Targeted to Men Than Woman

If you didn’t keep a training log how would you know it was three weeks since you went bouldering, except that carrying the pad about suddenly felt odd and unfamiliar. But, of course, we’ve had the rain, and then a long bushwalk to escape both the rain and the election weekend, and a few days at the local crag working on a project or two, and a bit of a virus (not the ‘rona) and suddenly, it’s three weeks since I went bouldering.

I miscalculated the tide by not noticing that the low tides are relatively high right now, so the wall I expected to climb on was under water at the base. But, I found a couple of nice easy walls to warm up on, and then a good boulder, unfortunately with no easy way off, and then a nice steep boulder to fail on. There is a point at which you know you are done, and, after a couple of hours, I was at that point but I strolled, as much as one strolls with a boulder pad on their back along slippery rocks in slippery shoes (never buy Merrell Vapour Glove minimalist shoes unless you are only wearing them in urban settings, the soles suck) to a lookout over the ocean and passed a couple more good walls on the way that I knew about but had forgotten, such is the life of an old boulderer.

While I was climbing and failing, a young couple came past with two trekking poles each clicking away, undoubtedly walking the Bingie Track. They looked like giant spiders from War Of The Worlds. Do young folk really need trekking poles on a flat easy track? Perhaps they had read something about how trekking poles “engage your core,” which is clearly nonsense because the most functional way to engage your core is to not fall down while walking over uneven ground. Sometimes (most of the time?) I think we have forgotten the obvious in our search for the solution. Trekking poles seem like a solution in search of a problem. If you are interested in one of my obnoxious rants, I wrote about trekking poles in 2014.

I just finished reading The P:E Diet by Naiman and Shewfelt. I have wanted to read this for a long time but the hard-cover has a ridiculously hefty price tag and even the Ebook version seems a bit on the pricey side, but, for some reason, I got a deal from Amazon and got the book for $1.64. I could see this would be an unpopular book proposing as it does that you eat real food, train to failure and get uncomfortable. Just doing the first of those things – eating real food – is likely to make the average person used to a steady diet of processed food the third thing (uncomfortable).

The nutrition part of the book is on point, but likely to be seen as “restrictive,” impossible to follow, expensive, elitist, and on and on. How any of this stuff can be either controversial or subject to argument is “outside my ken,” as the Scots would say. But, as with trekking poles I think we have forgotten the obvious. Junk food, is, well, junk food. Eating a whole foods diet is less expensive than chronic illness, which is also not a whole lot of fun, and not actually expensive when you compare real food made at home to ultra-processed junk bought in either the grocery or the cafe.

The exercise part is interesting; not because of this charming one star review by Dawn in the USA: “Its [sic] more targeted to men than woman [sic] we are built different and we can't eat as much as men can and the exercises are clearly for men.” I love one star reviews for their, almost universal, laugh out loud inanity. Given, that the book is predominantly about eating less and exercising the fundamental human movement patterns (show me a female who does not need to squat multiple times a day and I will show you someone with a urinary catheter) this review gets a real belly laugh.

But, I digress. The reason the exercise part is “interesting” is because the authors unequivocally recommend training to failure on every set of every exercise, every single day. I can understand how Dawn in the USA might think this makes the exercises clearly for men because my first thought, as a 59 year old female who has been lifting for four decades, is that training to failure might suit young bucks with truck loads of testosterone but is disastrous for the masses.

Jocks and gym rats have been arguing about training to failure since god purported to make Eve out of one of Adam’s ribs. Many of these debates are so esoteric that they appeal only to true aficionados. It’s debatable whether novice lifters can even determine whether or not they have reached failure as, funnily enough, just as strength is a skill, learning to push to the maximum is also a skill and one infrequently realised in the modern world.

In reality, I don’t think it is even possible for most (?any) of us to truly train to failure every day on every rep and set. Personally, if I followed that strategy the end of the training week would see me prostrate with fatigue, facing a week of recovery before I could train seriously again and that clearly is counter-productive. So, while the training section of The P:E Diet should come with a YMMV warning, the rest of the book is pretty darn solid.