Middle-age man morning report

When in the U.S. Army five decades ago, I remember how each morning there was a morning ritual leading to what was known as the Morning Report.   A fellow soldier friend of mine had as one of his many duties its daily preparation.  

The Morning Report was a document produced every morning for every basic unit of the Army.  It reported head counts of Army soldiers and changes in status from the previous day.  Once completed, it was reviewed and approved by the unit’s Commanding Officer and then punted up the Army chain of command. Basically, it was a daily measure of Army soldier resources, strength accountability and military readiness. 

Fast forward to my middle-age man present.   

Nowadays, I do a morning report of sorts with my middle-age man body to assess its resource availability and readiness for another day of fitness training.  In 2 Thessalonians 3 we read: “If any man will not work, neither let him eat.”   Pierini Fitness says, “If I don’t earn my calories from activities of daily living and exercise, let me not eat.”

My morning report assesses my body and mind’s readiness for planned daily living activities and fitness training.  Nowadays, it’s giving me much different information than a noon or early afternoon report.   

For example, yesterday, upon awakening and crawling out of bed, one of my first thoughts was how sore and stiff I was, and that perhaps my planned fitness activities for the day might not take place.   

My wrists, hands and ankles were sore, and the rest of my body “radiated” signals that perhaps a day of fitness training rest was a good idea.  My previous day’s workout included a short morning kettlebell workout and then later in the day, 150 burpees performed at a moderate pace. 

This has become a common morning experience for me that’s more pronounced than decades earlier.  I remember when in my late 40’s until my early 50’s hitting the gym at 6:00 am sharp, roaring, and ready to go, each Monday through Friday.  I don’t have the physical ganas to do this nowadays.  Did it, done it and gone! 

What I’m also finding is that as time passes, these morning report feelings begin to dissipate so that by noon or early afternoon, I’m ready to tackle my fitness training for the day.  Yesterday, for example, after my ganas woke up, I went for a great 6-mile early afternoon run.

So, my middle-age man morning report is often not a good measure of my middle-age man body's resource availability and readiness for another day of fitness training.

You may recall from what I’ve previously shared that my fitness training approach is an intuitive one.  I’m never quite sure what I’ll do even though I have some ideas and preferred exercises to select from in my fitness training cafeteria with workout duration and intensity depending on what’s being reported in my morning, noon, and early-afternoon reports. 

Works for me. 

Even though it doesn’t always give me the good report I’d like, I’ll continue each day preparing upon awakening and crawling out of bed, my middle-age man morning report. 

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Where's the beef?

Recently, Pierini Fitness read an article with a clever clickbait title Eating meat has ‘dire’ consequences for the planet, says report.  It said that a new report, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, offers a solution to feed a rising global human population expected to be 10 billion people by 2050.  Apparently, the way we’ve been eating can’t be sustained in the future with 10 billion hungry people.

This report, compiled by a group of 30 scientists from around the world who study nutrition or food policy, was three years in the making and its authors deliberated with the intent of creating recommendations that could be adopted by governments to meet the challenge of feeding a growing world population.  The bottom-line recommendation is to follow a largely plant-based diet, with small, occasional allowances for meat, dairy, and sugar.

The article reported how this report weighed different side-effects of food production, such as greenhouse gases, water and crop use, nitrogen or phosphorous from fertilizers, and the potential for biodiversity to take a hit should a region be converted into farmland. By adopting the recommended plant-based diet, the report's authors say climate change-inducing gases could be reduced and enough land could be reserved to feed the world's growing population.

This isn’t the first-time news like this has been reported.  Upon reading this, Pierini Fitness was curious who these researchers were and who funded this research study.  You know the saying, follow the money.  It provides clues so that after we’ve taken everything into account, we can say, borrowing what the late and great Paul Harvey would say, “And now you know the rest of the story.”

According an January 20, 2019 article published at https://www.beefmagazine.com, obviously representing ranchers and others delivering us middle-aged men our beef, this research study was funded by “vegan billionaires” and “screams of centralized control of our dietary choices with a globalized system that mandates what we can and cannot eat. What’s worse, these recommendations are elitist and ideological, lacking in science and common sense.”

Elsewhere, one obesity researcher recently carried out an analysis into the effects of eating this new suggested plant-based diet and found it’s deficient in several important nutrients.  For example, comparing it with the current authoritative US diet recommendations, this recommended plant-based diet would only provide 5 percent of vitamin D recommended, 17% of vitamin A (retinol) and just 55% of the calcium recommendations.

What’s the Pierini Fitness recommendation to all middle-aged men?  Do your own research and make your own conclusions but when hungry you may very well ask as Pierini Fitness does, “Where’s the beef?”

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Get our Fountain of Youth back

Content here at Pierini Fitness – all original and written by its chief executive blogger also named Pierini Fitness – generally follows the genre of “middle-aged man reflections about living and dying, gracefully-aging and trying my best to live a good and honest life.” 

Those of you who have read Pierini Fitness over its 10 years in existence, know there’s also good middle-aged man diet, fitness and health stuff here too.  Occasionally, I share a snapshot from my training journals and that’s what I’m doing today.

Today I’m sharing part of my Saturday workout from a couple days ago. It was a workout of alternating pull-ups and chin-ups done with a “greasing the groove” cadence.

What’s greasing the groove?  It’s an approach to doing an exercise frequently where every set is performed without going to muscular fatigue.  Do a Google search and read up on it if you’re unfamiliar with this training method.

About a dozen years ago when I was closer to being in my prime, I was a pull-up “beast” and regularly completed some amazing high-volume workouts.  I also did heavy weighted single pull-ups and chin-ups.  I recall doing a pull-up with 88 lbs. strapped around my waist, and a chin-up with 100-lbs. added.  I built a killer back from doing this “simple” exercise.

Pierini Fitness circa 2007 at about age 52

Here’s the detail from my Saturday workout:

# of rounds and reps	Reps done	Start new round every
10 rounds of 3 reps	30	60 seconds
10 rounds of 2 reps	20	30 seconds
20 rounds of 2 reps	40	Flexible based on feel
3-2-2-2-1	10	Finish as quickly as possible
Total reps completed	100

My plan was also to perform this workout as a superset with bar dips, but I only did bar dips for the first 10 rounds as my right tricep muscle had a funny feel to it and I didn’t want to injure it.  I was able to complete 35 bar dips in these 10 rounds.  Pull-ups and bar dips make a nice couple for a superset workout, so I’ll try again soon. 

If you want to restore some lost pull-up performance like me, let’s do a once-a-week volume workout of pull-ups and chin-ups greasing the groove style.  While it won’t be our primary purpose, who knows, we may get our Fountain of Youth back.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum