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.
An encouragement to our many fitness-interested readers: For the past few months people have been asking me whether I have lost weight.
Quite the contrary. I look like I have lost but thus far actually have been able to gain 6 lbs in 4 months by forcing myself to eat more than my normal, and to keep that pace up I am doing this: a meat or egg sandwich for lunch, a banana for morning snack, a 20 or 30-gm protein smoothie for after-work-out breakfast, and my usual American supper of a carb, meat, and a vegetable or two. Small portions, no seconds. My genius trainer wants me to gain another 4 at about 1 lb/month. He says my gain has been in bone and muscle. Most of my several lbs of disgusting middle-age abdominal pudge has evaporated which probably means a net gain of almost 8 lbs of bone, gristle, and muscle. And grit too which weighs nothing, has no substance, but matters a lot. Anyway, not bad at all for only 14 months' dedicated and fairly intense effort usually 6 days/wk for about an hour.
With pushing the lifting, plus cardio and heavy calisthenics, the most an average person can gain in muscle/bone is optimistically 1 lb/month. That can only be done by pushing the weights constantly. Fat loss is quicker: a healthy dietary weight loss should be limited to 1-2 lbs/wk except in a temporary regime. In other words, it's far easier to lose fat than to gain strength and fitness. You can lose fat just by sitting and sleeping with a low-carb diet.
In another 6 months I should be in reasonably good condition, and it will be time to move in the direction of a more maintenance-oriented program for the indefinite future. I do not need to do multiple reps of 300 lb deadlifts - just upping the reps of 200 lbs is fine with me. I do not have a muscular build, more ectomorphic - a runner's build. Mesomorphic is the ideal multi-purpose athletic physique, but that's genes.
Mrs. BD says she'll need to buy me a new head to match my semi-buffish youthful body. That's fine with me as long as it comes with a brain that doesn't worry so much about stuff the way my current one does.
I am not surprised about the testosterone and growth hormone results. Those are good products of extreme physical stress.
A few problems with the article: First, it only went on for 12 weeks. Second, and maybe most importantly, the study had them lifting four times/week. That makes no sense. A set of heavy deadlifts takes 4-6 days from which to recover properly. Next, you can light- deadlift 100 lbs four times a week with 25 reps if you want, but you will still not be able to lift that 200 lb. of rocks a prankster placed on your front porch. And your exercise will not be time-efficient. Part of heavy is the time-efficiency. 5 reps of heavy deads, benches, etc once a week is plenty for the average fellow to stay youthfully strong.
In any event, exercise of any sort to muscle failure is the only way to gain strength. BTW, I do do lighter-weight exercises almost weekly on off-days to failure. Squats, curls, overhead presses, etc. It's just to remind my body that it is not on vacation.
I would arbitrarily consider any movement High Rep if you can perform over 10 in a row. With or without weights, any exercise over that begins to fall into the Calisthenics category or the Warm-up category in my book. Sure, anything can feel heavy after a while, but high-rep is a different sort of exercise unless you are a professional.
Thus if you can barely do 6 pull-ups, it's strength-building Resistance. If you can do 20, it's more like Calisthenics. Likewise, 20 body-weight squats are Calisthenics, 4 Barbell squats to failure are Resistance.
It matters because High Rep exertions, even if reaching the breaking point, do not effectively improve strength. A useful thing about High Rep is that they douse your existing strength and help maintain. In other words, good for general fitness.Other examples are Jumping Jacks and Jump Rope which overlap Cardio and Cali categories but do not build strength.
Different sorts of muscle fibers are used. From here:
High reps develop Type 1 muscle fibers (“slow twitch”) that are endurance based and slow to fatigue. Lower repetitions activate Type 2 muscle fibers (“fast twitch”), which have greater power but fatigue quickly.
Getting stronger is mainly about stressing and damaging those fast twitch muscle fibers. You can do High Rep deadlifts all day long and still never be able to lift a 200 lb box of rocks.
