I wanted to start the year by getting way out of my personal comfort zone and trying something entirely new. That’s why I accepted when physical therapist Shon Grosse invited me to join him and some of his neighbors and clients at his annual New Year’s Day workout. I think this is the third time he’s invited me. Shon’s training facility is about 30 miles south of me, and in the past it’s been hard to justify spending a couple hours away from the family on a holiday.
This year I made my excuses way in advance, and the weather was perfect. By the time we got outside to push sleds, it was 50 degrees. We were in shirtsleeves and sweating like farm workers.
The highlight, for me, came when we worked out on the gymnastic rings. In the video clip,…
Today is Opening Day for my new book with Alwyn Cosgrove, The New Rules of Lifting for Abs. I’m not sure if it’s in every bookstore yet, and Amazon still lists it as available for pre-order (the official release date is December 30, while I’m writing this on the 29th). But Amazon is telling those who pre-ordered that their copies are on the way, and friends and colleagues who received advance copies are posting their reviews, so it feels close enough to the real thing.
Among the generous and enthusiastic endorsements for the new book:
* Craig Ballantyne lists his three favorite exercises from Alwyn’s programs.
My friend Kevin emailed on November 4 to tell me he’d lost 25 pounds. I can’t recommend his training protocol — if I’m reading his email correctly, 90% of the calorie deficit came from his Wii Fit Plus workouts, and 10% came from not drinking chocolate syrup straight out of the can — but of course I congratulated him on his results.
On November 29, he wrote back to say his program had hit a snag:
I’ve been gaining and losing the same three pounds for six weeks. I need something new. A new gym just opened up less than a mile away. Or maybe an exercise bike? Any recommendations?
In reply, I suggested that he forget the exercise bike (limited muscle involvement, limited range of motion, limited results) and join the gym. “If you’re creative,” I wrote, “by which I mean, if you View Comments (3)
For most of the year, I don’t spend much time thinking about weight loss. I could stand to lose an inch around the middle, but I’ll be honest: the reward wouldn’t match the effort it would take to get significantly leaner than I am right now. I’ve been weight-stable at around 185 pounds for years, and that’s a comfortable weight for me. I can be strong and lean and mobile and feel solid and fit at that weight, and what else do I really need?
But who cares about me (other than me)?
In the past few days I’ve had three conversations with friends that inspired this three-part series. I’ll start with the most recent.
Gregg and I have worked together for years, but had never actually met until we got together for a drink the other night. He mentioned that he only worries…
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:
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…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
