Cinemorphosis

Tag: fitness

  • Anatomy of a Rotator Cuff Meltdown

    Anatomy of a Rotator Cuff Meltdown

    A torn rotator cuff doesn’t just hurt—it becomes the project manager of your mood swings and mental health. Every everyday gesture gets interrogated like a crime scene: How high can I raise this arm? Which angle is the assassin? When will the orthopedic surgeon enter stage left and demand a sacrificial tendon? You find yourself mentally policing every muscle fiber in the chest, shoulders, and biceps—formerly your prized territories, now embargoed like Cold War no-man’s lands. And then comes the flashback reel: Was it the single-arm kettlebell press? The swing? The curl? Maybe it wasn’t a heroic injury at all, just the slow, bureaucratic decay of connective tissue over time—aging’s signature insult.

    The constant vigilance is corrosive. Shoulder injuries have support groups because sufferers eventually learn the catastrophic secret: it’s not the rotator cuff that breaks first—it’s the psyche. The shoulder, like the back and knees, is a psychological choke point. When it fails, it takes your mood, your sleep, and your sense of invincibility hostage. Physical rehab becomes inseparable from emotional rehab. The body limps, and the mind limps with it, muttering under its breath.

    It’s been three months and I’m starting to resent the job of being my own orthopedic babysitter. I’m grateful I can still sleep without feeling like someone is driving a railroad spike through my scapula. I have enough forward and lateral mobility to get dressed without a prayer circle. I can still train legs, glutes, and abs like a functioning primate. But the lesson is brutal: a torn rotator cuff grants no mercy, no sanctuary from overthinking, and no reprieve from the quieter forms of psychological sabotage.

    A torn rotator cuff is no country for sniveling, navel-gazing men. The challenge now is to un-snivel, un-navel-gaze, and rebuild myself without the luxury of denial.

  • A Diagnosis is a Weapon: My First Step Toward Shoulder Recovery

    A Diagnosis is a Weapon: My First Step Toward Shoulder Recovery

    Yesterday I met with a sports medicine physical therapist at Kaiser for the first time. The kind nurse took my vitals, and to my surprise my blood pressure wasn’t bad at all: 127 over 84. My blood pressure always spikes a bit at the doctor’s. 

    Then I met the sports doctor. She was affable, direct, and clearly passionate about her work. She examined my left shoulder, noted that the swelling was visible even through my T-shirt, pressed along the biceps groove, and tested my range of motion. After watching me perform several movements, she diagnosed me with rotator cuff syndrome and biceps tendinopathy. She immediately ordered an X-ray (results pending) and scheduled an ultrasound in five weeks to gather more detail. 

    Her initial verdict was cautiously optimistic: with proper rehab, she believes I can recover in three months. I told her that unlike my old gym injury—when I tore my rotator cuff doing heavy bench presses and spent nine months in purgatory—this one didn’t begin with trauma. I was simply doing my normal kettlebell chest presses, felt a little tightness, and woke up the next morning with a shoulder that felt like it belonged to someone else. That incident was three months ago. 

    She has me on Motrin three times a day to bring down the inflammation so I can tolerate the rehab movements. To my relief, she didn’t ask me to abandon muscle training; she understands the realities of aging and the need to protect lean mass. I just have to avoid chest presses, shoulder presses, and curls. My work will shift to legs, glutes, traps, and lat activation, with shoulder and pec stimulation coming indirectly through rehab. She gave a handout of exercises, some I can do and others I can’t. I also consulted some doctors who do shoulder rehab on YouTube and told her about some, and she agreed I could do them.

    So far, I have a long list of rehab exercises I can choose from: cat–cow yog pose, broomstick flexion, wall push-ups, wall flexion, planks, plank taps, narrow push-ups on the knees, light dumbbell rotations, and others. 

    Some overhead movements are currently impossible. Hanging from a chin-up bar, the internet’s magic cure, feels like medieval torture. 

    I’ll do the exercises that I can tolerate for fifteen minutes daily: integrated on kettlebell days, standalone on the rest. Also, on my non-kettlebell days, the doctor agrees I should take an hour-long walk.

    Psychologically, this appointment mattered. A diagnosis means I’m not inventing pain or collapsing mentally. It gives me a plan, an organizing principle, a weapon. When my body fails, I can live with discomfort; what I cannot tolerate is drifting in uncertainty. Seeing this doctor was the first step in taking back control.

