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.
Exercise science is clear that the recovery phase from intense exercise is when the benefit is obtained.
Intense exercise (meaning resistance) is designed to damage and deplete nerve and muscle and to stress bones. This is why I only do each of the big exercises (deadlifts, barbell squats, pull-ups, bench press, rows, military press) once per week. (nb: Those exercises are for women too.) 5 sets of each after a light-weight warm-up, increasing weight, once a week. I do 3 of those exercises one day, 3 of them 3 days later. That is enough frequency for a strength-building or maintenance program. More is not always better.
Like most fitness-oriented people, I do auxiliary strength exercises too but those are not so essential, like arm exercises and core exercises for my tennis and my skiing. Those more focal exertions do not need much recovery.
It is generally accepted that most cardio and calisthenics do not need more than a 24-hr recovery. Hybrid programs like Crossfit deserve a couple of days of recovery unless you are age 18-25. My middle-age fitness regime is 2 days/wk of heavy weights plus a little calisthenics, 2 days of cardio intervals (25 mins only), and one or two days of calisthenics (maybe 45+ mins), depending on my sports schedule. I play lots of sports but recreational sports, and even things like mountain hiking, are not really exercise. They are for fun even if you play hard.
Recovery days for a strength-building program can and should include cardio and calisthenics, but no heavy weight on the movements which need repair.
Good recovery entails a decent amount of sleep and hydration, and an above-normal protein intake in a normal diet. Your muscles, nerves, ligaments, and bones will be grateful for that reward.
The Bench is one of the Big Five strength-conditioners. To make your time on the bench more productive and more of a multi-muscle stress, do not just muscle the bar up with your arms. Engage your back muscles too.
You do this by arching your upper back and raising your chest (while keeping butt on bench) as you lower the bar to your chest, then flattening your upper back against the bench during the press. While this will help you move more weight over time, what matters more is that it stresses more muscle groups in the same exertion.
If you are an exerciser, do you do a dedicated Leg Day? Many people do.
I mix leg strength in with the other items (ie Strength, Cardio, and Calisthenics) instead of doing a Leg Day. My legs are skinny and weak from a strength standpoint, but I can hike up mountains all day long and can ski all day long. However, that is Endurance, not Strength. I tend to have more Endurance than Strength. Sometimes I wonder why I want or need more leg strength, but in the end I just do what I am told like a good soldier and trust that my genius trainer has my best interest at heart. He wants to build me up but we are all limited by the physique we were given.
The leg strength exercises are great for my posture. People notice that. It's that Posterior Chain of ankle-to-neck that the good deads stress the most.
Mrs. BD says that when she pats me on the ass she now feels muscle instead of bone, so that is good. I deserve more spanks than pats, but whatever. I do deserve spanks when caught with tobacco even though I am part Indian and have that excuse, and sometimes I do deserve them after boys' nites out but boys have to be boys. I still need to gain 4-5 pounds of muscle and sinew and then I'll be set. Gaining the good kind of weight is not easy at all because it requires working harder than you like and eating more than you want to. I hate hard effort and I do not love eating, even in Italy. I like food when required but do not love it and enough is enough.
For lower body strength, I do deadlift, barbell squat, squat and press, step-up-and-press, and lunges with weights. Except for deadlift, it is all very unpleasant. Also, calf lifts on my cardio days just for something extra to do.
I am all in favor of "functional fitness." Beginning around 35, the human body begins to deteriorate. Unless you are a competitive athlete, fitness is for daily life. One of my daughters was talking about fitness this weekend and opined that a Div 1 singles tennis match was a good work-out. I asked "Are you sure?" After a moment's thought she revised her opinion: No, I guess the physical training is the prep/work-out, and the competition is just the reward.
Playing sports is mostly calisthenics at best. Many sports require strength and athleticism, but actually playing the game is not the same as a work-out. Think baseball, or the several seconds of effort in a football game. Training is for life and games, but they are not training.
As I said, it sounds like great fun and challenge and bonding but it amounts to heavy calisthenics, which is just one of the three components, in my view, of a balanced fitness program.
Phizzicle phitness consists of strength, endurance, and athleticism (plus body composition). A balanced fitness program will address all aspects.
Ordinary guys often tend to emphasize the strength component because it seems more rewarding, but if you have bulging biceps to impress the girls at the beach but can not sprint a mile or a half-mile, what good are you? Fact is, biceps are not very important in functional fitness. Triceps? More useful.
