Episode: 2387
Title: HPR2387: Free Weights and a Bicycle
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2387/hpr2387.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 02:08:10

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This is HPR episode 2,387 entitled Free Wates and a Bicycle.
It is hosted by Frank Bell and in about 21 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is, Frank discusses his life long-run throw free weights.
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Hello, this is Frank Bell.
And today I want to talk about a topic I've been toying with addressing for some time
and was motivated to actually record this by HPR episode 2361 in which Klaatu, DeepGeek
and Lost in Bronx discussed their various exercise routines and some general pointers about
particularly weight training.
I have worked out with free weights since I was about 15 years old.
There were only two periods during which I was not doing that.
First the period when I was in college and the few years immediately after that and then
the period during which I had so many kids in the house, I could not find time to maintain
any sort of regular exercise schedule.
I was a fat little kid or at least I was a fat little kid from about 8 years old when
I had my consults out.
I wasn't as fat as spanky in our gang but my mother would order my trousers from the Sears
Husky line.
And then when I was in 10th grade one of the coaches at my high school coach Ken Parker
for some reason took me under his wing.
Now coach Parker was a rough, breast re sort of fellow.
A lot of the kids were scared of him but I realized as I got to know him that underneath
he was a teddy bear.
And for some reason he took pity on me and got me into some athletic events but I wasn't
big enough and had no desire to play football but he got me interested in track.
And although I never became and probably could have never become any sort of star athlete
he got me to get interested in getting in shape.
And that Christmas my parents gave me a 110 pound Sears Ted Williams vinyl covered weight
set.
It consisted of a barbell, two dumbbells and several plates of weight, four tens four
fives, four two and a half I think.
And ever since then free weights has been my thing.
I don't have any particular interest in going to the gym.
I'm very much an introvert.
I also don't like the whole shower scene simply because I like to content myself with one
shower a day not two.
And that one shower a day I can take now that I'm retired or as Dave Morris would put
it a pensioner I can work out then take my daily shower.
Also working out at home is a lot cheaper than working out at a gym.
There are no membership fees and no tempting gift shops and the like.
To supplement my weights and weights are what when I was growing up called an anaerobic
exercise meaning they exercise your muscles for strength and endurance but did nothing
for the aerobic or what these days is called the cardio system endurance you know strengthening
your heart and stuff like that there.
And I do my aerobic stuff with a bicycle because I love bicycles.
I don't particularly enjoy jogging though I have done it and now I actually value having
my knees far too much to go around and punish them with heel strikes.
The general structure of my exercise routine is to do some loosening up and I do stretching
exercises very loosely based on the old Canadian Air Force exercise routine which I used
to follow when I was on the road and away from my exercise equipment and there will be
a link to a Wikipedia article about that in the show notes.
And after I do my weight training I will then ride either the stationary bicycle in inclement
weather or in the winter time or my Fuji sports 10 which is probably older than most of
you listening to this except for me and Dave which was reconditioned by an outfit called
the Urban Bike Project in Roamington Delaware and I do love my Fuji sports 10.
To ride free weights they have a versatility you are not going to find with lots of other
types of exercises.
You don't need big heavy weight machines to do them you can make them do pretty much
wherever you want.
If you want to train for muscular endurance and to lose weight you can do that.
If you want to train for strength and bulk you can do that or try to be somewhere in
between which is where I try to hit.
There are many different exercises you can do for each part of your body so you can exercise
each part of your body in slightly different ways.
What I commonly do is design a program and every three to four months I will change it
out because frankly I get bored with it and want to do another set of exercises.
My general regimen is three sets of eight reps.
I add a rep every two weeks when I was younger it was every week until I get up to ten reps.
I will then drop back to eight and add five pounds.
If there are dumbbell exercises I will add five pounds total which is why I have four
one and a quarter pound of disc.
These discs also have kilos on them.
A two and a half pound disc is approximately 1.1 kilograms.
If you want bulk and strength the general rule is to do fewer reps and heavier weight.
If you want muscular endurance you do more reps with less weight.
The only other piece of equipment I have besides my bars and I do have a special curling
bar but that is not essential for anyone starting out is I do have a weight bench that has
a leg attachment on the end so I can do leg curls and leg raises.
For a typical program the conventional wisdom and I have never seen anything to counter
is to start with your larger muscles first so I will start out with my leg exercises.
I may be doing half squats don't do full squats with weights that is dangerous half squats
or I might do a mix of leg raises and leg curls on my bench then I will move to the chest
and shoulder muscles with something like bench presses or dumbbell flies.
I will also usually do depending on the combination of some sort of lateral raise either a standing
forward raise or a standing side raise or a bent over lateral raise where you bend over
from your waist and then you hold the dumbbells beneath you and raise them out to the side.
