Neglect

I've been neglecting email. For two, I've got Adam, my cousin, and Ronny over in Japan (Ronny: I lived in Hayma in Honshu for five years; '84-'89). They both want to know about the working-out aspect of EvFit.

The truth is, I'm not the person to ask. This is the one aspect of the thing I've surrendered. By happenstance, I've got a trainer who knew short, intermittent, variable, and intense. I see him twice a week, and seriously: I'm 'yessir' all the way; literally, to the point I enjoy saying "yes sir" (I've had it said enough to me: my turn). He barks orders; I submit and obey. I wouldn't have it any other way, in spite of the reality that it's normally me in command of all that's around me. I read the stuff about various exercises, and I'm immediately at a loss because I don't even know the names or descriptions of the stuff I do, which is various and at different times and different days, random. It's my trainer's job; you get it?

Here's what I'll advise, because I'm certainly not qualified to advise on weight training regimes: follow Chris' blog, Conditioning Research. He is very good at tracking just about every relevant thing out there, he seems to know a lot about training, and maybe he'd even be kind enough to do a beginner's workup, if he can't point you to something already done. Chris: the trouble I find with a lot of stuff is that beginners don't know the names/descriptions of exercises (me included). To them, it's like saying, "Do 3x10 of aklkjdlka alknlllasdd's." In terms of finding exercise diagrams on the Internet, I find it hit & miss. YouTubes are probably the solution, and better anyway.

Finally: think. Think evolutionary and functional. If I had no specific knowledge and lived out where I didn't have access to facilities like a gym, I'd do stuff like climb trees and rocks, hike hills with weight strapped on, do a lot of jumping -- with and without weight -- and a lot of short burst sprints of random duration. In essence, think about the functions you might have to perform if you were living by your own means in total, and try to duplicate those functions with the intensity that your life depended on it. Can you imagine trying to catch a rabbit when you haven't eaten in three or four days? Solving that problem has 2 million years of cellular evolution behind it, and to the extent you can simulate and duplicate it is the extent to which you express your genes, which of course want you to be lean and mean.

Comments

[Chris H]

Cheers

i'll have a think about this - there are one or two resources out there that i would recommend for beginners. I think the first thing is to get more active in general - lots of walking daily - then to add in a little more intense stuff, e.g. a sprint session once a week and a body weight session once a week e.g. pushups and squats to start with.

I'll try to pull some ideas together. Matt's book is a good starting point but probably needs to be a bit more beginner friendly on the exercises:

http://mattmetzgar.blogs.com/StoneAgePowerE-Book.pdf

[Chris]

..... I'm still thinking about this, but a starting point might be this post I put up on another rather dormant blog:

http://hillfit.blogspot.com/2007/10/typical-week.html

There are some links in that post that are worth following up - including a free programme that is pretty good - but in summary I'd say:

Daily balance work
Lots of walking
One interval / sprint session per week
One or two resistance sessions per week (starting off with bodyweight/calisthenics e.g. http://www.tbkfitness.org/Bodyweight1.html)

[Adam]

Chris and Rick-

Thanks fellas. This will help a lot. I too am in charge most of the time and it is nice to have someone tell you what to do and when(on occasion).