Immediately I noticed I was hitting a quicker stride and that it felt good.  I thought for a bit about how the heat affected my running and settled into what I anticipated to be one of the best runs of my summer.  My pace was pretty fast.  Not as fast as when I wore trail shoes, but faster than I had been running in my Vibrams so far.  I wondered if I’d ever get to that kind of pace in these shoes.  I took advantage of the low, soft stretches of trail and really sprinted, high on the balls of my feet.

Just past halfway on the trail I began to notice a warm pain in my left foot.  My calf was tightening and my footfall on that side became flat.  I alternated walking and sprinting for a while but the feeling never went away and I became more and more aware of how off my left foot had become.  By the two-thirds mark I was walking and I walked the rest of the way out.  As a testament to my pace I did clock out of the trail at 54 minutes which is still consistent with my average pace, since I started wearing the “toe shoes.”

By the time I got back to the car I had a straight up limp.  I was not happy.  Injury is a fact of life when you are active.  Eventually something will get hurt, no one is super human.  But it still pisses me off.

Back at the gym I was trying to minimize my exposure.  I’ve caught a lot of flack for my new footwear and I was sure to get an earful of, “You hurt your foot running in those shoes, didn’t you?”

I managed to shower and get to my back area without too much notice.  As a massage therapist I know you’re supposed to wait 48 hours after an injury before applying any therapy.  Ice is the only answer.  Well, I also know that applies to everyone else and not me.  I want it fixed and I want it fixed NOW.  So, I took my trusty lacrosse ball and began rolling my foot over it looking for trigger points, basically any spot that hurt like hell and applied pressure, to make it hurt like more hell.  I trained my 9 o’clock clients from my chair and kept treating my foot.  I switched to a frozen beer bottle at one point thinking the cold would help with inflammation and finished with an all out ice bath.

I trained my clients for the rest of the morning and at noon left for an already scheduled massage.  John Murray specializes in Thai massage and that, by God, was what I was going to get.  I told him of my injury and asked him to pay special attention to my left calf and foot.  I opted for a full session because I am learning Thai massage and wanted to get a taste of how he worked.  It was a great session and I look forward to robbing him blind of knowledge in our future work together.  As such here is a plug, if you’re looking for Thai massage in Birmingham, go see John Murray (by the way John specializes in many other modalities and has more than 12 years experience to back him up.  Go see John.)

Somehow I made it through the day without too much notice.  At home, Samantha gave me some baleful looks but was otherwise sympathetic.  She nursed me well, scolding me for not taking Arnica on my own and offering me some of her 800 mg Ibuprofen.  The girls were my own cheering section each coming up to me to hug and ask with deepest concern, “How’s your foot, Daddy?”

Wednesday morning was not so good.  I woke around 2:30 to go pee.  I managed to hobble my way to the bathroom but needed the assistance of my youngest daughter (who was up herself) to get back to the bedroom.  At 4:30 I got up to get ready for work.  It was at this point that I seriously considered calling in and saying I couldn’t make it.  Walking was extremely difficult.  I pushed through and as I did I noticed that things were slightly starting to get better.  I wore my Redwing boots to work for support and protection.

Unfortunately, there was no hiding my gait.  Right in the door, “Monkey, what’s wrong with your foot?” asked Trey, my best friend and gym owner.

“I hurt it running yesterday.  I think it’s either a stone bruise or I’m starting to get plantar fasciitis.”

“Hurt it running in those gorilla shoes, didn’t you?”

So that’s how my day went.  The good news is that as the day wore on and I became more and more active my foot hurt less and less.  I had worried that it might prevent me from jiu-jitsu practice but that is actually when it felt its best.  I think the increased blood flow from exertion was helpful.  The bad news is everyone blamed my shoes, except one dear client, who called me a “numb nut” for wearing the shoes, let alone running in them.

For the record, I don’t blame the shoes.  I blame me in the shoes.  Anyone who’s read this blog and compared it with any of the other barefoot blogs out there can attest I seriously shortened my break in process.  I didn’t want to compromise my runs and as such tried to speed up my transition.  I think I went a little too fast.

