Some Notes on Fitness

My practice with weight lifting and yoga

So I periodically get emails asking me for my fitness routine, supplements, etc.  I’ve never felt that I have anything especially significant to share, since my fitness level is, well, pretty good for a (late) middle-aged law professor, but hardly in a class with Arnold, or even moderately-talented amateur athletes of my age.  I’m not fat, I’m fairly muscular, and I have decent wind and coordination.  Not bad, but . . . well, pretty good for a middle-aged law professor.  A low bar, really.  (Below – me at the seated calf raise machine the other day:  Friends don’t let friends skip leg day!)

The most important thing I’ve done, honestly, is just kept it up.  I’ve been exercising continuously since about 1991, when Helen encouraged me (mostly by example) to start working out.  Before that I had a few episodes of weightlifting or running, or whatever, but nothing serious, and nothing that lasted more than a few months.  When I practiced law in Washington, DC I was careful to get an apartment that was about a 25 minute walk from my office, so that I’d get about that much walking in every day.  (They’d send you home in a cab if you worked past 9, but I usually still walked unless the weather was awful.  They also offered a discount gym membership, secure in the knowledge that few would have time to take up the offer.)  After I moved to the law-professor job in Tennessee that walking became driving and I started to notice the development of a paunch, which I initially addressed through diet.

Anyway, for the next ten years or so I lifted, but not particularly heavy.  After Helen’s heart attack I went on a two-year cardio binge that got me skinny, with a resting heart rate of 50 and low cholesterol, but also with aching knees, ankles, hips, feet, and so on.  I got a trainer, the first of several, who carefully measured where I was strong, weak, tight, loose, etc., and helped me fix those problems, which made the old-man achiness go away.  (Honestly, I felt like 80 back then, which I certainly don’t now).

For a while, I still thought squatting with 185 counted as heavy.  But then I got to following Mark Rippetoe’s work – he was already a blog reader – and got his excellent book, Starting Strength.  Since then, that’s been the core of my workout approach.  (I also recommend The Barbell Prescription:  Strength Training for Life After 40.) I do a mix of heavy compound movements:  Squats, deadlifts, chin-ups, rows, weighted carries, dips, and the like.  (I don’t bench much because I tore a rotator cuff back in my early lifting days, when I thought that benching 275 meant that I could incline bench 275, which was . . . not really true.  I’m pretty much healed up now, but I agree with Vince Gironda that dips are a better chest movement anyway.) 

Sometimes I’ll switch it up with a month or two of isolation/bodybuilding type movements instead, usually cribbed from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s surprisingly good Encyclopedia of Bodybulding.  I do that both just to keep from getting bored, and because I find that mixing up movements is better for my joints, tendons, and soft tissue.  (For the same reason, I have multiple chairs, desk, etc. that I use when working on my laptop or desktop computer.  Decades of experience has taught me that the best ergonomics isn’t optimized ergonomics, but constantly changing ergonomics.)

For cardio I do High Intensity Interval Training, typically sprinting all-out for 60-90 seconds then walking for a couple of minutes, repeating as needed.  Or I’ll do something similar with stadium steps, which my gym has a set of just for those purposes.  And I walk.  I’ve been skimping the cardio lately, because of the nonstop rain, and it shows.  Sometimes I swim, though too much of that bothers my shoulder too.

I also do yoga once or twice a week.  I never thought I’d be a yoga guy, with a mat rolled up in the back of my car, but Helen gave me a mat and a couple of months worth of private lessons for Christmas a few years ago, and to my surprise I really liked it.  I do a mixture of classes and private lessons and my yoga skills are also . . . not bad for a middle-aged law professor.  (Below:  Mastering Crow Pose under the tutelage of Lizzy Bullman.)

One of the interesting things when I started was how much carryover there was between the lifting and the yoga.  When I first started lessons, my teacher was surprised that I could drop effortlessly into a deep “yoga squat,” but since it’s basically identical to an “ass to the grass squat” for lifting I found that super easy.  Likewise I had a lot of core strength and balance, and breathing awareness/control, because that’s what you need to lift heavy.  And lifting heavy just gives you more general body awareness and control.  I wasn’t a yogi, but I wasn’t where most beginners are.  I’d say I’m now probably “advanced intermediate,” in that I can do all the normal poses you’ll do in a class, and maybe a couple of harder ones.  That’s honestly good enough.

And in fact, “good enough” is probably my goal in all of this stuff.  I’m not a competitive athlete and don’t want to be.  My PR on the squat and deadlift both is 375 lbs, which is good but not outstanding.  I got up that high and felt like I could lift more, but that I was starting to push what my body could do without getting injured, and avoiding injury is my number one goal.  (I learned from the rotator cuff incident that you lose much more training time to an injury than you gain in training benefit from pushing too hard.)  And, much as I’d rather not be, I’m kinda starting to get old now, and that calls for more care.  (That said, Mark Rippetoe thinks I should be lifting more).

As for supplements, I have a few must-haves and some others I try.  Best bang for the buck is CoEnzyme Q10.  Everyone in my family who took it at my behest has felt better and more energetic.  I could tell the difference right away, and didn’t expect to as my doctor had just recommended it because I was on low-dose statins.  I also noticed I got fewer migraines.  I also like zinc and quercetin – which turned out well during Covid – citrulline, which is supposed to help keep arteries dilated and promote circulation and a good “pump” after weightlifting, Vitamin D (if that counts as a supplement), and Niagen.  I also take resveratrol as an anti-aging supplement.  (Does it work?  I seem to be aging pretty well, but who knows?)

What should you take from my experience?  Whatever you want.  The most important exercise is the one that you’ll do regularly, though I do think you should incorporate resistance as well as cardio.  (And if you do the resistance work hard enough, it’ll do double duty as cardio; a while back when I was taking a layoff from the HIIT stuff, Helen took me on a brisk walk up some steep hills and said “you’re not even a little out of breath.”  Well, no, I was doing heavy squats twice a week.  You won’t have marathon-runner endurance from heavy lifting, but you’ll have more than you think.)  Lifting is also useful.  A while back I returned a portable generator and the kid at the Honda store was surprised that I just lifted it out of the back of my SUV and set it on the ground.  It weighed 165 pounds.  I probably should have gotten help, but it was convenient to hold on to and really not hard to put on the ground.

Likewise with the supplements.  CoQ10 and Vitamin D should be on everyone’s list pretty much.  As for the rest, see what works for you.

Or sit home and surf the Internet.  It’s your choice, though I think you’ll feel better and be happier if you are more active.  I certainly am.