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Fitness Weekly Discussion
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?
I got sick and then had a loss in the family so I was out of it for basically all of Nov, Dec, Jan. I'm trying to get back to a three day weekly exercise routine + weekend activities. Submitting for commentary from the community...
Then weekends are hiking, biking, skiing, something like that. My goals used to be 300/400/500 in bench/squat/dead but I don't think that's attainable any more (especially without really being able to do heavy squats at all), so I need to figure something else out. Maybe would like to try to get more lean for the summer bod while maintaining strength. Partial ACL and patellar tendon reconstruction surgery is likely happening in September.
My own routine has been a bit of a mess since the holidays. I got got sick twice (thanks, co-workers showing up sick!), which threw off. I'm aiming for 5 days a week, maybe 20-30 minutes Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, with Wednesdays as stretch/yoga-ish days. Right now I am using mostly Apple Fitness. I'm back to about 2-3 days a week now, but for a few weeks I barely did 1-2 days. On the bright side, I do go for a good 2-5 Km walk 4-6 times a week thanks for having to walk my dog, so at least that keeps me moving. Spring is starting to show its face here too, which has been a pleasant change, and now it gets dark later, so I can make my walks longer.
Today I tried a kickboxing workout and I was sweating pretty good by the end of it! Surprisingly challenging as it's totally new to me, especially the kicks. Punches, I did before and I have some familiarity with the standard boxing punches. Kicks, not so much! The guys is like "now we do roundhouse kick" and I'm like "o....k...." lol. Tried my best, but I am sure my form sucks. I was trying to think back to the 90s and the Chuck Norris movies I was watching.
I've had a pretty slow fitness journey this year. My main goal was weight loss so I have been trying to adjust my diet to be a bit healthier. I was successful for Jan and Feb but regressed for the first half of this month. Hoping to get back on track starting this week. I've been more mindful of the calories of the things I consume. I've also started slow with fitness, focusing mainly on closing the rings on my Apple Watch. My Watch was telling me that I've closed all 3 rings 100 times now, which I'm happy with. I'm also going to slowly start incorporating more real exercise into my routine. My only real exercise atm besides the brisk walks to/from my office is riding the rideshare bikes every now and then. I'm going to try to pick up some jogging as well as some weight training with just my body-weight. I don't want to commit to a whole gym membership just yet.
I took nearly an entire half year of casual walking and ring-closing before even looking at something more serious, and honestly just that helped me out a lot (as someone who is extreeeeeemely sedentary otherwise due to computer job and WFH)! And based on what I have been getting from the strength and conditioning classes, you can definitely get a lot of mileage out of just body-weight exercises!
Yep, totally agree! My goal for now is just to get myself moving and I'll then think k about slowly incorporating weights. I'll see how the next 3 months go and adjust as I go
AI is taking over my life, it seems. After having such a hard time getting back into the swing of things after my shoulder injury, I decided to ask Claude to help me with my routine and we eventually worked out that the problem I was having was with lifting too much weight. So now I'm having it give me tips to improve my mind-muscle connection, figure out what weights I should be lifting, and how to get the proper form that I've apparently not gotten right after all this time.
Went in again for muay thai on Saturday morning, where I felt a little awkward because I still don't feel comfortable drilling with experienced partners (I mentioned last week that everyone here is nice and they'd probably be chill, but I feel like my body still doesn't quite have this whole jabbing and crosses and hooks right and I just wouldn't be a good partner at all...). I just did bag work! And got fancy gloves in though I foolishly ordered them before asking the gym which ones I needed. Debating whether I should keep them or do a full on exchange - internet suggested that me being extremely petite meant it'd make sense to get lighter gloves for bag work, while most gyms including mine will only accept 16oz for partner drilling. I'm also seeing some comments suggesting to have separate pairs between bag work and sparring since bag work will slowly but surely make the gloves far more compact and hard... which I can afford, just not sure if I should keep the 12oz gloves I got in or get two 16oz gloves.
Today's workout was fun! Only had three of us for the earlier class and we had all been regular attendees of the Monday class for the last several weeks, so the coach pushed us a bit more than usual. I was a little excited because I usually finish all the sets last (not that it's a competition at all), but one of the exercises was hanging knees to elbows, and my lower body weight finally gave me the edge here... that, and I was feeling the returns from the last several weeks' worth of casual pull up training and resulting grip strength.
Workout was:
Lastly: I finally assembled the pull up stand I got in! I was inspired by some YT videos to actually keep it on the lower height and work on some inverted rows / pullups. I need to acquire gym rings. I need to run more.
I mucked up my finger a while back and it still hasnt healed... partly because i kept climbing on it. Real bummer. Being away from the climbing gym is always a real mood killer for me. I dont care for weights or anything else really so it feels like i cant do my hobby/passion, not just exercise. Ive gone back to swimming 2k atleast two times a week and running 10/5k atleast once a week each. Its getting nicer outside so im looking forward to hiking with the dog and soloing some insane hikes ive been amassing since eos last year. Not to mention a lot of outdoor bouldering in squamish. So excited for warmer weather and my finger to finish healing.
First time coming in for consecutive days (slowly freeing up my online obligations, and have a work trip coming up this week so I either go in early this week or not at all!). Today was very arms focused:
Warmup of jumping jacks, walk out plank + pushups, windmills.
Workout:
I tried to use the lighter resistance band for my pull-ups today and failed miserably! And then I tried to see if I could jump to reach the lowest pull up bar (I need to climb onto a bench to reach otherwise), only to see I cannot in fact jump high enough! So now I'm looking at exercises I can add on to increase vertical jump height....