Don’t PUSH Through The Pain—Find Your Away AROUND it.

Stressing our muscles makes them stronger; stressing our joints destroys them.

A commenter on one of my YouTube Videos remarked that he was happy to see I had good leg development, as most senior bodybuilders do not. Well, I think the main reason for that is ruined KNEES and those gullible people who actually believe others’ ridiculous lecturing them that they need to work through—push past—the pain. They lecture "when you feel pain, keep going." NO. Pain is our body screaming at us to “STOP!” So stop.

In my early 30s when I first began to notice knee discomfort, my logical conclusion was that I was performing the exercise in a way that was causing this discomfort, and therefore, I needed to change my way of performing the exercise. So because I’m not stupid, I did change my way. I tried many different variations of the same exercise until I found a way to perform it without causing pain. I became hyper-aware of at which point it began to hurt, and worked on resolving that. The mistake I was making, and that MOST people make, was misusing my joints, that is, utilizing the elbow, knee, ankle, hip, and shoulder joints to do work they were never designed, or intended, to do.

I have written about this before and I will write again because all around me at the gym, as well as in everyday situations such as watching people getting up off the couch or climbing stairs, I see people using their knees to bear weight and/or propel themselves rather than giving these tasks over to those things created for this actual job—their MUSCLES.

Our joints are not muscles. Applying stress to our muscles makes them grow and get stronger; contrarily, applying stress to our joints causes them to degrade, to wear down, and finally, completely wear out.

So, in my 70th year I still do squats and heavy leg presses. My first two sets are performed with light weight and devoted to getting myself into gear, fine tuning the movement so as not to cause any pain. I don’t minimize pain; I eliminate pain. Can’t go deep without pain? Then don’t go deep. Can’t do a full extension without pain? Then don’t do a full extension. Put the brakes on before you reach that point.

Protect, soothe, ice and REST the injury or painful area so that it can heal. Don’t exacerbate it by continuing to do those things that cause pain. Correct bad habits such as sitting with your feet tucked under the chair, which keeps knees in a locked and compressed position. Never lock your knees or keep them flexed. NEVER. Be aware of what is exacerbating your discomfort, then STOP doing that.

Logical, right?

March 31 Inspiration

The NYTimes and Testosterone

This article in the NYTimes unfortunately tells us nothing new and useful. 

It's a rehash of that which any who have an interest in the subject have most likely already read elsewhere.

What the article lacks is testimonials of men who have experienced the often dramatic enhanced quality of life on many different levels that replenishing the essential male hormone has brought about for them.

Interestingly it's the commenters in the sidebar of this piece who fill out this article with intelligent feedback and musings.

The bottom line is the ABSURD categorization that the governments of so-called civilized countries have burdened testosterone with, in the US, putting it in the same category as heroin.

Adding to this are willfully ignorant doctors, many with obvious personal deficiencies and hangups they have allowed to override the principals of the Hippocratic oath they swore.

Regaining Lost Muscle After Illness

I reported earlier about the lean musclemass loss I experienced after battling a serious flu for three weeks, and how demoralizing that was. After all, gaining muscle is a slow often frustrating process, so such a loss felt to me like taking ten giant steps backwards.

In the past I’ve said that once gained, lost muscle size is easier to regain than it was to gain in the first place, and this has again proven to be true. Within three weeks of resuming my normal high-protein, low-carb, low-sugar, low-fat eating regimen, a good portion of the muscle size returned despite weak workouts.

Additionally, regarding the flu-related loss, I had to factor in the ongoing pump that we all acquire from ongoing workouts 4-5 days a week, a pump which “deflated” after a total of 4 weeks of total inactivity. Also I was not supplementing with creatine during this time, and current conventional wisdom claims that creatine allows our muscles to draw in and retain water, thus adding to the look and feel of fullness of the muscle bellies.

