New Book Helps Busy People Lose Weight, Get Fit, and Sculpt the Bodies of Their Dreams in Just Minutes a Day

My neighbor, Richard Walters, a personal trainer, has just published a new book that distills the fundamentals of his original “16-Minute Body Sculpting System” into a readable, easy-to-use reference. It’s called 16 Minute Body Sculpting Kit (you can check it out on Amazon here) and it should be of interest to anyone who wants to lose a few pounds, sculpt their body into more beautiful form, or just generally get in shape—and who don’t have endless free time to spend hours at the gym.

It’s a great system for getting in shape when you don’t have tons of time to spend, or a lot of money to spend on equipment, fancy gym memberships, or expensive nutritional supplements. And the book is a great resource for busy men and women who’ve been looking for just this kind of system. Written in clear, plain English and packed with illustrations, the book walks you through the 16-Minute Body Sculpting System, explaining not only how to do each exercise but why—what it does for your body, what muscles you’re working, etc.

The book demonstrates a wide range of strength training exercises that target “problem” areas of the body such as abs, arms, and shoulders. All exercises can be done with no more than a set of dumbbells, and many exercises use no equipment at all. And as the book’s title promises, each workout requires only 16 minutes.
It’s also a complete system: it incorporates a healthy diet, strength training, and cardiovascular exercise.

Based on the “60-30-10” principle, which ranks a healthy diet as the most important factor in getting in shape, Rich’s book includes extensive guidance toward obtaining a healthy diet. Included in the book is set of food cards that make it simple to plan out each day’s meals without exceeding a daily calorie limit. With cards for each of the main food groups, there’s no need to count calories, points, or anything else to maintain a healthy diet.

I was looking through the book’s foreword, and this line from Rich jumped out at me: “The System is built on the fact that our natural bodies, supplied with natural food and a well-planned exercise and diet regimen, will develop into what we think of as a beautiful body—because that’s the real you.” That really captures the essence of the system, which emphasizes a natural process.

The 16-Minute Body Sculpting System has helped a number of people attain a range of personal fitness goals, from losing weight to dramatically increasing strength. Check out the reviews on Amazon.com to see for yourself. You can also “look inside” the book there, as well as order it. Or check out Rich’s site, www.16minbody.com, for more information.

New Fiction up at White Whale Review!

Hey everyone, check out my short story, “Bedroom Tapes,” in the great online journal White Whale Review.

Check out Rich’s new site

Rich has moved his web presence to this new address. Check it out for new content and some updates on how Rich has kept fit despite the massive blizzards that have hit Pittsburgh in the last week.

Countdown to the Pittsburgh Marathon: A Video Tour

From Rich, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has put up a sort of guided video tour of the 2009 Pittsburgh Marathon route: check it out.

The narration is from Marathon consultant Charlie Ban, who has a bunch of interesting things to say about the course: which parts are tough, some pitfalls for runners, and how to attack a hill (which advice I found super-useful and hope to remember come August). He also uses the word “deleterious,” for which I salute him as this is not a word one encounters every day.

It sounds like the Marathon should be a fun time. Even for those of us—sniff, sniff—who won’t be competing. The really good news is that to hear Ban tell it, this year’s registration, plus the huge interest in getting on the waiting list, is a pretty sure sign that the race will succeed and continue for the coming years.

Update + the Possible Beginnings of a Plan

Things have been going well on the weightlifting & running fronts. Mendel and I are now up to somewhere in the 210s when it comes to our benchpress weight!

In the world of running, I’ve kept up my routine of going out three times a week: runs of 4-5 and 3-4 miles during the week, and then a longer run on the weekend. This week I plateaued a bit, doing 10 miles when I had planned to do 12.

(Basically I ran out of time but was also feeling some pain in my knee and getting a little queasy for some reason; I felt pretty weird and woozy the rest of the day, which is something I’ll have to plan for going forward. I think this week I am going to eat more carbs on the days leading up to my long run, rather than just making sure I eat a little something before my run—which is all I’ve done, in terms of planning, prior to the last couple of long runs.)

