I’m suprised to see so many people recommend walking for weightloss.
Walking an hour on a level surface (3.5 mph pace) burns 200 calories compared with Running an hour on a level surface (11 min mile pace) which burns 450 calories.
Whereas an hour of martial arts burns 500 calories… And isn’t so boring you want to stab yourself.
Its what I’d recommend. 
Thanks for the replies, everyone.
Remembering how fun fencing was, I looked to see whether there are any fencing classes taught this summer at my campus’s rec center. Unfortunately not, but amongst the martial arts they do have:
Capoeira
Iaido <—Drawing and slashing with a katana
Japanese Karate
Kung Fu
Jiu Jitsu
Kyudo <—Japanese Archery
From the description, Iaido looks interesting. (So do several others.) But does anyone know–does Iaido give you much of a workout?
I used to do Karate when I was a kid, wouldn’t mind taking that up again either. Hmm…
-Kris
It worked for me, that’s why I recommend it. Over a summer I lost 20 pounds with my only real exercise being long, brisk walks.
Two points:
I can’t find the site, but I’ve read in the past that if you can’t run at least 6mph (a 10 minute mile) you shouldn’t be running. Below that speed you’re really just causing excessive wear and tear on your back an knees (i.e. there’s less glide in your steps and too much up and down motion).
Variety is the key to any good work out. You say you have access to a gym, so alternate between the elliptical, running, stationary bikes, swimming, etc.
Ergs (indoor stationary rowing machines) are probably the best workout you can get. It’s a weight bearing cardiovascular workout that hits the whole body but without impact to the joints. Try to build up to 3 sets of 2000m and getting each set under 8minutes.
I do shinkendo, which is Japanese swordsmanship, and includes tameshigiri (test cutting). Shinkendo is safety-oriented, so it may move a little more slowly than iaido, but in shinkendo they generally don’t let people handle a shinken (a real katana) for 1 - 1.5 years after starting.
Our two-hour sessions generally involve fifteen minutes of warmups and footwork, 20-30 minutes of suburi which is very good aerobic exercise, a hefty chunk of other kata and stuff with pauses for instruction, and finally some time doing tachiuchi, or choreographed sparring. The suburi is very hard work; the rest of the evening probably evens out to being about as hard as walking fast… harder if you have good form and sensei doesn’t stop you to correct you very often
My dojo does tameshigiri about once a month. Everyone who is cutting, cuts about a dozen targets. We’re doing it tonight, as a matter of fact.
re: shins
what do your arches look like? if they are very high or very low there is not much you can do aside from running on sand or grass. soft is key. i have very high arches and insteps. my feet are not made for running. i will get shin pain just running a city block or two.
on the swimming front unless the pool is heated, nicely heated, you will bulk a bit. have you ever seen a slender marine mammal? when i stopped swimming i went down 2 sizes in trousers. swimming is almost as good as ice skating for thighs of thunder.
You can get orthotics for either condition. It is not the cheapest solution, but orthotics last a long time, which helps. And yes, you can run a full marathon on orthotics without blister problems, if they are fit right.
I don’t think it works that way. If the water is cold you will burn more calories keeping your body warm. Humans are not adapted to add bulk in response to cold water; fat will go where it wants to go. If you legs slimmed down after you stopped it was because you stopped exercising the muscles in your legs and they lost muscle mass.
Maybe, but I know a woman who, while fit, always had a layer of fat around her muscles etc. She was not chubby, but she lacked muscle definition. She swam religiously for exercise all through college. Post college, she had no access to a pool and took up running/ walking. When I saw her next, she looked svelte. I asked her if she had lost weight and she said no, she had quit swimming.
So, I’m willing to be wrong but have seen the effect he posted about.
I recommend watching your portions and making sure you walk or exercise each day (maybe alternate the two). If you can take the stairs, do so; use outlying parking spaces etc. It all adds up to a fitter you.
Stupid question, but is there any reason running in place is not as good as “real” running? Like, if I run here at my bed for fifteen minutes before I go to sleep, is it as good as running to somewhere for fifteen minutes?
Man, DO THIS! I’ve seen several performances in Brazil, and I was awed, shellshocked, and any other adjective you can come up with to describe how breathless I was. That shit was awesome!
