Fitness You Can Use

Hey Phil,

My Crossfit dabble was a couple years after yours. I don't remember Dan John so he must have already moved on. Mike Burgener is the name I remember as the Oly lift Guru. Wolfe and Rippetoe are names I definitely remember. During my time is when the Crossfit Games became widely popular and pretty soon after the emphasis at the franchise I worked out switched away from general fitness to be more geared towards the needs of competitive Crossfitters. Less thought was given to how workouts could be scaled/adapted to average Joes and Janes. The little nagging aches and pains, some chronic, began to mount, and over time my body told me that pushing myself to utter exhaustion 3-5 days/week was doing as much harm as good. I was in my mid-late 40s at the time.

The Olympic lifts were my favorite part. I loved their mechanical efficiency and that they require some skill and coordination along with strength to maximize. When I was putting together a routine some months ago my first thought was to get a bar and some plates and go back to them for the strength portion--problem is that the house here in Illinois is 60s vintage and there are no ceilings anywhere, including the garage, high enough for me to lift a bar with plates overhead.

I guess I'll start with what my goals were going into this. I don't remember how much of this I may have mentioned along the way, so apologies if I'm repeating myself. Last December I had some blood work done. In that they do some sort of cardiac risk assessment based on the numbers and mine was below average so they sent me on my way with an "all's good." But I looked at some of the other numbers and with some casual research on the web quickly concluded that I had some dire things going on under the hood. Basically I was losing ground to that cluster of metabolic diseases that are almost a pandemic in Western and Western-influenced cultures, the so-called "metabolic cluster--weight was higher than it should be (with obvious buildup of visceral fat), blood pressure was creeping into the hypertension range, liver enzymes indicated fatty liver disease, fasting glucose was one point away from pre-diabetes, and together those indicated I had substantial insulin resistance. The other things associated with the cluster are coronary disease, dementia, and a number of cancers. No indications of any of those but I was on the road leading to higher risk territory.

So the number one goal on my list was to combat those problems (which are also known as 'Western Lifestyle Diseases'). My choices boiled down to fighting a rearguard action using drugs to slow their progress as long as possible, or to try to modify my lifestyle to be less disease-promoting. I figured in the end I would probably wind up at some combination of the two, but I opted to forego pharmaceuticals initially and go all-in on the lifestyle aspect.

It quickly became clear that the dominant lifestyle contributor was my diet. So I spent a lot of time delving into the food choice-metabolic health connection and gave my eating habits a huge overhaul. I won't belabor that here, but what improvement I made I'd attribute 80% to diet.

Still, anywhere I found information about combating the metabolic diseases of aging exercise and physical activity were also mentioned. So they got on my list in support of improving my metabolic health.

Once exercise and fitness made my list of priorities I thought about what my overall goals for those were. Promotion of health was obviously high on the list. But a few other considerations were:

- During 2022 I had trouble getting my kayak on and off the roof of my vehicle myself, and lugging it around. It weighs about 80 lbs itself and fully loaded around 120 lb. So not a ton of weight, but manhandling it is awkward due to its length and width. One particular aspect, was pulling the boat out of the water on my property, a very unergonomic task that was increasingly causing soreness in my lower back.

-Also during 2022 I noticed I tired easily paddling it around. I have a small electric motor on it which to me is all but essential while actually fishing, but it allowed me to be lazy out on the water.

-Again in 22, I found myself shying away from taking day hikes. The nearby trails are of moderate difficulty and I didn't feel up to tackling them.

-And overall, I found myself avoiding things that required expending physical effort because I just didn't feel up to them.

-A last consideration was the accumulation of little aches and pains over recent years, and a notable decrease in mobility.

So my fitness goals wound up being:

1. Improvement in metabolic health
2. Improvement in upper body strength so that loading/unloading the kayak from the rooftop was more manageable (and hopefully easy).
3. Improvement in endurance so that I would look forward to things like paddling around and hiking rather than shy away from them.
4. Improvement in mobility and flexibility
5. Increased sense of overall well being.

