Choice of music for working out is perhaps a type of personality test. If the piped music at the gym is any guide, most people seem to go for your standard up-tempo pop music--at least that's what they play in the gym. This never appealed to me. It's bland and uninspiring. I prefer music with the promise of something heroic and extraordinary. This to me is the point of working out in the first place, not to mention most other things I do.
So herewith a selection of some of what I listen to when exercising. May some of them inspire you.
1. "What Are You Going to Do When You Aren't Saving the World?" from Man of Steel (2013). Like many of my choices, this is movie music. In general I find movie music is often more willing to commit to a concept. This piece starts good but builds up to a couple of great climaxes. Great for pushing through he last couple of sets of an exercise.
2. "The Great Race March" from The Great Race (1965). In the movie, this song serves as the theme song for the always white-clad Great Leslie, the story's hero---polymath, daredevil, and unflagging good sport. This song is lighter in mood, but I like how apparently every patriotic song in the world was stolen from the great Leslie.
3. "Bim Bam Smash" from the Bourne Supremacy. Bourne soundtracks are admittedly all rather similar but Supremacy has more "flavor" to my ears and is my favorite. This track is from the big chase scene at the end of the movie. It has a high-speed energy to it--better for running than heavy weights.
4. "The Ecstasy of Gold" from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, by the great Ennio Morricone. This is another good song for running (there's actually a lot of running in this scene).
5. "No Rest for the Weary" from In Like Flint. More likely than not, you have never heard of this movie. It's my favorite among the James Bond imitators. For my lucky readers I found both the music track and the scene from the movie. Flint is very 60's--and yet his athleticism is more like Daniel Craig than Sean Connery.
6. "Chevaliers de Sangreal" from The Da Vinci Code. Another great tune that gradually builds in energy, great for doing several sets of an exercise or pushing through the last half-mile of a run.
7. "Setting up the Lair" from the TV show Arrow. Once again, I provide both the scene and the music track, because I think visual context is essential for appreciating this track. Stephen Amell is one of the buffest guys ever to appear on TV. This track accompanies him setting up his lair (a strenuous activity in its own right), culminating in the most badass workout ever.
8. "His Name is Napoleon Solo" from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. One of my disappointments in life is that this film seems not to have spawned the franchise that was clearly intended. If it had done so, this track could have become a theme song. It's more about attitude than energy.
9. "The Pines of the Appian Way" by Ottorino Respighi. Okay, not a soundtrack; in fact this one is classical. Another great piece that steadily builds to a climax.
10. Finally: "Big Right" from Cinderella Man, by Thomas Newman. Newman also did, for example, the soundtrack for The Shawshank Redemption. He makes an interesting choice in moments of triumph: contrary to what almost anyone else would do, he takes the mood rather dark. The message that I take from this is that it's a bit scary what human beings are capable of achieving in their peak moments.
I've got to learn from the greats, earn my right to be living, with every breath that I take, every heartbeat...
My list of resolutions for this year is shorter than some previous years. Why so? I'm not sure; perhaps it reflects an evolving strategy of prioritization.
1. Simplify my life. Reduce the number of my possessions. Drastically reduce my stack of unread books. Complete or abandon unfinished tasks. Extend the make-your-bed principle (I do make my bed) to keeping my various inboxes clear and relentlessly chipping away at my to-do list.
2. Hit the gym about 25% more often, no matter how busy I get. Every year for everyone should include at least one fitness-related goal. I'm optimistic about this one, because actually I've put it into effect for several weeks, and I'm seeing the results.
3. Start a new language. Most likely this will be Persian. It's not the first time I have "started" Persian, but circumstances are more favorable this time. Notably I have found an excellent italki teacher for Persian.
4. Continue improving my Vietnamese. After two years of assiduous study, I can have meaningful conversations. This is satisfying and at the same time stimulates my awareness of what I miss out on by not communicating better.
5. Make significant progress on my digital-imaging research project. (My day job)
6. Spend at least five minutes a day writing this blog. May not seem like much, but it should allow for significant progress.
Which is the title of an article over at GQ. The article appears to be 50% sensible health advice and 50% mocking the whole idea of getting into shape.
