Biscuit of the Day - Exercise!
Today's Biscuit of the Day is exercise! Yes, that wonderful thing that lets you work off the cream in your tea and lets you live longer to enjoy more tannin laced goodies. :) I've been walking 30 minutes every day on the treadmill for the past two weeks, and it's already slowly stripping off the pounds. Not too bad, considering I'm an engineer, and as a general rule, our creed of efficiency extends to eliminating excess movement (where's my remote control???????).
I am going to post some stuff I've found that makes exercise more fun:
1. Get a partner. Even if they walk at a different time of day than you, they can still bug you until you get on the treadmill and give you ample feedback and praise when you start losing weight.
2. Get an iPod (mini). MP3 players are the best thing since sliced bread as far as walking for exercise. Fill it with cheesy 80s pop or other bubbly music like club music to get you going at a good rhythm. Fill it with audio books so you can learn during your 30 minutes of pounding the pavement.
3. Get good fitting shoes. Nothing like blisters to make you wish someone would just kill you while you are walking. I found this out the hard way, as I wear an extremely small shoe size (ladies 5). Unfortunately, it took my shredding most of the skin off my toes to crush my dignity enough to accept that I should shop in the kids' dept for a dorky kids shoe that fits rather than wear a 6 from the ladies' dept that looked cool but was too big.
4. Get a heart monitor. I am a numbers and math junkie. To me, the feedback of a heart monitor is the butter that goes on the sliced bread mentioned in point #2. Once you look up your target heart rate, you can make sure you are challenging yourself when you walk. Another tip I have on heart monitors is for people who exercise in a gym. A lot of the treadmills say they are 'Polar compatible'. If you want a relatively inexpensive way to get your heart rate to show on the monitor on the treadmill without having to hang for dear life onto the handgrip monitors, you can buy Polar heart rate transmitters at the PolarUSA store. The next time you step onto the Polar compatible treadmill with one of these strapped on your chest, the treadmill will automatically pick up the signal and show your heartbeat rate.
The only thing that's not been very fun about my exercise routine is severe DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). What's funny is that my soreness is not brought on by my own routine, it's due to my phys ed teacher. The warm up in his routine is practically non-existent and he works us hard, so as a result, I can barely walk (or crab walk) the next day. I haven't really found a very good solution for this problem except for (surprisingly) more exercise of the sore muscles at a reduced intensity. Usually, after this very gentle workout, the soreness goes away within a few hours.
Aeryth
I am going to post some stuff I've found that makes exercise more fun:
1. Get a partner. Even if they walk at a different time of day than you, they can still bug you until you get on the treadmill and give you ample feedback and praise when you start losing weight.
2. Get an iPod (mini). MP3 players are the best thing since sliced bread as far as walking for exercise. Fill it with cheesy 80s pop or other bubbly music like club music to get you going at a good rhythm. Fill it with audio books so you can learn during your 30 minutes of pounding the pavement.
3. Get good fitting shoes. Nothing like blisters to make you wish someone would just kill you while you are walking. I found this out the hard way, as I wear an extremely small shoe size (ladies 5). Unfortunately, it took my shredding most of the skin off my toes to crush my dignity enough to accept that I should shop in the kids' dept for a dorky kids shoe that fits rather than wear a 6 from the ladies' dept that looked cool but was too big.
4. Get a heart monitor. I am a numbers and math junkie. To me, the feedback of a heart monitor is the butter that goes on the sliced bread mentioned in point #2. Once you look up your target heart rate, you can make sure you are challenging yourself when you walk. Another tip I have on heart monitors is for people who exercise in a gym. A lot of the treadmills say they are 'Polar compatible'. If you want a relatively inexpensive way to get your heart rate to show on the monitor on the treadmill without having to hang for dear life onto the handgrip monitors, you can buy Polar heart rate transmitters at the PolarUSA store. The next time you step onto the Polar compatible treadmill with one of these strapped on your chest, the treadmill will automatically pick up the signal and show your heartbeat rate.
The only thing that's not been very fun about my exercise routine is severe DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). What's funny is that my soreness is not brought on by my own routine, it's due to my phys ed teacher. The warm up in his routine is practically non-existent and he works us hard, so as a result, I can barely walk (or crab walk) the next day. I haven't really found a very good solution for this problem except for (surprisingly) more exercise of the sore muscles at a reduced intensity. Usually, after this very gentle workout, the soreness goes away within a few hours.
Aeryth
2 Comments:
Try stretching before & after your Phys Ed class (on your own). This should help. Keep up the good work!
Hi Tan,
I'm going to try that out this upcoming Saturday and see if that helps. The only problem is that there is about 2 hours delay between the time I can warm up (before class) and when lab (the very structured class exercise routine) starts. The gap may be too big between warm up and exercise for it to do any good, but I guess I won't know until I do it. :)
Thanks for the encouragement! I am somewhat of a walking veteran, and used to log about 3-4 miles daily constantly for a few years as stress relief. It feels wonderful to be able to return to my old routine, even better since I have my iPod now. :)
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