KOACHing BLOG

If imitation is flattery, poet John Keats should be flattered by my citation of his 1819 poem.  Keats abandoned poetry shortly thereafter, in pursuit of “real” paying professional endeavors…That transition followed his “Ode to Melancholy” about life.

Centuries ago – before Christ, Greeks sang publically and emotionally about gloried athletic or natural events – like autumn. Odes are assuredly NOT odious!

I suppose that recording artist Don Henley is a modern-day Keats with his own Ode in 1984 – The Boys of Summer are Gone; “Don’t look back, you can never look back”.  Didn’t Satchel Paige also counsel us to avoid looking back? Yes, he did!                    Taking Keats’ and Henley’s lyrics to heart; let’s look ahead.  And how about those “SLAM DIEGO” Padres of ours? Good things are truly worth the wait.

Autumn officially started today with an equinox at 6:24 AM in my time zone and at my longitude and latitude in San Diego. Did you know that a Terminator describes our solar/earthly interaction today?  As Ahhhnold often grumbled on big-screens, “it will be back…”

Most of us think of autumn as a transitional phase. Vivaldi did with his memorable Four Seasons composition.  And, Keats’ ODE to Autumn is a marvelous bit of fall poetry, a sonnet of 33 lines alluding to perfection, fruitfulness, and labors of love. Lines that eloquently suggested life’s ripenings, harvestings, and ultimately demises. Magical!

On this parallel day for National Voter Registration [HINT], it seems worthy to consider where we are in our own transitions. I alluded to national transitions with the passage of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on last Friday, so let’s get tactical, KABOOMERs with shifts for our betterment and stamininety this fall…

Today, we’re all about our KABOOMER self-ripening, and harvesting for many moons before our ultimate demise. Magical outcomes if we had sown before we reap in a biblical way.  Seemingly magical outcomes of transition when a Medicare-aged person learns well and works appropriately on her or his physical portfolio.  Each of us working our fertile fields for strength, stability, stamina, and stretching. Breaking from farmer’s walks to clean eating at the family tables. And restfully sleeping before other cool, crisp productive days.

If I was asked to produce 10 queries/thoughts with my own praise for autumn, here they are:

1. What is our 90-day action plan for stamininety steps to live longer and better? Recall that our Winter Solstice and our shortest day is “only” 13 weeks away.
2. What are our fall activities to praise, even if Tailgate rallies are ZOOMed? Think about what ancient Greeks and Keats celebrated…
3. Are we going to do the work necessary to produce results before Thanksgiving feasts in late November?
4. Are we going to get our flu shots to potentially boost our overall defenses against microbes?
5. Will we get outside to bond with Mother Earth? Example – rustle leaves and get down?
6. Can we socially enjoy Hay Rides and mulled apple cider at social distances, of course?
7. Can we take advantage of cooler temperatures in our northern hemisphere to help gain restorative sleep as nights get longer?
8. Can we sing, hum, and laugh about zany things beyond our control, while getting “right” things in our powers completed?
9. Can we enjoy marvelous farm-to-table produce for healing, anti-inflammatory Vitamin”P”? And
10. Will we exercise safely – with proper clothes, shoes, and reflective gear to make the most of our exhilarating fall workouts? 

I hope so!

Should any reader desire my counsel for ways to work the praises of Autumn – type”WP40” to text #41259, or reach out by email:

Titular trembles came today to good citizens in my ‘ol stompin’ grounds of Monmouth County, New Jersey. Bruce Springsteen and Jack Nicholson territory, yup.

You saw that correctly – New Jersey, the “Garden State” experienced what we Californians sorta accept as reality – temblors and earthquakes. Today’s shock and aftershocks are reportedly small in a Richter sort of way.

We don’t need any shake here in Cali (or locusts either) – as we have plenty of flame-broiled baking – regrettably.

Here’s to our thousands of firefighters who are doing their darnedest to protect Golden state property and lives! I think of their performance – in heavy and hot mufti – and likely dehydration.  Our bodies are amazing.  Yet, we’re NOT camels – of either variety- so a redundant message of proper hydration helps with SAFETY FIRST. Most of us can absorb a quart of water per hour.  Think about sweat and water vapor expended in exertions like beating back flames – or heavy exercise.  Forewarned is forearmed, as this infographic portrays:

Credit: https://www.pinterest.com/fionarosalyn/safety/

And how about recent, confounding weather in the Rockies?  From red-hot, hotter than hokey temperatures to pearly white snowfall in one day.  Kudos to Coloradans for their adaptation.  Credible studies show that COLD Temperatures can be good for us, if we are cautious and do not pursue DARWIN awards for stupidity.

