DB press 35lb x 4 x 12
farmers walk 90lb x 1500 ft
While I use this blog primarily as a workout log, I usually just post what I did and don't spend much time talking about it. I primarily post other things that motivate or interest me, and frankly, my own performance isn't that inspiring. As a result, I try not to spend much time talking about myself.
But if you've been reading this blog for awhile, you might be wondering if there is any purpose to my training (I wonder that myself). So I thought I would write a couple of posts describing where I've come from as it relates to training, share some thoughts about what I've learned along the way, and talk a little bit about my current focus.
Just for the record, I'm 5'10", weigh about 180 and I'll be 40 years old on Friday. I played baseball in high school and began lifting weights then. I have basically never stopped doing some sort of daily training since that point. So for what it's worth, I have over 20 years of experience trying nearly every exercise approach you can think of. Bodybuilding type workouts, bodyweight only stuff, crossfit style work, heavy weights, short and long distance running, indoor rowing, kettlebells, you name it, I've done it.
My primary training motivation has centered around the example set for me by my Grandpa. My grandfather was a very important person in my life (
see a post I wrote about him just after he passed away here). He was a farmer his whole life and he was one of the hardest working and most physically fit people I have ever seen or heard of, well into his 90's. That example of daily, hard work and consistency and integrity is a key motivator to me.
My grandpa was working his farm and climbing steep hills and hunting deer well into his 90's, doing things that people 70 years younger than him would struggle to do. He passed away two years ago just before his 99th birthday. I think about him every single time I do a workout and on every run I do. He loved the mountains, and long trail runs are one of the ways that I stay in touch with him.
There are of course other factors that drive me. I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment of working hard. I like to accomplish things other people think are difficult or impossible to do, I can get competitive from time to time, I like my body to look a certain way, etc. But at it's core, my training has largely been driven by my desire to live up to my Grandpa's example of hard work and sacrifice.
I am admittedly an exercise generalist. The one key theme is I typically enjoy working hard. I can honestly say that after the majority of my workouts in my life I have been exhausted. That has its pros and cons, but it's just my style.
All of this generalist work has enabled me to put up some decent numbers in various activities, but not be a top tier competitor in anything. In my life I've been able to row sub 1:30 for 500 meters and sub 7:00 for 2,000 meters on the concept 2 rower, run a sub 5:45 mile, run an 8k in 33:29, finish a 50 mile race in 9:30, run a marathon in 3:27, do 30 strict dead hang pullups in a row, do 70 pushups in a row, do 100 burpees in 6:17, bench press 250 pounds and clean and push press 75 pound dumbbells. These are not heroic numbers by any means, and to a number of people they aren't even very impressive, but it's a fairly decent range of fitness for some dude working out in his garage.
One aspect of my training approach is I like to keep things simple and efficient. This has two effects. The first is relatively short workouts. I have never seemed to have enough time or interest to spend two hours per day exercising. Most days I would rather suffer for 45 minutes and be done (though that has been changing a bit in the last year or so). The second impact is I am a big fan of single exercise workouts. Why? I just like it. While it may bore other people to death, it's how I prefer to do things. I like to just zone out doing a single movement per workout and not be distracted by switching weights, etc. It's probably not the optimal way to do things, but it makes be happy. It also makes it easier to work out at home, which maximizes my time because I don't have to spend time getting to and from the gym.
Like most folks, I have my share of nagging aches and pains. I have never been truly sidelined due to injury (i.e. not training for 6 months straight or something like that), but I have definitely had to switch things up to work around various aches and pains.
As I approach age 40 I spend a lot of time thinking about aches and injuries. Are sore joints just a by-product of 20 years of training? Do I just need to accept it and train through them? I actually don't mind that as long as I don't eventually get some kind of crazy arthritis or something (and even then I honestly might still train anyway). I'm not sure of the answer here, and I will have some more comments on that later, but regardless, my approach up to this point has largely been to work around serious joint pains instead of push through them.
Not to sound like a whiner, but a listing of my major ache related issues has some relevance to my training comments (in a future post). My biggest issue are my elbows. I got golfer's elbow (tendonitis on the inside of each elbow) from doing too many pullups and golfing too much about 12 years ago. Tendonitis sucks and is really hard to get rid of. It has bothered me on and off ever since, especially if I do much upper body work. It's not super painful anymore (I used to not be able to pick up a grocery bags sometimes), but the ache is definitely there if I work it too hard. My other injury aches are more minor. If I do too much pushing work (i.e. pushups), my right shoulder bugs me all day. Also, if I do any serious squat work (either with very much weight, or higher rep bodyweight style) the ligaments in my right knee click like crazy during the workout and bug me the rest of the day. There isn't a lot of pain there, but it doesn't seem like too good a thing long term.
Again, I'm not complaining. I have a friend who is a very competitive amateur boxer who has trained 12-15 hours a week on a torn ACL for the last 3 years. My grandpa had three fused vertabrae in his back for 40 years and he never complained. Everybody has got stuff like this. But the injuries or aches do give context to my current training program, so I thought it made sense to inventory them.
Next post - some lessons learned
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