Use the experience of FitOldDog, an actively competing Ironman triathlete with an abdominal aortic aneurysm stent graft, to exercise safely for better health through improved mind-body awareness if you have diabetes, heart disease, cancer, obesity, or other health challenge.
“Can you coax your mind from its wandering and keep to the original oneness? Can you let your body become supple as a newborn child’s? Can you cleanse your inner vision until you see nothing but the light? Can you love people and lead them without imposing your will? Can you deal with the most vital matters by letting events take their course? Can you step back from you own mind and thus understand all things?
“Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing, acting with no expectations, leading and not trying to control: this is the supreme virtue.”
This is the bay where we enjoyed swimming with turtles and other beautiful sea life.
Hi folks,
I awoke with a stiff neck this morning. I am not sure why. It was maybe because I slept on a couch in a more remote location in Hawaii so all four of us could fit into a smaller apartment to keep costs down, and so we could have a view of the Hawaiian jungle. I often wonder about stiff necks, which come in many forms.
Each day I try to ask myself, “Am I resisting some kind of valuable change because of old habits, or fear of change (misoneism - FitOldDog’s favorite word)?” Basically, “Am I being stiff-necked about something important?” This is a good question to ask yourself, or would you prefer to blame everything on the ‘couches of life?”
Today’s post will be short, as I am working on roam on my MiFi and communication is becoming challenging. I mainly wanted to say that once again being in good shape has enriched my life. We all went snorkeling yesterday in a beautiful bay, but I had a scheduled open water swim, so I just went in using my usual Swedish goggles and nose clips. Due to my current state of fitness and swimming skill (thanks to great coaching), which is necessary for Ironman distance races, I was able to negotiate the reef more effectively and freely than the people around me encumbered with fins, masks and snorkels. It was a great workout and I got to swim with sea turtles. Can you imagine? Takes your breath away!
This is the reef where we got to swim with turtles and see the beauty of the sea - when it comes to the reef itself, DON’T TOUCH!!
I wonder if all that reef swimming, and working to avoid touching the coral, played a role in my stiff neck - or am I resisting a significant change in my life that is overdue.
Important Note: These posts do not provide medical advice. You should always consult your physician before undertaking or significantly modifying an exercise program.
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“The supreme good is like water, which nourishes all things without trying to. It is content with the low places that people disdain. Thus it is like the Tao.
In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.
When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.”
View from our hotel in Waikiki, Hawaii. We have found somewhere closer to the ground for the rest of our stay, even though the people here have been very nice.
I often wonder about our existence, and how in geological time we kind of popped out of the Biosphere, from the sea and/or the ground, to run around for our brief lives that seem so important to us, which of course they are to us, and then to disappear back where we came from. It must look odd from the earth’s perspective, but from the earth we come and back to the earth we go, which is reflected in the advice of Lao-tzu, in the Tao te Ching, the one book that has helped me the most in my life, via the translation by Steven Mitchell.
This translation of the large original volume, into eighty-one pithy poems, provides compact guidance on life.
My favorite book of all books because it has helped me with my life so much.
Take, for instance, the advice on family life, where you are instructed to be completely present. So simple, but so difficult, with all the distractions of one’s job, entertainment systems, and the thoughts and worries of a busy life, plus outside interests and relationship challenges. Just remember this and read to your children or whatever it takes to be completely present.
In sports, or when undertaking safe exercise for better health, being completely present is also good advice. Don’t think about the outcome, just live the current swim stroke, pedal spin or run stride. I don’t mean analyze them all the time, live them! I have found that this works quite well when I can quieten my mind, and what better place to calm oneself than surrounded by nature. Knowing your place in the universe is actually great solace, making sense of many things, including death itself. No death, no life! Letting old ideas die is another critical path to learning and living, without which you stay stuck in the past. Not a place that I want to spend my life.
Important Note: These posts do not provide medical advice. You should always consult your physician before undertaking or significantly modifying an exercise program.
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Sunset in Hawaii, taken by FitOldDog on his iPhone just after arriving from North Carolina.
