The Ever-Evolving, Completely Malleable, I’ve got Triplets Exercise Routine

No Pain, No Gain

I’ve been thinking about my own fitness lately, for numerous reasons.  One, at 36 years old, it’s not inconceivable that I could have a heart attack and die (nothing like starting with a happy thought).  I remember quite clearly a few years ago, a former boss of mine’s husband died one morning, quite unexpectedly, from a massive heart attack.  He was 35 at the time, and he was smaller than I am.  I’m not big by any means.  I am 5’9” and weigh 190lbs.  But when I was a college hockey player fifteen years ago, I weighed 135lbs.  So, I’ve put on a lot of weight, a few pounds at a time, but it’s cumulative over the years.  So reason number one is that I want to be around for my children, to watch them grow from the tiniest of seeds to healthy young adults. 

The second reason is that I often suffer spells of weakness in my upper body, to the point where I think something is actually wrong with me.  I’ve got a doctor’s appointment in late July so perhaps we’ll know more then.  I worry about even being able to hold my babies when they come home, for more than a few minutes at a time.  I want to be able to carry them when the load is too much for them to bear, and I want to be able to play with them as they grow older.

These are compelling reasons and I hope they are enough incentive to keep me focused this time around.

My Not-so-successful Past
As I said previously, I was a former college athlete.  I played varsity hockey for a year, did club baseball for a bit, and even did Crew team for a semester.  I have a history of starting things and not following through.  Nevertheless, I’ve historically been in decent to great shape; that is until I got out on my own.  With no coaches pushing any longer it’s easier to skip a workout here and there.  Skip a couple in a row and all of the sudden inertia is on the side of keeping you glued to the couch. 

When I hit age 34, I took up running with the hopes of working my way up to a marathon.  I ran a half marathon that year, and then stopped running once the cold Buffalo weather hit.  So from October to the following March, I didn’t run at all.  In 2008, I decided it would be a terrific idea to step up to the full marathon.  I haphazardly trained for two months, and then in May, it took be over five and a half grueling hours to cross the finish line.  From a physical and mental standpoint, that was the hardest thing I have ever done.  I hurt my hip pretty bad from that race and so took up biking and a little swimming. 

In August of 2008, I decided to do a triathlon, even though I barely knew how to swim and all I owned was a commuter bike.  In a triathlon, you swim first, in open water, then do the bike portion, followed by running.  I remember that morning well.  I was the only idiot in a full wetsuit, and if it weren’t for two other swimmers who panicked and had to be picked up by the boats, I would have been the last person out of the water.  It took me 21 minutes to swim 400 meters. 

I finished in the bottom ten of the race.  I was happy that I finished it, and probably should have parlayed that into further successes but I decided instead to stop exercise again till April 2009.

Thirty pounds heavier between April and the previous August, I can tell you that running with that much extra weight feels like your legs are tree trunks.  Somehow I managed to trim down five pounds and run the half marathon in May again, but since then, I’ve stopped again.

See the Pattern?

Without a goal and a compelling reason why, I stop working at it every time.  My goal was always the big race in May, then after that, it gets haphazard.  My reason why didn’t exist before.  Now it does, it’s my three babies.

Lofty Goals

The other problem I had was that my goals were loftier than I was ready for at the time.  And when they didn’t go so well, I would quit.  Having smaller multiple goals is one way to combat this.  That way, when goal number one in May is done, I would have something else to move towards immediately. 

It’s also an issue of time.  To train for a marathon takes, at minimum, ten to fifteen hours per week.  There are a lot better things I could be doing with that time, perhaps, and we all know of marathon runners who have dropped dead during a race.  This is because a byproduct of such hyperfitness is an enlarged heart.  So marathon training is no guarantee of preventing a heart attack. 

I think we can all agree that I won’t have ten to fifteen hours a week to train when my triplets come home from the hospital.  So I have three factors to consider here as I develop the next steps forward.

1.  My goal is to be fit.
2.  My compelling reason is to be able to enjoy life with my children
3.  I don’t have a lot of time or money to train

What’s Left as an option?

Well, I don’t believe in the effectiveness of eight minute abs and other videos of that genre.  I don’t want to waste my time or money driving to the gym and paying for a membership, so I am looking at options that work as part of my normal day, and that are cost effective, providing the best results under these circumstances.  What I have put together is my “Ever-Evolving, Completely Malleable, I’ve got Triplets Exercise Routine," un-patent pending:

1.  Bike to work and to errands – I’ve got a cousin in Oregon who bikes as a regular part of his daily commute, nearly all year long.  Now while Buffalo can be a bit nastier in the winter, I have at least a good six month window or longer to do this.  I’m fortunate that I only live six miles from work and it takes me about 25-30 minutes to make this ride.  It takes me twenty minutes by car, when fighting the morning and evening traffic.  Therefore, I’m not giving up much time, and I am gaining a whole lot of benefit.  Bonus: I get to ride along the waterfront and the Tifft Nature preserve, which makes for a beautiful ride.  Modest goal, ride 1x or more a week during the period March through October.

2.  Swim on lunch – It’s a fact that the hour long lunch is a thing of the past in our hyperculture.  Too often many of us cubicle rats wind up scarfing down lunch while catching up on emails at our desk.  The company I work for partners with the gym down the street, though few of us take advantage of it.  Yearly rates of $150 and they have a nice pool as it is a community college gym.  Even cheaper and closer to home is the Community pool which has nightly swim hours for people who want to do laps at $3 a season.   Goal – Swim one time per week year round – that means actually taking a real lunch once in awhile.

3.  Running – Once a week at 3 – 5 miles, distance depending on how the run is going.  Running can be done outside all year long, but I also have a treadmill a friend free-cycled to me.   And since I have been studying ChiRunning, hopefully I can run pain-free.

4.  Strength Training – Apart from a short mention in the second paragraph of this article, I haven’t given this much space.  I think it is as important or more important that the cardio options above.  It’s rare in life that you’re going to find yourself having to run five miles, bike six miles, or swim a few hundred meters to safety.  However, you use your Core strength every day, in nearly everything you do, even if you are a cubicle rat.

Nearly everything that I’ve learned in the last few years of fitness comes from two people, Nate Rifkin and Matt Furey.  While I am a prodigious follower of their information and a consumer, I do not get a dime for mentioning them here, just giving credit where it is due.  Nate has some easy exercises as part of his Lumberjack Yoga product, and Matt Furey is the King of modernizing age-old (think thousands of years old in many instances) body weight exercises that are effective for every day, functional strength.  You can run yourself dogged in five minutes trying to pull off 200 hindu squats and a hundred hindu pushups.  We all have five minutes, I don’t care who you are.  And these two exercises will take you a long way.  So my goal is to work up to the iterations above, by incrementing a bit each session.  Nate’s exercises are great for the morning, for a few minutes, or the evening before dropping off to bed. 

The whole routine is based on working things in without affecting the schedule I currently have.  The key to maintaining it is to get in the habit of asking the question, “What can I be doing now to be more productive?” or “What can I do now to take me closer to my goals?”  Put a note near your computer, an index card in your wallet, a sticky note on the Frig, just keep it in front of you as often as possible.  If you can get into that habit alone, that will drive your ability to achieve any goal.

Lastly, though I think this topic warrants its own article, learn to pamper yourself.  I don’t care if you’re a guy or a girl, massages kick ass.  If you don’t want to pay for them, hit up the local massage school, or better yet, take a class with your significant other and agree to a once a month massage, for services rendered.  I’ve got a massage studio less than a quarter mile from work that I can hit up once a month as long as the Mrs. Lets me spend the money.