If you have a basement gym, you might as well use it

Over the last year, I've gotten a lot of mileage here on the blog posting about my adventures at the gym.

I was never a weight lifter until May 2024, when Elissa and Mark bought me four sessions with a trainer named Kirk at Ohio Sports & Fitness (OSF) in Willoughby, Ohio. My knowledge and enjoyment of strength training really blossomed under Kirk's guidance, and I enjoyed working out with him twice a week almost without fail for 13 full months.

As of a month ago, however, I no longer go to OSF, nor is Kirk serving as my trainer. This has nothing to do with the gym or with Kirk. The facility is great with a lot of friendly and very helpful people. As for Kirk, what can I say? He's an amazing personal trainer whose extensive knowledge blends well with his positive personality.

He's a good egg, that Kirk.

No, my disengagement from the gym has nothing to do with them. It was simply a decision I made several weeks ago when I decided I needed to free up some time in my otherwise hectic life (something I mentioned this past Monday in an egregiously gratuitous game show-related post).

One of the changes I made in my routine was to shift the site of my twice-a-week strength training to our house rather than an outside gym.

It turns out we have a pretty nicely equipped gym in the back room of our basement, thanks to the efforts of my son Jared. When we still lived with us and was really into lifting, he stocked that room with everything you really need to build muscle.

That includes two adjustable weight benches, a rack for bench pressing, a barbell and various weight plates, a full assortment of dumbbells, a machine for hamstring curls and quad extensions, and a bunch of other stuff I won't even list here, all placed on a series of heavy-duty rubber horse mats.

For the longest time I felt guilty I wasn't taking advantage of this nice exercise setup located right in my own home. Now I do.

I admittedly miss Kirk, and I miss the atmosphere at OSF, but so far this change has been for the better. It cuts significant time off my morning routine, and it doesn't involve any sort of membership or personal training fees.

It also helps that my strength training goals are relatively modest. I'm not looking to bulk up or anything. Really, all I want is to maintain what I have in an attempt to stave off age-related muscle loss.

The Tennant Gym is more than equipped to help me do that.

Now if only I could get a machine for the basement that makes me not want to eat cake all the time...

Here's what I've noticed about going to the gym: Everything is heavy

"Yeah, that's the idea," you probably said to yourself upon reading the headline of today's post. But hear me out.

I know the point of weightlifting is to move heavy things around in an attempt to build strength. You're supposed to make your muscles fail, thereby breaking them down and allowing them to rebuild themselves bigger and stronger.

And the only way to make them fail is to lift heavy objects.

Yet there's a difference between "heavy" and "HEAVY."

Like, the first set of everything I do is "heavy." By the time I get to the last rep, I'm working hard to get that weight into the air (or out to my side or whatever the movement calls for). But it's not to the point that I've lost the will to live.

That's not the case when I'm dealing with "HEAVY" weights. These are generally the types of weights my trainer Kirk will give me when I'm working out under his tutelage.

We'll be doing, say, a dumbbell incline bench press exercise. He'll walk over to the dumbbell rack and select two that are, for him, not a problem to move, but that are, for me, at least a small problem to move.

He'll hand me the dumbbells, I'll lean back on the bench, and I'll proceed to lift them 10, 12 or 15 times, however many reps he tells me to do. The last few reps are decidedly uncomfortable, and my earnest desire is for the set to end so I can go back to the mostly comfortable lifestyle to which I'm accustomed.

But then we'll proceed to a second set, and this time Kirk will hand me a Volkswagen or a small elephant and tell me to lift it about the same number of times.

I'm not speaking literally, of course, but he inevitably picks large dumbbells of the kind I normally associate with Mr. Universe contestants and that one women I see every day at the gym who is way stronger than me.

Even if/when I successfully complete this new and decidedly unfair task, Kirk will keep handing me larger and larger objects to lift. It's as if he's playing a practical joke of which he and all the rest of the gym-goers are aware, and I'm serving as a source of endless amusement for them.