At the end of the day we are each responsible for our own health and happiness, which is why it is so important to take a little time for yourself each day and each year. It is easy to stay on the treadmill and forget your emotional, spiritual, intellectual and even physical, recovery time. We just arrived in Hawaii to attend a friends wedding, and it sure is a wonderful location, even though you see the same ‘mainland’ problems of traffic, homelessness, and people struggling to make it. The ‘geological/botanical’ place underlying the frenetic human machine is still magical, somehow.
I am fortunate to be here, so I don’t want to miss it with rush, rush, rush, but I will complete my workouts (open water swims and runs, both pretty long), but in a more relaxed and less driven kind of way. This approach fits my philosophy of life, anyway, which to dance through life, following the Tao that I think of as the river of activity through time by the Biosphere, of which I am but a small and generally happy part.
Coming to Hawaii is one of those rare events that can rehabilitate the ‘soul,’ but the more important recovery work that I do is my daily, early morning, meditation with a cup of tea and the animal in my life, which right now is Scooter, while my partner and the kids sleep on for a while.
I’m one lucky FitOldDog, but these things happen through a combination of luck, effort and the choices we make, which also include an element of chance.
Important Note: These posts do not provide medical advice. You should always consult your physician before undertaking or significantly modifying an exercise program.
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“Just because it feels right, doesn’t mean it is right, and just because it feels wrong, doesn’t mean it is wrong.” FitOldDog learned this from Feldenkrais.
Hi folks,
Old worn out bike shoes on the left, but really comfy, while I can’t stand the new bike shoes (only had them two years), but now I finally have to accept them as better than worn out shoes. Today’s test proved that the new shoes are great!
This is a short post to remind you to take the slightest of symptoms seriously until you work out what is going on and can fix whatever it is. Sometimes the signs of potentially serious trouble will come in the form of fate knocking very quietly on the door. For instance, a soft, apparently ‘no big deal,’ abdominal pulse was the first sign of my life-threatening abdominal aortic aneurysm. So the other day, when I noticed that it felt as though I was wearing sock on my right foot, but I wasn’t, I thought, “Uh-oh! What’s that?”
Then I remembered that I’d felt that weird ‘I’ve got a sock on but I don’t feeling‘ once before, years ago, in relation to cycling-induced foot pain between my first (big) and second toes on my right foot. At that time it turned out that I needed better bike shoes, with more support. New shoes fixed it. Then I thought, “Boy, I’ve been riding a lot lately, and I’m back in those old comfy shoes that I love so much, but they’re all worn out.” Bet it’s the same problem. I checked that spot between my toes and, surprise surprise, it was really tender. Then I remembered Victor, my bike guy, who fitted and supplied my new shoes, saying a while ago, “Kevin, get rid of those old shoes, they’ll ruin your feet.” So today, with big sigh (I love those old bike shoes), I got out my new shoes, which don’t feel so soft and nice, but instead feel solid as a rock, and wore them for a 100-mile ride. Yep! As I got off of the bike a little while ago, I had to admit that it was the old shoe problem again. Suck it up FitOldDog!
If this kind of thing is ignored, you can induce serious nerve damage in your feet, so listening to the quiet little messages from your body is the real secret to successfully undertaking a program of safe exercise for better health.
Important Note: These posts do not provide medical advice. You should always consult your physician before undertaking or significantly modifying an exercise program.
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FitOldDog’s Facebook page, Old Dogs in Training LLC, is slowly improving its appearance and function.
Hi folks,
When I’m not training, being an elderly soccer dad, reading, playing with our dog, Scooter, meditating or drinking tea, I’m working to improve my online media skills. Facebook took up so much of my time today that I decided to use the current state of my business Facebook page as my blog post. Some people seem to prefer Facebook to putting comments on blogs, so here it is if you want to ask me any questions about safe exercise for better health, especially following vascular surgery. I’ve already had one interesting question, which will become a blog post on the dangers of guarding in the next little while.
Click on the image at the top of this page to travel to the weird world of Facebook.
Important Note: These posts do not provide medical advice. You should always consult your physician before undertaking or significantly modifying an exercise program.
