MALE PATTERN FITNESS: exercise Archives

April 03, 2007

Bald Man Fuming

I've thoroughly enjoyed my two months as a member of the AARP. The magazine, formerly known as Modern Maturity, is a first-rate product.

But I have a serious problem with a workout feature in the latest issue.

If you click on the link, you'll see a middle-aged guy who appears to be robust and in perfectly good health. And he's doing bench presses with eight-pound dumbbells.

A grown man. Eight-pound dumbbells.

Let's assume the man weighs 200 pounds, and he can do at least one push-up. A push-up forces you to move about 60 percent of your body's weight, which in his case would be 120 pounds. So the photo in the magazine shows a man capable of pushing at least 120 pounds off his chest doing an exercise with 16 pounds.

Here's the article's advice on how to select the weights to use:

Beginners should start with one set -- 8 to 12 repetitions -- of each exercise, using 5- to 8-pound weights (you can find them for $20 or less at any sporting-goods store). More advanced exercisers should shoot for two sets of each exercise, using 10- to 12-pound weights.

So I'm the magazine's reader, and I'd consider myself a "more advanced exerciser." That means I'm supposed to use 12-pound weights for bench presses, as well as the other exercises in the workout -- squats, one-arm rows, biceps curls, lateral raises, and triceps extensions. (The triceps extensions show the model using a single dumbbell, held in both hands.) I could see how those weights might start to feel heavy on lateral raises, especially since it's an exercise I rarely do. But bench presses? Squats? What possible benefit would I get from that?

According to the article, I'd get all these:

Strength training has been shown to decrease insulin resistance, decrease resting blood pressure, reduce arthritis pain, even improve memory. Some experts believe it's as essential as aerobic training: "As good as walking is for a variety of things, it does not address the loss of muscle that accompanies the aging process," says Wayne L. Westcott, Ph.D., fitness research director at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts, and coauthor of Strength Training Past 50 (Human Kinetics, 2007). That loss of muscle -- about seven pounds per decade for men and five pounds per decade for women -- causes a slowdown in resting metabolism that then translates into a host of health problems.

Yes, but where's the research showing that grown men working out with Barbie weights get any of those benefits?

It's hard enough to convince women to use weights that will increase their strength and muscle mass, which of course are the only ways they can get the promised benefits of strength training. You don't increase your metabolism unless you challenge your body. But now here's a magazine that goes out to millions of people telling men to work out with weights that wouldn't challenge my six-year-old daughter.

Grrrrr ...

Posted by LouSchuler at 08:42 AM | Comments (2)

March 26, 2007

Enduring Myths

This article in the L.A. Times is equal parts inspiring and frustrating.

The inspiring part: Author Roy Wallack profiles several retirees who compete at high levels in endurance sports.

The frustrating part? Well ...

Often born-again exercisers who got religion in their 50s and 60s after busy, non-athletic careers and family lives, they surprise themselves by reclaiming dormant childhood skills -- or developing athletic talent they never knew they had.

Among the leaders of the pack are four Southern Californians -- a runner, a cyclist, a swimmer and a triathlete, ages 84 to 94. Using good diets, family support and challenging athletic goals to keep them motivated and youthful, they're helping prove that sweat equity may be the best social security.

Maybe I'm just getting crotchety in my senescence, but I catch a vaguely propagandistic whiff in the implication that success in endurance sports is synonymous with "athletic talent." Fitness, sure. Running, swimming, and cycling take a lot of that. But endurance is one component of athleticism. Where are the seniors competing in Olympic lifting, which tests strength, power, and coordination? What about tennis, which involves speed, lateral movement, quick changes in direction, hand-eye coordination, and anaerobic conditioning?

I understand that it's just a newspaper article, and in a newspaper article you never know how it was changed as it moved up the chain from writer to assigning editor to section editor. Maybe it was always intended to be an article about older adults staying fit and getting involved in competition, which is a perfectly legitimate and interesting topic for a feature, and an editor chose to jazz it up with the lines about athleticism.

For an opposing view, here's an excerpt from a short interview with Bill Bradley, former NBA star and U.S. senator, which appeared in Sunday's New York Times:

As a former Knicks star who still stands 6-foot-5, do you ever play basketball with the school kids in your neighborhood?

Oh, God, no. I have a bad hip. I would say it’s because I did the Stair Master, four days a week, for 10 years. You take these short steps and you just have the femur up there in the socket wearing away the cartilage.

What do you think is the best exercise?

Walking outside, about five miles a day. People want a more intense experience, not realizing that walking is an intense experience.

Maybe they prefer the gym with its machines because it’s a social experience. ...

I don’t think so. It’s hard to have a conversation when you are on the elliptical.

You go, Bill.

Posted by LouSchuler at 08:18 AM | Comments (3)

March 21, 2007

The Runaround

Kids, according to this, don't need a lot of exercise to fight off obesity:

Just 15 minutes a day of kicking around a ball or swimming might be enough to keep children from becoming obese, British and U.S. researchers said on Monday.

A study of 5,500 children who agreed to wear a motion sensor device showed that those who exercised more were less likely to be obese -- and that short bursts of intense activity seemed to be the most helpful.

Children who did 15 minutes a day of moderate exercise -- equivalent to a brisk walk -- were 50 percent less likely than inactive children to be obese, the researchers reported.

You can find more detail on the study here.

For some reason, I'm skeptical. Given what we know about how genetics affect both physical activity and weight control -- you could safely say that about 30 to 40 percent of each is genetically determined, based on current thinking -- what evidence do we have that the active kids aren't the ones who're programmed to be active? Or that the obese, inactive kids aren't genetically predestined to be sedentary and to struggle with weight control?

If we took all the heavy, inactive kids and forced them to play soccer for 15 minutes a day, would they be any less heavy? And if we took the thin, active kids and forced them to be sedentary, would they actually gain any weight?

In my admittedly limited experience, certain kids seem to find ways to be inactive even when they're playing a sport. I first saw this when I enrolled my son in a karate class when he was 6 or 7.

The heavy kids in the class would do exactly what the instructor told them to do, and find the least strenuous way to do it. The skinny kids were the opposite.

When the instructor told the kids to go across the room and line up by a wall, the skinny kids would sprint to the wall. One or two would bounce off, fall to the floor, flop around until they got the other kids to laugh, and then jump back up and run to wherever they were supposed to be -- unless they thought they could milk the same stunt for another set of laughs, in which case they'd repeat it until someone told them to stop.

Meanwhile, the heavy kids would walk to the wall and stand there, taking only as many steps as necessary. During kicking and punching drills, they'd do the absolute minimum.

I know I've told that story before, and I apologize for repeating it. I just think it illustrates as well as anything the problem with generic exercise prescriptions. You can put every kid in the school out on the soccer field, but some aren't going to move much, while others won't stop moving until you force them to.

Understand, I'm not making fun of the heavy kids, or assigning some kind of virtue to the hyperactive ones. And I'm not saying that all heavy kids are inactive or unathletic, any more than I'm suggesting that all the skinny ones stay thin because of their dedication to sports and love of physical activity. I'm just pointing out that there's no single prescription for helping the most at-risk kids manage their weight and safeguard their health.

That's why I cringe when I see passages like this:

Obesity is on the rise in many countries, including the United States, where 60 percent of the population is overweight or obese, Britain and elsewhere in Europe.

It is clearly a matter of people eating more calories than they burn off, but experts cannot agree whether diet or exercise is more important -- and which kind of exercise might be best.

Experts will never agree on whether diet or exercise is best because the answer will change according to the circumstances. If you're talking about a kid who's unlikely to ramp up his physical-activity level, then you have to tackle his weight on the nutrition side.

And no one will ever determine "which kind of exercise might be best" because any nimrod can figure out that the best exercise for you is the one you'll continue to do because you enjoy doing it.

I don't know why that's so difficult to understand.

(Thanks to Rannoch Donald for the link.)

Posted by LouSchuler at 07:42 AM | Comments (3)

March 19, 2007

Can I Do It Until I Need a Bra?

The L.A. Times this morning has a bold story for a mainstream newspaper. It asks the questions that lots of guys in lots of gym have asked about steroids: What if they aren't as dangerous as we've been told? What if the side effects are exaggerated? What if they merely offer a faster and more efficient way to get the look a lifter wants, with little danger of growing man-boobs (gynecomastia) or having an upper body that looks like it's been assaulted with acid-tipped darts (steroid acne).

Here's a sample:

Many gym-goers who use performance enhancers see them as no riskier -- and perhaps less so -- than surgical cosmetic fixes.

Los Angeles personal trainer Rob Parr describes an acquaintance with a "waistline like Santa Claus" who used steroids over several years to transform himself into a Rambo look-alike. The man, in his 30s, avoided alcohol and ate a healthful diet, Parr says, and simply didn't think steroids posed a threat. There's even an attitude in gyms that there is "steroid use" and "steroid abuse," and that the muscle men are the go-to guys for "safe," reasonable steroid advice, as opposed to doctors and others in the medical community whom they believe exaggerate the dangers.

The medical community's credibility gap with gym-goers dates back to the 1970s and '80s, when early studies concluded that steroids didn't boost muscle mass and may be no better than placebos, says Cedric Bryant, chief science officer for the American Council on Exercise, a nonprofit fitness group based in San Diego.

"All the people in the gym knew that was nonsense," Bryant says. The problem with the studies is they involved medicinal doses, he says, not the amounts athletes and bodybuilders take -- which could be 10 to 100 times higher.

Most of the story is the usual blah-blah-blah about all the dangers we don't know about, and how steroids become addictive and lead to ever-riskier drugs and behaviors. But one quote caught my attention:

Jay Hoffman, professor and chairman of the department of health and exercise science at the College of New Jersey in Ewing, believes steroids are safer when cycled.

Hoffman, who took steroids himself for three years while attending NFL training camps in the early '80s, says steroids were widely used in professional football before they were banned. "If they were so dangerous, we'd be seeing a lot of people in their 50s dropping dead and we're not seeing that," he says.

