"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
Confucius

Actually in this case the journey started with a slightly longer hop, namely a car ride to a music festival this summer. I can't remember which one it was - this year we made it to Trowbridge (highlight The Waterboys), Wickham (highlights Richard Thompson and Seth Lakeman) and Beautiful Days (highlight The Levellers, of course). They were all great.

Anyhow, it was summer, there wasn't much news and the newspapers had run a feature of Blair and Cameron wearing their swimwear and looking not entirely lean. (Actually I thought Blair didn't look in too bad a shape for his age, but Cameron needs to leave that bike alone and get some serious exercise.) We had the radio on in the car and this came up as a phone-in topic, leading by natural progression to the subject of man boobs.

At some point a fitness expert called in to the show, to make the point that man boobs were just excess fat, laid down in middle age along with the expanded midriff. He then stated that the mistake that most people make was to do lots of cardio in an attempt to tackle this problem. This didn't work, he claimed. Rather than losing fat, cardio exercise just resulted in muscle wastage. What you should do instead was to do weight training exercises of the major muscle groups. This would raise your metabolic rate, allowing you to burn more fat as a consequence.

Now this wan't exactly what I wanted to hear. All my attempts to keep my weight down in recent years had been based on doing cardio on my rowing machine. 2006 had been a good year for this thus far, as between January and July I'd been managing to do about five cardio sessions a week. Granted I hadn't lost any weight but at least it had been stable. By August I'd lapsed, but was planning to get back to it after the holiday season.

So, was this right? Time to start googling.

"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilisation."
Gerald Weinberg

Speaking as a programmer myself I just love that quote.

Anyway, with my goals written I was able to set about reading the rest of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. Essentially it has four cornerstones - Goal Setting, Nutrition, Cardio and Weight Training. Nutrition gets the lion's share of the content, but then there's a lot to say about that subject.

The key thing is that these four elements work in tandem to produce a result that's greater than the sum of their parts. And that is the answer to the chap on the radio in this post who claimed that cardio caused muscle wastage. Well it might, if done in isolation. But if done as part of a programme that also includes good nutritional practices and weight training then it won't.

Having four cornerstones seems comforting somehow. The concept of four walled constructions seems to have served the building industry pretty well, notwithstanding the Pentagon and the London Gherkin. Mind you if modern day house building techniques get any flimsier than at some point they're going to have to resort to a honeycomb structure. That way they'll get the benefits of low weight combined with high strength and rigidity and so be able to stand up to an onslaught of woodpeckers.

“Exercise: you don't have time not to”
Anon

Well, perhaps the word gym conjures up an image a bit more grand than the reality in this case. In our back garden we have a wooden built structure which we refer to as 'the office'. The previous occupant built it for that purpose, but I've never used it as such despite the fact that I work from home.

Over the years we have used it for storage of my band gear (I play in a barn dance band), my windsurfing gear (which I haven't used in four years), garden furniture and general junk. I've now cleared out just enough space to accomodate my rowing machine, my partner's son's weight bench and weights and my newly acquired lat pulldown machine. I'll be blogging further about these bits of kit in the days to come. At some point I also want to add a hyperextension bench.

When I say 'just enough space', well it really is extremely tight. For example, I have to shift the weight bench out of the way to do a standing exercise such as a barbell curl. But for all that I'm really happy with it. It's a lot cheaper than a gym membership and I also save on all the travelling time. I can have the radio on the station of my choice, I don't have to queue for the next bit of equipment and I can grunt and groan on that final, blood-vessel bursting rep without disturbing anyone other than a few sparrows.

The word 'aerobics' came about when the gym instructors got together and said: If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it 'Jumping Up and Down'.
Rita Rudnor

Cardiovascular exercise, or cardio for short is an indispensible part of the Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle program. It's any form of exercise that you can do for a decent stretch of time without getting out of breath. It's aerobic exercise, meaning that you burn fat in the presence of oxygen as part of the process. Unfortunately the word 'aerobics' conjures images of women in leotards prancing around to pop music, so cardio is the preferred term.

