SpecFit Team Three

WEEK 7

OK, OK, I’M BACK ON THE DIET!

By Mark Clem

Remember all those things I signed at the beginning? One line of one document read, “follow all the recommendations in supportive eating program the trainer specially designs for you to meet your stated fitness goals.”

That darn weight loss goal that I got seduced into making is still haunting me. I’m back on the diet.

I really was only off for about an hour until the witch doctor (WD) found out that I was revolting.

Skipping is improving marginally but, like I thought, the better I get the tougher it is.

No sign of the hard roller but the one I use is getting very easy except for one spot on my left thigh which is still very very painful.

I am now doing pull ups on a slide table with noticeable improvement.  The workouts are getting tougher but I am able to do them so far.

Next week on my days off, I will start swimming and biking to boast my stamina. My son came in this week to get his body fat measured with the light sabre. He has 13% body fat to my 26%. 

WD says he has shadow abs which means when the sun shines a certain way and casts shadows on him, he appears to have fabulous abs.

Now he is exercising and dieting too so he can lower his body fat to single digits and have real abs that look great in any light. Lock up all your daughters 18 - 22.

Loren has accepted my challenge for a race on Father’s Day. We are keeping the time a secret to avoid huge crowds of fans seeking our autographs. Ray’s Place better increase their beer and wings order for that week.

A group of ladies come into the gym to do a fitness class as I am wrapping up. The last thing I do each session is stretching. The ladies find my moaning and groaning during the leg stretches to be hilarious. I slink out of the gym with my male ego shattered. 

MY GUY IS BACK ON TRACK

By Mark Young, Nutrex Solutions, nutrexsolutions.com/

Last week Mark hit a stumbling block. His weight jumped and he was obviously having a little trouble with nutrition. His meal frequency had fallen off in favour of convenience and he was finding it hard to get the right foods when he needed them.

In many cases, this is where most people fail. AT this point they don’t fail because they don’t know what they should eat or what exercises they should be doing, but because they feel like they’ve hit an obstacle and they flat out quit.

What I’d like to highlight for everyone out there who has hit, or is currently hitting this point, is that the people who are successful with weight loss aren’t the ones who don’t have any obstacles.  They’re just the ones who choose to find a way to deal with them.

In Mark’s case we used a simple two step solution:

Step 1 – Identify the REAL problem

Mark was not eating as frequently as he was supposed to. As much as this is an issue, it was not the real problem and simply saying “eat on time” probably wouldn’t work. 

The real problem was that he was allowing his schedule to dictate when he had time to eat instead of planning times to eat and allowing his schedule to fall around these times.

Step 2 – Create a plan to deal with the problem

We discussed creating a schedule by putting the important things in his life (health, family, friends) before the least important things (work, laundry, bills). When you make time for these things, the results come. 

The bottom line, though, is that while most people get stuck on step 1 of this process by listing all of the obstacles that prevent them from succeeding (otherwise known as excuses), it would only take a little effort to get them to step 2 and the results would start flowing in.

Now here’s a little breakdown of Mark’s training week: Global Warm Up, Foam Rolling, Dynamic Mobility Work, Movement Prep: 

To be honest, there have been few changes in this regard since day 1, but Mark will be the first to tell you that the foam rolling has become much less painful and his range of motion and joint pain is much improved.

That said, I’ve had several requests for more information on each step of this warm up so I’ve decided to include links to our 3-part series on our warm up progression for your reading pleasure.

You can check them out these website addresses:
www.nutrexsolutions.com/2008/07/02/mobility-for-the-masses
www.nutrexsolutions.com/2008/07/09/foam-rolling-the-secret-weapon
www.nutrexsolutions.com/2008/07/16/decrease-the-pain-increase-the-performance

Resistance Training – Day 1

Horizontal Pulling – Face Pull: This exercise variation allows us to continue to train the muscles of the mid back with a slight emphasis on some of the less used muscles called the lower traps which have a very strong role in posture and shoulder health.  In Mark’s case, these will do wonders to minimize his shoulder pain.

