Thoughts on Death and Dying
- Details
I listened to the awful way we kill our old in one of Terri Gross's always wonderful interviews while driving home from work today, entitled "A Clearer Map For Aging: 'Elderhood' Shows How Geriatricians Help Seniors Thrive". It got me to thinking.....
It has been a long journey from my Woodsville radish patch, across high Alpennine trails overlooking the Mediterranean, to so efficiently navigating the labyrinthine halls of my Agency's Big Four. I can't say that I've enjoyed it, but I achieved everything I set out to do. As I approach the end of the journey, it is not death that I fear. It is how we force people to die. Dying as a vegetable, incapacitated by dementia and pain killers in some institution leaching away the personal savings I have accumulated for my wife is worse than any other conceivable end. We have laws put in place by people who have no understanding of the biological sciences and evolutionary fact. Instead, they impose some mishmash of views concerning the right way to die that springs from ideas more comparable to Medieval myths than the scientific facts. To compound the crime, they are encouraged along my industries making themselves rich off the sentimental lies we tell ourselves about life after death.
I have chosen the arc of my life every step of the way. I will not relinquish it at the end.
5/17 Friday
- Details
Down in my basement gym. It's upper body compound dumbbells today. I alternate dumbbell and barbell workouts for the variety. Compound movements because I don't have time to do isolate arms this morning. Compound movements provide the most bang for the buck/minute. 5 sets, 3 minutes between sets. Chest ups, db bench, reverse rows, db standing press. Skipping legs today: my back's a little sore from Monday's deadlifts.
I don't really call it cross-training. It's all training to me. Everything you do to improve is training. And I like the way it makes me look in a tee shirt. I keep at it because I keep improving. I know this can't go on indefinitely, but, at 64, improving is hugely rewarding. It defies the convention of what 64 is supposed to be. I don't really train like exercise authorities recommend. I go at it every day, resting only on sporadic days when I wake up tired and my body's demanding a rest. I train like I did when I was 24. The only significant difference is that I can't/don't run as fast. I can run much further, but not as fast. The weight I'm lifting now is beginning to approach what I was lifting 40 years ago, also. This is really quite an exploration as I run out my remaining years. I keep thinking....plyometrics and some sprinting...maybe I can match my old running paces.
5/13 Last Week
- Details
I lost my focus last week and missed 2 runs and 2 strength work outs. This happens from time to time. I'm 10 weeks out from my 64'th. Physical fitness is the foundation upon which all mental and physical health rests. I cannot honestly claim injury or fitness. It was just loss of will and focus. I don't know why the wheels sometimes just come off. No excuse. I'm 151.7 lb. 16% body fat by impedance measure. This is too high.
In wonderful Stoic Spartan manner:
"You should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body.
Ask for a stout heart that has no fear of death,
and deems length of days the least of Nature's gifts
that can endure any kind of toil,
that knows neither wrath nor desire and thinks
the woes and hard labors of Hercules better than
the loves and banquets and downy cushions of Sardanapalus.
What I commend to you, you can give to yourself;
For assuredly, the only road to a life of peace is virtue."
I lose my identity when I do not train. I flush into the pool of the indulgent lumpen consumers.
5/3 Friday
- Details
I begin my strength workouts with deadlifts and pull up, 3 sets of the first, 5 of the second. By the time I'm finished with those movements, I am wide awake.
I don't use belts or straps, unlike in my youth. I firmly believe you are only as strong as your weakest link. A belt compresses your core. The increased internal pressure takes load off the back, making the deadlift easier. Likewise, straps relieve hands of the need to grip the bar as tightly. This decreases load on hands and forearms. What good are strong legs without a midsection capable of lifting what the legs did? What good are strong bicep and lats without the grip to move the object they pull?
Holistic training must leave behind no weak spots. Deadlifts and pull up are my most mentally demanding movements. Leading off with them, particularly at 04:15, is particularly difficult for me. My mind rebels against the exertion. This is a weakness. Mind or body, you are only as strong as your weakest link.
I slowed my rep tempo this morning and lost about a third of my reps. Jerking the weight and kipping cheat your muscles of the work. There is a place for plyometric training. But too often, those techniques degenerate to being a means of squeezing out more showy reps for bragging rights. I do not train for others. In the end, the only voice inside your head is your own. It is weakness if you need the deceived opinions of others to prop you up when you are alone inside your head with that one voice.
Mind, body, the link between them: train everything. Train for life.
4/28 Sunday
- Details
I passed up my long run for 5 miles in the pollen. While running, my mind wandered, as it almost always does.
From something akin to a tree shrew to bipedalism, to enlarged cranium, to tool use, there is a continuous archeological record of human evolution. Now H. Sapiens sits as Rodin's Thinker, pondering the quantum universe. The senses of sight, smell, and sound that evolved hunting on savannas and the steppe no longer suffice. H. Sapiens extends his ability to conceive and know through abstract mathematical models because nothing in his experience can possibly explain or even be analogous to what he learns of the universe through careful measurement and thought. H. Sapiens as Thinker of abstract models becomes the God his ancestors thought they worship. H. Sapiens has becomes the measure of all things.
