Further thoughts on workout variation

I ran across an article on yahoo yesterday entitled "The 5 Biggest Exercise Myths" that gave me some further ideas about workout variation. I just want to make a sort of mental note about the substance of the article here. But before doing that, a bit of review on the need for variation in workouts as well as an update on how my current experiment with variation is going. Oh, and, incidentally, the article can be found here.

So, why variation in workouts? As I've observed previously, it's to offset monotony. Sort of a mental trick to counteract some of the trudgery that can go along with engaging in fitness regularly. The theory is, keep things changing in order to sustain interest and perhaps to help boost morale. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?

My own approach to varying things centered first and foremost on finding a few "canned routines." In layman's parlance this means finding a few exercise DVD's that suit my needs (upper-body strength training) that I can follow along with.

Well, we're in about our third year of working with those DVD's. So, though we've got some basic variety, I'm now looking into ways to vary things yet a bit more.

I recently decided that, for most of any given "phase" of our fitness cycle, I should be varying things by working out at a lower intensity. There should be a few sessions in each phase when I really go all out, but most sessions should be done at a lower intensity. I'm experimenting with that now.

And it's going ok. I can say it's refreshing to not have to feel that I'm pushing to my maximum all the time. It has its challenges but so far seems to be giving the desired effect.

One thing I will note here though is that I was initially thinking of doing high-intensity sessions toward the end of a given phase, while lately I've decided it's probably better to do the high intensity sessions at the beginning. But I may further change things based on what's said in the article I referenced at the beginning of this entry.

Before I address that issue though, I need to provide an overview of the article. Thus the following. It's a short piece that challenges some fitness "myths." What this means in the main is that it questions numerical standards such as the 10-repetition, 3-set formulas. Its not very technical and the alternate suggestions they make do seem appealing to me.

For example, the following excerpt:

MYTH #1: DO 8 TO 12 REPETITIONS
The claim: It's the
optimal repetition range for building muscle.

The origin: In 1954,
Ian MacQueen, M.D., an English surgeon and competitive bodybuilder, published a scientific paper in which he recommended a moderately high number of repetitions for muscle growth.

The truth: This approach places muscles under a medium amount of tension for a medium amount of time—it's basically The Neither Here Nor There Workout.

Here's the deal: Higher tension—a.k.a. heavier weights—induces the type of muscle growth in which the muscle fibers grow larger, leading to the best gains in strength; longer tension time, on the other hand, boosts muscle size by increasing the energy-producing structures around the fibers, improving muscular endurance. The classic prescription of 8 to 12 repetitions strikes a balance between the two. But by using that scheme all the time, you miss out on the greater tension levels that come with heavier weights and fewer repetitions, and the longer tension time achieved with lighter weights and higher repetitions.

The new standard:
Vary your repetition range—adjusting the weights accordingly—so that you stimulate every type of muscle growth. Try this method for a month, performing three full-body sessions a week: Do five repetitions per set in your first workout, 10 reps per set in your second workout, and 15 per set in your third workout.

That gets the variation gears working yet further in my mind. I don't intend to do 3 workouts per week, but it does seem as though I can adapt these directives in some way into my strength-training routines.

I could, for example, try to use heavier weights and fewer repetitions--and possibly more sets--during certain workouts. It doesn't seem, as I think of it now, that this is something I need to plan into my annual fitness schedule, but more like something that could be introduced more or less spontaneously. But I am still considering what are the possibilities for my purposes.

I should mention in closing that the article is tackling what could be considered body-building myths. In other words, they're saying that the received wisdom among body-builders is not necessarily going to build muscles as large or as quickly as has been assumed.

Which makes what's being said somewhat irrelevant to me, since I'm not trying to build bigger muscles. That said, the workout variation potential the article offers is definitely interesting. So I figure following some of the advice they give--despite the fact that I in no way, shape, or form, am interested in body-building-- certainly can't hurt me. It can help me introduce some further variation into my regimen and, though I don't vehemently opposing increasing the size of my muscles, I can't say that, if they did grow a bit further, I'd be terribly disappointed.

So, it's got me thinking. I'll be posting again on this topic once I decide how I can actually use the information I've found.