Horizontal Pushing – Push Ups: Granted, we haven’t changed this exercise much except for the fact that we’ve progressively been lowering the box that Mark puts his hands on to do his push ups each week with the eventual goal of doing these on the floor. These are great because they don’t usually cause shoulder pain in people with ongoing issues.

Lower Body Push – Box Squat: When Mark first came in and told me that his knees hardly had any cartilage left I’m sure he was positive that he’d never be able to squat again without pain. However, with all the mobility work we’ve done and proper retraining of the squat pattern Mark is now able to squat down without any knee pain at all. As the weeks go by we’ll gradually increase Mark’s range of motion and he should eventually have no problem squatting from any surface.

Core Work, Stretching and Cool Down:

With some input from Conor (a.k.a. “Thumbs”) I’ve included a few more stretches into this regime, but he’s sworn me to secrecy as he doesn’t want me to give away all his tricks. OK …that’s a lie. I’ve only got so much space to write so perhaps I can touch on this more in a later blog.

Resistance Training – Day 2

In the case of this workout, I’ve carefully selected a small number exercises and we’re rotating through them on a biweekly basis so there’s nothing magical to report here. 

While I could easily come up with any number of exercises that might be of use here to make me sound like the most knowledgeable trainer on the planet, I’ve identified a very select few that Mark can do without pain and, more importantly, bring the results that we’re expecting.

Instead of thinking about progressions in terms of timelines, I like to proceed to a new variation only when Mark has mastered the previous one. 

Just as you probably wouldn’t attempt teach a child to write before they can speak, you shouldn’t train a person to do an advanced exercise before the basics become easy.

WEEK 6

MY FOOD DIARY IS HISTORY!

By Mark Clem

Week 6 is gone and so has my strict adherence to the Witch Doctor’s (WD) diet. I am not willing to modify my life to revolve around when I eat and what I eat. The diary is history too! I am going to eat healthy and eat often — but that is it. 

To compensate for this deviation, I am going to increase my cardio work on my off days when I don’t see the WD. My stamina is one area that has not changed over the 6 weeks and this increase in cardio work should help that.

Thumbs (massage therapist) has me black and blue so you won’t see me with my shirt off for a while, too hard to explain the visual effects of active release.

I am learning to skip since WD switched me from doing steps while he records my work and devises new exercises. Skipping is hard work when you are learning and probably stays as hard work once you learn because you can last longer before you either trip on the rope or strangle yourself.

The roller is getting easier so WD says he is bringing a harder one. Great! My shoulders are so weak and my weight so great that I still can’t come close to doing even one chin up but I believe I will be able to do at least 5 by week 10 (if I lose another 10 pounds).

I expect the intensity of my workouts to increase for the last 3 weeks. WD has to look good among the trainers (at my expense). I promise after the 10 weeks I will maintain daily activity 12 months a year for the rest of my days.

By August 10th 2009 I expect to have lost 39.5 pounds so the work doesn’t end after 10 weeks. Like I said so long ago, the challenge will be to stick to the changed eating habits and increased activity level.

I liked Loren’s Week 4 blog. He now has a partner to push him. I want to add to the push. I challenge you, Loren, to a race anytime on Father’s Day June 21 at Bayshore Park. The distance will be 5K. The winner gets free beer and wings at Ray’s. The loser pays. I will watch your blog for a response.

PUTTING THE ROCKS IN THE JAR

By Mark Young, Nutrex Solutions, nutrexsolutions.com/

Any trainer worth their salt knows that it is going to be a bad week when their client suddenly stops bringing in their diet record.  It is at that moment when you know that you’re going to need to have a serious discussion.

When Mark showed up on Tuesday he was up about half of a pound from last week. It wasn’t a big deal, but given that there was no diet record, I had a feeling that this was only a taste of things to come.  By Thursday Mark had gained an additional 3.5 pounds!

Fortunately, Thursday was also assessment day and we were going to have a chance to measure his progress and to have a chat about getting back on track. Below are the measures we took.