So overall my fitness ambitions were fairly modest. I didn't need to do multi-set high rep 200+ pound bench presses and become a triathlete to achieve them.

When it comes to metabolic health the recommendation is generally a blend of strength training and cardio, and the other items fit within those two categories as well.

For strength training I went with resistance bands for two reasons. First, they allow a wider variety of motions under load and I thought they'd be effective for things like kayak wrangling because I could mimic some of the compound motions that requires. Second is that same variety in motions could also contribute to mobility and flexibility, particularly in my shoulders. They are also reputed to be easier on joints than weights.

For cardio I opted to use the rowing machine I've toted around for the last decade. It's a good choice for N. Illinois in the wintertime since it's indoors. It provides a decent although not comprehensive total body workout and along with cardio has a moderate strength aspect to it. The motions also have some similarity to those of paddling a kayak.

I also added walking/hiking. It directly translates to hiking, obviously, and purportedly repetitive non-damaging firing of ones larger muscle groups has its own unique benefits when it comes to metabolic health.

And that's basically it. My schedule was to do band work 5-6 days per week, rotating between different routines. For example, one day was combining pushing from the shoulder (think overhead press/a pushup motion while standing/and similar with a 180-degree span of pushing angle) and shoulder raise variants. I had my nephew build me a little "band ladder" so that I could anchor the bands at different heights from the floor. So as I would come back to a given set of motions in the rotation, I'd change the anchor points from what I'd used the prior time. A lot of emphasis on variety within the type-of-motion categories I selected.

On the rower I blended longer moderate intensity cardio workouts (mostly in the 30-45 minute range) with shorter HIIT-style workouts. I adopted some "biohacking" approaches I got from a guy named Dave Asprey (of Bulletproof Coffee fame) which put emphasis on fewer intervals but more extreme swings in intensity. I used the rower four days per week alternation between cardio and HIIT, then on one day I did a 2K row for time so I could get an estimate of improvement in V02 max. I made a lot of improvement Jan through May, but my starting point was woeful.

For the walking I tried to get 3-4 days per week walking 3-4 miles at an "I've got somewhere I'm going pace" so in between my usual stroll and aggressive "power walking".

The only other thing I did was making a HIIT out of shoveling snow off of the driveway when it snowed.

At the cabin I don't have the rower. As a substitute I paddle the kayak a mile or two every time I go out fishing. I did bring some bands and hardware to approximate the band ladder. The frequency of workouts has fallen off due to competing interests for my time, but I'm using heavier bands. I got out of the habit of regular walking because we had an extra bad bug season this year, but in recent weeks that's waned and so when I go back that I will be ramping up. The terrain there, even walking on the side of a paved road, is much more challenging (more and larger/steeper hills) so once I'm back into the habit that will be a helpful activity. My diet also slipped a little up there--getting the right stuff is difficult. The only nearby grocery (by near I mean it's only 18 miles one way from the cabin) is small (town only has 3,300 residents) so there's a lot of compromise. The nearest "full size" grocery is an additional 40 miles each way, a Super Walmart, which still wouldn't provide optimal selection.

I gained 5-6 pounds in the two months I was there. My belt tells me maybe as much as half of it was good weight. I'm still looking at coming in at 6'-2" 181 lbs as of yesterday, which isn't bad for a 59 year old, and quite a bit better than where I was back in December. On top of that, on balance I feel good all the time, energy levels I haven't had in decades, all of my little aches and pains are gone, slinging the kayak is much easier, pulling it up on land uphill over uneven terrain is easier and doesn't bother my back, and I enjoy paddling on my way out to a fishing spot while still having residual gas in the tank for fishing.

