Notes on exercise and exertion: what seems to matter

After focusing on creating and sustaining a full-on exercise program for myself I've now moved on and stepped aside from any obsession.

My lengthy mid year bout of ill health had sabotaged my program and recovering any routine has been difficult.

So I said to myself, "Chill out. All in good time."

After 4 years at the sweat face I'm relenting.

Of course when you take a break you should feel it physically and I do -- I feel my bod is missing something: not as strong nor as enduring as it  was...and theres' more daily pain.

But each time I get into the old mode -- do a session, so to speak -- I appreciate the changes that I'm re-introducing.

For instance, I'm back dancing almost every day and it's clear that the lack of practice had really impacted on my hip and knee mobility.

So it's great to discover  my core again and become more movement aware.

I'm walking less -- shorter distances -- but the irony is that I recognise  I'm missing  the routine of the peace and interaction with my environment long nighttime walks with the dogs give me.  So it's not the distance I yearn for. Nor the activity. It's the time and place. 

A walk to the shops or one of my shorter routes isn't the same as my old rambling habits along the shoreline. The dogs may get out for a walk but it isn't the same head space thing for the human.

Worst of all, I miss my early morning kickbike scoot...and that was so important to me. I could notch up an on-waking scoot even though I may be incapacitated the rest of the day. 

It was something active when I'm so often inactivated by pain and stiffness.

That leaves the High Intensity Interval Training exercise sessions -- the really demanding stuff. I need those 8 minutes of intense exertion every second day so I can handle my pain and alleviate stiffness. So that is a sort of pressing need I'm trying to re-embrace. After all: No pain/no gain. 

The rest can fit in as I feel primarily because I like all this other stuff: the walking, scooting and dancing. The HIIT -- lifting kettlebells or dumbbells, push and pull ups -- on the other hand is just plain Ouch! 

It slips my mind that I need to do this.... (no prizes for guessing why).

But I can feel its physiological absence especially on my upper body, across my shoulders and back. I'm stiffening up, despite my conscious attempts to work my limbs while swimming. Swimming and water work really doesn't challenge me that much. I need to work hard against gravity.

Since it's New Year resolution time: this year -- gotta get back doing HIIT. 

It may be irksome but the science supporting HIIT confirms it as the best 20-30 minutes  you could invest in yourself each week. So it's worth taking up and finding your own preferred HIIT routine. That's the trick. There are any number of ways to get highly INTENSELY TRAINED. Squatting. Running up stairs. Skipping. Sprinting (on foot or cycle/scooter). Lifting weights. Push up and pulling....

Just go flat out to the max. Then rest. I use 90 seconds/10 seconds cycles.

See also: How 1-Minute Intervals Can Improve Your Health

Rope Jumping -- the exhilaration of bouncing off the earth (Tis a pity about the landing...)

Jumping rope -- skipping -- may seem infantile.  School girls do it. It's a boxer's warmup. But given what else you could do to exert yourself, why jump over twine, time and time again?

Why indeed...

It turns out that jumping rope is extraordinarily good exercise. There are many physiological reasons why you should jump rope but that aside, it's a very practical pastime -- as Dr Jump points out:

It's inexpensive...You don't need a fancy or special facility....It can develop nearly every area of fitness including: aerobic conditioning, muscular endurance, agility, quickness, timing, and rhythm to name a few....There's tremendous variety  in jump rope, especially in regards to the number of skills. ...It goes well with music....If you master a few skills in jump rope, people will think that you are one of the kings of fitness.  I know, this is an appeal to vanity - but what the heck.

The one drawback is that it is a skilled activity demanding rhythm and coordination as well as a certain threshold of already existing fitness before you can sustain the skipping required.

I was regularly jumping rope 5 years ago and loved it primarily because it was a skill challenge.Unfortunately I suspected I caused myself an injury from jumping and did not persevere.

The problem is, of course, that you have to raise your whole body weight off the ground by springing upward, then drop that weight hard upon the ground as you descend -- and do that so many times per minute.  It's all about gravity and gravity is a brutal  master.

But the exhilaration of   bouncing off the earth always excited me. The challenge -- skill + exertion --seemed worth it. 'Tis a pity about the landing...

Since I'm overweight, skipping also meant that I had to propel a heavy carcass skyward. When you consider how much effort it takes to lift a 10, 15, 20, or 30... kgm weight, the sort of exertion required to lift your whole self off the ground is something of a conceptual challenge. 

Nonetheless, I came back to this consideration as I contemplated the ideas explored in Sitting Kills - Moving Heals by NASA scientist, Joan Vernikos.

In the book, Vernikos argues that gravity rules our lives and a sedentary existence is essentially  an habituation to ceding to gravity and not asserting ourselves against it.

So being the kind of guy I am I've spent my empirical hobby time exploring ways I can push back against gravity on an everyday basis.

This is where skipping popped back into my consciousness. So I started to jump rope again.

Warning:I'm 64 years old and people my age do not jump rope. Rope jumping is, even in the gym junkie milieu, an exercise for the young....or for kids. A person jumping rope seems the epitome of 'fitness'  and not some one my age nor handicapped by my physical ailments.

But hey:I can't help myself.

I'm a terrible rope jumper. My skill level is low and I'm still at the stop-and-start stage that may last forever.

But I know my onions and I've quickly learned a few key lessons.

