187.2 and the week without a Bod Pod

The score a few moments ago was 187.2 English pounds on the Tanita scale.  The digital read-out wavered between 187.0 and 187.2 several times before rounding up, as it always does.  Let's presume that I am 187.1, and the 2/10ths digital display simply cannot indicate that fact.

The Bod Pod would place me somewhere 186.2-186.25 this morning.  That is without any special prep.  I did not do an extensive areobic workout last night.  I did not do 30 minutes in the saunas at 24 Hour Fitness.  I did not purge my intestines with Magnesium Citrate.   An official prep for the Bod Pod would put me lower this morning.

I mention all this, because this is the end of another two week Bod Pod cycle, and I have officially missed the test.  It was a tough week of finishing Jury Duty and trying to catch up at work after 8 days out of the office.  I never found a spare moment between 9:00am and 5:00pm to call the California Health and Longevity Institute to make an appointment.

I mention all of this because two weeks ago, my body weight was 195.7 pounds on the Bod Pod scale. The indication is that I have lost some 9.45 pounds in the past two weeks.  This is shocking.  When last I blogged on this subject, we were speaking of the point of inflection.  We were speaking of that moment when my body weight would cease decreasing, and begin increasing... hopefully with lean-mass only.  Low-and-behold:  we have a massive 9.45 pound decrease in gross body weight at the end of this cycle.

God only knows what this did to my Body Fat Percentage (BFP).  I wish I knew.  I bitterly regret not having a test this week.  It might have been a dandy. Presuming that this was all fat weight, my body fat would have dropped from 44.56 pounds to 35.11 pounds.  35.11 / 186.25 = 18.85%.  This is astounding.  I might actually have moved the check-box to Healthy territory, and I might be just 1.85% away from my final and ultimate medical goal.

This is all the more shocking because I have largely abandoned the aerobics machines that have brought be most of the distance.  I only walked on the tread mill once last week.  I only got on the bike twice last week.  I only got on the Elliptical Cross-Trainer once last week.  I only did the Olympic Rowing Machine twice last week.

To make matters more interesting, I did ZERO CrossFit workouts last week.  Now why the limited amount of work?  Because I encountered a substantial training injury to my right shoulder doing head-stand push-ups last Saturday at the CrossFit gym.

I did train last week.  I did a dumbbell workout with Aaron on Thursday, and I did a killer WOD routine here at the apartment with my ROM machine and some Kettlebells that I have recently purchased.  Those were brutal workouts.  My heart rate went over 170 during the Kettlebell swing, I am sure.

I am going to add one more piece of complexity to the picture for you:  I have fallen in love with the Del Taco Macho Bacon and Egg Burrito all over again.  According to one source, this burrito contains approximately 1,030 kcal per shot.  That's a load of kcal energy, buddy.

Yet at the same time all of this has been going on, I know my strength has been increasing.  I am officially swinging, cleaning, and rowing the 20 KG kettlebell, doing orbits with 16 kg, and doing the Turkish Get Up with the 8 KG bell.

The Kettlebell has become my new obsession, and a powerful one at that.  If you were to read Enter the Kettlebell! by Pavel Tsatsouline (an August 23, 1969 Virgo guy from Russia) you will find that a simple regime consisting of 5 minutes of Kettlebell Swings and 5 minutes of Turkish Get Ups done once every other day is all he recommends for a beginner.  Don't count reps, go for 5 solid minutes with good form.  He claims that is enough to get your strength moving northward and your body fat moving southward.

Evidently, the Kettlebell Swing and the TGU are the two master exercises in the Kettlebell regime.  They are just as important in Kettlebell training as the Deadlift and Squat are in the Powerlifter's regime.  These are the two exercises a Kettlebell student must master and perform all the time.

Further, this two exercise regime will trigger plenty of fat loss without "the dishonor" of aerobic exercise.  Pavel is very derisive of those metro-sexual machines.  Men should be playing with cannonballs, not girly bikes and treadmills.  The comrade-ladies should also be using Kettlebells to meet their fitness needs.

