Anyone else getting fit in Covid?

[kittens]

healthy bmi in accordance with True Height achieved. still a stone or so to go but i'm feelin good

[bgmnts]

Well done kittens!

[Blue Jam]

Yesterday I did BodyPump for the first time since March 2019. Was embarrassed at how much of a struggle it was. I used to chuck great big weights around but the most I could manage was 5kg on the bar for anything, including the squat track. Felt absolutely destroyed afterwards and wanted to cry. Feeling achey as fuck now and seem to have sprained my upper arm, possibly by overdoing it on the shoulder track. Really need to get my strength up again! Oh well, the inhalers made things a little easier in the lung department, at least.

I've learned to quite like running, if not love it, but I think exercise will always be something of a necessary evil to me. I don't think I'll ever enjoy it 100%

[kittens]

Well done kittens!

thank you señor.

i'm staying at my mum's this weekend and she keeps saying i am anorexic and dangerously thin. makes a nice change from her telling me I'm a big fatty.

[holyzombiejesus]

When I was working in the office, I used to cycle there and then cycle on my visits. Now that I generally work from home I barely leave my chair, let along go out. I could go on walks for my lunch but because I spend most of my day flicking between works stuff and C&B/ Discogs, I usually need to 'work' through. So, I've put on a good few pounds and that's despite me going from half a bottle of red a night to zilch for two months. Also, I don't have any enthusiasm for using my bike as I'm out of practice, older, fatter and less fitter, and the weather is shit. Woe is me. Something needs to change. Going to start having a later breakfast, ditching butties and having soup 3 nights a week, whilst staying off the booze for 5 (probably 4) nights a week (unless I'm going out). That should make a difference but I still feel a bit fed up that I've wasted the opportunity to properly slim down this last year.

[Rich Uncle Skeleton]

thank you señor.

i'm staying at my mum's this weekend and she keeps saying i am anorexic and dangerously thin. makes a nice change from her telling me I'm a big fatty.

I need to follow your lead. My mum prodded my tum, said there's more of me than usual and asked if I'm still going to fit in my suit at a funeral next week,  fucking cheek of it 

[Ferris]

About to buy a folding stationary bike and a set of weights. Latest lockdown has been really difficult, not being able to go out and feeling exhausted all the time with no real breaks to mentally prepare means I'm just going "oh fuck it" in the evening and eating crisps.

I've probably gained a few kg in the last month that I need to shift - once Ferris Jr is back at nursery I'm going to set up a gym[nb]some weights and a folding stationary bike[/nb] in the basement and become a hunk in time for summer.

[JamesTC]

With work being so stressful and my anxiety being through the roof, these last six months have really meant my diet has taken a back seat. Whilst I've kept up with my fitness, I knew I'd definitely put on lots of weight.

Well I finally got a new battery for my scales and weighed myself today. The results were more than a little disappointing. Whilst I can write off some of it to muscle due to the sheer amount of exercise I've been doing, I still know it will take the next three months of sticking quite stringently to my diet to get me back to where I was at my lowest. I guess the journey starts here again.

Doesn't help that I've taken 10 days off running to try to finally shake off a calf injury which has been on and off for months.

[popcorn]

3 months is nowt. Fully doable.

[JamesTC]

It is just that I spent 10 months last year fully dieting and very rarely breaking from the diet and it was all fine but then I fall away for six months and lose three months of that progress. If I stick with the diet until November, I think I'll be well into a healthy BMI which would be nice.

[JamesTC]

As annoyed as I am with myself that I let myself lose track, I have gone back over my food diary, weight log and running stats and I have to admire what I was managing to do in that time.

I think in the period of July-August of last year was just a roughly 10 week period where I smashed it out the park beyond belief. I lost so much weight, I build up so much fitness and I managed to have a diet which had regular treats in and even the weekly takeaway. I've got to try and get back to that for at least the next 10 weeks. If I can do that then I won't be far away from the my lowest. I guess I'll see on the 8th August whether I can do it.

[Ferris]

^yeah it's a pain in the arse when you lose track, because you go "ooh a run, this will be easy" and it is insanely difficult and you realize how much progress has evaporated into the ether. I was doing 5km runs in 22 minutes at my running peak but I've got no fucking chance of that now.

I used to do the calorie/weight track thing for 6 months as well and felt terrific. The sense of smug superiority... can't beat it.

Very difficult when you have negligible mental energy though - pandemics and toddler mean I'm shattered in the evenings so can't face exercise and diets crumple in the face of being physically and mentally very tired. I'm expecting our lockdown to finish end of next week so that's when I'm targeting to start exercising and calorie counting again.

