With the start of the New Year, there's s surge in gym memberships and cable TV infomercials on how to lose weight. For many, getting in shape is synonymous with losing weight, though the two are not the same things.
You can lose weight by eating fewer calories and still be out of shape. Likewise, you can be in pretty good shape, i.e., normal blood pressure, OK lipids, and also overweight. Some 300 pound NFL lineman are in tremendous physical condition, while many skinny people are not.
However, most of us do equate fitness with leanness, which is usually measured in percentage of body fat. Exercise physiologist Covert Bailey was one of the first to get that concept in front of the general public in his Fit or Fat books over twenty years ago. Healthy range of body fat is different from males to females. In general, a healthy male may measure between 10-20% body fat, and women 15 to 25%. This number goes up slightly with age. The number also varies even in elite athletes, depending on their sport. Marathoners can be in the 5-7 range, while swimmers are twice that.
So what's the advantage of a low percentage and what does it have to do with fitness and health? Leanness means less wear and tear on your skeleton, especially your joints. Your heart does not have to work so hard for the same amount of physical work, thus improving your endurance. Most importantly, leanness, when combined with exercise, reduces the amount of body inflammation suspected to cause many chronic diseases.
I've recently been reading two excellent books on body fat and exercise: 1) Robb Wolf's The Paleo Diet, and 2) Tim Ferris' The 4-Hour Body. Both are based on a similar premise: you will lose weight if you restrict simple carbohydrates in your diet. Wolf says to eat mainly high quality protein, vegetables, and fruit, but no wheat or legumes. Ferris says okay to legumes (because if you don't eat them you won't feel full and be hungry all the time), but no to fruit (fructose is a sugar, the digested final product of all carbs). Both these books are based on good science; the references are there if you want to find out for yourself.
I think these authors are in their late 30's, about the time most humans have just passed their athletic prime and when percentage of body fat tends to start to drift up, especially around the gut. As a result, they are a little body image-obsessed. Ferris even goes so far as to have pictures of his shirtless torso as proof his diet works. (I'm much more impressed when he does 180+ kettlebell snatches on YouTube.) Ferris gets excited when his body fat percentage gets so low he can see the veins popping out underneath his skin. Pretty funny.
This TOJ thinks both of them offer sound advice on eating and exercise, and there's no doubt that for most people, lowering percentage of body fat by reducing simple carb intake (especially anything with white flour or sugar) is good for you. In the past few years, the evidence has mounted that consumption of simple carbs elevates insulin and causes insulin resistance, which is linked to Type-II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers.
Percentage of body fat is a much more reliable indicator of health than the popular Body Mass Index (BMI). Many very fit athletes have high BMI's because muscle is much heavier that fat. Muscle is preferable to body fat because muscle raises your metabolic rate and lowers insulin levels, especially when the muscles have been exercised. Fat can't do that, it's just along for the ride.
If you follow the diet and exercise advice of either Wolf or Ferris, expect to lose fat, not necessarily weight. A pound of fat takes up four times as much space as a pound of muscle. When you combine a high protein diet with exercise, especially with lots of resistance exercise, you will lose body fat and increase muscle. The surest sign you are will be in looser clothing, especially around your waist, thighs, and butt.
Who knows if you'll see changes in the mirror, but you'll feel them. That's what really counts.
Showing posts with label Covert Bailey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Covert Bailey. Show all posts
Fitness Lessons from the Ultimate Coach
If I were going to be stranded on a desert island and could only take one book on exercise and fitness, it would be an easy choice -- The Ultimate Fit or Fat by Covert Bailey. That's a high compliment because I have a pretty good collection of books on those topics.
In the case of Covert Bailey, you really can't judge a book by its cover. They sometimes have a cartoon or a goofy picture of him wearing a tie, a stark contrast to the present day fitness books with Photo-shopped shots of sleek super-bodies and bulging muscles. Don't be fooled: he knows his stuff.
Now retired and in his late seventies, Covert Bailey made his book debut in 1978, around the time the aerobics movement was quickly gaining strength. He had a graduate degree from MIT in biochemistry and learned his first lessons on diet and exercise from lab rats. He went on to sell over 6 million books and had a show on PBS (though I never saw it). And he did it in a light-hearted, straightforward style that is accessible, inspiring, and devoid of scientific jargon (though he once expounded on the Krebs Cycle and ATP with a raw display of expertise that would stand with any PhD).