Thus the general idea is that, for strength, Low Rep with very heavy (whatever that is for you). For general fitness maintenance, High Rep Calisthenic-type exercise. For overall conditioning, I do both, plus Cardio. Almost everybody can find time for this, especially if you do it at 5 am. Why not?
Mrs. BD and I are 14 months into our program, so we are now officially past the Beginner phase of weights and calisthenics. Novices, now.
Trainers say that it takes two years with 1 hr. 5-6 days/wk (approx 2 hrs of weights, 2 of calis, 1+ of cardio not counting fast walks) for middle-aged people with the right work-out diet to reach a good level of conditioning for a given age and build. Not for bulging muscles, but for full fitness for life and a fairly tight, firm, beachable, streetable, athletic bod.
Athleticism is a good goal for the middle-aged because almost everybody in America has a sport or two which they love.
Based on my dedication to this, I think that the time frame must be right because, for example, I still can not do a deep barbell squat of my body weight. Bench press? Almost there, a few more weeks to press my weight for one or two reps. Those are normal, modest and realistic strength goals for the average middle-aged guy. We up the heavy weight exercises by 5 lbs/wk and I practice holds with much heavier weight.
Anyway, Mrs. BD and I have decided that we can now do our calis without trainer supervision, so we do them together. Good fun, terribly fatiguing. For example, I'll do a plank while she does wall slams, I'll jump rope while she does the burpee/ mtn climber/ j jack routine. etc. We can group them up as supersets or triplets, and switch off.
One day/week we'll do three sets of almost each pair or triplet on our list (our cali list below the fold) for about 40 mins, and finish with 20 min. cardio intervals. Two days/wk we'll do 20 min of additional calis and 20 min cardio intervals. Saves money this way, and we can push each other and correct each other. Married couples are very good and experienced at that... fun.
We'll keep our trainer for two individual hours of weights per week for now. It is difficult to advance in strength training without a pro watching you like a hawk and pushing you further like a sadist.
Mrs. BD also does Yoga, but I do not. Interestingly, the weight work has done wonders for her ex-dancer joint pains. She is now doing deadlifts, weighted squats, bench press, leg press, rows, overhead presses, curls, etc - all the things I do. Pain-free at last thanks to our genius trainer. Muscle and stronger tendons can help compensate for half-rotten joints.
A "healthy diet" above and beyond the basics cannot be defined and never will be defined because adequate nourishment can be obtained in so many ways. Much of the science of nutrition is dubious and, anyway, nobody reading this website is in any danger of being malnourished. Overnourished, more likely. Americans probably pee out more vitamins and minerals in a week than malnourished African kids get in a year.
In other words, Americans are the last people in the world who ought to fetishize the idea of "healthy" food. That is probably why we are the only people who do.
The nutritional science which has the most value involves diseases of malnutrition, which are absent in the Western world. The knowledge that has general applicability concerns the roles of protein, carbs, and fats in the diet, perhaps the role of vitamins, and the new information about how people become fat.
Furthermore, some foods are disparaged as unhealthy for no reason. Consider steak and burgers, ice cream, and so forth. People say "Eat fruits, greens, and vegetables." Why? They are just sometimes-tasty fillers with minimal nutrients but which can be fun to eat if done right. Is orange juice "healthy"? Depends what you mean. It's flavored sugar water and some people prefer it to plain water. Is chocolate "bad for you"? Of course not. It is wonderful food.
People talk about what foods are "nutritious." In the Western world, that is an absurd notion. Lots of guys in the NBA were raised on Frosted Flakes, Doritos, hot dogs, Coke, MacDonalds, and school lunch slops. Highly nutritious. The only people who should eat brown rice and whole wheat bread are people who prefer the flavor. The only people who should pay any attention to nutrition are parents of growing kids, people who are overweight, and athletes and others with heavy physical work.
In the prosperous Western world, you are not what you eat - so people ought to eat what they like and what they can afford and ignore the health marketing hype and ignore the health superstitions. I can tell you why our family meals consist of what they do: Tradition, preferences, and nothing more.
Modern investigators find it hard to accept the fact that groups exhibiting superb physical development and perfect health ate liberally of the very dietary component that modern nutritionists have demonized: Saturated animal fat.