Today is Friday.  I’m back to wearing my Tevas and only have a slight limp.  The pain in the sole of my foot is slight and entirely bearable.  I did not run yesterday or jump rope.  I opted to ride the stationary bike for 20 minutes, did a 20 minute kettlebell routine and got back on the bike for another 20 minutes.  My foot did not bother me at all during the entire workout.  I did, however, tear a callus on my left hand with the kettlebell, but that is another story.

I took my first trail run in them last Tuesday.  The weather was perfect and I had a nice run.  I intentionally took a shorter route this time knowing I would need to transition into running in the Vibrams.  My pace was definitely slower, but I ran the whole way.  What struck me most was how much more attuned my feet were to the terrain.  I paid more attention to how I picked my path than I ever did in running shoes.  Which, again, made me slower but I think overall was better for my run.  I tried to flow over obstacles rather than let the armor of my shoes let me crash through.  Overall, I think I saved myself a lot of jarring and joint stress.

On Thursday I did another Hurricane, this time it was a little more involved with 20 second sprints and mountain climbers and pushup variations in between.  The warmup was the same and included the 12 mintue jump rope session.

My arches “spoke” to me throughout the week, but in way I was comfortable with.  They felt well worked and sore but in a muscles-are-gettting-stronger kind of way.  I am optimistic.

I wore them during my lifting workouts as well and paid particular attention on leg days.  Both deadlifts and squats feel good in the shoe.  I noticed them the most on squat day.  The old phrase “you’re only as strong as your weakest link” stays in my mind as I pursue this experiment.  I have always felt my feet and ankles were my weakest links and “fixing” them with orthotics never really made sense.  How do you strengthen a muscle by giving it a crutch?

After that last run, I made a decision.  I have been doing a lot of reading about Paleo lifestyles and barefoot running in particular.  I had shifted my running style to a “toe running” style a year or more ago.  I was intrigued by the reports of it being a more natural stride and more in keeping with the physiology of our feet and running.  I liked the results and became more interested in it and surrounding ideas.  I had thought about the new “barefoot running shoes” but knew there was a tranistion period involved and wasn’t willing to limit my runs (read: sacrifice my conditioning) in order to break into new shoes.  Enter Alabama summer.  After last Tuesday’s totally crappy run I decided that if I was going to continue these crappy runs now was the perfect time to break in “barefoot” shoes.

That afternoon I bought a pair of Vibram Five Fingers.  They resemble water shoes, but with a strap and a sole manufactured by Vibram, the same people who made the lug sole I had put on my Red Wing work boots a while back.  Because I wanted to  use them to trail run, I bought the more expensive model with a thicker sole that had some tread to it.  Thick is a relative term here as the sole is just a few milimeters thick.

Trying them on was a bit of a challenge.  Getting each toe in each compartment was a chore, but by today, the fourth day of wearing them I found them much easier to get on.  Once on, I loved them immediately.  There just so damned comfortable and I really liked the way they helped my toes spread.  Fashionably, they’re a nightmare.  My kids and other young people think they’re cool.  But so far everyone over 30 has had an issue with them.  Apparently the older you are the more ridiculous they seem.  No matter, I’m used to playing the fool and don’t mind being the object of your amusement.

Conversations about them have been interesting, though.

Do they offer much arch support?

No.

????

See, that’s the point.

What about your feet/ankles/knees?  You going to be crippled in no time.

Well, the theory is that our dependence on increasingly therapeutic shoes is actually the result of the shoes themselves.  Excessive cushioning and support makes the muscles of our feet, for whom those jobs were originally assigned, redundant.  As such they atrophy, becoming weaker, and make the need for cushioning and support more apparent.  Rather than increase that downward spiral, this approach encourages the development of stronger feet and eleminates the need for advanced foot technology and thereby alleviates issues such as “bad” feet, ankles and knees.

The response to this varies from blank stare to outright skepticism to mild curiosity.