Changing Emphasis
- Details
We've entered spring. In my quest to return to marathon fitness, I'm changing my training emphasis. I'm dropping the separate leg and upper body workouts 6 times a week and adopting a full body 3 times a week routine. As I try to increase running mileage, there is always a tension between my leg strength work and my need to have them endure miles. With the current scheme, I'll do my legs on non-running days. I was finding that both running and do leg strength work on the same day was really making me tired. Hopefully, by splitting them, I'll have more recovery time for both.
I do not see all this as optional. I am convinced that the leg work prevents running-related injuries: dead lifts, high load heel raises, good mornings, and split squats. There's some peer reviewed science to back me on this as well as personal experience. Additionally, the dead lifts, along with a more knowledgeable core routine, have me hefting wet mulch bags with more strength than any time in my life, including when I was an active duty Marine. The upper body work is not optional either. Progressive muscle loss begins in the sedentary population in their mid twenties. By their 60's and 70's they are either emaciated and frail or obese and hardly able to move. They tell themselves that they are the inevitable result of age and genetics. These are lies we all tell ourselves. Muscle loss is discretionary. Sarcopenia is reversible. Epigenetics is more powerful than genetics.
Increasing the Weight
- Details
I track total volume for each exercise. Total volume is simply the weigh, multiplied by the number of times lifted, summed across all the sets of the exercise. I follow a traditional body building scheme where, once I hit 12 repetitions on all sets, I increase the weight by 10-15% and drop the repetitions down to 6-8 reps per set. The result is a satisfying rise in intensity as my muscles contract with additional intensity against the additional weight. But, with higher intensity comes lower ability to achieve volume: my total volume. I know objectively that this is a good thing. By cycling through sets of 6 reps and slowly building back to sets of 12, I am cycling through high-intensity, low volume and lower intensity, higher volume routines. This holistic approach stresses both strength and endurance systems in my body. Of course, that total volume number will drop for this particular work out, only to inevitably rise again as I continue to train.
This morning, it was supine pull ups. Last workout, I hit 5 sets of 12. Today, I laid a 10 pound weight across my chest and dropped to 6 reps. The additional weight brings additional focus. Sometimes, doing 12 reps almost becomes mindless; 6 reps, on the other hand, demand to be noticed.
This particular morning is the Monday after a more aggressive 11-miler. Mornings after harder, longer runs are always lower energy, no matter how careful I am in attending to recovery.
No matter, Friday's repeat of this morning's routine will show progress.
2/16/2019 Volume Metric
- Details
I've never tracked workout volume for strength training before. It is a simple concept. For an exercise, multiply the number of repetitions by the weight raised in each set. The sum of the results for all the sets is the volume of that exercise. It is a basic, unflinching metric of work performed. Decreasing rest periods between sets decreases the volume the athlete can achieve. Increasing sets, repetitions, or weight lifted increases the volume. I find that increasing goal repetitions or weight lifted often decreases my volume on that day for that exercise. If I have achieved 5 sets at a particular number of reps, I will increase the number in the next workout. However, I can often not sustain that increased number across all sets. Likewise, an increase in weight lifted often causes a drop in reps sufficient to drop the overall volume. But these are anomalies. With consistency, I increase the number of repetitions at the heavier weight with the goal of hitting 5 sets of 12.
The volume number sets a metric that the athlete must focus on raising. I'm beginning to see the impacts of improperly managed components of my life affect my strength when I let them intrude. With body, as with mind, consistent improvement can only be achieved by focus on desired goals. If you divert this focus to other things, let other things intrude, the metrics will show it.
8/31/2017 Social Media: I don't like Facebook
- Details
On Twitter, people think in phrases. On Facebook, people think in full sentences. Users can rise to the level of an essay on a blog. A website challenges its owner to create an organic whole. Twitter and Facebook are fundamentally democratic and populist. There is no entrance criteria, no need to construct cohesive thought, not enough content to contain quality. The writer can just blurt out any half-baked impulse that comes to mind. Witness POTUS.
1/2/2018 Running with Dogs
- Details
While on a run, I thought of Candace Burt's recent post about running with her dogs. Current research suggests that dogs were domesticated from wolves multiple times in multiple places as humans spread across the Earth. This suggests that the mutual benefits were strong. It is easy to see how homo sapiens or even his predecessors derived advantage from this partnership. Proto dogs brought increased visual, aural, and olfactory acuity to the relationship. Wolves and humans are nearly unique in their ability to trot and run across vast distances to hunt or, in the case of humans, gather. Some paleoarcheologists believe that running may have been humans' killer advantage in competition for scarce food. But, as I run and think of dogs as running companions, have to wonder if the partnership between humans and dogs might have been the actual advantage that propelled humans to the position of apex predator. Dogs extend human hunting senses far beyond our natural limitations. It is easy to envision how this was a strong selective mechanism on both species; we both ate well thanks to the partnership. When the night came, humans must succumb to sleep in a world of night time predators. Any dog owner knows what good sentinels his partners can be. Likewise, with our relative lack of need to sleep, proto dogs may have gained increased protection by remaining near human encampments.
