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.
Well, sort-of a run. Since I did my heavy weights on Monday, I had my choice of doing a cardio on Tues or calis in my living room. Decided to get outside (35 degrees F, and forgot gloves) and do 40 minutes of HIIT road running (alternating 30-sec semi-sprints with 120-sec fast walk). I haven't done that for years.
I remember doing 1-mile sprints for training. Long ago. Also remember my 20-mile morning runs. Lucky me - no joint problems. I quit it in time.
Readers know we oppose road running for the toll it takes on joints, but a month, twice a week, is fine with me although I'd like to get back to the treadmill and stair machine for my HIIT.
What did I learn from it? The pounding surprised me, even though I was a road-runner and racer in my youth. I also learned that a hat and gloves might be nice when it's chilly, despite the sweat from the sprints. Finally, it is so much more interesting than watching CNN in the gym.
Maybe I should try biking, but our bikes were all stolen and I will not wear that biking gear.
We like to introduce people to various beginner's routines. This one is simple and pretty good. Done daily for 2 or 3 weeks (it should be easy by then), a person can move on to more challenging fitness programs.
20 body weight squats. 10 push ups. 20 walking lunges. 10 dumbbell rows (using a gallon milk jug) 15 second plank. 30 jumping Jacks.
This program is designed to minmize loss of fitness while your usual routine is not available. Daily or every other day - but if every other day, walk or jog 3+ miles on the off days
Warm-up: 1 min jumping jacks + 1 min jogging in place
120-sec rest after completing each full 3X circuit -
Circuit #1 (3 times through):
90 Mountain Climbers Pushups to failure 1 min jumping jacks
Circuit #2 (3X):
Jumping squats, 1 min. Curls to failure, any weight but not too heavy 1 min. elbow plank
Circuit #3 (3X):
1 min. lunges (body weight or dumbells in hands) 1 min burpees (or to failure) 1 min bicyles (on floor)
Circuit #4 (3X):
Floor chest presses to failure (dumbells) 1 min leg raises 1 min wall sit 1 min squat with overhead press (dumbell)
Circuit #5 (3X):
Dumbell (or kettlebell) swings, 1 min Floor skull crushers (dumbell) almost to failure 30-sec. shoulder-slap plank dumbell deadlifts (1 min)
If this routine is too easy, let me know in comments.
They recommend 5 sets of 90 for beginners. (I assume that is counting 1,1, 2,2,...) Never underestimate challenging calisthenics. The US Army transforms bodies with daily calisthenics.
Some large gyms and yoga studios are closing for the duration, but that's no excuse not to continue a daily workout program. There are tons of yoga workouts online too. Home workouts won't be as good, probably, but at best it might help to minimize backsliding.
Most people do not have home gyms full of barbells, dumbells, kettlebells, treadmills and stair machines. I feel home gyms are silly anyway because they lack the spirit that comes from being surrounded by hard-working people who are often in much better shape than onself.
Remember, 5-7 days without your exercise routine can set you back quite a bit. Sad, isn't it?
Some simple ideas for home fitness maintenance, just an hour/day, plus small meals for your immunity (heavy eating is a health stressor):
Cardio
- Do your cardio outdoors on a track (not a road, please). 30-60-second sprints, and jog recoveries. - Find some outdoor stairs and go up and down at your best speeds, or HIIT - Jump rope is great cardio
Strength
- Sets of pushups and pullups - High reps with hand weights (curls, lunges, bent-over rows, floor chest press, had-weight pushbacks, etc etc) - High-rep squats with or without hand weights - Squats + overhead presses with hand weights
Generally speaking, good daily workouts reduce appetite and lead to better food choices. That does not prove a cause and effect relationship, though, because people who get on the fitness train focus on whatever their fitness needs are.
For example, people who do strength training daily commonly eat everything in sight whether they want it or not, and try to gain weight, both fat and muscle. For those interested in general fitness, though, not so much.
Barbell squats and Deads are the ultimate full- body strength builders and strength-maintainers. Middle-aged+ people, male or female, ought to do some of each weekly for bone and muscle health.
You can do deads with kettlelbells or trap bars, but there's nothing like the barbell. (There are lots of other good and useful lower body exercises, calisthenics etc., but just talking about sturdiness today.)
