Health Care Reform Dead? I Hope So...

I don't generally talk about politics on my blog with one exception: Health Care Reform. I think it's one point where politics and physical fitness intersect. I've been pretty critical of anything remotely called universal health care, single-payer, public option, or exchanges (In case you weren't paying attention, this is what the previous four is now called in the Senate Bill) because I don't think that the problem with health care cost spiraling out of sight could be solved by any reform in Washington DC.

I've stated numerous times that I believe that Americans are ringing up a collective doctors bill that we can't pay because of our rampant obesity. As I thought about it, that's not the whole problem but a root cause. Another key part of the problem is that some Americans think it's a right owed to them. I wouldn't be as concerned about America's obese medical bill if the average American would pay for their piece health care bill. Obviously, they can't. Instead, they treat it as an entitlement and expect the government to pay for it. The problem is that's 150,000,000-198,000,000 people, depending on which polling data you chose to believe. It doesn't matter whether we pay for it via the public or private sector. This is unsustainable because it's unaffordable.

About six weeks ago, The American Diabetes Association released a study which startled a lot of people. According Dr Elbert Huang, the number of diagnosed and undiagnosed cases of diabetes will balloon from 23,700,000 to 44,000,000 people by 2034. That would result in the cost of diabetes-related treatment going from $117,000,000,000 to $336,000,000,000.

This is alarming for sure but I'm even more concerned because I think that their 2034projection is too far away. They're assuming that 65% of the country will be overweight or obese in 25 years. By some estimates, WE'RE ALREADY THERE! Who is to say that these diabetes-related costs aren't just around the corner? Diabetes is a gateway disease, leading to a host of other, very serious medical problems. Who knows how much all of that could cost?

For those who don't pay attention, or are in a foreign country, Obama's, and the Democrat Party's, latest stab at health care reform that includes some form of universal coverage just hit a major stag with the election of a Republican, Scott Brown, to Massachussetts' vacant Senate seat. In fact, if Brown is seated in the Senate, it's unlikely that any health care reform gets passed this year, if ever.

If there's anything in the way of insuring every American through the federal government, I hope that it never happens. If it does, then there are two outcomes. The first is that the government will, by default, make it every American's right to be as fat as they want to be without consequence. Or, they'll give themselves the power to micromanage what Americans eat when it becomes clear to them that they can't provide adequate coverage for all of these fat people, much like what New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is doing with trans fats and salt or Obama wants to do with soft drink taxes.

If my opinion counts for anything, I think that the reform that should happen is that health insurance should operate like auto insurance. It should be there to cover major health care costs that are out of the control of the holder of the insurance plan. Routine maintenance things, such as drugs and doctor visits, shouldn't be covered by the plan. So, if a fat person wants to maintain their unhealthy lifestyle, let them pay for it and not pass the cost off on someone else. Furthermore, if they chose to live such an unhealthy lifestyle, they should have to pay more, just like bad drivers who get speeding tickets. They do the exact, same thing to smokers already.

I realize it probably won't happen but I have little doubt if fat people had to bear the costs of their bad decisions, they'd find a way to lose some weight. Here's to hoping!

But I've only Got 45 minutes a day to work out

Maybe I've been having a 7-year-blond moment but it never occurred to me that the whole, "I only have ___ minutes a day to work out," complaint might have been an excuse to not work out all along. I always took it as a severe lack of motivation, good planning, and creativity. It might be both. Either way, I've never fell for it. I'm no different than anyone else when it comes to not having all the time in the world to train. Actually, I probably have a lot less (sometimes as little as 20 minutes) than most people do. In spite of that lack of training time, I walk around just a suntan-short of a bonafide beach body.


While I was eating my breakfast one morning, I read a magazine article about the famous 300 Workout. The article gave some 300-style (or, CrossFit style) workouts. I liked the circuits a lot but at the end of the circuits, you were supposed to rest 6 MINUTES BETWEEN CIRCUITS.

Was that supposed to be a joke? The workouts were 3 circuits total so you're supposed to spend 18 minutes of the training time looking like a tough guy, drinking your disgusting sports drink, or checking out some hot chick doing bent-over rows? Give me a break! A little more a back ground about me: I work for my dad. He's demanding as hell. I'm a salaried employee. Taking extra time doesn't pay me shit.