So resuming eating properly, resuming a workout routine (weak as it was for the first 2 weeks) despite feeling very lethargic physically after recovery, and resuming the creatine and drinking water intake together brought me back about 70%, I’d estimate. Resuming my normal level of effort in my biceps/triceps workout, for example, pumped me right up to appearing pretty close to what I had been before the flu in a resting state, so I was satisfied that regaining my previous condition would not take long.

I also factor in that, unlike many people I read online, I do not obsess. I do not measure or weigh myself. I judge my progress and condition by my reflection in the mirror. I have a “shit happens, so what?” attitude and always believe I can make up for losses in due time through persistence. Time passes regardless, so I can either make the best of my days and reap the rewards as weeks go by, or I can do nothing and watch as I diminish and decay during the same time period. 

Diminishing isn’t an option for me, as it is as damaging mentally and emotionally as it is physically. Slow and steady wins the race.

Monday In March Inspiration

When Older People Are More Swole Than Younger People — Watch The Shit Fly!

Some underachieving younger males are freaked out by older men who, despite being double—or even 3 or 4 times—their age, have built physiques superior to what they themselves are wandering cluelessly around in. This seems to drive them absolutely crazy. Their go-to method of dealing with such humiliation is to claim, or more precisely, accuse, these older people of using steroids—you know, as if steroids all by themselves create amazing physiques. 

To not possess the intelligence to figure out that those of us who have worked out all our lives would obviously still retain what we have built over the years reveals the severe limitations of trolls’ intellect. That anyone would assume that, despite faithful adherence to a muscle-building diet and workout regimen, that when one happens to reach a certain age it all just disappears into thin air, or that the human body at some point in time loses its ability to respond, to strengthen, and to grow as a result of strength training, is just plain ignorant. Humans NEVER lose their ability to build muscle, even into our 100s.

Trolls also attempt to paint physician-prescribed HRT as something untoward, as some “unfair” advantage, when in fact HRT merely levels the playing field. Reestablishing one’s normal hormone levels equal to that of their 25 year old self via doctor-prescribed pharmaceutical means is no less legitimate than reestablishing one’s glucose levels via insulin, or reestablishing bone strength via Vitamin D. Trolls work tirelessly to demonize HRT in desperate justification of their personal lack of commitment to achieving what they claim they desire—an outstanding physique.

Let’s not neglect factoring in as well the oddity that these overwhelmingly male sad sack trolls are searching out and spending hours on end on Youtube entranced by videos of attractive men, their farcical “no homo” disclaimers notwithstanding.

If these creeps spent one tenth of the time in the gym that they waste online thirsting and lusting and despising, they would already have achieved the physique they’ve always dreamed of. The only people worse than trolls are those who buy into, and further spread, their particular flavor of poison.

The Illusion Of Food Deprivation

If you diet or are cutting back on calories, carbs or whatever to attain a certain physical goal, such as losing your love handles, do you feel deprived? Most people answer with an emphatic “yes”. I will tell you why that is both wrong and counterproductive.

You, the reader, if you’re being honest, can name 50 foods or more that you LOVE that you have not eaten in 6 months—or perhaps even years. Maybe one of these is a treat from your childhood from a locally-famous bakery, or something your late grandmother used to make. Do you feel deprived that you have not had these and other treats lately? No, you don’t. And not just because grandma’s gone and you haven’t been back to your hometown in years. It’s because you know you can’t eat 50-100 different favorite foods every day, due to factors like availability, logistics, calories and cost, as well as stomach capacity. It’s just not logical, realistic or healthy, and you fully realize that.

We can get over our present feelings of deprivation by acknowledging this reality, that there are dozens and dozens of delicious foods we love but don’t even think about, so in that context, obsessing right now about potato chips or grease-puddled pepperoni pizza makes little sense. 

And why do people who claim feeling deprived because they can’t eat what they want in the quantity they want whenever the mood strikes NOT feel deprived because they don’t have the body or mobility or level of health they’d like to have?

 Acknowledging that deprivation applies to both wants—both to food and to fitness goals, helps make the right choice, the more rewarding choice, easier.

Why Your Personal Trainer Should Never Be “Hands-on”

Personal trainer WRONG.

