TMI - Too Much Intensity

You know what our problem is on a physical level?

We don't understand the notion of intensity.

Our notion of intensity is defined based around the numbers on a treadmill. We think to ourselves, jack this number up and keep it there, and the longer we keep it there the better we're going to be.

The problem with this? The problem is that it's far too much stress for far too long. Intensity works best in brief, short spurts of activity. Lifting weights, sprinting, things like that. Driving yourself down into the ground like that has a tendency to cause stresses all throughout your body, beyond the scale of what it can actually heal.

In the case of running on a treadmill, you're flirting with overuse injuries as you keep crashing down from foot to foot. If it's a heel strike pattern, you're smashing your knees. If it's toe strike pattern, you're flirting with injuries in your foot.

This isn't even getting into the cortisol issue. Cortisol is a great hormone, not bad in and of itself. It triggers adrenaline, and in the proper doses is incredibly beneficial. The problem, though, is that we end up dosing ourselves with far more cortisol than we actually need.

It's not that the substance is bad. It's the dosage.

In the doses that we expose ourselves to, cortisol causes a number of different problems:

• It leads to proteolysis, the breaking down of muscular tissue into smaller amino acid chains.
• It reduces bone formation, creating a metabolic environment that favors osteoporosis.
• It increases blood pressure.
• Most importantly: it interferes with your sleep, resulting in a messed-up hormonal reset. The growth hormone you secrete when you sleep and the rebalancing between estrogen and testosterone is impinged. You get less restful sleep, and you're weaker in your daily life.

You end up in a vicious cycle - you're weaker, so you have to work harder, which stresses you more, which makes your sleep worse, which makes you weaker.

It's not a happy place to be. But we tend to think that we have to be there. We can't rest. Rest is for the weak and the dead, and we're neither one of those, are we?

Here's reality: intensity is only one side of the coin. There is another side as well. Becoming truly fit requires you to understand both sides.

What is the other side?

Leave your thoughts below, and stay tuned...

What I Learned in the Three-fold Land

I don't know if y'all have noticed this, but comics are pretty popular right now. It's the age of the nerd. What was once discussed in hushed tones in brick basements has become a pop-cultural norm.

It's an exciting time, filled with all kinds of interesting discussion. The ethics and morality of our heroes is a constant subject of debate on comedy websites and philosophy courses. The reality of fandom is also becoming a subject of discussion, particularly with regard to questions of feminism and diversity. It's fascinating stuff, it really is.

What might surprise most of my fellow nerds, though, is how this is being appropriated in the fitness industry.

No, for real! This is totally a thing. I think I can point out to you almost exactly where it started happening, too.

Never you mind the fact that he was lean to start.

Everybody's seen 2011's Thor, right? Chris Hemworth's transformation was a jaw-dropper, from an aesthetic standpoint. He was one of the most recent actors to develop the physique, but he's also really the first one to do so in a post social-media world.

(An argument could be made for Christian Bale in 2005 with Batman Begins, but he's such a transformer that from an industry perspective, it's kind of mundane).

And it's not a dudes-only kind of thing. You're seeing a lot of it happening with females who act in these films. Jennifer Lawrence is a particular favorite of mine, given that she had to undergo some serious strength training to prepare for the role of Katniss Everdeen.

Off to undoubtedly do a thing involving strength

And you know, she's actually a good spring board for what I wanted to talk about. Comics are not the first place to draw inspiration from when it comes to physique and physical capability. You can find it in literature too.

I mean, look at Lord of the Rings. In The Two Towers, you have Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas running down a bunch of Uruks across the plains of Rohan. They not only run this distance, day and night, but are in shape such that when they catch the Uruks, they are prepared to fight and slay.

How badass is that?

Me, though, I didn't draw my inspiration from them. I drew mine from Robert Jordan's Aiel.

Go ahead. Say hello. Don't ask them to dance.

The Aiel, in case you didn't read the Wheel of Time series, are a sort of composite culture. Think a mix of Native American, Zulu, and Celtic Ireland. They were my first real badasses, and to this day I have a soft spot for them.

Which I swear has nothing to do with the fact that they're basically desert ninjas.

Beyond feats of superhuman endurance - running 20 miles a day faster than a horse, with energy left to fight at the end - what really stands out for them is their culture. They have a complicated system of honor and obligation that nobody can make heads or tails of. This is something that, as they become more a part of the rest of the world, generates much comment.

They are savage. They are weird.

As for me, I think there's something to be learned from in that.

So often, in the real world, we hear that we shouldn't worry about getting in shape, that we're 'fine as we are.' As if the norm is for us to become obese, insulin-resistant, dependent upon a flawed and broken system that is only interested in creating more problems so that it can solve them.

Forget that. If that's normal, I embrace strangeness, and the alien ideas that come with it. We are all of us made of sterner stuff than the broken culture tells us we are.

Still, I can't imagine I'm the only one who's ever read a book and thought, man, that was cool. So let me open this up for conversation: who are some fictional badasses that inspired you? What made them stick out in your mind?

Futility, Thy Name is English!

I saw an article today, talking about the end of the English major. It was about how there are less and less of the students actually undertaking this field of study. It's going the way of the Latin major, a useless holdover of a bygone age.

This does not surprise me.

Before I offer my opinion, let me show you my circumstances. I attended North Carolina State University, majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. I wasn't particularly in love with NCSU over any other college, save for two things: one, that I went to high school just down the street from there and two, that they reached out to me while I was in high school. I was the first person in my family to attend college, and the first to graduate.

To come back to it: this article is a rallying cry. It's not over, the author says. English is a good thing, and it's worth teaching.

I agree with the heart of this concept, on the whole. But I don't think it really applies to me.

I'm a writer. My job is to tell stories. Some of them are not fictional, but all of them hopefully have some element of the truth in them. So here's a true thing: my being a writer is not now, nor has it ever been, defined by me having a piece of paper. I could have gone off to be an auto mechanic, and sat down at my computer at the end of the day with grease in my fingernails, stinking of sweat and motor oil. But the story would still come out if the words were in me. Like they do now.

Here I am. I am a borderline bro. I have a total man crush on my biceps. I fret over my workout programming and how many pull ups I can do. My hands are calloused from hanging from the bar, from swinging the kettlebell. But the words come, and I can bleed on the page with the best of them.

Did I really need to spend tens of thousands of dollars just to learn to do something that I was doing already anyway?

I don't know. I don't claim to have any answers for anyone, here. But if I don't need the Major to be who I need to be, and my freaking vocation is tied to it, then what use is it really?

(Perhaps the argument can be made in the value of English Major as the shelter of those souls who find themselves in the works of the past, in Shakespeare and Chaucer and Bradbury. But keep in mind: all that means is that you're running away from the real world, choosing to engage in an extremely limited fandom and asking to get paid lots and lots of money for it. At best, it's an extremely sanctimonious con: you write your fanfiction, call it a thesis, and everyone loves you. At worst, it's cowardice, taking the wonder and beauty of story and hiding it in an ivory tower where you don't have to engage with anyone, save those young minds too terrified to show you that maybe Jane Austen wasn't the end of literature. Then again, I may not know. I had very limited access to my professors. They were too busy reading Bronte to comment).