Love/Health: The Big Definition

Victor posted:

I really love your quote where you said,

(1)   "Strong people live short life, while feeble ones live longer." 

Being strong doesn't always mean you can get the most out of your life. To be healthy, you should have proper nutrition."

Amazingly, readers are astonishing in spotting the very few but succinct words that sum up all arguments in piles of phrases and thoughts.

(2)  Another reader spotted the "T" concept which I have advocated in all my books about weightlifting. 

I argued that keeping the shoulders and the spine in perfect "T" configuration will improve strength, health, and fitness beyond all other means of training. Simply put, elevated shoulders ease the breathing and circulation and smooth the blood flow to the brain and vital organs.

(3) A third reader spread on the Internet a pivotal belief that I have advocated also in all my books on weightlifting. I stated:

 “If you do not do Goodmorning everyday, you should not live on Planet Earth.”

The anonymous reader cited my words in his blog. Google search engines picked it up and attached to my name. I became the original author of my original thoughts without having to seek  notarization. 

http://pdf-ebooks.net/sample/42386/bodybuilding-strategies

(4) A fourth reader stopped me in a gym in Philadelphia and posed this question:

  "What did you mean when you stated that "distance was born when matter was created, time when radiation was?"

Originally, I attempted to simplify the classical paradox of assuming that distance, time, and mass were ultimate constants of nature which the special relativity refuted. I argued that distance was a property of mass, while time was a property of radiation, and since mass and radiation were two forms of the same entity: that energy, therefore, the three constants; mass, distance, and time (denoted by MLT) were indeed one constant, that is energy. 

As a Muslim by birth, simplifying issues to refer to the one universal entity, the Almighty, was in part a factor in approaching nature. It is hard to believe that any person could isolate his early ingrained beliefs from the way of viewing the world.

Returning to Love/Health, both entities share the same faculty that must initiate life and distinguish being from inert matter.

Well being must start from the soul. That where values and instincts are encoded into the subroutines of the DNA of all living beings. You would not enjoy the most delicious foods unless your soul could measure deliciousness in reference to your instincts. If your soul was damaged, such as in cases of orphan kids, nothing would be perceived as euphoric or delicious. 

It is the soul that defines the being.

And your soul, as well as mine, is nourished by the love of your mother. In my beloved culture, motherhood is equated with Allah's eternal Paradise. A place where only the most noble and chosen beings will live happily and forever. Those are the 50 percent of the human beings: moms.

Where do the rest 50% go? 

Iraq, Afghanistan, WWII, WWI, the Crusaders.... Wonder why moms seldom planned, plotted on initiated strategic defense initiatives? Except Golda Meir of Israel, Margaret Thatcher Britain prime minister, or Cleopatra of Egypt.

Definitely, it is better to be strong and on top of the planet earth rather than being feeble and emaciated.  But, health is a balance between your instincts and your purpose on this planet. Did this bodybuilder get there? My gut feeling that his knees will be shot as we speak due to his grotesquely enlarged upper body and mostly disproportionate weight bearing joints. This man would not walk home on his deltoids or triceps. He must carry those massive beef on his poor knees. Those knees would soon give way to a nursing home bed-ridden patient. There, nurses of Haiti and the poor Filipinos would have to turn him in bed and clean his mess as his ability to carry himself would be undermined by his own beef.

Empowering  women with weight lifting is a true revolution in our history.

Woobs, I got it all wrong.

My own native villagers who milk the cows and maintain the stables in the Egyptian rural areas were much into bodybuilding, from 4 am to 5 pm, 13 hours daily, and for thousands of years. The Egyptians women abandoned the thousands-year old bodybuilding after the electrification of their villages and the invention of the TV. It now more enticing to stay later at night and watch soccer and theatrical plays than caring for the manure of cows and the brutal demands of farming. Muharab, the only son of one of my employees in a rural village in Egypt, dreamed of dating an urban woman with high heels and manicured nails. His wife always smelled like the manure of the animals in his table.
I wish that Muharab is alive and well and could see the above bodybuilding chick.

