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If the Shoe Fits . . .

By Craig Cox / June 2010

OK, so after last Monday's meandering rant about my tendency to meander around the gym with no particular workout program or plan, I'm happy to note that on my next trip to the gym I came equipped with not just an idea of how I might punish myself, but with an actual crumpled-up post-it note on which was scrawled the names of eight specific, punishing exercises:

 

Kettlebell swings

Renegade row

Shoulder presses

Sidebridge

Glute bridge

Weighted squats

Tricep extensions

Weighted lunges

 

Many of these I had never before attempted, a fact that became painfully obvious at some inopportune moments (as well as the next morning). Plus, to make the workout even more distinctive, I decided to try wearing my Vibram FiveFingers barefoot running shoes. 

 

A couple of summers ago, I pulled on these skin-tight, toe-isolating rubber-backed foot gloves and took them for a spin around a nearby soccer field. It was cool to jog around without worrying about puncturing my feet on some foreign object, but after a while it became clear that my toes lacked the rugged individualism necessary to thrive in their own confined space. They seemed to prefer hanging out together.

 

Anyway, I've been reading a lot about primitive workouts lately, and the whole idea of scampering along woodland trails without the hindrance of modern footwear is pretty intriguing. So, in the spirit of mixing things up, I sat down on the bench in the locker room and began coaxing my communal toes into their own individual habitats. This is not as easy as it might sound. The FiveFingers are tight -- really tight -- and my toes are not easily separated. So, I'm sitting there like a 2-year-old with his first pair of gloves doing my best to line up my recalcitrant toes with their prospective new homes and recalling with some fondness the ease with which I can normally slip on a pair of sneakers. I'm also thinking I could use a good pedicure -- but I'll spare you the details.

 

After much persuasion, all 10 little piggies seemed to have found a home, and I strode confidently out into the gym. An easy 10-minute warm-up on the EDM got my heart pumping a little and I moved over to the stretching area where I secured one of those too-thin yoga mats and consulted my list. The big toe on my right foot was throbbing a bit already, declaring its desire for freedom, but I launched into a lively set of kettlebell swings nevertheless. This is, by the way, just a terrific cardio workout -- it never fails to get my heart rate up into the 140s. I highly recommend it. The renegade row? Not so much. I'd seen this move described in an upcoming issue of a certain fabulous health and fitness magazine and figured, How hard can that be? The idea is to basically get into pushup position while holding onto a dumbbell in each hand and simply lifting the dumbbell to your chest a few times. What I discovered was that it's not that easy when the dumbbells refuse to remain stationary. Mine were maybe five-sided, but it would've helped if they'd been square.

 

Shoulder presses are old hat to me, though I felt a little feeble after my renegade rolls. And I was able to work through three sets of side and glute bridges, which are basically modified planks. Weighted squats (I used a 40-pound dumbbell) are just plain killers for me, and tricep extensions -- especially while standing -- always leave me pining for more leisurely pursuits. But nothing sends me reeling like any type of lunge activity. I like to think it says something about my tranquil nature that I avoid lunging at all costs, but anyone who happened to catch a glimpse of me wobbling all over my mat would've simply concluded that I have a no sense of balance. And they would be correct.

 

I have enough difficulty remaining upright while lunging without any weights in my hands, but put a couple of 25-pound dumbbells in my mitts and I'm all over the place. (Note to self: Yoga might be a good idea.) And I'm not making excuses, but by this time the aforementioned big toe is not at all happy with its surroundings and I'm wondering whether I may need an emergency pedicure by the time I rip these stupid anti-shoes from my oppressed feet.

 

Still, it's a helluva workout I've just completed, and I'm feeling jazzed enough to crank out a couple sets of one-legged pushups before heading back to the locker room to liberate my toes.

 

This all brought up an interesting question for me that had nothing to do with pedicures: Is this sort of programmed, non-machined and weight-roomed routine a better workout than what I've been doing all these months?

 

To answer that question, I consciously reverted to my old routine when I hit the gym last night (with real shoes, BTW): 35 minutes on the EDM followed by a whole bunch of push-and-pulling on the resistance machinery. The verdict? Get back on the mats. It's way more interesting and it's going to work way more muscle groups than anything I can do on the machines. Yeah, I'm going to look pretty foolish from time to time, but what's new about that? I figure as long as I can wear real shoes I'm good.

