Founded on August 28, 2008, Pierini Fitness is a middle-aged man's reflections about living and dying, gracefully aging, and trying my best to live a good and honest life. There's good middle-aged man diet, fitness and health stuff here too. Enjoy your visit here and savor the knowledge and wisdom. Tell a middle-aged man or woman friend to stop by for a visit. Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum.
How time flies when we're having fun, or not having fun. It's a little later now and since my last reflection here at Pierini Fitness, Father Time has given me another present, a birthday that has come and gone. Pierini Fitness is now 68-years young and is very grateful that thus far, good fitness, health and wellness continues to be his blessing.
I must admit that I get a school letter grade of F for my effort, or lack of it, adding new and interesting content here the last year. It's probably my worst effort in the 14 years plus that Pierini Fitness, the blog, has been in existence. I hope to do better this year than I did last year.
Until I step up to the plate, take a viewing of my 68th birthday 100 burpees in the park effort from a few days ago.
As an older fellow still on the
fitness training saddle, chasing fitness goals need to be age-adjusted for best
results. What might have been a goal in
my 20’s to do 100 burpees in under seven minutes may now be do so in less than
ten minutes. This has been a goal for several
years that for some strange reason, lack of patience and perseverance come to
mind, has alluded me.
Until last week!
I finally completed 100 burpees in under ten minutes - nine minutes forty-seven seconds to be exact.
While my goal has been to do 100 burpees with hands extended overhead jumps for each rep, I had to further tailor downwards my goal sans the jump. Now that I’ve accomplished the sub-ten-minute benchmark, I’ll soon start doing burpees again with this demanding jump and see how long it’ll take me to enter sub-ten-minute land again.
Here's my recent effort:
I received an accolade from a fellow cyberspace fitness brother from a different mother who shared the following brilliant wisdom soundbite:
“Every day we’re the oldest we’ve ever been and the youngest we’ll ever be so every (fitness) personal best is something to be celebrated.”
Thank you Gus GainBros for
your sage wisdom and, yes, I agree, my recent age-adjusted fitness
accomplishment is something to be celebrated.
I'm currently a retired runner and have retired several times. But there was a time when I was a fun runner and would enter a couple fun runs each year. One of my favorites was the Run to Feed the Hungry, a very large (probably over 17,000 runners) Thanksgiving Day fun run in the city where I used to live. I would enter the 10k distance and each year I tried to run a better time. I believe at my best, I completed the 10k distance at about a 7:18/mile pace. I have many pleasant Thanksgiving Day memories running it, along with my son who was an excellent high school track distance runner.
I came out of retirement last in 2019 and ran a couple fun runs and also trained for a goal of running one mile on a high school track in 7:30 or less. I trained hard and finally achieved this goal on the last day of Summer 2019 (age 64) with a time of 7:20. Then, I retired again.
I have plans of coming out of retirement again on New Year's Day 2023. I'll slowly begin training for a 5k fun run in April 2023. I'll train with my little grandsons who will enter the kid division 1/2-mile run. It should be fun.
Regardless of how I do - I don't believe I'll set any personal "world records" - I'll have fun on fun run race day and will always have my forever to cherish Thanksgiving Day fun run memories.
In my bodyweight exercise
training journey, like others, I’ve been seduced into volume training for reps
and sets of an exercise. For pull-ups and bar dips, for example, I’ve had a
fascination with 100-rep workouts. Many of these workouts were timed; how fast
could I complete 100 reps. I’ve always liked the game “Beat the Clock” but,
truth be told, often it was the clock beating me. But I’ve always had fun trying.
Another variation of
training with these two exercises has been adding weight and seeing how heavy
of an added weight I could use to perform a single rep. Or how many reps of,
for example a five-set effort, I could complete with a given weight, with
progress measured by adding weight or trying to complete more reps with a given
weight. Progressive resistance has always been the name of the game in my
fitness training department.