Ordinary gals tend to emphasize the cardio aspect but that is just as unbalanced. That's why we always say Weights + Cardio + Calisthenics (with sports counting as calisthenics unless it is TV football).
Today, more fun info re strength-building (for men and women).
- You can gain strength without dramatic growth in visible muscle size.
- An adult body can not grow new skeletal muscle cells. However, muscle cells can develop new and larger muscle fibers within the cells you were born with.
-Usable strength can only be increased by pushing, pulling, and carrying progressively heavy resistances (eg weights). Cardio and calisthenics do not generally build strength. Running one mile vs. 10 miles is not strength - it's endurance. Distance runners are often not very strong or powerful.
- Steroids work remarkably well to increase strength and size. Do not use them - go natural.
- After an initial phase of neuromuscular adaptation, strength improvement is discouragingly slow. Few good things come easily.
- Strength, endurance, and athleticism are rapidly lost without use. The older you are, the faster they disappear. Fitness is like money: Hard to get, easy to lose.
- Serious strength-building programs require a diet high in protein and fats, plus adequate carbs unless overweight. A good dose of protein immediately after a painful work-out is recommended.
- Strength building is a mind-body challenge. Very difficult and unpleasant unless you love pain and extreme effort. Most people prefer comfort - just look around at people. It's more fun with a trainer or a group so there is a relational aspect to it.
For strength-building for men and women, we recommend working one's way up over months or years to being able to condense a program down to multi-muscle exercises like bench press, deadlift, barbell squat, pull-up, rows, military press/inclined bench press. Together, those will stress pretty much every functional muscle group. That is my goal - a simple, basic, efficient strength regimen.
Getting into pretty good condition from ordinary condition (ordinary is somebody over 30 who is not fat, hikes, walks daily, plays some recreational sports) takes about two years of commitment. Longer if pudgy, mostly sedentary, or if complicated by some physical impairment (which almost everybody over 40 is).
Yes, two years - and that means ideally 5-6 days per week. I can witness to that because at 16 months of my program neither I nor my trainer feel I am ready for a maintenance program yet. I had thought that I might have graduated by now but I have a ways to go. Part of what has slowed me down has been an old skiing shoulder injury and some non-arthritic hip pain.
If you feel inspired to take on such a slow but ultimately-rewarding process, I would recommend getting an evaluation from the smartest trainer you can find - not a musclebound musclehead, but one who knows physiology and anatomy, etc - and being taught a recommended program. Unless you were a well-trained lifter in high school or college, you can not walk into a gym and begin lifting weights, or even dumbells. You will do it wrong and injure something.
In fact, without training you will not even do simple things like medicine ball slams or heavy rope slams correctly. Everything has a correct technique designed for minimal damage and maximum benefit.
I have the luxury of a superb trainer 3 days/wk, thanks to Mrs. BD. That seems ideal. At this point, though, I think I can do my "heavy calisthenics" hour on my own. You can always learn more, but I have the basics down and an hour of calisthenics is a hell of a total body workout and you sweat like crazy.
Advantages of supervision by a trainer:
correcting your technique and managing your recovery time the trainer is your spotter. you need that for some weights planning your program to match your strengths and weaknesses pushing you harder than you would yourself making adjustments for aches and pains holding you accountable trainer can give you his advice on what you should do on "off days" the well-educated trainers will give you a nutritional plan too, depending on your needs
A less-expensive alternative is a group conditioning program like Crossfit. Crossfitters have good fun and good group bonding while busting their asses, but the supervision is not as exacting as it with with an individual trainer who watches your every move and corrects you constantly.
For a "boot camp" program like mine, most trainers would recommend something like ours (that of me and Mrs. BD):
Mon: 1 hr upper body weights or push weights Tues: Half hour cardio intervals Weds: 1 hr. lower body wts or pull weights Thurs: Half hour cardio intervals or 40 mins speed walk Fri: 1 hr mixed "heavy calisthenics" Sat: Half hr cardio intervals or speed-walking, plus 1/2 hr calisthenics. Some days just 40 mins speed-walking when it's a beautiful day.
You all know that physical conditioning consists of strength-building, cardio-pulmonary conditioning, and calisthenics (+ weight adjustments if needed). This guy is focusing mostly on the strength component (and, like most guys, wants to have big muscles), but his advice here is pretty good and applies to women too.
