The J-660B-UB exercise regime

In this entry I want to extol the virtues of the J-660B-UB exercise regime. As you may be guessing, the guy who came up with that title name didn't exactly have a flair for merchandising gimmicks. And I can personally vouch for that fact, given that I know him very well: in fact, that guy is me.

Ok, so this entry is going to be a bit facetious. But it will be, after all, in the interest of making valid points about fitness regimes.

So, what is J-660B-UB? Since the title is not nearly as catchy as something like "P90X," we can expect it's not going to be nearly as sexy. And, well, it isn't. But it may still be something worthwhile.

No, J-660B-UB is my own fitness regime. I came up with the name partly as a way to take a jab at what I see as faults in the ways fitness is marketed and consumed, and partly as a realization about my own fitness endeavors to date.

The "J" in J-660B-UB is, of course, the first letter of my first name--indicating my role in formulating the plan. The 660 is the approximate number of days since I started my current fitness pursuits. And the "B-UB" part stands for the main components or foci of my regimen: bicycling and upper body strength training.

I have to use the phrase upper body rather than naming a device or program--as in the case of the "B" part of the moniker (for bicycle)--because I've been pretty eclectic so far in choosing what sorts of things I do for upper-body strength training. Readers of this blog will know that I've used calisthenics, the Soloflex, and various parts of some Tony Horton routines. In the future I will try yet other things--kettlebells perhaps being next.

And I feel quite justified in, and satisfied with, taking that eclectic approach. In fact, I would encourage anyone reading this blog to consider taking a similar approach. Granted, I may have something of an advantage when it comes to more or less formulating my own fitness regime--being in good shape and having done a fair amount of athletics at various points in my life--but I still think many who may not have had as much experience as I have could nonetheless do what I've done and do it just as effectively.

But let's get back to the exercise regime I'm promoting here. As I mentioned, I somewhat facetiously pose it in opposition to plans like P90X. Why? Because it seems to me the 90-day-plan approach has some serious flaws.

One of those flaws is that it's so short: do you really want an exercise regime that encompasses only a 90-day period? I'm thinking to myself, "no way. I want a 90 month plan, or maybe a 90 quarter plan" (about a 7.5 or 22 year cycle, respectively). Yeah, that's right. I want a fitness regime that will last, if not the rest of my life, at least a good portion of it.

The 90-day plan can, I think, have some appropriate applications. For example, it can motivate someone who's not too badly out of shape to get back in shape. Nothing wrong with that . . . that is, until the 90 days are up. What happens then?

Well, various things. I'll bet a lot of people who follow that cycle just end their fitness pursuits after the 90 days. They've proved to themselves they can do it. They've paraded around their results in a tank-top or swimming suit, gotten their egos stroked, and now they're going back to their old ways. Judging from the many moribund P90X blogs I've run across, this pattern may be occurring in a significant percentage of cases. In other words, as I've said before, the 90-day cycle and the marketing of it represents a sort of fast-food approach to fitness.

But don't think the marketing minds behind that hype aren't wise to the additional sales opportunities inherent in the 90-day approach. No, not at all. They understood before even shooting their first infomercial that there would be a follow-up to the 90-day saga.

Thus, we get things like P90X plus, or the latest challenge for P90X graduates--Insanity. So the 90-day approach is not just a quick-fix pitch for fitness: it's a prequel to future marketing possibilities that will keep the cash flowing into the corporate coffers of fitness empires.

But honestly speaking, how many 90-day segments is the remainder of your life going to occupy? None of us know the answer to that for sure. But most of us hold out hope that it's going to be more quarters than can be easily calculated. I've dared above to hope that 90 90-day segments remain in my life, and that I'll be able to pursue fitness during each of them.

Now, I know that fitness marketers would be happy, for the right price, to sell me a new regimen for each of the remaining 90-day segments of my life. But I hope it's become apparent by now that, no thanks, I don't think I need them to do that. No. I might need to rely on their products at the outset as I learn more about fitness, but there's going to come a point--and it's likely to be sooner than later for some of us--where we're ready to go it on our own.

That's the point at which we've made a life-long commitment to fitness, and at which we have developed some sensibility about what it's going to take to sustain our interest in continuing to do it over the long haul.

And that's the point I'm trying to get to now. So far I've kept it going for close to 2 years. Now I'm looking toward the 90-month and 90-quarter goals. I guess I'll have to come up with names for them when I reach those milestones. But for now I've been quite satisfied with J-660B-UB.