I've been playing the Wii Fit almost every night for the past two months, in addition to my normal weight-lifting routine. I hit 40 pushups tonight in the Pushup Challenge, and I feel pretty good about it.
Fitness, like metal, should always be a challenge. What challenges have you faced, and beaten, in recent weeks?
I recently started working out due to health issues (high cholesterol and high triglycerides). I do short burts of running uphill on a treadmill and then slow walking. I recently got the incline to 10 (highest mine will go) and up to 8 MPH for 30 seconds during 1 of the reps. I only hope to improve from there.
ReplyDelete40 pushups is no easy task. Congrats!
That's awesome. Running uphill at 8 mph for 30 seconds is a feat itself, and when you make that just a *part* of your run, that's something. I haven't been doing any aerobic exercise since I started working out, until recently. That's another thing the Wii Fit has done for me--I'm expanding the range of exercises I do. Now I do a little yoga (which is better exercise than I ever thought before trying it) and aerobics (usually the boxing game, because the running-in-place games are hard for me with my stupid flat feet).
ReplyDeleteMy own cholesterol was out of whack a couple years ago, before I started working out (not outside of what's considered normal, but it was borderline). Exercise has made a huge difference there.
As I'm only a Senior in high school, I probably have a unique perspective on this compared to you old guys, since I can still eat whatever I want and not gain an ounce. I was blessed to be born pretty naturally slim and muscular in some areas, so I'm hoping my good genes will do me some good later in life. Not to say that I don't exercise, that is, as I've done track and field all four years of high school. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure (The weights in that metaphor seem oddly fitting in this situation).
ReplyDeleteI've never had any weight issues, either, really. I was about 135 lbs from 8th grade through the beginning of my junior year of college. At 5'9", that made me skinny. I started lifting then, and I would eat breakfast before lifting, second breakfast after, have a Slim-Fast a half hour later, and eat lunch an hour after that. I ate obscene amounts of food, putting on 40 pounds of muscle in something like three months. (It's a lot easier to build muscle when you're 20 compared to when you're 29.) I pretty much stayed around 175-180 for several years, despite losing all my muscle and turning into one of those flabby but still thin-looking guys, with skinny arms and a slightly pudgy belly. When I was 27 I started lifting weights again, and have trimmed down to about 165 or a little less, and turned everything into muscle once again.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I guess the point of my long story there is that you should find something to keep you physically active, or things can go south gradually, to the point where you won't notice that you're just becoming an average, regular person instead of the fit person you want to be. Right now you have high school athletics, but as your life changes and more demands are placed on you, fitness can take a back seat. You need to find a way to motivate yourself. For me, it was joining a gym for a while, and the desire to be that "small muscular guy" that I was for a brief time in college once again. I got my routine and weights, so I don't need the gym anymore. I'm stronger now than I ever have been before, and I hope to continue improving for many years.