We aren't seeing mass deaths, but there have been enough to make me suspicious, as I've written here many times. The problem with looking at NFL deaths retrospectively is that there's no way to tell how many drugs a dead 50-year-old did in his athletic prime a quarter-century before. And even if you knew every drug an individual took, it would be impossible to determine which drugs did what damage. And even if you could somehow know that, then you're stuck with the unanswerable question: Were the deadly effects of those particular drugs unique to that individual, or would they be dangerous to most of the people who use them?

With NFL players, it's hard to know where to start when assessing the health issues that would plague a player long after retirement. The sport itself is intense and violent, with a high risk of concussions. The excess body weight of linemen seems to be a factor in some premature deaths. With a sport that's played once a week, there may be more temptation to indulge in risky lifestyle choices, although I have no idea if NFL players use more recreational drugs than young and wealthy athletes in other sports. And, heck, some of the guys who played in the '60s and '70s might've been exposed to toxic pesticides on their playing fields. You just never know.

But in a sport that requires an unnatural combination of speed and body mass to succeed, and in which fearlessness and aggression are richly rewarded, who can rule out steroids as a serious health risk?

That doesn't have anything to do with the adults in health clubs who choose to use steroids to put an extra inch on their biceps, but whenever you talk about steroids, it's probably the most interesting part of the conversation.

Posted by LouSchuler at 07:56 AM | Comments (0)

March 05, 2007

All the News That's Fit

Because I edited Core Performance, the terrific book by Mark Verstegen and Pete Williams, I got to work out in Verstegen's Athletes' Performance facility in Tempe, Arizona. One of the highlights was the "contrast baths" -- going back and forth from tubs filled with hot and cold water -- which are described by Geoff Van Dyke in this story for the New York Times' Play magazine:

After a day of warm-ups, “prehab” exercises (designed to prevent injuries), strength screening and cardiovascular testing, Joe Gomes, our coach, has us alternating between a hot tub and a 55-degree cold plunge, a process that helps facilitate muscle recovery. At the moment, we are submerged to our necks in the frigid water. Gomes, a 28-year-old Brit who heads up Athletes’ Performance’s education programs (and has helped train Navy Seal units and consulted for the Wimbledon tennis championships), stands on the edge of the cold plunge, stopwatch in hand. We curse, whimper and complain until, finally, one of my fellow campers, Lynn Forrest, a fit, tanned and retired 40-something from Connecticut, asks the question on all of our minds: “How much longer?”

Gomes looks at his watch and says, “Go to a happy place.”

Much easier said than done. But I will say this: After I finished the baths, showered, and had a post-workout recovery shake, I felt pretty damned good. Normally, after trying out a different workout routine, I'll be pretty sore for a couple of days. But the baths worked some kind of magic, and I didn't feel anything in the following days except a desire to work out again.

The hook for the story is that Athletes' Performance now offers week-long camps twice a year. The price is pretty steep -- $2,100, not counting airfare or lodging -- but if I had the time and the cash I'd gladly go there again.

Still, I do feel a bit of sadness for losing the distinction of being able to claim I worked out at an elite sports-training palace that's otherwise inaccessible to people like me.

Chronophysiology

"What's the best time to exercise?" is one of those generally pointless questions that fitness geeks like to debate. Since most of the population doesn't exercise seriously, the best answer to the question is, "When you can." Some people like morning workouts because it gives them a feeling of accomplishment before they start their workday. Others like to go after work, to work the kinks out of a body that's just spent eight or 10 or 12 hours hunched over a computer. Then there are lucky bastards like me, who work out at midday just because there's no one around to tell us we can't.

But it's also understood that there are compromises involved in working out early in the day. Your body's core temperature is lower, so it takes longer to warm up. Your spinal disks are filled with fluid after eight horizontal hours, so there's greater risk of injury. And then there's the dilemma of what to eat or not eat before a morning workout. Is it better to exercise on an empty stomach, and burn more fat? Or is there a risk that fasted exercise will cost you some hard-earned muscle tissue?

Once you start getting into these debates, the fun never stops.

But for a few of us, the bottom line on exercise timing might be the issue of performance. For a while, when I was a waiter, I had such odd hours that the best time to work out was 6 a.m., right when the gym opened. The first thing I noticed is that I had to use lighter weights on everything, probably 20 percent less, on top of the need for an extended warm-up. I didn't notice any big difference in the results of my workouts, but there was a clear shift in how I had to go about getting those results.

It's long been acknowledged that morning exercise compromises performance -- nobody is as strong or fast or efficient in the morning as he would be later in the day. But that leads to another question: Is it because bodies are cold and stiff in the morning, or because of something else?

A new study attempts to resolve the mystery of exercise timing:

The 25 subjects (13 women and 12 men between the ages of 16 and 35, all highly trained swimmers) spent four weekends pretty much sequestered in the lab, with schedules regulated to two hours of wakefulness, followed by one hour of sleep -- to distribute the amount of sleep evenly over a day.

Participants were also given similar meals, and their exposure to light (which affects circadian rhythms) was controlled.

The swimmers hit the pool every nine hours for a 200-meter freestyle swim. Swimmers' times were generally faster later in the day -- fastest at 11 p.m., and slowest at 5 a.m., with a time difference of 5.84 seconds. That's significant in competitions such as the Olympics: "Even a hundredth of a second is of paramount importance," Kline says.

The participants' sleep schedule was unusual, but Kline doubts that it radically skewed results. Short amounts of sleep, he says, have been shown in other studies not to affect anaerobic performance. And swimmers' schedules were varied, allowing them to have their first trial at various points in the day.

So even with that crazy schedule, the athletes' bodies still knew when it was morning and when it wasn't, and their performances were substantially worse earlier in the day.

Well, at least we now know that what we always knew was correct. The earth can keep spinning on its current axis.

Posted by LouSchuler at 09:01 AM | Comments (3)

February 25, 2007

Too Buff for His Own Good

I'm old enough to remember the days when football coaches cautioned their players not to lift weights because they didn't want them to get musclebound. The idea was that too much muscle would make a player tight and slow, which of course explains why today's football players are twice as big than they were in the bad old days, and still manage to be a step or two faster.

But there is one potentially serious side effect of being too buff, as Lisa Sanders, M.D., explains in this column in the New York Times Magazine:

When the patient undressed for the exam, Duffy was immediately struck by the highly developed muscles of his upper body. “He looked like one of those young men in a men’s fitness magazine,” he told me later. Otherwise his exam showed nothing abnormal.

Then Duffy remembered a physical-exam maneuver he learned years ago when he was a medical student. He straightened the patient’s arm and held it parallel to the floor. Carefully placing a finger over the pulse at the young man’s wrist, he moved the arm behind the patient. Then he asked the patient to tilt his head up and face the opposite direction. The pulse disappeared. When the patient looked forward again, the pulse returned. He repeated the maneuver. Again, the pulse disappeared when the patient turned his head. Immediately Duffy suspected what had caused the clot.

The vessels that carry the blood from the heart to and from the shoulders and arms travel through a narrow space under the clavicle and above the top of the rib cage. The presence of hypertrophied muscles of the shoulder or neck, or in some cases an extra rib, can make this small opening even tighter.

This problem, known as thoracic outlet syndrome, is most commonly seen in young athletes who use their upper extremities extensively -- baseball pitchers or weight lifters -- or in workers who use their arms above the level of their shoulders, like painters, wallpaper hangers or teachers who write on a blackboard. When these patients put their arm in certain positions, the extra muscle or bone constricts the space between the two structures and cuts off the flow through the vessels like a kink in a garden hose. Blood can’t get into the arm, so the pulse disappears. And blood can’t get out of the arm, so it pools and can clot. When the arm is moved and the vessel reopens, the blood flows once more, but if a clot has formed, it can break lose and travel to the lungs.

That sounds scary -- I think I'll skip my workouts for a while. After all, I wouldn't want to get too muscular.

Posted by LouSchuler at 06:27 AM | Comments (2)

February 23, 2007

At Long Last ...

... Chad Waterbury's new website is up, and you can purchase Muscle Revolution via direct link.

If you're an intermediate-to-advanced lifter looking for some great programs and information tailored to your goals, this is about the best I've seen. Of course, I'm biased, since I worked on the book with Chad, but I'm biased in a good way. I think it's a terrific book, a really unique tool for improving strength, muscle mass, and body composition for those lifters whose bodies have already made significant gains in all those areas.

No gains are easy for those of us with average genetics, but the hardest gains are the ones you try to make after your body has already made a lot of adaptations to lifting and is pushing up close to its genetic peak.

As I wrote in the foreword to Muscle Revolution, I was shocked at the strength improvements I made after 12 weeks of the book's Total Strength Program. I set personal records in two lifts that weren't even included in the routines.

So I guess Muscle Revolution is my version of Hair Club for Men -- I'm not only the editor, I'm also a fan.

Posted by LouSchuler at 07:00 AM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2007

Your Abs: Don't Suck!

Paul Scott has an interesting story in the New York Times this morning about the controversial advice to draw in your abdomen during exercises in which that's a very unnatural thing to do. (I wrote about it in New Rules of Lifting.)

Although I'm not quoted in the story, Paul and I did chat about it twice, so I still feel some pride in seeing it in print.

Paul, by the way, is a fellow fitness-book author and National Magazine Award winner -- he won for a series of articles for Outside magazine that he later expanded into the book.

Posted by LouSchuler at 08:12 AM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2007

How I Solved the Childhood-Obesity Epidemic

Normally, I enjoy a good snowstorm. I take freakish pleasure in getting outside and shoveling the front walk and driveway, and if that doesn't feel like a complete workout, I'll tackle the back porch, as well.