After that I will proceed to the arm muscles doing something for the triceps and something
for the biceps maybe a curl and then a triceps curl or possibly some form of curl or triceps
pull over where you lie down on your back with your barbell and you basically lower your
arms and then raise them again focusing on the triceps and I will generally wrap up with
something for the wrist I made a little wrist machine which is a two foot pipe with a hole
in it and a piece of clothesline strung through the hole and a ring and a hook at the other
end I can put that clothesline through a couple of discs snap it tight and then just hold the bar
out and wrap the clothesline up tight with my palms facing downward then I do the same thing with my
palms facing upward or I may do wrist curls with either the barbell or the dumbbell at this point I
have maybe 250 pounds of weight disc to put on the barbells and the dumbbells this is not because I
lift 250 pounds so I can have the amount of weight that I want on each device and not have to take it
off and put it on again and take it off and put it on again I can simply stay there until I'm
ready to add more weight in a couple of weeks now I mentioned various types of curls this will
give you an example of how many variations there are on exercises you can do with free weights
you can do barbell curls dumbbell curls you can do the classic curl with the palm up are the
reverse curl with the palm down you can do zotman curls where you start out with your palm facing you
with the weight extended downward you as you curl you twist the dumbbell until the palm is facing you
when you reach the peak of the curl you can do concentration curls think of the sculpture the
thinker you assume a position similar to the thinker except that in one hand you're holding a
dumbbell you balance your elbow against your knee and curl up this has the benefit of focusing all the
exercise on your bicep and those are just different types of curls I can think of as I'm
ex-stimping this podcast if you have not done work with weights and you are interested to and in
this I'm speaking to a question that claw two raised in episode 2361 start small when I had been
away from weights for quite a while for various reason and then decided to pick back up again
I started with weights that were on the bar that was much less than I thought I could handle and I
started with one set if the weight was ridiculously less than I could handle the next time I might add five
pounds until I felt I was at the right place and then I worked up from eight to ten reps and added a
second set especially working out at home the way I do safety has to be the first concern that
frankly is why I do not do squats with the barbell across my shoulders anymore it's not that I
couldn't do the squats is that getting barbell with 120 125 at one time I was squatting my own
weight up to my shoulders is not something I can do safely by myself and I don't have room and my
bedroom where I work out to have a squat rack attached to my weight bench now I will mention the
first weight bench I had when my parents gave me that set of weights row these many years ago I made
myself out of two by fours and one by eights that we had in the bar and loft on pineview farm where I
grew up it was very primitive but it worked you don't need the fancy stuff what you need more than
anything to get full benefits of weight training is a little bit of research so you know what
combinations of exercises you can use and perseverance in the times I've been away from weight
training and come back to it as when I finally had a house it was instead being full of three kids
was full of one kid I found it takes me about three months when doing the exercises stops being
a chore something I must discipline myself to do and become simply part of the routine so if you
can stick it through that first three months or so till it becomes habit something you're used to
and even start to look forward to then you'll be fine but I will warn you that is first three months
or whatever the timeframe might be for you will require some perseverance and sometimes
fighting the emperor to say oh not today I also have not been sucked in to the modern idea that
you have to keep your records on your computer I use the same record keeping method that I used
50 years ago a composition book and I record the names of the exercises and then the date
and in a formula of sets times reps times weight what I did I see no benefit to putting it on the
computer no benefit to me certainly no benefit for it to go to some website where they're going to
take my information and sell it to somebody who's going to turn around and try to sell me
something to track my performance so they get even more information that they can turn around
and sell I recommend this a mead composition book works just fine and you keep your records using
a pointy implement where ink comes out of one end some of your older folks may remember it
is called a fountain pen the other reason I adopted this is when I'm working out and I'm busy
listening to a hacker public radio podcast or some other podcast I sometimes forget how many sets
I've done so after each set I will enter in an element of the date I use the American notation
month day year I'll enter in the month they'll do the next set I'll enter in the day I'll do the next
set I'll enter in the year and it helps me on those days when I'm really concentrating on something
else with my mind while I'm trying to improve my body just to keep track of where the heck it is
it's sort of like a GPS except it's more of a map remember maps they they were on paper and
had pretty colors I like them too I must say deep deep mentioned Jack Loraine's book I've never
seen that though I can say that Jack Loraine appeared in one of the episodes of Peter Gunn
back in the late fifties and he was one trim little fellow the book they provided the most
assistance to me was one called Mike Mincer's complete book of white training which is near as I
can tell is no longer available and most people don't remember it most of Mike Mincer's books were
about high intensity training this one is not it's for the person who just wants to stay fit
it's divided into sections for men and women these days it might not be but also sections about
exercises for your back exercises for your arms so you can see the smartest board of different
exercises you can choose from depending on what you want to accomplish the only thing I found
that I would recommend that I've seen recently is something called weight training for dummies
and I'm looking at it right now they also tell you exercises for various parts of the body
and I just open it to this pace it says practicing shoulder exercises and list the exercises coming
up dumbbell shoulder press lateral raise front raise back delt fly internal and external rotation
and then two machine exercises which I'm not going to mention because who cares for machines
I know that LL Cool J also has a book out about weight training which is actually quite good
I was rather surprised until I saw a picture of LL Cool J and he certainly does keep himself
in top shape but I think the weight training for dummies would be better for someone who's
interested in just starting out I have looked for various websites that might be useful and
frankly I haven't found much that I would consider useful for a beginner too many of them
behind the tutorials are trying to sell you stuff
and so really a nice book where all I want to say you is a book is probably a much better choice
and I think let me look at my notes see if there's anything else
no that's it I will include just in case someone finds it useful some of my various
routines taken from my records here and my me composition book this particular book I started
keeping in let's see September of 2010 so you see and I and you know what over that whole period
this book has never suffered any data loss sometimes nothing beats a book and that will be
my last word has been fun talking at you if you want to email me you can email me as frank
at pineviewfarm.net my website is pineviewfarm.net thank you very much and I'll catch you on the flip
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