My view is that it's not a good idea to do more than 25-30 total working reps of deadlifts in a day's routine. That would be maybe 5-6 working sets of 3-8 reps (not counting a warm-up set). I only do deads once weekly (and barbell squats once weekly).
And, just for fun because it's not about general fitness, you can check out where your one-rep max falls - enter male or female, age, and weight. I try one-rep maxes around 4X/year, for fun. Taking age into account, I am between intermediate and advanced, which seems good for me. I can not dead 300 lbs. I blame Isaac Newton for that because he is the guy who glued the weights to the floor.
Doctors like to put numbers on things, including things like your body composition. Your body composition matters for dozens of things, from diabetes and heart disease to arthritis, to general fitness of course.
Calculated BMI is a poor measure for many reasons. As mentioned yesterday, caliper measures are quite accurate. It only takes a minute, and is often done by the nurse with general physical exams. Here's how to measure your body fat correctly.
It would be unusual to feel muscle "burn" during powerlifts. It is common with high-rep, lower weight exercises like high-rep tricep press-downs, high-rep curls, sprints, and the like.
(We've discussed high-rep vs low-rep weight exercises in the past here, but the bottom line seems to be high-rep (10-20), lower weight for small muscle groups (eg calves, arms, etc) and high weight, lower reps (less than 10) for powerlifts.) That might be an overgeneralization, but no high reps with powerlifts, please.
Our readers know that the goal in strength training is to achieve a level of controlled muscle damage - microtears in the the involved muscles. The repair and recovery from those microtears is what builds muscle function. The burn doesn't mean that you are doing that. DOMS (explained in the link) means that you might have. Longer-lasting pain means you are probably doing something wrong.
Many if not most fitness buffs workout first thing in the morning. I feel it's the best way to start the day right, and to get it out of the way before work and everything else.
A cup of coffee with some sugar for instant energy is all that is needed for weights and calisthenics assuming your daily nutrition is correct for your weight and fitness goals.
For morning exercisers, a banana before HIIT will not be much help because it takes a while for fruit sugars and carbs to be digested and available. Hours. The banana will just sit in your stomach. Sugar, on the other hand, is quickly available.
I was asked for a list of some good HIIT cardiac stressors. The theory, likely correct, is that these anaerobic or borderline-anaerobic stressors build heart muscle and heart vasculature such that physical endurance and energy are improved, along with the chance of surviving one's first or second heart attack.
Here's a partial list of good ones for interval exertions (30-60 seconds, 60-120 seconds slow between):
- Speed jump rope - Mountain-climbers - Rower sprints - Treadmill running sprints - Swim sprints - Stairmaster sprints - Step-ups with hand weights - Box jumps - Heavy ball throws and smashes - Combat bike sprints - Sled pushes and pulls - Ski Erg sprints
I think it's best to do a mix of these to prevent adaptation and efficiency.
Powerlifts also are good heart stressors as we all can tell from the dizziness after a few reps of heavy, but I am not convinced that it's enough to do the job. A reminder to women that, after menopause, heart disease quickly catches up to that of men.
For St. Valentine's Day, consider how your lover (or lovers) feel, regardless of age. It's good to be appealing to a lover unless you are a billionaire.
A great exercise to add to your conditioning routines (any sled is fine). It's a total body exercise:
We posted about conditioning and related topics last week. We talked about measuring progress. I'd say that if you can get through my Friday morning fitness class, and if your body weight is right for you, you are in decent condition. But when you begin, you plain suck and hate yourself because you are not in good condition.
Newbies have trouble at first, but the ones who stick with it religiously make good progress.
That class is cardio and endurance, but those things are important. A 4-minute rower sprint is a bitch. I can not sprint for 4 minutes, have to pace myself.
So although it's difficult to put a number on fitness class performance, you can get a sense over time about how you are doing/surviving a class. Or you can compare yourself with others, which is a bad idea but difficult not to.
At my gym, the classes are free. Usually it's 50/50 guys and gals in early morning. They kick your ass, start the day right. Give it a try for a few months, and see what happens. I do one or two weekly, and count it as my calisthenics. Difficult to call it "fun," but there is some comaraderie.
