Get In Shape / Help Me Get Points

Tony Horton is creating a new workout program along the lines of his previous programs, the world-famous P90X series (X1, X2, and X3). I've been doing the various X programs for years now, and I find them the perfect compliment to running. Running rapidly depletes upper-body mass, which can result in weak back and core muscles. That, in turn, can create the kinds of muscle imbalances that lead to running-related injury. I started doing Tony Horton's workouts after suffering a pretty big back injury, and simply stated, they nursed me back to health. I haven't been significantly injured since.

So, needless to say, I'm a huge fan of Tony Horton's workout philosophy, and his programs, and I'm a passionate believer in his training approach. Am I interested in the new program he's developing? You bet I am!

Somehow I ended up with a referral link that gives me "points" if people click on it and sign up. If you're looking for a new workout program, why not be part of Tony Horton's beta testing group for his new program? If you're interested, and don't mind giving me a few "points," whatever they're worth, click here right now and sign up for the email list.

Thanks!

Lactate Threshold, Critical Velocity, And Other Stories

Recap:

Some time went by, and I never bothered to elaborate on the training approach I've taken over the last four weeks.

I mentioned that I was going to start doing two fast runs per week (Mondays and Wednesdays), plus a plyometrics day on Fridays. I never circled back to the blog to say that I was also going to incorporate P90X's "three weeks on, one week off" monthly training cycle into my regimen, then change again. Tony Horton bills this as "muscle confusion," but that concept doesn't really apply to running. One doesn't really want to confuse one's running muscles. Still, there's a lot of good evidence in support of taking on a lighter load every fourth week to help reduce fatigue, and that means the fifth week is as good as any other to make another adjustment to the training regimen. Then, on for another three weeks, and yet another lighter week at week #8. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Last week was my fourth week, making it a lighter or "transition" week between what I was doing previously, and what I will be doing now. Interestingly, my overall training load increased last week, rather than decreasing:

Notice that my "relative effort" training load (from Strava) indicates a consistent upward trend for the past four weeks, up to and including last week, which was my "light" week. (The data from Garmin tells a much different story, though, and according to that data, my load did indeed decrease last week.)

As part of my one-month cycle, I did a guided lactate threshold test using my Garmin watch and chest strap HR monitor on Saturday. I will do this again next month in an attempt to chart my training progress using some semblance of cardinal measurements and real data.

Garmin's lactate threshold test produces a lactate threshold heart rate value and a lactate threshold running pace value. My numbers on Saturday turned out to be 167 beats per minute and 6:37 per mile. These results surprised me. I frankly expected a higher lactate threshold, meaning a higher heart rate value and a faster pace time.

Skeptical, I decided to read up a bit more carefully on lactate threshold. The USATF's VO2 max pace chart, as quoted here (p. 2), indicates that 10K race pace corresponds to approximately 92% of VO2 max, and from this value we can calculate various other estimated paces using the percentage values in the USATF table.

My most recent 10K time, taken in early October 2019, was 39:40, or about 6:23 per mile. With the help of some algebra, we can see that lactate threshold pace -- 88% of VO2 max -- corresponds to 6:35 per mile. Thus, assuming I have not lost any fitness between October and today, Garmin's estimate was only 2 seconds off. That's far more robust than I expected! I have gained some faith in Garmin's lactate threshold estimation technology.

Lactate Threshold Training

Having now established a 2020 training benchmark for myself, the next logical question to ask is, "How can I improve my lactate threshold?" The internet is replete with articles on improving lactate threshold, but why read all those articles when it can be summarized in a single sentence? 

The most common recommendation for improving lactate threshold is to run 30-minute sessions at lactate threshold pace. 

For me, this means something like this: 2-mile warm up, 30 minutes at 6:37/mile pace, 2-mile cool down. Pretty basic stuff. I might try it. 

However, while reading up on lactate threshold improvement, I came across an interesting article here. Read the whole thing. It is highly informative and, if you're a training geek like me, absolutely fascinating. In particular, the article contains a discussion about training above lactate threshold pace. Summarizing the approach used in a York University study, the article states:

The idea that intense workouts are best for boosting LT was even more strongly reinforced in research carried out at York University by Stephen Keith and Ira Jacobs (‘Adaptations to Training at the Individual Anaerobic Threshold,’ Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, vol. 23(4), Supplement, no. 197, 1991). In the York investigations, one group of athletes trained exactly at LT, a very popular way to attempt to heighten LT, for 30 minutes per workout. A second group divided their 30-minute workouts into four intervals, each of which lasted for seven and a-half minutes. Two of the intervals were completed at an intensity above LT, while the other two were carried out below LT. Each group of athletes worked out four times per week for a total of eight weeks.

What happened? (Emphases mine.)

Which strategy was better for boosting LT – working at LT intensity or putting in the time above it? After eight weeks of workouts, both sets of athletes achieved similar increases in VO2max and LT. The actual gains in LT were absolutely tremendous, averaging 14 per cent in both groups! Advances in muscle-cell enzymes were also rather splendid – and nearly identical in the two groups. In an endurance test in which group members exercised for as long as possible at an intensity which corresponded to their pre-training LT, the above-LT trainees seemed to hold an edge, continuing for a total of 71 minutes, while the at-LT subjects could last for only 64 minutes. However, this difference was not statistically significant. 

At first glance, these results seem to suggest that there’s not much advantage to be gained by sweating through above-LT workouts, but wait! If you’ve been following carefully, you probably noticed that the above-LT athletes really logged only 60 minutes of quality work per week (4 x 15 minutes), while the at-LT subjects put in 120 weekly minutes of quality exertion (4 x 30 minutes). To put it another way, the above-LT athletes achieved the same gains in LT and VO2max as the at-LT folks (and perhaps enjoyed a slight advantage in endurance) – with only HALF the total training time. It’s reasonable to assume that had the above-LT athletes stepped up their volume of above-LT work a little bit, they would have outdistanced the mundane at-LT trainees.

