Fitness

[wellinghall]

O wise FList, I need your help.

I want to get fit. No, scrub that - "fit" is far too high a target to aim at. I want to get a little bit fitter, and lose the couch potato status I seem to have acquired over the last few months. I do have some physical issues which complicate this - knee, feet, shoulder, nose, lungs, to name just the most obvious - but they don't have to keep me welded to the settee.

Does anyone have any suggestions for:
- some sort of fitness program I could follow? - in fairly easy steps, please!
- some sort of (realistic!) target I could aim at?

Comments

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

malaheed and I can give no suggestions, but await the wisdom of your FList...

[atreic.livejournal.com]

I only exercise if I need to. So it works, because at the moment it is cheapest and most convenient for me to cycle to work. Is there any way you can change your life to cycle more places?

(Sorry if this is so completely wrong for where you are / how you're physically issued, but it works for me, so I thought I'd suggest it)

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Also, we used to have a video called the Y Plan countdown, which was fun because it took 12 minutes a day, and you got to progress through different levels. I have no idea if it was any good, but it was great fun! Lots of bobbing up and down aerobicsy type stuff to music, and some press-ups and sit-ups and things.

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

How would the knee be on a bicycle, on reasonably flat ground?

[chainmailmaiden]

Walk more. Since I started to walk from Victoria to the office each morning (just over 2 miles) back in October, I've dropped a dress size. I don't know how much weight I've actually lost because I hate being weighed, but the looser clothes and needing new jeans because I could pull my old ones down without undoing the zip are a good indication that it's working :-D I also feel a lot better in myself.

Once the nights are lighter I'm going to walk back in the evenings too as it's far better than squeezing onto a sweaty tube.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

What a coincidence! I travel from Victoria to the office every morning too...

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

That made me laugh :-)

[chainmailmaiden]

If I walked from that Victoria to my office each morning I'd be very late, but *very* fit :-D

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Fitness programme to follow:
Eat plenty of chocolate.
Relax.
Put feet up whenever possible.
Don't get stressed.
Never get up early.
Try not to do anything more strenous than walking, ever.

Realistic target: Don't die in the next twelve months.



Works for me.

[miss-t-ide.livejournal.com]

If there are any yoga or pilates classes that you can (and will) get to, then they are pretty gentle on dodgy bits, expecially if you tell the instructor what bits you need to be careful with.

Walking more is also an excellent idea.

[romancinger.livejournal.com]

I endorse this. I go to yoga, and I just miss out the bits that my joints can't cope with. I give everything a go the first time, gently and not too much, then if I find I haven't got a problem I do it a bit more the next time, and I've been surprised at what I can do. Yoga is also really good exercise - it gives you a great workout (some of it while you're lying down!) and uses every part of the body.

[gayalondiel.livejournal.com]

I generally fail at fitness beyond playing DDR. But I can recommend www.sparkpeople.com as a useful site for tracking diet/exercise/calories/etc (although I would put them on a scondary email as they tend to make their money by advertising...)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Unless it's something you can do indoors, don't start it now. We are just heading into the coldest grimmest part of the year, you are struggling with a job that's already time consuming and stressful. Starting something now and failing to keep it up will make you feel worse.

Spend a few months relaxing as much as possible, get shot of the stupid job, then spring will be sproinging, you'll have daylight, and it will be a lot more fun to be doing stuff outside.

Exercise is something you need to be doing all the time, not just at weekends or you overdo it and hurt yourself. If you are in the office from 8 til after 6, that's just not going to happen. Sitting down being stressed for 10 hours a day is surely going to do your health far more damage than any 'fit in the gaps' exercise routine is ever going to be able to fix.

Finish job, find routine that suits you involving walking etc, then get new job with space for a proper life around it. Get dog, that way you won't be able to not walk. If possible, move away from city. Cities are total crap for your lungs, nose, and probably also knee & feet (too much tarmac).

I thought about not answering, or answering diplomatically, but what the hell, I might as well say what I think, you never know, it might actually help and if not you can ignore it.

