Decisions that Aren't

The fact that I get up early makes me sound like some kind of Ben-Franklin clean-livin' type, which isn't entirely inaccurate, but it definitely has its downsides. Chief among these is that I'm terrible company after about 8:30 PM. If Heidi makes arrangments for us to go out to dinner with another couple, she'll usually suggest that we dine at something like 4:45 in the afternoon, giving the sensible alibi that we'll "beat the crowd" at the restaurant. In fact, she's inevitably trying to keep her husband from getting banned from yet another LA restaurant by falling asleep in his soup, toppling into a tray of chicken flambé, and setting the dress of the woman at the next table on fire. I gave up on 9:00 PM movies years ago because my bedroom was more comfortable, didn't cost $5/hour to rent, and wasn't continually and unexpectedly filled with the sound of explosions, laughter and applause.

All this is to say that being an early riser has its liabilities: you pay for all that 5 AM virtuousness with poor, if inadvertent, social behavior. Thank god I now have a child to blame it on; now when I nod off at dinner tables I make up stories about tending to my poor sick daughter, and everyone thinks I'm just a good Dad.

So when I talk about getting up early, just remember that I'm hip to its downsides, too. I had to get up early this morning to bike in for a 7 AM client, and it got me thinking about that first moment of decision when the alarm rings, and something in you decides between getting up or hitting "snooze." If you choose the latter, the little drama gets played out again five minute later, sometimes for an hour or more, as you unconsciously restructure your day based on the newly-revised time of awakening.

Often people will tell me, "I tried to get up but I couldn't." Now, this may be true. And the choice to stay in bed may have been a good one. Getting up early does nothing for you if you don't get to sleep early, too. But the heart of the matter appears to be the rhetorical -- and, I'd also argue, psychological -- trick of denying one's own responsibiity for the choice.

The "should-I-get-up-early-and-work-out-or-not" dilemma is a good example of what I like to call 'Decisions we Opt not to Make So We Can Pretend We Didn't Make Them." Another classic one, for me, anyway, is Wait Till the Deadline Passes. If I'm wrestling with whether to apply for this or that academic course, or workshop, or get in touch with this or that person who could be of help, I'll often just put it off until some deadline, real or imagined, has passed and thus remove myself from the decision altogether: "I made a mistake, now it's impossible, or awkward, or pointless, and the opportunity's gone. I didn't make the decision, I just forgot." Easier to admit being absent-minded than it is to admit to being scared to try new things or too timid to ask for something I really want. Of course I DID in fact make the decision. I chose to let this or that opportunity elapse. But I'm pretending, for my own fragile ego's sake, that I didn't.

I'm being (painfully) honest here, ladies and gents, and I suspect I'm not the only one out there who's guilty of this type of non-decision-making decision-making. When I look over my life -- which is hardly a thing of beauty time-management-wise -- I realize that such denial of accountability has wreaked some pretty serious havoc in my life.

Television, the internet, videogaming, and the like eat up a staggering amount of time in the average person's week. We need to face the fact that we choose to give our time to these things. Now, downtime is important, of course. And all the fun, Candyland things we do with our free time have their place. But we can't pretend that time was stolen from us: every hour we spend doing something essentially pointless is a choice, not something foisted on us from above that we had no choice but to obey. We may be called at any time -- by our physician, our spouse, or boss, or some inner need -- to spend more time doing something difficult, be it exercising, parenting, or developing ourselves professionally. It's up to us where to find that time, whether to take it out of the time we spend watching "Lost" or the time we'd usually spend doing something else that's productive and important. The important thing seems to be to make important decisions consciously rather than procrastinating until the decision has essentially been made for us (my wife will want to me have this tatooed on my forehead. I'm not doing it, Heidi, you hear me?).

My daughter Kate is a great mirror. She has become quite the little debater, and what she lacks in rhetorical flourish she makes up for in passion and volume. Being a three-year-old, some days she simply has to do things she doesn't like to do, like take a bath, and often she will resist for up to half an hour, screaming, running away, hiding, begging for a reprieve, demonstrating her cleanliness, bargaining, cajoling, throwing fits, making threats. After a while, I'll try to point out to her that the time and energy she has spent in resisting the bath -- something that she knows is fun and good for her -- is now far greater than the time and energy required to just take the bath. The standoff with her soaking, pleading, rubber-duck wielding father is also far less pleasant than the bath itself will be. In her half-crazed, rebellious, "I'm not going to submit to The Man" mode, she never quite hears any of that.

