Fit Communications

Today I read an e-book (The Secrets Of Fighting Female Flab Over 40 With Master’s Fitness Champ Maxine Johnson, available free on Tom Venuto’s Inner Circle) in which Anja Langer and Gladys Portuguese were mentioned. I hadn’t thought about them in forever, but after seeing their names, I spent some time googling for images. Quite a few are available on Anja Langer’s website. Her story is intriguing because although she had a bodybuilding career in the 1980s, she is still stunningly fit. Check out the shots from 2001.

I couldn’t find a single image of Gladys. She was a beautiful competitor as well.

Here’s a site with photos of a number of female competitors from the ’80s and ’90s. See what you think.

Images can be highly motivating.

MSNBC.com’s fitness section recently ran an article that caught my eye by referring to the Presidential Physical Fitness Award of bygone days. I well remember my disappointment at not earning a badge. The problem? My softball throw. It was terrible. I scored very well on the strength measures–things like sit-ups, push-ups, and being able to hang from a bar. Alas, I threw “like a girl.” What can I say? I wasn’t working on arm strength at age 14, nor have I ever had anything like hand-to-eye coordination.

But if I felt the need to redeem myself I could take the government’s new Adult Fitness Test. The promotional site, unveiled May 14, offers instructions on measuring aerobic fitness (with a 1-mile walk or 1.5-mile run), muscular strength and endurance (with “half sit-ups” and push-ups), flexibility (with a sit-and-reach test), and body composition.

This last is problematic, as it infers body composition from body-mass index (BMI), a measure that in fact relies only on weight and height. In other words, it says zip about body composition–how much of that weight is fat and how much is lean tissue. If you’re muscular, your BMI may falsely indicate that you’re “overweight.”

One of the things I forget about starting over in the gym: how fatigued I feel. I don’t mean fatigued while in the weight room. There I tend to feel energized. It’s how tired I feel a couple of hours later. Of course, that passes as one’s fitness level increases, and it doesn’t take long to start adapting to the increased demand.

Musing on this has made me think of Get Buffed, the first in a series of self-published volumes by Australian strength coach Ian King. These books aren’t cheap. Current price on King’s website is $49.95, although I don’t think I paid that much for it in 2004. King says a lot of intelligent things about lifting, one of which is that older people benefit from brief, intense workouts but need more time to recover than younger people

I loved hearing the part about shorter workouts and fewer sets because I’ve always hated long, drawn-out sessions in the gym. I’m glad to be there, I work hard while I’m there, and then I want to get on with my life.

In any case, I’m wasted today after popping in to the gym for 25 minutes on the elliptical trainer. No weights today, just stretching afterward. I’ve lifted twice this week and will probably lift again on Monday.

A recent Reuters story covers a scientific literature review proving what we already know: that movement keeps us young(er).

Aerobic exercise helps turn back biological clock

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Maintaining aerobic fitness through middle age and beyond could delay the aging process by more than a decade and prolong independent living, according to a new review of research on aerobic fitness and dependency in old age.

One caveat: if you’re also interested in your shape and appearance, you also need weights. Weight training offers scads of health benefits: increased bone density and muscular strength, improved balance, healthier joints, and so on. There’s also research indicating that it improves cardiovascular health.

Ideal combination: aerobic exercise plus weights.

Here’s an interesting story from the Associated Press that makes me wonder what the teens in question are eating at home. I probably know the answer to that, and it isn’t vegetables and fruit.

The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey has been trying to help teenagers learn to like vegetables and has been serving things like steamed carrots, greens, vegetable stir-frys, and so on. Some of the kids literally spit out the carrots. Vegetables don’t taste like food to them, apparently, and it isn’t the kids’ fault. Clearly they haven’t been getting carrots and broccoli at home—and just as clearly, those haven’t been the mainstay of school lunch programs.

It’s time for schools to get extremely serious about removing all the junk food from both machines and the cafeteria. Now I sound like an old person: When I was a kid, you either ate the school lunch, brought something from home, or went hungry. You didn’t have the option to buy burgers or pizza (unless that was the cafeteria meal of the day). And you shouldn’t have that option.

Schools operate for the public good, and they’re not obliged to give the youth in their charge non-nutritious food simply because that’s what kids prefer.

Anyway, here’s the link:

Eating healthy is a hard lesson to teach teens
New Jersey program holds out hope it’s never to late to set good habits

I hope soon to provide some information about what Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, Tenn., is doing to improve children’s health. Memorial is working on a pilot program with some Hamilton County schools in order to combat the child-obesity epidemic. The program may eventually be expanded to additional schools. Let’s hope so. Our kids need it.

