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I'm No Dumbbell
A very smart man. (image from Wikipedia)
For a brief period in my teen years, I had a friend who owned a set of barbells. It must have been a Christmas present, because I don't recall him ever being interested in lifting weights prior to that time. He was more of a free spirit; and, now that I think about it, the barbells may have been an attempt by his father (who had issues of his own) to "weigh" him down in some metaphoric way. It had little effect on his waywardness, but it did offer me my first opportunity to practice the clean and jerk -- which we did late one night in his basement.
Teenagers are particularly prone to peer pressure, and I was no more immune than most. So, when my pal hoisted 100 pounds up and over his head, I felt compelled to do the same. I think at the time I may have weighed 100 pounds (the wrestling coach at my high school was rumored to be after me to grapple in the 98-pound weight class, though he never approached me personally, which was a good thing, given that I hated wrestling and was never very good at saying no), so the notion of hoisting something that weighed at least as much as I did above my head was not something that appeared to be in the realm of possibility. But, when you're 16 years old, most things seem perfectly reasonable, so I grabbed the bar and not without some difficulty managed to muscle it up to my shoulders and shakily get it over my head and back down to the floor without injuring anyone.
Challenge answered, I was able to avoid any more lifting that evening and for the next 39 years. It's nice to know that, if you ever really needed to, you could pick up a hundred pounds and push it over your head. Might come in handy during some natural disaster. But, as with other difficult things, when I've proven I can do something once (write a book, publish a newspaper, clean-and-jerk my weight), I don't feel an urgent need to do it again.
That's not to say I've given up on weightlifting. I actually really enjoy lifting. It's a great way to get cardio and strength training in one compact workout. I never leave the gym without spending 20 to 30 minutes hoisting iron -- dumbbell lunges, goblet squats, curls, shoulder presses and the rest. But I don't need to do the clean-and-jerk with a weight approximating my own, you see, because I've done that.
It may appear to the casual observer that I'm just avoiding a good challenge, but actually there is hard science backing up this behavior. Studies at the University of Tsukuba in Japan and at the University of British Columbia found weightlifting sparked more neurogenesis (or brain cell growth) than endurance training, according to a recent article in The New York Times. This means that weightlifters might actually be building better brains than marathon runners.
Resistance training, according to Teresa Liu-Ambrose at the Brain Research Center at the University of British Columbia, improves blood flow to the brain by strengthening the heart. And, while endurance training also boosts cardiovascular performance, weightlifting requires more brainpower, because, as Liu-Ambrose puts it, pumping iron requires more thinking about "proper form and learning the technique."
All this research rings true
in my particular experience. By lifting weights regularly, I've become smart
enough to never again attempt to clean and jerk my body weight.
My friend, by the way, soon lost interest in his barbells, as I recall, and moved on to more dangerous pursuits, the results of which sent him to an early grave. There's no guarantees, of course, but now I wonder whether he would've made smarter choices if he'd lifted more.
Conversation Starter
I was sweating
my way through some overhead presses Monday night, when a curious thing
happened: I had upped the load to 170 lbs. after a few trial lifts at lower
weights, and actually managed to hoist it up there to a point where I could
lock my elbows and take a breath.
This is a lot of
poundage for me (hold your applause; it was on a machine, not in The Pit), so
there was a brief debate going on in my brain between some old geezer and some
other guy I didn't recognize. The geezer was saying something along the lines
of "What? Are you nuts? Put this thing down, you idiot!" and the other guy was
saying something like, "Hey, check this out!"
Two reps later
(not great form), my old geezer-self had returned and I was left wondering why
I can't channel that other dude more often.
It's all about
tapping into our central nervous system and getting it to convince our muscle
fibers to respond when we hit the wall. At least that's how Andrew Heffernan
explains it in his excellent blog, Male Pattern Fitness. His hypothetical
gym-goer, Olivia, "never gets enough
sleep, and she's always stressed and exhausted. Nevertheless, she dutifully
hits the gym several days a week, but it seems like no matter how hard she works,
it's rare that her muscles really get a workout, and she's almost never sore.
She can't really ever power through a tough set because her muscles just seem
to 'turn off' at a certain point.
"She also finds that she can sometimes lift a certain weight for rep after rep, but if she increases the weight by just a few pounds, suddenly it's impossible to lift even once. She can't mobilize her nervous system to activate the fibers necessary for the heavier lift."