It sounds preposterous, I know.  That just can't be enough work to get the job done.  However, in this week of recovery from injury, I seem to have inadvertently proven his point.  Now, I did more than that.  There were other Kettlebell exercises.  Further, there was the good 'ole ROM machine.  However, the Kettlebells in my living room were the big, big, big change item.
I am in love with Kettlebells!

The lower body ROM workout is now a doddle.

A moment of silence please... I just kicked the Lower-Body ROM exercise squarely in the nuts. I blasted all four minutes at 210 pounds of resistance and scored 121% on the meter.

What is the significance of this moment?

The last time I rode that horse, the year was 2009. On that occasion, it ripped a chunk of cartilage out of my right knee that set me flat on my back on the surgery table. This is how I was introduced to Dr. Evan Bachner. Favoring the right knee blew out the left knee, which put me back on the surgical table less than 4 weeks later. Bachner pulled chunks of bone out of my left knee.

My last ROM ride was the beginning of sorrows for me. My body weight spiraled up due to immobility and post surgical pain. Higher weight made it hard to exercise, exercise made the pain worse, which made me more immobile, which made me gain more weight. I was caught in a vicious negative feedback loop.

As you know, this vicious cycle was only broken by a visit to Providence St. Joseph Hospital and full Roux en Y gastric bypass. This was my most dangerous surgery every. Understand that this is nowhere near as simple as pulling a chunk of torn cartilage out of a knee. They open your torso and repipe your guts. Not everybody survives this surgery. I am a member of the good and lucky majority.

As you might imagine, getting back on that horse and doing that Lower-Body ROM exercise has represented one of my greatest fears in life. There have been many times in the past two years when I wondered why I ever spent $6,000 on a $16,000 machine that cost me more than $10,000 in flesh, blood & tears.

Of course, the vicious scorpion at work has chided me about this subject...

Well guess what? I just got up on that horse and rode it again. It was a doddle. I wasn't even breathing hard until 3:15 had already expired. I didn't sweat profusely until a minute or two afterward. For some 10 minutes afterward, I kept checking and rechecking my range of motion for any signs of inflammation in my right knee. There is no inflammation in my right knee, and it is now an hour later.

You can see the exercise here. This constitutes a major, major victory. This is almost like killing Osama.

Compared to the upper body workout, the lower body workout is trivial. This was never the case in the past. I could never do 4 whole minutes, period. I had to break it into 2 minute segments. Now it is easy. I guess losing something like 100 pounds makes a difference.

If there is a greater lesson in this story, I guess it this: You never know where providence will take you. I probably would never have conquered my weight problems without Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery. Given my good blood chemistry and my heart health, my insurance never would have approved this surgery. It was only a series of letters from Bachner, my GP and Dr. Quilici regarding my orthopedic problems that caused United Health Care to approve the surgery.

Now I have reversed the aging process by 15 years at the very least, and still counting. I am stronger and healthier now than I was at 30... not to mention better looking. I'm not into cosmetics, though.

Lately, I have been wondering how much longer I may live as a result of this surgery. Of course, you can die in a car wreck at any moment, but presuming I don't, how much longer will I live? The starving mouse studies suggest I should double my lifespan. That's no joke folks. Google Roy Walford and CRON.

Popular Science magazine just published a piece called "Why you will live to be 150". They are talking about everybody, not just us starving mice who have had Roux-en-Y. Google search for Dr. Bill Andrews, Geron, and Telomerase. He is working on the cure for aging.

The men and women in my Dad's family live a very long time. Grandpa kick off at 93. Grandma kicked the bucket at 95. My dad is 69, has kicked prostate cancer in the ass twice, and doesn't quite look 60. Nobody believes I am going to turn 45.

God, I have no clue how long I will live, but I can see no reason why I shouldn't make it to 90. Frankly, I should reach 100.

Just to close the loop for you, I would not be thinking these thoughts if the ROM hadn't ripped a chunk of cartilage out of my right knee one dark day in early October of 2009. Isn't strange how this event became the next best thing to a guarantee that I will make it to 100 years of age?

