Incorporating Exercise into Your Life
Andrea has exercised for virtually her entire life. Steven, though starting a little later, has exercised regularly for more than 20 years. We have both been professionally coached. We have regularly sought the help of experts in our quest to become healthier, fitter and leaner.
Unfortunately, this does not make us personal trainers, nor does it qualify us to dispense advice on how others can best integrate exercise into their own lives. In other words, the fact you have had an appendectomy does not qualify you to perform one. Lucky for us, we are friends with a man who has over 50 years of experience training athletes. He was kind enough to share his hard-earned wisdom.
Willie Hector was drafted to the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams in 1961. His selection for the team is even more impressive in the context of the time. In the early 1960s, the NFL had unspoken quotas; there was no written rule, but it well understood by everyone involved, from the owners and coaches to players and staff, that teams would limit the number of African-American players. The L.A. Rams were one of the NFL’s most integrated teams in 1961 with a full 25 percent of positions on the roster filled by African-American athletes. The Washington Redskins, by contrast, remained an all-white team until 1962 when they integrated only in response to Kennedy Administration threats to evict them from their publicly owned stadium. In other words, at the time Willie entered the NFL, he was part of a large population of black athletes competing for a very limited number of positions on each roster.
Unfortunately, this does not make us personal trainers, nor does it qualify us to dispense advice on how others can best integrate exercise into their own lives. In other words, the fact you have had an appendectomy does not qualify you to perform one. Lucky for us, we are friends with a man who has over 50 years of experience training athletes. He was kind enough to share his hard-earned wisdom.
Willie Hector was drafted to the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams in 1961. His selection for the team is even more impressive in the context of the time. In the early 1960s, the NFL had unspoken quotas; there was no written rule, but it well understood by everyone involved, from the owners and coaches to players and staff, that teams would limit the number of African-American players. The L.A. Rams were one of the NFL’s most integrated teams in 1961 with a full 25 percent of positions on the roster filled by African-American athletes. The Washington Redskins, by contrast, remained an all-white team until 1962 when they integrated only in response to Kennedy Administration threats to evict them from their publicly owned stadium. In other words, at the time Willie entered the NFL, he was part of a large population of black athletes competing for a very limited number of positions on each roster.
Fact: A bit of history of race and professional football: The early 1960s represents the only era in which the Canadian Football League was competitive with the National Football League in play quality. The reason, according to most historians, was that the CFL was far more integrated. A lot of African-Americans who were locked out of the NFL by quotas went up to Canada to play ball. In fact, after being cut from the Rams, Willie played a few years in Calgary before returning to the United States for a partial season with the Denver Broncos.
Willie always knew that the career of a NFL lineman was likely to be short. A few players are able to stick around for a decade, but most last no more than four or five years before injuries retire them. During his time off between seasons, Willie earned a Master’s Degree in Physical Education. When he left the Broncos, he hung up his jersey, walked out of the locker room and never looked back. He retired this year after half a century of teaching and coaching at both the high school and college levels.
Willie Hector Fact: Willie’s Master’s thesis was titled “The Effects Of Foods on An Athlete’s Performance Prior to An Athletic Contest.” His conclusions, by modern standards, seem mundane. When Willie was playing professional football, standard nutritional advice was to eat as much protein as possible in the 24 hours before a game. The pre-game meal endorsed by the NFL in his day was a buffet spread featuring the entire hindquarter of a cow. Staff and trainers were on hand to encourage the players to eat as much as possible. Since no one wanted to eat right before a game, these meals usually took place the night before. Nonetheless, Willie has strong memories of getting to the field still feeling like he’d consumed a lead brick.
Willie’s thesis put forward the radical supposition that a pre-game meal balancing complex carbohydrates with varied protein sources was easier to digest and would therefore improve performance. The typical reaction these days is, “duh.” At the time it was far more controversial. There were more than a few old-school professors who viewed that thesis like Pope Urban VIII viewed Galileo’s heliocentric model of the universe. If they could’ve thrown Willie in front of the Inquisition, they most certainly would’ve done so.
We cannot overstate Willie’s influence in our lives. We’ve known him for nearly 20 years. We still call him first when we have questions about exercise, fitness, injuries, diet or any thing else performance related. We are obviously not alone. Almost everyone we know calls him “Coach.”
