April 2008 Archives

Maybe Popeye really ate pasta.

Two interesting questions lodged themselves in my pea brain after last night's workout: 1.) Do certain foods make you stronger? and 2.) How hard should my heart really be beating when I'm busting my butt at the gym?

But, first, a little context. Several weeks ago, a couple of personal trainers walked by as I was laboring futilely on one of the resistance machines.

"Any questions?" one of them asked.

"Yeah," I replied. "Why is this so hard?"

I was only partly looking for a laugh to ease my sweat-stained burden, but they didn't take the bait. Instead, they explained how chowing down on some complex carbohydrates prior to my workout would power me to peak performance. For some reason, I filed away that bit of information until yesterday afternoon, when I ordered up some creamy pasta dish for a late lunch. I'm not sure if I was really curious about the potential affect on my workout or if I just wanted the pasta, but I enjoyed the meal and about three hours later climbed on the treadmill (!!!!!) and started running (!!!!!).

Do complex carbohydrates go right to the brain? I hate the treadmill (vertigo), and I despise running (calf cramps), and yet I walked right out of the locker room, spied a vacant machine and climbed right on. After a five-minute walking warm-up, I started to jog and didn't stop until I'd done a mile!!!!! It wasn't fast, it wasn't effortless, but it wasn't that bad, either. My legs felt good, my heart rate soared into the mid-140s (more on that later), and I could almost imagine doing the whole routine again some time.

No, I didn't stretch.

But I did dive into my strength-training routine with a weird sort of vigor. At each stop, I threw an extra 10 pounds above my normal load and pushed myself to the point of failure. On the chest press, in fact, I kept piling more and more weight on the machine -- just to see where I landed -- and found myself eventually doing a single five-rep set at 200 pounds!!!

So, later, I'm thinking: It must be the food. And, sure enough, it turns out that experts, like the folks at Human Kinetics, preach the virtues of complex carbohydrates in the pre-workout meal. I probably should've known this, given that the whole "carbo-loading" cliche is so durable (the body turns carbs into the ATP needed to contract your muscles, yada yada yada), but I've never actually experienced it the way I did last night. Weird -- but in a good way.

I think so, anyway. I was wearing my heart-rate monitor during this whole food-to-energy experiment and was wowed by how it shot up into the mid-140s during my run and stayed in the low-to-mid 130s during much of my lifting routine. This is WAY higher than what I've become accustomed to in the past several months, so I'm wondering: Am I going to have a coronary or something if this keeps up?

So, I checked in at WebMD to see what numbers I should be paying attention to, and found that maybe I was over-extending myself a bit. According to their heart-rate calculator, I should be hovering between 84 and 126 beats/minute during exercise and not exceeding 162.

This seems a little wimpy to me, but soaring heart rates aren't really that productive, I'm told. So, I'll try to slow down on the pasta in the future.

After my Crapmobile episode on Monday, I was anxious to get back on my regular workout schedule, so last night I hit the gym after work and went through my regular routine -- except I built in some time between the elliptical machine and the strength training room to actually do some stretching!!!! It's a stretch, of course, to say I did much loosening of the muscles -- a little hamstring here, a little quadriceps there -- and it was on to the weight room.

The dirty little secret about Craig's fitness regimen is that I really like how it feels when I'm lifting weights. The tightness in the muscles is a sign that something's going on in my body that might be a good thing. I don't get the same buzz from the cardio stuff -- though all that panting can't be a bad thing -- and stretching . . . well, is just stretching.

I've been taking the advice/challenge from SW, my fitness guru, who's been encouraging me to throw on some extra weight, and now I'm finding that the 80 pounds on the lat pull-down thingy that a couple of weeks ago left me exhausted after two series of 10 reps doesn't start feeling impossible until I'm nearly done with the third series. I'm up to 120 pounds on the bench press and think I can move it to 130 next week. I did 115 on the chest press thingy last night; I hadn't ventured beyond 105 before.

This all seems like a good thing: I'm noticing a little definition on my upper body and arms, and that's encouraging. I'm not aiming for some statuesque physique (I'd have to do something about my abs, then, wouldn't I?), just hoping to ward off the floppiness inherent in middle-aged saggification.

Still . . . . Check out this piece on geezer bodybuilding in today's New York Times. It seems that a growing number of oldsters are taking up the sport (?) and entering shows around the country. These are guys who start out just wanting to get back into shape and then start thinking maybe they and Schwarzenegger have something in common. Could this happen to me?

I trekked through the beginnings of a classic March blizzard yesterday morning, workout gear in my backpack, fully intending to hit the gym after work. Really I did. Then, about 3 p.m., my lovely wife called me on my cell to notify me that the Crapmobile (my 17-year-old son's not-so-affectionate moniker for our '91 Honda) had bit the dust in the parking ramp next door.

She was on her way to an appointment with a Life Time Fitness personal trainer downstairs, but clearly that was not going to happen, since she had to call a tow truck now and it would be an hour, at least, before salvation would arrive, and because the Crapmobile's disabled ball joints had actually led to the wheel bearings falling from wherever wheel bearings are supposed to be and the front axle collapsing there on the upward slope of the ramp, she would be standing there directing traffic around our little blue wonder for the forseeable future.

I dutifully notified the aforementioned P.T. that my wife would like to reschedule her appointment during a time when she wasn't directing traffic in a parking ramp. Then I headed next door to survey the damage and lend moral support.

Our poor little car was indeed immobilized (though a couple of fairly muscular trainers showed up later with the idea of pushing it into a less inconvenient position until they noticed that it wasn't going anyplace unless they picked it up and that picking it up would be a problem, since it was a car . . .), and my poor wife was thus destined to resolutely await the arrival of the tow truck.

Did I mention that we were having our annual late-March blizzard? Well, by the time the tow truck had hooked up our crippled little vehicle and headed off to the auto hospital, there were about 6 inches of slushy snow on the ground and a rip-roaring northwest wind propelling it through the air in a particularly unpleasant manner.

Was I going to let my lovely wife traverse the storm on her way home all by herself? I don't think that's what a guy like me does, do you? No sir. So, we tromped our way through the tempest toward the river, picked up a bottle of wine at the liquor store, caught the first bus we saw, transferred to the train heading south, and walked the last four blocks home, where we had a nice spaghetti dinner with the kids (none of whom seemed surprised that the Crapmobile had broken its leg), after which I watched the Twins game. So, that's why I didn't go to the gym last night.