Call it what you want

Certain buzz words and phrases exist in the fitness world and us cyberspace fitness experts will pontificate what we know or don’t know about them.  Take “functional strength” for example.  What does it mean?  It depends on who you ask.  Simple and not-to-simple answers abound.

For a simple explanation, I found one written by Katie Chasey of RXBound.com.  She identifies herself as a 2-time CrossFit Games Coach for those of us who don’t know who she is.  Ms. Chasey defines functional strength as the strength that gets us through life and daily survival.

Well you can never go wrong with a simple explanation like that but fitness meatheads, like me, with a thirst for complex explanations may want more.

Later in her article, she offers more by adding that “Functional strength is the ability to run your load-joints (shoulders, hips, knees and ankles) through a full range of motion without pain, stiffness, or restriction.  This is also known as load-joint articulation.”

Wow!  I don’t know about you but that’s more than I need.  I never took a human anatomy course in either high school or college and I don’t know a thing about textbook exercise physiology because all that I know has been acquired from my own school of hard knocks.  But that won’t prevent me from giving you my own take on this functional strength term.  

For me, functional strength is strength efficiently applied to get the job done whatever that job may be.  So the functional strength needed by an Olympic weightlifter is different than an average Joe Blow stacking a just-delivered cord of seasoned oak firewood in the woodshed in preparation for an upcoming cold winter wood-burning season.

And the functional strength needed by a super-heavyweight power-lifter attempting to set a new personal record in the dead lift is different than the functional strength needed by a skilled karateka intending on breaking a stack of bricks in a demonstration of his tameshiwari skills. 

A final comparison would be that of the functional strength needed to lift a very heavy object off the ground versus the functional strength of a construction manual laborer who makes, perhaps, a hundred or more trips a day moving a wheelbarrow full of cement.

Just as there are “different strokes for different folks”, so too is the case with functional strength and its efficient application to the life and daily survival tasks at hand.

Visit any internet fitness forum in which its members are engaged in a discussion about functional strength and eventually, more likely than not, you’ll read about how someone once knew someone who was a muscle-head bodybuilder who got a construction job and even though this person could bench press 300 lbs. and squat 400 lbs. he almost dropped from exhaustion unloading a truckload of 100-lb. cement bags.

I’m sure these accounts are true stories and they certainly drive home a point that strength is only functional if it gets the job done.

Further visits to other internet fitness forums will find discussions about strength where a distinction is made between power and strength.  I read several explanations from different people and eventually decided that I best liked this one:  “Strength is what someone is capable of and power is how that strength is utilized.  Seen in this way, you can talk about strength and power in any context.”

Still another explanation I read elsewhere is that power is similar to strength but it adds speed as a dimension so power = strength x speed.

It’s all making sense to me.

A couple points, from me, deserve mention.  The first is how cardiovascular conditioning is needed to make one’s strength lasting and therefore functional.  Take the muscle-head bodybuilder in the above example.  Undoubtedly he had the strength to get the job done if the job lasted ten minutes but not the strength to get a job done that takes all day to complete. 

That’s why this middle-aged man devotes a lot of time to cardiovascular conditioning.  And while I’m an expert at avoiding hard manual labor requiring rigorous effort thanks to my ability to afford paying someone else, I know I could do it if I had to thanks to a good level of cardiovascular conditioning. 

But so long as I can use my brain to get through most of my life and daily survival tasks and can afford it, I’ll hire a functionally strong laborer, when needed, to help me get through life and daily survival tasks requiring physical labor functional strength.  It’s why I have a gardener to keep my landscape groomed, why I hire a roofer when my house needs a new roof, and why I’ll hire a grave digger to dig my grave when my time comes.

My second and final point on this discussion that functional strength is strength efficiently applied is that we need to only use our strength at the generally brief moment required and then with decisiveness.  I’ll borrow the term “kime” from my martial arts training days and use the following explanation I found on a Wikipedia webpage that best aligns with my understanding of it.

Kime is a Japanese word and the noun of the verb “kimeru” which means “to decide”.  In karate, it can mean power and or focus realized by the instantaneous tensing at the correct moment during a technique.  In some cases, this moment is but a nanosecond after which a return to a relaxed state of being is how strength efficiency is realized.  The speed to translate strength to power can only be had from a ready yet relaxed state of being. 

So in some respects, power is what is created when kime is applied to strength that is decisively executed with perfect technique.

Blah, blah, blah – this could go on forever so I better stop while I’m ahead or to be no further behind than I am already.