  • Three Months of Shoulder Pain and the Art of Not Panicking

    Three Months of Shoulder Pain and the Art of Not Panicking

    This afternoon I’ll see a doctor about my three-month shoulder ordeal. I’m hoping for clarity: bursitis or a torn rotator cuff. The injury didn’t begin with a dramatic moment. I remember doing single-arm chest presses on the garage mat with a 50-pound kettlebell. There was a subtle tightness in the left shoulder—no alarm bells. The next morning I woke as if someone had rearranged the joint overnight. Side raises and reaching behind became nearly impossible. I cut out all chest and shoulder presses. Some days the pain flared after training; I blamed curls and single-arm swings, so I eliminated them too, and the pain eased.

    To make up for the reduced kettlebell volume, I doubled down on the Schwinn Airdyne, grinding through hour-long sessions that combine pedaling and lever rowing. No pain—until three days ago, when the movement set off a nerve fire down my arm. That told me I was no longer dealing with simple irritation. Something was pinched and inflamed. The bike is now retired. I’ll walk the neighborhood for cardio until further notice. I’ve experimented with rehab exercises: cat-cow yoga poses help; so do wall push-ups from shoulder rehab videos. Side lateral raises, though medically recommended, feel like sabotage. I refuse them.

    I made a video about the injury yesterday. The floodgates opened. Dozens of comments from people who had surgery, magnets, injections, or long stretches of physical therapy. One old friend emailed: he never recovered and has lived with pain and restricted motion for a decade. The road, it seems, is long and indifferent to optimism. I don’t enjoy the pain, the limited workouts, or the hypervigilance required to avoid reinjury. The mental effort—combined with physical discomfort—wears me down. Right now the shoulder aches at a low level, probably from the idiotic attempt to sling on a backpack this morning. Starting next week, I’m switching to a messenger bag over my healthy shoulder.

    When I speak to the doctor today, I’ll try to be calm, give a clear narrative, and resist letting anxiety pull me into melodrama. I want to hear the data, not force my fantasy of “no surgery” onto the facts. I had hoped to write about something else this morning—anything other than this shoulder—but obsession has its own gravity. It will not be ignored.

  • Among the Sprout People

    Among the Sprout People

    I’ve been a bodybuilder since 1974, which means I’ve spent half a century haunting health food stores. Not the modern corporate ones with sterile aisles and soothing playlists, but the old-school mom-and-pop operations run by barefoot idealists and tense, caffeine-free librarians who smelled faintly of patchouli and moral superiority.

    Those stores had a bouquet unlike any other—a humid cloud of brewer’s yeast, carob dust, desiccated liver tablets, toasted wheat germ, and stale bran, all marinated in tea tree oil and valerian root. Mix it together and you got the unmistakable scent of loneliness and intestinal distress.

    The shelves sagged with mimeographed books from obscure presses, all preaching salvation through sprouts, tofu, and lentils. Reading them, you understood the subtext: renounce pleasure, annoy everyone, and either die alone or join a small cult where everyone smells faintly of alfalfa and martyrdom.

    In the back corner sat the “Alternative Reading” section—dog-eared manifestos about conspiracies, telepathy, UFOs, and energy vortices. These weren’t health stores; they were secular monasteries for the over-enlightened and under-medicated.

    Most shoppers weren’t buying vitamins—they were buying deliverance. They came searching for answers: to their chronic bloating, their failed relationships, their career detours, their lingering sense that the world had been designed without them in mind. They were pilgrims in pursuit of absolutes, desperate to turn meaninglessness into a smoothie.

    I often tried to avoid eye contact. The vibes were heavy, like wet hemp. They looked at me—broad shoulders, protein powder in hand—and saw a defector. In their eyes, I wasn’t a fellow seeker; I was a pragmatic muscle robot looking for more bioavailable amino acids. They, meanwhile, communed with chlorophyll and cosmic vibrations.

    In that ecosystem, I was the natural enemy: a bodybuilder. My very existence refuted their gospel. My muscles were proof of a material world they’d spent decades trying to transcend through spirulina and good intentions.

    These days, I skip the incense and buy my protein online. It’s efficient, impersonal, and utterly free of judgment—mine or theirs. They can keep chasing transcendence through powdered algae; I’ll settle for FedEx and 160 grams of protein a day. Somewhere, they’re still sniffing valerian root and waiting for the universe to text them back.

  • Have I Gone Overboard with My Protein Obsession?

    Have I Gone Overboard with My Protein Obsession?

    Five nights ago, I dreamed I was trapped at a houseboat party. The decks heaved with music and laughter; people swayed, bottles clinked, lights shimmered across the water. Somewhere between the bass thump and the spray of cheap champagne, I decided it was time to save everyone. I climbed onto a railing and began lecturing on the virtues of a high-protein diet.

