Which workout is best

In article <6DdLd.304$Tt.98@fed1read05>, Richard Miller
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Walking 2 miles 6 days a week, or walking 3 miles every other day, or 4
miles twice a week, or 5+ miles once a week?

Well it depends what you want to achieve and where you are now. In
general if you are just getting started every other day is fine. You
have to allow your muscles to recover from the previous exercise fully
before training again if you want them to improve. If you want to
exercise every day then take it slow every other day to allow full
recovery.

--

Dominic Sexton

"Richard Miller" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:6DdLd.304$Tt.98@fed1read05...

Quoted message said:

Walking 2 miles 6 days a week, or walking 3 miles every other day, or 4
miles twice a week, or 5+ miles once a week?
The 24 hour, 100 mile race are done by some runners who train heavy only
once a week. If you walk 2 miles a day, 6 days a week for a year and then
walk 5 miles, you'll be dragging your butt and if you try 10 miles, then
you'll need someone's help.

You have answered your own question, what ever you learn your body to do,
your body will get good at doing it!

So, if you want to get fit for hill walking, go hillwalking!

Most nights of the week I take the dogs over the local hill, this involves
850' of ascent. As a result I am pretty damn fit over 850' of ascent. So
much so that I now carry an altimeter watch when I'm up north and take 5
after evry 850' of ascent or descent.

In the Army I could do 50 pushups 10 times a day

Quoted message said:

every day, but I couldn't do 60 pushups. Any comments would be

appreciated.

Quoted message said:

Can't hack 60 press ups ?, what sort of army were you in, a French one ?

Bitstring <6DdLd.304$Tt.98@fed1read05>, from the wonderful person
Richard Miller <[email hidden]> said

Quoted message said:

Walking 2 miles 6 days a week, or walking 3 miles every other day, or 4
miles twice a week, or 5+ miles once a week?
The 24 hour, 100 mile race are done by some runners who train heavy only
once a week. If you walk 2 miles a day, 6 days a week for a year and then
walk 5 miles, you'll be dragging your butt and if you try 10 miles, then
you'll need someone's help. In the Army I could do 50 pushups 10 times a day
every day, but I couldn't do 60 pushups. Any comments would be appreciated.

What are you working out =for=?

If you're training for the marathon, then yep, you need to do marathon
distances, even if only once a week. if you just want to keep your heart
fit, then two/three times a week is enough (as long as you actually get
your pulse rate up at some point .. leisurely stroll on the flat may not
do it), and a couple or three miles is likely enough.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Outgoing Msgs are Turing Tested,and indistinguishable from human typing.

I noticed that Message-ID: <[email hidden]> from GSV
Three Minds in a Can contained the following:

Quoted message said:

What are you working out =for=?

If you're training for the marathon, then yep, you need to do marathon
distances, even if only once a week. if you just want to keep your heart
fit, then two/three times a week is enough (as long as you actually get
your pulse rate up at some point .. leisurely stroll on the flat may not
do it), and a couple or three miles is likely enough.

Well I've put my name down for the Ben Nevis trip so I've got to start
thinking of training for that.

We've got a few landscaped [censored] heaps round here, perhaps I should check
them out...

--
Geoff Berrow (put thecat out to email)
It's only Usenet, no one dies.
My opinions, not the committee's, mine.
Simple RFDs http://www.ckdog.co.uk/rfdmaker/

Geoff Berrow said:

Well I've put my name down for the Ben Nevis trip so I've got to start
thinking of training for that.

We've got a few landscaped [censored] heaps round here, perhaps I should check
them out...

Wat everyone else has been on the money: the best way to get good at
walking up hills is to walk up hills...

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net [email hidden] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

Richard Miller said:

Walking 2 miles 6 days a week, or walking 3 miles every other day, or 4
miles twice a week, or 5+ miles once a week?
The 24 hour, 100 mile race are done by some runners who train heavy only
once a week. If you walk 2 miles a day, 6 days a week for a year and then
walk 5 miles, you'll be dragging your butt and if you try 10 miles, then
you'll need someone's help. In the Army I could do 50 pushups 10 times a day
every day, but I couldn't do 60 pushups. Any comments would be appreciated.

A simple reliable method of exercise to get you fit enough to do
something is simply to do it, or as much as you currently can, rest
until you feel fine, then try again. Long unused muscles can need a
week to recover, whereas muscles used to training can recover in a
day. Evolution has seen to it that this method of doing your best to
do your best works pretty well.