Waist Measurement
Starting measurement: 44.5 inches
Current measurement: 41.75 inches
Loss: 2.75 inches!
Despite the moderate weight gain this week, this number proved to be excellent. More importantly, this takes Mark within three quarters of an inch from his 10-week goal of getting his waist down to 41 inches.  Since abdominal fat is also highly related to cardiovascular risk, Mark is improving his longevity with each inch he loses here!

Weight
Starting weight: 219.5
Current weight: 214.0
Loss: 5.5 pounds
Despite the drop in his waist measurement, this number left a little to be desired. If I didn’t know Mark had gained back four pounds within the last week I wouldn’t have considered this a bad loss so far, but knowing that made the number a little disappointing.

Prior to this weigh in, Mark had been on target to reach his 10-week goal of weighing in between 200 and 205 pounds. Now it is possible, but will be much more difficult. He’ll really need to buckle down if this is to be a reality.

Body Fat Percentage
Starting percentage: 27.0%
Current percentage: 26.3%
Loss: 0.7%
Body fat percentage is a measure of the percentage of your body that is fat. Beyond simply using the scale, this is the single most important measure of body composition.  It is a function of how much fat you’ve lost and also how much muscle you’ve gained so it gives you a ton of information. In Mark’s case, I would have expected a greater drop this week, but since his efforts weren’t what they needed to be, it didn’t turn out quite as well as I’d hoped.

Fat Weight
Starting fat weight: 59.3
Current fat weight: 56.3
Loss: 3.0
Not too shabby, but not excellent. My guess is that this may have been closer to 7 pounds without this week’s gain.

Muscle Weight
Starting muscle weight: 160.2
Current muscle weight: 157.7
Loss: 2.5 pounds
The main idea when losing weight is to gain or maintain muscle while simultaneously losing body fat. This is what gives the fit or toned appearance that most people are looking for. In the very worst case scenario, the maximum amount of muscle lost should account for 1/3 of the weight loss.

I should note here, that rapid weight loss plans promising 30-40 pound losses in a short time ALWAYS result in dramatic losses of muscle which will leave you looking like a smaller version of your current self with the same body shape. 

In any case, about 45% of the weight Mark has lost to date is muscle so this can mostly be attributable to one of three main causes.
1. Not enough total protein
2. Not enough total calories
3. Skipping snacks and going to long without food. Definitely

After speaking with Mark it was easy to determine the root cause.  Since his nutrition plan hinges on the notion that he should never go more than 3 hours without food, this appears to be his biggest issue. 

As with most busy people, planning is the single most important key for Mark’s long term success and that was the focus of our discussion to get him back on track.

The Rock Jar
I once read a story in a book called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that was so powerful that it has stuck with me ever since.

As the story goes, a university professor walks into a lecture hall and places a rather large empty jar on the desk and, without speaking, reaches under the desk and begins placing several large stones inside the jar. Once he is done he asks the class “Is this jar full?”

The class responds “Yes”.

Again, without talking, the professor reaches under the desk and pulls out a large container of coarse gravel and begins pouring it into the jar with the large stones. He occasionally shakes the large jar and eventually all of the gravel falls into the spaces between the larger stones. Once again the professor asks “Is this jar full?”

Having caught on to the game, the class responds “No”.

Finally, the professor reaches under the desk and pulls out a bucket of sand which he proceeds to dump into the large jar. The small grains fall between the gravel and the larger rocks until the jar is finally actually full.

“The point of this example” said the professor “is that the larger stones represent the truly important things in our lives and the gravel and sand represent those millions of other small things that keep us busy, but aren’t really that important. If you put the big rocks in first, the smaller stuff will just fall in around it. If you try to put in the smaller stuff first, you’ll never have room for all of the big rocks”.

In Mark’s case, his days are so hectic that he often forgets to eat when he should or finds himself without food at the appropriate times. Instead, I’ve asked him to plan his days ahead by “putting the big rocks in the jar” and allowing the rest of his day to fall around them.

To do this Mark will have to determine what is truly important to him and begin by putting those rocks in the jar first. In the literal sense, this means scheduling times for meals in his calendar and building his day around those.

If his health and his weight loss are truly important, these must become the big rocks and they must be among the ones that are put in first.