So what is functional strength?  Call it what you want.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

“To Fatback with Love”

Recently I read an interesting internet article titled “Women, bikinis and Serena Williams.”  It was written by a woman and began with a highlight caption asking the question of what’s causing young women to still feel so bad about their bodies.

The author shared how this summertime beach season is wrecking havoc with another generation of young women who are consumed with dreadful fears of being seen wearing a bikini in public.

For example, a recent survey asked 1,000 millennial women how they view their bodies and whether they were happy with their body appearance.  A staggering 80 percent of respondents revealed how they avoid public activities because they feel self-conscious about their shape.

Blog space here at Pierini Fitness doesn’t allow me ample room to present the Ph.D. dissertation required to adequately discuss the reasons for this.  It’s fair to say that social media websites bombarded with selfie-photos of young and beautiful people allow for far too much mine versus yours body-image comparisons by these troubled damsels in distress.

Mean-spirited comments delivered by anonymous male jerks only make matters worse.  Like, for example, a recent comment from a mean-spirited man trying to be funny who posted a comment on Twitter that tennis great Serena Williams – in a photo where she is dressed in a tight, orange dress – looked like a man.

Well there are two ways these troubled millennial women and all their up-and-down the generation ladder sisters can rest at ease about their fears.

The first way is to dress modestly as women did long ago.  Like this circa 1915 photo of Lillie Boniface and friends at Burlington Beach, Ontario.

The other way is to take some self-love lessons from middle-aged men, many of whom believe their added girth is really just visual evidence of them being big-boned and packed with muscle.  No portly girth will prevent most middle-aged men from getting their well-deserved beach time during this peak to-be-seen-buff season.

In a spin of "To Sir with Love", a 1967 song sung by the Scottish recording artist Lulu, most rotund middle-aged men hitting the beach this month will do so singing along the way "To Fatback with Love".

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

I’m coming to join ya, honey!

There’s something about a heart attack that scares most people to death, and brave and tough-as-nails middle-aged men like me are no exception. 

Comedian Redd Foxx allowed us to see momentary humor in something scary like this when, as Sanford & Son’s Fred Sanford, he would fake a heart attack by putting his hand on his chest while looking upward and talking to his deceased wife, “This is the big one!  You hear that, Elizabeth?  I’m coming to join ya, honey!  

Years later, while still a middle-aged man at age 68 years, Redd Foxx would experience a real "The Big One" that would end his life.  

I can’t lie and must confess there have been times when I didn’t feel right and had a perceived rapid heartbeat that eventually led me to privately pondering if I was getting early warning signals of having the big one like Fred Sanford.  

I’ve talked to other middle-aged men friends asking if they’ve ever had experiences like this and they privately shared they have.  In both their case and mine, after time had passed, all was well and our post-jittery analysis concluded that stress or lack of hydration on a hot day were the likely culprits.

Nonetheless, the thought of having “The Big One” gave them and me a good scare and made us think about our mortality and how we can be here today and gone tomorrow with no advance notice.

Such was the recent case with middle-aged man Roderick George Toombs, better known to you and me as WWF wrestling legend “Rowdy” Roddy Piper who departed planet earth late last week at the too-young age of 61 years due to cardiac arrest – a.k.a. “The Big One” or “heart attack.”

Thanks for the memories Rowdy Roddy Piper and rest in peace.

His passing brought back many pleasant memories for my son and me of father and son bonding while watching WWF wrestling matches on television beginning over 30 years ago.  And in a recent conversation with my son, he jogged my memory of a time we saw Rowdy Roddy Piper in person while attending a WWF show in our hometown.

Less than one year older than me, Rowdy Roddy Piper’s passing is a reality check that while I may joke about how I see this 16-year old kid when looking in a mirror, the truth is I’m at an age where, according to 2013 statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease is the cause of death for almost 25 percent of men between the age of 55 and 64 years.

As middle-aged men, we never know but we can’t live in fear of having “The Big One” – if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen and hopefully it’ll happen in our sleep as was the case with Mr. Piper and not while working as was the case with Mr. Foxx.

Like Fred Sanford, my wife’s name is Elizabeth.  I pray to God that she’ll be blessed with a long and joyful life, longer than mine, so that a day never comes where I find myself with hands on my chest looking upward and telling her, “I’m coming to join ya, honey!”

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

You can call me grandpa

All chief executive bloggers need an occasional time out and this middle-aged man is no exception.  

Spending time in Phoenix visiting my first grandson and celebrating his first birthday was a breath of fresh air as was getting to see for the very first time my second grandson who was born on July 8^th.

