HIIT,HillFit, Hardware: the exercise 3 H's rule

I suspect that I have made a turning along the three meals-a-day yellow brick road of life.

A turning such that I have quickened my pace.

But I need to add, my turning isn't a shortcut nor  detour, nor a high or low road...

Henceforth, to celebrate,  I shall refer to myself as  'Dorothy' and wear  red shoes when in the company of Munchkins. 

 Becoming Dorothy

Auntie Em: Help us out today and find yourself a place where you won't get into any trouble!

Dorothy: A place where there isn't any trouble. Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto? There must be. It's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It's far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain...

[begins to sing "Over the Rainbow"] 

HIIT

After years of deploying many exercise regimes, experimenting with a range of approaches, I have now settled upon a creative mix that seems to have more impact upon my person than of yore.

The key element is to defer to the principles of High Intensity Interval Training 

HIIT exercise strategy alternating periods of short intense anaerobic exercise with less-intense recovery periods. HIIT is an effective form of cardiovascular exercise. Usual HIIT sessions may vary from 9–20 minutes. These short, intense workouts provide improved athletic capacity and condition, improved glucose metabolism, and improved fat burning.

For me the baseline was/is the Tabata Method

20 seconds of ultra-intense exercise (at an intensity of about 170% of VO2max) followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated continuously for 4 minutes (8 cycles)

That set off bells in my head. Gave me a comprehension of what I was missing (and missing out of in way of pain!).

I doubt that  my Tabata-ing reaches 170% of VO2max but it's the thought that counts.

HillFit

I guess the  h's rule!

HillFit is a little ebook put together of Chris Highcock.

It's a simple set of only four (that's right, only four) exercises packaged in a thoughtful essay on exercise.

HillFitting anchored me and more so than related literature gave me a comprehension of the why and the how. I mean my routine was no longer routine. It had meaning. 

HillFit also bought me back to the importance of technique: it is not about repetition or 'grunt'. Easy does it, slow as you go. 

It's Tai Chi without Mr Yin and Ms Yang. High Intensity Interval-ing for the sake of an exercise Zen.

HillFit and related inputs also changed my attitude toward frequency and duration.

This was a Wow! moment.

Instead of forcing myself to keep to an unrelenting routine of obligations I simply  'exercised' every second day. 

And these every-second-day sessions are no longer than 5-10 minutes.

Hardware

Another 'h': hardware. 

I've been a long term kettlebell user. And I love my kickbiking. I also box and own gloves and a heavy bag. In the present mix I make use of these resources. I've recovered an old cheap rusty set of dumbbells and put a sandbag in a torn old back pack. I got myself some cheap sandals I can run the tidal flats in...

So I put all this stuff to work.

1. Every Second Day: I keep to a every second day schedule of focused exercise. One day I do HillFit. Two days later I do Kettlebells. And two days after that I do a dumbbell session. We're talking 9-12 minutes each time...with Tabata finishers (either Tabata boxing or squats: all of 4 minutes). If I'm a bit challenged that day -- ie: ill -- I skip a day or only do Tabata boxing if only for the pump up 'high'.
2. Other times: Kickbike + Running.  Elsewhere in my week I take off on the kickbike as has been my long term norm and instead of simply going for a walk when I reach my destination, I run -- I run the tidal flats. Strictly speaking this isn't supposed to be exercise . It's supposed to be 'fun'. At least it will be once my running improves. I don't have a schedule for this, I simply do what I feel like doing, when I feel like doing it.
3. Spontaneity: Running Stairs. Since I live on flat terrain and can only yearn about the elevations in the far off distance, I've taken up the impulse to run up things -- usually stair cases -- when the opportunity presents itself. I'm working on a few stair running routes to tackle when I'm in the vicinity. But every train journey is going to offer me a chance to run stairs at most railway stations. I am also much taken with Jacobs Ladder here in Brisbane town. If I have an ambition -- a goal -- then 'running stairs' or sandhills or mountains is it. 

So far so good. My body is now ordering weight reduction  after plateauing for 12 months. I expect my bood sugar will also roll back a bit. I've done some dietary tweaking which I'll explore in a later post. I feel the best I've felt in a long time -- despite my ready penchant to be relapsing hither and yon. (Can't do much about that unfortunately esp in the current weather conditions: wet and humid). I also do urban soul line dancing but that is fun and more a mental challenge.

---

Tabata Diary: Boxing (plus squats)

Another day, another sweat.

