Exercising

As mentioned here, I exercise regularly.

"Regularly" in this context means thrice a week, and it also means that I always exercise in the morning, right after waking up and before breakfast. Sometimes I skip exercising, though I shouldn't. Usually that's because I've slept badly (subject for another post!) and don't need more exhaustion. Sometimes it's because I was up late the day before and don't have time to exercise. Sometimes it's a combination (I slept badly, so I woke up late). But these are exceptions.

I exercise for about an hour. I usually listen to two podcasts of my favorite radio show while exercising, and they last for half an hour each.

The exercise is pretty tiring. I start with three repetitions of the following:

• x burpees (the push up + jump up variant), where x is a function of my fitness (Currently x=13).
• Shadowboxing for y seconds, where I typically adjust y so that it takes as long as the burpees do. Currently, y=45 seconds, although the burpees don't take that long, so I have to adjust a little.
• Do one more of both the above points.
• Rest for a couple of minutes.
• The Plank for z seconds, where z=90 the first repetition, z=60 the second repetition, and z=45 the third repetition.
• Rest for a minute or so.

After this, I do one more of the burpee/shadowboxing repetitions, so I do four of those altogether. Summed up, then, I currently do 13x2x4=104 burpees per exercise session. The above takes about thirty-five minutes altogether, including warming up.

After this, I do back and abdominal exercises for about twenty-five minutes, which i think is important when you sit as much during the day as I do. In between these, I do as many pull-ups as I can.

It is an important point for me to be able to exercise without too much hassle, because then I usually never get around to it. The less overhead time, the better. So I prefer to exercise at home using only body-weight. For those of us who are only reasonably fit, that's more than enough. If your goal is to stay fit, not build muscles, there really is no point in doing heavy weight-lifting, IMO. Body-weight exercise will only take you so far, though, so if you want to look really buff, then you should start lifting weights.

Or you can start doing experiments with certain drugs.

When I first started doing burpees, they totally killed me. They're one of the most exhaustive forms of exercise I know, as long as you do a proper jump up and a proper push up each time. So in the beginning, x in the above regime was about two-three. It's nice to see improvement. I am a bit unsure of doing this for a long time, though. Although it's probably better for your legs and back to do burpees than running (for a fixed amount of 'exercise'), it can still be a strain on the joints to do that many jump-ups. So far, though, so good, so I'll keep doing it until it starts hurting!

Anyway - the above regime works all major muscle groups in addition to being good cardio exercise. Combined with healthy eating, and remembering that being hungry for a little while isn't dangerous, you should notice an improvement in how you look and feel after a couple of weeks.