PEAX Equipment

Practical Fitness

Finished the day dragging hoses & watering trees & grasses. Up & down & stepping between Dottie's bones. Obstacle course.

A spike skull & thigh bone on the front step this morning slowed my rush for the 30-30 shot.
She is now conning the yotes to give it a try again. I shot the other day with her next to me,no flinch.

I almost drowned @ 5. Pool.
So dad taught me to swim. Ocean.
I could swim to the 1/4 mile buoy by 7 & back. Found a surfboard in the trash with some bikes.
Made a trailer & took up surfing. No leashes back then.
Navy taught me the rest.

I was teaching the open water rescue folks at my favorite surf spot @ 40. How to get in and out on 10ft days.
Hazzard's. A reef,kelp,deep channel and Whitey. 1/2 mile out.
Have not been there in 16 years.
 
Nameless Range said:
I think those are all good goals. I could do some, but not others. I think there’s probably some virtue having a goal around squatting. It’s cliché, but it’s the one associated with getting up off of a lot of things - like a toilet. Because you will lose muscle at some rate by the time you achieve some age, it would be good to have as much as you can by the time you reach that age. Not sure what that benchmark would be.

One I think about is BMI/body fat percentage. Though BMI is imperfect, and I’d have to dig up the studies, it seems to be a fact that there’s just no such thing as a fat person that’s in shape insofar is they are sitting themselves up for longevity. There are tubs who could achieve many of the things on that list, but statistically they are still at risk for a lot of the complications of older age if they are carrying around too much weight.

Aside from nutrition being on point,I used to think that just being active and living an active life would kind of take care of itself for someone’s fitness. A couple older guys on the fire department, one of which is in his mid 70s still cut multiple cords of wood a week and sells them. Just a savage. But an outlier who’s also on his 3rd knee.

What I’m getting at is that if you want to maintain those practical fitness goals in the spirit of living better longer, I think you have to pointedly train in the gym. Lift weights, do cardio, etc. Just living an active lifestyle probably won’t be enough.
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I don't think about BMI, at all. It has its flaws. If you are tall, it skews your result towards obesity. If you carry a good amount of muscle, it skews your number towards obesity. I'm a little of both. I wear 34 inch waist jeans, so, not carrying too much extra weight.

Most people in the gym eschew squats and deadlifts, based on what I've observed. Leg day is hard, most definitely not type I fun. It is hard intense work, once you are knocking at your strength limits. Likely, I am strongest in my legs. I'd say that a reasonable benchmark for an old man, is squatting with weight equal to your body weight for a good number of reps. I don't see very many people do that.

I give myself an emotional break from the intensity of leg day, as needed. Right now, squats are two sets of 7 with 265# and two sets of trap bar deadlifts for 6 reps with 320#. Sometimes, I deload and do more reps with less weight, and other times do a heavier single, to spare volume of work.

A big reason is, I want to be able to easily mount a horse into my golden years. So far, I can swing a leg over a horse easily.
 
Straight Arrow said:
Disagree ... my Mom lived fairly active, healthy life to 101 yrs old. She never trained in a gym in her life.
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I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, it’s good and is absolutely important, but I think one is leaving a lot on the table by assuming that just hiking, wood cutting, etc will make up the difference of actually going to the gym in terms of maintaining muscle mass.
 
Good addition re:squats @406dn and @Nameless Range, that is a great measure of practical strength.

I had tried to cover that part with the 6mile pack @50lbs, but that may not be sufficient now that you guys mention it.

BMI was considered as well loosely in my original list, although not specifically. My thinking was the 5/10k, pull-ups/push-ups and body weight bench would all incorporate body weight somehow (ie probably way easier to achieve with a 24 BMI vs 27).
 
Nameless Range said:
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, it’s good and is absolutely important, but I think one is leaving a lot on the table by assuming that just hiking, wood cutting, etc will make up the difference of actually going to the gym in terms of maintaining muscle mass.
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One aspect of getting old is attending funerals more often than you would choose. Funerals bring together friends and acquaintances. I've noticed that friends from work, etc, have lost muscle mass in their torsos and legs. Just as you don't see yourself growing older, by looking in the mirror each day...you don't notice you are losing your muscles.

