I did my little 6 workout around noon on Sunday. I forgot that I was into a new workout log, so I did not have my prior workouts for measuring benchmarks. I selected my resistance based on memory and made my focus using the most demanding form possible. This made for a very demanding workout, even for a little 6. With attention totally focused on perfect form rather than progression, TUL’s were shortened due to a more rapid rate of fatigue. I think I will continue this blinded approach for a while.

There has been some discussion of HIT and BBS on the excellent blog of Dr. Kurt Harris (www.paleonu.com). Dr. Harris was very conservative with regard to his exercise knowledge and advice citing the old adage that half of what we know is wrong…we just don’t know which half. This adage is even more true for exercise, because the human body is an adaptive organism and will make adaptations to almost any kind of exercise stressor. If we make the adaptation the measure of our success, then almost anything appears to work. This being the case, I think it is very important that we make these adaptations without damaging or destroying the organism in the process. This is why BBS has a greater emphasis on safety than many other exercise philosophies.

Another thing that I think exercise should do is augment changes that can be brought about by a proper diet that avoids Neolithic food agents. In the same blog post, Dr. Harris endorsed the concept that 80% of health and longevity is accounted for by diet, and that health benefits can be achieved with Paleolithic dietary modifications, even if someone is sedentary. I agree to some extent with this 80/20 notion (although the percentage is really just a gestalt assessment). However, exercise can slide this percentage (80%?) up or down depending on whether it is properly done or not. If you are doing a proper HIT workout, you will be aggressively emptying the largest sugar reservoir in your body and restoring insulin sensitivity. As your muscles grow larger and more metabolically capable, the size of your glucose reservoir will increase-which means you will tip into the metabolic syndrome later in the game. Proper recovery will insure that you do not produce excessive oxidative damage and systemic inflammation. These facts can diminish the necessary contribution of diet down to (for arguments sake) 60%, allowing a little more latitude for behavioral slips in our environment of constant temptation from Neolithic foods. My involvement with HIT is probably why I came out of the low fat 90’s and Entemen’s fat-free cookies with a coronary calcium score of zero.

Improper exercise can have an opposite effect. If you are doing large volumes of steady state exercise, you are rarely tapping your fast twitch muscle fibers, which will stimulate an adaptation that interprets them as “dead weight” and results in atrophy of these motor units. This results in a reduction in size of your largest sugar reservoir, which means tipping into the metabolic syndrome sooner. Combine this with an increase in oxidative damage and systemic inflammation you will now have a scenario where a proper diet becomes even more critical to good health. You will have less latitude for behavior with the temptations of the standard American diet. Instead of carrying an 80% weighting of importance, your diet may now approach a 95% level of importance. I’m not just picking on steady state exercise here. HIT done improperly (too little recovery, too much volume, and especially to many intensity extenders) can be even worse.

In conclusion, I support the idea that diet has a dominant position in health and longevity issues, but do not mistake that the type of exercise you choose is unimportant. The type of exercise you select can be very synergistic or detrimental to the contributions of a proper diet.

My WOW:

Calf Raise- I am using the entire MedX stack, I progressed the resistance by gapping out 1 hole. This really made it heavier and shifted the strength curve to load up at the mid-point.
MedX Abdominal- dropped the weight back to 70lbs, did 1 and 1/3 reps at SS cadence-ouch!
Plateloader Bicep
Tricep Pushdown
Thick Bar Wrist Flexion
Thick Bar Wrist Extension

Post Your WOW’s (and your thoughts).

I have been working some really busy shifts at the ER, so recovery may be compromised. For those that are curious, it is NOT busy because of H1N1, just garden variety ER stuff. As a matter of fact, during this “H1N1 crisis” I have admitted exactly ZERO patients with complications from this illness and have seen much less flu than I have seen in a typical flu season. Things that make you go hmmm.

This workout was somewhat frustrating and unsatisfying. All of the weights felt very heavy and difficult to manage. Failure occurred suddenly and generally sooner than I was expecting. I am glad I had to wait a day to write this post. If I had written it right afterwards I would have complained, but today I feel fantastic. A pleasant but significant degree of soreness with a great sense of well being is present upon awakening. This is a pattern that I have noted repeatedly in my workout journals. Sometimes the workouts that seem to be the worst turn out to be the best.