Aerobic exercise (often aka Aerobic Cardio) is much disparaged these days, but it is not entirely useless as one component of fitness. It's roughly defined as exercises that keep one's heart rate elevated significantly for extended lengths of time (ie 20 minutes plus, but around 20 is enough for the benefits), and physiologically defined as exercises in which oxygen supply can keep up with metabolic demand. Thus jogging, running, swimming, rowing, biking etc. Eventual fatigue in these exertions has to do with depletion of muscle glycogen supplies or plain muscular inadequacy.
Heart rates for a beneficial cardio workout vary by age and fitness, but a rule of thumb is that if you can converse, you aren't doing anything; if you can get a few sentences out you're about right; and if you can barely speak you are probably over your limit or in a sprint.
Cardio is not very useful for fat loss or strength-building but it's good for maintaining or building endurance, bone fitness, and cardiac fitness. Better than sitting or walking, for sure. If you can bike 50 miles at any speed, that is great because most people can't.
As an aside, reader Mike reminds us that excess cardio can lead to muscle loss. True, but really only if you are in good shape with little fat.
Anaerobic cardio exercises are those which exceed the ability of oxygen metabolic pathways to keep up with the muscular demands, eg sprinting, weight-lifting (yes, resistance exercises do stress the heart), and other high-intensity exercises like calisthenics. Anaerobic exertions build up lactic acid in muscle, hence the burn - but burn has nothing directly to do with any benefit other than maybe encouraging muscles to increase their glycogen storage. Almost any aerobic exercise can be made anaerobic by increasing intensity. This can not be sustained for very long, at most a couple or a few minutes. Cellular machinery cannot keep up with the demand.
Any exercise that leaves you limp, gasping, or burning pain after a brief time has probably become anaerobic. Good stuff, and more likely to be building rather than maintaining. This is why, for the Cardio piece of the Conditioning Triad, we recommend interval cardio (HIIT) for efficiency instead of endless aerobic cardio. The sprints will get your heart rate way up but only for a brief (30-60 seconds) while.
Men seem to have an innate preference for anaerobic exercise, women for aerobic. That's statistical only and I have no idea what relevance it has to anything.
The physiology of aerobic and anaerobic cellular metabolism is interesting, and miraculous. Minimal Bio education needed to understand it.
Not necessarily a recommendation, but for "cardio" I do two approx 20 min sets of HIIT per week and about a total of 80 mins of calisthenics each week. (Plus my 2 hrs of weights.) Feels like a good balance.
Generally speaking, your body derives little benefit from an exercise itself because exercise (as contrasted with a normal active life) is designed to stress the body, to hurt it, really. That's why going for a hike, playing a round of golf, or playing doubles tennis is not exercise: it's recreation.
The benefits obtained from exertions are obtained during the recovery phase from the stress and damage. This can take a few days, and much longer to repair damaged muscle and to build new muscle fibers and blood vessels and to ramp up neural connections. Progress is thus slow.
The approach I use for recovery is to try for a good diet with high protein and enough carbs so as not to lose weight or maybe to gain some in 5 smallish meals/day, and "active recovery" meaning days of aerobic exercise between days of intense work-outs. Also, days off for pure recreational activities like sports or hiking.
I refer to the Fitness Triad frequently. Maybe I should trademark it unless somebody else has.
Our modern notions of fitness go back to the ancient Greeks, and probably back to the earliest hominids for whom fitness was necessary for survival. In modern times, what I call "Fitness for Life" is more self-preoccupied, some might call it narcissistic, than fitness was for the farmers, hunters, shepherds, ironsmiths, builders, masons, and soldiers of the past. Modern fitness efforts are simply about staying as physically fully-functional for as long as you can for ordinary life activities and for play.
Sooner or later, something will strike you down, cripple you or kill you but, until then, why not give life your best shot? I know we all want to be strong, to look good, and to remain vigorous and competent for whatever comes our way.
The Triad is Strength, Cardio, and Calisthenics, but Strength is the foundation of the triangle because the best use of the other two depends on it. Proper nutrition - having neither too little physical structure, nor excess fat - is a separate topic.