Part of the irony is that the author's wife is not at all happy that he gets into shape, ha-ha. Because she then feels pressured by implication. Here is a sample quote (I wish I were making this up):
You have a ripping six-pack, but it's a little gross. You ever see those pictures of Madonna? She's like 50 and made of sinew. You look like that.
Is this supposed to be funny? Insightful? Can you imagine this situation with the genders reversed? Wife decides to slim down and get into shape. Husband is opposed because he doesn't want the implied pressure to get himself into shape. Then when wife succeeds, husband calls her "gross."
Do such husbands exist? Indeed they do. I know because I've seen them on Dr. Phil. The difference is that a husband who takes this attitude is universally recognized as selfish and abusive, and nobody find it amusing.
Read the GQ article. It suggests that this attitude among wives is pretty widespread. (My limited personal experience does not back this up.)
It ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!
Ooh, I like this speech. But that's not what I'm here to talk about today. Don't get me wrong, being able to bounce back from defeat is important. But it's also important to fail sometimes and be unable to bounce back. Otherwise you're missing out on life.
Why?
Let's imagine three high-jumpers; we'll call them Alice, Betty, and Carmen.
Suppose first that Alice, during her entire jumping career, never misses the bar. Let's suppose she clears the bar all the way up to 3 meters, no one else can match 3 meters, so she never loses.
Great, right. Actually, kind of strange, right? Wouldn't Alice want to know how high she can jump, regardless of how high anyone else can go? Maybe she could have made it to 3.1 meters, 3.2. Who knows?
I think most would agree that Alice is not fully exploiting her gifts. The fact that she never lost is irrelevant.
Now, let's consider Betty. Betty is not as gifted as Alice. In fact in a competition with Alice, Betty made it up to 2.49 meters. But when the bar was set at 2.5 meters, Betty missed.
But that's not the end of the story. Betty trained and trained, swallowed raw eggs, and eventually came back and cleared that 2.5 meters. She missed again at 2.6 meters, but eventually she came back and cleared that 2.6 meters.
Inspirational story, right? We all have goose bumps. And suppose the end of the story is that Betty never missed the bar again. Betty has something that Alice doesn't, namely she knows that she made herself better. This is an important principle. Failure gives you a benchmark for making yourself better.
But like Alice, Betty doesn't know how far she could have gone.
Let's take finally the case of Carmen. Like Betty, Carmen failed at the 2.5-meter mark, then trained until she succeeded. Also like Betty, Carmen failed at 2.6 meters, but after that, no matter how much she trained, Carmen never made it higher than 2.55 meters. 2.56 meters was forever out of reach.
Of our three jumpers, Carmen is the richest, because she knows she squeezed as much as possible out of her gift.
Every day you negotiate with yourself on what to achieve for the day. If every day you achieve the goals you set, this indicates mainly that you're a lousy negotiator. (Always having your offer accepted indicates lousy negotiating skills.)
If you fail at some of your daily goals, and then come back later to meet them, good for you. This is what Rocky is talking about: get hit and keep moving forward. Sometimes a negotiation requires several rounds before a deal is concluded.
But an optimal negotiator ends up walking away from some deals. You can't make the best deal unless willing to risk the deal falling through. Likewise, if you succeed at all of your life goals, that indicates that you could have had more.
Back in grade school they used to tell us this story of the tortoise and the hare. I assume you know it—you can look it up otherwise. I could have recited the story to you from heart, but I never got it, not until I was on the verge of middle age and looked back at a long list of projects I had started with great enthusiasm and great investment of time, and sometimes sustained for a while, but let drop eventually.
Now more than ever we live in a society of hares. The only gratification is immediate gratification. The 160-year-old technology of Morse code is faster than text messaging (do a search on Morse code vs text messaging for a demonstration), but nobody does Morse code any more, because it takes time and effort to master (what a wild concept, huh?).
Yes, I know, I'm just an old curmudgeon.
