Fitness for Old Farts

Tim – Third Four Weeks to Understanding

Understanding

In what was to become a tradition, the full Fellowship gathered to hold the second general meeting of Club FFOF at the end of week eight AGD (After Gym and Diet). It seems that four weeks between meetings is about right for all sorts of reasons; being reminded of promises made at a drunken lunch being the least of them.

Of course the chance to compare notes, change up exercise programmes and eat, drink and be merry with family and friends is addictive, but the purpose of the club was to get into physical shape and improve the quality of life as an Old Fart. Having fun was a happy by-product.

With memories of body shapes and fitness levels BG (Before Gym) training still fresh in the minds of all, the viewing of my by-weekly fat photos became the yardstick they used to measure their own progress in the flab reduction process. At the end of the day, it’s achieving your individual goal that keeps you focused and steady progress along the way keeps you motivated.

As you can see, my progress was steady, but not near what I hoped to achieve by the end of the programme. Here are the pics from Week Four and Week Eight side by side.

By Week 8 I could feel my muscles, joints and tendons pulling themselves into the kind of shape they last saw more than a decade ago. Even my hair was looking better. (Yes, the ginger jokes had just about stopped.) It’s astonishing how much more capable you feel when you don’t grunt every time you stand up … or sit down … or tie your shoe laces … and being able to do up your pants without fear of losing a button is an experience for which every Old Fart over the age of 55 should strive.

As in the first gathering, my photos had the rest of the Flatulence lining up with shirts off and sucking in as hard as they could to show off their personal progress. Wives and friends were forced to make the right noises, more from the hope that their quick compliments would have the fellows cover up the abundance of untanned old flesh on display than actual admiration, but a compliment is a compliment even if it has an ulterior motive.

There was a moment when John, Paul, Jerry and Mick were lined up with shirts off that I heard Sarah whisper to Cathy, ‘It’s the flab four, yeah, yeah, yeah.’ But even she could see how much better the guys were looking.

There was a change in attitude as well.

Mick now strode into the gym as if he owned the place, and Jerry was actually chatting to other gym lovers … chatting, it was astonishing to watch. Paul and John were both moving like men half their age and I was still seeing progress on a weekly basis.

It’s strangely liberating to discover that change is not always a bad thing. It’s even more liberating to know you are strong enough and fit enough to drive that change on.

The final four weeks of training loomed ahead and all of us were finally in the physical and mental condition to look forward to the challenge. That was the biggest change of all; in eight weeks we had lost that Old Fart Attitude. It had taken eight weeks of effort and self discipline and now the benefits were truly beginning to show, every one of the guys was feeling rejuvenated.

I’m not saying that we, the Fellowship, were suddenly a bunch of super fit and lean Old Farts ready to take on the world. Far from it, but we were leaner and fitter than we had been eight weeks before.

Obviously Mick was not in any condition suddenly to launch into a five-day programme without enormous amounts of pain (followed by a heart attack and death), but he could quite easily move onto Paul’s three-day programme and find the challenge achievable. And so it was for the rest of the Fellowship; all could step up a programme if they wished to do so.

As I keep saying, it’s about your individual journey, it’s not a competition and that is what the Fellowship had embraced. Each man had taken ownership of his programme, progress and goals.

***

Cliff’s programme was more than a step up every four weeks, it was a giant leap. So it came as no surprise when he handed me the charts for Weeks 9 to 12, and I saw that the programme extended the effort levels to a new high.

‘I can manage this,’ I remarked, feeling cocky, or at least hoping I sounded cocky.

‘Good,’ said Cliff, ‘because at the end of twelve weeks, I want you in condition to really start training.’ The Cheshire cat grin was firmly fixed.

That pissed me off.

Here are the final four weeks of Cliff’s twelve weeks of madness for those who want to get into condition before the real training starts. Check it out carefully. Once again the number of sets and reps and the percentage of max weight are completely different to the previous two blocks, so do your homework and fill in your correct weights before you begin.

The only new instruction in the programme is – ‘to failure’, which means you do as many reps as you can and go on until you simply can NOT do another one.