Around 50 (!) years ago, I was running some very long distances on Guam, even including one marathon.  It’s a funny thing, though, we often don’t realize how good we were at something until we no longer are.  This certainly applies to me and running!

Over the years, my running has had many stops and starts.  Fortunately, I’ve never given up on it which is the plight of many runners who were competitive high school and college athletes.  I started in rather late at running --- when I was a graduate student --- and did it on my own without a bunch of teammates or a coach to push me along.  Perhaps that’s why I still run today and am still pretty much on my own.  The unique thing about my situation now is that it has become crystal clear to me that it isn’t as easy to get back in shape as it was in the past --- even ten years ago.  My thinking right now is that, if I can once again get into acceptable condition, I’d better stay that way, because it might be impossible to recover again. 

Here in Norwich, NY, my hometown now, we have an annual Thanksgiving 5K run.  I’ve competed in it many times, usually winning first or second place in my age group.  After COVID restrictions were lifted, I again competed in 1981 at 80 years old.  My time was a disgraceful 42:08.  I was in such terrible condition that I had to walk a lot more than I ran.  In 1982, I competed again with a time of 35:29, a major improvement, but I still had to do some walking to finish the race.  This coming Thanksgiving, I’m determined to run the entire race with a time of under 30 minutes.  This will amount to a pace of under 10 minutes/mile.  After that, I vow to never get out of running condition again.  You can hold me to that vow!

Amazingly, in both 1981 and 1982, I won first place in my age group (80 and up).  The reason was simple.  In 1981, there were no other competitors and, in 1982, there was only one other guy whose time was very slow.  It’s a sad fact that, among seniors, there are very few of us that are capable of running a 5K distance --- or even walking it.  I’ll be writing more about the sorry condition of senior citizens in future blog posts and what I hope to do about it --- at least on a local level.
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In December of last year, I had a hernia repaired.  Needless to say, that messed up my fitness activities for a while.  However, I mapped out a “post-surgery” fitness program that I’ve been fairly faithful to since then.  It includes both strength and cardio work.  For cardio, I run and pedal a stationary bike on alternate days of the week.  My feeling is that running at the slow pace I’m stuck with doesn’t do too much for leg strength whereas, when pedaling a bike (of any kind!), it’s easy to make your thighs burn --- something that has to lead to strength gain.  My running program uses the method I described in my first book, The K*I*S*S* Fitness Program.  This program involves a 30-minute “walk/run.”  You start the program walking almost the entire time and gradually replace the walking with running until, ultimately, you’re running the entire 30 minutes.  Sounds like my goal for the 5K, right?  So far, I’m on track.  I’m up to running around 4/5 of the 30-minute time period at the 10-minute pace.  My plan is to be running the whole thing by the end of April.  As soon as I can run the distance, I plan to compete in 5K races.  Actually, my hoped-for time of 30 minutes is very good for an 80+ year old guy --- even though it seems like a snail’s pace to what I’ve done in the past.  That’s the way things go, I guess.  I’ll provide a running update in another month or two.  Stand by…
 

It’s been close to nine years since I last posted on my own fitness activities!  So, there is no shortage of stuff to talk about!  Perhaps the most important thing is that I am still at it.  I recently turned 82 years old and this decade promises to be a challenging one physically.  Sarcopenia --- the loss of muscle with age and its replacement with fat --- has kicked in big time and my former “Mr. America” physique is slowly but surely becoming a thing of the past.  The best that anyone in this situation can do, I fear, is to fight it to the best of his ability in an effort to try to stop the process.  The prevailing medical advice is to exercise, specifically to do strength training.  I don’t always agree with medical advice.  However, in this case, I feel it’s on the money.  I would only add that a compete fitness program also requires aerobic exercise.  In addition to our muscles and bones (osteoporosis is another problem that senior citizens face that can be countered by strength exercise), we must keep our cardiovascular system in shape too.  So, the bottom line is that, in-so-far-as exercise is concerned, it’s business as usual for me.  Getting old should not be an excuse for stopping.  We should --- no, must (!) --- exercise as hard as we safely can if we are to maximize our potential to remain physically fit to a ripe old age.

For me, “business as usual” means two workouts almost every day.  In the morning, after I down at least a half-quart of diluted orange juice to rehydrate myself, I either run or exercise on a stationary bike for at least a half hour.  Both are great aerobic exercise.  However, I feel that the bike is also a good strength workout for the legs.  I do interval work that leaves my thighs burning --- just like pedaling up a long hill on a real live bike.  I do my upper body strength workout before dinner.  It centers on the use of the K*I*S*S* Exercisers that I have developed.  There’s a lot more info about them elsewhere in this website.  I do a bunch of sit-ups beforehand both as part of a warm-up and because I feel that, except for a few very lucky people, one’s abs require special attention.  Even though I’m basically a skinny guy, I still pay extra attention to my midsection.   
  
