Usually, I do pretty well at this, but I made a few major mistakes this year. I thought it might be a good idea to post my theory of how to exercise, partly as a reminder to myself while I am in my healing phase from a complex injury.
When you are young, up to about the age of 25, your body heals very quickly, but not necessarily completely. What this means, is that it’s possible to work out at 100% of your maximum ability, and you can do it regularly because it feels fine. Worked out til it really hurts? Well, in two days you will feel good again, and you can do it again, even harder. However, if you work out this way, you have a tendency to accumulate small injuries which will plague you later in life. I see plenty of former athletes who are now 35 or 40 years old, and don’t understand why they are incapacitated with pain. Often those micro-injuries are so old, they don’t even remember how they injured themselves. Fortunately, a lot of those injuries are manageable with acupuncture and stretching (that’s how I did it), but especially if you were very athletic when you were young, you have to be careful when you are in your next phase of life. I do try to warn young athletes about the importance of preventing these kinds of injuries (rest, stretch), but I’ve only ever seen one young person take it to heart. The others don’t believe me. They think that they will not end up like the 40 year olds they see who have debilitating, chronic sports injuries. (Which is exactly what those 40 year olds thought 20 years ago.)
I’m 50 years old. The right way to work out now is to figure out what 100% is, but only work out regularly at 70-80%. Working out at a lower level will cause you to gradually improve, i.e., every few weeks you might find that 100% is more than it used to be. You can test yourself once every few weeks, but if you push it more than that, you have a real risk of injury. If you get injured, you need to cut your workouts down by half, or more – down to a level which does not cause pain. (You may have to stop altogether) You need to operate at this level for at least two months to heal. Injury is counterproductive, because while you are out, you get really out of shape. Ignoring injury leads to worse injuries. Increases in the intensity of a workout should happen a few percent at a time (initially, the smallest increase you can measure). You can repeat a given workout three times or so within about a week. If you can tolerate the new level of working out with no discomfort for that whole week, then you can do another small increase. Tiny increases in your workout are unlikely to injure you, but you can compound the improvement over time, like money earning interest at the bank. Even a few percent a week can result in doubling your ability in a year. (I wish I could find bank that paid a few percent interest per week…)
I do see some patients who are 80 years of age or older and still active. At that age, I recommend working out regularly at about a 50% level. At a 50% workout level, you can maintain what you have, and maybe gain a tiny bit more. However, I suggest never intentionally testing yourself at 100%, because there will come an age where doing that is almost guaranteed to cause a serious, long term injury. You don’t have to fear being incapable in old age if you really take good care of yourself, but you can’t go around trying to prove that you’re still great. If you are smart about it, you can keep yourself fit enough to live a full life (shop, cook, clean, enjoy family and travel). You know at the back of your mind that you have a little bit athleticism saved up for emergencies, BUT using that power is going to leave you badly injured for months. Imagine a situation where you are 90 years old and you see a little kid in the street who’s about to be run down by a car. You could decide to use your one bit of strength to save that child, and if you’ve been taking care of yourself, you might succeed. You might decide that being badly hurt for a long time would be a worthwhile price to pay. Keeping that ability to late age is a long term goal of mine.
So my philosophy of working out through life is that in the beginning, enthusiastic young athletes usually cannot be talked out of causing themselves chronic sports injuries. Middle age athletes can reverse a lot of the damage they did when they were young, but they have to be careful and patient about healing to preserve their bodies, even if it means progressing at a slower, more gradual pace. Elderly athletes who do this right will be able to preserve a certain amount of awesomeness, which should be very carefully rationed. The positive part of it is that you never have to feel helpless. You just understand that there are consequences to overdoing it.
Here’s a few examples of me doing it wrong:
Horse stance:
A few months ago, I wanted to do some extra leg training to get in shape for a kung fu seminar that I was going to attend. I knew it would involve getting up off the ground repeatedly, which is a surprisingly difficult workout for your legs. I started doing a low horse stance, which is basically just a very broad squat with the tops of the thighs level with the ground. This was fine for 10 seconds. The right way to do it would be to hold it 10 seconds each day for a week, then if that felt okay, try 11 seconds each day. Do that for a year, and you’re holding the stance for a minute, with little to no risk of injury, provided you do the right stretching before and after to keep the muscles happy. However, I was on a schedule, so I decided to try doing 10 seconds, then 20 seconds the next week. I made it up to a minute, which would have been enough to survive the seminar, and then hurt myself. Why? Because I was not increasing a few percent at a time – I was going much too fast and irritating a muscle in my hip, the piriformis. While doing a rock climbing movement that was not particularly strenuous, I had a major spasm in my piriformis muscle, which required some immediate acupressure, and several rounds of follow-up acupuncture. I made it through the kung fu seminar, barely. If I had stuck with doing horse stance for 10-15 seconds, on schedule, I would have been in better shape. Mark calendar for two months, so I know when I can start training this muscle again. No difficult stances until then.