This is
pretty interesting. I mean, it's sort of understood that you have to exert
yourself to achieve your fitness goals, but I've never seen it expressed as a
dialogue between your muscle fibers and your brain. But it really doesn't have
to be that complicated, says Heffernan: Get enough sleep, manage your stress,
and you ought to be able to make that conversation happen on a regular basis.
Random Acts of Fitness
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.
A Welcome Epiphany
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.
The Right Tempo
A pretty OK workout last
night: Did 30 minutes of intervals on the EDM rather than my normal routine,
during which I watch Seinfeld or whatever sitcom happens to be playing on the
flat-screens and stride glumly along for 45 minutes, moving from a resistance
level of 10, to 15, then 20. I usually burn about 600 calories this way. The
intervals burned about 400, as I recall. (Should I be writing this stuff down?)
But, I was pretty drenched by the time I hit the weights.
I avoided The Pit to let my shoulder
heal, and because I didn't feel that ambitious. Still, I managed to work my upper
body to near exhaustion in about 25 minutes. I concentrated more on form with
less poundage rather than pushing my limits. I've found on those occasions when
I'm lacking serious lifting determination that just scaling back on the weight
and slowing my tempo really does the job. It's not officially tempo lifting -- a
formal strategy of timing your eccentric (lowering) and concentric (lifting)
movements -- but by holding a lesser weight for a couple of counts at the top of
my lift, it has the effect of really stressing the muscles.
It must work, because I'm
pretty sore today (hooray!).
Sweat Shop
A gorgeous autumn morning
for a bike ride. The trees along the Mississippi are beginning to turn and the
squirrels in Minnehaha Park are frantically building their winter food cache.
The chill in the air gives
me permission to pump a little harder on my way over the bridge and up the big
hill to the office, but I was still surprised to note that I made the trip this
morning in less than 12 minutes. Now that may not seem like much to you guys
who tool around the parkway at 20 mph, but I always have to balance the desire
for a little cardio before work and my unwillingness to walk into the office
drenched in sweat.
Summer is tough in this
regard. I tend to downshift into my lowest gear going up the big hill and try
to keep my heart rate down as much as possible, while staying in the shade
along the sidewalk. Still, I can end up being a bit moist on the muggiest days.
So, fall temperatures are great for the morning commute - even though I have to
drag out my mittens.
I needed them last night too
after my workout, even though I worked up a good lather at the gym. I skipped
my normal 45 minutes on the Elliptical Death Machine in favor of 15 minutes on
a new version of the EDM - which emphasized the glutes a bit more -- followed by
15 excruciating minutes on the stair-climber thingy. There's something about
climbing stairs that just turns on the sweat faucet for me. I mean, it's OK to
sweat in the gym, but the torrent that machine seems to release from my body
every time I step on it is a little bit embarrassing. Forget the little paper
towel and spritzer thing to clean up; just hand me a mop. Weird.
I glanced into The Pit once
I wrung out my Stewart-Colbert For President T-shirt ("The Smart Choice"), but
it was packed with other sweaty guys, so I hit the machines and decided to test
one side of the "training to failure debate": If your muscles aren't completely
worn out by the time your done with your routine, you're not making progress.
So, I pushed and pulled a bunch of tonnage with my shoulders and upper arms
until, by the end of the night, I could barely bench press 50 lbs. My heart was
racing, the sweat was pouring, and my poor arms and shoulders were screaming
for mercy. How great is that, huh?
Weight Control
Day 6 of the Great Food Chronicle Experiment has now come and gone, and one very clear pattern has emerged: I don't seem to eat very much. After my Tony Soprano dining extravaganza last Friday, my calorie intake went like this: 1,697, 1,972, 2,034, 1,936, 2,049, and 1,704. I have been consciously avoiding refined sugars (no dark chocolate Snickers) and limiting myself to one or two glasses of wine in an evening. But it hasn't exactly been a hardship.
And when I weighed myself at the gym tonight, I had lost a couple of pounds, down to 162.5 lbs. I'd like to report that I'm feeling more energetic and lively as a result of this new conscious-eating exercise, but that would be lying. I'm mostly sore.
That has nothing to do with my caloric intake, though. I blame The Pit. For the past couple of weeks, I've been wandering among the burly weightlifters in the gym's sub-basement, sampling the joys of hoisting iron sans machines. And my hammies and quads are not accustomed to such rigor.
Still, I went downstairs tonight after work determined to work my way through any pain, and 25 minutes on the EDM got the juices flowing in a way that convinced me to descend once again amongst the masses of muscularity.
