I missed that part. Sorry. However, others replied, perhaps with more insight than I. Headphones and polite clarification may be what I would try.
Another thought. Since this is another country, maybe she can ask a native woman the best way to handle it, culturally speaking? Maybe he’s not taking the hint because of a cultural disconnect.
A good idea … in several ways.
Most of her new friends there are also au pairs from various countries. The mother of the house however is a native Swede and while I doubt she will wise my daughter up on any cultural disconnect, she may be more successful, woman to woman and not parent, at getting the need to be blunt about leaving her alone acted upon.
This is what I’d say. I’m fairly chatty in public, and often chat with strangers when stuck at airports, or whatever. And he ought to take the hint when she makes a short answer and doesn’t look at him. (And heck, you only talk to people wearing headphones if they’ve dropped their wallet or something, not to be chatty.) But he’s not taking the hint, and he is hitting on her. So she should be clear that she doesn’t want to talk with him. “I’m busy now” is a good, impersonal, excuse. She’s busy working out. She should say so.
Asking the mother for advice sounds good, too.
Change of topic but I was thinking of starting regular rucking. I have a backpack and weights specifically made for that. How does this stack up in terms of resistance training? Do you need to have rest days in between rucking and regular strength workouts? I’m starting with 10lbs and currently have the capacity to go up to 30lbs.
I’ve been getting up early to go for a walk in the morning. I don’t have a lot of time, but it’s something. But I figure especially in the winter when I can’t jog, I could ruck.
It’s a good exercise. Whether you need rest days depends on how demanding it is, which depends on the weight used and duration. Start slow, listen to your body, and see.
As I understand it, the human body is pretty strongly designed for walking with a pack, nigh infinitely. On the other hand, I believe that I’ve seen various sources saying that the US military determined that 50lbs seems to be the limit for endurance, all day walking. Likewise, I believe that I’ve seen people say that that also seems to be where heavy plate armor tended to top out as well. Both of those are probably based on testing of young men, so you would probably want to target something smaller as a max load if you want to do hours and hours of rucking at a go. And (once you build up to it) you should be able to do that pretty much every day for months. Long range hikers do. But, of course, you have to build up to it.
On the other hand, people can yoke walk numbers in the high three digits for whole seconds! For that sort of thing, I’d personally put it in the territory of exercises to be done maybe once or twice a month, in preparation for some competition and then to stop doing it.
Research that I’ve seen generally indicates that putting weight on your body is good for your joints. The pressure stimulates the creation of protective layers in the joint. On the other hand, you’ll see some powerlifters who seem to have destroyed their joints. I personally suspect that there’s a zone of stimulation and a zone of damage and we can lift so much weight on our posterior chain that we can exceed the healthy range.
Anything you can get onto your back from the ground, you’re almost certainly good to go. Just stop when you need to and progress with the weight as seems reasonable. If you need the weight to already be lifted and you can only walk with it for a few seconds - probably that’s more than you need to be lifting.
Thank you!
That is more complex. In general, a modicum of manageable stress is healthy for both bones and soft tissue and joints, making them stronger. Hiking with modest weights for under an hour is very healthy. Your body will let you know if this is hard enough to require more recovery. This may well be true.
Infantry members do sometimes run into issues with stress fractures, chronic pain and back issues related to cyclic loading. You can overdo these things, both load, time and accumulated stress.
It is one thing to build big muscles. This is merely asking for problems if soft tissues like tendons, ligaments and fascia are not also gradually strengthened. Or there is imbalance at the joints between strength or changes in strength between antagonistic muscle pairs. Some exercises, famously bench presses, are inherently hard on joints and require both accessory training, proper warmup, use of rowing and back exercises for balance, and excellent technique. At significant weight it is hard to do these properly without spotters.
Poor training or unwise stimulants may predispose to muscle growth without proper joint or soft tissue adaption, which is a problem. These stimulants are said to be widely used in strongman circles.
Do you know what percentage?
No, but I have seen plenty in clinic.
So about recovery … how rigid does it need to be?
My work schedule is such that it is going to be very hard to do the hard days always with an easy or off day between, but two hard can be followed by an off and an easy.