But what do people mean by "physical conditioning"? After all, it's a something that most people exercise to maintain or achieve. When people commit to a daily or near-daily exercise program, conditioning is what most people are after. They are in crappy physical condition (sedentary, overweight or underweight, flabby muscles, poor cardio and muscular endurance, low energy, agility, posture, or power, etc).
They are not after mighty muscles, winning marathons, or entering the Crossfit Games. Most people just want to move from a poor or mediocre physical condition to the best condition they can reach given their age, sex, and physical architecture. And, really, people want to look in good condition too instead of looking like they are going to seed, over the hill. That's not a good look to present to the world.
When you see trainers working with clients in the gym, they are usually working towards general conditioning. That's why they do so many varied things in an hour: ball throws, some weights but not too heavy, combat bike sprints, lunges, kettlebell stuff, body weight squats, box jumps, band walks, machine rows, sled pushes and pulls, etc etc. A full mix of good conditioning exercises. Trainers in most gyms rarely have the opportunity do do real training.
The Maggie's Fitness for Life program is basically a general conditioning program - but it can be a general fitness training program if you keep records and graph performance. What can we easily graph? The weights we move, speed and endurance with "cardio", our own weight, and similar. It is difficult to graph out our performance with calisthenics and calisthenics classes, but it's easy to know how many pushups or pullups we can do, or how many kettlebell swings with a given weight.
So I guess my point today is that the Maggie's Fitness for Life Program can easily be turned into a training program by keeping records of most of the components (especially the weights and cardio speed/endurance parts). Oh, also, body weight - some need more weight and muscle, some need less body fat.
What is the Maggie's program? Readers know what it is: 2 days of weight training (powerlifts and accessory weights), 2 days of cardio with HIIT, 2 days of calisthenics/fitness class, and one recovery day of some sort of enjoyable recreational activity after church. This doesn't include most recreational sports, because they do not really count. Recreation is the reward.
Modern corporate health clubs are designed exclusively for Exercising, Training being far less profitable. The standard industry model is 55 percent of the floor space devoted to "cardio" equipment, on which repetitive motions of various types can be performed while watching television. The remaining 45 percent of the floor space is dominated by exercise machines designed primarily for the convenience of the gym staff -- they are easy to use, easy to teach the use of, and easy to vacuum around.
Programs like P90X, CrossFit, or anything available on DVD that promises to keep your muscles "confused" are also Exercise. Any program that features random exposure to various types of physical stress cannot produce a specific physical adaptation, past a certain point that occurs relatively quickly. Their function is to burn calories, get your heart rate up, and make you sweaty and tired. They may do their job of providing Exercise quite well, and again, this may be all you need from a fitness program.
But certain people rapidly outgrow Exercise, and for them Training is the logical next step...
A reader noted yesterday that "exercise isn't training."
Photo is people exercising. You can tell, because they are smiling and having fun together.
The reader is correct. We use the term "exercise" to apply to many sorts of movement, from taking a walk to taking a calisthenics class to throwing weights around in the gym. Random efforts in the gym do not lead to much progress but do keep you moving.
Training refers to a program for measureable fitness improvement, whether in endurance, strength, power, or all of the above. (The Maggie's Program of weights, calis, and cardio is designed for "all of the above").
For example, if you swim a mile daily that's exercise, but it's training if you aim to reduce your time a bit each week or two by adding anaerobic sprints. Eventually, you will reach your limit and you can call that new level "exercise" again.
Another example: If you go for a 3-mile jog most mornings (many people do 3-5 mile runs most mornings, which I do not recommend doing on roads), that's exercise. It's great for the mind. If you mix it up with speedy segments to steadily reduce the time, it's endurance training.
A final example, from weight training: Let's use deadlifts because they are foundational for general sturdiness. Barbell or kettlebell, but barbell is better because you can do more weight. If you do 5 progressive sets of what you can do, it's exercise. If your plan is to add 5 or 10 lbs to your final set of, say 5 reps every month or two, you are training.
So "training" is about progressive goals, steadily upping intensity and stress. That is why so many people take their phones in the gym. It's not for texting; it's to follow their program and to map progress.