Grandpa Pierini Fitness bonding with JJP - grandson #2 born on July 8th

I’m a blessed man with two grandsons under my belt and hopefully more to come in the years ahead.  Oh, by the way, some granddaughters would be nice too.

So not a whole lot of fitness training while I was away but definitely some active rest as grandson number 1 spent 4 days with grandma and grandpa at our hotel that had an awesome swimming pool.  We had a good time in the pool every day.  I’m wondering if little Pierini Fitness IV is a Johnny Weismuller in training given his early-onset proclivity for being in the swimming pool and lung power.

I also spent time getting back up to speed with children nursery rhymes; remember this one? 
   

But I did manage to get one day of fitness training in using the hotel fitness center.  Believe it or not, they actually had a small kettlebell collection so I put together a three exercise complex using a 16 kilogram kettlebell, the heaviest one available, and a treadmill.

I completed 12 rounds of the following: 

#1 = one-hand snatch right side x 10 reps and then left side x 10 reps, and then 

#2 = one-hand swing right side x 10 reps and then left side x 10 reps, and finally 

#3 = walking on treadmill at 1 percent incline and 4.0 miles per hour for 3 minutes. 

After the 12th round, I walked another 3 minutes at the same speed to get a total 60 minute workout.

I have no heart rate monitor stats or a video to share for this workout which was done at a more comfortable pace than some of the recent kettlebell workouts I’ve done.  Every workout doesn’t need to be “pedal to the metal” for fitness benefit.

Pierini Fitness is back in the fitness saddle with big plans for August so check back often for more details and please cheer me on.

And if you’re tired of calling me Pierini Fitness and prefer instead, you can call me grandpa.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Goodness warming and footprints

Pierini Fitness is on a summer sabbatical until August 3, 2015.  Enjoy this blogflection until we return. Stand tall and be an awesome proud middle-aged man.

Well as a man with little science background, you’d think I’d be inclined to place all my trust in scientists for answers about something I know little about.  This is not what I’ve done in my middle-aged man wisdom-gaining journey.

Like scientist proclamations about global warming, running out of water due to drought and carbon footprint stuff.

Take global warming for example.  For every scientist and other interested-party “expert” warning us about this calamity is someone else equally scientific and an interested-party expert telling us it’s all a bunch of, pardon the pun, hot air.  I’ll let you do your own research, just like I have, and draw your own conclusions.  I’m not a scientist or interested-party “expert” but that doesn’t disqualify me from joining the “it’s a bunch of hot air” crowd.

How about running out of water due to drought?  That’s a hot topic in my California part of the world and our government water police will cite and fine you and me if we use more water than they decide we should.

One thing about aging is having the benefit of history to guide your present and this middle-aged man is blessed with some yesteryear drought-related history to guide his current water consumption, even if he has to do his watering in the wee hours of the night.

Twenty or more years ago I lived in a rural area that was in the path of residential development.  I would regularly read the local newspaper about the, then, drought and all the disasters it would eventually cause.  At the time, I lived on acreage and had my own water well so I read this constant dire news with emotional detachment even though, I suppose, my well could have run dry.  But it didn’t.

During this same time, not that long later, was news of an approved major residential development that would result in I can’t remember how many hundreds or maybe thousands of new homes to be constructed.  Where are they going to get water is what I thought to myself before eventually realizing that I had had enough of this drought nonsense like a well gone dry.  Those homes were eventually built and none of us every ran out of water.

So what about this carbon footprint stuff?  I’ve heard this sound bite term many times, can repeat it in environmentally-friendly conversations but, until now, couldn’t define it if my life depended on it.

So thanks to a morning Google internet search about carbon footprint, I learned that it has been historically defined as the total sets of greenhouse gas emissions caused by an organization, event, product or person.  To make a long story short, it’s something that can’t be calculated because of the large amount of data required and the fact that carbon dioxide can be produced by natural occurrences.

So this means the carbon footprint generated at a Sunday NFL football stadium packed with tens of thousands of hot dog eating and beer drinking middle-aged men belching and farting can’t be quantified but merely expressed as a figure of speech.

Your carbon footprint and $3.25 will buy you a large cup of Café Americano at your local Starbuck’s.

So where is all this Pierini Fitness rambling leading you?

Rather than focus on this global warming, running out of water due to drought and carbon footprint stuff designed to create fear and unnecessary worry about how your children and grandchildren may not have a planet earth to call their own like you and I have, why not direct your middle-aged man energies to something within your control?

Like gracefully aging and trying to live a good and honest life.  And from that effort, contribute something wonderful to the world we middle-aged men live in with our own contributions of goodness warming and footprints.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

My squatcentric kettebell complex

I’ll be the first to agree that there’s nothing new under the sun so what I’m about to share has probably already been invented and named by someone else who deserves to have the honor.  