    The crowd ignored me. The more I shouted about the glory of amino acids, the louder the DJ turned the volume. My words scattered across the lake like crumbs for fish. I tried compromise—lowering the daily requirement from 200 grams to 120—but no one cared. Eventually, hoarse and defeated, I realized I’d become a mad prophet of whey protein, screaming into the void. When I woke, I asked myself the obvious question: Had I gone overboard on my protein obsession?

    That question lingered until this morning, when I read Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall’s Food Intelligence: Protein, the “Only True Nutrient.” They argue that our worship of protein is centuries old. In 1853, a Parisian newspaper mocked vegetarians as gaunt weaklings too frail to walk out of a restaurant unaided. A hundred years later, Arnold’s gospel of 250 grams a day turned protein into a civic duty for gym rats. Now, with Google searches and supplement sales hitting record highs—an industry worth $28 billion—protein has become both religion and racket. Everyone preaching its holiness seems to be selling tubs of it.

    Protein has always been marketed as a competitive edge: animal protein supposedly bestows power, plant protein supposedly punishes you with mediocrity. Yet Belluz and Hall dismantle this myth. Plant eaters, they write, can easily get all essential amino acids from a diverse diet—no powders, no “meat extract,” no panic required.

    Even more humbling, they admit that no one actually knows the optimal daily dose. Our bodies, they say, have a built-in governor called “protein leverage,” which drives us to crave roughly what we need. Too little protein and we lose muscle, which shortens life. Too much—especially at the expense of a balanced diet—and we hasten the same end. Somewhere between the extremes lies the sweet spot, but it’s not a round number you can print on a supplement label.

    That answer frustrated me. I like numbers. I like goals. “More” has always felt safer than “enough.” Reading their chapter, I remembered the summer of 1978, when I was sixteen and backstage with Mr. Universe Mike Mentzer before his posing exhibition set to 2001: A Space Odyssey. I asked how much protein he ate. “About a hundred grams,” he said, barely looking up from his shake. I was stunned. Arnold had taught us to eat at least 250.

    “Why not more?” I asked. Mentzer shrugged. “It’ll just make you fat.” Then, with equal candor, he mentioned his steroid stack—Deca-Durabolin included. Even then I could tell: genetics, not shakes, were the true miracle. At five-foot-eight and 225 pounds, he was carved from marble, but it was marble under pressure. He died of heart failure at 49, just five miles from where I live.

    Now I’m 64, taking in 180 grams a day and wondering if I’ve turned protein into a creed. I’m strong for my age but heavier than I’d like. Maybe the excess that built my muscle also built my burden. That houseboat dream feels less like absurdity and more like warning. It’s time to stop shouting about protein and start listening—to appetite, to reason, and maybe to the quiet voice reminding me that balance, not bulking, is the real art form.

  • Tooter Turtle Goes to Gold’s Gym

    Tooter Turtle Goes to Gold’s Gym

    When you’re old, you burn daylight running stupid counterfactuals. Forty years of teaching college writing and now I mutter to myself, “You were never meant to be a professor. You were meant to be a personal trainer.” This fantasy is less revelation than acid reflux—I can’t keep it down no matter how hard I try.

    But let’s be honest about the personal trainer gig. Path A: you scrape together rent money coaching half-motivated clients through limp triceps pushdowns while they whine about kale. Path B: you cater to narcissistic celebrities who want you to count their lunges in a whisper, until their self-absorption has hollowed you out like a dry coconut.

    In this farce, I’m no different than Tooter Turtle, that cartoon sad sack from my childhood. Every week he begged Mr. Wizard to reinvent him as a lumberjack, a detective, a gladiator, a football star. And every week he proved that no matter how much you change the costume, you can’t change the pratfall. His new career always ended in humiliation, panic, and the desperate cry: “Help me, Mr. Wizard!”

    That’s us: eternal college freshmen, forever switching majors, convinced that the next “out there” will be our deliverance. But when the magic portal opens, we loathe ourselves for asking.

    Me, a personal trainer? Please. Within a week I’d be rolling my eyes at clients’ flabby excuses, pawning my kettlebells to cover insurance premiums I don’t have, and slinging creatine tubs from the trunk of my Honda. I wouldn’t be a coach—I’d be a sidewalk prophet of six-pack abs, half-broke, half-starved, and wholly ridiculous.

    Punchline: In short, I’d be Tooter Turtle in gym shorts—begging Mr. Wizard to zap me back to the classroom, where at least the only thing I’m destroying is a freshman’s thesis statement.