I just finished reading Leslie Goldman’s Locker Room Diaries. It was interesting and made me vow to quit being so shy when changing clothes in the locker room. I’ll never be comfortable with walking around undressed, as some women are (more power to them), but at least I can try to become less self-conscious.

In any case, having just read Leslie’s book, which devotes a lot of discussion to "scale behavior," I was aware of the woman who hopped on the scale last Friday. She and I had begun and ended our workouts about the same time. She was probably about my age and had obviously come from work to do her workout.

She stepped on the scale, and I looked away, knowing that a lot of people feel self-conscious on the scale.

A couple of seconds later, she let out a minor whoop and said to me (there was nobody else around), "I’ve lost eight and a half pounds in a month!"

I said I thought that was fabulous and told her that I’d lost about 30 pounds a little more than a year ago. Then we had a little chat about how much harder it is to lose fat when you’re 40- or 50-something.

She said she’d been completely ignoring the doughnuts and junk food people bring to work, and then we got to talking about why people bring in such lousy food as "treats." Anybody of normal intelligence knows that cookies, doughnuts, enormous muffins, and so on are special-occasion food—not the sort of fare anybody needs on a regular basis. But how many people bring bananas, fresh strawberries, homemade low-fat muffins, or fresh vegetables?

I know, some of you probably work at enlightened companies where that’s the norm. But in my case, I bring (my own) food from home every single day–and almost every single day make a decision not to eat the chips, cookies, Krispy Kremes, and other junky offerings that magically appear in our kitchen.

Here’s a challenge: If we do have occasion to bring food for everyone, let’s make it something that actually does our co-workers good.

And here’s a horrible (apparently true) story: The successful loser of eight and a half pounds said that one of her co-workers brings Krispy Kreme doughnuts to work almost every day. She commented to the KK-bringer that it must be expensive buying doughnuts so often.

The colleague replied that she had a family member who worked at Krispy Kreme, so she got a discount–and then she added that perhaps by eating lots of doughnuts some of the older workers would vacate their jobs more quickly and create promotional opportunities for the younger ones.

I said, "I hope she was kidding." My locker-room companion said, "Knowing her, I don’t think she was."

Yikes: Career sabotage via Krispy Kremes!

Holy heart rate, Batman!

I wanted to try something different at the gym today whilst working on my aerobic fitness. Decided to climb aboard “Jacob’s Ladder” and see what kind of burn could be achieved.

Quite a burn, as it happens. In six minutes I managed to torch 100 calories (at least, that’s what the machine said). And I wasn’t moving all that fast, although my heart rate was certainly quite elevated.

The machine is pretty simple: you climb the moving rungs of a ladder at a 45-degree angle, going faster or slower as you wish.

When I visited the company’s website a while ago, I read that the contraption’s developer was looking for a way to increase cardio fitness without stress to one’s back or hip and knee joints.

In any case, if your gym has one of these, give it a try. I’m thinking it’ll be a real boost for doing cardio intervals. The one at my gym is rarely used, so on most days I ought to be able to go back and forth between JL and treadmill—or just alternate heavy work and light work on the JL. I like the idea of doing shorter and more intense cardio workouts rather than long, slow, boring ones.

There’s no need to freak out if we’re not a size 4. Most of us aren’t meant to be.

But apparently being even a little bit overweight (that is, overfat) poses dangers. Adding to the confusion is the fact that many of us don’t know what a healthy weight is, judging overweight adults and children as being at “normal” weight.

Study: Even a few extra pounds are risky
Being a little overweight can kill you, according to new research that leaves little room for denial that a few extra pounds is harmful. Baby boomers who were even just a tad pudgy were more likely to die prematurely than those who were at a healthy weight, U.S. researchers reported.

Indulge me: this has nothing to do with women’s fitness.

On the other hand, it could.

I just read an interesting article on msnbc.com, one in a series on how senior news editor Mike Stuckey is coping with prostate cancer. What I liked: once Mike received the diagnosis of prostate cancer, he changed his diet radically.

No, he’s not eating alfalfa sprouts and drinking rice milk (although those could be healthy choices). He’s eating many more vegetables and fruits and cutting way back on some of his former favorites: sausage, cheese, red meat, nacho chips, and so on.

Changing his diet wasn’t all that difficult, he says, once he realized that it could help save his life.

Most of us don’t have a cancer diagnosis at the moment, but one in three of us will have one at some point in our lives. Why not make the dietary changes now?

The ultimate payoff could be a longer, healthier life; the short-term payoff will be increased energy and probably a better-looking midriff and rear end.

Here’s the article:

Battling bad cells with good eating
Had enough of cancer, urine and assorted penis facts for now? Good, let’s talk about food! In his battle with prostate cancer, MSNBC.com’s Mike Stuckey finds that it’s not very hard to do the right thing when it comes to nutrition.