The Powerlifter Look Was Never the Point

Hey {{first name | reader}},

It’s Tuesday, which means your weekly fitness check-in. Welcome to Week #35. Saturday was my first hike with my hiking group in more than two months. It was a pleasant reminder of the many things that I love about San Francisco — the crisp mornings, sunny days, steep hills. My trips to France and Brazil included a lot of walking so the eight miles slipped by easily as I engaged in conversation with my friends. I have some nostalgia for my days as an academic when September marked the start of a new school year prompting reflection and reevaluation. I always enjoyed the process of building a new course syllabus or revising an old one. It is in my fitness routine that I maintain some fidelity to this idea.

After a summer that amounted to three weeks of travel, three weeks at home, and another four weeks of travel, I expected some backsliding. Instead, I found that I’m not far from the weights I was lifting before I left. I’m on track for most of the strength goals I set in January.

The problem is that I’m no longer sure they are the right goals.

Last week I wrote about power: not simply how much force you can produce, but how quickly you can produce it. In one frequently cited study of healthy adults ages 65 to 89, differences across the age range suggested that leg power declines faster than strength—although the difference was clearer in men than in women.¹ You can preserve your ability to grind through a heavy lift while becoming less able to catch yourself when you trip, sprint for a bus, or move quickly up a steep hill.

So I’m changing the assignment. I’m keeping the heavy lifting, but I’m adding a small amount of explosive work at the beginning of my sessions, while I’m fresh. I’ll start gradually—with a few jumps and short, controlled bursts of speed—and see what my Achilles tendon has to say about it.²

There is also the aesthetic question.

I’ve been training toward a powerlifter look without ever deciding that was the look I wanted. This is not a criticism of powerlifters. They are strong, and they look strong. But I prefer the way my body looks when I train more like the athlete I used to be: still muscular, but quicker and a little less built around moving one very heavy thing once.

Working out isn’t only about aesthetics, but aesthetics are allowed to count.³ I want to be healthy enough to hike, travel, carry my own suitcase, and remain upright when I encounter an unexpected tree root. I also want to like how I look in a bikini. These goals can coexist.

Question: How do you keep your fitness on track?

Answer: I set simple goals that are easy to count and measure, and I make sure that I track the progress toward that goal. I constantly reevaluate the goal and the tactics that I use to get there, and I’m forgiving of myself when I fall short in the near term. I also remind myself of why I want to keep fit. I want to extend my health span so that I can continue to do what I enjoy most— play the mandolin, take trips with my nephew and nieces, hike with friends.

Myth: Once you find a good routine, you should stick with it.

Reality: A routine should remain stable long enough to tell whether it works. Then it should earn the right to continue. If your progress has stalled, your priorities have changed, or the routine is no longer serving the life you want, change it deliberately. The routine isn’t the goal. The adaptation is.

Autumn is just around the corner, and although I’m happy to eat soup all year, I especially enjoy having a pot of soup on a clear cool fall day.⁴ So here’s a recipe for lentil soup that I like.

2 Tbsps olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1 lb chicken sausage

1 cup dried lentils

1 14 ounce can diced tomatoes

4 cups chicken stock

1 bunch kale, chopped into bite-sized pieces (keep the stems for the crunch)

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a Dutch oven. Cook the onions until softened. Add the chicken sausage and cook through.

Add the lentils, tomatoes, stock, and finely chopped kale stems. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for 15–20 minutes, or until the lentils are tender but still hold their shape. Add more stock if the soup becomes too thick. Stir in the kale leaves and cook for another 3–5 minutes.

Harvard Health, "Power training: A complementary approach"

Short and to the point: power is the product of strength and speed, and it's what actually gets you up a steep trail ahead of the younger members of your hiking group, or lets you catch yourself when you trip on a root. The piece backs up the stat driving this week's reorientation — power declines at more than twice the rate strength does — and makes the case for adding speed to ordinary lifts, not just doing more of them.

Audit one goal. Ask yourself: Am I making progress? Do I still care about the result? Is the way I’m pursuing it helping me become the person—or athlete—I want to be? Change something only if one of those answers tells you to.

Stay strong,
{{first name | reader}}

P.S. The powerlifter look wasn't wrong. It just wasn't the assignment anymore.