And then I think to myself, what baths am I refusing to take in my life?

Bathe well, my readers. Bathe well.

Andrew

DF Tip #27: Stealing Workouts

A few years ago I read an embarrassingly-titled book called "The Men's Health Cover Model Workout" by, yes, a Men's Health cover model named Owen McKibbin, who probably has the most coveted physique in the kingdom of average guydom. He looks -- and this is probably what has made him such a long-standing ambassador for the magazine -- ALMOST like a guy whose body the average exerciser could roughly approximate without resorting to a lifetime of covert pharmaceutical-acquisition trips to Tijuana. He's not enormous; he models with his shirt on, too, and doesn't look like a rhino in a tablecloth like most bodybuilders do (side question: since we spend most of our lives clothed, shouldn't we exercise in a way that makes us look GOOD in them? I just ask). He's "just" an athletic looking guy whose job it is to keep his bodyfat in the single digits year round.

His relative normalness, of course, is an illusion: McKibbin has some serious genetics. Yes, as his book recounts, he's overcome a lot of injuries, and has worked hard for his muscles, but he's a mesomorph through and through: he doesn't tend to gain fat, and he doesn't have a tough time holding onto his muscle mass, either -- the relative sanity of his workout programs are ample evidence of that. Now, most people can exercise and diet themselves into a peak condition resembling a cover model's, but they usually lose it when they go off their Spartan diet/workout regimes, which is why Brad Pitt looks one way in TROY and quite another on the cover of US.

The only person I ever met who had the McKibbin-like combination of muscularity and leanness was a guy named Wayne who lived in the same apartment building as my family and me before we moved to the 'burbs of Glendale. The first thing I ever said to Wayne, which he had the kindness not to misinterpret, was "How did you get legs like that?" Turned out Wayne was a former Army Ranger and breaststroke world record holder. His athletic accomplishments were the result of hard work, for sure, but his enviable genetics had given him a massive headstart on his competition. When I met him, he hadn't worked out in years. And when we went to the gym together, it was clear he'd never done a squat in his life and barely knew a dumbell from a hole in the ground.

And this guy was leaner and more muscular than me on my best day, after 15 years of dedicated exercising. And he had done fitness modelling as a freakin' sideline, in the same shrugging way I might put in some hours driving a cab for extra beans. Jesus H. Macy, I wanted to stab myself in the head with an ice pick.

Okay, my resentment of sub-normal bodyfat types aside, Owen McKibbin has some smart things to say about fitness. He was the one who turned me on to sprinting and lower-rep weight training for muscle-building -- before both became exercise modes du jour in just about every mainstream fitness publication currently on the shelf. His exercise programs are clear and reasonable, very doable for most average guys, and adaptable in intensity for more advanced people as well. His diet tips are sensible and clear and remain more or less the parameters I use to guide my eating to this day.

But I think my favorite McKibbinism has to be the concept of "stealing" workouts.

To paraphrase Simon Cowell, 'What. The. Bloody. Hell. Is. That?"

Here we go: stealing a workout means figuring out a way, often against serious odds, to cram a workout into an overstuffed, overcrowded, overstressed day. The kind of day where you might say: "I can't possibly find a second to work out in this day. There just isn't time. It's totally impractical. If the great gods of fitness were to look down on me from Mount Olympus, they would say, 'You're off the hook, Sally J. Oppenheimer, no reasonable person could find a way to exercise today.'" Stealing a workout means to have a day like that and find a way to WORK OUT ANYWAY.

Let's say you're home from a stressful day at work at 6:30 PM and you've got a dinner to attend at 7:45. You haven't so much as left your desk all day. Now, you COULD sit on the couch, catch your breath, pour yourself a glass of wine and savor your time off for an hour or so before you change and get back in the car. You could spend some time with your family. You could catch up on reruns of "Gilligan's Island," thumb through the latest issue of Tiger Beat (the one with David Cassidy on the cover). Lord knows I've burned through years of my life doing things far less productive.

But here's another option. Steal a workout. True, you don't have time to schlep to the gym. And you might not have all the energy you would have if you'd planned for the workout, eaten a high-protein/carb meal 90 minutes before, and gotten yourself psyched up to sweat. Assuming you don't have a commute as nasty as mine, you've got yourself just 40 minutes to get a workout in before you have to shower and get out the door.