Jogging:
About six months ago, I got an Apple watch. Mainly, I was interested in the pulse monitoring and electrocardiography functions, to be on the lookout for possible future heart conditions. Conditions like atrial fibrillation and atherosclerosis run in my family. They are the reason why I am quite paranoid about keeping thin and fit. So long as my weight and fitness levels are good, my blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and other metabolic measures are fine, and my risk of those heart conditions is relatively low. However, the Apple watch told me that my VO2max levels were a little bit below average. (Insert pause to represent me looking up what the heck a VO2max is. Apple watch results are probably not super accurate on this measure of cardiovascular fitness, but could be useful if watching general trends) I decided that I should start jogging a little bit. Using the pulse monitoring of the Apple watch, I very carefully worked my way up to doing one jog each week (in the middle of a regular daily walk), which ultimately came up to a 0.6 mile jog with three 100 meter interval sprints on the way back. Things felt fine and I was rewarded with a VO2max measurement that increased from 36 to 40. (Above average, yay!) The trouble came when I injured my piriformis. The injury did not impact my walking or running, so I thought I could keep doing it. Then after a month, my innately competitive nature was triggered by a sudden decrease in the VO2max level to 39. (What happened? Meaningful or not? Maybe run more? Do I need to do something about this?) So I stupidly started doing the jogging and running twice each week. The right way to do it would be to do one jog per week, and then add 5% of a jog on a different day. Instead of increasing a few percent, I did a sudden jump of 100%. It didn’t take long before the piriformis started to hurt, along with my Achilles’ tendon on the same leg. I presume that the pirifomis injury changed my gait enough to put extra stress on my calf and Achilles’ tendon. So much for running. Reset calendar for another two months off, now watching the entire left leg. Total injury time: now three and a half months.
Zone 2 walking:
So I heard about this thing called cardio training zones. Very interesting. There are five zones, of which the second lowest one is interesting. Apparently, if you train in Zone 2, which means a level where you can still breathe reasonably well (able to hold a conversation with effort), you can improve your cardio fitness, reduce your risk of a lot of health problems and burn fat calories rather than carbohydrates or proteins. This is very appealing to a competitive person such as myself, especially since I am at this point unable to run for exercise. I found that, for me, Zone 2 was walking at a pace of about 14-15 minutes per mile rather than my usual 16-20 minute mile. Well, I thought since I can’t run for two months, maybe I can get some benefit for my cardio by increasing all of my daily walks to this pace. Wrong. If my average pace before was 18 minutes, dropping to 15 minutes is a 16% increase, which is more than a few percent. After two weeks, I noticed that my Achille’s tendon and piriformis were getting gradually worse after walking, not better. So now I am back to walking at a 20 minute pace. Reset calendar for two months, again. Total injury time: four months. The good news is that walking at a 20 minute pace seems to make both injuries feel better. My VO2max is just going to have to go down for a while.
In conclusion:
So the problem is that three times in a row, I got excited about working out and ramped up my workouts faster than I should. Once my final two months of taking it easy and healing (with lots of stretching and acupuncture) are up, my plan for working out is going to be this: Continue walking at a 20 minute pace, but add 100 meters of faster walking at a 15 minute pace in the middle. (I could try to see if I can figure out how to walk at exactly a 19 minute pace, but I think pacing myself with that level of precision would be hard without a treadmill. On the other hand, a 20 minute pace and a 15 minute pace are obviously different.) If this is fine for a week, then I will add another segment of 100 m walking at the faster pace. Repeat for about 20 weeks until I am walking fast for the entire 1.2 mile portion of the walk (which is on the nice portion of sidewalk which does not have vehicle crossings). Next, add in 100 m of jogging at a slow, 11 minute mile pace. And repeat adding things very slowly.
So the question is, how far do I go? In three years, if I am careful, I don’t doubt that I could be running 1.2 miles at an 8 minute pace. But do I need to? I’ll be thinking about that. I have to be careful to not get overexcited by any medical results (from Apple watch or other source), which might cause me to go fast and have another setback. I do believe that someone my age can still be awesome. I should point out that my martial arts and rock climbing continue to go well, and improve, despite the injuries, because I tend to be very careful with those workouts. So I do have it figured out in certain areas, but I also need to make sure I apply my advice to every part of my life.
Summary:
Going fast and getting hurt = going slow (or backwards)
Slow and steady is the way to go.
Kao Acupuncture 