In an attempt to resume my gym and pool visits, which the commencement of a “grown-up” job has interfered with by providing a pathetic excuse of “I’m tired!” at the usual 6:30pm weekday timeslot (which I never found objectionable during university); Having come to a realisation that my resting heart-rate, at 72 bpm, is now 15 beats higher than it was a year ago;
Hoping also to lose about 5 to 10 lbs and reduce my bodyfat levels;
I now resolve to make the time, and just go.
But help me. Give me some anecdotal motivation.
Tell me about a time in your life when you were the fittest you ever were. What exercise, recreational or in the course of your job, made you that fit? How long did it last? What made you slide backwards into (relative) non-fitness (assuming that you are not now currently in your personal best shape)?
Between college grad and my first full time job. Besides job interviews and some freelance work, I had a few months where I had an awful lot of spare time, so I worked out a lot. 5 days a week, 2 hours a day. I’d start about 7am with a 2 mile jog or 20 minutes on the exercise bike, then finish with yoga. Every other day I’d weight train instead of the cardio, but I did the yoga daily.
Now most of my day is spent at work, which is pretty physical in itself (I’m lifting large boxes of paper or clay and lumber on a daily basis), so I manage to get about 30 minutes of biking in every day. I don’t have a car so I bike or walk everywhere. I’m not as fit now as I was that couple of years ago, but I’m still in pretty good shape.
I regularly would ride around 140 miles a week cycling in the winter and nip out for a couple of 5 mile runs, with perhaps two weigths sessions - not heavy weights, more geared toward endurance and power.
During the summer months its not unusual to ride 150 racing miles, along with the same on top just keeping in trim, and for particular events such as 12 hour time trials then it would be upwards to around 400 miles.
I have ridden over 900 miles a week, but that was just touring and camping, so it wasn’t at any real speed.
I exercise about an hour a day, 6 days a week. Usually its running between 5 and 6 miles followed by a bunch of sit-ups, or weight-lifting followed by 15 miles on my stationary recumbant bike. I’m down about 50 pounds in the last 7 or 8 months, trying to drop the last few.
I’m in the gym 5 days a week, 1.5 to 2.5 hours at a time. Cycle, run, core, weight training, swimming when I can force myself. I’m always looking to drop a few pounds or get a little faster but I’m learning to be satisfied with being in the top 5% for my age group. In fact I’m in far better physical condition than a large proportion of men half my age.
My motivation: Nothing tastes as good as thin/fit feels.
High school was the fittest I’ve ever been I’d think. Non-stop, 12 month sports, usually more than one at a time. Straight from football into basketball, into track and Legion baseball, with summer basketball going on at the same time.
Every day was at least two full practices, or a game and a practice, or some combination. My body fat had to be a negative number, I drank a protein shake every morning just to maintain my weight.
Since I’ve been an adult, I’d say the period right after my knee surgery in Fall 2002, when I was in pretty intensive rehab and just being able to get fully active again. Bicycle riding when the weather allowed, 10-12 miles after work. Weights, elliptical trainers and rowers in the gym 3-4 days a week. My weight stayed constant at first then I gained a few pounds as the muscle mass built.
Heading out on my Saturday morning 13-22 mile run right now!
But, typically, I run between 40-80 miles a week (depends on how far out from a marathon I am. My next one isn’t until December, so today will only be 14 miles). I lift weights around 5-6 hours a week as well.
I’ve never thought of it this way, but I think this is very accurate. I LOVE eating. I would love to eat cheesecake every day with every meal. But, I’d rather just have a few bites of cheesecake once in awhile and be able to be fit.
Early-'90s. Every weekday morning I’d do 25 push-ups, 120 sit-ups, 40 reps with 20-pound dumbbells, and jog for 45 minutes. In the process of working up to this routine I lost 65 pounds.
I had two periods of excellent fitness in my life. The first was in high school. I drank egg-shakes for breakfast, skipped lunch to lift weights in the school gym, and went to aikido four days a week. So, workout was between 1 and 2.5 hours a day. The hardest aikido day was when only me and one other guy showed up, so there were no rest periods while someone else practiced; we worked solid for the whole hour and a half.
The second was in college, after a girl I liked started going out with someone else. I drank protein for breakfast. Lunch was baked noodles and a bagel. Dinner was noodles or rice, a piece of fruit, and at least two vegetables from the dining hall, even if I hated everything they had. My mindset was, “Food is not for pleasure, it is for fuel.” I lifted weights nightly for about an hour, and spent about another 40 minutes running the stairs. And off and on, my friend taught me a bit of isshinryu karate. I didn’t get thin, but I did get rock-hard.
Since you asked what made me slide back: at the same time, I was also taking the ephedrine/caffeine/aspirin “stack” to lose weight. It worked, but it also affected my sleeping habits in a very negative way, and I became very agressive. After I threw a couch at my brother in fury, I figured I’d better stop before I killed someone.
My fitness peak was probably the two summers that I spent working in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. I spent five days a week working at a resort hotel outside the park. For the two weekend days I would typically psend one day hiking and one bike riding. Hikes were typically 10 to 15 miles, bike rides were in the 40 to 50 mile range. I would also do some short hikes or trail running in the evenings on my work days. All told that pushed me down to about 135 pounds, the thinnest I’ve ever been during my adult life.
