Eureka, I found it!

I should acknowledge up front that the discovery I'll announce in this entry is likely to be earth-shattering mainly only to yours truly. It is something I had been searching for for quite some time, but had begun to suspect did not exist, so it's a relief to me that I finally found it. But since it suits a need that is peculiar to my own fitness ideas and program, what I've finally found is bound to constitute a ho-hum moment for most others. But, hey, this is my blog about my fitness pursuits, so I can exult in whatever I want, right?

Anyway, anyone who's read my previous blog entries will know that I've been on the lookout for an alternative upper-body workout. When I began looking for a good upper-body workout in the wake of my initial upper-body fitness forays which had been centering around using the Soloflex, I discovered the upper-body workout segments from the P90X regime. I excerpted the four P90X workouts that concentrated on the upper-body and began using them last fall in a twice-weekly, two-week rotation.

While I generally "enjoyed" (with such enjoyment as can be gotten from enduring these rather grueling workouts) the P90X exercises and learned a bit more about fitness from them, I found them too rigorous for my fitness needs throughout most of the year. I decided fairly early on that those workouts, though they could fit into our overall regimen, should be restricted to a certain segment of the year, and that during the rest of the year I needed to use something a little less strenuous.

So I started checking out other Tony Horton exercise regimes, thinking I'd be bound to find something that was less rigorous but that provided the needed focus on upper-body strengthening. After a lot of looking and sampling I settled on two segments from two similar regimes: one segment came from the Power 90 routine (circuit 3-4 sculpt); the other was from the Power 90 Masters series (circuit 5-6 sculpt). These were a bit shorter than the P90X routines we'd been doing (about 40 minutes as opposed to 55 minutes) and contained a good deal of upper-body strengthening exercises. We started using one each of these for our twice-weekly strength-training sessions.

But these routines also contained a few lower-body exercises, which I didn't really want in our routine (we use cycling for lower-body strengthening, as I've stated previously). So, these were not the perfect fit but, as I began to presume, might be about the closest I could find.

Well, recently I decided to do a little further searching and, lo and behold, I finally found the thing I'd been looking for for several months: a Tony Horton routine that was comparatively short and that focuses exclusively on upper body. It's from the Power Half Hour series, a segment called "Arm Toner."


This routine is really just the thing I'd been looking for to use during our more "relaxed" portion of the fitness year. We'll want to have a portion of the year when we're not totally forsaking upper-body fitness, but are doing just enough to keep the muscles limber and not turning to flab. It's also nice to work up at least a little sweat exercising the upper body.

So why is this routine such a great find? Well, it fills the bill nicely in terms of the length of the workout--exactly one half hour. Another nice feature is that there are no rep counts: you just perform a given exercise for a set amount of time--I think it's one or two minutes--then move on to the next exercise. I think you do two sets of most exercises--I've only viewed the whole routine once so I have not yet figured out its structure. But from what I've seen so far, this should fit really nicely into our fitness pursuits.

I managed to find a copy of just this routine on Amazon for a little under $7.00, shipping included--so the price was definitely right, too. I should mention on that note that the whole Power Half Hour regime actually consists in five or so different sessions and that the Arm Toner session is only one of the five. But, as was the case with other Tony Horton regimes, there's only one segment of Power Half Hour that really interests me.

It might sound like I'm turning this blog into some kind of promotion for everything Tony Horton puts out. I have to admit that I generally like the upper-body routines he's put together and that they're easy to follow. Another virtue of his programs is that they require very little in the way of equipment. Owing to this desgin feature these workouts incorporate a fair amount of calisthenics or bodyweight exercises--another big plus in my view. In my defense, I do have in mind in the longer term, once I've got more experience with upper-body fitness, creating my own routines. But, it seems for now there's not a very good way to dodge the accusation that I'm promoting his materials.

As for how we'll use the new Power Half Hour routine, I'm still deciding on that. At the moment I envision switching over to this for our twice-weekly strength-training sessions some time after that start of the new year. We'll probably stick with that until cycling season hits--say in April or maybe May.

On that note, I've been saying for some time now that I want a less rigorous upper-body workout specifically for the cycling season--so that our strength-training won't interfere with our preferred form of fitness, cycling. Well, I'm reconsidering where best in the fitness year more rigorous vs. less rigorous upper-body workouts belong. What I'm actually thinking at the moment is that we might cut our strength training down to once a week during the cycling season, but that the workout we would do during that part of the year will be an intense one. On that scenario, we'd do something like our modified P90X on Wednesdays (currently our rest day), while Mondays and Fridays (our current strength-training days) would be days off. That would provide the advantage of giving us rest days both before and after our most intense cycling days--Saturdays and Sundays. And our less intense cycling days--Tuesdays and Thursdays--would sandwich our strength-training day. On that scenario, our modified P90X would be a four-week cycle, and we'd do the cycle something like 4 or 5 times over the course of the bicycling season.

As the cycling season is winding down, say in October or so, we'd go back to our modified Power 90 strength-training regime, resuming our two-day-per-week strength-training schedule. This is all tentative and represents my thinking at the moment. Rest assured I'll be posting about whatever regime we end up adopting.

At some point I plan to list the exercises along with the structure of all the strength-training routines we do. So that's on tap for a future blog entry. I'm also thinking of offering my critique on the latest beachbody fitness hype--called Insanity (which I'm thinking, in my facetious way, of renaming to Stupidity). Look for those topics to be covered in future entries.

Slow breathing exercises for lowering blood pressure

This post will be about something I just discovered by researching an ad I saw today. I saw an ad for what seemed like a really overpriced device that was claimed to be a non-medicinal way to lower blood pressure. The claims made, as is typical with such products, were dramatic. But in this case it did seem like they had some legitimate medical studies to back up some of their claims about the device. So I decided to look into the matter a little further. As usual, before I can present the information I found, I'll have to provide some background that's important to my interest in the product I've mentioned.

As an aside and before going into greater depth on my findings, I have blogged previously about how one of the key factors precipitating my current fitness endeavors was high blood pressure. Though I was not particularly inactive, was not overweight, nor did I fit any of the other typical profiles for those prone to high blood pressure or hypertnesion, my blood pressure was definitely well out of the normal range. And this was certainly having its negative effects--most notably it would keep me from sleeping on occassion due to a nasty headache that could only be relieved by assuming an upright (non-prone) position.

Things reached a point where something definitely needed to be done. The initial course of action, in consultation with my physician, was to begin taking a prescription medication (hydrochlorothiazide [HZ hereafter], a diuretic), which brought some immediate relief. But I wanted a longer-term solution that was non-medicinal, if possible. So I decided to get more regular about exercise--hence the current blog.

I should mention here that, from the time I started taking this medication I began experimenting with reducing dosage--from a full 25 mg tablet per day to half a tablet. I seemed to get the same desirable effect from a half tablet as I did from a full one but on my doctor's advice (he was far from being any kind of athlete, by the way) I decided to take a full tablet each day.

The exercise did, indeed, seem to have an effect on blood pressure readings. During the first year on HZ I found that, when I did really strenuous aerobic exercise like hard bicycle riding lasting an hour or more, I would get very light-headed and feel as though I might pass out--and could even have some distorted vision. I suspected that the HZ might be the culprit, and that it might be making my blood pressure too low. So I decided to measure my blood pressure after some of these hard rides to see if it was, in fact, too low.

Sure enough, at those times when I measured blood pressure after a strenuous ride my blood pressure was dangerously low--like in the 89 over 56 range. So I decided to experiment with decreasing HZ intake.

At first, I went back to the half tablet dosage. Despite the lowered dosage, the light-headedness and other symptoms associated with HZ intake and strenuous exercise persisted.

I next decided to try not taking any HZ at all on days when we would go for bike rides. That helped, and the light-headedness I had been feeling essentially went away. Since my blood pressure seemed much closer to normal, i.e., a little below hypertension range, even without taking the HZ a few days per week, I decided to experiment further by ceasing to take it altogether. Thus, during much of the 2008 cycling season (roughly June through August of '08) I did not take any HZ and my blood pressure nonetheless mostly stayed below the hypertnesion range (blood pressure seemed to vary from about 125-136 over 72-87).

After the cycling season that year I began to experience some of the symptoms I previously had (occassional headaches exacerbated by being in the prone position) and that I associated with elevated blood pressure, so I once again resumed taking the HZ. Then, the 2009 cycling season rolled around.

On some early rides during that season I forgot to forego the HZ dose and felt the same negative effects I had felt the previous season (light-headedness, feeling faint, some distortions of vision). At first I tried what I had done the previous season, viz., not taking the medication at all on days when we planned to ride. During the 2009 season I found, however, that even though I did not take any HZ the day of a ride, I would nonetheless have the negative symptoms I associated with the medication when it's combined with strenuous exercise. I once again decided to cease taking the HZ altogether.

That brings me pretty much to the current post. I have been off HZ for the most part since about April of 2009. I have had a couple of the headache episodes, particularly over recent weeks when we took a break from or had cut way down on our exercise regime, since that time. I even decided about a month ago that I would probably need to start taking HZ regularly again over this winter, and resumed taking a daily dosage.

I reversed that decision, however, when--having taken HZ that day--during one of our strength training sessions two or three weeks ago, I again experienced the light-headedness that usually results from combining HZ with strenuous exercise. I should mention a couple of details in this regard: first, I do not recall previously experiencing light-headedness in connection with our strength training--despite having taken HZ on the day on which I was doing said training; second our strength training regime is pretty strenuous (even somewhat aerobic), though it lasts usually only about 40 minutes.

My current hypothesis is that my body has become more acclimated to regular exercise and correspondingly more sensitive to the HZ: therefore, I should not use HZ with any regularity, instead taking a dose only in limited circumstances--such as when what seems to me a blood-pressure-related headache occurs.

So, the last time I took any HZ was probably 2 or 3 weeks ago. And I feel fine for the most part. I measured my blood pressure yesterday and, though it could be better, it was still below the hypertension range (it was 138/84).

Cut, finally, to today's blog entry: the aforementioned non-medicinal means of lowering blood pressure--which I actually started today. While browsing some news today, I ran across an item which, given what I've said above, piqued my interest: a device that claimed to lower, non-medicinally, blood pressure. I wanted to investigate.

They're fairly forthcoming with information about this device on their web site, and they give a good basic overview of how it works. It simply teaches you to slow your breathing by measuring your current breathing rate, then gradually lowering it by having you breathe in unison with certain sounds, to a particular level for a set interval.

Sounds simple enough, and it does seem widely accepted in the medical community that exercises that lower the breathing rate for a time do affect blood pressure. But should such a device, about the size of a CD player, really cost around $300? Couldn't the enterprising individual (aka yours truly) approximate closely enough what the device is doing using items already at hand?

Turns out the enterprising individual can do this. I've just proved that to myself and also proved, gauging by the effects I felt afterward, that this sort of exercise does help.

I should mention to start with that I learned a fair amount about the product, what it does, and what are the more cost-effective alternatives, by reading reviews of the device at amazon (see those reviews here). A great deal more information can be found by googling, as, for example, these results will indicate.

From what I'd read, the positive effects on blood pressure offered by this device could be gotten simply by lowering your breathing rate to something like 4.5 to 6 breaths per minute (BrPM hereafter so as to distinguish this from beats per minute [BPM], and acronym I've used previously in this blog) for a period of 10-15 minutes per day. One of the key breathing tactics for these "exercises" that is stressed on sites I found is that breathing out (exhalation) should take about twice as long as breathing in (inhalation). It is also said that listening to calming music while doing the exercise is helpful--which, of course, makes sense

In any case I decided if I've got a wristwatch with a second counter (or a second hand), I can do this right here and now. So I tried it, pretty much right on the spot.

Well, I found out first of all that I apparently don't need any device to help me lower my breathing rate. During the first minute, without any special strain or discomfort, I breathed 4.5 times--which seems to be about the lowest BrPM rate that is recommended for people using this technique. I simply relaxed, breathed slowly and deeply, and counted breaths using my fingers, over a 15 minute period. By the end of that 15 minute period, my average minutely rate worked out to about 3.8 BrPM (57 breaths in 15 minutes).

On finishing this exercise I felt great. I felt relaxed and rested--like some inner tension had been released. I haven't measured my blood pressure yet but I'm eager to see whether there has been any effect yet. I'll probably walk over to a nearby pharmacy later today and check my blood pressure just to see.

Anyway, even if regular use of this exercise doesn't lower my blood pressure significantly I think I'll work it into my daily routine. From what I've seen so far it's a great way to relax. I definitely need that--not only from time to time when I feel stressed, but every day before bed. Seems like it could really help with some sleep issues I've been having.

So my plan at this point is to do this exercise daily for 15 minutes right before bedtime. I will also use it in selective circumstances when I'm under stress--like before and/or after a lecture I'm delivering, when I get angry or upset about something, or when I'm feeling generally stressed or anxious. I'm very eager to see what will be the effects and will definitely be posting about them in the future.

Charting fitness progress: necessary?

In this entry, want to explore the necessity of fitness charting, i.e., of keeping various charts, devising graphs, or even writing a fitness diary. I will play devil's advocate here since I do not myself do such charting and feel I have good reasons for it. But you are not me and you may have good reasons for charting your fitness pursuits. I will later spell out some scenarios where I think fitness charting could be helpful.

Many fitness instructors and a lot of fitness literature harp on the theme of tracking your fitness. You are told to keep track of (write down) how many repetitions you did on a given day with how much weight, how you felt that day, and so forth. Diet diaries are likewise often encouraged. Tony Horton, as a case in point, keeps stressing the importance of keeping such charts as he instructs the P90X participants.

I considered doing something like this when I started my strength-training regime about 1.5 years ago but decided against it. I decided that the most important thing to me is not how much weight I lifted how many times, but rather how I felt after the workout: did I work up a good sweat?; did my arm muscles tremble from the strain I'd made?; did I notice pumped muscles when looking in the mirror afterwards? If those sorts of criteria were met, I decided, I'd had a good workout and my health was benefiting. That would be the only form of charting I'd need, I decided.

That's really the rule of thumb I've been following in my strength-training workouts since and if I've made some mistake in adopting that approach, I have yet to find out what it is. I've developed some muscle tone, lost a little fat (didn't have much to lose as you'll know if you've read my previous entries) and felt that my health has benefited. I really don't see what thing of value charting might have added.

That said, I am able to keep track of certain numbers in my head. I know, for example, about how many push-ups, chin-ups, bicycle crunches, or chair dips I can do at maximum. I also have a good idea of how much weight I should use for 15 repetitions of, say, bicep curls or "lawn mowers." In some cases I can remember how many I could do the first few times I tried these exercises as opposed to how many I can do now. I don't know, maybe there are folks that can't keep those kinds of numbers in their heads and who could therefore benefit from charting all that?

My suspicion, though, is that except below a certain level of fitness, these charts are used mainly for vanity purposes. And I think they simultaneously play into the marketing strategy of commercial exercise regimes like P90X: if you can get people comparing numbers, you'll stimulate consumer competitions in connection with your product. That's the way another line of business I know fairly well--computer sales--works: oh, he's got a 3 gigahertz, but I've only got a 2.9 gigahertz so I better go out and buy a new one so I'll have something better.

The upshot of the position I'm voicing on the matter of fitness charting, then, is that it's not crucial to getting more healthy or to maintaining health. Certainly for me, as someone already in reasonable shape and with no need to lose any weight, this has been true.

That said, I do think there's a place for fitness charting. My guess is that, if someone is really out of shape and so has to start off their fitness pursuits really slowly, they could get discouraged early on by an apparent lack of progress. Perhaps, going back over their charts, they would come to see that, although they're still fat, they are doing more repetitions and/or listing more weight than when they started. And this could help sustain their dedication to exercise. I suppose, given the state of American society--which now seems to tend largely toward obesity--this scenario could apply to a majority of people looking for fitness solutions.

In this same vein, I know that keeping a diary can be helpful to dieting. My wife finally got serious about dieting and exercise and has dropped about 40 pounds and she records her food intake religiously. It does seem to have helped her.

Another scenario where fitness charting could be helpful is in the case of professional athletes who are trying to better their performance. Being in peak form is their job, after all, and the more effectively they can do that, or any competitive edge they may attain, the more enhanced will be their professional existence.

In the final analysis, then, fitness charting has its uses. I think as a general rule, the more out-of-shape one is when embarking on a fitness regime, the more helpful it is likely to be. For average folks that are not professional athletes and that are not badly out of shape or have already been doing fitness for a time, it's quite optional and is likely to do little or nothing for them in terms of health. In these cases, it is usually done either out of vanity or some sort of obsessiveness.

Your thoughts on this topic?

Interesting new study on muscle and aging

Here's information from an interesting study on muscle growth and aging--some food for thought for those of us over a certain age. The upshot of the article seems to be that, past a certain age, muscle tissue does not grow and/or repair itself. Of course the study indicates that they're working on ways to overcome that limitation.

As you'll see, the older subjects in the study are quite a bit older than this pentagenarian, so the study seems to apply in a limited way to folks my age. I already had some sense of this since I'm certain that since I started my strength training about 1.5 years ago I've gained some muscle. Probably muscle growth rate would have been much more dramatic had I been doing what I'm now doing at, say, age 25.

But it was never and will never be my goal to get anywhere near any body-builder sort of figure. I'm happy with where I'm at in terms of physical form and have begun to cut back a bit on the intensity of my strength training sessions (more reps with lighter weight).