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“Psychiatric diagnoses, in this view, are in the minds of observers and are not valid summaries of characteristics displayed by the observed.” Extracted from ‘In Being Sane In Insane Places‘ by David L. Rosenhan
“Kevin, you must be crazy doing this Ironman stuff at your age - silence - maybe I should work out more?” By lots of people in FitOldDog’s daily life.
Hi folks,
The thing about Ironman training is that it involves a lot of gear, much of which has to work well on the day, and this equipment is created from raw materials using human imagination. It is the imagination part that you should not forget!
When people start to work out they seem to think that it is all about their body, but it is really all about their mind. For instance, my traffic is heavily weighted by people using search terms that include the word ‘MOTIVATION.’ A common human ailment, which blocks their ability to start training and carry it out effectively, is misoneism or fear of change.
Is it the mind or the body that gives out when a winning Ironman triathlete crawls over the finish line - clearly the mind says, “There’s the finish line, I can stop now,” and it does, and down they go.”
It is critical to realize that you can change both your body and your mind. It helps to think of your mind as a raw material, and then decide what kind of material you would like it to be - think ‘metals’ for instance. Some minds are like mercury, just flowing into any old idea that comes along, others resemble caste iron, hard, unbending and rigid, whilst they fracture under any serious strain. Choose your mental metal (or wood, or stone, or whatever) carefully, and work to change your mind for the better - remember, it is both tool and raw material). If you don’t think that the mind plays a critical role in endurance sports, just watch a world-class athlete collapse just beforethe finish line, having to crawl the last few yards (I saw two of the lead women do this almost simultaneously, right before my eyes, in the Hawaii Ironman race). Or watch one collapse just after they cross the finish line (Boston Marathon, 2009). They were holding themselves together with their minds, like the mental debate I discussed previously with respect to tough bike climbs. It can help to think of your mind as a raw material that can change itself, becoming tougher and more flexible, and that you are then able to mold into an increasingly effective tool to improve your life.
Dave (left) and FitOldDog working in Johnny’s, turning their raw materials, wood and Facebook, respectively, (and their minds) into functional tools. Bet that spoon will still be around when my Facebook account is long gone.
This line of thinking reminds me of a book that I read years and years ago, The Midwich Cuckoos!
Midwich Cuckoos (book, John Wyndham) or Village of the Damned (movie), in which mind control by Gordon Zellaby, who has to kill the alien children, plays a major role in the final climax.
People say to me from time to time that I must be insane to pursue Ironman training, which raises the interesting question of ‘what exactly is sanity?’ I am starting to suspect that happiness with one’s lot in life is more important than the actual nature of one’s lot in life, whether you are considered to be sane or not.
The Midwich Cuckoos, by John Wyndham ends with a critical mental scene, the image of which stuck in my memory. A key character in the story, Gordon Zellaby, had to play a difficult mind game in order to destroy a group of alien children, destined to take over the world if he failed. He brought a bomb into his last meeting with them, but they could read his mind, so he had to build a mental wall between his consciousness, which they could see, and his knowledge of the bomb he brought with him to kill them all, including himself. The aliens realized that something was up and worked to penetrate his mental wall, which slowly crumbled under their combined pressure. But what was this wall and where was it in his mind? This is not a new question.
When it comes to consciousness, people talk about ‘the ghost in the machine.’ The term, initially coined by the philosopher Gilbert Ryle, was used as the title of a book by Arthur Koestler, and to quote unashamedly from WikiPedia:
“One of the book’s central concepts is that as the human brain has grown, it has built upon earlier, more primitive brain structures, and that this is the “ghost in the machine” of the title. Koestler’s theory is that at times these structures can overpower higher logical functions, and are responsible for hate, anger and other such destructive impulses.”
Aside: One of the best books I ever read on this subject was ‘The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial Of Human Nature,’ by Steven Pinker.
When you look closely into your mind I think that you might find warring or conflicted impulses at work, and maybe a whole population of ghosts. Your job in life is to choose which voices to listen to when it comes to selecting the actions that will define your life (as Prof. Dumbledore said to Harry Potter). From here, I think, comes the power of imagery, about which I have written previously with respect to my ‘inner child‘ and the challenge of handling pain during intense training on the bike. I am now exploring the power of imagery to improve my Ironman race performance - I need all the help that I can get.