I had more blood work in May, and all of the numbers I was most concerned about improved substantially. The others were stable but I would like to see them improve. I'm kind of just holding course as best I can for cabin season, but when I get back in the fall I plan to tweak the nutrition regimen to target some of the numbers that didn't show drastic improvement, and since the basic nutrition regimen seems to be addressing the most concerning symptoms effectively, I plan to put more focus on and ratchet up the activity and fitness regimen, although at this point I don't have a specific plan for that. Kettle bells might be something I'll add, I nearly got a couple last winter. I remember them providing a pretty thorough overall workout with some cardio properties. I'll have to stick with what I think we called the Russian swings because of ceiling height, but even those are pretty good.

And as I mentioned in the weekly update threads, subjectively I feel like the overall lifestyle upgrade has helped with guitar. When you start improving nutrition and metabolism, all the systems of the body reap benefits. Seems like it takes fewer repetitions to learn new movements, and my retention is better. I've had no recurrences of the tendon issues I had back in the spring of '22 that sidelined me a few months.

Sorry about going all manifesto. Due mostly to the weight loss I get asked on occasion about "what I'm doing". And although body weight was part of it, weight loss was really a secondary consideration, kind of a side benefit to improving metabolic functioning. I think it's generally best for people to tailor things for their own situation and goals. In my case I set out the goals above for myself and coincidentally lost some bad weight along the way (something I attribute mainly to the diet/nutrition facet of the regimen) while addressing them. The same is true for the fitness aspect. I had a few modest goals aimed at helping with activities I enjoy and didn't want to give up for having gotten to old and out of shape. Happens I was able to put together a routine that also ticked the boxes for improving metabolic health though addressing those specific activity goals. I don't think I'll aim for becoming a Crossfit-like specimen, but I do hope to build a little on the gains I've made.

Phil,

Great you found some motivation! No matter how you do it, movement of all kinds is a good thing, especially for us in the established gentleman cohort. I tend to agree with what you said about the best exercise/fitness regimen is one a person can/will actually do.

You probably know this, but smart people are increasingly learning how essential retention of muscle mass is for maintaining health in later life. So among my goals going forward is to pay more attention to that. Heavy resistance bands should help, but I may decide to branch out some. They are a solution that fit my present situation pretty well and are portable so, unlike my rower, I can easily bring some along for the 4 months I'm up hiding out in the woods. Another thing I looked at was suspension trainers which appear to extend the possibilities with body weight exercises. When I do my year end assessment planning between Christmas and New Year's I may very well opt to add one of those to the toolbox. I only did a cursory look into them back in January, but there seemed to be basic options available that weren't too costly.

I didn't mention it, but my nutrition regimen includes liberal use of nutritional supplements. As I was hopping down the rabbit hole of nutrition I got interested in cellular and mitochondrial health, or in other words, metabolic health, in my effort to combat metabolic diseases. A good fraction of the supplements in my regimen I chose for that purpose. I also practice intermittent fasting (generally, I do all my eating for a day between 100 and 400 PM). The IF and those supplements (and the exercise) give me a degree of overlap with anti-aging/longevity practices. I don't look any younger aside from being leaner/significantly thinner, but as mentioned I do feel pretty good. I'm currently spending a good bit of money on supplements each month. My rationale is that given I was on the path towards spending that money and more managing a cluster of chronic diseases (along with managing the side effects of meds), I might as well spend money proactively to avoid all that to whatever extent possible. Even though there's some research that indicates various compounds could affect the aging processes, I think some of the claims of potentially achieving dramatically longer lifespans are a bit over exuberant. But I do think there's a decent chance that they can contribute on top of diet and exercise towards increased "healthspan" (i.e., decreasing the number of years of morbidity towards the end).

I am a bit weird, haha. Just slugging away on guitars when it's clear its a low ceiling endeavor for me attests to that. I know I frustrated my prior primary care doc in my resistance to pharmaceutical "solutions" (that weren't really solutions at all). I suppose my engineering background has trained me to go after root causes rather than trying to address symptoms. There may come a day when I have to capitulate, but for now I feel like I'm taking the better route for me.