Strength & Fitness

Books / Strength & Fitness — No Comments
10
Aug 07

Why You Need a Paper Route

“I’ve noticed,” Mom said, “ever since you got your paper
route, you haven’t been sick.”

Having a paper route in the middle of the last century
meant delivering papers to people’s homes seven days a
week, 365 days a year in rain, snow, summer dog days, and
excellent weathers.  It meant, in my case, exercising hard
for 45 minutes up to an hour and a half on snowy Sunday
mornings in the dark.

“Where have I heard this before?” you inquire politely.

“That’s right – Younger Next Year and Harry’s rules.  The
first rule is exercise hard six days a week.  Exercising
triggers the rebuilding and healing processes in your
body.”

“But you were just a kid, so you would have been healthy
anyhow,” You challenge.

“That’s the point.  I was not healthy.  I was a sickly kid
in some ways.  My new standard of health, post paper route,
was noticeable because of the massive contrast.”

Since the beginning of the year, eight months now, I have
been exercising hard seven days a week — How’s my health
been?

Conclusion – I have been much healthier than my norm.  That
is no colds and flu – more energy and good spirits.  I have
increased my exercise just enough to get this benefit.  I
was exercising hard already, just not enough to reach the
tipping point. 

I will see how this plays out in the future.

Here’s a question for you:

On my Sabbatical to Walla Walla, Washington, I noted that
Whitman College has just built a shinny new Fitness Center.
 What do you make of the name – Fitness Center.  What’s the
message they are giving to the students, faculty, alumni,
and Walla Walla with that title.

Is Fitness in?
 

Life Mentoring / Strength & Fitness — 1 Comment
6
Jun 07

Younger Next Year

When it comes to getting older, you think you know –

But guess what? You don’t know. The point of this book is that you do not know. And you have the wrong picture in your head. You know what it meant for your old man and his father.., for your mentor and a few billion other guys. But the rules are changing. Right now. And your prospects are different. Quite different. 

Harry–that’s Henry S. Lodge, M.D., my doctor, my co­author, my close friend–is going to give you enough of the new evolutionary biology in his chapters so that you can understand for the first time how your body actually works. It is going to be a revolutionary insight for virtually every­body, believe me. Once you understand it, and once you do some of the things that will seem obvious to you after that–why, you can choose to live like fifty until you’re in your eighties. In your eighties, my man! We mean it. You may ski into a tree; that’s a different story. Or you may grow a tangerine in your brainpan and be dead in the morning. Fine. But most of us really do not have to age significantly. For decades. 

Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You’re 80 and Beyond by Harry Lodge and Chris Crowley will make you hoot.  I had to stop reading because my loud guffaws and appreciative chuckling disturbed Suzanne’s needed rest as she recovered from her surgery.

 

This book is for men who are over 50 or think they may be over fifty some day.  And for the women who love them.  Presumably, the biology of women will benefit from the same suggestions.  This book motivates men and doesn’t try to motivate women, who require different conversations to motivate them. 

Younger Next Year for Women I haven’t read this one yet, but heck the biology of decay and growth are the same.  The motivations of feeling good are the same.  Women are often smarter about health and taking care of themselves than men are.  This book should as delightful as the one for men.  I ordered it.  JUST IN, one of my brilliant research staff has now read the book and approves heartily. 

Younger Next Year will change your perception on the biology of aging.  We have it wrong, us male folks over 50.  That’s why he or you must read it and why it’s so humorous.  If you’re a guy, you’ll need the humor because the authors don’t pull any punches.  The reality of Harry’s Rules (see below) leaves no weasel room.

Here’s what you think you know: You turn sixty and your feet are on the slippery slope–the long slide into old age and death. Every year a little fatter, slower, weaker, more pain-racked. You can’t hear — you can’t see. Your hips go. Your knees. And that great friend and amusing companion of your youth curls up and goes to sleep in your lap. Except when you have to take a leak, which is every half hour. You get petulant. Your conversation goes stupid. Your teeth are a bad yellow, and your breath isn’t so great, either. You don’t have any money. Or hair. And your muscles look like drap­ery. You give up. You sit there and wait. Go to the Nursing Home, get tied to a chair.

There’s a graph. 

The Mind Blower – We Have It Wrong Part II 

When I was using Bill Phillip’s excellent book, Body for Life, he suggested eating a bit more one day a week, your Free Day.  Phillips and others believed that you needed to eat more so your body didn’t go into a famine response, which would drop your metabolism and save fat stores.  

This logical sounding thinking turns out to be dead wrong.

