What I’ve Learned So Far

. . . to use this photo in a post:

I mean, besides the obvious reason of my automotive lust.

Enable me, people.

Mostly I talk here about whatever’s on my mind, but maybe you have ideas that could give me more direction.

Could be general (”Talk more about lifting weights”), could be specific (”What did you think of Book X?”), or whatever.

Lay it on me, eh?

And WHY?

Because I have a preview copy of Chris Barton’s next book . . .

. . . Shark vs. Train on my desk — and you don’t.

;)

P.S. It’s awesome!

Item: I woke up around 4 a.m. because of a howling rainstorm outside my window, so I’m extra-logy on this Monday.

Item: Kick Butt Coffee is across the street from my office. Their Americano has the cure — or at least an adequate palliative — for what ails me.

Item: The weather outside is still nasty, so the trip across the street holds little appeal.
Thus does life vex me on this gray Monday morning.

(Fear not: I’m aware that my problems are small potatoes in life’s grand scheme. But the lack of caffeine is getting to me . . . )

But enough of my problems — how’s by you?

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that there were more than 1,600 e-mails lurking in my Gmail inbox — most of them unread.

After using many kinds of arcane Inbox-Fu, there are now . . . 11 messages.

Since I’ve taken vicious whacks at my work e-mail, too, there are now less than 80 messages total in all of my inboxes. This is a psychological relief, but it’s also a pragmatic advantage since I’ve more or less stopped using project folders in e-mail. The messages that remain represent most of the live obligations I have underway.

Now to cut that pile down even smaller . . .
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(Photo by Rob Brewer, used under a CC-Share Alike license.)

This is something you’ll hear from time to time, especially from women, in response to the idea of lifting heavier weights.

But here’s the deal: most people who lift weights won’t EVER get big and muscular like the bodybuilders in the picture. Not ever.

Here’s who gets big from weightlifting:

–Men under 25 who work out diligently with heavy weights. (Because of a high natural level of testosterone production.)

–Men and women with uncommon, highly favorable genetics who work out diligently with heavy weights.

–People who take performance-enhancing substances (steroids, growth hormone, etc.) while working out diligently with heavy weights.

–A few others who explicitly pursue a muscular physique through a years-long process of heavy weightlifting AND tailored diet AND careful recovery AND healthy supplementation (e.g. with protein powder).

Many champion bodybuilders fit into all of these categories. Most folks you see at the gym fit into one or none.

The moral of the story: you’re very unlikely to get more muscular than you want to be by accident, and it’s IMPOSSIBLE that it would happen so quickly as to sneak up on you.

One more personal opinion: many people — men and women — looking to lose weight and get fit would look fantastic with ten extra pounds of muscle on them, not because they’d look like Bill Grant flexing in the picture (no risk of that), but because they’d fit better in their clothes, move better, and burn more fat 24/7 with a slightly beefier physique.

Don’t you think?

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(Photo via David van der Mark, used under a CC-Share Alike license.)

Yesterday’s schoolyard whipping of the Tennessee Titans by the New England Patriots got me thinking about how we often use statistics as blunt instruments. Kerry Collins, the Tennessee QB, certainly didn’t have a great day, and he suffered all the worse since his opposite number, Tom Brady of the Patriots, threw for six touchdowns and more than 300 yards in a little over two quarters of work.

New England won the snowy game in a landslide, 59 - 0, and Collins finished with terrible passing numbers — roughly 1 for 700,000. It was bad all the way around, and the Titans look like a franchise in disarray.

But Collins wasn’t quite THAT bad. More to the point, 4 of his first 5 passes hit his receivers in the hands. Sure, the serious NFL geeks will know that. But the simple passing line will show those passes as incompletions, not drops, which is what they were.

The same thing happens in baseball, when a pitcher handles his own business but still earns an “L” on his record because an error by a fielder allows in the winning runs. Again, baseball geeks will know this, but that fine-grained knowledge gets lost in the oversimplified stat line of the box score.

What’s my point? This small one, first: it pays to dig a little deeper, not just with sports stats but in general. Figure out what the evidence actually says.

But then this bigger point: when you DO have limited evidence — Kerry Collins’s passing line or a pitcher’s won-lost record or whatever — acknowledge that it IS a blunt instrument . . . and refrain from bludgeoning the truth with it.

. . . to see if I can blog from my phone.

Apparently, I can.

Run & hide.

One KEY principle I left out of yesterday’s post — maybe because it’s so foundational that I regard it as a fish would regard water:

• Do compound exercises, i.e. movements that incorporate multiple joints and muscle groups, before and in preference to simple exercises, which focus around one joint or muscle group.