When it comes to pursuing an exercise program, there's another way the hare can get tripped up besides mere laziness or distraction, and that's by getting injured. The more enthusiasm the hare starts out with, the more likely this is to happen. An injury can set you back weeks or even years while you wait for it to heal. I myself first got seriously into weight training during a time that I had to give up running because of a foot injury. Since then, I've had my share of injuries from weight training. This is due to the following inconvenient fact of nature:
Your own muscles can exert enough force to damage your own joints.
This is as good an argument as I know against the theory of intelligent design. There is also the related glass-half-full principle:
Your joints can adapt to increasing load, but maybe not as fast as your muscles.
The Tortoise Protocol is a system I developed to make strength gains while minimizing the possibility of injury. Now, pay attention: I make
NO GUARANTEES
as to what will happen to you if you try this. However, I can report, based on my unscientific sample size of one, that I have used this approach to avoid injury while making strength gains (which is a nontrivial matter for someone, like myself, who has been weight training for over ten years)—not in some dramatic overnight transformation, but not at some painfully slow incremental rate, either. (The Japanese have the perfect expression dondon which refers to modest, but measured, steady progress [not to be confused with dandan, which means gradual]. )
Trust me, two years from now you won't care whether you made your gains in three months or six months or nine months. You'll care whether you were able to sustain the gains that you did make.
This system was heavily influenced by Bill Phillips' Body for Life method, which I have used in the past, and which I recommend you check out. The Tortoise Protocol is a little simpler, more detailed, and harder to get injured with.
Here's what I'm going to explain: How many sets to do, how many reps on each set, how to decide how much weight to use on each set, how long to rest between sets, how to decide when to increase the weight and by how much, how long a workout should be, how often to work out.
Here's what I'm not going to explain: what exercises to do (beyond some general principles—there are a hundred books and other resources out there for that) and what to do with your diet (which is very important—but there are even more resources for that).
In the following I want you to picture a dial in your head showing your effort level on a given exercise on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the legitimate utmost that you can put forth. This is approximate, but there are other elements of the system that will help you pin it down.
THE METHOD
For each exercise you do six consecutive sets. We'll number these I through VI, and discuss them in order.
Set I: 10 reps. Choose a weight that lets you complete the whole set with a perceived effort level of about 5. Essentially this should amount to a mild warm-up.
Set II: 9 reps. Increase the weight 10% to 20% from Set I. The exact increase is likely to be dictated by circumstances. For example, suppose you completed Set I of whatever exercise with a dumbbell that weighs 70 pounds. 10% increase from 70 pounds is 77 pounds. 20% increase from 70 pounds is 84 pounds. Most likely your gym has neither a 77-pound dumbbell nor an 84-pound dumbbell, but perhaps it does have an 80-pound dumbbell—and that's the one you'll use. The same principle applies elsewhere when we talk about 10% to 20% increases or decreases.
Target perceived effort level for this set is 6.
Set III: 8 reps. Increase the weight 10% to 20% from Set II. Target perceived effort level for this set is 7.
Note well: this is the maximum weight you are going to use for this exercise, and you should be able to complete 8 reps with an effort level of 7 out of 10. In some special circumstances (described below) you might push the effort level to 8 or 8.5 but no more at this point. We are not talking go-for-broke, eyeball-bulging, vein-popping effort here.
Set IV: 12 reps. Reduce the weight to what it was for Set II and aim for a perceived effort level of 8.
Set V: 16 reps. Reduce the weight to what it was for Set I and aim for a perceived effort level of 9.
Set VI: 20 reps. Reduce the weight 10% to 20% from Set V and aim for a perceived effort level of 10. This is the time to go all-out. Ideally toward the end of Set VI and possibly Set V you should be feeling some serious burn.
I like this combination because it saves the strongest effort for the lightest weight, which minimizes your chance of injuring your joints; the high number of reps helps develop stamina, while still not neglecting some heavier weights for strength.
The "perceived effort level" is an approximate guideline. The pattern of increasing and decreasing weight provides a more precise guideline.
SOME OTHER TIPS
1. Aim for a one-minute rest between sets of the same exercise—but if you need a little longer to catch your breath, that's OK. The point is that muscle strength should be the limiting factor rather than wind.