So, training above lactate threshold corresponds to greater increases in lactate threshold than simply training at lactate threshold, because training above LT increases LT more efficiently on a per-minute basis.

This all reminded me of so-called "Critical Velocity" training.

Critical Velocity

The article I mentioned above when citing USATF pace percentage values, by Chris Puppione of UC Davis, includes several amusing discussions about how coaches and trainers are always looking for a new magic training elixir that will enable athletes to suddenly and momentously acquire a tremendous advantage over their peers. Here is one such excerpt:

There are no secrets in distance running—no new revelations and no magic bullets. Somewhere, some other coach has already done it. Somewhere, some exercise physiologist has already written about it. Knowing this, however, has not stopped coaches from exploring better ways to train their athletes year to year. Knowing this does not stop us from picking through our copies of Running with Lydiard, Road to the Top, or Daniels’ Running Formula to find that one piece of information that we may have glanced over without giving it the attention it was due.

Puppione is right, of course. There really is nothing new under the sun. He mentions that "Critical Velocity training," which is gaining lots of new press thanks to the quite admirable success of the Tinman Elite racing team, can trace its roots all the way back to the 1960s! That's more than half a century ago. 

Still, Puppione does incorporate CV training into his coaching of athletes at UC Davis, and reports good results in doing so. He explains that the advantages of CV training over LT training are mainly that the athlete can reap many of the benefits of both LT and VO2 max training, simultaneously, and at substantially reduced overtraining risk compared to VO2 max training.

It makes sense, but keep in mind that the difference between LT and CV training is about 2%, or about 7 seconds per mile. To be sure, seven seconds per mile is a substantial increase in pace over the course of a few miles, but the difference is not enormous. Think of it this way: If my lactate threshold pace were to run a 10K against my critical velocity pace, my CV pace would win by about one minute. My race pace would win by two minutes.

Can seven seconds per mile really result in such great training improvements? It's tempting to buy into the hype, but again Puppione offers a voice of reason. He points out that he uses CV training early in his athletes' season to quickly ramp up their lactate threshold. Then, he focuses on VO2 max training during the middle of the season while reducing weekly mileage, to improve his athletes' speed without overtraining them or over-taxing their muscles. Finally, he incorporates a bit more CV training at the end of the season so that he can reduce the athletes' training load even further as they prepare to taper for the final, major competitions of the season.

In other words, CV training is a good tool to have in the tool kit... but it's not the whole kit.

Back to Me

As for me, what can I learn from all of this? How can I apply my newfound knowledge to my own recreational training regimen?

Looking back across the past month, I realize that I probably was overtraining. By the end of my third week, my muscles felt exhausted, and I couldn't really complete the workouts I had scheduled for myself. Well, I could complete them, but I wasn't getting the most out of them. I was essentially training at VO2 max pace twice a week, and adding a quite difficult plyometrics day to the mix. My weekly mileage decreased a bit, and my body started to feel worn down. 

I can improve my training, at least in the near term, by doing more workouts at or above lactate threshold, although not so fast as VO2 max pace.

I had originally planned on making speed the focus of my next three weeks of training. Speed, of course, involves a lot of training at VO2 max. I am less excited about that approach now, however I did happen to notice an interesting aspect of Puppione's recommended training sessions. He structures his CV training workouts as follows:

1. 5-10 minutes warm up
2. CV intervals (say, 4 x 2K at CV pace with 2 minutes recovery in between)
3. 5-10 minutes recovery run
4. VO2 max intervals (say, 5 x 200m at VO2 max with 200m recovery in between)
5. 5-10 minutes cool down

You'll notice he adds some VO2 max intervals at the end of the workout to condition athletes to "run faster in a fatigued state." I believe that adding some VO2 max intervals to the end of my threshold runs and/or CV runs will enable me to improve the quality of my training runs.

So, friends, that's what I'll be doing for the next three weeks. Two weekly hard workouts at-or-slightly-above lactate threshold pace, with recovery runs and a weekly long run.

Let's see how it goes!

Training Changes: Start Small

As I wrote last time, I'm in need of some changes to my exercise regimen.

One thing that has helped me a lot in other aspects of my life is, once having identified a problem, to make small and incremental changes, one by one, until I arrive at a desired result. I find it easier to adjust to new things if I don't have a lot to adjust to. That is, it's much easier to turn your life around one step at a time than it is to become a completely different person overnight. At least, it's easier for me.

With that in mind, I started thinking about what kind of changes I wanted to make to my exercise regimen, and what kind of goals I wanted to pursue. Regarding goals, I arrived at the following:

• I want to condition my body to run at faster paces. Over the past three months or so, it's become obvious that running under 6:00/mile pace during interval training -- and probably also shorter races -- is not just feasible, but entirely appropriate. I don't know if I'll ever be able to go back to cranking out 400's in 75 seconds maximum again, but doing so in under 90 seconds has not been that big a deal for me lately. So, I should embrace that. And, in time, I should seek to dial it down to as fast as possible. With fitness, it's use-it-or-lose-it, and I'm not ready to accept an average pace of 7:00/mile for the rest of my life. I still have a little speed left in me.
• I do not want to fixate on long races. Marathons and half marathons are fun, no doubt about it. But they also involve a lot of running-for-the-sake-of-running (during training runs) that starts to feel a little mindless to me after a while. I want all of my workouts to serve a productive purpose, I want to dedicate my concentration to that purpose, and I want to achieve that purpose as I run. Then I want to take a shower and go on about my day. Realistically speaking, it's not hard for me to go out and run 13.1 miles whenever I want to. So I don't really need to train for that.
• I want enough flexibility in my training that I don't feel FOMO for missing a day of running. As I've started to ramp-up my miles, I've noticed a tendency to feel really bad if I miss a day. Not guilty, just... bad. Bad, as though if I don't do at least 8 miles in a day, then I'm going to lose all of my fitness. That's obviously nonsense, but it's hard not to feel that way when you run 8 miles or more every single day and then have to miss a day or two because you're traveling. I can fix this problem by planning a training regimen that is less tied to daily mileage and more focused on -- as I mentioned about -- purpose.