So here’s the experiment so far.  Tuesday I bought the shoes.  I wore them through the afternoon and evening.  Wednesday I wore them to work and through my bench press workout, until 11:30 am.  I put them back on in the late afternoon and wore them through the evening, until bedtime.  Thursday I had a massage client scheduled at 8 which is the second half of my usual run time.  I had planned to do Martin Rooney’s hurricane scheduled in week two of the workout program outlined in Ultimate Warrior Workouts (catchy title, eh?) instead.  That meant, after the warmup, two five minute rounds of jumping rope and eight rounds of 15 second sprints at 10 mph, recovering to a heartrate of 120 bpm between each sprint.  I have since decided that at least until the weather cools I will continue to follow Rooney’s hurricane progression on Thursdays and trail run on Tuesdays.

Here are my results so far.  First I loved the way the shoes felt during the workout.  My sprints were crisp and up on the balls of my feet.  Only during rest did my heels touch the floor.  After the workout, in the shower, I noticed, by touch, the prominence of a vein in each butt cheek that I’d never noticed before.  My legs were highly vasculated and the blood was pumping.  Later that day a noticed a new level of tighness (nothing too extreme) in my quads and calves.  By evening I could clearly feel my arches had been challenged as they were a little tight and sore.  I’m wearing the shoes this morning and intend to wear them through my squat workout today.  My arches are a little tender but in a stretch-them-out-and-that-feels-great kind of way.

I plan on trail running on Tuesday in them for the first time.  My goal is a light run just to see how they do on the trail, testing sole sensitivity and overall run feel..I’ll keep you posted.

1. To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.

2. To speak to all of happiness, health and prosperity.

3. To give all your friends the feeling that they have value.

4. To look at the bright side and turn your optimism into an eventual reality.

5. To think only the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best.

6. To be as fair and as enthusiastic about the successes of others as you are of your own.

7. To forget the mistakes of the past and focus your energy on the achievements of the future.

8. To always keep the person next to you happy, and always smile to those who address you.

9. To expend the greatest time improving yourself, and no time criticizing others.

10. To be too great to feel uneasiness, too noble to feel rage, too happy to feel setbacks, and strong enough to feel fear.

11. To have a good opinion of yourself and proclaim it to the world, not with resounding words, but with good works.

12. To have the firm conviction that the world is on your side, as long as you stay loyal to what is best in you.

Applicable to anyone’s journey.  No matter how you choose to stride.

View of Birmingham from atop the quarry at Ruffner Mountain Nature Center

So there’s this old martial arts adage that says you fight how you train.  What that means is that your body responds with the techniques it knows best under the stressful conditions of a fight.  It also means that the conditions under which you train affect your ability to respond as well.  That is if you don’t train striking in a sparring context you’re not going to be very adapted to someone actually hitting you.  Fights get very intense very quickly and having trained in a tachycardic state will make you more able  to keep your head and function in that state in a fight.

I bring this up because I went for a run in one of my old haunts today.  For about six months I ran the Five Mile Trail at Ruffner Mountain Nature Center.  For full disclosure I must admit that the Five Mile Trail is, much to my dismay, not five miles long.  In fact, at 3.9 miles it’s not even close to five miles which is very disheartening, considering the first time I ran it I was amazed at my sub ten minute miles.  That was faster than I’d even run on pavement before.  How was that possible?  Short answer is, of course, it wasn’t.  Oh the agony of a misnamed trail.

Nonetheless I ran the trail today, or well, part of it.  See I haven’t run that trail in about a year and a half.  My training shifted to other areas and longer (for me) runs seemed contrary to my strength goals and jiujitsu seemed a much more fun form of cardio.  Anyway, now the trail seems a perfect addition to my strength gaining and my jiujitsu.  So I ran in the woods.

It.  Kicked.  My.  Ass.

I remembered that the road to the trailhead from the parking lot was steep.  I did not, however, expect to be sucking wind so severely two minutes in.  I persevered and as I hit the crest the trail evened out and I settled in.  I only had thirty minutes total to run and planned to double back when I hit fifteen.  I managed to make the lower entrance to the quarry in good stride.  My iPod was in perfect sync with the run and all was well.  The problem came as I began my ascent back out of the quarry.  By the time I hit the ridgeline I was again sucking wind very hard.

At that point, I am ashamed to admit, I had to walk.  I actually hit the slow stride a few more times on the way out and by the time I got back to my car my inner thighs were really talking to me.  I can’t wait for tomorrow.

