The countdown has started. I can now start marking my time until I leave by the amount
of malaria medication I have remaining.
It truly is a love-hate relationship with that little pink pill. If you don’t take it and one of those
nasty little mosquitoes gets you then look out. If you do take it, but on an empty stomach…look out! All in all I will take the upset
stomach over the shivers any day. It
is the price of coexisting in Africa with the camels, goats, skinny cows, and
occasional sheep.
The time ticks away…tick tock. This week will mark 3 months away from home with only 2
months-ish left. The temperature
and humidity continues to rise as we march steadily towards summer. I count myself fortunate that I get the
distinct pleasure to experience Africa hotness in its full July glory prior to
heading home. Yes! Yes! Yes!
Training is accelerating at a breathtaking pace. Fitness and strength are both
improving. Mobility still needs
some work. Body comp is in
progress. My training partner (the
ever illustrious Marine Master Sergeant or MB) and I are always looking for new
ways to push the limit just a little more. He kills me on the run and then I get to return the favor on
the squat rack. It really is a
symbiotic relationship that is built upon fear, intimidation, and
ridicule. Today was a 1000-meter swim, followed
with a 25-mile bike, and then a 5-mile run. Not too shabby for two old guys.
During the time away from home I have also spent a ton of
time reading and researching for a methodology of fitness that moves past event
based fitness and more towards a holistic, sustainable program. I have been looking for programming that makes life outside
of the gym easier. One of the pitfalls of being an aging athlete is that as fitness becomes
harder to maintain…weight gain is easier, mobility starts to suffer and chronic
injuries manifest themselves. For
programming to be sustainable it has to address and solve all of these
issues.
I stumbled upon an
article that had a statement that was so
profound that it changed my entire view on fitness, health, and training.
(Fitness and Health are not always
related) It said, “Treat yourself as a professional athlete.”
Bang!
The context of the article is for the tactical military guy
(i.e. spec ops dude), but if you really think about that statement you can see
how it transfers to the everyday person or everyday athlete.
Treat yourself as a professional
athlete (minus the entourage, hookers, and blow)!
More simply, train and take care of your body as if your
livelihood depended upon it….because it actually does.
If you need any examples please ask me and I will give you
some.
In form athletes don’t eat fruit loops for breakfast, stop
at Burger King for lunch, and then eat chicken fingers for dinner because they
are tired and the kids are hungry. They don’t drink gallons of soda (or diet soda) and eat
mountains of candy. They also don’t go to the gym and frantically cram in 40
minutes on the elliptical machine, chase it down with a double latte frappe on
their way back to work and then wonder why they are fat. (They still drink Sierra Nevada…its my article and I get to say what I want to).
In Dan John’s book
Intervention he argues that strength is the foundation for all fitness.
It is strength that brings everything together.
He lists a series of
standards
that everyone should achieve.
In
the article
Fitness, Not Mobility, Is Durability, Jordan Smothermon goes one
step further and states, “We believe strength is king.”
He also uses the durability formula
“Durability = 80% Strength + 10% Proper
(Functional) Movement + 10% Mobility” For the aging athlete this is the recipe
for continued success or even possibly the course correction needed to find
lost fitness.
The current fitness craze focuses too much on endurance
sports as the ultimate achievement of athleticism. It does have its place, but should not be the focus of what
is achieved. Endurance races
(marathons, triathlons, ultras, centuries) are nothing more than expressions of
fitness. The issue is not
with these events, it is more with how we train for these events. It not uncommon to see endurance
athletes hurt for large stretches of time….especially the weekend warrior
sort. A marathon as an expression
of fitness does you no good if you cannot climb a fence to get your kid's ball out of
the neighbor's yard or you are so functionally stiff that you cannot bend over and
pick up a bag of groceries without straining your back. I will argue that fitness must have a
direct application to life and be able to be expressed as such. Remember…strength + movement +
mobility.
My focus for the past three months has been on all three of
these. Strength has dominated, but
all three are worked throughout the training cycle. This week I am starting my second block of strength programming with the LBEB
12 week program. I also swim, bike, run, do BJJ and martial arts (MCMAP)…but the real laser focus is on strength. There is a lot of work left to do and I am still learning what it takes to treat myself as a
professional athlete, but I know for sure it was not what I was doing in the
past. The diet still could use some work (I love ice cream) and I
really dislike stretching. After
Beach 2 Battleship I will be changing my overall programming to something that
looks like what
Mountain Athlete offers….tough, functional training with
mobility mixed in. That sounds
like a recipe for success.
