Table of Contents
This book is dedicated to my parents, Paul and Marcine Roarke.
All I can say is thanks, I love you both very much. PJ
INTRODUCTION:
REAL FITNESS FOR REAL PEOPLE
Before I enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1981, I grew up in a large working-class family in upstate New York. Not many people in this big circle of family and friends went on to college and a white-collar career. The standard career path was a short tour in the military, and then straight to work. They worked with their hands, their heart, and common sense; physical strength, health, and endurance were required to be successful. With skill and honest effort they ran small businesses, worked the fields, and made things of value. Many were construction and factory workers, mechanics, and truck drivers. Some chose to serve as police officers and firefighters. When the call went out, they put aside their tools and served in our military, defending our country against Hitler, communism, and terrorists. It was all work and they did it with humility, integrity, and pride.
Despite the fact that no one really exercised (unless you count hunting and fishing) or followed special diets, you didnt see many overweight people. Nor did you often hear of people being sick. Hurt on the job sometimes, yes, but just at home sick? Almost never. The fact was most of my family never went to the doctor for anything until they were much older, after many decades of hard work. Yet day after day they were able to work hard, raise their families, and stay fairly healthy in the progress. That was the recent past.
In the last 25 years there has been a serious decline in the health and basic fitness of Americas working people. Its hard to believe how dramatically the rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease have risen over this time period, but dont take my word for it: Go to the Centers for Disease Controls (CDC) website, where they have all the data. Its alarming, but its all true. Many workers are also getting injured and becoming disabled early in their careers. Its no coincidence that the economic productivity of our country has been waning. Many major American industry icons are also in decline, and in no small part due to the massive increase in the cost of insurance and health care.
The fact is that the health of our nation is directly related to the health and fitness of our people. This is, and has been, the case throughout human history. No great nation has ever survived and prospered when its people were unfit and unhealthy.
Surprisingly, this decline in health and fitness has been accompanied by an explosion of health and fitness products and information. The media is overloaded 24/7 with fitness products, workout DVDs, diet systems, special weight-loss supplements, and more. Youd think that with all this information more available than ever, wed be in better shape and healthier. The reality, however, is that the opposite is true. While the reasons for this disconnect are pretty simple to explain, its by no means an easy fix.
Over the past three decades, through much trial and error, I designed a system to get and keep me at a high level of physical fitness for when I couldnt participate in normal Marine Corps training. This is not a standard Marine Corps, body-building or sports-conditioning program. Its a comprehensive system that takes the best parts of many different exercise programs and brings them together to obtain what I call working fitness. Working fitness is a term and goal that Ive used for many years. I came up with it to capture the blue-collar nature and goals of the system. Like the working man himself, its effective, time efficient, and, above all else, results driven.
Throughout this book Ill be running my pie hole, giving my opinions, making observations, and providing recommendations concerning physical fitness and eatingmany of which Im sure that youve never heard before. Or at least never heard explained the way I lay it out. I base 90 percent of my guidance on only three simple things: long personal experience, first-hand observation, and the input of other trusted people. The other 10 percent is what Ive read in books (hundreds of them) or heard from what Id consider a reliable source. Am I hard-headed? Maybe, and while I realize I dont know everything about this subject (far from it), I know what I know. More than anything else, I know what works, and more importantly I know what doesnt work.
I also share many of my experiences related to physical training. Sea stories are what we call them in the Marine Corps. Like everything else I write, they have a purpose. Two, actually. One is to illustrate a point Im trying to make. The second is to entertain you with some funny stuff that Ive seen and experienced. I learned a long time ago that when youre instructing or teaching anything, its best done with real-life examples and humor. Believe it or not, the stories I tell are 100 percent true, to the best of my memory (thats my memory).
Another fair warning: I write like I speak, as an adult speaking to other adults. To do it any other way would not be me. So if you dont like direct, honest opinions in grown folks language, you need to find another fitness guide.
PART 1
LINE OF DEPARTURE
CHAPTER 1
WAKE-UP CALL
Of course I didnt know it then, but the first chapter of this book was written when I was around ten years old. It was right about the time my team, the New York Jets, won their only Super Bowl in 1969. For those who werent there, life for a ten-year-old boy was much different than it is today. First off, there werent any high-tech toys to keep us indoors. No computers, video games, or iPods. TVwhich was essentially cartoonswas limited to a few hours on Saturday mornings. Our parents didnt give much thought to how we spent our free time. They were busy with things like working and keeping the household together. So if the weather was anything short of a hurricane or blizzard, we were pumped full of Capn Crunch and booted out the door. We played sports, rode bikes (Sting-Rays mostly), and fished in local ponds. We were like a pack of wild mutts, always moving and looking for something to get into.
The working-class neighborhood where I grew up was filled with kids back then, and there were lots of boys around my age. So a pick-up game of something was never hard to get going. On this particular summer day it was basketball. After throwing fingers to choose sides, we started with a normal driveway game of hoops: lots of missed shots, plenty of fouls, yelling, and attempts at fancy dribblingnot much passing or game plan here. Sounds like fun stuff; however, it seemed like every time I got the ball, one of the other kids just simply grabbed it away from me, or stuffed it when I went for a shot.
The bottom line was that I was much smaller than the other kids, shorter by a head, and skinny as a snake. Not that the other kids were young Michael Jordans or anything, but I was damned near a midget compared to them. This happened time and time again, until after one especially nasty blocked shot I reacted like I always did to a physical insult: I took a swing at the kid who did it. Not just some little kid, mind you, but a kid who went on to play college football. He was a few years older, and much bigger than me. Needless to say, in a hot minute I was down, bloodied, with my shirt torn. I somehow managed to tear away, and I ran for home like an escaped mental patient. (If nothing else I could outrun him.) Shouted insults from the boys about my dwarf size and little loser status followed right behind me.
