Exercise and Fun Are Two Different Things

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I’m going to give you my take on exercise.

I see RED when I hear people talking about how much they love exercising. That usually means they aren’t working very hard at it.

Background: I was a conference, district and regional high jump champion in high school. I was 2^nd in the State of Ohio track meet in 1968. In college, I was won 6 conference high jump titles (4 indoor and 2 outdoor) and finished 5^th in the NCAA College Division Track and Field Championships in 1971 in San Luis Obispo. I was a College Division All-American.

I purchased Kenneth Cooper’s Aerobics while I was in college. My friend Larry Claggett and I used to train together and count up our Aerobics points. Upon moving to Madison in 1973, I continued to high jump for a couple of more years and played city league basketball and softball. After a few years of that, I started road racing. I ran nearly every day and religiously logged my mileage in Jim Fixx’s Joggers Diary. I ran in all kinds of weather and fell several times while navigating the Madison, WI winters.

I’ve belonged to health clubs, owned a home with a pretty nice exercise room, spent thousands of hours watching TV on a treadmill and am still pretty good with a jump rope.

Nobody believed in cardio more than I did. But I am completely deprogrammed today. And I think “programming” and “propaganda” are reasonable words to use when discussing why people believe what they do about exercising.

The deprogramming process began as soon as I did my first Super Slow workout. I did it at Evolution Spine Clinic in Middleton, WI a few months before  my 55^thbirthday.  At the end of that workout, I realized that I had seldom exerted myself during exercise for 30 years. I had exercised 30-45 minutes per day. I was in “great shape.”  But I hadn’t given every ounce of effort I had on every exercise. That day at Evolution, I did six or seven exercises and was completely exhausted at the end.  I had only worked out for 25 minutes, but I had done each exercise to failure. And once I could no longer move the weight, I held it for 10 more seconds instead of letting it down. The trainer used a stop watch to measure time under load (TUL) and urged me to hold the weight for ten more seconds and keep pushing or resisting for ten more seconds even though the weight isn’t moving. This is called inroading.

I now do Super Slow 44-48 times a year. I do not consider tennis, riding my bike, walking, gardening, grocery shopping to be exercise. Tennis is a competitive outlet, but with one hour court times the standard at Mid-Town Tennis Club in Chicago, hardly a major workout.

Super Slow is my exercise.

Ken Hutchins is the founder of Super Slow and his definition of exercise resonates with me: Exercise is a process whereby the body performs work of a demanding nature, in accordance with muscle and joint function, in a clinically-controlled environment, within the constraints of safety, meaningfully loading the muscular structures to inroad their strength levels to stimulate a growth mechanism within minimum time

Arthur Jones, founder of Nautilus said, “If you are going in the gym on a regular basis and you are not getting stronger every time you go in there, then why are you going there?”

Today, I did seven exercises. Five were brand new weights because I had set records on those exercises the last time I did this routine. The other two exercises were the same weight, but I managed to increase one by 4 seconds and the other by only one second. That doesn’t sound like much, but every second counts. Sometimes there will be breakthrough workouts where I get 12-20 second increases. Anyway, I will have to stay at those weights until I can move the weight for 2 minutes. Then I get two more pounds. I have had workouts where I was down on one or two exercises in terms of weight or time. But in the 4-1/2 years, I have never NOT made improvements in my strength and time under load week after week and year after year. I anticipate there may be an age where I start to plateau and even decline. But that age isn’t 59. I love the fact that I am improving every week and that I have zero aches and pains. 
Here’s a pretty good video that shows even older people can do Super Slow weight lifting (sometimes called Power of 10 as in 10 seconds up and back)

Here is why I used to go work out every day:

1. I bought the government line: According to the latest joint American Heart Association/American College of Sports Medicine guidelines on physical activity, all healthy adults ages 18–65 should be getting at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity activity five days of the week. However, there are additional guidelines for those 65 and older, or for those  50–64 with chronic conditions or physical functional limitations (e.g., arthritis) that affect movement ability or physical fitness.  The USDA doubles and triples he requirement if you want to stay slim after you have become obese by eating the six to eleven servings of grain they recommend. The USDA advises “at least 60 to 90 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity daily to sustain weight loss in adulthood.” (These misguided bureaucrats are wrong, but mean well.)
2. There were healthy (good-looking) people at the gym and they were of a like mind. Being around fit people is fun and reinforced my decision to keep exercising.
3. The gym was a decent place to hang out and socialize and seemed healthier than the bars.
4. Jim Fixx believed that running would create ancillary circulation that would work around his and anyone else’s blocked arteries. I believed it too until he died.
5. Exercising meant I could eat more.
6. No pain, no gain.

Here is why I am down to once a week:

1. Exercise doesn’t make you fit. If it’s done correctly, exercise stresses the muscle and the body repairs and grows back the muscle while your REST.
2. If you can do something for more than a couple of minutes you aren’t putting enough stress on the muscle to fatigue it. If you don’t fatigue the muscle you haven’t stimulated it enough to grow back strong. If you exercise on consecutive days, your muscles don’t recover properly.
3. When it’s done correctly, exercise is not fun. It is work and requires concentration and proper form. Any place that has audio visual equipment, mirrors, shouting instructors and temperatures over 70-degrees is not conducive to real exercise. (More Ken Hutchins influence).
4. The goal of exercise is to see how little you can get away with not how much you can do.

If you take nothing else from this know that “Sports Medicine” is nothing more than a marketing phrase for orthopedists who profit from the thousands of sports-related and exercise related injuries. Been there, not going back.

One more thing, and I think this is the key for me. I used to dread going to the Super Slow workout because I knew it was going to hurt. I knew I was going to work very hard and be sore afterwards. It was like going to the dentist for a root canal only doing it every week. So I quit thinking about it. That’s right. I just go at 9:00 AM on Friday and leave. When I am there, I give it my all. When I am not there, I don’t give it a thought. My thought is, “Rest.” My other thought is, “I don’t like it, but I’m glad I do it.”

Sarah will sometimes say, “Have fun” as I leave for the gym. I never do. And I never ask anyone, “Did you like your workout?” If you like working out, you are doing it wrong. And that’s why I do it.  It’s become a habit. If I didn’t do it, I would feel like something was missing.

That’s all I’ve got.