But the storm that nailed us on Wednesday was not fun snow. I don't know if there's a name for what came down from the sky -- "wintry mix" sounds too benign, like an iPod shuffle -- but whatever you want to call it, it had the local interstates clusterfucked for a full day:

Vehicles started getting stuck on I-78 around midday Wednesday. But because of what Gov. Ed Rendell called an "almost total breakdown in communication" among state agencies, it took more than a day for state police to close all of the entrance ramps. All motorists had been cleared off the highways by early Friday.

The worst of the problems were on a 50-mile stretch of I-78 in eastern Pennsylvania, where National Guardsmen in Humvees ferried food, fuel and baby supplies to the stranded drivers.

This was my neighborhood; the eastern end of the freeway ice capades was just a couple miles from my house.

When I got out on Thursday to shovel, it was absolutely miserable work. It looked like snow, but because of the layers of sleet, it was several times as heavy. I'd bought a new snow shovel in January, thinking I was clever for doing this before there was snow on the ground, but the damned thing worked too well. It has a bigger scoop than my old one, and picked up too much of the crap at once. I was winded long before I got to the bottom of the driveway, which is the hardest part, where the snow gets heavier and deeper, and where the local snowplows tend to create even bigger piles to move.

But it all had a good ending. It was warmer yesterday, and I decided to tackle the rutted ice on part of the street just outside our driveway. (We live on a cul de sac, so when I saw "street," I'm talking about an area the size of a couple basketball courts.) Our cars had been sliding around and wheel-spinning on the part at the bottom of our driveway, so I figured that was the best chance I'd get to give us a little safety zone before something bad happened.

I soon discovered that, with some effort, I was able to break up the ice into large, six-inch-thick slabs, which were curiously fun to lift and throw into piles. Two of my kids were home (my older daughter, ironically enough, was at her weekly ice-skating lesson), and they were so entertained by my feats of strength that they got out and helped me. Soon they were challenging themselves to haul and throw ever-bigger ice slabs.

The work then evolved into a geography lesson, with my 11-year-old son debating with me whether this slab looked more like South America and Africa. Soon we were deliberately creating chunks to look like individual states. (Swear to God, I got one of mine shaped just like Oklahoma.)

A neighbor kid came over with his snowboard -- we have a small but steep hill in your backyard, which is popular with kids old enough to steer around the massive oak tree at the base -- and soon he was helping us break up and haul blocks of road ice. For a few minutes there, you would've thought the ice in our street was Tom Sawyer's fence.

It didn't last long; the neighbor kid got bored with the manual labor, and talked my son and younger daughter into sliding down the hill. But they had so much fun that they stayed out there all afternoon. Altogether, my two kids were outside working or playing at least four hours. I'd guess that they got more exercise on Saturday than they'd gotten the previous five or six days combined.

The secret to getting kids to do exercise without being told?

1. Novelty

2. Entertainment (Dad lifting big things that looked heavier than they were)

3. Physical challenge (lifting bigger things than they'd thought they could lift)

4. Choice (I wasn't making them help me, and they got to go off and play when they got bored)

5. Intellectual stimulation (for nerds like me and my son, at least)

Is it really any more complicated than that?

Come blow your snow

Speaking of novelty, the New York Times has a story this morning about people who want to make their own:

Those who make snow are proud of their powder. They speak passionately about its stacking qualities (it is denser than snow that starts out in a cloud) and bandy about terms like nucleation and wet bulb temperature. Forums like snowguns.com, which has over 3,700 members, show a subculture as much into the process of snowmaking as the result of it. There are discussions about how to build your own rope tow and lengthy back-and-forths about the attributes of various snow wand nozzles.

Still, size matters to a snowmaker. Mr. Young dreams of a “bigger vertical,” he said. “Everyone who makes snow wants a larger hill.”

Mr. Heaven dreams of a commercial machine, an 18-nozzle gun that would make a hill like his in an hour, he said. “It’s a serious commitment,” he said, and it would require a concrete platform to mount the thing, which costs about $30,000. “It’s a whole different story,” he said, indicating that his wife was not yet on board with a system upgrade.

Posted by LouSchuler at 07:36 AM | Comments (1)

February 13, 2007

Over the Hill

Yesterday I got my first copy of AARP The Magazine -- living a half-century has its privileges -- and linked to this story about why exercise is less productive as you get older.

This morning's Washington Post has an article about exactly what happens to the aging athlete to make him slower, weaker, and fatter:

Maximum heart rate declines about 5 percent per decade as the heart becomes less responsive to the adrenaline-like hormones that whip it into action. VO2max declines 6 to 10 percent per decade after age 25, and this accelerates to 15 percent per decade after age 60.

At the receiving end, muscle strength declines 10 to 15 percent per decade starting at about age 30. This is because there is an actual loss of muscle fibers (and the nerves that drive them), and because some fibers usually used to generate brief bursts of power are transformed to longer-acting endurance fibers -- a change that reduces strength overall. By age 70, a person is only half as strong as he or she was in youth.

But here's something that I find absolutely amazing:

One study looked at the top 10 performances for four different length races run by U.S. Masters Swimming in 1976, 1986 and 1996. Masters are amateur swimmers, all older than 18 but most in their 30s, 40s and 50s, who race against one another in five-year age groups. Nearly all the times were faster in 1986 than in 1976; and in 1996 more than half were faster than they had been in 1986. Interestingly, the average age at which finishing times began to rise -- a sign that the swimmers had passed their peak performance -- went from 33 in 1976 to 40 in 1996.

Conclusion: The whole population of adult competitive swimmers is getting faster, and the average swimmer is staying fast longer.

You'll see another illustration of this if you click on the link and scroll down to the bottom of the first page of the story. It looks at the fastest 100-meter sprint times by age group. The current world record, it says, is 9.77 seconds. The fastest time for someone 50-54 is 10.54 seconds.

If you look at that number on a chart, it looks like a steep decline from the world-record pace. But when you think about it in real-world terms ... holy shit! There's some 50-year-old geezer out there who can run a hundred meters in ten and a half seconds!

Posted by LouSchuler at 08:02 AM | Comments (0)

February 12, 2007

Monday Linkage

Just because I'm too busy to organize these stories with a unifying theme ...

Why extreme stress makes you stupid

This story shows that when you lose sleep, your brain stops making new brain cells.

This test was pretty extreme, since it kept subjects awake for 72 hours. In real life, that would only happen in times of war, personal tragedy, or natural disaster. And it doesn't really say anything about what happens to brain cells when people just lose a few hours of sleep here and there.

But the news is still kind of scary: If you're involved in something so traumatic that you don't sleep for 72 hours, it takes two full weeks for your brain to catch up.

Sleep it off

It's not news that sleep is important to weight control. So this short item about kids and sleep isn't surprising, but it reinforces what we already know:

Researchers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., used detailed diaries kept by families to examine children's sleep behavior and its relationship with weight. They determined that an extra hour of sleep cut the likelihood of being overweight from 36 percent to 30 percent in children ages 3 to 8, and from 34 percent to 30 percent in those ages 8 to 13.

Not a huge difference, but it's still something. Parents, turn off the TV or computer or PlayStation, and enforce a consistent bedtime. And if you have any of those things in your kids' bedrooms, where you can't monitor whether they're on or off, get them out.

And make sure they get a good breakfast when they wake up.

There. I just solved the childhood obesity problem in two easy steps.

Cut it out

I meant to blog last week about the rise in obesity surgeries for teenagers. But like so many things, I never got around to it. So this morning's L.A. Times has a handy roundup story about how weight-loss surgery is getting safer across the board:

What really improved safety, experts say, was the introduction, in 1994, of laparoscopic procedures into weight-loss surgery. Using lasers and cameras, surgeons make a few small incisions and perform procedures without cutting a person's belly.

Between 1998 and 2004, the death rate of patients undergoing obesity surgery dropped 80 percent, according to a 2006 report by William Encinosa of the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in Rockville, Md. -- probably due to simpler surgery.

Maybe someday surgery will be as common for people tired of being overweight as Lasik is for people who're tired of wearing glasses. If it's truly as safe as it now seems, it's hard to argue against it.

Use it ... and lose it anyway

I spent the weekend watching my older daughter skate. She probably skated four hours on a friend's frozen pond on Saturday, and then another three hours Sunday at an indoor rink -- she had her regular lesson, then tore around on the ice with friends for another hour and change.

At 50, I'm lucky if I get in three hours of exercise a week, but for her that's just a regular old Saturday afternoon.

Of course, I'm only doing what my body tells me to do -- I'm supposed to slow down with age. This is a process that occurs naturally in every species. It's not just activity levels that downshift. Performance declines as well after about the age of 30, even with elite-level talent and serious conditioning.

A new study sheds some light on why our bodies persist in getting older and slower:

The team from the Howard Hughes Medical School at Yale University School of Medicine compared the skeletal muscle of three-month-old rats and two-year-olds. They found that a process called AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) slowed down in the older animals.

AMPK's role in skeletal muscle is to stimulate the body to burn off fat and to fuel cells, via the production of mitochondria -- cells' power sources. ...

The animals were exposed to a chemicals which stimulates AMPK and were also fed more food, which also stimulates the process. They found that the older rats had lower AMPK activity than the younger animals.

What's funny about this story is that it portrays this loss of muscle function as all-or-nothing:

Dr. Anne McArdle, an ageing specialist at the University of Liverpool, said: "Loss of skeletal muscle mass and function as we age is a major problem which has a significant effect on quality of life of older people." ...

But she added: "The data suggest that the ability to increase AMPK activity is completely abolished and so there is little evidence to suggest that 'working harder' would overcome these deficiencies."

There's still a pretty big gulf between "doing nothing" and "working harder." No one walking around with a 70-year-old body thinks he just needs to work a little harder to make his body perform like a 20-year-old's. But there's plenty you can do that falls in between the extremes. Some exercise is always better than none, and exercise in combination with a good diet will do wonders to delay the inevitable -- to slow the slowdown.

So what'll you bet the next time we see the acronym "AMPK" in a news story, it'll be about a drug company that's invented a product to increase AMPK activity in older people? "It's Viagra for your muscles!"