Cardio tends to be done in one of two modes, steady-state or interval training. In the steady-state mode you work at a more or less constant intensity, with a view to getting your heart rate into a target zone and keeping it there. With interval training you intersperse periods of high intensity where you push really hard with periods of low intensity where you recover. The book has a lot of information about this and also discusses the pros and cons of the various ways in which you can do cardio, e.g. jogging, cycling, etc.

My chosen form of punishment is the rowing machine. As of this week I'm doing 21 minutes and each week I add another minute with a view to getting to 30 minutes eventually. I work in a heart rate zone of 135 to 142 beats per minute, which is about 80% of the maximum heart rate for my age. That's getting on towards the anaerobic threshold, the limit to which you can keep up this type of exercise without getting out of breath.

Here's the contraption on which I get my cardio done.

It's a Waterrower, purchased in 2000. Since then it's been used sporadically, a few months on, then rather more months off. It's now a key part of my armoury in the battle against body fat with Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle.

According to their sales blurb 'The WaterRower is available in a range of models specifically styled to compliment all and any environment'. Well for most of that time it has lived in our bedroom and I'm not sure that my wife-to-be-in-twelve-days-time would entirely agree with the complimenting the environment bit. Anyway, now it's been moved to the home gym.

The device uses water resistance with a paddle in doughnut shaped container (jam doughnut, not ring doughnut). That's meant to make the experience as much like rowing as possible. I've never been a rower so I can't comment on that, but I do know that it's a nice easy machine to use and that it's virtually maintenance free.

My model is the old style which has a fixed foot rest, whilst the more recent ones have a movable affair. The fixed footrest works fine for me, but the only issue was that my trainers were starting to create grooves in the wood and they would catch on these. I fixed that by getting a piece of thick perspex made up and screwing this on top of the wooden plate.

The device stands on end when not in use and doesn't take up too much space. Once that's done it looks a bit like a French Revolution Guillotine. If we ever have a revolution then you can send all the aristocracy round to my place. I won't be able to execute them, but I should be able to give them a nasty bump on the head.

I don't know whether anyone else heard the item on the Radio 5 Live breakfast show recently where some academic was claiming that there was no obesity epidemic and that the health risks of being seriously overweight were overstated. Well no doubt he has some statistics to back up his claims, but I suspect it's just a case of trying to get his five minutes of fame by being controversial.

Perhaps the word epidemic is not appropriate when discussing obesity but any trip around my local Asda supermarket makes it pretty clear to me that the problem is quite widespread. And speaking of supermarkets, why is it that as soon as anyone sets foot in one of these places they start moving at a pace that I would describe as 'snail-like', but that would be a major insult to gastropods everywhere? Add the fact that it's Christmas and the stores are jam-packed and what you have is a real problem of near gridlock for those of us with busy lives who want to get around the shop in the minimum time possible.

Anyway, this juxtaposition of thoughts lead me to a solution that will give everyone some much needed exercise and will also considerably reduce the overcrowding - supermarket aerobics. The idea is that everyone rushes round with their trolley trying to beat their own personal best. That way everyone would get round in half the time and the shop will only be half as crowded. The really keen participants could stop off at the beer aisle to do some bench presses with a couple of cases of Stella Artois. As a final twist, supermarket staff would move your car to a new random location whilst you were shopping, so you would have to do a few laps of the car park with your trolley to find it.

Remember, you heard it here first.

As I mentioned last time in my Shoulder Pain post, I had an appointment first thing on Wednesday. That appointment was an induction session at the Fitness Centre at my local university. I've signed up so that I can get the use of a wider range of cardio machines. Luckily for me they do an off-peak membership at very reasonable rates and it's only ten minutes drive away in the car.

Thus far I've been doing all of my cardio on my rowing machine. I wanted to ring the changes a bit, as your body adapts to any form of exercise and you need to find new ways of challenging it. Furthermore, the variety reduces the risk of overuse injuries.

In particular I wanted to get access to an elliptical trainer, as the motion of these devices is quite gentle on the knees. The university has Precor ellipticals and these are really nice to use. Compared to the rowing it seems to be much more straightforward to get my heart rate up to my target zone (135-142 bpm) and to keep it there.