With these goals in mind, I think I am going to return to a training plan that worked well for me during my last year or so in Ottawa. Lately I've been running two fast days per week (T and Th), a long run (S), and a lot of long, slow miles. Instead of that, I'll run two fast days per week (M and W), plus one plyometric workout per week (F), plus recovery days and a long day if I feel like it.

This arrangement will satisfy my first goal by maintaining my current speed workout regimen, while adding a day dedicated to explosive power, which is also a way to increase footspeed.

I'll satisfy my second goal by giving the long, slow miles a bit of a rest. I anticipate that I'll still be doing a lot of those 8-9 mile recovery runs, but with an added plyometrics day, that will be at least one fewer of these runs, and may require a shorter recovery run on Saturday.

I'll satisfy my third goal by dedicating one day per week to a non-running workout, plus potentially allowing myself to cross-train on the various recovery days. I'd rather run than do something else, but by formally giving myself permission to not run, I'll hopefully avoid the pitfalls of feeling as though my fitness is decreasing if my recovery run is 6 miles instead of 8 or, god forbid, it's a bicycle workout instead of a run.

It's a small change, but one that I think will make a good difference for me as I head into the last two months of winter training. Wish me luck.

Finntervals

As I've previously blogged, I follow some pretty awesome runners on Strava, and I try to pay attention to fast people in hopes of learning new tricks and gaining some of their wisdom.

The other day, I noticed an athlete who did a very interesting workout. In it, he ran out to a particular location, ran around the block repeatedly, then ran back to his starting point. When I looked at his pacing information, I noticed that he was doing intervals as he ran around the block. I thought it was really interesting to do a series of short, fast intervals in the middle of an eight-mile run.

So, I thought I'd give it a try. Here's the workout I did, which is a slight modification of the original.

• Warm up: 3 miles at an easy pace
• Intervals: 10 repetitions of 1 minute at 5:00/mile pace or so, followed by 1 minute at recovery pace (about 3 miles)
• Cool down: 3 miles at an easy pace

Here's my pace graph:

It was really interesting to do these shorter intervals after 3 miles of steady running, and then to finish off with another 3 miles. The intervals are short enough that it feels pretty easy to crank through them. (I can run pretty much any pace for just sixty seconds, right??) Ten seems to be just the right number of repetitions, too. By the end, my muscles were full of acid and my pace was starting to suffer -- but only just. It seems that the workout takes an athlete right up to the saturation point.

Give it a try!

Neringa's Crazy 8's

Here's an absolutely brutal workout I got from an athlete I follow on Strava. She didn't come up with the name, this is just what I call it. Here's how it goes:

• Warm-up: 2 miles @ an easy pace
• Workout: 8 x 1-mile repeats @ race pace, with 60 seconds of recovery jogging in between
• Cool-down: 5 kilometers @ an easy pace

This is an ingenious workout. First of all, eight one-mile repeats is really hard! But it's even harder when you only give yourself one minute to recover. Holding that pace over the course of a long workout like this is phenomenal training for your body. Not everyone will be capable of doing a workout like this, but for those who are in good enough shape, it's amazing.

And the masterstroke of the workout is the total mileage: 13.1 miles of running, i.e. precisely the length of a half marathon.

It was such a great idea that I just had to try it. I failed my first attempt. On my second attempt, I made it through the warm-up and the workout, but had to bail on the cool-down. I may not be running enough miles to pull off the full workout, but I'm willing to try again!

The 2 x 2 x 2 x 2

It's extremely hot out there these days, so I have taken to running my important workouts on the treadmill. I have no problem with this. I'm not training for a race, and so fitness is my number one running goal right now. I can get nearly double the workout on the treadmill than I can in extremely hot weather. My pace is faster, and I can run a longer distance. So long as I continue to do easy runs outside, I doubt I will feel any adverse impact from all this treadmill running, and in fact will likely get in better shape in the end.

While training on the treadmill, I discovered a neat-O workout that you can do anywhere, treadmill or otherwise. I call it "The 2 x 2 x 2 x 2," and it goes like this:

• 2 miles at warm-up pace (Heart Rate Zone 1)
• 2 miles at easy pace (Heart Rate Zone 2)
• 2 miles at aerobic pace (Heart Rate Zone 3)
• 2 miles at threshold pace (Heart Rate Zone 4)

If you can manage it, you can do another two miles as a cool-down for an even 10. This is a great workout that requires self-control as well as will power.

As I've said before, I am not a huge fan of heart rate zone training, but in this case, I believe it works. Anyway, this is not a workout that one should do all the time, but it's a nice reprieve if you're looking for something different to do on "fartlek day."

The 15:32 Special

Here's a tough workout that's not for the faint-of-heart. I call it "The 15:32 Special." The objective of the workout is to run a cumulative 5K in 15:32, i.e. five-minutes-per-mile pace.

It goes like this:

• Warmup: 7 minutes at a relaxed pace
• Three sets of:
• 4 x 75 seconds at 5 min/mi pace
• Take 60 seconds to recover between each 75-second repetition
• Take 3 minutes to recover between each set of 4 reps
• Cool down by running home/back to your starting point

You can also do this workout at the track; simply run 4 x 400m repeats instead of 4 x 75 seconds. I prefer the 75-second version, however, because then it's an open question as to whether you'll truly run five kilometers in 15:32.

