I don´t want to be a liar anymore

The other day my fried Matt sent me this article (http://www.slate.com/id/2205635/) about ¨The most annoying economic crisis in the world.¨No friends, it´s not the US economy or the bailouts - it´s the complete lack of change in Argentina. Change as in coins, not lack of progress. On days when I actually have to do something or go somewhere, the only limiting factor to what I can do is whether or not I have coins for the bus. Often that means waiting in line at the bank for them to say to me, ¨No hay monedas hoy.¨ How ridiculous! You´re a bank aren´t you? Isn´t giving out money and making change what you do?

One side effect of the lack of change is the fact that I have to lie about whether or not I have any everytime I buy something. The grocery store and the convience store don´t have coins just like everyone else, so they have to be creative. Every time I buy something, I´m asked ¨¿diez centavos tienes?¨And of course, I say no, even as I walk away with a jingling pocket full of coins that I´ve spent the last three weeks collecting. I´d rather have the store offer me a piece of candy or drink mix that I don´t want or need because they don´t have exact change for my 10 peso bill than tell the truth that I have a pocket full of coins. My personal favorite is when they ask me if I want to donate the change that they don´t have to the store. Even the locutorio where I´m writing this has a huge sign right in front that says, ¨NO HAY MONEDAS!¨Either I wait until the clock on the computer is at a whole peso amount, or I sacrifice the difference.

My sister-in-law, who has lived here for just about a year now, tried something different. She tried the good karma, what goes around comes around approach to monedas. If someone asked her if she had coins, she was honest and gave them what she had, believing that there would be enough change when she needed it. I´m not sure how long that approach actually lasted, but it wasn´t long. Now she hoards coins just like the rest of us.

All of this brings me to why I actually started writing this. It´s our last week in Argentina - I know, I can´t believe it either. So, I thought that I would write down a few things that I´ve really enjoyed and am going to miss, and a few things, like the monedas, that I won´t.

Things I´ll miss:
1. Huge tree-lined, green, shady avenues, all over the city
2. The parillas in the park where I buy my $1.33 lunch
3. The parks and plazas across the street from our building
4. The city lifestyle - walking and taking the bus everywhere
5. Gimnasio Renacemiento
6. Plant covered balconies on every building
7. Getting a little cup of agua con gas and a cookie everytime I order tea.
8. The 3-1 exchange rate
9. The leisurely time schedule
10. The pool on the roof


Things I won´t miss:
1. The diesel fumes on the tree-lined avenues
2. The complete disregard for the lives of pedestrians
3. The noise from the street at rush hours or after a futbol game
4. The lack of monedas
5. The leisurely time schedule
6. Paying for bottled water
7. The dog shit all over the sidewalks
8. The neighbors´shouting that serves as my alarm clock
9. The neighbors´dog
10. The elevators that make you pray everytime you step inside

What would you say, you do here?

I certainly don´t have busy schedule here. My day usually consists of three things - going to the gym, going to the pool, and watching movies (Eating steak the whole time is a given). I thought that I´d write down a little bit about how I´ve spent the majority of my time here, partly for the benefit of the few who read this blog, and partly for my own benefit to have written down some of what I´ve been learning. Below is a chronicle of my last 4 months in the gym.

A couple disclaimers first: 1) Not everyone will be interested in reading about how I´ve been working out for the last 4 months. Attention everyone who´s not interested. I hear that there is global economic melt down going on. Maybe there is something to read about that on the internet. 2) I am by no means an exercise physiologist (shocking I know...) so don´t confuse this with actual research by professionals in the field. This is just my experience and learning over the last few months that I thought I would share. If you´re interested in the actual data, I can point you in the direction of a few studies; otherwise, you can just take my word for it. 3) These workouts are not for the weak of heart. They are intense, painful, and possibly dangerous (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/fashion/thursdaystyles/22Fitness.html).

Background
For most of my life I have been an athlete - more specifically a soccer player and therefore, indirectly a runner. The most intense training I have ever done was pre season soccer two-a-days in high school. It´s been....7 years... now since I´ve played competitive soccer, but I have remained active since then. I still play for fun several times a week, do a lot of cycling, ran a marathon, etc. In all of that time I never truly spent any real time working out with weights in a gym. It was always about mileage, whether on a bike, on foot, or vertical mileage. All this is to say that I haven´t completely slacked off since giving up competitve sports.

A New Paradigm
Once we finalized our plans to come to Argentina, and decided that I probably would not be working, I turned my attention to other things. Namely, working out. I figure that if I´m going to spend the next two years on the African continent, I want to be in good shape for whatever comes my way when I get there. But beyond that, I have personal fitness goals of my own.