It gets more complicated if you're trying to do gym-type exercises to
prepare you for some outdoors activity, because it's hard to exercise
all the needed muscles in the right proportions and in the right way.

For general home-based leg conditioning to walking up hills I rather
like "Hindu squats", i.e., repeated non-weight-carrying deep squats
down to bum on heels, pause to avoid cheating by using bounce, and
then up again. Repeat until you fall over :-) But if trying one of
these deep squats causes knee cracking, pain, or pretty serious
exertion, don't do them until your knees and legs have got a lot
stronger. If you have unfit knees these squats will rapidly wreck
them. Stairs two at a time are good for unfit knees.

If what you're after is developing as much strength or as much
endurance as possible in the shortest possible time, then it gets even
more complicated. There's a lot of variables to play with, intervals
between exercise sessions (e.g. 12 hours), periodic rests (e.g. two
days off a week), what proportion of maximum strength to repeat, and
for how many times. People vary widely in how they respond to
training, and this also varies as you age, and with your degree of
fitness to start with. I suspect the optimum training schedule for
fastest results needs to be tailored carefully to the individual, and
that indivual's current state.

Being somewhat housebound at the moment, I'm doing some home-based
exercises to the point of exhaustion and keeping a log of dates,
times, and reps. I've collected enough data on pullups to start trying
to curve fit a mathematical model of my own muscles' behaviour. When I
was a young fit climber a hundred years ago I don't know how many
pullups I could do because I got too bored counting them. I was
embarrassed to discover a few months ago that I couldn't even do one
from a completely straight hang, all I could do was twitch! So I
decided to find out how trainable my ancient muscles still were by
trying to train these thoroughly degenerate pullup muscles.

My doctors tell me that at my age I can't expect much. I do like it
when they challenge me like that :-)

So far I find I need 5 separate contributory functions in order to
calculate my strength at a particular time given a timed history of
previous maximum exertions.

These functions are:

A time of day cycle, with a maximum around noon.
Fatigue, negative, with a half life of about 2 hours.
Strain, negative, with a half life of about three quarters of a day.
Muscle training, positive, with a half life of about seventeen days.
Muscle growth, positive with a half life of about eighteen months
(there's not enough data yet for this last to be more than a fair
guess).

There's probably also a muscle training limit which I haven't got near
enough to register yet, which when reached will slow progress to the
muscle growth rate.

I find doing all this work keeps my brain fit :-)

The arms are doing well too. It took a while to get up to one pullup,
but once there things started moving, and in the last month I've gone
from one to four, and the rate is picking up as I discover what
schedule gets the fastest results.

So my general recommendation to anyone wanting an optimum gym-type
exercise schedule is to keep records and devise your own :-)
--
Chris Malcolm [email hidden] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

Dominic Sexton said:

In article <6DdLd.304$Tt.98@fed1read05>, Richard Miller
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Walking 2 miles 6 days a week, or walking 3 miles every other day, or 4
miles twice a week, or 5+ miles once a week?

Quoted message said:

Well it depends what you want to achieve and where you are now. In
general if you are just getting started every other day is fine. You
have to allow your muscles to recover from the previous exercise fully
before training again if you want them to improve.

I find by experiment that this is not the case for at least my arm
muscles. Fastest training progress happens at a compromise position
between a shorter interval being better, and the interval being so
short that you can't do enough for good training session. Exercising
again when I've recovered most but not all of my capacity seems to be
best; for me, in my current state.

Quoted message said:

If you want to
exercise every day then take it slow every other day to allow full
recovery.

I know some people prefer a few days to several days of max exertion
followed by a rest day or two.
--
Chris Malcolm [email hidden] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

I noticed that Message-ID: <[email hidden]> from Peter
Clinch contained the following:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

We've got a few landscaped [censored] heaps round here, perhaps I should check
them out...

Wat everyone else has been on the money: the best way to get good at
walking up hills is to walk up hills...

Well what do you think a [censored] heap is?
--
Geoff Berrow (put thecat out to email)
It's only Usenet, no one dies.
My opinions, not the committee's, mine.
Simple RFDs http://www.ckdog.co.uk/rfdmaker/

In article <[email hidden]>, Geoff Berrow
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

I noticed that Message-ID: <[email hidden]> from Peter
Clinch contained the following:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

We've got a few landscaped [censored] heaps round here, perhaps I should check
them out...

Wat everyone else has been on the money: the best way to get good at
walking up hills is to walk up hills...

Well what do you think a [censored] heap is?

