Elf Sternberg

I should like to register a complaint! This is not the body I was issued at birth. It’s not even the body I had been carefully maintaining until 2019. I’d like to send it back and have a new one issued, but unfortunately that’s not possible.

One healthy thing to which my recent vacation re-introduced me was yoga. Omaha and I used to do yoga for a few years while the kids were still at home, but when I discovered weightlifting I sorta dropped out of the yoga class and she didn’t want to go alone. There was a yoga class on the cruise ship, and I discovered that I enjoyed it enough to go home and pick it up again.

Being ADHD, I arranged all my triggers. For years, my habit is to hang tomorrow’s clothes on a hook inside the bathroom door. Now I hang my yoga clothes in front of those, and when I head out of the bedroom there’s a bottle of cold water already in the ’fridge and my mat, my iPad, and a fully charged set of workout headphones are waiting for me. (These come under the heading of “reduce environmental friction” and “force the next action” under the “managing ADHD” banner.)

And for three weeks, I’ve been at it every day, using a nice enough app on my iPad. It’s just a 15-minute beginner class, and I had to downgrade from “beginner 2” to “beginner 1” because I’m so far behind on my exercise it’s not even worth mentioning. I’m a wreck.

The one thing I discovered, and the reason I downgraded, was that I have absolutely no sense of balance anymore. The reason I downgraded from beginner 2 to 1 was that I kept falling over doing the one-legged poses! I used to be a flamingo, able to stand on one foot for an hour or more, often in what yogis call “tree pose,” without even noticing; now I can’t hold a tree pose for more than five seconds without falling over. Hell, I was having trouble holding a goddamn straight-line two-legged lunge, the kind where you put your feet exactly in line, so you have no left-right stabilizers other than your sense of balance.

Given that not being able to hold your balance is associated with early death, I’ve been pretty determined to get it back. The good news is that even after three weeks, I’m no longer falling over during a lunge.

I’ve also noticed that the force-of-will “relax” habit that I’ve been developing as part of my daily meditation practice is no longer necessary. Yoga is teaching my body how to relax, and when to tense up, refusing to carry the tension of the day inside my skin. I’m no longer trembling at the beginning of the exercise, with a sense of calm and readiness that wasn’t there three weeks ago.

I have noticed that the places where my muscles have tightened unacceptably is strange… I can do some stretches with ease, like pressing my feet together and putting my knees to the floor, but if I try to do a shoelace pose, stretching forward while my knees are stacked… I can’t. I just can’t move at all. That chain from my back to my knee is frozen, and it’ll be weeks before I get it stretched out properly.

But overall, this has been interesting. If I make it to the end of next week, I’ll have gone four weeks with this practice, and maybe that’ll make it a routine. Then I’ll have to up either the time or the difficulty, or both. But dammit, I need not to lose my balance, by strength, or my flexibility. Those get harder to hold on the older you get, but I was doing so well until Covid tried to kill me. I’m still not gonna let that damn germ win.

I was having a bout of dizzy spells recently. It turned out to be fluid building up in my inner right ear, but my doctor in a fit of extreme caution sent me to a cardiologist anyway.

It was kinda neat; he used a standard android tablet and this thing that looked a little like a mouse with a USB connector plugged into it, and was able to get a fairly high-resolution sonogram of my heart on a battery-powered, man-portable device. He said there was absolutely nothing wrong, no sign of any buildup or blockage, and the velocities of blood flowing through it were quite excellent for a guy my age. He also said I had surprisingly large aortic valve. (Actually, he said, "Wow, that's a big valve.") I asked if that was good or bad. He said, "Doesn't make a difference." (Actually, apparently it does make some difference: a larger valve means my heart requires less effort to move blood around.)

I explained that I bicycled eight miles a day, three to five days a week, as well as going to the gym two to three times a week, and my diet, while "American," had a lot less processed food than average. My food journal says that I eat about 20% processed food; the average American gets half their calories from processed foods. "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it," he said.

Far be it for me to be anyone's workout guru, although my doctor says that at 53, with all the bad habits that I do indulge in, I have a body ten years younger than my chronological age. So there's that.

Anyway, my current workout record can be found at twitter, but the gist of it is simple:

Three times a week, do a full-body workout. Full body workouts are more effective than targeted workouts at building resilient, dense muscles, the kind that may not be huge, suns-out-guns-out popular, but the kind that you can use to climb walls, lift wheelbarrows, and generally ensure that you'll never be the sort of person who has to shout, "I've fallen, and I can't get up!" That article above includes a chart of a five-days-a-week workout. Pick three for each week, and rotate them as necessary to keep your interest. Go ahead and buy a popular fitness annual, like Men's Workout or something like that; add some abs exercises, some light trapezius work, some stretching as needed. Just freakin' exercise like you mean it.

