BahamaMan’s BodyBlog

          When I was 10 I wanted to be a baseball player.  When I was 13 I wanted to be a professional bodybuilder.  When I was 19 I wanted to be the next Arnold.  When I was 21 I wanted to be a biologist.  When I was 23 I wanted to be an environmental scientist.  When I was 24 I became a husband.   When I was 25 I tried being an environmental scientist.  When I was 27 I became a graduate student (again).    When I was 30 I became a father.  When I was 32 tried being a teacher.  When I was 34 I started being a conservationist.  When I was 38 I thought I wanted to be a writer.  When I was 40 I thought I wanted to be a personal trainer.  When I was 43 I lost my job being a conservationist.  At 43 I became a personal trainer.  At 44 I became/thought I wanted to be/tried being…

          Certainly, there have been times in my life when I have envied people who knew what they wanted to be when they were like 5-years- old and then became it and are still doing it when they are, oh say, 44.  Lord knows I feel sorry for my wife sometimes (okay, most of the time) for being married to such a vocational gypsy.   And sometimes I feel like there is something wrong with me for not evolving deep into something.  You know, moving up some kind of ladder.  Moving into a corner office; into a job with lots of responsibility.  Having said that, I can’t imagine how boring it must be to be the same thing for like 20 years.  I think I would go insane.

          (Perhaps I have real issues.  Or maybe one huge issue.  An issue that even has a name.  Perhaps Oprah or Dr. Phil or maybe Oprah and Dr. Phil have even done shows on my issue.  Maybe it’s called “perpetual adolescent syndrome” or “arrested development syndrome” or “failure to grow-up syndrome”)

          I guess the one constant in my life, one of the things that I am proud of, is that I have always stayed in pretty good shape.  No matter how happy (or unhappy) I was doing what I was getting paid to do, I’m proud of the fact that there were no lost years.  And during the most uncertain times in my adult life (of course I wonder if my adult life has begun yet) I have always known that at least I could control what kind of shape I was in.  That my fitness is the one of the few things I could control.

So, here I am.  A buff-as-hell forty-something that’s still trying to figure out what he wants to be when he grows up.  Am I a club of one or am I part of a silent majority? 

            Way back in the last century lots of people thought that climbing never-ending flights of stairs and pedaling to nowhere was the best way to get and stay lean.  So, everyday in gyms across America hundreds of thousands of people sweated it out on cardio machines while they listened to there iPods, watched TV, and/or checked out the rear of the person on the machine in front of them.

            Day in and day out all these people spent hours on all these machines convinced that their “workouts” were really helping them shed unwanted fat.  They watched the calorie counters on the LED displays go up and up.  Visualized themselves in skinny jeans and/or diving into a DQ Blizzard.  Bragged and complained about how hard they were working to stay fit.

            But some of these cardio addicts, somewhere deep into their second hour of going nowhere, fast, on the treadmill, began to question the sanity of their actions.  Looked around at all the still not lean people sweating on the ellipticals.  If this is what it takes to fit into my skinny jeans and enjoy the occasional DQ Blizzard, they thought, two hours of this stuff everyday?  I give up! 

            Many of these people walked right off their treadmills and out of the gyms and were never seen again.

            Then the 21^st century brought enlightenment.  Scientists began to measure exercise afterburn and discovered that lifting weights could burn as many or more calories than traditional cardio.  A separate, but related breakthrough was made at Tufts University.  Researchers there coined the term Sarcopenia to describe the phenomenon of age-related muscle loss. 

            And in one of those ah-ha moments that can change the course of history, someone (perhaps one of those ex-cardio addicts) reasoned:  We know that muscle is a very metabolically active tissue.  And we know that most Americans start losing muscle pretty much the day after they get out of school.  So maybe the answer to getting and staying lean is not doing loads and loads of cardio, but rather building muscle and keeping it into middle age.  And since lifting weights can burn as many calories as cardio…And because doing cardio everyday can interfere with muscle building…Why should anyone waste valuable gym time doing cardio ever again?!

            Someone reasoned this and it made sense and the word began to spread. 

