A couple years ago, I was thinking about putting together a fitness program for myself. My goals were endurance, strength, less low-back aching, flexibility, longevity, and being able to get on my horse bareback without a mounting block or other cheat.
I spent quite a bit of time at Doug Robb’s HeathHabits site. He has a post called The “I don’t have time to workout” Workout. I ran across some paper notes I made during my time there. Doug recommended some basic moves to incorporate: air squat, Hindu pushup, dragon flag, shuffle of scissor lung, Spiderman lung, hip thrust/bridge, swing snatch, dumbbell press, Siff lunge, jumping Bulgarian squat, band wood chops, leg stiff leg deadlift. Click the link to see videos of most of these exercises. The rest you can find on YouTube.
Another post is called “Do you wanna get big and strong? -Phase 1”. The basic program is lifting weights thrice weekly. Monday, work the chest and back. Tuesday, legs and abs/core. Friday, arms and shoulders.
Doug is a personal trainer with a huge amount of experience. He’s a good writer, too, and gives away a wealth of information at his website.
Around this same time of searching a couple years ago, I ran across Mark Verstegen’s Core Performance, Mark Lauren’s book “You Are Your Own Gym,” and Mark Sisson’s free fitness ebook that also features bodyweight exercises. I did Core Performance religiously for 15 weeks—it’s a good program, requiring 5-6 hours a week.
Lauren is or was a Navy Seal trainer. His plan involves 30 minutes of work on four days a week and uses minimal equipment. Lots of good reviews at Amazon.com.
I recently complete a stint with the Hillfit program. Here’s my current regimen.
Newbies to vigorous exercise should seriously consider using a personal trainer.
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Stretching actually doesn’t do any good for the average person
My wife, Sunny, decreed April to be Fitness Month. No joke. A time to re-dedicate ourselves to eating right and physical activity. No dining out for the entire month. No junk food.
In the spirit of Fitness Month, I restarted my exercise efforts, which had been on hold for the previous month. I’d simply been lazy.
To help me judge effectiveness of my exercise, I measured and recorded my baseline fitness. I re-measured after six weeks.
Exercise isn’t fun. You need good reasons to do it. Here are mine:
If you hope to exercise regularly, you’ll need your own list of reasons. You’ll have days, weeks, or months when you just don’t want to exercise. Review your list then.
Women DO NOT get gross bulky muscles from resistance training
With regards to TV’s “The Biggest Loser” show:
The show’s 24-week regimen consists of approximately 4 hours of daily exercise, including 1 hour of intense resistance, 1 hour of intense aerobic activity, and 2 hours of moderate aerobic activity (for example, walking), along with a caloric intake of at least 70% of estimated resting daily energy expenditure, explained Dr. [Robert] Huizenga, who is a a former team physician to the L.A. Raiders football team.
This is an excerpt from “The Biggest Loser Pushes Envelope on Diabetes,” in Internal Medicine News, vol. 45, No.11, page 17.
In a previous post about The Biggest Loser, I’d written that I didn’t know how much they exercised.
For purposes of discussion, let’s assume the documented major weight losses of Biggest Loser contestants are not simply due to caloric restriction.
Dr. Huizenga shared some of his experience at the recent annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. In a study of 35 Biggest Loser participants, about half had prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. Hemoglobin A1c, a measure of blood sugar control, fell significantly in this subset. Three of the six with diabetes were able to stop metformin early on. By week 29 of the study, average body mass index for the entire group had fallen from 46 to 29.
Sure, this is a small study, but my clinical intuition is that results are reproducible on a larger scale. Television exposure and the $250,000 (USD) prize to the winning contestant are major motivators. Furthermore, I bet there’s also a process for weeding out those who are likely to fail, before they ever get started.
Yes, exercise helps with weight loss. But most folks aren’t willing or able to exercise vigorously for almost four hour daily. If I were an obese sedentary diabetic, I’d sure try.
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Saguaro cactus fruit is edible
I ran across a 1991 New York Times article by Jane Brody discussing the benefits to Pima Indians of returning to their ancestral diet. The Pima have major problems with obesity and diabetes. (I frequently treat Pima Indians in the hospital.) Some quotes:
Studies strongly indicate that people who evolved in these arid lands are metabolically best suited to the feast-and-famine cycles of their forebears who survived on the desert’s unpredictable bounty, both wild and cultivated.
By contrast, the modern North American diet is making them sick. With rich food perpetually available, weights in the high 200’s and 300’s are not uncommon among these once-lean people. As many as half the Pima and Tohono O’odham (formerly Papago) Indians now develop diabetes by the age of 35, an incidence 15 times higher than for Americans as a whole. Yet before World War II, diabetes was rare in this population.