Usually very loose underfoot and often quite steep. Should be hard work
- good to improve stamina.
--
Bill Grey
http://www.billboy.co.uk

I noticed that Message-ID: <[email hidden]> from
W. D. Grey contained the following:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Well what do you think a [censored] heap is?

Usually very loose underfoot and often quite steep. Should be hard work
- good to improve stamina.

Ah but these is posh landscaped ones. Prolly got paths and everything.

--
Geoff Berrow (put thecat out to email)
It's only Usenet, no one dies.
My opinions, not the committee's, mine.
Simple RFDs http://www.ckdog.co.uk/rfdmaker/

In article <[email hidden]>, Geoff Berrow
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

I noticed that Message-ID: <[email hidden]> from GSV
Three Minds in a Can contained the following:

Quoted message said:

What are you working out =for=?

If you're training for the marathon, then yep, you need to do marathon
distances, even if only once a week. if you just want to keep your heart
fit, then two/three times a week is enough (as long as you actually get
your pulse rate up at some point .. leisurely stroll on the flat may not
do it), and a couple or three miles is likely enough.

Well I've put my name down for the Ben Nevis trip so I've got to start
thinking of training for that.

We've got a few landscaped [censored] heaps round here, perhaps I should check
them out...

There's always Mow Cop, or Gun, or Congleton Cloud, though I must admit
I found Forest Park a bit stuff; what I thought was a path was a runnel,
and the ground was too loose at the top, for the gradient.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

Geoff Berrow said:

Well what do you think a [censored] heap is?

I know what it is, I'm agreeing it's a good thing to get started on!

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net [email hidden] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

"Chris Malcolm" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Richard Miller said:

Walking 2 miles 6 days a week, or walking 3 miles every other day, or 4
miles twice a week, or 5+ miles once a week?
The 24 hour, 100 mile race are done by some runners who train heavy only
once a week. If you walk 2 miles a day, 6 days a week for a year and then
walk 5 miles, you'll be dragging your butt and if you try 10 miles, then
you'll need someone's help. In the Army I could do 50 pushups 10 times a

day

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

every day, but I couldn't do 60 pushups. Any comments would be

appreciated.

Quoted message said:

A simple reliable method of exercise to get you fit enough to do
something is simply to do it, or as much as you currently can, rest
until you feel fine, then try again. Long unused muscles can need a
week to recover, whereas muscles used to training can recover in a
day. Evolution has seen to it that this method of doing your best to
do your best works pretty well.

It gets more complicated if you're trying to do gym-type exercises to
prepare you for some outdoors activity, because it's hard to exercise
all the needed muscles in the right proportions and in the right way.

For general home-based leg conditioning to walking up hills I rather
like "Hindu squats", i.e., repeated non-weight-carrying deep squats
down to bum on heels, pause to avoid cheating by using bounce, and
then up again. Repeat until you fall over :-) But if trying one of
these deep squats causes knee cracking, pain, or pretty serious
exertion, don't do them until your knees and legs have got a lot
stronger. If you have unfit knees these squats will rapidly wreck
them. Stairs two at a time are good for unfit knees.

I found that my knees were pretty bad and squats were out of
the question, they were normally accompanied by crunching
sounds. I do quite a bit of swimming and at the end of a
session I would do some squats in the water. (it may look
as though your having a pee) The worse your knees are the
deeper the water you do them in, less weight on the joints
and bones. After a month or so I found my muscles around
my knees were improving to such an extent I can do half
squats out of the water with no sound or pain. More importantly
descending hills or stairs is much more of a pleasure.
The swimming is good for breathing exercise, and gasping
for breath on the shortest of ascents is no longer necessary.
I am also trying to see how fit I can get as I'm in my late 50's
and got a couple of red cards from the quack last year.
My quack althoug a nice lad believes after 50 one should
basically take things easy and wait to die.. So I'm training
for Kilimanjaro in September.
Being fit will never be as good as being young, but it does
help to even things up a little.
snip

Quoted message said:

My doctors tell me that at my age I can't expect much. I do like it
when they challenge me like that :-)

Yes my doctor gave me 18 months last January so I'll pay him
a visit in September when I get back from Kili.

Quoted message said:

So far I find I need 5 separate contributory functions in order to
calculate my strength at a particular time given a timed history of
previous maximum exertions.

These functions are:

A time of day cycle, with a maximum around noon.
Fatigue, negative, with a half life of about 2 hours.
Strain, negative, with a half life of about three quarters of a day.
Muscle training, positive, with a half life of about seventeen days.
Muscle growth, positive with a half life of about eighteen months
(there's not enough data yet for this last to be more than a fair
guess).