Posted by LouSchuler at 08:56 AM | Comments (0)

February 08, 2007

They Got Physical

For a blast from the past, you must click on this link. It's a picture from the heart of the aerobics craze, with women dressed up as after-dinner mints and feeling the burn.

The picture accompanies a really good story in the New York Times about the damage wrought from high-impact aerobics:

Mrs. Siemens, 54, a jewelry designer in Berkeley, Calif., said she often took as many as six aerobics classes a week in the ’80s when, she said, “aerobics was new and everywhere and my friends and I all did it with a vengeance.” Sipping a drink from Jamba Juice, she added: “I was jogging in place with Jane Fonda. I did my jumping jacks and high knee lifts with Richard Simmons. I twirled my arms and punched the sky while hopping on one foot to the music of Olivia Newton-John. It was supposedly all about staying in shape, but look at me: I can hardly walk.”

Mrs. Siemens isn’t the only possible casualty of the early aerobics craze that took millions of Americans to group exercise classes for the first time. The hordes came, believing that nonstop jumping, kicking and running in place to (bad) throbbing music was the ideal way to raise one’s pulse.

“I was on the concrete floors in bad tennis shoes jumping with everyone else,” said Jay Blahnik, a spokesman for the IDEA Health & Fitness Association, a trade group. Mr. Blahnik, 38, now teaches rowing, running and cycling in Orange County, but he spent a dozen years leading aerobics classes. “A lot of people doing aerobics back then can no longer do any jumping whatsoever,” he said. “They have problems with their backs, feet and hips.”

I should confess at this point that I used to take aerobics classes in a converted racquetball court at a Vic Tanny gym in St. Louis. It was the early '80s, and since I couldn't run worth a damn, it seemed like a pretty good way to keep in shape, even for a musclehead.

Part of the reason aerobics classes seemed palatable back then was because the weight rooms were often nasty places. Nobody brought towels to clean up their sweat, and many didn't bother putting dumbbells back on the racks or unloading barbells when they were finished with them. So you spent a third of your workout finding equipment, a third of your workout cleaning up or avoiding other people's messes, and a third of it actually exercising. Aerobics classes were marvelously efficient compared to that.

Plus, when I was young and single, it wasn't really horrible to be one of five guys in a room with two dozen women. Even if the classes sometimes felt more like cheerleading camp than workouts, well, parts of that fit into the category of letters-to-Penthouse Forum fantasy as well.

I never suffered any orthopedic damage from aerobics classes, probably because I got frustrated and bored with them long before I overtrained. It took a real sport -- basketball -- to finally cut me off at the knees.

Posted by LouSchuler at 07:44 AM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2007

Mid-Week Blog Meat

Time to play catch-up on some of the stories I've missed.

Exercise -- even deadlier than you thought

Doctors have an intriguing explanation for how some elite endurance athletes put themselves at higher risk of heart failure:

Endurance sports may cause changes in the hearts of some athletes that can lead to a rare but life-threatening condition which causes an abnormal heart rate and rhythm, Belgium researchers said on Monday.

Ventricular arrhythmia (VA), a disturbance that occurs in the ventricles or lower chambers of the heart, is a condition that can cause sudden death in top athletes who have had no previous symptoms of the disorder.

After studying Dutch and Belgian endurance athletes with VA and other healthy sportspeople and volunteers, the researchers found that in the athletes with the problem the right ventricle (RV) of the heart was not functioning normally.

They believe VA, which could have many underlying causes, may be triggered by intense exercise or that endurance sports could promote the arrhythmia along with genetic or environmental factors.

(Thanks to Rob Duffield and Rannoch Donald for this one.)

Whooping it up

At my last visit to a doctor, he gave me a vaccination for whooping cough, something I'd been vaccinated against as a kid and hadn't thought about since. He said there's been a resurgence in the disease, which Gina Kolata of the New York Times discusses here:

Before the 1940s when a pertussis vaccine for children was introduced, whooping cough was a leading cause of death in young children. The vaccine led to an 80 percent drop in the disease’s incidence, but did not completely eliminate it. That is because the vaccine’s effectiveness wanes after about a decade, and although there is now a new vaccine for adolescents and adults, it is only starting to come into use. Whooping cough, Dr. Kretsinger said, is still a concern.

The disease got its name from its most salient feature: Patients may cough and cough and cough until they have to gasp for breath, making a sound like a whoop. The coughing can last so long that one of the common names for whooping cough was the 100-day cough, Dr. Talbot said.

The issue, Kolata explains, is that it's not always clear what is and isn't whooping cough, which is how a major hospital completely misdiagnosed a recent illness going around among its employees, with expensive and disruptive results.

Widebodies

I can't decide whether to laugh at this, or take it seriously:

Researchers at Iowa State University found nearly half of the offensive and defensive linemen playing on Iowa high school teams qualify as overweight, and one in 10 meet medical standards for severe obesity.

"These are 15- and 16-year-old boys that have a weight and body-mass ... that as they enter adulthood puts many at a very adverse health condition," said Dr. Joe Eisenmann, co-author of the study and a professor in pediatric exercise physiology at Iowa State.

On the one hand, reporting that football linemen are heavier than average is like saying basketball players are tall. If you were a natural widebody, wouldn't you gravitate toward football? (I had the opposite body type, and played anyway.) On the other, I guess it's newsworthy if it turns out that overweight kids are making themselves even more overweight to play their sport.

But that's not really what the study found:

The study's researchers began by gathering height and weight data of 3,686 varsity linemen available from rosters from all classes of Iowa high school football teams. They used that data to calculate a body-mass index, the same tool used for the NFL study.

Of the players analyzed, 28 percent were deemed at risk of being overweight and 45 percent fit the standards for being overweight, including 9 percent who met adult severe obesity standards.

Common sense tells us that a healthy kid whose natural playing weight might be 220 pounds would see the benefit in bulking up to 280 to get a major-college scholarship, where the coaches would hope that they could get him up north of 300 to make him a championship-caliber lineman.

So of course that kid would do what he could to put on that weight. He'd lift like a maniac and eat like a horse.

What we don't know is whether the weight kids put on for a specific purpose, like football, creates long-lasting health problems. I could guess that the kids who put weight on easiest are also the ones who are most susceptible to obesity and obesity-related diseases. But I don't know if those are the same kids who're playing football and on the cusp of getting athletic scholarships.

Do the kids who try to bulk up in high school, but fall short of the size and skill needed to play at the next level, keep the weight on? Do they lose it? Do they keep gaining weight, even when they aren't trying?

I honestly don't know, and I don't know if anyone else does either.

So studies like this, as stand-alone piles of statistics, probably offer less than meets the eye. Really, who didn't know that the biggest kids will exploit their natural advantage by playing football in high school? The real question is what happens to them later in life, when their bulk is no longer an asset.

The road to hell is paved with good cuts of meat

It's not just the meth freaks who shoplift. It might be someone you know:

According to the Food Marketing Institute, meat was the most shoplifted item in America's grocery stores in 2005. (It barely edged out analgesics and was a few percentage points ahead of razor blades and baby formula.)

Meat's dubious triumph is due in part to a law enforcement crackdown on methamphetamine use. Meat used to be the shoplifting runner-up to health-and-beauty-care items, a category that includes cough medicines containing pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in home-cooked meth. In 2003, for example, a quarter of shoplifted products were HBCs, while meat took second place at 16 percent. But states began passing laws that require stores to move medicines containing pseudoephedrine behind secure counters. That was enough to cut the pinching of HBCs, which fell by 11 percent between 2003 and 2005. ...

Stores have had particular problems with cuts bearing the Certified Angus Beef brand, which are often displayed near ostensibly less succulent offerings. With only enough money to purchase an ordinary chuck-eye roast, many otherwise ethical shoppers make a snap decision to lift the Angus instead. Store detectives speculate that these meatlifters feel entitled to have steak instead of hamburger on occasion, as a reward for their hard work; swiping an expensive bottle of dish soap doesn't provide the same sense of satisfaction. Though men and women shoplift in equal numbers, such aspirational meatlifters are most likely to be gainfully employed women between 35 and 54, according to a 2005 University of Florida study; men prefer to lift Tylenol or batteries, often for resale and often to support a drug or alcohol habit.

So the next time your wife puts filet mignon on the table, you might want to check the grocery receipt. Then again, you might not want to know.

(Thanks again to Rannoch for this one.)

Posted by LouSchuler at 06:48 AM | Comments (2)

January 15, 2007

Monday Blog Meat

If it's Monday, that means there's a one-in-four chance that the kids are off school for some reason. Today it's Martin Luther King day. Next month it'll be Presidents' Day. We get a break in March, but then double up in April with the spring break/Passover/Easter juggernaut.

I'm not complaining about the observance of any of those holidays in particular. I just wish the MLK/PD holidays could be combined into a single holiday. Call it Great Americans Day. We could have that holiday in early February, when the kids really need a break, as opposed to mid-January, when a holiday is a burden on parents still trying to recover from the kids' Christmas vacation.

I don't say that to disrespect Dr. King, George Washington, or Abraham Lincoln. It's just that in this age of historical illiteracy, it makes more sense to me to have a holiday celebrating all the great Americans and all their great achievements.

Then, in November, we use that holiday for a National Day of Voting. Call it Democracy Day, perhaps. In even-numbered years, the adults vote for congressmen, governors, and the occasional president. In odd-numbered years, the children vote in non-binding polls on the things they'd like their country to do. The point is that everyone celebrates the great individuals of our country's history on a single day in February, and then in November everyone practices what those great Americans gave us: democracy.

Anyway, my point is that the kids are home from school today, I'm on deadline, and I have to travel later this week. So today's blog is a link dump, without a unifying theme.

Downward-facing devil

When Rannoch Donald sent along the link to this story, his only comment was, "I'm not sure what to make of it."

