The Pennsy Workout

This is the training program I'm working right now. I've fine tuned it a little based on what I learned in the first go-round. The goal here is general fitness, endurance, and muscle mass.

POWER LIFT/ASSIST ROUTINE

Each day focuses on one power lift. I start the lift of the day with an empty bar and slowly build up to the day's weight for working sets, usually with three or four reps at each weight. Then I do 5 sets of 5 reps at the heaviest weight I can lift. There are long breaks, two or three minutes between each of these sets.

The exercises that accompany the power lifts are meant to support muscle groups critical to the day's lift. So Clean & Press is followed by arm and shoulder work. Squats go with legs and lower back. Bench Press day is chest and lats. Deadlift day hits upper back, glutes and wrist grip.

These "assist" exercises are done at max weight with very short breaks, just long enough to catch my breath. 3 sets of 10 reps each.

CLEAN & PRESS
DB Curls & Arnold Press Combo
DB Lat Raise, Ben Lat Raise Supersets

SQUAT
Hip Abduction/Adduction Supersets
Straight Leg Deadlift
Front Squat

BENCH PRESS
DB Incline Press
DB Decline Press
Pullover
Close Grip Bench Press

DEADLIFT
DB Incline Bench Pull
Good Morning
Barbell Shrug
Low Pulley Cable Row
DB Wrist Curls

DAILY WARMUP (on lifting days)

These daily exercises are all bodyweight movements. I vary the sets and reps depending on what hurts, what feels great, and what I don't want to wear out. For example, I don't do the lunges on Squat day or if my ankles are hurting.

Assisted Dips
Lunge
Calf Raise
Pushups
Assisted Pullups
Crunch
Superman
Plank

RECOVERY DAYS

Ideally, I would like to do four days with two days rest. That rhythm gets broken up by soreness, schedules, and the calender. The reason for the long rest is to make room for a long running day. I also work in a sabbath day when I don't run or lift at all. Since my running program is a seven day cycle and my lifting is a four day one, variety is sort of built in.

CARDIO

This is pretty straight forward.

Monday - training run
Tuesday - cross train, bike or elliptical
Wednesday - training run
Thursday - Yoga, no running or weights
Friday - day off
Saturday - long run
Sunday - day off

The long run is designed to stretch my endurance. Everything else is about maintaining conditioning and fat burning.

STRETCHING

I work stretching in between reps so I have something to do besides pant and pose. I always stretch after a workout or run. I never stretch without warming up the muscles involved. I take a good, indulgent long time to stretch as gently and thoroughly as I can. Then I sauna, shower, and go home to eat protein and complex carbs. (meat and plants)

The whole deal takes about two hours. By spreading the work over several days, I'm getting more recovery time, increasing strength growth, and spending less time in the gym each night. Things are working well right now as I prepare for a 5K on August 9th. If nothing breaks, I'll be ready.

That's actually a good goal. I want to finish my next 5K without breaking anything. Unlike my first one where I knocked myself off the road for two months.

Maybe I'll take a skateboard along, just in case.

Peace,

Pennsy

Good advice from Brad at Promatx - Your body is telling you something. Listen to your body, and you won't go wrong.

Fat Man, Heal thy Heel

The low grade soreness in my right Achilles tendon has lasted long enough to get my attention. it isn’t painful, just sore. Warming up usually loosens it up and it isn’t preventing me from working out, though I have had to shorten my stride considerably on the treadmill. I don’t want it to get worse, so I did some homework.

As you can see from this drawing that I found on eOrthopod.com, the Achilles tendon is really big. It attaches the calf muscles to the very short lever at the back of the heel and allows the foot to flex. If you can stand on your toes, thank Achilles. This is one butch rope of tissue.