Anyway, without further ado, the article about the study:

Scientists Discover Clues To What Makes Human Muscle Age
Main Category: Seniors / Aging
Also Included In: Biology / Biochemistry; Stem Cell Research; Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 01 Oct 2009 - 0:00 PDT

A study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has identified critical biochemical pathways linked to the aging of human muscle. By manipulating these pathways, the researchers were able to turn back the clock on old human muscle, restoring its ability to repair and rebuild itself.

The findings will be reported in the Sept. 30 issue of the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, a peer-reviewed, scientific publication of the European Molecular Biology Organization.

"Our study shows that the ability of old human muscle to be maintained and repaired by muscle stem cells can be restored to youthful vigor given the right mix of biochemical signals," said Professor Irina Conboy, a faculty member in the graduate bioengineering program that is run jointly by UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, and head of the research team conducting the study. "This provides promising new targets for forestalling the debilitating muscle atrophy that accompanies aging, and perhaps other tissue degenerative disorders as well."

Previous research in animal models led by Conboy, who is also an investigator at the Berkeley Stem Cell Center and at the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), revealed that the ability of adult stem cells to do their job of repairing and replacing damaged tissue is governed by the molecular signals they get from surrounding muscle tissue, and that those signals change with age in ways that preclude productive tissue repair.

Those studies have also shown that the regenerative function in old stem cells can be revived given the appropriate biochemical signals. What was not clear until this new study was whether similar rules applied for humans. Unlike humans, laboratory animals are bred to have identical genes and are raised in similar environments, noted Conboy, who received a New Faculty Award from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) that helped fund this research. Moreover, the typical human lifespan lasts seven to eight decades, while lab mice are reaching the end of their lives by age 2.

Working in collaboration with Dr. Michael Kjaer and his research group at the Institute of Sports Medicine and Centre of Healthy Aging at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, the UC Berkeley researchers compared samples of muscle tissue from nearly 30 healthy men who participated in an exercise physiology study. The young subjects ranged from age 21 to 24 and averaged 22.6 years of age, while the old study participants averaged 71.3 years, with a span of 68 to 74 years of age.

In experiments conducted by Dr. Charlotte Suetta, a post-doctoral researcher in Kjaer's lab, muscle biopsies were taken from the quadriceps of all the subjects at the beginning of the study. The men then had the leg from which the muscle tissue was taken immobilized in a cast for two weeks to simulate muscle atrophy. After the cast was removed, the study participants exercised with weights to regain muscle mass in their newly freed legs. Additional samples of muscle tissue for each subject were taken at three days and again at four weeks after cast removal, and then sent to UC Berkeley for analysis.

Morgan Carlson and Michael Conboy, researchers at UC Berkeley, found that before the legs were immobilized, the adult stem cells responsible for muscle repair and regeneration were only half as numerous in the old muscle as they were in young tissue. That difference increased even more during the exercise phase, with younger tissue having four times more regenerative cells that were actively repairing worn tissue compared with the old muscle, in which muscle stem cells remained inactive. The researchers also observed that old muscle showed signs of inflammatory response and scar formation during immobility and again four weeks after the cast was removed.

"Two weeks of immobilization only mildly affected young muscle, in terms of tissue maintenance and functionality, whereas old muscle began to atrophy and manifest signs of rapid tissue deterioration," said Carlson, the study's first author and a UC Berkeley post-doctoral scholar funded in part by CIRM. "The old muscle also didn't recover as well with exercise. This emphasizes the importance of older populations staying active because the evidence is that for their muscle, long periods of disuse may irrevocably worsen the stem cells' regenerative environment."

At the same time, the researchers warned that in the elderly, too rigorous an exercise program after immobility may also cause replacement of functional muscle by scarring and inflammation. "It's like a Catch-22," said Conboy.

The researchers further examined the response of the human muscle to biochemical signals. They learned from previous studies that adult muscle stem cells have a receptor called Notch, which triggers growth when activated. Those stem cells also have a receptor for the protein TGF-beta that, when excessively activated, sets off a chain reaction that ultimately inhibits a cell's ability to divide.

The researchers said that aging in mice is associated in part with the progressive decline of Notch and increased levels of TGF-beta, ultimately blocking the stem cells' capacity to effectively rebuild the body.

This study revealed that the same pathways are at play in human muscle, but also showed for the first time that mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase was an important positive regulator of Notch activity essential for human muscle repair, and that it was rendered inactive in old tissue. MAP kinase (MAPK) is familiar to developmental biologists since it is an important enzyme for organ formation in such diverse species as nematodes, fruit flies and mice.

For old human muscle, MAPK levels are low, so the Notch pathway is not activated and the stem cells no longer perform their muscle regeneration jobs properly, the researchers said.

When levels of MAPK were experimentally inhibited, young human muscle was no longer able to regenerate. The reverse was true when the researchers cultured old human muscle in a solution where activation of MAPK had been forced. In that case, the regenerative ability of the old muscle was significantly enhanced.

"The fact that this MAPK pathway has been conserved throughout evolution, from worms to flies to humans, shows that it is important," said Conboy. "Now we know that it plays a key role in regulation and aging of human tissue regeneration. In practical terms, we now know that to enhance regeneration of old human muscle and restore tissue health, we can either target the MAPK or the Notch pathways. The ultimate goal, of course, is to move this research toward clinical trials."

Other co-authors of the EMBO Molecular Medicine paper include Abigail Mackey at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and Per Aagaard at the University of Southern Denmark.

The National Institutes of Health, the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, the Danish Medical Research Council and the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research helped support this research.

Source:
Sarah Yang
University of California - Berkeley

Anyone who knows someone that's suffered a major injury--say a bone fracture--after age 40 or so will not be surprised by the results of this study. Those I've known to suffer such injuries at that age or later often never fully recover the strength or flexibility they formerly had in the affected area.

