Fun discussion about diet and exercise yesterday.
I actually love exercising and the whole gym scene. For me, going to the gym is a fun activity.
The hard part for me is carving out an hour in the day for the gym. I have a ridiculously packed schedule these days and that hour isn’t always available. I like to go at around 1 or 2 in the afternoon, when the place is empty, and I can get MY treadmill. By that time, I have finished any writing for the day, so I can go guilt-free. I have to be done and home by 3 in order to meet a school bus.
Question of the Day: What’s your exercise routine?
UPDATE: Here’s Bill deBlasio’s workout routine. And, of course, Obama’s gym routine.
Apt. 11d 
Ever since I got peroneal tendonitis around Christmas from doing 30 minutes a night on our new elliptical machine, nothing much. I’m mostly just trying not to hurt myself any more than I have, which means limiting my walking to the necessary and certainly not doing the elliptical again anytime soon.
All of the methods of exercise that are fun to me and convenient to schedule are off the table at the moment.
Oh, and saying “My podiatrist says blah blah blah” as much as I do makes me feel old.
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Spinning 2x a week (either after dropping the girl off at school or once in a while at a 7:15 class while the man takes her). Walking her to and from school as often as possible (adds up to 80 minutes in total a day).
I was doing yoga 2x a week and lifting weights but am recovering from a rotator cuff strain. (the result of age and some bad form that caught up with me – hey all women 40-60, it’s a huge risk and they don’t really know why). <—– AmyP this makes me feel old too!
Now that my shoulder is better I'll be using our TRX at home/at the park for weight-bearing exercise. And starting yoga again with a yogi who is experienced in shoulder recovery.
This summer there'll be biking, swimming, waterskiing and wake boarding but that's more on vacation rather than a standard activity (except for the biking).
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This year I started yoga, I have a bad knee and needed something that was low impact. I do yoga 3-4x a week and then I play golf 1-2x a week, walking and carrying my bag. About the whitest exercises someone can do. I’ve fallen in love with yoga though, it really makes a difference in my state of being, mentally and physically.
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“About the whitest exercises someone can do.”
I think my rising 7th grade daughter may still have you beat–she’s trying out fencing this month. It’s kind of like yoga with weapons.
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My daughters play golf and tennis and they aren’t white. I guess its probably more suburban umc exercises. Fencing now that will be fun to watch and yes, its yoga, warrior #2 with weapons!
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Speaking of which, you know how there’s always a new exercise craze–yoga, pilates, boxing for women, Zumba, etc.? I’ve only watched one class, but I think fencing is a great candidate for being the new thing.
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Although the best US fencer when I was coming up was bi-racial, Black and Asian, a sabrist named Peter Westbrook.
I think the end of the Cold War brought a lot of E. European coaching and teaching talent, and elite US fencers are now among the best in the world, alongside the usual-suspect French, Germans, Russians, Italians and Hungarians.
My coach in Tbilisi was a former Soviet university champion; on my very good days, I could keep up with her.
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Doug said:
“Although the best US fencer when I was coming up was bi-racial, Black and Asian, a sabrist named Peter Westbrook.”
That’s an interesting Tiger Woods parallel.
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“About the whitest exercises someone can do.”
Barack Obama, Tiger Woods?
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Outliers – golf, through cost and access, is one of the least accessible sports there is.
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Polo? Yacht racing?
“If a pro is playing 6-chukker polo they will need at least 8 horses or more, especially at the 10-goal level and higher. If a pro is playing 4-chukker polo they will need between 4-6 horses. Many pros have one or two green horses they are bringing up. They also need horses to umpire on and a spare in case one gets injured during the season. For this reason our minimum of horses is 6.”
http://www.polobarn.com/articles/2008/costofpolo08.html
I had no idea–I thought you might just have one or two polo ponies to compete, but no, not good enough.
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I have all sort of tendon issues, which is why I took a whole month (and counting) off from running after I finished the half marathon this year. My training for that was entirely decided by how much I could run without hurting my tendons so much that I couldn’t run the next time. In the morning, I can’t go down stairs without warming up.
I should try to swim over the summer instead of running. I’ve considered going to yoga classes as a way of improving my running by giving my tendons some stretching and strengthening the smaller muscles that might support the tendons, but I can’t make myself go. First, I have just horrible balance and I think that going to a yoga class and being unable to stand on one foot would be like going to a graduate seminar when you can only read while moving your lips. Second, I assume that everyone would think I only went to yoga class to look at women in yoga pants.
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…bending over. You can see women in yoga pants any place.
I suppose yoga or swimming is probably not a bad solution for me, too, but it requires so much more forethought than I’m used to.
