 |
| Eugen Sandow |
[This offering can be
consumed independently BUT, it is best read as a companion to the blog/podcast
titled Three Old School Principles You MUST Have to Un-Stick Your
PT. Following this a browse of any of our old school Unleaded Conditioning
articles will add bolstering support. Surface understanding serves no good
purpose.]
Performance
Cars & Performance Bodies
We start our engines
at Le Mans, France where beginning in 1923, world class drivers came to test
themselves in a 24-hour endurance race.
Where many races are
tests of speed over a course of limited laps, Le Mans ups the ante and asks for
speed, of course, but also endurance of both the car and tests the stamina of
the flesh and blood piloting that car.
For any who doubt that
performance driving is a physical endeavor, might I suggest enrolling in a
Rally Driving Course, put yourself mid-pack at speed for even a mere 10 laps, I
wager your estimation of the physical demands will change.
All Weight Impacts All Performance
Let us turn to an
extract from an article from a 1957 issue of True magazine
titled “The Man Who Inherited Death” penned by Erwin C. Lessner. The
article discuses the in-depth preparation for Le Mans by driver Pierre Levegh.
“The petrol tank
was a large problem on Le Mans cars. Regulations set the minimum interval
between refueling at 25 laps (about 210 miles.) The Talbot had a 40-gallon tank
which gave it a basic range of 300 miles. Levegh thought that 330 would be
safer, so a new tank containing 44 gallons was built in. This in turn caused an
increase in weight. Since every ounce might
reduce speed by one yard per hour and the loss of 24-yards could decide the
issue, weight had to be saved by the body.”
Allow me to repeat that
mighty significant portion: “Since every ounce might reduce speed by
one yard per hour and the loss of 24-yards could decide the issue, weight had
to be saved by the body.”
A loss of one yard per
hour, 24-yards in a day.
One ounce could be THE tipping point in a
24-hour race.
Let’s
expand the timeline of one ounce of overage.
If it were possible to
drive that car for seven days straight that is a loss of 168 yards.
If we drove it for a
year: That is 4.96 miles.
Keep in mind we are
talking a mere single ounce.
There are 16 ounces in
a pound.
A pound of weight over
optimum results in a loss of 384 yards in a 24-hour period.
In short,
weight MATTERS.
It matters far more
than a short-term view assumes.
“Neat racing story,
Mark, but does this ounces analogy hold for living organisms?”
The
Incident of the Slightly Chubby Dog
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| The Formerly Larger Hound in Training |
I have a Lab mix, her
name is Tu’ Sarr’i.
In December 2022 she weighed
87 pounds.
What was, as a pup, a bundle
of bounding frolicking obsessive ball-retrieving energy had, over the course of
seven years devolved to a slower ball-retrieval with a bit less obsession.
Add to it, a noticeable
limp after some play sessions.
The limp progressed to
the point where she could not walk up the stairs on some days.
A vet consult decided
surgery.
A specialist was
called in to do the surgery. He examined her and said, “Hmm, let’s try this
first—cut her weight to 75 pounds.”
At seven years old and
87 pounds she carried 12 pounds above optimum weight.
As she ages chances
for injury increase, speed goes down, stamina foreshortens.
She had been 87 pounds
for at least 3 years—the limp was not persistent, the loss of energy was not persistent—just
when it was present, it was noticeable and clearly detrimental.
Her weight overage, he
explained, was less about the impact of “Right now” than it was “Here’s
what this weight does over time by being carried every minute of the day.”
To forestall a
diminishing hip-joint, my orthopedic vet has offered that for every lost ounce
that approaches the optimum weight: performance will increase, pain will
decrease, and odds look better on the longevity table.
We dropped her weight
in 30 days.
She is drug-free, we
kept $4,900 dollars in the bank, and the dog has returned to spitfire energy
and almost annoyingly incessant prompts to play.
All resulting from trimming ounces and pounds from
the chassis that is her living performance car.
It seems
that what holds for performance cars holds for performance animals.
And for those of us
who consider ourselves combat athletes, or merely humans walking around on the planet
subject to the forces of gravity, we are performance
animals.
Keep in mind, the game
is not one of mere pounds, but even ounces in the long-haul of life.
Every increase over
optimum, well…
·
Increased
stresses on the overall structure/chassis of our bodies.
·
Decreased efficiencies
in the biochemical power-plant/fuel-injection system that is our bodies.
Fat-Shaming?
Nah, Old School Shames All
Often today’s “jacked”
is a game of increase,
That is, increasing
the size of the fuel tank with zero consideration of what the added weight
might be doing to the chassis and internal combustion engine as a whole.
Human Fuel
Tanks of Yore
If we look at athletes
of the past, or beyond sports to the conditioning of high-performing Hosses of
yore we see the ranks populated less by the comic book expectations we
encounter today than a more reserved, more realistic, more, well, I’ll say it,
efficient and effective performer.
Yes, the very large
strong man was admired and ogled, Louis Cyr comes to mind as our stand-in icon
of this class but…most of these plus-sized humans were, well, exactly that, a
bit on the plus-size. Not exactly aesthetic wonders, but one need not be an
aesthetic wonder to be effective.
If we look to the
ranks of physical culture, and/or the combat sports of boxing and wrestling we
will allow three exemplary individuals to stand-in for what was the average
“large” size of each endeavor.
Keep in
mind, these stand-ins were not outliers, they were pretty much the standard.
In physical culture we
have Eugen Sandow, coming in at 185 to 195 pounds.