(BTW, why is the client buffer than his trainer?)

Go to Google, search “personal trainers” and click “Images.” A troubling majority of the images that pop up show personal trainers (PTs) with their hands literally touching their clients, “guiding” and “helping”. This is a Red Flag.

Personal trainer RIGHT.

No one requires another person to manually guide them through an exercise—especially on a gym machine, of all things! Gym machines were designed in the first place to do exactly that, to guide you through the exercise. They are designed specifically to guide you through the exercise based on, and mimicking, the classic free-weight version of the exercise. You can do biceps curls using a dumbbell in the classic manner, or you can hop on a fancy machine designed to guide you through performing the exact same exercise. The machine in essence is your personal trainer.

So when I see PTs with their hands on the elbows of someone sitting in an overhead shoulder press machine for example, “guiding” the client through an exercise that the machine is already guiding the client through, it makes me crazy. “Push up with your hands as high as you can,” is the usual verbal instruction. Uh—NO, you don’t push up with your hands, you idiot, you “push up” by engaging and flexing your shoulders. It’s a SHOULDER exercise. Your hands have nothing to do with the exercise other than connecting you to the machine. Demanding the client focus on their hands rather than their shoulders during a shoulder exercise is an all-too common illustration of trainers' overall cluelessness.

Their main strategy of course is for the PT to create in the client a dependency upon them and their expensive service, to generate a psychological reliance within their client where none is actually required. Not only are these PTs' hands-on style completely unnecessary, this contrivance prevents the client from performing the exercise to full benefit, correctly and rewardingly, by compromising the client’s aptitude and potential. 

After my many decades of gym attendance I can state that 95% of all trainers I have observed going about their work are absolutely sub-par. No certificate can teach someone how to teach, as we all know from our school years: we can all name those teachers we have had who were amazing, and those who were useless, and yet both types had earned a teaching certificate.

Fat People’s Fixation On Diets That “Don’t Work”

from salon.com

Dear Fat People,

You’re fat because you use excessive consumption of bad food as a coping mechanism. Confront your problems head on, preferably with a good therapist, and you will no longer need to eat your problems.

You’re welcome.

Signed, 

Me

To read continually the justifications of fat people, which never include personal responsibility or the acknowledgement that they have deep emotional problems that they soothe with large amounts of crappy food, reveals they just don’t WANT to get it. They are so spooked by the prospect of actually confronting the problems that cause them to eat excessively they go to absurd lengths to justify their fatness in other ways.

This article on Salon.com by Matthew Rozsa is the exact sort that one can find daily online in which fat people refuse to face the facts about their food consumption.

Predictably these writers focus on diets and how they never work. Well of course they don’t work, you morons—diets are  temporary and unrealistic. Of course you’re going to gain back your lost weight when you return to the original diet that made you fat in the first place (2+2=4). It’s not about going on a temporary diet, fat people—it’s about changing your daily diet permanently because your current daily diet has obviously proven to be a fat-gain diet—because you’re fat.

You might want to start by caring enough about yourself to learn how to cook a few things. The number of people who boast and laugh about not knowing how to cook, which means in fact they don’t have (and don’t care to have) the basic LIFE skills needed to keep themselves—and God help them, their kids—alive, is baffling. Depending on others to feed you rather than learning how to feed yourself is the epitome of self-sabotage.

Yeah, not being able to feed yourself is hilarious.

Monday Geezer Inspiration

Eating On A Schedule Is No Fun

Arnold: photo from Muscle and Fitness

Intentional eating, as opposed to random eating, is one of the keys to muscle growth. Intentional eating means eating certain foods at a pre-determined time, day in and day out, for maximum results. 

We all know our bodies need certain nutrients to remain healthy and many people take vitamins and other mainstream supplements as a ‘fix” to make up for deficits in their eating regimen. Didn’t eat vegetables today? Pop a multi-vitamin, we think. Rather though, we should aim for obtaining our nutrients the old school way, via balanced nutrition.