Listen up this is important; this is why you subscribe to this newsletter. (Blog)

 

Harry goes into lovely, understandable detail explaining to you why this is so.  It turns out your body takes its cues from exercise.  It only reads one newspaper, and it only looks at the sports page.  Did you exercise hard today or not?  That is all it wants to know.  It doesn’t care how much you ate.

 

If you exercised hard, then it will repair tissue, cure disease, and build fitness, muscle, and strength.  It turns on the immune system.  You get healthier. 

If you didn’t exercise hard, it will just breakdown tissue WITHOUT REPAIRING IT.  It will conclude from your inactivity that you are starving, and it will lower your metabolism and conserve your fat stores and other stores to help you survive the winter or drought that you must certainly be experiencing.  Obviously, you would not stop exercising hard for any other reason.

 

Your body has no programming for an overabundance of food, high carbohydrate fatty food in particular, combined with sedentary behavior.  500 million years of perfection are nothing to mess with.  Humans just need to get with this perfected program of the body’s ancient wisdom. 

See?  Can you tell what a huge shift in thinking this is?

I knew I was in trouble with this review when I wanted to quote page after page for you.  Just buy the book – read it.  Laugh.  Don’t look for short cuts, they don’t exist.  Follow Harry’s rules.

HARRY’S RULES 

1.     Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life. 

2.     Do serious aerobic exercise four days a week for the rest of your life. 

3.     Do serious strength training, with weights, two days a week for the rest of your life. 

4.     Spend less than you make.  5.     Quit eating crap! 6.     Care. 7.     Connect and commit. 

Strength & Fitness — No Comments
9
May 07

You Want To Get Strong and Stay Strong

I say, “You want to get strong and stay strong.” 

Why?  Because everything in your life gets better when you’re strong. 

Here’s what I mean.

Researchers have shown repeatedly that when you are strong, your body and soul work better.  Miriam Nelson did the first research I read.  She took postmenopausal women and did moderate strength training with them.

Because Nelson wanted to get a clear picture she controlled the research with one other requirement – the women could not lose weight.  

At the end of a period of weeks using the battery of indicators for biological age the women got younger by twenty years.  TWENTY YEARS!  Holy moly!  And they dropped several dress sizes.

Get it.  A skimpy number of weeks, not years, of moderate exercise and twenty years younger.  This is an easy trade off for you to make.

I hasten to add I do not advocate the cult of youth.  I spit upon it.  I do advocate feeling good.  I advocate you having more fun in your life because you feel good.  I advocate your being able to contribute to your world because you feel good, feel vital, feel strong.

This applies to men and women of all ages even into your 90s.  Nature designed your body to do strength training.  When you stop exercising, your body thinks you have hit a famine and it goes into decay mode.  Decay mode is not pretty. 

Most of the horrors you associate with aging are really decay mode horrors.  You can avoid it all by doing strength training, aerobics, and by avoiding  junk foods that you know don’t work for you.

Tip:  Don’t eat anything that wasn’t around in 1900. 

With strength training you get –

More strength => Healthy Aging

More strength => More fun, better play.  Other sports become a breeze.

More strength => you don’t fall, you have better grace, stability and ease of movement.

More strength => Daily life is easier – schlepping groceries, walking up flights of stairs carrying a child.

More strength => Handle the normal bumps of everyday life better.

More strength => Better sex

Find a way to do some strength training.  Kettlebells is what I love to do.

Kettlebells Are not for Everyone 

I have written about Kettlebells before, so you know I love them.  (See related articles below for more details.)

I love Enter the Kettlebell, book and DVD.  (Obviously, you save when you buy them both.)  Kettlebells (KBs) are terrific for multiple reasons.  Primarily, they are the most efficient fitness and strength training tool I know.  They make the best use of your time and they act broadly and provide you with overall functional strength.

One measure of functional strength is the amount of carry over benefits the exercise provides.  KBs excel at this.  Here’s what I mean –

The Russian army tested recruits for overall strength and fitness by measuring their pull ups, their speed in the 100 m run, which surprisingly is a function of strength, and the 1 km run, a function of stamina. 

Half the batch of recruits trained in the three exercises above and were later tested again and found to have made good improvements.  No surprise.

The other half trained using only a couple of KB exercises.  The surprise – they blew away the first group’s numbers.  Even though they had not trained doing any pull-ups, sprints or 1 km runs, when tested they smoked the competition.  That’s carry over.

This means that when you do kettlebells, your golf game improves, your tennis game improves, making love improves, playing with your child or your grandchild improves.

If you like intensity, you’ll love kettlebells.  If you want to be like everyone else at the gym, forget them.

If you want short efficient exercise, you’ll love kettlebells.  If you want to run for miles instead, skip them.

If you don’t want something a bit risky and want something more mild and safe, skip kettlebells.

If you can’t follow safety instructions skip the kettlebells, they will hurt you.