Lately, I’ve been toning
done the volume and doing something different that is currently a joyful change
from my past training efforts. I’m doing a single set workout when doing
pull-ups and bar dips. Yes, a single set for the day, no more and no less. To
make it a beneficial single set, I’ve incorporated pause holds during the reps.
My current variety of this is to hold a three-count at the top and bottom range
of the exercise. Here are two recent videos of me doing this for pull-ups and
bar dips:
Pull-ups with 3-count pauses
Bar dips with 3-count pauses
Add fitness training variety
to your bodyweight training by incorporating pause holds with your reps like
how I’m doing, three up and three down.
Yesterday afternoon, I decided to work on my Navy Seals burpees speed and gave myself a quick test of how many Navy Seals burpees I could complete in one minute; I completed nine.
You get older and realize the fitness stuff you did as a younger man can't be done, or if it can be done, it takes a lot of hard work begging the question is it worth the effort. My great friend and now deceased Mr. Tommy Kono - America's greatest Olympic weightlifter - best explained it when he told me the following:
"When I was a young man, I trained to get better. Then as
I aged, I trained to maintain what I have achieved. Now, as an older man,
I train to survive!"
Is this now me talking to myself?
Not yet is my initial answer but maybe yes.
Regardless, there comes a chapter in one’s middle-aged man fitness
journey when the road traveled is a bit slower.
Like, for example, my workout the other day at the park,
consisting of 100 double-pump burpee pull-ups done at a slower pace. The workout was still hard, but I got it done
at a pace that was age-appropriate for me.
I’ve arrived at a point in my life where my fitness pursuits are
being done at a gentleman’s pace.
I’ve
been doing weighted pull-ups and bar dips lately in my fitness training and am
pleased with the recent progress made reclaiming my strength. I say “reclaiming”
because whatever I’m currently achieving with my training – weight used, reps
completed and time to complete a specified workout - is what I’ve done in the
past. At this point in my gracefully aging fitness training pursuits, there’s
nothing new under the sun and this includes workout performance.
Sometimes
I’ll do the weighted pull-ups or weighted bar dips on different days but
sometimes, I’ll pair them together as a superset. When I need pushing variety, I’ll
substitute the weighted bar dips with double kettlebell overhead press work.
Other
exercises I’m including in my training are double kettlebell rack squats, an
occasional kettlebell complex or chain workout and burpees. I’ve discovered the
challenge of Navy Seals burpees and have been trying to get about two workouts
a week doing 100 repetitions of them. I’ll also do other burpees work because
it (the burpee) has become my primary cardiovascular-respiratory conditioning exercise.
Like other burpees enthusiasts, I “hate” burpees but love the benefits they
provide. And they keep my humble.
Here’s
part of my workout last Monday.I’ve
been off since then because I caught the flu and had to take a training time
out. I’m projecting to be ready to get back with my fitness training tomorrow
or the next day and am sure I’ll notice the time out.
Father
time continues to tick tock forward for everyone, including all the middle-aged
men of the world, and that includes Pierini
Fitness.
Recently,
Father Time added one year to his age which now reads and sounds as age
67.How time flies when we’re having
fun.
I’m
blessed and grateful to thus far be enjoying good fitness, health and wellness.These are things I’ll never take for
granted.I’m smart enough to know how it
could all change – as in end – in a heartbeat as it recently did for an
internet fitness forum acquaintance who passed from lung cancer, and two
cousins who passed from COVID.
So,
what did Pierini Fitness do on his 67th
birthday?
He
had a 100 burpees party at the park but guess what, nobody showed up, so he
celebrated alone.Here’s the action:
He had a great time at his 67th birthday 100 burpees party.
I'm a 68-year young middle-aged man fitness dude.
As founder and chief executive blogger of Pierini Fitness, I'm the ambassador of middle-aged men around the world, advocating their interests and expressing their views of the way life was, the way life is and the way life should be.
I have my own thoughts and opinions about this and that, and they're not dependent upon whether or not you believe them. I express them periodically - and sometimes more - with a Pierini Fitness blogflection. I will personally and timely reply to all your comments and questions.