This is probably an “interesting” question to ask on a forum allegedly dedicated to RPGs, but what sorts of things do you guys do to stay active? Since I realized last year that I was approaching a slight milestone, that my metabolism wasn’t speeding up any, and that my body was beginning to suffer from a lack of physical activity, I made a commitment to get into better shape and to work on keeping those habits sooner rather than later.
I work out with my personal trainer twice a week doing mostly strength training exercises for overall toning. I also try to go in at least once or twice to the gym aside from that to do similar workouts with more of an emphasis on cardio. I have been slack on attending classes at the gym, but the ones I have attended have been great. I was also on a running program with friends from work until April, but since running was a bit boring for me I didn’t really stick with it. Probably not a good idea before the 7K trail run I did yesterday… and my right knee is paying the price! I’d like to get back into swimming once I find a pool that’s reasonably priced and sized. I’m not much on team sports - I think I’m scarred from school days and kickball…
Now, besides Arac who I know spends more time giving out punches rather than blocking them with his face, what do you do? Maybe I can get some ideas for new stuff from you.
I walk and bike everywhere. Makes me good for moving myself and keeps me goshdarned skinny, but I have all the coordination of a monkey on a helium, which is not a very coordinated thing at all. Therefore, sports are an uncharted territory to me, about as familiar as the daily lifestyle of the Neptunian moon druids, which is something not very familiar to me at all.
The summary: Locomoting by foot keeps you fit, but does nothing for sports.
I don’t really have much of a choice when it comes to walking. I live way out of town, which means I unfortunately have to drive everywhere. When coupled with my inability to ride a bike (due to reasons I don’t want to go into), this means I have pure shit fitness.
I generally take walks around the block for a half-hour a day, lift weights at home, and try to use an old exercise machine my folks bought years ago. This has at least kept me alive, even if I probably look like I should have died years ago.
I walk everywhere because I don’t drive, and take the bus if it’s too far or if I’m in a hurry. I also run at least once a week, go to the gym (went on an unintentional year hiatus though), and I also like to hike around in the beautiful mountain ranges that are literally 45 to 60 minutes away from my home via public transit.
I don’t like sports though, as I’ve never really liked working on a team but with small groups of friends it’s all right. I’ve been considering taking a sword martial art sometime in the future as well, either Fencing or Japanese Kendo.
I walk 4 miles a day(yeah, I have a lot of free time :P). There’s this one 4-mile path around a river near where I live that I walk once around every day.
I also go to the gym three times a week, and do general strength-training. This is something that only started within the last few months cause my dad was trying to lose weight and got himself a membership, and got me one so he’d have someone to go with. The strength training is high reps, lower weights, and doing the whole gamut of ten exercises or so only takes about half an hour. I don’t really care about bulking up. Its just something to do, really.
I bike. Usually about 2-3 hours at a time. I’ll usually either do a few laps around this long circular street nearby, or I’ll just do a lap around almost the entire city. I switch it up sometimes, I just go wherever I feel like going. It’s not very structured and I like exploring. I don’t really do it to stay fit either. Fitness is why I started it, but now I just do it for fun or when I’m sick of sitting on my ass inside.
I have a barbell, some dumbells and a decent bench at home so I don’t really have any use for a gym. I’m not very hardcore about weight training but I’ll probably get deeper into it after I lose some more of this fat.
I play road hockey when I can. I don’t like playing anything bigger than 2v2 though. More players make it less of a workout and a lot less fun.
I skate in the winter. Skating is awesome, especially on outdoor rinks. Good luck finding any ice this time of year though.
I think that’s about it, unless playing guitar counts. It’s not usually very draining, but if you’re playing a hard song, it can be. Drumming is a workout and a half though.
I was never much of a physical person… I don’t think I’ll ever manage to be “in shape”, but I can at least endeavour to be healthy. I walk for about half an hour a day total, and three times a week I do half an hour on an elliptical machine plus as many pushups and situps as I can do without collapsing (right now about 30 of each).