This is the kind of sail that I imagine, but it is made of my sense of confidence and purpose.
I suffered a poor race performance at the Eagleman Half Ironman recently, because the heat brought me down to a walk-run, which I hate after all that training. So, I talked to Rebecca, my Continuum teacher, about the impact of a poor race performance on one’s self-confidence. A disappointing race can play havoc with the mind. Rebecca suggested that I explore my thoughts and feelings about this race, and consider its impact on my posture. This line of enquiry into my psyche resulted in a valuable suggestion with respect to maintaining confidence in the face of a physical challenge, such as intense training or racing in the heat. Based upon her knowledge of my previous success with creative visualization, Rebecca proposed that I imagine my self-confidence as a large white sail lifting me up and pulling me along, especially when things are tough.
A book to make you think - is that a bad thing?
I tried it at the pool, and it worked fine, helping to hold my posture together in the water. The only time it faltered was when things got tough, during the last set of 6×100 yds on the 1:40. I noticed that the image tended to fade as I struggled to maintain my pace. Then came a run in the hot sun, and the fading of my ‘sail of confidence’ was even more marked as I worked to finish the last mile at a decent pace. As the sail faltered I could feel my confidence ebbing. Then I would take hold of the situation, the image of the sail would grow stronger, and my pace would pick up. I would imagine the ship in the picture above, and I could almost feel the salt water spray in my face cooling me down - made the whole business a lot more fun, and my pace picked up. I think that this concept is one worth exploring. And all of this makes one wonder about the nature of sanity, which is probably contextual, as Carlos Castaneda has already explained in A Yaqui Way of Knowledge.
So, when you are working out to improve your body, and undertake ‘safe exercise for better health‘ (note the flagrant use of my major long-tail keyword, as I attempt to market without becoming obnoxious), FitOldDog’s advice is that you start with your mind, not your body. Strive to improve mind awareness, and I think that your body awareness and ultimate fitness goals will be more readily attained.
Important Note: These posts do not provide medical advice. You should always consult your physician before undertaking or significantly modifying an exercise program.
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Click the image to be taken to the purchase button for this excellent and important contribution to the process of personal recovery from vascular surgery. Only $13.95.
I finally prepared my first product, a guide to aortic surgery recovery based on personal experience. Then I stepped gingerly into the world of marketing by studying books on the subject and testing alternative keywords as bait for my target audience, such as guidance on life after hospitalization, getting your life back on track after surgery, nurses helping patients going home, surgery rehabilitation, and reclaim your life after vascular surgery, in spite of which traffic is still very slow. But I’m learning, and isn’t that what counts in life? For instance, I now understand that marketing and sales are not the same thing. Here is a wonderful example of great marketing that leads into knock’em down dead sales, by a famous musician, Grimes Posnikov. The narrative below was extracted from a ‘eulogy’ in the San Francisco Chronicle, published a few days after Mr. Posnikov’s unfortunate demise.
The Human Jukebox, populated by one Grimes Poznikov, a tour de force in marketing and sales.
“Mr. Poznikov would sit at Fisherman’s Wharf near the cable car turnaround in a painted refrigerator box. On one side of the box were dozens of little tabs cut into the cardboard, each with a song title written on it. On the other side of the box was a slot for dropping in money, and on the front of the box was a lid operated by a pulley from the inside.
Tourists would push in a song tab, drop in money, and the lid flipped open to reveal Mr. Poznikov in a fedora hat and tie. He’d reel off the song on trumpet, kazoo or any of a half-dozen other instruments he kept in the box.
The quality of the song depended on how much cash was dropped in the slot. A reporter selected “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” one hot summer day in 1976, slid in a dime, and got one quick kazoo blast. The reporter then tossed in $2, and when the performance lid flipped open Mr. Poznikov blew a soulful, pitch-perfect version of the same song on trumpet, fetching cheers from the crowd of 40 people gathered around.”
