Mental Toughness

Howard Wasdin, former Navy SEAL:

I can take just about anyone and make them physically strong. A lot of people showed up at [training] who were much more physically capable than I was, football players and athletes in phenomenal shape, and they were the first to quit. Mental toughness is a must to make it through training, much less through combat.

I've always believed this was the case, for this kind of hardcore work. I remember reading that the survival rate for torpedoed British merchant marines, during World War II, was higher for older men than for young, and they attributed it to their mental seasoning. It also kinds sorta supports my view of why it is perfectly okay to have proportionately less severe pushup standards, for females in the military. 

January at the Gym: The Attack of the Resolutionaries

Amusing article, that will immediately ring true to all veteran exercisers. I think the point below captures a truth about gyms:

Humans have a need for rituals and routine. Humans in gyms display this need in a hyper-developed, 'roidy kind of way, which makes sense: The gym is the place we go to control one of the few things in life we can control (dumpiness) and so it becomes the place where we become the people who try to control everything else (diva-ness!). The gym is a microcosmic symbol for how splendidly the world could work, if only everyone would wait their turn, properly hydrate and remember to wipe down whatever they touched with a lemony Pine-Sol solution.

My own personal peeve--which does not apply exclusively to newbies--relates to waiting for machines. There is a certain body language that one needs to exhibit, to indicate that one is waiting for a machine. It needs to be subtle, so as not to inappropriately crowd the person currently on the machine (unless of course they are resting between sets, in which case they are breaking the rules and being unfair themselves, and deserve to have pressure applied--up to and including crossing the non-verbal barrier, of being asked outright "okay if I work in?"). But it needs to be clear enough to inform the sequencing decision of other patrons. It is frustrating to think you are next in line for a machine, only to have someone come flying from across the gym to claim it. There is an instinctive art that most people seem to grasp, but a few are either unconsciously or willfully oblivious to. Here is a list to help them:

Do's and Dont's:

1. Don't rest between sets. Ever. Even if the gym seems empty, discipline yourself to clear off the machine, to give others a chance to work in. Don't make them ask.
2. As a corollary, don't "guard" the machine. This involves complying with the letter of the law, by getting up off the machine, but violating its spirit, by hovering so close that another person can not gracefully access the machine.
3. Do realize that proximity is very important. You can't signify you are waiting for a machine if you are across the gym.
4. Direction is also important. You need to be generally facing the machine you want, and without staring, you need to let you glance drift toward it occasionally. 
5. Which brings up the next rule--while waiting, be aware of others. If you sense that they are trying to evaluate whether there is a wait for it, you need to give off clear signals that you are in line. But not aggressively. Your operating assumption should be that they are not competitors who must be actively deterred, but rather rule-abiding fellow exercisers of goodwill, who, like you, are merely seeking to optimize their time.
6. You absolutely can't be waiting for one machine while you are on another. Not even if they are right next to each other. (A possible exception--some gyms may try to set a priority for those who work in sequence. In my opinion, this is both undesirable--because different people have different ideas of the proper sequence--and just leads to disputes. But if it is the posted letter of the law at your gym, you should respect it.)
7. Don't exercise in packs. It isn't fair for 2-4 people to monopolize a machine by trading off sets. (Note: this probably varies with the culture of the gym, in hardcore, male-oriented facilities this may be the norm. You will know if you are in the wrong place.)

Fitness - Workout Distractions - Good or Bad? - NYTimes.com

Anyone who knows me well will know I am a big advocate of reading while doing exercise machines. The recumbent excercise bike, in particular, is the perfect reading machine. I know my target cadence, and glance from time-to-time to check, so I don't think reading diminishes my workout intensity hardly at all. It is true that if I didn't read, I could probably push myself past hard toward the limit a bit more--if I were so inclined--but by the same token, if I didn't read, I don't think I could stand to stay on the damn thing an hour!

Female Pushup Standards in the Army

When the roles suitable for women in the military are discussed, pushup standards are often a point of debate. The pushup standards are quite a bit lower for women than for men. I personally think this factor is over-rated and mis-interpreted.

We should first ask ourselves--is push-up capability a Bona-Fide Occupational Qualification (aka, BFQ)? Or is it, like a college degree, more of a proxy or marker for some more general indicators of suitability? I would submit, for 90+% of military assignments, it is the latter. Being able to do a goodly number of pushups is an indicator of:

• general physical fitness
• discipline (maintaining one's fitness)
• mental toughness

All of  which are important in the military environment, much more so than the absolute number of pushups a soldier can perform.

Heavier Americans Lobby Group

I fall in the middle on this article. Valid point: it certainly not right to disparage people for being fat, and it probably would not be fair or right to penalize someone in terms of heatlhcare premiums solely for being overweight. On the other hand, the likely tendency of this lobby will be to decry any references that cast overweightness[1] in a negative light. And that would definitely be going too far. Because while they are correct in asserting that the real social goal is fitness and health--not thinness thinness' sake--the fact is that overweightness is very strongly correlated with health problems.

Which brings me to my next objection to the article: like almost all articles I read on the subject, it almost completely glosses over the importance of exercise. Yes, there is one nod to the importance of "movement" (movement--talk about euphimisms!), but that's it.

Overlooking exercise is a very unfortunate omission. Because unlike dieting--which is very, very, very hard to sustain because it feels like permanent deprivation--exercise is a positive good. So exercise is far more sustainable than dieting.

In my 20+ years of regular gym attendance, I have very, very rarely seen a confirmed, dedicated exerciser who is severely overweight. Some of us exercise addicts may be bulkier than others, but almost all have weight reasonably under control.

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[1] Using the term "overweightness" rather than, say, "fatness" would be the kind of thing that an interest group might push. I typically detest that sort of euphimism-promulgation by the langage police--detention center for jail, landfill for dump--and would normally resist it. But in this case I think it is justified. "Fat" is a pretty loaded, pejorative term. Likewise for obesity, and anyway, it only properly describes the extreme of fatness. So awkward as it sounds to the ear, "overweightness" seems like the best term available. (Heaviness doesn't really cut it, because it is absolute, not relative--Yao Ming for instance is quite heavy, but hardly fat.)

Counting Calories Is Fundamental

For the last few decades, the most popular diets were complex formulas that promised abundant eating with just the right combinations of fat, protein and carbohydrates. Now those regimens are starting to look like exotic mortgages and other risky financing instruments. And just like a reliable savings account, good old calorie counting is coming back into fashion.

Yep, this seems pretty reasonable. There are some secondary considerations to what kind of calories you consume--more calories are used turning protein into stored fat than turning fat into stored fat--but the primary factor is just the number of calories.

I take the same view of calories in relation to exercise. I have always believed, for those interested in weight-control and general conditioning, that total number of calories was probably the most important factor. (Training for finely-tuned competitive althletes, seeking to maximize performance, may have more subtleties.) Likewise, in terms of fitness and especially weight-loss benefits, I think that total calories burned is more important than which zone you are in, or what your heart-rate is. (Although some of the literature on interval-training does make it sound "magical".)