Preparing for Winter Workouts

The Big Chill

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The Big Chill

I pulled my truck close to the staircase accessing the rear entry to the gym, gathered my gear, rolled up the windows and locked the doors. This was the new procedure, as some creeps have taken to robbing the local vehicles in broad daylight, relieving hard-working, responsible and none-too-rich gym attendees of their stereos and glove-box belongings. It makes one want to apply his grip (made strong by lifting weights) to the redemptive act of crunching dishonest little bones.

I sat for a moment and gazed at the building’s uninspiring backside, every bit as attractive as any industrial structure’s parking-lot entrance, and silently said something cynical, like, "Been here before," or "This looks familiar," or "Oh, my aching back."

Thus was the attitude as I dodged raindrops, ascended the short set of stairs to the deck and entered the glass double-doors to the humming muscle factory. Familiar, indeed.

Now you might say the Bomber sounds a bit stiff around the throttle. Nah! Every day has its tones and shades, curves and angles, that’s all. Today’s a good day about to become better. This is my generally MO: I take a look at the day and what it has to offer, I note my reactions and responses to the options, remind myself it’s my job to make it work right, throw in some high hopes and give the mix a good shake.

I take a slug and let the good times roll.

So it’s raining, so what? Sow seeds, bombers, that’s what. Tis the season for planting. The last of the warm and sunny days are gone and the snug short-sleeve T-shirts displaying our lean might are in the closet, bottom shelf. Yesterday I weighed 226 and I felt like a bull. Mid-August I weighed 226 and I felt like a cow. As the Good Book says, there’s a season for everything. Pass the mass.

A year ago I publicly threatened to bulk up, but chickened out. Or, maybe, I ducked out. Whatever. This year I’m repeating the threat, like a grammar school bully looking for attention. It’s been a long time since I broke the 230-pound barrier and, if I don’t gag, suffer shortness of breath or find myself floating around the gym buoyed up by a built-in fleshy inner tube, loathsome and unsightly, I will give it a go. I’ll just toss in some more Bomber Blend and another can of tuna during the day and boom-zoom, huge!

A bunch of us are diehard muscleheads and intend to train relentlessly. The barren months offer a change in pace and approach and expectation, forcing us to modify our routines and methodologies. This is very good; unless compelled to change, we just might remain the same. Assuming adaptive changes we’ll forge ahead placing new demands on the ole body and allowing relief and repair where needed.

The mind and spirits welcome the variation as well. You might say they are greedy for it. Adventure marks the restless and devoted muscleman and musclewoman, you know. Give us unmarked trails and we’ll reach the mountain peaks before you.

How about you, bright eyes? We are of many types. Some of us are even-tempered and like the status quo -- steady as she goes and keep the ball rolling; all things come to him who keeps his nose to the grindstone. Progress thrives on sound momentum, certainty and sameness. I understand. This approach matches the mindset of the hard-working, time-thrifty, risk-free and grateful muscle-maker: Do, don’t doubt, acquire and be thankful. I love it. Discipline, austerity and frugality, never may they wander, never may they rest.

Of course, it is rest to other types that is absolutely fundamental. Rest rules, rest reverberates. Winter is the season to hibernate, says papa bear to mama bear; we’re letting the joints rest. Eat, relax, slow down and burrow into the shelter: football on the TV, apple pie in the oven and holidays around every corner, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. Celebrate, rejoice and go to the gym on occasion if you get the urge. Hardly anybody there these days, so we’re not alone in laying low. We’ll inaugurate our exciting extreme-training scheme the first of next year. Absolutely and for sure! Works every time, they say. Never fails, I’m told.

This will not do for us, because, in fact, it does not do. Extended lay-offs are the kiss of death. That is, they kiss you and you die. It’s that simple. Kiss, smooch, fall over, plunk, dead, gone, forgotten. See how it works? It doesn’t work.

This is the big problem many face. How do you continue your training spirit and performance through the next five months when there are so many factors working against you?

Short answer: You fight like a dog!

