Speaking of watches

Last weekend I got in a pretty good 2 mile run, but could only estimate the time. Today I managed to run 4 miles, and the middle 3 under 30 minutes, according to my old analog watch. The real test will be tomorrow morning. If I can walk, I’ll buy a new battery for my fancy watch, and plan to get in a 5k before December.

Six Minutes a Week?

Don’t take health advice from random guys on the internet.

From Can You Get Fit in Six Minutes a Week?, with [editorial comment]:

A few years ago, researchers [somewhere] put rats through a series of swim tests with surprising results. [Turns out wind sprints are brutal. Who knew?] The potency of interval training is nothing new. [Ah. Apparently everyone knew.] Many athletes have been straining through interval sessions once or twice a week along with their regular workout for years. [Indeed. Hang on to that grant writer.] Could it be that most of us are spending more time than we need to trying to get fit? [Yes and no. A man who likes to run will come up with a fitness program that requires 30 miles a week. Another who likes to lift weights will be in the gym 90 minutes a day. A third, who doesn't really like to exercise, probably won't.]

“There was a time when the scientific literature suggested that the only way to achieve endurance was through endurance-type activities,” such as long runs or bike rides or, perhaps, six-hour swims, [says some guy. Hey, New York Times, it's html! Instead of distracting me with an in-line biography, use a link.] But ongoing research [...somewhere. Again, a link, or maybe a footnote] is turning that idea on its head. [Why did those old studies give a misleading answer? Do these new studies have the same problem?]

In other words, six minutes or so a week of hard exercise (plus the time spent warming up, cooling down, [vomiting,] and resting between the bouts of intense work) had proven to be as good as multiple hours of working out for achieving fitness. The short, intense workouts aided in weight loss, too. [Maybe it's the vomiting.]

There’s a catch, though. Those six minutes, if they’re to be effective, must hurt. [Really. We aren't kidding. Bob thought he was going to die.]

Could a single, two- to three-minute bout of intense exercise confer the same endurance and health benefits as those six minutes of multiple intervals? [Maybe. Squat down, grip the bar, and we'll find out.]

“I’m 41, with two young children,” [Then you should be getting plenty of exercise.] “I don’t have time to go out and exercise for hours.” [Everyone's busy (well, 90% of us) Everyone gets 24 hours a day. Time spent exercising is time not spent doing something else. Suck it up.]

Seriously, you have to be in good health, start slow, learn proper technique, and build a base before you go sprinting up hill, or doing heavy deadlifts. Sudden hard interval training is like going out to shovel snow. You’ll be lucky if you just hurt your back. Andrew Heffernan, who (unlike me) really knows something about fitness, discusses this with less snark and more thought in Health News: Interval Training, Plus The Benefits of Fat

Exercise

There are two ways to write about exercise. You can say what you did, or what you will do. For example:

Prospective

Blogging is going to be light, ’cause I’m going to be hitting it hard for the next 16 weeks. Mornings will be for cardio intervals: wind sprints MWF, and hard laps in the pool TThSat. Afternoons, it will be weights – Monday and Thursday I’ll do upper body, Tuesday and Friday, lower body. Wednesday and Saturday I’ll relax with some long slow distance on the bike. That and my eating plan – fruits and veggies, lean meat, a piece of whole grain toast or a bowl of plain oatmeal once a day – should bring my cholesterol under 150 and my body fat to basically zero.

Retrospective

My last deliberate extended rest period was a success. I didn’t gain much more weight than I expected, and I re-read all the Harry Potter books. The last couple were pretty heavy. Tomorrow, my recipe for stuffed spaghetti pizza.

I haven’t decided exactly what program to follow this summer. I’ll post an update later, by August for sure.

They’re on to me

Speaking in public has always been easy for me, partly because my standards are so low; partly because of a lifelong commitment to hard cardio workouts. But now some changes may be necessary.

“There is one style that always stands out, no matter what. I like to call it the “Scatter-Drone.” That is the presentation that has 50 bullet points scattered on every slide with a long-winded drone of a voice wavering in the air saying something, but nobody really knows what because catatonia has already taken over.” — Doing a 15 Minute Presentation in 10 Easy Steps

That’s just how I do it, except without the PowerPoint.

See, if the audience says “that was boring,” I can dismiss it as uninformed opinion. If they knew anything about the subject, they’d be giving the talk. But now that they have a word for it – “another one of his scatter-drones” – I’ll have to shape up.

Impressive

Jennifer Lopez completed the Nautica Malibu Triathlon Sunday. That’s a half-mile swim, immediately followed by an 18 mile bike ride and a 4-mile run.

The Healthy-User Effect

Will taking fish oil supplements improve your health and help you live longer? Sure, this year anyway. But if fish oil would help you, eating blueberries would help you just as much. Following any reasonable health advice will have the same effect as following any other reasonable health advice. Not many people can eat potato chips and feel good about it. Eating blueberries is reasonable, and you can see how it would be healthy.