Two days from my last Tabata indulgence  -- that's "Tabata' not 'Chabata' (a delicious  Italian bread made from Durum Wheat ) --  I leaped at the punching bag and pounded it for 6 sets then got bored in the next 10 seconds ... so I squatted up and down with vigor  for the remaining two sets in the session.

I can feel my exertions in my shoulders now -- 8 hours later -- but at the time , aside from the urgent need for air and an enveloping muscle weakness, I was missing the feel of a darn good burn.

Can I go faster and harder or am I proscribed by age? Or am I: just a weakling?

The more I read the literature on the Tabata/HIIT stuff -- gilded by so much promise and fitness hype --  the more confused I am about its logic.

I mean does it/will it deliver as suggested...?

The associated problem is that doing it correctly isn't an easy call as the level of exertion may be beyond me. So while I'm doing HIIT -- in a fashion -- I'm not really doing powered on Tabata. Is that a problem methinks? My  main interest is to just do it -- as best I can -- and see what gives. There may indeed be a threshold that is beyond my powers and aptitude. So long as I'm not gonna do myself damage I think I'll persist because the exercise raises more prospects for me in the light of such tomes as Body by Science -- which I've just read. I've also just read  The Power of 10: The Once-A-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution  which I thought so hyped for just a one idea notion: slow. Maybe the science is all good. I'll see but enroute make my own adaptions.

For my body it's too early to pull up the stats...and make a ruling.  

I nonetheless love this Tabata stuff. 

Love it. Tabata and the focus offered by High Intensity Interval Training.

Going the full max plus is so invigorating. I feel so much more alive after each routine than I do beforehand. I'm in more pain but then, compared to my usual pain-ness, any change is a holiday. In that sense I'm experiencing a new level of body awareness, a greater organic thingness formatted by the fact that I have to go the limit...and ask mu muscles to accompany me.

That I can do this and know that it will only last for a few minutes -- in 20 second grabs -- breeds confidence. 

I will not die. I can do it.

It's the controlled nature that I appreciate. I can be confident that the whole thing is a set routine that supposedly has results -- measurable results.

But if it doesn't and Tabata doesn't deliver on all of its promises -- my problem is that I may like it so much that I'll continue Tabata-ing regardless. 

BOXING: Moving right along, this time hitting the bag Tabata style

Boxing the bag to a Tabata schedule won't improve your form and your arms may drop off...but you get to give your all, at least  170% of  your VO2max.

Lucky you. Lucky me.

Since I want to alternate lifting Kettlebells with boxing I snaffed a few vids to keep me focused.

You can do it ...I'm sure (perhaps) I can. All I need do is keep it up for  4 minutes -- 160 seconds of the hard stuff. That's 8 multiplied by 20 seconds, right?

And then bath in the fact that for the next 36 hours I'm covered with physiological possibilities before I need to consider topping up in the way of pain and exertion.

I shell/You shell: Getting my body back

Since  I've been under the weather these last -- so many that I cannot recall them -- weeks I have not been able to sustain an exercise regime. 

With a dicky knee I haven't been able to kickbike because I cannot stand on one leg.

The knee also obstructed -- through a ready dash of intense pain -- my kettlebell swing; and the generic pain and stiffness (not to mention the pain in the knee I rocked on) postponed boxing the bag.

Knees will be required to move any time the body above moves. This I have learnt. Sneeze and the knee will move. Turn the head...and the escorting  shoulder ...then the knee will follow. There's no aloneness in the body. No show without Punch. 

But today I completed my first 10 Shell  Workout in yonks.

Hallelujah! He I is risen!

My previous best during this epoch of pain without gain had been 3 shells so I must be on the mend. 

Oh what a whiz it is to notch up those shells! If the  Little Red Engine had to remind itself that "I know I can..." I get to tell myself, "I shell!" Big difference. It becomes personal misspelt law: Thou shell...

Checking my records my last 10 Sheller was six weeks  ago.

So I'm getting my body back...

This may not be 'bouncing back' style but crawling back will do. 

My last sailing attempt on the paddleski was a month ago and the adjustments I have since made to the rig have not been tested. Since my last outing was abortive I need the trials to catch up. 

Oh the frustration of watching the wind come up and knowing that the water waits for me only a short walk away.... if I could but bend my knee enough to sail about.

I shell/you shell: the Magic Shell Workout

My 10 Shells

I can see the marketing options already on late night television: The 10 Shell Workout  -- up against the Ab-Circle Pro and Zumba.

