Yes, this is a site aimed primarily at women, but as I touch on in Boy Butches up Girl, there are lots of wonderful men who have been instrumental in creating a world where strength and hard work, not gender, are the primary qualities which matter in training. Askem and Siff are two of those men.

Training has a long history, much of which has been lost because it was anecdotal, informal, and handed down from elders to juniors in a relatively closed community. Athletes were sometimes celebrities, though not in the multimillion dollar way they are now, but in general the strong men and women of yore laboured in obscurity, creating communities of knowledge and practice. The old tyme lifters—and yes, some were women—didn’t have drugs, surgery, or supplements. They had weird lifts, hard work, and lots of real food.

It was Siff who taught my old Olympic lifting coach, John Gray, the Olympic press. This is a strange little lift, fun to do and challenging. It’s also a small piece of history, as it was discontinued in competition in the 1970s. Most folks now don’t know how to do it, or even know that such a thing existed. Askem also details the history of the press on his site. From time to time Siff would dip into his collection of weightlifting lore and come up with some obscure training tidbit: split lifts, hybrids, barbell rollouts. He would dispense these goodies like Pez candies, scattering them into our eagerly outstretched hands. I always felt in touch with the past, and with the deeds that were done in grimy basement gyms of Eastern Europe. These training goodies weren’t special magic secrets of the Soviets or anything, but rather elements of knowledge and practice that had become endangered species in the market-driven North American fitness industry of the late 20th century.

Askem and Siff appeared to share a mania for description and detail which even extended to their own lives. Askem documented the progress of his brain tumour on his site, while Siff painstakingly recorded his own lifestyle and rehab program after a near-fatal heart attack. When I visited my father in the hospital after his heart attack, I told him about Siff’s experience, how he had lain on a lecture platform in front of stricken students. As both of us are academics, we laughed a bit about possible scenarios for our own heart attacks in front of students. It was Siff’s meticulous narrative about his own cardiac rehab which comforted me when my father was sick, and which formed the basis of the rehab program I suggested to him.

Siff was a tireless provocateur, a gadfly of the fitness industry, who used his substantial scientific education to poke and prod and reveal the stupidities of people trying to make a fast buck by peddling bullshit. He continually exhorted us to refer back to first principles about how physiology and biomechanics actually worked in order to find our answers. Does movement X or supplement Y does what its promoters say it does? Why or why not? Thanks to Siff I learned that the physics of levers and forces isn’t the deathly boring subject I thought it was in high school. Rather, applied to humans in the form of biomechanics, it’s a way to think through training problems. I know why Lift A is better than Lift B, but now I know why, too. I know that the best training program is useless if it doesn’t meet the needs of the lifter. Again, I know why.

I had the privilege of meeting Siff and hearing him speak at a conference in 2002. He was a bundle of energy, and delighted the crowd with leaping about the stage, loud pratfalls to illustrate the value of peripheral stability (rather than the overhyped “core stability”), and demonstrations of the “potty training” method of teaching the squat. Now, every time I stand on the subway and use the “stepping reflex” to keep from falling over, I think of his dynamic presentation. Siff’s model of the body was one which was clever, practical, ever-responsive to change, rather than a static lump or a collection of inert parts. As far as he was concerned, our bodies were exciting microworlds which were continually self-organizing and re-organizing in response to multiple stimuli. This concept has greatly influenced my own approach to training and rehab.

I like to think of Siff and Askem as being from a generation that knew and joyfully communicated these ideas, which have been buried in the tide of crap from the fitness industry: that strong men and women of yore squatted and deadlifted and threw around heavy objects before they knew why and how it worked, that they valued manual labour and the potential of the human body, rather than viewing their bodies as fragmented enemies. I hope that the principles they taught will not be forgotten. Goodbye, iron men.