  • When It Comes to Swim Trunks the Size of a Hotel Mint, Maybe Opt Out

    When It Comes to Swim Trunks the Size of a Hotel Mint, Maybe Opt Out

    The New York Times article, titled “Skimpy Men’s Swimming Briefs Are Making a Splash,” offers a solemn dispatch from the front lines of GLP-1 drugs, but I would guess that men—having exhausted every form of visible self-optimization—are now expressing their Ozempic-enabled slenderness via tiny, Lycra-clad declarations of status. We’re talking male bikinis, or what I like to call the ego sling.

    Apparently, if you’re dropping $18,000 a year to chemically suppress your appetite and shed your humanity one subcutaneous injection at a time, you deserve the privilege of looking like a Bond villain’s pool boy. I suppose this is the endgame: pay to waste away, then wrap what’s left in a luxury logoed banana peel.

    Luxury underwear companies, never ones to miss a chance to monetize body dysmorphia, are now marketing these second-skin briefs not as mere swimwear, but as power statements. To wear them is to say: “I’ve defeated fat, joy, modesty, and comfort in one fell swoop.”

    I’m almost 64. My aspirations remain high—ideally, I’d like to look like a special-ops operator on vacation in Sardinia. But I know my place. I wear boxer-style swim trunks, the cloth of the pragmatic and the semi-dignified. They’re not exciting, but neither is seeing a sun-leathered septuagenarian adjust a spandex slingshot over a suspicious tan line.

    There’s a difference between being aspirational and being delusional. The former means striving for vitality, strength, and energy. The latter means stuffing yourself into a satirical undergarment and pretending you’re a twenty-two-year-old wide receiver with a sponsorship deal.

    To my fellow older men: sculpt your body like it’s your spiritual obligation—but when it comes to swim briefs the size of a hotel mint, maybe opt out. Not every part of youth is worth reliving. Some of it deserves to be left in the chlorine-stained past, right next to Axe body spray and Ed Hardy tank tops.

  • Expiration Date, Please Hold

    Expiration Date, Please Hold

    I have been lifting longer than most marriages last. My barbell education began in 1974 at Earl Warren Junior High, when the world still smelled of gym chalk and cheap cologne. By twelve I was worshipping squats, chasing pec pumps, and counting out 200 grams of protein like it was scripture. Weightlifting wasn’t a hobby; it was a program for staying human in a chaotic world. Say what you will–and I will–but lifting saved me. Plain fact.

    Being a lifter has been a suite of advantages: I look younger than my driver’s license suggests, my muscular frame reads as backup insurance against chronic illnesses and wayward surgeons, and I can still train with a teenager’s ferocity. There is a chemical grace to it–the endorphin blast after a set that feels like a small, private resurrection. I am, frankly and proudly, a workout addict.

    But let’s not romanticize. Every addiction has its dark shadow. There will come a winter–perhaps in my eighties–when my body will send a clear memo: enough. The garage kettlebells I currently haul like battle standards will be too heavy, the Turkish Get-Up will turn into a consult with gravity. That prospect terrifies me because the kettlebell isn’t just steel and handle; it is a throttle on my will to live.

    We are all animated by different things. For me it is sweat, breath, the rattle of plates. For my old beloved Finnish Spitz, Gretchen, the decline arrived as a refusal of walks and food. When desire dies, everything else follows. So long as I rise hungry and ache for a workout, I count myself unexpired. When hunger and will fade, I suspect I’ll understand what Gretchen taught me without lectures, philosophy, or think pieces about aging in The Atlantic: the stopwatch of life has clicked.

    Am I foolish to have stapled my life to a routine of kettlebells and protein scoops? Have I mistaken the ritual for immortality? Maybe. Maybe I should cultivate other anchors–friends who aren’t gym bros, projects that don’t require a heart rate monitor. Or maybe I did the right thing: built a life that keeps me moving, thinking, and sufficiently irritable to remain alive.

    I don’t have the script for what comes after the iron thins. I’ve got the stubbornness to keep trying. If anyone’s got a convincing new plot, I’ll listen. Preferably between sets.

  • The Farmer’s Walk of Shame and Glory

    The Farmer’s Walk of Shame and Glory

    At thirteen, I became an Olympic weightlifter—because what else does a wiry, overachieving kid from suburban California do when puberty arrives like a freight train full of testosterone and insecurity? My coach, Lou Kruk, had the gruff certainty of a war general. His command: Squats. Lots of them. Squats were the foundation, the gospel, the holy writ. Lou didn’t care if your femurs screamed or your glutes cried for mercy—he wanted you buried under iron like a potato under mulch.