The bottom line is that I don't waste time and getting lots done in a little time is a way of life. Take last Thursday night's work-out for example. I had exactly 24 minutes to work out between the time I got home and dinner time. So, prior to getting home, I settled on this circuit:

30 single leg squat progressions, 15 each leg
2 minute wall chair
2 minutes 1 hand KB Swing (FYI, my Kettlebell is 18 KG)
2 minutes KB woodchoppers
20 wide grip pull-ups

I repeated it twice, resting, at most, 30 seconds between each exercise. I finished up in about 21 minutes. One item that I consider nearly necessary is the Gymboss. After the squats, everything was on the timer, 2 minutes of work, 30 seconds of rest. If you don't have this gem, and you're wondering how to compress your workout into a shorter period of time, then I highly suggest you spring the $20 for it NOW!

Proper mental images and mindset are paramount to getting a good workout in a little bit of time. Chip Conrad reminded his readers about the importance of psyching up prior to hitting the gym not too long ago. Mental movies help me a lot, and few force me to work harder than thinking of Buddy McGirt yelling at Arturo Gatti to give it everything in the last few rounds of his first fight with Mickey Ward. I can still hear him saying, "GIVE ME 15 MINUTES, THEN YOU CAN REST..." and it still gives me goosebumps as I type this! When I'm working out, it's just what I need to force myself through the fatigue. After all, time is short and, well, I can rest all I want in 20 minutes, after I'm done.

Well-planned circuits. Inspiring head-movies. A well thought-out gym timer. A hard-ass, can-do, and will-do attitude. It's really that simple to get a good work-out in a time crunch. Don't let anyone, including yourself, talk yourself out of it. Get your head right, plan accordingly, and get moving!

Controlled Suffering

I love Pauline Nordine, and it's not just for her incredibley hot body combined with the sexy, Swedish accent. When it comes to keeping in good shape, few probably have things as clear in mind as she does. On her Facebook page the other day, she came out with these gem of fitness wisdom:

"You can't enjoy every workout. People who think every workout is happy fun fun usually never push the limit on what they can endure, perform, execute. Nothing wrong with that approach, but it's like sayin' "oh I love to go for a walk!" to someone who's been doing three hours of powerwalking with a 50lbs weight vest ev...ery day for four months in order to lose all the bulge. It ain't fun all the time! and it's ok!"

"I also don't believe in moderation so I do a LOT. Moderate results require moderate effort. Extreme ideals take extreme measurements. "

Those of us reading this know that the world around us is ridiculously soft. Industrialized nations, generally speaking, have moved their cultures in directions where we barely move our bodies for any reason and certainly not for any useful purposes. We sit, we get sick, and we manage this through pills, procedures and surgeries.

Then, every so often, a few of the sendentary/sedated get the idea that they need to get off their ass and start training. The modern rendition of gyms aren't much help. They're almost as soft as those seeking to get hard. People sit too much. We can all agree on that much. Well, take a look at most gym equipment.
How much of it is a piece of machinery that, to use, you have to sit or lay down in? Obviously, progress is doomed to be limited. A little while ago, they did one of those DUH! studies and found out that you get more ab work if you do standing ab exercises rather than sitting and lying down ones. So, this constant quest to make exercise palatable and comfortable isn't getting a lot of us anywhere.

By trying to make it comfortable is missing the biggest reason why we're soft: we avoid suffering, hardship, pain, and discomfort like it was a swine flu epidemic (which, if you follow my FB page, you now know I was right about that one. Told you so!). If you want to be successfull with your fitness goals, then you must accept all of these as an absolutely necessary part of your training regimen. When you get right down to it, training is the art and science of administering the right amount of physical suffering. If you expose yourself to the right kind, at the right amount, and at the right time, your body, mind and spirit become stronger.

"Your flesh is killing your spirit"

We have to do this because everything has to be practiced to become good at it, even the stuff that we perceive as something negative. You just have to do it in a lesser, more controlled manner. Boxers don't like to get punched but to learn to avoid it, they have to be punched. The best warriors in the history of war were often times excellent game hunters.

In my last blog entry, I talked about how our tolerance to stress is getting worse and our quality of life is suffering. After spending the first 100,000-or-so years of our existence laboring ourselves do death, we thought that the way to live happily ever after was to avoid as much stress as possible. It's not working. Those of us who enjoy training (or at least understand the necessity of it) understand this. Ultimately, it's up to us to show this to the rest of the world. It's the rest of the world's responsiblity to listen up.

