Why we made the bid in the first place

…and now we arrive at the slack time, that couple of weeks between the end of the Olympics and start of the Paralympics where everyone gets a chance to relax, wind down a little, and take time away from being as resolutely enthusiastic and patriotic as we have been required to for the last two weeks (or a lot longer if you factor in the Royal Wedding and Queen’s Jubilee). However, it’s also an undoubtedly good time to reflect on what have been, whatever your viewpoint, a very eventful last couple of weeks.

To my mind, and certainly to those of the Olympic organisers, these games have been a success. Whether you feel that it was all a colossal waste of money (although how anyone can think that of an event featuring the Queen parachuting out of a helicopter alongside James Bond is somewhat puzzling to me), or the single most amazing thing to grace the earth this side of its existence (in which case you could probably do with a nice lie down at the very least), its motto has been to ‘Inspire a Generation’. From a purely numerical perspective, it appears to have worked- sports clubs of all sorts up and down the land, even in niche areas such as handball, have been inundated with requests from enthusiastic youngsters after membership, and every other sentence among BBC pundits at the moment appears to include the phrase ‘the next Mo Farah/Usain Bolt/Ben Ainslie/Chris Hoy’ (delete as applicable).

However, I think that in this respect they are missing the point slightly, but to explain what I mean I’m going to have to go on a bit of a tangent. Trust me, it’ll make sense by the end.

So…, what is the point of sport? This has always been a tricky one to answer, the kind of question posed by the kind of awkward people who are likely to soon find an answer flying swiftly towards them in foot-shaped form. In fact, I have yet to hear a convincing argument as to exactly why we watch sport, apart from that it is for some unexplained reason compelling to do so. But even if we stick to the act of participation, why do we bother?

Academics and non-sportspeople have always had a whole host of reasons why not, ever since the days that they were the skinny, speccy one last to be picked in the dreaded playground football lineup (I’ve been there- not fun). Humans are naturally lazy (an evolutionary side-effect of using our brains rather than brawn to get ahead), and the idea of running around a wet, muddy field expending a lot of precious energy for no immediately obvious reason is obviously unappealing. Then we consider that the gain of sport, the extent to which it contributes to making the world a better place is, in material terms at least, apparently quite small. Humankind’s sporting endeavours use up a lot of material for equipment, burn a lot of precious calories that could be used elsewhere around the world to help the starving, and often demand truly vast expenses in terms of facilities and, in the professional world, salaries. Even this economic consideration does not take into account the loss in income presented by the using up of acres upon acres of valuable land for sports facilities and pitches. Sport also increases the danger factor of our lives, with a heavy risk of injury ranging from minor knocks to severe, debilitating disabilities (such as spinal injury), all of which only adds to the strain on health services worldwide and further increases the ‘cost’ of sport to the world.

So why do we bother with it at all? Why is it that the question governments are asking themselves is “why aren’t enough kids playing sport?” rather than ‘why are so many of them doing so’? Simple reason is that, from every analytical perspective, the benefits of sport far outweigh the costs. 10% of the NHS’ entire budget is spent on dealing with diabetes, just one of a host of health problems associated with obesity, and if just half of these cases were to disappear thanks to a healthier lifestyle it would free up around an extra £5 billion- by 2035, diabetes could be costing the country around £17 billion unless something changes. Then there are the physical benefits of sport, the stuff it enables us to do. In the modern world being able to run a kilometre and a half in four minutes might seem like a pointless skill, but when you’re being chased down the street by a potential mugger (bad example I know, but it’ll do) then you’d definitely rather be a fit, athletic runner than slow, lumbering and overweight. Sport is also one of the largest commercial industries on earth, if not on a professional level then at least in terms of manufacture and sale of equipment and such, worth billions worldwide each year and providing many thousands or even millions of jobs (although some of the manufacturing does admittedly have a dubious human rights record). The health benefits of sport go far beyond the physical & economic too, as both the endorphins released during physical activity and the benefits of a healthy lifestyle are known to increase happiness & general well-being, surely the ultimate goals of all our lives. But perhaps most valuable of all is the social side of sport. Whilst some sports (or, more specifically, some of the &%^$£*)@s involved) have a reputation for being exclusive and for demoralising hopeful youngsters, sport when done properly is a powerful force for social interaction & making friends, as well as being a great social equaliser. As old Etonian, heir his father’s baronet and Olympic 110m hurdles finalist Lawrence Clarke recently pointed out in an interview ‘On the track it doesn’t matter how rich your family is or where you’ve come from or where you went to school; all that matters is how fast you can get to the finish line’ (I’m paraphrasing, but that was the general gist). Over the years, sport has allowed mixing between people of a myriad of different genders and nationalities, allowing messages of goodwill to spread between them and changing the world’s social and political landscape immeasurably. This Olympics was, for example, the first in which Palestinian and Saudi Arabian women competed, potentially paving the way for increased gender equality in these two countries.