I toured a cheap new gym with childcare that just opened and was bummed out when we visited the kid area and the childcare worker wasn’t even sitting with her chair (?) turned in the direction of the tiny little kids she was supposed to be watching. I am starting to think Parents’ Day Out for our Baby T (2? 2.5? 3?), but I couldn’t in good conscience dump her off at some place like that gym kid area. (Baby T is 19 months old now, almost 20.)
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That’s the trickiest part with young kids – finding a place to work out with childcare. When the girl was a baby I actually found a book club taught by a professor of english that had childcare! Double score…
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7 years of competitive distance running left me with the flexibility of an 80 year old man, and my balance was not anything special either. I would still recommend taking up yoga. I do yoga 5-6 times a week, an hour a day. It’s good mentally as well as working on my obvious physical deficiencies. I have a pinched shoulder nerve and probably like 35% of expected range of motion in both my hips and my shoulders, and yoga has helped a bit with both. Before yoga I knocked my neck out of alignment doing the strenuous activity of…sleeping. Since yoga I’ve managed to avoid needing any emergency PT appointments.
But it helps to view yoga as physical therapy rather than a sport, so I don’t feel bad about sucking so badly at it.
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And that’s part of yoga – accepting where you are at and “keeping your eyes on your own work” – learning not to compare yourself to others. Every body is different in terms of not only flexibility, but in how we are each constructed mechanically. Some poses will come easy and some will always be a challenge. The latter gets you focused on the journey and patience rather than being goal-oriented.
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Speaking as a practicer of yoga for three years, I am always delighted to see new people show up who aren’t as good as I am. Of course we are not supposed to identify ourselves or others as being “good” at yoga or notice what others are doing (and really I almost never pay attention, because you have to stay focused on your own postures), but when I do it’s not “what kind of an idiot is this” but “yay, I actually know how to do stuff!” Today we had a few new people and we were all helping the teacher come up with tips for how to gradually work into the more difficult postures and mentioned how long it took us to learn to do particular poses.
The key to yoga is learning the “modifications” which is a fancy way of saying, “I can’t do this, or this, or even this, so what can I do that works on the same muscle group or ability?” I am an expert at modifications.
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The current routine is going to the gym Tuesday and Friday at 12 noon, where I do a set of Tabata intervals on the bicycle, and then a few reps on various of the weight machines, focusing on lats and pecs. The gym is right downstairs from my office, so I can get in and out in 45 minutes, eat lunch in another 45 minutes, and only lose a total of 1.5 hours from work.
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From January to May, I used the gym/trainer at my school and gave up parts of my free periods–shifted more of my grading/planning to home hours, but it was worth it to me. I split my time between upper-body strength training and cardio, first on the treadmill and now on the elliptical. Then in May, I ran a 5K and did a Warrior Dash (5K plus 11 obstacles) with my sister. I’m very lucky to have free access to the fitness center and trainer on my campus, who helped work up a good strength training routine, but the downside is there are no classes, spinning/yoga, etc, and we don’t have a school pool. This summer, I’m a little nervous about how I will keep up my routine once I’m not on campus every day, but I’m hoping to use our neighborhood pool and their facilities in a structured way.
Stealing those 45 minutes or so out of my day did make my general working-mother schedule more complicated, but I found that if I set the appointments on my calendar and honored it like any other meeting, I felt better and slept better each day that I kept that appointment with myself. Keeping it during the work day saved it from getting buried under the avalanche of “second shift” responsibilities that start tugging at me as soon as I walk through the door at home!
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Biking to a trail near my house and then biking on the trail, about 18 miles total with a few steep hills. I try to do it four, five times a week, but during the school year I’m lucky to get three.
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My exercise routine involves scrubbing the kitchen and bathroom floors by hand weekly, lugging the vacuum (and vacuuming) on three floors, scrubbing the tub, doing laundry in basement and walking kids to and from school (my younger child rides a bike to school so I actually speed walk/jog alongside) so that’s about 40 minutes 5 times a week. According to my doctor, my cardio is fine; for extra “training” I wax and polish the hardwood, wash windows, the car, etc. A lot of the green ways of cleaning burn a lot of calories, and I’d rather clean by myself with loud music going than go to a gym with a lot of people around. That “gym smell” reminds me too much of 8th grade…
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Christiana reminds me of my mom: she used to tell us that she went to an exercise class once, and the instructor had them do sweeping motions. She realized that she could do sweeping motions at home, and have something to show for it, so she never went back.
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I have to exercise in the morning, or else it doesn’t happen. I work while the kids are in school, and the afternoons are full of activities. For me, it’s more of a mental health thing. I’m fit and don’t need to lose any weight, I just don’t function well without a chance to do some daily activity. I exercise every morning, alternating between running, yoga, and walking, depending on the day. Some mornings, I can only fit in 15-20 minutes, but that seems to be enough.