Long answer: First of all -- confrontation -- you must recognize that a real problem, a large problem, exists and that large problem is the daunting collection of smaller problems. Days are shorter, colder, grayer and less lively; gorging holidays run back to back, daily order turns to daily chaos, everyone submits to wintertime sluggishness and they influence our struggling spirits; heavy clothing conceals our bodies and weighs us down. We tend to naturally gain fatty weight due to the above disruptions, and, though not a proven scientific fact yet, due to an increase in gravity the weights are simply heavier and harder to move in the winter, resulting in less pump, fulfillment and inspiration. And, what’s this? Oh, gee, we have the sniffles, the first sign of the flu. I’m aching all over.

Second -- reality check -- the problem, the large problem, composed of all its miserable smaller problems, must be looked directly in the eye and acknowledged. Get ye behind me, Satan, or I’ll use you for deadlifts. My heart, soul and mind are bigger than yours. But I must confess, what cute horns and tail you have, and that red leotard is to die for, you big sis. Now, scram.

Third -- courage -- you must determine you will prevail and the nippy winter will not to take you down. This is not the primal courage one displays when confronted with violence or high risk, but the steely courage that’s needed to apply disciplines with persistence, to choose the pain to gain over the pleasure of leisure, to seek potency over complacency and to stand tall before lying down. Bombers, you know the stuff I’m talking about -- the dauntless stuff. The stuff you’re made of.

Fourth and finally -- confidence and high hopes -- you determine a plan to overcome the problem, initiate it and adhere to it and before you know it, it’s spring and the skies are blue and the birds are singing and everybody’s happy and you’re ripped.

There, nothin’ to it.

Maybe I can help you on the fourth and final minor detail of the problem we all face right about now. Where do we start?

Not discounting the first three steps -- owning and acknowledging the dilemma are prerequisites to overcoming it -- we must reinforce our need to conquer the tyrant by asking ourselves, "What if we don’t? What if we go through the winter without attending our training and diet sufficiently, that is, wisely and well?" Good question and the answers aren’t pretty.

Training neglect leads us astray: there’s the guilt of disciplines gone south, the embarrassment of buttons and zippers too tight to close entirely, the pain we endure when we witness the scale’s display of unacceptable numbers and the obvious loss of precious, hard-earned muscle and strength, energy and endurance. Fat in bunches will surely clog our well-shaped torso and, alas, not too far in the future we’ll stand once again on the starting block, anxious and defeated. It’s a lonely place and we share it with other uninspired losers. Tell me I’m dreaming and it’ll all go away when I open my eyes.

We get the picture, Bomber, thanks. Sounds like The Texas Chainsaw Winter of Lost Workouts or She Took a Lay-off and Was Eaten by the Squat Rack. You’re demented!

We have five months before we see the sun shine at the end of the tunnel. Count them, The Big Five: November, December, January, February and March. Kinda gives ya the shivers, don’t it?

I know; more than a few of you are grinning and saying, "There’s snow on those frosty mountain tops, and my skis and snowboard are sharpened and waxed." God bless you and break a leg. We’ll be here knocking out sets and reps -- groan -- while you’re hitting the slippery slopes -- swoosh. Watch out for that tree, those rocks, that cliff... an avalanche... frost bite... don’t get lost. Did I say, "Have fun"?

We who remain need a plan, or, as I prefer to call it, a scheme, to carry us through the motley days and months ahead. A plan suggests true order, whereas a scheme is a plan with trap doors and convenient arbitrary entries and exits and room to roam. Batman and Zorro and Robin Hood had schemes. They were fair and clever and winsome -- take from the filthy rich and give to the deserving poor, without hurting the good. Their methods were generous, bold and free.

That’s what we’ll do, sort of. In one Big Gulp, we’ll arrange a loose program -- a scheme -- to serve our basic needs and to give a semblance of order to our plans. We’ll take it to the gym regularly where we’ll perform it according to our energy, mood, needs and desires, completing the extemporaneous input within a 60- to 90-minute timeframe, again, freely chosen by us, the trustworthy keepers of time and deed. There you have it, troops, our training scheme executed with freedom, fairness and balance, not by the anxious labor of an unyielding plan, to get the job done at any and all cost, good or bad, or not at all. The latter will surely keep you out of the gym when it’s gloomy or nice.