According to Dr. Stephen Pribut, DPM (that's a foot doc for the acronymically challenged), "Soreness” in a tendon is not something to ignore or "run through". Tendons don’t get sore like muscles do. Tendons hurt when they are injured. In other words, the discomfort I'm feeling isn't the result of normal exertion like when I lift heavy weights and my muscles feel especially "present" the next day. If a tendon hurts, that's not soreness, that's pain. A painful injured Achilles tendon is something to take seriously and requires immediate attention. Otherwise it will just get worse. The tendon can even rupture (tear) and break completely leaving a runner with months of expensive rehab and NO running while the surgically repaired tissue heals. A ruptured Achilles sucks most profoundly.

Like everything else involving health and the internet, there is plenty of controversy about what to do about Achilles pain, but these seem to be consensus opinions.

LEAVE THE MACHISMO IN YOUR LOCKER
Dr Pribut's first instruction is one everyone agrees with: rest. You don’t have to stop exercising, but slow down. Ease up on things that put particular strain on the tendon: Hill running, Sprinting, Deep stretches of the calf muscles. Shoes with too soft a heel can also cause the Achilles to stretch too far after the foot's initial impact when you're running or walking. Running on your toes instead of your heels will wack you up. I think mine may be the result of too long a stride. Shortening up and taking more smaller steps is helping me. This tendon is terrifically strong because it sustains tremendous force, even during something as simple as walking. Like the cable and pulley on a weight machine, the Achilles is always under strain whenever the foot is in motion. So rule one is - go easy .

FIRE AND ICE (AND A NICE RUB DOWN)

In an article in the Jewish World Review , Marlene Cimons (who lacks an acronym, but does her homework) reports that ice after exercise and heat before bed will help control inflamation and relax the gastrocnemius which is a very impressive word for calf muscle. A non-steroidal anti-inflammatory can help - cortisone is wicked bad. Don't let the doc shoot you with it to ease the pain. Cortisone will make you feel better for a while, but it also weakens the fibers in the tendon making it even more prone to tear or rupture.

Massaging the calf can also help. Heel lifts, tape, and elastic braces can get you through the day, but still, only rest will allow the injury to heal.

CAREFUL, GENTLE STRETCHING
CoolRunning has some good stretches for prevention and maintenance for runners. When returning from an Achilles injury, wall pushups and hamstring stretches are especially important. I have had some really bad results from the towel around the foot thing. I think I actually aggravated the injury by pulling too hard. Your mileage may vary.


DON'T CROSS TRAIN AT CROSS PURPOSES

The amazingly named achillestendon.com, recommends some common sense things (stay fit, go easy, check for injury after your workout) and one really interesting one. When you do strength training and run on the same day - run first. Strength training is based on microscopic injury and healing of muscles. Running after weakening your muscles with resistance training just sets you up for further injury.

NO PAIN, NO PAIN

In a wise and funny essay called How Not to Treat and Achilles Injury by a writer named Wiltsey, this advice makes a lot of sense to me:

“Pain sucks”--This might seem obvious, but if it hurts, back off. Cut down your workout to minimal, preferably rest. Although this is anathema to most training athletes, better to miss a couple weeks than your entire season, like me.

My doctor gave me a simple rule to live by- “Let pain be your guide.” Simply, if it hurts, don’t do it and back off. A good recovery program is a must. Consult your coach, or begin with 5 minute sets of walking and every few days add thirty seconds of light jogging.

Achilles pain is really easy to fix unless you get stupid. Then it's really easy to make really really bad. Take it seriously and take it easy until it gets better.

That's what I learned in school today..

WORKOUT UPDATE
My big meeting concluded on Thursday and I went straight to the gym. I had a lot of steam to blow off.

I did a light warm up on the treadmill, then spent a long time stretching. I’m not noticing any increase in flexibility yet - but I am definitely feeling a much shorter recovery time so I can tell that stretching after warmups and after the workout itself is making a difference.

I worked out with the resistance bands and really tried to hold my form while going as fast as I could, snapping each rep against the resistance of the band. It still feels ridiculous when I do it, but my doubts all disappear the next day when my body lets me know that the exercises have done their work. I’m going to do a session with machines and some free weights on Saturday to measure my progress and keep my chops up.

