Lifting dumbbells

I notice various things at the gym and one is that some people work out with dumbbells holding them like this:

How not to do it

They swing the weight up and down. This is better than nothing, of course, but it seems to me a bad idea, the reason being that the lifter is greatly assisted by the momentum of the weight.

How to do it

In the latter example the lifting is more difficult, thus more beneficial. It’s possible I could be wrong about this, and if so I would appreciate any comments below.

Keeping fit

It’s tempting to think that most people who play sports are not as bright as the rest of us. I say “the rest of us”, but they are probably in a majority. The temptation arises because sport has a lot in common with religion. It also arises because no physical activity requires the same intellectual ability as, say, the study of molecular biology or quantum physics. Those who are attracted to such physical activity at school are often the baser, less refined, types, who are accepting of the “sport as religion” mentality, who like cliques, are inclined towards bullying, and towards sport because, quite frankly, it is the only thing they can do: they are not as inclined towards intellectual pursuits.

Once these types begin to dominate the playing field or the gym, a vicious circle of a kind begins to develop and more cerebral individuals become disinclined to partake in these activities. They would rather stay out of the way.

In the case of competitive sports, I see this as no bad thing. I don’t like competition between people particularly, but rather competition against ideals and against oneself and one’s own best performance. But in the case of general physical fitness it is not a good thing, because physical fitness is important for two reasons:

1. Health
2. Aesthetic appeal

1) is obviously more important than 2), but 2) is certainly nice to have and undeniably has value, whether we like it or not.

In my case, I was early in my life disinclined to participate in any sports or even fitness, partly because of the reasons outlined above and also because of ill health. But now I’m catching up. It is not fair that the intellectually challenged should have a dominion on fitness. It’s worth checking all boxes. Outside of a school environment there are no cliques, you don’t know anyone in a gym apart from those who you want to know. If people misbehave they are disciplined. It’s a different ball game.

There’s a satisfying feeling of “claiming back” what should have been mine, were the environment not polluted by the less intelligent. But this brings me on to my second point: exceptions to the rule.

There are exceptions to most rules (note the “most” – there are exceptions to this one too). Two famous stars spring to mind as having been in peak physical fitness and as being of obvious high intelligence too:

• Dolph Lundgren
• Arnold Schwarzenegger

Dolph Lundgren, made famous by his role as a towering muscleman in the film Rocky IV, has a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering, studied at MIT and speaks more than five languages.

Schwarzenegger is to a large degree an example in how to live one’s life. He is a man who has systematically set himself difficult goals throughout his life and proceeded to meet them all, Terminator style, ending up with the Governorship of California.

One little-known fact is that Schwarzenegger was a self-made millionaire through business before he even began his acting career. This, at the same time as winning Mr Olympia seven times, until he simply became bored of winning it.

An ex-girlfriend said of Schwarzenegger:

“He’s as much a self-made man as it’s possible to be – he never got encouragement from his parents, his family, his brother. He just had this huge determination to prove himself.”

This is reflected in his politics. Coming from a poor village near Graz in Austria, Schwarzenegger knew from an early age that he wanted to go to America, the “land of opportunity” and saw values he respected in Republicanism. This view, incidentally, is shared by few other actors, who are famously (or notoriously!) liberal-minded. While he was somewhat arrogant in his youth, one has to respect such a self-made man. At least, I do.

What is good, of course, about people like Schwarzenegger and Lundgren is that they are rounded. Arguably extreme bodybuilders like Schwarzenegger take things too far, but at least he did not entirely neglect other areas of his life. Becoming a millionaire by the age of 30, while training as hard as he did, is not an easy thing, and he has proved further intellectual ability by serving as a politician (it’s easy to be cynical, but that is no mean feat either).

The lesson then – one both Aristotle and Seneca taught – is to be rounded and not entirely neglect the physical or the intellectual. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson too advised:

“Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.”

“Jocks” are stupid and coarse, but “nerds” or “geeks”, though preferable, also have failings in that they often take little care over their health or appearance, and sometimes even embrace or celebrate their pariah status and their under-achievement in the physical and aesthetic realms, as if this were some kind of achievement in itself.

If the less intellectual of society did not tend to dominate physical activity early in life, the task of achieving the required balance would be made both more attractive and more enjoyable  for the more intellectual. But it is never too late to catch up, beat these people at their own game and then have two boxes checked: the intellectual and the physical… while they can only ever have one.

Gym Sheet

Since November I have been visiting a gym here in London three times a week for the spinning class, and I’ve begun weight lifting. I have various reflections to make on these topics so will open a category here called “fitness“, but for now I just want to offer my Gym Sheet for public download.

This is a sheet which can be used to monitor which machines you use, how many sets you perform and how many repetitions per set. If you’re going to the gym more than three times a week, as I am, you don’t need to take this sheet every time, but you might want to take it along and complete it once per week. Take the previous week’s sheet too, so you have something to compare against each time.

The Gym Sheet is at version 2.2 and in PDF format (requiring the free Adobe Acrobat Reader). It’s optimised for colour printing on A4 paper, with room for holes so you can gather sheets in a binder and monitor your progress.

If you find this sheet useful do let me know. I will post updates as I amend it.

Gym Sheet (PDF, 65.27 KB) — Downloaded 67 times