A far cry from today’s
heavyweight bodybuilding class, yet, have a look-see at his physique and decide
for yourself if, “Yeah, but only if he were bigger would he be more pleasing
to the eye.”
[Keep in mind, Mr.
Sandow was not mere show-muscle, he could perform feats of strength and agility
as well. The aesthetic standard of yore also assumed ability—not mere, beach
muscle. Use-Of muscle was the watchword.]
In boxing, Jack
Dempsey, a heavyweight champion ranging in fighting weight from around 183 to
193—again a far cry from many of today’s heavyweights, yet, does anyone doubt
his formidable punch?
Mr. Dempsey
In wrestling we have
Jim Londos. In the puffery that often surrounds pro wrestling he was usually
billed as weighing 200 pounds, but athletes in the know who stood alongside
him, men such as David P. Willoughby, assert his weight as around 175 pounds.
[Londos, at a height
of 5’ 8”, and a gander at his physique, Willoughby’s eyewitness estimation
sounds far more in line with truth.]
Mr. Londos
The
Training Arrow of the time was, forgive the word, weighted towards natural
bounds and good performance weight.
This
lighter, by current standards, Training Arrow was nothing new to the minds of Americans
who were still steeped in the Frontier Tradition.
At the turn of the
century before the one we are examining, the 1700s to 1800s, the voyageurs
[rivermen] were considered Hoss athletes and were offered as physical exemplars
in tale after tale of remarkable feats of strength and endurance.
When frontier rivermen
are portrayed in film we often see large burly Hosses, as if that was what it
took to “get the job done.”
In fact, smallness was
coveted—a fact of economics, performance car strategy. Room in canoes was
valuable—larger men ate up room for stackable profits of beaver pelt. The
average size was closer to a height of 5’6” to 5’8” with weights topping at
around 165 pounds.
Young boys who
idolized these Rivermen often lamented growth spurts as it took them out of the
range of those they admired.
 |
| Livin' at the Cut |
Leaner
& Meaner
The Training Arrows of
yore emphasized leaner means meaner not bigger is better.
Weight, be it muscle
or flab—requires resources to move. Requires energy to shuffle about the
planet.
Ounces be it muscle or
fat still impose the same performance costs over time.
The Performance Car/Slightly
Chubby Dog Analogy Holds.
Modern
Warriors Know Ounces Matter
Let us look to Marine
Owen West of 1st Force Reconnaissance Company, to illuminate. Here he refers to
a “swole” Marine.
“He has
sculpted the perfect build given our working uniform: Like cops, it is protocol
to beef up the biceps to fill out the rolled camouflage sleeves. When our
Marines start pulling this crap—working on beach muscles for aesthetic
purposes—Gunny and I run the extra meat off until they view the extra weight as
a burden.”
Start At
the Cut
This leaner = meaner
equation also applied to combat sports where weight cutting is often part and
parcel of the game.
Formerly less ado was
made about weight cutting as work-rate and frequency of fights/bouts served as
checks on between-bout bloating.
Fighters worked closer
to their natural weight class simply because, weight cutting steals strength
and stamina and winds up being a long-term drain on health.
It is akin to
attaching a U-Haul trailer to your Le Mans car between races and putting that
performance engine under stress and expecting it still to be top-notch each
time we unhitch the trailer and require it to hit an endurance track.
Start at
the cut, live at the cut.
This Training Arrow is
opposite today’s beef up and then cut down mentality.
This was seen as
counter-productive and health-killing.
Life like
Le Mans is a long-haul event.
It is a game of ounces
or pounds, where the “Yeah, I’m a few over but that’s OK” may, in fact,
matter far far more than we realize.
It matters in cars,
aircraft, elite ocean-craft, spacecraft, all vehicles expected to perform.
It matters in dogs if we
want to keep them healthy and pain-free over the long haul.
And, well, it matters
for you and me.
Every
ounce over optimum, be it muscle or fat results in a net loss over time.
The 24-hour period of
Le Mans shows us that that time scale need not be a lifetime, we may be
suffering net losses in the day to day that grow foreshortened with each day
the overage persists.
I will repeat a
portion of that, ponder it hard: We may be suffering net losses in the day
to day that grow foreshortened with each day the overage persists.
For those who may be
asking, “What’s a good target walk-around fighting weight for my height and skeletal
frame, Mark?”
We’ll
address that soon in Part 2, and it has nothing to do with the dubious BMI
scale.
But…I warn you, it
still might be lower than you’d expect.
Ounces can impede in
the short-term race.
They can kill in the
long run.
So, do you, will you,
do you wanna measure up?
[For PT constructed on
the trajectory of the Old School Training Arrow see our Unleaded
Conditioning Volumes. Available volumes include:
·
Unleaded:
Old School Conditioning The Chest Battery
·
Unleaded:
Old School Conditioning--GFF Volume 3A: Scattergun Muscle
GFF—Grip/Fingers/Forearms
·
Unleaded:
Old School Conditioning Volume 2B: Stabilizing Muscle—Hips & Thighs
·
Unleaded:
Old School Conditioning Volume 2A: Stabilizing Muscle—The Trunk
·
Unleaded:
Old School Conditioning Volume I: The Pliant Physique
·
Unleaded:
The Back Battery
·
Unleaded:
The Shoulder Battery
With more on the way!
For more Unleaded
Conditioning info see our store!
Thinkin’ about
becoming part of the Black Box Brotherhood?
Well, good on you!
Mull these resources,
Warriors!
The Black Box
Warehouse
https://www.extremeselfprotection.com/
The Rough ‘n’ Tumble
Raconteur Podcast
https://anchor.fm/mark-hatmaker
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