I've recently been checking my web stats, looking at some of the search terms with which visitors arrive here. Some of the obscure ones are quite amusing. I rather suspect that the person searching for 'big and fat bums and boobs' was rather hoping to look at someone elses, rather than lose their own. The person searching for 'photos of my wife shaving' must have been similarly disappointed.

Quite a lot of people are searching for 'spare tyre exercises' or some variant of that. If you are one of them then I've got some good news and some bad news for you.

Let's get the bad news out of the way first. The direct consequence of any exercise that you do is to build muscle, not to lose fat. So, you can do 200 abdominal crunches per day and your abs muscle will be perfectly developed with superb six-pack definition. However, if it's hidden behind 12lbs of abdominal fat then sadly it's not going to turn any heads on the beach.

Now the good news. When you do prolonged cardiovascular exercise, such as running, cycling or rowing, then your fat deposits will be one of the two sources of energy used for this. Plus, if you do this at a high intensity then it will raise your metabolic rate, so you will continue to burn fat at a higher rate for several hours just through your normal day-to-day activities. Doing weight training also raises your metabolic rate, to the same effect.

So, you can't spot reduce your stomach fat, but you can burn off your general fat deposits. If your stomach is mostly where fat goes on then similarly that is where it will mostly come off. As ever more details can be found in Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle.

In my Cardio on Elliptical Trainers I mentioned that I had joined a gym to get more variety in my cardio workouts. The way that is has turned out I am now doing my cardio exclusively on the elliptical trainers in the gym. My waterrower is now only used for a quick warm-up before my weight training sessions in my home gym. This has come about for three reasons.

1. The motion of exercising on the ellipticals seems to be a lot more gentle on my knees than rowing.

2. On the elliptical you can control your work rate by setting the resistance or pedalling faster. On the rowing machine it's a case of pulling harder or pulling faster. Somehow on the elliptical it seems to be easier to get my heart rate up to the target zone and to keep it there.

3. Doing cardio for 30 minutes at a stretch is pretty boring. In the gym there is more going on to distract you, so the time seems to pass a bit more easily.

You don't get to my age without having a few aches and pains and in my case it's my knees that are the weakest link. However I've found a few things that help.

First of all I take two 400mg Glucosamine Sulphate tablets every day. The tablets that I use also contain Chondroitin Sulphate, MSM (MethylSulfonylMethane) and Vitamin C.

Secondly I try to find exercise methods that don't stress them too much. I used to do my cardio on a rowing machine, but I find the action of elliptical trainers seems to be much more kindly to them. I've also adapted the way in which I use the ellipticals. I'm slightly knocked-kneed by nature so to compensate for this I stand with my feet slightly splayed. I use an action which gives me the sensation that my knees are going outside of the vertical line, but when I look down they are moving pretty much straight up and down.

Finally I have re-introduced deadlifts and stiff-leg deadlifts back into my weight training regime, with the hope that having more strength in my quads and hams will be good for the knees. I'm doing this progressively, being quite careful with the weights. So far, touch wood, I seem to be able to do this without causing any knee pain.

Recently I read the excellent "Hackers and Painters" by Paul Graham. The book is mostly a series of essays on the art of programming but he also strays into some other territory such as wealth creation.

One of his conjectures is that if Karl Marx was to come back to life and visit the offices of a large company in the western world then his first impression would be that his future vision had come to reality. The reason for this would be that, although there are obviously huge differences in wealth between those at the top of the organisation and those at the bottom, those differences are not immediately obvious. Compared to Karl Marx's day, rich and poor within modern society eat the same kind of food, wear the same sort of clothes and have broadly the same access to healthcare.

Karl Marx would probably also be bemused by the incidence of obesity in modern society. In the 19th century the working classes mostly wouldn't have the luxury of getting fat - an inadequate diet and grinding physical labour would have seen to that. These days obesity is more prevalent amongst the lower socio-economic groups.

In this context I was interested to see this article on the BBC web site describing a treadmill workstation that has been designed to enable overweight employees to shed some poundage whilst doing their work. Karl Marx, who lived in London from 1851 until his death in 1883, would have associated treadmills with the workhouses, those feared institutions which provided a safety net for those in society most wretched and unable to support themselves. Funny how times change!