[chainmailmaiden]

Unless it's something you can do indoors...

Vigorous Sex ;-D

Good exercise, relaxing & you don't need daylight, but it might be hard to hold a job down if you do it all the time - unless the new career takes a very different direction!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Trust you ;-)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

unless the new career takes a very different direction!

...now there's an image that will stay with me!

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

I didn't know you had such fantasies... ;-)

[gramarye1971]

This is probably going to sound a bit strange, but I was able to slim down a bit and build some muscle strength by doing a series of stretching exercises that used my own body weight as resistance. I'd lie down on the floor of my bedroom with a pillow to support my neck, and do things like lift my legs off the floor and hold them at about a 45-degree angle for 10 or 15 seconds at a time, four or five times in a row with a bit of rest between each. I was doing this and other, similar stretching exercises pretty much every night for about half an hour at a time -- it's the sort of thing you can do while you're watching TV, and you can adjust your exercises to compensate for any aches and pains.

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

That sounds interesting - what other exercises were involved? I have insanely tight hamstrings (can hardly reach past my knees without bending them) and weak wrists, but exercise that can be incorporated with reading or watching TV would be less dull. Most of my previous attempts at exercise have come unstuck due to sheer boredom, or doing in my wrists.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I've got absolutely the thing for you to exercise your weak wrists (never thought I'd recommend an exercise machine):

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=TY-000-PB&groupid=253&catid=886&subcat=

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

A couple of blokes at work have got these. They stopped using them when the rest of us collapsed in fits of laughter; it just looked like they were having a very active masturbation session! :-)

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

VERY active!

[gramarye1971]

I tended to experiment to see what worked best for me. It's very much a matter of 'Does this feel good to stretch?' or 'Do I feel like I'm using some muscles I don't normally use?'

One of the things I used to do was to lie on my back on the floor with my feet up on the sofa (so that the backs of my legs were on the cushions and my knees were bent 90 degrees), and lift my hips off the floor to tighten the muscles of my lower back and abdomen. Arms and shoulders stayed flat on the floor -- all the lifting and holding was done with my abdominal muscles.

The key, I think, is to remember to breathe the whole time. ^_^ Otherwise, you just make yourself feel sore and out of breath.

[emperor]

Do you enjoy any active passtimes? swimming is quite low-impact; I cycle to work, which seems to keep my beer-gut at bay...

[deepbluemermaid.livejournal.com]

I am very unfit, and also have knee/back problems which restrict high-impact exercise.

I've taken up aqua aerobics in the last few months, though, and found it really enjoyable. I would highly recommend it if your local swimming pool offers a class.

It can be quite taxing on the lungs, but you can always stop and breathe / cling to the side railing / do a less energetic version of the exercise. I'm doing it with my friend who has chronic fatigue syndrome, and he just rests as and when needed. It's low impact, and you can modify any jumping exercises to reduce strain on your knees/feet.

General swimming is also very low impact. The shoulder and lungs might make doing freestyle (or whatever you call it in the UK) problematic, but breast-stroke isn't so demanding. The good thing with swimming is that it's easily measurable in number of lengths, you can build up in increments, and you can rest between lengths without any trouble.

It's much easier to motivate yourself to exercise if you have someone to do it with. Without my friend coming to aqua aerobics with me, I might not have stuck with it.

My parents have been attending Feldenkrais classes for years now, and have found them very beneficial. My mother's neck and shoulder problems and my father's back have definitely improved, they say. It's very slow, minimal impact, and involves stretching and moving around on mats on the floor.

Finally, I've found osteopathy helpful for my chronic back problems. If your physical issues can be reduced at all, it might give you more energy and greater range of movement.

Hope that was a little helpful!

[na-lon.livejournal.com]

I haven't read all comments yet and assume that many people are saying similar things, but walking is definitely good. I used to walk to and from work - often briskly - before I got ill this winter. Since then I haven't really been able to get back into the walking to the same extent - I have to limit it and go slowly. And it's had a huge knock on effect: back is worse, breathing is worse (though that is probably confounded with after effects of the nasty virus thing). So I recommend starting by going for a little extra-walk every day, no matter what the weather (though I'll let you off in excessive wind conditions, because hunched shoulders are not helpful when walking): just round the block. Build up from there.