Does he work out too obsessively? Probably, but he is a trainer and body-building is a hobby for this presumably eastern Massachusetts guy.
I believe that life is deepened by physical, spiritual, emotional, social, and intellectual stress. Added as a bonus: discovering one's limitations. Doing what we "feel like doing" tends to be a dead end in life, paths of least resistance. Doing what we don't feel like doing can be amazing. A quote:
.. .the author Charles Duhigg, in his 2012 bestseller The Power of Habit, calls exercise a “keystone habit,” or a change in one area life that brings about positive effects in other areas. Duhigg says keystone habits are powerful because “they change our sense of self and our sense of what is possible.”
Because I am in a weight-training program, I take a scoop (5 gms) of it every morning along with a 20-gm. protein shake. There is no reason for either of those things unless you are trying to move heavy weights and pushing your limits to 5-9 reps.
I don't think it causes noticeable water retention. Your body makes about 2 gms of it per day, and you get a little bit from eating meat. The idea behind supplemental creatine is that, by giving your muscles a little extra ATP, you can theoretically stress your muscles harder, thus resulting in more good muscle microfiber damage, resulting in strength increase during the recovery process. Creatine doesn't build muscle; it is supposed to help you damage muscle.
Does it work? Experts say it does. It's difficult for me to say whether it has helped me in my program because I have no basis for comparison. At the least, a placebo effect.
Can women who lift use it? Sure. Many women these days do weight-training programs for general fitness for life, for osteopenia, and for sports. The same reasons the average guy does it. We have an 80 year-old gal in our gym lifting every morning a 6 am. And yes, Mrs. BD does 2 hrs of weights each week along with her other exercise. She loves those deadlifts. I hate it all, but I give it my best anyway. Delayed gratification.
A healthy distrust of experts, especially government experts, is a good trend. Government "expertise" is always contaminated by politics (eg the Ethanol scam). Caveat emptor.
As the threat of communicable diseases receded, public medicine began to turn its attention to treating and preventing health problems that weren’t germ-caused, such as chronic heart disease and strokes, the death rates for which seemed to be soaring after World War II. Some observers cautioned that the apparent increase might be the result of diagnostic advances, which had improved doctors’ ability to detect heart ailments. This possibility, however, failed to deter the press and advocacy groups like the American Heart Association from declaring the arrival of a frightening epidemic.
That is a major but unknown scandal. Think of all of the gullible Americans who avoided "red meat" and "animal fat" over a generation, for no reason at all.
Pic is my medicine ball on our driveway on Cape Cod
When we leave town, we remain very "active" people, as they say of the middle-aged who are not flabby couch potatoes. We swim, kayak, hike, climb hills and all that, but that is just being "active" and alive. It's not "exercise". Exercise means high stress, high intensity.
In 5 days without stressful exercise, a fit adult begins to lose strength and endurance to a measurable degree. A non-fit adult deteriorates more slowly because there is less to lose.
Hotels and ships all have fairly decent gyms in them, but when you go somewhere quiet with no gym I think 45-60 minutes of early morning calisthenics is the best way to begin an active day. Calis are great for outdoors, even if it's raining, sleeting, snowing, or storming. More fun outdoors.
So, for our beach house "vacations" with the whole family and my in-laws, and all of our sisters and our cousins and our aunts, Mrs. BD and I have a pre-breakfast cali program to prevent any backsliding.
(My sibs, who join us on the Cape with us with their kids, do an early morning biathlon, alternating days between a 16-mile run + a one-mile swim, and a 40-mile bike and a one-mile pond swim. They race each other. They are such strong swimmers that the last time I competed with them in that I came close to drowning. Not exaggerating. They would never have noticed if I sank because I was so far behind the rest of them. Years ago I swam a mile daily but have not done so for many years. Some of my kids will join my sibs, but I will do my Cali program routines mostly on the empty beach or driveway and I could care less whether I look stupid.)
This is maintenance, not building. Also relevant: Unlike weight lifting, calis need no recovery days. All we bring are jump ropes, 10-lb. weights, leg bands, and a medicine ball. Obviously, no medicine ball or weights on airplanes. We do a varied circuit of things like this but never the same item two days in a row. Just keep pushing it until the time is up:
Jumping squats Lunges with weights 20-30 -second wind sprints and 30-second jogs Jump rope Medicine ball slams, and playing hard side-catch with the ball Jumping jacks Squats with overhead weight lifts Burpees and Mountain Climbers Planks Push-ups (or inclined push-ups) Various walks with leg bands High-rep arm lifts with the wts: forward, side, overhead, curls
The full-body fitness exercise category, combining some resistance with cardio, contains my favorite Friday tortures. They do not build strength so much as build functional fitness and endurance. Best of all, you feel great when it's done. Well, maybe an hour later.
