Introduction to Peak Conditioning

Introduction

The men of America come in a hundred million different sizes, colors, ages, backgrounds. But most of us share one thing: the ability to tell scary stories about our grade-school gym teachers.

Remember the time the entire class watched as your teacher forced you to wrestle a guy 150 pounds bigger than you? Or when you loudly split your gym shorts on your 53rd consecutive sit-up, just as the gym was getting quiet with exertion, and how your teacher called you Rip for the rest of the year? Or the time you fell on your head while your teacher stood three feet away, grade book in hand, watching to see if you could do something—anything—on the parallel bars? We have no proof to back this up, but we suspect millions of men have avoided the gym their entire adult lives because of flashback fears.

Gymteacherphobia—as good a reason as any for why men don''t work out. Which is to say, there''s no good reason to blow off exercise. Sure, as a whole, we are working long hours. We have families, communities, friends who need us. We have no time to exercise, and frankly, it''s not a priority.

And yet, three hours of exercise per week—that''s 1.8 percent of your time—is all you need to be healthy and strong. Compare that with the 20-plus hours of television you watch in a week (yes, the U.S. TV-consumption average now exceeds 3 hours a day). And so, year after year goes by, and the men of America get fatter and lazier.

But we''re starting to sound like your old gym teacher. We know we can''t scare you, or guilt you, or paddle your butt into exercising more. That you''re holding this book suggests you are one of the brilliant who know the benefits and joys of being fit and strong. If so, you''re going to love all this book has to offer. But if you''re new to this, here''s why being fit makes so much sense.

First and foremost, realize that exercise, done right, is pleasure, not pain. Particularly if you do things you enjoy. Running, bicycling, bowling, rowing, throwing a baseball. This is the stuff of life, of laughter, of good times.

Second, the feeling you get after exercise is exquisite. Your body has this calm euphoria about it. Blood is flowing, your breathing is deep, your mind is sharp. It''s hard to explain this post-workout aura, but if you exercise, you know.

Third, exercise lets you eat more. And not just to make up what you burned off during workouts. Toned muscles need more fuel even when they are idling. That means you''ll need more food merely to get through a night of sleep.

Fourth, exercise gives you energy. To stay up late. To play longer. To love better.

Fifth, exercise makes you look great. Your belly flattens, you gain definition, your posture straightens, your demeanor gets confident.

Pretty good list, no? And that doesn''t even include the stuff the doctor will tell you. Like how exercise can help prevent heart disease. Strokes. Cancer. Impotence. Bone degeneration. And on and on.

All for a few hours a week.

The Training Gap

The thing is that most men don''t really know how to exercise. The only training many of us got came from the gym teachers and coaches of our youth. You''re an adult now. You can''t succeed very well in business with an eighth-grade education; how can you succeed at fitness with that level of schooling?

Sure, men have an instinctive knowledge of how to pound a baseball mitt or ride a bike. But a true understanding of what fitness is and how to get it? We men are surprisingly naive. Which is one of the biggest reasons why we wrote The Men''s Health Guide to Peak Conditioning. Men need better information about how to reach their peak fitness levels. Gut instinct won''t do it—no matter how big our guts have become.

For example, it is astounding how many myths and half-truths are widely considered as fact, we discovered in our research. That weight lifting is just for bodybuilders. That stretching isn''t very important. That being sore is good. That you need to consume more salt when you exercise.

We were also struck at how so much instruction presented by books and magazines is "one size fits all," as if a single exercise program will work for most every guy in America. This, too, isn''t right. We all know that every man is different: different goals, preferences, body types, lifestyles, time constraints.

So we set goals for our book. First, to tell the complete, practical truth about exercise—how much time to allot for it, the right way to do it, how much money you should spend on it. And we set out to tell you in as easy, entertaining and actionable a format as possible. Hey, that''s our stock and trade here at Men''s Health.

We also decided to write Peak Conditioning in a way that truly does offer fitness tips for every guy in America. To do this, we sat in a room and brainstormed all the different exercise challenges our readers might encounter. Like living in the country. Or living in the inner city. Or approaching middle age. Or having kids. Or working at a job that takes 50 intense hours of your week. Then we pondered all the goals our readers might have. Like getting better at golf. Recovering from an illness. Improving sexual stamina. Losing weight. Bulking up.

Armed with these lists, we came up with our approach: Offer exercise routines and solutions for roughly three dozen different goals, lifestyles or activities. That way, readers could dip into each situation that is relevant to them and build their own program. Say a guy loves tennis, is 43 years old and needs to lose 25 pounds. He would go to the "Racquet Sports," "The Forties" and "Ridding Fat" chapters to learn the stretches, exercises and strategies to be the best at all three.