SHIVER My Timbers!

Cold Therapy is something for KABOOMERs to consider seriously, and not just because of my FROSTY family name!.

One’s metabolism, lymphatics and general constitution can benefit from intended chilly efforts – like COLD SHOWERs.  KABOOM. The WIM HOF Method offers these potential other upsides of shivering and controlled breathing  – BRRR:

Our eleventh letter of the English alphabet – K – is pretty special. Did you sense, or know, that K is used so sparingly? Only letters J, Q, X and Z are used less than #11 n our modern speeches and writings. Let’s consider a slew of GREAT words hangin’ around our vocabularies that relate to KABOOMing – K?

As a prelude, The ABCs of Ageing(sp) Gratefully offer that K represents “KISS like ya mean it.” Enough said for those who “like it HOT” – just like Norma Jeane Moretensen – immortalized by Sir Elton John’s Candle in the Wind –

Let’s begin with that Greek letter/symbol Kappa. Some readers may have been Phi Beta KAPPAs [ΦBK] because of their prestigious liberal arts acumen. I’m certainly NOT a ΦBK! Something happened on the way to the forum, as KAPPA was the 10th letter of the Grecian alphabet, a spot lower than our 11th spot…. I have no clue why KAPPA is related to the number twenty?! If you have time on your hands in these waning days of COVID summer, you might practice signing this ancient letter –

Linguists assert that the Norman Conquest led to diminished use of “K” in the King’s and Queen’s English – if you need a trivia point when you have your next game of Jeopardy…

With Kudos to Mental Floss, here are Your Koach’s List of 11 kool O’ K words – with their meanings:

1. KAFFEEKLATSCH – a coffee gossip and catch-up encounter. Right – STARBUCK’s IS a bit easier on the tongue. And low-acid, high polyphenol coffee, or kaffee is GOOD for most KABOOMEREs as a natural ergogenic (in moderation).
2. KAKIDROSIS – smelly sweat. THis is NOT exercise-induced perspiration as a rule. It is our other perspiration – fearful, stress-driven sweat. We love to sweat to cool our bodies, measure proper C6-C10 cytokine actions in our bods, and help our livers detoxify. Yet, we try not to generate KAKIDROSIS.
3. KAKORRHAPHIAPHOBIAs – these sentiments happen to folks who suffer from fear of failure. As I wrote in KABOOMER, please think of the acronym FEAR as Face Everything and Rise. No suffering, no smelly sweat – K? Incidentally, KOPOPHOBIA is a fear of Fatigue. KABOOMERS honor fatigue as the result of building their physical bank counts! Remember that legendary Koach Vince Lombardi offered that “Fatigue makes cowards of us all”. Did I offer Face Everything and Rise? Yup.
4. KALON – this is uber kool! Kalon means stoic beauty in both physical and moral contexts. KABOOMERS have KALON, IMO.
5. KECKER – meaning squeamish. That descriptor does not fit KABOOMERs. We use mindfulness and fortitude to face challenges and calm our nerves. Right?
6. KEDGE BELLY – this person is a large a gluttonous eater. Remember this dude from an Addendum in KABOOMER?

KABOOMERs don’t become Kedge Bellied, “apple-shaped”, endomorphs – Si?

7. KICKY-WICKY – The Bard himself used kicky-wicky to describe whimsical or fantastic people. KABOOMERs should be honored to be labeled kicky-wicky! We are laughable, affable, and stay light-hearted, ’cause Dr. Patch Adams says we should for “good medicine.”

8. KING’s BARGAIN – this is olde slang for a dude or lady who shirks duty or responsibility. KABOOMERs are most definitely opposites of KING’s BARGAINs! They willingly accept the efforts needed to build their physical portfolios! Motion to Sweat is their regular, habitual duty.

9. KINTRACLASH – this “talk of the town” or gossip is thoroughly discounted by KABOOMERs whose felicities of age (according to R.W. Emerson) encourage practices of the subtle art of not giving a F$%*. Counter-intuitive as this might seem, KABOOMERs DO NOT SWEAT small Stuff. And most of life’s hassles [not ALL] are small stuff! Remember what Hans Selye wrote, IT IS NOT STRESS WHICH KILLS US…

10. KNICKKNACKATORY – this is a shop which sells knick knacks – just like your KABOOMER “e-Kommerce” shop on another page of wellpastforty.com.