Like my earlier journey through the resistance machinery, I haven't had much of a routine -- just moving from station to station, staying out of everyone's way and trying not to embarrass myself too much. Until this week, when I borrowed a relatively simple routine from former weightlifting champion Marty Gallagher that he says is all us amateurs need to do to get SUPER FIT!!!
Here's the routine:
1. Squats: You put a barbell on your shoulders and neck behind your head and squat up and down (three sets of eight reps). Tuesday night, I started at 50 lbs. and worked my way up to 70. Tonight, I started at 50 and worked my way up to 80.
2. Bench Press: Lay on your back. Raise and lower a barbell loaded with iron over your scrawny chest. This is more difficult than I had imagined -- chiefly because that barbell full of iron does not balance by itself. It's kind of all over the place once you lift it off the rack. There is a certain incentive to keep it airborne, however, given that its hovering unsteadily up there above your chest and (gulp!) throat. I managed three sets of eight reps hoisting 50 lbs. on Tuesday; tonight I figured I'd settle for the same level of achievement, but was astonished how heavy the load seemed to be. I grunted my way through three sets of eight again, lamenting my wussiness -- until I noticed that I hadn't loaded two 25-pound plates on the barbell. I'd mistakenly slapped on two 35 pounders! (I could've been killed!) That made me feel better.
3. Deadlifts: This is where you lean over a barbell and simply straighten up (24 times) and try to do so in a way that doesn't strain your lower back -- which is precisely what I accomplished on Tuesday, midway through my second set of reps with 90 lbs. I'd started out with 80 with the intent of adding 10 lbs for each succeeding rep, but when I felt that twinge in my lower back, I hesitated . . . then soldiered on like an idiot, finishing another set of reps with 100 lbs. My back, astonishingly, was none the worse for wear when I descended into The Pit tonight, but I decided not to push it. I did three sets with 90 lbs.
4. Overhead Press: Holding two dumbbells at shoulder level, you simply push them skyward, taking care to avoid conking yourself on the skull during their descent. Thirty pounds in each hand is all I can muster so far, and I'm only able to hoist that poundage by arching my back in a way that causes a particularly unattractive protrusion of my belly.
5. Triceps Extensions: Take a single dumbbell in both hands and lift it over your head in a way that suggests homicidal activity, and then lower it slowly behind your head in a way that threatens to send you backpedaling into oblivion and you've got the idea for this one. I can manage 35 lbs. on this maneuver, or about the weight of an otherwise innocent pick axe.
6. Biceps Curls: Can I just say that I love biceps curls? So simple, yet so personally awe-inspiring? I mean who doesn't want to leave the gym every night with their biceps all taut and tingly? You feel like you can conquer the world -- like you're Superman. Or Michelle Obama. In The Pit tonight were two massively muscled, ornately tattooed guys, taking turns curling 35-pound dumbbells in each hand and exhibiting a grand sort of -- how would you put it? -- gruntability. And yet, there I was, right next to them, calmly curling a couple of 25-pounders. I could almost swagger back up the steps to the locker room.
Anyway, this new conscious eating plan, combined with The Pit, has me looking at this fitness thing in a new way. Maybe I'll even start stretching.
The Whole Point
It's been raining mornings and evenings the last two days, thus deleting my bicycle commute (My Lovely Wife has been driving me to and from), so I was anxious to get down to the gym tonight and rev up a good lather on the old EDM and see if my Thursday experience with the free weights was an anomaly. Plus, today was the first time in four days I didn't feel like my joints had rusted. After my Thursday workout, I spent the weekend schlepping heavy objects to and fro in the service of MLW's mother (who's moving) and Our Lovely Daughter (whose 21st birthday party inspired me to do a lot of unnecessary, but strategic, landscaping maneuvers in the back yard). In other words, plenty of bending, lifting and twisting -- all the motions I can never seem to replicate during my workouts.
But that may be changing. I wasn't that energetic tonight, but I managed 25 minutes on the EDM, pushing my heart rate up to 152 and working up a good sweat. I didn't stretch (of course), but immediately descended into the free weights pit, where I found a bench and tried to replicate the work I've done on the Clapping-Hands-Together machine by grabbing two 25-pound dumbells, lying down on the bench and bringing them together above my head. I managed to do three sets of 10 reps, but it was a stretch -- which makes me wonder what it is about our physiology that makes it so hard. On the CHT machine, I can pretty effortlessly handle three sets of 10 reps with 120 pounds, and there I was struggling mightily with 25 lbs. in each hand.
