Tagged: Fitness

Lockdown Exercise

I have posted a couple of my longer walks to this blog during the lockdown. I thought I’d share some of the other exercises I do. Just to show the variety, it isn’t much but there is some.

I own a treadmill. On the days I don’t go out I will mix jogging and walking on the treadmill. This is usually early morning and I do between 2-3hrs while the rest of the house is asleep. Distances vary between 15 to 22 Km.

I also do runs outside. These will be between 5km to 10km and take between 25mins to an hour.

I do mixed walking (Uphill walking as Lancaster has a nice monument that is 320ft or so above the river) then jogging a circular route back downhill and flat with some uphill back to the river. This is usually 2-3 laps and varies between 15 to 17 Km taking about 2hrs.

Today was the latter. this has kept my daily step average around 23,000 steps and distances daily between 18-28 Km. Keeping me fitter than I could have hoped considering all the other bad lockdown habits.

Thanks for listening.

Me with my virtual chum after today’s exercise

2018 Exercise Stats

At the start of 2018 I was on a slight bit of a downer. I had spent most of 2017 dropping around a quarter of my body weight in a diet and exercise routine that saw me go from unable to run to a 5Km a day guy. However late November to after New Year I hit the winter doldrums, threw on 20lbs of the 65 that I had lost and felt like a failure.

I decided that I would reset in 2018. And so I set my mind to once again getting into shape, getting out and running (when it was bright and warmer) and using the gym on dark and cold mornings.

I also decided to once more monitor my progress os that I could do a yearly update on the stats and figures.

Some More Notes

For the start of the year the figures were low as I had to build my dedication and rebuild my ability to do any length of exercise. I had a low point in February (pretty much from half way through the month until early March due to a minor elective operation that prevented me doing strenuous exercise for five weeks.

I also had a period in December where I was ill with the Flu for eleven days, this also made it impossible for me to exercise.

In November I bought a treadmill and use that in the early mornings and late evenings of the Autumn to early spring as I rarely like to run when it is dark, wet and cold (i don’t find it fun running on my own at those times).

The Stats

So lets look at the numbers and charts:

As you can see the middle of summer (August) was my best month, but the whole of the second half of the year is good. My averages before this were about 10K a day, after they were 20K steps a day. The whole year averages at 16k steps a day.

Heart points are interesting. The UN WHO recommends that you do a minimum of 20 a day and 150 a week. These equate to aerobic or cardio points where you are increasing your activity and exercising. On most days recently I exceed the weekly average before breakfast on each day (I usually exercise in the early mornings). This is mostly because I will use a treadmill or run for 90 to 120 minutes.

Conclusion

It’s been a fun year of restarting my exercise and weight management regime. I reached a comfortable place in August which sees my weight mostly level going up and down a little each month. On the whole year I have lost over 2 stone and that has placed me at a point I am happy with. I also love being able to exercise at home when the weather is inclement or I have no mood for the outdoors (I get more stimulation at home).

The plans for 2019 are to see if i can keep the same sort of activity levels while focussing on getting my overall fat content down (still a little high and I would love to see less body fat as a whole). I also think i might try and focus a little on tightening the abdomen.

I will let you know how it went in 2020.

What a difference 2 years makes

In the last two years I have addressed what I thought was an issue for me (your experience and feelings will likely vary) and that was my weight. I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t healthy (or I didn’t feel healthy) and I wasn’t fit, in fact exercise was tiresome and often painful.

So I went to the gym, and I started to run, and I learned to love it. The following pictures are 2 years apart. The first two from the Tree Top Nets in Cumbria on the 22nd October 2016 and the next two from this morning in a hotel room near to the Theme parks and the M4/M25. I am with my two oldest boys, and I feel better about how I look, how I feel and how much exercise I get with my boys.

A Year of Effort

Over the past year I have been publishing results of my attempts to get fitter. Let’s be honest, tweet, blog, vlog, facebook and all. I have had Zombie’s chasing me around parks and updates in the wee hours from the gym.

It started almost a year ago (I started on the 6th January 2017 but it was as close as damn it to New Year) when I decided 2017 was the year to kill the excess weight I had and look and feel better. It was how I felt about my body and my overall health.

Since then I have lost about 60 pounds (to be fair I lost nearly 70 but have fluctuated up a little in the past few weeks due to lack of gym and running time and holiday over-indulgences). I still have some way to go, about 15 pounds now since I threw some back on. But I am confident that it I can achieve it and I have set a date of 2019 to lose that weight so I don’t have to push myself.

This post is the last time you will see the fitness graphics from 2017 and it shows a general high level of activity. In total last year I did nearly 5.5 million steps which is an average of 448,215 steps each month or 14,736 steps (about 14km) each day. None of that includes the gym time and the efforts to make a better diet.

I was aiming at doing this for a year to make a lifestyle change and I think I have achieved that Where I go from here is about 15 pounds lighter and to keep up the exercise that I do. I will probably randomly keep you informed (unless you follow my runs and I start getting chased by zombies at which point you are going to hear about it much quicker).

A year ago I honestly couldn’t run for 3 minutes without feeling very tired and out of breath and running up the stairs had started to make me sound like a steam train puffing up a hill. Now I can jog for an hour (usually between 6-10Km) and sometimes twice a day and feel satisfied. I am concerned that there is a toll on my knees and back, but for now I can enjoy feeling better.

I also know that I have the ability to dedicate myself to a very strong cause and to carry through with it.