Most people do not care about it. Just look around - it's obvious. That is because, unless your daily work involves manual labor, in the modern world most of us do not use our bodies in the ways for which they were designed.
We are designed to be hunter-gatherers and warriors, which entail day-long physical activity and often required lengthy periods of inadequate nutrition and starvation (which is why human fat cells are such sponges for hoarding carbs). The hunter-gatherer activities involve endurance, and the warrior activities entail strength and athleticism.
All of the people who do not care about their fitness have a strong case. In Western civilization, hunting is recreation, gathering is done at the market or the backyard garden, and we play sports for fun and hire our warriors. Speaking of warriors, last night I watched a live match between McEnroe and Jim Currier. Gosh, what beautiful and powerful games they still have in their late 50s.
But why would any ordinary man or woman want to spend discretionary time imitating primitive hunter-gatherer and warrior exertions? Well, they mostly don't. Furthermore, they know that fitness, except in the case of overweight and obesity, has little correlation with health or life-expectancy.
Here are the reasons Mrs. BD and I devote a mere 5 or 6 hours per week for structured physical conditioning (trying to compact a full day's activity into a brief time via intensity), and generally try to keep our weights at a fit and youthful level. It's about quality of life:
- we feel better, look better, and have more energy without any excess fat on us. Fat fatigues. And a sloppy appearance makes a poor impression in our Anglosphere culture. - becoming stronger makes us more functional in every way. - we want to be at our best for sports - a body is a gift, and deserves decent stewardship - we want to get a head start on fending off the physical deterioration of age - tough physical exertion to exhaustion is good for our heads - the discipline required is a good life challenge. Progress is stressful and unpleasant, and the rewards are slow to come so it's a good test of delayed gratification. Is it rewarding to lift up 200 lbs without spraining a muscle? Yup. It's a cool feeling of masculine competence and it has many practical applications. - and for us dads, we must consider what sort of condition the mothers of our kids would appreciate in us. Chances are they appreciate good attitude, high energy, a bit of visible muscle, and a trim physique.
Only progressively-heavy resistance with weight can build meaningful muscle strength with efficiency.
Cardio intervals, and other mostly-aerobic exercises like calisthenics and sports, can build or maintain useful endurance and athleticism, but not much strength.
(Athleticism and endurance are more important to me in life than strength and power. However, I had lost strength and muscle over time and, anyway, I think the Fitness Triad works in a synergistic way.)
- How much muscle mass can be gained in a month of heavy resistance work 2-3 times/week? At the very most, one lb for the ordinary person. Maybe dedicated gym rats can beat that, but not you and me. That would be 10 lbs. of red meat gain in a year, which is not likely or even possible for ordinary people like you and me. Maybe for body-builders who are able to lift very heavy.
Unless you are overweight or fat already, each lb. of muscle mass comes with about one lb. of fat+water. Not belly fat, but fat somewhere. That's the way it works. Because of my body build, I aim for wiry strength and not bulk. My physical structure can't and won't bulk and that is fine with me. As I have reported, though, my superb trainer wants to see some more red meat on me so I am trying to follow his dietary orders to eat more food.
- A proper diet is required for muscle recovery. I am working on that.
- Importance of high-weight and low reps: For large muscle groups - ie back, chest, and legs - pretty much everybody recommends approx 4-5 sets of 3-8 reps, working up towards about 80% of your one-rep max weight. In short, if you can do 10 of a large-muscle group, you need to increase the weight. Basically, high reps (more than 10) of these big movements (bench press, barbell squat, deadlift, pull-ups, leg press, military press, rows, inclined press) at lower weights are probably counterproductive and should be avoided.
- Does that low-rep plan apply to smaller muscles or isolated muscles? Not so much. When it comes to things like curls, tricep exercises, calf lifts, straight-arm pushes, skull crushers, leg curls, pull-downs, and the like, it seems fine to burn it out or do drop sets sometimes.