If you think scheduling meals is little extreme, consider the fact that people used to actually sit down for breakfast, take time for lunch each day and spend time as a family at dinner time. 

Now we’ve become so fast paced the many of us skip breakfast, wolf down our lunch at our desk  and eat a reheated dinner standing by ourselves in the kitchen before we race back out the door to some meeting or event. Maybe I’m being nostalgic here, but I personally think a little structure might just be a nice change. 

For Mark though, even if his puts the rocks in the jar to begin with, it is more important that these “rocks” are not displaced for other seemingly urgent and important things in the heat of the moment. 

After all, other things may seem important at the time, but without our health we have nothing.

WEEK 5

MORE PAINFUL THERAPY, BUT MY SHOULDER, BACK ARE PAIN FREE!

By Mark Clem

It has been five weeks completed and five weeks to go. Ten pounds are lost for good and ten pounds to go.

As I suspected, therapeutic massage really means pain. I much prefer the other kind. The one minute of active release that the Witch Doctor (WD) did has now become 30 minutes of active release with Thumbs. That’s the nick name for Conor, the massage therapist who, for half an hour, buried his thumbs deep into every tight muscle in my body — and there were lots.

The other half hour was spent doing deep massage of my larger muscles. It felt like he was ripping the flesh right off my bones. I got him back when he pressed hard on my hip flexors and had me extend my leg slowly. There was a natural gas leak in the clinic and one of the treatment rooms had to be evacuated.

What can you expect, given what I have been eating for the past 5 weeks?

As Thumbs was recovering, I thought about making a dash for the exit and running home. But then I realized I was in my boxers and I think there is a bylaw in Ancaster about running around the streets in your boxers .

More time with WD is spent on exercises now — and especially this week because The Spec sent a videographer to record my workout. I had to do everything twice, once to show him what I was doing and once to film it. I hope he can remove the bad words that I screamed out near the end of a few exercises. Was I ever a whipped puppy after that session.

Each session consists of some familiar exercises and some new ones. I thought that meant I was progressing, but WD says he is just adding some variety. Why doesn’t he add some easy ones?

Some very good news: For 5 years I have had a very sore shoulder since ligament surgery. The pain is now completely gone as a result of the WD strengthening the shoulder muscles and Thumbs doing active release on all the muscles around the shoulder.

The same is true for my lower back. And even my left Achilles tendon is much improved. I have more energy so I can do more things longer. Being more active is a good thing.

I did two sessions in a row this week and I don’t know how some of the other cadets are doing 5 sessions a week, every week. I have had a total of 9 sessions since the beginning while some of the others have had 25 sessions.

It sucks to be old!

MASSAGE THERAPIST CAME TO MY CADET’S RESCUE

By Mark Young
Nutrex Solutions,
nutrexsolutions.com/

We’re about half way through our journey now and Mark is down a total of 9.5 pounds! That is just shy of our 2 pound per week weight loss plan and it puts Mark right on target to hit his 20-pound weight loss goal by the end of our ten week program. 

At this point I think it is important to reiterate that this is being done with only 2 days per week in the gym, almost zero formal cardio, and absolutely no crunches.

When secondary issues become primary

When I first met Mark, he mentioned that one of his goals was to reduce his back pain. Little did I know at the time that he also had shoulder pain, knee pain and an Achilles tendon that flared up with pain regularly.

What rapidly became apparent to me was that dealing with these problems wasn’t only a good idea, it was essential.

While dealing with these issues isn’t necessarily Mark’s primary goal, each one imposes a barrier that limits his exercise ability and will ultimately prevent him from losing weight the way he should. 

More importantly, if he doesn’t take care of them now, they’ll eventually end up preventing him from exercising at all in the future.  When you’re 60, you have to start thinking ahead.

As I mentioned last week, I put in a call to my friend Conor Collins, who is a massage therapist at the Foot Knee Back Clinic in Ancaster, to get some assistance dealing with Mark’s issues. 

I did this primarily because I believe this will accelerate the rate at which Mark’s foam rolling and mobility work will bring results and allow him to train harder for continued weight loss.

