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.
Yes it is. Your waist size is not your belt size or jeans size though, especially if you wear them on your hips which most people do these days. Your waist is above your belly button, the potentially narrow space below your rib cage.
How to Measure Your Waist
How do you measure your waist? Sounds simple enough, but it’s not always obvious where your waist is. Posture and other variables can affect the reading, so here are some basic guidelines to follow:
Position a tape measure at the narrowest point between your lower rib and the top of your hip bone, or at the midpoint in between. It should be snug but not compress the skin. If you can’t find the narrowest point (it may be difficult if you’re very overweight), measure just above your belly button.
Stand straight and breathe out normally; don’t suck in your belly.
Measure your waist first thing in the morning, before breakfast.
Though there’s no magic cutoff point, values over 37 inches for men and 32 inches for women indicate increased health risks, according to the World Health Organization; values over 40 for men and 35 for women represent substantially increased risk.
Readers know that we recommend scheduling two hours of calisthenics/week as part of a balanced fitness program (ie resistance, cardio, and calisthenics).
Calisthenics are for athleticism, generally addressing a mix of cardio, balance, agility, speed, endurance, without much focus on strength. While playing basketball or doing martial arts count as calisthenics, most of us do calisthenics routines in the gym, preferably in fitness classes, or on our own. The classes are more intense, thus better, I feel.
Because my class sched changed, here's what I did on my own this morning as an example:
- 10-minute elliptical warm-up - 30-sec sprints, and 60-sec recoveries. Sweat. - 1st rotation of 3 rounds: Pushups, pullups, Roman Chair leg lifts, elbow planks, jump rope, squat and holds - 2nd rotation of 3 rounds: Kettlebell swings, heavy ball squat and throws, "bicycles", rower - 60-sec sprints
I have another rotation list with which I alternate the above list when needed, just keeping the pushups, jump rope, and pullups. (List #2 includes other things like lunges, farmer walks, step ups, box jumps, mountain climbers, inclined pulls, etc). These things are good and semi-fun complements to my other things.
Do our readers incorporate calisthenics in their fitness routines and, if so, what do you do?
We're talking about general fitness and energy for life during the years of sarcopenia, arthritis, and other various age and accident-related things. Younger people can take on tougher programs but few of them do.
- 3 hrs of resistance exercises/wk: weights +/- machines. It's for muscle and bone.
- 2 hrs/wk of "cardio." Includes HIIT. Gotta challenge that heart muscle or it will give out on you. Even so, it might anyway unless some cancer kills ya.
- 2 hrs/wk of exercise class or your own calisthenics. Classes push you harder. These are for agility, athleticism, cardio, balance, endurance, etc. To make your body do what's it's meant to do.
That's a good program, because it permits space to miss a random day without losing a step. A 5-hour hill hike can be a sub for any day. What about sports, yard work, gardening, etc? Unless you are playing a few sets of tennis in the US Open, these sorts of things are why you work to stay fit. Doing ordinary life things are the rewards of fitness, but provide no fitness.
A reader asked for ideas about how to begin a fitness program after recovering from illness (with a Dr's ok, please). Same thing applies to anybody wanting to begin a fitness program. You start gradually to get your body geared up if it hasn't been used vigorously.
After a few weeks of these simple low-impact calisthenics/cardio daily, you can begin to advance, lengthen, and intensify your overall program. Ignore those calories - it's not true and it means nothing. Sure, it takes an hour to burn a donut or a bagel. So don't eat it.
These trainers talk kind of silly, but that's normal. The girl shows you how to modify if you can't keep up with the guy yet:
"Conditioning" is about speed, agility, HIIT cardio, endurance, explosiveness, and muscle use. Energy, stamina, and get-up-and-go. It is not about strength or strength-training, which is why lots of calisthenics are involved. In a tough conditioning hour, you can never catch your breath so it is intense cardio. Good stuff for life.
I am in the sorry 10% who routinely flunk our Sat. AM calisthenics ("Athletic Conditioning") class. By flunking, I mean being unable to complete the trainer's expectations on at least half of the exercises in the time allowed. I hate failure, so I give it my all and come up short. We are calling ourselves the "Masters Class" and we are all age 45 or more. However, several 50+ and 60+ do make the passing grade. Bravo for them because this sort of thing is great to prevent physical deterioration.
