September 2008 Archives

Everyone who knows anything about fitness tells me that I need to do three things regularly to stay in shape: cardio, strength training and stretching. I've been pretty religious about practicing the first two, but positively negligent about the third. So, I've been doing some research lately to learn more about how to work this stuff into my regular workouts.

It's not easy. I'm just not very flexible. To illustrate: If I bend over at the waist and keep my knees  unbent I can, with some discomfort (make that considerable discomfort), reach down to about the middle of my shins. My lower back and  hamstrings are about as flexible as a mortgage banker.

I can take some comfort knowing that most geezers my age don't fold and unfold like a jackknife. Still, I'm committed to remaking my whole body, not just my lungs and familiar muscle groups. And that means getting more limber. To that end, my wife and I will begin attending a yoga class next week, and I'm vowing publicly to begin stretching a little every day -- even at the gym!

I've armed myself with a few beginning stretches that I've actually done in the past, so it doesn't seem too exotic or painful. I'm going to take their advice and spend about 20 minutes on the mat tonight and see what happens. We'll see if I can do 20-20-20 minute split between cardio, stretching and lifting. Maybe someday I'll be able to touch the tops of my shoes.

It's primary election day today, so I'm skipping the gym to go exercise my political franchise. I did cycle into the office this morning, as usual, enjoying the gorgeous  autumnal weather. And I spent a fun-filled 40 minutes or so on Saturday morning doing my Dr. Oz pushups, some planks (so there, JS!), crunches, cobras and other punishing stretchy kinds of things.

The point being: I don't feel at all guilty about missing a couple of gym workouts. I'll be back at it downstairs tomorrow night. But, all this has me wondering something about my aging body (57 years, one week and two days): Are old muscles, tendons, ligaments and such fundamentally different from young ones?

So, I consulted the pages of Technology Review (where else?), where I discovered that, just as I had suspected, exercise damages muscle cells -- old and young -- which are eventually replaced by new cells. Here's how the TR folks put it:

"When we exert ourselves, like going to the gym or running after the bus, we always damage muscles which are being replaced over time [by] muscle stem cells," says Irina Conboy, assistant professor of bioengineering and an investigator at the Berkeley Stem Cell Center. "But when we get older, cell death is faster than cell replacement."

So there's the rub: My cells are dying off faster than I can replace them, so it takes longer to repair my aching muscles.  I'm not interested in "miracle" muscle growth supplements, but I'd like to know that what I'm doing in my ongoing fitness regimen might have some mitigating effect.

 Big Al Fortney, over at Criticalbench.com, gives me some hope. He says getting sufficient protein can help to repair muscle damage -- and I'm not one to disagree with a guy whose biceps are as large as my thighs, you know? (How does this guy even fit through doors?)

Thus armed (sorry), I'm off to devour some protein. Tomorrow, back to the sweat-a-thon.

Worshipping the rubber mat.

Bicycling on the Ford Bridge this glorious morning, I spotted a lone rower (sculler?) resting on the perfectly calm river below. It was a perfect Zen moment: a man balancing exquisitely in his knife-thin craft, oars extended, a water bug on the wide expanse of the Mississippi. . . .

I didn't do any rowing last night at the gym (it's a little hard on my twingy lower back), but -- as promised -- I finally did mix up my usual routine a little.  Ten minutes on the Elliptical Death Machine got my heart pumping pretty good, after which I moved over to the rubber mat area of the gym. There, I stretched out my quads, my hammies (ouch!) and my lower back (cobra pose) before launching into some ab work that I'm sure entertained the multitudes on the cardio machines behind me.

First, the prone cobra, which is supposed to help spinal mobility, but probably made me look like a beached whale. Then, the reverse crunch, which could be interpreted as an inability to rise after a bad fall. And, finally, the side crunch, which I frankly don't even want to talk about.

 Most people don't like to exhibit their awkwardness in front of a crowd, and I'm no different. I like to amble confidently from station to station at the gym, pretending that I really know what I'm doing. So, this whole idea of flopping clumsily through some floor exercises in a public manner is a bit of stretch (sorry) for me. I've always thought exercise, like prayer, ought to be done in private.

But, I guess I should start thinking of the gym as a sort of exercise church (The P.T.'s are the ministers?) and myself as an acolyte. That might work -- growing up as a Midwestern Lutheran, I never had to talk, really, about what I was doing in the pew or what I believed might be my reward. So, in that sense, it was a lot like my current gym experiences.

Of course, I haven't been to church in a long, long time. Hmmmm. . . .

Anyway, yesterday's workout reformation (sorry) inspired me to climb on the mysterious stair-climbing machine, which stands in the back of the cardio room like -- well -- a pulpit (sorry). I'd successfully avoided the urge to use this machine, fearing that my creaky knees would not survive more than a couple flights of mechanical stairs. But, it actually wasn't too bad on the knees -- tough on the calves, but not too bad on the knees.

Which would've allowed me to give thanks in a certain way, but I decided not to go there.

Why not try something painfully new?

No intervals on Tuesday's stationary bike ride (you really have to be in a certain mood), but I did a little over 5 miles in about 20 minutes -- average heart rate of 110 -- so I wasn't slacking. And I upped the poundage slightly over on the resistance machinery during my 25-minute lifting session. We'll see if I can maintain the momentum tonight.

My real conundrum these days is figuring out how to shift from my fairly random cardio/strength training  routines into something a bit more strategic. It's not that I'm bored or anything; I always feel better after my workout than before. It's just that I think it would be interesting to move on to something a bit less "creative." Maybe work on specific muscle groups. Maybe focus a bit more on increasing my flexibility.

So, I'm thinking that tonight I'll do a brief (10 minutes?) cardio warm-up before moving on to the mats for some stretching (quads, hammies, lower back) and ab work (check out these painful-looking reverse crunches!). Then maybe 20 minutes on the machines (lower body?).

At least it's a plan. I'll report back if I'm not in the hospital.