And I guess I better spend some more time on the elliptical for a while.

Peace,
Pennsy

You Talking to Me? - or the Tale of the 300 lb Chicken

I worked cardio tonight. About 7 minutes in the stair climber, 30 on the elliptical, 30 on the recumbent bike, and another 15 on the treadmill to cool down. The left knee and right Achilles' tendon both felt better afterwards. Still trying the stretchless workout. I haven’t noticed any ill effects yet.

Are you talking to me?

Tonight, I feel stranger than I have since I started working out. I met with Brad, the owner and head of Promatx today for my quarterly progress review.

We talked about nutrition, of course. I have some things I can do better now. Need to work harder on eating more small meals throughout the day. Right now, I have carbs in the morning and fats and protein in the evening. I need to even that out some.

Having a trainer tell me that I need to eat more was a real shock. But there was an even bigger one.

“What is your goal?”, Brad asked.

“I want to lose 200 lbs.”

“How would you feel about changing that?”

We had just measured my body fat,and it turns out that in order to reach my target weight, I will have to lose almost 50 lbs of lean muscle along with the fat. I was confused. So what should my target be?

Based on my current lean body weight, if I get my body fat down to 18% (not bad for a man of 47) I would weigh 304 lbs! Were I to get down to 10% body fat (pretty fit for anyone of any age) I would weigh around 277.

These numbers have really rattled me. Especially when I consider that since I started working out, I have gained 19 lbs of muscle and lost 53 lbs of fat.

See what’s happening there? My lean weight (in red) is increasing almost 40% as fast as my fat weight (blue) is going down. I don’t have the patience to work the figures at this hour, but it appears to me that if my muscle weight keeps increasing at this rate, I will be at 10% body fat at right around 300 lbs.

I am going to be a trim, muscular 300 lb man. That sentence freaks me out for reasons I can’t even begin to explain. The words seem so incongruous - me...fit...trim...three-hundred pounds -- I can’t even picture what that will look like. It certainly won’t look like anything I have ever imagined myself being.

It’s one thing to count your chickens before they’re hatched, but I’m starting to realize that there’s a very big chicken waiting to peck its way out of this blubbery shell and the bird scares me a little.

Jeremy Likness has posted a series of before/after pictures of himself as he reduced from 30+% to 10% body fat. (245 to 188 lbs)

Frankenpennsy will be 6 inches taller and 112 pounds heavier. - It that even possible? And will I really look that imposing in robin's egg blue underpants? This may send me to the shrink a few months early.

Peace,
Pennsy

Expert du Jour - Jeff Galloway

I did ninety minutes of cardio today. A long, gentle run/walk on the treadmill, and a half hour on the elliptical. I really wanted to do 10K on the treadmill, but the left knee said it was time to step off, so I did. I wasn’t really paying attention to speed at all, just trying to listen to my body - run when i was ready, stop when it was time.

Weigh in tomorrow - I peeked at the scale today and am officially at a plateau. I have my quarterly check in with the trainer (Brad is my new man - Jordan is off playing professional football which I find to be incredibly cool). I’ll see what his thoughts are about how to get the fat burning motor started again.


EXPERT DU JOUR

I read a book this week, Running - Getting Started by Jeff Galloway. He’s a blogger and a columnist for Runner’s World and a 1972 Olympian, so I figured he had some valuable things to teach me. And so he did.

The thrust of his message to beginners is to avoid the pitfalls that make most people give up. He suggests a run/walk approach where you begin a run by walking at a very slow pace, then gently work your way up to short runs, stopping to walk again before you become breathless and tired. in this way, you avoid “overdoing” that causes the kind of fatigue and soreness that discourages so many new runners.

He had some things to say that surprised me. He does not think runners should lift weights, especially lower body exercises because they build up heavy muscle that you’re just going to have to haul around when you’re running.