Finally, as we pondered all the books and magazines out there that deal with exercise, we came to the conclusion that they were written in a vacuum, as if a guy has unlimited time and resources to achieve a state of peak fitness. So we tried to put exercise in context with the full gamut of modern life. We teach you how to buy equipment. How to make time for exercise. How to stay motivated. How to give a massage. How to eat. How to work out at lunch without changing your clothes. How to teach your kids about exercise. How not to get arrested when riding a mountain bike through city streets. And on and on.

How We Organized the Book

As we said, jumping blindly into an exercise routine just doesn''t work: You need some education first. And that''s what we provide. Part 1, "The Peak Lifestyle," teaches how to make exercise a part of your life with as little effort as possible. Part 2, "Achieving Peak Conditioning," gets into the art and science of exercise—the what, how and why of it all. It''s fascinating reading.

Of course, what good is a workout book without great exercises? In part 3, "Achieving a Peak Body," we go muscle group by muscle group, offering the best exercises for each. These exercises are the ingredients for part 4, "Workouts for Every Scenario," where we go through the nearly three dozen goal- and lifestyle-specific workouts.

Part 5, "Body Maintenance," discusses how to keep your body healthy and sound. In it, we teach how to give a massage, how to avoid injury and how to treat one if one indeed occurs.

We wrap things up with part 6, "Getting Equipped," in which we discuss all the gear you''ll need to achieve your goals.

A word regarding photography: Our approach was to provide instructional photographs each time we introduce a new exercise. If a chapter mentions an exercise previously discussed and you do not know how to do it, take at look at the Reference Points box that accompanies the chapter. It will list where every exercise in that chapter is first detailed.

In all, Peak Conditioning provides nearly 500 photos showing how to stretch, pump and otherwise strengthen your body. Our hope is that you will take this book with you to the gym, the basement, wherever you exercise. If this book stays on your night table, we will consider ourselves failures.

Your First Lesson

In the course of writing Peak Conditioning, we interviewed hundreds of fitness experts, read dozens of books, digested untold number of research papers and studies. We also tested out virtually every exercise on our own to make sure it felt right and was easy to do. We learned a lot of things, one of which is that there is not much consensus about the proper methods or amounts of exercise. For all the research into health and fitness, in many ways, exercise is as much art as science.

Yet we still needed a foundation on which to build the book. And so we established some underlying assumptions and approaches, based on experts'' opinions. Each of these are discussed at length in the pages that follow. But knowing them up front will help you considerably in your quest for success. So consider this roundup of assorted facts and assumptions as your first lesson for achieving peak conditioning.

* The elements of fitness. Every exercise regimen should blend stretching, aerobic activity and strength training. While specific goals—running a marathon or sculpting your body, for example—might emphasize one of the three, it''s still necessary to work in all three aspects to truly be at your peak.

* The way to weight lift. Resistance training benefits everything you do. There''s not a guy in America who shouldn''t be doing it. The trick is to find the right method for you. There''s no such thing as "just doing" bench presses—the outcome of the exercise will vary incredibly based solely on how much weight you use, how many repetitions you do and how much you rest between sets. We''ll be offering five different approaches.

1. Weight lifting for brute strength

2. Weight lifting for general fitness

3. Weight lifting for stamina

4. Weight lifting for body shaping

5. Weight lifting that blends the best of each using what''s known as a periodization
program

It''s your job to decide your personal goals. From there, we''ll teach you what you need to know.

* Machines versus free weights. We are biased toward free weights over machines. One obvious reason is practicality: Many men don''t have access to a gym and would prefer to work out in their basements. For these guys, there is no choice but to buy free weights. Another reason is that free weights test your muscles more fully.

* Proper stretching technique. Unless told otherwise, slowly extend yourself until you feel the appropriate muscle is being stretched, then hold the position for 20 to 30 seconds. Most guys bounce and yank while stretching, or release the stretch after a few seconds. Bad habits.

* How much you need. The minimum amount of exercise time needed per week to gain significant health benefits is three 30-minute sessions, each session on a separate day, many doctors agree. Better yet is to do three days of a well-rounded routine that takes 90 minutes or so. Best of all is to rotate weight-lifting days with aerobic-exercise days.

* The workout sequence. There''s much argument over this one out there in academia, but we''ve come to the conclusion that the best sequence has six parts.

1. Warm-up

2. Stretch

3. Resistance training

4. Aerobic exercise

5. Cooldown

6. Stretch

If you''re doing your weight-lifting and aerobic workouts on separate days, we still advise a warm-up, stretch, cooldown and stretch sequence as part of each day''s workout.

* The appropriate diet. Again, there is lots of debate on this. But our stance is that an active man should derive 60 percent of his calories from carbohydrate, 25 to 30 percent of calories from fat and 10 to 15 percent of calories from protein.

In addition, an active man should drink six to eight eight-ounce glasses of water per day.

Feeling smarter already? All part of the therapy to exorcise the gym-teacher demons from your soul. Peak conditioning is terrific to achieve and even better to sustain. Here is your definitive guide.

Neil Wertheimer

Senior Managing Editor,

Men''s Health Books