 

Gold Meir could not find love in the great land of America and pursued the Zionist soul searching in Israel which took her to the highest ranks in the Israeli politics. A devout American Jew who visited Israel during the war in Iraq commented on the definition of the modern Jewish identity, on whether Jewish women should be smoking, getting tattoos, dating without marriage, or serving in the military. It all boils down to soul searching.

 

Love is encoded in the DNA. It defines Health in establishing the soul of the being. The mind and body follow the soul.

Jane Fonda's mother was manic depressive, committed suicide when Jane was teen. Her dad was a remote and cold actor. Jane suffered from Bulimia nervosa all her life. She married three times and ruined every marriage with her insecurity and confusion of her tortured soul.  Introducing aerobics to modern American society did not heal Fonda's wounds of the loss of her mother's love or her father's detachment. She married a French movie producer addicted to drugs, perverted sex, and total degeneracy which she took as norms of her reality. Her second husband, who married her in order to run for office, walked away as soon as she returned to the chaos of movie making. The last billionaire husband Ted Turner, was left to dry in vast and remote places after Jane walked out for the last time to return to Hollywood. This time, Jane was over 60 and Hollywood had no need for her obsolete acting skill.

By

Mohamed F. El-Hewie

     

Safety precautions concerning lifting weights at home

Lifting weights at home might appear a benign proposal on its face. with the gasoline prices climbing to unaffordable levels, one must take exercising at home very seriously. Here are few pros and cons to consider.

1. A fellow of mine whom I included in my book Essentials of Weightlifting died in his own home at the age of 44 in an electrocution accident. The subject was a well trained weightlifter. He extreme overweight hindered his ability to maneuver when he came in contact with a bare electric wire in a narrow alley in his house.

2. Another Goldmedalist Egyptian weightlifter was also electrocuted in his own house. That was Kheder El-Tony who won the 1936 Gold medal and was photographed shaking hands with Hitler.

3. In my personal life, once a knife fell from the kitchen table stabbing my foot between the webs tendons of the toes in a freak accident that could have been prevented had the table been organized.

4. In another accident that took place in an empty gym, I incurred acute low back pain during squatting that might have been crippling had I was not well aware of the management of such emergency.

5. Another well known accident occurred to an elite Russian weightlifter in the hotel room at the night before his Olympic contest. As I recall, the Games were in Korea and the lifter got his finger caught in the door slot that resulted in severe trauma preventing him from lifting.

6. The following video shows a mishap that occurred in the living room due to lifting in the proximity of a fish tank and the bed. The tip of the bar was caught under the bed frame resulting in tilting the bar which hit the fish tank.

 7. In contrast, Sjaak Smorenburg is a different kind of lifter. His training in the army and as a train engineer enabled him to take his home lifting very seriously.

The Economy of Strength Training: Getting the Most with the Least

The myth of the ever booming methods, machines, and supplements for enhancing fitness, health, and strength is beyond comprehension. Yet, the demand far exceeds the supply. Among fifty or so books I posted for sale, the fitness books flew within hours. The hard science books never left the shelves. Ironically, books that contain enormous wealth of knowledge would not sell for more than few pennies.

On every garage sale or flea market, fitness equipments are resold, brand new, with slim fraction of their retail. And the stories of people purchasing fitness equipments that never left the shipping box are all familiar.

A fellow Lebanese who was fortunate to land on his dream of marrying a blond, Kansan lady and getting a prestigious software position with government defense lab, ventured into purchasing a $4000.00 fitness machines, which he never had a chance to unpack. His sweet heart has never heard of the epidemic of obesity or heart disease. So, she fattened her husband's belly beyond the 44 inches. Like the Greek, most Lebanese are addicted to sweets and fats. My fellow Lebanese, who weighed over 400 pounds, could hardly shoulder-press a 25-pound barbell. Getting him to train on an empty stomach was interpreted as drinking his usual half gallon whole milk for breakfast, leaving the solid foods for later. In his mind, liquid foods were not real food.

