Anyone who knows me knows I have a love affair going on with coffee. Over the past two years a lot of positive information about coffee’s beneficial effects regarding type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, liver cancer, and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease has been emerging. There are some caveats, but here’s a great link from the Harvard School of Public Health that addresses some of these benefits (with the caveats, as well).
I’m happy.
I’ve thought about this question; “why fitness? Why workout? Why compete in sports?”, for a long time. If I’ve learned anything about myself, it might boil down to one loaded word: overcompensation.
I was always smart. The Plainview school district where I grew up started administering intelligence tests in the 3rd grade. In the 5th grade my reading comprehension tested at 12th grade level. I was only average at things like math, but I could pretty much understand any concept. In the 11th grade I played chess grandmaster Shelby Lyman to a draw in a match that lasted over 3 hours. I was cutting classes to stay in the match and the principle was watching the last 60 minutes of it. It was the crowning moment in my love of chess. But I always felt I was cheating just a bit. I was born talented and smart the way some people are born beautiful, I hadn’t really earned it. I took it for granted, absolutely.
I was also born short. Slightly built to the point of puny. And a big nose. Smart, short, skinny, and a big nose, made me an easy target for bullies, but I had some less obvious physical advantages. I was crazy fast, possessed great reflexes, and I had a much older brother who I loved to rough house with, so I was tougher than I looked. I learned to make myself more trouble for the bullies than it was worth, using my brain, my speed, and a first strike policy if I thought a fight was inevitable. I was and am small, but my ego was (is) 10 feet tall. Did I mention I was competitive? Whatever I liked doing physically I needed to do as well as I possibly could. I hated losing in anything if I believed I should win, and I hated not doing as well as I thought I could, even in defeat. I was always a good sport, but would obsessively work on improving my game. The sports I loved to play as a kid were Basketball and football. Did I mention I was puny? Didn’t matter. I played smart, I played fast, and I played big by surprising people with my unexpected strength. It wasn’t that I was super strong, it’s just that people underestimated me and I loved taking advantage of that. When opponents would adjust, even when they shut me down, I felt great; I forced opponents to notice me!
That started slowly changing with puberty, and the discovery that I really liked looking at girls but was at a total loss as far as interacting with them. I retreated. I was still short, puny, big nosed, and now pimply. All the girls were taller than me. I felt I was undesirable in the extreme. I was more comfortable with adults, books, and my art (I was a self-taught sculptor at 4), than with peers. People praising me for being smart or talented meant nothing to me though. These were gifts from fate (or genetics). I wanted, needed, to be acknowledged physically.
I was 17 when I got a job at a nearby gym the summer after high school graduation. If I was afraid of girls before, now it was worse! All these sexy women in their form-fitting leotards (it was the 80’s) and I’d never kissed a girl or been on a date, and was convinced no woman could want me. Low self-esteem. Low self-esteem came into conflict with the fact that I always felt special, above average, above normal, because of those natural gifts. High self-esteem. I started working out to make my body over in the image of my ego. I wanted to feel super strong and powerful. I wanted to earn it. I started building my body, from 5’6″ and 120 lb., to 150 lb. I started playing racquetball and soon became a top club player and a competitive “open” level player, competing in tournaments all over the northeastern seaboard. And women who liked athletic guys started noticing me. The popular athletic guys started wanting to hang out with me, started looking to follow me. I had re-invented myself. There was a cost. I became someone I’d grow to not like very much. It took time to reconcile low self-esteem me to my high self-esteem self.
Eventually I added an additional 20 lb. of muscle, getting to 170. I was really strong and felt compelled to keep pushing. By my mid 30’s I was stronger than anyone my size and un-augmented ought to be and the injuries started piling on. By then I’d learned a secret. All these people who were pulled into my orbit were being pulled in because I was smart and passionate and supremely confident in those attributes. My physical accomplishments had little effect on people’s behavior towards me. It was all about my attitude towards myself. I still want to be the best at whatever I do, but try to be smart enough to know what I can’t do. I haven’t beaten low self-esteem, and it still exerts its influence, but I have improved myself in some ways, taken backward steps in others. It is about health now, and a little more. I still dream of getting myself really strong, if I can do it smarter. I still like being the go to expert on anything I care about. There’s that ego again. Overcompensation isn’t always bad if you channel it right. Still working on figuring out how to tell the difference, 23 years later. The adventure continues…
Is it too early to feed the brain? Taking a corrective exercise workshop Save Your Back, Get Your Butt in Gear, with Eric Beard.
7:15: He’s a pretty good speaker, but he espouses a lot of research without telling us the source.
7:50: getting into some good stuff now on how muscles work. How they work and what happens when they malfunction.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Location:Broadway,,United States
I wanted to do a blog on Body Image, but it’s turning into a rather long essay and is a bit more slow going and editing heavy on my part. So, for the weekend I want to give anyone paying attention to this blog a little homework. I believe it will tie into the essay on some level.