Clearly, when we all get behind it, sport has the power to be an immense tool for good. But notice that nowhere in that argument was any mention made of being the physical best, being on top of the world, breaking world records because, try as one might, the value of such achievement is solely that of entertainment and the odd moment of inspiration. Valuable though those two things surely are, they cannot begin to compare with the incalculable benefits of a population, a country, a world united by sport for the good of us all. So, in many respects, the success of an Olympic games should not be judged by whether it inspires a new superstar, but rather by how it encourages the guy who turns up with him at that first training session, who might never be that good a competitor… but who carries on turning up anyway. The aim of top-flight sport should not be to inspire the best. It should simply be to inspire the average.

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The back, the tits and the showy bits

OK, time for part 3 of my current series on working out without the need for a gym. For all my general hints and tips, check out my last post- today I’m going to be listing techniques and exercises for working the muscle groups of the upper body, starting with…

PECTORALS (PECS) & TRICEPS
Where: The chest- or ‘boobs’ as one guy I work out with sometimes insists on referring to them. The chest is the muscle group most associated with posturing and aesthetic effect, and as such is one of the most worked by gym goers. Whilst most people tend to have a rather underdeveloped chest, it is a very useful group once they are built as they are able to take the work off other parts of the arm and shoulder. Triceps are found on the back of the upper arm, and are used purely to straighten the arm (pivoting mostly around the elbow).
Exercise: The chest is used as a way of levering the arms around the shoulder joint, pulling them from out to in and straightening them. Thus, most chest exercises are based around the straightening of the arm, and are often adapted forms of exercises designed to work the triceps. One of the best, if done properly, are press-ups (or push-ups).
Press-ups are much-maligned as an exercise, usually because they are done improperly. However, because they can vary so much in difficulty depending on your technique, they can get harder and harder as you get stronger and stronger so that you keep on progressing. Everyone knows the basic motion of press-ups; you lie face down on the ground, arms by your sides, and lift yourself upwards by extending your arms whilst keeping your body straight (this is especially important). This then gets repeated several times, your chest ideally going down to a height of about the width of a fist off the ground (if it’s really too hard for you to begin with then you can go down less far, but you should really try not to).  However, the variability comes from your arm position. The easiest position to do, and what you should start with if you find press-ups difficult, is with your hands as wide by your sides as is comfortable- this is quite an easy, short range of motion that uses all your muscles, so is nice and easy. Once you feel comfortable with those (if you can do 20 of them in a single set without a break, that’s usually a good indicator that it’s time to move on), start trying them with your hands getting steadily further inwards, until they are directly below your shoulders. To work your chest from this position, move your hands down a little so that they are around your rib area, and do press-ups with your arms bending outwards- after a set you should feel your pectorals pulling at your sternum (breastbone). To work the triceps more, bend and extend your arms so they stay parallel to the direction of your body (warning- this is very difficult the first time you try it). If this ever gets too easy (which is kinda unlikely), then try putting your hands in a triangle directly below your chest, or even trying them one-handed (which is easier with your legs spread wide for stability). If they ever get too easy for working your chest, then try  moving your hands lower or loading a backpack up with weight. There are some even more athletic alternatives, but I could talk about this forever. 45 second rests over 3 sets of whatever you can do should be all that’s needed.