While waiting in line behind a man and his ten year old son, in a the gym shop, I paid $1.50 for a bottle of diet Pepsi. The fellow ahead of me has filled the front counter with half a dozen of bottle of supplements that carried the logos of proteins, muscles, and such fancy stuff that promise nutritional gains and enhancement of strength. My educated guess was that the man purchased those nutritional supplements out of genuine belief that it must be something better than alcohol or cigarettes.

Embarking of my early years in strength training, nutrition was a true factor in making some athletes stronger than others.  Then, in the 1960's, butter, meat, and milk were all we had as the ultimate source of nutritional supplement. Affluent athletes who had access to those three foods were able to excel ahead of others whose financial situations stood in their way to supplement their high-carbohydrate diet, with protein and fat. Back then, the skim milk was never heard of, neither was the connection between high cholesterol, heart diseases, or lack of exercise.  Indeed, those three nutritional foods made many people much stronger than carbohydrate and bean eaters but also shortened the life span of those stronger, meat eaters. We used to joke on such paradox by saying: "Strong people live short life, while feeble ones live longer." 

Indeed, it is unquestionable that people with access to nutritional diet and restful life were able to excel in physical fitness far and beyond those with meager means. The simplest explanation is getting the proper fuel to the muscles, the proper nutrients to the nerves and vital organs, then the biological systems could perform its function at its best.

Exercise would only stimulate the body to utilize those available nutrients to build newer and resistant muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones.  Realistically, however, the majority of us are occupied with challenges greater than kitchen tasks or gym training. Most of those kitchen fans have nothing to do with gym lifestyle and vice versa.  With the great progress in industrialization, one could easily get a full nutritional meal without the hassles of getting stuck in the kitchen.

That leaves us with the politics of the gym training, the equipments, exercises, and planning.  In deciphering the brain of my greatest ever coach, Mohammad El-Kasabbany, I did not have to go far beyond his often repeated statements: legs, lower back, shoulders.

El-Kasabbany gets to the gym by 2:00 pm after getting out of his work as a banker. Within a minute, his training routine was scribed on a leaflet paper, with those three body regions assigned to three segments of the each training session.

The skill of planning a weightlifting routine by El-Kassabany took me thirty years to document in my book :"Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training".

The variables played into such scenario were clear and evident.

1. The space was the major determinant in writing any routine. Whenever was changed gyms or equipments we planned accordingly.
2. The weather was another. In the brutal heat of Egypt, we trained even without any water faucets nearby. That was before the era of bottled water. Then, transporting water in bottle was a science fiction topic.
3. Personal development was the greatest player of all. Each lifter developed on different scheme over many years. El-Kassabay played as an open eyed nurturer and educator with unconditional care and concern. Some lifters has life-long physical limitation that set their ability to lift beyond certain threshold. Very few exhibited the potential to excel beyond the ordinary.

Strength Training, the way I grew up to learn, was geared for picking the most effective exercises, within the most available training time. Nutrition was solely the lifter's responsibility. Yet, we never witnessed the frank and blatant commercialism of  repackaging chicken soup under fancy titles of muscle power. 

The change of professional ethics has impacted every human society on the last few centuries. Reading through the British literature, surgeons had not gained their due respects as real physicians in the early history of medicine. Further, physicians were compelled to stand on the right side of the patient during the exams of the British Royal Society for Li censure.  Today, many radio and tv stations dedicate channels for doctors advertising for all sorts of purposeless procedures, supplements, and cures. 

What could four years of Living Room's lifting do for you?

 The person seen lifting is Sjaak Smorenburg, a prolific writer, weightlifter, motorcyclist, and a train engineer. Smorenburg's lifting videos are published free on YouTube and other Internet sites. Google him or follow the printed and ebooks listed below.

Clean and Jerk

x

The bar trajectory is now squeezed in the vicinity of the fall-line. (collapsed bar trajectory on the fall-line.)

No feet play or escape. Fine motor control is well established

The problem with stiffening the neck by looking downwards.
Looking downwards at the bar reduced the Trapezius stretch reflex.
The shallow elevation of the heels impeded shoulder heaving. The bar departed to the front during the initial Jerking.