However, I also did it because Conor is a brilliant guy to have on my side and he can help me identify and correct Mark’s issues faster that I could possibly do on my own. After all, it isn’t necessarily what you know, but the number of resources you have at your fingertips that can help you bring big results quickly.

All the best fitness guys and girls I know have a network of other excellent professionals that they can call on. For me, Conor is one of those guys and I’m positive that Mark’s results are only going to take off from here.

The workouts

 

This week the workouts were similar to those we did last week with only a few exceptions, so I won’t bore you with the details. 

However, I should note that one thing that we’ve done thus far is to always have Mark stepping up and down onto an aerobic step between sets to keep his heart rate up and to facilitate fat loss. 

This saves time by preventing him from having to do “cardio” after his workout and allows him to get more exercise within the limited amount of time we spend together.

This week I decided to step it up a notch and have Mark jump rope between sets to increase the intensity.  To say that this was the ugliest attempt at skipping I’ve ever seen wouldn’t be far from the truth. I’d honestly heard jack hammers that were quieter.

Fortunately, Mark quickly picked up the rhythm and was skipping like a champ within minutes. If you haven’t done this in years I’d highly suggest you give it a try. What you might have done for an entire recess in elementary school will probably leave you gasping for air in less than a minute. 

WEEK 4

I MISSED MY WIFE AT FINISH LINE, THANKS TO SLOW BOSTON TROLLEY
By Mark Clem

I did the Boston marathon with my wife — well a portion of it, and a very steep portion. It’s known as Heartbreak Hill and it comes around the 20 mile mark. I ran up it and down it (2 miles) and then caught the trolley to the finish line. The trolley was slow and my wife got to the finish line first. It wasn’t good to not be there when she arrived. Not my fault!

The Witch Doctor (WD) tried something called active release on me — he buried his thumb deep into the muscle under the arm called "lats". If anyone ever suggests you try it, run the other way as fast as you can for as long as you can. It hurts more than child birth or kidney stones. (I have had one but not experienced the other first hand.)

We are now into full work outs, no cardio, very weird exercises with funny names that I will get WD to explain in his blog. By the end of
Week 3 I had noticeably greater energy levels and was nearly pain free in my shoulders. Now in Week 4, WD has increased the degree of difficulty in the old exercises and added some new ones.

I am at the point where I am considering putting a hit out on WD so I can get a new merciful trainer. Anybody want to trade? After the workouts on Tuesdays, I have just recovered by Thursdays and it’s workout time again. Sundays and Mondays feel good but that’s only 2 days a week.

WD keeps telling me by the end I should be pain free. The end feels a long way off.

In a workout we spend one third of the time getting me flexible enough to do the exercises the other two thirds of the time. WD is suggesting I might benefit from a therapeutic massage once a week. I have a hunch that therapeutic means more pain. I would prefer a no pain flavour once a week but that’s not going to happen. Some how I gained half a pound in Boston.

WEIGHTY VISIT TO BOSTON; AND ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE
By Mark Young
Nutrex Solutions,
nutrexsolutions.com/

Day 1:
Mark lost three pounds last week, so I had hoped that he would be on track again this week. But instead he experienced a half pound gain. While I was glad he’d been out of town for the weekend to support his wife as she ran the Boston Marathon, I was disappointed with this gain. 

Truthfully, I’m not so much upset with the gain as I am with the fact that so little planning was done in an effort to avert it.

I certainly believe that vacations should be relatively care free, but business travel or short trips such as this one can and should be handled much more effectively. In the coming weeks, Mark and I will be working on travel strategies to ensure that leaving home doesn’t mean abandoning a healthy lifestyle.

Here’s how Mark’s day went today:
Global Warm Up, Foam Rolling, Dynamic Mobility Work, Movement Prep:

This week we added some additional foam rolling for the calves to facilitate the hamstring flexibility and changed almost all of Mark’s mobility drills. Essentially, we’re still working on the same things, but I wanted change the way the joints and muscles were affected and to keep the workout fresh.

