by Grandpa Gym » Sat Jul 21, 2007 6:43 pm I just joined this blog today, so I am new here. I'm 64 years old. I have known about Dr. McD for 20 years but never taken any of his live-in programs.
I could not find out anything here about Combat Conditioning. I want to share with you what I have discovered and see if any of you know about this.
I was raised about 99% vegetarian (that mean's we had meat (chicken, turkey, fish) served at home a couple times a year. When I was on my own a higher percentage of my diet was meat, (hamburgers, fried chicken, etc.) until I found out the Army was putting lard in everything they cooked. For the Bible recommendations agains swine as food, I then quit eating any meat or anything that could have lard in it. That was 1968.
In 1972 I married a wonderful girl who had never eaten any meat whatever. She had mostly given up dairy products since she was a toddler because of her brother's lactose intolerance at birth. The reason I say mostly is because she did not do much reading of labels. We used mayonnaise at home and had a milk shake when we went out to eat.
It was shortly after our son was born in 1975 that we began to read labels. We began limiting what we were eating to be strictly of non animal sources (except for honey). It's interesting to note that we still, occasionally, had a milk shake when we went out to eat with our vege-burgers and I used blue cheese dressing on my salad when not at home.
When I was 50 I thought I ought to have a physical examination to see if there was anything wrong with me. All the doctor said was that I handled stress well. It was about this time that we got real strict about dairy products and eliminated them out of our diet completely.
I am a computer programmer and don't get much exercise. I have arranged things so that I work out of my home and have since 1978. After a few hours at the computer I like to get outside. I work a little in the garden and yard.
Last year, while I was working on the barn I am building, I started having pain in my right thigh and leg. I hadn't done any computer work that day, spent the whole day on the barn. I quit early, took a hot bath, and went to bed. That usually takes care of any soreness I acquire when spending a whole day in physical activity. But this time it didn't. I woke up about 12:30 and could not get back to sleep. I could not find a comfortable position. I didn't sleep much the next two nights and the third day found me in the doctor's office, a friend that I had helped with computers .
Orthopedics was his specialty and he liked sports medicine. He diagnosed it as sciatica and said it would go away. He knew I did not like to take anything that would keep me from thinking. How long? Two weeks. At the end of two weeks, without much sleep, I suggested I go to a chiropractor. After two weeks of visits to him, still without much sleep, I quit going to him. In another two weeks I was free from pain and finally getting some sleep. By the way, the pain was not so great that I couldn't concentrate on computer programs but enough that I didn't sleep much. The least pain was lying on my back on the floor with my feet up in an overstuffed chair.
One day a magazine was delivered to us by mistake and it fell open to an advertisement by Matt Furey. He wanted you to buy his book on Combat Conditioning. I read the advertisement. I looked up his web site www.mattfurey.com I did searches on google and found out what his Combat Conditioning consisted of without buying his book.
Combat Conditioning, according to Matt Furey, consists of three exercises that can be done without any equipment that will build your muscles and stamina. There were several things that I knew before I started this that drew my attention and caution. One is that it is better to excercise the muscles and strengthen them than it is to have back surgery. The second is that a body that is older and hasn't exercised needs to start very slowly or great damage will be done and then you will need surgery. You can find pictures of all three excercises on the internet. There are even some videos you can watch.
The first excercise that I do is called a back bridge. You lie on the floor on your back. I prefer a carpeted floor. Put your feet flat on the floor with your knees up. The goal is to raise your buttocks and shoulders so that only your feet and head are touching the floor. You can use your hands to keep from falling over. You push your body as high as it will go and rotate your head back. The goal is entually to have only your feet and forehead touching the floor. At this point I have still not become limber enough to get my forehead on the floor. The first time I did it, once I had my buttocks off the floor, I could just barely lift my shoulders up off the floor.
The second exercise is called a hindu push up. You lie on the floor face down with your hands flat on the floor near your shoulders. Then you push your shoulders up off the floor with your hips staying on the floor. When your arms are extended, then you lift your hips off of the floor and then push them up as high as you can until you look like a stink bug. Then you come all the way back down flat on the floor. This bends your back in both directions. The first time I tried this I could only do two of them.
The third exercise is call a hindu squat. You stand on the floor with your arms straight out. Then you pull your hands toward your shoulders as you are squating. You squat down until your thigh is parallel with the floor as you move your hands down. Your fingertips just touch the floor and then you push up quickly and put your arms out ready for another repitition. The first time I tried this I could not recover from the down positon. By the way, do it with one hand on a table or chair to keep from falling over until you get coordinated.
I found these exercises interesting but I did not try them until I had a second sciatica attack. This attack was much less severe and in a few days I was feeling well enough to start my excerise program. I did one excersize, or as much as I could of it, each evening for 5 days. I skipped the weekend. The second week I did the same as I had the first week. I found that this time I could complete both the back bridge and the squat that I was not able to complete the week before.
The third week I tried two reptitions of each exercise each day for 5 days. After that it became spotty. I did them when I remembered them. The first thing I noticed was that before I started this exercise program I could not bend my knees all the way. What I mean is that I could kneel down with my knees at 90 degrees but could not bend them much further without great discomfort. That comes from sitting for hours at a time. The exercises have extended that so now I can bend them until there is an angle of about 30 degrees. I would like to get so I can sit on the floor with my knees bent all the way as I did as a youngster.
I am doing 10 to 15 back bridges, 15 to 30 hindu push ups, and 30 to 45 hindu squats a session now. I could do more but I do not want to chance injury. I did not do any last week because of the other exercise I got, more on that later. The week before I only did 3 sessions. It takes less than 10 minutes to do the above sequence. In 10 minutes I start sweating and breathing hard. My goal is to eventually take 15 minutes.
The reason I didn't do any exercises last week is that I was repairing our roof. We have a clear story window that leaked last winter. That wasn't the first winter it leaked. We finally determined that the roof line above it needed changing. So, last week I spent the afternoons rebuilding the structure and roofing it. The rolls of roofing weighed 97 pounds each. I put one on my shoulder and climbed the ladder. There were 8 of them. I also carried the 2x6's and 4x8 osb panels up that ladder.
My sciatica has not returned. My knees have been working better. When the doctor found out I had been bucking some bales of hay, he could not believe it. He advised me not to do the squats, however. He has seen a lot of injuries as a result of squats. I have not taken his advice. But, then, he didn't offer any excersize program to prevent sciatica.
What do you know about Combat Conditioning?
