When we got around to talking about the how and the why of it all, the Fellowship decided that they wanted to keep things simple.
‘Let me say upfront,’ remarked a somewhat worried-looking Paul, ‘please don’t bother with any technical talk or terminology, which I’m never going to understand or bother to learn, okay?’
I think it was the amazed look on my face that made the others jump in and add their two cents to the conversation.
‘Absolutely, I was going to say the same thing,’ chirped John. ‘If I wanted to know what the muscles in my arms were called, I’d have gone to medical school, know what I mean?’
‘I do, I certainly do,’ from Mick, adding his weight to the argument. ‘Let’s keep it simple, basic, call a metatarsal a foot bone, I say.’ He finished by looking at Jerry who shook his head and muttered ‘Poephol,’ then patted me on the shoulder to show his support.
‘So, just the big picture then,’ I summed up, delighted that they thought I knew that stuff in the first place. ‘Just enough terminology to describe the exercise we are doing, for example, front deltoid raises and barbell curls, but that’s it.’
‘I thought a deltoid was the mouth of a really small river,’ piped the ever helpful Mick, proving how simple he could be.
‘There are some basics about form and technique that I think you guys should know,’ I said. ‘A little knowledge can go a long way to stop you from hurting yourselves.’
‘No, no, I’m all for that,’ agreed Paul, using the classic South African double negative and still smarting from his brush with the body building magazine. ‘Less pain more gain is my new motto.’
‘Here, here,’ said John, ‘And until Mick actually has a muscle to brag about, technique is all he has going for him.’
‘Oh, oh, that’s very clever,’ countered Mick with a feral glint in his eye. ‘Did you hear that everyone? The crash test dummy made a joke at my expense.’
Jerry drummed his fingers twice on the table in a rare show of irritation.
‘Hey, hey,’ I said, hoping to end the two word starters, ‘can I finish talking about technique and gym stuff before Jerry puts metatarsal to asshole and ends this sparring session, or shall we let his foot have the final word?’
It went on for a while, but finally we got to the point.
***
So, for all you technically challenged Old Farts out there who want to keep it simple, here’s the easy theory about exercise and stuff as explained to the ‘Flatulence’.
In big picture terms, we start losing muscle and bone mass from the age of about 40. If you want to stay as active and vital as you were at 40, you need to keep the muscle and bone mass you had at 40. Stands to reason, so get off your ass and get into the gym, you are never too old to start.
Once you pass the age of 50, there is only one way you can retain or regain muscle mass and bone mass, and that is by doing resistance training. There may be many ways to do resistance training, but the best way is to go to a gym and work with weights.
All the latest research points to a fact that has been generally accepted in gym circles for years: to live a longer, active and healthy life, diet and exercise are the absolute keys to success. Eating five to six small meals a day and sticking to a low-GI diet will slow down the aging process and give your body 90% of the vitamins and nutrients you need to continue with an active and energy-filled life.
The other 10% are available as supplements, but you can find that stuff out from your doctor. I suggest you take some Vitamin A, D and C for a start, and perhaps drink a glass of red wine a day, that covers most of the stuff us older guys need … unless you are allergic to any of that, in which case, don’t take it.
Gym (including weights and cardio exercise) will give your body the strength and flexibility to enjoy the world you live in.
So here’s the ‘stuff’ about gym you need to know. Once again (to all you stinkers who haven’t been paying attention), for the purposes of gym, we will divide the body into seven parts, viz.:
Each body part requires a different set of exercises, which are designed to work that set of muscles. I know it seems obvious, but then there are the Micks out there who still believe things such as, ‘muscle turns to fat’ and ‘you can’t build muscle after 50’, so bear with me.
All weight-related exercises in the gym work the same way, moving a weight against gravity and then letting that weight settle back down to its starting point i.e. flexing and extending your muscles.
How you move that weight is important. Use your muscles to lift the weight, not momentum. Swinging a weight at the end of your arm so you can curl it is not doing anything for your bicep. Use a lighter weight, Paul.
Always control the movement of the weight as you go with gravity, never just let it drop. Muscles strengthen in both directions.
‘Form’ is a word you’ll hear a lot in the gym. ‘Form’ is holding your body in a way that allows you to get the most benefit from an exercise without causing injury. Basically, form takes the strain off joints and bones and makes the tendons and muscles do the work. For example, keeping your back straight and your chin up when doing a dead lift or keeping your shoulders down and neck straight when doing a bicep curl is the correct form. If the weight you are trying to lift is forcing you to break form, i.e. bend your back or strain your neck to the side, use a lighter weight.
Form is important so check out the exercise descriptions and pictures before launching yourself at a new piece of equipment, and have someone who knows about this stuff check out your form occasionally.
There are two types of exercise with weights that you need to concern yourself with, compound and isolation.
Compound exercises utilise more than one muscle group at a time and build strength and fitness. Almost all exercises will be compound to a certain extent. For example, a bicep curl will involve the muscles in your fingers, wrist, forearm, shoulders, chest and back even though the exercise is mainly focused on the bicep. The point is that muscles work in opposites. A pull on one side must be supported by a push on the other. If your legs, back and shoulders did not brace and hold when you did a bicep curl, you’d fall over. Your body is, after all, a series of levers (bones), pulleys (joints) and cables (tendons). Your muscles are the engines that make them work. It stands to reason that better engines will make the whole system work better.
