Pumping Irony

At the dentist this morning, the hygienist took my blood pressure: 119 over 84, which she told me was "very good." My resting pulse was 59. Also pretty good, I'm told.

I'm trying not to feel smug, which is pretty easy, since I'm so sore from last night's sweatfest. Or is it still lingering from Monday's workout? My hamstrings and glutes were still barking yesterday, so I climbed on the old reliable EDM to work out the kinks. Thirty minutes later, I figured I'd do some stretching, but all the mats had been grabbed by a particularly large aerobics class. So no stretching.

That's the thing about this whole fitness mission: You can plan the coolest workout routine, but reality can intervene. I was planning to hang out in The Pit and do some upper-body work, but when I got there I noticed some guy perched on his elbows on some contraption that allowed him to swing his legs up and to the sides -- a core move that looked pretty interesting. So, I stood out of sight and stretched my calves a bit, waiting for him to finish up. But, then, when he did, some other guy grabbed it. So, no core work, I guess.

The Pit is like that -- a bit more chaotic and random than the resistance machinery. There are people who clearly have a set routine, real pros who will cut in like Fred Astaire when you're stepping on Ginger Rodgers' toes, and get their reps in between your paltry sets. It hasn't happened to me more than once or twice, but it's always kind of embarrassing: You put down your iron, which seemed plenty heavy at the time and then you watch this guy slap on an extra 50 pounds. Very humbling.

Anyway, I had upper-body work on my agenda, so I left my core dreams behind for the moment and grabbed some dumbbells and got to work on some overhead presses, when I noticed this guy next to me doing what looked like a really cool balancing move with a dumbbell -- one leg up, leaning over and hoisting maybe 25 lbs. toward his chest. I'm thinking I'd like to do that -- and maybe the lat raises this guy to my left is doing. But it feels goofy to imitate exercises -- even cool ones. So I didn't.

Still, I got my work in despite all the distractions, and I was heading out of The Pit when I spied that core contraption one more time. Nobody was on it. Maybe I'd sneak in there for a little last-minute push. . . . Oops, too late.

I think I mentioned a while ago that my gym got a makeover recently -- they really spiffed up the joint, but they relocated the scale in a mysterious place, so I hadn't been weighing myself. Well, Monday night I finally located it and sheepishly climbed aboard, expecting the worst. Much to my surprise, the number (159.4 lbs.) was a bit lower than expected.

I've been more conscious of my weight since I started working out -- my fitness assessment a couple of years ago had my 5-foot-7-inch body bordering on overweight (a body mass index of 25) at 164 lbs. The whole BMI calculus is pretty controversial (a lot of buff guys, like Kobe Bryant and the majority of NBA players, for example, have BMIs as large as their biceps), but I was starting to get concerned that, because I was not Kobe Bryant, maybe I would just gradually add a pound or two every few months and wake up one morning tipping the scales at 180 or something. It's a very insidious process, and I've developed a new appreciation for how hard it can be to manage your weight.

So, it was interesting this morning to stumble upon a piece by Gina Kolata in the NY Times that addressed the whole weight question in a way that I'd never seen before: What is a person's ideal weight and how do you know it when you reach it?

Kolata points out that even the most body-conscious people (i.e., elite athletes) don't always successfully gauge how heavy or light they should be in order to perform at their best. But it can make a huge difference: Too heavy and the added baggage will slow you down; too light and your body begins burning muscle protein, sapping your energy. Andre Agassi, for example, would often stop eating in the days leading up to a major tournament in order to get leaner, a habit that frustrated his coach, who counseled him to simply train harder.

I'm not Andre Agassi -- though my tennis game is improving -- and I don't think I have to worry much about losing too much weight. Nor am I going to lose any sleep over beating my personal best in a 5K (especially since I've never run a 5K). Maybe my ideal weight is precisely 159.4 lbs. and for that one hour in the gym on Monday night I was absolutely at the top of my game. Or not.

I guess the real point is that it's a good idea to become a little less oblivious to energy levels, etc. when I'm at the gym or -- what the heck -- just less oblivious in general. I'll try that and report back.