Review of scooby

In this entry I'll offer a review of a site I stumbled across when looking up fitness information about a year or two ago. The URL for that site is www.scoobysworkshop.com.

I was pleasantly surprised when I found this site--mainly because the author of the site and I share similar fitness philosophies. The author of that site goes by the nickname "scooby," by the way, thus the title of this entry.

Scooby demonstrates bench press

It was refreshing to find scooby's site because, unlike the vast majority of fitness sites on the internet, he's not trying to sell you anything. Rather, he advises against buying expensive equipment and/or instructional material, encouraging readers to buy just a few used weights. His workouts are designed to be performed in a home setting, so gym memberships are likewise not promoted by him.

What's more, scooby even provides a wealth of material, including instructional videos, all for free. I would definitely advise anyone interested in starting a fitness regime to check his site. Even rank beginners can find useful material there--he's not at all elitist in his approach.

And he's not an amateur either. By his own admission, he's been lifting weights for 30 years--another reason I felt a kinship with him; he's pretty close to my age. His fitness pursuits all these years seem to have focused mainly on bodybuilding.

Which will clue you in to the aspect of his site that I find not so helpful. As you will know if you've read other entries in this blog, I'm not really interested in developing bigger muscles--"bulking up" as they call it in some circles. For one thing, I don't think there's a whole lot bulking I could do at 51 years of age, even if I wanted to. But then there's the fact that I wasn't interested in developing a bodybuilder's physique even in my younger years when it would have been feasible.

For my taste, there's too much emphasis on scooby's site on things like gaining muscle mass and reducing body fat--both obsessions for those who go in for bodybuilding. That said, he does have a good deal of information that can be helpful to those such as myself who are not pursuing a bodybuilder's physique. It just takes some ferreting around to find it.

For example he's got some good nutrition information and even recipes. And his videos give good demonstrations of proper form for various exercises. Scooby also provides a review of P90X which happens to agree pretty substantially with my own review written a couple of years ago.

So, all in all, scooby's site is a net positive. Anyone interested in fitness is bound to benefit from having a look. So, go check him out!

On the fitness front, we decided to take a week off this week. We're moving from one apartment to another so we're getting exercise from that. And we just give ourselves a break from time to time during the year. This is one of those times.

Inaugural post: why this blog and who am I?

So, why am I writing this blog? The short answer is that I recently undertook an exercise regime and had trouble finding helpful information about exercise for people around my age (49, soon to be 50). I decided starting a blog might attract attention to what I'm doing and could help create an internet resource for others who, like me, are trying to keep fit and active at 50 and older.

Mind you I can't say I found nothing at all on the internet related to exercise for people in my age group. It's just that the information I did find was not very helpful. To tell you why I found it unhelpful means telling you a bit about myself. And telling you a bit about myself will, in turn, help you decide whether what I write about in this blog will be helpful to you. So, a bit about myself.

I've been fairly fit all my life. I enjoyed playing the more popular American sports (baseball, football, and basketball) throughout childhood and adolescence. I didn't play on school teams but loved to play sandlot or pick up games with friends and peers. At the age of 19 I took up bicycle racing and cross-country bicycle touring, which has remained an avid interest of mine since. I really still enjoy that kind of good aerobic workout.

Cycling, in conjunction with the manual labor employment (construction) I had, ensured that I kept fairly fit throughout my twenties and into my thirties. I began some serious academic pursuits in my thirties, which made me a bit less active. The lessened activity may, in turn, have contributed to high blood pressure readings I've gotten over the past 2 - 3 years. It was partly as a response to those readings that I decided several months ago to institute and maintain a more disciplined exercise regime-which, in its turn, is also what led me to create this blog.

So, the long and short of this review of my history is to say that I have never been terribly unfit in my life. I could definitely, at any given point in my life, have done, say, 10 push-ups, walked 5 miles, or cycled 20 miles. I was at no point so out of shape that I couldn't have done these sorts of modest fitness feats. In fact, my weight and physique have remained pretty much the same since I was in my early 20's, and I can still wear all the clothes that fit me when I was 23 years old.*

Don't get me wrong . . . I wasn't totally happy with the effects I saw in myself recently that resulted from a combination of aging and decreased physical activity. No, I was coming to the point about a year ago where I didn't like some of what I would see in the mirror. Some rudimentary "love handles" were forming and overall I seemed to be getting more soft than I had ever been in my life. That, in combination with the health issue I mentioned helped motivate me to get more serious about exercise.