BICEPS & BACK
Where: Biceps are at the front of the upper arms, the opposite side of the bones to the triceps. They are used for bending the arm about the elbow, and for flexing in front of mirrors and the easily-impressed. The part of the back I am interested is the upper part, between the shoulders and covering the trapezius (below the neck), latissimus dorsi (across the back below the shoulder blades, and the underarms, pulling the arm in to rotate around the shoulder) and a myriad of others that I can’t name or identify.
Exercise: I stick by my principle and say that you won’t need any gym equipment for this- however, you will need a backpack and a tree. Said tree does not have to be huge, but has to have a limb going horizontally with some space beneath it that you can reach, hang from and get off from without too much difficulty (this is a really good excuse for finding any good climbing trees around where you live), because here we’re going to be talking about pull-ups. (It doesn’t have to be a tree, but they’re probably the most accessible, free solution) For all of this, 3 sets of whatever you can manage (but keep it regular), separated by minute rests, will do.
The majority of the population probably lack the strength to complete a single pull-up, and to be honest I don’t blame you- until 2 years ago I couldn’t either. So your backpack will once again come in useful- load it up with weight and do some bicep curls with it to start off with. Holding the bag in both hands (or do one hand each if that’s too easy and your bag won’t take more), let your arms hang by your sides and, ensuring that you do not lean back, twist your body or move your elbows (they should be around the hip area), raise the bag up, rotating around the elbow, up to your chest (or until your elbows form a 90 degree angle if you can’t do that too easily). Do 2 sets to destruction (as man as you can), separated by a minute’s rest. After a few weeks (or whatever) of that, you should feel some improvement in your arm strength, so it’s time to move on to pull-ups. To start with, stick to chin-ups, as these will use your (by now quite strong) biceps mainly and work a few other muscles more gently to prepare them for some heavier exercises. Hang from your tree limb with your arms straight and hands in a ‘palms towards you’ grip, and pull yourself up so that your chin clears the limb. Then, lower yourself down a little, at least until your forehead is below the limb, and then raise once more. Some people like to leave their legs straight, others tuck them behind them crossed together, but don’t whatever you do use them to swing yourself up. As you get more proficient, extend the length of your pulls- start by going down so that your elbows form a 90 degree angle, and eventually progress to ‘full arm’ (extending your arms back to straight before pulling up). As a general rule with pull-ups of all sorts, if you can do 12 with relative ease in one way then it’s time to vamp up the difficulty. If you can do full-arm chin-ups, then start mixing them up with narrow pronated pull-ups; these are exactly the same as chin-ups except with your hands in a pronated grip (palms facing away from you). This works your biceps less and your back, especially your trapezius, more. Another thing- if you’re finding that the last inch or so of the pull-up is really tough, then it probably means that your lats are weak (which is not unusual). To work those specifically, try to touch your chest to the tree limb when doing your exercise- you can also try leaning backwards, endeavouring to keep your back straight, in a dead hang position (just hanging with straight arms).
If you are able to do around 8 of both narrow pronated and chin-ups (full-arm) without a break, then firstly well-done; if you’re doing your technique right and are not a dwarf stick insect then you should have built an impressive set of biceps by now. However, to work your upper back more (an underappreciated, useful and rather impressive muscle group), then it’s time to move on to wider pull-ups. These will require a slightly thicker tree limb that is able to support a wider grip without wobbling. If you can find one, then hang with your arms slightly wider than shoulder’s width apart and pull up with the same motion. If your back is weak (which it probably will be- everyone’s is) then these should be harder, but persevere and you should see definite improvements. Sternum pull-ups are slightly harder variations of these in which you lean back a little as you lift yourself and try to bring the top of your sternum (leaning back), close to the tree limb- if you really want to challenge yourself, on the way down try to push yourself out away from the limb a little and feel the burn as you descend slowly and controlledly!
Finally, for more work on the back itself (especially the V-shape of the shoulder blades), try wide-grip pull-ups which (you guessed it) are the same but with a wider grip. And, if you really want to give your biceps a killing, try the odd one-arm pull-up to mix things up a bit- if you can do one of those with a set of horizontal shoulders, every gym-goer on the planet will salute you.

OK… ah. 1500 words. Sorry about that- there was a lot to get through. Ah well, no matter, I’ll just have to do another one! Monday’s post will feature a bit on forearm work, and a full-body exercise that even a seasoned gym-goer probably won’t have heard of, as well as a little more general advice. See you then.