Yes, it could be that I'm just a wuss, but I'm searching for more rational explanations. Obviously, the free weights are using more muscles than the CHT, and it's just possible that I haven't been using those muscles very much over the past 57 years. Also, there's the whole balancing thing: free weights don't move smoothly and happily up and down a pre-assigned track; you have to keep them from falling into your lap (or worse).
Anyway, I moved on to various engagements with heavy objects -- squats, lunges, overhead presses, etc., plus my first experience with the basic deadlift, which every serious weightlifter seems to say is the nirvana of lifting. I did 70 pounds and really felt it in my lower back -- again, probably a good sign.
The weird thing about free weights is that you leave the pit without the sense that you've worked this or that muscle to its breaking point. It's more like you've worked your whole body. Which, I suppose, is the whole point.
Free At Last!
As previously noted, I've been avoiding the free-weights area in the gym because it's just a bit intimidating -- all those large ripped and tattooed guys hoisting megatonnage of iron. But, last night, inspired by Marty Gallagher's advice to quit the resistance machinery and go "primitive," I descended into the pit and discovered . . . all sorts of regular folks. Sure, they were all in better shape than I am, and they all seemed to know what they were doing, but nobody kicked sand in my face or threatened to toss me back up the stairs just to prove they could. In fact, once I kind of oriented myself, I didn't feel any more out of place than I do in the rest of the gym.
And Gallagher was right about the free weights vs. the resistance machines. I spent maybe a half hour down there: some previously hazardous goblet squats, lunges, curls, overhead presses, triceps extensions and even a couple of sets of the exotically named Sumo Romanian Deadlift, and I can really feel it this morning -- way more than when I was doing my normal routine on the machines. And it's different muscle groups, which I take to be a good thing. As Gallagher puts it in The Purposeful Primitive, there's a good reason why dumbells and barbells are better:
"The very rawness of hoisting the barbells and dumbbells is what makes them so effective for muscle and strength building. Smooth and efficient is not nearly as good as crude and difficult when the name of the game is triggering hypertrophy. Free weights trump movement-mimicking machines every single time and in every single instance."
What was interesting was that I didn't hoist nearly the poundage that I generally use on the machines, but I'm feeling it a lot more than I usually do. Plus, I didn't drop any iron on my toes. An auspicious beginning, I'd say.
Coasting
Got milk?
You know, you look up from the mess on the desk in front of you and you notice that a month has gone by and you haven't sprained an ankle, torn an Achilles tendon or blown out your knee and that's a good thing, generally, though you also notice there are cobwebs collecting now on your blog site and the seven readers you once had are now busying themselves filling out March Madness brackets and catching ESPN updates every three minutes on their I-Pod-Phone-Touch thing. So, it appears some catching up is in order....
The ice is out on the Mississippi and the roads and park trails are clear, which is always the signal for me to roll my old Schwinn out of the garage and change the nature of my commute. Sunday, I actually cleaned out the garage and chipped the ice from the floor (don't ask), which turned out to be a great little functional fitness workout -- bending, twisting, lifting, squatting, digging, cursing, lamenting poor foundational structure, etc. Then I climbed on my bike and rode west, past Lake Nokomis along Minnehaha Creek and through several smaller bodies of water that were too large to describe as puddles. I managed to stay upright and remain more or less dry all the way to Park Avenue and back -- a distance of about 5 or 6 miles.
This managed to work my hamstrings and quads in a way they haven't been worked for a while -- I've been avoiding the bicycle-that-goes-nowhere machine at the gym for many months, because it tends to leave my left knee barking. But, I'm happy to report that my Sunday ride and my subsequent jaunts over the bridge to and from the office this week have been kind to all of my functioning body parts, as far as I can tell.
Of course, I don't push myself very hard on my commute (last summer, in fact, a jogger passed me going up the hill from 46th Street to the Intercity Bridge) or when I bicycle for recreation. I'm just not one of those guys who pulls on the skin-tight bike shorts and colorful shirts with the pocket in the back and races automobiles on the parkway. I like to coast.
I feel like I've been coasting at the gym in recent weeks, as well. Same old comfortable routine: 25 minutes on the EDM, a little stretching (maybe) and a half hour on the resistance machinery. I've been avoiding the free weights since my last (and first) visit there back in February, but I may get back there for a bit tonight and see what happens. I got a little inspired last week, when I had occasion to drop in on Marty Gallagher's Web site. He's a former championship powerlifter and now trainer who argues passionately in favor of free weights (and lots of them) over the resistance machines. His new book, The Purposeful Primitive, draws on the wisdom of legendary lifters like Paul Anderson (above) and Ed Coan to design a serious cardio and strength-training regimen.