And, remember, all this exercise stuff improves our internal health too.  Our body is a system.  We eat healthy natural food to load our blood with the nutrients our body requires for its health.  Exercise moves this blood to every cell in our body in an efficient manner.  I already mentioned that exercise can be at least a partial cure for certain diseases.  Cardiovascular issues, sarcopenia, and osteoporosis are three; I’m sure there are more…
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Plenty more to talk about.  See you in my next post.   

It’s almost eight years since my last post!  Time flies!  I WILL get back to posting on a regular basis.  A lot has happened here that makes it important for me to do so.  All that will have to wait for my next post which, I promise, will be very soon.  Since my last post was about my daughter, Margie, and her swimming efforts in elementary school, it might be fitting to briefly summarize how swimming went for her in high school.  She is now a student at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, majoring in International Studies.

Margie worked hard at her swimming while in high school.  She did well, winning a number of awards in the process and we are very proud of her accomplishments.  She was a member of two relay teams that set school records and came within a fraction of a second of setting a school record in the 100 fly.  Not only did she compete for her high school team, she also competed for the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) national team in a number of international competitions.  She has dual citizenship by virtue of the fact that her mother is a citizen of the FSM.  She set many records that still stand for the FSM.  To be brief, her FSM swimming bought her to meets in the FSM, Papua New Guinea, China, South Korea, and Argentina.  The Argentina meet, the Youth Olympic Games in 2018, was, perhaps, the most memorable.  She was the female swimmer sent to the meet to represent the FSM and proudly was the flag-bearer for the country.  I suspect that it was an experience of a lifetime for her.  There is a chance that she can represent the FSM in the coming 2024 Senior Olympic Games to be held in Japan.  However, she will have to train very hard to make that happen.  There is keen competition amongst the FSM female swimmers for that coveted honor.  Margie came very close to representing the FSM at the 2020 Senior Olympic Games.

I should briefly note that Margie’s older brother, Bruce, graduated from Niagara University with both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Criminal Justice.  He was almost a straight “A” student.  He is now a Deputy Sheriff with the Chenango County Sheriff’s office. 
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That takes care of the family stuff.  In my next post, I’ll get to work catching you up on my own fitness activities…          

One of my best ab workouts from many years ago was probably about as simple as you can get.  It goes along with what I said in my previous post about sit-ups being the natural --- and, therefore, the best --- abdominal exercise.  One problem with sit-ups, however, is that, when you get good at them, you can do them by the thousands.  In this situation you have to make them harder!  One way to do this is to do “Roman chair” sit-ups.  You do them by sitting across a bench with your feet under something heavy.  Then you do a sit-up, the difference from a conventional sit-up being that you hyperextend your abdominals and touch your head to the floor behind you.  There are many variations of this.  One that I used when the photo was taken was to do Roman chair sit-ups on my basement stairs!  I had devised a way of locking my feet to a step below me and I could hyperextend as much as I wanted.  If I recall correctly, I also held a barbell plate to my chest when I did them.  A famous body builder from my college days, Irwin (Zabo) Koszewski, always won best abs at contests.  His formula for success?  Roman chair sit-ups.  Lots of them!   

When it comes to stomach exercises, sit-ups are king!  Forget about crunches.  Forget about hanging from a bar and raising your legs.  Sure, there are a lot of ways to exercise your abs.  But, sit-ups are the natural movement of the human body that strengthens your abdominals. Let’s face it, whenever you rise up from a lying down position, you do a sit-up.  That’s the motion that your abdominal muscles are there to do.  So, if you want to develop them, treat them like any other muscle on your body.  You just move them in their natural way.  But, you do lots of them and/or you add resistance to the movement.  As far as sit-ups are concerned, it’s possible to do thousands of them.  You can make them harder by holding a barbell plate to your chest, by using an inclined bench, and a few other ways as well.
 
Around seven or eight years ago I got fanatical about doing sit-ups and I recall that I used to do them for a half hour or so while holding a 50 pound barbell to my chest.  Once, back then, I did sit-ups with no weight for roughly an hour and twenty minutes.  Around 1,500 of them.  Marian held my feet down and I watched a movie while I did them.  Aside from the movie, it was pretty boring.  I finally stopped because my shins hurt!  Marian had probably been holding my feet a little too tightly!  My abs were fine.  But, I welcomed the excuse to stop!  There are a lot of photos of me taken at that time in my book, the K*I*S*S* Fitness Program.  At 66 years old my abs still looked pretty good!  Now, at 73, it's a little harder to keep my abs in shape as this old body of mine wants to replace muscle with fat.  All I can do is fight it…
 
In both my exercise books, the K*I*S*S* Fitness Program and the K*I*S*S* Weight Training Program, I use sit-ups as the exercise for strengthening a person’s abs.  The approaches I take in the two books are different.  But, the exercise is the same.  Again, sit-ups are king!   

In my last post I noted that I was running again after a layoff of nearly a month.  Since then I’m now happy to report that I’m again doing my strength exercises.  As I’ve emphasized in all my eBooks, it’s imperative that you get both endurance and strength exercise.  The endurance exercise is so important for the health of your cardiovascular system and the strength work makes your entire life easier.  Both of them make you look good and feel good and help the pounds to slip away if you’re overweight (more about weight loss coming in future posts!).  