Luckily my father is an optimist, and as he cheerfully eats his hospital dinner (“I love hospital food!” he exclaims, without a trace of irony), surrounded by dog-eared newspapers and his beloved books, absentmindedly wiggling his little feet at the ends of his fuzzy-plaid-flannel-clad legs, he says that he is going to change his life. Being immobilized by the weight of your mortality gives you plenty of time to think; not that dad ever slacked in that department. When he arrived at the hospital, the doctor took one look at the overweight, 58-year-old man with chest pains and told dad to, quote, get his affairs in order. Some days later thanks to the wonders of modern medicine, flippant predictions of my father’s incipient demise are no longer being made, but my dad is quick to realize that it’s time to face facts: he needs desperately to change his lifestyle.

I never really knew most of the extended family on my father’s side. Dad’s father, a kind and amiable man, at least when he wasn’t drinking, died when I was thirteen. He was a heavy smoker, and a drinker for many years, though he eventually quit the booze. Dad’s mom, a generally unpleasant woman who cried at Richard Nixon’s funeral and had managed to ostracize most of her family, died several years later from a stroke. As a child I recall her careful arrangement of pills in tiny ordered canisters like dolls in their houses, and the way her thin, pointy-manicured hands looked like a bouquet of spikes. I also remember that she didn’t like my mother’s food, and would bring her own white bread and margarine when she came to visit. Her decades of poor health were probably due to a lifetime of secondhand smoke exposure and the typical nutritional habits of working-class white people, along with the bitterness experienced by women of a certain generation who were clever and should have been educated professionals, but wound up spending their adult life in menial work and attempting to be good wives to abusive drunks. Most of dad’s cousins dropped dead of heart attacks. One was a firefighter, who one day at age 46 responded to a routine call about a car fire one day and keeled over at the scene. The leaves on my father’s family tree have pretty much all dropped by now, and in almost all cases, the wind that blew them away was heart disease.

So here I am, thinking about my dad in his hospital bed. Dad was always a healthy, hearty man who loved to eat and drink. Like the majority of middle-aged North Americans, he is carrying some extra pounds. Though he eats relatively well and doesn’t indulge much in the worst types of junk food, he taught night courses at the university and ate dinner there four nights a week, which meant eating fast food. He likes exercise, particularly martial arts, but for him, it’s the first thing to go when any work stress appears, which was often. This year, dad was serving as the director of the Italian program at the university, which necessitated a lot of extra administration time. The commute to his job is long and stressful, driving at least an hour each way on crowded or dangerous roads. So-so nutrition, lack of physical activity, the stresses of life… there were little things, here and there, piling up. Little things which aren’t a big deal in isolation, but when they appear together and stay friends for a long time, mean that one night, a man who thought he was healthy will hold a phone like a security blanket, trying to breathe, thinking that each difficult inhalation might be the last one.

I hug my dad good-bye and walk out of the hospital. I can feel the burger and fries I indulged in earlier sitting in my stomach like a reproach. My liver is quietly processing the saturated fats to protect my bloodstream from the worst of the nutritional onslaught. I try to reassure myself that an occasional burger is no big deal, and it’s not. I eat well and I exercise. But how many times have I relied on the goodwill of my body to see me through? How many times have I thought to myself, oh well, I’m young and resilient, I’ll just dump this crap into my body and not worry about it? Taking care of yourself only needs to happen when you’re old, right? “You’re female and in good shape”, says dad to me when I voice my concerns about our family history, “You’ll be fine”.

But he’s wrong: cardiovascular disease, including coronary heart disease and strokes, is the number one killer of women over 65. The foundations of heart disease, arterial obstructions and athersclerosis, a thickening of the artery walls, begin as early as childhood. My arteries aren’t going to be squeaky shiny clean for 50 years then suddenly get covered in crud one day. It’s a long, slow process that begins early. Estrogen provides a small protective effect, but I can’t count on it, nor do I want to. With my genetic background that predisposes me to heart disease in early midde age, I’m going to be in some deep shit if I’m not careful. My body may even now be silently, subtly eroding: microscopic potholes in smooth arterial roads, infinitesimal globules of arterial plaque collecting around their edges like fluttering birds at a water hole. I may indeed be fine, but I’m going to have to work damn hard to make sure I stay that way.