- Skeletal muscle diminishes with age. It is called muscle atrophy and is a normal part of aging. Unused cells die. That is termed apoptosis, like leaves falling from a tree. Atrophy of age is normal, that is, unless the muscle is put to stressful work. With work, muscle can be maintained or rebuilt to some degree at any age.
- How quickly does muscle lose strength without stress? The strength in a muscle begins to diminish after a month unless it is adequately and regularly stressed. Not used, but stressed. The human body, in its wisdom, sees no need to maintain something for no reason. That's the "use it or lose it" aspect. Similarly, heart muscle needs to be stressed regularly to stay tough.
Please discuss. We seem to have plenty of fitness-oriented readers of all ages and genders sexes.
Unless you give yourself 4 or more hours in the gym daily like an anorectic, no. For practical purposes, it is of no use for that.
All exercise which fatigues and stresses the body is good for mental health, fitness, and vitality, and it probably slightly raises calorie-burning and is better than sitting, but exercise alone can never help you lose 10 lbs of belly lard. It's wishful thinking.
My fitness trainer is no musclehead. It's his second career, following his passion. Yes he is strong and athletic, but he knows physiology and anatomy as well as any civilian and loves learning as much as he can.
He has now instructed me to gain 5-10 lbs over the next 4 months with a correct balance of carb+extra protein+fats.
I may be abnormal, but in recent years - maybe since turning 50 - my appetite has decreased, and decreased even more since I have been working out hard almost daily. He says my current diet is not sufficient to get me through the physical demands he is now putting on me with the weights and calisthenics. He plans to push the heck out of me this year with his daily grind claiming that, after one year, I am experienced enough to work really hard. He is not kidding. It is now brutal beyond my imagining and highly unpleasant. But I can do it, mostly. No pain, no gain. Loud grunts of agony and exertion.
The strong lifts - barbell squats, deadlifts, bench, etc. just kill me at these current weights. He keeps a record of what I do, and ups it every week mostly in weight, not reps. As they say, tho - if you want a 200 lb dead to feel light, do 225. Otherwise, 200 will always feel heavy.
I will grant that my muscles and overall strength, and my endurance, have improved dramatically, as well as the shape of my old cadaver. Same with Mrs. BD. However, my recovery time for a hard (ie weights or calis, not my cardio) workout is about 48-72 hrs. I know, because I am afflicted with DOMS. The consequence is that you never get to feel as good as you deserve to because you always feel sore or weak with fatigue from a day or two before. Sheesh - where is the pay-off? Vacation?
Since I often have to force myself to eat a meal and can rarely if ever clean a plate of food, I told him that this challenge will be as difficult for me as it would be for someone who was charged to lose 10 lbs. BTW, I am not scrawny at all but I do not carry much fat and my belly is cut, as they say.
We agreed that wine is an appetite-stimulant and I should try that with supper. Although I love a good wine, I usually only have wine with meals in restaurants and parties.
Any suggestions? I definitely need to add a second protein shake daily. Another thought was to try McDonald's or Wendy's for lunch for a while. A Big Mac with a small fries is probably a perfect balanced diet. Or a glass of milk, and maybe some ice cream at night. I like Subway, but they don't put in enough meat.
Another trouble is that midday food makes me drowsy for an hour so I can't really eat carbs at lunch. I don't know how other people do that and keep their functional edge. I don't know how anybody can eat breakfast either, beyond 2 coffees. Who wants food in the morning? Gross. Morning is for coffee. I will try to force down a protein shake or protein smoothie to be a cooperative client, but I don't want it. Breakfast is for children.
If I can gain 1/2 lb of muscle per month, that would be remarkable but probably unattainable. I would not enjoy that in adipose tissue. I am not anorcetic, but I just think fatty tissue is gross and definitely not sexy.
"BOSU" stands for Both Sides Up, or Both Sides Used. BOSU exercises - calisthenics basically - supposedly train balance and strengthen the core.
It is challenging just to stand on them (either side is wobbly), but I had to do 3 sets of squats on both sides. It is sort of amusing to watch your legs wobble and vibrate under the effect of the proprioceptive storm.