Make sure you write down how you did, or track your performance in a running app, so that you can chart your progress over time and ensure that you're improving.

I did this workout today and found it to be difficult, but extremely rewarding.

_________________________

This workout adheres to the following principles:

• A1 (fun)
• A2 (no out-and-backs)
• C1 (serves a purpose)
• C2 (based on speed, not heart rate)
• C3 (improves a known weakness)
• C4 (wrote it down here and tracked on Strava)
• C5 (hard days should be hard)
• D1 (came prepared)
• D4 (consistent with Precautionary Principle)

When You're Just Not Feeling It

I'm now eleven weeks through with a 16-week half marathon training schedule, and I feel slower, more lethargic, and more mentally drained than I did at the outset of the program. I have about four more weeks to train for my half marathon and, for the most part, I won't be following the Garmin schedule anymore. I'll be doing my own thing.

Let me acknowledge a few clear positives about this training schedule. First of all, the initial four weeks of training were interesting because they seem to be geared toward building up the runner's endurance base. I didn't expect this, because the schedule's materials indicated that the schedule was for experienced runners who are already used to interval training. In my experience, that has most often meant that one should only use that training schedule if one is already in shape; but in this case, I think what they meant was that this schedule is appropriate for anyone who runs and who has done speed work in the past. At any rate, the first four weeks are definitely intended to build endurance, and in my view, they succeed in accomplishing this. I had worked my way up to running 60 miles per week, which is something I hadn't done for a decade or longer prior to this plan.

A second positive note is that I did not get injured on this plan, so it appears to be quite safe for most runners. I know, I know… that's only one data point, but I have a pretty good feel for these things. I sometimes felt as though I was putting in lots of miles and getting tired, but I never felt that I was at risk of running-related injury. That's worth something.

Another positive - maybe - is the way the plan is constructed. I've never trained under a philosophy quite like it before. The general idea seems to be that the plan starts with workouts that are all between 10 kilometers and 10 miles in length, plus a weekly long run. Each subsequent week, more of the time spent running those 6-10 miles is dedicated to running in HR Zone 4, the aerobic threshold. So, one starts the plan running mainly in Zone 2, and slowly the plan phases in more and more Zone 4 running. I think the idea is that, by the end of the plan, the runner should be able to run in Zone 4 very easily for extended periods of time, and thus the final half marathon will be a breeze.

For people who have never spent much time running at their aerobic threshold, this might be a good approach to take. For runners who have never run competitively and need to get used to pushing themselves harder and harder, I can see how this might get them used to it. So the plan is not all bad. I can envision a kind of runner who would succeed on such a plan.

For me, however, the plan is a terrible fit. So many of the scheduled workouts are assigned to Zone 2 that my "base rate" of running actually declined. I got used to running slower, and that's not beneficial at all. If a runner doesn't spend adequate time running fast, he loses his speed. I don't see any benefit to slowing down in order to achieve a particular heart rate. There doesn't seem to be any underlying purpose to that. If someone already spends the bulk of his time in Zone 2, then fine, Z2 running is just a proxy for "go for an easy run." But for someone who spends a lot of time running fast in order to run fast, this it's counterproductive to slow down on purpose.

Meanwhile, I found that Zone 4 running wasn't hard enough, either. In some cases it is, such as tempo runs and fartlek interval training. But this schedule pretty much maxed out at Zone 4 for all speed work. So I never spent time training to increase my foot speed. Usually, we use track workouts or other kinds of sprint intervals to build that speed, but there were no such workouts in this training schedule. All intervals were to be performed at Zone 4. There were also no tempo runs whatsoever.

Finally, a lot of the workouts were structured in a way that I found unorthodox and not to my liking. A good example of this is the way long runs are structured in this plan. Yesterday's workout, for example, was supposed to be a one-hour-and-twenty-minute easy run (Zone 2 again), followed by 40 minutes at race pace. How on Earth is a runner supposed to run 40 minutes at race pace after a long, slow slog? The schedule essentially asked me to completely tire my muscles out, and then try to run at race pace. That's obviously never going to work.

A better way to do long runs is to either do the entire thing at a moderate pace - say, Zone 3 if you're going by HR zones, or just a comfortable pace otherwise - except for perhaps 10 kilometers in the middle of the long run, done at race pace.

A similarly flawed structure permeated the "threshold runs." The schedule would call for a 10-15 minute warm-up followed by 10-15 minutes at threshold pace; then, without pausing for a brief recovery, the schedule would immediately call for 4-6 intervals at threshold pace again; then, another 10-15 minute threshold interval. In other words, the first "interval" would be 15 minutes at threshold pace, plus the addition of a shorter interval, all together, with no recovery in between. The result of this was that my legs would be completely spent by the end of the first shorter interval, and my remaining intervals would be done at a much slower pace.

That's not productive! What would be better? Well, if I needed to do two "long" intervals and six "short" intervals, then I might organize them like this: 3 x 1 km at a hard pace, with 1:30 recovery in between, followed by 1 x 3 km at hard pace with 3:00 recovery. I'd do that twice, with a warm-up and cool-down, and that would be alright. It might be a tough workout, but it wouldn't expend all my energy on the first two intervals and leaving me too tired to benefit from the later intervals.

So, what's next? Next I spend four weeks training my way. You can get a feel for what that is by checking out my marathon training plan in the blog's header links, but basically I'll be doing standard, comfortable runs on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; I'll do a speed/interval workout on Tuesdays and a fartlek or tempo run on Thursdays. Saturdays will be long runs, again done my way, and Sundays will be rest days. As for two-a-days, I will likely do morning runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays to try to remain consistent with what I've been doing up to now.

