What is your exercise regime?

[Abisashi]

Ski 8 hours a week? I walk some too, and occasionally do pushups and situps. But at 20, I'm still coasting on the strength of my metabolism.

 

[MonsterMash]

walking to get beer...

Best exercise evah!

 

[KnowTheToe]

You notice you really put on the weight after college. I think it has some to do with age, but mostly with activity. You walk a crapload in your life through college, but once you graduate, you don't even know what walking is. In the Army we would walk 2 miles to the PX and back without thinking, not, my stores are half that distance and I have never walked or biked to run my errands. Desk jobs & cars are evil SOBs that rob us of our personal energy.

I hate to excercise. So I chose things that take only a few minutes. Pushups. Do all the pushups you can in two minutes and you are wiped out. Same thing with crunches and situps. I do 100 jumping jacks (1 minute) and I walk my dogs. Throw pull ups and chin ups in there and you hit every major muscle group in your body. This is excellent for toning, but will not change the shape of your body. If you want to change the physical shape of your body, you need weights.

 

[Pbartender]

I hate to excercise.

Oh boy, so do I. The thing I've found that helps a lot, is doing excercise that actually accomplishes something... Riding a bicycle to work, walking to the library, chopping wood, walking the dog, gardening, using a push mower on the lawn.

If you want to change the physical shape of your body, you need weights.

Losing weight (fat) is easy... Calories in << Calories out ...that's all you need to know.

Eat less or excercise more... Better if you do both.

 

[ledded]

Well, my youth was filled with baseball, football, running and hiking in the National Forest I grew up on the edge of. I had to walk a mile and a half to the nearest kid's house I was friends with, so we rode bikes and ran around pretty much constantly. Later, I did a PT regimen through high school ROTC and early college ROTC, and started weight conditioning.

In mid-late college, I mostly participated in binge-drinking and extended periods of laziness, occasionally interrupted by the aerobic activities of chasing women, keg parties, and walking/biking to classes with horrific early morning hangovers.

My post-college life P.K. (pre-kids) was such that I played indoor soccer/raquetball/flag football off and on, did Shinkendo (kenjutsu) twice a week for 2-3 hours, did olympic fencing for about 5-6 hours per week, did at least 2 or 3 3-5 mile runs per week, and on top of that did a weight conditioning program to help condition me for the above activities. 5-6 years ago I was in the best shape I've been in since early high school. After kids and jobs where I had to travel a lot (forcing me to quit most of the hobby sports/martial arts for a few years) I have more weight on me than I'd like (but not too much), and have recently been attempting to get into better shape mainly so that I don't, you know, die.

So I decided to eat less, drink less beer, quit smoking, get more rest, and change jobs to one where I can learn new things and that I am more challenged at by essentially having to do things I havent done much before. I've started going to the gym in our building at lunch at least 4 times per week during my lunch hour, doing a modified super-set weight regimen to pack in as much pain as it possible in about 45 minutes at only a fraction of the level I did it at 4-5 years ago, and I run/stair step/walk/swim at least 2 miles/30-40 minutes 3 times per week (I have to mix it up because of an old sports injury to the knee and back which are troubling me more now that I've turned 35). I play disc golf (lots of walking with hills), raquetball when I can, and go for fast walks in my hilly neighborhood pushing a double stroller full of children who keep asking me why I'm breathing so hard.

The results?

Well, to be honest, it sucks.