The joy of eating comes from eating a food we love, a food  that may or may not have much nutritional value. Comfort eating means eating what we want whenever we want or crave it. Intentional eating is the opposite of this. Eating eggs and oatmeal at 8:00 followed by a protein drink at 10:00 followed by chicken, broccoli and brown rice at noon—there’s little joy in that. But when such intentional eating produces previously elusive muscle-gain results, there is certainly a lot of satisfaction to be found looking in the mirror.

Our aim should be to make a list of nutritional foods that we actually like and enjoy eating from which to shop at the market. Protein, as an example, is found in many sources, both in foods we like—or even love, and in foods we avoid. Taking the time to Google nutrition facts from which to compile a shopping list is a wise investment in moving toward building a strong, healthy, attractive physique.

Getting Back To The Workout After Illness

For 15 years I was untouched by the flu. In all those years I had only one cold lasting three days. This year like most I had a flu shot, but nonetheless I contracted the flu anyway, and it hung on for over three weeks. The first four days I couldn’t even think of food, and for a week after that I had to force feed myself, as I was losing hard-won muscle fast. The ultimate tally was 7 lbs. of muscle lost. It took me more than a year to gain that.

It’s sobering to see how quickly we can lose muscle, especially in relation to how long it takes and how much effort nutritionally and workout-wise it took to create that to begin with, but that’s life.

Getting back into it is a challenge in and of itself, as I am noticeably weaker and have diminished stamina. But as I learned earlier in life when this same thing happened, it takes less time and effort to reestablish stamina and strength and regain lost muscle than it did to establish and create it in the first place.

Since I am 15 years older than when this same set of circumstances was a factor, it will interest me how having aged 15 years since the last time this happened affects the process. This experience provides me with an experiment to see how quickly I can get back to where I was pre-influenza, and I will report on this as I progress. 

Monday Inspiration

From retromuscle.com

Don’t Blame The Kids For Being Fat

Salon. come needs to pay closer attention.

This headline on Salon.com uses language that deflects from parents’ responsibilities for the health and well-being of their own children.

Kids can’t get fat without their parents’ full cooperation and participation. Parents who hobble their kids by overfeeding them are setting them up for a whole host of life-long problems, both health and mobility-wise, as well as emotional. Fat kids are far more likely to get bullied.

The Best Jeans For Bigger Legs

Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones

The classic original jean, Levi’s 501, is so popular worldwide because they FIT. They fit everybody, amazingly enough. Fat, skinny, bodybuilders, dads, cowboys, university professors. I recall as a boy walking in on my older brother sitting in a hot bath of blue water wearing his new Shrink-to-fit Levi’s 501s and his explaining that this is how you got custom-fit jeans —by molding them to your individual body type with this hot bath method.

I recall my middle brother’s rocker friends strutting around as 15 year olds in their carefully bath-shrunk 501s and black leather motorcycle jackets and their worshipful admiration for Marlon Brando who is credited with this look in the motorcycle gang film The Wild One.

I learned long ago that when trying on jeans at the store to take into the fitting room as many of the same size as possible, let’s say 32 waist and 30 length, because each one, although identically marked, fit somewhat differently. My favorite pair is from Levi’s recently-created Vintage Series in which they have brought back Levi’s 501s from different eras, accurate reproductions true in every detail, going back to the 1800s: I own the 1947 version.

In the past I’ve bought many a pair at second-hand clothing stores not only because they were cheap but because unlike the new Shrink-to-fit Levi’s, the used ones held no surprises as to how they would ultimately fit. Genuine vintage 501s can bring thousands of dollars on eBay and in certain stores in Japan. I recall owning a pair in the past, bought in a second hand store, that had a copper rivet in the crotch, a feature I recently found to have been discontinued in the 1930s. Those jeans, had I not lost track of them, would be worth thousands today.

The next time you shop for jeans try on some Levi’s 501s.There are a couple of terrific documentaries on YouTube all about the mystique of the Levi’s 501 jean included here.