Muscle time

OK, time for part two of my ‘gym-less workouts’ guide, this time dealing with the important stuff- muscular strength. Strength is a fairly blanket term, covering every one of the (numerous) muscle groups, different motions and the various aspects of size, explosive power, maximum strength and endurance. The general rule that applies to pretty much any exercise is that less reps on a higher load (so more weight, more difficult technique, doing the motion in a slower, more controlled fashion etc.) will build more power and strength, whereas more reps on a lower load will build lean, wiry muscle built for speed and endurance. It’s also important, as with fitness exercises, to do a quick warm-up to ensure your muscles are ready for work- this generally takes the form of a few very easy exercises just to get them moving and the blood flowing. A quick note on sets and reps too- it is standard practice among gym goers to do exercises in ‘sets’ (normally three of them, but any number from 1-5 is fine), each of them containing a fixed number of repetitions, or ‘reps’ of that exercise. Each set is separated by a break of anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes. This way of working allows you to do more stuff than you could in a single sitting, but the resting and then reworking of your muscles will also pay dividends in terms of effectiveness. I have tried to offer some advice as to the amount you should be doing, but adjust to whatever feels right for you. Try to set yourself small, achievable targets to work towards, as these can be the difference between somebody who turns into a muscle-bound hunk to just a bloke who works out and always looks the same way.

One final thing- it’s not good to go and blow yourself out with a high-intensity session every day. These exercises are probably best done in one big ‘gym session’, and if you cycle through the various exercises, giving that muscle group, rather than your whole body, a rest, then this circuit training will be a great fitness workout too. But they can work just as well done whenever is most convenient, and trying to do a big session every single day will just tire you out to the point at which your muscles can’t recover (and thus can’t build effectively) and you won’t be able to keep up a good intensity. A gym goer will rarely do more than three sessions a week, with rest days spread between them , to ensure maximum effectiveness. Sessions should also be well planned in advance (it makes sense for anyone who wants to get serious about this to plan a weekly routine and just change the number or reps & sets as you improve)- good planning separates those who are always improving and the blokes who go to the gym three times a week for years and never look any different.

OK, now to start on the actual exercises (for which a rucksack will be necessary for a number of the exercises), working from the bottom up:

LEGS
Where: Quadriceps (quads) are located at the front of the thigh, hamstrings (or ‘leg biceps’) at the back and calves down the back of the foreleg, behind the shin bone
Exercise: Run. Or cycle, if that’s more your thing, but to my mind you can’t really do better than running- it’ll do everything. Sprint sets, running as fast as possible over short, 20 metre distances, will work for strength (try sprinting out and then back-pedalling for a good, mixed workout)- sets of 10 sprints, separated by a minute rest, should do nicely, increasing the number of sets you do as you get fitter and stronger. A good run at moderate intensity should will work wonders for both muscle mass and endurance- it should start to hurt from about 10-20 minutes onwards, in both heart and legs, but try to push on through the pain and it’ll be worth it. However, if you feel a stitch coming on then slow to a walk and take a rest for it to subside, otherwise you’ll be in for a very uncomfortable time and you won’t work as effectively. If you can manage regular half-hour runs, at whatever speed you can, that will do nicely
If you really want to work on your leg strength but for some reason don’t want to do sprints (wanting to mix it up a bit is a good reason- laziness is not!), then load up a backpack with as much weight as it can take, and stand with feet shoulders-width apart. To work the quads, squat down as deep as you can, trying as much as you can to keep your feet flat to the floor, and then stand up- if you really want to feel the burn then do so as slowly as you can. Three sets to destruction (as many as you can do), with a 90 second rest between each should work. For calves, just go up onto tiptoes and back down again repeatedly. These should be done as quickly as possible for as long as possible- but make sure your calves are well-stretched beforehand, as they are particularly prone to cramps and pulling. If this is too easy (which it probably will be), try doing it on only one leg at a time, and do lots of fast reps

