Best practices for exercising consistently and often?

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stand@desk
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Re: Best practices for exercising consistently and often?

Post by stand@desk »

Here is your role model:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Whitlock

Read his bio, he has been running well from his 40s to his 80s, and is the best there is for an elite old age athlete.. I look to him for inspiration and emulation. I don't know how much training he does, but I bet it's a fair amount for someone of any age.

@brute

There is records of Elite Ultra marathoners who have done permanent bodily damage including damage to the heart but their training mileage is so extreme I doubt they would tell others to emulate themselves. But some Ultra runners can do the extreme mileage and be ok. But one was to look to them for best practices for exercising consistency I bet they would have useful info to share cause they do it so much. Doesn't mean one has to be just like them though but they have the knowledge.

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Ego
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Re: Best practices for exercising consistently and often?

Post by Ego »

BRUTE wrote:if copying eighty-year old humans, even "good" ones, brute suspects that besides walking, they haven't exercised much. certainly the 90+ year old humans brute knows personally haven't done any exercise besides errands since WW2. maybe they got all their exercise done in one sitting, though.

what mostly seems to keep old humans in shape is walking around a bit (seems enough to keep range of motion, muscles, and bone density) and hobbies/social circle.
Brute and Ego have different goals. My goal is not to become one of the "good" ones in a world where our definition of good is continually declining. I don't want to "walk around a bit" at eighty.

This is the obituary of someone I knew well. He was a competitive tennis player. When his ability to play tennis waned, he did not hang up his racket and retire to an easy chair. He hung up his racket and took on different challenges. He was the most ALIVE 90 year old I've ever known.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/new ... -obituary/

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jennypenny
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Re: Best practices for exercising consistently and often?

Post by jennypenny »

That obit was inspiring.


I was going to post about Matt Fitzgerald's How Bad Do You Want It? here, but decided it probably warranted its own thread ... viewtopic.php?f=13&t=7821

SilverElephant
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Re: Best practices for exercising consistently and often?

Post by SilverElephant »

@stand@desk Ok, the Rockefeller bit wasn't a perfect argument.

The trouble with elite athletes will be that their training is their job - often much more than 40 h/week. In addition to their different genetic makeup, the training plan of someone who trains for a living will be very different. Here I'm not entirely certain if an elite full time training plan can be scaled to 1 h/day without having to modify its structure, for example.

Everything I've read about muscle building/training leads me to believe that different people have very different responses to training - some have a high response to training, others don't. This manifests in the first kind becoming professional athletes.

I'm 100% behind you that none of this is an excuse to slack off.

BRUTE
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Re: Best practices for exercising consistently and often?

Post by BRUTE »

elite athletes might also be elite athletes because they naturally enjoy working out consistently. brute is not looking to NBA players, asking how to get tall. maybe causation is reversed.

and yes, brute is just rationalizing that working out consistently is lame. works for him so far. in brute's experience, "desire to work out" is a result of an otherwise healthy lifestyle, not the cause.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Best practices for exercising consistently and often?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Ego said: My goal is not to become one of the "good" ones in a world where our definition of good is continually declining.
Right, but if you are somebody who is seeking excellence or peak "aliveness" in realms other than physical fitness or sports, what then would constitute good enough practice in the realm of exercise? Also, I have come to the conclusion that looking forward about 7 years is better than looking forward to when I am 90 when it comes to best practice because opportunities, circumstances, resources, available knowledge and standards change so much. For instance, running did not become popular as an activity for American adults until maybe the mid-1960s, so somebody who was one of the first middle-aged guys out there wearing little short-shorts with stripes down the side, could just now be about 90.

