Author and athlete Phil Campbell fought having his picture on the cover at first. But he relented when shown other fitness books that ran author’s portraits prominently.

Campbell out of the blocks fast with middle-age fitness book 

By Ken Stone

You gotta have a gimmick. That’s the way this country sells soap, soda pop and self-help programs.

In a new book by a true-believer masters athlete, the gimmick is an invented phrase -- “Synergy Fitness.” But if you can get past that trendy-sounding construction, “Ready, Set, GO!” by Phil Campbell of Tennessee has some solid meat on its bones.

Campbell is a respected health-care executive and hospital administrator (now on sabbatical) with a gym rat’s bent toward bodybuilding and exercise. He promotes the notion that middle-aged folks can benefit a lot by increasing human growth hormone in their systems. That’s not a novel idea -- as a visit to any search engine will attest.

But he wisely points out that HGH (which he calls GH in the book) is risky business when injected or ingested and can turn off the body’s natural tap. So how do middle-age folks get more HGH? This is where Campbell makes a contribution to the geezer fitness genre.

He argues effectively for a regimen focusing on high-intensity training. Such training, combined with proper sleep and diet, can spur the pituitary gland’s “pulsing” output of HGH. Campbell calls such HGH goosing a natural anti-aging regimen. And he stresses natural (while failing to note that unnatural means of importing HGH can get you banned from competition under USATF and IAAF anti-doping rules). A minor quibble.

His introductory chapters summarize the state of research on HGH -- how it got to be “hot,” how certain supplements increase its production or fight body mechanisms that suppress it. He quotes anyone who supports his case -- from scientific and medical journals to articles in USA Today or National Masters News. Even masters coach Ross Dunton is mentioned.

(He also lists masterstrack.com on Page 164 as a source of information on masters track -- a pleasant surprise.)

Although sprinkled with medical/technical jargon -- and appendixed with dozens of supportive sources -- the tone and presentation of this information go down easy. If someone were to write “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Differential Calculus,” Campbell’s book could serve as a template. It offers lots of charts, a “Strategic Fitness Plan” training log and sample workouts -- all in a large typeface that vision-challenged seniors will appreciate.

In fact, Campbell says, “Ready, Set, GO!” originally was to have been produced by Frederick Fell Publishers Inc. of Florida -- which churns out a series of self-mastery books with the common title “The Know-it-All’s Guide to. . . .”

But Fell wanted to downsize “Ready, Set, GO!” to 144 pages, so Campbell’s literary attorney suggested he take a cue from Dan Poynter’s guide -- “The Self-Publishing Manual.” Thus encouraged, Campbell produced the book himself, via his own Pristine Publishers (it kind of rhymes with Katherine, his wife and chief photographer, who is listed as Pristine’s contact.) As well, Kathy Campbell has a mass communications degree, and put that skill to work well. (She’s going to publish other books via Pristine over time.) 

The change in publishing strategy, Campbell says, “allowed me to double the size (of the book) to 368-pages with 200 photo-illustrations.”

About those photos. I counted 289 -- not including the big cover shot of a buff and tan Campbell smiling in a muscle-revealing tank top, or the nine smaller cover photos of Phil and others engaged in stretching, weight lifting, karate, biking and swimming.

Phil confided that he had misgivings about plastering himself on the cover -- if not the book’s interior, which is flooded with 110 photos of Phil exercising and doing various drills..

“When you see the cover, you’re going to think, ‘Yeah, he’s an egotistical sprinter.’ ” Campbell wrote me in early February 2002, not long after the book began appearing in stores. “FYI ... I fought my wife and the cover designer (as I sought to use) some type of quad photo arrangement of different-age people doing different types of exercise. But when the cover designer e-mailed a copy of the Top 10 fitness sellers, and most of them had the author’s photo, I went along.”

So do I. If this was to have been a “Middle-age Fitness Training for Dummies,” it probably had to have oodles of illustrations. And if the target audience is out-of-shape forty- and fiftysomethings, the scores of photos of hunky men and chiseled women demonstrating various stretches and exercise techniques are appropriate. (At least they’re pleasant to look at.)

But this dummies approach -- which includes photos of Phil and others doing the most rudimentary of drills and stretches -- may be its undoing in one market. Masters athletes already are on the fitness bandwagon. They know how to do a hamstring stretch. Thus the proper setting to sell “Ready, Set, GO!” is a Senior Olympics event, or in parks and rec departments or healh clubs that introduce sedentary types to the virtues (and fun) of exercise.

Although I’m sure that masters athletes can benefit from a clearer understanding of HGH and how the body can repair the ravages of aging, most masters will think he’s preaching to the choir regarding high-intensity training. Sprinters, jumpers and throwers intuitively realize that they can’t prosper by focusing mainly on aerobic/cardio type exercise -- a staple of many fitness programs. A sprinter needs to sprint. A jumper needs to jump.

And a couch potato needs to get off his spud.

Campbell realizes this, too, so he uses the book to talk up the masters movement (he also mentions masters swimming and cycling) as a way of providing motivation for fitness.

He wrote me: “The conclusion of my book encourages readers to participate in masters track and field. And I probably mention master T and F 20 or more times. If someone doesn’t join masters T and F after reading the book, I would be surprised.”

Campbell says his book was released locally in late January in the large Davis-Kidd Booksellers in his hometown of Jackson, Tenn.

“It sold more copies in the first week than ‘Body of Life’ sold at this store last year. And ‘Body’ was a bestseller for them.” Campbell says. “I have 10 or so physicians doing the program, getting great results, and telling all their patients to purchase the book. That helps!”

The author also has been interviewed on radio shows in Missouri, Maryland, Florida, Tennessee and Los Angeles about the topic of increasing GH naturally through fitness training.

Demonstrating that synergy is good for marketing as well as muscle-building, Campbell hired a company to build him a promotional Web site -- and he sends out an e-mail newsletter with plucked-from-the-Web items that flesh out his fitness philosophy.

His book may be unnecessary for many age-group track and fielders -- already training hard at recommended 4- or 5-hour-a-week levels -- but its enthusiastic advocacy of masters sports is a godsend for a movement that lacks effective promotional leadership.

Further, Campbell writes in his book:

“We have the Senior Olympics and the Special Olympics. What we need is the Masters Olympics for age 30 and up.... Most people stop competing in physical events after high school. A small number continue in college through intramurals and official athletic competitions. Unless you are in that very small number making it to the pros, almost all competition is over -- for life. This is a huge cultural failure.”

Campbell has a clue, thank goodness.

A USATF masters nationals entrant for at least three years, Campbell competed at age 48 at Baton Rouge in 2001 (running the 100 in 12.97, 200 in 27.09 and throwing the discus and javelin 104 feet and 132, respectively).

Thank goodness he walks the walk as well.

Campbell is a relatively unknown apostle of active lifestyles. But if his book -- a reasonable $19.95 cover price -- succeeds in the mainstream fitness publishing market, it can’t help but make known our niche to thousands of people.

We’re no dummies. We’ll take any publicity we can get.