            Then something magical happened.  The cardio machines in gyms across America became less popular and began to gather dust.  People began lifting weights and the crickets got run out of the power rack section of the gyms.  These newbie weightlifters were no longer slaves to cardio, spent significantly less time in the gym, reclaimed their lives, (re)built muscles AND got lean.

            But the best part of this story, the part that give me chills…is that the ex-cardio addicts, many who had not been seen for years, began to return to the gyms and started lifting weights.  And within months, that’s right within months, I said within months, they were all in their skinny jeans and enjoying an occasional DQ Blizzard. 

             True story (for the most part).

     Way back in the last century, when I was a skinny 13-year-old trying to gain weight, one of the guys at my beloved Belleville Weightlifting Club gave me a copy of a book titled appropriately “How to gain weight”.  I can still close my eyes and see the cover of that little old paperback with a Charles Atlas looking guy on the cover staring at me in all his buff, albeit rather smooth, black-and-white glory. 
     The piece of advice from that book that I remember to this day was a very straightforward guideline on how to conserve energy throughout the day and thus help with the weight gaining effort.  The book said something like, “When possible, walk instead of run; sit instead of stand.”  Made sense.  And to this day I avoid running (though mostly because running hurts me!)
     Fast forward 30 years or so and someone actually quantified the value of being the opposite of lazy to gain weight (which not a whole bunch of grown-ups want to do).  Namely, some folks with letters behind their names concluded that doing a whole bunch of little things that might be considered fidgeting can burn a bunch of calories throughout the day. (Who knew?!)  Specifically, and I quote from a May 25, 2005 report on ABC’s Good Morning America:
 
“A new study from the Mayo Clinic shows that fidgety people can burn up to 350 calories more a day than people who sit still simply by doing what they do best — fidgeting. If you decide to forego the gym — chewing gum burns 11 calories an hour (if you chew six pieces at a time), standing instead of sitting can burn up to 20 calories an hour, and toe-tapping can burn nine calories an hour. If you spend two hours of your work day standing instead of sitting, you can burn an additional 340 calories a day, which can translate to a loss of 40 pounds a year for heavier people.”

     Of course, this finding supports my theory that losing weight isn’t as hard as most people try to make it.  That there are opportunities to burn calories all over the place; opportunities that don’t involve treadmills or gyms or weird home exercise equipment, or fat burners.  Opportunities that don’t cost any money (well, other than buying a bunch of gum). 
     Several of my favorite suggestions for adding some “fidgeting” to your day/week include a) standing (and even pacing) at your kid’s soccer game instead of planting it in your lawn chair, b) standing at lunch instead of sitting (like you do all day at work anyway), and c) sitting on a stability ball at work or at home instead of becoming one with your fancy office furniture/lazy-boy.  There are, of course, scores of other good examples of “fidgeting”.  Just watch a 6-year-old for awhile and take notes.
     People, the reality of this whole lose weight/gain muscle thing is that it ain’t rocket science.  It’s just that lots of folks try to make it seem complicated (so that you will buy their supplements/magazines/equipment/etc). 
     Me, on the other hand, I like keep the message simple.  Like, “When possible, stand when you could sit; run when you could walk.” 

Awhile back, my wife and I both played hooky from work.  She was just back from 10 days out of town so we took the kids to school and then hung out together to talk and stuff J

After a round of “talking”, we went out for brunch.  It was a spring-like day in southern Illinois so I wore shorts.  Our waitress, in the course of our ordering and “how’s the food” conversations, commented on my legs, saying something like, “Well, you can afford to eat so much, being a runner and all.  And look at those legs.”  My wife noted that I was actually a bodybuilder.  I added that I’ve never run 2 miles without stopping in my life!

It’s not the first time my natural bodybuilder legs have been confused with runners legs (hopefully they’ve all thought more sprinter than marathoner).  And while I don’t have Tom Platz legs or anything (younger guys, google Tom Platz), I do have a decent set of sticks that are in proportion to my upper body.  

Oh well, it’s one of the realities of being a natural bodybuilder:  When you wear regular clothes, you look, well, pretty regular.  Now,  I’m not a fan of wearing tight clothes (as opposed to Under Armor Guy), and I’ve pretty much come to grips with the fact that I don’t look like a bodybuilder in street clothes, but sometimes everyone wants to show off, just a little. 