11. KOAN – this isn’t a Norman word, rather Koan comes from Zen Buddhists. Koans are “paradoxes to train and improve thinking.” KAABOOM! That is our Mind-Body Alignment – sans brain fog – to get through life’s challengers. KABOOMERS think clearly, by getting fuel and Oxygen to their clear-headed executive functions to CARPE DIEM. Now, that is a mix of language and origin, with my apologies to you ΦBKs…

O’ K Boomer (ha). Your scribe and wellness Koach says: drink some kaffee, show your Koan, exhibit your Kicky-wicky frivolity often, rise above kintraclash, avoid kedge bellies and, get your KABOOMER “KIT” at our new [secure] e-commerce KNICKKNACKATORY.

Be safe and KAPPA,

df

Hues – like reds and blues – can be funny “things.” Perhaps you know a funny person named Hugh, yet today’s post is about wavelengths we can see and virtuous associations developed over centuries. If I added mellow YELLOW Light to the blog title, you’d have ALL our Primary colors to consider. I’m glad that state primaries are over in this crazy election year, yet I want PRIMARY COLORS to be on my plenteous plates of Vitamin P(lant) for many years to come.

• 

And I hope that we can ardently avert self-saboteur behavior as we go!

I find it amusing that a color – like a warm red or a cool blue – impacts a person as it does.

I’m a rube in metaphysics, traditional healing, and biblical symbolisms. Here’s what I think I know…colors are associated with CHAKRAs in eastern meditation, Christian virtues [or lack thereof for BLACK as the absence of color wavelength.] Reiki treatments may enable colors associated with energy, “don’t be misled into thinking that colours are unimportant.” I’m not misled…”It is commonly asserted that human beings have five senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. We use these senses to learn about, and navigate in, the world.” Let’s sense what “R O Y G I V B”

• 

can mean to KABOOMERS in contexts of wellness and fitness:

Credit: https://steemit.com/chakras/@lunaknight/my-christian-lds-view-on-chakras

Many of us boomers watched GILLIGAN’s ISLAND on our family little B&W television sets in yesteryears. You may recall that this show’s main characters may (or may not ) symbolize seven distractions of life (that far right column in the Table above). Gilligan’s creator,Sherwood Schwartz, reportedly admitted to its intended symbolism. I love what an NPR articles offers as life’s metaphor. And this is a key point of our Red Light, Blue Light “column”…

“each of us has our own inner Gilligan, that sweet-natured, well-meaning part of us that always sabotages us from getting what we really want. Maybe if we truly want to succeed in life, we need to kill our own inner Gilligan.” KABOOM.

My rather puritanical and wannabe-hippie Dad used to remind me that the road to Hades is paved with good intentions. KABOOM redux. The centered column in the Table above has meaning for me, as I hope it does for you…

Have purpose and faith in your ability and capability. Trust your knowledge gained to live well and eat clean (circling back to Vitamin P(lant)). Make good choices, and be accountable for your actions. Finally, build your Individual WORTH in that “7S” physical bank account without letting STRESS steal or sabotage occur.

Conscious, senseless SABOTAGE? NOT ON MY WATCH!

If you follow my drift, I’m making a KABOOMER kase for succeeding in our journeys, our idyllics quests, to party past ninety. Yup – stamininety shouldn’t be sabotaged by our sweet inner selves.

You know what can happen if we let it: it’s pretty hot today, I think I’ll skip my workout…

Don’t let good intentions way-lay you on your journey. Stay the course, and perhaps get off that devilish isle of temptation to live longer and better. We don’t know, as DH Lawrence penned, where our stamininety journey will take us, or how lengthy a journey it will ultimately be. Yet, be adventurous, stay kid-like and do what Blue Zone folks do.

Man is a thought-adventurer.
Man is a great venture in consciousness.
Where the venture started, and where it will end, nobody knows.                                        

–  Lawrence, D H, Books.

My favorite color? Fair query… a cool and settling Sailor BLUE.

Be successful Navigators. And away we purposefully go.

df

Uncomformities

Our last August Saturday is now “past time”.

I take great pleasure in reading, or rather devouring each Saturday’s Wall Street Journal.

I find the WSJ’s Book reviews, Lifestyle information and general journalism to be wonderful. Case study: I consumed a wonderous book review for author Hugh Raffles. His work’s title was The Book of_Unconformities, subtitled Speculations on Lost Time. Though Raffles’ writings were focused on things geological, I challenge that written counsel for Unconformities in our KABOOMER context! And for linguists, I will swap “un” to “non-” to be in stride with our Queen’s English.