FitOldDog could learn a thing or two about marketing and sales by considering the exploits of Grimes Poznikov and his Human Jukebox. He brought them in, closed the deal, and didn’t take any crap in the process.
Important Note: These posts do not provide medical advice. You should always consult your physician before undertaking or significantly modifying an exercise program.
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Dr. Eric Topol talking sense about statins on The People’s Pharmacy on National Public Radio. Finally someone - thanks!
About 40 years ago, whilst working in my laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, we discovered that I have a fairly extreme form of hyperlipidemia (high blood fat or triglyceride) with a resting level (no treatment) over 2000 mg/dL (extremely high), hypercholesterolemia (high blood cholesterol) of over 230 mg/dL (high) and low HDL (high density lipoprotein, so-called ‘good’ cholesterol, but really an indication of reverse cholesterol transport) of less than 20 mg/dL. These numbers indicate that I should probably be dead by now, and every cardiologist, fat or thin, that I have seen since then wants to put me on statins. These guys drive me crazy. When I mention that I tried statins, but I have controlled the problem more effectively with intense exercise, it is as though I didn’t say a word. They don’t listen! Then I heard a cardiologist, Eric Topol, talking sense about statins and their risks on National Public Radio today, in The People’s Pharmacy. Finally!!!!
The reason that I am ranting about this is that I tried statins and the improvement in my lipid profile was transient, whilst Ironman training has brought it more permanently into a much safer range without the pharmacological risks. More importantly, I have seen the lesions induced in muscle by statins, first hand.
Excessive exercise in an under conditioned horse (or human) can induce life-threatening muscle damage.
I’m a Toxicologic Pathologist by training. I took one look at a muscle of a rat treated with a statin and I thought, Monday Morning Disease (rhabdomyolysis) in horses or New Recruits Disease, in the early phases of military exercise training, both of which are induced by excessive exercise in under-conditioned mammals. I never took the stuff again. Why would I want a real risk of muscle damage in exchange for a statistically predicted reduction of a statistical risk of heart problems? I’m not a statistic, I’m an individual. When you take a statin you are messing with the entire energy (bioenergetic) machine, so it is no surprise to me that statins also come with a risk of diabetes.
FitOldDog avoids taking pills whenever he can by changing his lifestyle. But do I take some pills when advised by my doctor? Sure, if it makes sense after I’ve researched the issue and decided that I trust him/her.
Eating beetroots may make your urine red, but the color is not quite the same as that induced by rhabdomyolysis. The connoisseur can tell the difference.
For instance, I take aspirin and an ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) inhibitor to reduce the risk of clots forming in my remarkable and wonderful Cook Zenith abdominal aortic aneurysm stent graft, and to reduce the hypertension (high blood pressure) that the stent induced, respectively. I tried other approaches to the hypertension, but it was not enough, so medication was my only alternative. If I could get off of the stuff by stuffing myself with beetroots, would I do it? Sure, but I tried and it didn’t work, plus I got fed up of worrying about my red urine (one of the symptoms of rhabdomyolysis and eating beetroots).
I think before I take a pill, and if my doctor won’t listen to me after I’ve researched the issue of concern, I move on until I find one that will. We each have to decide for ourselves how to handle such issues, so I won’t tell you what to do, that’s for sure.
Important Note: These posts do not provide medical advice. You should always consult your physician before undertaking or significantly modifying an exercise program.
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“In America, a person is presumed innocent until proved guilty. Unless, that is, he plays college sports.” [or competes in triathlons, it would appear]
Lance Armstrong has been banned from triathlons due to doping charges (not doping convictions!).
Ayn Rand sure got it right, for all her weird but understandable ‘right-wingness,’ when she gave that lecture at West Point in 1974, entitled “Philosophy, Who Needs It?” The thesis of this short essay is that we each have an underlying philosophy of life (as do certain groups of people), so it had better be a conscious, consistent, defensible and effective philosophy. But you will have a philosophy, whether you think it through or just base your actions on a bunch of random feelings and preferences, combined with unthinking familial and societal conditioning. This is also true of the underlying philosophy of any nation, and as such it will determine the nature of the laws of that nation and their application to the daily lives of its citizens.