Leg Press – up 2lbs, TUL down 20 seconds
Pulldown- same weight and TUL
Chest Press- up 2lbs, TUL down 2 seconds
Pullover- up 2.5lbs, TUL stable
Overhead Press- up 2lbs, down 2 seconds

Post your WOWs and your thoughts

Today I did my little six routine. I keep track of my workouts in a small spiral notebook. As I went to plan and record today’s workout I noticed that I was on the last page of the notebook. I went to the first page and noticed that I began this particular notebook in October of 2007. At that time John and I were in the thick of writing BBS. I began doing the three way split similar to the one from Mike Mentzer’s writings. It was really neat to go through the record and realize that I could remember details of every single workout. It was also neat to see the gradual but steady progress over the past 2 years. It is a strange dichotomy to be bummed how quickly you have become 2 years older, yet be proud of the improvement that has occurred in those 2 years.

I have kept a journal of my workouts since I was a teenager. I also keep a personal journal detailing the events of every day. Someday if my kids want to know when they lost their first tooth, they will be able to look it up (and know how I felt about it). Anyway, I remember writing when I was a teenager that I would never fear growing older. I remember the old photo of Arthur Jones and Casey Viator both flexing their right bicep and how old Arthur’s face looked relative to his body (Arthur was about the same age in that photo as I am now). I distinctly remember as a 17 year old kid thinking I wouldn’t give a crap how craggy my faced looked when I got older if I could maintain a kick-ass body like Arthur displayed. I am happy to say that at this point I am pretty happy with how things are going with my body, but I must admit that I am more bummed about the craggy facial developments than I thought I would be.

Calf Raise- stable weight, stable TUL
Med X Ab- went back to 70lbs and will work my way up again. I did 1 and 1/3 reps style (full rep, then negative/positive through the lower 1/3, then lower through the full ROM and repeat)
Thick Bar Curl- stable weight/TUL
Tricep Pushdown- stable weight, up 2 seconds TUL
Formulator Wrist flexion-up 2.5lbs, down 4 seconds
Formulator Wrist extension-stable weight/TUL

Time to shop for another notebook.

Post your WOW’s

I got up at 5am this morning so I could work out at 6am before going in to work a day shift. It was COLD out this morning. Even with the heat on this morning, I could not get the temperature in UE above 57 degrees. Normally, we maintain a 61 degree temp. It may just be placebo effect, but 61 truly does seem optimal to me, as it was more of a struggle than usual to reach my workout benchmarks. Despite this it was a great workout.

Leg Press- up 2lbs, up a couple seconds
Pullover- stable weight, down 2 seconds- added a Rest-Pause rep in honor of John Tatore
Chest Press-stable weight, stable TUL- stuck for the 3rd time
Compound Row- up 2lbs, stable TUL
Overhead Press- up 2lbs, down 4 seconds TUL

No scientific studies this week…just a thought. I was out doing some hot laps on my BMX track this week and was feeling especially good. (For those that don’t know, I used to be a professional BMX racer and I have a practice track built on the lot next to my house). I started to think about how much more rewarding my professional career would have been back in the late 70’s and early 80’s if I had known then what I know now. At the time, I was doing the traditional M-W-F routines inspired by Nautilus philosophy and Mike Mentzer. I then raced on Saturday and Sunday. I remember frequently feeling tired and underpowered for how strong I thought I was. I think if I had worked out once a week on Sunday evenings or Monday mornings and raced on the weekends I would have risen to a much higher level in the sport. I also wish I had got onto the Paleo diet bandwagon much earlier. I can still remember vividly choking down Lean Cuisine dinners and being ravenous all the time in my attempts to maintain leanness. It hurts me to think of all the time I could have been much leaner and without hunger. If you are a follower of this blog and are a young person, consider yourself very lucky to be getting such a head start. As we go along in our discussions, keep asking what I am asking myself… “what else could I be blind to, ignoring or suppressing?”.

Post your WOW’s…and your thoughts.