They benefit both men and women.  In fact, one of the most persuasive articles I read was by a physician who was also the mother of a toddler.  She mixed in five minutes of kettlebell work between episodes of chasing down her wandering toddler.  

Fitness guru, Pavel Tsatsouline’s newest kettlebell book and DVD surpasses all others.  This one gives a much better picture of what you actually do with the beasts to build a personal strength program. 

He makes some very simple suggestions for strength training routines.  I have adopted them and they are fun, simple and, while not easy, don’t kill me.  I thrive on the challenge, you will, too.

I also like that he stresses safety strongly in this book.  I will admit to a male trait of ignoring safety sometimes at great cost.  I am learning.  I am delighted that Pavel makes safety OK for us men.

Safety Is a part of, not the opposite of, performance.  

Ladders – A Slick Solution to Two Major Problems 

Pavel reminds you, “Everybody must lift weights.”  If you’re over 50, I say you must lift weights or occupy yourself with something just as good.  I haven’t found anything just as good.

One of the problems of any training program is the body’s ability to acclimate to the challenge.  If you don’t change the workout, you lose ground.  You also get bored and if the workout is always onerous because of boredom or it’s always at your edge and never easy, you and I will quit.  Quitting ruins your chance for getting the massive results you want. 

Pavel introduces the idea of using ladders to handle the acclimation and the boredom.  Ladders provide an engaging challenge for me.

Here’s how ladders work:

I do an exercise called the clean and press (C&P).  On Tuesday, I currently do two rungs of the ladder.  I do five ladders.

Here’s what it looks like:

·        I C&P the kettlebell once with each arm.  Then rest.  That comprises one rung.

·        Then I C& P twice with my non-dominate arm, then the other side.  Rest.  That’s two rungs and I am done with that ladder.

·        I repeat for five ladders totaling 15 clean and presses with each arm.  This is a breeze, an easy day.  I like easy days.

On Thursday, I do three rungs.

·        C&P once, Rest. 

·        C&P twice. Rest. 

·        C&P three times.  Rest.  This completes one ladder.

·        Repeat for five ladders.  Still not killer but I am now up to 30 C&P with each arm for the work out.  Not shabby.

Saturday, is my heavy day.

The same thing here as before except I do four rungs.  1+2+3+4 = 10.

Times five ladders and Woof!  I’m doing 50 clean and presses which amounts to a load.  I thrive on the challenge.

As I progress, I will eventually be doing five rungs and five ladders.  This level will give me an awesome 75 C&Ps with each arm.  Woof!

I can either stay at that level or nudge up to a slightly heftier KB and start over.  We’ll see when I get there.

Note, you don’t have to start at this place.  Pavel shows you how to build up slowly at a pace that works for you.  He counsels patience.  He wants long-term health and fitness.  I want that for you, too.

Tip: A nice language tip and reframing from Pavel –  think of this as practice and not a workout.  The goal is to learn a skill.  Strength is primarily a set of skills according to Pavel, much like mastering a martial art.  I have come to understand his point.  And it completely abolishes boredom and engages me fully. 

The neurological benefits of weight training, especially kettlebells, provide at least half the value.  These benefits keep you from falls as you age not to mention keeping you mentally alert.

Kettlebells on Submarines 

In an earlier kettlebell book, Pavel mentioned that

USSR submarines carried kettlebells because they provide full-body strength training and yet require almost no room to use or to store.

When we moved to our flat, I had to give up my 7 foot (2 m) Olympic barbell that lived in the garage.  I now practice with my KB in a space not much bigger than 1 x 2 meters (3 x 6 feet).  The kettlebell waits for me in a tiny space the size of a teakettle.  

The KB is so compact that when I go on road trips, my KB stores under the floor deck of my trunk.  Most lodgings I stay in are more commodious than by home practice room.  (I don’t take them on airplanes.) 

Here’s a carry over.  I am thinking of getting a kayak.  It weighs 42#, 19 kg.  Do you think it will pose a problem carrying it to the beach, if I routinely throw a KB around that weighs 35#, 16 kg?

There are three books on kettlebells now.  I recommend Enter the Kettlebell, and From Russia with Tough Love, lastly the Russian KB Challenge.  This last one most will never need.

Only Buy the Official Russian Kettlebell 

I recommend you get your kettlebell from Dragon Door.  It’s where I got mine.  As we have become good friends and traveling companions, I have discovered he has a name.  Many people become so fond of their KBs they name them.  Just go with it.

I am happy with him.  You’ll be happy with yours.  There are imitations out there I think, but I can’t speak for them.  Shoddy stuff doesn’t work.  Buy good merchandise.  The Official Russian KB is kind to my hands.  Smooth.