That will not prevent me from presenting it to you here, calling it mine and giving it a Pierini surname.

It’s a single kettlebell complex that uses a pyramid approach designed to blast my thigh wheels.  Here’s a simple explanation of it:

And here's a short video demonstration of it performed by a 60-year young "fitness model".

This was my first time performing this workout and I used a 20 kilogram kettlebell, the only one I own.  My time was 17:56 to complete it as prescribed; not a great time, but good enough for me.   

Erring on the side of caution, I front-loaded my rest time between rounds in a deliberate effort of stave off oxygen debt.  My recovery formula (note that I like exercise structure) was 5 breaths multiplied by the number of total squat reps completed.  So, for example, after the first round consisting of 4 total squat reps, my recovery period was 20 breaths (5 breaths x 4 squat reps completed).  This turned out to be a little more rest than I needed thereby allowing me to complete this new workout for the first time without killing myself.

I suppose when I want to be more of a beastly middle-aged man, I can up the weight, use a pair of kettlebells or decease the recovery time between rounds.  One thing seems seems certain from this experiment and that is completing more than 100 reps in a workout is not something I'm likely to do.  It's so easy to get caught up in rep volume as in the more the better; I've been there and done that and will not do it any more.

For the heart rate (HR) monitor junkies like me, here's what my HR monitor reported for this workout:  time to complete was 17:56, total calories burned were 366 calories, starting HR was 113 bpm (61% of my maximum HR), average HR was 155 bpm (84% of my maximum HR) and peak HR was 171 bpm (92% of my maximum HR).

I’ll add this pyramid complex to my training mix and over time hope to improve my performance by slowly but surely beating my fitness clock.

Give it a try and tell me if you like my squatcentric kettlebell complex.  

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Fight for your life to keep it

A recent study by a group of researchers reported how obese men had less than a one percent chance of dropping to a normal bodyweight.

Here’s an abstract of this research from the internet website of the American Journal of Public Health:

Objectives. We examined the probability of an obese person attaining normal body weight.

Methods. We drew a sample of individuals aged 20 years and older from the United Kingdom’s Clinical Practice Research Datalink from 2004 to 2014. We analyzed data for 76 704 obese men and 99 791 obese women. We excluded participants who received bariatric surgery. We estimated the probability of attaining normal weight or 5% reduction in body weight.

Results. During a maximum of 9 years’ follow-up, 1283 men and 2245 women attained normal body weight. In simple obesity (body mass index = 30.0–34.9 kg/m²), the annual probability of attaining normal weight was 1 in 210 for men and 1 in 124 for women, increasing to 1 in 1290 for men and 1 in 677 for women with morbid obesity (body mass index = 40.0–44.9 kg/m²). The annual probability of achieving a 5% weight reduction was 1 in 8 for men and 1 in 7 for women with morbid obesity.

Conclusions. The probability of attaining normal weight or maintaining weight loss is low. Obesity treatment frameworks grounded in community-based weight management programs may be ineffective. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print July 16, 2015: e1–e6. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2015.302773)

You can read more here: 

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302773

The good news revealed is that about 8 percent of men stand a chance of losing 5 percent of their bodyweight.  For a 200 pound man, that translates to a 10 pound weight loss.

But this research finding is of limited implementation value because the study did identify the methods used to lose this weight.  Did these men use a fad diet, exercise more, a combination of both or something else?  We don’t know from reading this research report.

But what we do know is that the weight-loss success is generally short-lived because almost 4 out of 5 men gained the lost weight back within five years.

So for all middle-aged men out there destined to lose their tub of lard pasted to their hips and their enormous potbelly and gargantuous lap, once you achieve your new sinewy leanness, fight for your life to keep it. 

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Middle-Aged Man’s Day

Imagery of Pierini Fitness announcing Middle-Aged Man's Day

Well in an announcement likely to be met with cheers and praises from government workers looking for another paid holiday, Pierini Fitness is pleased to announce that this ambassador of all middle-aged men around the world will be advocating on their behalf for a new world holiday to be known as Middle-Aged Man’s Day.

Yes you read me right.  After all, we have Mother's Day, Father's Day, Labor Day and Veteran’s Day as holidays in the United States honoring a class of people rather than an individual and that’s what this new proposed holiday would be – honoring the esteemed class of people known as middle-aged men.

Yes sir and yes ma’am; it’s time to honor the middle-aged men of the world for they are the pillars of society and modern-day purveyors of all intrinsic goodness existing in your life thanks to their painstaking efforts to make the world a better place to live. 