I awoke to a gorgeous Minnesota winter morning -- snow blowing sideways from the northwest and 4 inches of the white stuff underfoot as I trekked to the office. The combination of craggy ice and crunchy snow makes for a pretty good lower body workout; I can already feel it in my hammies and glutes as I write this.

Of course, it could be that the soreness in my rear extremities has more to do with my workout last night at the gym. Recently, for reasons I can't adequately explain, I've been doing different stuff. Rather than climbing onto the Elliptical Death Machine for 45 minutes of cross-country air-walking and then grunting through a half hour of lifting on the resistance machinery, on Friday I inexplicably jogged a mile on the dreadmill. Then, last night, I did 20 minutes of anaerobic intervals on the stationary bike (six one-minute sprints interspersed with one-minute recovery pedaling). I even kept track of my heart rate: 116 for the sprints; 102 during recovery. After some stretching (!!!), I did a round of kettlebell swings (which I was surprised to note pushed my heart rate up into the 140s) as well as some dumbbell lunges and overhead presses. Then a half-hour of push-pull lifting (various presses and compound rows) before heading home.

I'm not sure what this means, frankly. It's not that I was bored with my previous routine. Or that I'm concerned that I'm not progressing toward my fitness goals (I feel pretty good for an old guy). I was curious how my tweaky left knee would handle some running and delighted that it seemed to hold up just fine. And interval training of any sort is a great way to squeeze in a little more intensity into a shorter space of time (though I didn't work up much of a lather on the bike). Plus, it was about time I got serious about stretching, right? It actually seemed to do some good.

I'm sure I'll get back on the EDM soon enough. Meanwhile, today is a non-gym day, so I'll take the same route home after work tonight and thus chalk up a total of 80 minutes of moderate cardio and lower-body exercise. Not bad for an off-day, I guess. Plus, it keeps things interesting. There's nothing like the threat of sliding off a sidewalk into the path of an oncoming car to keep you focused.

An old colleague of mine, who I like to call The Captain (our Air Force careers briefly overlapped in 1970), dropped me a note the other day with an interesting query: Why does he always seem to come up with such great ideas when he's out on his bicycle cranking his way up some torturous hill? What's happening in the brain during intense exercise that seems to spark, as he put it, "wildly exciting, clarifying thoughts and ideas"?

He did not clarify what these exciting thoughts focused on, but let's just assume that, The Captain being The Captain, they involved truth, justice and enterprise rather than, well . . . other stuff. This sort of Big Idea thing never happens to me while exercising; working up a lather on the EDM or in The Pit just makes me a happy, sweaty guy. Of course, I'm pretty oblivious to brainstorms these days (the last Big Idea I had was to start my own newspaper!?!?), so I'm tempted to chalk up The Captain's personal rush of creativity to some level of latent brilliance that eludes happy, sweaty, oblivious guys like me.

That may partly explain this burst of imagination and clarity when he's in the saddle, but there are some things going on in the brain when you're exercising that tend to boost your ability to think big thoughts. In this 2008 study, researchers found that regular exercise helps the body produce neural stem cells in the hippocampus -- the brain's center of memory and learning -- through a process called neurogenesis. A healthy hippocampus means a smarter, more insightful, creative, sweaty guy pedaling up that god-forsaken hill.

And that sense that he's experiencing a "rush" of insight is probably triggered by the body pumping out serotonin, dopamine and other pleasure-enhancing neurotransmitters that make guys like me feel happy even though we're making a fool of ourselves in The Pit.

So, The Captain is doing the right thing by climbing on his bicycle regularly and fueling his brain to think big thoughts. The problem, he explained, is that by the time he's parked his bicycle in the garage, changed out of his biking clothes, showered, and parked his butt in front of his laptop to record his terrific new insights, they've pretty much disappeared. His hippocampus, so lively and receptive on two wheels, goes all slacker on him. "All those grand schemes somehow disappear from my to-do list, and I go back to being a 66-year-old man," he laments. "Maybe with a slightly stronger heart after an hour in the saddle, but I never quite follow up on all the brainstorms I have while exercising."

Maybe his hippocampus needs more frequent workouts, I'm thinking. Or maybe all that dopamine he's generated by the time he's reached the top of that hill has made him so euphoric that pretty much any idea seems breathtakingly insightful. Who knows? I'd suggest that The Captain arm himself with pen and paper next time he's saddled up, so he can capture those grand visions in a more timely fashion, but then I think back to my last major brainstorm and wonder whether his hippocampus may be doing him a favor.

My Lovely Wife and I got married on Facebook this evening. She, sitting comfortably in her favorite chair across the living room from me in my favorite chair, noticed in a bit of a panic that she'd not identified her husband on her Facebook page and quickly remedied the situation with a few keystrokes before giving me that look and suggesting in her most persuasive voice that I might want to reply to the request that I confirm our relationship. So now we are coupled in cyberspace.

That was easy.

I recount this magical moment not so much because I want you all to be part of our digital nuptials (our actual wedding almost 29 years ago required only a bit more planning than this evening's celebration), but because it synchs so nicely with my current fitness vibe: Do what seems necessary at the moment.

For the past month or so, I've been hitting the gym maybe once a week at the most, neglecting the tennis court altogether, squeezing in a few pushup-and-planks workouts before work, and generally opting for a take-care-of-myself approach to living as opposed to my normal über-disciplined aspirational semi-obsession to fitness. This past weekend, for instance, I felt a real need to de-stress, so I slept late, read books and generally practiced eliciting my body's parasympathetic response (AKA breathing) while steering clear of any activity that didn't veer toward leisure. It's a good thing to do once in awhile.

I've been thinking recently that I'm harboring more stress in my body than I care to admit to myself -- or anyone else -- and that I need to make a conscious effort to unravel those knots. And, yes, exercise has been shown to be a great antidote to stress, but sometimes -- when your son takes away the car for a weekend and that weekend's temperature barely inches above zero and the pantry's well stocked and gosh isn't it quiet and isn't the sun shining in on that chair at just the right angle to attract a purring cat to your lap and, yes, a cup of tea would be just lovely, thank you -- it's more productive to just take it easy.

This "what, me worry" attitude has been embraced by one of the nation's most prominent doctors, Susan M. Love, whose new book, Live a Little! Breaking the Rules Won't Break Your Health, celebrates a more laissez faire approach to fitness. In this interview in Tara Parker-Pope's (is she married on Facebook?) New York Times health blog, Love explains that we're a lot healthier than we tend to think we are and that we ought to just chill a little on the whole weight-loss, carbo-loading, six-pack-abs-and-buns-of-steel thing.

"Everything is a U-shaped curve," Love tells Parker-Pope. "There may be times in your life when you've gotten too much of this or too little of that, but being in the middle is better, and most of us are probably there already."

I'm good with that. But I'm still going to play tennis tomorrow night -- just because it's fun. And tomorrow morning I'll bundle up and walk that 2.5 miles to work -- just because it's, well, not fun, but eventually pleasant. And maybe Wednesday night I'll go and sit for an hour or so at the zendo -- just for the chance to breathe and unravel and see what happens. Ice skating on Saturday? Perhaps.

But Sunday I'll be drinking beer (not too much) and watching football -- because that's fun too. That is, if my new wife will let me.

It's definitely December now (a balmy 24 degrees this morning), so I've parked my bicycle in the garage for the next four months and will begin my day with a walking commute up the street to the train station, across Hiawatha Avenue, through Minnehaha Park (stopping to admire how the falls freeze from the bottom up), across the Intercity Bridge and up the hill to the office. It's a great way to begin and end the day -- so long as my knees hold out.

Actually, it's not my knees that concern me these days as much as my shins -- or, to be more specific, medial tibial stress syndrome. It's a shooting pain just below my left knee on the inside of my tibia. As the helpful people at athleticadvisor.com put it, this is basically an overuse condition traced to things like "improper footwear, muscle strength imbalance, muscle inflexibility or improper running surface." I'm guessing that it's my lack of flexibility, as usual, that's causing the problem, because when I stretch out my left calf muscles, I can really feel it.

Apparently, what's going on is some inflammation where the gastrocnemius, soleus and tibialis muscles connect to the tibia. It's not really debilitating -- I played basketball and tennis with it last week without any noticeable damage. But, every once in a while, it flares up enough to get my attention.

The solution, of course, is to stretch it out regularly and maybe work to strengthen those aforementioned posterior and anterior leg muscles with some specific exercises (any ideas?). Or I could back off a little on my weekly basketball game (I suck anyway) and let it heal -- not a bad option for the short-term, probably.

Meanwhile, I'll try to spend at least some time this week stretching it out. It can't hurt, right?

Loyal readers of these pages (yes, you two know who you are) know me to be a bit random in my workout approach. I do my cardio. I do my lifting. I ignore my stretching. My assumption all along has been that as long as I stay active, it shouldn't really matter what I'm doing or when I'm doing it.

Well, I was wrong.

Or at least that's what noted fitness guru John Berardi is saying in this piece on muscle recovery. According to Berardi, I shouldn't be subjecting specific muscles to intense weightlifting sessions more frequently than once every seven days. That's because each session damages the muscle and depletes the calcium balance and protein content. And if you don't give the body enough time to refuel the muscle, you're going to see diminished results. Or, as he puts it:

"Without adequate recovery of calcium balance, muscle energy, and muscle protein content, your muscle force will be lower with each subsequent workout, thereby reducing the quality of the workout in terms of the weight lifted. This is certainly not the way to get stronger. In addition, unless you wait until full structural recovery occurs, you will simply be destroying the new muscle tissue being formed to replace the damaged tissue."

In other words, if I go to the gym every other day and work my way through the same lifting routine, I'm actually damaging those muscles. Thus, the need to have a plan that works different muscle groups in some sort of rotation.

I'm guessing that by "intense" lifting, Berardi is referring to those workouts in which you tax your muscles to their maximum capabilities -- the old "lift to failure" routine -- an approach I practice fairly regularly. I'm going to assume, then, that my normal morning bodyweight (pushups and planks) and kettlebell routine would not qualify, since it's meant primarily to get my heart beating and my blood circulating.

I'm also going to assume that my weekly basketball and tennis workouts (a great 7-5 4-6 match last night with my tennis buddy, M.E., by the way) are not doing more damage, given that they are designed to work whole groups of muscles -- and function more as flexibility exercises than as strength training.

If I'm interpreting all this properly, then, I simply need to develop a strength-training plan that guides me through a weekly routine working specific muscle groups -- say a core workout followed by an upper body routine the next time at the gym, and a lower body workout the next. Mix that up with my regular cardio, plus basketball and tennis, and I'd say that would do the trick.

I know, I know . . . This is such a "DUH!" moment for most folks. Of course, you have to vary your routine, work different parts of your body, etc.... But I've never seen it explained in the way Berardi expains it. So, I'm going to treat this as an epiphany. Plus, I happen to like epiphanies.

It used to be that the second day after basketball I'd really feel the pain (it's called DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness), but I was surprised yesterday morning to find that I wasn't hobbling around as much as I thought I might. It's all relative, of course, but aside from a mysterious twinge at the top of my left shin, I was feeling pretty good. So I went through my usual morning meditation/workout routine and headed off to work.

There's plenty of research to back up the notion that it's better to exercise your creaky joints and aching muscles than it is to baby them. As Matt Fitzgerald points out in this EL piece from a couple of years ago, Swedish researchers in 2005 found that "moderate exercise strengthened cartilage, reduced pain and improved functional performance in a group of patients at risk for developing osteoarthritis of the knees."

My Lovely Wife, whose bum right knee prevents her from running, relies on daily bicycle rides (yes, even in the Minnesota winter) to loosen -- and strengthen -- that troublesome joint. And her weekly yoga practice has allowed her to improve her flexibility to a point where she can now get pretty close to a 90-degree squat for the first time since she injured her knee more than 30 years ago. And I've found more often than not that even moderate movement is a great solution to creaky joints -- and sore muscles.

This approach is echoed by Fitzgerald, who explains that exercise "literally warms the muscles, making them more pliable, and releases synovial fluid in the joints, lubricating them and allowing them to move more easily."

So, despite my crazier-than-normal foray on the basketball court Monday night, I was able to push through whatever soreness I did have yesterday with a moderate morning workout. By evening, I felt good enough to hit the gym for a 3-mile "run" on the Elliptical Death Machine followed by a half-hour of lifting. Then, just to show off, I walked the 2 ½ miles home!!!

And I lived to tell about it.

Well, of course I played basketball last night -- despite a weird twinge in my left knee and a general whole-body soreness from Sunday's tennis match/basketball shoot-around. (What did you expect?)

And it was OK. I didn't roll my ankle or catch an elbow in the mouth or take a knee in the groin. I mostly stayed out of the way of the big guys in the paint and tried to make some good passes and play sort of a middling defense. All my cardio work seemed to pay off, in that I could go up and down the court for a solid 90 minutes and still feel pretty fresh by the end of the evening.

All my old basketball buddies had aged -- some more gracefully than others. D.D., who's in his mid-50s, hobbled up and down the court like a man who needs a new hip -- which he does. T.W., who's pushing 60, can't quite get off the ground anymore when he's rebounding. And J.Y., now in his early 50s, doesn't really drive the lane anymore for those acrobatic underhanded lay-ups.

They weren't alone in showing their years. I didn't expect that I would exactly light it up after so many years away from the game, but I also didn't expect it would be so tough to get off a shot that didn't clang off the backboard or miss the rim entirely. In the final game of the evening, with my team needing one basket to clinch the game (we hadn't won one all night) I broke free for an easy lay-up . . . and it rolled off the rim.

Still, it was fun to trade jibes with these old guys again after so many years away from the court, and it was gratifying to realize that my workout regimen over the past three years had kept me in good enough shape to avoid cardiac arrest.

Now if I can just get my shooting stroke back.

I enjoyed a decent workout this morning with my tennis buddy, M.E., at the Crosstown LTF. We cruised through a set (I played OK, but got clobbered 6-2) and then shot some hoops for about a half hour. Then it was back to the courts for another 45 minutes of whacking the ball around (I think I lost 5-3, or something like that) before we knocked off for the day.

This sort of cross-training works way different muscle groups, and I'm really feeling it tonight in my knees and back. Tennis doesn't generally do that to me, but basketball is another story.

You may recall an earlier post in which it appeared that whole competitive basketball thing had been left for dead. Well, M.E. now is talking about re-joining our old basketball buddies for their weekly two-hour game (the first of which convenes tomorrow night), thus the sudden interest in hooping it up this morning. Unlike our earlier shoot-around, this morning I really felt pretty good. I was hitting those little 18-footers like the old days and feeling pretty comfortable with the ball in my hands. Still, I'm a little ambivalent: On the one hand, I haven't played competitively for seven years. On the other hand, I haven't played competitively for seven years. You get the idea. So I thought it might help if I listed the pros and cons:

Pros:

• It would be interesting to see if I can still compete after seven years of retirement.

• It's always a great cardio workout.

Cons:

• I could sprain one or both of my ankles.

• I could wrench my back.

• I could blow out my one gimpy knee.

• I could blow out my one good knee.

• I could dislocate one or more fingers.

• I could break my nose.

• I could develop some great new blisters.

• I could really suck.

So, of course, I'm leaning toward heading over to the gym tomorrow night and letting it all hang out. Getting back on the court holds some allure simply because I'd like to see how much I've lost as compared with how much these other old guys have lost. And I do like the game. It's just that, well, it could be the dumbest thing I've done in a long time (and that's saying something).

I guess I'll just see how I feel tomorrow night. Maybe the universe will give me a sign. Like If I can't walk or something...