If it were high school or college, we would ask for extra time due to disability but, instead, we do our best and accept the fail. Reality is a bitch. Do better next week, or just give up and rightly despise yourself forever for being a loser.
We've written about this topic in the past, but it's worth reviewing the misconceptions about cardio fitness and cardio exercise. (Remember, in our view, "cardio" should be only 1/3 of your exercise program beacuse it does little for muscle and bone strength, and little for athleticism.)
Any exercise, from walking to weight-lifting, makes more demand on heart function than sitting or lying down. So cardio exercise has a spectrum from very light to maximum intensity. Simply put, the core purpose of "cardio" exercise is to maintain or upgrade heart function (cardiac condition is measured by things like a Cardiac Stress Test with Echo, Stroke Volume, Cardiac Output, cardiac vasculature, and left ventricle size to some extent). Like weight-lifting for skeletal muscle, it requires stress, relative to your conditioning and medical condition.
With lighter stresses (eg non-sprint, endurance-oriented swimming laps, jogging, rowing, stair machine, elliptical, etc) we are putting our hearts to some use, but we are working more on general time endurance than cardio. (Lots of people do those things thinking that they involve fat-burning, but don't count on that to work if you do 1 hour/day.) For people who are not training for specific goals, building endurance is great for life. Nobody wants to slow down or feel tired during ordinary recreational activities like sports or hiking. These non-sprint exercises aim for around 70% of one's max heart rate to make it worth your precious time.
The higher the physical demand - the intensity of an exertion for your level of fitness - the more you are training your heart rather than just using it. The highest levels of exertion (say, with sets of deadlifts near 80% of your max, or with 30-second sprints) are anaerobic and can push your heart rate to 90% of your max. That heart-pounding rest time or slow time is to catch up on oxygen.
For endurance, an hour of lap swimming, cycling, jogging, elliptical, stair machine, ski machine, rower, etc at around 70% of your max heart rate is where you ought to be, if in decent health. Over time, you will need to raise the speed to get to those heart rates. These exercises do nothing much to build muscle or bone strength.
For maximum cardiac fitness (with bonus endurance benefits as well), mixing in sprints which get your HR to 80-90% of your max should be included. Bursts of intensity. In the Maggie's Fitness for Life program, the other good sources of intense cardiac stress are the powerlifts and calisthenics. Ideally, some of all of those because there is more to fitness than cardiac fitness. Fitness is a package deal.
An interesting detail is that to up your game in any area of exertion, it's always a good idea to do what you do not usually do. Explosive linebackers get better with distance running, distance runners get better with weights and sprints, heavy lifters get better with calisthenics. Balance.
The reason for guys and gals of any age to do total body resistance exercises like squats and deads is to maintain or build muscle and bone strength and overall functionality. They are not just for athletes, and yes, they are preferable to machine exercises which tend to isolate muscle groups rather than being full-body, functional exertions.
BUT proper technique is important. Beginners need to be trained to do those things correctly. Even with excellent training, I had a painful back during my first few months of deadlifting. As I grew stronger with the movement, the pain went away and never returned.
I began doing deads 3 years ago. I began with 95 lbs, with trainer. The bar weighs 45 lbs, and the lightest bumper plates weigh 25. I have the movement pretty-well grooved in by now so I do deads on my own. However, my trainer still programs what I do. Occasionally I use the trap bar, for no reason other than variety.
At this point (mind you, I am not a youngster, and do not have a husky lifter's build) my programming looks like the below note from my genius trainer - This is a strength program for a not-young guy, not an endurance program although I mix it up sometimes:
Think: after 115 lb. 5 rep warmup, with 90 second rests between sets.
Set 1—135 for 5 reps Set 2—145 for 5 reps Set 3—155 for 5 reps Set 4—155 for 5 reps Set 5—165 for 3-5 reps
If you add a 6th set add another set at 135.
Even if you feel you can/should do more weight, don’t. Master the weight(make 135-155 move smooth and easy, with no sticks)- Master the hold. Get to a point where 135-155 for 5 reps “feels” like you could do it for 15-20 reps.