In other news, I’ve mentioned before my plan to train through the spring and summer for the Philadelphia Marathon. Well, that’s still on.

But—I’ve begun to get worried that 7+ months to train for the Philadelphia race might be just enough time to get sidetracked, hurt myself, or get complacent about my training. Or maybe a simpler way to put it would be that 5 months or more is just way more time than I need to get ready for a marathon. I’m now up to 10 miles on my long runs, and in the next month I fully expect to get that up to 14 miles; by the end of May, I should be up to 18, and I will be disappointed if I am not hitting 20 early this summer. (And this is a very relaxed schedule: I’m basically letting myself hit a certain target—say 12 miles—and then do it again the next week, getting my body acclimated before moving up to the next benchmark.) Twenty or twenty-two miles is about where most marathon guides recommend that a runner top out in his or her training, so in theory I’ll be ready for a marathon in June or July.

With that in mind, I scouted around a site, Marathon Guide, that has a fairly comprehensive “Marathon Calendar.” And what I came up with is pretty interesting: on August 9, in Titusville, Pennsylvania, there is the Drake Well Marathon. Titusville looks to be about 100+ miles from Pittsburgh, north toward Erie. Apparently it boasts the world’s first oil well.

In terms of timing, location, and affordability (the race starts at 7 a.m. so driving from Pittsburgh actually sounds like more of a nightmare than ponying up to stay in a hotel the night before), this could really work out. And since it’s three months before the Philadelphia Marathon, it’s not an either/or proposition: in fact, it could be a nice preparatory race for the bigger Philly race.

I’m still crunching some numbers, but I think this could be a big set-up for my delayed—but not-to-be-denied—first marathon.

A New Record + Some Disappointing News

First, the disappointing news: the Pittsburgh Marathon is closed! Not just the Marathon, but the Half-Marathon, as well as the Relay.

I honestly had not expected this. I didn’t think that Pittsburgh would be a huge spot for the marathon. Who knows whether this is mostly local people signing up—which would make sense since this is the first year the marathon will be back after several years—or if it’s out-of-town runners. Either way, it’s kind of disappointing.

(I’m on the waiting list, but the Marathon organizers started making calls yesterday, and since it’s first-come, first-served, I doubt that they will make it all the way down the list to me.)

Now, the new record, set by Mendel and I last night: 209 pounds on the bench press! This smashes the 199 that we each lifted last week. Not only are we over 200 pounds now but, as Mendel pointed out, we are both now able to lift more than we weigh! I really don’t think I ever thought I’d say that.

Back to Double Digits

I don’t want to jinx myself, but it seems that things are back to normal in terms of running. I haven’t had any real foot, ankle, or shin discomfort to speak of in the last few weeks. This week I did runs of four, three, and 10 miles. The soles of my feet were pretty sore after that last one, but for the most part I have no complaints.

Getting back to running shape, and falling back into a good running routine, have been nice, but a little bittersweet. I’ve decided for sure now that I’m going to put off running the marathon in May, and do “just” the half-marathon. (“Just” is in quotation marks because 13.1 miles is still pretty tough and a pretty long distance to run.) The timing of my getting up to 10 miles is sort of awkward because there are still about six weeks before the race, enough time to keep increasing my weekly mileage, up to maybe 16 or 18 miles on the long runs, but not enough time to get up to 20 or 22 comfortably and to do it with time to ease back on the long runs for a few weeks before the race. So I’m pretty much deciding more firmly on the plan I had hatched about a month ago, to keep training during the summer and do the Philadelphia Marathon in November.

So, expect future blog posts to deal more with the specific challenges of the half-marathon. I’ve been training, so far, as if the half-marathon were just Marathon, Jr., but I can already see that it’s not. I’m hoping to devote some of my training time to speed workouts, which is something that’s gone by the wayside since the fall. One really nice thing about already being up to 10 miles is that I have the time to get really comfortable with that distance and to increase my speed and stamina with it.