So, you've got it worse than 800 years ago?

I forgot about how good of a blog that Mistress Krista in Toronto has until a few moments ago when I decided to see what's new on her slice of the world wide web. She wrote a nice article about her health predictions for the next decade. I thought there were some pretty good guesses and it's obvious she knows her shit but I still found stuff to disagree with.

The one point that I got pretty flamed about was the notion that modern life is more stressful than it's ever been. I quote:

"Problem is, modern life is more stressful than ever before, and it’s showing no signs of abating.

A global high-tech world means that along with the usual woes that have always plagued humanity (food, shelter, getting out of bed in the morning, getting and maintaining sex, mean people with pointy objects and thundersticks, malevolent power-grubbing bosses, etc.), we have new ways to stimulate ourselves, to which our physiologies (see #6) have not yet adapted."

Really? It's worse than it's ever been? It's worse than it was, say 70 years ago? I mean, could we consider that as part of the modern world? I was watching a History Channel show about the labor union movements a couple of months ago. They discussed how the average American worker in the cities could expect to work 12 hours a day, sometimes 6 days. I've met several people who thought that such a workday was just inconceivable and could barely get past an 8 hour workday. Did you know that back then, there was still the idea that if you dumped sewage into the rivers and lakes, that these bodies of water would take care of themselves?

It may be not be modern by any standards, but let's go back farther, back to Medieval Times. Mist-Kris talks about bad people with sharp & explosive stuff and mean bosses. Well, back then, the leaders established authority over their populace by mercilessly slaughtering those who opposed them. Vikings nearly destroyed the Western education. Peasants barely moved in the winter because they didn't have enough food work, or even live, through the winter. They couldn't keep the rats, and the diseases, out of their food supplies (hello, plague!) People had lots of kids since maybe half would survive to adulthood. Do you realize that, for a several hundred years, the ancient Roman doctor Galen (died 199 AD) was the leading medical authority in the Western World? Think about that: a guy that lived 1000 years ago, still being used as a reference for medical care. How's that for stress?

I could keep going but I think that you get the idea that life has gotten easier than it's ever been for those of us capable of reading this. If we can't deal with the stress of our lives, it's our own fault. Mist-Kris nailed it in the same blog entry: a lot of us, frankly most of us, just don't take very good care of ourselves at all. We eat shit and don't do shit. We eat stuff that we know is poisoned, or at least very unhealthy. We don't look for the truth about diet and exercise with any sort of zest or sense of urgency. We sit around and make excuses (most of the time, we bring science down to suit our laziness) as to why it's not our fault. More-over, we expect someone else to take care of the problem ourselves.

Call this what you will, just don't call this more a more stressful life. It's a lazier life, and it's a life that's decaying our bodies to the point where OUR CELL PHONES STRESS US OUT! Hello! If that's getting your underwear in a bunch to the point where you need to reach for something to calm you down, then you need to make some serious changes, because your individual conduct in life isn't working.

Traps without Weights

We can come up with poetic reasons for why we train so damn hard but when it comes down to it, we all want to look big, hot, muscular and sexy. So, much of our effort goes to working the muscles that accomplishes that end, as far as the rest of the fitness world is concerned. So, rarely does the muscles of the back get any recognition (has anyone complimented you on your rhomboids or Teres Major lately?). There’s generally two, however, that get some attention: the lattisimus dorsi (lats) and the trapezuis muscle (traps).

I’m going to touch on the Traps at this moment, since it came up on Rosstraining. Plus, they’re a bit more visible from the front anyway. A well-developed traps (or at least the upper traps) look like a cobra-like hood of muscle just above shoulders and to the sides of the neck. Frankly, it just looks bad-ass as hell!

The question on Rosstraining wasn't about how to get them by any means necessary. The question was about getting them with BW ONLY! First of all, there's cards that need to be thrown on the table. Brock Lesnar is blessed in a way that not many are. Trap size, or the appearance of trap size, is determined by how long the tendons that the Trap meat connects to are as well as the length of the neck.