Don't assume that whatever you do won't help. Don't assume that your don't have the time -- or the energy -- to make it happen for yourself. Just focus on getting through the transition period from harried office worker to refreshed exerciser.

So spend from 6:30 to 6:35 pouring yourself a glass of juice (yes, juice, for the love of god), maybe with a sprinkling of protein powder, and getting into your workout duds (hint: get some workout duds you feel dead sexy in. I personally think it's fun to exercise in t-shirts with holes that I've had since college, but that's my personal kink).

At 6:35, walk out the door. Take a watch with a secondhand with you.

• From 6:35 to 6:40, ease from a brisk walk to an easy jog to get your blood pumping.

• From 6:40 to 6:45, do some dynamic stretching of your major joints: arm swings, toe touches, ankle, knee, wrist, and neck circles. Pay attention to what you're doing, work with increasing range of motion, and use the time to "arrive" in the body you've essentially been using as a brain-storage chamber all day.

• From 6:45 to 7:00, do thirty-second sprint repeats with two and a half minutes between repetitions. After each sprint, and while the clock is still running, drop and do a set of 10 pushups. Perform a total of five sets of pushups and five sprints.

• From 7:00 to 7:05, do some easy jogging, jumping jacks or calesthenics to bring your heart rate down.

• From 7:05 to 7:09, perform a circuit of four exercises: squat thrusts (stand, bend to pushup position, jump legs back into squat position, stand up for one rep); pullups on a monkey bar (jump up to the "up" position to make it easier on the upper body); step-ups onto a stair -- higher for more intensity, lower for less; and walking lunges. Do twenty seconds of exercise one, rest ten seconds, move to the second exercise, and so on, unil you've done two sets of each for a total of four minutes.

• From 7:10 to 7:15 make your way back to your doorstep, do some easy stretching -- the yoga sun salutation sequence is one of my favorites, but then I've got a soft spot for touchy-feely things. Sue me, I'm married to an astrologer. Bring your heart rate down, breathe deeply.

• At 7:15, walk inside, take shower, change clothes, and hit the restaurant. Your body will be craving healthy food at this point, so you'll be all the less likely to order the sausage pizza with pepperoni, extra cheese, and extra cheese inside THAT cheese.

Serious exercisers: you can can cut down on the rest between sprints, try to match your 30-second distance with all five efforts, elevate the feet doing pushups, perform a tuck jump at the end of each squat thrust, and do two-legged jump-ups rather than step-ups onto the bench. Less conditioned people, you can rest longer and go easier on the sprints, perform pushups with the hands on an elevated surface, do body-weight partial squats instead of squat thrusts, and do partial pullups or simply eliminate pullups from the rotation and do a couple extra sets of other moves.

Last week when I was in Hawaii with my family I squeezed in one of the most fun workouts of my life. While on the beach, I did 20-second boogie-board pulls with my daughter and niece in tow. When that got too tiring I pulled them one at a time. Then I caught my breath and did 10-rep sets of "alternating kid overhead throws" where I'd lift each child overhead rapidly, release them briefly at the top, catch them on the way down, put them down, and move onto the next child. Then I did pushups with both of them on my back, then just the bigger one, then just the smaller one, then with no weight at all.

When I have to get up for an early morning workout and the alarm goes off when the raccoons are still poking through my garbage, I remind myself that the hardest part will be the act of getting out of bed. Once I've done that, autopilot takes over until I'm actually exercising, waking myself up, and having fun. Stealing a workout is the same way: it's that transition period that defeats most people, that moment when you ask yourself "Am I up for this?" Just answer yes! Overcome your resistance to move, and pretty soon you'll find yourself out the door and exercising. And pretty soon after that you'll be done -- and happier, healthier, and more energized for it.

And Gilligan won't have missed you.

Andrew

Confessions of a Sick Athlete

Well, ladies and germs, time for your host to help himself to a sizable slice of humble pie, topped with a healthy dollup of crow.

I've got a tip coming up that will be posted here and going directly out to subscribers (which you, yes, YOU could become if you submit your email address at dynamicfitness.us!) on the concept of "stealing" workouts -- that is, cramming in an exercise session when circumstances seem to be conspiring against all your best health and fitness intentions. I stand by it, but let's just say that the events of the last few days have made me realize that you can take these things a little too far.