On a final note I need to mention that my shoulder pain is returning now that we've resumed strength training. Were I pressed to point to what's causing it, I think I'd have to say the push-ups. But I do so many different types of exercises when strength training that I'm not sure I can pinpoint the cause without doing some in-depth testing.

Also, I'm beginning to look into Pilates for men. That might be a good supplement and/or alternative, at intervals, to our strength training. More on that in a future entry.

Inspiration for a new winter cycling regimen

I'm usually on the look-out for ways to vary our fitness routine. Why? So that keeping fit won't become something boring, some kind of trudgery. The latest on that front is an article I actually read some time ago (at least 6 months back I'd say).

The original article I read had kind of a gaudy title--something like "stay fit exercising six minutes a week." Despite the snake-oil-salesman sound of it the article was based on a medical study that investigated the effects of interval training. Even more to the point, the subjects in the study rode exercise bikes. So it seemed to offer some promise with respect to my idea of regularly "changing things up" in our routine and a way to possibly cut back healthfully on our regimen for part of the year.

Anyway, without further ado, here's an article similar to the one I read:

Fitness 'takes 6 minutes a week'

Monday, June 6, 2005
Short sprints are more beneficial than long runs, the study says.

LONDON, England -- Six minutes of pure, hard exercise a week could be just as effective as an hour of daily moderate activity, according to a new study.

"Short bouts of very intense exercise improved muscle health and performance comparable to several weeks of traditional endurance training," said Martin Gibala, an associate professor at Canada's McMaster University.

The research, published in the June edition of the Journal of Applied Physiology, says that repeatedly doing very intense exercise such as sprinting resulted in unique changes in skeletal muscle and endurance capacity, similar to training that requires hours of exercise each week.

Sixteen subjects were used in the test: Eight who performed two weeks of sprinting at intervals, and eight who did no exercise training.

The program had in it four and seven 30-second bursts of "all out" cycling followed by four minutes of recovery time, three times a week for two weeks.

Researchers found that endurance capacity in the sprint group increased on average from 26 minutes to 51 minutes, whereas the control group showed no change.

The muscles of the trained group also showed a significant increase in a chemical known as citrate synthase, an enzyme that is indicative of the tissue's power to use oxygen.

"Sprint training may offer an option for individuals who cite lack of time as a major impediment to fitness and conditioning," said Gibala.

"This type of training is very demanding and requires a high level of motivation, however less frequent, higher intensity exercise can indeed lead to improvements in health and fitness."

Extracted from McMaster university journal of Applied physiology, discovered and published by Martin Gibala.

Looks very interesting to me, and very much along the lines of the experiment I wanted to try during cycling off-season anyway. To refresh our memories a bit on that, I wondered, since riding stationary bikes one half hour four days a week seemed to keep us in pretty good cycling form over the winter months, what would be the effect of riding for only fifteen minutes four days a week during part of the cycling off-season?

Well, this article has given me an idea about how to implement that. I think we'll try riding fifteen minutes per session during a certain part of this winter--say, from December through March. But instead of the usual high rpm, steady heart-rate pace we've been keeping on our half hour rides, we'll do intervals. At the moment I'm envisioning thirty-second intervals where we go all out followed by four minutes or so of liesurely riding followed by another thirty-second burst, etc, until the 15 minute period is up.

At this point, I'm still planning exactly how we'll implement this strategy. But it should be something very close to what I've just described. I'm anxious to try it out and see what the effects will be. And you can rest assured that once I determine the particulars I'll report them in this blog--as well as the results at the end of our trial period for this method.

On other related fronts, my shoulder--even after our third strength-training session following our vacation--continues to feel ok. I'm hoping the break from exercise allowed it to fully heal. I'll keep posting here on that topic as well.

Shoulder update after fitness sabbatical

Wow, long time no post! We were on vacation for a month and, since I didn't get around to posting in August before we left, here I am posting only at the end of September.

In the way of things related to fitness that I have to report, the following on my ongoing shoulder saga. I took my latex bands with me on vacation thinking that, if I didn't have an opportunity to do any other exercising, I would at least do my physical therapy exercises for my shoulder. Well, I ended up not even doing that. So about the only exercise we got while vacationing was some walking and toting around luggage (some of which was pretty heavy and would have been a whole lot harder for me to manage had I not been doing strength training for the previous year or so). So, here's how things went with the shoulder during this hiatus from exercise.

My shoulder continued to bother me for about the first week or so but, after that the pain gradually went away altogether. I can say that up to the day when we were able to resume our strength training regime, well over a month after we had to interrupt it, my shoulder feels fine. Almost no noticeable pain when moving it in any direction or manner. Quite a contrast to when we were in the midst of our strength training regime, where it was regularly bothering me with certain movements. Not only that, but my other shoulder (left) had begun similarly to have pain.

I'm not sure what all this means. Surely it means that a break from strength training has helped to heal this problem. The big question is, of course, whether the problem will return after we resume our strength training, or whether the break allowed the shoulder to totally heal. Our first day of resuming our strength training was today and I can say, at least at this point, that I don't feel any particular discomfort in that shoulder: it feels pretty much the same as it has for the last 3 weeks or so, i.e., pretty normal. I'll be keeping tabs on this and posting the results here.

That's about it for this post. I will just mention in closing that I'm strongly considering reducing our twice-weekly strength training workouts to once-weekly. I'll post more about the logic behind that decision if and when I make it.

Heart rate monitor, 66 mile day. MyMaps

I decided to finally break down and get a heart rate monitor. My reasoning was, partly, so as to have some concrete figures to connect with my fitness endeavors when I speak with my physician. As I think I've mentioned, I've had trouble so far getting helpful input from my physician on my fitness program.

Why? Most doctors seem set up to dispense very generic fitness advice: if your health is decent but you're not sufficiently active, they'll tell you to try and do some moderate fitness activities. Take walks, ride your bike, take the stairs rather than the elevator. Most doctors seem set up to dispense this kind of advice.