A Pretender at Parkour

By Craig Cox / April 2010

Mr. Parkour and I paid a visit last night to Gleason's Gym, a sprawling gymnastics center artfully hidden in a suburban industrial park just south of the city. This was not my idea, but I tagged along with my housemate/former child out of curiosity and a faint notion that I should be supporting his newly won interest in fitness. You'd understand if you saw him swinging on the clothesline pole -- these days he's inhabiting a body that seems to be electrically charged. He's just got to have a place to expend all this energy.

 

And it's hard to imagine a better place for him than Gleason's. At our local gym, we have plenty of cardio and resistance machinery to work various muscle groups, but this place is more like a giant parkour playground, with climbing ropes, trampolines, springboards, and all manner of large padded obstacles to test the aspiring free-runner.

 

MP pointed out his parkour guru standing at the end of a long runway where two young men were joyfully launching themselves into back flips and landing in a pit filled with foam cubes. One of MP's lifelong dreams, he has confided to me, is to complete a back flip on solid ground. For someone who does not aspire to much, this is a serious endeavor.

 

But first there's this climbing rope dangling from the ceiling in a way that's not what I would call inviting, exactly. It's more like that kid in seventh grade - the one your mom never liked much - who enjoyed jumping off the roof of his garage and loved to cajole you into joining him. Before I could really ponder the challenge (and briefly relive some of the horrors of junior high gym class), MP was happily ascending, hand-over-hand. No big deal.

 

I'm not nearly as competitive as I once was, but there's something about seeing your own progeny - someone who not that long ago held your hand when climbing the back steps - do something you can't imagine doing yourself that makes it imperative that you go ahead and do it. So, I grabbed the rope and started up - hand over hand, no wrapping my legs around it for extra oomph. Three or four feet later, I descended, doing my best to appear nonchalant. Just a little warm-up.

 

MP was charitable, of course, offering some tips and encouragement (interesting how the father-son dynamic can shift) before escorting me over to the trampolines. I quickly noticed that these did not feature a large bouncing surface; the well-worn "X" upon which I focused my attention was centered on a mesh fabric that measured perhaps 4 by 8 feet. So, while MP was soaring skyward, I bobbed up and down in a more exploratory manner, carefully eyeing the "X" and noting the nearby sign that cautioned bouncers about flying over the safety net.

 

It's possible that at some point in my distant past I frolicked on one of these, but I found it hard at that moment to imagine the allure. There was a certain exhilaration when airborne, a kind of weightlessness. What made it tough to enjoy, though, was the knowledge that I was just as likely to hit my "X" the next time down as to veer wildly off course and find myself bouncing on a less merciful surface somewhere below.

 

"It's really a type of meditation," MP assured me, as I searched in vain for some equilibrium. In fitness circles they'd call my futile bouncing an exercise in proprioception - perfecting a sense of balance and knowing where your body is in space. It seemed to me more like an exercise in fear management.

 

Years ago, when MP was a toddler, I read an article about a parent who spent the day mimicking the movements of her 2-year-old. She came away from the experience amazed at the exertion it required. I was reminded of that as MP led me from one station to another around the gym: swinging on the high bar, leaping from balance beam to balance beam, vaulting over and through various padded obstacles. He demonstrating the proper technique, me attempting to avoid injury.

 

At one point, he exploded off the mat to the top of a padded three-step stair. I crouched and jumped to the second step with little difficulty. Feeling my oats, I announced I would go for the top. Unfortunately, the stairs were not anchored to anything, so when I landed just short of the top step, the whole thing tilted over and I fell backward and conked my noggin on the (thankfully) padded floor. Note to self: Do not try this at home.

 

Eventually, we made our way into an adjacent room, where MP located a couple of mats upon which he would attempt his back flips. I offered to spot him, and he showed me how to position my arms at his back and knees. Then, he crouched low, swung his arms, and sprung up and back, landing on his feet - though not completely upright. The next one was better, as was the next and the next. Each attempt seemed to generate more energy than the last: crouch, swing, spring, flip, land, smile.

 

The flips were not perfect, but his smiles were. And, as we meandered back through the main room, I tried unsuccessfully to recall a workout that gave me that much joy. Of course, I'm not 19; there's probably some major endorphin disparity at work here. Or maybe it's more about taking risks, trying something new.

