Long term readers have heard the story where I read Warrior’s Way and learned about isometric structure.
That book encouraged me to up my walking habit. Around the same time, I discovered the power of the 30 minute daily brisk walk. It’s like the most low-hanging fruit lifesaver in existence.
So, you combine these two–the isometric structure and walking–and you have a super-effective brisk walking session as you’re using your body the way it is meant to be used.
At the same time, I cut back on the weights and really focused on the walking.
After several months, I started adding the weights back in.
But something wasn’t right. It didn’t make sense. Why have 2-3 dedicated weight lifting sessions where you really push it? Why not just do it daily and don’t push it as much?
The walking and posture work had really transformed my body. That’s a daily thing.
Walking and posture progressions
But for now, consider the progression of walking.
From 4k, to 5k, to 6k, to 7k – 1k per month. Four months of ramp up! That says a lot right there. You have to be patient when it comes to this stuff. You want to build a sustainable habit and I had gotten out of the habit of walking because I work at a desk.
So I built that habit back up slowly, and while I was at it, I worked assiduously on my posture. Not just while walking, either. There’s another lesson here: posture is 24×7 work. Prior to 2021 I thought well if I just stretch and do some rehabilitation exercises then the posture will come naturally.
No, posture does not come naturally. It’s active work.
Adding weights on top of the walking and posture
So then the training starts. And I said, OK, walking for the legs, hindu push-ups for the arms. Right? Same type of deal, just up the volume gradually.
This is where I make the lifting a daily thing. Not always the same volume, somedays easier than others, but almost daily. Why not just make it part of the daily thing, in an appropriate dose, measured and tracked–just like the walking habit?
So, I’m doing this with the deadlift and some other exercises right now. But the big focus is on the deadlift.
My go to weight is 135. Why? Mainly because that’s the first weight that is an appropriate weight off the floor. It’s a weight I can confidently handle for many reps. It’s a weight where I can lift it and internalize the effort rather than focus on whether or not I can perform the lift. Finally, because of these qualities, I can deepen the movement, just the same way I can make walking a meditation on posture, I can make lifting 135 a meditation on picking shit off the ground.
Each day I do some deadlifting. Today just happened to be 8 times. My kids have been sick, I’m feeling a bit run down, and that’s what I felt like doing. But what I’m targeting here is a baseline of deadlifting. Not focusing on increasing the weight, but focusing on increasing the daily volume. I also had my eyes closed today.
135 is also a weight that requires no warm up. Also, how much do you need to lift? I cover this in the following YouTube video:
So, a thought is I could do a few different sessions throughout the day. The most I’ve done so far is 20.
Bear in mind these are 20 fully focused reps. I could whip out 20 in one set pretty easily. But that wouldn’t suit my purpose. My purpose is to fully concentrate on my muscles and how my nervous system is using them to lift the weight. Where is my body in space? It’s just FULL ON FOCUS.
The thought is that I’ll ride this out for a little while and see what it does, in addition to hitting the hindu pushups and Turkish Get Ups.
I’m getting a little scope creep here. I can see that while writing it out.
To summarize this up, if walking a certain amount of steps per day in good isometric structure is yielding fantastic results, why not try the same thing with a powerful exercise like the deadlift? Or the hindu pushup? The main thing is with daily training to keep the volume low so you can recover…and up the volume gradually.
The only big bummer is that I’m not currently tracking the exercises as much as the steps, simple because there is no app that does this for me automatically.
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