Another thing that confuses me, is your insistence that people used to have better health habits. My grandparents all had worse health habits than me. My paternal grandfather was a slender athlete in his youth, but by the time I knew him (around age 70) he smoked a pipe, drank Tom Collins, ate beef roast, baked potatoes, coffee and molasses cookies, and had a belly and big chunks of flesh hacked out of his shoulders from sun exposure during his tour in the Coast Guard, and his exercise routine was limited to working in his rose garden. The only older adult I can picture exercising in my relatively affluent childhood is Jack Lalanne on the television, and he seemed odd, because most grown-up men wore suits and hats, and Jack LaLanne wore shoes like I wore to ballet class. Only people under the age of 6 were seen in public wearing tight,stretchy, brightly-colored or pajama like clothing.

stayhigh
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Re: Best practices for exercising consistently and often?

Post by stayhigh »

BRUTE wrote:what limits the number of push-ups? shoulders, triceps, lower back tension?
After few pushups my heart is beating super fast, my head is about to explode and I have to stop as I fell like couch potato after exhausting sprint. This only happen in pushup position, when my head is rather low, as I can do other exercises or run 5k+ easily. My upper muscles can take much more.

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Ego
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Re: Best practices for exercising consistently and often?

Post by Ego »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Ego said: My goal is not to become one of the "good" ones in a world where our definition of good is continually declining.
Right, but if you are somebody who is seeking excellence or peak "aliveness" in realms other than physical fitness or sports, what then would constitute good enough practice in the realm of exercise?
Why are you framing them as mutually exclusive? I see them as building on one another, as elements of a positive spiral. I guess it depends on how you define "aliveness".
7Wannabe5 wrote:so somebody who was one of the first middle-aged guys out there wearing little short-shorts with stripes down the side, could just now be about 90.
Yep, those are my role-model friends I mentioned above. They are (and were) the outliers. California is chock full of them. :D
7Wannabe5 wrote:Another thing that confuses me, is your insistence that people used to have better health habits.
When did I say that?

BRUTE
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Re: Best practices for exercising consistently and often?

Post by BRUTE »

stayhigh wrote:
BRUTE wrote:what limits the number of push-ups? shoulders, triceps, lower back tension?
After few pushups my heart is beating super fast, my head is about to explode and I have to stop as I fell like couch potato after exhausting sprint. This only happen in pushup position, when my head is rather low, as I can do other exercises or run 5k+ easily. My upper muscles can take much more.
does stayhigh get dizzy when getting up fast from a sitting or prone position to full standing? it might be lightheadedness related to low blood sugar or salt. push-ups are not that metabolically taxing, especially with the ability to run 5k easily or do other exercises.

another suspect may be breathing. is stayhigh breathing naturally during push-ups or somehow restricting breath?

Miss Lonelyhearts
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Re: Best practices for exercising consistently and often?

Post by Miss Lonelyhearts »

@stayhigh: are you remembering to breathe while performing the push up? I have a natural tendency to hold my breath during the exercise for some reason. Perfect form would be sucking in on the way down and pushing out on the way up. I recommend playing around with this on every 2nd, 3rd, etc repetition to see what works.

stayhigh
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Re: Best practices for exercising consistently and often?

Post by stayhigh »

Miss Lonelyhearts wrote:@stayhigh: are you remembering to breathe while performing the push up? I have a natural tendency to hold my breath during the exercise for some reason. Perfect form would be sucking in on the way down and pushing out on the way up. I recommend playing around with this on every 2nd, 3rd, etc repetition to see what works.
I have tendency to hold my breath while exercising, but I learned to do exactly as described above: one push up - one full breath, in and out. I'm in my twenties, normal weight, rather active lifestyle (no car, no tv) and healthy diet. I have no problem with various exercises but push ups, for example I can do dips till muscle failure. Maybe it's time to have some blood tests?

BRUTE
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Re: Best practices for exercising consistently and often?