So the big question is when should this new holiday be observed?

I’ve thought about it over and over and the one day coming to mind is the first day of autumn in the United States; this year that’s September 23^rd.

September 23, 2015
Middle-Aged Man's Day

Why this date? 

Well middle-age marks the transition period from young to old just like autumn marks the transition period from a pleasant and warm summer to a harsh and cold winter.  For many, it’s a melancholy chapter of life that all men who are blessed to live long enough will eventually experience.

Like expressed in the following autumn-mentioning poem “Wild Swans at Coole” written by Irish Poet William Butler Yeats in 1917 who, at the time, was melancholy, unhappy and reflecting on his advancing age, romantic rejections and his search for a lasting beauty in a changing world where beauty is mortal and temporary.

The trees are in their autumn beauty,

The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
 
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

Join me this September 23rd and each first day of autumn thereafter in giving all middle-aged men of the world the bare minimum to which they are entitled; a day of honor and recognition that I propose be known around the world as Middle-Aged Man’s Day.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

I am Mr. Big Stuff

It only seems natural that the author of a book titled “Every Man Who Looks in a Mirror . . . sees a 16-year old kid” would, from time to time, reflect back on all the pleasant yesteryear memories he has of that coveted age in his life.

Even if that was a whopping 44 years ago!

Well the other day I caught myself doing just that and the memories floating around in my head had a summertime flavor. 

What do I recall about being a 16-year old kid during the summer of July 1971?  Pretty simple stuff is my quick answer.

Pierini Fitness circa 1971.

School was out for summer recess; I had finished my 10th grade sophomore year in high school.  I was enjoying the warm summertime weather and school time-out before starting my 11th grade junior year beginning in early September. 

I had a summer intern job working as a clerk for the Internal Revenue Service making $1.65 an hour (yes really).  Life was great and I was living at the top of my simple and worry-free world.

I recall hot summer starry-nights, and hanging out with my friends playing late-at-night rough and  touch football games in the empty and bright-light parking lot of the neighborhood grocery store after it had closed for the day.

I was the proud owner of my first car, a bright red 1963 Pontiac Grand Prix with a white vinyl top. 

I recall listening to a lot of music on the radio and from the 8-track cartridge player mounted below the dashboard in my car.

Old-timer middle-aged men like me fondly recall these music playing dinosaurs that preceded the audio cassette players following a few years later.

My musical interests at this chapter of my life were more of the rhythm and blues (R&B) vintage.  Doing a little research reminded me that during July 1971, the most popular R&B song was “Mr. Big Stuff” sung by Jean Knight.

Life was great that summer of July 1971; I was a 16-year old kid making many pleasant memories of me going about my little simple and worry-free business.

If you would have asked me back then, “Who do you think you are?” my answer would have quickly been, “I am Mr. Big Stuff.”

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Wednesday workout at the park

A little more blogflection frequency here at Pierini Fitness is going hand in hand with an uptick in my training and two upticks are better than one or none.  

I got another good workout in yesterday after taking two days of rest from my Sunday basement workout.  My wheels are still slightly sore from Sunday’s squat work so I decided to give them more rest.

This time I returned outdoors and visited a different park for a quick circuit workout taking slightly over 20 minutes to complete.

I have no video to share for this workout so allow me, instead, to share the workout details for your middle-aged man viewing pleasure.  Maybe it’ll be a new workout idea for your next training day if you’re looking for something different or new. 

I completed 8 rounds of this combo:

#1 = standard-grip pull-ups x 4 reps for odd-numbered rounds and standard grip chin-ups x 4 reps on even-numbered rounds – all reps were full-range -

PLUS

#2 = single-arm kettlebell overhead press x 8 reps - right side on odd-numbered rounds and left side on even-numbered rounds using a 20 kg kettlebell -

PLUS

#3 = alternating single-arm kettlebell swing x 25 reps - each one-arm swing is one rep – I started with my right arm on odd-numbered rounds and with my left arm on even-numbered rounds -

I started a new round every 3 minutes and my time today to complete all 8 rounds was 23:10.

For the heart rate (HR) statisticians out there, the following is courtesy of my HR monitor with all percentage being those of my maximum HR of 185 beats per minute:

Starting HR = 91 bpm (49%) – Average HR = 154 bpm (83%) – Peak HR = 173 bpm (94%)

Furthermore, according to my HR monitor, I burned 464 calories during this quick workout.

I hope you enjoyed reading the details of my latest summer 2015 Wednesday workout at the park.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum