Tag Archives: From fit to fat to fit

Two final bits of advice for the Gym Novice

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First, if you don’t know what you are doing, really, get a trainer and tell the trainer you are serious and that the trainer should be serious or they’re fired. Make sure you get a good trainer. Tell the head trainer that you want a good trainer. Ask around about who is a good trainer. Seriously, a lot of trainers suck. You don’t want to pay for a bad trainer.
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Don’t be Fukushima and let your core melt down

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The above discussion applies only to the muscles mentioned (chest, back, shoulder, various leg muscles) and ignores “The Core.” People define the core differently, but it usually consists of the abdominal, obliques (a kind of abdominal) which are together often referred to as “The abs” as in “hey, dude, my abs are ripped”; the lower back (which we pretend to be one big muscle) and perhaps your hip flexors. Maybe your hip flexors are in the “lower body – pull” category. Your choice.
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How to use the Gym to attain your personal fitness goals

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I had promised a few pointers regarding using the gym experience to become fitter or maintain fitness. Do not use my advice without consulting a doctor first. Everybody who does anything should do so only on advice of a doctor. I wonder if anyone has ever done that (consulted their doctor). I imagine the doctors must be pretty busy with this sort of thing. Anyway, what I have learned from Lenora, books, and experience:
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Joining the Gym

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Back from South Africa and with some time on my hands, I was hell bent on keeping the promise I had made to myself to get back into shape. For most people I know, this would mean eating better and going to the gym more often. But for me, it meant eating better and going to a gym for the first time in my life.
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Africa. Some time in the early 1990s.

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I started out walking a good six feet behind her, to avoid the sand she was kicking up and the occasional thorn-lined branch that might swing back in the wake of anyone walking through the African Bush. We were traversing open country in the Kalahari, in an area sealed off from people owing to the presence of unfriendly lions and other dangers. We were doing this in part because we both felt like we had been locked up for days and needed some freedom; We needed freedom from confinement, freedom from the people we were with, freedom from patronizing park employees, freedom of movement, freedom from the sound and smell of a diesel engine in a “safari vehicle,” and a taste of the freedom, which I can’t describe, you get when you walk through the wild bush in Africa knowing that you are being slightly annoying to the unfriendly lions and have the chance of almost anything happening and no way to stop it. Over every dune was a question, in every cluster of brush and camel-thorn tree was a mystery, in every patch of long grass a cobra or a rodent or a game bird or, at least, some kind of interesting spider or something.
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From Fit to Fat to Fit. And Back.

Photo by flickr user gato-gato-gato.
Did you ever watch cattle? I mean, really watch them, for a few hours? Mostly they just sit or stand around munching on grass, chewing their cud, or snoozing. But every once in a while a handful of them will stand up and point in one direction. And they may take a few steps in that direction. Then a few more will join them. And once a critical mass has been reached, the whole herd will just go. Domestic cattle, wild African cape buffalo, whatever. This is what they do.
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