The Ultimate Fit or Fat, his last book, was published in 1999. That may seem so, like, last century, but Covert Bailey set forth all the enduring principles of exercise for health and wellness that are still valid today. I reread it recently and realized how much my guiding principles were influenced by him. Here are some lessons he taught me:
In the case of Covert Bailey, you really can't judge a book by its cover. They sometimes have a cartoon or a goofy picture of him wearing a tie, a stark contrast to the present day fitness books with Photo-shopped shots of sleek super-bodies and bulging muscles. Don't be fooled: he knows his stuff.
Now retired and in his late seventies, Covert Bailey made his book debut in 1978, around the time the aerobics movement was quickly gaining strength. He had a graduate degree from MIT in biochemistry and learned his first lessons on diet and exercise from lab rats. He went on to sell over 6 million books and had a show on PBS (though I never saw it). And he did it in a light-hearted, straightforward style that is accessible, inspiring, and devoid of scientific jargon (though he once expounded on the Krebs Cycle and ATP with a raw display of expertise that would stand with any PhD).
The Ultimate Fit or Fat, his last book, was published in 1999. That may seem so, like, last century, but Covert Bailey set forth all the enduring principles of exercise for health and wellness that are still valid today. I reread it recently and realized how much my guiding principles were influenced by him. Here are some lessons he taught me:
- The best exercise for you is the one you like to do best. No one exercise size fits all because of differences in age, genetic makeup, injuries and a host of other factors.
- Fitness is a lifelong endeavor that is health and wellness, not competition.
- Muscle metabolism, not just diet, controls your weight, and it's exercise that controls metabolism. If you focus on developing a conditioned body, weight takes care of itself.
- Forget about body image. Exercise to strengthen your bones, improve your immune and cardiovascular system, and improve your brain function and nervous system.
- Aerobic exercise must be mixed with sprints, strength training, and recovery.
- Exercise is for people of all ages.
- Keep exercise fun like play is for a child. If you get too intense about it, you steal the joy and increase the odds of injury.
- As you age, exercise longer, but more gently than you did in your youth. And don't do the same exercise two days in a row.
There's an insightful poem that Covert wrote when he was sixty-seven years old:
I'm in training!
For what?
Oh, just training.
I'm thinking about
the mountains I'm going to climb,
the rivers yet to be paddled,
the square dance that lasts half the night.
Read it a second time because this might be his most important lesson of all.
New Mantra: Faster, Harder, Shorter
The "faster, harder, shorter" mantra, aimed at people of all ages who wish to achieve quick results on the road to fitness, is spreading like the H1N1 virus.
My last blog was about some anti-runners who recommended a grueling, once per week, 12 minute routine in which you do extreme resistance (weights or machine) exercise to the point your muscles fail. Half their book was a dire warning that running will debilitate or kill you.
Then I got an email from Al Sears, MD, who promotes a copyrighted program called PACEBOOK (I bought a copy and found some good stuff) that recommends short, intense, progressive interval training, which can be sprinting, biking, swimming, lifting, jump roping, etc. Like his book, his email had more dire warnings about jogging/running. Check out: http://www.alsearsmd.com/jogging-injuries.html
So I cringed when I picked up the the August issue of Trail Runner magazine (in which you'll find a snatch of poetry about running in mud they printed from my April 2009 blog) to see an article entitled "The Fabulous 4 (Minutes) - The Short - Intense - Workout That Delivers." It is about a system developed Izumi Tabata, at a Japanese sports institute in the early 90s, that involves sprinting as hard as you can for 20 seconds, then resting 10 seconds, then sprinting again. You do this eight times. Tabata discovered that this painful regimen can confer tremendous improvements in aerobic and anaerobic capacity. (I'd be wary of any regimen developed in Japan because, even today, it will be influenced by medieval samurai culture, which places a high value on suffering.)
I think there are great benefits to be gained from interval training. I do sprints once or twice a week. But it should be noted that the only injury I've had this year was a pull in the lower left Achilles tendon that occurred when -- sprinting! The anti-runners always offer scientific studies to support their attacks on jogging/running, however, often these studies are flawed or incomplete. If you want to read a good blog, with solid scientific thinking, that questions these broad claims for interval training over running, go to http://frayedlaces.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html.
If you haven't done intervals in a long time, start very slowly and build up. There is no hurry to get to "fitness." The journey itself is the goal. Start with the slow gentle approach to interval training recommended by Covert Bailey.
My last blog was about some anti-runners who recommended a grueling, once per week, 12 minute routine in which you do extreme resistance (weights or machine) exercise to the point your muscles fail. Half their book was a dire warning that running will debilitate or kill you.
