New Orleans fitness training

When I first began lifting weights I worked out every other day - Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday - repeat - and I never missed for five straight months.  The sessions were with a personal trainer, and accurate records were kept.

Soon my progress stopped. I was particularly stuck with bicep curls just barely achieving eight reps each time for five months. Twice during that time I got nine reps on that one exercise; I likened it to a religious experience – achieving beyond the realm of normal.  The workouts during this time were grueling, as I was hell bent on breaking through a plateau.

I went home for Christmas.  It had been more than a week since my last workout when I found a health club with the very same line of equipment I had been using. I thought surely I would be weaker. I was shocked to find that I was stronger. On the bicep curls I got eleven reps, not the usual eight. I had no explanation for it.

This blog is primarily concerned with health, fitness, diet, personal training, and human performance. Not unrelated to health is the environment where you live and the opportunities presented.  From this Kiplinger Personal Finance article Best Cities 2010: Austin, Texas:

Austin - our number-one Best City for the Next Decade is a hotbed for small business -- and music.   A video touting Austin is here.

and this:

When I first started strength training improvement came quickly, but soon it trickled to a halt. I figured I was a slow gainer stuck on a plateau that I just had to push through. For five straight months I worked  every other day with a trainer to make sure that I did not cheat on my form.  I never missed one training session, and pretty soon I stopped improving no matter how hard I tried.  My reps stayed the same every workout.  Twice during that period I managed to get nine reps instead of my usual eight on the bicep curls.  I likened that ninth rep to a religious experience – beyond the realm of normal.

Several years ago I was working out a doctor who described to me the phenomenon of creep. As we get older our physical abilities diminish. Each year we have a little less strength, stamina, flexibility, and ability to withstand trauma and infection.

Slowly the parameters of our world of physical abilities creep in on us. I researched the phenomena of creep and found nothing that was similar to what the doctor described. I think the phenomenon was one the doctor himself coined. Nonetheless, it is very real. We lose a few seconds off our personal records, a few ounce of muscle, and a little range of motion each year. This process will occur more quickly if we are not active. When we exercise we are placing demands on the body that send a message to the body that the muscle, flexibility and stamina are needed for survival. As an act self-protection the body will do what it can do accommodate those demands.

You join the local health club with high hopes that this is going to be the year you get in the best shape of your life. You sign for a year to get the special rate, and the automatic bank draft begins. You faithfully go each week for the first couple of weeks or maybe even the first couple of months. Eventually your attendance becomes sporadic. You miss a couple of weeks and then you miss a couple of months. Eventually you return with the intention of really buckling down. For most that never happens.

Finally you admit defeat so you try to cancel, and that becomes a hassle and expensive because there is a processing fee. You realize that there are just a few months left, and you rationalize that it is not worth the hassle of trying to terminate the contract. You ride it out cringing when you look at your monthly credit card bill and see the card charged for the service you did not use.

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

By Francis P. Church, first published in The New York Sun in 1897. [See The People’s Almanac, pp. 1358–9.]

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Our bodies undergo many changes that can be reversed with proper strength training. Wearing glasses, dying one’s hair, or applying creams for age marks have their place, but nothing compares to the long list of benefits from high intensity interval training for strength:

1. Base Metabolic Rate (metabolism) decreases. Those who are stronger can have the metabolism they had when they were twenty years younger. More muscle requires more calories.

I was going to buy a home a few years back, and I had a friend come over to do the inspection.

He crawled, climbed, and wedging himself into every part of that small house. When he was finished he refused to accept my check, as it only took him a half an hour. I told him that I was paying for a half an hour plus 20 years of experience inspecting houses. If I were to try to do it on my own it would involve extensive reading and learning before I learned how to do it right, and chances are it would not have been done correctly.

I was working out a client the other day, and I was explaining to her what we were doing and why we were doing it that certain way. She told me that she totally trusted me and that she could not figure it out on her own. Sure she could. It would take time and lot of reading

The conventional wisdom regarding the prevention of lymphedema after surgery for breast cancer is avoid lifting anything heavy, certainly no weight lifting. That depends how you lift those heavy weights.