Yesterday's cardio/calis post was an hour of exercise, not training. Quite intense endurance exercise with plenty of cardio stress, but mostly do-able (I can not jump rope for 3 minutes). It was a high-level "recovery day." A lower-level recovery day might be 50 minutes on a treadmill or elliptical (boring), or a 4-hour mountain hike (not boring, especially with company).
My final point is that exercise is great, especially for maintaining a level of physical functioning and for the mental benefits. However, many of us who catch the fitness virus want to see steady gains in various areas of fitness. That's where the training program begins. You keep your records, and have a plan to surpass them. Trainers are experts at that for any level of fitness.
In the first year or two of a daily or near-daily training program, people advance rapidly. That is partly neuro-muscular (getting used to it), and partly because beginners are often in poor condition. After a year or two, progress slows and can often be discouraging. That's just the way it is if you choose to play this game. When you attain a new speed or a new weight, though, the success feels good.
Whether your goal in life is intellectual, spiritual, or physical, it takes dedication, effort, time, and strain. Of course.
But it is only in fitness where you can easily graph it out over time. On your iphone.
I disagree. Similar things done to excess days in a row can be overtraining. It is impossible to overtrain with a mixed fitness program like Maggie's, done 6-7 hours/week.
What might entail overtraining? Max deadlifts two or three days in a row.10- 20 mile speed runs two or three days in a row. In other words, intense efforts without recovery time.
This morning, a pal and I did a recovery day together to make it fun. We both did powerlifts yesterday. Her cardio fitness is amazing, so I wanted the challenge of trying to keep up with her for an hour. A workout partner can be a good thing.
Here's what we did (I barely kept up - no breaks unless indicated):
5 minutes elliptical warm-up, just to break a sweat 2 minutes jumping jacks 2 minutes jumping lunges 1 minute jump squats
30-sec water break
2 minute mixed jump rope 1 minute rower sprint 20 squat and throw up heavy ball 20 pushups
(Two rounds of the above, then 30-sec water break)
Set of 20 goblet squats (light kettlebells) 1-minute elbow plank Set of 20 bent-over flies (hand weights) Set of kettlebell backward lunges
(2 rounds of that, then 30-sec water/rest)
Set of 20 stepup and overhead press (hand weights) Set of 12 floor roller 30-sec rower sprint 1 minute combat rope slams
(2 rounds of that then it was getting about time for me to quit)
That's an example of a recovery day of cardio and calisthenics. After 24 hours with good sleep you will be ready for hard things a day or two later. In many ways, an hour of heavy is easier.
It's good to take one day off weekly for just fun recreation regardless of age.
No, but for people who try to move serious weight (meaning weights you can only move 3-8 times) two or three times/week (or do regular HIIT), creatine can be helpful to get you moving a bit more and thus stressing your muscles more than you might have the energy for otherwise. No stress, no effect. I use it, when I remember to take it. It might have a placebo effect on me too.
For real muscle magic, steroids and maybe GH. Do not touch that stuff though, friends. It is bad juju.
Amusingly, the only other supplement the Greysteel doctor recommends is coffee. Without a cup at 4:30 in the morning, there is no way I could get my head into effort.
Here's the Greysteel doc on Creatine. Good basic energy physiology. The stuff works like a little battery.
The most intense forms of exercise - heavy weight sessions, sprinting (HIIT sessions of any form), or God forbid, distance running - benefit from 48-72 hours of "recovery." This is age-dependent because youthful bodies can handle almost anything.
People over 35 should not do weights on the same muscles two days in a row. If you do heavy weights (eg powerlifts) twice weekly, even then it's best to focus on different lifts each session. "Overtraining" can be a problem for obsessive exercisers.
Recovery means getting protein you need, good sleep (reparative growth hormone operates during sleep), and maybe making sure to roll out your muscles.
"Recovery" does not mean taking a day off from physical activity. How it is done depends on age and level of fitness. For example, fit 35-75 year-olds can use an hour of calisthenics with hand weights as a day of "active recovery" from weight-lifting, but unfit people might just benefit from a long-slow hour of non-cardio "cardio" as recovery. People have to listen to what their body is telling them, but not to their "lazy voice." It can be difficult to tell the difference.