So, in our situation, I think that it would be helpful to take a closer look about this piece of meat on our back that we're talking about. The Trapezuis gets it's name from it's shape. It's a trapezoid-shaped muscle that originates on our spine from our neck down to the middle of our back and inserts into the spine of our shoulder blade. (FYI, Origin refers to the point on the skeleton where the muscle connects that remains fixed during movement. Insertion generally refers to the point on the skeleton where the muscle connects that moves. Naturally, this can vary depending on which part of the skeleton moves or stays fixed.)


This muscle does a lot of things, most of which involve moving the shoulder blade. The upper fibers pull the shoulders upward, the middle fibers pull the shoulder blades together, and the lower fibers rotate the shoulder blades downward (Another FYI, the shoulders don't move in a straight line, up and down. Instead, they rotate slightly).

So, now that we know about the shoulders, how do we exercise them with BW only? Well, I'm a huge fan of two upper body exercises for the task: handstand push-ups and pull/chin-ups. Before you start sputtering that the latter doesn't work the Traps, read the above paragraph again. While you're at it, read this again, too.

Or, at the very least, check out this picture of me doing towel pull-ups... What is that in the middle of my back, flexing as I perform the exercise?

The handstand push-ups are much more straightforward, but also very difficult. Train up to them by doing pike push-ups. Use elevation of the hands and/or feet to work your way up to a handstand push-up. This is probably my favorite push-up and it's well worth using for the traps, as well as a myriad of other muscles in the upper body.

Another good isometric exercise for the Traps looks sort of like a deadlift. What you need for the exercise is a long piece of rope/strap/belting/whatever that you can step on and have enough material left to grab onto with both hands. Thrust your hips back and grab onto both sides, pulling the leftover material tight. Instead of lifting upward, shrug powerfully upward, trying to tear the material apart.

BW rarely gives out muscle-specific exercises, and the Traps are no exception. That doesn't mean that there are no exercises that work it. It's a pretty simple bottom-line when it comes to working the traps: exercises that require that you move your shoulders up or down, or hold the shoulders firmly in place, work the Traps to some degree.

The High Rep Curse?

If there's one thing that I've frequently complained about weightlifters is that many seem stuck in the same rut when it comes to making an exercise more difficult: add more weight. That's the reason why so many can't seem to comprehend how Bodyweight could strengthen the body as well as weights could. They don't see how you could possibly get stronger if the weight (your body) stays the same. The truth is that there are a myriad of ways to increase the difficulty of strength training that don't involve more weight, or iron.

Bodyweight trainees have a similar rut. Many only know one way of making an exercise more difficult: add more reps. Sure, this works for a while but eventually, the max strength benefits are maxed out and the exercise becomes good for endurance. Unfortunately, they don't seem to see or understand that. So, they continue on training with high reps, believing that they're going to get bigger and max-strength stronger by cranking out rep after rep. It kind of makes BW the laughing stock of the strength training world, not taken seriously by the serious strength trainers.

Like I said, high reps are good for endurance but it's value for building muscular bulk and max strength is negligible. I know because I've tried it before. I got into very good shape but eventually I stopped getting the benefits that I sought. So, I had to look elsewhere. So, I started playing with ways to make the exercises that I did more difficult. I looked for new ones. I tweaked the new ones that I found. I made some basic, even crude, pieces of equipment. Other times I'd buy stuff that looked like it would have some merit. Travel always has a way forcing me to be creative with my training, as well as demanding basic but brutal workouts that don't take too long.

Based on my work, I've found that exercises performed at no more than 25-30 reps per set are good for getting max-stronger and increasing muscle size. I also found out that muscle confusion is incredibly important. I daresay it's more important with BW than it is with weight training. Gaining strength in different directions, working from different angles, makes for some astonishing strength gains.

There are other ways to make a BW exercise harder. Most of them fall under one, basic idea: make the exercise more unstable. It's a pretty simple to understand why this works: your muscles now have to work to keep the body in place while moving. Tension becomes your ally. You can do this in a number of ways:

1. Placement of your limbs. Generally speaking, moving limbs together makes a BW exercise harder. Move your hands closer together to make push-ups harder. Move your feet apart to make them easier. Move one hand downward, on a towel, to make a pull-up harder.

