We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
I am writing about the muscle atrophy of age more than its more severe form of sarcopenia (which we see all the time in its advanced form in frail elderly).
Use it or lose it? Not exactly, unfortunately. After age 40, men and women lose an average of 1% of their muscle power each year, and more rapidly after 50. Only heavy exercise can slow this deterioration and help maintain function and energy, but it can't stop it. Even high-performing master athletes are effected by it (which is obviously why that category exists).
All that is not to mention the various physical things that happen to people over 50.
For inspiration, take a visit to some independent-living old folks home, or some place in Florida. It can be frightening to see what happens to people who keep living past 70 but do nothing to maintain their bodies other than to visit doctors.
Eccentric movement is the more seemingly passive component in resistance exercise. It's the reason a trainer will not you to want you to drop a barbell after a lift, or why a trainer will advise you to do, say, curls, 2 seconds up, 4 seconds down.
I am a fan of group workouts, with everybody working at his or her level. Well, not "at" but pushing it. I enjoyed a 6 AM group at a gym for three years but moved to a garage gym with no classes to stay with my personal trainer.
I am skeptical about that claim. HIIT is intended for cardiac fitness and, secondarily, for endurance. I do it once or twice weekly, and I still lost my cell phone twice on vacation.
We do not believe that fitness can extend life very much. Fitness is mainly for vitality.
Calisthenics are the best thing for maintaining fitness. If you hate weights too much (weights are for building muscle) or find all "cardio" boring, a daily hour or less of calisthenic workouts might be for you.
They entail enough cardio if you take few breaks between exercises to keep your heart rate up, and at least help maintain muscle strength.
If you take the classes at a gym (recommended) you will do circuits of around 10-12 exercises for 50 minutes depending on rests. Good stuff. If on your own in a gym, it is more feasible to do circuits as below. That's what I do on my calis days.
A sample of my routines below the fold - if you can do all of these circuits in 50 minutes, that's amazing. I can not:
I call it the Costco Walk. Even though it is not a body-weight exertion, I put it into my calisthenic days. Nothing is simpler or more basic.
It is a functional total body stressor, especially as your kettlebells or dumbells get heavier. If you get to a weight where your grip fails due to grip strength or sweat, you can use a towel around the weight. Maintain posture. It's sort of fun to walk until failure.
Of course it's good to walk a lot. Swimming is good too. If general mobility is your goal, that's good.
Despite the article, I've never heard of anybody who lost fat by doing either of those things. Well, maybe if you decide to give a month to hiking the Appalachian trail you will lose fat.
I sort of admire, or envy, people who do not think about their fitness.
What has occurred in the last week, for me, has been significantly bad. Nothing measured or caught for medical worseness - just that radiation on your brain for 6 weeks slowly causes growth in skull brain reduction in the region after about 4-5 weeks as language and memory slows due to expansions of brain from this. Over time, this will reduce. It ended all yesterday and I headed down to FL to live with my in-laws who were very grateful to offer themselves to me. They are in their late 87s and in wonderful shape than my own parents - and they have been AMAZINGLY HELPFUL helping me with my word members and working through when I hit memory or language slowdowns. As an FYI, over 32 years of married to their daughter, I have gained a great deal of love and support for these people, even as both my parents and one stepmother remain alive, they are simply not capable of keeping up with me at all the way my in-laws have. I owe them great love and support for their effort and support.
As I mentioned, I want to write more as my system continues or alters. Sadly, it's been nuts for slightly over 2 weeks with a lot going on. I can share information or a few things, because it's been mostly good, but there are a few items.
1. Due to Chemo and Radiology daily (5 days) I have seen my health drop. Not significantly, but enough to definitely feel awful. Nausea, then treated. Weakness, handled by some improvements which manage a bit more extensively. The last 2 weeks allow the assistance of steroid assistance allowed in lower levels. Headaches higher the past 3 days. Treatments allowed in higher levels. As mentioned, my hair is long cut (and I'll share my lovely look now lately).
2. Overall feeling better in treatment as weekly doctor meeting have opened the assistance and treatment gains. Greatly appreciated. I have been in the city twice over 4 years, will add tomorrow and next week - though weakness is down slightly.
3. Radiology lost one day due to errors wasting 3 hours waiting last week - my day shifted by one day so my last day is 4/15 Monday - but I am heading immediately to leave Mrs. Bulldog behind as her parents will allow me to resolve in FL as I'll need restness and softness at the local beach. It will be helpful. Great to have healthy in-laws.
Besides both exercises being upper-body, I link them because they share the same gym machine.
To get the benefits of enough reps, many people (me) need the machine support for 10-15 reps/set. Fit guys and slender gals don't need it, but many of us do.
(It's funny/sad to recall, but we were all also tested on our singing ability, math ability, and public speaking ability. Whew. As a 13 year-old nature-boy nerd, I guess, all was deeply humbling. Humbling is good for the soul, mostly.)
There have been at least 10 calls or meetings with my doctors and learned several issues. It isn't that doctors withhold information, but sometimes trials and treatments are described certain ways to push for particular outcomes. In my particular situation, there are, literally, very few of great benefit. As a result, one we had originally signed up for early, we quickly dropped out of taking part as a member. We learned a lot about no outcomes at all for my particular issue. We also learned about significant reduced health as part of it and a switch in my chemo drugs - which have significantly lower results. So we dropped out and switched to the original chemo for sllightly better near term results. We shall see.