I know what my face looks like when I'm really struggling to get a weight into the air, and I'm sure it's hilarious if you're just standing there watching. I also start to contort my body in a way that undoubtedly defeats the purpose of the exercise but also makes me feel like I'm making some progress toward lifting the 4-ton anvil Kirk has given me.

When we get to the heaviest weights, I'm quickly beyond caring whether I live or die. All I know is that existence = suffering and the only way I will make it through is to perform the prescribed number of reps, whatever it takes. This is when I know we have reached the level of "HEAVY."

And, if you'll pardon my language, it really sucks.

Then, suddenly, without me realizing it, my 1-hour session with Kirk is over. He gives me a fist bump, tells me I did a good job, and walks with me back into the gym lobby.

I collect my things from the changing room and head out to my car, noting that while my arms are fatigued to the point I simply cannot lift them over my head any longer, I have logged another workout. Victory.

The next day I am sore. And weak. My daily creatine powder helps, but there's a certain level of muscle fiber breakdown my 55-year-old body simply cannot overcome without the passage of at least a few days.

Yet there I am back at the gym soon after, sometimes the very next day to work on another part of my body while the first part tries desperately to repair itself. This cycle of suffering ends only if I die or decide to give up lifting, which in the eyes of the gym rats around me is kind of the same thing.

So back I go. It's hard knowing that while "heavy" is at least manageable, "HEAVY" is the only way I'm going to get better at this.

And worst of all? I'm paying both Kirk and the gym owner Frank for this suffering.

It always bears repeating: No one ever said I was a genius.

Finding the line between "live your life" and "do what's best for your health"

From the outset, I should establish that I don't believe a fun life and a healthy life are mutually exclusive things. You can (and should) have both.

But there's no denying that, at least for me, a healthy life sometimes means making certain sacrifices and prioritizing my time in ways I might not otherwise.

As an example, let's take the gym-going habit I developed nearly a year ago.

When I started lifting last June, you could find me in the gym five days a week without fail. And it undoubtedly made a difference, to the point that my chest, arms and shoulders are now somewhat bigger, which means some of my button-downs and pullovers are harder to get on than they used to be.

It's a good problem (and a very healthy habit) to have.

But there are downsides to a five-day-a-week gym routine, again, at least for me. They include:

• Sometimes getting less sleep than I really need because I have stuff going on the night before I work out
• Perpetual soreness
• A higher risk of injury and less chance to recover

To that last point, in the past year I have sustained injuries at the gym to my shoulder, back, forearm and foot. All were lifting-related, and while all probably could have been avoided with better form, the fact is they happened and they didn't heal quickly.

That was probably because I kept on going to the gym five days a week and never gave those muscles a chance to heal themselves.

Then I cut back to four days a week of lifting, and now sometimes I'm at three. And voila, as I type this, I'm suddenly injury-free!

Who knew?

When it comes to diet, we all have to decide what we're willing to do to maintain a reasonable weight without being in constant self-denial. Few people can get by without indulging in less-than-healthy treats from time to time.

You have to decide what "from time to time" means for you, though, and what potential long-term health consequences you're willing to accept in exchange for the happiness that extra piece of cake or the double cheeseburger bring you.

As I mentioned recently, you and I each have an expiration date, and we can only push it out so far. As Colin Hay, one of my favorite singer-songwriters, puts it: "Nobody gets a sequel, no, everyone gets shown the door."

I think a lot nowadays about these tradeoffs. Maybe it's because I have a grandchild on the way. Or maybe I'm at an age when everyone starts to look ahead to whatever is left of this life, which for me should be at least a few more decades, though you never know.

Pick a philosophy and stick to it. Find your balance. Then go and live your life the best you know how, even if the final number of years you live isn't as long as it could be.

That's the best advice I can give you.

As if we needed more proof that evil exists in this world, along come Bulgarian split squats

(NOTE: I'm in France right now, but I'm not chronicling that trip here. Terry is mostly doing that for us on Facebook, if for whatever reason you want to look her up and see some vacation photos. I think they're viewable by anyone. I will say this, though: Whenever I get to speak French to a French person, I inevitably sounds like Pepe Le Pew because I'm trying so hard to sound French. I need to back off a little...)