We usually think of 45 minutes of calisthenics as active recovery for fit people under age 75 or so. Calisthenics sessions do not require more than 24 hours of recovery. Indeed, in my gym there is a cohort of around 40 men and women of all ages who do nothing more than 6-7 calisthenics 6 am classes each week. It clearly works well for their fitness, but lacks the bone and muscle strength components of strength training.
Recovery is one reason for the design of the Maggie's fitness program. Weights, Calis, Cardio, rinse and repeat and take one day for sports or hiking to enjoy your improving condition.
What about days off entirely from activity other than walking around? Such days hardly need to be planned, because life interferes regularly enough with our virtuous routines.
He makes a number of good points, and not just about strength training.
For one thing, he makes a useful distinction between exercise and training. Exercising is using or maintaining what you've got. Training is about steadily building ability, whether in strength, endurance, etc.
I like his idea of the Minimum Effective Dose, which is pretty much what my trainer guides me through - just enough needed to show slow but steady improvement.
Readers know that, for the strength-building and maintenance part of fitness, we prefer compound exercises to the isolated muscle exercises which many gym machines offer.
We all see people going from machine to machine in the gym and wonder why they bother because they could get far more bang for their buck (and time) with compound resistance movements. Sometimes the machine-users are body-builders and body-sculptors, but that ain't us.
Accessory strength exercises are fine if you have the time, but the compound ones are the priorities: Deadlift, Barbell Squat, Bench Press, Pullups (or pull downs), Rows and Dips, Overhead Press. Five or 6 sets of each of those once (or even twice weekly if young or very fit) will produce a good sturdy foundation for life whether male or female, young or old.
No compound exertion stresses as many muscle groups at once as the Deadlift. Here's the list of the muscles challenged in the traditional Deadlift:
Gluteus Maximus: Butt Quadriceps: Upper front legs Adductor Magnus: Inner thigh Soleus: Smaller part of your calf muscle Hamstrings: Upper back of legs Gastrocnemius: Bigger part of your calf muscle Erector Spinae: Lower back Trapezius, upper: Upper neck muscles Trapezius, middle: Middle neck muscles Levator Scapulae: The muscle from your jaw to your shoulder Rhomboids: Upper inner back muscles right below your neck Rectus Abdominis: Abs Obliques: Side abs Forearms: Grip
If you punch in gender and age, you can get some average Deadlift standards here. I am in the Intermediate strength range now, aiming higher. I can not move 300 lbs. two inches off the floor. Point is, do one's best and keep advancing by small increments.
As a guy who can not face breakfast other than coffee with the occasional cigar, I rely on a protein shake for after my 2 and sometimes 3 mornings/wk of powerlifting. I don't know anybody who can or wants to eat food after a morning workout.
People ought to get about 20 gms of protein after a heavy weights session, so a good breakfast for heavy lifters (but not body-builders - not talking about them) would be a couple of hard-boiled eggs unless they are trying hard to put on weight. I can't stand solid food in the morning, so I do a protein shake (from Amazon) after a lifting hour and after a very tough calisthenics class too when they include more weights.
I throw some frozen berries or a banana in the blender for a little carbs etc. I use the vegetable protein powder cuz I became lactose-intolerant. Funny, tho - I seem to tolerate ice cream just fine...but I do not need to lose any fat anyway since Mrs. BD says I am "cut". I suspect I am naturally pudgy like one of my grandpas, but that's not going to happen. My Dad was 6'4", lean, and hard as rebar, but I sadly didn't get that gene. Gotta work with what we get.
With my daily workout plan (6-7 hrs/wk), I am supposed to have two slices of chicken or meat mid-day, and an apple or some raw vegetables. I try to do that too, but any mid-day food makes me sleepy and lazy. Not good for being productive and useful.
Real athletes who workout 4+ hrs/day have entirely different nutritional demands. At Maggie's we just address us ordinary fitness folks. Sedentary people? They do not need much food at all but, curiously, they have greater appetites than active people. Probably recreational/boredom/ritual feeding. Something to do.
The Maggie's Fitness for Life program includes about a one-hour session of aerobic endurance exercise per week. For true cardiac exercise, we include plenty of HIIT cardio whether in calisthenics or sprints. That tends to be anaerobic.