Snatch From Hang

 
Feet escape is null. That means, coordination under load is advanced. You wiggle and shake if your muscles could not stand the stress.

The heel elevation is more aggressive than in the Clean. The head is stiff and never shot beyond the vertical fall-line.

The confidence and familiarity with the classical snatch is apparent in the perfection of the chest thrust. Pay attention to this chest contour and the corresponding contour in the next exercise, close grip Snatch.

 

Very efficient ascent after reception. 


The same trend of relaxed spine and perfect chest thrust which will be reversed in the next exercise. Here, the familiarity with the Classical Snatch put the mind at ease and allowed the musculoskeletal system to perform at its best.

Close Grip Snatch

 
First: Note the contrast between this new exercise and the previous ones. Here, the lifter appears in uncharted territories, with evident fragmentation of the mental processing. The attention at positioning the lower limbs far exceeds that of maintaining proper spinal support. The chest is soft and the shoulders are dismissed by the mental apprehension.

Second: Note that the start position on the close grip Snatch lacked the enthusiasm that was vividly demonstrated on the Classical Snatch.

Third: This is the high price paid in living in a modern society. The shoulder joints lack the muscular balance due the life style of living in contained environment where the arms are always kept below the shoulders. Chinese lifters have little problem with overhead resistance with narrow hand gripping.



First: You could tell that the new exercise is taking a toll on the concentration process. While Sjaak is consumed on arranging his legs, his chest, spine, and lower back are amiss.
Second: Instead of lowering the body by bending his knees, the chest cage keep drooping and the internal focus will never return to full gear as far as the chest is concerned. With the chest out of the lifter's full attention, the shoulders will fall into disarray.
Third: You definitely could keep your hands up and chest thrust during this stage. But the worry and concern towards an annoying intruder, such as the close grip snatch, suffice to snatch the self esteem of the lifter. It would require a whole cycle of desensitization, try and error, until you would find the route of least resistance. You know where the problem lies. Work your way around it.


Sjaak Smorenburg
 

x z x x x x x x x

Lifting weights in your living room

Lifting weights in your living room is, most probably, the most effective way to enhance your strength. The convenience of working out where you are most comfortable with your territory reduces the chances of missing out of training.



Sjaak Smorenburg, my coauthor on multiple books on home-gym weightlifting, was able to develop home-gym lifting along the strictest rules of Olympic training.  In the attached photo, Smorenburg
breaks down the bar trajectory of a freestyled lift into its minute details.

You could possibly read the lifter's mind by deciphering the trajectories of the motion of masses. The bar trajectory is pushed away from the body when the hips thrusted forward. If the head trajectory is rotated clockwise, to more horizontal plane, the bar could have passed over the groin and stayed on the initial vertical ascent when the hips thrusted.

To the contrary, the following photos shows a person lifting next to his bed and fish tank, which he ends breaking during the lousy biceps curling.

 

Note the casual curving of the spine during lifting which indicates the total lack of awareness of the proper lifting technique. 

Now, the barbell is already gripped from the floor while the back is still hunching. Visualize this lifter after 20 years from today!! In fact, this sort of ignorant lifting is more damaging than good. Muscles are not the primary target of strengthening, the bone posture is.  Say lifting in such poor posture is better than getting hooked on other bad things, right? Wrong. Look at Smorenburg's unconditional commitment to perfecting his posture in his home-gym.

 Smorenburg is a father of two, Floor and Jeop, and works as a train engineer for over three decades. Yet, in his fiftieth, Smorenburg could maintain perfect posture under resistance. 

 

Here, goes the fish!!  

The fish tank broke during the least demanding curling of the biceps.

God gracious. It is just the fish that got hurt. 

Smorenburg has to worry about avoiding head concussion during the high speed overhead Snatch. Smorenburg transformed his attic into such lively Olympic Weightlifting Laboratory by the simplest means of searching, reading, posting on the Internet, and later, traveling to meet with me in search for deeper insight.