Lesson?  As ye train, so shall ye fight.  There is absolutely nothing like trail running.  The changes you have to make, the obstacles to avoid, the necessity of getting your feet up so you don’t trip over rock and root make it unlike any other run you’ve ever had.  Needless to say I’ve been re-hooked.  I’m thinking maybe I can get back out there on Thursday…

So why accept second or third best in your movement?  An old body building adage goes, “One good rep is worth a thousand bad ones.”  Maintaining a strict adherence to form, making sure the movement is as perfect as you can make it is quality.  Every muscle fiber you are trying to address is hit to it’s maximal effect.  This way your efforts pay dividends that are worth that effort.  Sloppy movements with a shortened range of motion are not worth your time.

One of the reasons for this is that your mind is not focused on what you are doing.  You’re just trying to get through the rep or set as quickly as possible.  Get on to the next thing and get the workout over with.  Focus, feel the rep, savor the movement.  That pain?  That’s growth.  That’s you getting better with every ounce of effort you expend.

To get back to the beer metaphor, those Trappist Ales are complex.  There’s a lot going on taste wise.  You need time to truly experience every element it has to offer.  Cheap beer?  It’s watery, relatively tasteless and comes in large quanitites because all it has to offer is the drunk.

Contrast that with pushups.  Full range pushups, lowering your body until your chest touches the floor requires a deeper level of strength.  It calls on your triceps, pectorals, serratus anterior, and abdominals.  Your glutes and hip flexors have to stabilize as well as your rotator cuff muscles and calves and ankles.  Properly done, between the lowering and lifting phase, there are few muscles this exercise does not hit.  Partial range pushups hit most of these muscles, but not nearly as deeply as the greater range of motion supplies.  If your hips or shoulders sag then you can forget about your stabilizers.  As such you may be able to get many more reps than you can with the full range but what do you get?  A pump, blood flushed into the tissues that makes them plump up and look nicer, but just like that cheap drunk they offer no substance and the effects are short lived.

This morning I felt a definite improvement but I knew I wasn’t done yet.  After my first client I scheduled an appointment with my favorite chiropractor (Dr. Ellen Witt).  She put me back in place and I can feel the improvement.  As the morning wears on I can feel the muscles of my right shoulder and neck relax and begin to lose their anguished cry of, “Oh Shit!  What was that and why is it happening to us?!”

I’m home because Wednesday is a workout day.  In fact normally I would have finished my warmup by now and begun my bench press sets.  I just saw this killer video from Scott Sonnon and his new TacFit program and would love nothing more than to intergrate some of those exercises into today’s workout.  They would have followed the bench press beautifully.  After that I would have rolled into (pardon the pun) jiujitsu and by one o’clock I would have emerged from the showers feeling well worked with that “tired, but I just really did something feeling” ready to take on my next clients and the rest of the afternoon.

I’m home because I don’t trust myself to stay at the gym.  I want to be better NOW.  I know myself.  I’ll test my limits too soon and prolong my recovery.

It’s all part of what I consider as a drawback to our instant society.  There are benefits to be sure, movies on demand, foods from all over the world just down the street, internet shopping.  Every boon, however, has its price.  Patience, it seems, is one of those.  Patience may well be a virtue, but it’s not very prevalent.  Time waits for no man…and neither do we.

I remember when I first started training this sense of immediate gratification held with me, and in funny ways.  It would prompt me to work extra hard in a workout, as if by the end of it I would be able to see a difference.  Or while focused I would be very restrictive of my calorie intake and be disappointed when at the end of the day I looked the same.

Change is gradual.  True healing is gradual.  It sneaks up on you unnoticed.  Clients will work with me for a few weeks and say, “I just don’t see any difference.”  Of course not.  You see yourself in the mirror, several times a day.  Your brain won’t recognize the changes until they’ve accumulated enough to be significant.  That takes time and consistency of effort.  That takes patience, both with yourself and the work

“Isn’t there just a pill I can take to make me (fill in the blank)?” I shudder inside every time I hear this.  This tells me you’re still not on board yet.  This says that the work you’re doing right now is a chore, a necessary burden you’re willing to put up with in order to reach that goal of “thin” or “buff” or “attractive.”  This changes when your training and exercise become a part of your lifestyle.  It becomes something you do because it makes you feel good, because overall life gets easier when you make this extra effort.