I'll admit that I could not do all the squats on this thing without a light touch of my trainer's hand. Worth doing? I doubt it but it's more exciting than sitting on a chair or watching TV.
Squats are among the handful of essential strength-building and strength-maintenance exercises. They also happen to be highly-functional and, done properly, they can engage about 200 different muscles.
People tend to want to do barbell squats because they are the most demanding and stressful, but for beginners and for those who just want to stay fit and mobile without really increasing strength, higher-rep body-weight squats or light-weight squats (eg four sets of 20+ per week) are good exercise. You have to get low for it to work.
Note: All of our physical fitness posts are about "fitness for life" for ordinary people. That means functional strength, power, agility, and endurance - and it includes getting rid of excess fat. We are not about body-building, becoming an underwear or swimsuit model, or a serious athlete. However, "fit for life" does look much better than its opposite. We try to cover the three main categories: strength, cardio, and calisthenics. You can review our fitness archives here.
- Deep squats are killers for me. They are, however, one of the basic full-body exertions and no fitness program can be complete without them. It's best to start with just body weight 90 degree squats, then deeper ones, then goblets, then to barbell, over months. Ass (almost) to the grass, they say. Not at first, though.
What's a good weight goal for the average, non-gym rat? Just your body weight on the barbell for 5 deep reps. That's good enough for sturdy "fit for life" legs. How Much Should You Be Able to Squat?
I would not suggest that anyone, regardless of age, begin the very good and simple 5X5 without at least several months of mixed training to get in decent conditioning first. Once prepared, it's a good approach for ages 18-90.
- Isolation exercises (ie weight exercises that stress less than large and multiple muscle groups): Isolation exercises are mainly for remediation, rehab, or aesthetics. The goal is to get past these things to do the big, hard things.
We consider curls, whether dumbbell or bar, to serve an aesthetic purpose more than functional muscle development. Biceps and brachialis are not highly-functional muscles but, unless over-developed, sturdy ones look good to females. That's why they are Curls for Girls. (Of course, toned arms on women likewise look good to men.)
Vanity of vanities...
The opposing muscle, Triceps, is a much more functional one so if you strengthen triceps you have to balance it with some biceps development.
Following orders, I did a very tough sequence of barbell curls this morning: A sequence of one to ten curls with 7-second rest between. (ie, 1 curl, 7 second rest; 2 curls, 7 second rest, up to 10). Then, after a one minute rest, backwards down from 10 to 1.
After that, picking up a coffee cup is a challenge.
Distance running, like any extended-time cardio (eg swimming, elliptical, rowing, bike, etc), procures no health or fitness benefits. Worse, distance running damages the body, often permanently.
If you must use running for the cardio component of a fitness program, two to four quarter-mile or even half-mile sprints per week is plenty. Treadmill sprints are kinder on the joints than a road. The comparable anaerobic sprint approach applies to any cardio exercises. For cardio, it is the spurts of max. intensity that matter, not time wasted.
(I am reminded to add that, for those over 75 or 80, aerobic cardio is great and much better than sitting.)
The experts say it takes a year of training for a middle-aged person to wake the body up and get into half-decent Beginner's shape, and two years to be "fit for life" for your age and build (ie "fit" for a regular person, not for a serious athlete, lifter, or body-builder).
By training, that means two hours/week of steadily increasing weights, one hour of heavy calisthenics, and 1 to 2 hours of interval cardio/endurance with some calisthenics. Plus fat loss if needed via a food plan. That's not maintenance, it's training.
It is a mental and physical adventure. At my one year point, I understand what the experts mean by two years. Functionally, and looking in the mirror like Narcissus, I know exactly what they are talking about. At first, I lost almost 15 lbs of blubber that I did not know I had. After 6 months, I began adding a bit of that back in muscle and sinew so my old cadaver has a different shape. Started at 172, now 162.
Thus, at one year out, I am now prepped to begin to work my hardest. Mysteriously, slowly, my brain and will have engaged my musculature and my physical determination, discovering resources I did not know that I had. A cool experience to fully engage with, and conquer, Mr. Fatigue and Mr. Give Up.