It's fun to read about guys like Anderson, who had a two-hole golf course set up on his Tennessee farm and liked to squat-lift an 800-pound barbell a few times after putting out, then tee off, chip onto the green, putt out and press 400 pounds a few times at the other green. "Paul combined short, intense workouts ... throughout the day, with periods of rest. For example, he would do 10 reps in the squat with 600, rest for about 30 minutes, and then do a second set of 10. After another 30 minutes rest, he would increase the weight to 825 and do three reps, rest again and do two more reps with 845. then he would rest again and conclude by doing half squats with 1200 for two or three reps and quarter squats with 1800. the whole routine took three hours or more. He would sip milk during the rest periods, consuming a gallon or more throughout the course of the day."
I would do that, of course, but I'm not a big milk drinker.
Superfood?
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.
Old and Buff
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?
DOMS and Dumber
Sometimes it helps to know your limitations.
True to form, when I finally got to the gym on Friday I completely overdid things -- piled on the poundage and lifted to failure, just as I had promised myself. By Monday, my upper body -- especially my arms -- felt like I'd gone 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali in his prime.
(OK, the idea that I would last 15 seconds in the same ring with Ali -- even in his current condition -- is pretty ridiculous, but you know what I'm saying.)
I know all about the dangers of overtraining, the delusion that if you just push yourself past your limits you'll get healthier and stronger faster. So, I have nobody to blame but myself. What was curious, though, was how my body's response was so delayed. Why was I in so much more pain on Monday than I was on the weekend?
It reminded me of my old basketball-playing days, when my legs would feel crippled not on the day after the game, but two or sometimes three days later. Another few days and I was back to normal -- clanging wide-open 15-footers and blowing layups.
The answer to this particular mystery is something called Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (whose acronym, DOMS, sounds enough like "dumb" to be instructive), which peaks 48 or 72 hours after your foolishness at the gym.
All that pain comes from the microscopic tearing of your muscle fibers and connective tissue at the cellular level, Kermit Pattison explains in this January/February 2006 story in EL. And this tearing can be exacerbated by eccentric exercise, the lowering of weights in a strength-training regimen.
This makes sense to me, since the pain is most pronounced on the inside of my elbows and my forearms -- the muscles most affected by lowering the weights during bicep curls. (Foolishly heeding my inner Schwarzenegger, I added about 10 pounds to what I usually lift on this machine.)
The result was that I couldn't really straighten my arms without feeling some fairly excruciating pain. It seemed as if the muscles had constricted; the only way I could loosen them up was to (painfully) extend them with my elbows locked and palms facing up and then pull my fingers toward my body.
The good news is that, even as I suffer through DOMS, my poor muscles are growing stronger. It just doesn't seem like the smartest approach.
Failure Is an Option
It was kind of slow going this morning, due to the patches of glare ice hidden beneath a couple of inches of new snow. Lots of slipping and sliding on the sidewalks. At one point I could envision catastrophe -- "Geezer breaks hip while foolishly walking to work in snowstorm" -- but, instead of panicking, I just slowed down and practiced a little walking meditation. That's when you mindfully place one foot in front of the other and breathe: heel to toe, heel to toe, heel to toe (you get the idea).
This worked surprisingly well until a bus roared past me on the Ford Bridge and mindfully showered me with slush. After that, I picked up my pace a bit.
Anyway, I haven't been able to get to the gym yet this week (reality intervenes. . .), so I'm jazzed about getting back on the machines.
I particularly want to try out this whole idea of lifting to failure on the resistance machines. The idea, as I understand it, is that you're supposed to put enough weight on the machine that you can't actually complete the reps you set out to do (say, three sets of 10 reps) with good form.
This approach is not without controversy, as strength training icon Charles Staley points out here. There's a potential for injury and for developing bad form.
For me, the idea of not completing my reps with acceptable form has kept me from advancing very far in the amount of weight I'm lifting. Tonight, I'll try adding some poundage and see what it feels like to fail.
Muscle Bind
I'm learning more about how the muscles in my body work, which is a good thing, since a lot of them are still sore today from my Wednesday workout. The most surprising news? It's the period between workouts when your muscles really develop. Indeed, according to Fernando Pages Ruiz in this July/August 2003 story in EL, sleeping is just as important to bodybuilders as lifting.
I'm a great sleeper, but a wimpy lifter. Still, Ruiz notes that even old weaklings like myself can benefit from a regular lifting regimen. My big question today, however, is whether I should further tax my already aching pecs, biceps, lats, and triceps. So, I sought out SW, my secret fitness guru, for his advice.