I expect this more traditional training approach will work better for me than the training plan that I've become disillusioned with, but we shall see. That's the great thing about training: the proof of the pudding is in the tasting and the numbers don't lie. So let's see how it goes.

P90X Again

I’m on vacation, and boy, is it fun and relaxing.

Just before I left, I checked my physical progress as I finished up P90X2. I suspected that I had lost quite a bit of muscle mass over the previous three months, but to my delight I had actually put on a little more muscle. I was also more toned and had a stronger core compared to when I had finished P90X earlier in the year. So, six months of Tony Horton workout programs has made a huge, felicitous impact on my physicality. I’m so pleased.

Just looking at the before/after photos, which I will not share here for decency reasons, reveals what a difference these programs have made to my life. If you’ve got six months and a DVD player or streaming video player, you can reshape your body.

So, I’ll start my second round of P90X — my third round of Tony Horton workouts — this coming Monday, once I’m fully recovered from traveling. This time, I’ll be doing it alongside my wife and in tandem with a friend of ours. If you’d like to join in with us, reach out to me and you can join our Facebook group or whatever. Do join us.

And if you need to purchase P90X to get started, we can help you out there, too, either with a link to a discount, or a free video streaming trial, or just some advice.

The Importance Of Staying Fit To Stay Pain Free

I have never been one to suggest that a person can be both overweight and healthy at the same time. While I don’t think obesity is necessarily and automatic death sentence, it’s a big, and usually unnecessary, strain on the body that ought to be corrected if you know what’s good for you.

Having said all that, there’s another problem that I see all the time that seldom gets as much airtime: Skinny doesn’t mean healthy, either. I see people all the time who aren’t overweight, but whose muscles can barely support their frames. Some of these people, because they are skinny, enjoy lots of positive attention for being physically attractive. But an eye accustomed to seeing physical fitness can spot things that the average person either overlooks or mistakes for something good.

For example, I often see young women who dress and act as though they have an attractive backside, but upon closer examination, what we’re really seeing is bad posture associated with atrophy of the abdominal muscles combined with shortening of the piriformis muscle. This combination of problems has a tendency to tilt the pelvis muscle down and back while pushing the spine forward. The “pushed back” backside isn’t the feature of a genetic gift, it’s a potentially debilitating posture abnormality that probably causes these young ladies serious pain along the sciatic nerve.

Here's what it looks like:

I’m not trying to single people out. I work out almost every day of the week, sometimes twice a day, and even I am not doing everything I need to do to keep myself healthy and pain-free. This year, I’ve been suffering from some pain and injury related to my known weaknesses. But I’ve been working on these weaknesses diligently, and slowly but surely, my pain is dissipating and I’m working my way back to normal again. It’s a new normal, though. It’s a normal that includes more specific exercises designed to keep myself healthy and happy. 

And what’s good for the gander (me) is good for the goose (you). I’m here to help. If your posture looks anything like the “Incorrect” side of the picture up above, you desperately need to start performing some very specific exercises. Let’s take a look at what those exercises might be.

The first thing you need to do is increase flexibility in your legs and core. Specifically, you must increase flexibility in your piriformis and gluteus muscles, your hip flexors, and your quadriceps. Everyone knows how to do a quad stretch: Stand on one leg, grab your other leg’s ankle, press your foot against your glute and pull. Piriformis and gluteus muscles can be stretched by lying on your back crossing your leg so that your ankle is resting on the other leg’s knee, and pulling the not-crossed knee toward your chest:

Image courtesy Natasha.com

Stretching like this daily, even twice a day, will help maintain adequate flexibility in the offending areas. But that’s not good enough to ward off pain, stiffness, and sciatica. To do that, you need to exercise. If you’re not currently doing any strength training – and if your posture looks like that picture, you can assume that you have not been doing any strength training – then you need to start with some very simple abdominal exercises. Start with planks, three sets of however long you can hold a plank without letting your back dip. In a week or two, your muscles will be ready for some bigger and more important challenges, like leg raises. Finally, you must counter-balance this abdominal development with the development of your gluteus and piriformis muscles. You can achieve this by doing rear leg extensions, quadruped hip extensions, and unweighted squats.

Remember, if you’re in pain or your back isn’t capable of diving into a comprehensive strength training workout, you need to start small and slowly build up to something more ambitious. There’s no harm in starting small and building. It’s much safer and will ensure that you don’t accidentally make your condition worse.

Feeling Ambitious

As January comes to a close I thought I might provide a fitness update.

After reviewing my 2016 stats on Smashrun.com, I decided that, since I came in under 1,000 total miles last year, I ought to try for over 1,000 miles of running this year. That works out to be about 2.75 miles per day, which feels pretty reasonable to me. If nothing else, I need only have a year similar to last year, but without a big gaping break in June.

Reasonable goals are nice and provide good satisfaction when you reach them, but ambitious goals are even more fun.

I had a rather ambitious idea shortly after coming up with my 1,000-mile goal: What if I were able to run for 100 consecutive days, without taking any formal rest days. If I needed a rest day, I could just run very slowly or very low mileage, or both. Given how much I run, the challenge for 100 consecutive days of running is not physical, per se. I won’t find it physically daunting to go out for a run every day for one hundred days. On the other hand, ensuring that my schedule remains free and open such that I always have time to go for a run is quite another story. Keeping my will power attuned to a goal like that is also a major challenge since people like to take days off every once in a while. On a nice and sunny day, or a cold and stormy one, it’s easy to let the workout slide and go do something else. In short, running one hundred days in a row is a challenge that is more mental than physical.

It’s been going well. By the time most of you read this, I will have run twenty consecutive days, a fifth of the way to my endpoint.