Which means I probably need to find a goal for this year…

 

Ranking up Achievements

If by now you are getting bored of me talking about hitting fitness goals and my achievements this year you might want to give up now. Though you’d miss all the pretty graphs…

For those of you still here this blog post is all about the recent achievements.

Yearly Goal

At the start of the year( well actually a few days into it but that’s just because I don’t do New Year resolutions at midnight on the 31st I think through and make sure I want to do them after a few days) I set a goal, I wanted to beat the last recent low weight I had in 2014 which was 3 stone less than the weight I was at the start of this year (I was 18 stone 1 lb at the start of the year and my previous best was 15 stone 1 lbs).

I did that about 2 months ago, so I set a new goal. I wanted to hit by the end of the year the healthy weight band that the NHS has for my age/height. By now you should have guessed it, I did it:

This is the first time that I know of (so my living memory) where I have achieved this. I am a Healthy Weight. So I have a new goal which is about 12-14lbs under this weight and that is a lifetime goal and one to keep and maintain. I reckon I should do it for the end of the year but earlier would be nice.

Challenges

I also wanted to get more active and a good benchmark for that is to be vigorously active for 25% of the time I move around. This would be either fast walking, cycling or other exercise. That was a big challenge as it a big percentage of the active part of a days movement.

However I thought this was a goal that can be achieved, the easy way to do it would just be to walk a lot more energetically, this will be recorded by Google Fit as jogging/running. Of course that energetic state is not just swift walking it is ‘fast’ walking which is a semi-jogging pace.

I passed this as well, in fact I passed it so much I am more vigorously active than just active – I run more than I walk.

It’s also nice to note that I pass 500,000 steps in a couple of months and come close on others, which puts my daily average at about 17,300 steps.

Another thing I have started to do is to accept fitness challenges from friends and on various apps. These work out well for me as I am fairly competitive so I can be pushed, it is also nice to win for a change (at school I was generally last and considered amongst the wets/weirdos/fatties – I pretty much was in all 3 of those categories judging by the nicknames and insults hurled).

This was the most recent challenge, a Mon-Fri event. It was helped by the fact that I ran 10K each morning and ran at 4 lunches with either Leigh or Tom (names and images are purposefully blurred and Leigh and Tom were not in this challenge 😉 ).

Heart Health

My family has a history of poor heart health. My maternal grandfather and father both died in their 50s from heart attacks and my mother has suffered with Angina, my sister has a congenital heart defect. So having 3 young kids and being very overweight and approaching 50 I was suddenly filled with a lot of concern.

My blood pressure was high (125-142/80-90) showing signs of hypertension starting and my resting heart rate was averaging 75-82. I couldn’t go upstairs without being slightly breathless from the weight and fast breathing.

When I started with a fitbit heart tracker I was ‘Average’ for the heart tracking, by that point I had been exercising for close to 3 months, I was likely at ‘Poor’ to ‘Fair’ when I started. This week I was happy to sneak into ‘Excellent’ though two days later I dropped .3 points and went back to 49.2 and just ‘Very Good’ – but at the top end of that.

As you can see my resting heart rate is now around 60, though it hovers between 56-63. My last blood pressure check I was at 110/65 and I average 107-122/63-81 dependent on the time of the day and what I am doing.

All in all I am feeling happy about my health. Since December I have lost 4 stone 9 lbs (65lbs/29.484Kg) and this year it is 4 stone 7 lbs (63lbs/28.576Kg) so my current weight is 13 stone 6lbs (188lbs/85.275Kg).

 

Running Socks (Review)

The History

If you have read this blog before you will know that this year I decided to change my lifestyle. Part of that change was to exercise regularly. These days I run every day, I go at least 8Km and sometimes I do 15-20Km in a day.

Not being the youngest person in the world I do suffer from small strains and injuries. Two that were particularly troubling were blisters caused by shoes (new trainers in one case) and a pain in the arch and ankle of my left foot.

In a bid to try and move away from an ankle support I decided to try a running sock. I chose the More Mile Mens London sock as it had good recommendations of Amazon. I would like to share some of my experience.

The Review

This review can be broken into 6 distinct parts:

  • Fit: The socks are snug and tight, they fit well and do not shrink as long as you keep the wash cool and use colour setting. They also are suited to left/right division and as such are labelled.
  • Support: As promised they support the arch and most of my pain has disappeared. The compression on the toes and ankle are also good.
  • Sweat: The sock works well at getting sweat away from the skin and my feet can be dry after running (or at least they feel dry).
  • Padding: Toes and ankle are nicely padded and as such they have eliminated blisters, another big plus is the padding on the ball of the foot which helps to cushion and protect the side of the foot.
  • Comfort: They feel great, like standing on clouds, snug clouds though.
  • Wear: I have had them for a few weeks and they are only just showing wear, I estimate a lifespan of 20-30 wears for each sock, which is about 10p a run. This might seem high but I think it is a bargain for the level of comfort I have noticed.

Overall I am going to give a thumbs up to these socks. Please note that I haven’t tried their other socks, nor have I tried many other brands that are similar so cannot give a side-by-side comparison.

However I think they are worth the cost and the comfort and reduction in strain and blisters alone is worth double the daily cost.

If you are going to purchase some of these socks please consider using my affiliate link below.

[Note: I was not asked, sponsored, or otherwise tempted to write this review. I made a purchase and this is a response to the usage (personal) of the product I bought. I was not offered any compensation or gain]