I have been following for a while the website of Mark Twight (gymjones.com), who was a very accomplished, fanatical alpine climber. He gained a fair amount of notariety in the last few years as the guy who trained the actors for the homoerotic fiesta that is the movie 300. That´s the one about the Battle of Thermoplyae. You can read Mark´s own thoughts on the project here (http://www.gymjones.com/knowledge.php?id=35), and if you search the internet for Vincent Regan, you can see the transformation of one of the actors. Mark Twight approaches training with the same fanatacism that characterized his climbing. Since retiring from ¨real¨climbing, he has now turned his attention to punishing workouts for climbers, mixed martial arts fighters, and anyone else who has slightly masochistic workout tendencies. Gym Jones would be my starting point, but I´ve learned quite a bit since my first introduction to him a few years ago. Now, I finally have put in the time in the gym myself to have a personal opinion about it.

More Background
I´ve done a fair amount of reading about this, so I´ll go ahead and list some references for you. You already know Mark Twight. Mark Twight got a jump start from Crossfit (crossfit.com), an increasingly popular program started by Greg Classman. Crossfit in a nutshell combines Olympic Weightlifting, gymnastics and timed hard circuits into typically short, very intense workouts. He posts a Workout of Day (WOD) on his website, and crossfitters all over the world post times and weights for comparison. Other places I´ve done some reading are mtnathlete.com, where Rob Shaul runs a Gym Jones style gym, and danjohn.org. Dan John is the weightlifting guru.

The Beginning and the Short Comings of Body Building
As I said before, I´ve never really trained seriously with weights before. So to start, I followed a fairly standard program of doing exercises like bench press, shoulder press, biceps curl, triceps extensions, etc. etc. in 3 sets of 10 reps each. You have to learn to crawl before you can walk. I spent 3 weeks doing rounds of this at the gym 3 or 4 times a week. I also did a moderate amount of running, usually no more than 3 or 3.5K a once or twice a week. This was simply foundational work, but it exposed some dramatic strength imbalances that I´ve developed over the years. I had a pathetically weak bench press, well, upper body in general, and while I could run well, I couldn´t generate large amounts of power from my legs. They were definitely stronger than my upper body, but I had a long way to go.

It makes sense at this point to outline some of my goals for working out. Simply put, I want to be able to do the things that I love to do (like running, biking, soccer, climbing, kayaking,) longer, faster, stronger and later in life. I want my time in the gym to make me a better athlete outside of the gym, as opposed to a body builder, who simply wants to be bigger (I have great respect for the dedication of body builders, they just have different goals than me). So then, can lifting weights alone really make dramatic improvements in my overall athleticism? The answer is yes, but it´s not really the best way to get the maximum return on my time investment. While body building style lifting will make one stronger, which does help in athletics, it has one huge shortfall: It does not train the complex coordinated muscle movements needed in the dynamic world of sports. A fundamental principle of body building is to isolate a muscle or muscle group, overload it, and thus induce hypertrophy. Research has found that the best way to do this is to do 3 exercises per muscle group in sets of 3, with 8-12 repetitions each. Frankly, working out that way is boring, and not nearly hard enough.

However, the best way to maximize gains for sport is through "functional movements," or exercises that involve the total body or multiple muscle groups working in unison. Typically things like the Olympic lifts below are done in very few repetitions with 2-3 min rests in between. That process adds strength without bulk. The ¨revolution¨of crossfit, though, is doing those kinds of moves at a high work rate. In addition to strength gains, athletes get the added bonus of aerobic improvement from the high oxygen demands that full body movements require.

The Second Month
Following my foundational training, I almost completely moved away from a body building approach to my weight training. Reading articles by Greg Glassman and Mark Twight, convinced me that they were on to something; so I gave it a shot. My first true attempt at a gym jones workout was the infamous ¨300¨ (I had done other easier circuit workouts before). According to Mark Twight, this was one of the final workouts he gave the 300 actors, and only to the ones he deemed ¨worthy.¨ A friend of mine had recently done it, and with my new weight lifting foundation, I felt I could at least finish it. It would be a benchmark, a time to improve on.

The ¨300¨
25x Pull-up +
50x Deadlift @ 135# +
50x Push-up +
50x Box Jump @ 24” box +
50x Floor Wiper @ 135# (both sides = one-count) +
50x Kettle bell Clean and Press @ 36# (KB must touch floor between reps) +
25x Pull-up
300 reps total all done for time. The best times are sub 20 minutes.

I couldn´t do it. I made it to the box jumps before my lungs collapsed, and I had to lay on the floor of the gym for awhile before walking home. It was a humbling start.

Here are a couple elements that I´ve used in my workouts since that ill fated attempt...

Olympic Lifts
In the words of guru Dan John, "If you want to get strong, pick up something heavy from the floor and put it over your head." Simple enough advice.
In the weeks following my 300 attempt, I focused on the deadlift, front and back squat, powerclean, thruster and over head squat. I saw dramatic increases in my overall strength, mainly from improving technique. Some of these lifts are difficult to learn, so at first gains come mostly from learning how to properly do the lift. Depending on how one structures an olympic lift workout the objective can either be development of raw strength, or power endurance. Borrowing WOD´s from crossfit like "Elizabeth" or "Fran" (21-15-9 reps of 135lb cleans, and ring dips, 21-15-9 reps of 95lb thrusters and pull ups) I also began developing my power endurance. These workouts are designed to completely wreck your metabolic processes quickly. They are short workouts, but about 1 minute into it your body has reached cardiovascular and muscular failure. The systems are maxed out by the effort. Eventually, power endurance workouts extend your ability to produce that kind of effort for 30mins - 2hrs. (Greg Glassman claims that elite crossfitters have power outputs around 0.5 horsepower for 30 min)