Ten days into my project, however, there was another development. My wife because a Beachbody coach and subscribed us to Beachbody On Demand, the company’s streaming video service. It is essentially “Netflix for exercise videos,” if you will, and it comes with the ability to stream the world-famous P90X program. This is something I have always wanted to try, and having it “on tap” in my own home proved to be too great a temptation to resist.

As a result, I am now waking up at four o’clock every morning and working my way through a 60-to-90-minute P90X workout. And that’s in addition to my continued progress toward a hundred days of running.

Today I’m ten days into P90X and twenty days into my running goal. If all goes well, I’ll finish both initiatives on exactly the same day and I will have accomplished two reasonably difficult fitness goals at exactly the same time.

Ambitious? Yes. Will I be able to do it? I’m not sure. But if I do, it might be the most difficult physical undertaking I’ve ever managed. Wish me luck!

Run Bike Explore

Exploring!

In honor of my new Garmin device, I'd like to cordially invite all my readers to join my Garmin Connect group, "Run Bike Explore," dedicated to all things adventurous, fun, and fitness-related.

As you may already know, you can connect with me on Strava via the Strava widget on the right-hand sidebar.

And let's not forget my new favorite, SmashRun! Join up with me here.

In Which I Declare Non-Wimphood

Everyone likes to go fast, and no one likes to be a wimp. It is the primary conflict of the distance runner. Putting in solid mileage involves extremes of weather, distance, effort, zen, and perseverance; there’s nothing wimpy about that. If a runner doesn’t set aside time to pump some iron, though, he soon finds himself withering away at the upper body and shriveling to skin-and-bones. You don’t want that.

Neither do I. Thus, now having spent the better part of a year running diligently, to the exclusion of a daily strength training regimen, I find myself in what can only be called a pickle. I’ve done a lot of butch running this year; I’m all man, baby. But my muscles are fading fast. I’m told it’s not their size that counts, but how I use them – but how can I be sure?

It’s safe to say this turn of events stems from my growing obsession with GPS fitness trackers, which enable me to track my runs and almost immediately review the data interpretations of my running. It’s not that I’m obsessed with data; I’m not that much of a wimp! it’s just that when I happen to see the little “running guy” icon hovering over six of the past ten days, it makes me wonder if I can get him to hover over a seventh day. Having done that, I wonder about an eighth day. Now I’m up to nine, and ten seems like it’s right around the corner for me. See? Manly! Not wimpy.

Look, if you award me a score related to something I happen to be doing a lot anyway, I will attempt to improve that score.  Because I’m no wuss. And besides, I’m doing whatever it is anyway. Granted that there are people in the world who take this to dangerously obsessive levels, relentlessly flogging themselves for failing to improve their largely meaningless points tally. Me, I’ve been running and working out for so long that it hardly matters anymore. I am either already obsessed or I have demonstrated over the years that obsession is not a risk for me here. The reader is invited to draw her own conclusions about that, but the bottom line is that, for me, fitness trackers are more boon than bane. Bring on the arbitrary milestones!

While I’m coming clean about all this, I may as well get another one off my chest: I’ve been syncing my data with a fabulous browser-based application called Smashrun (find it at Smashrun.com), and this has taken my running to even greater manly heights. Smashrun provides all the same statistics that my nascent running apps provide (Microsoft Health, Garmin Connect, Strava, etc.), and then adds to that large dollops of additional information to binge on. Smashrun will tell you how long ago it was that you ran a similar distance, how your last run compares to other, similar runs, how it compares to similar runs ran by similar runners, what healthy or unhealthy food your calorie burn corresponds to, how many days in a row you’ve been running, and more. Then, to sweeten the pot even further, Smashrun gives you arbitrary badges and points as you log your miles, as if to say, “Hey, you’re just three days away from another bauble; why not go for it?” Dutifully, I do. Wimp? Not me!

And yet, the tone has changed. Earlier in the year, I was using my Microsoft Band 2 to guide me through interval training a few times per week. But since that data isn’t classified as “running data” in Microsoft Health (instead, they call it a “guided workout”), it doesn’t sync with Smashrun as a run per se. In other words, I might do five miles of interval training but never get credit for it on Smashrun. This is not a weakness with Smashrun, it’s just a data artifact. It is what it is. But since I don’t get Man Points – er, I mean arbitrary Smashrun points – for these workouts, I’ve taken to just going for a run instead! That way I get the mileage and the points and the badges and, ultimately, the cool satisfaction of knowing that I’m not a wimp.

Overall, I’d say this has worked out quite nicely for me. I’m running more often, putting in more miles, running them at a faster pace, improving my blood glucose control, and having fun while doing it. There’s just one little problem: my upper body muscle mass is disappearing. I’ve turned myself into a weakling, a wimp, a wuss, a Nancy-boy, a stick figure. You get the picture. (No, I won’t post one.)

There is one, final confounding factor here: the rotation of the Earth is too wussy for my manly ambitions. That is, there aren’t always enough hours in the day for me to succeed in strength training, and running, and then participating in all the aspects of life (such as they are) that are not directly tied to those two things. I’ve tried berating the Earth, but it doesn’t seem to be listening to me right now, so I have to cook up new ways of achieving my goal of Ultimate Tough Fitness Guy, meaning that I want to do all that running I’m doing and not lose muscle mass while I do it.

This can most often be achieved with the world-famous two-a-day workout strategy. Now, I’m not saying I’m a wimp – definitely not saying that – but lately I haven’t had enough time in the morning to get myself to the gym and back and still manage to, you know, maintain a steady stream of employment income. IF only there were some way to get a good muscle-building workout in the morning without having to give up my job. Now that would be manly!