My three drugs of choice are beer, pain pills, and ice. It helps with the swelling, it helps with the pain… here’s a conversation I had with a rugby old boy who came to visit me this weekend to see how my ACL reconstruction/replacement was going:
Me: Yeah, I’ve just been icing it a bunch.
Him: Ice is great, isn’t it?
Me: Sure is. I’ve been drinkin’ a lot of beer, too.
Him: Beer is great, isn’t it? Now, when you put the two together…
Try using an Ace bandage or thin rag between the ice and your skin if the cold is too shocking. I promise you it’ll make just about anything feel better.
In Twickiniham (where the English rugby national team plays), they have entire ice baths devoted to the cause.
Re: the swimming thing. Yes, swimmers do have higher body fat than other athletes. On the other hand, the difference is only about 5% in comparison with runners. Twelve versus seven percent. Big deal. And that’s if your focus is only on swimming or running. People who do other training in addition to or in rotation with swimming would have slightly lower body fat than dedicated swimmers. Most single-sport athletes don’t really care about anything that doesn’t have a direct impact on their performance, and so don’t spend any time on training outside their discipline.
Regular people, on the other hand, are (or should be) doing a variety of activities because specific adaptations optimizing your body for a particular activity present trade offs. Long distance runners can’t carry much muscle mass. Bodybuilders have relatively low endurance. Swimmers have slightly higher body fat and almost the same bone density as non-athletes. Cross training, non- sport-specific exercise avoids most of the specific adaptation pitfalls. In other words, do a variety of stuff, keep doing it, and try to do more of it.
People keep recommending running as a way to get in shape when it’s actually a intermediate to advanced form of exercise. Boggles the mind. If you’re already overweight, then you’ll have a higher chance of injury from running. If your muscles and connective tissues aren’t in halfway decent shape already, you’ll have a higher chance of injury from running. If you’re really determined to run, do some conditioning and lose some weight first, and take up running after you’ve done some preparation for it.
Do some low-impact aerobics or swimming along with some beginning weight-training exercises. Take it slow at first, listen to your body, and take at least a day off in between sessions for the first couple of weeks. Former couch-potatoes along with other inexperienced and unconditioned athletes hurt themselves quite a lot because they rush, because they read too much about the advanced training techniques of elite athletes and what works for those people.
If you haven’t been running, you probably don’t have shin splints; they’re usually a repetitive stress injury. Since you said you’ve never been able to run without hurting, you’ve probably got some kind of structural or postural problem. This might or might not be correctable with specific exercise. Strength imbalances are often a cause of pain or injury in running, and bad technique either contributes to or causes the imbalance. Besides seeing a physical therapist or sports therapist for an actual expert opinion, there are two things I can recommend.
Check out Pose running. The exercises and drills they do to get you ready for running will probably help with most correctable body imbalances. The technique taught in Pose is also an efficient and biomechanically sound way of running. If you’re going to start from scratch, might as well start out right so you don’t have to retrain yourself later.
Try a few sessions doing some easy, short-distance running with bare feet on a soft surface, like a grassy field. If running with bare feet doesn’t cause significantly less pain in your legs than running in shoes, I’d be very surprised. You probably will get a bit sore afterward in some odd small areas. I did the first few times I ran barefoot because it makes all those little stabilizing muscles and connections in your lower legs and feet work more. Besides strengthening stuff, barefoot running will also auto-correct some bad technique; you usually end up looking quite a lot like Pose after a few hundred meters.
Neither of these is a panacea, though. If you’ve lost weight, gotten some better tone, done a few weeks of strengthening exercises, stretches, and drills, done some short barefoot runs after all that, and you still hurt while running, then you probably should not run.
On the other hand, you don’t need to run. The best outcomes in changing body composition come with a combination of strength training (weightlifting, calisthenics) and aerobics. Anything that gets your heart rate up and keeps it at 60–80% of your max will do just fine for aerobics. Elliptical, stair climbing, rowing machine, stationary bike, jumping rope, or a combination of all of the above will work for that. I got a link that gives quite a lot of information about novice weight lifting from someone here on the boards in an earlier thread on getting in shape. It’s mostly cribbed from a book called Starting Strength.
Well, for one thing, what could be more boring than running in place? Or look more dorky?
Yes there are differences. When actually running, you push back - that’s what makes you go forward. Most of your energy should go into pushing, not lifting your legs up. Ideally, you expend next to no energy picking your legs up. Rebound and elastic energy in your legs help bring your leg back into proper position for the following stride.