He cautioned me to go easy on my poor body and work some other muscle groups instead. (Other muscle groups?)
The truth is, I've been neglecting my glutes and hamstrings and quads; and while my core beliefs are strong, my core muscles need a little work. So, I'll give the rest of my body a rest and get at those tonight.
The Cardio Conundrum
After about a 10-day hiatus, I'm finally feeling back in the swing of things. Winter is (very, very gradually) turning into spring, so I've been able to resume my walking commute, and last night I hit the gym for the first time in what feels this morning like a long, long time (I'm a little sore).
It's surprising to me how my body responds to a workout after I've been sedentary for a while. Last night on the stationary bike, for example, I was pretty winded after only 10 minutes of moderately fast pedaling. Usually, I'll push through that stage and do another 10 minutes before shifting into cool-down mode, but I just wasn't up to it last night. It's not just that my body wasn't willing; after a week and a half away from the gym, my mind was a little flabby, as well. That little voice that usually cheers me on just wasn't as persuasive as usual.
Having said that, I should note that I'm pretty conscious of the signals my aging body is sending me when I'm exerting myself. It's not like when I was in my 30s, when I would routinely push myself through exhaustion on the basketball court. These days, if I'm feeling winded, I slow down. It would be so embarrassing to have a heart attack in the midst of so many fit people.
So, with an extra 10-15 minutes to burn, I spent more time lifting than usual. And I noticed that, unlike my cardio collapse on the bike, I didn't really suffer any major setback by staying away from the weight machines for 10 days. I could pretty much go back to lifting the same amount as I was before, without much struggling.
Of course, my regimen is not exactly Herculean: three sets of 10 reps, working my upper body mostly, with weights ranging from 70 to 95 lbs. (not including bicep curls, where I'm stuck at around 35 to 40 lbs).
This makes me wonder whether strength training, in general, is easier to sustain than cardio training over the long haul. I haven't been able to find any conclusive evidence, but it appears that muscle mass, once built, may hang around longer than the oxygen-burning capabilities built from regular aerobic exercise.
As Liz Plosser puts it in this piece in Women's Health, strength training pays dividends long after you leave the gym, because of the "metabolic spike" that occurs as your body works to help your muscles recover from all that heavy lifting. My sense is that acquiring and keeping muscle mass is a lot easier than building cardiovascular resources.
But that could just be me. I'll get back on the treadmill (or whatever) tomorrow and see if it's any easier.
70-lb. Weakling
I mentioned earlier that I'd never set foot in a health club before about a year ago, so it's almost goes without saying that the whole strength training routine remains pretty foreign to me (that is not me in the photo). I can remember as an early teen lifting a barbell at one of my friends' house -- an exercise designed chiefly to identify the wussiest of our pack based on the amount of iron he could raise over his head. It was not a comfortable moment for a scrawny kid like myself, but I've been pleasantly surprised to discover that real strength training is a good deal more sophisticated -- and quite a lot less intimidating.
Of course, that's not to say I have much of a clue about this stuff. Take last night at the gym, for instance. After 25 minutes on the new elliptical machine (much easier on the knees than the treadmill), I shuffled over to the weight room and, as is my habit, surveyed the machines to see what was available. Rather than move from one machine to the next in an orderly fashion, designed to strategically work specific muscle groups, I tend to just wander from one machine to the other based on which one is open -- sort of a half-hearted version of circuit training -- but without a real plan.
What I have noticed in the year since I started doing this stuff semi-regularly is how good my body feels after each session, how the muscles I've been working seem to be generating their own kind of energy. I'm as vain as the next geezer; it's gratifying to see a little bit of definition here and there on my formerly floppy triceps and sagging pectorals. But, what really keeps me coming back to these machines is the knowledge that strength training is vital to your overall health in a way that simply bicycling -- or even walking -- isn't.
All those activities are helpful, of course, but strength training does stuff at the cellular level that can boost immunity, build bone density, and even ease stress.
Plus, you don't really have to lift hundreds of pounds of weight in order to have a good result. So, when I set the lat pull-down machine to 70 pounds and do three sets of 10 reps, I know I'm doing myself some good -- even if it may not look that impressive to the guy yanking 150 pounds on the machine next door.
Sure, I'm a piker compared to most of the young bucks in this room, but this isn't really a competition -- unless you count the battle between the sort-of-healthy guy I am now and the really healthy guy I'd like to become.
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