2. Stuff! TRX. Push-up T's. Rings. Ab Wheels. These things make a lot of exercises much more unsteady, translating to more contraction. The nice thing about these tools is that most don't take up too much space, making them ideal for travel. The downside is that some are expensive. The upside is that they are pretty easy to improvise if you're handy. In any case, an investment in a bit of gear pays strength dividends.

3. Single Limb Work. Do I need to tell you that dropping a limb out of any exericse will make the exercise A LOT HARDER? Hopefully, I don't. If you're going to bitch that BW doesn't have good max-strength building exercises, then do 6 one-arm push-ups with your feet on chairs, 3 for each arm. Then, get back to me.

There's something else that merits mentioning since we're talking about the fallacy of getting strong using high rep calisthenics and that's the notion that high reps cause injury. I can't give a conclusive answer on that one but I can speak from my own experiences. I've never injured myself by doing high rep (30+ rep) calisthenics. I do, however, see where some people could, or probably will, injure themselves by training in such a manner. Many people sacrifice control of the movement in order to make it easier to do more reps. That's stupid, and it merits my normal adomonition: Speed - Control = INJURY

If you really commit yourself to BW training as a comprehensive method of strength training, then you'll realize that the possibilities of getting more powerful are hard to fathom and don't begin and end with simple number of repetitions. Those of us who do know that with the right modifications, there isn't a lot that you can't do with BW that you can't do with weights. As far as the average (and above-average) strength trainer is concerned, Bodyweight is weight lifting's equal for getting strong. You just have to get creative and get past the high reps as the only method of progression.

Form

Training at Altitude kicks ass, or should I say, kicked my ass. I stepped outside of my hotel in Cusco, Peru to do some training just a few minutes ago. I thought that this workout wouldn't be too hard to handle:

1. Twelve 1-arm push-ups, each arm
2. Fifteen pistol progressions, each leg
3. twenty handstand push-ups
4. Fifteen 9-count burpees.

Repeat 3 times.

Well, I couldn't get through the third set of burpees. My head and lungs where aching, trying to get enough oxygen into my body in this 3,000-plus meters-above-sea level city. By the time I got to the last set, I my form was slipping, BAD! It was all I could do to get through the handstand push-ups. I probably would get a few fuzzy eye balls from form police if they'd seen me half-assing my final 6 push-ups.

They might have a point. I wasn't getting the full benefit out of each rep by only going partially down to the ground on my 1-arm push-ups. I'd get more upper back work out of the handstand push-ups had I touched my nose to the ground rather than my head. Still, they'd be missing the point.

If you think about it, form serves two basic purposes: to keep our body safe while exercising and to get the most out of each and every rep of the exercise. Safety is pretty easy to understand. If you don't keep certain parts of your body rigid and in the right positon during the exercise, you could injure yourself to varying degrees. Take my handstand push-ups for example. If you don't keep your glutes and abs contracted, you risk hurting your lower back. The same thing applies for the single leg squatting work. If you don't keep your hip flexors contracted to control the movement, you'll throw your hips out of alignment. So, a basic form for exercises is required and necessary.

When it comes to tweaking form, or losing it, from a performance standpoint, things get murky. Form must conform to the needs of the practicioner, to some degree. If you have to go with kipping to do decent pull-ups, then who is anyone to say that you're doing it wrong? After all, if you're working your way up to a full pull-up, then it's a issue of progression. If you´ve exhausted yourself and you´re just trying to get a few more in, then so what?

As for fatigue, well, I doubt that everyone's reps on the final set are as clean in form as the beginning set. If you're really killing it, it gets really difficult to get all the way down to the ground on the last one-arm push-up. The body's capability to do so is dwindling. Even so, it's not like you're not getting some benefit out of the exercise. You're just doing what you can.

Now, I could go into the ¨form police are assholes¨ rant from here but, frankly, Ross Enamait already covered that base so well. Let´s just leave it at this for now: Keep enough form to protect yourself during the exercise but feel free to modify based on your needs. The ends do justify the means so if you get strong and healthy with a modification, then nobody is to say whether or not your form was good or not.

As far as I´m concerned, unless you have a video out there proving how perfect your form is, then shut your face about anyone else´s.

Tweaking some more ab work from some Plain Vanilla exercises

So, I was chipping away a while back at my version of the Exercise Bible not too long ago and while I was doing the tablemakers and the hindu push-ups, something kind of struck me. I realized that I could make these two exercises more difficult with a modest tweak in how I perform them, each one adding up to more core work in the exercise.