(We forgot to include isometrics in our categories. That's more for Yogurt Yoga, but Planks are isometric)
An example of my Friday mega-set would be something like this, with no break between exercises:
3-minute Elliptical warm-up to start 1 set of high-rep bench press to failure for secondary warm-up
Burpees, 10-20 Heavy ball smashes, 10-20 Lunges with heavy hands, 2 walks Jumping Jacks or Jump Rope Squats with and without light military lifts, 20 Dips High step ups, lots Heavy Ropes Farmer's Walk, 4 walks Calf lifts, 50 with weights Mountain Climber Planks or any other type of plank, 1-2 minutes each Ball wall slams 30-second Sprints
Rinse and repeat italicized 3-4X as time permits.
Then 5 minutes stair machine to finish up, to painfully drain the last drop of energy from your body
I think I have more power, endurance, and general fitness than I have had since I was 18. A body will respond to demand, slowly. That is useful and feels alive. I do one day of mostly upper body resistance, one day of mostly back and lower resistance, one day of mostly total-body calisthenic destruction, and 2 or 3 days of intense cardio for just an efficient and exhausting 1/2 hr. I do all of it at 5 am. My trainer is a sadistic Nazi monster Ohio farm boy. A real knowledgeable pro, cheerful and demanding, precise about form and technique.
Here are some tough, fun, medicine ball calisthenics:
Bone weakness is mainly seen in post-menopausal women. It isasymptomatic until a bone breaks and you face a real problem. When men have it, it tends to be at least ten years later than women, on average.
You do not need to appear frail to have bone fragility, but osteopenia is one component of what we term "frailty" - vulnerability to things breaking. While being underweight is one risk factor, being heavy is not a protection. Vit D deficiency and inactivity are other factors, along with bad habits, unlucky genes, and a life style lacking in daily resistance exertion.
Hip fractures are one of the common presentations of previously-undiagnosed bone weakness. Contrary to common belief, people do not "fall and break their hip." It is usually the opposite: their femur just fractures from weakness, causing them to fall. People with bone weakness, though, are more prone to any bone fracture anytime they fall or have an accident.
Diagnosis is usually via a routine Bone Density Scan or after a fracture.
Prevention and Treatment: Besides getting some sunshine daily (not just on your face) and taking Vit D along with a good diet, the prevention and treatment for bone weakness is strength training. The medicines for osteoporosis are problematic and often ineffective. Cardio exercises - things like walking, running, swimming, etc. are not effective in building muscle or bone strength. (It is not unusual for runners to be weak-muscled - or for weight-lifters to be unable to run a mile. Balanced fitness means strength, a little cardio, and calisthenics for athleticism but only the strength component is relevant here). Some full-body calisthenics might be helpful (eg squats, farmer's walks, push-ups, step and press) but what really helps is moving heavy weights against gravity with all the muscles you can engage for a couple of hours each week.
That works because muscle stress and muscle growth put the good kind of stress on the bones to which they are attached. This naturally stimulates bone development. Bone-ligament-muscle is a functional unit. Weight training can not damage your bones. Quite the opposite.
For strength training for post-menopausal women, I recommend working towards multi-muscle-group exertions like barbell or goblet squats, bench press, deadlifts, assisted pull-ups, military press, leg press, etc with ever-increasing resistance. The uninitiated should not do these things without an experienced and savvy trainer with some nutritional sophistication. Being overweight is no obstacle to strength training, but a low BMI is a major obstacle to strength-building and requires remediation.
Bone weakness aside, any non-casual fitness program should include strength training, some cardio, and calisthenics. In addition, a nutritional plan that supports your conditioning goals.
Thanks to readers for comments on the exercise diet and weight gain issue. I am digesting, as it were, the idea that I need to eat more. That will have to mean 5-6 small meals/snacks per day because I am rarely hungry despite my weigh training plus my cardio and calisthenics on "off" days.
My goals with all this, as I have mentioned, are to improve and maintain strength, agility, endurance, and energy in the face of Father Time and the dread apoptosis. While some muscle hypertrophy is inevitable and amusing, wiry strength is more what I want to pursue.