Then I stumbled upon a solution, in the form of a website called Darebee.com. Darebee offers free exercise plans, motivation, tools, and most notably the “workout of the day.” These workouts can all be done at home and are brief enough from a time perspective that I can actually get a second workout in without getting fired. I’d call this “manly,” but I should mention that Darebee was started by a pretty cool woman named Neila Rey, so the word doesn’t quite fit. Instead, I’ll just call it awesome. And while it may strike a blow to my male ego to convert my pursuit of “ultimate manliness” into a pursuit of just being as awesome as a person like Neila Rey, the reader shall kindly forgive me. (Especially since, as faithful readers know, I never write like this, so you can probably assume all this “manly” stuff is tongue-in-cheek.)

And so goes my next undertaking: Maintaining a consistent, progressive running regimen while completing the Darebee workouts of the day, simultaneously.

I can do it. I’m no wimp!

Seven Days In A Row

Today, after a four-mile run at a pretty easy 7:11 per mile pace, I successfully logged my seventh consecutive day of running. After carefully reviewing every GPS-logged run I've been on since the year 2012, I realize that running for seven days in a row is something I haven't done in more than four years.

So this post is a little victory lap for me. It's not too difficult to run for seven consecutive days, but it's also not something that tends to happen all the time. In fact, the typical training regimen includes six days of running and a day of rest. I haven't even done that for many years. This is starting to look like a bigger accomplishment than I originally thought.

The tool I'm using to aggregate all this running data across the various GPS platforms I've used over the years - Nike+, Garmin, Samsung S Health and Microsoft Health - is a fabulous free website product called Smashrun. (Find it at the aptly named Smashrun.com.) The idea is simple: you give Smashrun your login information for any GPS running app you happen to use, then Smashrun logs in on your behalf, downloads the GPS file, uploads it into its own system, and then spits out a variety of statistics and gamification.

Smashrun isn't just cool (it's really cool), it also seems to reflect a big slice of the Stationary Waves all-encompassing philosophy. No, really. I mean it. Check out this excerpt from the "About" section of Smashrun's website:

The idea, at its conception was a simple one — that motivation and context are intrinsically linked. When you understand not just how an action fits into your goals, but how it fits into your history, then you understand purpose. And doing anything with purpose is a heck of a lot easier than doing it without purpose. So, if that's true, then the key to motivation might just be a matter of framing.

I mean, uh... I had nothing to do with the creation of Smashrun, but by golly, that sounds like something I might have written myself. It goes on:

Often it's not about the game, so much as it's about the sense of accomplishment. The cynical (or perhaps just honest) way to look at a lot of games is as virtual skinner boxes. By rewarding a repeated behavior, you condition pleasure response to that behavior, and in doing so, develop a drive. 

Now, what if instead of rewarding behavior, which has absolutely no real world benefit whatsoever, you set up the game to reward truly beneficial behavior. Let's say, for example something which might help, you to live longer, feel better, look better, even have a better sex life, not to mention improve your facility to get away from any real world zombies should they ever materialize?

If these guys (and gals) aren't Ryan, they sure are doing their best Ryan-impersonation!

Therefore, it should surprise no one that I have found Smashrun addictive as an online activity/tool, and also highly motivational. Strange as it might be to admit it, the whole reason I've run seven consecutive days is because I desperately want to earn Smashrun's "10 for 10" badge, which I can earn if I run for ten days in a row. I might not get it, but who cares? I haven't done this much running in literal years.

And that makes me feel great - not just for the sense of accomplishment, but also just physically great. My blood sugar has been low or normal, my body feels like it's ready for action constantly, my hormones are adapting. I phyiscally feel like a runner again. It's been a long time.

Some Links

For just $500, you can combine fitness tracking technology with a full-body scanner to get even more insight into how your body is changing as you exercise. This is not actually too rich for my blood, but I think I will wait and see whether the technology catches on first.

Science tells us the keys to an effective apology. (H/T Marginal Revolution) Faithful reader PR remarks that this is more reflective of society's current obsession with "science." After all, the findings are basically common sense.

This is probably an old article, but I wanted to gather some ideas for speed workouts I could try over the next few weeks, and its recommendations were really helpful. Note that the distances all work out to be about five kilometers. That's not a coincidence.

The sound you make when you laugh changes, depending on whether you are with friends or strangers.

Calisthenic Drop Sets

There seems to be a real dearth of hard facts on the topic of drop sets. When I search, I find scant physiological evidence justifying their use in strength training. I do, however, find many anecdotes related to use of the technique. Some of those anecdotes are favorable to the use of drop sets, and some are not. I've yet to form an opinion, so the search is of interest to me.

What Is A Drop Set?

Simply put, a "drop set" is when you reach muscle failure during a strength training workout as usual, and then immediately drop 20% of the pounds you're lifting, and do another set to muscle failure.

The best description of what a drop set is - at least the best one that I can find, and the one that actually offers up a citation of some kind - can be found at BodyBuilding.com. Here's what they have to say about how the technique was developed:

According to Arnold's Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding, the drop set method was originally "discovered" in 1947 by Henry Atkins, editor of Body Culture magazine. Atkins called it the "multi-poundage system." Since then, this muscle blasting technique has gone by many different names including breakdowns, descending sets, triple-drops, down the rack, strip sets or the stripping technique.

I cite that passage to underscore that this is mostly a trial-and-error workout technique, i.e. there does not seem to be any physiological basis for it. But, speaking of physiology, here is their description of how it works:

Even though you may reach a point of momentary muscular failure after 8-12 reps in a conventional straight set, you haven't reached absolute failure; you've only reached failure with that poundage. You see, in a single straight set performed to failure, you don't activate every fiber in a muscle group. You only recruit the number of fibers necessary to lift a particular weight for the desired number of repetitions. By stripping off weight and continuing the set, you cumulatively recruit more and more "reserve" muscle fibers. 