As Canis Lupus slowly became Canis lupus became Canis lupus familiaris, it became the only animal that could actually read human facial expressions, as research now suggests. This would be valuable feedback to man's best friend as not all humans and not all human emotions are beneficial to dogs. There is some preliminary research suggesting that dogs can even communicate back to humans with facial expressions of their own, increasing the richness of the inter-species communication. One can view the human-dog relationship, at least in hunter-gatherer societies, as a symbiotic one.
In light of this, we can understand the human love for dogs and their mindless, instinctive need for us, no matter how we often treat them. We can also think of those who abuse them as something proto-human, sub-human.
5/23/2018 Karma
- Details
"The law of karma is a special instance of the law of cause and effect, according to which all our actions of body, speech, and mind are causes and all our experiences are their effects."
Geshe Kelsang Gyatso (1)
This is the most satisfying definition of Karma that I have come across.
I came to the notion of through Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Dostoyevesky's intent is to demonstrate how
(1) 1931-, Kelsang Gyatso, Geshe, (1995). Joyful path of good fortune : the complete guide to the Buddhist path to enlightenment
6/8/2018 Colorado Dreams
- Details
Facing the Collegiate Range, we came across this diner. Amazingly, the interior is done in a Caribbean style. It's just a burger and breakfast but it all tasted great in that high altitude mountain air.
Mesa east of Durango, facing north. It's just outside Pagosa Springs.
The Gunnison etched a vast, deep canyon into the Mesa over millions of years. It is called the Black Canyon because, at best, sunlight reaches its bottom for only 32 minutes a day. The local Native Americans avoided it out of superstition.
The Collegiate Range, the second range just west of Colorado's Front Range. While the latter contains Pike's Peak and is home to four 14'ers, the Collegiate Peaks rises off the valley between them with a line of 9 14'ers, another six 13'ers, and is home to the Continental Divide. It is an incredible sight of one massif after another, a wall of massive peaks. Coming upon them going east after Monarch Pass takes the breath away.
8/19/2018 Will in Life
- Details
"The essential thing is action. Action has three stages: the decision born of thought, the order or preparation for execution, and the execution itself All three stages are governed by the will. The will is rooted in character, and for the man of action character is of more critical importance than intellect. Intellect without will is worthless, will without intellect is dangerous."
—Hans von Seeckt
12/13/2018 Setbacks
- Details
Jack Daniels calls time off from running due to injury a "setback". He identifies their cause as an error in judgement in training. Seeing the positive side of setbacks, he notes that they have a positive effect on the runner's attitude. While a runner often become depressed while experiencing the setback, he/she usually returns to running with heightened motivation. This enthusiasm can lead the runner to become injured again by returning to previous running mileage and intensity.
My setback was the first in three years, an unusual healthy period of time for a recreational runner. I attribute this to a holistic approach to exercise. In my previous setback, I discovered the split squat. This movement provides a strong stimulus to peripheral muscles in the leg and along the kinetic chain to provide greater stability while running. I ran without issue until my experimentation with zero-drop and minimal shoes. However, I do not think that running in shoes made with this design philosophy caused my current setback. Rather, the particular model I chose is extremely light and, I believe, unstable for my needs.
As with previous setbacks, the extra time and energy I have from not running gives me opportunity to increase my strength training. My knowledge of this form of exercise was mostly gained in the 1980's. I have learned a lot from re-focusing on strength in the era of the Internet and YouTube. My technique in the dead lift has improved dramatically. I learned about the split squat. I have also become convinced of the advantages of combining strength and cardiovascular training to create a more holistic approach to training for health.
Honestly, the setback experience has not been completely positive. I've manage to put on roughly five pounds over the many months. This has a strongly negative impact on my self-image and sense of well-being.
When thinking about the conflicting emotional currents that I've experienced in this Setback of 2018, one moment stands out. An older non-runner remarked at one point during my long down time: "Well, you are getting older...", expressed with emphasis on the verb. Yet, I have watched my non-running peers, often while predicting my eminent demise from running by injury, get knee and hip replacements, pacemakers, or succumb to the universal expanding waist line. I've found the remark to be somewhat taunting and exceptionally motivating. My non-runner friend completely misses the point of all the physical activity. Getting older mandates the activity, it does not provide an excuse to quit it. In our society, the remark becomes an invitation and a challenge: "Give up what you're doing and come get old like us. It's easier. Come be mediocre with us." I train because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate.
I have said it before: what we associate with getting older is nothing but the accumulated effects of lives spent poisoning ourselves with poor nutrition and completely inadequate amounts of exercise. Miraculously, these effects are reversible, but are best avoided altogether.