFCS starts being used in other products. And at the same time people start getting fatter and fatter. Epidemiological evidence may suggest a link but is the clinical evidence there? In other words, is there any good direct evidence? It appears not. To find out more read Fructose Consumption: What are the Real Health Implications?

It is obviously a bit ironic to try to get your extra vitamins while drowing them in sugar, fructose, whatever. Hence my VitaminSugar joke. There are a lot of confounding factors in figuring out why someone would do this. The thing is that we are simply talking about a multivitamin added to sweetened water. One thing that is clear about those who take a daily multivitamin (and other dietary supplements) is that as a group they are more concerned about health. So with MVM use we see more fruit and vegetable consumption and many of the other general lifestyle habits we associated with "healthy" such as not smoking, regular exercise, etc. In fact this is one of the things that makes it very difficult to actually correlate MVM use with beneficial health effects.

So what does this say about someone who would choose a product like VitaminWater? I'd say it's one of several possible things:

1. Some Vitamin Water drinkers are not necessarily the same "group" who take a daily MVM or other supplements. For this group, drinking vitamin water is not associated with other healthy lifestyle factors but instead they reach for the vitamin water just because it's there and they figure it's more healthy than a soda, they like the taste and so "what the heck?, may as well get the vitamins.

I'd tell them that they could probably save a lot of money drinking a cheaper sugared beverage and getting their vitamin supplement in pill form.

2. Some vitamin water drinkers are somewhat concerned about health and think that there is an added benefit to getting the vitamins in water as opposed to a pill. I.E. quicker absorption and better bioavailibility. Well studies supported by Glaceau have found the two to be the same. So that is, there is no ADDED benefit. It's the same as getting your vitamin from a pill, at the end of the day. It just costs a whole lot more.

3. Some vitamin water drinkers are generally into a healthy lifesyle and think that the more vitamins they get the better and perhaps are fooled into thinking that crystalline fructose is healthier as well.

We may never know. Another problem that many have brought up is that a bottle of Vitamin Water is actually 8 ounces, so those 20 ounce bottles contain 2.5 servings. Very few consumers will actually realise they are getting 2.5 times the amount of the vitamins claimed on the label because very few people think to check the serving size on anything they consume. They drink the whole bottle just like they would any other beverage. This may be no big deal in some instances but problems could emerge.

One problem is that while most parents wouldn't give their children an adult's multivitamin many will give their kid a vitamin water to drink. Also, recently, another problem came to light. ConsumerLab tested Glaceau Vitamin Water® Multi-V Lemonade A-Zinc and found that it contained 15 times the claimed folic acid. This is a big deal. In fact this could be dangerous. That is a lot of folic acid.

They claim that one serving provides 10% of the RDA. For folic acid, which is the fully oxidized synthesized form of folate, we need to keep in mind a few things. Folic acid is actually more bioavailible than natural folates from foods, about twice so. That means you need half the RDA for folate if you rely on folic acid for all your folate. Actually it is 0.6 mcgs of folic acid for every one mcg of folate, but let's not quibble. Don't forget though that many foods, especially grains, are fortified with folic acid and you are probably getting plenty of folate without a supplement. Nevertheless folic acid supplements are recommended sometimes, such as for pregnant women to prevent neural tube defects.

So, the UL amount for folic acid from supplements or forified foods is 1000 mcgs for adults. Vitamin water claims 100 mcgs per serving so 250 mcgs per bottle. Yet consumerlab found 3750 mcgs. And remember what I said about children. The RDA would be based on the adult RDA. for children the amounts are much lower. Although generally this much folic acid may not pose a problem too much folic acid can mask a vitamin B-12 defenciency. Those don't happen very often but if a defenciency of vitamin B-12 did occur and went unnoticed it could be deadly.

Assuming, however, that this is nothing to get too alarmed about, it is Glaceau's reaction to the report I find grevious fault in. Their reaction was to do nothing. They simply claimed that their "own tests" showed the claimed label amounts of folic acid. I expressed my opinion of "in house tests" concerning supplements in the thread about the Consumer Reports finding of heavy metals in protein shakes. When approaced with the opportunity to have another, third party organization perform a test (not ConsumerLab) Glaceau made no response. Incidentally, Propel Fit Water and Sobe Life Water were approved by ConsumerLab.