We have a dog who requires lots of walking, so that helps with activity too. We also just got a punching bag in the basement for our teenage daughter. We are taking a boxing class together. That’s a fun workout – I had no idea how much fun it was to hit things. (the punching bags…not my daughter!)
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Currently, out the door by 5:30am for a maintenance run (2 days – 45 min) or walk (4 days) with the greyhounds and 1 day a week a long run (with the greyhounds). 3 days a week at the gym at lunch for 1 hour of strength training. 3 days calisthenics and stretching at home when watching TV or listening to audiobooks.
Every day: 20-30 min walks with greyhounds around 6pm and another 20-30minuts around 10:30pm. Dog walker comes at noon during the week, weekends mean another 20-30 minutes more walking.
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Walking my young dog several times a day has become my new exercise routine. I probably put in 6 to 10 miles on any given day. I try to do at least ten minutes of weight bearing exercise every day as well. Prior to getting the dog a few months ago, I did interval training 3 or 4 times per week.
I am very fidgety person and I think that has played a huge role in keeping thin into middle age. I have a hard time sitting still for even a few minutes and I think all of those tiny movements throughout the day really add up to burning a lot of calories.
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Two yoga classes a week – I’m trying to increase it to 3 or even 4, or at least do some at home – plus a 30-45 minute walk 4-5 times a week. If I could swim outdoors near my house I would do it all the time, but that only works on summer vacations at the lake. Our university has a program where the students learning to become athletic trainers can use you as a guinea pig if you pay $50 a semester, and they’re apparently pretty good, so I may do that next year to incorporate weights. Like most women in their 40s (almost 50, ack!) this level of exercise only helps with muscle tone and flexibility; even maintaining my weight, which is already a little high, is a challenge.
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Just started kickboxing 2x week. I like to punch things.
I walk the dog a few times a week, and my husband and I are trying to bike every weekend 10-15 miles. I’d love to work back up to the 30+ we used to do pre-kids. We can only bike now because the kids are old enough to leave home (yes, we’ve asked them to come with us; no, they won’t because we are so not cool).
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I used to do TKD with the kids. It was perfect – while they were in their class, I was in the adult class.
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I can’t believe how many yogis are reading Apt11d! If you aren’t familiar with YogaGlo.com it’s my absolute favorite. I’m a yoga snob–I only practiced in yoga studios in NYC for over 14 years. When someone recommended YogaGlo I scoffed, but now it’s replaced my studio practice–yes. I never would have believed it. There is a free two week trial, and it costs $20 a month. (Given the price of a class this is a deal!) A few things I love about the site: new videos are uploaded frequently; you can select for a) teacher, b) length of class, c) area of body, d) length of class, e) style of yoga (and they even have a “woman’s yoga” section), f) level (1, 2, 3). I think Jason Candrall is superb for my aging ways. I’m really addicted to his class. And, I’ve taken classes in Chicago at Jodi’s studio (she’s now in LA) so it was neat to see her online. Given the time constraints I see above, I thought readers might like this. Namaste!
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I already to Yoga on the Wii. I think I need somebody to physically move me into place if I’m going to get better.
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Yes, definitely take some classes before you try to do too much on your own. Correct form is important for making sure you don’t hurt yourself.
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I’ll have to try this – I want to start a home practice.
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Thank you! I’d never heard of that, but just signed up. That sounds perfect for me. Too bad you can’t get a referral credit!
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Also impressed by all the fit dog owners! Does catching an escaping cat count?
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I also walk my cat (not with the greyhounds – that would be asking for trouble) on a leash. But that isn’t exercise. He mostly sits in the grass and suns himself and occasionally terrorizes the neighbor’s pit bull. The pit bull crosses the street if my cat is in the yard. My cat hissed at him once.
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Yeah–it’s like the dogs are their personal trainers!
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Before I was laid low last month, I walked the dog once a day up to three miles. I’m slowly working back up to this distance which is surprisingly effective at keeping one fit. I also plan to reincorporate my exercise bike and some free weights this summer as I continue to improve. (I’d abandoned those earlier when I started to struggle and had no diagnosis to understand what was wrong.)
The younger dog gets two walks a day (the older dog joins for one if she’s up to it). That is barely enough to keep her energy at manageable levels but it’s enough to wear me out if it’s all on me. I wish that I could do more exercise but the gym is not feasible with my work and my family’s schedule so I try to keep it to what I can manage at home.
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I once (once!) went to a aquatic exercise class full of old ladies. It was humiliating to struggle so much to keep up with the routine that I never went back.
I had a similar experience with an aerobics class full of people 20-30 years older than me.
It sounds like yoga might be more forgiving in that respect, which is nice to know.
(A mom friend of mine finds it daunting to go to the college classes full of flawless 19-year-olds.)
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