With increasing resistance, you might be able to barely gain, at most, one lb. of muscle mass per month. Doubtful, because even that is a lot unless you live in the gym or in jail. Strength, however, can be increased without much measurable muscle mass.
Cardio and calisthenics, as we have explained, build strength minimally if at all but seem good for agility, endurance, and general athleticism. In other words, worth doing as part of the triad of Resistance, Cardio, and Calisthenics.
With the help of my nutritionally-knowledgeable trainer, we have worked out a nutrition plan for the next 3 months, with the goal of gaining 2 useful lbs per month (possibly - but doubtful - 1 of muscle, and 1 of fat - can't gain one without the other unless you are already overweight) while upping my carb intake to speed exercise recovery and to increase energy. To be a good client, I will do my best with something like the below, but I will take a several weeks to work up to this much daily volume ( the "/" means "or"):
- After morning work-out, a 20- gm protein 200 cal. shake or 2 scrambled eggs with tomato and cheese - Mid-morning, a banana/handful of Greek olives/half an apple, and a small glass of whole milk (I can't drink a large glassful) - Mid-day, a slice of meat/hard-boiled egg, and an avocado/cup or so of vegetables with salt and olive oil - Mid-afternoon, peanut butter on a slice of toast/some cheese and crackers/some yogurt with berries/some cottage cheese - Supper, a couple of slices of meat or equivalent, a tater/rice/bread, a veggie or salad, maybe a little ice cream or other dessert.
We'll see whether this experiment works to gain 5-6 lbs of red meat by November. I am skeptical. If I gain in the waist, it's a no-go because my trousers fit fine now.
Body type is relevant to health, exercise, and appearance. It's worth bearing in mind that few people are a pure type, and that, for example, endomorphs can be fat (often termed "skinny fat" - ie a belly on a slender frame) and ectomorphs are not necessarily fat.
The body types are genetic, products of inborn bone and muscle structure. In other words, the body frame.
Posture is complicated, because it involves habit, training, psychological attitude, and muscle strength. Further, good posture makes you more presentable and makes you look more confident even if you do not feel that way.
Medically, good posture helps prevent back problems.
Computer monitors, age, shame and shyness, muscle atrophy, and general slovenliness are the enemies of good posture: shoulders back, head up, no slouch, belly tucked in, etc. Look good, not proudful but self-respecting.
A Pull-up is with overhand grip. The challenge is mostly to your upper back. You pull with your back while your arms mostly just hang on.
A Chin-up is with underhand grip. The challenge is primarily to arms and secondarily to upper back.
I shamefully still can not do enough reps of either to make for a worthwhile exercise, so I am practicing with jumping pull-ups, pull-ups with the band, and holds. Also, the pull-up machine sometimes.
If pull-ups and chin-ups are too easy for you, widen your grip or put on a weight vest.
My goal is 10 reps of each, but I may never get there. When I was in high school you had to do 10 or they put you in remedial phys ed which was basically an excellent sort of boot camp for 2 hrs/day. In fact, it was a lot like Crossfit with medicine balls, sprints, jumps, push-ups, 1-mile races, etc.
In the crematorium, will you sizzle nicely or will your corpse burn down the funeral home?
We recently posted about abdominal muscles and abdominal wall fat, but fat of course is widely-distributed on the body. It's not all subcutaneous. Much of the excess fat you have is intramuscular and most of it is stored amongst your guts in the large packets of soft lard which produce the belly.
The human body is a sponge for carbs. It is designed to be a prepper for the next famine. If you have ever assisted with surgery on a heavy person, those giant yellow blobs of adipose clinging to the organs and intestines mean trouble. They ooze a slippery oil that make it difficult to hold onto a tool and get in the way of everything you try to do. Disgusting. Surgeons hate working on heavy people because of that. It pisses them off but they deal with it. Risky, though.
But, with the first incision when the yellow subcutaneous globules billow up and flow out onto your skin, they will say things about you that you would not like to hear. It's one reason they knock you out first. Handling all of that goo in my youth helped motivate me to stay fit in middle age.
Around 15% body fat is considered good, athletic fitness for men, and about up around 19-23% for women. Women naturally carry somewhat more fat in their hips, butts, and boobs. Less than 19% in women is for under-30 year-olds, body-builders, the naturally-skinny, and if it gets too low, those with eating problems. No need for expensive tests to assess yourself. Just compare your image below the fold, from here.