The hindu push-ups sometimes get lost in the shuffle of trying to find exercises that develop strength because part of the exercise has very little in the way of muscle contraction as you return back to the starting position. Often times, I eschew them in favor of the dive bomber push-up, which requires you to back-track during the dipping movement. There's no doubt that makes it harder than the hindu push-up. A good way to make it harder as you return to the starting position is to pull yourself back to the starting position with your abs, rather than pushing yourself back with your arms and shoulders. It may not make it as hard as the dive-bomber, it does help you squeeze more out of the former.

You can add more ab work to the tablemaker by never resting your butt on the floor. Instead, rest your bodyweight on your heels and your hands. Raise and lower yourself upwards and downwards, NEVER PUT YOUR ASS ON THE GROUND! A friendly reminder when you're doing the tablemaker: make sure your head and neck travel with your torso. Don't raise your torso while keeping your head stationary.

While I don't do these exercises when I'm doing the Bible, I thought that while I'm going over the finer points of certain BW exercies, I'll mention a pointer on one of my favorite ab exercises: The spider-T push-up. When you're doing this push-up, make sure that as you descend downwards, make sure that you keep your shoulders straight. Don't allow the shoulder on the side of your moving knee to sag. This assures that you're not losing any of the difficulty of the exercise. It also may spare you some shoulder soreness afterwards.

I could keep going with small details like this but I think I'd be better served to tell you to keep yourself focused on what you're doing when you're exercising. Getting the most out of a given exercise by paying attention isn't just about the move as you've learned it. It's also about realizing that you might be missing out on a small tweak that can get you more results. As you tire, your body will instinctively try to make the exercise easier. It's up to your sharp mind and your willpower to realize this and force yourself to maintain the intensity and form. That's why paying attention and staying focused is so important when you're training.

Where do they think this stuff up? Or, more scientific reasons why we´re so fat...

I'm just starting to realize how many really good lines that Jim Wendler has spouted from time to time. One of the guys at Rosstraining's forum has a great one for his signature: "You want science and studies? Fuck you. I've got scars and blood and vomit." These days, things have a way of being paralyzed by the necessity of having scientific proof about why things are the way that they are while ignoring information gained by experience and good sense.

Take eating right for example. We all know that Americans are increasingly a pile of fat bastards that just can't drop the extra weight. Those of us serious about training know exactly why that is: most Americans eat shit and don't do shit. Unfortunatly, the mainstream fitness world hasn't exactly been helpful in this fight and instead of bluntly stating the obvious, they seek out excuses for the common fat body.

Have you heard the latest about our food being so badly tainted with chemicals like pesticides, pollutants, and animal-bulking steroids that disrupt our endocrine system to the point where it's making America fat? It´s in this month´s Men´s Health magazine, if you dare buy it (Go easy on me, BTW! It was a long airplane ride!) Um, okay, maybe some of this has merit. Maybe it doesn't help that a lot of that junk makes it into our food. Let me ask you this though: I don't eat orgainic all the time (maybe a third of my food is organic, at best). I eat the same tainted meat, fruits and veggies as the next guy. So, why am I not fat as hell? If you´re eating kind of like this, then are you fat as hell too? I'd love to hear from my non-organic eating readers who somehow, miraculously, beat this curse on this. I´ve got a gut feeling that I´m far from alone.

I've always loved the genetics excuse too. Apparently, Americans have a fat gene that few other countries have. I find that kind of funny since we're a conglomeration of people from all countries. Let's get something straight here: Our bodies were designed to hold onto surplus calories for bad times. The idea 100,000 years ago was that food was so scarce and the body valued surplus calories so much that it would store as many calories as possible as fat. That's not the case now. Frankly, the life of plentiful food is in complete defiance of our genetic programming; ALL OF OUR GENETIC PROGRAMMING! So, as a result, we´re getting fat.

2010 is here and we´re all making resolutions, many of the fitness-related. Do yourself a favor and dedicate (or re-dedicate) yourself to being skeptical of the LATEST SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH about obesity. We all know what it takes to get in good shape and stay there. Don´t take the word of science because it´s, um, like.. scientific! You know what you have to do and don´t look for excuses disguised as worthwhile information.