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have been “shirt off at the party” guy.  The gory details are that after a few drinky-poos I was persuaded by some of my wife’s lady friends to take off my shirt (I know, a total jag move, but the firewater was talking to me).  The lady friends were, shall we say, very “Oh my gawd” and got kinda touchy.  Good for ego, bad for relationship.  Note to self:  Even if wifey says, “Sure, go ahead”, don’t take shirt off at parties.

Anyway, one of my goals in bodybuilding was to build a bod that most guys would like to have (as opposed to a freak physique).  I think I’ve done that and I continue to work with my genetics to build the best body naturally possible.  But I do want everyone to know one thing… “I’m not a runner, damn it!”

            A couple of years ago I was diagnosed with degenerative disk disease.  I remember the moment of truth vividly.  Doctor walks in holding x-rays, sticks them in that light box, sits down on the little stool and says “Yep, you’ve got degenerative disk disease.  Not surprising really.  You’re 39, you’ve had a spinal fusion.”  Blink, blink.  “Oh yeah, and life’s a bitch and then you die.”

            Thanks for the great bedside manner, doc.  But hey, DDD was better than what my borderline hypochondriac-self had been trying to turn the nagging lower back ache into during the last few weeks as I’d been gimping around like an old man.

            “Are you taking anything for the pain?”

            “No.” (I hate taking any kind of pills.)

            “Well, I recommend you start on Ibuprofin and we can get you started on physical therapy.”

            Pills maybe, I thought.  But there’s no way I’m going to pay good money to have some 20-something show me how to lift things properly. 

            I gimped out of the office and to the pharmacy.  But those 20-something PTs never got a dime of my money (ha, showed them!). 

            Fast forward a couple months and my daughter and I started taking TaeKwonDo classes.  The back was still bothering me, but I was determined not to be one of the stiff, bent dads watching their kids from the sidelines.

            And then something amazing happened.  After a few months of TKD I was off the Ibuprofin and pain free.  My theory:  I was stretching for the first time in my life as part of the TKD training.  (hmmm, maybe that’s what those 20-something PTs would have done with me.)

            Needless to say, I’ve become a huge advocate of stretching.  Stated another way:  I believe stretching can work apparent miracles.  One more time in a more useful way:  If you have lower back pain attributed to DDD, start stretching.  Stretch, stretch, stretch!

            With my DDD in apparent remission, I was running around like a kid playing soccer, basketball, doing TKD, rough-housing with my aspiring WWE star; all essentially pain-free.  Then I tried a long-jump.

            The thing is that my daughter, a budding track star, is a sprinter and a long-jumper.  Being the fit, helpful dad that I try to be, I’ve done some research on long-jump technique and have been trying to coach my young Jackie Joyner a bit.

            Then I tried to lead by example.  Bad idea. 

            Oh it wasn’t a 100% effort mind you.  More like about 75%.  But the mistake was not in the level of effort.  Rather, the mistake was my failure to consider the physics of 200 pounds becoming airborne then landing in surprisingly hard sand.  Specifically, I had failed to even back-of-the-envelope consider IMPACT FORCE (I’m assuming there is such a variable in physics, and if there ain’t there should be).

            Well, on impact I experienced two very noticeable sensations.  My knees, having bent further and more forcibly than they had since I was about eight and jumped out of my grandfather’s apple tree, began tingling.  And my lower back…how should I say…got woken up.  It didn’t tingle or hurt immediately, but I had this sinking feeling, kneeling there in the sand, that I had just really f*ucked up.  

            When I wrote this, it was with my laptop computer between my legs; legs stretched out to the sides as far as possible.  I would occasionally lean forward and feel the stretch in my lower back, groin, and hamstrings.  The good news turned out to be that although my back definitely got woken up, I didn’t PISS IT OFF.  And a couple of weeks of stretching got me back to 100%. 

            But legal-sized post-it note to self stuck in a prominent place:  Stretching good.  Long jump bad (when you’re 40+, weigh 200 pounds, and have degenerative disk disease.)