Jumping is one of the best and most demanding calisthenic/cardio-endurance exercises. It is harmless to knees and hips because it is on toes.
Like most things, it takes practice to get to the point where it is useful. I am working towards a repertoire of jumps, but it is more difficult than it looks and I am not highly-coordinated. (If you think you are, try double unders sometime and let me know.) Also, I find just two minutes of speed rope to be quite fatiguing. That's why I embed a minute or two of rope in a circuit of calisthenics. Cardio and calisthenics are a waste of time without intensity.
This guy is an expert. It's like watching a dancer. His double unders are great. Three things to watch: 1. His body stays in a relaxed athletic posture with no tension 2) The rope usually maintains a steady pace regardless of what his legs and feet are doing (he is mostly not doing speed), and 3) His hands and arms remain in the same position.
The best-organized and rational program I have seen is the New Atkins.
If you want to look good, have maximum vigor, and save your joints, back, and heart, it's a good tough program which will shrink your belly, your stomach, and your appetite.
Once you reach your target, the plan focuses on maintenance. Not easy in a world of temptation.
They are physiologically correct in general, and especially in noting the trivial effect of exercise on fat loss. Exercise is for strength and vitality for white-collar and otherwise sedentary people, but not for fat loss. Lose fat, exercise better, get stronger, feel better, and fight aging.
Medically, each pound of spare adipose tissue over-stresses your heart, and your knees and hips. Not good. Also, strong and thin is good for sex.
If you just don't care, that's fine too. It's a free country. Very few have the self-discipline needed to do hard things persistently and obviously many people do not care very much about how they look or feel.
I have no problem with overweight people. I just assume that other things are more important to them than physical fitness, and they are right about that. It is not for everybody.
My excellent fitness trainer told me that it takes 2 years to pass from the beginner phase of weights, regardless of age. That has nothing to do with amount of weight moved; it's just about getting the forms down right, ramping up past the beginner's need for any machine training, and getting to the point of effectively pushing the envelope of your innate abilities - whatever they are - past the initial "waking up" phase.
The antique fitness recommendations of simply running, jogging, walking, rowing, swimming, spinning, etc. have long gone the way of the low-fat diet. Well, the low-fat diet was totally wrong, but low-resistance cardio (only if intervals) does still have a place in the Fitness Triad of Resistance, Cardio, and Calisthenics.
As an ectomorph with a runner's build, I will never bench at the levels of the shorter, muscled guys with short arms. No problem with that. I just want to maintain and improve fitness and not be, or look like, a weak, lazy schlub. That's why I did 45 pull-ups this morning (ok, jumpers), and 5 sets of deadlifts with increasing weight each time. It feels quite good when you stop.
Barbell squats kill me, or will. Matchstick legs and no ass, he says. I ask him to please wait until I finish my coffee to insult my God-given physique: I am easily offended and may need to retire to my Safe Space at the local pub.
Mrs. BD is a more sturdily-built mesomorph. She enjoys the weights part of her program more than I do, but she can't do barbell squats (iffy knees). She does deadlifts, snatches (which I can not do due to one bum shoulder), pull-ups, dumbell rows, bench press, curls, press-downs, pull-downs, overhead presses, and plain squats. Interestingly, doing weights has done a lot of good for her knee issues, just as the trainer predicted.
Rule of Thumb: Make everything a bit harder each week and aim for the goal of condensing everything in the efficient multi-muscle group basic exercises. Takes a while to get there, maybe a year. If middle-aged or +, one 3-6 set of each resistance exercises/week is enough.
Photo above:Your editor last week, after one year of resistance training. Think I should cut my steroid dose a bit yet? Truth is that no middle-aged guy with 5-6 hrs to spend on fitness including only 2 hrs of weights in that will bulk up very much. Mainly weight-redistribution will occur. That, plus energy and vitality. Any gut disappears even if you like beer.
Photo below:Mrs. BD after one year of the Fitness Triad plus Atkins diet. Keep it up!