ABDOMINALS (ABS)
Where: As the name suggests, in the abdominal area- around the belly. These muscles are what form a six pack, and are often hidden by a belly- so if you want to show them off, you’re going to need to lose the flab (which I have yet to do!)
Exercise: There are a huge variety of abdominal exercises you can do- sit-ups, medicine ball drops, leg raises etc.- but one of the most reliable is crunches. Lie with your back flat on the floor, hips and knees forming right-angles (so your shin should be parallel with your back). Grab your ears with your hands (you can let go if you’re used to the motion, but it helps to prevent your arms swinging you up), and sit up very slightly, pulling your shoulder blades just off the floor and touching your elbows to your knees. Then drop back down and repeat. Try to keep your knees in position, and do not pull yourself up with your arms. All abdominal exercises are done in an isotonic fashion (low load, fast motion, high reps), and this is no exception- crunches should be done as fast as you can, each one ideally taking around a second (but if you can’t quite keep up then don’t worry- it’ll come). After 20-30 reps, your belly should start to hurt- keep on pushing until you physically cannot do any more. Then take a 90 second break and do another set to destruction, for as many sets as you can do comfortably.
Another muscle group typically grouped with the abs are the obliques, which are similar muscles down each side of your body. A lot of exercises (and gym goers) tend to ignore them, but they are important nonetheless. A small adaptation to crunches can work the obliques- when lifting yourself off the floor, twist your body so that your right elbow touches your left knee. Then, on the next rep, touch your left elbow to your right knee and so on, continuing to alternate. The same ‘burning’ sensation should be felt down your sides as well as in the belly, which tells you you’re doing a good job.

OK, all that rambling at the start took up quite a lot of room, so I’m going to have to continue this in my next post. Until then- see what you can do on the aerobic and flexibility fronts, and try not to burn yourself out too quickly (advice I have been breaking recently =] ).

The Churchill Problem

Everybody knows about Winston Churchill- he was about the only reason that Britain’s will to fight didn’t crumble during the Second World War, his voice and speeches are some of the most iconic of all time, and his name and mannerisms have been immortalised by a cartoon dog selling insurance. However, some of his postwar achievements are often overlooked- after the war he was voted out of the office of Prime Minister in favour of a revolutionary Labour government, but he returned to office in the 50’s with the return of the Tories. He didn’t do quite as well this time round- Churchill was a shameless warmonger who nearly annihilated his own reputation during the First World War by ordering a disastrous assault on Gallipoli in Turkey, and didn’t do much to help it by insisting that everything between the two wars was an excuse for another one- but it was during this time that he made one of his least-known but most interesting speeches. In it he envisaged a world in which the rapidly accelerating technological advancement of his age would cause most of the meaningful work to be done by machines, and changing our concept of the working week. He suggested that we would one day be able to “give the working man what he’s never had – four days’ work and then three days’ fun”- basically, Winston Churchill was the first man to suggest the concept of a three day weekend.

This was at a time when the very concept of the weekend itself was actually a very new one- the original idea of one part of the week being dedicated to not working comes, of course, from the Sabbath days adopted by most religions. The idea of no work being done on a Sunday is, in the Western and therefore historically Christian world, an old one, but the idea of expanding it to Saturday as well is far newer. This was partly motivated by the increased proportion and acceptance of Jewish workers, whose day of rest fell on Saturday, and was also part of a general trend in decreasing work hours during the early 1900’s. It wasn’t until 1938 that the 5 day working week became ratified in US law, and it appeared to be the start of a downward trend in working hours as trade unions gained power, workers got more free time, and machines did all the important stuff. All of this appeared to lead to Churchill’s promised world- a world of the 4-day working week and perhaps, one day, a total lap of luxury whilst we let computers and androids do everything.

However, recently things have started to change. The trend of shortening working hours and an increasingly stressless existence has been reversed, with the average working week getting longer dramatically- since 1970, the  number of hours worked per capita has risen by 20%. A survey done a couple of winters ago found that of our weekend, we only spend an average of 15 hours and 17 minutes of it out of the work mindset (between 12:38am and 3:55pm on Sunday when we start worrying about Monday again), and that over half of us are too tired to enjoy our weekends properly. Given that this was a survey conducted by a hotel chain it may not be an entirely representative sample, but you get the idea. The weekend itself is in some ways under threat, and Churchill’s vision is disappearing fast.