I want a cigarrette so bad I could chew through the arm of my desk chair for one. I'm hungry because I'm trying not to gain 20 lbs while quitting smoking, and quitting smoking makes the desk chair arm look quite appettizing. I'm taking Zyban to help me quit smoking, which means I've all but eliminated my alchohol intake (bah... how bad could a brain seizure be anyway?), while experiencing my emotions as if being sucked through a large ball of styrofoam that is stuffed over my head. Wrapped in plastic. The Zyban, however, has had the positive effect of me not actually maiming or killing anyone for committing horrendous offenses such as asking me what time it is . I've cut my caffeine intake because I'm tense enough quitting smoking, and eliminating smoking makes caffeine a lot more intense for you, so not much coffee these days either. The workouts have helped with the quitting smoking in that they also make me cough up pieces of something that I swear are my pancreas and make my lungs hurt, along with quite a few other muscular bits that I've forgotten or let atrophy a bit. Every couple days I'll switch up my conditioning so that I can discover an all new muscle group that I've been stupid enough to ignore for far too long, and then wonder why after quitting smoking my body has decided that it should produce 5 times the mucus that it did BEFORE I quite smoking. My guess is that I'm shedding the lining of all the internal organs that smoking/drinking/bad food have corroded. Of course, since I'm fitting in that much more activity and a new somewhat-stressful job (that I like) with lots of extended hours I have much less time for leisure activities or rest, which with a wife and 3 young kids wasnt very much to begin with, so I can't tell if I'm sleep deprived because I havent had the luxury of more than 5 or 6 hours of sleep at one time in so long I've forgotten what it's like.

So all in all, it's not that bad, the road to better health and all that. Though I am now convinced that I'm a bad haircut, an orange robe, and a brass bowl away from a one-way ticket to Tibet with all of the denial that I've been putting myself through lately.

(ok really, it's not that bad. I am having a craving filled morning, and so far all I've filled it with is work. Mmmmmm yummy work, ah so satisfying)

 

[Desdichado]

Practicing how to kill people with swords? That I can do. And it's pretty good exercise, too.

Indeed. I know you do Oriental swordfighting, so I don't know what you're moves are like, but I remember when I was learning the foil that I literally couldn't walk up stairs after we learned lunges and practiced them for 45 minutes straight. Aaiee, my poor calves! I wonder if Errol Flynn ever had that problem.

 

[barsoomcore]

Actually, Japanese swordfighting has nothing on fencing when it comes to exercise. Fencing is insane. Probably up there with tap-dancing and boxing as far as sheer energy expended per second.

If I didn't hate the rules of competitive fencing so violently, I'd fence like a madman. But every club I ever joined wants you to put on those stupid electrics and then obey a bunch of stupid rules (I'm thinking particularly of the one that says that after you've been blocked you have to let the other guy have a turn) when all I want to do is run around, you know, swordfighting.

It's the same thing in kendo. You're not allowed to back up in kendo. It's the stupidest thing ever.

When swordfighting becomes a sport all the fun goes out of it.

My wife is reading The Book of Five Rings and we spent yesterday afternoon going through a bunch of videos of my dojo's kata and talking about the moves and how they're performed and what they're for. It was very inspiring.

Not sufficiently inspiring to get me out of bed early enough to go to the gym and practice, of course, but still. Doesn't the thought count?

 

[ragboy]

I want a cigarrette so bad I could chew through the arm of my desk chair for one.

Hey Ledded! I heard that updating your story hour burns like 5000 calories and helps with the nicotine cravings...

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

I'm in the same boat brother. I went my entire pre and early adult life disparaging cigarettes and smokers and then I got stuck in the Saudi desert for six months with nothing to do and a carton of cigarettes won in a poker game. Now, fifteen years later, I'm trying to kick, too. All last year I used a generic brand of nico-gum and damned if it didn't work worth a darn. Every time I chewed one, I wanted to wash the taste out of my mouth with a pack of cigarettes. I broke down over the Christmas holidays and bought the Nicorette (mint and coated...i.e. chiclets with a kick) and it was like a switch turned off as far as cravings. I cruised along smoke free until this last week when the addiction bug came down like a sledgehammer (I think it had to do more with approaching deadlines and half a book to complete). Anyway, I'm chewing again today, and things are snappy.

Other than that, I started a workout regime in December. I do about 3 miles of cardio (usually walking home from the gym) and lifting (muscle concentration - Monday: triceps and chest, Wed. Biceps and back, Friday: shoulders and lower back) and then as much abdominal exercises as I can take. I found this website to be extremely helpful. I'm not going for the bodybuilding look, but the proper execution of exercises (and a wide variety of exercises by muscle group), as well as some great balanced diet tips had me sold:

www.bodybuilding.com

If you're going the weight route, remember that the more muscle you build, the more calories your body burns just sitting still. As long as you feed the muscles and get them to the level you want, you'll have an easier time with diet and cardio. I used this type of regime to lose about 50lbs of fat (gained about 20 lbs of muscle) three years ago, and have finally had the time and money to get back into it.