The Insanity of ROM

I acquired my ROM Quick Gym on 9/12/2009. This was the weekend USC beat Ohio State and UCLA defeated Tennessee. I remember it well. Me and Aaron listened to both games as we drove down to Laguna Hills and back again. Aaron and I were not able to move the machine into my apartment that Saturday evening. The 500 or so pounds of this device were just too much for us. I got it done on Sunday 9/13/2009. It took 4 illegal assistants plus me to get that thing up the stairs to my apartment living room. I was absolutely busted after hauling that thing up the stairs.

I did not workout on the machine for the first time until the Monday 9/14/2009. So here I sit on Tuesday evening September 30, 2009. I have been working out with the ROM for about 16 days. The results have been shocking. I am not prepared to go public with the actual mathematical figures yet. I will though. It has been kicking my ass, and I have been loving it. I have been able to get into a regime where I use it most mornings, usually within 30 minutes of wake up. This is a pretty hardcore way to wake up in the morning.

Let me just give you a few observation points:

• I purchased this machine because of arthritis in my knees. My arthritis had reached the point where I was climbing out of bed each morning like I was climbing out of a wrecked car. I suffered pain throughout the day: Pain in my back, pain in hips, pain in my legs.
• In my first few ROM workouts, the lower body exercise was very tricky and painful. My right knee screamed at me. 1 minute was all I could muster. I tried to do 4 reps of 1 minute each. The first few times I worked out, 3 minutes was all I could muster. I had to lower the resistance to considerably less than my ideal weight to be able to move those pedals without agony. About 190 was all I could take.
• I am already at the point where I can do 3 minutes on the lower body exercise in just 1 shot. At the same time, I have moved the resistance up to my ideal weight (231). Because I have not completed the 4 minutes in a single span, I try to do two reps of 3 minutes on lower body. No matter what, I do 6 minutes of lower body exercise on lower body days.
• I am now walking down the stairs relatively normally, without grasping the side rails. Sometimes I still grasp the side rails, but this is a psychological thing. I don't absolutely have to have them any more.
• If I workout in the morning, I can pretty well guarantee myself a pain-free day. If I don't workout in the morning, I will suffer pain throughout the day. This much is certain. This is one of the most counter-intuitive and shocking facts about the ROM workout. Most workouts leave you sore and beat to death. ROM will make you a bit tired and sore, but not beat to death. Rather the contrary. You are invigorated.
• A good deal of my upper body mass has been returning. At the moment I am gaining weight, not loosing it. The ROM manual warned me that this would happen. You gain muscle first. You loose fat later. This is the standard pattern with the ROM. My arms, chest, back, & legs are all muscling up again. My cellular memory is being activated.
• The ROM literature makes some fairly outrageous claims. They claim that 4 minutes of ROM workout is equal to 20-45 minutes of aerobic exercise + 20-45 minutes of resistance training + 20 minutes of conventional stretching. Although I bought the machine, I scoffed at this sales pitch. I thought these statements an outlandish lie. Frankly, I am beginning to accept these claims. I can see no other way I might be making this kind of progress this rapidly.
• There is no doubt that you are doing heavy resistance work over an extended period of time (4 minutes). Nobody benches 225 for 4 minutes, not even at the NFL combine. Doing a ROM workout is a little like benching and rowing 225 for 4 minutes straight. There is no doubt that you must do this through an extreme range of motion. There is no doubt you are putting an overload on your heart and lungs at the same time that you are tearing up your muscles and stretching those joints and tendons.
• Probably one of the strangest aspects of this journey has been the metabolic effects through the day. If I don't workout in the morning, I have a tough time waking up. I will be listless all morning. If I don't workout by noon, my metabolic energy will collapse by the afternoon. This is as bad or worse than the sort of mild narcoleptic fatigue I suffered before the Armodafinil. If I do workout by noon, I will have no problems with energy through the day. This exercise does ignite the metabolism.
• The ROM has altered my food choices and my food cravings. I want protein in copious quantities these days. I really don't like potatoes or rice as much as I did. I find myself shunning a burrito and preferring steak and eggs. If I can get those in a burrito, fine. If not, I want my steak and eggs. Forget the burrito. Things like chips and ice cream have lost much of their luster. Protein drinks have suddenly become very seductive again. They make me feel great.
• The ROM has messed with my sleep a bit. At the moment, the time is 10:56, and I can barely finish this entry. I need to hit the sack. I did my workout less than 3 hours ago. I am pretty sleepy. My body wants to shutdown and build. I can tell. I once did the lower body workout at approximately 10:00pm. I did about 6 minutes plus 2 of upper body. I couldn't sleep until 4 in the morning. My metabolism went off the chart.