Post by BRUTE »

maybe. but not sure what blood test would be appropriate. maybe something related to iron/potassium/sodium/magnesium. sounds really strange. dips to failure but no push-ups?

maybe stayhigh can try playing around with the breathing during the push-ups and see if that has an effect. also if dips are easy: starting with dips but keeping feet on the ground, then lowering the hand position step by step down into a push-up. just to see where it starts to become difficult.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Best practices for exercising consistently and often?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I said: Right, but if you are somebody who is seeking excellence or peak "aliveness" in realms other than physical fitness or sports, what then would constitute good enough practice in the realm of exercise?

Ego said: Why are you framing them as mutually exclusive? I see them as building on one another, as elements of a positive spiral. I guess it depends on how you define "aliveness".
I agree that mutually exclusive is over-statement, and positive spiral does apply, but still, there are only so many hours in the day, and only so much discipline/attention towards mastery in anybody's pocket, and everybody needs some variety or balance. For instance, I can go out and haul my cart to my garden and shovel compost in the morning, or I can go out and take a bike ride down to the river in the morning, and then I can read a 19th century novel in the afternoon, or I can study Javascript in the afternoon, and then I can go to a concert in the evening, or I can have conversation over dinner with a good friend in the evening. Or I could choose to bike in the morning, swim in the afternoon, and run in the evening, but I wouldn't, because that would be boring compared to a more varied lifestyle.
I said: so somebody who was one of the first middle-aged guys out there wearing little short-shorts with stripes down the side, could just now be about 90.
Ego said:Yep, those are my role-model friends I mentioned above. They are (and were) the outliers. California is chock full of them. :D
Lol- Okay, first cut me some slack, or adjust for the fact that I am in the less-fitness-centric realm of the Midwest. Now let's pretend that we have been teamed up on an assignment for some publication such as "Men's Health" to do research and write an article that will be entitled something like "Vigor and Vitality Forever!" The piece of the puzzle, or data file to be included, that I possess and you do not, is that in the last 10 years, I have had sexual relationships inclusive of a great deal of open conversation on the topic, with many (more than 10, at least) very intelligent, affluent enough to afford any sort of health or fitness resource, men over the age of 50. Human beings are healthiest at age 10. Then puberty begins a cycle that will eventually end in death. You can't really go back to being 10 again, although there are some aspects of health/fitness/longevity that can and should be addressed in the same manner whether you are a 10 year old child, or a 57 year old woman, or a 81 year old man. BUT...as with any sexually-reproducing species, there are other aspects of health/fitness/longevity that are more directly correlated with extension of sexual life-cycle, and this requires thoughtfulness about hormonal production/maintenance and function, and sometimes, for some people, what might be the healthy-for-10-year-old-you thing to do is not the healthy-for-50-year-old-you to do. Actually, that's not exactly true. It's more like if you only keep your eye on the metrics that would apply to 10 year old you, then you may be f*cking-up when it comes to some metrics that apply to 50 year old you. Simple example, only one of many I could offer, would be if you are a man who is 57 years old, your BMI puts you in the healthy range, and you can bike 20 miles with ease, but you have a little bit of a hard paunch that you can't easily move when you grab it, and you have noticed that your desire for sex has really fallen off in the last few years, then you are likely going to die sooner than your simple metrics are informing you. Purchasing the services of a 22 year old Vietnamese mail order concubine actually will help, but that's a pretty expensive fix, and doesn't really address the root problem.

Okay, you didn't literally say that people used to have better health habits, but you did say that standards have fallen. I would argue that it is tragically true that standards have fallen for young people, even very young children, but standards have actually increased for affluent middle-aged and up people. I offer as evidence Ms. Christie Brinkley, who remains eternally 10 years older and 10X as fit and attractive as moi, except for the fact that I do not yet need to make use of hair extensions - Hah!! I should probably move to your neck of the woods where I might actually have to compete for my share of good-looking men, but then I wouldn't be able to afford garden space. (She types from the hotel room where she was abandoned for the morning after being brought coffee and large cinnamon roll. Even the ones who would prefer me skinnier feed me too much-sigh.)

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