I’m making a big deal out of the change, but in a lot of ways nothing will change. It’ll still be a big race and having it ahead of me will be a nice goal to work toward—in this case, I’ll have two nice goals to work toward, as the full marathon will be looming a bit further in the future.

In other news:
My weekly total of 17 is pretty good for me, but it’s not even as high as the weekly-long-run distance that Rich had to do this week: 18 miles! I see that he put up a new “Geezer” blog post, which means he finally made it back.

The comeback trail

I had quite a Sunday, exercise-wise. In the morning, Rich supervised Mendel and I as we went through another junkyard workout: an intense regimen of tire flipping, wheelbarrow pushing, duct-taped watering can toting, cinder block curling, dips from a couple metal posts, and one of the most frustrating exercises I’ve ever done. This last one consisted of stooping down and pulling what Rich calls a “dinosaur egg” out of some nesting inside a tire. The dinosaur egg is some kind of weight or medicine ball bound up with what must be several rolls worth of electrical tape. All this water, as well as dead leaves and dirt and mud, collects in the dinosaur egg’s nest, and with the smooth surface of the ball itself it is a feat to pick the thing up. One then pulls it up to the chest and holds it and dumps it back in the tire.

So, that was early Sunday morning—we met at 7:30 a.m., which with daylight savings time was “really” 6:30. (Every year, at one or the other of the daylight savings days, I seem to get in a debate about the idea that it is “really” an hour earlier or later. I don’t think anyone would disagree, though, that if 7:30 a.m. was only 23 hours ago, to your body it is going to feel like it’s only 6:30.)

Afterwards, I went back to the trail. I ran at the Schenley track, on the gravel track, and then headed down to the trail, running for a total of eight miles. That is more—by a lot—than I have run in some time. What’s more, so far my shins, calves, ankles, and feet feel OK. I’m planning to continue to take it easy—what I’m thinking is two runs during the week and then a long run on Saturday or Sunday—but this is an encouraging sign.

Checking In

It’s been a while since my last post, mainly because there’s been little to report. After my last run, last Wednesday evening, I had more shin splints, and forced myself to go on another break from running. I’ve done some biking since then, but mostly it’s been a somewhat frustrating lapse in any kind of cardio. I’m heading back to the track tonight, though, and am hoping the lay-off—and, this time, some very thorough stretching, plus a warm-up walk—will translate to pain-free running (and an absence of pain after running, which really has been the big thing).

One note worth mentioning here, concerning the running, is that I had no discomfort during my Wednesday-night run. I may be overthinking it, but I believe that was because I returned to my normal stride, which is a bit longer than the stride I started trying to adopt a couple months ago. Basically, I shortened my stride because of something I read about the stress on the knees that’s often caused by overstriding, so that your feet are not fully beneath your weight and the knees get more than their share of stress. It sounded good, and so I started taking shorter strides. What I should have asked myself is, “Do your knees hurt?” The answer would have been, “No, not really.” My response to myself would have been, “Then I guess I don’t need to change my stride,” and I probably would have listened to myself.

My plan for here on out, then, is to stride naturally. Rich recently mentioned an interesting way of striding, which is to run as if on a treadmill. It sounds like a good thing, as it would lessen some of the stress of impact on your feet and knees. But I feel like I’ve learned my lesson as far as trying to change my stride. My main concern at this point is to avoid injuries and build my mileage up toward May 3, which suddenly doesn’t seem so far away.

On a more fun note, because it was freakishly warm and nice in Pittsburgh yesterday, last night Rich put Mendel and I through our paces outside his studio, out in his back yard. It wasn’t our normal Wednesday night double session, but it certainly duplicated the workout. (I can vouch for that because I’m much more sore today than I’m accustomed to being.) We lifted watering cans covered in duct tape and filled with sand and bricks. We hit a tire with an axe. We did curls with a concrete-and-steel kebab. We did dips on a pair of metal poles planted in Rich’s yard. And—by far the most challenging, and for me the most eventful—we crouched down and flipped over a massive tire (from some kind of construction equipment). I say that it was “eventful” because at one point while lifting the tire end, my footing gave out and I ended up flat on my face with a lot of mud flying up from the tire’s landing and splattering all over my face. I didn’t realize it until later, but there were pretty big chunks of mud caked on my forehead and chin and in my hair. I’m hoping it’s the kind of mud that clears up your skin. That would be great.

