Just to make clear at this juncture the motivations for my training:
- I am turning 38. The closer I get to that 40 landmark the more serious I know I need to sort out my health for the sort of sailing I want to make thereafter. There are a number of physiological factors – such as from 40-70 you will loose 50% of you flexibility, muscle development, increase fat in arteries etc. – which can be prevented with simple exercise.
- I am a Chartered Safety & Health Practitioner. I think it is critical point that often too much attention is given to the “safety” and not enough to the “health”. I’m also a Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health. It would utterly incongruous to be all this and unfit. Therefore a principled philosophical assertion must be that to inspire others to improve their health in simple and practical ways – not only in a gym but in other gym-free lifestyle choices – then I must be as I say. More so.
- I have committed myself to the Men Health ‘Survival of the Fittest’ in Edinburgh this year. 10km with 10 obstacles. There will be more challenges like this and I’ve been looking at those arranged out on the South Downs. I am twist the arm of my old friend, Mark Habben, at the Zoological Society of London, to coach me up on running. Since his since recovering from cancer he has become a virtual Lance Armstrong.
- I shall be making a debut return to the rock. Given that I am moving into Sussex soon it puts me right on the door step on my old stomping ground – Harrison Rocks and Stone Farm. For this I need my weight-strength not only to be correct but better than it use to be. I’m a member of the British Mountaineering Council so it’s my duty to climb. Badly.
- I’m a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. I’m supposed to be spending more time outside, more time training, and less time in an arm-chair. However, am armchair is a lovely oxblood Queen Anne Chesterfield, so it is easy to spend so much time in it.
- I have a son now. I want to inspire him to be fit, strong and healthy. Who wouldn’t want that?
To achieve all this I took an off-peak membership with Virgin Active a couple of months back, which as a membership package perfectly suits my work lunch breaks.
Routine is:
- 6min walk to the Gym,
- 5mins to change and prep,
- 30mins session – concentrating on 7-9 sets,
- 10 mins to shower and change,
- 6min brisk walk back to the office.
NB: The nice part about the brisk walk is that it functions as an easy warm-up and cool-down.
I’m presently going through a break-in period for at least another two month to build up the my foundation strength, thereafter I’ll be dropping to fewer than five working sets per session with a longer rest period - necessitating 4–7 days of recovery before the next workout.
Naturally, the last week has been manic due to the birth of Elijah so I dropped only to one session per week – but increased the intensity, with surprising results.
The program I am working to in adaption outlined in High-Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer Way. Mike Mentzer was an American former IFBB professional bodybuilder, businessman, and author. Having read much of his work it is quick to recognize that he was much more than that. AS contrived as it seems he was also a philosopher and Objectivist.
He was one of those all-round Americans which are increasingly becoming a dying breed, or simply have become increasingly less vocal. Regardless of some minor ideological differences – although largely cultural due to my own cheerless sense of Europeanism engrained within me – it would have been nice to have made contact with Mentzer before his untimely death. Still, it is nice to think that a generation of meat-heads has been fed a philosophical approach to existence rather than just a gym regime.
According to Mentzer, biologists and physiologists since the nineteenth century have known that hypertrophy - that is the biological process by which to increase of the size of muscle cells – is directly related to intensity, not duration, of effort. Most bodybuilding and weightlifting authorities do not take into account the severe nature of the stress imposed by heavy, strenuous resistance exercise carried to a point of positive muscular failure.
For me, the program is working well. I may have moderately slight advantage with my genetic heritage – predominately East Anglian, Cumbrian and Litvak – which has expressed itself with quick muscular development, but the radical stuff won’t show for months. I think it may be good to take photos of these changes so there is a visual record for this.
All going according to plan, then I will towards the end of year I will change from Virgin to Forest Gym – the facility is more in-tune with what I need from a sporting perspective, a training regime and fiscally. Afterall, it will be counterproductive to hold a weekly membership to a gym I will only use once a week. The only thing I will need to do is get a collapsible bike of some sort to use to get from work to there – two fold benefit of my getting a bit of aerobic warm-up and being able to store the bike in my office. However, budgets permitting.