He is also very much against stretching, (except in the case of IT band injury) which really caught me up short. His position is that stretching almost always does more harm than good, reduces your performance, and increases your recovery time.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone suggest that stretching was bad for you. Still, this is a very respected and experienced dude. I’m going to experiment with the no stretch thing for a couple of days, but it still sounds really weird to me.

It is a good book, though. Gallaway obviously loves running, and loves helping others to run. His passion shines from every page. I don’t intend to spend too much time reading books about running, but I think this one will be useful to me for a long time.

SPRINGTIME IN THE BLUEGRASS

Still, a good day to be Pennsy. Thanks to lynross for posting this beautiful photo on Webshots. The Bluegrass flora are starting to bud and bloom. I sure do love me some Kentucky today.

Peace,
Pennsy

Aches and Pains

I turned into the grumpy old fat man today but can't remember why. Someone slipped me a roofie and beat my legs with pipes at lunch time. The knees were stiff and the right ankle had a strange tightness in the Achilles' tendon. I had planned to just work upper body today, with light jogging after.

A whole day of work didn’t seem to achieve anything. The upside of all that frustration is that I usually set new personal bests on the weights, today I improved my curls, flies, and shoulder press.

I stretched after lifting and hit the treadmill- walked/ran quarter-mile intervals for two miles. The ankle felt gradually better as I warmed up -- It actually felt easier to run than to walk . When I was done though, I could tell that I had been favoring my right leg. My left knee is hurting, my mysterious right ankle hurts, my old right knee thing is better, but just wanted to join in to be sociable. a sauna and a shower made my head feel better, but not my creaking joints.

Much as I hate to, I am going to back off the running for a while. Walking and the elliptical are going to have to be my cardio workouts until I lose some serious pounds.

I sure feel good from the waist up, but man I could use a soak in a jacuzzi.

Peace,
b

Recovering from Runner's Knee - One Expert at at Time

It’s been a while since I have taken the time to post. That usually means I’ve been goofing off, but not this week. I made it to the gym six out of the last seven days, which has been my plan all along. I’ve actually been spending a lot of time researching runner’s knee.

Sports medicine turns out to be a lot like nutrition -anybody with a keyboard and an internet account can be an expert. I have read every possible variation on how to treat this injury, from ice to heat, from compression bandages to surgery. The one that finally made the most sense to me was Dr. Lewis G. Maharam on Runner's World. (It is me, or does The Running Doc look like he could be Christopher Hitchens' sober younger brother?) Basically he says, “Look, your knee hurts because the muscles around it aren’t strong enough yet. Until you fix that, you will just keep hurting your knees. Here are some exercises that will help you make them stronger.”

I know -- just another expert. But this one made even more sense than the last one who seemed to make sense so I gave his treatment a try. I also started stretching for a good long time before and after my workout, and slathered the old Ben-gay® on quite liberally.

The aroma does not make me particularly popular on the gym floor, but the cure is working. I have decreased my range of motion on both the leg presses and extensions to focus on the quads without grinding my knee cap any further. I’m also spending a lot of time stretching the hamstrings and the groin. Stretching the quads will have to wait until the knee is better, unless someone can suggest a way to stretch your quads without bending your knee.

I’ve also put the ice pack back in the freezer. It may be that it’s done all it was going to do, or it may be that it was just making the joint stiff, I don’t know. What I do know is that knee feels better when I get home, and feels almost fine when I wake up in the morning.

I may keep the little knee strap for a while. (Pennsy's knees are - well - meatier.) It’s kind of a mental crutch and Mrs P thinks it makes me look sexy.

And that, as they say in the Visa Commercials, is priceless.

The last two days, I’ve tried splitting my workouts, upper body one day and lower body the next, with half an hour of cardio after. I don’t exactly have a program yet, but at least I have a plan.