1. Surface matters. I skip on grass grown on sand in bare feet. You got that? Best landing I've ever had. I'm rooted to the earth but can spring off with a great sense of the power push from the soles of my feet all the way up my legs. I live near the sea, in cooee of  Australia's great sand islands,  so I'm lucky:

Sand is soft and conforms to your landing, reducing impact force. Second, it requires a considerable amount of force to push off from, but compacts upon landing, allowing you to jump at a fast pace. Third, its unstable nature incorporates muscles in the shins and feet. Lastly, it is soft and will not inflict injury upon landing or falling, making it an ideal surface for jumping rope.  (ref)

2. Rope matters. Go to any gym or sports shop and you'll usually be offered variations on a  speed rope. These are narrow gauged and tend to be stiff plastic or leather. Handles will vary but the key function of  such ropes is the speed they cut though the air. This is all very fine except when you miss a jump and the rope hits your legs. Ouch! it really hurts.

I prefer a thick gauge rope that travels through the air slower than the thin types and is made from a softer material.I'm not jumping to become an athlete. I just want to jump x number if times per minute and do it with rhythm. Thicker ropes are also heavier so that once you have the rope airborne you have more weight above your head and more drag as you bring it down. So unlike speed ropes you have a mental marker as to where the rope is relative to your next jump.

3. Music matters. I use music for all my High Intensity Interval Training sessions so I  jump to the same schedule - 90 seconds intervals followed by 10 second rests marked off by music. For HIIT I usually use gamelan music but I'm thinking that I may need to up the tempo. Listening to music is much better than watching  a clock.

4. Rope Jumping is satisfying even thrilling. I won't lie to you. Skipping is physically demanding especially as you learn technique. With greater skill, your body will work less. This is the Catch 22 of skipping. It may be hard yakker at first but it will get easier. And when it gets easier completing a session  will give you a great sense of achievement. And with each session I (usually) improve on the one before. There's sure to be a lot of feedback en route.  With each session I'm fostering more spring in my step.

5. Skipping beats stair climbing. For me it's always exhausting to jump rope and the exertion required is akin to climbing stairs. Since I live in flat country I don't have hills or a local built environment  that I can climb. The satisfaction you get from reaching the top of a staircase is similar to the sensation on offer the end of a skip. While you may run out of stair case steps,  there are always more skips to be had if you are up to the challenge,..

Turkish Get Up and Go

This  isn't a post about my favorite cuisine. There's no mention of yogurt.

I am instead following up my last post on gravity -- 'Exercise' -- is it worth the effort? Discovering Anti-Exercising and G-forces.

I'm following up because I think I overdid the gravity thing the last few days and are now suffering as a consequence.I'm sore, fatigued, and stiff  -- and I suspect that I did too much  'core' play around.

'Core' is of course an exercise buzzword.  Core Exercise usually means focusing on your trunk, especially the abdominals and pelvis.

Dantien

But anyone with any background in martial arts -- and I have a  'hard' form Tai Chi Chuan past -- will tell you that 'core' is all about Dantien which is located as low as you can lower it. It's a centre-of-gravity thing.  It's a balance point located in the body as it moves about.

Freed of any mystical content, as an abstraction Dantien is a useful concept. But there is more to it than 'core' because it's also about keeping yourself upright and free moving. Pilates deploys 'core' like that.

So it's also about movement awareness rather than just shaping the abs or buns.

Over the last few days I've worked at lowering my Dantien (so to speak) by

• standing up from a seated position more often (on average at least 3-4 times per hour)
• standing up from a seated position without using my arms for support
• standing up from a lying position without using my arms for support
• altering my exercise routine (more on that later)

...and it hurts. Despite what I may get up to I'm very Dantien weak. I remember when I was Dantien strong because my Tai Chi was good.

But I'm not gonna go back and do Tai Chi again.

Getting Down

My gravitational  shift downwards -- physiologically no more than a conscious and very slight pivot of the pelvis and a bend of the knees -- has shocked my system, constrained and contained as it is by Fibromyalgia. This tells me that I'm carrying around a lot of stressors just to keep myself upright in the manner to which I have been accustomed.

Standing up against gravity takes more work than you realise. The question is: is there a better way to do it than relying on  habit?

This leads into my exercise tweaks.

First tweak: skipping. I like skipping/rope jumping. It gives you a sense of accomplishment. It's cheap and exhausting, thus ticking a lot of boxes. But I haven't skipped seriously for 3 years. So I'm adding 90 seconds of skipping to my HIIT workouts. Ninety seconds. That's all. Just me bouncing up and down, bobbing my head toward the sky, taking on gravity by lifting up my full body weight a wee bit off the ground. (You want an excuse to lose weight? Skip. There's not a better definitive answer about how much you weigh day in day out than the challenge of lifting your own self  up.)

Second tweak: the Turkish Get Up. The videos below explain the Turkish Get Up better than I could in words. It's a kettlebell exercise where you lift yourself and the bell from a starting position flat on the ground. It is hard to master and there is significant skilling up required in order to do it right because the fulcrum of the weight keeps  shifting on a vertical plane (although it also has a G-force mind of its own and will want to drift horizontally).

Since I started doing conscious High Intensity Interval Training I shaved back my kettlebell routines and only lifted vertically rather than swing the weighs away from  my body. I did that because I lift slowly and I don't employ momentum to lift.

The advantages of the Turkish Get Up are that it can still be done slowly, requires no momentum to complete and the lift is vertical. Of course starting so low and reaching up to the sky is a real gravity challenge...especially for all that core/Dantien.

So I've added the Turkish Get Up to my kettlebell sessions. My form is terrible (but you have to start somewhere)...

When you consider the Turkish Get Up and study it from the POV of gravity and posture and balance it is a superb exercise challenge. Like the Tai Chi form itself, your body can learn a lot of good lessons from 'getting up' under the hefty weight of a kettlebell. The quest to do it right is almost a Zen thing, is it not?  A sort of Zen and the art of the Turkish Get-Up. 