KettleBells
In Russia, Kettle bells are a sport unto themselves. Looking like steel bowling balls with a handle, kettle bells originally came in only a few weights 16kg, 24kg, or 32kg (Approx 35lb., 53lb., and 70 lbs.) There are now an infinite number of weights and exercises to do with a kettle bell, but the ones I routinely use are the kettlebell swing, goblet squat, Turkish get-up, clean and press, and deck squat. What is the benefit of kettle bells and these exercises you ask? Well, in one study where two groups of college freshman were selected. One group was given an exercise routine of running and military style calisthenics. The other group was given a kettlebell workout. At the end of several weeks the two groups competed against one another in the running and calisthenics exercises. The kettle bell group consistently outperformed the other group even though they had not trained specifically for those exercises.

One note - unfortunately, the gym I go to here does not have kettlebells, so I have to substitute dumb bells. It´s not ideal, but it works.

Tabata´s
Crossfit, Gym Jones, and Mountain Athlete all post their workouts online if anyone is interested in seeing what one looks like. I´m also willing to help explain the jargon and notation that they use if you have questions. All of the workouts are brutal, but I have found one element in particular to be the most pain inducing - the Tabata. Named after a Japanese exercise physiologist, a tabata is simply 20 sec of work followed by 10 sec of rest - 8 times. That´s 4 minutes of exercise total. The goal is to do as many reps as possible in each of those 20 sec work segments. You can do tabata´s with any exercise but the most common are squats, push ups, pull ups, etc. Tabata´s alone are difficult, but there is a way to make them even worse. Substituting the 10 sec rest with 10 sec of isometric exercise makes tabata´s a lactic acid nightmare. For example, with squats, that would look like 20s of bodyweight squats, 10s holding in the ¨down¨squat position - 8 times. Did I mention that you do it 8 times? Or with push ups, 20s of push ups followed by 10s of a plank...I think you get the idea.

The Results
So, after almost 3 full months of body punishing work, has it made any difference? I say absolutely yes. I have seen significant gains in my overall strength. I´ve added over 25 kgs to my bench press (don´t be too impressed, it was pathetic to begin with). The impressive part is that I only do the bench press once a week. I´ve seen major gains in all of my olympic lifts as well. I feel much better, stronger, fitter. Before coming to Argentina, I had been having some problems with my knee. I was in a lot of pain while running or biking. I consulted a physical therapist who suggested lunges to work out the muscle imbalance that was causing the problem. While I did few lunges, the other quad burning work I did completely worked out the problem. I can now run and bike pain free, but how fast? Now remember, I have done very, very little biking and running, and predominantly lifting while I´ve been here. The results have been surprising. I dropped 5 minutes from my 3K time from when I got here. I ran a 5:52 mile the other day, and while not my best time, it is still very good for not having trained for running in almost a year. My 5K time is at 24:29, once again, not my best, but very good considering that I haven´t run a 5K in over 2 years. In terms of running, I´ve been most impressed with my 400 meter time. I ran back to back 1:12 which is about as good as I could do in high school. I haven´t really been able to test my power output on a bike so far. The bikes here don´t measure in watts, which has become the standard for biking. I used to average about 140-150 watts (For comparison, Lance Armstrong can put out 400 watts for several hours). I have seen an increase in my typicall rpms. I used to be below 90 most of time and now I can average about 110. I assume that translates to increased power.

Now for the real test, the infamous 300. I gave it another shot the other day. On my second go, I finished the whole thing in 29:01 - a great time for me considering how the first try went. I hope that´s not the best time I ever do. It´s been great to have the free time here to work this hard. Honestly, there are some days when I can´t do much more than walk home from the gym. I can´t picture what it will be like to try to work out this way when I have real responsibilities again. It´s been a long journey of hardwork, lots of sweat, and many strange looks from people at the gym when I do something unconventional or rest on the floor between rounds. Thanks for reading - there is much more out there. As long as this was, it was still only the abbreviated version.

Here´s a video sample from Mountain Athlete...



2008-12-04

WORLAND

Obj: Extended Power Endurance

Warm up: 250x Step Ups, w/pack (M-35#, W-20#)

Training:

(1) 5 Rounds
10x Dead Lift (M-185#, W-95#)
15x Box Jumps (M-24", W-20")
15-ft Rope Climb

(2) 10 Rounds
Row 500m (400m-women)
5x Turkish Getups each arm (M-12kg, W-8kg)

(3) 7 Rounds
5x Pull ups
10x Kettlebell Floor Press each arm (M-12kg, W-8kg)
10x Back Ext

(4) 20-15-10-5
Curtis P (M-75#, W-45#)
Ankles-to-Bar

(5) 250x Step Ups, w/pack (M-35#, W-20#)