A legal system can place the burden of proof of innocence on the accused, or make it the responsibility of the accuser to prove the truth of their accusation. This is a critical distinction, which I understand to have a long and complicated history, being reflected in a major difference between Roman law (innocent until proven guilty) and the Napoleonic Code (de facto presumption of guilt), which was largely based upon these Roman laws, but with this important distinction.
The Napoleonic Code—or Code Napoléon declares a person guilty until proven innocent.
But think of the implications. If you are falsely accused and you have to prove your innocence, until which time you are assumed to be guilty, anyone could destroy your life with an essentially effortless but false accusation.
Upon reading of Lance Armstrong having been banned from triathlons, I was saddened to realize that the triathlon authorities appear to have lost their way on this issue. Years have been spent trying to pin a doping charge on Lance Armstrong, with no apparent success beyond rumor and innuendo. I went on line to some forums on the issue, finding comments such as “He must have juiced in a sport where all the winners are doing it.” This is just guilt by association, and it runs contrary to the underlying philosophy of most Western countries, including that of the USA, where fairness and justice are purportedly held in high esteem (with the flagrant and embarrassing exception of Guantanamo Bay!).
Until the proof comes in, I will judge my hero, Lance Armstrong, to be innocent. And even if the man turns out to have done years ago what his accusers say he did, I will still judge Lance Armstrong, the legend, to be innocent. His book, ‘It’s Not About The Bike: My Journey Back To Life,’ was one of the few things that really helped me through my post-surgical depression following abdominal aortic aneurysm surgery in 2010. It also gave me the courage to work my way back to Ironman training, and the 2011 Lake Placid race. My first commercial product, the ‘FitOldDog’s Quick Start Guide to Aortic Surgery Recovery,‘ which was based on considerable thought and reflection, recommends a very small number of books as essential reading because they have the power to inspire the reader to take charge of their post-surgical life, and one of my key reading choices was the book by Lance Armstrong.
I hope that the triathlon ‘courts of justice,’ and the NCAA for that matter, will return to innocent unless proven guilty, because Lance Armstrong was busy doing for older triathletes, such as myself, what he did for American cycling, ‘put us on the map.’
Man or legend, I sure appreciate what Lance Armstrong did for me.
Important Note: These posts do not provide medical advice. You should always consult your physician before undertaking or significantly modifying an exercise program.
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Many years ago I attempted to learn Bruce Lee’s one-inch punch, and I got close a few times after a year or so of trying. I got to feel, if only briefly, how you can put the force of your whole body into a punch over a distance of just a few centimeters. The process seemed to be all about optimal body coordination, timing, and considerable skill. It is apparent that there are many ways to carry out any action with your body, and some will be efficient and safe, whilst others are forced and prone to the induction of injury. I have played tennis (not well), racket ball (fairly well), table tennis (quite well), and golf (not too horrible) and found that the best interactions with the ball occurred for me when I felt that the racket or club and I were all of a piece, and the impact with the ball was barely perceptible if at all.
On the way to my latest Continuum lesson with Rebecca, I was wondering about all those strained wrists and forearms in amateur tennis players. Do they have weak arms? Do they grip their rackets too tightly, as suggested in a previous post on cycling and tennis? Or is there something inefficient with the manner in which they, their racket and the ball interact as they dance on the court with gravitational and kinetic forces? I mentioned this to Rebecca, who has helped my triathlon training in many ways. The video below reveals what my dance teacher had to say on the subject.
I suggest that you explore picking up a small rock in many ways, gain an improved sense of where you are picking it up from, your forearm or your entire body, and then carry that learning over to your tennis racket. Explore your biomechanics, and see if you can find the road to injury-free tennis. I am sure that for each of us there is an optimal way to handle the racket, and it is probably subtly different for each of us.
Enjoy and thank you Rebecca for another great Continuum lesson.
Important Note: These posts do not provide medical advice. You should always consult your physician before undertaking or significantly modifying an exercise program.
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