Starting back to fitness

[Emanresu]

I have been so busy at work that I have let my fitness go to pot. Any ideas how I can make good use of half an hour a day to get my fitness back? I've also put on nearly one stone in a year. If I cut out the junk food, what exercise regime would help me lose weight as well without too much pain?

[Marmot]

Id say just try to walk or cycle as much as possible and try and walk fast when you do walk - you could probably get in a 3 mile walk in half an hour

[David]

Sounds more like jogging to me (not that there's anything wrong with jogging). If you want to build up the muscles you could try some calisthenics; half an hour a day will get you fit pretty quickly.

[Ollie]

Calisthenics? What are they?

Ollie

[David]

Calisthenics means exercises like press ups, sit ups, squat thrusts etc. Precisely I think it means any exercises using body weight as the resistance (eg not using gym equiptment for example). I reccomend this sort of exercise as it does not need any equiptment or a set amount of time.

[Ollie]

You learn something new every day :D

[Flutterby]

I always wondered, is it better to start off by doing, say, 5 minutes of hard exercise and then working to increase time, or to start off doing half an hour of light exercise and increasing the difficulty of the exercise?

[pookiecheeks]

hello all,
..swimming or walking i say. both easy, enjoyable and certainly for walking... FREE !


pooks

[macgl78]

However a lot of people when they think of getting fit and weight loss is running or swimming they think of but you can get great results from exercising your major muscel groups as this burns fat much better than thrashing your self on a run and if you feel you do want to run remember training hard is not training clever get a heart rate monitor and get training advice be it net or trainer.

[MariaD]

If it's motivation you're after, try joining a local club or sports society. My running has improved immensely since I started going out with the local fell runners / nutters (delete as appropriate) on a Tuesday evening. Normally I find it hard to motivate myself to leave the house if it's cold or rainy, but if I know I'm doing it as a group it's a lot easier to haul myself out of the front door!

I've just come back from a session tonight: 2.5 miles warm up; 30 mins speed reps; and a 2 mile run home. It's the first time I've tried to run since injuring my calf on holiday and - touch wood - it seems okay, although it twinged a tiny bit. Who knows, I might even get a vaguely decent time in my hilly off-road 10k this Sunday!

[MariaD]

So how'd it go? Are you a super-fit, lean mean exercising machine yet?

You've got to keep us up to speed with how your efforts are going!

[Relemar]

Well every day to keep my six pack there I eat healthily, I do one sport and one sport only being Martial arts, training 8+ hours per week is enough to keep me fit. To keep/get a six pack I always do 50 leg lifts (lift legs up about 30 cm and not let them touch floor) and I do 50 sit ups per day, sometimes twice a day.

Gets me sweating, blood pumping. I also jog to school (its about 1 mile which aint bad) and jog home.

[Ollie]

Always good to be healthy :) I think I have more of a 24 pack than a six pack - I really need to do some more exercise!

[Pigdog]

I'll try and get the miss's to post - she runs a gym and is a trained diet-thingy-ma-bob lol

[Marmot]

Always good to be healthy :) I think I have more of a 24 pack than a six pack - I really need to do some more exercise!

:) bit of an in joke