Exercise

[chess]

Usually I deal with the need to exercise by walking to work every day, but Fimbulvinter has got me out of the habit, and I find myself distinctly out of shape.

Unfortunately I am also lazy, generally short on time, have an incredibly low boredom threshold, and like eating pies.

I think the most commitment I could give any kind of exercise would be '15 minutes sometime in the evening on days that the entire evening isn't taken up by something else' (most of my activities actually leave me an hour or so afterward before I'm sleepy enough to go to bed, I think only CUTT interactives and sometimes running D&D if it overruns have the 'entire evening' flag set).

If anyone has any ideas for 'basic exercises to make me not feel so incredibly unfit (and maybe lose some of the Extra Pie Storage)' which can be done at home without complicated equipment in 15 minutes in the evening (maybe up to 30 minutes if there's enough variety / interestingness that I don't get bored and give up), I apologise in advance for the way I will inevitably argue and shoot all ideas down and fail to follow up on them but I'd like to hear those ideas anwyay :).

Comments

[favouredenemy.livejournal.com]

Last winter, I hit pretty much the same problem.

Have a look through:

http://hundredpushups.com/
http://www.twohundredsitups.com/
http://www.twohundredsquats.com/

Doing all three (plus weight lifting) took up about 30 minutes 2/3 times a week.

Once summer came out, I took up jogging. Now that winter's back and I really don't want to be out in the cold so much, I'm going to try taking these up again. Big difference this time round for me is the space I used to do the exercises is now taken up by my wife's computer...

[chess]

Thank you - I think my brain was vaguely searching for those but couldn't remember what exactly to google for :).

[naath.livejournal.com]

Is a Wii (or an Xbox Kinect) Too Much Equipment? I find the feedback useful (even if it isn't great).

[chess]

Yeah - if I have to spend more than a tenner on it or it takes up space / needs to be set up before use then it's not a great idea (especially as we don't have a TV / space for a console setup)

[naath.livejournal.com]

Ah, no TV makes that a much much stupider suggestion.

[chess]

It's not so much 'hate' running as 'running makes me limited on breathing much quicker than it makes my legs care at all', due to hilarious breathing failure.

Thank you very much for the form advice for stuff, if I do get around to being even moderately less lazy it should be useful :).

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

High Intensity Interval Training, using bodyweight exercises (squats, push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups are all you really need -- get a pull-up bar for a tenner or so from Argos and fit it to your doorframe).

Basically you follow the Tabata Protocol from this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training

4 minutes per day of each of squats, push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups will do the trick, for a total of 16 min. You will be too short of breath to get bored.

[sath.livejournal.com]

I too am horrendously unfit, and I like pie. I'm going to bookmark this post for my own use!
I wonder which one of us will be the first to find the motivation to do these excercises? :P

[chess]

15 fake pressups (after comprehensively failing to perform any real ones) and 10 incredibly lousy situps this morning! :)

[sath.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, you beat me by a mile there. Go you! :)

[passage.livejournal.com]

Have you considered getting hat/scarf/gloves to the point where winter no longer interrupts your walking? I find the key is to have as little skin uncovered as possible.

I admit I haven't found a solution to 'the pavement has become an ice rink'.

[chess]

I have all those and it's fine again for walking now the ice has melted, but my nonexistant sense of balance doesn't have an easy fix :)

[passage.livejournal.com]

On those pavements, a sense of balance was just a way of knowing it had all gone wrong slightly too late to do anything about it.

[requiem-17-23.livejournal.com]

I found that getting bored of exercise didn't happen, which was odd when I think of all those hours on a [characterisation deleted] erg. That UT2 exercise (that is, exercise that burns fat and improves cardio, without just primarily being about teaching your brain to use your body's emergency reserves better, best done for half an hour to an hour, if you can't keep it up that long then it isn't UT2) was otherwise known as 'exercise just hard enough that all you can think about is what your body is doing, but not so hard that your lungs have teamed up with your teeth and whatever part of the body is doing the exercise and are threatening strike action'.

I also find that I can get UT2 out of fast walking while hilariously unfit, but running is anaerobic under all circumstances. Bodies vary; do what works.

[omniscient-fool.livejournal.com]

A little late to the party but...

Speaking as another pie eater who resents exercise, have you tried exercise dvds? They can be very cheap, and a professional has worked out the routine for you so no effort required in planning and is demonstrating it so you can see clearly what to do from the privacy of your living room. I find they keep my mind engaged better than just sets of crunches etc. If you go for one that has a number of short workouts on the disk then you can make it fit into your time frame and rotate the workouts to keep from getting bored. I've been doing one of the '10 minute' series and found it to be quite good (£4, has 5 x 10 min workouts) although you might need to warm up first and stretch afterwards independently.

Pushups and situps are good too but they get boring quick on their own (I've tried the 100/200 so many times) so maybe alternate with exercise dvds? You need to get a mix of cardio and strengthening exercise, esp if you want to shift the pie storage (otherwise you just have toned muscles hidden under a layer of fat).

Also, do you make your own pies? Cooking from fresh reduces the trans fats of processed foods and will make you feel healthier and reduce need for lots of exercise.

[chess]

Exercise DVDs, alas, have several fatal flaws: a) I have no TV; b) I can't do exercises in the main room because it is too cluttered and often is also cluttered with a tienelle who doesn't think he can shut up and avoid injuring my fragile self-esteem while I'm trying to exercise; c) it makes me hideously nervous to have even a fake Perky Enthusiastic Stranger in the room when I'm trying to exercise, and reminds me vaguely of PE classes which are never a good association.

I find myself fortunately incapable of eating most processed food because people insist on putting onions or onion powder in every single thing, so I actually eat pretty simple meals most of the time. The problem on the food intake side is not really the 'pies' component of the food but the 'flapjacks, chocolates and cake' component...

[omniscient-fool.livejournal.com]

Playing them on a computer is not a problem, and you actually don't need as much space as you think, but I can totally understand why c might make it an impossibility. If I come across anything that seems less hideous in that regard I'll let you know. I admit a lot of the time I exercise thinking 'fuck you, bitch' in my head at the perky instructor, but I kinda realised that if I wanted to be able to run for a train without nearly giving myself a heart attack I had to just suck it up! Good luck.