To top it all off, most doctors I've met with are not overly athletic folks. Ok, maybe they're not fat, and may even be fairly thin. But do they engage in intense athletic activities? Do they have a strong competitive drive when they do fitness? If they don't, I question how capable they will be in dispensing advice to those who are competitive.

I, for example, have yet to find a doctor who can give me meaningful advice about what I'm doing, at my age, for fitness. I can tell them I ride hard when I'm on my bike, but what does that mean? I went up a hill, riding as hard as I could? I submit that, if the doctor has not him/herself done some competitive athletics, they're not going to have much of a clue about what I, as a sometime competitive bicycle racer, mean when I say 'm riding hard.

The heart rate monitor is meant to help me communicate to them better what I'm doing. "You know, doctor, my heart rate on my two-hour ride yesterday was averaging about 135 beats per minute (bpm hereafter). I went up to 165 bpm and sustained that for about five minutes at one point, though." I hope by presenting the matter in those terms I might get some helpful input.

Which brings me to my results so far. I've actually only used the monitor on a couple of rides and on one upper-body workout session so far, and the results are interesting. I got a less expensive model, by the way--the Nike Triax C5 (ca. $49.00, shipping included, ordered through Amazon), a picture of which I'll include below.

I have to say that, preliminarily, I'm happy with this monitor. It's true that I don't have much to compare it with and that I've barely used it. But stay tuned to find out whether I continue to be satisfied with it.

As you can see, it looks like a wristwatch. And, as the photo indicates, it does tell time. But its significant function for my purposes is to read heart rate. It does this by wirelessly transmitting, from a corresponding strap you put around your chest, your heart-beat rate to the watch, which can be set to display that information. I will likely do a more in-depth review of this monitor in a future post.

Results so far. 120 bpm is a pretty comfortable rate for me: I feel like I'm hardly working at that rate, really. 150 bpm is a vigorous work rate, but one I can fairly easily sustain. I hit 160 bpm+ by the top of a long hill. Once I get to 170 bpm or so, I'm reaching the point where I start to go into oxygen deficit. I.e., I can hit that rate and sustain it, but my heart and lungs are just about at the point where they can't keep up with my leg muscles' demand for oxygen. Finally, on a particularly intense, but short chase, hit 190 bpm this past Saturday (and that at about the 55 mile mark of our 66 mile day!). I think my heart rate can go yet higher than that, but so far 190 bpm is the highest I've seen.

Now, contrast that with the heart-rate poster that hangs in our building's exercise room. There it says that the maximum heart rate for a 50 year old is 175 bpm. Well, I can tell you that I've exceeded that by quite a bit and lived to tell about it. Maximum heart-rate calculators found on the internet also tell you that, for a 50 year old, 170-175 bpm is supposed to be the maximum.

But according to my experiences so far, that's hogwash. And it seems there is plenty of information on the internet that calls into question the standard formula for calculating maximum heart rate as well. See the following link, for example: http://www.thefactsaboutfitness.com/research/max.htm . There is also a New York Times article, published on April 24th, 2001 in the Health section, entitled "'Maximum' Heart Rate Theory Is Challenged."

So, once again I'll be using myself as a guinea pig. I'll keep track of my own heart rates, discuss these with my doctor, and try to determine whether there are any principles that apply to aging and fitness--one of the main interests of this blog. Now, on to other concerns.

We did a 66 mile day this past weekend, so we continue building up mileage. A little stiffness and soreness developed in my left knee, so I'm a bit concerned about that. I would have guessed, if a knee problem were to crop up, it would be in my right knee, since my left foot is a little differently aligned to the knee than on my right leg (owing to a bad sprain I had in my right ankle as a kid). But it's actually my left knee that's started bothering me. Anyway, something I'll be keeping tabs on as cycling season continues.

As a final topic for this entry, I'll just mention that I've discovered how to use google's MyMaps. It's a bit rough around the edges, but it's something with great potential for cyclists. One of the really nice features is that you can draw lines wherever you want (you're not limted to following roads). In combination with Satellite view, this enables cyclists to trace out routes that follow bike paths instead of roads, and to easily calculate mileage. I'm highly pleased with and enthused about this.

I have to say, though, that I've had a few issues. One is that the mileage calculator that follows the cursor as you trace out your map can interfere with your view of the map: couldn't they make this thing more transparent? Someone dropped the ball a bit on this issue. Likewise, I've created two maps which start and end in the same place, but take differing routes to get there (except the last 8 miles or so). Well, it seems that the last 8 miles of one or other route keep getting cut off. I've tried correcting this by re-extending the adumbrated route, but when I did that, the other route got shortened by 8 miles. Go figure.

There are obviously still some bugs that need to be worked out of this system, and some interface improvements are needed. But what I've seen so far looks really promising. Anyway, see below a sample map I made up to demonstrate some preliminary results (the red lines represent bike paths while the blue lines represent city streets):


View plank rd clinic <--> cedarburg in a larger map

60 mile day, preliminary review of modified Power 90

Well, we've now managed to break the 55 mile mark we set in late May--but not by much. We did 60 miles this past weekend, and I was surprised at how much it took out of me. Recalling, however, that although I took it pretty easy for the first 15 miles or so, we got into kind of a rush about 25 miles in and I really pushed it after that--especially between about miles 35 and 45. And even after that there was at least one fairly long hill, and hills are always daunting on a recumbent tandem (you can't use your body weight to help you stomp your way up the hill).

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the effort. I am building up toward something with these mileage increases: a hoped-for weekend tour later this month. I'm not sure we'll be able to pull that off though. Doing this sort of mileage also takes me back to more youthful days when I would hit the road for long-distance touring of a month or more. I may never be able to do that sort of thing again, but a guy can dream, can't he?

I'll also include in this entry a preliminary review of the modified Power 90 routine we began doing a couple of weeks ago. First, a word on what the phrase "modified Power 90" means.