Anyway, now, in addition to running, I’m working out with weights regularly.  I’m following the program in my book, the K*I*S*S* Weight Training Program.  In a nutshell, it consists of working out four days per week using a split routine.  Half the exercises are done on Monday and Thursday and the other half are done on Tuesday and Friday.  I like this arrangement for a number of reasons.  One is that there is some flexibility built into it.  For example, last week I couldn’t work out on Tuesday. No problem.  I simply worked out on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday instead of the normal arrangement.  Don’t fall into the trap of letting a missed workout disappoint you to the extent that you stop exercising all together.  In my book I talk a lot about strategies for overcoming occasional laziness or missed workouts.  I’ve seen so many guys abandon their fitness program because of this. You don’t want to be one of them!
 
I only do two or three exercises each workout --- in addition to sit-ups.  This takes me between a half hour and an hour to get done.  It’s a good workout and I feel it’s more than enough to make significant gains in strength.  In my case I also do some extra warm-up exercises.  This might take another 10 to 20 minutes.  Warming up becomes more and more important the older you get.  You don’t want to strain a muscle or, worse yet, become a candidate for a joint replacement.  
 
There’s a lot happening here with respect to fitness in this family of mine.  In my next post I think I’ll talk about the weight training program I just started Margie on.  She’s 12 years old now and has a lot of potential as both a sprinter and swimmer --- and, I think, as a power lifter!    


 
    

In my last post I indicated that I now have the problem of getting in shape --- again.  The hardest thing about exercising is always getting started.  It doesn't matter if you're a beginner or someone who has laid off and wants to get back at it again.  I'm in that boat now --- and I've been in it countless times before.  The way to get started is to simply do something --- ANYTHING!  Memorize the motto at the bottom of this page!  If you do something, you will always feel better afterward.  Just get started!

So, that's where I'm at right now.  I'm goofing off a little with my strength work (more about that in my next post), but am seriously walking and/or running for a half hour almost every day.  I'm fortunate in that we live on a large piece of land so that, at least two thirds of the year, I can run in my own back yard.  And, that's what I'm doing now.  Running back and forth on a fairly level course across our property.  When I'm in better shape, I'll change direction 90 degrees and run up and down the hill!  My hope is to again be competitive in my age group in 5K races.  Every year there is a "Turkey Trot" here in Norwich, NY, around Thanksgiving time.  So, I have around three months to get in shape.  My objective is an eight minute pace.  We'll see...    

In my training I'm more or less using the procedure for developing endurance that I talk about in the K*I*S*S* Fitness Program book.  It's very simple.  You walk and/or run for a half hour.  As you progress, you gradually replace the walking with running until you're running for the entire time period.  The book goes through a very  structured program for advancing (that's the engineer in me!).  However, this is the basic idea.  I'm prejudiced, of course; but it seems that this method works great.  I feel that I've already made progress in the few weeks that I've been at it again.  Here's hoping that I'll achieve my goal for the coming Thanksgiving race.  I'll let you know what happens!

I didn't mention it in the book but a half hour period of walking and/or running is just about perfect for training for 5K races.  A fast guy will complete the race in under 20 minutes.  Older folks are happy to complete it in a half hour.  The eight minute pace (per mile) that I'm aiming for will amount to around 25 minutes.  So, you can see that running for a half hour per day is pretty good training for this distance.  A thirty minute run is also a very reasonable time period to devote to running every day.  It's not very long but it's still long enough for a person to obtain significant cardiovascular benefit.  

OK, if you haven't started running yet, get with it.  Pick up a copy of the K*I*S*S* Fitness Program if you feel you need help along the way. 

Welcome to the K*I*S*S* Blog!  I hope that what I share here will be interesting and useful to you --- and sometimes even a little entertaining.  Mostly I'll talk about what's new with me and the family as it pertains to health and fitness.  Sometimes I'll get a little nostalgic and reminisce about all this from times past.  I plan to make a post every weekend and will do my best to make them worth your while to read.  Of course, I'll welcome your comments on what I write.  However, I'm afraid that I'll have to screen comments before allowing them to post.  It's unfortunate but some comments on blogs can be inappropriate or are simply useless spam.  Please refrain from promoting websites or products in your comments. 

We just returned from a three week trip to Micronesia, my wife, Marian's, home and where our kids Win and Margie were born.  Win and Margie represented Chuuk as swimmers in the 2014 Micronesian Games held in Pohnpei.  They didn't bring home any medals but Margie came within tenths of a second from a bronze medal in one event.  Not bad for a 12 year old competing against adults...   

Now I have the problem of getting back in shape after three weeks with almost no exercise, not enough sleep, and food that violates many of my dietetic principles.  However, that's life.  I'm back in the groove again and it will take me another three weeks to get into the condition I was in before we left.  I've been through this sort of thing many times before.  All you can do in this situation is get back on track living the way you know you should live.  As far as exercise is concerned, I've decreased the poundages I handle in my weight training routine and will give myself a few weeks to get back to where I was before we went on vacation.  I'll keep you posted on progress...