Look, working out is hard. It is. Even if you’re one of those freaks who absolutely LOVES their 5 a.m. run through the neighborhood, the effort and discipline required to haul your sleepy ass out of bed and make it out the door into the morning chill is usually more than what the average person can put up with. And I should know; I absolutely LOVE karate, but finding the time, will and balanced blood sugars to get through a couple of hours, twice a week, in order to stay consistent is tough. That’s why one sometimes needs to take baby steps. Habitually, and for the most part, my wife and I are quite adept at carrying out brief, 30-minute workout circuits together. While it might not sound like a lot, for the purposes of a workout, 30 minutes allows us to get our cardiovascular efforts in, break a significant sweat together and gain that tell-tale ache in our muscles of a job well done. This begs the question; are we doing enough?
According to an article by the Mayo Clinic, the average person should aim to get at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity a weekor 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity a week. This total can be spread out into smaller chunks throughout the week. So, we’re talking about a workout that gets your heart pumping. The article goes on to say that you should “Do strength training exercises for all major muscle groups at least two times a week. One set of each exercise is enough for health and fitness benefits. Use a weight or resistance level heavy enough to tire your muscles after about 12 to 15 repetitions.” Further, it specifies that “As a general goal, aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity every day.” Okay, perfect! This means that the 30-minutes allows us circuit workouts that my wife and I hammer out together on the weekends meet the mark and is all we need, right? Well, maybe not…
If you’re carrying on your fitness activities with the end goal of losing weight , keeping the weight off or achieving specific fitness goals, this minimalist approach may not be adequate. And sitting for prolonged periods of time can be horrendous on your overall fitness and goals. This should be pretty intuitive but you’d be surprised, and I’m guilty of this myself, how much time people spend on their ass, either working, binging television or in their leisure activities. I lose count of how much time I spend sitting when I’m out to coffee with friends or binge-watching new episodes of Grey’s Anatomy with my wife. Not so great for fitness goals and can actually aggravate or undo some of the fitness achievements you’ve reached. But that isn’t the goal of today’s post. Today’s post is about length and frequency of working out. So, let’s get to the important question: Are my current 30-minute workouts worth it?
The short answer is yes. As most leading health practitioners and fitness experts will tell you, any activity is better than no activity. Another obstacle/hurdle, at least for me, is the fact that as I get older, the energy levels and ability to maintain the same level of fitness as I did even just five years ago, has altered significantly. Sensei would likely cuff me on the back of the head if he reads this, considering that in his seventies, he is very much the image of fitness. More so than someone at my age or younger. Frankly, he puts most people to shame. That being said, ensuring I reach that couple of hours’ total throughout the week CAN be challenging. My body’s propensity for letting the blood sugar drop about twenty minutes before I get home certainly doesn’t help matters. This leads to more evenings than not, where I find myself wolfing down food when I get home as opposed to taking the half hour needed to burn some calories and get a sweat on. The struggle is real…
At the end of the day, all of this starts with you. Unlike most people, I don’t subscribe to the thought that one needs to be motivated in order to workout. That is a whole lot of nonsensical bullshit, right there! You need to be disciplined. Period. Start. Do something. Only do ten minutes of running in your backyard? Good for you. Twenty minutes of doing some weight reps? Fantastic. An hour of wrestling and rolling around on the floor with your kids? Even better. Develop and maintain the discipline to do SOMETHING. Once that discipline is in place, the motivation will follow. It can’t happen in the other direction. That’s an important detail, and most people fail to understand this. For me, going back to the days of 2-hour karate workouts several times a week are likely dead and gone. Type-1 Diabetes and my overall age and health just won’t allow it any longer. If I tried, I likely wouldn’t have the energy and ability to deal with, you know… work, kids, life… But I can guarantee that I’m going to keep pushing workouts and exercise. As often as I can, for as long as I can. They’ll have to pull my cold, dead corpse away from the mats because my health is important, as it supports everything else. So, take care of yours, as well. Unless you’re healthy and capable, you’ll find yourself unable to do any of the other things in life that may be important. Food for thought… ☯️
The Blogging Buddhist 