I like to bike everywhere. The fun part is, going from home is never a problem, because I live at the top of a hill. coming back, however, is a bitch.
my main problem, honestly, is eating healthy. I mean, I try, and when I manage to quit eating meat, it goes great. I just ened to wait for the next horribly fatty Fast Food sepcial to come out, preferably with “extra thick bacon”, to make me forego meat for at least three weeks.
I would bike 3-4 times a week and do various exercises (squats, push-ups, etc.) nightly. But my knee’s kinda fucked up now and my job at a moving company have made me lazy in that regard. I need to quit it and just get back to exercising. ~_~ I do try to play soccer with my brother’s recreational team though (every Thursday evening).
I run for about 20-30 minutes a day on the college track or around the premises when I don’t want to kill my feet with my not-track-friendly shoes.
I’ll hit up the school gym for a few upper body work outs and such. Energy spent today is energy for the next few days. Especially for the arms; I read somewhere that a good deal of energy comes from the arm muscles.
Since diet is also important, Dollar General has become my friend in the past year. Regular saltine crackers, black beans, cheap tuna and ranch dressing, collard greens and black eyed peas, gooood stuff that won’t make you feel like shit afterwards. Although I can’t live without peanut butter for more than two days…
I bike around a bit. Not as much as I used to since my bike commute increased from 30 minutes to 2 hours and fuck that, will be picking this up again once I move in a few months.
I usually get a dreno high and run around my school. (dreno=adrenaline) I used to bike, but my tire popped. So now I am basically the wanderin’ bum of my school. Up to about 6-7 miles a day!
Edit:One din’ I’m not healthy about is eatin’. Last time I saw a school lunch I was gonna eat was September. -_- I need to eat better…
I have a driver’s license but no car (and to top it off, I don’t even like driving), so I walk or ride my bike wherever I need to go. It works fine because I live near the center of my town. However, since I’m looking for a job I’ll probably have to get a car at some point, which is annoying because I don’t feel like I need one.
Last year I tried to start a habit of going swimming every week, but it’s not very weekly because the swimming house here is rising their prices more and more and I don’t know if I’ll keep going there once my current prepaid keycard runs out. But swimming is the only sport I enjoy.
I go to gym for weight training, approximately 3x/week with a bit of football (read: soccer) thrown in when the rest feel like it. I keep up with the gym as it’s the only way for me to stay thin (rather than extra thin) and usually go for exercises that engage many muscle groups, as it seems more effective and requires less time.
I suppose you’ve talked to your trainer about your knee. Always accommodate it (and your low back); it’ll help you immensely as you grow older.
I go running with my dog around parts of where I live which takes about an hour and is about 5 or 6 miles. Other than that, I go to the gym every day and do cardio for an hour and then do resistance training. One day for my legs, the next day my arms, and repeat. And I do as many crunches as I can. I don’t do any of this because I want to stay in shape though, I just get bored a lot. And I also chase my dog around the backyard and play catch with my brother sometimes.
Weight is all about the first law of thermodynamics: energy is conserved. It doesn’t come from nowhere. I know guys that are like “oh my god, that was such a good meal, it was so BIG, oh god, so fatty mmmmm” and then 2 hours later they talk about how they need to go to the gym.
Anything you might hear about “good food” vs “bad food” is all marketing bullshit and I can point to a nice little body of research and anecdotes from patient interviews to support that. Its not what you eat, its how much you eat.
For the record, I don’t work out. My physical activity includes walking to and from work. My BMI is 21 with little fat and my diet consists mostly of pizza, burgers and pasta.
If your knee is busted, do more swimming. Swimming won’t damage your knees like running.
I used to be in good enough shape because I worked on construction, and because I used a bike as my main form of transportation. But when I became epileptic, I had to stop working physically, and my family was deathly opposed to my riding a bike anywhere. Last year, I ballooned up to 192 pounds! But since I seem to have stabilized (I have seizures only once or twice a year now) and I was going stir-crazy at home, I went back to using my bike (mostly to go into town and back) and I’m losing like 3 pounds a week. I’m happy with this, though it doesn’t do much for upper body strength (and I’m still unemployed.)
Up to about 6-7 miles a day!