Let me say two quick things about my newly formed strength training habit:

1. I have given much of the credit for me taking up the gym life to my daughter Elissa, and rightly so, but my son Jared also had a hand in this. He has been lifting for years, which not only provided inspiration but also led him to piece together a pretty formidable home gym in the back room of our basement (on his own time and using his own money). I now benefit from having that gym. Also, today is Jared's 26th birthday, and he's a good guy, so please wish him a happy happy.
   
   
2. This is the third or fourth time I've written about lifting in the past month, but please rest assured that this is not going to turn into a gym bro blog or anything. It's just that I write 150 or so new posts a year, and they're generally based on what's new in my life as a husband, a dad, and a middle-aged guy. Lifting is still new to me, so it's probably not surprising that I've been writing about it. I'll dial it back, I promise.

I'm writing this post the morning of July 4th. Yesterday I was at the gym with my trainer Kirk for leg day. I've already learned that leg days always lead to soreness 24 hours later, and that is certainly the case now. My quadriceps are killing me.

The primary reason for that is the exercise demonstrated in the video above: the Bulgarian split squat. I hadn't done this exercise before, and I wasn't particularly thrilled to do it when Kirk's explanation of it began with, "This is pretty much everyone's least favorite exercise."

Great!

In the video it appears to be innocuous enough, but man, it's a killer. Kirk had me do two sets on each leg. Each set consisted of 10 repetitions holding a dumbbell, then 10 additional reps with just body weight.

You would think the body weight reps are a welcome reprieve after getting rid of the dumbbell, but no. They are somehow even worse, probably because your legs are already awash in burning lactic acid after the dumbbell reps.

You know what was even worse? Kirk – a seemingly nice guy who has a hidden masochistic streak a mile wide – gave me a heavier dumbbell to use for the second set.

I walked away from Bulgarian split squats with a decidedly wobbly gait. My legs were the kind of rubbery I had only seen before when Mike Tyson knocked out Trevor Berbick to win the heavyweight title in 1986.

I will admit, though, that Bulgarian split squats taught me something important. Going to the gym five times a week and activating muscles I haven't used in years has obvious physical benefits when it comes to strength, flexibility, mobility, etc.

But just as important, I've found, is the way in which weight lifting is making me mentally stronger. As Kirk says, it's all about your willingness to approach and break through the threshold.

That threshold is one of physical discomfort, sure, but it plays out just as much in your head as it does in your biceps or your hamstrings.

When we get to the final set of an exercise and Kirk tells me the goal is "8 to 10 reps," I naturally want to hit 10. When it starts getting tough only 5 reps in, though, it becomes a mental game. Do I struggle my way to the minimum of 8 and stop there? Or do I willingly embrace the pain (and potential failure) of those 9th and 10th reps?

So far it has gone both ways for me. Sometimes I'll get to that minimum and simply say, "That's it, I'm done." Other times I've sucked it up and gutted out those 9th and 10th reps.

I feel much more satisfied when I take the tougher road, and I'm working on the best mental approach to ensuring that happens consistently.

In the meantime, the key lesson to take away here is perhaps obvious: Bulgarian split squats are, at their core, the work of demons.

I have once again been bullied into better habits

I like to tell the story of why I began drinking black coffee after years of pouring cream into it.

The date was September 15, 2022. My family and I were at Pine Ridge Country Club in Wickliffe, Ohio, for the Wickliffe Schools Athletic Achievement Hall of Fame induction ceremony. (Someone had scammed the organizers into inducting me. I still can't explain it.)

After the meal, I poured myself a hot cup of coffee to cap off what had been a very enjoyable evening. As I reached for the small pitcher of half and half, my daughter Elissa looked at me and said (in a tone of undisguised condescension), "When are you going to grow up and start drinking black coffee?"

I replied to her, "Right now, I guess." And I did. I drank that cup free of additives, and I have not drunk anything but black coffee ever since that moment.

I have said many times that Elissa bullied me into what is undoubtedly a healthier habit when it comes to coffee drinking.