Finally, Rich has started yet another new project. This time it’s a humor blog relating to the marathon—which, if you’ve ever trained for a marathon, you know that a little humor is necessary if you’re going to maintain your sanity. His first entry is here.

Status Update: More leg troubles

I will have to stop writing upbeat posts, like I did last time. Maybe I’m just being superstitious, but it seems like shortly afterward I run into trouble.

So it was this past week. After my long Wednesday evening run (I went about 6 miles through rain and brief hail, which felt better than it probably sounds), I experienced some nasty shin splints that only got worse as the weekend came along. I’ve had shin splints before, and know how to take care of them: rest and ice are the two big things. So I skipped my planned Thursday run, hoping to be in better shape for Sunday’s long run.

But the shin splints have persisted, and I ended up putting off the long run, or any run at all. I’ve gotten on an exercise bike a few times, and I’m hopefully going to go swimming at least once this week. My plan, at the moment, is to do a fairly short run on Wednesday evening, then rest Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and shoot for a longer run on Sunday, stopping to walk fairly regularly so that I can stay sort of checked in as to how my shins are feeling.

All of this would be no big deal if I were just trying to jog more often, or “just” trying to get in shape. But I’ve found that having the marathon looming (11 weeks from now, as of this writing) makes the whole thing seem much more ominous. I’m aware, maybe too aware, of the danger zone that I’m entering: shin splints require time and care to heal, but I have a particular schedule in mind for the marathon, and at some point I will have to move up the ladder and do some pretty long runs. The trick, and the place where the danger comes in, is to run longer distances without ramping my mileage up so suddenly that I risk getting injured again.

I had actually sort of written the marathon off for a day or so, thinking I could safely train for and run the half-marathon and then shoot for a marathon some time during the summer or fall: the Philadelphia Marathon has already been on my mind. (It’s sort of the perfect set-up for me because my family lives in Philadelphia and the race is on November 22, meaning I could go home, do the race, and then completely gorge myself at Thanksgiving with zero guilt as far as pigging out: I’ll need to replenish all the calories I lost.)

But talking to Rich during our weight session* last night, I realized there are a few things I can do to make training less risky and still give myself a good shot at being ready for the Pittsburgh Marathon in May. I had been going off the Runner’s World marathon guide for beginners, trying to follow it to a T: in this case, that meant going for runs on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I realized I’d had success, just a month or so ago now, staggering my runs so that I did not go out on consecutive days. I also did well with some other “rules” that I imposed on myself: namely, keeping to flat surfaces. I’ve noted that I don’t really like driving to go run, or running on monotonous tracks. But it looks like that’s what’s in store for me. I am hoping that by following the Runner’s World regimen a little more loosely—I think the main thing will be trying, eventually, to do the number of total weekly miles that they indicate—I can give myself a shot at tackling this marathon come that first weekend in May. Another good idea that Rich had was to intersperse walking and running, which should spare my ankles, calves, and shins while letting me “do” these progressively longer runs of 12, 13, 14 miles. I want to reach a point of being able to run these longer distances without stopping—I’d really worry about doing 26.2 miles if I couldn’t get up past around 18-20 miles before the race date—but the best and safest way to accomplish that may be to swallow my pride a little and walk some of these runs.

*I’d like to note that I’ve smashed my personal bench-press record, of 170 pounds. The new record—the ink is not even dry in my personal record book—is 185. I am deeply impressed at myself. This is a full 100 pounds more weight than what I started at, back in October. Even more impressive, 185 is what I have been thinking of as “Mendel Territory.” If you could see Mendel’s beast-like arms and hear the awesome groaning he emits as he throws up these Herculean stacks of weights, you would surely understand why I am so full of myself this morning.