my exercise ROUTINE

6:30 a.m.

flat on back: 

swing hips left, right 30-40 times

lift pelvis up 30-40 times

lift bent knees left, right 30 times

swing extended legs left, right 120 times

bring knees to chest 30 times reps one leg at a time

sit on edge of bed, lean down with feet on floor 3 minutes

sit on bed, bring feet flat together

arms straight lift body 30 times, then do it fast

stand and lift toes, heels 30 reps

march in place for 100 plus steps

squeeze hand grips 40-50 times

lift 8 pound weights, up, up reversed, out, forward 30 times each

stand lean  pushups, 80-85 times.

lay on swiss ball on stomach for count of 100, legs extended, toes touching floor

sit on ball, move forward and do bridge 50 times, hold for count of 25

Put on 2 pound ankle weights, hold pole and swing legs each way for 15 , dresser 25 lifts for each leg.

Hang from horizontal bar for count of 100

Sit on chair, lift feet 150 times with ankle weights

same position swing legs back and forth 150 times

At counter, do 40 more standing pushups

Standing, lift 10 pound weights 25-30 times

Do crunches hands on 3 positions 15-30 times

Do ski pole lunge 25-30 times or stand on one leg for balance count of 30

Back against door frame bend knees to parallel with floor for two counts of 25, then one count of 50-100.

On back deep breathing 10 counts

On Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday 15-20 minutes on treadmill, bike. Sometimes couple of minutes on stair stepper.

sam col oct. 27 pls tell me you got it and  add blog at end as in the past

When is too much exercise too much exercise?

by sam

I’ve often mentioned my exercise program in the past, especially when I thought it might inspire other seniors to remain active. But now the two-hour daily stint is getting boring, particularly on the three days when I add aerobics on treadmill and bike.

My routine was something I had created from many sources over the years, starting when I was teaching skiing at Big Bear Mountain in Southern California.  

When I moved to Tahoe and began teaching at Heavenly’s Boulder Base, I enlarged the workout to about and hour, figuring that daily class work would keep me fit. (I never aimed at making myself bigger and better, just staying where I was and not declining.) The exercise was designed to keep me skiing as I aged.

But the long gaily workouts were demanding and eating into my mornings. I sought advice from some PTs I knew, but they of little help in examining what I was doing.

So after meeting Stephen Yasmer, manager of physical therapy for Carson Tahoe Health, I decided to talk with him about my fitness program. I did so and brought with me a printout with me that read something like this:

“Flat on back, lift knees on at a time to the chest for 30 reps.

“Using 8 -pound weights lift up, out, frontwards, over head each 30 times.” And so on.

The list was more than two pages long, and we went over it together. At the end he said if it wasn’t causing me pain, it sounded good but was way too long.

“Make some of the actions tougher and shorter,” he said. “Instead of 120 leaning pushups, do 10 or 15 traditional ones. And wherever possible make the action more demanding and with less reps.”

I said I was considering reducing my present routine to include tai chi once a week. (I had added some tai chi moves to the routine over the years.)

“Yes, that might add variety, but don’t cut back on your present routine except as I’ve suggested,” he said. And meanwhile sign up for some therapy now.”

So I did.

Meanwhile, I showed him my left knee, which had become painful a few days ago. No reason, I hadn’t bumped it or fallen on it. I had taken the inexpensive version of Aleve (naproxen) to ease the pain. (When I had my right knee replaced I took painkillers and vowed not to do so again.)

He checked and diagnosed inflammation. “Just use cold compresses for 20 minutes at a time. Take the naproxen for a day or so.”

I used the cold compresses every couple of hours and the hot knee cooled down, and the pain ebbed away and hasn’t come back.

Yammer also checked my flexibility and muscular strength  and suggested a series of physical therapy sesions to reduce my ever-present back pain, the result of too many falls on the ski trails.

I’ve had the back pain for years and many therapists have tried to help with little success. I ever tried at TV-ad therapy in Reno, but all he did was stretch my back with an elaborate device. I knew from experience that I could do that at home by hanging from a fixed horizontal bar in a doorway. Palliative, yes, but I simply hang from it for at  count of 25 and the back pain subsides.

I’ve got a schedule for therapy that stretches to ski season with a very professional therapist named Isabel, who worked me over in prep for the sessions. I’ll report on how those go in the future.

And I’m lucky that the apartment building I live in on Russell Way has an exercise room couple with stationary bike, treadmill and stair steppers. I’m apparently the only resident to use it, as well as the outdoor hot tub a couple of hundred feet from the exercise room.

While I use the treadmill regularly, I’m happy to enjoy the nearby bike and hike trail along highway I-580. And before the Big Mac multiuse athletic facility began to rise, there was a nice field of sagebrush where one could walk.

So I hope that this report encourages activity among seniors. As Yasner said, ”Not how good or bad the routine was but that I was active.” That’s what counts. Pant, pant.

“Bridge of Spies” Spielberg as his best, with Tom Hanks stolid and sure

by Sam

 “Bridge of Spies” is movie making at its heights with Steven Spielberg directing and Tom Hanks as the leading actor. It’s a tense Cold War thriller about the exchange of a Soviet spy caught in America for a U.S. Air Force U-2 pilot shot down on an aerial spy mission over the East Germany. It’s rich in Cold War Incidents as well as solid characterization.