It is clear that it is valuable to do both, but not on the same day. For what it's worth, I do back squats once weekly, deads once weekly, and leg press once weekly for lower body resistance exercises.
Might be worth bookmarking or printing out the informative article.
Muscle pump from resistance training is caused by the increased blood flow into the muscle to supply needed oxygen. That's why it subsides after a while. It's a sign that you are making a muscle work hard.
For strength-maintenance and strength-building you need to create micro- tears in your muscle fibers. This can sometimes result in muscle soreness for a day or two. It's a good sign of the inflammation needed for muscle repair.
The repair is what builds strength. That's why it's never a bad idea to have a 20-25 gm. protein shake as a meal (we like to make it with a banana) shortly after an hour of resistance exertion. It's also why it's smart to recover for 48 hours or so before pushing heavy weights again. (We advocate "active recovery" days in the form of calisthenics and cardio.)
There is an exception, though, to the 48-hour rule. That is when people separate their resistance days between legs and upper body. That works for some people but I do not like it.
There is obviously a correlation between muscle mass and strength for the "strong men," but for ordinary men and for women, not so much. It's common for me to see young women in the gym, with no notable muscle mass, outlifting me in squats and even in deads.
What do we consider low reps? Low reps are when you can only do 3-8 reps. Higher reps are 10-20. I would never do high reps with powerlifts. Arms, yes. Calisthenics like pushups, for sure.
Cardio endurance training is one component of the Fitness Triad (strength, athleticism, endurance) or, as we usually divide it, strength, calisthenics, and cardio.
Unless one is a competitive runner, swimmer, biker, or rower, we believe it's good to mix up cardio exercises because just doing one improves one's efficiency too much for the cardiac stress you are looking for.
Cardio training (ie exercising your heart muscle) is like anything other muscle: you want to stress it without injuring it. That can either mean keeping your heart rate at 55-85% of your max heart rate for 30 minutes (depending on age), or it can mean HIIT cardio training with sprints. I recommend the latter for time efficiency and because it is gentler on your body.
I no longer recommend road-running, especially distance road running. A morning 5-mile jog is harmless but the main benefit is mental because few joggers get their heart rates very high. Distance runners/races (ie from marathoners to 50 milers to 100-milers) are admirable in their dedication and amazing endurance but it just isn't healthy for joints, heart, body inflammation, risk of kidney damage, and so forth. Pheidippides, who was a professional distance courier (before cell phones), died in Sparta.
Our current "Maggie's Recommended" general fitness training for the cardio component is roughly one hour of endurance cardio (a mix of elliptical, treadmill, stairmaster) keeping a solid (ie 55+% but sub-max heart rate; and 1/2 hour of HIIT cardio (30-60 second max sprints on rower, treadmill, combat bike, stairmaster, etc) with triple slow recovery times; and the mix of cardio and athleticism training in calisthenics/exercise classes.
I almost forgot to mention sports. Two hours of basketball is excellent cardio/athleticism exercise. Same for martial arts, or a tennis class.
Remember, unless you are in training for multiple hours daily, you can not lose weight by doing cardio exercise.
If you can handle 6-7 days of 1 hr (or so) workouts weekly, you can try putting in 3 days of heavy weights/ big movements. Never two weights days in a row in our view.
This is a way to get past whatever strength plateau you might have reached, or to jump start a program. Try it as an experiment. It is working for me.
There are all sorts of ways to schedule your routines, but they must be planned. Typical programs are listed here at Old Schoool Trainer.
A regular weights program for me is not for body-building, just for the strength component of general fitness, and to slow down entropy:
Monday: Barbell squats (5X5-8), Bench press (5X5 or 6X10), dumbell row (3X10), pull-down or pullups (3x10)
Thurs: Heavy deadlift (5X5-8), Dumbbell bench (4X10), Seated Row (4X10), pull-downs or pullups (4X10)
Sat - A higher-rep (12-20) but not too-light day for me: Leg press (higher reps), Chest press (higher reps), curls + tricep press downs
Note: the first number does not include warm-up set. Always do a brief warm-up set for any weight exercise to avoid muscle sprain.
I am still giving it time to see whether this is too much for me, considering that on my two calisthenics days I am doing pushups, burpees, body weight squats, kettlebell lunges, box step ups, hand weights, kettlebell swings, kettlebell deads, inclined pulls, etc. - and stair machine on one of my cardio days.
