Gravity Fx Fitness

I’ve lost 20 pounds in the last 6 months and playing basketball recently has kept it off while exercising just a few hours here and there.

I’ve been playing once a week for the last 7 weeks against guys who are mostly 10-20 years younger.  Our team is made up of men in their forties with one guy in his early fifties and two young bucks of 30 and 25.

I lost the weight prior to starting this league but have kept it off without spending much time doing anything else.  Basketball is a stop and go sport, mixing in periods of higher and lower intensity.

This stop and go nature really generates a lot of body heat, sweat, and greatly increases your oxygen consumption – causing you to suck in extra air at times, which is why us old guys need an occasional “sub” to come in for us.

Two twenty minute halves is plenty of action and our heart rates and metabolism stay elevated for a while afterwards, burning additional calories.  I was in pretty decent shape previously, but hadn’t done specific training for playing hoops, since I didn’t know I was going to play.

One of the things I have done is to do jump rope training between games to prepare for the jumping impact of the games.  I’ll do about 20-30 seconds on and then rest for the same amount of time.  This is for 5-7 minutes and then back to more interval training, keeping my heart rate up with different agility and strength training.

Besides being a time efficient way to workout, these interval workouts prepare you for the stop and go nature of basketball.  One of my personal training clients recently talked about doing step aerobics classes twenty years ago.

“I didn’t lose any weight but it was fun.”  Many people adapt to steady pace activity very quickly and don’t end up losing much, if any weight.  Not long ago, this same client walked on a treadmill 5 days a week for four months and only lost 6 pounds – not the greatest return for her “investment.”

She’s since lost close to 20 pounds by doing shorter bursts of exercise and eliminating processed foods from her diet.

The amount of sweat we produce in these games is a pretty good indication of large amounts of calories burned.  The guy who is 52 remarked about how you can’t get the same kind of breathlessness from doing typical workouts on a treadmill.

This guy is a former college wrestling coach, so he knows a little about training…. and is in pretty decent shape, too.  The take home point is that long periods of exercise aren’t always necessary and sometimes can be counter-productive if you don’t get the weight loss you want and decide to give up because you get frustrated with a lack of progress.

At the same time, if you haven’t done much exercise in a while, start out easy and gradually increase your intensity and/or decrease the amount of rest between exercises as you become more fit.

Train to play the sport and don’t play the sport to get in shape.  Don’t forget to do your strength training to help protect your joints and flexibility/mobility work is also strongly advised.

Get Moving!

Brian Morgan

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Since playing in a men’s basketball league recently, I’ve altered my workouts slightly to be able to compete and avoid injuries.

While my competitive days may be behind me, in my mind I still want to play my best, even if I’m 15-20 years older than many of the guys.  So today I started off with some self-massage with the Tiger Tail rolling massage tool and then some flexband stretching for my lower body.

Last week I had some tightness in my calf and want to avoid any major muscle tears.  I followed this up with more calf stretching with the Prostretch.  Next I did some interval jump rope training – 20 to 30 seconds on and then 20 to 30 seconds off for 5 minutes.

I followed this up with some bodyweight rows with the Bandit’s Loops suspension trainer, alternating with Power Plate pushup holds.  My elbow is still a little sore and this lets me maintain upper body strength without the eccentric contractions of doing the full movement.

While doing this, I picked one leg off the ground for increased core work.  By having one less contact point, it increases the stability demands on your midsection, which saves me from doing crunches and saves time as well.

Then I did some flexband squat-rows for some additional cardio work and then used the flexbands for lateral agility training.  Definitely need that for playing basketball.

I also mixed in some one arm grappler’s throws with the Ropes Gone Wild for more interval cardio work and to hit my obliques.  Doing these with one arm and the 1 ½ inch manilla rope is a great core exercise.

So all total, the warmup and workout lasted almost 45 minutes, making this workout doable by most everyone from a time perspective.  Not everyone over 40 can jump rope, but if you are still playing sports then you need to do exercises that prepare you for the sport, instead of just playing sports to try and stay in shape.

Get moving!

Brian Morgan

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