Douglas Schorr

If the lion of the concrete jungle thinks you’re easy meat, it’s too late to ask Tarzan.

I try to follow the “what would Tarzan do if he met the other lion” line of thought, adding leisure and social activities to the mix. The Tarzan approach is simple: focus on movements and strength that serve real purposes. In the jungle, you need to be ready to sprint away from danger, climb to safety, or face a threat. You need strength that isn’t just for show but for survival and living. That’s what shapes my training.

Leisure and social activities center around walking in what remains of the beautiful Malaysian jungles nearby, our little local lake (more of a saunter and chat-along) in the morning, and the suburbs when it’s cool. I enjoy participating in Tai Chi and Qi Gong classes at our local “field.” Every morning, over 100 people, mostly “oldies,” split into their preferred specialty groups and have fun for a few hours. They care for each other off the field too. My ability to fully participate is dictated entirely by my other exercising.

Variety is vital; an enjoyable part of waking up is choosing what I’m going to do for my hour, hour and a half, or maximum two hours of exercise. I have only one regular: the gym. The 2 km walk there serves as both warm-up and warm-down. Because I practice the maximum effort routine as described in “Resisting the Training Trap,” gym happens only every 5th or 6th day, with the following day being a compulsory rest day. It is at the gym I’ve gained Tarzan strength qualities.

Between gym sessions, I focus on step-work, freestyle sprinting, and additions such as yoga mat work and shot put. Shot put helps me coordinate the power I’ve gained at the gym into a well-directed force—”stay away,” I say, brandishing a boulder. And I do it with a reasonable measure of speed and agility. These two Tarzan qualities I am building from the yoga mat and up the steps and along the road.

Step work comes in two forms. Living on the 15th floor of a 21-storey building provides my training ground—30 and 42 flights, respectively. Effort 1: With a 20kg pack, I climb to the 21st, head for the bottom, and up to 15. I halve the weight and repeat. The third set is without the backpack. Coming up, I take two steps at a time and the last three of each flight. The fourth set I do as fast as I can. There’s no fixed routine; my mood, muscle feeling, and work agenda play a big part. Occasionally I’ll do more! My rule is that as soon as my pulse is too high, I rest by walking the passage between the building ends. It’s important to listen to your body while maintaining discipline to push it.

Effort 2 involves repeats without weights but with this difference: every floor change requires sprinting 25 m to the first lift, catching breath over 25 m to the second lift, then sprinting to the end steps. The pattern reverses direction on the next floor. Some days I do a full 50m from the steps to the second lift, followed by deep breathing to work my COPD lungs hard. My best effort was three sets; usually I manage two and struggle through part of the third.

Sprinting was challenging to restart, but increased mobility made me really enjoy feeling the wind rushing through my hair. The benefits were enormous and cumulative, improving even my balance and confidence against falls.

Freestyle sprinting means picking targets along quieter back roads and going for them. As I warm up, an almost-fast walk becomes a fast, healthy long-stride jog, finally becoming sequences of all-out sprints with walking breaks of equal distance. Recently, while walk-‘n-sprinting the 4.5km from the field, a 12-year-old schoolboy (struggling under an enormous backpack) joined me. Trying to keep up with his youthful energy strained my biceps femoris and semitendinosus—or, as I tell the masseur, the “bottom of my bum.”

This incident reinforces a crucial point: stay within your level and heed your body’s signals. When your muscles tell you you’re overdoing it, ease up and walk home gently. This morning I managed 2.88km of Effort 2 Step sprinting before getting a strong bottom of my bum message and taking the lift home. Recovery involves immediate rest, a large steak for late lunch, and possibly another massage when available. I’m planning a jungle amble for Sunday—that’s in 3 days. I’ll take my time on the ups and downs and keep a steady pace on flat ground.

Shot put provides an intense 40-minute workout, either added to a sprint day or done in the evening when I need to get out of the flat and onto the grass. After a general warm-up, I really push the legs, back, arms, and neck, which quickly elevates my pulse rate. For variety and social interaction, I join the guys for squash when possible, though my macular degeneration makes time my swing challenging. Interestingly, since switching to a carnivore diet combined with this exercise regime, my macular degeneration has improved significantly—I’m now only half degenerated, as I like to say.

The yoga mat stays out permanently, serving a completely different function—stretching. I emphasize two approaches: first, improving flexibility, and second, building strength by holding challenging positions. Most floor sessions combine bridges, hip thrusts, trunk rolls, and balance work. I particularly focus on practicing getting up from the floor in one reasonably fluid movement—a vital skill for maintaining independence as we age.