And all I would have to do is send the insomniac customer 10 shells. That's all: send them ten magic shells. (As magical as any late night six pack abber dabber do or weight loss device.)

These aren't big shells, or special ones. They're just beach pick ups that  in one row will number to ten.

That's it. That's my new workout: moving those shells into one neat row.

Customer endorsement  goes in here...

But before you are allowed to move a shell  you have to do 1 minute of intense exercise.

That's the rub.

Since I'm slowly recovering from my crippling knee injury I am slowly getting back into the kettlebell lifting and boxing.

Very slowly apparently.(Or so my body tells me.)

So I alternate: one minute on the kettlebells; followed by one minute with the gloves  punching the bag. Then back on the bells...

With little respites -- time taken to line up the shells -- in between.

Of course I could move up the scale and, in time, tackle the 15 Shell or even the 30 Shell workout. But then I'd need to get more shells....and around here, shells  there are aplenty. I could also rule that I need to work longer before I earn the right to move each shell.

If I want longer respites all I need do is line up my shells father away from where I pick up the gloves or bells.

Brilliant.

I shell means I will.

Shell Values:

1. Kettlebell lift
2. Left Right box
3. Kettlebell swing
4. Upper Cuts
5. Kettle clean and jerk right
6. Left Right Left
7. Kettle clean and jerk left
8. Right Left Right
9. Kettlebell Bench Press
10. Left Right box

Exercise and the brutal irony of my painful existence

While I may be very physically active  I am in fact crippled by stiffness and pain so that much more often  than I'd prefer I'm popping  analgesia into my mouth.

Since I have gone off one of the primary medications for  treating the neurological pain  of Fibromyalgia  -- amitriptyline hydrochloride -- I am at the receiving  end of much more daily soreness.

Ironically the best response to this is to do a lot of exercise..and compared to my peers I do indeed do a lot of exercise. Exercise is its own analgesia and combats muscle stiffness. 

It's no pain/no pain/no pain/no gain...

Over the past few years I have anchored my exertions with a personal trainer and developed a penchant to box and lift kettlebells . 

Love them bells....

But since I have moved residence I haven't had gym access and have relied on my  other routine stalwarts -- kickbiking and walking --which I do every day.  The break had caused me to slack off lifting the bells and boxing.

However, my very good doctor -- Dr Julian -- insisted I attend an exercise physiologist. She was most   adamant about the  visit.

I complied and the guy reviewed my engagement with exercise and wrote me up a "Kettle Bell Circuit" which exploited my experience and preferences. Despite my exertions over the years, with age especially, I know that I am weak and stiff in certain areas of my challenged bod  especially the knees and hips.  The rigors of illness have ensured that because of this my stride is shortening and my ambulation slowing.

I'm like a brittle,  ageing crab, closing in on itself.

The circuit addresses some of these weaknesses. It can be completed in around 20 minutes. It requires a punching bag, kettlebells and boxing gloves.

It makes me work hard. There is no comfort zone.

Kettle Bell Circuit 

(Reps: 1x10-12)

1. Clean and Jerk
2. Straight jabs (30 seconds)
3. Deadlift
4. Left. Right. Left Hook. (30 seconds)
5. Front swing.
6. Right . Left. Right Hook. (30 seconds)
7. One arm row.
8. Quick jabs (30 seconds)
9. One arm bench press.
10. Quick upper cuts. (30 seconds)
11. Walking lunges.
12. Upper chest stretch
13. Lats Stretch
14. Calf stretch.

Kettle Bells

Basic kettlebell exercises to know.


Kettlebells in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
www.kdtathletics.com

Boxing: the punching bag how to

Focus mitts: video sampler

Seen around Northside Boxing

Boxing Workouts with Dean

JojoTipace

Made with Slideshow Embed Tool

Watch slideshow in full screen format

Focus mits for beginners.

I love focus mit workouts. This is a great introduction to using them.Ignore the poor video quality.

Day out at Northside boxing with Dean Mikelj

Dean Mikelj has been doing Amateur Boxing for 5 years and last year he won the National Novice Champs in his middleweight division (75kg).

Dean completed his cerfificates 3 and 4 in Personal Training at TAFE in Cairns in 2005, then worked full time as a Persoanl Training for a major gym in Brisbane in 2006.

Dean has been training with NSB for about a year and joined its staff at the beginning of this year, 2007. He specializes in Boxing Personal Training for the beginner through to the Amateur fighter.

My regime is a' kicking in

At the mo I can boast that I am coasting along nicely with a series of applications that are all part of my Kickbiking journey. The kickbike --and my journey with same -- is a metaphor for the whole package. It's a marker of what's cooking in way of my physiological makeover.

