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:

You should do exercises in a certain order, and this order can be conceptualized at different scales of time.

The very first muscles you should work on, as in “I’ve never exercised at the gym before, what do I do?” (Not as in “I’m at the gym for the billionth time, what do I do first?”) are your core, and particular, rotator cuffs, as well as lower back and abs.

Rotator cuffs are very easily injured. They are muscles and tendons that stabilize your shoulder while other bigger muscles are doing their thing. People often injure their rotator cuffs and these injuries can be quite severe and stop you from doing any other upper body exercise for a long time. Don’t mess up your rotator cuffs. The exercises you use to strengthen these muscles can be found in a book on exercise and involve very small dumbells. Whatever you do, don’t work them hard. Work them easy, work them every day (almost) for several days (unless they hurt), and always, always do this before proceeding to other, more intense, upper body work if you’ve not exercised for a long time. After exercising the rotator cuffs, don’t do anything else with your arms right away. In other words, let your rotator cuffs get in shape before you demand that they do their rather difficult jobs while you do other upper body exercises.

There are two exercises that I learned, but there may be others, for rotator cuffs (again, find a reliable reference or ask a trainer for advice on this). In one you put your arms out to the sides and drop your forearms like you were a rag doll, and then lift the forearm to parallel to the ground while your elbow is still bent, with a very light dumbell. If you do this and it looks rather silly, then you are probably doing it right. Over time, make the dumbell heavier. Start with two pounds, work your way to five. No more than five, ever, unless you are a robust person.

The other exercise involves having your arms to your side but your forearm out straight, like you were holding ski poles or about to clap your hands. Hold light dumbells, and move your forearms out away from your body and back towards each other, slowly. This also looks silly when done correctly. Again, use light weights, don’t overdo it, slowly build up the weight over several days, and don’t do other major arm exercises until you’ve done this for a few days to a week.

In the meantime, all the other exercises you do initially should be done on machines if possible until you are somewhat trained up, then you should add dumbells and eventually swith to a high proportion of free weights. You should use light weight settings at first, and don’t stress your muscles at all, until you’ve done this for a few days for each excercise and built up a bit of stamina and learned to make the motions properly. Improper form means injury. Proper form means lower risk of injury and better results.

In most cases you are trying to isolate a muscle (or two muscles) and work only that muscle. Keep reminding yourself of this as you do the exercises. If you find yourself using lots of different muscles to carry out a simple exercise, then you are doing it wrong .

Look at the picture on the machine, get a book on exercise, whatever, to learn the techniques. Reps should be slow; Usually your push (where you are pushing against the resistance) is faster than your return, which is slower. Some muscles are best exercised faster, some slower, and for some, the speed is actually a variable you will want to change up. But overall, when you are first starting out, most people should go slower than their natural instinct will tell them in actually doing the exercise.

Slow is important in the beginning because you must perfect your form to avoid injury. I may have said that already. Oh, and by the way, it is important to have good form to avoid injury.

… Continued …

Obsession can be a good thing. And I’m not talking about some dumb-ass perfume.

But that would not be enough. I needed more.

Our field survey required that we have a truck and a trailer. So, I bought a complete dumb-bell set at a store in Pretoria and packed it into the trailer. When I purchased the set, I told the clerk that I did not need the full length bar, just the adjustable dumb-bell bars. He insisted that I take the large bar because I had paid for it. I said I really didn’t want it. He checked with the manager. I had to take it. I said no. He said yes. So I said OK, I’ll take it. Then when I packed up all the stuff I had bought at that store (which included a lot of field gear as well as the weights) I “accidently” left behind the large bar.

I assume it is still there.

Anyway, whenever we set up camp somewhere, I’d pull out the weights. Lynne accompanied us to most of our field sites, but was not there all the time, so she rarely used them. Rather, she ran whenever she had the chance. There were, variously, four or five other people with us, but only two Americans, a grad student from The U, and my BFF, Stephanie. They decided they wanted to get buff, so they used the weights as well. So, after a day of survey, we’d come back, have some food and drink, and then get down with the weights out in front of the cabin. We stayed most of the time in a tourist rest camp near the Kalahari. Tourists would walk by and openly stare at us as we took turns lifting, spotting each other, writing down our progress on gridded note paper.

This worked. Before going to South Africa, I did a series of calibration exercises to establish the strength and endurance level of various muscle groups. When I got back from South Africa, I was ahead of where I had left off in all areas. Lenora was impressed.

Funny things happened at the gym in Kimberly. I remember three in particular.

First funny thing: There was a series of machines laid out in a very logical fashion, organized anatomically in the order one would ideally use to do a full set of exercises covering all muscle groups. Thinking this rather convenient, I did an exercise on the first machine, a leg press of some kind, then moved on to the second machine, a leg lift. While I was using the leg lift, doing a few sets, a woman came over and waited for me to finish. I wasn’t sure why she needed to use this machine because there were other similar machines, but I did not think about it too much. When I fished the machine, she jumped on it like a Texas ranger on his horse.

So I moved on to the next machine, working hamstrings. While I worked, I noticed these funny lights, like traffic lights, up near the ceiling. They’d go from green to yellow then back to green in a cycle for several seconds. As I was wondering what those lights were for, that same woman, was suddenly there waiting for me to finish again. The next machine was calves, but I didn’t like that particular machine so I skipped it and moved on to a bench press kind of machine. I was using that machine when I noticed the woman who had been following me was using the calf machine. I then moved on to a back machine of some kind, as the woman moved to the machine I had just been on. She finished there and came over to me while I was still working my back, and started at me until I was done. Then she took over the back machine as I moved to the next machine, feeling this was all kind of strange, and stared working my abs.

I decided to really hit my abs because this particular bench thingie I was using was working really well. So I did a bunch of reps, rested, and did a bunch more, then adjusted the machine to make it harder, then did a bunch more, and then I was resting again when I noticed the woman was standing next to me, looking down at me, ready to say something.

So I gave hear a look like “Huh?” and she said, “What are you, a moron????” And I was like “Huh?” and she was like, “Do you not know that this is a circuit?” and I was like “Huh?” and she pointed to the traffic light thingie and gave me a really dirty look.

Suddenly I realized that these machines laid out in this order constituted what is called a “circuit” which is a series of machines laid out in a certain order with a timer attached to a flashing light of some kind. You were to move from one machine to the next as the light flashed. Like a trainer telling you to keep moving and work harder. A dumb robotic trainer attached to the ceiling.

So I looked at the woman and said “Well, that traffic light of yours is certainly no Lenora!” and she was like “Huh?” and I got the hell out of her way.

Oh, I see I have run out of time. I’ll tell you the other two stories next time.

… Continued …

It ended on a low note, but then, almost ironically, my journey took an even more undesirable turn when almost exactly one month after I wrote the last installment I suffered an incident that put me in the hospital, in the operating room, then into bed for several weeks (and not in a good way), on crutches with a brace for several more weeks, hopping around with just the brace or just a crutch for several more weeks, and just about a year after the incident, to my final visit to the surgeon and not quite healed yet, but good enough. It was an injury to my knee and it had a rather negative effect on my overall level of athletic fitness, bringing me to an all time low point. From which I am now rapidly ascending like a swift and powerful Phoenix from a pile of ashes. And I exaggerate only a medium amount.

So I’ve decided to rewrite, revise, extend, and repost the original story. Those can be found in the archives under the category heading “exercise and fitness.” The present version will be archived under the heading “From fit to fat to fit,” to help keep them separate.

I recommend printing this out and reading it at the gym while you are on the treadmill. You’ll feel much better about yourself, I promise.

… Continued…