I have also found Pilates really useful in the past, but recommend trying to find a class/teacher at least for the start. If you like I'll show you some of the basics when we next meet.

Yoga is good too.

Or you could build up very slowly to a bit of jogging - I did that a few years ago and enjoyed it far more than I thought I would given my usual aches and pains.

If you want more info, I am happy to witter on at length. ;-)

[tovaglia.livejournal.com]

I think it is well worth getting fit and doing it properly (not just aiming to get a tiny bit fitter, you won't see much benefit and then you will stop bothering after a while). I find it very good for relieving stress and for increasing my energy levels generally. There are lots of ways of getting fit. The important thing is to find something that fits in with your lifestyle and that you don't feel silly doing. the following is mainly based on personal experience.

I am surprised that nobody has yet mentioned joining a gym and signing up with a personal trainer. I did this when I moved up north - it's good value for money if you go 2-3 times a week, and it's easy to make yourself go if it's on the way home from work (and the nearer work it is, the more likely you are to go, because it's really helpful for de-stressing). If you haven't done any exercise in a while, it's a great way of getting started again. And very good for strength training. You improve a lot quicker with strength training than aerobic training, and the results are quickly visible if you're not too lardy, so it's very good for morale in the early stages. Don't worry, unless it's a really swanky gym the personal trainer will not actually watch you doing your exercises each time you go. He'll just teach you how to use the machines/weights and then give you a programme to follow with instructions as to how to build it up between regular reviews.
Once you have got used to the way your body responds to exercise, and the weather improves, you can un-join the gym and start doing your own thing. Gyms also often run free (to members) classes in various activities so you can sample a variety of yoga, pilates, body pump, martial arts or whatever before you commit to a prolonged course of lessons/ specialised kit etc.
Be warned though, to cover themselves legally they will want you to go to your GP first and check whether there are "any medical reasons you shouldn't be exercising" (actually this applies to almost nobody as long as you are sensible and don't try to build up too much too soon - hence the personal trainer aspect). So you might as well do this first and in the meantime take some tours round conveniently-located gyms and see which you like. Remember to ask whether they tend to show international cricket on their tv monitors - they will usually have all the sports channels.

If you are quite used to exercising and just want to get back into it, you could maybe skip the gym-joining thing and just get a heart rate monitor instead. These are great if you are the sort of person who likes a quantitative target and hard data on your progress, don't like being told what to do, and have a basic understanding of sports physiology. But it only measures your aerobic fitness so you don't get the instant morale-boost that you do when you're doing strength training as well. Also, it's not really the weather for running or cycling at the moment - there's hardly any daylight and you need to exercise in the week as well as the weekend in order to get fitter properly.

[muuranker.livejournal.com]

I was listening for answers, too.

I am hoping the additional ability to walk to work which will come with the move to Woking will be enough. I'd like to start Pilates again (again, post move to Woking). And possibly dancing (this last doesn't seem like a Wellinghall kind of thing). I would really like to swim (I love swimming), but there has to be a pool very close to home or work, or I can't spare the time.

As for targets: 20 minutes, 3 times a week seems to be the mantra.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

How about nordic walking? You can build up gradually, and the poles take a lot of the strain of ordinary walking/running off the joints.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

If you want to lose weight and get fit, then as Bunn says now is a bad time for excercise (except horizontal jogging).

So start with diet, after Christmas, by looking at what you eat and counting the calories (so many food stuffs have the calories printed on the box), it's also a good way of looking at how much fat and salt you're eating which may be useful in other ways. Keeping track like that helped me lose 10kg over a year (okay slow but hey) and there wer holidays from it in that time when I treated myself, or was just somewhere where they don't have the numbers on the box (like germany & Australia).

Otherwise, walking, swimming, pilates are all good, as is staying for the dances at the Taruithorn banquet - we're always short of men!