I quoted J.R.R. Tolkiein in KABOOMER about non-withering oaks. Now, I thank the Hobbit and him for this riddle:

Credit: The Hobbit  

My null hypothesis and “timely” assertion?

KABOOMERs should speculate, plan. and move down their roads ahead. Leaning into Time rather peering in their rearview mirrors while dwelling on lost days of yore.

 In stamininety spirit – let’s make our next years’ our best years. My audiobook coach-turned farmer reminds me that “it’s later than you think”, yet assuredly it is NOT too late. 

We can still build skeletal muscle in our mid-eighties for instance.  Not easy. Yet investing in something important isn’t always easy. KABOOM.

Me?

I don’t conform to actuarial norms for death as a bell curve conformist. I am doing my very best to drive Insurance actuaries and Social Security actuaries loco with a physical portfolio which enhances my chances to party past ninety.

« Social Security Administration – I’m statistically muerto at ~85 years of age. 

               Of course, that’s bell curve “big data” with both lower and upper outliers. Well, I want to be an upper year outlier and I want you to be a longevity outlier as well. You know this Koach’s corollary – Add life to all those many years, too!

≥ Living to 100 Calculator – I might make it as a centenarian. I’ll take most or all of those outlier years which Dr. Perls suggests are plausible! You and I are investing in our physical “banks” to get there.

How do we get there (to ninety or more candles) with non-conformity and nil speculation?

Well, doing things a little bit differently is what my forbear, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote way back in Civil War times; when he enticed Bostonians take advantage of Felicities of Aging. One of those nonconformist steps is to not give a tinker’s damn about what other people say. Another is the wisdom gained you get your “encore” house in order. Bang Your Own Drum in a musical sort of way. Make some noise and enjoy the ruckus!

And speaking of music, I cite a gentleman named Charlie Parker, a bellwether jazz musician; a young free-wheeling trend-maker and breaker. Young Charlie was extraordinary for his music as well as his impact on future musicians. He didn’t bang on the drum all day as Todd Rundgren sang.  Rather, Parker played a woodwind instrument, a sexy saxophone, until his untimely death at age 34. It would have been his 100^th birthday last week.    

Composer and pianist George Gershwin is another extraordinary candle sniffed out far too quickly as a non-conformist. Our musical world is a better for his innovations! GG was only 39 when he passed. We Medicare-aged folks have outlived that pair of musical prodigies.  An adage goes, quantity may have qualities all its own!  And, Warren Buffett, who just blew out his quantity of NINETY candles last week, made his fortune after age 65!

And, you know of the resilience and persistence of a “bird” Colonel salesman, Harland Sanders.

That white-clad southerner didn’t get “fast casual” acclaim ‘til he was older than me. [He lived to ninety too].

These folks DIDN’T mark Time, they made Time!

Conformity – bah!

Physicist Richard Feynman, who helped design the atom bomb, was pretty notorious for doing crazy things as a professor at Caltech.

Admiral Ray Spruance was a non-conformist in the way that he dressed on board ships in World War II. He offered extraordinary autonomy and delegation to his subordinates. Do you sense that I admire “un” or non-conformists?

Here are four of many more [If you asked me to extend my list – Jack LaLanne would be high on it!]

1. Steve Jobs.  He  asked, would you rather be a sailor or a pirate? I pile on… would you rather be Johnny Depp or a Pirate of the Caribbean or a white hat in America’s Navy? There are certain merits and demerits for both lifestyles.   

2. Dick Fosbury. This lanky high jumper from ORYGUN was a track and field pioneer who trademarked a “flopped” better way to go “ALTIUS” in Olympic tradition. He didn’t quit, fer sure!

3. Eric Liddell. That devout English sprinter refused to participate in his main event (the 100M race) in the 1924 Olympiad, due to his sabbath. He ran to gold with an unorthodox, underdog style in the longer 400M event. He found his strength – from within.

4. Satchell Paige. Tall Leroy “Satchel” Paige may be quoted about Life as much as Yogi Berra is. Example: Don’t look back, something may be gaining on you…

 “On July 7, 1948, his 42nd birthday, Paige became the oldest player to debut in the Major Leagues, as well as the first Negro League pitcher in the American League….[Seventeen years later, he again pitched in the big show at age FIFTY NINE.] Joe DiMaggio thought that Paige was the toughest pitcher that he ever faced!  And he often quoted another non-conformist – Mark Twain, “Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”   

So, non-Konformists:

• Bang your own drum.
• Sweat six days each week, every week.
• Do not give a tinker’s damn.
• Honor Father Time (and Mother Nature) => be an unwithering oak as JRR Tolkien wrote.
• Don’t mind, so age doesn’t matter!
• Change your world – day by day.