A person WILL lose significant muscle mass, unless they work hard to hold on to it.
 
Nameless Range said:
Just living an active lifestyle probably won’t be enough.
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Agreed. I think there are three pillars of health and longevity:

1) Nutrition/diet
2) fitness and activity
3) sleep

And, if you ask me, the only one of those that has some negotiating room is fitness and activity. I just simply believe there is no way to be optimally healthy without good diet and good sleep; you can’t outrun either of those.
 
62 and hit the gym about 4 times a week now.
Not near as strong as I was in my 40's but getting close on some exercises, bench press is coming back nicely.
Cardio is going to kill me but hey something has to, lol.

You can keep your muscle mass and build it back if you don't lay off workouts too long, I took 10 years off from the gym because of my mid life change- you know what I mean. Gained a bunch of weight then decide 2 years ago to loose it. Took sugar out of my diet and the weight fell off.
Big difference now in being in better shape for everything.
Life is easier to enjoy and the spouse isn't complaining about how I look.
 
TOGIE said:
Agreed. I think there are three pillars of health and longevity:

1) Nutrition/diet
2) fitness and activity
3) sleep

And, if you ask me, the only one of those that has some negotiating room is fitness and activity. I just simply believe there is no way to be optimally healthy without good diet and good sleep; you can’t outrun either of those.
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X2 to this whole post @TOGIE. For most people, if you do a good job with sleep and diet the last pillar is really probably a distant third.
 
The one problem with some of this stuff is if you started training with the intention of getting more pull-ups that number would go up quick. I use to do a dozen or so with 2 plates hanging off me. I wouldn’t argue that I’m any more stronger today than I was then. The goals are great and it can be a great way to measure to keep you healthy but if you start training for those I feel like you won’t accomplish much to adding to actual health. I’d look more at the Olympic lifts also but consider gauging it off a 4x5 rep max depending on how your body functions. My 1 rep max is trash my body is a 4 rep kinda thing
 
I’ve got two buddies in the special forces (one late 30’s, other early 40’s). They’ve both had to maintained a high level of fitness for their jobs. They recommended this book to me, which is next on my list to read. Might be helpful/interesting to some as I think it relates to this topic. IMG_6637.jpeg
 
cgasner1 said:
The goals are great and it can be a great way to measure to keep you healthy but if you start training for those I feel like you won’t accomplish much to adding to actual health.
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This is a great point, and I have been guilty of this- it influenced my input in my opening post for sure.

A few years ago I really trail ran a lot and was almost solely focused on that- I did get pretty decent at it (by my standards, not actually that fast) but that was pretty much the only thing I was good at. Good cardio/lungs but skinny and weak all over. I one-tripped a mule deer just a mile or two that year and it almost tipped me over backwards.

I tried to create a mix different types of strength and endurance benchmarks in that wouldn’t require all that much specialization. In my mind, the goals are reasonable enough that just being fit would make them achievable just by fitness alone.
 
I’ve thought about having test days were every couple months I do x amount of workouts and see if I went up or down
 
cgasner1 said:
I’ve thought about having test days were every couple months I do x amount of workouts and see if I went up or down
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Me too. Some sort of criteria to show what parts are ok and what needs a bit more attention.

For me personally- I have a tendency to overestimate my capability, but getting on a pull-up bar and actually ripping out 10 is a lot different than thinking I can. A lot can change in a year, especially as age creeps in.
 
Regarding Olympic lifts, they are very explosive movements. If I had discovered weightlifting as a young man, I'd have been all in on them. I think for a man my age, the risk reward is skewed in the wrong direction.

Most of the people, I see at the gym, spend much of their time, doing isolation exercises. They will curl etc, and perhaps bench press.

My recommendation is to do compound lifts that challenge multiple joints with the same exercise. I overhead press, bench press, weighted pull ups, back squats and deadlifts with a trap bar. I should probably do some sort of lunge, but I haven't. At various times, I've done farmer's carries. If the local gym was better set up for them, I'd still be doing farmer's carries.

Everyone has their own set of life's battle scars. Work around them, but don't use them as a pass. Nearly every time I suggest how beneficial a back squat or deadlift is... the response is a knee or back prevents them from doing it. Well, they do the movements every day, just living. In most cases, they could do it with some load, on a bar.
 
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