Evolving Fitness

My friend Bob Gorinski ("Mental Reps"- see my links) posted a great blog on weight-training not too long ago. Bob blogs on life, faith, family and sometimes lifting. He is a SICK athlete,a thoughtful Christian and a great dad. He's also a great PT and he blogged about the toll that lifting takes even as he hit an incredible personal best in the squat. Anyone considering PX90 or whatever it is, should see his review of that program.

Yes, there is a masochist element to most of us who like exercising whether we are runners or lifters or whatever... But, I think there are ways to at least maximize our pain to payoff ratio, and one major way to do that is to maximize time.

Once upon a time, I would work out for an hour or more and I know lots of runners and others who exercise for long stretches even though they don't enjoy it because they think they have to in order to reach their goals. See Bob's "Gospel of Not Running" post too. Here's how it went for me...


When I worked out with my dad in the basement we did a few sets of a few exercises (mostly upper-body) with repetitions like this - 12, 10, 7, 5. Not a bad way to go. When these sets got easier, we added weight.


Somewhere along the way I got Bill Pearl's Getting Stronger which is a great book in its own right with workouts for beginners and up, bodybuilders and every imaginable sport.


The problem with the book is mostly that Pearl is a bodybuilder. He thinks in terms of individual muscles and individual exercises to target those muscles. In the end then, the training is less functional and you end up doing a LOT of different exercises in a workout.


I used to follow programs like this and I would do exercises aimed at "isolating" the muscles I wanted to work. When you think this way, you have to do a LOT of exercises. That takes a LOT of time. You also end up treating all muscles equally. You spend just as much time on your biceps, which are a very small proportion of your body, as you do on your hamstrings, which are much larger.


I enjoyed these workouts and made some progress, but they just took too long!
Then I entered grad school and had a 2-3 year hiatus from working out. When I decided I needed to get back into it, I had no equipment and I had no intention of joining a gym.
SO, I got into bodyweight exercises, push-ups, pull-ups, bodyweight squats and crazy variations of all three. It was really fun and, coming back from a "keyboard-only" workout regimen, I made a lot of progress. I still like the simplicity of bodyweight workouts. A person can get incredibly fit without ever picking up a "weight." One great resource for this kind of thing is this primitively published manual by Ross Enamait (see Rosstraining link).

My only real criticism of this book is that Enamait uses a LOT of equipment in some of his workouts, even if the equipment isn't weights. But its still a great book, with a ton of great information as well as exercise ideas to get your creative juices flowing. You really could be "Never Gymless" although I don't know how anybody could go without a good pull-up bar or branch or fire escape or something.


Still, there is something about lifting heavy stuff. It is hard to chart your progress on raw strength doing bodyweight exercises. I mean, its awesome when someone can do 100 pushups, but it takes a lot of determination to decide you're going to do 1 arm push-ups and I never got there. Maybe someday. Anyway, I cruised craigslist, found a weight-set I wanted and made a low-ball offer. $90 got me 2 Olympic bars, a bench/squat rack set-up and about 380lbs of plates. I also reclaimed some weights I bought in high school that my dad wasn't using (he's still using a LOT) and he threw in a couple dumbells. It was time to hit the iron again...
More on that in a future post.

Where it began and why I keep doing it.

I remember 5th or 6th grade gym class. I guess everybody does. Unless you’ve managed to block it out. What I remember is standing at the front of a line of other kids in my class as they witnessed my inability to perform a pull-up for the Presidential fitness test. The gym teacher was relatively cool. I think I remember him saying, “Don’t worry about it Matt.” Sure.
I vowed that was not going to happen again. Somehow or other I talked to my dad about it and he took me out to the barn, showed me a bar that I could use to work on my pull-ups. It was not a pull-up bar, it was some sort of support bar in the barn. Very ROCKY.
A few times a week I went out there. How do you work on an exercise you can’t even do ONE of? You just pull as hard as you can. I decided to pull as hard as I could ten times, rest, and do this again.
The next year I think I did 7 or 8 pull-ups (a few months ago I did 20 to impress my nephew). It felt great.
Around the same time (6th grade I think, not a few months ago), my dad initiated me into the ritual of weightlifting and I am so glad he did. We used to workout in the basement before dinner and talk. I don’t know what we talked about, but it was a good thing.
My dad used to say that he worked out 11 months a year for the one month we had to put hay in the barn. This annual event involved a few weekends of transporting several thousand 75-80lb. hay bales from a field a couple miles away and stacking them 50 feet high in our second floor + hay loft. We don’t live on the farm anymore but now in his mid-late 60s, he still works out. He can probably still benchpress more than me. So here are a few things that I have picked up from lifting.

1. I like feeling physically capable even if all my life requires of me is sitting, walking and minute finger movements on a keyboard. I think that’s what my dad meant. “Putting hay in the barn” means being capable to do whatever life might require, even if it doesn’t require it very often. Actually, raising 2 boys requires a lot more. My dad knows this as well. My brother and I used to ask him to launch us through the air, in the pool, onto the bed, etc. A friend of mine watching me do a particular exercise asked, “Why do you DO that? Are your kids always saying, ‘Throw me higher dad!’?” Actually yes, just this weekend Zephan asked me to throw him “up in the gy (sky)” and “ADIN! (again)” and “ADIN!” and “ADIN!” 
2. Vanity. This is probably a bigger reason to lift than I would normally admit. Pretty self-explanatory, but my wife appreciates the way I look too. It’s probably also the best short answer to "why do you workout?" but when I needed a short answer recently I just said, “I started lifting weights with my dad in the basement when I was 12 or 13 and I just haven’t stopped.” 
3. Lifting teaches some life lessons. A. We have limitations. When you have a weight, you find your limitations quickly, even on my best day. Much more quickly than running unless you’re a sprinter. It’s a good reminder. B. Progress is possible. It might even be inevitable. If you lift heavy weights, eat decently and sleep decently, you will get stronger. As with the rest of life, making certain decisions DOES yield certain results. I may not ever be the strongest, or the best at anything else but it is always possible to improve. Which brings me to C. You have to commit. Sometimes, when I miss a lift, I know it’s not because I couldn’t do it. It’s because I didn’t put everything into it. Likewise, if lifting (or anything else) is not a priority of any kind I will NOT make progress or improve. The problem is applying this truth to other areas where improvement is less measurable. Which brings me to…
4. It’s satisfying. I’m not much into math or measurements or goal setting but when it comes to working out, I love it.   Lifting a weight a couple more times than you did last time you worked out, or lifting a few more pounds than last time feels great. It’s like crossing things off your to-do list. Even when many other things are NOT going right, it’s nice to be able to write down some little improvement in my workout chart.

As Paul would say, “Physical training is of some value, but godliness has value in all things.” 

A word from the basement

Since I'm getting more requests for workout advice, I've created this blog to help build my side-business - Your Fitness Solutions. I want to offer short-term consultations and personal training for men, couples and families. You can take this stuff to the gym, but you don't NEED the gym.

My story, other links and tips will be forthcoming.