We live in a society run by image.  Even here at Lakeview, a gym largely inhabited by enlightened trainers and their clients, our cardio room literature is dominated by the latest yellow journalism all about which celebrity is screwing what other celebrity, complete with full color photos (not of the screwing, just the celebrities).  Plastic people with plastic lives that no rational one among us would trade lives with– except….damn, they’re pretty.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be that pretty?….Just for a little while?

Magazines, television, movies, video games, all of these visual media are absorbed by our fertile brains.  As social animals we are programmed to want to emulate what we see.  It’s how we gain acceptance.  Monkey see, monkey do.  So of course we want to be pretty.  Long term health?  That takes forever!  We want it now!  Lipo!  Plastic surgery!  Hell, even those giant people on The Biggest Loser shed half their body weight in a single season!

But what’s the cost?  What happens to our inner lives when our biggest goal is to have a butt like the girl on the Reebok commercial?  (Which I have to point out is so small it can’t really even be called a butt– poor, poor girl.)  Long term strategies by their very nature entail a small gain now, but one that builds steadily over time.  Healthy lifestyle changes often lead to a more gradual weight loss, but that change makes for a permanent loss and an overall upswing in quality of life.  The exchange you make is a steady effort, consistently applied.  Short term gains by their nature pay off big now, but their price is long term.  Anorexia and bulemia may make you skinny today, but there’s a lifetime of osteoporosis, kidney disease and other ailments to follow.

Rory Miller writes an excellent blog post on the social aspect of our minds, the monkey mind.  It is this desire to be part of the group, to be socially accepted, that drives many of us NOT to be special or exemplary.  Just as the drive to be pretty dominates our concept of why we train it also can drive how we train.  Group fit classes are successful for this very reason.  Get enough pretty people in a room doing something and soon enough all sorts of other people will be in there too, convinced that this is how those pretty people got to be pretty, regardless of how stupid or contrary to your particular needs what they’re doing is.  Dare to be different.  Unleash your own particular brilliance.  Don’t be enslaved by groupthink or your fears of rejection.  The brighter you shine, the brighter we all shine, as your incandescence shows us the light of our own potential.

For me, my light is strength, and all that goes with it.  To deny that gift, to train in a way contrary to this diminishes my light and you as my client suffer for it.  I can only teach what I know.

For this relationship to be successful we must both be clear on why we’re here and what we want.  I don’t mean to imply that I am dogmatic, or that my way is the only way.  As the old proverb goes, “There are many paths to the mountaintop…”  I am flexible and realize that each client needs his or her own personalized approach, but I’m also aware that as the proverb ends, “…there is only one moon to see when you get there.”  Or as Bruce Lee states in Enter the Dragon, “It’s like a finger, pointing to the moon.  Don’t focus on the finger, or you will miss all that heavenly glory.”  The “finger” is whatever gets you into the gym, or outside, or just plain moving.  In this case I even see wanting to be pretty as an effective “finger,” but the moon, the whole point, the reason for the finger is health, physical health, which spills into emotional and spiritual health.  Want to fix your life?  Fix your body and you’ll see you’re well on your way to achieving just that.  And that, I think, is pretty.

What does all this mean?  Outside of context, not much.  My freshman year was a very sedentary one.  I spent most of it in a bad relationship.  My girlfriend was very insecure.  I think somehow she thought if I was fat other girls wouldn’t try and steal me away.  I was insecure myself and the emotional rollercoaster of our relationship made food an easy comfort source.  With both of us working to make me fat it wasn’t long before I’d put on some major pounds.