As expected, Hanks delivers a terse portrait of an insurance salesman dragooned in defending Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance, who creates a marvelous picture of a captured spy who will never surrender; he may well be the best actor in the film. PBS TV fans may remember him for his brilliant performance in “Wolf Hall,” whee he played Thomas Cromwell.).

Film starts out with a long sequence during which Abel paints a picture, receives a phone call during which he does not speak. He goes to a park and retrieves a nickel which contains a secret message for him. 

The FBI raids his dingy apartment then but he covers up the secret message depriving the court of direct evidence of his spying, but he is taken prisoner anyhow.

Meanwhile, a insurance lawyer named Donovan (Tom Hanks) is pressured by his law firm to take over as Abel’s defense at that to 30 years so that Abel can be used later in a switch with the Soviets.

Meanwhile, four pilots are selected as those to fly the mystery U-2 spy plane over the Soviet bloc. In the only computer generated scene in the film, the U-2 is shot down, and the pilot Francis Gary Powers despite instructions to take poison lives. (Personal note: I worked on the U-2 missions long ago while in the Air Force as a photo-recon officer. We just looked at the 9-by18-inch pictures. Just following orders.)

Hanks talks Abel into going along with the prisoner swap (although he says when the East bloc takes him “they will shoot me).

Many complications as Hanks waits around for all the pieces to be put together for the exchange, including an East German official in casual clothes takes him for a ride in a fancy Volvo P1800 sports car. That was status supreme in East Germany and it was back in the days before Volvo switched to puffy sedans.

Things get murky as tine for the exchange on a snowy bridge with both sides lined up with snipers ready in case anything goes wrong. The swap is made and Hanks goes home to collapse on a bed before talking to his family.

Director Spielberg is a master at creating doubts about who is right and who is lying. He also inserts enough scenes from Cold War days to send chills down the back, including a nuke bomb test towering mushroom cloud, something  most of us have buried in the past. Spielberg seems to be telling us that it wasn’t all black and white in  those Cold War horrors. And a treat: Alan Alda shows up as a CIA type. Nice to see him again and a reminder of “M*A*S*H” days.

Director Stephen Spielberg

Writers

Matt Charman

 Ethan Coen

Joel Coen

Cast 

                TomHanks as James B. Donovan

  • Mark Rylance as Rudolf Abel

• Amy Ryan as Mary McKenna Donovan 

• Alan Alda as Thomas Watters

• Austin Stowell as Francis Gary Powersel

• Scott Shepherd as Hoffman

• Jesse Plemons as Murphy

• Domenick Lombardozzi as Agent Blasct

        • Eve Hewson as Carol Donovan

• Michael Gaston as Williams

• Peter McRobbie as Allen Dulles

• Stephen Kunken as William Tompkins

• Joshua Harto as Bates

• Billy Magnussen as Doug Forrester

• Mark Zak as Soviet Judge

• Edward James Hyland as Chief Justice Earl Warren

• Marko Caka as Reporter

• John Ohkuma as FBI Agent

•

books

Three books you might enjoy

Two are crime novels, one a political treatise you might find amusing. Another is a crime thriller.

The best crime novel is John Sandford’s “Night Prey.” Sandford is a best-selling writer, a fugitive from the newsroom of the Star-Trib in Minneapolis. This one dates from 1994 but still is fresh and fun. It’s all about a lurking psychopath who is fixated on a female target, watching her from a close rooftop. Lucas, a wealthy computer game designer, likes the cops’s life and he is a good one. No need to go into plot —- that’s Sandford’s job and he does it well. You’re rooting for the target woman all the way and Sandford makes the trip fun.

Less original is Sue Grafton’s “K is for Killer,” one of her alphabet series keyed by the title letter. This is not Sandford-level but entertaining as Kinsey searches for a missing person as a private eye. She knows the local crime scene, and becomes involved with a teen prostitute as a source. The writing i nimble and fun and the plot nicely complex. It’s good enough to make you keep and eye out for her next one, keyed to the letter L.

 A very different book is Patrick J. Buchanan’s 2007 “Day of Reckoning” of 2007. I got steered to it by a mention of it in a political column as worth a read, despite Buchanan’s lack of political action of late. Funny thing is, he suggests a solution to the Iran nuclear crisis very much like the one cobbled together by the U.S. and others.

Most of the book is an attack on George W. Bush for invading Iraq with phony weapons claim. George W. gets no praise here, which maybe why GOP has pretty much abandoned Buchanan.

Lots to contemplate here as Buchanan ticks off recent history of where the U.S. went wrong. But it’s all George W.’s fault.

Lee Child is a very popular thriller writer, with one major character, Jack Reacher, former Army MP major  now a wanderer carrying only a folding toothbrush and a couple of thousands in cash.

His comes to the aid of a embattled innocent. Child’s prose is clean and neat and his bad guy foes always tough in the final sequence. 

Child’s “Echo Burning” from 2001 follows the formula well, in this case helping a battered wife after she picks him on as a hitchhiker and tells him of her abuse. She’s caught with a young daughter with the family of her jailed husband who detests her as a “beaner.”

The husband is released from jail but murdered and the wife is accused. How Reacher works it out is of course the novel. It reads well, the plot is messy but fun. 

Child is a Brit, but he captures America’s flavor well. A fun read, not literary stuff but action enough.