Most of the things I have written here seem insane upon review. 4 minutes of workout per day cannot have these kinds of effects. Doing 8 minutes cannot have these kinds of effects. You can't fix arthritic knees in 16 days while gaining weight when you are already overweight in the first place. Diet change usually requires conscience effort. Still, all the things I have written to you are true. This is my experience so far.

Recently, I saw a few videos regarding the ROM done by a YouTube.com personality. Said personality managed to con the ROMFab folks into lending him a ROM for a month or two, in exchange for the promotion. Watching him workout is underwhelming to say the very least. He seems more concerned with his music choices than his workout pace. He seems to be able to converse with the cameraman, which is a sign he is not working very hard.

Still, the dude had a doctor check his body composition before and after. He lost a total of 3 pounds in 1 month. However, he lost 13 pounds of fat and added 10 pounds of lean during that time. This altered his composition and appearance significantly. I asked Dr. Tom Long about this, and he confirmed that this information was accurate. If a half-assed effort can yield 13 pound compositions swings in 1 month, what will serious effort yield?

This makes me very hopeful. I am certainly beating the living shit out of this dude in terms of workout intensity. My first month should be better than his. I will certainly be happy with a 13 pound swing. I would prefer 20.

The ROMfab Time Machine and B-Model

So, as you know, I am devout reader of Science Magazine and other sophisticated periodicals. It just so happens that this is the exact forum which Alf Temme likes to advertise his marvelous ROM machine. This where I initially discovered the ROM. So just what is the ROM machine?

The ROM machine is nothing shy of the world's finest aerobic/strength building exercise machine. It essentially provides two exercise movements: A deep-stroke rowing and pressing exercise for your torso and arms, and a deep-range stepper exercise for your legs and hips.

Now for the shocking claim: Alf Temme and his buddy Dr. Petrie claim that you reach untold levels of fitness if you use this machine religiously for just 4 minutes per day. Of course, you have to work hard during this 4 minute span; harder than you have ever worked in your entire life. Four minutes of hard exercise on the ROM can make a N00B puke his guts out. It is that intense.

Skeptical? So was I. I dismissed the claim when I first read the advertisement. I thought it was another fly-by-night ripoff scheme designed to separate science geeks from their dollars. I thought there was no harm in checking the website, though, so I did. What I found there surprised me.

This rudimentary html website contained a number of articles which seemed to echo a school of thought I had once deeply internalized. This is the gospel of intensity. I learned it from Dr. Elington Darden, the mastermind behind the Nautilus workout and the Nautilus machines. I don't know about you, but I never got shit out Joe Weider's system. Weider's perspective was (and probably still is) the dominant theory of weight training. It is also absolutely and completely wrong. It couldn't possibly be more wrong. It just as wrong as wrong can be. It works great for club owners, for a number of dirty reasons I won't go into here. It doesn't work for the guy who wants to train.

Incidentally, I should mention that Joe Weider's main offices are less than a mile from my abode in Woodland Hills. I should walk down there and start a fight. It won't take more than a couple of minutes to knock them out. Then I can go around the corner to Fry's and shop for my next HDTV.

As far as I am concerned, Dr. Dardin proved beyond any shadow of a biological doubt that the human body won't grow strong unless you apply some fairly massive overload on the system. It is only when the body feels a massive overload stress that it kicks out of metabolic sloth mode and begins to build rapidly. The body must feel a survival-level challenge before it will go into adaptation mode. Weider would complain this he knows that and his system delivers that overload. What do I say to that? Bullshit!