Pima Indians traditionally ate a diet of tepary beans, mesquite seeds, corn, grains, greens, and other high-fiber/low-fat foods. The switch to a diet high in sugar, refined grains, and other highly processed convenience foods may well be responsible for the current high rates of obesity and diabetes. Australian aborigines have the same problem.
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“Let’s hope this thiazolidinedione doesn’t give you bladder cancer.”
At least according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
-Steve
PS: The article I link to above says diabetes is the fifth leading cause of death in the U.S. Not so, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which lists diabetes in seventh place. I suspect it’s not even as high as that.
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I’ve written previously how it’s helpful to have some baseline physical fitness measurements on yourself. That post mentioned up to 14 different items you could monitor. In the comment section, I recognized that’s too much for some folks. For them, I suggested just doing the five-item functional testing: 1-mile run/walk (timed), maximum number of push-ups and pull-ups, toe touch, and vertical jump.
A few months ago, I was at a training session for adult Boy Scout leaders. One of the items covered was environmental heat illness: how to avoid, recognize, and treat. One of the risk factors for heat illness is “poor fitness,” defined as taking over 16 minutes to run two miles. Inquiring minds want to know where that number came from. No reference was given.
About.com has an article on fitness requirements for U.S. army soldiers, who are tested at least twice yearly. There are only three components tested:
Fortunately, the Army doesn’t expect a 57-year-old man to perform as well as a 17-year-old. For instance, a 17-year-old has to run two miles in 19 minutes and 24 seconds or less; the 57-year-old is allowed up to 23 minutes and 24 seconds. Females and males have different performance standards: a 17-year-old woman has 22 minutes and 24 seconds to run two miles.
(An ex-Ranger a few days ago told me the Rangers have to meet or exceed the standard for 19-year-olds, regardless of age.)
The simplicity of the Army’s approach appeals to me. Check out the APFT tables in the About.com article if you want to see how you compare to Army soldiers.
Impressive jump!
Before beginning or modifying a fitness program, it’s helpful to take some baseline physical measurements. Re-measure periodically. That way you’ll know whether you’re making progress, holding steady, or regressing. Improving your numbers also helps to maintain motivation.
Not taking measurements would be like starting a weight loss plan without a baseline and subsequent weights.
Eighteen months ago, I finished a home-based, 15-week, six-days-a-week fitness program called Core Performance, designed by Mark Verstegen. I was pleased with the results. The only problem is that it’s very time-consuming, 45-60 minutes a day. Perhaps fitness just has to be that way.
I regret that I didn’t take any fitness measurements before and after starting Core Performance.
For much of the last year, I modified Core Performance to a thrice weekly, then twice weekly program, until a couple months ago when I pretty much abandoned it. I miss the benefits now, but just didn’t want to put in the time to achieve them. In other words, I lost my motivation.
Who needs this much flexibility?
This new style of fitness is promoted by the likes of Dr. Doug McGuff, Chris Highcock, Skyler Tanner, Nassim Taleb, and Jonathan Bailor, among others.
The particular aspects of fitness these measure are strength and endurance in major muscle groups, cardiovascular and pulmonary endurance, a little flexibility, and a hint of body composition.
You may appreciate an assistant to help you measure some of these.
It’a long list. If too long, just do what you think is important. Record your numbers. Re-test some or all of these periodically, such as every six weeks after making a change.
If you’re in fairly poor condition at the outset, you’ll see some improved numbers after a couple or three weeks of a good exercise program. It takes months to build significant muscle mass; you’ll see improved strength and endurance before mass.
Am I missing anything?
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In truth, German character—so admired and feared in some 500 years of European literature and history—led to the present Germanization of Europe. These days we recoil at terms like “national character” that seem tainted by the nightmares of the past. But no other politically correct exegesis offers better reasons why a booming Detroit of 1945 today looks like it was bombed, and a bombed-out Berlin of 1945 now is booming.
—Victor Davis Hanson, writing at Townhall.com
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I couldn’t find a picture of “neuropathy,” so enjoy this
Aggressive efforts to control blood sugar either delays or prevents clinical neuropathy in patients with type 1 diabetes, according to the Cochrane Collaboraton as reported in MedPage Today. Type 2 diabetics showed a strong trend in the same direction, but did not quite reach statistical significance (p=0.06). Tight control of diabetes is often at the cost of more frequent episodes of hypoglycemia.
Intensive blood sugar control is also a treatment for established neuropathy.
One in ten diabetics has neuropathy at the time of diagnosis. After 10 years, four or five of every 10 have it. The pain of neuropathy is worse than the numbness.
The medical community is still debating how aggressively blood sugars should be managed.
PS: I don’t know what the Cochrane reviewers consider “tight control” because the article is behind a paywall, and the MedPage Today article didn’t address that either.
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Click the pic to purchase at Amazon.com. E-book versions also available at Smashwords.com.
Bible Verse of the Day
Diabetic Mediterranean Diet 