A school program to fight childhood obesity that includes yoga is drawing complaints from some Christian parents in the Quesnel area in B.C.'s Cariboo region. They say yoga is a religion, and shouldn't be taught in public schools.

Chelsea Brears, who has two children in the school system, said her son was asked to do different poses and "to put his hands together." Brears, a Christian, said she doesn't want her children exposed to another religion during class time.

"It's not fair to take prayer out, and yet they're allowing yoga, which is religion, in our schools."

Local rancher Audrey Cummings doesn't believe Christian children should be doing yoga at all. "There's God and there's the devil, and the devil's not a gentleman. If you give him any kind of an opening, he will take that."

This is a new one on me. I guess there's a line of thought in contemporary fundamentalist Christianity that insists every idea not mentioned in the Bible is a competing belief system. Evolution isn't discussed in the Bible, so it must be a competing religion. Jesus and the Apostles didn't practice yoga, so it must be a competing religion.

It reminds me of the Harry Potter flap, with Christians arguing the books are an endorsement of paganism and witchcraft ... which of course are competing belief systems.

Personally, I think the Potter books are profoundly moral. There's good and there's evil. Harry, at various points, is tempted with worldly riches and social position, but shows no interest in either. He spends most of his time either being a kid or saving the world.

Granted, there's no God in Harry's world, even though they celebrate Christmas. The magic is controlled by mortal beings. In that sense, it's like Star Wars. There's The Force, and some are better at using it than others. But there's no God or gods who can save the mortals from their own dilemmas.

What all that has to do with yoga, though, is beyond me.

Eat a steak, save your brain

According to this, low levels of LDL -- the "bad" cholesterol -- are linked to Parkinson's, a secondary symptom of which is dementia. That's right: Low levels of cholesterol are linked to a debilitating disease.

Another way to prevent dementia -- learn a foreign language:

Researchers in Canada, where the official languages are English and French, examined 132 patients with a diagnosis of probable Alzheimer's disease. Those who spoke two languages experienced the onset of dementia 4.1 years later than those who didn't, the researchers wrote in a study published in the February issue of the journal Neuropsychologia. The patients spoke a total of 25 different languages, including Polish, Yiddish, German, Romanian and Hungarian.

Previous studies have shown that lifestyle factors such as physical activity, social involvement and education may improve overall brain health. Bilingualism may help the brain build what is called a cognitive reserve, which may provide protection against the onset of dementia, the Canadian researchers said.

"There are no pharmacological interventions that are this dramatic," Morris Freedman, director of the Memory Clinic at Baycrest Research Centre for Aging and the Brain in Toronto, said in a statement today.

The difference in dementia onset remained even after the researchers factored in the possible influence of culture, immigration, formal education, employment and gender on the results, the study said.

Since I only speak one language, I sure hope those cholesterol-raising steaks are enough to protect me.

The height of fashion

I've been reading more and more about height the past few years -- and blogging about it from time to time -- so it's no surprise the L.A. Times would devote a major health feature to the topic, including this:

Take the common perception that employers discriminate against short men in hiring and income. That isn't exactly what happens. It turns out the much-touted income advantage of height is more closely linked to high school experiences than to hiring practices in the adult workplace. And when brothers are studied, one tall and one short, the two have exactly the same employment opportunities and income, regardless of height.

"There's still a widespread perception that male success is measured in stature," says Dalton C. Conley, chairman of the sociology department at New York University. "But in terms of total income, earnings and occupational outcomes, the male height issue is really a red herring."

Other widely held notions about short people do hold up. Based on history, there can be no doubt that Americans like their presidents tall. And on the dating scene, women go for taller men. When it comes to romance, height is often a deal-breaker.

What I didn't know is that some parents are giving normal, healthy kids drugs to make them taller:

Treatment with growth hormone helps some, but not all, children grow taller. Medical tests cannot predict in advance which children will respond. In general, growth hormone works best when started younger, given in higher doses and administered for longer periods of time. On average, treatment helps children grow a little taller -- but not much. An analysis of studies published in 2002 in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine found that children with idiopathic short stature who were given growth hormone for an average of 5.3 years had an average gain of 1.6 to 2.4 inches in height over what had been predicted when they began the drug.

The added height comes at a cost of $52,634 per gained inch, according to a study in the March 2006 issue of the same journal. About 410,000 U.S. children qualify under the FDA guidelines. If they were all treated with growth hormone, the total healthcare cost would be more than $8 billion a year, wrote Dr. Leona Cuttler, pediatric endocrinologist at Rainbow Babies and Childrens Hospital in Cleveland, in a February 2004 editorial in the journal.

I look at that as a parent who gives one of his children powerful stimulant medication to help him function normally. Nobody who saw our son in school before he started taking the meds doubted that he needed them. We waited as long as we could before starting the treatment. It's helped him in profound ways, but we still struggle with issues the drugs can't treat. That's fine; it's the deal you accept when you decide to become parents.

But to take those kind of risks with children just because they're short? And to spend that kind of money to make it happen? Holy cow.

That said, I do understand that it's kind of disappointing to realize your kids aren't going to be tall. My wife and I are dead-solid-average for American adults -- I'm 5-10, she's 5-4. I'm two inches shorter than my dad, and she's about the same height as her mother.* Both of us have taller siblings, which gave us hope that our kids would be taller than us. Our son may end up being taller than me -- he's about average for his age right now, but started out above average and may end up there again -- but both of our daughters remain stubbornly short for their ages.

Our siblings' children are mostly taller than them, so in that sense we wonder what the hell we did wrong. Two of our kids figure to be smarter than us, and the third is stronger and faster and more athletic than either of us even dreamed of being when we were that age. So why did they get the short end of the stick?

I have no idea how to answer my own question, but it would never in a million years occur to us to try to change that genetic roll of the dice with powerful and potentially dangerous drugs. I hate to judge other parents' decisions, but this is a tough one to understand.

* Actually, she's the same height as her 65-year-old mother now. Her mother was actually 5-6 for most of her adult life, two inches taller than my wife. So each of us is two inches shorter than our same-sex parent, which is bad enough. But now our daughters may end up even shorter than my wife. Where's regression to the mean when you really need it?

UPDATE: Water, water everywhere, but don't let any of it out unless you want to lose the contest

Craig Ballantyne wondered how I could possibly miss this story about a 28-year-old woman who died after a water-drinking contest she'd entered for the chance to win a video-game system for her three kids.

I didn't actually miss the story; I just found it too damned depressing to write about on a Monday morning.

Posted by LouSchuler at 07:36 AM | Comments (0)

January 12, 2007

Pain Drain

If I had to sum up my accumulated wisdom regarding injuries and exercise, it would be this: "Sometimes trying to work through an injury makes it worse, and sometimes it makes it better."

After reading this New York Times story about doctors who're pushing the envelope by using exercise to treat injuries caused by exercise, I think my hard-earned wisdom is about as close as we're going to get to a final answer.

If a muscle's genuinely torn, exercise is only going to make it more torn. I tore a calf muscle playing pickup basketball 10 or 11 years ago. It was a concrete court, on an unusually chilly night, and the douche bag I was covering decided to fire the ball off my lower leg to send it out of bounds.

I kept playing, but the next day I was in so much pain I couldn't walk without crutches and it hurt just to use the pedals on my car. Still, my recovery seemed to be going along just fine, and I ditched the crutches after a couple days. Big mistake. Just walking with my wife from our car to a movie theater made the injury worse than it had ever been -- more pain, more swelling, less range of motion. That one short walk probably prolonged the recovery by weeks, if not a full month.

Conversely, I've had more minor tweaks and strains than I could ever remember that got better after a light workout.

And that's what the doctors quoted in the Times story conclude as well:

Medical researchers say that they only gradually realized the importance of exercising when injured. A few decades ago, Dr. Mininder Kocher, a sports medicine specialist and orthopedic surgeon at Children’s Hospital Boston, said doctors were so intent on forcing hurt athletes to rest that they would put injured knees or elbows or limbs in a cast for two to three months.

When the cast finally came off, the patient’s limb would be stiff, the muscles atrophied. “It would take six months of therapy to get strength and motion back,” Dr. Kocher said.

At the same time, in a parallel path, researchers were learning that painful conditions that are essentially inflammation -- arthritis and chronic lower back pain -- actually improve when patients keep moving.

There's still some interesting detail in the story, particularly this technique:

Dr. Weinstein’s advice for injured patients is among the boldest -- he said it’s based on his basic research and his own experience with sports injuries, like knee pain and tendinitis of the Achilles and hamstring. Before exercise, he said, take one anti-inflammatory pill, like an aspirin. Ice the area for 20 minutes. Then start your usual exercise, the one that resulted in your injury, possibly reducing the intensity or time you would have spent. When you finish, ice the injured area again.

The advice involving an anti-inflammatory pill, Dr. Weinstein said, is based on something surgeons know -- in most cases, a single anti-inflammatory pill before surgery results in less pain and swelling afterward. It also is consistent with Dr. Wang’s research because, at least in theory, it should forestall new inflammation from the exercise that is about to occur.

The icing is to constrict blood vessels before and after exercise, thereby preventing some of the inflammatory white blood cells from reaching the injured tissue.

I wouldn't have thought of that.

The caffeinator

Continuing with our "pain and suffering" theme, Rannoch Donald sent along news of a cutting-edge way to prevent post-exercise soreness:

Drinking coffee could help reduce the post-workout pain that puts many people off exercise, a small study suggests. The study found moderate doses of caffeine, roughly equivalent to two cups of coffee, can cut muscle pain by up to 48 percent.

Alas, there may not be any benefit for regular coffee drinkers, since their bodies are already accustomed to the caffeine. But maybe we can combine the information in the two stories, so the next time you're in Starbucks, you can have this conversation with the barista:

"Hi Kashi. I'd like a Cinnamon Dolce Frappucino, Venti, with a twist of ibuprofen. Oh, and could you add an ice pack to go?"