C’mon September – let’s see what unconformities it throws our way.

/s/

df

Our Triple “T” thought for this Thursday focuses on a few National Days of import, intervals as healthy timed workouts, and carving out up to 4 hours a week of “hybrid” activities to offset potential Dementias – like Alzheimer’s Disease.

Time:

I’m missed the movement boat to meet any of those amazing suffragettes, and boosters like Frederick Douglass, who fought the good fight for decades until our country’s 19th Amendment to the Law of our Land was ratified on August 26, 1920. A century is a goodly period of Time – our first T. And centenarians are my all-Time allstars!

Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Stanton and Alice Paul are three of that happy band of sisters (begging pardon, Shakespeare). In my world of personal training and wellness coaching; gizmos and accoutrements of training are truly color- and gender-neutral.

• 

Suffragettes were by definition ACTIVE. Wait, wait…Lady KABOOMERs today are also active! Nothing wrong with activism when things of importance face us – right? “Act” in Latin means “done”. “Active” means motion rather than contemplation in Middle English. Remember what the legendary Amazon women of ancient Greece were known for? Athletic skill, courage, pride… Nice attributes – even for modern goddesses 🙂

• 

Timed:

As a bad, bad Hurricane called Laura is now clobbering our Gulf Coast citizens and property, one can think back to a mother of all storms – Katrina, which hit landfall near New Orleans fifteen years ago this week. Coincidental timing of Mum Nature… Laura’s wind speed was timed at over 140 miles per hour. Rainfall was timed at over one inch per hour. Even life-sustaining water can be way too much of a good thing.

I note that Friday, September 4th is National Chianti Day; getting our Labor Day holiday weekends off to mellow starts. You’ve assuredly seen plenty of ongoing and useful discussion about pluses and minuses off noble grapes – more red than white. My stance?

Don’t start drinking if you’ve been a teetotaler ’til now. If you are a social, moderate imbiber -like me – the timing of your alcoholic intake is important. Nightcaps are generally discouraged, as alcohol absorption takes hours and a boomer might awake in the wee hours, upsetting REM sleep. I’ve read about centenarians who offered that a stiff drink on most days/early evenings – with the key letter “a’ meaning one – was part of their longevity recipe. Might that be because social drinkers are by definition – sociable? We know that social interactions are de-stressing, even if no hugs are offered for oxytocin. I don’t know, and do not particularly worry about the cause and effect of social drinking and KABOOMER longevity. What I do care about is emulating best practices of BLUE ZONERs which credibly include wine drinking in moderation.

Timing:

I am pleased that fitness practices are evolving to endorse interval based exertions; actions in both resistance and stamina moves. Active bumps of exertion and heart rate, preferably of complex moves which involve multiple muscle group (non-isolation).

HIIT, SIHIT, VHIT, and REHIT are some[of many] Timing protocols which challenge our cardio-vascular and skeletal muscular systems for advantage.. (remember that PAR-Qs are needed before such strenuous activity!) You may recall that I’m an advocate of, and proponent for TABATA regimens as Designated HIIT’ers.

As is often the case – terms in “my” profession have interesting yet distracting urban meanings. REHIT – reduced-exertion high-intensity interval training- as shared by the NIH is far different than that offered by urbandictionary…

Fit folks in Sweden have a term for similar timing sessions – FARTLEKs (which translates to SPEED PLAYs). FARTLEKs are like almost every productive training programs, as pros and cons, advantages, disadvantages are present. Principles of speed play are not limited to running, by the way. KABOOMERs are forewarned to stay forearmed to avoid over-training or injury. Remember that we want and need the quantity and quality of cytokine flows – NOT inflammatory “C-storms!”

• 

If you are interested in protocols and work/recover periods for all these timing workouts … CALL your KOACH. Timing being what it is for KABOOMERs, brief bursts of interval training are short duration boosts – and fine caloric burners, when post exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) is factored into your personal energy equation. This kind of temporary debt – OXYGEN Debt – is healthy. Trust me.

Closing this note – just in TIME to hop on my indoor rower. KABOOM.

df