My point concerns what amounts of recovery and nutrition are needed for constructive recovery/rebuilding in my program, given my age (ummm, over 50...but I don't look it). Generally speaking, a cardio day is considered active recovery so it's good to sched. that on a day before big weights.
Celebrities are always touting the latest nutritional fads like "clean eating", veganism, etc. Now it's the Fasting Plan. Of course, these people know nothing. In fact, little is known about human nutritional needs but we do know some simple things to prevent starvation. For example, your nutrition requires fats.
There seem to be all sorts of variants of the Fasting Fad, but there may be something useful in it. For example, no adult without an all-day manual labor job (or a heavy lifter or a distance runner) needs three meals/day unless they are underweight. Three meals/day was designed for farmers, just like summer school vacation.
Furthermore, most hunger is what we have described as "false hunger" (meaning it represents no need for significant nutrition) for anybody even 5-10 lbs overweight. Our fat cells are a massive storage battery waiting to be used.
So what about fasting, whether it means just skipping one of the conventional meals or even taking a day or two off from food every week? Not as a weight-loss plan, but just as a plan. Many find it increases their energy.
When you think about it, during almost all of the 300-500,000 years (except the past few thousand agricultural years) of human life and evolution, food scarcity was the norm. Humans are designed for food scarcity rather than for today's abundance. That's why eating is fun rather than necessary.
Strong arms seem to be a biological signal to females that a male might make a good sexual/reproductive partner. It's primitive, a sign of power, vitality, and virility.
Well, all guys want strong arms for either signaling or functional purposes, but curls are not the most sensible way to approach strength: they are more about hypertrophy. We prefer compound exercises over single-muscle exercises. More time-efficient. After all, the hands are connected with the arms, the arms to the shoulder, and the shoulder to chest and back.
I'll assume that few of our readers are Body Builders who focus mainly on the size and definition of muscles, but are, rather, regular, function-oriented fitness people.
What about the ladies? All of our exercises are valuable to ladies' fitness, but ladies can not develop bulging muscles under ordinary circumstances. Big muscles do not equate with strength.
However, we do single-muscle-group exercises as accessory exertions when there is time for them. Thus hand and forearm exercises, calf exercises, upper arm exercises, leg raises and leg contractions, etc.
Let's list both focused and compound exercises which can build stronger arms while mostly stressing other muscle groups at the same time:
- Pullups and cable pull-downs (biceps, forearms, back) - Bench press (triceps, biceps, chest, shoulder) - Cable push-downs and skull-crushers (triceps) - Dumbell and barbell curls (biceps and brachioradialis) - Pushups (triceps, chest, shoulder) - Overhand curls (forearms and biceps) - Grip exercises like rope climbing, grippers, farmer walks, deadlifts
NB: Sometimes you will see a guy in the gym with muscles bulging all over the place. That guy is juicing. A bad fitness plan.
It took me over three years to be well-enough trained to do more of my daily work on my own - not including my 1-2 hours/week of trainer-led calisthenics/athleticism classes. (If you can give yourself a ballbusting calis class on your own, God bless ya. I know only one person who does, and I admire that person. She's a great ball of energy and good cheer.)
Admittedly, I am a slow learner and was not in great shape when I began this fitness adventure. And I did not know correct deadlift or squat technique. In fact, I did myself some damage in the past out of ignorance.
Why I have needed a trainer, despite the truly burdensome cost:
- To evaluate you and then plan your fitness regimens, advancing as possible - To train you to do your exercises and lifts properly, to avoid injury and to avoid wasting time - To instruct about proper nutrition for your fitness goals - To inspire and push you, through a positive relationship. Even working out with a spouse or buddy can take you to greater heights. Heck, even a pretty gal in the gym can have an effect. Stupid, right?
Eventually you begin to internalize your trainer's voice and direction, as people sometimes do with a therapist. It's like an alter ego. Many of us need that, because many of us do not really know how to push ourselves to the max. Human nature is lazy, mostly, but with plenty of potential.
Free weights are always better because they engage so many accessory muscles, core, and balance. BUT...