Fast forward to about a month ago, when Elissa and her boyfriend Mark presented me with a card for a personal trainer named Kirk Simmons. As a reward for coming to their house and taking care of their pets while they were on vacation, they had paid for four training sessions for me with Kirk.

"You'll love him," Elissa said. "He specializes in cranky dads."

Well, sign me up!

I hadn't expressed any interest in personal training, but everyone in my family knew of my longstanding intention to start doing more than just cardio-based exercise. I knew I needed to lift, and deep down I knew I probably needed some sort of kick in the butt to start doing it.

Two days after presenting me with the card, Elissa and Mark were at our house. A very persistent Elissa told me, "We can sign you up with Kirk now." I promised I would do it myself within a day or two, and I did.

Once again, my low-level fear of incurring the wrath of Elissa had pushed me into making a better lifestyle choice.

Here's the funny thing, though: I'm typing this post on May 31st. As of today, I haven't had a single workout with Kirk. I did meet him at the gym for my initial assessment yesterday morning at 5am (yes, 5am, which didn't seem to phase Kirk because the man is an ex-Marine and could probably conquer a small island by himself on three hours sleep).

All he did was conduct a body scan to assess my muscle mass and prodigious fat deposits, and some movement tests so he could get an overall idea of my flexibility, stability, problem areas, etc.

My first workout with Kirk is still four days away, but by the time you read this, he will have put me through my paces several times already.

How can I be so confident this is going to work out? Because I know myself. I'm excited to do this, and when I'm excited to do something, I do it no matter how difficult it is or what obstacles life throws at me.

I don't know that I'm ever going to be a true gym rat or anything, but by the time you read this, I will have at least transformed into a "gym guy."

Which is saying something for me, a lifelong runner/walker and formerly avowed non-lifter.

The upshot of today's post? You need to have a loving bully like Elissa in your life. Or maybe just hire out Elissa herself to threaten you into making better choices.

Trust me, she's very good.

The AI Blog Post Image Generator did a nice job creating the photo you see at the top of this post. But it also produced this image, which makes me laugh no matter how many times I look at it.

I need to quit whining, go to bed earlier, and regularly lift heavy things

"The problem is we have a problem. It's not that we don't know what the problems are; we've known those for years. It's not that we don't know what the solutions are; we've known those for years. The problem is we haven't done anything about it." - Former Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson

I usually do this in the caption, but there's so much going on with the photo above that I had to address it in the main body of today's post.

I prompted the AI Blog Post Image Generator with "sleepy guy lifting weights." After several attempts even worse than this, I settled on the image at the top of your screen. I'm fascinated by (a) the bar running through the narrow end of the weight plate and on to...I don't know, another machine?; (b) the situation with the guy's right arm; (c) the condition of his right eye.

Why, you might logically ask, do I continually use such an inferior generative AI tool? The answer is a combination of it being free and my inability to look away from some of the images it creates. I can't stop going back to it.

Anyway, the quote above from Frank Jackson is famous here in Northeast Ohio. People make fun of it, but it perfectly encapsulates what I know to be true about my personal health – and what you may know to be true about your own health.

I am not unaware of the areas in which I fall short when it comes to taking care of myself. I do many things well in the bodily maintenance department, but there are areas in which I miss the mark badly.

Specifically, I don't get enough sleep and I don't strength train.

These are both bad things if you're looking to live a long and vibrant life.

Like Mayor Jackson, my problem is that there's a problem. And I've known for a long time what the problem is. And I've known exactly how to fix that problem.

The problem is that I choose to do nothing about it.

My quality of sleep is good, but the quantity of it is not. I don't like sleeping as much as most other people do. It is, to me, a necessary evil at best.

It's also a key ingredient to peak mental and physical performance. We have to sleep, and we have to get enough sleep. Most nights I get around 6 hours, sometimes less.

I fall asleep almost right away when we turn out the lights, but I also wake up earlier than I probably should. I almost never get the recommended 7 to 9 hours.

I should choose to go to bed earlier, but I do not.

I have also, for many years, chosen not to engage in the practice of lifting weights. My exercise focus has been on cardio activities, and for good reason. A healthy heart is vital.