That means beginning now, today, as I am about to shuffle of the edge of my twenties. Today, by coincidence, I see a clinical study that shows that even children and teenagers whose nutrition is poor are showing evidence of high cholesterol and atherosclerosis. In other words, your youth does not protect you.

Several days after dad’s first incident, by coincidence I call him in the hospital just as he is having a full fledged heart attack. “Hi dad, how are you doing?” I ask. “Not so good,” he replies. He sounds awful, the worst I’ve ever heard him sound. “Chest pains are back,” he croaked, “Gotta go. Daddy loves you, sweetie!” Click. I sit with the phone, madly trying to employ all the denial mechanisms I possess to keep from freaking out.

Seconds after he hangs up he is being wheeled down to the ICU to have a hospital SWAT team execute a commando raid on his circulatory system.

Later when we speak he says he didn’t want to worry me. My dad is such a trooper. If he were bleeding out his eyeballs he would pretend he was fine so as not to upset his daughters. “I didn’t think about God or anything,” he explains later, “No religious thoughts at all. The whole time, I just thought about my family.”

The day after dad’s near death experience, a team of cardiologists stuff a stent into his obstreperous artery, even as he begins to have a second heart attack on the table. Ha, eat hot medical technology, you clogged fucker. The artery they clean out was almost completely obstructed, full of arterial plaque and coagulated blood, like the debris of a beaver dam.

I speak to my father again once he recovers from the surgery enough to be coherent. Dad says he feels like he’s been reborn. Knowing his interest in near death experiences I ask if he had seen the white tunnel during his heart attack. “No,” he said, “Unfortunately I was conscious for the whole thing. I’d rather suck a bullet than do that again.” On this day, he can actually breathe, and he’s thrilled.

Dad’s recovery is going to be very slow and take a long time. But he will be okay, I think, if he re-evaluates his lifestyle and changes his priorities. I think I will do the same.

Update on Dad, December 2003: Dad had to have a second stent put in after another bout of chest pains in the early spring. All told, he probably spent about four months in and out of hospital. He carries around a bagful of pills. But he has lost weight and while he moves more slowly, he tells me that his cardiac rehabilitation program is going swell. Every time we go out to a restaurant, he chooses his meal carefully. With his characteristic meticulousness he examines the menu to see which entree has the most vegetables and the least fat. I hope to have Dad around for a good long time, and I’m happy he got a second chance!

Update on Dad, February 2009. Six years later. In fall 2007, dad had double bypass surgery to repair a defective valve. This was pretty scary shit, and he nearly died in the process. Now he has a bitchin’ scar, just like Krusty the Klown. And he feels a lot better now that oxygen is going where it should go. He’s even hitting the gym and doing some strength training! Every February that rolls around makes me more grateful that he’s been granted one more year. This year he’s 65. Way to kick mortality in the balls, dad!

More on coronary heart disease: Medline Plus

Sanchez, A., Barth, J., Zhang, L. “Diet and its Relation to Early
Atherosclerosis in Teenagers”. Supplement to Journal of the
American College of Cardiology. February 2000. Vol. 35. Issue 2, Suppl. A.
48.
This study revealed that most adolescents (over 80 percent) between the ages
of 13 and 18 exceeded dietary recommendations for total fat and saturated
fat intake. Forty-nine percent exceeded the recommended cholesterol intake.
More than one-third (37 percent) had elevated total cholesterol levels and
29 percent had elevated LDL cholesterol levels. A major finding was that
those with high cholesterol intake were more likely to show early signs of
atherosclerosis in their arteries. The authors concluded, “These data
support the assumption that diet is important in the etiology of
atherosclerosis in its beginning stages in teenagers, as it is with
atherosclerosis in the adult.”