To inspire those who might like some calisthenics in their fitness routine:
- A three-set circuit of box jumps, squat-and-pull unbalanced bar reps, heavy ball smashes, burpees, and jumping jacks
- A three set circuit of sideways box jumps, unbalanced push bar reps, and floor ladder drills on hands and toes
- A three set circuit of box step-ups, ladder agility drills, and jump rope drills (regular, running man, and speed changes. I can't do arm shifts or doubles yet but these are my jump goals. 13 year-old boys can do amazing things with jump rope but I can't compete with that).
That took one hour, dripping sweat all over the floor. Mrs. BD and I agree that an hour of calisthenics is more exhausting than an hour of weights but you bounce back quicker. Calisthenics are not so much for strength-building as for muscle use and maintenance, agility, balance, core-strengthening, endurance, and cardio. Or, as we say, general athleticism. Good things for the middle-aged but I think the urban youth need these things too. That's why many of them love the demands of Crossfit.
When you stress your muscles sufficiently with resistance training, you damage muscle. This only happens with extreme stress to failure and beyond. Not high reps, but heavy weights. High reps are mainly maintenance and toning.
Muscle (but not heart muscle) only grows stronger in the repair, or recovery, process, which can take a week. Without damage, there is no strength-building.
Early on in my resistance training I realized that I was not getting enough protein for good repair. Feeling tired and weak. A hard boiled egg (8 gms of protein) and a glass of milk (8 gms) was not enough. For your maximum strength-building efforts, you probably need 100+ gms of protein/day for repair and reconstruction.
As long as I am in the intense strength-building phase of things (almost 12 months now with a few to go), I am sticking with these meathead drinks in the photo for breakfast.
40 gms. is a good start towards 100 with a heavy shot of protein after your barbell squats, deadlifts, bench presses, pull-ups, dips, etc. You get used to the lousy flavors.
You can make your own sort of thing cheaper with whey powder, some blueberries, some milk, and a blender.
If you do not push and pull weights to the point of good damage, 100+ gms/day is not necessary at all. For maintenance, not needed either. Maintenance efforts do no muscle damage and just keep things working.
I would arbitrarily consider any movement High Rep if you can perform over 10 in a row. With or without weights, any exercise over that begins to fall into the Calisthenics category or the Warm-up category in my book. Sure, anything can feel heavy after a while, but high-rep is a different sort of exercise unless you are a professional.
Mrs. BD and I are 14 months into our program, so we are now officially past the Beginner phase of weights and calisthenics. Novices, now. 
Aerobic exercise (often aka Aerobic Cardio) is much disparaged these days, but it is not entirely useless as one component of fitness. It's roughly defined as exercises that keep one's heart rate elevated significantly for extended lengths of time (ie 20 minutes plus, but around 20 is enough for the benefits), and physiologically defined as exercises in which oxygen supply can keep up with metabolic demand. Thus jogging, running, swimming, rowing, biking etc. Eventual fatigue in these exertions has to do with depletion of muscle glycogen supplies or plain muscular inadequacy.
Generally speaking, your body derives little benefit from an exercise itself because exercise (as contrasted with a normal active life) is designed to stress the body, to hurt it, really. That's why going for a hike, playing a round of golf, or playing doubles tennis is not exercise: it's recreation.
Most people do not care about it. Just look around - it's obvious. That is because, unless your daily work involves manual labor, in the modern world most of us do not use our bodies in the ways for which they were designed. 
My fitness trainer is no musclehead. It's his second career, following his passion. Yes he is strong and athletic, but he knows physiology and anatomy as well as any civilian and loves learning as much as he can.
"BOSU" 
The best-organized and rational program I have seen is 
My excellent fitness trainer told me that it takes 2 years to pass from the beginner phase of weights, regardless of age. That has nothing to do with amount of weight moved; it's just about getting the forms down right, ramping up past the beginner's need for any machine training, and getting to the point of effectively pushing the envelope of your innate abilities - whatever they are - past the initial "waking up" phase.
When you stress your muscles sufficiently with resistance training, you damage muscle. This only happens with extreme stress to failure and beyond. Not high reps, but heavy weights. High reps are mainly maintenance and toning.