But machine resistance is better than no resistance work, and machine work can help improve your free weight efforts. A prime example is pullups. Lots of people can't do even one. Sad. It indicates that your back muscles are underdeveloped, or you are overweight, or both. BUT if you work on machine pull-downs and machine (assisted) pullups, you can advance get to real pullups. Lat Pulldown vs Pull-ups: Research Reveals Which Is Best
Again, I do sets of each, weekly. Weakly too. I entirely understand doing barbell squats with a Smith Machine. You don't need a spotter. Still, I'd rather do squats with a spotter anyway, and my leg presses on my own.
The moral of this fitness post is that free weights are better, but anything is better than nothing as long as it is difficult to do. "Difficult" means reaching deep down to what you do not want to do because it is "too hard." That's a bad approach to life.
Short for Metabolic Conditioning. It's the hip new term for high-intensity, low-rest Calisthenics. It's a similar idea to HIIT but without the anaerobic or the recovery periods. The purpose, supposedly, is that 60-120-second bursts of total body high intensity - or max intensity with only seconds of rest - ramp up your energy systems so that you can be prepared for anything. It's about going all-out almost anaerobically, busting past the phosphagen system and training your body's efficiency in glycolysis, etc.
For those who believe that you can burn fat with exercise (I do not), this format does keep your metabolism elevated for up to one or two hours after finishing. These sorts of things do not build strength. That's not what they are for. They are for energy, agility, and cardio endurance. Some powerlifters like to take the class because, despite their size and strength, they want agility, quickness, and endurance too. They have little of those.
I take a 50-minute class weekly which is basically Met Con but not labeled as such. A typical routine in that class might be a 20-second kettlebell swing followed immediately by 20-seconds of pushups followed by 30 seconds of mountain climbers, then a 5-second rest before repeating 3 times. Then a 30-second rest before going into the next triplet of calisthenics (which might be a similar pattern with 20-seconds of burpees, 30-second rower sprints, and 30-second squat and presses. The timing is everything.
I can testify that this format improves general conditioning, because when I began with it I couldn't really complete the class and stole seconds of rest time. I still steal a couple of seconds of rest time to catch my breath but I can get through the class.
A friend recently went vegetarian just for kicks, as an experiment. In 6 weeks, the friend lost the 8 lbs that no amount of exercise could burn off without quitting dinnertime wine. (This friend is an athletic sort, a strength and fitness buff but not a fanatic.) She asked me how that could happen since she goes light on carbs.
It turned out that the answer was easy: Too much protein.
That sounds crazy, doesn't it? It's not crazy because any excess protein (protein in excess of what you body needs to maintain or repair muscle) is converted into and stored as fat. Many people are not aware that most of their steak ends up as body fat.
So whether you are sedentary (less than 6 hrs/week of fairly intense exercise/wk, not including walking) or not, your protein needs might be less than you imagine because you can only use about 20 gms of protein every 4-6 hours.
That's why people who restrict carbs, and replace the food volume with protein, have trouble losing body fat.
People who pursue daily strength-building (weights) or daily endurance training (ie triathlete types) can need more than the basic 45 gm/day for women or 55 gm/day for men - maybe up to 100-150 gms/day. That's why they tend to go for 4-5 smaller balanced (carbs, protein, fats/oils) meals/day.
Nutrition and fitness go hand-in-hand, and it takes a little bit of thoughtfulness. A few simple recommendations:
If you do barbells/powerlifts 3+ times/week, eat a lot of everything. If in daily endurance race training, eat a lot of everything. Until "stuffed". If a regular daily exerciser (some wts, some calis, some cardio, some endurance), 45-60 gms/day is plenty in divided doses. For weight loss, cut the volume dramatically. If overweight, you do not really need hardly any food at all other than some protein and vitamins and minerals. Overweight people have no caloric needs.
Grams protein conversion to lbs for all sorts of foods are easily found online. For one example, a regular chicken breast contains around 55 gms of protein. So if you eat one in a meal, about 30 gms of that protein goes to body fat and some in excretion. Sliced into thirds or quarters over the course of a day, that breast would be plenty for a full-grown male who works out.
So, again, volume management matters for weight-lifters, and for the overweight. It's a "First World Problem." And do not imagine that protein does not become body fat. It does.