Fact: Watching a football game with Coach is one of life’s great pleasures. Coach obviously knows the game very well, so his commentary is far better than anything said on television. But the real fun comes when the camera pans the sideline. Coach still knows a ton of people in the NFL, especially among the coaches and coordinators who are closer to being his peers. And unlike TV commentators, Coach isn’t bound by a code of secrecy. Coach’s color commentary usually includes the unpublished back-story to hirings and firings. Sometimes, he’ll even share the salacious details behind a high-profile divorce.
The first time we called on Coach’s expertise was shortly after we met him. Steven had just begun learning the basics of Olympic Lifting. He found that holding a barbell in front of him in “rack position” was wrecking havoc on his wrists. Steven has a tendency to panic at the first sign of pain or discomfort. He was convinced that he had permanent nerve damage.
“If you lay off for a day or two, does it get better?” Coach asked after listening to Steven whine.
“Absolutely,” Steven answered. “But the minute I start lifting the pain starts again.”
Coach relaxed visibly. “Take it easy for a few days. You’ll be fine.”
“This doesn’t feel fine.”
“As long as an injury gets better when you take time off, you’re fine,” Coach said. “It’s the injuries that don’t get better that you have to worry about.”
We still quote this advice all the time.
When we have questions we always go back to Coach. He has forgotten more about health and fitness than we will ever know.
Exercise Advice From Coach Willie Hector:
Define Your Goals:
Coach often points out that most professional athletes retire well before their 40th birthday. There are a few outliers such as swimmer Dara Torres and Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice. But most professional athletes stop competing well before then. “They don’t stop because they want to,” Coach explains. “They stop because they have to.”
The ability to bounce back from injury is a rarely mentioned factor that makes a huge difference in the longevity of athletic careers.
Competing professionally puts a lot of stress on the body. These athletes are working themselves to the edge of their capabilities and, in the case of Jerry Rice, bumping up against 260-pound monsters intent on getting him to the ground as quickly and violently as possible. As a result, they occasionally get injured. The question then becomes, how quickly and completely do they recover from those injuries?
Coach doesn’t bring up the possibility – or even likelihood – of injury to discourage people from competing. Quite the opposite. If you want to compete, Coach will cheer you on. He mentions the potential of injury solely because it’s a major factor to be considered when defining your fitness goals.
For example, if your goal is not to beat the Williams sisters on the tennis court but rather to still be playing club tennis in your 70s and 80s, your daily workouts need not resemble the daily drills undertaken by the Williams sisters. Working out like the Williams sisters can increase your risk of injury. Backing off, by even a little, allows you to stay fit and healthy while reducing the injury risk.
This is why Coach recommends defining your fitness goals up front. If you want to compete at an elite level, you should push as hard as you can and see if your body can take it.
If your fitness goals fall short of world domination, Coach argues that pushing yourself to the absolute limit is not required. That said, Coach is still a strong advocate for competing. You’ll maintain a higher level of fitness if you participate in competitions, even the casual road race or tennis round robin. He just sees a big difference between training to complete and training to win.
Listen To Your Body:
Coach is adamant that everyone should exercise regardless of age or fitness level. However, throughout his long career, Coach never tried to produce a one-size-fits-all exercise program.
“Everybody is different,” Coach says. “It’s impossible to standardize for people with different goals, different abilities and different levels of fitness.” The one piece of advice he offers to everyone he has worked with is, “Listen to your body.”
“I don’t care if your muscles hurt,” he told us. “In a day or two, you’ll be fine. But if your joints or tendons ache you need to pay attention.”
His reasoning is simple: joints and tendons recover slower than large muscles. If you don’t give them time to heal when they’ve been overstressed, a slight ache can progress into a chronic problem.
Let your body be your guide and listen to its cues. If you start feeling pain in your joints, tendons or vertebrae, back off and take it easy for a few days.
But, Coach warns, “Don’t use minor pain as an excuse to stop exercising,” Instead, go light or change up the type of exercise you’re doing. If you run, try biking. If you bike, try swimming laps. The goal is to maintain your exercise program while letting your tendons and joints recover.