The healthy-user bias (h/t) is the greatest thing since the placebo effect, at least if you are a rule-following kind of guy. If you ignore advice and break all the rules, the studies suggest you should knock it off, eat what the FDA recommends, and take your fish oil every day.

If you go to the doctor and he tells you to take half an aspirin every day, and then you do what he says, you will statistically live longer and be healthier than someone whose doctor told him the same thing, but who did not take the aspirin. But here is the surprise: this difference in health also holds if the doctor advises blueberries instead of aspirin. It is following the advice that does it. The advice itself does not matter, unless it is really bad advice.

Of course this is based on epidemiological studies, which other studies show mean nothing at all. Next year the studies might tell us that people who ignore advice live longer. But even if that happens, you can still eat blueberries – Think about it.

Lunges are the hot new exercise

Everyone is doing lunges. Lunges are the hot new exercise. When I was a boy, I’m pretty sure my parents told me more that once, “Stop lunging around like that.” Now to stay ahead of the curve, I’m going to have to start doing lunges with kettle bells, or hold a Swiss ball over my head while doing lunges.

Preparing to study James, it occurred to me that faith is like an exercise program, in that you aren’t following it if you don’t actually lift the weights.

Then it occurred to me, fortunately before the class on James, that I may be spending too much time at the gym. We’ll read the chapter; I’ll emphasize Abraham and Rahab, and let the class come up with their own examples. I bet no one says good works are like squats.

Find something you like and do it

Some fitness links and resources

BBC Healthy living – Fitness is a good comprehensive site, with a little about every important topic.

Strength

Stumptuous.com is an excellent site about strength. It is aimed at women training with weights, but has useful information for humans generally. I followed one of the workout plans for a couple of years with good results. The approach is accessible to absolute beginners, with advice and example programs. There is also good stuff here about the Olympic lifts, some of which I have integrated into my own program.

The New Rules of Lifting, by Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove seems pretty sound. The authors have sensible but non-obvious suggestions for exercise based on some basic moves. It has the obligatory material for absolute beginners, but it is better for someone who has been exercising regularly for a couple of years. If you have hit a plateau, or have moved from outside endurance exercise to indoor strength workouts, this is something to read. The author has a summary online, “The Only Six Exercises You’ll Ever Need“

…and flexibility

ExRx has detailed instructions with animated pictures for an enormous variety of exercises and stretches, including these shoulder stretches that I mentioned before.

Endurance

My long-time favorite indoor exercise machine is the rower. Many gyms have this or something similar on which you can do a great whole-body workout. This does seem to be something people love or hate. If you try it out, start slowly and be careful to use good technique – there are pictures. An excellent training guide for the rower is available. Its plans can be applied to other rowers, or even adapted to other machines. The company that makes the Concept 2 Ergometer has a good informative site.

Fitness Cross-training by John Yacenda is an older book, but still a good simple guide for general exercise. A range of plans are included, both indoor and outdoor, easy and hard. It is probably better for beginners than advanced users. I use this for my cycling and swimming workouts when I am in that mode.

Leaving the gym, Outside magazine’s Bodywork has had great stuff in the past, with detailed programs incorporating the latest cutting-edge research. They do not neglect strength, but are oriented more toward endurance athletes. Of course “cutting edge” can become “bleeding edge.” Don’t go overboard on the latest new thing. “Outside Magazine” seems aimed at the under-forty demographic.

Runners World, obviously more specialized, continues to be a great resource, especially good for beginners.

Weight watchers

Researchers say the average woman spends 31 years on a diet. You won’t see a man fuss about his weight to that extent. The average man only spends 28 years on a diet. Don’t diet; it’s pointless. Exercise every day, wear clothes that fit, and be content with what you have. h/t

Shoulder stretches

I have been working on an exercise called the hang clean with only limited success. The problem seems to be my elbow position. My technique could be used as a model for “Elbows too low.” If my elbows are up, my hands are behind my neck. If my hands are where they have to be, my elbows are down. I cannot get my upper arms horizontal, and cannot imagine ever doing so. My joints seem not to work like that, or the ratio of the lengths of my upper and lower arms are way out on one end of the bell curve. Since I have always been able to buy my clothes off the rack, I think it is more likely that my technique is totally wrong, or my shoulders aren’t flexible in the way that they should be. Nobody at the local YMCA seems to do this exercise, so I don’t really know who to ask about it.

There is a good chance my technique is wrong, or I am missing some key point. For some time I dead-lifted with a casual overhand grip. At a certain point the limitation was how much weight I could hold on to. Then I learned that I should have been using the hook grip, and was soon able to lift significantly more.

To address my problem with elbow position I looked for some stretches. They will give me something to do until I figure out what I am doing wrong, and I figure I should stretch more anyway. Whether these do anything or not, they feel really good. They are the Broom Stick Infraspinatus Stretch and the Broom Stick Subscapularis Stretch. I think I will try to construct a systematic stretching routine around these. If they don’t help, maybe I’ll have to start swinging Indian clubs.

As with all stretches, you can probably hurt yourself if you are not careful. Don’t take health advice from some random guy on the internet who did poorly in ninth grade biology.