 

So, when I spied that climbing rope on our way to the door, I jumped up, grabbed hold and started pulling myself upward with a real sense of purpose. I made it about two-thirds of the way to the top (full disclosure: I was using my legs, too) before I ran out of gas and inched my way back down to terra firma.

 

Mission accomplished? Sort of -- except my hands still hurt.

The Son Also Rises

By Craig Cox / March 2010

My son and I traveled to the fancy gym in the suburbs last night for a workout. He's 19 and likes to go first-class (although we traveled there in the Crapmobile, which I think he's beginning to appreciate for its rugged good looks). My local gym, which is in the basement of the office where I work, can be a little crowded and he doesn't really like to draw attention to himself -- especially when he's in the company of his old man.

 

There's been a ton of ink spilled in recent years about child obesity and the generally poor state of health among kids of all ages, and while Martin is as lanky as they come and hasn't been to a doctor in years, he hasn't been particularly active. Since I started working out, he's occasionally mentioned cranking out some push-ups when he gets up in the morning/afternoon, but he's generally not a highly motivated guy.

 

At least not until recently, when he discovered something called free running (aka parkour), a sort of urban acrobatics performed amid and upon various structural obstacles. Think of the opening scene in Casino Royale -- only without the fight to the death. It's a discipline that requires all sorts of physical attributes -- strength, endurance, speed, balance, power -- as well as the kind of bravado that most of us lose by the time we hit 30.

 

Martin has never been one for conventional sports. He played little league baseball and park-and-rec soccer for a couple seasons back in grade school, and he can still block any of my shots on a basketball court (he's about 5-7, but he can touch the rim). But he's always been attracted to more unconventional stuff: rock-climbing, skateboarding and snowboarding, and now doing backward flips from the roof of abandoned cars.

 

I like to encourage my son in whatever (legal) endeavor he's currently embracing, and he assured me after his first parkour training session the other day that this is all on the up and up, so we hit the gym last night with the idea of doing a little upper body and core work.

 

He's got a ways to go, and he knows it. After 10 minutes on the elliptical, he confessed that his legs were feeling rubbery. And hoisting 50 pounds on any of the resistance machinery is a real struggle. Still, we made the circuit and I was doing the whole personal trainer bit, smugly teaching him all I know about body-building.

 

At one point, while he was resting between sets on the chest press machine, he asked about the benefits of push-ups. I told him they might be the best body-weight exercise you can do, pointing out how they work your shoulders, your biceps, triceps and core.

 

"They don't work your biceps," a young man at the next machine offered.

 

"Oh, they work them a little," I replied, hoping to maintain my dignity.

 

"Not really," he countered, explaining how pushing moves build your triceps and pulling moves work the biceps.

 

I thought back to the 30 push-ups I did that morning and briefly considered dropping right there and doing a set just to prove my point, but thought better of it. "Hmm," I pondered. "Not the biceps, huh?"

 

"Nope."

 

"Hmm," I mumbled. "Great for the triceps, though."

 

Martin went back to his chest presses. I gazed at the ceiling. Maybe I'll set him up with a real P.T. next time.

The Shock of the New

By Craig Cox / February 2010

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.

A Welcome Epiphany

By Craig Cox / December 2009

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.

Now, a Racket Rut

By Craig Cox / September 2009

For months now, I've been struggling to find ways to "mix up" my workout routine. Loyal readers may recall my foray onto the basketball court awhile back or my occasional yoga adventures. Well, now that I'm everyone's favorite tennis opponent, the problem isn't so much finding a way out of my tried-and-true EDM/lifting/sometimes-stretching rut; it's all about getting back into the gym!

 

Since my Belgian Waffle revelation a week ago, I've not had a chance to visit the gym (or to eat any waffles, for that matter). I was consumed by various tasks at home over the Labor Day weekend, I played tennis on Tuesday night, had a meeting after work on Wednesday, and last night played tennis again. Not against my regular tennis buddy, M.E., but instead I squared off against an old magazine colleague of mine, J.W., who apparently reads these pages from time to time and, noticing my current obsession, challenged me to a match.