Grunt won't get you very far at all. Technique is important, indeed crucial. But an extreme focus and sense of space and movement -- just you and da bell -- without the distraction of time -- is essential.

I'm looking forward to a bit more Turkish get up and go.

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'Exercise' -- is it worth the effort? Discovering Anti-Exercising and G-forces

I do a lot of --what you may call -- 'exercise'.

I began to consciously do it because my life was stymied by arthritis, and for years I have been relentless in pursuit of an 'exercise program' that ticks all the right boxes...for me.

The irony is that after all this time and effort I now hardly 'exercise' at all.

Let's  consider that, shall we?

Hardly at all?

Well, I do 8 minutes of 'exercise' every second day -- leastways when I remember or feel up to it (given my often delicate condition).

That's it. I do  High Intensity Interval Training , inspired and based on Chris Highcock's HillFit.

Chris has sent me a copy of the new edition of his book and I'll get around to reviewing it soon enough , but for now I gotta say that the principles of Hillfittery have changed my life.

Interval training. Short. Sharp. Intense. Injury free. The research studies are in (check out the references in HillFit). You want to 'exercise' then  HIIT is where it's at. No gym fees. No special equipment. No long hours building up a sweat. HIIT is all you need to log up any number of great consequences.

Nothing I have ever done has had as much direct beneficial consequences as a conscious investment in HIIT.

8 minutes. Eight short minutes. That's roughly 24 minutes per week.

Not Exercising:Exercise isn't what you think it is.

Of course I do other stuff -- stuff  you'd call exercise. I kickbike/scoot hither and yon. I walk the dogs. I dance. I paddle a canoe. When I started doing these things I called them 'exercise' too but I don't any more because I do them  for the enjoyment of doing them.

I don't have to. But I want to.

What I have done was engineer my life so that these pursuits became an essential part of my activities of daily living. I found pleasures in the exertion. Excuses to do them other than the supposed need to exercise.

Of course it is 'healthier' for me to do this stuff than not to, but there isn't a direct physiological relationship in the way that 'exercise' supposedly registers on the body. Indeed, exercising like this isn't all what it is cracked up to be.

That's the truth. You could spend hours walking or dancing or whatever but not notch up the same impacts as a succession of HIIT sessions. If you don't believe me, follow a HIIT program such as Hillfit.

Nonetheless, kickbiking  has remade my glutes -- I'm taught and terrific -- and dancing has taught me to master my pelvis and given me leg dexterity and greater balance. I can scoot long distances and probably dance for hours... (Come to think of it, that's indeed what I do do each week!) But then I love doing this stuff. For me it aint exercise.

So that's my first point. Exercise isn't what you think it is. Exercise is very conscious. Planned...probably very painful...and always exhausting. Fortunately it can be of a short duration.

Anti-Exercising = Anti-Gravity

This brings me to the conundrum that I have been dealing with of late. I've been asking myself:If I have been investing all this effort into 'exercising' why do I register so few health benefits?

Surely that's why you do it, right? You want to live forever or look like Adonis. (Or in my case, live with less pain and stiffness and be more mobile day to day).

This is why folk sign up to the gym or buy a pair of running shoes.

But this approach obscures what is a fatal flaw. If you are 'exercising' for 25 minutes per week or every second day or an hour a day or whatever...what are you doing the rest of your time?

This came home to me sharply during this last Summer when the heat and humidity really bore down on my body and I was less active and often bed ridden. Very quickly I put on weight and loss some muscle mass. I was still doing stuff -- but I was doing less because I was so unwell. But just because I was doing -- a little -- less  my body paid a hefty price.

Why? Hadn't I paid my dues? Didn't I have  reserves in my somatic bank to draw on? Why is life so unfair?

So in addressing this conundrum I started to explore time management and activity theories like Pomodoro Technique and N.E.A.T.--Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. 

While both concepts are useful and make a lot of sense I thought they required a level of obsessiveness I did not possess. Indeed, both approaches asked you to micro manage your life.

I read the books. Did the Googling. Guinea pigged myself. And came away thinking, "I can't do this. I can adapt some of it but the whole shebang is far too demanding."

I  couldn't get a handle on a DIY.

Then I read Sitting Kills - Moving Heals by NASA scientist, Joan Vernikos.

..and it clicked! Maybe not the best written book on planet earth but the relentless message is challenging. Day to day my challenge -- our challenge -- is to stand up to gravity.

When I stand; when I lift weights or jump; when I get out of bed in the morning or dance or bounce up and down on a scooter -- I'm pushing hard against gravity.

...but when I sit down at the computer or vege out or sleep I'm pushing a lot less.

Think about it: G forces rule our lives. And it's not so much about being upright or seated or lying down but changing  the location of your body (and its organs, muscles, bones and Proprioceptors) relative to the rest of the universe. It's about standing up and sitting or lying down. It's about jumping or skipping; climbing or descending stairs. It's about lifting not only objects and weights but your own body upwards away from the earth at your feet. 

This may sound almost ethereal but space does not lie. We are moulded by our relationship to gravity. It impacts on our muscles and bones; on our blood pressure and metabolism. It rules our lives.

So when you take that view -- that long long view from the POV of the solar system -- all our activities and all our exercising must relate to the force of gravity. When we 'exercise' we challenge those G forces more than when we don't. 

Think about it. 

If that's the domineering principle -- then what you do or don't do day in/day out is sure to impact on what sort of body you'll age with. What Vernikos argues is that if you consciously and frequently assert yourself against gravity you are going to be conditioning your body, training it up to  work better and undermine any penchant  it has -- you have -- to remain in a state of rest. You also slow down its deterioration.

G  Challenge I: lay down on the floor and get up without using your hands
G Challenge II: (to make you feel better) get out of  chair without using your hands.

So what does that mean day to day? What's the take-away message?

Well, it is not about more exercise is it? Exercise is only a few  focused moments of giving gravity the finger. 

I'm just beginning to think this through but along with elements I already have in place this is my working scenario:

• Get up frequently when seated. Stand up at least 3o times per day.
• Sit on an exercise ball . This I already do but the G advantage is that I shift my position in space as I wiggle  my tail.
• Climb and descend stairs rather than not.
• Be consciously more active and make things harder to do. Don't get too comfortable.
• Keep a  sedentary account. If I lay down for any amount of time I need to make up for  the indulgence by being consciously more active the rest of the day. 
• Try not to sit. (If you do, stand up frequently.) Fidget instead. 

I'm thinking of getting a balance disc and hope to explore ways I can integrate that into my HIIT sessions plus any other uses I can imagine.Maybe I'll start skipping again or go back on a mini trampoline...? I could make either one of my HIIT sessions perhaps?

A Balance Disc and its uses.

What I’ve learned about working out is that you don’t have to keep using heavier and heavier weights, you just have to find a way to make an exercise harder to perform, and Balance Disc does just that. Not only you can incorporate in into your workout, but it is perfect if you have a sitting job. Sitting on the balance disc creates active and dynamic sitting. Place the disc directly onto the chair, this provides a less stable sitting surface, which means that the body has to make continuous small movements to correct balance. These movements strengthen the deep core stability muscles which provide postural support to the body. Make sure to maintain a good posture at all times while sitting on the disc.I use it in my workouts, since the disk creates unstable surface you are engaging more muscle groups. Source

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Why bother? The Joys of Exercise

I've had a simply terrible month in what's been a brutal  Summer for me.

I've spent so much of it flat on my back. 

But today...I dragged myself out of bed this morning thinking that it was gonna be another one of those days in which I'll be housebound and more often abed.  

Fortunately, it didn't pan out that way

Since I'm a total weather vane -- a barometric junkie-- after an hour shuffling around the house I began to feel a little nimble. 

I don't look a gift horse in the mouth so I always try to seize the opportunity if it's there. So I altered my agenda to fit the expanding options.

The thing is that I bounced.

And bouncing is a skill you have to work at.

I was able to bounce today because I have such a great customized exercise program and my body is ready to be turned to active mode when it is given the go ahead.

That means I am trained to recover quickly.

This is the great thing about careful exercising -- something that explains the seeming conundrum. Exercise doesn't lessen my illness at all. I can't help the bouts of stiffness, pain and fatigue I am prone to.

Like shit, it happens.

But when flagged 'well' I can quickly seize the moment. 

I value that bounce.Waste not. Want not.

Exercise also reduces my pain levels. It won't prevent pain or stiffness, but my body is less willing to cede its carcass to crippling rheumatic symptoms. So I get traded a certain edge -- a little leeway.

I am allowed resilience. 

Resilience...and awareness. Exercise gives me movement awareness. I'm more attuned to how my body moves and feels. I more readily read all the somatic signals I get from all over: pain, stiffness, ease of movement, tension, fatigue, clumsiness.... It's surprising how easily you misread how your body is -- how routinely  you make assumptions based on a shallow inventory. I do it all the time. And so often I have to begin some exercising to chart the full picture because that will then tell me what I am install for and what agenda I can expect  that day. 

Finally, what exercise does is switch me from victim to animator. It won't do that all the time, of course, but I find that if I attempt  light exercises  while ill - and dancing is especially good in this regard -- I switch on responses in my body  that alleviate the pain, fatigue and stiffness. I consider it a sort of endorphin response but it also may indeed be cognitive in  that activity has its own rewards.

And exercise, afterall, is its own routine. Like those three meals a day, exercise is a regime, a schedule --- something that gets included on  your to-do list.

If you wallow in pain by focusing on its presence you will indeed ensure that the pain will continue. 

So get up, get out of bed -- and have a go...or so I try to tell myself. But hey! It works.

• Excellent summary of the proven benefits of strength training

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Ah! How sweet the after burn: High Intensity Inverval Training

I've been tardy and haven't bought y'all up to speed.

My usual 'routine' -- such as it exists -- was ticking over when I missed a couple of my Interval Training sessions. Mainly because I was bored  and with  a bad health fortnight  hovering over me I didn't  force myself.

I was also suffering from confusion as to what regime I should be following on each second day -- was it the Kettlebell/Dumbells thingey or the HillFit?

Habit had clouded my recall

So I thought, bugger this, I'll retool.

My norm had been to do 5 minutes of HillFit one day and the lifting of da bells for 20 minutes two days later.

There's an obvious glitch in the routine, right? Why 5 and 20? 

So now I do (roughly) 12 minutes each:

• HillFit plus Kettlebells one day ( 4 HillFit plus 3 KB lifts)
• Lifting Dumbbells two days later( 6 Dumbbell lifts).

More balanced. Each session is more evenly challenging and 'intense' as High Intensity Intervals should be.

Still with music in my ear with a cycle of 90 seconds of exercising followed by 10 second rests. Still with exertions as slow as I can make them.  

I don't have to do this but I find with the stuff I do I tick more of the body boxes and I challenge my carcass all over. That's what I want. I want muscle burn from head to toe each time in as many muscle groups I can work over and strain.

That's the point.

HillFit as a standalone was getting too easy as after the four routines I wasn't hurting as much as I wanted to.  The HillFit is very 'core' and I had learnt to appreciate the consequence of straining the limbs more. 

I'll surely tweak this some more to tidy up the routines -- but the fact that I can feel the session's effect on my musculature, 10 hours later  (as I do now) is what I'm after. 

I'm no masochist but the physiology impact of HIIT relative to insulin resistance, pain threshold, metabolism, etc  is all good.

I don't see any reason why I should extend the time I spend doing this  --  30-40 minutes per week -- nor alter the cadence -- 90 seconds on/10 seconds off -- nor change the exercises I do. After doing this for many months now I am still physically  challenged by  the pushing,  pulling, lifting, lunging  and squatting I do and even look forward to it (at least a tad). 

The slowness really forces me to focus on technique  and the ironic challenge is trying to make the moves even slower. Performing a move with the best possible form to it and take seemingly ever so long to complete it (eg: 20 seconds) offers a succession of Zen moments. 

Slowness is key. It's the trick. The slower I go, the harder it is to complete the cycle. 

I tell you it's a great discovery! A wonderful lesson.

I used to do Tai Chi. Even helped teach it. But Tai Chi Chuan can be caught up in its own metaphysics and movement metaphors. It formats balance and body alignment; movement awareness and core centering --  but as an exercise for what I want from my exertions it doesn't come close.

I can get the same results from dancing as I can from Tai Chi with more fun out of the performance.

And with Tai Chi my muscles aren't challenged  like they are with HIIT. Of course if I did Tai Chi with weights...that would be different. But the drawback is that when you lift as slow as I do you can't have the weight out there and all over the place. You need to lift close to the body  on a direct vertical plane otherwise you can't lift slowly.  And when you lift weights slowly it doesn't take long to note that the lift that matters is the one that starts in your legs -- not in your backbone or abdomen.

So I'm deploying the HillFit template as developed by Chris Highcock and adapting its essential elements for the specific reasons I do physical conditioning and strength training .

That said, it is remarkable how far I still have to go as the more I do this stuff the easier it is  to locate my inadequacies. It's easier to become your own personal trainer because your body is always speaking to you when you work it in slow mode. And since you aren't in a rush you get to listen.

A lot can go through your mind in 10 seconds as you lift or pull something against gravity. It ain't the ends. It's the way you get there...

Grunt is obscurantism.

                     

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Blood Sugar Adventures : three years on with diabetes

"Getting" diabetes ( albeit the Number Two kind)  was a terrible blow for me. Not only did I get to take on a range of yucky symptoms with potentially bad endings   but the diagnosis was a big shock to  my psyche.

Since I already had chronic ill  health what I didn't need in life was another layer of malady.

But three  years on, after due attention to tweaking my diet and lifestyle I can confidently say that I've 'dealt' with it.

While I  wish it would go away and never come back -- that's not gonna happen. It's in the fam gene pool, unfortunately, and I did well to starve it off or as long as I did.

I coulda done better if I knew what I now know.

But then, that's life, right?

Hindsight is a brutal bugger. Always right but never around when you need it most.

The good news is that I've just cut my diabetes meds in half. I do that and my blood sugar readings are still at fours and fives. That's sorta 'normal'...remarkably normal.

I've been able to do that because...well that's  the inspiring part:

• Because I tweaked my exercise regime to improve my insulin sensitivity. In that regard I dips my lid to High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) and lifting weights. I do, however, do a lot of exercise.
• Because I embraced a low carbohydrate diet -- and more recently  with greater success -- a Low Carbohydrate High Fat (LCHF) diet. Diabetics have to obsess about what they put in their mouths and in my case I'm eating low on the carb hierarchy:maybe 50-70 grams/day -- usually under 100 grams each day.

To do all this I more or less ignored my doctors. Not that they were telling me wrong but that they are constrained by a certain old school  and very generic point of view. (Diabetic diets is still a hot potato issue).

I still have a problem  with blood pressure which is a diabetic's  dead hand but if I can get that down further I'm sweet. 

Elevated BP is a family curse -- but , of course, as chance would have it, not from the side that passes on the diabetes!

Just on the doctor thing...Before I became a  client at a local indigenous health centre (and I'm not indigenous but they let me attend as a Migloo) local GPs treated my worsening blood sugar picture almost with fatalistic disdain.

"You're pre-diabetic (6-7 mmol/L), Mr Riley. (How about that...) Ok -- piss off."

Among Murris and Torress Strait Islanders, diabetes is a plague so the centre is geared to actively intervene and diagnose. Every visit included blood pressure and blood sugar monitoring. 

I owe so much of my  better health today to the team there...even if I do now customise my treatment regime.

I try to tell people -- if you are on a short list for diabetes (ie: you're over weight, sedentary and/or have a family history of diabetes) do stuff now so that you hold off crossing the nasty blood sugar threshold. If your blood sugar is OK, work to keep it that way. If it's 'pre-diabetic' work even harder.

If it is not being tested (and you are over 50) -- demand that it should be at every opportunity.

You don't want diabetes...at all. It's a bummer all round.

 That you could prevent it -- or at least slow its onset -- has to be a wonderful option.

In my case, a range of symptoms kicked in  and the friggin quacks never thought of seriously monitoring  my blood sugar levels...and when they rose: "Umph!"

That's "general practice" for you in the context of massive increases in the incidence of diabetes across all local populations.

4%  of Australians have diabetes. That's around 898,000 people.
This rate has risen from 1.5% in 1989.

So now I'm diabetes paranoid. People tell me stries about their bood picture with s casual indifference( over 12 mmol/L for one family member) and I think: what the f...! Do they realize how much damage  is happening to their body every time they put food in their mouths? We're talking major health complications and a greatly shortened life span.

Diabetes is  a real nasty. If you are on the short list for it there is one absolute necessity you have to do: Test. Test. Test.

Without pricking your finger and monitoring your own blood picture with blood glucose test strips you'll remain pig ignorant of what's a'happening. Occasional doctors visits won't suffice. What you eat  has to be ruled by the droplets of blood on your finger tips. 

There is no other option. 

Following a diet -- any 'prescribed' diet -- blind to your blood picture needs the feedback that can only be delivered in mmol/L. 

That's the irony: diabetes is the most democratic of diseases. Only you have the power  to treat it.

           

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Exercise: the good and the bad of it...as far as I'm concerned

I now and then wonder about why I do what I do. A good part of that speculation questions  the amount of  time and energy I invest in exercising.  I  ask myself, why bother? Where are the gains?

And it's true the promise of exercise -- so much promoted as a lifestyle essential   -- isn't really there. Our obsessions are seemingly fed by myths.

Will exercise help you lose weight?

No.

Will it improve your general  health and well being?

Yes -- but that's a perhaps 'yes'...so long as you 'exercise' properly.

If I do more exercise am I gonna be healthier?

Definitive answer: No. Volume doesn't decide these matters.

These above observations are the sort of conclusions coming out of more recent research into exercise and its effects on the human body. (See video below for over view of some of these). That 'exercise' is such a huge industry today cynically obscures this underlying physiological reality.

Assuming the above...I'd like to review what I do and assess it according to these criteria.

What I do is too much

Yep. I really don't have to exercise as much as I do do  -- that is, if I was you. That's what I'm telling myself anyway.

At one time during the distant past I ceased to consciously exercise and my health and mobility suffered terribly. I soon enough had to rely on a walking stick to get around. I thought this was just pathology doing its evil work, but the fact was that while I was gaining nothing self evident from 'consciously exercising' I was nonetheless, holding back the grosser impacts my chronic condition, Fibromyalgia, was having on my body.

So that's the heads up for exercise: not that you are gonna feel better, but that you won't feel worse.  That's a consequence which is extremely hard to get your head around.

Exercise -- of any amount -- is gonna be primarily preventative.

Now if I knew way back whenever what I know now I would have definitely always exercised and done much more of it.

"Of it"? Of what? What kind of exercise would I have been doing?

All exercises aren't equal of course and I had to apply myself to my own body's quirks.

So, let's assume , that after a hiatus I started off on a journey of recovery through exercise. Not that I'll get anywhere special but at least I won't be going backwards.

Walking

Walking is my core ever-so-conscious exercise routine. I try to do it daily -- and to help me do it regularly I rely on my pet dogs to force me out the door.

You want to 'exercise' but don't trust your ability to always do it?  Simple answer: get a dog...and walk it.

Dog walking is probably the best long term exercise strategy available to suburbanites and there is nothing like a dog to keep you doing it. When one dies you go get yourself another...then another as you adopt to the  pack life style.

As I began to  ramble further in my doggy routes I addedx trekking poles to my walking rig. These are  hiking sticks about the height of ski poles. As a walking tool they generate upper body activity and increase the aerobic quality of your exertion.

Today I neither walk with a stick nor with trekking poles  but they were a great means to an end. As  my distance increased and my confidence improved I embraced the 10,000 steps walking program and began to seriously notch  up some ks.

That was over 5 years ago....and today I'm still walking the dogs. On average I'm out most days , preferably in the evening and usually I walk those dogs for at least 5 km. No aids of any kind. While I used to listen to audio podcasts on my mp3 player  as I walked -- for maybe 40 plus minutes -- I now partake of the experience device free.

Just my legs and a dog leash.

My walking stick and trekking poles are now family heirlooms resting against the garage wall.

Swimming, well sort of anyway.

Another invention I pursued was to walk in the water. We had a round 3 metre wide pool  filled with water up to my chest and I'd get in and drag myself walking around and around for a couple of  kilometres or so such that I'd create this whirlpool. Lovely in the Summer heat at night. When it got cold   I even had a wet suit so that I could jump in and do the routine during the cooler months.

 Water aerobics like this  was useful  because I could often do it despite the way I may have been feeling as the water offered buoyancy and I had to carry less of my own body weight around.

But really a pool and all that may be kosher for the kids -- and we had sprogs -- it is, nonetheless, a bit ritualistic -- what with the special dis-robing, towelling off and such. It's not much of a challenge given the effort and hardware required.

So aqua-robics like this  is an exercise option I mark down. You can't do it all year. If you use public pools you need to  commute to them before you can get wet. And really, it didn't have much of an impact on my health. I could get a better 'workout' --  which ticked the same boxes -- staying dry by   walking the neighborhood with a pair of  trekking poles.

Scootering

If you walk, sooner or later you may wonder that maybe instead of walking you could begin to run. I had been a keen jogger in my past pre-illness existence and loved it. Since I used to run long distance,  I knew what running required of a human body.

I was much heavier than  my old jogging weight and I knew that running was all about pounding the pavement and ramming gravity down hard on the ankles and knee joints.  Running can also be an injury waiting to happen.

So I thought: no I'm not gonna run. I'd like to but back then I didn't.

Nonetheless, this year I began to run the soft surface of tidal flats where I live. Had a great time, running with the dogs for 5 km at a stretch.

But I stopped running because (a) injury set in despite all my care and (b) it interfered with the time I spent scootering. I was delighted that I could so quickly notch up 5 ks -- at my age and given my condition -- but what was the supposed gain that I couldn't reach more easily and with less threat of injury by another means?

Back then - concerned that my condition was deteriorating -- I thought I may be sentenced to an electric  mobility scooter soon enough, as here I was already dependent on walking with a cane. 

I didn't want to cycle as it was too hard to always push down on the peddles and mounting a bike with a leg over wasn't going to be an option.  

I then had an epiphany: why not push a scooter? 

My first scooter was a home built vehicle cannibalized by my neighbor from two BMX bicycles (pictured left).

Thus began my  scootering passion....I later got a kickbike and then supplemented that with my cute Mibo Folding Scooter.

What can I say? Kickbiking rocks.

Unlike standard peddle powered cycling, scootering is always a physical challenge as there isn't much in way of hardware to assist your travels. Two wheels and the rest is all your own work.

Easy to mount.  Easy to dismount. You can always -- as you will so often -- get off and walk.

And the 'work out' is top to toe. A kickbike doesn't just demand that the legs do all the work. It's all over cadence.

While I  relied on  my scooters to get around, it was when I consciously deployed them as part of my exercise regime that their utility soared. 

I realized that each morning I had a brief window in which my relentless pain and stiffness was yet to make up its mind as to how brutal it was gonna be that day. So opportunistically I'd get on the scooter and push it around the block, exploiting the window. First once, then two times around, then three...while I logged my efforts.

Today I do 14-8 kms on the kickbike on a morning scoot without turning a hair . My base distance is around 7 km and if I can I go further. Scoot out of town. Walk the tidal flats if the tide is out and scoot back in again. 

It is, aside from dog walking, my  core (hopefully daily) routine.

Some days I don't make it because I am indeed so far under the weather that walking itself isn't  an easy option, let alone scootering.

But there, you see: great workout/injury free and a transport plus.

Weight Lifting and HIIT

Walking and scootering is all very fine -- thought I -- but I didn't feel like my body was changing for the better. This is when I started going to a gym, got a personal trainer (weekly sessions) and started boxing.

Great experience it was too. I loved the society of it all and the way I was pushed to the max.

It cost a pretty penny  -- and I shelled out for it for a year or so. 

I'd love to go back to that gym -- Northside Boxing -- but I now live so far away  and am my own personal trainer. 

The gym experience taught me how to lift weights properly and how to box. And it was there that I fell in love with kettlebells.

It's here that some of the recent research begins to really matter.

While exercise won't take your weight off and while aerobic activities are a bit of a physical plus in way of cardio efficiency (and that's all), lifting heavy things is now thought to be much more useful than was  originally believed. Bone density, insulin resistance, muscle glycolysis ... are all greatly improved by following a weight training regimen. If you are diabetic (like me) or pre diabetic (like so many in the population at large, all unaware that they are) weight training is gonna be  one of  your best options so long as it is pursued  within HIIT protocols.

HIIT means High Intensity Interval Training and to get your share of that I think you really do need to do weight work  even if the weight you lift or pull is your own body.

I love the kettlebells but I also now use dumbbells.  The problem with weight training is that it can be  so darn boring and so exhausting. I mean it hurts, really hurts to generate all that required grunt.

But  it's what the gyms won't tell you that really matters: do the weight training less for shorter times for the same or better results. 

Chris Highcock's wonderful manual, HillFit  offers a great summary in its introductory essay about this wonderful logic -- so go read it. 

Chris's perspective is 5 minutes of HIIT exercise 2-3 times per week! 

So that's what I do:  but I alternate every second day (sort of) the HillFit regime lasting about 5 minutes with a kettlebell and dumbbell routine that requires 18 minutes to complete. I do the  exercises slowly --  very very slowly.

Injury free. Challenging. Exhausting. Painful. But over and done with soon enough. 

• Video on HillFit
• Video on my KB/DM routine

I think this every second day HIIT routine I follow is one of the best things I've ever done for my physical self. I'm mastering my stiffness and pain by pumping heaps of adrenalin and other relievers through my protesting body.

I only wish I knew this decades ago. 

Knew what? That you can exercise less for much greater gain so long as you worked hard at it when you do.

So if I was designing an exercise program for whoever this would be my numero uno. 

The KB or DB lifting is customisable; the HillFit is not. But you need to research the physiological rationale otherwise you miss the point of what you'd be doing.

Start with  Body by Science  by Doug McDuff and John Little...

Is that too much?

The reality is, as far as I'm concerned, I am indeed doing too much. The HIIT stuff should be an ample investment if I wanted to do good things for my health.

But I'm not gonna give up the kickbiking...because I love those morning scoots. I'm not gonna give up the dog walking because I love those evening walks.

In fact I've recently added  to this routine by once again hitting the bag boxing. I do this under HIIT protocols via a Tabata schedule which means I box  for less than 5 very painful minutes in staccato 20 second bursts.

While  I love boxing, I'm primarily doing this because I have learnt that intense burn workouts like  Tabata  pump my muscles  with analgesia concoctions and I appreciate all the long term pain relief I can get.  A session on the bag -- despite how short its duration -- will stay with me and my muscles all day.  

So every other day I'm now back punching the bag. 

In terms of the current research into HIIT you don't have to do what I do -- but if your are arthritic you learn to appreciate what works for you and for once, in my exercise journey, I can say that through HIIT I am logging tangible results.

I guess I'm one of those -- again according to research -- who are  exercise resistant.

I didn't see  results from a year of gym work with a personal trainer. I didn't see them in the pool, and I don't see similar tangible results from my walking of kickbiking. While most of my exercises are  deployed as  preventative measures, the conscious HIIT has  made me  into something a little different from what I was before I started it. And that's despite how little time it demands.

But there's more...

That's not the end of it either. There's more. I didn't begin Urban Soul Line Dancing  because I wanted 'to exercise' -- I began it because I wanted to dance and I  had reached a level of physical capacity such that I knew I could sustain  the challenges posed by stepping.

