Kinetic Counts
Physical strength is the most important thing in life.
That is true, whether you want it to be, or not.
- Mark Rippetoe,
Author and Strength Training Coach
Strength is your important truth, and I want you to want it. Are you that Gen X person who is quick to move on up? This chapter will help you get a grip on five actionable numbers (1,2,3,4 and 5) that count. Five kinetic counts apply, whatever your functional strength is and however your physical banking is today. Five is a golden rings number as you must move stuff in these five ways: lift, push, pull, twist, or carry. This word, kinetic, simply means motion, or to put something in motion, as Dwayne Johnson and Mr. Whiting assert.
And away you go to improve your decent, good, or great physical strength by working this chapter’s kinetic counts from one to five. TINA, that is the singular moving truth.
One Truth
Be Stronger - Die Harder. Hinge on those above-cited words of strongman Mark Rippetoe. May I paraphrase what he contends? The essential cornerstone of your physical bank is functional strength. You want and need to move and put things in motion for the next fifty years of your lifespan. Whether you want it to be or not, strength improves your healthspan. Can I dodge the Intensive Care Unit when others can’t because I have a “vise grip”? Yes. Experience a revved-up metabolism with lean skeletal muscle? You betcha. Protect my joints from injury? Yes. Maintain an independent lifestyle for a decade longer than many of my peers? Amen.
A corollary for your one truth is that your own strength program is unique for you. You are one unique athlete, so your physical training and activities should correspond with your unique enablers.
Two Ages – Your Fitness Age and Calendar Age
The stronger you become, the greater are the measured performance differences between your healthspan (in fitness years) and lifespan (in calendar years) on this zany planet. I kid you not. Nor does Mark Rippetoe. I commend to you his book, Practical Programming for Strength Training, or PPST3. You can take his proven lessons about safe and rewarding strength training to your individualized physical bank. There is no doubt that strength is a cornerstone of your performance for decades to come.
You will learn about the four types of cornerstone strength in a bit; but in the meantime, may I offer a quick thought about “my” industry of fitness? I mean no disparaging remarks about “big box” gyms or fitness clubs that are omni-present. (I started my own Personal Trainer career in such a fitness organization.) Yet Rippetoe suggests that it is quite challenging to improve your fitness age in those establishments, and that is a shame. Do not be shamed. Your strength training requires time to do your regimens, safe instructions, and dedicated focus to your unique training goals. Go get these imperatives, whenever and wherever you can twice or three times each week until you are ninety (in calendar years and eighty in fitness years.)
Two also represents the average time in minutes that a committed Gen X will devote to self-myofascial release (SMR) of tight muscles and connective tissue. Do not underestimate the utility of releasing tight fiber to down age and perform better! Do invest those few extra minutes to help your body respond.
Flex Alert #3:
Strength helps you age well. Strength makes you a generational outlier on the favorable “right” side of the Gen X bell curve of performance. A great outlier like you performs on a par with someone ten years younger. This is your down aged healthspan enabler. I wager that you can think of many things to accomplish in the “saved” decade – right?
Three Body Planes
Although the formal names for your body planes are confusing, your strong muscle and joints simply move your body from front to back, from side-to-side, or from twisting movements.
(1) When you move from front to back, such as doing a hip hinge motion or a Good Morning Stretch you are getting sagitally strong. Or functionally carry weights in a Farmer’s Carry. (I promise that you will gain familiarity with these and other motions in pages to come.) Or perform a forward or backward Lunge maneuver. Or, when you perform a pushup to improve your dynamic strength or hold a Plank position for endured stability and strength, you are working in the sagittal body plane as shown in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1: Gen X Pushup Planks in Sagittal Plane
(2) When you move your body or torso in its side-to-side direction, you are working in your body’s frontal plane. Envision and execute a Side straddle hop (aka Jumping Jack), or a Side Lunge, and you are working your body in the Frontal plane.
(3) When you twist your body or torso in a corkscrew-like motion, you are working in the transverse body plane as shown in Figure 1.2. Tee up and take a golf swing, make a discus throw or row in a “sweep” boat, and you are doing great work in your transverse body plane.
Figure 1.2: A Transverse Plane Twist in World’s Greatest Stretch (WGS) Move
Next, I offer a 3-D combination movement that I hope you will perform when you are ready. (See Figures 1.3-1.5) Your functional strength can be celebrated with a Byzantine-sounding exercise. The origin of this maneuver may or may not be Turkish. Yet its exotic name may help folks like you to give it a go. I make a motion that you motion in all three body planes in every resistance workout and in your activities of daily life(ADL.)
The Turkish Get Up
When you execute what is called a Turkish Get Up, or TGU, with a weight held consistently overhead, you are assuredly a strong dude or dudette. A TGU challenges your strength, flexibility, and stability in all 3 body planes of motion. This image series shows the starting position, mid-way position and final standing position while keeping the arm straight and weight (kettle bell) overhead.
Figure 1.4: Second TGU Position
Figure1.5: Third TGU Position
Guys – there is an TGU strength measure for you to consider.
• You will be great at Turkish Get Ups (TGU) by using a weighted object that is one half (½) of your bodyweight. Powerful stuff!
o This TGU performance challenge for weight lifted may also hold true for ladies, yet I seek confirmation of that performance mark.