Good luck everyone!

 

[barsoomcore]

I quit smoking a couple of years ago. The physical cravings actually go away after (so I'm told) three days. From then on out it's purely psychological.

One GREAT trick that really helped me is that most cravings only last for a limited amount of time -- usually less than a minute. Just tell yourself, when the craving hits, that you'll wait for five minutes and see how you feel. Just five minutes.

Not the rest of your life. Just five minutes. I found it MUCH easier to resist for five minutes at a time.

All that said, I just sucked back a little tobacco smoke this morning. Hunter S. Thompson is dead and it seemed an appropriate way to mark the sad occasion.

Or at least, as appropriate as I could legally get away with at work. We'll see what happens at the poker game tonight.

 

[ledded]

Actually, Japanese swordfighting has nothing on fencing when it comes to exercise. Fencing is insane. Probably up there with tap-dancing and boxing as far as sheer energy expended per second.

Amen to that, though the Kenjutsu I did can be very physically taxing, because some of the more complicated kata, plus the kumite (contact sparring), are very energetic. And we weren't really allowed much 'rest' during class, as our Sensei ran it like a traditional dojo. But really, instead of being super-intense and fast, it was more like exercises in endurance and stamina (a heavy contact bokutoh gets very heavy after an hour of straight contact kata).

If I didn't hate the rules of competitive fencing so violently, I'd fence like a madman. But every club I ever joined wants you to put on those stupid electrics and then obey a bunch of stupid rules (I'm thinking particularly of the one that says that after you've been blocked you have to let the other guy have a turn) when all I want to do is run around, you know, swordfighting.
It's the same thing in kendo. You're not allowed to back up in kendo. It's the stupidest thing ever.

Sounds like you should have tried Epee . Seriously though, my biggest problem was not the rules (because I understand their reasoning behind some of them whether I liked them or not) but the things people would try to come up with to circumvent or take advantage of them that were not even related to good swordfighting, i.e. excessively whippy "flicks" in foil (you fencers know what I'm talking about). Come on, if I was a real swashbuckler and a guy "whipped" his flimsy sword at me and just barely smacked me with the tip, I'd whip the crossgaurd of my cutlass into his nose... but *nooooooo* they get all upset when you do that in olympic style. Sheesh, he *has* a mask on.

That being so, the best time and some of the best exercise I ever got was when we would do Sunday afternoon "melee" in fencing... line up 5 guys on a side, you get hit by anyone you are sidelined for 20 seconds; 3 hits and you're out for good. Just enough rules to be safe and 10 guys go at it, using tactics and positioning to gang up on each other. One of the only times I ever got to feel like Errol Flynn when fencing was fighting off 3 guys coming for me, back to a wall, while I yelled for my buddies to get back in. Of course, *real* fencers would never do stuff like that, because it might mess up their style (i.e. they'd get trounced).

When swordfighting becomes a sport all the fun goes out of it.

Yeah, it depends on the people a lot, but it can get kind of frustrating when it gets too "sport". One thing I loved about my kenjutsu is that while we didnt have unrestricted sparring, our sparring kata were usually active enough to scare the crap out of us, and it was a class for people who were serious about good sword work. Plus, after you got good enough, they gave ya a real sword and you got to cut up bamboo and stuff, and *that's* when you find out who really knows how to swing that sword.

My wife is reading The Book of Five Rings and we spent yesterday afternoon going through a bunch of videos of my dojo's kata and talking about the moves and how they're performed and what they're for. It was very inspiring.

That is so cool. My wife is not much of one for reading guys like Musashi or Yuzan Daidoji or books like Hagakure, the Konjaku Monogatari or Tengu Geijutsuron. Though she does like to watch my old dojo videos every now and then so she can make witty comments about us all wearing our "funny black skirts" .

Not sufficiently inspiring to get me out of bed early enough to go to the gym and practice, of course, but still. Doesn't the thought count?

To think, "I will not think" - This, too, is something in one's thoughts. Simply do not think about not thinking at all. - Takuan