I’m warming up, and Frankenstein (my cat) is very interested because she hasn’t seen me do this indoors for a while. Warmups are important, and with as many injuries I’ve had, I take this seriously. Even on an indoor bike or stationary bike, I know I can get injured because I had an Achilles tendon injury. I’ve had three somewhat serious Achilles injuries. One was a complete rupture that didn’t even happen during exercise. These are bad not just because of the pain and inconvenience but because they keep me away from exercise for long periods of time.
I’m using my phone timer and going for twenty minutes today. I’m on the bike inside because … I’m a coward. It’s freezing outside, literally. Thirty-two degrees, and I just didn’t want to do it. But that’s okay, I’ve been meaning to get more bike work in. I’m not doing the intermittent interval training; just trying to get twenty minutes of movement. I’m in a room where I have done many Running: A FEVER episodes; if you look back on YouTube, you’ll see a bunch of them with me standing and a lot of red light behind me.
I’m Michael Davis; this is a podcast about fitness, diet, and medicine. My goal is to live a long, happy, healthy, active life right up to the very end. I want to love my life so I can do everything I need to live as long as possible. If that’s your goal as well, you’re in the right place. This is mostly my own experience along my health journey.
I’m on my health journey, and I’m doing something good with it today. I’m making my body, my heart, and my legs healthier just by moving around. Motion is the key. That’s really all it takes. You don’t have to be a marathon runner. You don’t have to be a Tour de France cycler. You don’t have to be an Olympic athlete. All you have to do is “keep on movin’,” as the song says. That’s the whole point.
Literature Department. I’ve been reading a book called The Lombardi Rules. It was a Christmas gift. It’s pretty good. There are probably a lot of things you’ve heard before if you have read leadership or motivational books. But it’s from the point of view of football coach Vince Lombardi, so it has that kind of analogous flavor to it. It’s all about being prepared, working hard, setting an example, knowing yourself, and knowing your strengths and weaknesses. These are some of the concepts. It’s a very short book. Each chapter is about a page-and-a-half, and there’s a picture between each chapter. It’s a pretty good book. It’s about a hundred pages long. Every time you read something you’ve read before or something you are already familiar with, it gets reinforced. And there are some things you just know are true. It’s a human thing, being able to recognize the truth. This is the Literature Department, not Philosophy, so I’ll not get too much into philosophy today. But it helped me to see that I actually have to do the work. Thinking about being in shape doesn’t do anything except perhaps help me with goal-setting. But even then, if I don’t take action toward my goal, nothing is going to happen. Confidence is another of Lombardi’s concepts. Play the game with confidence, which you can build with preparation for one thing. Know the plays after running them many times in practice. This experience helps you to be able to execute in the game. Confidence helps you win. Winning makes you more confident.
I’m dry, so I should have hydrated today, and I’ll need to do so after I’m done. I’m trying to pick up the pace. I’m not sweating or breathing hard, and I should be at least a little bit. My cardiologist used a formula to come up with a recommended heart rate during ‘cardio’ exercise. Which I can get by looking at my watch. The number to hit, according to the doc, is 114 beats per minute. A pretty significant jump from my resting rate in the low fifties. In any event, I need to get my heart going. It’s important. It’s the most important organ in the body. You might think the brain is more important, but you need your heart to use your brain, but you don’t need your brain to use your heart. The same logic is useful in making exercise my highest priority. Some might say there are other activities in my life that do more to help society. But none of them is possible without having good health. Without my health, I can do nothing. So, health and fitness are my highest priority, and the heart is the most important organ in the body. It’s more important even than the lungs because you can have a heartbeat without breathing, but you can’t breathe without a heartbeat. I’m pretty sure of this. I’m not a medical doctor, folks, so take all this with a shaker of salt, or a box of salt if you will . . . plenty of salt, a mountain of salt, a whole mine full of salt . . . but with lots of salt on it.
If I had video now, you would see that it’s kind of soothing atmosphere. There is the big green screen, tripods, and light stands, but I also have a lamp that gives off soft red light. Red might not be the most calming color. It’s probably blue or green, a cool color.
Importantly, I woke up at 0430 and, after a couple of snoozes, got out of bed at about 0445. That’s the time I need to wake up if I’m going to exercise and still get to work on time. I have also rejoined the gym, so there’s an incentive to use it. It’s pretty cold outside, and I’ve set about twenty degrees as the absolute lowest temperature I’ll tolerate. And it’s freezing, so I could have gone out, but I’m doing something with this time, getting some motion, burning a few calories. I have to look on the bright side of things.
Coincidentally, considering the Lombardi book and all, last Sunday was Super Bowl Sunday. It was a good game. The Kansas City Chiefs won over the San Francisco 49ers. No doubt both teams practiced and prepared well. There were some trick plays in there. It was fun to watch. And it’s just a game. Like a podcast, it is not going to save the world, but football inspires people. It’s competition. It inspires people to look at the athletes and how well they are prepared and how well they perform. It’s good inspiration for us in life. All entertainment is like that. So you don’t have to feel like you are not doing something valuable if you’re doing entertainment. There’s value to that in its inspirational qualities. That’s what we’re about on Running: A FEVER, inspiring you to have better health and to do what you need to do to get there.
As usual, I’ll say, please like and subscribe on YouTube, and feel free to leave a comment. And if you’ve got the fever, keep it, and if you don’t, catch the fever, and I’ll talk to you next time on Running: A FEVER.
Photo by Alexander Schimmeck
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