Drop sets hit the "stubborn" muscle fibers "deep down," causing growth that normally couldn't be achieved by stopping after a single set of six to twelve.

I reiterate, these are claims without evidence. Still, that should give you an idea of what a drop set is, how to do it, and what people are thinking about physiology when they advocate for doing drop sets.

A blog called "FitFlex" offers up a more scientific explanation, although it, too, is bereft of citations and more or less consists of the author's personal belief about the physiology behind drop sets.

And that, friends, is as much as I've been able to find on the subject.

Stationary Waves Modified Drop Sets; Or, Calisthenic Drop Sets

I have very little interest in body building and efficient muscle gain, but I have a great interest in being stronger and healthier overall. As such, I'm always interested in trying out new workout ideas and seeing how they affect me in terms of both fitness and blood glucose control.

This week, I decided to try a little experiment. Rather than doing straight drop sets - and, in particular, rather than immediately finishing off my lifts with a drop set - I thought to myself, What if I took the muscle groups I focused on today and added a calisthenics exercise targeting those muscles at the end of my workout? In other words, what if I lifted weights as usual, pushing myself to muscle failure, and then set aside some time at the end of, say, a tricep/chest day to do some push-ups.

So I've been doing this as follows:

• Tricep / Chest day: Finish with push-ups
• Bicep / Back day: Finish with pull-ups
• Shoulder day: Finish with push-ups targeting the shoulders (e.g. decline push-ups)
• Leg day: (I do plyometrics for leg day - this one's already covered.)

The results? Well, I don't measure the size of my muscles, but I seem to have gained a couple of pounds, and most importantly, my muscles feel like they're getting a better workout. Whereas I normally cover from a weight workout by the next morning (in terms of how I feel, anyway), lately the tiredness has lasted 2 or 3 days. 

This is great, I think, because I only work out each muscle group once a week, not counting a few groups that are impossible not to duplicate, like abs and triceps.

My initial conclusion is that "calisthenic drop sets" are a good addition to a strength training routine.

In A Hurry? Improvise!

If exercise were my full-time job – and, boy, would I love it if that were the case! – then every morning I would wake up and carefully plan a new and exciting workout for myself. I’d extend my morning breakfast/coffee deep into mid-morning and arrive at the day’s perfect workout. Then, I’d deliver it in spades!

 

In the real world, I’m a working stiff, a parent, a husband, and a guy with a diverse set of interests and responsibilities. In short, I don’t always have time to concoct The World’s Greatest Workout, Man and then spend all day making my muscles sing from the rooftops. (Notes to future self in the event that reincarnation occurs: (1) You were wrong about atheism; (2) consider a career as a fitness model or personal trainer.) To put it concisely, I don’t always have a lot of time on my hands to think up a great workout.

 

What do I do in those situations? Well, I could always dig up someone else’s workout, but that starts to feel like a to-do list preceded by uninteresting internet research. I could also pull Stationary Waves up on my internet browser and see what I’ve done in the past. I’ve actually done this a number of times to smashing effect. (Indeed, it’s probably the main reason I blog my workouts – sorry to disappoint those of you who supposed I was primarily motivated by fitness altruism.)

 

But in this morning’s case, I opted for another handy approach to creating one’s own workouts: Doing the same thing you did last time, plus additional repetitions.

 

Unimaginative? Yes. Boring? Maybe. Effective? Absolutely!

 

TL;DR: Today’s workout was the same as Mondays, plus more reps.

Light Calisthenics, Part Two

 

This morning's push-up/squat workout sure was fun. On the other hand, it didn't feel like much of a workout. I think that means I ought to push a little harder tomorrow morning, and that's exactly what I intend to do.

 

Before I do, though, I think I ought to supplement this morning's workout with a little more exercise this evening. Nothing too complicated, just a few more sets of push-ups - I'll make it up as I go, because I don't want to burn up mental energy heaping workout responsibilities on myself. I just want to have fun with this - no pressure, no commitment, just a little something to make me feel more accomplished tonight.

 

As for tomorrow, my plan is as follows, perforated by mountain-climbers:

 

·         Set 1: 10 L-sit pull-ups

·         Set 2: 10 underhand pull-ups

·         Set 3: 10 L-sit pull-ups

·         Set 4: 10 underhand pull-ups

·         Set 5: 10 side-to-side pull-up isometrics

 

I suppose now might be a good time to mention that my ultimate goal is to create substantial increases to my ability to perform calisthenics. More on that as details become available. For now, I’ll just focus on building my strength.

Workout Of The Day

I typically use Monday as my triceps-and-chest day. As such, today's workout explores the deeper end of the push-up pool.

And speaking of push-ups, I typically do repetitions of between 20 and 40 - but that's sort of a runner's approach to push-ups, isn't it?

In the spirit of new-ness, today I'll try a new approach. I'll do five sets of push-ups as per below. Between each set, I'll do squats.

• Set 1: 10 diamond push-ups
• Set 2: 10 plyo-push-ups (clapping)
• Set 3: 10 side-to-side push-up isometrics
• Set 4: 10 incline push-ups
• Set 5: one-arm push-ups to max

Workout Of The Day

On that note, here's today's workout.

 

Three sets of:

 

·         5 dips w/ forward lean

·         5 one-arm push-ups (5 each arm, alternating; 10 total)

·         5 dips w/ forward lean

·         5 clapping or Aztec push-ups

·         5 dips w/ forward lean

·         10 decline push-ups

 

Followed by a running fartlek (weather permitting):

 

·         8 mins brisk

·         4 mins recovery

·         6 mins fast

·         3 mins recovery

·         4 mins fast

·         2 mins recovery

·         2 mins hard

·         1 min recovery

 

Don't forget, if you're doing an out-and-back run, the turn-around point should occur at the fifth minute of your 6-minute fast split.