I think lower body conditioning for strength, endurance, and athleticism ought to include (not all on the same day) barbell squats, leg press, kettlebell lunges, stair machine (which is good cardio also), deadlifts, box jumps. I do sets of each just once weekly. No time for more.
I omit mentioning cardio exercises which use legs (all of them do) because the emphasis of cardio is, obviously, cardiac fitness.
Not my Gym Boss who ain't going anywhere, but the guy who runs the athletic training classes that I like to attend at my second gym. We have had 35-40 people who follow his classes. He made it fun to experience pain and as a result there was some good group bonding.
It's an American story. He's about 30, with a wife and 2 little girls. Until yesterday with his announcement, I just thought he was just a regular trainer and class instructor - and a fine one, but during all this time he had been living in poverty and spending half his days in classes. He announced that this would be his last class, that he had completed his degree to be a Physical Therapist, and was moving to Texas for a great new job.
His two classes I usually took were mixed cardio/balance/athleticism/calisthenics things, lots of variation, with 6-second rests between items and most items 60 seconds. Kept us moving and sweating. Old and young, fit and unfit, guys and gals. Some cute gals. After an hour, everybody was happily done in.
For his good bye exercise, he put on some 6-minute hip hop thing with a strong beat and about 40-second bridges. He had us do body weight squats to the beat, and squat-and-holds during the bridges. Burn.
I was surprised by how saddened I felt by his announcement. We all clapped and wished him luck, and he insisted on giving us all a hug. A great moment. It's always amazing to me how we humans make attachments. He will have a fine new career, because he knows how to push people with good cheer and attentive correction.
Each morning at 6 he would run in, take off his motorcycle helmet and jacket, and "Good morning, wake up everybody, let's get moving! Gimme some jumping jacks to wake up. Here we go, let's go, it's a beautiful day." And then the terrible music began that you never really heard because all you wanted to do was to survive the hour with a trace of dignity.
Sometimes my gym boss wants me to do 8-12 reps per powerlift set. I hate that. I like 5 reps/set and 5 working sets. That's 25 tough efforts.
Since powerlifts (more or less including deadlift, barbell squat, military press, bench press, pullups/pull downs, dumbell or barbell row) are the core of any strength-building or strength maintenance program, approaching them right is critical for effectiveness.
Generally speaking, high rep exercises of any sort are more aimed at muscle endurance and maintenance than at strength-building. Of course, we want both, but it's a matter of emphasis and there are plenty of ways to build muscle endurance other than heavy powerlifts.
So for pure strength (bone and muscle), I want to push to my limits and show some improvement each month. So, for each powerlift session, I want to do one warm-up set then 5 sets of 5 reps ramping up in weight to finish at my absolute limit of 5, or just past it (thus needing a spotter just in case). Pushing the envelope.
I understand that my boss sometimes likes to push the powerlift reps with lesser weight, but 5s feel right to me. With 8-12, I just find myself wanting to get it over with. That's not the right attitude.
To use the example of chest strength, if I do bench 5X5 one day, and a few sets of 30 pushups on another day, the former is 100% strength, and the latter 20% strength and 80% endurance. All good for fitness.
How to Measure Your Waist
Readers know that we recommend scheduling two hours of calisthenics/week as part of a balanced fitness program (ie resistance, cardio, and calisthenics).
We've written about this topic in the past, but it's worth reviewing the misconceptions about cardio fitness and cardio exercise. (Remember, in our view, "cardio" should be only 1/3 of your exercise program beacuse it does little for muscle and bone strength, and little for athleticism.)
If you can handle 6-7 days of 1 hr (or so) workouts weekly, you can try putting in 3 days of heavy weights/ big movements. Never two weights days in a row in our view.
Strong arms seem to be a biological signal to females that a male might make a good sexual/reproductive partner. It's primitive, a sign of power, vitality, and virility.
It took me over three years to be well-enough trained to do more of my daily work on my own - not including my 1-2 hours/week of trainer-led calisthenics/athleticism classes. (If you can give yourself a ballbusting calis class on your own, God bless ya. I know only one person who does, and I admire that person. She's a great ball of energy and good cheer.) 
They are both valuable for lower body fitness. Squats are more about strength-building, lunges are more "functional."