 

J.W. is a kind-hearted soul who, I figured, would show some mercy on an elderly player who also has fed her a good deal of freelance work over the years (I'm just sayin' . . .), so I accepted her challenge and we met at the lovely Nokomis tennis courts after work last night. I also figured I needed some more practice before my scheduled match with the ultra-competitive M.E. on Sunday; he's been playing several sets of doubles each week and on Tuesday it showed -- his serve is getting faster and more accurate, and even though I played pretty well, he still beat me 6-3. (His Achilles has healed also, I should point out. . . and he's seven years younger than me.)

 

Anyway, it turned out that J.W. and I were pretty well matched. Neither of us has a big serve, relying instead on solid ground strokes, so we had some great baseline-to-baseline rallies, and we each hit our share of winners. In fact, J.W. is kind of a machine on the baseline -- she doesn't make a lot of unforced errors. Which is great fun, if you can keep up, which I mostly did through the 11 games we played. She went up 2-0, I rallied to win the next two, she went up 4-3, at which time I noted with some false bravado that I'd have to win the next three games to take a 6-4 set.

 

It nearly proved prescient, as I proceeded to take the next two games, losing only a single point. But, at 5-4, my game suddenly deserted me and I put up only weak resistance as J.W. surged to a 6-5 lead. We didn't play the tie-breaker, as it was getting dark and J.W. was nursing a bit of a strained hamstring, but I was confident that, had we continued, my superior conditioning would prove pivotal to the outcome (ha ha).

 

And, speaking of superior conditioning, I'll be heading cheerfully back to the gym tonight for a little cardio and some stretching. I might even venture down into The Pit to do some squats and deadlifts. I gotta get ready for my next match.

Miracle on Ice

By Craig Cox / January 2009

I recalled on Saturday morning that, contrary to the post below, I had sort of resolved to drag out my old hockey skates and get out on the ice this winter. (I had actually communicated the resolution to my fitness guru, SW, in a moment of weakness -- making it all that more difficult to ignore.)

A bit of history: After years spent bouncing basketballs on Saturday mornings at my local grade school gym and perfecting my jump shot in my uncle's driveway, the National Hockey League came to Minnesota in 1967, and my best friend (who sucked at hoops) and I transformed ourselves into puckheads. Every night after supper, we'd slap on our breezers and pads, grab our sticks and walk down to Hillview Park, where we would lace up our skates and chase the puck around the rink along with whomever happened to show up that night. Sometimes, we'd have nine or 10 or more players -- of all ages -- crowding the ice on either team, creating a divine sort of anarchy -- avoiding the little kids, crashing into our peers, and always keeping the puck on the ice (nobody was wearing a cup, you know).

The warming house was always populated by our neighborhood's more adventurous girls, Marlboro-puffing vixens who inhabited a world far more mysterious than any hockey fantasies my sports-obsessed friends and I could conjure. So, it all made for some magical winter nights.

I played a couple years of park and rec hockey in high school and one particularly embarrassing intramural league game at Williams Arena at the U of M (I'd neglected to sharpen my skates and spent my dwindling shifts sliding around as if I were wearing boots while deflecting pucks into our own net) before giving up the game in my mid-20s. I still loved to skate, though, and My Lovely Wife still speaks of the time in the late 1970s when, at a skating party with a gaggle of local bon vivants, I cast wild aspersions on my carefully constructed literary-revolutionary identity by casually carving figure eights on Lake of the Isles  -- while skating backwards.

But, I've been out on the ice only a handful times in the past 10 years, so when I sat down late on Saturday afternoon on the wooden steps leading to the the Lake Nokomis rink to lace up my skates (the warming house, of course, was closed -- budget cuts), I really didn't know what to expect. And that's a good thing, because if I'd had any idea how awkward it was going to feel, I probably would've stayed home.

Thankfully, there was no one else on the ice to watch me totter about, propelling myself speculatively -- prospecting for some sense of balance. Should I lean forward? Crouch more? And what do I do with my arms? For a while, I felt like I shared the impending tragedy of a toddler's first steps.

But, after a couple of turns around the rink's big oval, I was starting to get the hang of it again: leaning and pushing, leaning and pushing, arms swinging , body swaying, and blades skimming along -- frictionless against the frozen track. I was working up a bit of a lather after a few minutes; a healthy breeze greeted me after each half-circuit, forcing me to push through the oval's home stretch. It felt good, though. Despite the rough ice, the wind and a rapidly forming blister on the outside of my right ankle, this was actually kind of enjoyable.