Posted by LouSchuler at 07:44 AM | Comments (1)

December 31, 2006

Abbye's Road

When I wrote "The Ten Most Influential Muscleheads" for T-nation a couple weeks ago, the comments were lively and, in many cases, learned.

If you have a couple days to dig through them, you'll see that one of my most disputed inclusions was Abbye "Pudgy" Stockton, the Muscle Beach acrobat and strongwoman who, in my view, was the pioneering female lifter in the modern sense. She wasn't just a strongwoman, she wasn't just a acrobat, she wasn't just an athlete -- she was all those things, and she was more: She was a hottie.

Here's part of my entry on Stockton:

[I]n a just universe, she'd be at least as famous as any female fitness icon who followed her, up to and including Richard Simmons. Stockton proved that weights make a woman sexy. You couldn't possibly look at her and conclude that lifting gave women masculine physiques or "bulky" muscles; she was bigger before she started training than she was at the height of her fame. (She peaked at 140 pounds when she worked as a telephone operator shortly before she started her transformation.) It's not her fault that some women still believe the opposite.

Stockton died last summer, and the New York Times Magazine includes her in its annual roundup of notable people we shuffled off their mortal coils in the previous year. Here's a snippet from Elizabeth McCracken's elegant tribute to an American original:

There were plenty of superheroes in the making on Muscle Beach back then: Jack LaLanne, Steve Reeves, Joe Gold (who would found Gold’s Gym). Crowds gathered and gawked. Harold Zinkin, who later invented the Universal Gym, made himself into a belly-up table to support a totem pole of three bodybuilders, feet to shoulders, standing on his stomach. A strongman named George Eiferman -- a future Mr. America -- lifted weights with his left hand and played the trumpet with his right. Adagio dancers tossed one another around like javelins; acrobats defied gravity and common sense.

In photographs of the Muscle Beach hand-balancers, you can find Pudgy as a top-mounter or under-stander, upside down and right side up, with two women on each arm and a man on her shoulders or alone in a handstand, muscular and pocket-size: 5 foot 1, 115 pounds. Make no mistake: She’s not toned or firmed-up or any of those timid terms that even 21st-century women persist in using when they decide to change their bodies through exercise. She’s built. Her back is corrugated with muscles as she supports a likewise muscular man -- Les Stockton, now her husband, 185 pounds of bodybuilder -- upside down over her head.

There were strong women before Muscle Beach, pale, leotarded circus and vaudeville performers, stoic as caryatids as they lifted extraordinary weights. Even their names seem carved from stone: Minerva, Vulcana, Sandwina, Athleta. But Pudgy Stockton was something brand-new. Every inch and ounce of her body refuted the common wisdom that training with weights turned women manly and musclebound. She was splendid as a work of art but undoubtedly, thrillingly, flesh, blood, breath.

What she said.

Posted by LouSchuler at 07:32 AM | Comments (3)

December 21, 2006

Agents of Influence

Inspired by this story in the Atlantic Monthly, "The 100 Most Influential Americans of All Time," I wrote "The 10 Most Influential Muscleheads of All Time," which is now up at T-nation.

I hope it's as much fun to read as it was to write. The comments I've seen so far are lively as well.

Posted by LouSchuler at 07:30 AM | Comments (0)

December 19, 2006

"Hey You! Yeah, You! Somebody Writing in a Newspaper Says You're Supposed to Get Up and Exercise More!"

If we know nothing else about exercise psychology in this moment in history, it's that yelling at people to get more exercise doesn't work particularly well.

But that isn't stopping our worldwide media from engaging in some gratuitous end-of-year hectoring:

Let's start with this hand-wringing story from BBC News:

Twice as many dieters count calories to lose weight rather than exercise, a poll has found. Calorie counting is most popular with women -- half opt to count their food intake, compared with a third of men. ...

John Brewer, GSK sports scientist, said: "The trend of people swapping the gym for a low calorie meal is very worrying. Consuming fewer calories is no substitute for exercise. We cannot afford to become a nation of calorie-counting couch potatoes -- the benefits of leading active lives are enormous." ...

Charlene Shoneye, research dietician at Weight Concern, said: "I'm not surprised by the results. A lot of people find the idea of going to the gym quite daunting and so reducing calorie intake seems to be an easier option. A recent survey found only 12 percent of the population are gym members."

What I find funny is the use of the word "only." Twelve percent is a huge number. I remember just a few years back that the health-club industry considered 10 percent to be a major milestone. Currently, more than 40 million Americans belong to health clubs, which is more than 13 percent of our total population. According to this, close to 18 million use their health club 100 or more times a year.

So about 6 percent of Americans visit health clubs at least twice a week. Based on other information I've seen over the years, I'd guess that those people represent about a third of the total number who exercise enough to get any kind of physiological benefit.

Next up is this story from the CBS News website. It says a recent Gallup Poll shows that just 12 percent of Americans get vigorous exercise at least five days a week.

I can't figure out how they came up with that criterion. Who ever said that you need to do vigorous exercise at least five days a week? The party line these days is that you should do moderate exercise at least five days a week, and the Gallup Poll shows that about 30 percent of Americans hit that mark, while the "average American" does moderate exercise three times a week. (Frankly, that's a better number than I would've predicted.)

To the best of my knowledge, two or three days a week of vigorous exercise is enough to get physiological benefits, such as increasing strength, muscle mass, or endurance. For fat loss you want more exercise than that -- three tough workouts a week, with some moderate activity on the days in between. But if you're just getting those vigorous workouts two or three times a week, you're ahead of the game. A few years back I estimated that about 18 percent of Americans get that much serious exercise, and I doubt if the number has risen or fallen much since then.

Last up: Jane Brody in the New York Times tells us that it's not enough to walk around the block for a half-hour a day; we need to do all kinds of other stuff:

In addition to activities like walking, jogging, cycling and swimming that promote endurance, cardiovascular health and weight control, there is a dire need for exercises that improve posture and increase strength, flexibility and balance. These exercises can greatly reduce the risk of injuries from sports and endurance activities, the demands of daily life, falls and other accidents.

Musculoskeletal injuries are now the No. 1 one reason for seeking medical care in the United States. And falls, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last month, have become the leading cause of injury deaths for men and women 65 and older.

Unless you do something to slow the deterioration in muscle, bone strength and agility that naturally accompanies aging, you will become a prime candidate for what Dr. Nicholas A. DiNubile, an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, calls “boomeritis.”

“By their 40th birthday, people often have vulnerabilities -- weak links -- and as the first generation that is trying to stay active in droves, baby boomers are pushing their frames to the breakpoint,” Dr. DiNubile said in introducing a November press event in New York sponsored by the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons and the National Athletic Trainers’ Association.

“Baby boomers are falling apart -- developing tendinitis, bursitis, arthritis and ‘fix-me-itis,’ the idea that modern medicine can fix anything,” he said. “It’s much better to prevent things than to have to try to fix them.”

Dr. DiNubile's a great guy to interview. He's smart, funny, and remarkably accommodating for a fantastically busy orthopedic surgeon. And he wrote an excellent book showing how to do what he recommends.

But Brody's article contains none of that advice. In fact, it quotes one source who advocates against taking advice from a book:

Marjorie J. Albohm, a certified athletic trainer affiliated with OrthoIndy and the Indiana Orthopedic Hospital in Indianapolis, cautioned against “cookbook recipes” for exercise. “The key to a good workout is customization,” based on a professional assessment of flexibility, cardiovascular endurance, strength and balance, she said. “The goal is to minimize symptoms and prevent new injuries,” Ms. Albohm said, and she urged people to listen to their bodies to avoid making things worse.

Ms. Albohm emphasized flexibility, saying it is “not optional” as you age. “To prevent stiffness and maintain joint mobility you should stretch daily for 15 to 20 minutes,” she said “using slow, controlled movements, before or after your exercise program.”

So she says that no one should follow "cookbook recipes," but then in the next paragraph offers her own cookbook recipe.

I know she didn't write the article, so the exhortation to avoid uncustomized routines may have been said in a different part of the interview, or even in a different context.

Still, since the interview was conducted by Brody, who's been writing her health column in the Times for 30 years, I'm going with the assumption that she offered both thoughts in the same interview pretty much as Brody presents them.

And both thoughts are absurd.

I'll offer the disclaimer that I make a living writing and editing books that offer workout programs designed by the most competent, experienced, and creative professionals I know. So I'm biased when I say that there's absolutely no reason to suggest that programs designed by the top people in the field should be avoided because they aren't customized. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

Sure, if you're rehabilitating an injury, or have unique goals, or just want to work one-on-one with a professional and have the resources to do it, then by all means seek out personalized advice. But most of us do just fine on a well-designed but uncustomized program, and I'd be willing to bet that most of us will do a lot better on that program than anything we'd design for ourselves.

Personally, I've been working out since I was 13, and writing about fitness since 1992, and I make all my gains on other people's programs. I might have to make alterations to those programs to work around my creaky knees, but that's just a combination of common sense and hard-earned experience. I suspect that just about everybody reading this has at least one story of trying to ignore an injury, only to figure out sooner or later what a bad idea that was. (My money is on "sooner.")

If that's what Albohm means by "customization," okay. But I don't think that's what she was talking about, since her next quote, about listening to your body, seems to be making a separate point.

My real problem, though, aside from the blatant contradiction from one thought to the next, is with her assertion that 15 to 20 minutes of daily stretching is "not optional." It is optional, just like most types of moderate exercise are optional. If you aren't stiff, you don't need to do that much stretching.

And if you're doing strength training the way my coauthors and I recommend, you probably don't need a lot of extra flexibility exercise. That's the beauty of those "cookbook recipes" she disdains. They help you build strength, increase contractile tissue, speed up your metabolism, maintain or even increase your joints' range of motion, and improve your balance and coordination.

Best of all, you get those benefits in three hours a week, and you get them without anyone yelling at you from the pages of newspapers.