Freedman, D., Dietz, W., Sathanur, R., Berenson, G. “The Relation of
Overweight Children and Adolescents: The Bogalusa Heart Study.” Pediatrics.
June 6, 1999. Vol. 103. No. 6. 1175-1181.
The Bogalusa heart study reinforces the importance of a healthy weight in
relation to heart disease risk. The results indicated that children aged 5
to 17 who were overweight were 2.4 times more likely to have elevated
cholesterol levels. Of those children who were overweight (a total of 813),
more than half (58 percent) had at least one risk factor for heart disease.
According to government statistics, approximately 25 percent of children
between the ages of 6 and 19 are overweight, which may place an alarming
number of children and adolescents at an increased risk for heart disease.

Yet as I sat in my PJs cataloguing my sins, it occurred to me (not for the first time) that Healthism has become our new religion. How else can you explain a mass desire to run and run until you use up all your electrolytes and throw up? And yet, the dogmas of Healthism are unquestioned. We have all internalized them. Our leaders preach them from their pulpits and our media faithfully report their message. Instead of being photographed in church, our leaders are now photographed practising good health habits to demonstrate their piety and civic virtue. Health Minister Anne McLellan has announced that she’s starting an exercise program in order to lose weight. When are you?… For the most devout, there are special retreats, called spas. Nowadays, a spa is not a place that pampers you. Instead, it charges thousands of dollars a week to make you go on forced marches through the desert and survive on carrot juice. The less food you get, the more expensive it is. Don’t bother calling; they’re all booked solid this time of year… Have we all gone crazy? What’s so wrong with drinking beer? Whatever happened to the pleasure principle? And how did the most hedonistic generation on Earth turn into a bunch of self-righteous, guilt-ridden self-deniers?

Along with the smug screw-you defiance, masquerading as self-pity, of a narcissistic boomer, this article contains a supersized dose of poor argumentation. Wente sets up a straw person, that of marathon runners or wannabe runners (hey, all her middle-aged yuppie friends are into it, so this must be a mass social phenomenon), as representative of all things healthy. In fact, she suggests, interest in health and exercise is like unto a cult. Ruh roh, someone is starting an exercise program, next it’ll be chats with Xenu the Omnipotent.

This attitude would be less annoying if it weren’t masquerading as common sense. According to this rhetoric, people who exercise and take care of their bodies are all insane, since they have been deluded by the preachings of health gurus and those bad, bad doctors who are doing their mean studies to show that mommy’s ciggies will chew holes in her trachea, and that we should eat yucky vegetables instead of Doritos (hey, carrots are orange, Doritos are orange, what’s the problem?). Exercisers are accorded the archetype of the marathon runner, who Wente feels is someone who engages in ascetic self-denial in order to complete an extreme achievement.

Now, I have nothing against marathoners besides poking good-natured fun at them occasionally for looking like dried string beans, but get real: they don’t represent the 99% of the population who prefers one of the zillion other physical activities in the world, nor do they represent most of the people who do like running for exercise. Essentially this is like suggesting that the millions of religiously observant people in the world are not only all Christian, but rabid abortion-doctor-offing Jesus freaks. And, after glancing at the Jean’s Marines website [no longer available], these marathoners are right-on folks; no hint of extremism or pump-till-you-puke mentality, just an interest in achieving goals and having fun (hell, some bodybuilders could learn a thing or two from them).

It also suggests that good nutrition and activity are a fad or an affectation of particular groups of people, rather than a sensible lifestyle choice for good health and quality of life. Anyone who’s ever experienced both sedentary and active lifestyles will tell you that they feel better when they are active and treating their bodies well. In addition, most active and health-conscious folks avoid junk food in large amounts because it makes us feel like shit; once you start eating better you tend to notice just how disgusting the chemical-laden swill that passes for snack food really is. This isn’t to say we don’t all enjoy a nice cookie or glass of wine occasionally. We just don’t stuff our head into the Mr. Christie bag and pretend we’re being revolutionaries who are standing up against the oppression of the People’s Army of Nutritionists. And by the way, has Wente been to an inner-city Y? Sure, there are some suits, but you’ll find a whole lot more plain working people, old, young, with families, all different colours and backgrounds, trying to do something that makes them feel good. I get email from all over the globe, from average people with jobs and kids and various responsibilities and less than perfect lives, who are discovering that exercise and good nutrition improves their quality of life tremendously. But most importantly, it doesn’t have to be extreme, it doesn’t need to involve a spa or a marathon, and it doesn’t have to be associated with morality.