Examples of compound movements:

1. Pullup (latissimus, other back muscles, and biceps)
2. Bench press (pectorals, triceps, and deltoids)
3. Squat (thighs, hips, and trunk)
4. Deadlift (thighs, hips, trunk, trapezius, biceps, forearms)

Corresponding examples of simple movements:

1. Curl (biceps)
2. Cable flyes (pectorals)
3. Leg extensions (quadriceps)
4. Shoulder shrugs (trapezius)

Why should you do compound movements before simple ones? Here are a few reasons:

• They make more parts of you stronger, improving overall fitness.
• Working the bigger muscle groups, as you typically do during compound movements, provokes your body to produce more growth hormones. Once those bigger muscles grow, they do more to improve your overall metabolism, since higher muscle mass improves your body’s ability to burn calories 24/7.
• If you exhaust the smaller muscles first during a workout — for example by doing lots of curls before pullups — you won’t be able to lift as much as you should with the bigger muscles later in the workout.

It’s a truism among smart bodybuilders that if you want to increase the diameter of your arms, you’d better put in plenty of work on your legs, since that’s where the biggest, most growth-driving muscles are. In other words, you won’t get there just by doing endless curls.

To sum up: if you could only do one resistance exercise for the rest of your life, you’d be best served to choose a compound movement that incorporates the most muscle groups. (Squats, deadlifts, and Turkish get-ups are prime candidates.) And even if you can fit in many different exercises during a week of working out, you’re still best-served to make big compound movements the foundation for all of your other work.

(If you haven’t seen it already, please see the disclaimer in my previous post. I’m not a certified trainer, just an enthusiastic amateur.)

~

(Awesome deadlift photo by Andy Ward, a.k.a. @averylongwalk, used under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license.)

Several folks have asked me to outline my workout routine, so I thought I’d spell out the basics here. I’ll be happy to elaborate on specific parts of it in later posts if the comments indicate that people have more appetite for details.

A disclaimer up front: I’m not certified as a personal trainer and I have no formal experience in kinesiology, exercise physiology, or nutrition. My program is tailored to my interests and goals, and I pursue it understanding that there’s always a risk, no matter how careful you are, when you undertake vigorous exercise. YOU should understand that, too. So, don’t take my advice as professional advice, and don’t start a workout program before you consult (a) your doctor to make sure your health will sustain the type of exercise you’re contemplating, and (b) a certified trainer who can teach you what you need to know to work out effectively and safely.

Glad we got that out of the way — now for the fun part!

Whether you’re training to compete in the Ironman, to deadlift 1,000 pounds, or to look great in your bikini, you should understand that every good fitness regime rests on three pillars. The obvious one is exercise; the only-slightly-less-obvious-but-very-often-avoided one is nutrition; and the routinely-ignored one is rest.

Let me put this another way: if you take twins with identical levels of fitness and put them both through a tough training regimen, the one who takes better care of nutrition and rest/recovery will inevitably get fitter, faster.

Here’s what I’m doing on each of these three fronts:

Exercise — Lots of weightlifting, plenty of stretching, moderate cardio. Some guiding principles:

• Lifting weights, aiming for less than 100 repetitions per week per body part . . . but the repetitions need to be hard. I’m trying to make strength gains every single time I set foot in the gym. (Both of these principles are taken from trainer Jason Ferruggia.)
• As a rule of thumb, if you can hold up your end of a conversation while you’re doing a set, you’re not doing it nearly hard enough.
• Most sets are performed in the range of 6 to 8 repetitions to foster muscle hypertrophy (growth).
• Typically about two minutes of rest between sets.
• I switch up my “splits” between body parts (i.e. which part gets worked which day), but my current favorite is a five-day split: (1) legs, (2) back, (3) chest + shoulders*, (4) core + calves, (5) arms.
• Cardio gets worked in, for now, more or less randomly, though I never do high-intensity cardio on the same day as a leg workout.
• For cardio, I do either 45 minutes of light-intensity walking in my neighborhood, or else 15 minutes of high-intensity work on the elliptical stepper.
• My new best friend is a big foam roller for loosening my muscles before workouts and before bedtime.

Nutrition:

• Tons of water every day — more than a gallon, if I can stand it. (Easy trick: keep a full gallon jug of water on your desk at work.)
• Lots of complex carbohydrates in the first two-thirds of the day; minimal simple carbs, clustered before and after workouts.
• Plenty of fresh vegetables, minimal fried or creamy foods.
• Lots and LOTS of protein from lean sources (e.g. tuna) and from protein shakes and bars. (I keep a big jug of whey protein in my desk at work, plus more at home.)
• Plenty of good fats (olive oil), minimal saturated fat.
• I don’t count calories all the time, but I’m aiming to ingest about 17 kCal per pound of bodyweight per day.

Recovery — Essentials:

• Aiming for a full eight hours of sleep per night — and more than that on the weekends.
• Five days between body parts lets me lift super-hard without worrying about overtraining.

So far, so good — in the past couple of months, I’ve put on six to eight pounds of muscle.

That’s what I’m doing. Questions? What do you think?

[ * ADDENDUM: Thanks to Deb Roby for pointing out that I had left out mention of shoulders.]