Biking

I do of course kick -- I own a neighbour-made dogscooter and I've been kicking it along for a few years. I'm also only a few weeks away from obtaining a Kickbike (as can be seen to the left above --that colour too) which will take me up another major notch as the Kickbike is a lot easier to kick along than a dogscooter.

But I try to get out and about on my dosgscooter every day if I can manage it. The problem is that it offers journeys that are not as long nor as easy to execute as what the Kickbike promises. So if I shop I do it with the dogscooter -- but I'm not scootering it for the sake of a relaxing ride.

But as a shopping tool -- the dogscooter is grand. Its' my mule.

Boxing

The other core element is the boxing/box exercising. Typically I'm engaged so much that I doing background research on the sport, which is also called Fitness Boxing. I used to do Tai chi -- I even helped teach the form -- and somewhere within me is a memory of the complete form...but I think 'fitness boxing' is much better as a exercise medium because it pushes the physiological envelope and can selectively work on or rehabilitate focused regions of the musculo-skeletal and cardio-vascular systems.

It is also eclectic, flexible and pragmatic enough to be relevant to a whole spectrum of other engaged activities or sports -- from kickbiking to sitting at a computer work station.

What strikes me as very radical is the way that boxing fitness is harnessed. Its strict time quotients and surges of demand engineer a very intense and holistic work out. It may niggle you a bit in regard to the pain barrier but like all boot camps you soon get to graduate.

Eating

My sentence has been that as I age with my illness to accompany me, worsening ill health has progressed in tandem with weight gain. While I've always done daily exercise and kept to a reasonably good diet without much in the way of over eating -- genotype(my father was a diabetic) and the so often sentence of immobility has conspired against me and I'm pre-diabetic.

I would tear my hair out because despite my lifestyle I was being encased in a layer of blubber that in turn only served to further limit my mobility.

Over the past five years as my health got worse and especially over the last two -- it appears I have been sentenced to not only suffer big time but also to be further sentenced to increasing handicap and probably of a shortened time on earth.

I've hardly ever been an 'ideal weight' in regard to those codifying markers such as the BMI. Even when I was running close to 50 kms per week every week I never got below 75kgm and later I touched that weight only after spending a year on the Pritikin diet soon after I fell ill.

So my illness in serving to restrict my activity -- despite my exercise activities -- has also sponsored weight gain.

Since I've been a bit of a cynic when it came to weight reduction diets as they do indeed make you fat my life,nutritionally, has changed radically since I embraced the principles and logic of the GI Index.

And finally, albeit slowly, I'm beginning to lose it--despite the fact that in following the exercises I do, I am replacing fat with muscle -- which is heavier than fat.

So it is slow.

But the GI "diet" is a way of seeing food. It's a qualitatively very different approach to the nutrients you put in your mouth. And it's all backed up by scientific research and not crude caloric quotients.

The GI Diet is not only a way to lose weight but also a means to protect yourself from the toll or threat of Diabetes Type II because it has a kick arse approach to carbohydrate metabolism.

It is, as the rhetoric says: a GI Revolution.

10,000 Steps

Pulling all this together is the 10,000 steps program. This is a walking program that you run for yourself with a pedometer and daily use of the very interactive web pages. It is a program sponsored and promoted by the Brisbane City Council here -- especially through items -- like pedometers and videos-- you can borrow from the BCC library system.

Thats' how I got started by you don't need that entrez point if you live elsewhere.

But the good thing about 10,00 Steps is that it offers you the leeway to trade off walking effort -- in way of number of steps -- with intensity of activity. So I can enter my boxing workouts and my kickbiking journeys along with my walking as elements contributing to my present average of over 12,000 steps per day.

This anchors what I do a lot and generates a feeling for the big picture of all that I do in way of physical activity.

So the 10,00 Steps and the GI diet are a sort of orchestration of the total package I'm pursuing -- and, to my mind, the Kickbike is its symbol of the lot because a 'kick' is a totally holistic physical act.

Later on I want to see what I can do, despite my many handicaps, with such a machine -- the Kickbike --as a measure of my success.

Northside Boxing

Jojo Tipace at the 1998 National Boxing Tittles (NZ)
Fight in Invercargill NZ. Jojo Tipace stopping Dion Mcnabney in the 3rd round...

Northside Boxing
Jojo Tipace's gym in Nundah (as well as with kids -- one of whom is junior Jojo)

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