So what’s changed since the 50’s (other than transport, communications, language, technology, religion, science, politics, the world, warfare, international relations, and just about everything else)? Why have we suddenly ceased to favour rest over work? What the hell is wrong with us?

To an extent, some of the figures are anomalous-  employment of women has increased drastically in the last 50 years and as such so has the percentage of the population who are unemployed. But this is not enough to explain away all of the stats relating to ‘the death of the weekend’.Part of the issue is judgemental. Office environments can be competitive places, and can quickly develop into mindsets where our emotional investment is in the compiling of our accounts document or whatever. In such an environment, people’s priorities become more focused on work, and somebody taking a day extra out on the weekend would just seem like laziness- especially of the boss who has deadlines to meet and really doesn’t appreciate slackers, as well as having control of your salary. We also, of course, judge ourselves, unwilling to feel as if we are letting the team down and causing other people inconvenience. There’s also the problem of boredom- as any schoolchild will tell you, the first few days of holiday after a long term are blissful relaxation, but it’s only a matter of time before a parent hears that dreaded phrase: “I’m booooooored”. The same thing can be said to apply to having nearly half your time off every single week. But these are features of human nature, which certainly hasn’t changed in the past 50 years, so what could the root of the change in trends be?

The obvious place to start when considering this is in the changes in work over this time. The last half-century has seen Britain’s manufacturing economy spiral downwards, as more and more of us lay down tools and pick up keyboards- the current ‘average job’ for a Briton involves working in an office somewhere. Probably in Sales, or Marketing. This kind of job involves chiefly working our minds, crunching numbers, thinking through figures and making it far harder for us to ‘switch off’ from our work mentality than if it were centred on how much our muscles hurt. It also makes it far easier to justify staying for overtime and to ‘just finish that last bit’, partly because not being physically tired makes it easier and also because the kind of work given to an office worker is more likely to be centred around individual mini-projects than simply punching rivets or controlling a machine for hours on end. And of course, as some of us start to stay for longer, so our competitive instinct causes the rest of us to as well.

In the modern age, switching off from a modern work mindset has been made even harder since the invention of the laptop and, especially, the smartphone. The laptop allowed us to check our emails or work on a project at home, on a train or wherever we happened to be- the smartphone has allowed us to keep in touch with work at every single waking moment of the day, making it very difficult for us to ‘switch work off’. It has also made it far easier to work at home, which for the committed worker can make it even harder to formally end the day when there are no colleagues or bosses telling you it’s time to go home. This spread of technology into our lives is thought to lead to an increase in levels of dopamine, a sort of pick-me-up drug the body releases after exposure to adrenaline, which can frazzle our pre-frontal cortex and leave someone feeling drained and unfocused- obvious signs of being overworked

Then there is the issue of competition. In the past, competition in industry would usually have been limited to a few other industries in the local area- in the grand scheme of things, this could perhaps be scaled up to cover an entire country. The existence of trade unions helped prevent this competition from causing problems- if everyone is desperate for work, as occurred with depressing regularity during the Great Depression in the USA, they keep trying to offer their services as cheaply as possible to try and bag the job, but if a trade union can be use to settle and standardise prices then this effect is halted. However, in the current age of everywhere being interconnected, competition in big business can occur from all over the world. To guarantee that they keep their job, people have to try to work as hard as they can for as long as they can, lengthening the working week still further. Since trade unions are generally limited to a single country, their powers in this situation are rather limited.

So, that’s the trend as it is- but is it feasible that we will ever live the life of luxury, with robots doing all our work, that seemed the summit of Churchill’s thinkings. In short: no. Whilst a three-day weekend is perhaps not too unfeasible, I just don’t think human nature would allow us to laze about all day, every day for the whole of our lives and do absolutely nothing with it, if only for the reasons explained above. Plus, constant rest would simply sanitise us to the concept, it becoming so normal that we simply could not envisage the concept of work at all. Thus, all the stresses that were once taken up with work worries would simply be transferred to ‘rest worries’, resulting in us not being any happier after all, and defeating the purpose of having all the rest in the first place. In short, we need work to enjoy play.

Plus, if robots ran everything and nobody worked them, it’d only be a matter of time before they either all broke down or took over.