Then I got an email from Al Sears, MD, who promotes a copyrighted program called PACEBOOK (I bought a copy and found some good stuff) that recommends short, intense, progressive interval training, which can be sprinting, biking, swimming, lifting, jump roping, etc. Like his book, his email had more dire warnings about jogging/running. Check out: http://www.alsearsmd.com/jogging-injuries.html
So I cringed when I picked up the the August issue of Trail Runner magazine (in which you'll find a snatch of poetry about running in mud they printed from my April 2009 blog) to see an article entitled "The Fabulous 4 (Minutes) - The Short - Intense - Workout That Delivers." It is about a system developed Izumi Tabata, at a Japanese sports institute in the early 90s, that involves sprinting as hard as you can for 20 seconds, then resting 10 seconds, then sprinting again. You do this eight times. Tabata discovered that this painful regimen can confer tremendous improvements in aerobic and anaerobic capacity. (I'd be wary of any regimen developed in Japan because, even today, it will be influenced by medieval samurai culture, which places a high value on suffering.)
I think there are great benefits to be gained from interval training. I do sprints once or twice a week. But it should be noted that the only injury I've had this year was a pull in the lower left Achilles tendon that occurred when -- sprinting! The anti-runners always offer scientific studies to support their attacks on jogging/running, however, often these studies are flawed or incomplete. If you want to read a good blog, with solid scientific thinking, that questions these broad claims for interval training over running, go to http://frayedlaces.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html.
If you haven't done intervals in a long time, start very slowly and build up. There is no hurry to get to "fitness." The journey itself is the goal. Start with the slow gentle approach to interval training recommended by Covert Bailey.
A TOJ knows that all physical activities come with some risk of injury. So what? To a TOJ, the real problem with the 4 minute this and 12 minute that is he or she enjoys exercising too much to be subject to time limits. Life's too short as it is.
Science Lessons from Anti-Runners
One of TOJ's favorite blues song says:
"Ain't nobody owns the truth
about the best exercise,
and if they say they do,
they be flat full of lies."
What's holy gospel today is debunked tomorrow. Not that long ago, the critical necessity of regular rest and recuperation was heresy, and it was conventional wisdom to overtrain week in and week out. It was also believed that weight lifting was bad because it could elevate blood pressure to dangerous levels, so should be avoided. Both have been tossed on the trash heap of exercise physiology history -- for now.
Having been around long enough to see many theories (and "evidence") come and go,TOJs tend to be humble and open-minded about exercise. They figure that what is optimum for a particular person is dependent on a mix of genetics, health, environment, age, nutrition, body-type, and a host of other factors. Whatever you do, you are fortunate if you discover a combination of physical activities that you enjoy and keep you healthy.
But there's always something new to learn. It was in that spirit that I picked up a book by Doug McGuff, M.D., and John Little entitled "Body by Science: A Research-Based Program for Strength Training, Body Building, and Complete Fitness in 12 Minutes a Week." Don't laugh at the "12 minutes" claim. There are some new ideas that have some merit, once you look past their weight lifting/resistance training mania. But there are old ones too: They repeat the tired anti-running story of Pheidippides falling over dead after his historic run from Athens to Sparta, and the tragic death of running author Jim Fixx. Strangely, they make no mention of the fact the Mike Mentzer, a body building champion who pioneered many of their theories and whom they revere, died mysteriously at age 50 after fighting drug addictions and going in and out of mental institutions. (Fixx died at age 52? Is that evidence that running is superior to strength training for longevity?)
What first drew my attention was their frontal assault on the current gospel that running is good for cardio health. They contend that endurance athletes, especially runners, make a fundamental mistake when they equate endurance-based fitness activities with health because it leads to even more misguided thinking that more distance + more time running = more health. The result is runners, who can tend to have a compulsive streak, think they are climbing a ladder to wellness as they progress from 10K to marathon to ultra, when in fact they might put their lives at risk over the long term, or best case, unnecessarily shorten them.
Here's the scientific argument of these two fire and brimstone body builders, simplified so a TOJ can understand it: Low intensity exercise is high risk for your long term health, not because of the the widely known overuse injuries to ligaments, tendons and joints, but because running, contrary to popular myths, does not exhaust the glycogen in enough of your muscle cells. Yes, you might burn some fat, but not as much as you think, because with running you don't actually burn that many calories/mile. Worse, you engage the largest muscles in your body, but not all the major muscle groups in your body.