    And I obeyed. I squatted in the gym. I squatted while playing goalie in soccer. I squatted in line during PE roll call, waiting for Ernie Silvera to butcher yet another attendance list. I even squatted in front of my locker, hoping posture would hide the acne. Eventually, the kids at Earl Warren Junior High stopped calling me by my name. I was simply: Squats.

    But here’s the thing: squats weren’t just reps. They were a romantic infatuation with self-improvement. A ritual. A sacrament. I didn’t fall into squats—I plunged, like a lovesick poet into madness.

    Fast-forward to middle age—forty years and one mid-life crisis later—I traded barbell bravado for kettlebells and met a new myth: the Turkish Get-Up. It felt like choreography from some warrior ballet: lie down like a slain gladiator, then rise with a kettlebell overhead like a triumphant god reanimating himself for vengeance.

    Then came the Farmer’s Walk, and I was undone.

    Here’s the scene: I grab a 48-pound kettlebell in one hand, a 53-pounder in the other, and saunter out of my garage barefoot like a lunatic monk of pain. I circle my Honda Accord, not for superstition, but for symmetry. Then I march around the front lawn, beads of sweat trickling down my temples, tank top clinging to my body like a polyester declaration of war.

    The burn in my delts and forearms? Biblical. Especially when I’ve just finished kettlebell swings and around-the-worlds like some masochistic circus act.

    Why do I love the Farmer’s Walk?

    First: its austere simplicity. It’s manual labor disguised as exercise. I’m hauling metaphorical water, carrying invisible suitcases packed with existential weight.

    Second: it taps into a fantasy. I imagine I’m a young, vigorous farmhand, righteous and virtuous, about to earn a sizzling plate of bacon and eggs just for showing up to life.

    Third: it’s primal. I’m walking twin beasts, two snarling metal bulldogs, and I’m the alpha. My heart rate spikes, my skin gleams, and I feel, absurdly, alive.

    But with greatness comes peril. I go barefoot, which means one mistimed drop and I’m dialing podiatry from the ER. If I stub my toe, I’ll be hobbling like a Dickensian orphan. Then there’s the risk of dinging my Accord, which would be both tragic and hilarious.

    Yet the greatest threat isn’t physical—it’s psychological. I am, without a doubt, the neighborhood oddity.

    My neighbors stare. They whisper:

    “What’s he trying to prove?”
    “Is he unraveling?”
    “Is this a cry for help or a cry for gains?”
    “Why doesn’t he take up pickleball like a normal old man?”
    “Oh dear, that poor wife.”

    But despite the scrutiny, I press on. I rise each morning with the enthusiasm of a caffeinated Spartan. I brew my coffee, stir my buckwheat groats, and prepare for my ritual. And when it’s time to perform my ceremonial promenade across the lawn, kettlebells in hand and sweat on brow, I do so with one thought:

    Let them watch.

  • What Fifty Years of a High-Protein Diet Taught Me

    What Fifty Years of a High-Protein Diet Taught Me

    These days, there’s no shortage of content promising health, strength, and longevity through high-protein diets. Everyone’s got a take. I can only give you mine—earned through fifty years of trial, sweat, and a steady stream of protein powder.

    I first learned the value of protein in 1974. I was thirteen, a Junior Olympic weightlifter, and determined not to be outlifted by anyone with better genetics or better snacks. I made it my mission to eat no fewer than 160 grams of protein a day. That habit never left. For the past five decades—save for the occasional vacation detour—I’ve kept my intake between 160 and 200 grams daily. Today, approaching 64, I train in my garage like a teenager on a mission, kettlebells swinging, breath steady, muscles intact.

    Protein isn’t a trend. It’s foundational. Just the other day, I was driving my daughter and her friend to Knott’s Berry Farm when her friend said, “I think I’m going to faint.” I asked if she’d eaten breakfast. “Yes,” she said. “A bowl of fruit.” I told her the truth: “That’s zero protein. No wonder you’re crashing. First thing you do when we park—go find yourself a carne asada burrito.” I told her to eat a meal with forty grams of steak-powered resurrection.

    Here’s what people still don’t get: if you don’t eat at least 40 grams of protein in a meal, you’ll be starving and sluggish thirty minutes later. It’s not magic; it’s physiology. Back in the day, I inhaled bodybuilding magazines. Everyone warned me: “Don’t believe those. They’re just selling supplements.” Sure, some of them were. But when it came to protein, they weren’t wrong. The numbers don’t lie. For men, 160 grams a day is a solid target. For women, around 120. I’ve lived it. I’ve trained on it. And I’ve aged with it. The science has finally caught up to what lifters have known all along.