I’d like you to set aside one hour of your time this weekend, to honestly ask yourself these two questions: “Why did I start working out? Why do I work out, now”?
Really think about it honestly. Get down to the kernel of truth. Don’t settle for the surface answer. If your initial thought is to say “to look better”, then dig deeper. What do you think looking better will do? How do you think you look? Is that why you still work out or has the motivation changed?
If your initial thought “is to be healthier”, then are you really thinking you’re unhealthy? Why do you think that? Do you have family medical history that you’re trying to mitigate? Do you have injuries that have affected the quality of your life that you’re trying to overcome?
Is it about sports performance? Are you competitive? Do you need to be the best at your thing? Are you or might you get to be, a professional? If not, what is really driving you? Might it link up to some other issue even deeper?
Maybe it’s a social reason. Boredom, loneliness, whatever it is, think about it and smash it up, pulverize it, and get to the subatomic truth of the matter.
Don’t lie to yourself and don’t be afraid of sounding shallow. Don’t give the answer you think you’re supposed to give. Give the truth, and then decide if you want to share it. If you feel like sharing with the world, post it. If you feel like sharing with me, send it in an email. If you want to keep it private, just don’t ignore it yourself, too.
I’ll be at a fitness conference all day tomorrow (Saturday), but I’ll find the time throughout the day and share my story sometime tomorrow (Is there anything I can’t do on my iPhone? Well, a few things, I guess)
As usual, don’t hesitate to ask your own questions.
There are many ways to gauge exercise intensity. I’m going to discuss 3.
The most commonly employed method for the exerciser (even when they are unaware of doing it) is “perceived” exertion. That is, do you think you are working out hard. This method is used for both aerobic cardiovascular exercise and weight lifting exercise.
Since the vast majority of exercises have no idea what they are capable of, or even how to improve their capacity to train intensely, this method is often no better than a crude guess based on no facts.
For an experienced exerciser, this method can have varying degrees of validity; from somewhat valid to paramount validity, especially when partnered with the second method.
The 2nd method for determining intensity being used with increasing frequency is heart rate training using heart rate monitors (see my previous blog). These can be worn or built into machines like treadmills, stair climbers, ellipticals, etc. This technology’s aim is to take the guess-work out. A persons heart rate will always progressively increase in response to progressively increased activity. It’s the same science (to a lower level of intensity) that is used during a stress test. While commonly associated with cardiovascular and aerobic training, it can be used with weight lifting and other anaerobic activities, too.
The 3rd, and last method I’m going to describe is primarily used in conjunction with body building and other high intensity weight lifting exercises, but could also be adapted to other forms of anaerobic activity (sprints, plyometrics)as well.
Momentary muscular failure, known in weight lifting circles as the High Intensity Training Technique, describes the moment in an exercise set that you are literally unable to perform an additional rep. Very few people ever develop the conviction to achieve this result, and usually just stop when they hit a certain number of reps or decide that the set got hard enough.
For someone who has been working out consistently and hasn’t noticed much in the way of results in a while, this is the surest method to break thru a plateau. For someone trying to become as physically powerful, and/or develop the greatest amount of muscularity, as possible, they must eventually achieve this level of commitment. At this intensity, all other modes of determining intensity are of secondary importance or actually counterproductive. The only way to determine if you’re achieving this intensity level is to try another rep. If you succeed in completing it, you haven’t accomplished your goal, yet! At this level, success is achieved at the moment you fail!
This method is best suited for the very experienced strength athlete in excellent overall health, as it puts tremendous stress on a persons musculoskeletal system and your cardiovascular system.
I love technology. And I love using technology as an integral part of my workouts. Whether it’s gadgets that help plan my workouts or the workouts of my clients, track my workouts and intensity, or simply help me tune out the outside world so I can better focus on my workout, I use it. Here is a list of my favorite technology helpers, how they’re used, and the computer platform they are compatible with (if applicable).
MacBook Pro. (Apple) My all purpose tool for communication, education and research.
Email and text messaging. I use these tools to send workouts to clients when they’re working out on their own but need a little guidance. I also use them as motivational tools; having clients send me texts every time they’ve completed a workout on their own, for instance.
Polar FT-80 Heart Rate Monitor. (www.polar.fi) Monitor your intensity for any kind of aerobic, cardiovascular, anaerobic, and weight lifting activities. Sync to your computer with the included docking station (Windows XP, Vista, 7) and upload to the polar website for all kinds of useful tracking and chart info about your workout progress. I never work out without mine. The one negative about this model is the screen is DARK and hard to read.
iPod. (Mac, Windows) . iPod. I use this during almost every personal workout. It helps me to tune out the distractions of working out in the gym.
iPhone. (Mac, Windows) As with the iPod, but with so much more functionality. See below:
iMST. (MySportTraining by VidaOne; iPhone, Android, Windows mobile, Blackberry;; available in iTunes or from their website) is a fully featured, highly customizable, training tool that has anatomy charts, workout logs, an exercise library, journal, calendar, charts of your progress, GPS to map your walks/runs/rides, and more. It’s a very deep app. If you have a windows computer running XP, Vista, or Windows 7, it will sync to VidaOne’s Diet and Exercise desktop program.