Posted by LouSchuler at 07:18 AM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2006

Gruntgate IV: Collect the Entire Set!

I suspect this take on Gruntgate, by the L.A. Times, is the last one we'll see for a while.

Still, it has some fun tidbits:

To properly examine the topic, some basic grunt science is in order. Even though grunting during effort is perceived by many as a primitive -- even monkey-like -- behavior, it is also a distinctly human phenomenon, says Michael J. Owren, an acoustic primatologist (some might call him a gruntologist) at Georgia State University.

But there are differences. Even though monkeys and apes grunt plenty, researchers believe they do it as an involuntary response to an emotion, Owren says. In short, you will never see a monkey fake a grunt.

Humans, however, have a unique ability to simulate or exaggerate this sound strictly for effect. In fact, Owren surmises that humans who produce exaggerated effort grunts do so to signal great exertion and, hence, great power. "One can readily imagine that in a fitness and weight-lifting circumstance that it's being used as a kind of dominance signal," he says.

And here's something I should've known, but didn't until I read it here:

Most researchers think that grunting on exertion -- the so-called "effort grunt" -- doesn't confer much of a physiological advantage. Some have scientifically examined the issue. A 1999 study by researchers at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, found that among 31 men ages 17 to 35, grunting while performing a dead lift did not increase maximal force production, a.k.a. lifting ability.

Posted by LouSchuler at 06:49 AM | Comments (0)

December 07, 2006

Dead Man Running

It's been more than three years since I wrote "Death by Exercise," a look at the surprisingly high body count associated with serious endurance training. And yet, running marathons is more popular than ever. (Nice to know I've had such a profound influence on the exercise culture.)

As you might expect, the body count is rising:

This has been an unusual season for the cardiac health of marathoners. After years in which almost no deaths were attributed to heart attacks at this country’s major marathons, at least six runners have died in 2006.

Two police officers, one 53, the other 60, died of heart attacks at the Los Angeles Marathon in March. The hearts of three runners in their early 40s gave out during marathons in Chicago in October, San Francisco in July and the Twin Cities in October. And at the same marathon where Mr. Turner was felled, another man, 56, crumpled near the 17th mile, never to recover.

This year’s toll has sobered race directors and medical directors of marathons. But, as Rick Nealis, the director of the Marine Corps Marathon, said, “Statistically, maybe, it was inevitable.”

The risk is still small -- an estimated 1 in 50,000 marathoners will die with a race number pinned to his chest -- but researchers are finding more signs of cardiac damage from racing, on top of a higher risk of skin cancer and at least one scary thing I can't even pronounce.

There's nothing in the new research that suggests major health problems are inevitable with marathoning. The best conclusion is that it's dangerous and ill-advised for some. But that brings me to something I find mystifying:

If someone is new to strength training, no one suggests that he immediately start bulking up for powerlifting or bodybuilding competition. It's understood that very few people have the kind of genetics that make such ambitions realistic.

And yet, I'd guess that most people who start running have, somewhere in their minds, the idea that they'll someday run a marathon. And it seems to me that the running industry cheers them on.

I don't read running magazines, so I can't say this for sure, but I'd be surprised to find many precautions against long-distance running in their pages. Books about training for marathons tend to outsell my books about progressive strength training for beginners and intermediates.

Some of the titles are kind of disturbing, too. Take, for example, The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer. If I wrote a book called The Non-Lifter's Guide to Competitive Powerlifting, I wouldn't sell a single copy. But somehow a book about extreme endurance training for novices is considered perfectly reasonable.

Am I the only one who finds that strange?

Posted by LouSchuler at 08:42 AM | Comments (6)

November 29, 2006

The Revolution Has Begun

I met Chad Waterbury at a fitness summit a year and a half ago. He was the featured speaker, and I really liked his ideas. I contacted him shortly after that about working on a book together. I had just finished New Rules of Lifting, and had an idea that we could do a book about pure strength, sort of a follow-up to Book of Muscle.

Chad had an idea for a 12-week strength-building program that he hadn't yet used on T-Nation, and I tried it out. By the end of the 12 weeks, I had set a handful of personal records on some basic exercises that I'd been doing most of my life, and was completely sold on the program.

Eventually, I figured out that my traditional approach to workout books -- a trainer and I acting as coauthors -- wasn't right for this project. I'd just be getting in the way. So Chad decided to self-publish the book, and I signed on as editor.

The book, Muscle Revolution, is now available for sale at T-Nation (scroll down toward the bottom of the page).

What I find most amazing about the project is that it doesn't look or feel like a self-published book. The paper is high-quality, the design is clean, the color photography is first-rate, and I've heard good things about the editor.

But the real meat of the book is the 12-week Total Strength Program, and like I said, it's pretty amazing.

Posted by LouSchuler at 08:33 AM | Comments (0)

November 27, 2006

Monday Math

A handful of fun and interesting stories to check out this morning:

TV + exercise = weight loss.

A schizophrenia drug + a blood-pressure drug = an ejaculation-preventing contraceptive pill for men.

Slow reaction times + poorly functioning memory = heart attacks.

Making more money may or may not = more happiness. (And check out this New York Times story on how the really rich are separating themselves from the merely successful and affluent. Is anyone happier because he's making millions instead of hundreds of thousands?)

Posted by LouSchuler at 07:51 AM | Comments (1)

November 21, 2006

Skin in the Game

I guess November is "Bad News for Runners Month." First there was this. Now there's this:

Marathon runners may have an increased risk for skin cancer, a small study published Monday suggests, and excessive sun exposure and exercise-induced suppression of the body’s immune system may be involved.

The lead author of the report, Dr. Christina M. Ambros-Rudolph, said the pilot study had reached no conclusion about the exact increase in risk that marathoners face.

But, Dr. Ambros-Rudolph said, “Our results show that there is a difference, in particular in sun exposure and measurable consequences such as increased solar lentigines.”

Solar lentigines are “age spots” caused by long-term sun exposure.

The study looked at 210 white marathoners, with a control group of 210 nonmarathoners. I haven't seen the full report, but the abstract suggests that the study was prompted by the researchers' observations that they'd seen eight cases of malignant melanoma in ultramarathon runners over the past decade.

What they found was that, based on full dermatological exams, the runners had more signs of skin cancer than the control group, and the more miles the runners ran, the greater their risk.

But here's the real shocker:

Regular use of sunscreen was reported in only 56.2 percent of runners.

Holy shit! I'm not a runner, so maybe someone can explain to me why close to half of runners wouldn't use sunscreen. Is there a performance-related issue? Is it because it comes right off with perspiration? I've always figured runners were well-educated folks -- if you go to a sports-medicine conference, the streets are clogged with running scientists and doctors before and after the sessions -- so why wouldn't these smart, health-conscious people do the most obvious thing to protect their skin?

Beyond skin cancer, the researchers have a more ominous warning about endurance exercise, as noted in the New York Times report:

The authors write that although there is no question that regular exercise is important to good health, there is good evidence that high-intensity training and excessive exercise can lead to suppressed immune function.

“This is quite well established,” Dr. Ambros-Rudolph said. “Many alterations in immune cell function have been noted at the cellular level in marathon runners.

“For example, there is the association between excessive exercise and immunosuppression reflected in the increased incidence and severity of upper respiratory tract infections in marathon runners after races.”

The exact mechanism is unknown, but there is evidence that trauma sustained during extreme exercise can induce the release of cytokines, proteins that can stimulate the growth and activity of various immune cells and that may limit the ability of the immune system to fight potential cancers.

Funny how marathon running is still regarded as a worthwhile pursuit for fitness-conscious people, with no warnings about all the health hazards that are very well understood by scientists. I wonder why that is?

Posted by LouSchuler at 06:55 AM | Comments (1)

November 18, 2006

Grunt III: Grunter's Revenge

The New York Times has now weighed in on Gruntgate. The facts haven't changed from the last time I covered this paradigm-shifting story, but the Times has added some scientific perspective:

Grunting can be a nuisance to anyone within earshot, sure, but does it serve any physiological purpose?

Dennis G. O’Connell, a professor of physical therapy at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Tex., has conducted studies on the effects of grunting. He found that weight lifters produce between 2 and 5 percent more force when they grunt, in part because the deep breathing grunting entails can help stabilize the spine.

“I’m not so sure it’s wise to tell people not to grunt,” Professor O’Connell said.

And Planet Fitness, epicenter of Gruntgate, is getting no love from its peers in the health-club industry:

Rosemary Lavery, a spokeswoman for the Boston-based International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, said she could only assume Planet Fitness was trying to discourage bodybuilders and others who are diligent about working out. Ms. Lavery cited statistics showing that baby boomers who exercise once or twice a week represent the fastest-growing segment of health club members. Many clubs are seeking ways to appeal to those groups, she said, but a ban on guttural noises is not the path most have taken.

“I don’t think that at a health club the expectation of quietness is realistic,” Ms. Lavery said.

Which is a nice segue to this site, which the Times pegs as the official home of the Gruntgate backlash. On the site you'll find "Top 10 Reasons to Join Planet Witless," which include ...

3. Always thought Patrick Swayze was "too muscular" ...

6. Library is just too noisy of an environment for reading books...

8. Outgrew 15 lb. neoprene dumbbells at home and are ready to train with the "big boys."

Guess which one is my favorite.

Posted by LouSchuler at 09:25 AM | Comments (0)

November 14, 2006

Go Long, Live Short?

I don't find this surprising:

Healthy men over 50 who had finished at least five marathons in the last five years were more likely to have major calcium deposits in their arteries than healthy men who did not run as much, according to a study presented yesterday at an American Heart Association meeting in Chicago.

Calcium buildup is a sign that arteries are hardening, even when patients lack other symptoms. ...

About 36 percent of the 108 male marathon runners in the study had coronary artery calcium scores above 100, possibly a sign of increased cardiovascular risk. Similar scores were seen in 22 percent of 216 men who did not run and had risk factors for heart disease similar to those of the marathon group.