As was the case with the P90X regime, we've excerpted parts of another regime(s) called Power 90 to create our own upper-body workout routine. I have parenthesis around the "s" on the word "regime" because there is more than one regime called Power 90 and because we've excerpted parts of two different Power 90 regimes.

I'm aware that this probably sounds confusing. And it is, in fact, confusing. But blame the company that puts out these video workouts for that.

I've blogged previously about how the company that puts out P90X and the Power 90 regimes is engaging in a practice I called product/market obfuscation. As I mentioned, I may later post a more philosophical entry about that practice. But suffice for now to observe that this is why my description of our modified Power 90 routine might sound confusing (a look at the wikipedia entry for Tony Horton [under the videography heading] contains a list of exercise videos he's done, which can help allay at least some of the confusion).

Not wanting to make myself a marketing organ for that company, or to support their ethically marginal practices in marketing their products, I will simply observe that one of the routines we've excerpted comes from what seems to be the standard, and older, Power 90 regime. The other comes from a newer one that has the additional label "master's series." The first is called circuit 3-4 sculpt, and the second is called circuit 5-6 sculpt.

I gather from what's said in the videos that we've excerpted some of the most advanced portions of the respective regimes. I presume that each of those regimes is likely a 90 day fitness course that builds to more lengthy and more strenuous exercises toward the end. So we've essentially skipped the introductory and intermediate portions of the two regimes and gone straight to the advanced portions.

The focus in each of the routines we've excerpted is on upper body strengthening. There are just a few leg exercises--which is what we were looking for, i.e., a minimal amount of lower body exercising (we get our lower body exercise primarily from cycling) and an emphasis on strengthening the upper body.

I observed in a previous entry that I was pleasantly surprised by the modified routine we've put together. That opinion remains. This is a nice selection of exercises, alternating between use of weights (dumbbells) and calisthenics. It's not as strenuous as P90X and doesn't take as much time (roughly 40 minutes as opposed to 55 minutes). The icing on the cake for me is that it ends up being pretty aerobic. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I had decided that we needed to switch to something that would involve aerobic upper-body activities, and this looks like a really good answer.

I should mention in that regard that it is aerobic only if you try and keep pace with the video, which we do. If you use the pause button, it won't be as aerobic, and it will also take longer.

I want to mention in closing that, when doing P90X, I was trying to build up some muscle, so I was generally using heavier weight and doing less repetitions--in cases where weights (dumbbells) are being used. Though I've been following pretty much that same practice with our modified Power 90 routines, I will begin experimenting with using less weight and doing more repetitions. This will have the dual effect of making the workout more aerobic, as well as providing me with a little bit of a break from the rigorousness of the P90X workouts I'll be doing during the shorter part of the year.

As a final summary to this entry, an overview of our current annual fitness regime.

- workout 6 times a week, 4 days (Tues., Thurs., Sat., and Sun.) cycling or walking and 2 days (Mon. and Fri.) strength training.

- cycling days see us either riding on the road for between 6 and 70 miles, or riding the stationary bikes indoors for 1/2 hour, depending on weather. we have the option of replacing cycling with walking--which is more likely to happen during the colder months.

- strength training, done on Mondays and Fridays, will involve doing our modified Power 90 routine from about April through November. From December through March we'll be doing our modified P90X.

I should also mention that used copies of both these DVD's can be found on Amazon for between $5.00 and $15.00. eBay is another likely source for cheap copies of these video workouts. Stay tuned for my next entry.

Some considerations for the older exercise enthusiast

I will offer here just a short entry that conveys an important point that came up in one of my physical therapy sessions. It's actually a very commonsensical point that, on later reflection, leaves me wondering why I hadn't thought of it earlier.

On undergoing some physical therapy for a back problem that recently cropped up (I havent blogged yet about this problem or the therapy I got for it, since it seemed a muscular thing that was likely to pass quickly) I described to the therapist my exercise regime. While she thought what I was doing was generally good--meaning I was leading an adequately active lifestyle--she seemed a little put off by the variety of exercises I was doing.

To backtrack a little, during the time I had that appointment we were still doing our modified P90X routines. Taken together, we probably had a repertoire of 30 or 40 different exercises we were doing twice weekly at that time. That's quite a lot of variety and the variety, I think, played some role in keeping that program interesting.

Now, contrast that variety with the exercises the physical therapist gives you. They start out with some really simple "granny exercises" that I'm reluctant even to call exercises. You do those for a week and come back, then they give you some more. And so on until you're doing a larger selection of exercises that are a bit more demanding.

Why do they do things this way? Why start with such easy exercises, gradually building up to something more challenging?

It's pretty simple, actually. They do it this way because they want to find out if there is some exercise that's causing you problems. Only after checking, following a certain period of doing the exercises, whether they are having some detrimental effect, do they add more. Essentially they try to isolate exercises to see if there are any that cause problems.

Now, that's something I can relate to well. If you read my blog entries about my shoulder problem you'll know that I couldn't put my finger on exactly what precipitated it. In fact, it would have been very difficult to do that because I was doing about 20 different types of exercises when the problem came up (that was before we started P90X, when I was mainly using the Soloflex for strength training). I found myself wondering at times how I might conduct some experiment to see if I could determine whether one of those exercises was bothering my shoulder more than some other. But I couldn't really think of a good way to do that, so I just kept on with the same set of exercises.

Anyway, back to my more recent physical therapy sessions--the ones related to some back pain I've had recently. The therapist was a bit hesitant to fully endorse our P90X routine. Thinking about why that might be, in concert with reflecting on how the physical therapists I've consulted with introduce exercises in phases, revealed why she was hesitant: they attempt to try and isolate exercises that might cause problems and to stop those that do. They sometimes provide alternate exercises in place of the offending ones. In short, the way physical therapists approach exercise is to build up a routine for you gradually, using only exercises that your body seems to tolerate well.