Why do we include the endurance work at all? For ordinary functionality. We figure that if you can swim for an hour, or do the stair machine or high-inclined treadmill for an hour, well then a 6-hour hike, a day of skiing or basketball ought to be manageable. We strongly oppose road running.
So pure endurance work is only about 15% of our program although we assume most people also do fun recreational things like sports or hiking which do not count as exertion. Mark Rippetoe has other ideas. He is convinced that endurance exercise is a waste of time, and sometimes deleterious.
He is a smart guy, and might be right. Our Maggie's program attempts to strike a balance between strength-building (2 hours/wk of powerlifts and accessory weights), calisthenics (athleticism, balance, agility, HIIT, some strength), and "cardio" (an hour total of HIIT intervals with good rest intervals, and an hour of strenuous but aerobic endurance things). No need to do the hour of HIIT, for example, at the same session. In fact, not a good idea. Mix and match 1/2 hours of different categories but if doing weights, always do them first.
Most fitness trainers consider an hour of endurance work as a "recovery day," but I do not. For me, a half hour on the Stairmaster and a half hour doing high incline walks and jogs on the treadmill leaves me limp for a while.
Final word of 2019: Exercise for fat loss is nonsense. That is 99% nutritional. However, exercise does reduce appetite.
Monday is a weights day, so I did my best to kick my own ass with a mix of things. With trainer I would do barbell squats and bench. I want to inspire our readers...
4 sets of goblet squats (instead of barbell squats) 3 sets of 2-minute rower sprints 4 sets of overhand and underhand curls 4 sets of tricep push-downs 4 sets of seated rows 4 sets of cable pull-downs 4 sets of ab rollers 4 sets of 25 pushups (instead of bench press)
Yes, I do them in various supersets. I felt pretty beat-up at the end, ready for a ten-minute nap at 6:30 am before work. Pushing oneself to the max is the hard part for me, the mental part. I never feel like doing any of it until I get in the cage to fight the bear. Some of you know what I mean. The bear is one's own sloth. Sloth is a sin, by the way, so it's worth resisting like other disgusting temptations. I do try to turn my back on sinful temptations. Not a saint, tho.
The first few months of lower body weight training move along fairly quickly because the improvement is more neuromuscular than muscular.
After the neuromuscular system wakes up and is ready for action, progress slows down a lot. Physical architecture, frailties, and age are of course possible obstacles too.
Lack of progress, and plateaus, can be discouraging with large muscle group strength. I think my max 1-rep deadlift has only increased by about 20 lbs in the past year. 2020 will improve by 10 lbs, maybe, because I am fighting ageing. Small muscles improve more quickly (eg arms, but even backs improve fairly quickly - pullups)).
In my experience, the aspects of fitness that improve most dramatically and quickly in the Maggie's Fitness for Life program are endurance and energy. Precious things. Two days of weights/wk is not enough for serious strength-building, but the part of our program with 2 days of calis and the 2 days of HIIT cardio will get you fit for most recreational activities like sports, day-long hill hiking, etc.
Any age or gender. Give it a try. Include the barbells. A good Christmas/New Year present to oneself is a badass sexy and highly functional physique but, God knows, it takes discipline. Nothing pleasant about it except the slow progress.
I have a retired friend who has taken on learning Mandarin as his retirement project. I'd rather face a nasty, ugly barbell.
I was asked for a list of some good HIIT cardiac stressors. The theory, likely correct, is that these anaerobic or borderline-anaerobic stressors build heart muscle and heart vasculature such that physical endurance and energy are improved, along with the chance of surviving one's first or second heart attack.
We posted about conditioning and related topics last week. We talked about measuring progress. I'd say that if you can get through my Friday morning fitness class, and if your body weight is right for you, you are in decent condition. But when you begin, you plain suck and hate yourself because you are not in good condition.
We discussed
A reader noted yesterday that "exercise isn't training." 
The most intense forms of exercise - heavy weight sessions, sprinting (HIIT sessions of any form), or God forbid, distance running - benefit from 48-72 hours of "recovery." This is age-dependent because youthful bodies can handle almost anything.
As a guy who can not face breakfast other than coffee with the occasional cigar, I rely on a protein shake for after my 2 and sometimes 3 mornings/wk of powerlifting. I don't know anybody who can or wants to eat food after a morning workout.