In fact, the most successful exercise and diet programs incorporate a good amount of reality. I love weight training but no way am I going to leave my nice warm bed at 5 am to do it. I also know that if I don’t put my gym clothes into my work bag, so that I go to the gym on the way home from the office, I’m much less likely to go. I don’t subsist on bizarrely complicated diets that include drinking seaweed sludge. I just try to get some activity every day, eat my veggies, try to treat my body like it’s an important possession of mine, and let the rest work itself out.

If Wente likes to erode an ass groove in her La-Z-Boy, it doesn’t matter to me. But please, quit trying to self-justify with rhetoric about exercise cults, and get a clue about what the average person does for exercise. Hint: it does not involve thousands of dollars for a spa.

We will not be denied

By Jean Marmoreo and Bob Ramsay

Friday, January 10, 2003 – Globe and Mail print edition, page A11

Dear Margaret Wente:

We hope you enjoyed the six-pack of beer we sent over.

Even though you declined our invitation to join the 150 women who have signed on with JeansMarines to train for the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington in October, we thought sending anything obviously healthy would violate our own principles. You may be surprised to learn that they do not include self-denial, piety, starvation, purging, or even detoxification, all building blocks of the creeping Healthism that tormented you to ask in your Tuesday column: “How did the most hedonistic generation on Earth turn into a bunch of self-righteous, guilt-ridden self-deniers?” The answer is: We didn’t.

We and the 85 others who became JeansMarines last year did so not in order to deny ourselves anything, but to deny ourselves nothing: After a 15-kilometre warm-up run, we would pile into the nearest greasy spoon, gorging on fried eggs, blackened sausage, peanut butter and “double-double” coffee. Belching contests from Bay Street lawyers gave way to delicate fight songs that began: “We’re JeansMarines . . . We take no crap . . .” and descended from there. We’d invade the local running store, buying hundreds of dollars of gear at a time, maxing our gold cards, insisting that only the most fashionable tights could properly wick the sweat from our ever-shrinking bodies.

Getting up so early so often to “run with the girls” meant we frequently abandoned our mates and children, forcing them to make their own breakfast, telling them to run a bath for us, claiming we were too tired to do the shopping — then asking them to join us on the route next weekend — as waterboys. This doesn’t sound like denial to us; it sounds like having it all — that elusive and discredited goal of women everywhere, as in “You can’t have it all, all the time.”

But one of the direct effects of carving out an hour every other day for yourself to run or walk or walk-run, is that you get to treat yourself to one of two very real gifts:

1. Time alone. Just you, huffing and wheezing down the road, where no one can reach you, put demands on you, drag you off to a meeting. When was the last time you had four separate occasions like this each week just to yourself?

2. Time together. What made it possible for all these women to move from the couch in Toronto to the start-line in Washington wasn’t the trainers or the program, but each other. Forcing yourself out of bed because you know a pack of other women is waiting for you sounds like impending self-denial. But sharing the stories of their days and lives, making new friends when you thought you had time for absolutely no more, this is a feast no one should deny herself.

Barbara Hall, a JeansMarine and now svelte candidate for mayor of Toronto, would wake up at 5 for a run, and after a gruelling day of meetings, meals and receptions, she’d find herself dancing at midnight. Why? Because she can.

That said, training to run a 42-kilometre footrace will frequently take your breath away. But for us, because we denied ourselves nothing in the nine-month process, the benefit of putting one foot in front the other was also something many readers of your column may feel — mistakenly — they have to deny in their own lives.

And that is? Rollicking. Breathtaking. Fun.

So please: Give your self-indulgence a second chance and join us this year.

Dr. Jean Marmoreo is the founder of JeansMarines. Her husband, writer Bob Ramsay, is its propagandist-in-chief and president of the Gentlemen’s Auxiliary.