Quick sum-up: last week my family and I met my wife's brother and HIS family in Hawaii for a few days. My wife, Heidi, and I had our usual pre-vacation subtle mini-spat on the plane. You have to picture the two of us, settled into our seats, our adorable three-year old between us, already excited about seeing her cousins and visiting this mythical tropical locale:

HEIDI: You aren't going to try to work out while we're in Hawaii, are you?
ME: Well...
HEIDI: I mean, we'll be hiking, snorkeling, swimming, and running after kids all week -- you don't REALLY feel the need to add a formal regimen on top of all that, do you?
ME: Here's the thing, I've got a triathlon coming up the weekend after we get back...
HEIDI: Perfect, you need the rest, then! Plus, when was the last time you actually took a week off from exercise? Seriously?
ME: I took a week off during our honeymoon!
HEIDI: In 1999?

I realized that if I was going to exercise in Hawaii WHILE KEEPING MY MARRIAGE INTACT (capitalization mine) I would have to do so on the sly. On the down-low. Under the radar. Like many wives, Heidi has a pretty much omniscient radar, so I knew that trying to work out without her knowing would be an exercise (ha, ha...) in futility. So actually getting away with it was pretty much a foregone conclusion. But I could maybe figure out a way to do it unobtrusively -- no scouring the island for the best equipped gyms, no daily, forty-minute round-trips to the local Olympic-sized swimming pool. I was expected to enjoy my surroundings, sip fruit-flavored alcoholic beverages with my brother-in-law and his family, and generally Be. On. Vacation. Oh, lord, the deprivation.

So I did what's referred to by those of us with severe fitness problems as "stolen" workouts, which as I said I'll cover in more detail in my upcoming tip. And as I'll proudly describe, I jammed in some pretty intense sessions of beach-sprinting, calisthenics and stretching, all outdoors, with improvised "equipment," in the lovely environs of Kauai. Being in a setting like that, when everyone has their shirts off pretty much all day, does something to one's motivation. Maybe I was the palest guy on the beach, but damnit, I was going to be one of the fittest. And failing that, I was going to be trying the hardest.

We got back last Tuesday, and on Wednesday I did a "brick" workout (that's triathlete-ese for a multi-sport exercise session) consisting of biking and running at full tilt for about an hour total, in preparation for the triathlon which was to be held on Saturday. Because I'd been away from my bike, and from "formal" exercise for a week, I really pushed it, figuring I had to catch up for my time off -- which when I now think about it wasn't really time off, but, if anything, time spent exercising more intensely than usual, supplemented by entire days of hiking, kayaking, snorkelling and the like. My workout on Wednesday was tough as hell, as I tried to replicate race pace and intensity over the same biking and running distance as my upcoming race: a tiny fraction of that of an Ironman race, but proportionately far greater in intensity.

Checking the results of past races on the web, I saw that my practice times easily placed me in the top three in my age group for this particular event. This meant that, assuming that a truckload of ringers didn't suddenly materialize in San Dimas that weekend, I could be pretty confident of a place on the podium. At a small race, perhaps, in a small California town, pernaps, but hey, a medal's a medal, and for someone who never did much in the way of competitive sports until I was in my 30's, they're nothing to be sneezed at. I went to bed Wednesday night practicing my acceptance speech.

Well, to quote Mr. Wilson, my driver's ed teacher, "WHAM! It happened." I got sick as a dog. Some witch's brew of two parts plane travel, two parts race-performance-anxiety, and seven parts sheer foolish excess laid me out but good for about three days, starting late Thursday night, continuing till this morning, when I blessedly began to feel just a touch more human again.
Needless to say, despite the pep talks I gave myself Friday evening, replete with images of a flu-infected Michael Jordan scoring 50-plus points a game just a few short years ago, I missed the triathlon, something I feel particularly guilty about given the fact that I'd cajoled a client of mine into doing the race with me, assuring him that I'd be there right alongside him to cheer him on.

So I was hoping that today's entry would be a triumphant report of a race well run, biked and swum -- instead, I offer myself up as a living cautionary tale. Don't leave your best game in the clubhouse. You know the new Reebok ad campaign about "Run Easy"? I've scorned it in the past; now I think they might just have a point.

Pace yourself, people.

Andrew