Hoping I'll get back in shape in time for a Hot Ferris Summer^TM.

[popcorn]

How I hate the Hot Ferris Summer

[El Unicornio, mang]

I stopped regular exercising for about 3 weeks and found myself feeling more stressed as a result, which ironically caused me to lose more weight than I was when I was exercising and managed to lose 5lbs. Although my cardio and general strength is now shit again.

[Ferris]

How I hate the Hot Ferris Summer

Gonna waggle my steely buns in your face and there's nothing you can do about it.

[Drygate]

I stopped regular exercising for about 3 weeks and found myself feeling more stressed as a result, which ironically caused me to lose more weight than I was when I was exercising and managed to lose 5lbs. Although my cardio and general strength is now shit again.

Was probably just muscle loss rather than fat loss.

[popcorn]

This is my cardio fitness level (VO2 max) for the last 2 months according to my Apple Watch. I am currently at 39.9, making my fitness level below average. Cringe!!! A range of 43-50 is average, apparently.



The bump - from 39.0 to 39.9 - coincides with when I started personal training sessions (the only serious exercise I've done in the whole period - all other exercise was just walking, no jogging or biking or anything). This is surprising and interesting to me - can a mere two hours of serious cardio in bump your fitness by an entire point?

More likely it's just provided better data to apple. The watch can't measure vo2 max directly, it measures lots of things and estimates from that. Until recently you needed to do a high intensity work out to get a measurement.

Well blow me down, it has continued to rise. I inch slowly but surely towards a fitness level of AVERAGE. This just from walking a lot and an hour of punishing physical training once a week for a month.

[greencalx]

I think exercise will always be something of a necessary evil to me. I don't think I'll ever enjoy it 100%

Same. Never found a form of exercise where I don't feel like time is going backwards, except maybe hillwalking (although I never did that particularly seriously).

In the first lockdown we, along with all other parents thrust into impromptu homeschooling, tuned into Joe Wicks. Child and I did them all together, though he decided that Scottish children could get fat once English schools went back. (Actually, fair play to him, it must have got pretty tedious doing it every day and I got the impression that Mrs Wicks wasn't so keen; I do note they have a much nicer house now, so there is that). I stopped when our schools went back in the autumn, and at a subsequent GP consultation it was suggested I pick it back up again. Looking at the Health app data, I now realise how much exercise I did by walking to and from work, and by going between floors of the building. So since Christmas I've been back on the Wicks, and dallied with some of the competition (as well as the school's own home workouts that the PE teacher produced). I particularly like people who don't talk as much, and don't share Joe's burpee fetish.

The first half always feels miserable. The second half always goes much faster. But I still don't get how a 40 second work period feels 10 times longer than the 20 second rest in between. And I just feel knackered and sweaty afterwards, never get the endorphin rush that people bang on about. I think I am a bit fitter and stronger than I would otherwise be, but I suspect most of the benefits are reversed by the chocolate cakes and apple crumbles we've taken to baking at the weekends.

[Blue Jam]

The first half always feels miserable. The second half always goes much faster. But I still don't get how a 40 second work period feels 10 times longer than the 20 second rest in between.

This. Also burpees can fuck right off. Are they even good for you? I can't do them without falling over.

Fair play to you though, Joe Wicks annoys me too much for me to watch a single second, never mind exercise with him for 40.

Think I do actually enjoy Beat Saber and BodyPump now I think about it. The music stops me getting bored. I've never been any good at dance classes though, my brain just can't keep up with the moves.

[Blue Jam]

Also I did another BodyPump class this morning. This one:

https://nzglen.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/bodypump-85-tracklist/

Too soon, guys...

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Sunny weather means it's time to go kayaking again. I've just spent about two hours paddling up the river, followed by a return trip that took a dispiritingly brief 40 minutes.
It's good exercise for the upper body, although the only part that quickened my pulse was when the swans started getting lairy at me.

[Magnum Valentino]

Does anyone know how long a dynamic warm-up session 'lasts' for?

In context, my warm-up routine (which works and can be directly credited for less painful runs, back when I was doing them) is too ridiculous looking to do anywhere but at home, but I think I'd look forward to running more if I could do it in some other local locations that I'd need to drive to, 10 or 15 minutes or so.

So if the warm up is designed to make the muscles behave a certain way which means they're less likely to get strained during an exercise, are they likely to still be in that state after sitting in a car for 15 minutes, or should the exercise follow the warmup immediately?

[olliebean]

Does anyone know how long a dynamic warm-up session 'lasts' for?