Coach often points out that most professional athletes retire well before their 40th birthday. There are a few outliers such as swimmer Dara Torres and Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice. But most professional athletes stop competing well before then. “They don’t stop because they want to,” Coach explains. “They stop because they have to.”
The ability to bounce back from injury is a rarely mentioned factor that makes a huge difference in the longevity of athletic careers.
Competing professionally puts a lot of stress on the body. These athletes are working themselves to the edge of their capabilities and, in the case of Jerry Rice, bumping up against 260-pound monsters intent on getting him to the ground as quickly and violently as possible. As a result, they occasionally get injured. The question then becomes, how quickly and completely do they recover from those injuries?
Coach doesn’t bring up the possibility – or even likelihood – of injury to discourage people from competing. Quite the opposite. If you want to compete, Coach will cheer you on. He mentions the potential of injury solely because it’s a major factor to be considered when defining your fitness goals.
For example, if your goal is not to beat the Williams sisters on the tennis court but rather to still be playing club tennis in your 70s and 80s, your daily workouts need not resemble the daily drills undertaken by the Williams sisters. Working out like the Williams sisters can increase your risk of injury. Backing off, by even a little, allows you to stay fit and healthy while reducing the injury risk.
This is why Coach recommends defining your fitness goals up front. If you want to compete at an elite level, you should push as hard as you can and see if your body can take it.
If your fitness goals fall short of world domination, Coach argues that pushing yourself to the absolute limit is not required. That said, Coach is still a strong advocate for competing. You’ll maintain a higher level of fitness if you participate in competitions, even the casual road race or tennis round robin. He just sees a big difference between training to complete and training to win.
Listen To Your Body:
Coach is adamant that everyone should exercise regardless of age or fitness level. However, throughout his long career, Coach never tried to produce a one-size-fits-all exercise program.
“Everybody is different,” Coach says. “It’s impossible to standardize for people with different goals, different abilities and different levels of fitness.” The one piece of advice he offers to everyone he has worked with is, “Listen to your body.”
“I don’t care if your muscles hurt,” he told us. “In a day or two, you’ll be fine. But if your joints or tendons ache you need to pay attention.”
His reasoning is simple: joints and tendons recover slower than large muscles. If you don’t give them time to heal when they’ve been overstressed, a slight ache can progress into a chronic problem.
Let your body be your guide and listen to its cues. If you start feeling pain in your joints, tendons or vertebrae, back off and take it easy for a few days.
But, Coach warns, “Don’t use minor pain as an excuse to stop exercising,” Instead, go light or change up the type of exercise you’re doing. If you run, try biking. If you bike, try swimming laps. The goal is to maintain your exercise program while letting your tendons and joints recover.
Coach’s Exercise Tips:
Set Your Patterns Early:
“People who are not active when they’re young are rarely active when they get old.” Once eating and exercising habits are set, they are far more difficult to change. This does not mean that you are doomed if did not work out in your 20s and 30s. But, the sooner you get into healthy patterns, the easier they will be to maintain.
Start Today:
No matter how old you are, you can find the right exercise program. It will inevitably have to change as you age, but scaling back is a much better option than cutting out exercise altogether.
We’ll use Coach as our example of how exercise programs can change and adapt as we move through our lives:
In his 20s and 30s, Coach ran up to three times a day. He would run once on his own and twice with the track teams he was coaching. He lifted heavy weights three times a week. One of his favorite exercises during his NFL days was to push his car around a parking lot. You might have once had to push a car across the street to a gas station; Coach is the only person we’ve ever met who actually enjoyed it.
In his 40s and 50s, Coach started biking and walking. He began to scale back his weight lifting. He lifted regularly, but he lowered his weights to around 75 percent of his maximum capability. He also took more time off between workouts. This is, according to Coach, one of the keys to healthy aging. Your recovery time slows as you age. “Once again,” he say, “pay attention to your body and give yourself time to recover between workouts.”
Now that he’s in his 70s, Coach walks. Most mornings he reads his newspaper while trudging slowly up an imaginary hill on his treadmill. He still lifts weights, but he now holds himself to 55 percent to 65 percent of his max. He is no longer trying to add to his fitness. He is now simply fighting to maintain. He expects to be fighting this fight into his 90s and beyond.