Two other days a week, work on balance. Do the sorts of yoga that require one-legged stands, hand stands, and other poses that challenge your core and your ability to stay up when the world is rocking. Ride a bicycle and practice staying upright at traffic lights.

And here's the twonky part, the part not covered by the general consensus: vary the weight-to-rep ratio on different weeks according to your lift volume. Vary it by a lot. Your volume is the weight times the number of lifts you can do in a given circuit. For example, in one circuit I can do 12 reps of 25 pounds of a single standard dumbbell bicep curl, so my volume is 12 x 25, or 300 pounds.

Next week, I will halve the weight but double the reps, to 24 reps at 12.5 pounds.

The week after that, I will halve the reps but increase the weight by 1.25, or 31.25 pounds (or just 30 pounds, if I can't find my damn 1.25lb adjusters).

The third week, go back to the standard training regimen of 10 to 12 reps. If that's too easy, the fourth week do a standard regimen going up a weight category (2.5 or 5 pounds, depending on what you're exercising), and use that as a new volume, going to the light/heavy/standard rotation. If you can't level up, just go straight into the rotation, and keep working at it.

The idea is to consistently present challenges in both duration and capacity to your muscles. Train them to build them up, and don't be too merciful on them. As always, if something hurts, stop doing it, ya maroon. And if my system doesn't work for you, try something else. I'm not a guru. I'm just a guy trying to die at the slowest rate possible.

The other day, while I was working with my physical therapist, she had me do an exercise where I do sit-ups while throwing a medicine ball to her, and then catching it on the way back down. It puts extra strain on the shoulders and arms, and adds additional weight to the rise and fall of the crunch. When we were done, she put the ball on the rack and said, "Thanks. Usually people throw it at me, not to me."

I felt my brow furrow. "Why?"

"Well, I guess because it hurts."

"I guess. But this isn't, uh, fun, and they knew that going in. Well, maybe. Once I realized it's not about losing weight but about getting strong, I started to find it fun. But didn't they, you know, hire you to, uh, fix them?"

She shrugged and said, "I guess they don't always see it that way."

I just... don't understand the sort of people who think that because someone has taken their money, the hired hand has to put up with all sorts of abuse. I want a professional consultant to respect that I'm doing everything I can to take their advice, not abuse them because it's not the advice I want to hear.

Exercise proceeds apace. I'm still dealing with long-term incidental damage to my left shoulder and right knee, but the traffic accident I had back in November also damaged my right hip and makes it difficult to perform the rehabilitation exercises necessary to stabilize the knee completely; this makes doing the full workout difficult, but I have effective therapies for both.

Still, I'm pleased with the progress. I can do 12 sets of 3 reps with 1 minute's rest shoulder dips with 35 pounds in my lap (12x3w1@35), four pull-ups (on a good day, apparently), cable crossings at 35 pounds, 12x3w2@7.5 shoulder rehabs (those hurt).

I can also squat lift 160 lbs, and can almost press that much. So it's not quite my body weight (185 lbs), but it's almost there.

Here's the thing: I can do 36 chairs and 120 second planks, and I still don't have six-pack abs. You know why? Because I have what is, for an American, a "low" bodyfat: 23% or so. For those amazing abs you see on television, those people are 18% or less; a standard usually only seen in third-world countries.

Still, my doc tells me to keep at it. I can still lift my arm above my head; that means I just have to remember to use a warm press on that shoulder, or take a long hot shower, then contort it into a weird position and "flick" at the scarring until it gives way and grows new fiber.

Meanwhile, the weather has turned and I can ride the bike to work. (Well, take the train into downtown and then ride to the office.) It was beautiful today. Maintaining strength and vibrancy is tricky at my age, but I'm working at it. And winning.

Solid workout today.

Current weight: 189 lbs.

Bagwork: 5 minutes.
Knee lifts, 35 reps @ 2.5 lbs, 2 sets
Squat: 5 reps @ 125lbs, 2 sets. Hit the rest bar on the last lift and strained my left groin muscle. Gotta step back from the rest bar!
Bench Press: 5 reps @ 120 lbs, 2 sets
Bicep Curls: 5 reps @ 30 lbs, 2 sets
Flyes: 10 reps @ 40 lbs, 2 sets


In case anyone's wondering, my targets for both the squat and the bench press is 270 pounds. I'm far, far from there. Not even halfway. But getting there.

My biggest worry remains the amount of visceral fat I seem to have developed, and how I discourage it. I have a slight bloat (slight, given that I'm 189 lbs and 6'1") under my abdominals, which means I'm one of those people who develops visceral fat deposits-- the kind that leads to heart attacks and strokes in my 50s and 60s.

Omaha, Kouryou-chan and I have a weekly bicycle ride on our calendars. Storm can't ride a bike and no amount of cajoling will convince her to try and learn. We decided today to ride from the West Seattle Overpass to Alki Lighthouse Point, a trip of about eight miles total, there and back. At the halfway point there are shops and there is ice cream.