As Dardin showed in his work, you don't get the adaptive stress you need out of long workouts featuring 3 sets of 10. You will never get adaptive stress by working one muscle group. Rather, you work all muscle groups on your workout day. You do 12 sets total, 1 per exercise. You do your largest muscle groups first (Squat, Deadlift) and the smallest muscles last (forearm curls). You must lift enough weight to reach total muscle failure in each exercise within 12 reps. The moment you reach 13, you raise the weight. You move rapidly from exercise to exercise. You do not allow time for recovery. You should be totally done in 12 minutes.

When done properly, you will be ready to heave the second set 12 is done. Believe me, I puked several times outside the John Wooden center at UCLA. That's how hard we worked. My Nautilus period was the only epoch during which I made massive strength and muscle gains. I reached the point where I could pull 500 pounds off the floor in the deadlift. I never used steroids. If I had, I am sure I would have won a few powerlifting contests.

From this period of my life, I learned several thing:

1. Long and easy workouts may be good recreation, but they do nothing for your fitness level.
2. High intensity workouts change your body, and make you fit.
3. The objective is to reach your absolute maximum work capacity.
4. You cannot sustain your absolute maximum work capacity for long
5. Therefore the workouts must be short, sweet, and brutally difficult.
6. Get in, get it done, get out. Puke hard if you have too, but make sure you put a survival-challenge stress on the system.
7. When the body experiences fairly massive survival stress, it will adapt to accommodate peak stress levels. This is growth. This is improvement. This is fitness.

This is the gospel of intensity. This is the gospel I once believed in with all my heart. It was the only systematic theory that ever did me any good. The good folks at ROMfab reminded me of this gospel, and it was like an awakening.

It turns out that Dr. Petrie worked for Nautilus at the dawn of his career. He believed in Dr. Darden's philosophy, but he felt it should be applied to aerobic exercise, not just body building or powerlifting. Eventually, he got together with Temme and the two of them formed ROMfab. The results of their collaboration was the ROM machine.

I decided to order the educational DVD and have a closer look. It was an eye opener. I disliked the Hollywood glamour angle of the DVD, but inside the glam was the gospel of intensity. I saw a number of guys manifesting that "I'm going to have a heart-attack and die" look on their faces while doing the exercise. That expression cannot be faked. That facial expression does not happen unless you are being driven hard to your limit. It was no joke. These absolutely fabulous L.A. celebs were being forced to work at a whole different level than what they were used to. The ROM kicked their asses.

In short, I decided to visit the ROMfab factory in North Hollywood California, roughly 15 miles East of my apartment building. I had the opportunity to meet Alf Temme and his chief trainer. Temme maintains a small gym there on the premise. It is open to the public. He has 3 ROM machines availible for public use. Anyone can use them. Come as often as you like. There is no cost. Temme's trainer gave me the quick tutorial and I gave it a go.

I finished the first 4 minute workout, which consisted of rowing and pressing. I worked pretty hard. I am sure I can work harder. I was guzzling breath by the end. It was plenty hard. I recovered faster than I though I would. {I need to slam it harder.} Sweat poured off my body for a good 10 to 15 minutes.

Phase 2 was scary and more difficult. The deep stepper is a fearsome thing for a 300 pound man with advanced osteo arthritis in his knees. It turns out I could do the exercise, but no more than 75 seconds at a time. My right kneed--the one with the tear in the meniscus--was screaming at me. I wound up doing a little more than 3 minutes in 1 minute bursts. Temme and his senior trainer were both emphatic that this exercise was the most important one for me. To rehab my arthritic knees, I needed to do this deep-stepper motion.

I proceeded from there to the Magic Johnson 24 Hour Fitness in Sherman Oaks where I used the Sauna. I also took a couple of 81mg aspirins. To say that I felt great later that evening would be an understatement. Shockingly enough, it got better still. The next day, my legs felt considerably better. I manifested a smoother standing and sitting motion. All of the muscles in my thigh felt sore, like they had been hit by a good workout, but the result was better overall movement. I was shocked. All of this from one good workout.