Dr. Möhlenkamp said he got the idea for the study after hearing about some healthy older male runners who had heart attacks when running marathons. As a man who runs about 12 miles a week, he said, he was surprised by the possibility that long-distance running might pose heart risks.

To my scientifically untrained eyes, that doesn't look like a huge difference in the study group and the control group. If 22 percent of the non-runners have these elevated calcium levels, vs. 36 percent of the marathoners, what's the actual increased risk from running marathons? The crude math says it's 61 percent higher, but I have no idea the extent to which calcium levels are associated with mortality.

My instincts and experience tell me that there's a point of diminishing returns with any type of exercise. The only studies I've seen on the subject (from the Harvard Alumni Health Study) showed an L-shaped association between exercise and longevity: The guys who did no exercise had the highest mortality rates, while the ones who did the most were about at the same risk level as the ones who did moderate amounts. So we know that some exercise is good, and vigorous exercise is better than moderate or light exercise.

But then there are the individual cases, which I wrote about here. If seemingly healthy middle-aged men drop dead from running or cycling long distances, it seems entirely possible that there's something inherently dangerous about it that we're all missing.

Posted by LouSchuler at 08:19 AM | Comments (4)

November 07, 2006

Grunt II: Because Making Fun of It Once Wasn't Enough

Following up on this story, about the gym that called on the police to remove a lifter who'd broken the no-grunting rule, ESPN.com columnist Patrick Hruby has a few more behaviors he thinks the gym should prohibit. My favorites:

Running on Treadmills: Too loud. A distraction. Politely offer clients bunny slippers and ask them to walk slowly and softly; if they refuse, have them hogtied and detained.

Lifting Weights, Wearing a Weight Belt, Looking at the Squat Rack: Intimidating. Even if you aren't wearing Zubaz pants.

Hard Breathing: Implies effort, which also can be intimidating.

Funny/sad story:

I've probably mentioned a few times that the book I'm currently writing is my first for women. One of the goals of the book is to get them to use heavier weights in the gym. I knew that was going to be a hard sell, but even I was taken aback by something I saw in my gym the other day.

A woman was supersetting two exercises -- triceps kickbacks and one-arm dumbbell rows.

Kickbacks are one of those "muscle squeezing" exercises, as opposed to the more desirable "muscle building" exercises. Women think it's accomplishing their desired goal because they can feel a squeeze in their triceps muscles when they do it.

She was using six-pound dumbbells, which in my gym are yellow and plastic-coated, for her kickbacks. That's not a bad weight for that exercise, although the exercise itself is still mostly a waste of time.

But here's why I noticed her: She put down the yellow six-pound weights, picked up blue seven-pound weights, and did her one-arm rows. The row is a multi-joint exercise, using the big muscles of the middle and upper back to move the weight, including the lats, trapezius, and rear deltoids, along with the biceps. Since your body is braced at three points -- one foot on the floor, one knee on the bench, and one hand on the bench -- you have tremendous leverage, and should be able to use at least five times as much weight as you'd use on a kickback. If you go to a gym that doesn't prohibit grunting or the wearing of do-rags, you might see bodybuilders using more than 100 pounds on one-arm rows.

But if you had those same bodybuilders doing triceps kickbacks, it's unlikely they'd be able to use more than 20 or 25 pounds with the right form. The leverage is completely different.

Now, as I said, it was both funny and sad to see a woman using nearly identical weights for the two exercises, challenging herself on the useless exercise but then lifting the equivalent of a couple of cereal boxes on the exercise that might actually help her develop some strength and muscle hypertrophy.

But the real punchline here comes when you click on those links for the two exercises. The model is clearly laboring with too heavy a weight on the kickbacks -- you can see how her body twists and her arm drops as she tries to straighten her elbow. But then you see her using the exact same weight on the rows.

I know how exercise shoots go -- you're often doing them in a photo studio, and the only weights you have are the ones you brought. But those photos look they were done in a fully equipped gym, so it's hard to imagine the crew had only one set of dumbbells to work with.

I'm beginning to understand why so many people seem so confused in gyms.

(Thanks, as always, to Rannoch Donald for the ESPN.com link.)

Posted by LouSchuler at 07:31 AM | Comments (1)

November 06, 2006

Unprecedented

My friend and former colleague Matt Neumaier sent word this morning that the 1,000-pound barrier has been broken in the deadlift. Here's the video -- if you're watching it at work, turn the volume way down.

I won't pretend I follow powerlifting closely, or that I'm any kind of expert on the subject. But I have been fascinated with the progression of powerlifting records. The advent of the bench shirt and squat suit have helped PLers pass the 1,000-pound barrier in those lifts. But a deadlift is still the same lift it's been since the beginning of powerlifting. Sure, the guys today probably take more drugs, but given that all of them have access to the same drugs, it's always struck me as significant that deadlift records fell so far behind the records for the other lifts.

I think I qualify as a typical drug-free lifter (although I'm not particularly strong for a guy who lifts as much as I do and for as long as I have), and as such I find I can lift much more in the deadlift than in the squat or bench press. I've done one 300-pound squat in my life, and couldn't approach that today. But I've been able to deadlift over 300 pounds consistently for several years now.

The guy who broke the record, Andy Bolton, says in this interview that he didn't start lifting until he was 18, and his first day in the gym he squatted 500 pounds and deadlifted 600.

It won't make the news anywhere, but it's a hell of a feat nonetheless.

Posted by LouSchuler at 09:50 AM | Comments (1)

November 03, 2006

Grunt of the Litter

In at least one gym in America, heavy lifters are not welcome:

You can lift, strain, crunch and sweat all you want at the Planet Fitness in the Dutchess County village. But whatever you do, do not grunt.

Yep, "no grunting." It says so, in black and white, on a sign posted at the gym. One former member learned the new rule the hard way.

"This is really absurd, especially the part about the grunting," said Al Argibay, a corrections officer who learned first-hand "no grunting" means exactly that.

Argibay, a former competitive bodybuilder, joined the gym in September because it was affordable and convenient.

Planet Fitness is also somewhat picky, with a long list of dos-and-don'ts posted right inside the door. "No grunting or screaming" is listed, along with "no bandanas or do-rags."

"We're creating an atmosphere that's not intimidating," said Carol Palazzolo, the gym manager, who yanked Argibay's membership on Monday.

Argibay said he was at a multi-press station [I assume this means the squat rack], getting ready to squat about 500 pounds when the forbidden sin happened. "I let out a grunt, squatted down, back up, grunt again. That's it," explained Argibay. "Basically, grunt, grunt, basic breathing in heavy, and breathing out."

All that is weird enough (if you click on the link, you can see video showing how determined the gym is to keep out hard-core lifters), but this is perhaps the weirdest part: The gym manager didn't just ask Argibay to quit grunting. She didn't just ask him to leave. She called the police to have him escorted off the premises.

The manager says she tried to do those things before calling in the cavalry, but it didn't work. Argibay disputes her version of events:

"He did grunt, and when I told him he wasn't allowed to grunt, he got irate at me, he swore, and he yelled at me," Palazzolo said. "I asked him not to [grunt), he got irate and nasty, and I can't have him in my facility if he's gonna do those kind of things."

Argibay denied he yelled, cursed, or acted inappropriately. He demanded an apology from the gym and its manager.

I have no idea who's lying here, and I guess it's possible that both of them are telling a version of the truth. Maybe she tried to talk to him and maybe he scared her off; corrections officers who can squat 500 pounds are known to be intimidating fellows. Maybe he truly didn't think she was serious about kicking him out, and felt shocked and insulted when the police showed up to remove his grunting self from the gym.

Still:

Why even have a gym if the idea is to prevent people from working hard?

I should say here that I hate gratuitous noisemaking in the gym as much as anybody. The last time I bought a day pass for the local Gold's Gym, a guy there was shrieking on every repetition of every exercise. In between sets, he strolled around with this big smile on his face, like he was the homecoming king. People there seemed to like him, so I figured I was the only one who held his intrafamilial parentage against him. The obvious solution was for me to stop going to that gym.

At the other extreme, I've been to gyms where the place was so strenuously policed by its management that I felt there were eyes watching every step I took.

Here's an example:

Back in January, right after New Rules of Lifting came out, I had to chance to work out with Jorge Cruise. He's based in San Diego, but was in New York to do a spot on Good Morning America. He had read the book and was considering writing about it in his column for USA Weekend magazine. (That column is here.) He works out at his home with limited equipment, and he wanted me to show him how to adapt the barbell exercises in New Rules so he could do them with dumbbells and his multistation gym.

Jorge set it up with the marketing director of a gym in Manhattan, near his hotel. I took the bus in from Allentown, met him at the gym, and we hit the weight room, where I began showing him how to improvise variations on some of the exercises in the book.

We weren't bothering anybody. We weren't in anybody's way. We were sharing equipment, just like I've done hundreds of times when I've had to do magazine photo shoots in commercial gyms. And, more to the point, we had permission from the gym's marketing director to do exactly what we were doing.

But we were maybe halfway finished when a gym manager told us we were violating gym rules by doing personal training. Only the gym's authorized trainers are allowed to work with clients. We explained that this wasn't really personal training -- it was an author of one book showing the author of another book how to do a handful of exercises for possible inclusion in a magazine column. Nobody was "training" anybody. Plus, as I said, we had permission from someone in the gym's management. It wasn't like we were trying to pull anything over on anybody.

She didn't call the cops on us, but she made it clear that we had to cease and desist. So we left and went to another health club.

I can't say that's the most surreal experience I've ever had in a gym. If I had to rank them, number-one would probably be the time our crew from Men's Fitness was shooting a workout with a strength coach at UCLA, and another strength coach at UCLA tried to kick us out of their weight room. My memory's fuzzy, but as I recall he didn't actually have the authority to kick us out. The strength coach we were working with had set it up, so whoever was ultimately in charge -- probably the athletic director or someone in his office -- had given us permission to be t