2. Aim for a two-minute rest between one exercise and the next—but ditto ditto. 3. Total time for one exercise is therefore 8 to 10 minutes. Four or five different exercises chosen to work different muscle groups make for a respectable workout. I typically intersperse a couple of one-off sets like crunches, so my total workout time is about an hour.
4. Two or maybe three strength workouts per week suffices. On other days I run or mix it up with a different exercise. I have tried more frequent strength training but in this case more is not more—I found I could make faster progress with two days of rest (one, at least) between strength workouts.
5. If you never fail, you're not aiming high enough. If you find you are able to complete all six sets without undue strain, or even if you can reliably complete all reps of all sets for a given exercise, it's time to up the weight. Increase the weight for Set I (and therefore all the following sets) by the smallest increment your equipment allows.
Now one of two things will happen. Either you can complete all reps of all sets at the higher weight, or not. In the first case, great. Stay at this level for a few workouts and then increase the weight again. The second case—you can't complete all reps at all levels—is also fine. In this case, stay at the higher weight and make it your goal to successfully complete all reps of all sets. You might be working at a higher perceived effort level, but don't push too hard on Sets III and IV.
Once you manage to complete all sets at the higher level, you will know that you have become stronger.
6. When first starting out, use a weight level low enough to complete all sets with no sweat. Focus on getting the routine down, and then incrementally increase the weight level according to the guidelines in #5.
I think that's pretty much it. Any questions, ask me in the comments.
I see this study reports that people who undertake moderate exercise for two weeks show improved body image, even though there is no measurable change of body shape or weight. This is not the first time researchers have attempted to expose the futility of those poor, deluded exercise fanatics.
Of course the first and most dramatic effect of exercise—often noticeable within a couple of days—is an increase in strength, stamina, and generally the perceived ease of the workout. (Frequently there is an initial burst of improvement, followed by slow and uneven improvement thereafter.) This would seem sufficient grounds for feeling better about one's body, no matter who might come by with scale and tape measure to helpfully point out that you are just as fat as ever.
Try the following thought experiment: ten peopler across the U.S.A., young and old, male and female, wake up one morning with the sudden resolution to get into shape. All start exercising with high enthusiasm; working out several times a week and giving their all each time. During the first week, one pulls a muscle in his shoulder is forced to quit exercising; the second week another develops Achilles tendonitis and again is force to quit; the third week, a third person strains his back; and so on. After ten weeks, we find nine of the ten have developed injuries which forced them to quit exercising, while the tenth, lucky one is in truly awesome physical shape.
Inspired by her transformation, the tenth person thinks, "if I can do it than anyone can" and writes a how-to book based on her experience. Perhaps this explains why, of the score of exercise books I've read over the years, none gives the issue of avoiding and coping with injury the attention it deserves. Perhaps motivation is the first obstacle for many, but once that is surmounted, injury looms as the next, particularly for the middle-aged athlete.
Your capacity for physical development declines with age. Just how much is an open question--certainly not as much as is generally assumed (see for just one example the case of Dr. Jeffry Life).
One the other hand, the middle-aged have one advantage over the young--if nothing else, we have learned that time passes. You remember the story of the Tortoise and the Hare from grade school, don't you? That story never made sense to me until at the age of about thirty-five I thought back on various projects I had started with fervor and energy, only to drop out after a week, a month, or in any case before completion.
The big difference between the Fitness for the Middle-Aged Codger exercise program and the others is a modest amount of patience. Give yourself a year. Pick any given measure of fitness--body fat content, distance run, weight lifted. If you can improve it by two percent a week, that adds up to one hundred per cent improvement in a year (actually more, because of compounding effects). Perhaps that one-hundered-per-cent improvement just isn't feasible. In that case, your goal is to reach the peak value for you personally.
Don't want to wait a year? Then go for one of the many twelve week, six week, or other short-term programs out there. Just remember: the fast track to the top is littered with the wreckage of those who ran off the road. The stairs are much safer.
My next post on this subject will detail a technique I call summit running. The goal of this technique is to help you reach your personal peak performance in running speed and aerobic fitness, while minimizing the chance of injury.
Posts