Gym Buddy. (Mac, iPhone; image on bottom, far right) A mac only tool similar to iMST, that has its own desktop version that it will sync to.
iMuscle. (iPhone) an amazing 3D virtual human that responds to your touch. Tap an area to get a close up detail of the area muscles with location pins. Tap a pin and get details about the muscle including animated exercises, other secondary muscle involvement, and stretches.
MealSnap. (iPhone) Ever wonder how many calories your restaurant meal is? What about that stack of pancakes your significant other made for you on sunday? More often that not, this app will tell you. Just turn the app on and use it to snap a picture, and in 60 seconds or less it will tell you what you ate and how many calories it was. If it gets your meal wrong (it couldn’t identify matzo las t passover) you can manually enter in what you are eating and it give you a great estimate.
ExRx (website) an excellent website for all things related to fitness education for the professional and the motivated enthusiast trying to gain personal expertise.
These are the tech tools I use. I haven’t received any compensation from these companies to plug their products. Many of my clients use different types of pedometers and the Nike + GPS is very popular, too. What about you? Do you have any favorites? Share.
10 AM: 20 oz coffee. (80 calories)
11 AM: 20 oz of coffee and 2 fried eggs on a small bun. (380 calories)
2 PM: small apple. (60 calories)
7 PM: large bowl of homemade Minestrone soup with 5 mini meatballs. (500 calories)
I’ll probably have 2 glasses of coca cola around 9 PM with some microwave popcorn. (~ 400 calories)
On my low activity crappy weather lazy day I will have consumed about 1420 calories total. If i had worked out, and/or worked all day, my calorie total would have been somewhere between 2000 and 3000. What did you do today? Did you exercise or sit on the couch like me? How many calories did you consume if you took the day off from all effort?
When you’re weight lifting, how many repetitions should you do? 6? 8? 10? 12? 15? If you’ve been lifting for a while you’ve heard all these answers, and more. “Want to build strength and power? Then 6-8 reps. Want to make your muscles noticeably larger over time? Then 8-12 reps. Want to tone your muscles without getting too big? 15 reps is your magic number.”
Does anyone really understand what any of this means? What is the magic in these numbers that will give you your desired effect? The answer is, none. Just achieving the number of repetitions is pointless. What matters is the intensity of the exercise, caused by the amount of weight you’re trying to lift. It’s the last few reps that matter, regardless of your goal. I’ll say “the magic” occurs during the last three reps. All the reps that come before those all important last three are just preparation. if I’m trying to maximize my physical strength, I’m shooting for 6, 7, or 8, reps, and the last three have to be extremely difficult to finish. The first 3-5 reps are what is necessary to get my muscle tired enough to make the magic happen on the last three reps. If you’re shooting for 15 reps in order to “tone”, the first 12 should get progressively more difficult so that by rep 13, 14, and 15, you’re barely able to finish.
Since most people, inside or outside a gym really have no clue as to what constitutes intensity, let me be clear. The last rep you try to complete should be borderline, or outright, impossible. This is true, regardless of your weight lifting goal and the number of reps you’re trying to accomplish. And don’t be afraid of overestimating yourself. 1 rep less will never ruin you or your goal. It won’t turn you into the Hulk if your only trying to “tone”. If only it were that easy to bulk up!
To sum up: whatever your reasons are for weight lifting, the last three repetitions of every set, for every exercise, should be tortuously hard. Want results? It’s not a number. It’s the effort it takes to get there!
I have a problem with people who say they’re interested in “general” fitness. They might as well be saying “my body isn’t important enough to me to think about.”
When I feel like crap I’m usually not at my best intellectually either. That’s because our mind lives inside our brain, which in turn lives inside our bodies. Brains are the body. So any concept of separation between mind and body is beyond idiotic, at least during our biological lives. Saying you don’t care how strong and fit your body is, is akin to living in substandard housing when a 7.2 earthquake hits. Easy not to think about until it’s too late, and then act like the disaster was an act of god that couldn’t have been helped. Bullshit.
It’s time to take responsibility of the single most important residence you’ll ever live in: your body; yourself.
It amazes me…heavy smokers and habitual junk food over eaters and heavy consumers of alcoholic beverages, who can’t seem to understand why they’re overweight, why they can’t lose body fat, why they can’t build muscle. Really? They don’t know? Lazy brains, lazy bodies. Why are they in the gym if they can’t be bothered to make the most simple sacrifices? Consume less. Use your brain to make healthier eating and drinking choices. Exercise like you mean it. In 6 months you’ll be amazed.
Fitnessgroan's Blog 