Fuel Your Body:
We have not mentioned this yet, but Coach has been living an approximation of the Drink Your Carbs Lifestyle since the late 1950s. He eats healthy foods, he exercises and rarely does a day go by when he fails to pull the cork on a bottle of wine or pour himself an evening glass of Jack Daniels.
One of our favorite ways to eat in San Francisco – a city with some of the best food on the planet – is having dinner at Coach’s house. It invariably includes a big salad, his famous BBQ chicken thighs and/or ribs and enough wine to kill the Roman God Bacchus.
Long before First Lady Michelle Obama began her anti-obesity campaign, Coach was advising his students on the importance of eating well. “Think of your body like a car,” he likes to say. “It you put bad fuel in it, it’s not going to run well.”
Most of his advice comes down to: avoid sugar and processed foods, and be sure to eat plenty of lean meats, fresh fruits and vegetables.
Like all of us, he has had to reduce his calorie intake as he has aged. These days he favors a low-carb approach. More than once we have watched him push away a breadbasket or a basket of corn chips and say, “I’m saving these calories for my wine.” In the end, this may be a better summary of Drink Your Carbs than any description we’ve come up with so far.
We wish everyone had Coach in their lives, and hope many of you have your own version. If not, we are happy to have shared a few insights from one of the smartest and wisest men we know.
“People who are not active when they’re young are rarely active when they get old.” Once eating and exercising habits are set, they are far more difficult to change. This does not mean that you are doomed if did not work out in your 20s and 30s. But, the sooner you get into healthy patterns, the easier they will be to maintain.
Start Today:
No matter how old you are, you can find the right exercise program. It will inevitably have to change as you age, but scaling back is a much better option than cutting out exercise altogether.
We’ll use Coach as our example of how exercise programs can change and adapt as we move through our lives:
In his 20s and 30s, Coach ran up to three times a day. He would run once on his own and twice with the track teams he was coaching. He lifted heavy weights three times a week. One of his favorite exercises during his NFL days was to push his car around a parking lot. You might have once had to push a car across the street to a gas station; Coach is the only person we’ve ever met who actually enjoyed it.
In his 40s and 50s, Coach started biking and walking. He began to scale back his weight lifting. He lifted regularly, but he lowered his weights to around 75 percent of his maximum capability. He also took more time off between workouts. This is, according to Coach, one of the keys to healthy aging. Your recovery time slows as you age. “Once again,” he say, “pay attention to your body and give yourself time to recover between workouts.”
Now that he’s in his 70s, Coach walks. Most mornings he reads his newspaper while trudging slowly up an imaginary hill on his treadmill. He still lifts weights, but he now holds himself to 55 percent to 65 percent of his max. He is no longer trying to add to his fitness. He is now simply fighting to maintain. He expects to be fighting this fight into his 90s and beyond.
Fuel Your Body:
We have not mentioned this yet, but Coach has been living an approximation of the Drink Your Carbs Lifestyle since the late 1950s. He eats healthy foods, he exercises and rarely does a day go by when he fails to pull the cork on a bottle of wine or pour himself an evening glass of Jack Daniels.
One of our favorite ways to eat in San Francisco – a city with some of the best food on the planet – is having dinner at Coach’s house. It invariably includes a big salad, his famous BBQ chicken thighs and/or ribs and enough wine to kill the Roman God Bacchus.
Long before First Lady Michelle Obama began her anti-obesity campaign, Coach was advising his students on the importance of eating well. “Think of your body like a car,” he likes to say. “It you put bad fuel in it, it’s not going to run well.”
Most of his advice comes down to: avoid sugar and processed foods, and be sure to eat plenty of lean meats, fresh fruits and vegetables.
Like all of us, he has had to reduce his calorie intake as he has aged. These days he favors a low-carb approach. More than once we have watched him push away a breadbasket or a basket of corn chips and say, “I’m saving these calories for my wine.” In the end, this may be a better summary of Drink Your Carbs than any description we’ve come up with so far.
We wish everyone had Coach in their lives, and hope many of you have your own version. If not, we are happy to have shared a few insights from one of the smartest and wisest men we know.
Coach Willie Hector