But so is muscle mass and overall strength, much of which you lose after the age of 35 or so.

I am well past the age of 35.

The dilemma I face is that while I love getting outside and running/walking in the mornings, I do not love the act of lifting weights.

I do not even like the act of lifting weights. I find it as tedious and unenjoyable as I find running/walking to be uplifting and fun.

But as with many things in life, there is an element of "too bad, so sad" in play here. My choice is either to suck it up and start going to bed earlier so I can get up and lift some weights in the basement a few times a week, or to continue complaining about all of this.

I know what I should do. And I think, as I write this on April 9, I'm going to start doing it soon.

Really, I will. Or, by the time you read this, maybe I already have.

First, though, I should probably hire Frank Jackson as a consultant to help me better understand the problem.

What I'm willing and not willing to do to live a healthy lifestyle

I like to read books about longevity and health. Dr. Michael Roizen is my favorite author in the space, though there are many others – Drs. Joel Fuhrman and Neil Barnard come to mind – who are also go-to sources for this type of information.

Of course, there's a difference between reading about healthy living and, you know, actually following through on it. If you were to ask people who know me well, they would say I am generally a fairly healthy individual. But I'm more acutely aware of the areas in which I fall short than those in which I'm compliant with the latest recommendations around diet, exercise, stress management, etc.

And now in my early (rapidly approaching middle) 50s, I am largely at peace with it all.

At some point, you have to decide what you're willing to sacrifice in the name of better health and what less-than-healthy indulgences you want to maintain in your life. And connected with that, you have to be ready to accept the consequences of those less-than-healthy choices.

I don't mean to suggest that healthy = boring/difficult/burdensome, by the way. That's not necessarily the case.

But the fact is, many of us naturally prefer the bag of chips over the carrot sticks, and sitting on the couch over getting out and walking.

Over the past 15 years, I've had four what I would call "significant" weight losses of 20 or more pounds each. The biggest of those came in 2016, when I started around 217 and got down as low as 166, which in retrospect was way too low for me.

Yet, if you go by the BMI charts – and believe me, I'm well aware of the limitations of BMI as a measurement of overall health – 166 pounds for someone my height is within 10 pounds of being "overweight." So what's the answer?

As I type this, I'm approaching significant weight loss #5. I've dropped about 17 pounds since the first of September through my method of choice, Weight Watchers. It's a system that works well for me whenever I make up my mind to follow it.

I also benefit from the gender biology of weight loss, in which men generally have an easier time dropping pounds than women do. You ladies get screwed in a lot of ways, and this is one of them.

Last Saturday when I weighed in at the local Weight Watchers studio, the scale read 187.2. My official WW goal weight, as prescribed by my primary care doctor a decade ago, is 185. Once I get there, I'll switch to maintenance mode and try to stay around that number for...well, for the rest of my life.

Because you see, when you're someone who has had a number of successful weight losses, it also means you're someone who each time has put the pounds back on. I have never in my adult life been able to maintain a healthy weight for more than a year at a time. So my next big challenge is learning how to keep myself where I should be in terms of overall body mass.

I'm willing to make the mental and physical sacrifices necessary to do that. In fact, here is a complete list of the things I'm willing to do to live as a healthy person:

• Cardio: I power walk (usually just over 12 minutes/mile) five days a week, generally covering a total of 12 miles every seven days. I'm very consistent with this, and it's largely because I love getting out and moving.
• Eat leafy greens, beans, nuts, fruits and veggies: These are all staples of my daily diet, as they should be.
• Don't smoke: Not a problem. True story - I've never even tried it. Not even once. I have never inhaled smoke from anything and have no desire to try it.
• Keep my weight down: See above.

