The Cat Herd Chronicles: jump starting the transformation process
7 December 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
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I wanted Kirk Karwoski to be involved in working with our TV project for several reasons: as a strength theorist he is amazing. People look at K2 and think he is a genetic wonder born perfect but in reality he worked long and hard and continually chipped away at his weak points. He and I are old enough to remember the lessons of the iron elders; the path to true physical transformation is simple to understand. And need not nor should not be overcomplicated. In this day and age, fitness experts are superficial surface skimmers who think that having a broad array of exotic exercises at their fingertips bestows gravitas. Their brand of knowledge is a mile wide and an inch deep whereas Old School masters know that transformation is based on knowledge an inch wide and a mile deep. Better to master two or three key exercises, taking them deep into the trainees marrow, than acquaint the trainee with dozens of exercises yet never truly master any of them. K2 understood this and when I told him my idea was to take totally untrained and out-of-shape individuals and allow them to only do three exercises: squat, bench press, deadlifthe smiled, then laughed, then belly laughed. Other experts Id talked with offered a myriad of reasons why this ultra-simplistic approach was doomed to fail. Karwoski intuitively understood that it would work. When I came up as a man-child, all I had was a barbell, a bench and a few plates. We were not dazzled and confused by a never-ending menu of possibilities, we were not confused or in doubt about what to do. We instinctively knew it was not so much what you knew as it was how hard you did it.
We knew that pure physical effort was the force multiplier that triggered true transformation. Nowadays folks want to find a secret way or method to avoid the teeth-grinding effort needed to trigger hypertrophy Kirk and I would have the trainees embrace effort. We would do fewer things better. Cardio exercise also need not be overly complex or confusing. For an out-of-shape individual walking briskly will generate the requisite elevated heart rate. By taking aerobic activity out of the gym and placing it in a nature setting we taught obese folks that cardio could be made enjoyable. Ever notice that in a gym people riding the various cardio machines will do anything to distract themselves from the self-inflicted drudgery? Watch as they read a magazine or newspaper, theyll listen to music or watch the TV that the gym provides anything to alleviate the boredom and make the time go by faster. All this joyless grief endured in order to systematically elevate the heart rate. My idea was to introduce the untrained people, folks with a natural aversion to exercise and aerobic machines, to the pure joy of nature walking. Instead of dreading cardio they learned to actually look forward to it. They couldnt believe that high intensity outdoor walking was acceptable and beneficial. This is too much fun to be good for us! is how one beaming, smiling, sweating lady put it in the immediate afterglow of one of our invigorating, oxygen churning, lung-searing powerwalks.
They began dragging spouses and relatives to the incredible vistas and panoramas that Id introduced them to. The visual component combined with the sense of smell and the revitalizing effect of pure oxygen combined to give them runner highs. Their senses were stimulated walking through woods and across fields, it all combined to transform the arduous into the transcendental. Find a way to make cardiovascular exercise (critical for the overweight individual) fun for the unfit and progress is immediate. By embracing power walking, lung capacity improves and this enables longer and more intense cardio and progressive resistance training sessions. Circulatory sluggishness, so prevalent among the obese, is rectified almost immediately. Blood flow, previously stagnant, now gushes through arterial highways and heart valves in torrents: the metabolism is elevated for hours after the cessation of the session. Food is digested better as a direct result of intense aerobic activity and rest assured, when a person is carrying around 100-pounds of body fat, walking rapidly generates as much heart rate elevation as is safe or sane. Plus walking does not stress tender untrained body parts the way that jogging surely must. Making a person run or jog that is used to nothing more strenuous than walking from the Lazy-Boy to the refrigerator and back (as nearly every personal trainer nationwide does when an obese individual contracts their services) borders on malpractice.
Kirk structured and explained the weight training while I conducted the cardio sessions. Each of the six selectees was allowed to progress at their own pace. We showed them how to work to capacity in each session - yet stay safe. These people needed to gradually acclimatize their untrained bodies to ever increasing workout stress. Oddly, our biggest problem was holding them back; as a group they were so enthused to be given plain direction, simplistic direction that they understood, that each became overly enthused and Kirk and I had to continually stop them from lifting too much or trying too many reps, restrain them from going too far or too fast on their daily nature hikes. Within the first seven days each had learned (with one exception) that they really enjoyed and looked forward to the style of exercise they were being shown. The numerical nature of the lifting and the fact that we only concentrated on three exercises caused them to want to exceed that which they did previously. As any old timer knows an untrained individual under expert guidance can produce superior results with each succeeding workout. Continual progress creates incredible enthusiasmwhich is pretty amazing when you think about it. They feel in love with the daily nature walks in the mountains in the fall season. I had them use a heart rate monitor in conjunction with the walking and as a result we were able to provide numeric benchmarks that they could exceed. Again, since they were untrained and drastically out of shape, they were able to exceed previous best efforts every single day. This continual improvement in the weight room and in the mountains created a physical and psychological momentum that was palpable and real. Kirk was ecstatic, I was ecstatic, the selectees were ecstatic
Tomorrow:
The group dynamic takes hold
Food: the Mount Everest of the fitness process
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