When I was younger, I was most fit during volleyball season in the summer. We had an insane coach who scheduled five-hour practices (broken into two and a half hour chunks) each day, six days a week. Which really sucked because most of us also had summer jobs. So I guess that was 30 hours of exercise a week. Now that I think about it, that wasn’t so healthy.
When I was healthiest was during my first marathon when I was running about 40-50 miles a week. I guess that’s a little over 8 hours of exercise a week, considerably less than what I was doing during volleyball training. And I looked a lot better doing the marathons than I did when I was training for volleyball. Go figure. Sometimes less exercise is best.
For what it’s worth, I consider myself fairly fit now, but I usually just exercise 3-4 hours a week (3 miles on the treadmill or running outside a few days a week, maybe some stairmaster, elliptical training, weight lifting and yoga). Marathons take up a huge amount of time and sometimes I just want to hang out in front of the TV.
I worked “the pots” at a vucanizing operation. The pots were large pressure cookers that cured the mandrels with sleeves that v-belts were cut from. The mandrels were iron cylinders made of 7/8 inch steel, 42 inches tall, and from 9 to 60 inches in diameter. The object of the job was to hoist the mandrel out of the pot and pull the curing bladder off by hand (the curing bladder was a 3/4 inch rubber sleeve that was placed over the mandrel with pnuematic pressure) then place the mandrel in water to cool. Once everything was cool, the mandrel had to be manhandled to a hydraulic cylinder that would strip the sleeve off of the mandrel. The physical exertion was only part, being that steam was used under pressure, there were also high temperatures involved (sometimes up to 135 deg F). I worked on that job for 4 months, a 37 hour shift (sometimes 11, when some f*cker didn’t show up for work), six days per week. I was hard, much harder than I was when I played high school football. After 4 months there was an opening in the Quality Assurance Dept, I was the only in-house applicant that had taken algebra in high school and I was a shoe-in. After my promotion, I commuted 12 miles to the factory on bicycle.
I worked “the pots” at a vucanizing operation. The pots were large pressure cookers that cured the mandrels with sleeves that v-belts were cut from. The mandrels were iron cylinders made of 7/8 inch steel, 42 inches tall, and from 9 to 60 inches in diameter. The object of the job was to hoist the mandrel out of the pot and pull the curing bladder off by hand (the curing bladder was a 3/4 inch rubber sleeve that was placed over the mandrel with pnuematic pressure) then place the mandrel in water to cool. Once everything was cool, the mandrel had to be manhandled to a hydraulic cylinder that would strip the sleeve off of the mandrel. The physical exertion was only part, being that steam was used under pressure, there were also high temperatures involved (sometimes up to 135 deg F). I worked on that job for 4 months, a seven and half hour shift (sometimes 11, when some f*cker didn’t show up for work), six days per week. I was hard, much harder than I was when I played high school football. After 4 months there was an opening in the Quality Assurance Dept, I was the only in-house applicant that had taken algebra in high school and I was a shoe-in. After my promotion, I commuted 12 miles to the factory on bicycle.
Tough call. My fittest was probably during college (about sic yeara ago) when I was on the rowing team. I rode my bike to practice (a couple of miles) at 5:30 am, had a two hour practice, and then rode to school six days a week. I also lifted weights twice a week, did a weekly 10k erg (rowing machine) piece, and ran five to seven miles twice a week. Wow, that was a lot of work. My memories of that time period are a total blur 'cause I was constantly exhausted (I was a full-time student and had an almost full-time job plus other school activities). I also wound up *gaining[/i[ weight as I was packing on muscle.
I’m not as fit now because I’m working full-time, coaching, and tutoring. I still row for a couple of hours five times a week and I’ve started erging twice a week. I’m alos planning to add a run and start training for a marathon after I my big race in Boston. So I’m still decently fit, just not at my peak.
It’s tough to judge - I was probably at my fittest in 1981-2 when I worked in the stockroom of the biggest record store in Toronto. I lifted boxes and stacks of record albums all day, first from the truck into the back room, then through a trap door in the floor, to the person in the basement. Then around the stockroom, then upstairs to the sales floor. A couple years of that can make you pretty fit. During the times when I was out of work, I walked miles and miles, everywhere I needed to go. At that time, I was also undernourished, and looked like a skeleton.
Now, I’m about as out-of-shape as a person who sits at a computer all day, every day, would be. But I’m not even a little bit overweight and I don’t have to lose anything. Having said all this, I have never voluntarily done any exercise of any kind. Ever,
Just gym time and not counting dance classes and fun stuff, I’d say 45 minutes for three days a week of weight lifting and between half an hour to an hour of cardio three times a week. Cardio is my fave, so even though my program “Body for Life” GREAT program, only called for 20 minutes three times a week, I generally just let the music get to me and kept on going.
1997-=2000. Tae Kwon Do 3 + times a week. Lost 47 lbs in the first 5 months on Atkins, kept it off till September 2000 when I broke my back. Otherwise, would have been at it still.
TKD was excellent work-out stuff. Focus, sweat, different moves. Great work-out even if you hate fighting. I heartily recommend it.