Resistance Training:
Horizontal Pulling – Incline Dumbbell Row
Different exercise. Same goal.  Still trying to target and strengthen the upper back muscles to improve posture.

Horizontal Pushing – Incline Push Ups
Same exercise as last week, but we lowered the bench to make it harder. Mark will be doing push ups on the floor soon.

Lower Body Push – Split Squat
Interestingly, on only his third lower body workout, Mark was able to complete two full sets of split squats without holding on for support at all. In fact, he did so well that I think he may quite possibly be able to progress to a more difficult variation (called a Bulgarian squat) within another couple weeks! This is huge progress!

I should say here that this does not mean that there was any less profanity while this exercise was going on. Apparently there is a scientific correlation between the amount of strength Mark gains and the number of four letter words he knows.

Core Work:
As was discussed in a previous blog, I absolutely despise crunches.  I believe that the primary function of the “core” muscles is not to cause bending and rotation, but to prevent them by strongly supporting the spine in a neutral position.

Plank: Up until this point we’ve been using an exercise called the plank to teach Mark to contract and strengthen his abdominals in a stable environment. However, my experience has show that it is rare that the central abdominals (a.k.a. The Six Pack) is weak.

This week, to add a little bit more “fun,” I decided to progress Mark to an exercise called a dead bug. If done correctly, this exercise is very difficult and teaches you to control your pelvis by strongly contracting your abdominal muscles. In particularly, this exercise places a greater emphasis on the external obliques that are often weak in people with lower back pain. 

To see a video of this exercise and some of the other exercises outlined in these workouts you can visit youtube.com/nutrexsolutions. By the way, if you’ve decided to try this exercise and it seems easy, you’re doing it wrong.

Stretching and Cool Down:

We’ve continued to address Mark’s tight hamstrings and calves. In fact, Mark’s legs easily reached 90 degrees when testing his hamstring flexibility today so we’re both very happy with the result.

Day 2:

Today Mark and I had a discussion about his progress and I think we’re both very happy with how things are going. He’s playing tennis without pain in his shoulders and is experiencing some great increases in his mobility. We both agree that he’s made great strides, but that we could possibly make them better.

So, we’ve decided to have Mark continue with his foam rolling, mobility and stretching routine daily at home to accelerate to process. While I don’t agree with intense daily exercise (quite frankly I don’t think it is necessary or maintainable with a novice trainee), low intensity stretching and mobility work is most effective when done frequently. 

In fact, frequency is actually more important that intensity when it comes to this type exercise.  Once he has achieved enough mobility he’ll be able to go back to doing these drills only within the context of his two normal workouts to maintain it.

Mark has agreed to put in 10 minutes per day on this little routine that will definitely speed his results. I’ve also put in a call to a friend of mine who is a massage therapist to see if he can help us out in dealing with some restricted muscles. Not everyone can afford to shell out for a massage therapist and that’s fine. It might just take you a little longer to get to where you’d like to be. In Mark’s case, we’re going to use every tool in our arsenal to maximize his results.  After all, that’s what you’re waiting to see isn’t it?

Here’s how Mark’s workout looked today:
Global Warm Up, Foam Rolling, Dynamic Mobility Work, Movement Prep: 
Same drills as Day 1. Despite my downplaying it, Mark is making great progress here.

Resistance Training:
Vertical Pulling – Cable Pullover
Just a different variation for the same muscle. By hitting the lats on the outside of Mark’s back we can increase the V-shape of Mark’s torso which will give the illusion of a smaller waist.

Vertical Pushing – Lateral Raises:We didn’t change this exercise much since last week, but we’re slowly increasing the weights.  Mark experienced no pain in his shoulder this week at all. Now THAT is progress!

Lower Body Pull – Hamstring Pushup: I like this exercise because it allows us to simultaneously hit the glutes and hamstrings. This was a new one for Mark and based on the amount of cursing I could tell that it is going to become a new favourite.

Core Work, Stretching, and Cool Down: Again, we stayed with the dead bug progression for Mark’s core and did the usual stretches.  We’ve also started including a quad stretch as these have seemingly been tighter lately.