So, why am I rehashing all this? I'm telling you all this because I want to make the point that, although I had gotten a bit soft as compared to other points in my life, it was fairly easy for me to undertake a comparatively advanced exercise regime because I was not too far from being in decent physical condition. It may be, then, that some of the things I will write about exercising will not be very applicable to you, if you're in worse condition than I was to begin with. I certainly sympathize with and support your attempts at fitness if you're quite a bit behind me in your basic level of fitness. But this blog is going to be geared more toward those around my age who are already in fairly good condition. So, don't be disappointed if you don't find much here in the way of really rudimentary fitness discussion.

Which brings me to a point about the unhelpful information I found on the internet. I would classify what my searches turned up under two broad headings: 1) superficial "feel good" articles about how wonderful it is that people 50 and older are pursuing fitness these days; and 2) ads oriented toward people who have become really out of shape and that make unrealistic promises that, by following this diet and that exercise regime one will soon be as toned and svelte as, say, Michael Phelps. I might include even a third, unhelpful category here that I ran across because I was searching for information on strength and weight training: 3) body-building sites and forums.

Why was this information unhelpful? The first was unhelpful because it was devoid of any practical advice. These sorts of articles simply indulge in a kind of social gloating, their aim apparently being to make us feel that our culture/generation/era is superior to any that have gone before. What good does that do someone seeking advice on developing and maintaining a fitness regime at 50 and beyond? None, I submit.

The second type was unhelpful because it didn't apply to me. I wasn't fat by any stretch of the imagination, and even at my most unfit stage I think I always held the conviction that a month or two of more serious exercise would see me in a shape not too far from my condition in my 20's. The exercise regime I've followed for the last few months has, I think, proven out that conviction (we began our current regime in April of this year).

This is to say that those ads bank on unrealistic expectations, and I didn't have unrealistic expectations. You know how they show those before and after pictures when trying to promote exercise programs and diets? I looked a lot closer to the after pictures than the before pictures they showed, even at my most unfit stage. So this information was kind of a red herring.

The body-building information was also not terribly helpful. What I was hoping to find was advice on how hard one can expect to push oneself when beginning some weight training anew at my age. But what you mostly find on those sites is advice on building up your abs or triceps or something. I have no intention of entering competitive body-building--which would be delusional at my age in any case. And on top of that I don't find the physiques of body-builders attractive. I recall, even in my younger years when I did some weight training and was beginning to look more muscular than I wanted, switching from weights to calisthenics so as to not bulk up any further. Now, is that the sort of approach you'll find on body-building sites and forums? The short answer: no.

What I wanted to do was a fair amount of aerobics (cycling) and a bit of weight training and/or calisthenics. I did want to build up a little more muscle since, according to my reading having extra muscle mass helps your body to burn fat (remember those nascent love handles I mentioned?). But I think I would do the same thing I did in my younger years with regard to weight training, i.e., to switch to calisthenics if I started to gain too much muscle mass from the weights.

So, I've had to largely blaze my own trail. I've gotten some information from the internet and I intend to share much of that through this blog. I also hope that this blog will attract the attention of some professional trainers who might offer their advice or point me to internet resources I've overlooked. It may also attract the attention of some medical personnel, who can offer similar input. Finally, it can attract the attention of others who, like myself, are sort of going it on their own and who have advice to offer based on their experience.

In any case, it's time to conclude this inaugural blog posting. The raison d'etre and vision have been laid out and the rest can be developed with the passage of time. Thank you for reading and for offering your input.

NOTE: This blog was inaugurated several months (about 8 months, to be precise) after we started our current exercise regimen.
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* The 1984 photo seen in this blog's title was taken during this period and at the height of the bicycle racing season (I'm standing at the starting line of a race in that photo). I had undoubtedly put in a few hundred training miles by that point, as well as having several races under my belt, so my weight was likely a little lower than usual--probably down around 195 or slightly less--in the photo.