Our trainer suggests first-thing-in-the-morning (after coffee) daily calisthenics when away from regular training. That is in addition to all other physical activity (eg hiking, swimming, running, biking, yoga, garden work, etc) which he assumes active people do on weekends or on vacation. In fact, he recommends morning calisthenics for everybody of every age and condition whether they work out or not.
Readers know that calisthenics do not build strength. They build endurance and athleticism, help maintain strength by putting all muscles to use, and involve bursts of intense cardio. Very little equipment needed for this program: heavy ball, jump rope, 10 lb dumbells. Lots of core in this.
But first, a stretch/warm up of a short distance of lunges, sumos, side stretches, and toe-touching walking. All outdoors is best regardless of weather. Great fun. I think we'll have a good bunch for this each morning at 630. For a bunch of them, it will just be a warm-up before their 15-mile run and one-mile swim, but they are nuts. In damn good shape, tho.
Then 3 sets of each 3-exercise circuit:
Squats with 10 lb overhead press, 15 reps 1 minute jumping jacks or jump rope Heavy ball floor slam, 15 reps 30-sec side shuffle returning to squats
30-60 second rest after completing that circuit 3 X
Jumping squats, 15 reps 30 second side-shuffle Shoulder-slap arm planks, 15 pairs 30-secside shuffle back to jumpers
30-60 second rest after completing that circuit 3X
Mountain climbers, 15 pairs 30-second sprint or jog Burpees, 10 Sprint or jog back to climbers
30-60 second rest after completing that circuit 3X
Sideways heavy ball throws (game of catch), 10 each side Arm plank 1 minute 30-seconds of lunges with 10 lbs in hand then back to throws
Time up before finishing the last circuit? Then alternate the circuits on different days and just do 3 instead of all 4 routines. Still have a little time left? Can finish up with some elbow planks and/or light-weight arm exercises: high-rep curls, side lifts, forward straight-arm lifts with the 10 lb dumbbell.
It sounds easy, doesn't it? A good way to begin the day. Try it, and get it all in under 60 minutes. If this is too easy, you are pretty fit. It leaves me like a limp rag for an hour.
Many people exercise these muscles for athleticism or for appearance. Part of exercising "the core," as they say. Is it worth doing? Well, it can't hurt especially as we get older, but almost all calisthenics and heavy weights challenge those core muscles pretty well. Planks are the only core-specific things I do and I do them because I am told to.
It is near-impossible for a woman to show a six-pack, and it seems like a silly pursuit for the average guy. For one thing, it takes a body fat of roughly below 9% to uncover the divisions of the rectus abdominis assembly.
What the ordinary exerciser can achieve with exercise and proper diet is to be "cut" vertically, ie having a clear demarcation between the rectus and the obliques. I think that ought to be a plenty good-enough conditioning indicator for man or woman. It is an indicator of somewhere around 15% body fat and of decent but not extreme fitness.
At 15%, you will still sizzle nicely in the crematorium but you will not start a conflagration. At 25% you are chubby and begin to be a fire hazard.
A pal of mine who works out bragged to me that he doesn't have a lousy six-pack - he has a whole keg.
Readers know that we believe that jumping is an excellent and intense cardio-calisthenic for general athleticism. All I can do is singles and running jumps, doubt I will ever be able to do double-unders.
Anyway, my tech-oriented trainer introduced me to this cool thing last week: A rope which miraculously displays the count in the air in front of you with LED, and also sends the count to your smart phone.
Cool exercise toy. It's a heavy rope (as contrasted with light and medium-weight ropes), so it is extremely fatiguing for me. But that's the point - brief with high intensity.
Phizzicle phitness consists of strength, endurance, and athleticism (plus body composition). A balanced fitness program will address all aspects. 
Getting into pretty good condition from ordinary condition (ordinary is somebody over 30 who is not fat, hikes, walks daily, plays some recreational sports) takes about two years of commitment. Longer if pudgy, mostly sedentary, or if complicated by some physical impairment (which almost everybody over 40 is).
Thanks to readers for comments on the exercise diet and weight gain issue. I am digesting, as it were, the idea that I need to eat more. That will have to mean 5-6 small meals/snacks per day because I am rarely hungry despite my weigh training plus my cardio and calisthenics on "off" days.
Readers know that we believe that jumping is an excellent and intense cardio-calisthenic for general athleticism. All I can do is singles and running jumps, doubt I will ever be able to do double-unders.