Hard days include weight training once a week, the long slow distance run, a lactate threshold run of some sort such as 800 meter repeats, and a pace run (a less hard hard day); easy include relatively short light cross training on rower or elliptical. But the principle should be generalizable.
I get that lifters will sometimes do split sessions of upper or lower body, so each section of muscle gets its recovery time. Honestly I’m skeptical even if that for the no longer young exerciser, as the whole body stress response is still getting no break.
Likewise when younger I would alternate a day of weight training with an aerobic day with neither being “easy”, or bike alternating with swim and run when doing triathlons, one day a week off … and that was fine then maybe, but now I think real recovery is needed.
So can two hard days in row of body stress be offset by allowing an extra recovery day?
I’m guessing so but am interested in thoughts.
The human body is wonderfully adaptable. The older body somewhat less so, but much more than many might think.
It is easy to recover nutritional and hormonal needs. The liver stores perhaps 700 calories worth of glycogen. Muscle recovery depends on the amount of stress and targeting body parts, or better still, something like push-pull-legs^, works quite well to balance results with reality. Strain on the peripheral and central nervous systems is the toughest factor. But you can generally manage this by not going quite to maximum weight, volume or fatigue very often. Going to 80-90% is more than enough to make progress and in this range your plan seems fine. If you try it and your body is not performing or not wanting to exercise, listen to it and dial things back.
^ Pushing: presses, dips; hips, chest and triceps,
Pulling: rows, chin-ups, cables; back and biceps
Legs: squat, deadlifts; variations and machines
Curious. Did you? If so how’s that working out for you?
I’ve been doing it periodically. So far it’s fine. I’ve had mild soreness but nothing crazy. I can’t walk very fast. It’s not really a problem with my cardio fitness, it’s a problem with my short legs and difficulties with my feet. I think it’s the uneven (slanted) sidewalk. I try to walk in the street when I can.
One unfortunate morning after rucking, I had to hold my screaming son down for an EEG and my back hurt so bad it was nearly unbearable. (We aborted the EEG.) It was definitely sore muscle pain from rucking, not a spasm or anything. But it’s not often I have to do that. My son is much stronger than I could ever have imagined. It’s made me reassess the classic, “How many three year olds would it take to bring you down?” hypothetical. Fewer than you’d think.
Late to the thread,
I don’t lift weights because I am literally allergic to exercise. Always have been. The more I exercise the stiffer and sorer and exhausted I get. I never get beyond it because for me there is no beyond. If someone forced me to lift weights at whip point it would slowly kill me.
Yeah screaming and fighting isn’t going to make for a useful EEG. You being able to restrain wouldn’t have helped that. Muscle artifacts and best of sleeping for it anyway.
Try doing what a three year old does all day scaled for your size and weight. Doubt most of us could.
If you are that sore after rucking you may have answered the question regarding recovery need!
Thanks for the update.
My mom used to joke about that. But it turned out she was literally allergic to exercise. Or something pretty close to that. She had myasthenia gravis, an auto immune disease where her body made antibodies to a chemical that nerves and muscles use to communicate with each other. And exercise triggered it. So she literally got weaker if she did anything more than extremely minor exercise. The myasthenia nearly killed her, because it was difficult to diagnose. And then, ultimately, it kinda did. She died of omicron after several vaccines because she was on massive doses of drugs to tamp down her immune system.
Check what @puzzlegal said first but, if that doesn’t sound right then…
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Don’t lift weights, just do more than you did before. If even standing up and sitting down several times is too exhausting to be bearable than do something even lighter than that, that’s still more than you do now.
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Maybe start a thread asking others to review your diet. If you can’t adapt and you’re not overworking yourself, then you might have a dietary issue of some form. E.g. you might not be eating enough to support yourself through more physical activities.
@Lumpy - accepting your description at face value, including the always this way bit, it may be worthwhile getting yourself medically evaluated.
Generally speaking even very poorly conditioned people can build tolerance to gradually increasing activity. Some, such as those with myalgic encephalomyelitis (aka chronic fatigue syndrome) need to build very slowly under guidance, but they can still build. But there are medical conditions in which exercise always will lead to severe exhaustion and weakness and it is worth getting a basic evaluation to determine if any of those apply.