And this seemed to be working muscle groups that I didn't even know existed. I could feel it in my lower back, my glutes, quads and knees -- especially my knees (but not in the way I felt it when running). Maybe even a little bit in my core, actually. This can't be a bad thing, I thought, as I marveled at the pink sunset on the west side of the lake. Then, coming out of the second turn, wind at my back, I was suddenly greeted by a glorious full moon hovering just above the eastern horizon. MLW had mentioned the arrival of the "perigee of the Moon" (she knows about this stuff), the closest encounter with the moon in 2009, which presents a fuller, bigger moon than you're going to see the rest of the year.

I'm not accustomed to these sorts of magical moments. I could've just as easily caught a blade in a rut and tumbled face-first onto the merciless ice. Or turned an ankle. Or skidded over a bump and torn open my kneecap. (At my age, you think about these things.). But, no -- here I was, gliding around this oval in nearly perfect silence beneath this glorious full moon feeling like I was, oh, maybe 45 again.

So, I coasted over to where I'd left my boots and, with more effort than you'd expect from a 45-year-old, sat down and pulled off my skates, checked my new blister and slid on my boots, welcoming their offering of stability.

I was recalling those long-ago boot-clad treks home from Hillview Park, skates hanging from my hockey stick, when I came upon a park police car that was just exiting the parking lot. No ticket on the Crapmobile. Hmmm. The half-buck I had reluctantly surrendered for an hour-long slot on the blacktop turned out to be a smart move. Magic.

Rage Against the Machine?

By / May 2008

My motto: Make friends with new machines.

Well, I didn't get to the gym on Wednesday (worked too late -- not enough time for a good workout. . . . so, sue me! Geeze.), but I managed to get downstairs last night for a little sweat-a-thon. I did 25+ minutes on the treadmill while watching CNN talking heads lip-synch something about the Obama-Clinton race, which for some reason prompted me to hit the "incline" button a few times. And, about 15 minutes into my session, I inexplicably broke into a run. Was this a sympathetic response to Hilary's uphill battle for the nomination?

Anyway, my heart rate was creeping into the mid-140s (coronary territory???) and I was sucking wind and Wolf Blitzer was segueing into a story about John McCain's medical records (71 is old?), all of which kind of took the wind out of my sails. Defeated, I slowed to a walk, pondering my own mortality and the civic value of soundless TV news, before switching off my virtual runway and moving on to better things.

Last week sometime, a dizzying array of new resistance machines arrived at the club, so after nearly eight months of learning how to use the old machinery without hurting myself, I'm suddenly back at square one. For most people, this does not pose much of a problem. The hulking, tattooed denizens of the weight room seem to instinctively know which machines do what to their impossibly buff bodies; they simply bend the machines to their iron will. Other, less imposing specimens seek out a nearby helpful personal trainer and simply ask their advice. I, on the other hand, wander aimlessly amid the shiny white monuments, squinting at the inscrutable hieroglyphs designed to explain the machine's proposed relationship with the user's body. It's as if I'd stumbled upon a trade show for tool-and-die machines or the latest in Romanian commercial bakery appliances. No, I do not ask for directions.

Instead, I climb on the most familiar-looking pieces of machinery and crank away, marveling at how smooth and silent the transaction feels. Poundage that felt oppressive on the old machines I can hoist almost effortlessly. I did have pasta for lunch (see "Superfood?"), but that can't entirely explain how easy this feels tonight. I pile on an extra 10, even 20 lbs. more than I'm accustomed to, and, 10 reps later, it's: Whoa! I'm da man!

It momentarily occurs to me that different resistance machinery could register different results, but I quickly dismiss that thought and consider, just for the briefest instant, venturing over into the free-weights area, where the real men and their tattoos lurk. I even think, for the tiniest of nanoseconds, that maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't be totally out of line for a guy my age to get a tattoo. (Why should my daughter be the only one in the family with one?) But, just as suddenly, the thought fades, and I'm back on the ab cruncher thingy, wondering about this new pain in my lower back.

Way across the room, Obama's on CNN again. Skinny guy, I'm thinking. Probably no tattoos. Someday, maybe, the most powerful man in the world. Hmmm. . . .