The watermelon fast came on as I was just entering the fitness industry.  I never have had, nor will I ever have, a body fit to grace the cover of a fitness magazine.  At least not one published now.  Sixty years ago I was a stud, but now I’m just chunky.  For those of you who’ve never seen me, think pro wrestler pre-steroids or maybe one of those circus strongmen but with hair and a soul-patch instead of a handlebar mustache.  As you can guess I was still insecure and strongly felt the need to conform to the standards of my new profession.  I felt I had to “look the part” in order to be successful.  So following the advice of a “health guru” I ate watermelon and only watermelon for ten days.  I lost twenty pounds.  I was weak, I had low energy and didn’t look any closer to the fitness ideal.

Today I weigh 250.  That’s ten pounds less than me at my fattest and 35 pounds more than my leanest.  Without a doubt I am fitter now than I have ever been.  I’m stronger, I have more endurance and more overall energy.  I’m also happier.  It’s February right now so I’m carrying a little winter weight, not much, but I can feel a little more than say, July.  Come July I’ll be a little lighter, not much, 5 or ten pounds maybe.  That fluctuation I consider natural and in keeping with the seasons.

What’s more, I’m cool with that.  Before I might be panicked, worried how that would be seen by my co workers and clients.  What I know now is that I work hard.  My body is a reflection of how hard I work, but my body is also a reflection of what I work for.  I work for strength.  I work for health.  I work for stability.  I work for longevity.  Appearance?  Of course I care about it.  Everyone does, but it’s not my priority.

Interestingly enough, that insecurity I mentioned earlier?  It really doesn’t plague me as much as it did, certainly not as much is it might had I stuck with appearance as my priority.  It’s funny.  Strength, health, stability and longevity are things I can receive instant feedback on, from impartial sources.  The weights on my barbell tell me I’m strong.  That I’m able to continually increase those weights tells me I’m getting stronger.  I rarely get sick and I recover from hard training days quickly, a sure sign I’m healthy.  The exercises I do on gymnastic rings, stability balls and other dynamic bases both build my joint stability and exhibit it.  My ease of mind and flexibility in the face of crisis or upset point to a mental stability as well.  At 38 I’m in the best shape of my life.  I frequently spar or compete with men sometimes as much as 20 years younger than me.  What more can I ask of longevity?  If I play my cards right I’ll continue to live and train this way well into my later years.

Appearance?  I can’t count on the same objectivity, either from myself or those who love me, but my wife loves the way I look and I’m frequently chided by friends and co-workers for some of my more beefier attributes.  That’s pretty damn cool to me.

Post Script:

All of the above is absolutely true.  However, as it often is with life, I was tested very soon after having written these words.  A favored client of mine, for scheduling reasons, began training with one of the other trainers here at the gym.  Normally this would be no big deal, except, this particular trainer does look like a fitness model and could grace the cover of one of those magazines.  Now my insecurities begin their mad, irrational dance.  I started to wonder if the fact that I don’t look as fit as this other guy did figure into this equation.  I forgot that we are both competent trainers or that the move was due to a scheduling conflict.  Once again those old demons raised their ugly heads and monkeyed with my confidence and self respect.

The upside is that this entire episode lasted less than forty-five minutes.  Far less than it once might have.  That’s good.  It also reminds me that just like with my training, the job is never fully done.  There’s always one more plate, one more rep.  That’s the beauty of all of this.  You can always find a way to improve, not because where you are is bad, but because getting better is–well, better.

Agoge Fitness Systems takes its name from ancient Greece.  In the city-state of Sparta, young boys at the age of seven entered into a “school” called the Agoge.  Separated from their mothers, sisters and grandmothers these boys entered a world of men.  There they were taught everything they would need to know to become soldiers and eventually citizens of Sparta.  The lessons were hard, often brutal, but what emerged fourteen years later was a man ready to take the mantle of citizenship and all of its responsibilities.

I took the name Agoge because I wanted to bring some of that spirit back to our lives.  As modern Americans our lives have become too soft and many of us lack the knowledge, confidence and spirit that comes from a hard earned accomplishment.  By challenging ourselves physically we challenge ourselves emotionally and spiritually as well.  The growth that comes from meeting these challenges makes us better people.  As better people we lead better lives.

Agoge Fitness Systems aims to meet the needs of men and woman, adolescents and adults.  We train the body as a whole with an emphasis on strength and athleticism.  We offer private and semi private sessions at affordable rates.

Everyone has potential…What’s yours?