Why commit to something you disdain?  Think of your workday like a school day in third grade.  Cursive writing for 40 minutes, and then spelling, and then environment class, and then… Ever see a child get bored with recess?  Some of you have, yes, I know.  But most kids don’t.  You know why?  Because it’s the one time of day that they do whatever they want to do!  And do they play on the monkey bars the entire time!  NO!  They run constantly from 4-square, to tag, to the slide, back to 4-square, and they don’t stop, and they laugh the entire time!  Do that!

There’s one catch.  You have to go to the gym, even if you don’t want to.  But once you’re there, follow your instincts.  You’ll be surprised at how good of a workout you get in.  You may even go longer than you anticipated.  Soon enough, you will think of your workout more like recess, instead of study hall!

OK, so there’s two catches.  If you feel like running 10 miles and you’ve never even walked a mile, then maybe a few rules would do you some good.  Here are the basic rules of unruliness:

1. Warm up.  Even if it’s just for 5 minutes, it’ll help to prepare you for whatever craziness your subconscious has in store for you.
2. Ease into it.  The first few exercises should be a notch up from the warm up.  Consider it warm up part 2.
3. Use proper form.  Do pushups until you collapse if you like, but never compromise your posture.  Bad form = injury = detention.
4. Commit to at least 30 minutes of activity.  It’s a rule.  Even though you get to follow your folly, it must involve activity. 
5. Stretch when you’re done for at least 5 minutes.  You probably worked some muscles you forgot about; they’ll probably be sore and tight tomorrow; stretch.

Here’s an internal dialogue that goes through my mind during a typical strength workout:

I feel like doing pushups…9, 10, 11…I feel like stopping…on to a standing 1 arm chest press…8, 9, 10…feels pretty good, although the weight is a bit light, oh well…18, 19, 20…it’s starting to burn, I like this one…32, 33, 34…that’s enough…I think I’ll hop on an elliptical now…

That’s it.  Do what you want, have fun, play, and unleash your unruliness!

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Everyone has heard of lactic acid (“LA”), so what’s all the excitement about?  Does it cause muscle soreness?  How does it affect your training program?

Technically, LA is an end product of glucose metabolism.  In an oxygen rich environment, like an easy 20 minute workout, LA production is kept to a minimum, thus your working muscles feel fresh.  As the intensity increases and the cellular environment becomes oxygen deficient, like during a maximum 20 minute effort, LA production increases and the efficiency of your working muscles to contract decreases.  LA production and/or accumulation does not cause muscle soreness.  But it is the gateway to better endurance, maximum calorie burn, and higher performance.

As your intensity during a workout increases, so does your LA production.  The good news is that with proper training the cells of your working muscles develop the ability to recycle LA.  And so, even though LA production is increasing, concentration in your blood remains the same.

Even with trained muscles however, there is a point when LA production overcomes your cells’ ability to deal with it.  The point when LA overwhelms your system is called your lactate threshold (“LT”).  Muscle burn is generally, but not specifically, associated with this point, and the time clock starts ticking!  Just beyond LT, you have about 30 minutes of sustainable effort left before your glycogen is depleted and lactic acid claims victory.  The further your intensity climbs beyond LT, the less time you have before “hitting the wall”.  Proper LT training increases the point where LA production overwhelms your working muscles.

The key to improving your LT is to push the intensity to the edge of LA overproduction, and sustain it.  The next obvious question: where’s the edge?  There are numerous ways to answer that.  Here’s the short list of objective and subjective answers you’ll find on the web:

1. A comfortably hard pace
2. 85-90% of your maximum heart rate
3. If running, your 10k race pace + 30-60 seconds per mile
4. Your average heart rate in a 1 hour maximum effort
5. Your heart rate when lactic acid production is at 4.0 mmol per liter of blood
6. Suffer a Conconi test

Training in the Zone!

Frustrating, yes?  As a former professional triathlete, I fully appreciate the “feel-it-out” method, and the reluctance to trust science over personal experience.  Yet, as an Exercise Physiologist, I have seen the pitfalls of the “feel-it-out” method too.  Overtraining, for example, is what happens when you let your senses dictate your training program.  Your brain wants to do a hard workout because such a workout is cathartic.  Plus, it feels good to sweat!  Your body, on the other hand, may be tired and on the brink of injury.  It’s the delicate mixture of experience and science that leads to big results.  An organic middle ground is what I suggest:

1. Get your LT tested by a real Exercise Physiologist, not because the test is difficult to conduct, but because an accurate interpretation requires an understanding of the whole system.  The Denver Athletic Club, of course, offers such a test with such a scientist. J
2. Your LT test should present your training zones in terms of heart rate, perceived exertion, and pace (i.e., speed on a treadmill, watts on a bike, steps per minute on a step mill, etc.).
3. Your training program should incorporate your goals, likes and dislikes, family, work, and social commitments, your previous injuries, and your current conditioning level.

Here are a couple examples of typical LT-improving workouts:

Running, Cross Country Skiing, or Swimming

Progressive warm up followed by 3 intervals of 5 minutes @ LT with a 1 minute walk between intervals.

Biking

Progressive warm up followed by 3 intervals of 10 minutes @ LT with a 2 minute “walk” between intervals.

In conclusion, your pace at LT is moderate-hard, so the risk of injury is real.  Progress into this type of training slowly over 6 weeks to 3 months considering your current conditioning level.

If you have the patience, then you will not find a more affective workout!

Train Smart!

There are many benefits to strength training: decrease injury risk, increase performance potential, to look and feel better.  Maybe you have experienced these benefits, but maybe not.  I hate to use the phrase, No Pain No Gain (it’s so two decades ago), but there is some truth in any cliché.

No Pain, No Gain

Your muscles get worked with every subtle movement you make.  Walking from the office to the water cooler doesn’t leave you burned and sore the next day, but if an elevator breaks down and you’re forced to walk 13 flights of stairs, well, consider it a free gym membership. 

Each of your 640 skeletal muscles has a threshold

 of exertion before it fatigues (i.e., gets in a workout).  Most of the time our muscles are working below threshold.  And everyday you are raising or lowering that threshold by tiny micro adjustments.  For example, if the message you send to your quadriceps today is that getting up out of a chair is their only job, then they adapt.  The body, after all, is just a factory that produces whatever you demand.  And the threshold is lowered.  Thirty years of that and you’re left with a dusty factory floor, 4 part-time workers, and an empty vending machine.

 So move already!

Snail on the move

Walk the 30 flights to your office once a week.

Close your office door and do 25 or 50 squats (no warm up required!).

Go on a walk after lunch.

Join a gym and start doing something, anything.

Don’t get stifled by the what, when, where, and why’s.           

Just Move It!