I also had to attend a speech therapist from the oncologists themselves. I took several tests and ran several case studies for an hour and a half. I found my math, history and speaking skills were better than my graduate studies. I also found my ability to remember music, movies and certain names of known actors or singers to be sufficiently less - but also that was common among people my age. Another test, which required my naming several word categories within a minute to be well done - except for one. Words starting with the letter "M" and no names, did well for 40 seconds and stalled as one word dropped out of my head and I was dragging behind to spell it out and remember it. This identified a very high area to help improve my mentality where I have stalled. That said, she asked many business and corporate questions which were not stalled or slow at all. She was rather shocked by this in media as I exposed several concerns with journalists I'd had issues with - and they were backed up in her data, as well as my ability to describe a lawsuit I had closed with a previous employer, as well as my description of several previous depositions which I'd taken part of and my ability to not only remember them (though dates I doubt I could provide) I did know what was covered.
Brief hello and update! Good Morning! This may be long, but I spent a lot of time over the past few days having sports conversations and thinking about my growth and youth. So this may be broad and not overly specific in some ways. It's more of a combination of open conversations with friends who have happily swung by to speak and get together to see if I'm holding my head together and speech well.
I am slowly working on the reading, writing and updating. Will keep things as simple as possible. Some things are actually going way better even today than I'd expected! A few personal family and home things - oof. LOL. Frustratingly slow and asking help as words are struggled or forgotten, and I'm slowly reviving others which work!
Sorry if some of you have, or have families, friends or others who have had similar health issues like mine. I am not trying to make anyone feel bad or feel the need or desire to discuss. If I do speak about my situation in any way, I'm just happy to say what even others in my family have asked me to avoid raising. Mainly because I feel nice openly discussing as i need to work out the details! Hoping for great things as I may need to work through it all!
Lungers are a bitch, with dumbells in hand. You know how good they are because of how painful they are. I do walking lunges twice weekly, and hate them more than barbell squats.
As with everything, there is a right way and many wrong ways.
Such a pleasure as I work to recover! I will make one more statement that sounds mean but I'm not afraid to finish this finally, regardless of what anyone replies with. I make so few, but this is so overdue in my life and so damn annoying from the office. Zachriel, who I shall name once because I learned so much about his deep trouble, and his shit and his stupidity, who he is where he is from, his lies, his evil, his deepness that was often overlooked. I have no trouble if his mind is eliminated. He must go. His work is the most evil and I dug up so much about him in my online work, prior to my recent health issues, to know him, without exposing him, and I hope he finally got my recommendation to corporations who insisted delivery of my information. So many people opposed him and I agreed. I feel right to oppose his deep evil. I know he thinks I do NOT know who he is - but I do. I know where he is from, who he is, but I had to, due to the office, keep it all quiet publicly. That's how social groups handle this. But he fell into a range of BS that I had to keep raising because he is deeply evil in my POV and not afraid to lie and be an asshole as a person. So now I won't be the same toward his action. I'm sure someone or he thinks there is more information I don't know. That is incorrect. I'm far more intelligent than he ever knew or admitted. Far more connected, far more knowledgeable and he literally told me once I didn't know about him (or his group as he used to say) when I did. Corporate handling required ME remaining quiet...so I'm being as polite limited as I can. I know everything. He'll say I don't - and he should know he's lying if he doesn't realize it.
No more naming of him. He shall leave and we shall return to happiness and love without the truths I exposed about him.
Now I will share other information because that's my last negativity...I've had several things on a few issues I've had to pressure and move on the last few weeks and now I've told everyone I'm ending that.
Like most topics that come up here, many will find some boring as hell - but others will find them useful and informative. If you don't like our fitness info, just leave it alone. I just hope that our fitness info has been useful, if not inspiring, to some readers.
Squats and Deads are crucial to building or maintaining physical sturdiness and functionality for any gender, any age (above childhood). When you decide to take them on as a component of your strength routines, you will naturally want continuous improvement. We all want to see results, but strength results come slowly especially after age 35-40.
Either that, or decide that you want to maintain yourself where you are now. That's ok too as long as it is not easy because workouts are meant to be "work," ie difficult and unpleasant. A walk in the park is no "exercise" for healthy people.
Deads are called "The King of Strength Exercises" because they are a functional, total body exertion. Squats are entirely functional. Because exercise time is limited for working people, a 5X5 of barbell squats and another day with 5X5 deads is a decent lower body foundation. Go heavy.
Lunges are a functional calisthenic. Legs, core, and some cardio. I do walking lunges with kettlebells because my trainer boss makes me, but on my own I just do body-weight walking lunges until it hurts. With the kettlebells it's much more difficult, more strength-oriented, and it is a bitch.
The muscle groups challenged with lunges are similar to those of squats, but best to incorporate both in a conditioning program.
The SEAL youtube yesterday tells a lot about physical endurance. Sure, for the obstacle course (which SEALS in training run through many times) plenty of strength is needed too, especially grip. That guy doing the obstacle course was plenty strong but he flunked. Of course, the physical training for SEALS includes much more than that obstacle course but it's one component.
One of the things I've learned, even at my age, is that 60-75 minutes of workout daily does build endurance if only as a side effect. Strength is great, but for daily life endurance is what we want to maintain first.
What's the trademark Maggie's Farm 6-day/week fitness routine? Readers know: 2 hrs mostly pushing weight, 2 hrs cardio (real cardio), 2+ hrs calisthenics. Plus appropriate nutrition and one day of rest, "rest" meaning just walking etc.