Isolation exercises are really about cosmetics (shaping), repair (rehabilitation) and mass (making more muscle). Most gym equipment is designed to isolate a muscle and allow you to concentrate on that specific muscle, trying to negate the push and pull on the rest of your body, for instance, preacher curls on the bench. There’s nothing wrong with isolating; it is an essential part of training, as long as it forms part of your overall programme. For our purposes and in our programmes, we isolate into the seven basic areas of the body and work on one or more of those at a time. The rule is, the more you isolate a muscle, the more you can build that muscle. The trick is to isolate and work evenly over the entire body.
That’s as technical as you need to get on the subject of compound and isolation, but that skinny-legged guy at the end of the gym with the tattoos and the biceps the size of a fat girl’s thighs has been isolating too much.
There are two ways of exercising with weights you should understand, open chain and closed chain. Think of your right arm and left arm as links in a chain. Any piece of equipment that links both arms (or both legs) together and makes them work in unison to accomplish an exercise is called closed chain. There is NO break in the chain.
For Old Farts who are thinking, ‘So what?’, you should know that closed chain exercises are good for equilibrium, balance and strength and cause less injury to Old Farts than open chain exercises.
Exercises that can be done one limb at a time, such as dumbbell curls or dumbbell shoulder presses, are deemed to be open chain exercises because left and right are not linked together and can move independently of each other. Be sure you are braced and balanced when doing open chain exercises. In other words, make sure your FORM is correct. Here are some tricks to training that will help you reach your goals.
Think through the muscles you are working on, i.e. picture the muscles contracting to lift the weight (flexor) and retracting as they let the weight down (extensor). Combine this with your breathing. Oh yes, breathing.
Regardless of whether you are compounding or isolating, breathing properly is essential. This is the method used in weight training: breathe out when lifting against gravity (contracting) and breathe in when extending with gravity (retracting). This will also ensure that you support with your core (abdominals) and give your muscles the oxygen they need to work at their most efficient. Think of the process as supporting the effort with air.
Weights are generally called anaerobic exercises (not requiring oxygen), while running, bicycling, swimming, dancing, etc. are classified as aerobic exercise (requiring oxygen) … I know, technical twaddle.
Okay, the big picture. Anaerobic makes you stronger while aerobic makes you fitter.
The point of weights training is to build muscle mass, increase bone density and tendon strength; it will get the heart racing and make you gasp for breath, but muscle fitness is secondary to strength.
Cardio training is about keeping your heart and lungs working at a high rate over a sustained period of time. The point of cardio training is to increase your fitness; that it will also strengthen your muscles is secondary to fitness.
OFs need to do both cardio and weights to balance their (okay, our) exercise programmes. As I explained to Mick, cardio will give you the fitness to train hard, whereas weights will give you the strength to do cardio. Together they will restore your flexibility and give you the energy to do more.
All my programmes have a 20-minute cardio session after weights. Please don’t think of this as extra that can be left off if you don’t feel like it, cardio is vital to your overall health.
Cliff’s programme has a different philosophy and is a combination of both. Because of the pace of the workout and the way it is structured into super sets, it can be considered as aerobic weights and should only be undertaken by the very fit … or those who want to be super fit.
Finally, listen to your joints (and smoke them if it helps). As older guys our joints have been through the mill. We all have our rugby knees, tennis elbows, dancer’s hips and drunk man’s neck to remind us of a life well lived. Gym is supposed to relieve these aches and pains by strengthening the muscles and tendons around those joints and taking the strain. If an exercise is causing a joint to be painful, take the advice of my very expensive surgeon, stop doing that exercise. Seek medical advice and look for an alternate exercise; never ignore joint pain. That’s about as simple as I can make it.
Here is an exercise guide for those of you who have never done weight training before.
So many Old Farts waft into a gym, take one look at all the machines and free weights and walk away because they haven’t a clue what weight they should be using for an exercise and are too embarrassed to ask.
As a concept you know the weight you use should challenge your muscles without causing damage, such as ripping, tearing and pulling, but what is it? I have a formula you can use to establish your unique set of weights before you start your training.
Let me emphasise, this is only a guide, a place to start! After a week or so you may have to adjust and refine these weights depending on your individual strength and condition.
If you look at the two-day programme Mick started on, or Paul’s three-day programme in this book, you will see that every exercise is labelled with an (A), (B), (C), (D) or (E) next to the kilogram space of each exercise. Once you have done the calculation, you’ll have five weights in kilograms, labelled from (A) to (E) that you will write into your exercise book next to the appropriate exercise. Then go into the gym knowing where to start.
Here is the calculation: your weight, less half your age, divided by two, then that total weight divided by two, three times. Relax, it’s not as complex as it sounds. Get out your calculator or call your grandchild to help.
The examples below use Mick’s and Paul’s original calculations and give the weights with which they started training. Fill in your details in the column under YOU and find out your starting weights. If possible, and to make things easier, try to round off all numbers to the nearest whole number before starting the calculation, so if you weigh 98.2 kg mark it down as 98 kg, okay?
You can download this body programme from our website here
Now the weights in (A) and (B) must be rounded off the nearest multiple of 5, i.e. in Mick’s case: 78 kg to 80 kg and 39 kg to 40 kg.
Finally, round off the weights in (C), (D) and (E) to the nearest whole number, i.e. in Mick’s case: 19.5 kg to 20 kg, 9.75 kg to 10 kg, 4.85 kg to 5 kg.
You will now have six weights marked from (A) to (E) that you can transfer to the programme of your choice in this book. To see what those exercises look like and for tips on form, read on.