I have snuck a peek or two at the scale this week, and it looks like the lighter workouts are going to show up at my weigh-in tomorrow. I would rather not slow down the weight loss, but I thought it made sense to slow down and get the knee back in shape. I really want to be up and running soon, but I want to be ready.

Peace,
Pennsy

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. –George Bernard Shaw

( Is it me, or does GBS look like he could be SC's older drunken brother?)

Milestones

OK, I am not going to the gym to lose weight. As I say at the top of the blog. I am running for my life. The weight is a measure of progress, it is not the goal.

Still, I was really pleased when the scale read 370 today. That’s 35 lbs lost since January 19. I am encouraged, but I need to keep that in perspective. That’s a little more than 8% of my original body weight. Ultimately, I want to drop 50%. Still, I’m happy with the progress. I am shooting for 2 lbs a week for the next two years. I am ahead of that pace - also encouraging.


I added a short walk and about 10 minutes of stretching before I lift weights. I also added some leg exercises to try to strengthen the muscles around my knee. It feels better every day, and I want to keep moving in that direction. My last cardio day was pretty disappointing - I may just start on the elliptical tomorrow and not even try walking.

Someone suggested that I think about run/walking in a race this summer. a lot of people find that preparing for an event helps them to focus their training. I looked up some races in the Bluegrass, and I’m considering it. There are several 5K’s being sponsored by our running shop, and also a big 10K here on July 4. I think it might be cool to actually get out and run with other people. I am very content with the treadmill for now, but I can imagine a time when I will want to get out and smell the good Kentucky air.

All in all, I have to say I feel pretty good today. I hope you do too.

Peace,
Pennsy

A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things about himself and then says them about other people.

Peter McArthur

Oooooooooh, huh - I feel good!

I feel so good about today that I want to knock out a post before resuming the rest of my life.

Five miles today - 4.5 miles at 4 mph and .5 miles running at 5 mph. I ran a tenth of a mile during each mile. I started at .75 miles, ran a tenth, then walked until I felt good and my heart rate recovered back to 146-8. The last run was at 4.5 miles.

I followed with a long stretch and a Healthy Choice lemon chicken dinner.

Mrs P and I are going out to supper later. We are talking about Donatos. I don’t want to jinx my weigh in tomorrow, but I am feeling very confident right now.

Besides, I have not really had the urge to binge for a while. I don’t think I’ll be eating three quarters of a large pizza tonight. We’ll get at least two meals out of the pie.

I’m liking life right now.

Peace,
b

Weight! Weight? Wait...

Man, but I hate this machine.

This was a long strength day. I wanted to see if I could match the weight I had lifted on Thursday when I wasn’t mad at anything. Turns out that I could. I switched to shorter sets, 12 reps instead of 15, and diid three reps on each machine.

I almost made it.

The weights were going well, gradually kicking my butt, the way they ought to. I started to feel unusually fatigued which I chalked up to the extra sets and the high weight. Before the last machine, cable curls and triceps pulldowns, I hsd to stop and take a break. I got through them, but it was a struggle. Then I got to the last exercise, shoulder presses and ball squats. I alternate sets on these two exercises since they are completely different muscle systems and I can keep my cardio up by shortening breaks between sets. My arms were wasted, and the rest of me was not far behind. I completed two sets of each, then I just had to put my toys away.

I could barely walk through my cool-down. Mrs P helped me to stretch out after and that felt good. My legs are really tight from years of sitting.

I’m not sure why this day took such a toll on me. Mrs P suggested that it may have been the fact that I skipped my my daily medications in the morning. She may be right. Every little thing seems to affect my performance, and skipping my meds is no little thing.

The weigh in was both discouraging and mystifying. My weight has not changed a notch since last week! WTF? I was/am pretty disappointed. I don’t understand. I expected to hit a plateau, but not this soon.

I’ll ask Jordan about it next time I see him.

It’s a drag to be working so hard and left waiting for the pounds to fall. Maybe I should do more cardio and less resistance training? Research will just confuse me. I’ll ask the trainer.

Peace,
b