What is most important to your health, they argue, is to deplete the glycogen stores, otherwise the glycogen stays in the muscles. Then the carbohydrates (a dietary staple with runners) you eat will, after twenty or so chemical reactions, cause the formation of fatty acids and inflame the lining of blood vessels. The body then "mortars" the inflamed areas with LDL cholesterol (the bad one), and places you at high cardio risk. They make their case with some very compelling diagrams and plenty of documented evidence.
In fact, these guys attribute a laundry list of illnesses - CVD, atrial fibrillation, renal abnormalities, cancer, brain damage, spinal degeneration - to long distance running. However, when you actually examine their many interesting footnotes, it is clear that the scientific evidence places the blame not on running, but on over-training. I know many runners, and they do not suffer from any of these any more than the general population, and maybe less. That said, there's some truth in their view. (See the January 2009 blog "Not Too Much, Not Too Little.)
They do make a very important point that every TOJ should heed: running will cause you to lose muscle mass. Aren't most elite runners skinny nerds? Avid runners often ignore most of their bodies except for their lungs, hearts, and leg muscles. It is not a coincidence that many TOJ distance runners have very emaciated upper bodies. When muscles are not used, they waste away. McGuff and Little provide excellent analysis as to why this happens. (You can also find a shorter, but equally enlightening, explanation in Covert Bailey's Smart Exercise.)
The sarcastic tone McGuff and Little use when referring to endurance exercise can be annoying. These guys come from the very extreme end of the strength training spectrum. For them, muscle strength is the Promised Land, and they worship at the altar of anabolic muscle building. Unfortunately, their hostility distracts from some of the most informative scientific discussions for lay persons of certain aspects of exercise that I have ever read.
They believe that the key is overall metabolic health, not just cardiovascular fitness, because the muscular system is where critical enzymatic activity occurs, without which there is no fitness or health. They recommend the simplest and most extreme regimen you will ever hear about. It consists of once a week, 12 minute strength routines, preferably done in a gym/club on Nautilus equipment, during which you push your major muscle groups against almost immovable resistance to the point of total failure (thus total glycogen depletion through a phenomenon called "amplification cascade.") They offer lots of credible evidence that it is effective for building strength, improving cardio heatlh, and promoting weight loss.
Buried amidst their fanatic campaign for strength training are some worthy ideas for a TOJ. In the past few years it has been established that strength training does play an important role in health, maintaining balance, and stabilizing blood sugar levels, so strength training deserves to be in a TOJ's routine. I do strength training twice a week, not to the extremes they advocate, but close enough to exhaustion that I gain some of the benefits they herald. Hoever, though these guys may have great biceps and hearts from pumping in the gym, they need to have their heads examined if they think The Ultimate Exercise is pushing against a machine for a few tortured minutes.
Somehow in their one size fits all approach, they've lost sight of the big picture. TOJs exercise for reasons that go beyond the narrow pursuit of strength and fitness. Those are often just byproducts of a larger, more exciting journey. Exercise is a path to something more -- nature, joy, discovery, oneness with the universe and peace of mind. What happens during a long endurance activity is beyond way beyond cardio health, metabolism, or any other measurable physical system. You know it when you've experienced it. That's why I'm going for a run.
"Ain't nobody owns the truth
about the best exercise,
and if they say they do,
they be flat full of lies."
What's holy gospel today is debunked tomorrow. Not that long ago, the critical necessity of regular rest and recuperation was heresy, and it was conventional wisdom to overtrain week in and week out. It was also believed that weight lifting was bad because it could elevate blood pressure to dangerous levels, so should be avoided. Both have been tossed on the trash heap of exercise physiology history -- for now.
Having been around long enough to see many theories (and "evidence") come and go,TOJs tend to be humble and open-minded about exercise. They figure that what is optimum for a particular person is dependent on a mix of genetics, health, environment, age, nutrition, body-type, and a host of other factors. Whatever you do, you are fortunate if you discover a combination of physical activities that you enjoy and keep you healthy.
But there's always something new to learn. It was in that spirit that I picked up a book by Doug McGuff, M.D., and John Little entitled "Body by Science: A Research-Based Program for Strength Training, Body Building, and Complete Fitness in 12 Minutes a Week." Don't laugh at the "12 minutes" claim. There are some new ideas that have some merit, once you look past their weight lifting/resistance training mania. But there are old ones too: They repeat the tired anti-running story of Pheidippides falling over dead after his historic run from Athens to Sparta, and the tragic death of running author Jim Fixx. Strangely, they make no mention of the fact the Mike Mentzer, a body building champion who pioneered many of their theories and whom they revere, died mysteriously at age 50 after fighting drug addictions and going in and out of mental institutions. (Fixx died at age 52? Is that evidence that running is superior to strength training for longevity?)
