Physical Fitness

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• Background
• Overview

Background

The idea for this page came from a Conversation Cafe session. There were four of us present. At 52 years old, I was the youngest. We already knew our politics ranged from liberal/progressive to radical left. What surprised us was that three of us go to the same athletic club. Two were roller bladers. Two were sliding-seat scullers.

Instead of trying to verbally explain my workout regimen, I decided to write it up. I'm not claiming to be a fitness guru, and its been 20 years since I had ripped abs. I'm just explaining what I'm personally doing to fight back against stress, overtime, overwork, injury, etc. As they say, if I can do it anyone can.

Overview

The task is to build and maintain a healthy body. This is maintained (or lost and rebuilt) over decades despite injury, illness, major life-stress events, exhaustion, etc. It needs to address several forms of fitness. There is no magic, but there are insights and practical techniques. Basically, it comes down to stressing the body so that it:

1. Does not cause injury. This isn't just Hippocratic Oath stuff. An injury puts you off your training schedule. You have to heal and then you have to rebuild to your previous fitness level. An injury can waste months or even years.

   Injuries can be from repetitive stress (e.g., knee problems from running) or specific events (e.g., pulled back muscle from weight lifting). To avoid the former, use low-stress exercises (e.g., walking). To avoid the latter, use common sense. In all cases, listen to your body as you work out. Stop before injury occurs.

2. Triggers a biochemical "lets fix this" response. The idea used to be to just move the heaviest weight. It incidentally triggered the response. These days, we understand that a slow motion with lighter weights can trigger that response more thoroughly (and with less risk of injury).

3. Has time to make the fix before being re-stressed. That means a recovery day (at least) between heavy workouts, and some down time every few months. Of course as your fitness improves, a "recovery day" may look pretty active. Just make sure your body has time to recover.

4. Is reenforced to maintain the newly more healthy condition. Fitness effects go away within days and weeks. As a rule of thumb, it takes a week of workouts to undo a month of inactivity. A long illness or injury can put you back several stages.

The areas to tackle are:

Aerobic fitness

Ability to consume lots of oxygen over extended periods. This is an indicator (but not proof) of cardiovascular fitness (where the heart and arteries are clean and smooth).

The basic approach is to warm up slowly (c. 5 minutes), work at 80 percent of maximum heart rate (c. 25 minutes), and cool down (c 3 minutes). Getting to the heart rate without doing injury is tough. Walking, rowing, cycling, and elliptical machines can help. Racquet sports work if you just rally, but a true game (with stopping for change of serve) may not maintain the effect.

Fat ratio

A certain amount of fat is needed for healthy metabolism. Beyond that, it just puts an extra burden on your body. And looks bad.

There are two parts to the solution: First, build more muscle mass. It burns energy even when you are sitting still. Second, train your body to burn fat.

The basic approach to fat burning is to work at a modest heart-rate for longer periods. It should be possible but difficult to carry on a conversation. You don't want a "That was hard, let's fix it" response. Instead you want "Need more energy, let's burn some fat.".

If you happened to work at this rate all day long, day after day, then fat wouldn't be an issue. You'd burn your own, devour stacks of flapjacks, eat big cheeseburgers, and still be hungry. But few of us live that way. So a certain moderation in eating is also needed.

Flexibility

Joints and their muscles, tendons, and ligaments can have a large or small range of motion. More range allows more "give" during activity and thus lowers risk of tearing those muscles, tendons, and ligaments.

There are stretching techniques in many cultures, but it is fair to say that yoga is the best worked out system. The general idea is to work smoothly, without pressure, gradually building flexibility over months and years.

Anaerobic strength and power

In a short burst of effort, push or pull heavy weights. In terms of physics, strength means able to move the weight at all; power means doing it in a short period of time. However, "power lifting" is the term used for raw strength efforts in the gym.

The basic rule is to warm up and stretch, then work on an isolated muscle until it is exhausted enough to trigger the "fix it" response. The problem is that it is difficult to get to that level of exhaustion.

The standard solution is 3 sets of 6-12 reps each, with increasing weight in each set and with rest between sets. The first set just wakes up the muscles. The second is normal hard use. The third is at the edge of your ability. Only the third set is triggering the "fix it" response -- the other sets were just to get you warmed up enough to safely do the third.

The rest period between sets can be frustrating. You can fill the gap by interspersing sets working different groups. E.g., You could work opposing groups by doing a set on biceps, a set on triceps, then back to biceps. Even so, this is anaerobic, so take enough time to recover your breath.

More recently, it appears one set at very slow motion (c. 5 seconds per rep) may get the "fix it" effect more easily. I personally haven't tried it yet.

If this is going to last a lifetime, there has to be adventure and variety. You can track progress, and seek personal bests. You can do various sports, esp for fat burning and aerobic training. You can work with others to maintain focus. Whatever it takes.

For those interested, here is my personal regimen