So my exercising prepared me, with my illness handicap, for my dancing.

However, I can dance on days even when I can't do this other stuff and that's a wonderful bonus.  I also find that dancing changes me physically  in a way that these other grunt routines do not.

I do however do a lot of dancing on a daily basis.

The more I practice the steps the more my body flexes especially along the spine and hips. The groove takes over. It has taken months for this to begin to happen. My body  is changing as it moves into Gene Kelly mode. My foot work is still tardy -- but maybe in time....?

Dancing has given me a way to become  more movement aware and I haven't had that going for me since way back when I was doing T'ai Chi ch'uan which is one of the best 'movement awareness' regimes on offer (as is Yoga, Feldenkrais, Pilates, etc).

So the irony is that while dancing is pursued as an exercise it isn't the standard criteria that actually may rule on its efficacy. It's impact is multi layered. 

If only I was dancing decades ago! ...and doing HIIT my life would be much better today.

ADDENDUM: What I haven't discussed --and won't but I will refer to it -- is  how exercise improves your cognitive and emotional existence.These are the subjective plusses that a routine offers. The sense of accomplishment. The excitement of physical challenges. The excuse to get out and about. The camaraderie of the dog pack.Sunsets. Sunrises. Sunshine.  Distances logged. Real pain from real physical effort and exertion. The joy you get when you finish the straining. The horror you feel when you begin...All these things keep your wonderfully attuned to yourself.

• Follow up  post on this Topic: some thoughts on NEAT 

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The Bells: lifting kettlebells and dumbbells

This is what I do when I'm not doing HillFit. I use the same principles and try to follow the same physiological logic in order to be true to High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) approach. The advantage is that you can lift lower weights to better exercise   effect by going slower. Obviously my form could do with some overhaul, but then practice rules, even for non jocks like me, right?

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Exercise Musack: 100 seconds exertion followed by 10 second rests x 9 times

      This is a rough edit of some delightful Javanese gamelan music . The music rules the timing. If you want some music to format your exercise exertions here it is in roughly 100 second grabs.  (I tried for a set interlude of  90 seconds to fit with my HillFit routine but the music would not bend).

The musical interlude  is repeated  nine times.

All up your session (x 9 segments) will last 18 minutes. You also get ten second rests between the hard yakka stuff.

If you want the mp3 file for your audio player  you can download it here:    

Or play it online and right click to download it here:

or listen below:

Until yesterday my music had eight intervals but I added another segment because I  needed another 100 seconds to do all my preferred exercises with the kettlebells and dumbbells.  This is because I have two legs and two arms (rather than simply one of both). 

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My exercising: notes on HillFit

The HillFit Pullup

How much weight do you lift when performing HillFit?

I reckon the weight issue is subjective in context as you have a few variables you can play around with: (1) the angle of your movements (2) the pace you do the movements and (3) then you can consider what weight to add if any. For the pelvic lift I lay a dumbbell on each thigh and rest my upper back on a bench — a fantastic experience esp if done really really slowly.

The same knapsack (mine currently weighs in with a 13 kgm sandbag) is used for both squat and pull up. The push up plank offers so many tweaks I dont need the extra weight. But even with all that the slower I go the harder all the exercises get.

How slow is 'slow'? 

Since I used to do and teach Tai Chi you get a handle on ‘slow’ and while I started off counting I now rely on the slow controlled breaths. With the dumbbells it is easy to cross over with the same principles in mind. 

I recommend as a guide the very practical Matt Brzycki and Fred Fornicola Dumbbell Training for Strength and Fitness. Many options offered in its pages. It also discusses weight increments.

Nonetheless, since I have been lifting kettlebells for years the HillFit perspective undermines the practice of KB swinging but I now do no-swing routines ever so slowly like clean and jerks, bow ties, etc. You can do things with the bells you can’t do so well with dumbbells — and weight is formatted by other variables because KB cause you to adapt your body while the bells are lifted through space. A great example of a slow KB lift -- at least for the very adventurous -- is the Turkish Getup.

The Toolbox

So that’s a set of dumbbells, 3 single kettlebells at different weights (but two would do), a strong towel (which I reinforced with rope) an old knapsack…and a bag of sand.

An exercise bench is also real handy.

Music and Time

And the best thing is that I know HillFit will take me under 5 minutes to complete, and my weights routine – divided into 8 sections, each of approx 90 seconds followed by 10 sec rests — will take 16 minutes. And when I’m doing it all I have to do is listen to the music — my current fav is Javanese Gamelan — sequenced into 90 sec plus 10 secs x 8. ( I edited a song to my needs using a audio edit program like Audacity).

Mp3 players are essentials I reckon. A great discovery. As essential as a dumbbell.

I mention these details because I have done so many routines over the years, had a personal trainer for two years and followed many mixes in the past — but I love this blend. At two day intervals with alternating routines it doesn’t get boring. And the set time sequences stop me from trying to be macho enough to injure myself or foster ill health upon my good person...

I’d like to box more but I am tardy. I do other stuff mainly because I like this other stuff…but the low tech supplement I think I get the most from — and which I treat as part of serious exercise — is stair running.

Show  me a stair case and I’m up it like a rat up a drainpipe.

[Oh for a local sandhill! But stairs at railway stations will have to do.]

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HillFittery

Hillfit by Chris Highcock is the very simple to follow program that occupies the core of my exercising. Four routines done one after the other as slowly as I can manage while progressively increasing the difficulty and weight. Get the book and study the method. Highcock also offers a excellent essay summarizing the conditioning science behind his approach : www.hillfit.com

     The RatbagMedia Channel

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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.

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