That sort of approach helps guard against ending up in a situation like mine, where you have developed some problem but can't quite identify what caused it. Or, it helps prevent those sorts of injury to begin with. Granted, this might seem pretty self-evident, but it comes to me as something of a revelation.

Addressing why it comes as a revelation uncovers the difficulties involved in developing an adequate exercise regime. Of course the simple way to develop an exercise regime is just to get a book or DVD like I did and follow along. Ideally, though, what we should probably be doing is getting a book or DVD and working into it gradually: just do a couple of the exercises for the first two or three weeks and see what the effect are, then add a couple more. Continue like that until you've added a sufficient number of exercises to suit your goals.

I did not follow that path, obviously. Whether through impatience or perhaps naivete about how the exercises could affect a body the age of mine, I can't say. Likely a combination of the two.

Which brings me to the moral of this entry. When you start a new exercise routine, and I think this applies especially to those approaching my age, you should think seriously about working into it gradually. Try just a couple of exercises for two or three weeks, then introduce a couple more. And so on, until you've developed your full regime. Doing so may help you to avoid injury and allow you to spend less time in doctors' offices or in physical therapy, and more in actual fitness pursuits.

Farewell (but not good riddance) P90X!

As I've been mentioning for some time now, we've been planning a move away from the modified P90X routine we started doing earlier this spring. As I hinted in my last blog entry, that change was slated to come very soon. Well, it didn't come as soon as I thought it might: I decided to give my back a little extra healing time, so we actually took about 11 days off from our upper-body workouts before doing our final P90X workout for this season. We did the last P90X routine this past Friday, and started today (the subsequent Monday) with one of the new Power 90 routines I found. Before I say more about the new Power 90 routines, though, let me recap a bit about the P90X routines we were doing.

I will miss our modified P90X routines. I usually find a really rigorous workout like that refreshing--though a small percentage of the time I do find it tedious and have to force myself to do the workout. Overall we enjoyed it and got some good health benefits from it. It's definitely not for everyone my age: you have to already be in pretty good condition before you start, or else be ready to take things really slowly. But for us it worked pretty well. I should probably reiterate on that score that, before we started our modified P90X, we had been working out with weights and some calisthenics twice weekly for several months. So we were prepared to step up the effort a bit.

So, though I'll miss our P90X workouts, I can leave them behind without much regret because I know we'll be going back to those routines. As I've previously blogged, those routines do have a place in our annual fitness plan--that place is in the cycling off-season. At the moment, I foresee us going back to our modified P90X perhaps as early as late November--or by Christmas, at the latest. We'll continue using the modified P90X until probably late February or some time in March. Then we'll switch to some less rigorous routine, perhaps back to what we plan on doing for the rest of the summer.

Which brings me to a key topic of the current blog entry: the routine we'll be doing until late November or so, and possibly for most of the year for the foreseeable future.

As I mentioned in my last entry, we are using parts of another fitness regime developed by the same company that does P90X--the regime is called Power 90 (sometimes just P90, sans the letter X). Once again, Tony Horton leads the exercises and, once again, we are excising out portions of the regime that suit well our fitness needs and goals.

The company that puts out these fitness videos/DVD's is engaging in a common capitalist tactic I would call marketing obfuscation. The idea is to put out a whole lot of products very similar in character and name, but to not be very forthcoming with information about what differentiates these products from one another. This same practice plays a huge role as well in computer/tech marketing, but it is found in some degree in many capitalist enterprises. The tactic causes consumer confusion, which results in poorly-informed spending, which, the instigators of the policy understand, will result in more sales of their products and thus greater profits. Maybe I'll write a more philosophical entry at some point expanding further on this matter, but for now I just want to point out that there are a number of products sold by this company that go under the label Power 90 and I'm not entirely sure how they relate to one another.

But, by sleuthing a bit I've managed to find two that I think will suit our off-season fitness needs pretty well. These two focus on upper-body strengthening and have but a very few leg exercises. And both are advanced phases of the regimes from which they're excerpted. Both go under the label "sculpt" as well. One is level 3 and 4 from Power 90 sculpt circuit, and the other is level 5 and 6 from the Power 90 sculpt circuit.*

Though both routines are called Power 90 and they seem to be numbered consecutively, they were obviously produced at different times (don't ask me to explain beyond stating that this is an example of marketing obfuscation). The 3-4 sculpt routine looks to me to date to the 1990's, while I'm pretty sure the 5-6 sculpt routine was produced some time after the turn of the millennium--perhaps as recently as 2003 or so.

Though I've viewed both routines in their entirety, we've so far only actually done one of them: the 3-4 sculpt routine. I'll leave a fuller report for later, but preliminarily I can say that I like the routine we've tried and, furthermore, I can observe that this is a lot more cardio-intense than the P90X routines we were doing. I was pretty winded throughout the first two thirds of the workout, which I never experienced doing our modified P90X. We'll do the 5-6 sculpt routine this Friday, so I look forward to seeing how that will go.

I want to observe at this point that I was pleasantly surprised by the Power 90 routine we did today. I had just been thinking to myself that we should find something for upper body exercising that would be more aerobic, like perhaps rowing. Well, this Power 90 routine ended up being pretty intensely aerobic, so it looks like I ended up getting what I'd hoped for.

So, for the next few months we'll be doing only these two routines twice a week (on Mondays and Fridays). As for what the future holds, I can say that, in the longer term, I'm looking forward to the time when I become less reliant on exercise videos. I view myself at the moment as very much in the learning phase regarding this sort of exercise: I need to just try a lot of different routines and techniques and find out what works and what does and doesn't go well together. At that point, I should be able to cobble together my own regimens using bits and pieces from the various things I've tried and using knowledge gained through practice. More on that later.
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* Why do they combine levels like this? If 3 and 4 are essentially the same level, then they should be called just level 3 or level 4. Oh yeah, I just explained why . . . marketing obfuscation!