Friday Book Report: Papillon

The latest selection in Andrew Luck’s book club for adults is Papillon by Henri Charriere.  (Andrew Luck makes this qualify as fitness reading.  Also, extreme endurance events in the plot.)  The book is a memoir written by a man sentenced to life imprisonment in French Guyana.  He attempts multiple escapes, eventually succeeding and going on to live out his life in Venezuela.

This was not my favorite book.  Much of it reads too much like fiction, and some of it like the kind of fantasy a horny con would come up with.  The exploits are exciting, the prisons are horrible, and the characters are colorful.  They just don’t seem all that real and thus are less compelling.  Maybe I would like it better if I were a male.  Or if I saw the movie with Steve McQueen.

Verdict:  Give this one a miss.

Thursday Book Report: Indestructible

Full disclosure:  I went to high school with John Bruning and I think he is smart, funny, talented, and generally awesome.  Now go buy his book, Indestructible.

John tells the story of Pappy Gunn, a Naval pilot turned airline pilot turned Army Airforce Captain, who, by dint of extreme endurance and remarkable ingenuity, works to rescue his family in the Philippines during World War II.  It is all true; it has to be, because otherwise it would be absolutely unbelievable.  With deft prose, John unfolds the tale of remarkable characters in an indomitable family.

I don’t want to spoil the story by revealing the twists, but there are many, as well as a flying lizard, episodes of radical shoe-shopping, and enough airplane details to satisfy the aficionado in your family (my family has one; doesn’t everyone’s?).

Also, Pappy painted his airplanes red and therefore was a man after my own heart.

Unicycles use lots of core muscles, too

More is not necessarily better when it comes to cardio.  This is good news for those of us who are easily bored.

Unless we are training for a century ride, a marathon, or something similarly long and endurance-based, we do not need to spend hours and hours on steady-state cardio.  In fact, the data suggests we get more benefit from shorter workouts with high-intensity intervals.

What does that mean in practical terms?  No more hour-long walks on the treadmill.  Spend twenty minutes or half an hour.  Warm up for five minutes, then alternate bursts of speed of about a minute with recovery periods of one to two minutes.  This works with all the cardio equipment in the gym or out in the real world if you are running, biking, swimming, or pogo-sticking.  Then cool down for five minutes.

Not only does this form of training help our cardiovascular systems learn to recover more quickly, it also motivates our metabolisms to burn more calories.  Win!

The philosophy of form...

Emerson wrote that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.  I will use this in my defense should anyone point out that I contradict myself.  Then I will pull out other rhetoric, winning by boring my critics to death and enjoying the glazing over of their eyes.  Just kidding.  Mostly.

I often write that anything we do is better than nothing.  Today I am going to suggest that we actually have to try to do things well.  This would be that place where I appear to be inconsistent.  Both things are true.  Any work we do toward fitness is good.  I will almost always advocate for getting off the couch, the exceptions being times when we are sick or injured.  Do a little if doing a lot is more than we can handle.

That said, we have to pay attention to form.  It is better to do nothing than to do things that will hurt us in the long run.  If we consistently (hey, there’s that word again!) work out without paying attention to our body mechanics, we are setting ourselves up for future pain and suffering.  In that spirit, I offer these suggestions:

Make friends.  A workout buddy or trainer can help us see things we would otherwise miss.  A little reminder that we have to go through the whole range of motion, or that our elbows are sticking out too far, or that maybe we should use a lighter weight since we are compensating can save us from weeks of rehabilitation.

Make friends with the mirror.  When we work out alone, the mirror can help us correct errors in our proprioception (remember that fancy word?  It means our sense of where our bodies are in space.) that can lead to bad form.

Use abs.  I say some variation of “engage your abs” to clients more often than anything else.  Core strength might be the very best way to ensure proper form.

(The photo is me making friends with a warped mirror...)

Monday Workout: October Push

This month’s push workout includes one Pilates reformer exercise.  If you don’t have a reformer (like everyone does, right?), you get bonus cardio:  squat jumps.  It’s all about choosing weights that are heavy enough that ten repetitions are as much as we can do at once.  Two to three rounds.  Let’s be super strong!

1 min cardio
bar pullup	10
barbell squat	10
reformer jumping	10
barbell bench press	10
barbell row	10
bulgarian split squat	10
lateral raise	10
dumbbell walking lunge	10
deadlift	10

Rolling Rock, not the beer

In high school, I had several great teachers.  One of them made me go look up Sisyphus, which back then meant going to the library, not just whipping out my phone and asking Google, which is probably why I still remember it.  Sisyphus, according to the myth, was a jerk.  The gods punished him by making him roll a giant rock to the top of a hill only to have it roll back down for eternity.  Pretty frustrating.  He must have been a really serious jerk for that to seem at all appropriate.

There is one way that Sisyphus can lift his own punishment.  He can like rolling rocks.

So at first glance, I appear to be advocating some kind of Stockholm syndrome.  Rolling rocks uphill is hard work.  Being compelled to do it over and over again doesn’t make it better.  But shifting perspective, choosing to love the strain of the muscles and the roughness of the boulder and the moment of success at the top and the careening excitement of the rock falling back down, can turn hell into something else.

Workouts, I hope, are not hell, but for those hellish moments, maybe we can try loving rolling rocks.

Everything on the list...

I am a stress eater.  Rough day?  Bring on the mac and cheese and probably the ice cream, too.  I can drown my sorrows in spaghetti, no problem.  The actual foods involved might be different, but I know I’m not the only person with this problem.

So:  one thing we can do about it is make a list of things that make us feel better that don’t have any calories in them.  Here are ten of mine:

1.     Exercise.

2.     Sleep.

3.    Music.

4.     Dancing.

5.     Cuddling.

6.    Bath.

7.     Car wash.

8.     Pedicure.

9.     Knitting/sewing/crafts.

1. Bubbles.

What’s on yours?