In context, my warm-up routine (which works and can be directly credited for less painful runs, back when I was doing them) is too ridiculous looking to do anywhere but at home, but I think I'd look forward to running more if I could do it in some other local locations that I'd need to drive to, 10 or 15 minutes or so.

So if the warm up is designed to make the muscles behave a certain way which means they're less likely to get strained during an exercise, are they likely to still be in that state after sitting in a car for 15 minutes, or should the exercise follow the warmup immediately?

Depends; I think we'll need to see a video of you doing the warm up to give you a definitive answer.

[Magnum Valentino]

It's this. I've overcome a certain amount of image issues to be able to get out running in the first place but the squat/rotate and lunge/rotate in this are something I'm not going to be seen doing out and about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlz572cfQS4&t=329s

[popcorn]

It seems there is no strong evidence that warmups actually help anything (here's a trial, here's another trial) so if I were you I'd just skip it. If you don't like getting into strenuous exercise straight-off, just start by going for a brisk walk before launching into your graceful olympian sprint.

edit: oh I see you swear by your warmups. well, you could try an experiment, do them at home, drive to your place and do your run and see if they still feel like they're helping.

in my experience you can get away with any kind of ridiculous body movement as long as you're wearing gym shorts and trainers. as you repeatedly rub your bum up and down a telephone pole people will simply assume you are an expert athlete dedicated to his routine.

[Magnum Valentino]

Ah it's maybe unfair to say I swear by them, but I at least experienced noticeably less painful aftereffects on days that I warmed up before AND after. That said, it could have been coincidence. I'll take a read of those links, cheers popcorn.

I would absolutely love to not bother with dynamic warm ups to be honest. The mental toll it took on me was genuinely strong enough to put me off running. Probably notable that C25K doesn't recommend anything bar the brisk walk beforehand, either.

[Dusty Substance]

I put on quite a bit of weight during the first lockdown (March-June 2020) and then did my best to work it off. Did a bunch of sit-ups in June and July, felt exhilarated by doing it,  but did my back in on my rickety floor. Bought a gym/yoga matt to make sit ups a little more comfortable AND THEN NEVER DID ANOTHER SIT UP AGAIN.

Continued to put on weight but for the last four/five months I've been a lot more sensible with my eating, hoping that the gained weight will go. It hasn't. Need to get out a get walking again.

[Ferris]

Walked 22km today (and probably a bit more because I got lost).

Am I shagged? Yes. Was it pointless? Perhaps, perhaps.

[Blue Jam]

Did BodyPump again yesterday. Good upper back workout and now I'm feeling it. Getting a reet pair of lats. Not just working on my glamour muscles here.

Been enjoying BodyPump and seeing quick results but my gym used to do a "class only" membership which was about £35, but  now only do a ten-class pass for £64. Doing two classes a week they don't last long, and because class sizes are restricted it's a bugger to even get into one right now, lots of joining waiting lists and hoping someone cancels, or doing classes at 8am when no sane person wants to do them.

Due to the inconvenience and expense I think I'm going to wait until my current pass is used up and just buy a barbell and some clips instead. We already have a few weight plates, I might buy a couple more and then I'll have a full BodyPump set for home use. Do classes on YouTube, job's a good 'un.

One of the classes I've been doing features a bit of Fallout Boy and the lyrics: "Gonna change ya/Like a remix/Then I'll raise ya/Like a phoenix. I can't decide if that's terrible or brilliant. It's great benchpressing music, that's for sure.

[Neville Chamberlain]

Currently on day 4 of my '100 pull-ups a day' challenge. I don't do them in one session because I'm nowhere near strong enough for that, but I do them in groups of 10 spaced out over two hours (or one hour for chin-ups) while I'm in my home office. This means I'm never pulling up to muscle failure (not a good idea if you're doing them every day) and can instead focus on good, strong form. I use a variety of grips, too: pull-up (palms facing away); chin-ups (palms facing towards me); and parallel grip (palms facing each other). I've become a bit obsessed with pull-ups recently.

I also 'accidentally' ran a half-marathon the other day. 'Accidentally' because I fucked up my workout plan on my Garmin and decided to do a 5k or 10k instead because I was kind of in the mood. But then, at 10k, I found I was still feeling pretty mentally and physically strong so just decided to carry on. Did it in 2 hours 1 minute. With a few tweaks to the route and better preparation (i.e. not drinking a few bottles of beer during Turkey v Italy and going to bed at 2 a.m. the night before), I reckon I can go for sub 1 hour 50 min run. Having now run a half-marathon distance, my respect for full marathon runners has gone up immeasurably!