Our timing couldn't have been better. The weather hit a high of 79F (26C), there wasn't a cloud in the sky. But as we headed down toward the overpass we started to notice an excess of automobiles headed in the same direction. Today was the first "beach weather" day we've had here in Seattle, so that was partially understandable. Police guiding traffic, however, was not.

The lot was empty, but it's always empty on the weekends: it's a commuter lot for weekday businessfolk coming in from the West Seattle peninsula who catch buses into downtown. I unloaded the bikes, we slathered ourselves in sunscreen, and headed out. We rode in along the industrial side of Puget Sound, then rounded the jut that sticks out into the sound and points toward the Space Needle.

That's when we heard the first explosion. "Oh crap," I told Omaha. "It's going to be packed when we get there! This is Seafair Pirate Landing Day."

You see, SeaFair is an attempt to remind the citizens of this biotech and software development mecca that, no really, we were a port of call once upon a time. We have Pacific Fleet boats come in, do hydropower boat races, marathons, and a variety of things to celebrate the approxmately ten weeks of sun we get before the Great Grey Lid closes down and we go back into our forty weeks of doom, gloom, and darkness. One of our mainstays is the SeaFair Pirates, a year-round organization of men and women dressed in outrageous piratical gear which raises money for various charities. Usually it's a toys-for-tots kind of thing, but their focus this summer appears to be a charity to help kids who need feeding tubes.

There are several SeaFair "kickoff" events, but on is The Pirate Landing, which is mostly an excuse to remind people that Seattle has beaches. The Pirates light off loud cannon, wade up onto the beach and... that's about it. People get together, barbecue, drink beer, and watch this silly parade without a trace of irony.

We decided to head on. As we came around the tip of Alki Point, we spotted a bald eagle being harassed by seagulls. Apparently he'd flown in to take something, and the locals had objected. My camera is getting balky in its old age, and I had only one chance to snap this picture as he flew all the way across the Sound without stopping, from Alki to Queen Anne, in one go.

We rode into Alki proper, and sure enough the place was packed. A local band was playing, local restaurants had set up catering stations where you could buy Thai, Hawaiian, Chinese, along with the usual fare of hot dogs, hamburgers, and grinders. We rode past the festival, reached the lighthouse, then rode back and went in.

Our timing was perfect: we arrived just in time to watch the Landing, which was silly beyond words. The dredger boat they use came up, they lit off more loud explosives (I wish I'd gotten a pic of the two dozen or so pirates with their hands over their ears, waiting for the ka-boom), they waded onto shore and the general announcement to drink beer and donate generously was given over the loudspeakers to much cheering.

We went and had lunch at some of the stands. Afterward, we escaped and had ice cream at the little shop across the way, then rode home, which was fairly unremarkable. An easy ride over faintly rolling territory.

I got some sun, but not much. Omaha and Kouryou-chan both had a great time. Poor Storm; she missed the pirates, the festival food, and the great weather.

Ugh. Just did the measurements and the math. There's been a 3% shift in body composition away from muscle and toward fat. Suck. And, I'm not sure why, but my left trapezius muscle, the one over the left shoulderblade along the spine, has gotten so tight and painful that it's hard for me to lift my left hand over my head. I suspect being cooped up in buses and airplanes for a whole day, eating poorly, and not working out as I should have.

Maybe with a hot shower and a workout this evening, I'll feel a lot better.

I've noticed an interesting trend in my body fat percentages data, and I figured I'd share it with you. First, the slope is bottoming out. I suspect part of that is because I've been cheating more often. Sad but true. I'm a foodie in a house full of women and children: there are temptations everywhere. Most days, I can keep to the regimen, it's not tragically onerous. Some days, though, like when everyone's having some home-baked cookies or hand-made ice cream (Omaha won an ice cream maker made by a reputable manufacturer at an auction recently), self-discipline crumbles.

Those green dots are days when I recorded cheating: I had two oatmeal-and-peanut-butter cookies and a glass of milk, or a half-cup of ice cream, or ate my barbecue beef sandwiches on real bread (gasp!, I know, right?). I only recently started to mark down cheating incidents, so there's data missing from earlier in the pattern.

The data is pretty consistent. Upward spikes in body fat readings don't happen the day after cheating: they show up the second morning after cheating. This tells me important things about the relationship between food and my biochemistry, about the delay of fat cell construction and how it relates to eating even small amounts of carbohydrates.

5x4 Get-ups with 20lb barbell, 42 Gluteus medius no weight, 8 CV's in a modified plank for 120 seconds, and 8 Myos with a 2.5 pound weight.

Someone asked me which exercise I'm doing for the gluteus medius. This illustration in Men's Fitness shows exactly the exercise recommended to me by my physical therapist for my knees.

By the way, that's a great (and truthful) article, although most of what he says I'd already gleaned from other sources.