There's probably also a muscle training limit which I haven't got near
enough to register yet, which when reached will slow progress to the
muscle growth rate.

I find doing all this work keeps my brain fit :-)

I will start logging my training as it will also give me something
to do. My friends son is a personal trainer and he has promised
to work out an exercise routine for me to improve overall
fitness. Although with not being able to drink or smoke anymore
I'm not sure I want to live too long.😉

Quoted message said:

Richard.
Keep your words short and sweet you
never know when you may have to eat them.

Quoted message said:

In article <[email hidden]>, Peter Clinch
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Geoff Berrow said:

Well what do you think a [censored] heap is?

I know what it is, I'm agreeing it's a good thing to get started on!

Pete.

Hi Pete, I think the OP's problem is the same as mine. How much exercise
is it wise to attempt. Also how much is needed to obtain the desired
result - whatever that may be.

At our local Leisure Centre Gym, frequency and amount of exercise is
prescribed by more experienced people than I, and then only after an
interview in which my personal medical condition is taken into account..

--
Bill Grey
http://www.billboy.co.uk

W. D. Grey said:

Hi Pete, I think the OP's problem is the same as mine. How much exercise
is it wise to attempt. Also how much is needed to obtain the desired
result - whatever that may be.

At our local Leisure Centre Gym, frequency and amount of exercise is
prescribed by more experienced people than I, and then only after an
interview in which my personal medical condition is taken into account..

This is a "Value Added Service" provided by gyms, but frankly not
necessary, especially with something like walking. It is a low impact
exercise taken at a slowish pace so you're very unlikely to damage
yourself, and your body should come with excellent feedback mechanisms
that tell you when you've had enough: your legs hurt and you have to
stop to breathe.

It's quite difficult to overdo walking if you listen to what your body
has to say about when to stop, and by getting into gear up hills your
muscles will soon adapt and be better at it. You really don't need
professional opinions and prescribed exercise regimes to get better at
walking up hills, you just need to walk up hills, and stop if you're
having trouble to the extent of being seriously uncomfortable. That
advice should be overridden if you have reason to suspect you're a heart
attack waiting to happen, in which case see a doctor, but otherwise I
really don't see any reason to get too high-tech about it unless you're
training for some sporting event where it Really Matters if you shave
off a couple of seconds.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net [email hidden] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

In article <[email hidden]>, Peter Clinch
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

W. D. Grey said:

Hi Pete, I think the OP's problem is the same as mine. How much
exercise is it wise to attempt. Also how much is needed to obtain the
desired result - whatever that may be.
At our local Leisure Centre Gym, frequency and amount of exercise
is prescribed by more experienced people than I, and then only after
an interview in which my personal medical condition is taken into
account..

This is a "Value Added Service" provided by gyms, but frankly not
necessary, especially with something like walking. It is a low impact
exercise taken at a slowish pace so you're very unlikely to damage
yourself, and your body should come with excellent feedback mechanisms
that tell you when you've had enough: your legs hurt and you have to
stop to breathe.

It's quite difficult to overdo walking if you listen to what your body
has to say about when to stop, and by getting into gear up hills your
muscles will soon adapt and be better at it. You really don't need
professional opinions and prescribed exercise regimes to get better at
walking up hills, you just need to walk up hills, and stop if you're
having trouble to the extent of being seriously uncomfortable. That
advice should be overridden if you have reason to suspect you're a
heart attack waiting to happen, in which case see a doctor, but
otherwise I really don't see any reason to get too high-tech about it
unless you're training for some sporting event where it Really Matters
if you shave off a couple of seconds.

Pete.

Very interesting and valid Pete. I have to admit to having two things
merging here. One is hillwalking and the other general fitness. Of
course it helps to have a degree of fitness before commencement of
hillwalking but as you rightly say nature will tell you if you're
overdoing things.

My problem is the necessary beta blockers I have to take and these have
the same effect as a governor on an engine. When my body/heart is unable
to deliver the required energy/fuel to my muscles, they just ache. At
this stage I wait for further supplies of fuel and continue. On the flat
there is not much problem at all, but going up hill it comes to the fore
readily. A strict regime of exercises I agree would be not really
required.

My reference to the gym approach got mixed up with the topic
unfortunately.

Thanks for your valuable comments.
--
Bill Grey
http://www.billboy.co.uk