An outline and some hints might put a lamp to the matter, as it does get dark in the recesses of the wintertime gym. I’ll allow my mind slosh around like a bucket half-full of warm beer.

~ Excuse me for being a bore, but stick to the basics -- the top ten exercises for building strong bodies ten thousand ways: bar and dumbbell presses on varying degrees of incline, seated and standing curls with personal finesse, squats, deadlifts and rows accented with cable pulldowns and triceps pushdowns... now you’ve got it, the essentials.

~ You might arrange in your colorful mind a repertoire of handy systems to follow from workout to workout, including single-set training, superset and giant-set training. Throw in some heavy workouts on occasion to stimulate the system, maintain your power and sustain your interest. Permit yourself to think and piece things together workout to workout. It’s called creativity, the gentle path to rugged gains.

~ I suggest you train no less than three days a week, thereby assuring the sufficiency of the less rigid, more playful workouts. Loose in our approach in no way implies light in intensity. Give the obstinate metal a good tug and a mean toss. Obedience and improvement follow.

~ Loose in approach allows no space for coping out, either. "Loose" is the means to get you to the grim gym to do the good deed because you’re a disciplined bomber not beyond using a little cunning. That’s all. Stand tall before the iron and let your instinctive needs and desires pick and choose the exercises of the day. It’s grow time.

~ What do you mean you’re not ready for this unfettered, unstructured style of training, like you were walking an I-beam high above a barely visible construction zone below? Letting go is safer and more stable than hanging on. You get where you’re going faster and you learn more in the act about the task at hand and about yourself. It works, I can do this, I’m strong and courageous, enduring and daring. I’m me.

One needs to be a bomber and apply the "loose" application of exercise, training and working out to survive the Big Chill. Paradoxically, one only becomes a bomber by their application and by enduring the Big Five.

Put your mind to the task, your wings to the wind and your heart to the sky.

God’s speed... Dave

Another breaking story from Washington, D.C., slightly modified, embellished, colorized and prefabricated to clearly reflect the views of the author and editor.

The Bomber addressing the Twentieth Annual Presidential Committee for World Leadership:

I’m all for training like a madman -- this must be done -- and pouring protein and other major musclebuilding ingredients into the body on a regular basis. But I don’t always have the time or place, appetite or desire to prepare, sit down and eat a meal necessary for the cause. Give me a break, ladies and gentlemen. I have a real job. And certainly I’m not going to neglect my responsibility to my health, vitality and long-life and my deep interest in building muscle and might. We see too much of that on all levels of society and it is my aim to see the dishonor come to an end. You can expect more on that critical subject tomorrow morning in my dissertation on war and peace at the Pentagon.

So, what do I do, you ask -- and you ask, no doubt, that you may know what to do as well. I commend you for seeking wise counsel, my friends. I concoct quick blends of Bomber Blend powder and pure water or 2% milk. The mix is instant, delectable and rich in the elements that restore muscles and energy and high performance.

Consider: You’re amid fighting the enemy, but it’s been three hours since you’ve last fed the body. Two scoops of Bomber Blend in eight ounces of water, down the hatch and you’re fired up and all-powerful and the enemy submits, again. No time lost, no ground lost.

You’re balancing the budget and there’s no time for lunch and drinks at the club. Tough! Three scoops of Bomber Blend, classic vanilla, in a glass of juice, stir with a straw and, like one plus one equals two, you are sipping an elixir of life. Brain waves crackle, shoulders roll back into position and smile crosses your lips as you propose creative ways to save money by spending money wisely and eliminating pork-barrel spending. What an efficient meal at such a small cost, your economical mind observes. What a savings in household budgets! What a healthful addition to their menu, a point to underline when speaking to the difficult subject of national health. You suggest Bomber Blend be included in school cafeteria programs and fast food and sugar be removed. What courage, what foresight! You’re standing now before your mentors and declaring, "Save our kids, feed them right, save our country."

There is inspired applause and you wave broadly for several long moments, bow and humbly retreat. We thank you, Sir, Ma'am.

The Bomber, reporting from Capitol Hill

Grab yourself some Bomber Blend elixir here

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