Why running on a treadmill takes less energy than running outdoors is less obvious, but nonetheless true. Besides wind resistance, the motor in the treadmill is contributing. I’ve been told setting a treadmill at 2% grade is equivalent to running outdoors.
I don’t entirely agree with Sleel. He’s definitely right about the Pose technique, and I suppose running barefoot is worth a shot, but I don’t think it will mitigate your pain. Running, especially combined with walking is an introductory exercise. Much more so than swimming, which is very technique driven. (BTW, no serious swimmer only swims. Even at the club level, the kids run and do other forms of “dry land” exercises.) But, either will work fine if you can do them. (A friend lost far more weight than you are looking at, while training for his first ironman. He certainly wasn’t trying to win, but he finished, and lost almost 100lbs during training, and was still a bit overweight.)
If running hurts, don’t do it. Just because it is the most effective doesn’t mean it is the only. You don’t see any fat people at the Olympics, even in sports like shooting. Ride a bike. If you can’t do it safely outdoors, do it indoors. Pick up karate, again. Whatever you enjoy.
There must have been other changes in her lifestyle, because your body simply doesn’t care that you’re spending time in cold water. We’re not adapted to adding fat like that. I swam competitively for years and I was leaner then I’ve ever been in my life.
Body fat is a matter of calories in vs calories burned. The way you burn the calories or the environment you spend time in exercising really doesn’t affect things.
I, too, am ready to peel off a few pounds…
I have the same “shin split” problem, and have been looking into walking. Problem is, I really, really like cardio. I lost about 3 pounds a few years ago, through a combination of strict calorie control, exercise bike and my Bowflex.
So, the first of this year, I jumped back on my bike, and promptly blew out my knees - I was doing the 13 miles a day I’d worked up to years ago, not realizing I needed to work up there again.
So, what do your guys think of old-school aerobics? I’m thinking of just hooking up the old VCR in the basement and finding my mom’s copy of the 20-minute workout…
You blew out your knees on 13 miles a day? Either you were cranking too hard, or did not have it adjusted properly. The problem with old-school aerobics is that it was hard on knees. I wouldn’t recommend that in your situation. What was the exact problem with your knees?
I made a serious suggestion about compartment syndrome. If no other cause for pain can be found, it might be the cause for shin pain. Running should not hurt, well, no more than hard exercise can hurt. Joint pains, etc. are signs of a problem, whether it is as simple as too much too soon, or something complex.
I think I was probably cranking too hard. I was doing those 13 miles in about 28 minutes, sweating hard.
My knee problem is strange - they are fine 98% of the time, but sometimes they just… go out. I lose stability on one knee or the other, and get a sharp, horrid, yucky flash of pain. It seems to happen mostly on rotation, but not much rotation. Last week, I had my hands full and was leaning a bit to get the front door open, and my right knee refused to cooperate and gave me some real pain. Once I shift my weight off of the knee, and replant it, it’s fine, with maybe some slight residual random pains later on.
Any other suggestions? I have one full and one part time job, and two kids, a husband, and all the assorted baggage that comes along with that, so I’m having a hard time finding something I can fit with my lifestyle. But I do love me some heart beating, heavy breathing, sweaty cardio.
Road bicycle rides along with some strength training. Using a bicycle, you can do aerobic exercise for fairly long periods of time. You avoid the impact of running, you have more choices of places to exercise, and so forth. The strength training gives you muscle to burn fat, and (if you do core training) gives you stability and balance that help you avoid injury.
I actually like running, but I am careful not to do too much, no more than twice a week. I know many amateur athletes who lose months of exercise due to running injuries. In comparison, bicycle riders generally avoid muscle injuries.
30 mph is pretty fast, whatever the resistance setting. I’m no doctor or PT, but it sounds to me like you have a piece of cartilage floating around in there, occasionally getting stuck. You might just have stretched a ligament and the just occasional movements trigger a nearby nerve, but I dunno. The best thing to do would be to see a doctor, get a proper diagnosis, and treatment, but short of that, swimming might be made for you. Most sports and activities require lateral movement, and it sounds like that might be problematic for you. (One of the weaknesses of running and biking is that they are linear sports with no little or lateral movement, but if biking caused the problem, clearly they won’t help.)
Of course, your husband might appreciate if I point out to you that “heart beating, heavy breathing, sweaty cardio” can be performed in bed.