What first drew my attention was their frontal assault on the current gospel that running is good for cardio health. They contend that endurance athletes, especially runners, make a fundamental mistake when they equate endurance-based fitness activities with health because it leads to even more misguided thinking that more distance + more time running = more health. The result is runners, who can tend to have a compulsive streak, think they are climbing a ladder to wellness as they progress from 10K to marathon to ultra, when in fact they might put their lives at risk over the long term, or best case, unnecessarily shorten them.
Here's the scientific argument of these two fire and brimstone body builders, simplified so a TOJ can understand it: Low intensity exercise is high risk for your long term health, not because of the the widely known overuse injuries to ligaments, tendons and joints, but because running, contrary to popular myths, does not exhaust the glycogen in enough of your muscle cells. Yes, you might burn some fat, but not as much as you think, because with running you don't actually burn that many calories/mile. Worse, you engage the largest muscles in your body, but not all the major muscle groups in your body.
What is most important to your health, they argue, is to deplete the glycogen stores, otherwise the glycogen stays in the muscles. Then the carbohydrates (a dietary staple with runners) you eat will, after twenty or so chemical reactions, cause the formation of fatty acids and inflame the lining of blood vessels. The body then "mortars" the inflamed areas with LDL cholesterol (the bad one), and places you at high cardio risk. They make their case with some very compelling diagrams and plenty of documented evidence.
In fact, these guys attribute a laundry list of illnesses - CVD, atrial fibrillation, renal abnormalities, cancer, brain damage, spinal degeneration - to long distance running. However, when you actually examine their many interesting footnotes, it is clear that the scientific evidence places the blame not on running, but on over-training. I know many runners, and they do not suffer from any of these any more than the general population, and maybe less. That said, there's some truth in their view. (See the January 2009 blog "Not Too Much, Not Too Little.)
They do make a very important point that every TOJ should heed: running will cause you to lose muscle mass. Aren't most elite runners skinny nerds? Avid runners often ignore most of their bodies except for their lungs, hearts, and leg muscles. It is not a coincidence that many TOJ distance runners have very emaciated upper bodies. When muscles are not used, they waste away. McGuff and Little provide excellent analysis as to why this happens. (You can also find a shorter, but equally enlightening, explanation in Covert Bailey's Smart Exercise.)
The sarcastic tone McGuff and Little use when referring to endurance exercise can be annoying. These guys come from the very extreme end of the strength training spectrum. For them, muscle strength is the Promised Land, and they worship at the altar of anabolic muscle building. Unfortunately, their hostility distracts from some of the most informative scientific discussions for lay persons of certain aspects of exercise that I have ever read.
They believe that the key is overall metabolic health, not just cardiovascular fitness, because the muscular system is where critical enzymatic activity occurs, without which there is no fitness or health. They recommend the simplest and most extreme regimen you will ever hear about. It consists of once a week, 12 minute strength routines, preferably done in a gym/club on Nautilus equipment, during which you push your major muscle groups against almost immovable resistance to the point of total failure (thus total glycogen depletion through a phenomenon called "amplification cascade.") They offer lots of credible evidence that it is effective for building strength, improving cardio heatlh, and promoting weight loss.
Buried amidst their fanatic campaign for strength training are some worthy ideas for a TOJ. In the past few years it has been established that strength training does play an important role in health, maintaining balance, and stabilizing blood sugar levels, so strength training deserves to be in a TOJ's routine. I do strength training twice a week, not to the extremes they advocate, but close enough to exhaustion that I gain some of the benefits they herald. Hoever, though these guys may have great biceps and hearts from pumping in the gym, they need to have their heads examined if they think The Ultimate Exercise is pushing against a machine for a few tortured minutes.
Somehow in their one size fits all approach, they've lost sight of the big picture. TOJs exercise for reasons that go beyond the narrow pursuit of strength and fitness. Those are often just byproducts of a larger, more exciting journey. Exercise is a path to something more -- nature, joy, discovery, oneness with the universe and peace of mind. What happens during a long endurance activity is beyond way beyond cardio health, metabolism, or any other measurable physical system. You know it when you've experienced it. That's why I'm going for a run.
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