Those are admirable, but they do not cover all of the bases, health-wise. There are other habits we should be forming if we want to live longer, happier lives, at least from a physical standpoint. Here are the things I should be doing that I'm not:

• Strength training: The truth is, I hate lifting weights. I just despise it. I know I should be doing it, I know it has amazing benefits. Yet I can't seem to get myself to do it with any regularity. It's the one thing on my "bad" list that I hope to change. Maybe it will be my 2023 resolution.
• Meditation: I don't "feel" like I'm stressed, but the recommendation is that we should all be doing something to manage stress in our lives. Deep breathing is another popular technique. I don't make the time to do any of it.
• Getting enough sleep: I rarely sleep more than 7 hours, and most of the time it's more like 6 to 6 1/2 for me. I feel OK, though, or at least I think I feel OK, since there may be a higher level of "OK" of which I'm not even aware that I would experience if I just went to bed earlier. But as well as I sleep, I just don't love it as much as a lot of people do. I would rather be up and doing stuff. If there was a way to live without sleeping, I would jump on it. As it is, I should be getting more shuteye.
• Inserting even more healthy foods into my diet: I love fish, but I rarely eat it. Too much trouble buying and cooking it. I also don't do a good job with the "healthy gut" foods like yogurt, kimchi, etc., nor do I drink nearly enough water.
• Having a social life: I hang out mostly with Terry and my son Jack, the two people with whom I live. You're supposed to have a wider social circle than that, and men in particular tend not to be very good about building and maintaining friendships. I don't know, there doesn't seem to be enough time, though I know the reality is that I could make time if I really wanted.

I could go on, but the point is, I miss the mark on more items health-wise than I hit. That doesn't bother me as much as it used to. I'm doing what I can manage, and if that means a few years off the end of an otherwise healthy and happy life, so be it.

Or at least that's what I say now. Check back with me in another decade or two.

Four things I know I'm supposed to do but don't

Read the Classics

I have a degree in English and history from a well-regarded institution of higher learning (John Carroll University...go Blue Streaks!), yet I have never read The Scarlet Letter. Or Pride and Prejudice. Or Moby Dick. Or Don Quixote. How could this be?

(Actually, I know how it can be. Upper-level English courses get so specialized and esoteric that you end up reading the collected works of a 17th-century Finnish poet and have no time for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or War and Peace, also books I've never read.)

The point is, I should make time to atone for the glaring holes in my literary resume by actually reading these books. But I don't. Nor will I, at least not any time soon. It's easier to lament not having read them than it is to check them out of the library and crack open the front cover.

Lift Weights

I just mentioned this recently. I'm not a strength training guy. Never have been. I run. I run quite a bit. But I never touch the weights.

And it has always been like this. Even when I played football in high school, I was not a frequent visitor to the weight room. And by "not a frequent visitor," I mean I showed up there once a year to perform the mandatory weight-lifting tests set forth by my coaches. Then I wouldn't visit again until the following year.

I know I'm supposed to lift, but I can't stand it. Just like a lot of people know they're supposed to do cardiovascular exercise but can't stand running, cycling or climbing aboard the elliptical machine. To each his own, I suppose.

Take Care of My Fingernails

First off, I have abnormally small hands. And thus I have abnormally small fingernails. Making matters worse, I bite those fingernails. I bite 'em right down to the nub.

I admire people who take care of their nails, particularly guys. Society doesn't necessarily expect men to do much in the way of fingernail work, so I like the extra effort put in by guys with clean, nicely shaped nails.

My nails are ugly. At our wedding reception, the photographer took a picture of Terry's hand and my hand together as we showed off our new rings. Her nails are, as you would expect, beautifully manicured. Mine look like they belong to a 7-year-old. A hyperactive, nail-biting 7-year-old.

I'm embarrassed by it, but not so much that I'm motivated to do anything about it. My ugly nails will live on as long as I do.

Drive Under the Speed Limit

Depending on the mood I'm in, I'll drive anywhere from 5 to 15 mph over the speed limit. Not terribly bad, but still not legal, either.

The trouble is, I have kids. And I'm supposed to model proper driving procedures for those kids. Which is why I try to shield their eyes from the speedometer when I'm going 75 mph down a stretch of 60 mph freeway.

I should slow down, I know. And I don't. There are those who drive way faster than I do, but that's no excuse for breaking the rules. I will freely chalk this up to a classic case of hypocritical "do as I say, not as I do" when it comes to my children.