So how does this machine work? How do you scale the resistance? When you push and pull and step, you cause an 80 pound stainless steel fly wheel to crank around. The wheel has a literal car-break on it. The faster you spin the wheel, the greater the Centrifugal force applied to the break. The harder you crank it, the more it resists you. You can work as hard as you want to work. You also have a scalable slider which guides you resistance to some extent. Believe me, this scheme will make you work as hard as you possibly can.

In short, I am sold. Unfortunately... I have been agitated for the past 48 hours about how I might be able to acquire one of these machines. Finance is a problem. My job is solid, my credit is good, and I earn fairly decent money. So why be agitated? Are you ready for the next shocker?

The ROM Time Machine costs over $14,000 USD. With our state of California 9.75% sales tax, that will come to around $16,500. We're talking about the price of a compact car without any finance from the factory. Mr. Temme is definitely marketing to a more elite crowd than me.

Given our current recession and banking environment, it is not easy to walk into Wells Fargo Financial and ask them for a $16,500 loan to purchase an exercise machine. Prepare for a gun in the ribs. They might actually loan you the money, but it will be a personal signature loan and the rate will probably be North of 15%. We're talking about financial murder here folks.

With that said, the past 48 hours have yielded several shocking revelations. First, there are a lot of these machines on eBay.com. People are selling new units. People are selling used units. There is a clone machine vendor called UltraFastWorkout.com and they are selling at a steeply discounted rate (perhaps as low as $5,000).

I am awaiting official confirmation, but it also appears that Mr. Temme and his crew have released a new version of the ROM called the B-Model. This one will also be sold via eBay for as little as $5,000. {I still wonder why Mr. Temme didn't tell me this in person. He knew I had some issues with the price.} Yes, that is still a chunk of change, but I can slap that on my credit card if worse comes to worse. That fits well under my limits. I can also walk into Wells Fargo Financial and ask them to finance that at a more reasonable rate.

I can skip the shipping charges also. I'll just drive over and load the machine in the back of my truck. No cost for shipment or setup, buddy. I love it.

Am I going to do the deal? Yep, you bet. I am working on it right now. I am just about the happiest guy in America right now. I haven't been this happy since the Rams won the Super Bowl in 1999.

Why?

You don't know how bad my knees have been getting lately. I have been a bit depressed of late, expecting that I will turn into a 400 pound man in a wheel chair over the next 8 or so years. This is as good as a death warrant. From the wheelchair, it is all down hill to the grave. Suddenly discovering an exercise that can rehab my legs and knees is like a God-send. I am pretty fucking happy.

The main site

Lower body workout video

Upper body workout video

Update:

So, I spoke with the folks at Wells Fargo Financial on Friday, and I was most displeased. They offered me $2,500 at 27% with an immediate $25 application fee/finance charge. Quite frankly, I was shocked. The fellow I spoke with told me I was both lucky and good. The last 16 personal signature (unsecured) loan apps he submitted had all been flatly rejected. That is 16 straight rejects in a row. He reminded me that we are still in the midst of the greatest banking and credit collapse since the Great Depression of 1929. Credit remains ultra-tight. When I told him I wanted to buy an exotic exercise machine his first thought was "Okay, here comes the 17th straight reject!"

Naturally I declined the loan. My worst credit card (the one I never use) is at 17.99% APR. I can easily slap the machine on that MasterCard without coming close to the limit and I will still enjoy a lower rate with no immediate finance charge.

All is not lost. Driving away from Wells my first thought was "Why did Citigroup Financial send me a pre-approval notice for up to$7,000 just two months ago?" That was when I tweaked. I'll hand the deal to Citigroup. The offer Citigroup sent me was good for 30 days only. This was at least 2 months ago. The original offer has expired. Nevertheless, I think I will go by Citigroup Financial and see if they will look me up with the credit terms I want.