Time to recover fitness - any advice?

[Time Waster]

49 years old and about 9 years with very patchy activity levels at times. Over that period I spent 5 or so years commuting 14 miles round trip 3 or 4 days a week as my only exercise period. The rest was family walks great with a youngster in a carrier but only short walks since. I used to walk 20 plus miles as a good days walk, very easy at 15 miles with challenge walks up to 50 miles in up to 16 hours. I used to be fairly fit with endurance not any more.

So my aims are to get fit, healthy and active. It's just that I'm very limited with opportunity to train. Typical family commitments like son's taxi and activity support, new house needing work, etc. I've got a concept 2 in storage and a basic smart turbo plus road bike I could set up with it. I live in a rural, coastal village with good countryside but limited lighting and pavements. I'm not a runner, I'm kind of not into night riding and evenings/ mornings need to be quiet due to sleeping family members in a bungalow.

Basically I need suggestions to build up a training plan. How do people speak fitness training in? Is there a way to speak it into life 10 to 15 minutes at a time? Should I bite the bullet and start running? Is rowerg best left for later in the plan? I'll never be like that "run like a duck" author in that I'll never find the me time to take up running seriously.

TLR
How to train from beginner to decent fitness without enough time spare to do it properly?

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Do you drive your son to an activity then return home or do you stay to watch? How would he feel if you got in the opportunity to exercise yourself whilst he does his activity?

For 10-15 mins you’re restricted to high intensity or strength work to see fitness benefits. You want to aim for at least 3 times a week to see fitness benefits. Less frequent and you’ll just return to your current fitness between sessions.

Realise that unless you can find more time you’re going to be limited in the gains you’ll be able to achieve. You’ll reach a new plateau after a few weeks.

But to start just going for a walk every opportunity you have will help.

 

[vickster]

Look at HIIT / Fartlek programmes

Go out on the bike at first light / pre work, hour a day should get you fit (presuming you now wfh and don't commute?)

 

[fossyant]

Bit more info about work - how far, WFH etc. Commuting, or 'fake' commutes are best options for busy family lives.

 

[Mo1959]

? I'll never be like that "run like a duck" author in that I'll never find the me time to take up running seriously.

Once you get used to them, you can’t beat early morning head torch runs. Home and showered and ready to start your day with the rest of the family knowing your exercise is done.

 

[Legs]

Once you get used to them, you can’t beat early morning head torch runs. Home and showered and ready to start your day with the rest of the family knowing your exercise is done.

The same could be said of early-morning workout sessions on your turbo. It depends how noisy your turbo is, whether you can get away with doing a 5am session in the garage? Two or three one-hour sessions a week would be great.

Mrs Legs was telling me that I was waking up our children (4 and 8) when I was Zwifting in the house, so I'm paving the way to move my setup out to the shed...

 

[Time Waster]

Never WFH and only 2 or 3 months furlough. Commuting by train with a 10 minute commute. Downhill into work and uphill to the station going home. I use that to get the pulse up a bit.

I get up at 5 am to get to work, that's part of the trouble. From sneaking out I the morning to not wake others up to not much time after son goes to bed time is difficult. Cubs is good and half with a holiday home place with a gym I coukd get time in. Possibly up to an hour. A bit tight unless I don't get changed out of gym kit. Mind you when I used to gym it a routine lasted nearly 2 hours with cool down, shower and occasionally sauna/steamroom. I guess I'd have to pick weights or CV for each session.

 

[Time Waster]

Off work with the last dregs of a sympomless covid infection, so just did 4 minutes easy row. Got up to 155bpm, saw that and eased up then stopped 30s later. Not exactly a good idea! It's amazing that I don't feel ill at all but if I do anything slightly strenuous my pulse goes high! That's not good, right? It didn't feel like I was working out that hard.

Any advice on covid recovery? A strange virus, no symptoms, feel good but fatigue creeps in without me realising I'm working hard.

BTW I only got it out to see if it can be used in a certain spot. I have no intention to get it out or exercise for at least another week. I need to recover even though it feels like the virus hasn't done anything. I'm not a stupid as the above action would indicate!

 

[Colin Grigson]

It sounds to me like you simply need to gain fitness. Your cardiovascular system will need a couple of months (if you’re nearly 50) to regain the low heart-rate / high work-rate … it can’t really be hurried either. True fitness requires work, sleep, good diet and planning - the shame is that it’s lost as soon as you put your feet up for a few weeks … just keep plugging away at whatever you can fit in - it’ll all be beneficial

 

[Time Waster]

Resting hr is currently 58bpn so if that's a measure of base fitness it's not too bad. I've got a reasonable base but I know I'm not as fit as 9 years ago, even 6 years ago.

Ime when you increase activity you improve quickly then plateau for some time and need to switch up what you're doing. Then repeat. I'm kind of at a lower plateau than the past hence this switch up in activity. I'm ideal weight, physically not too bad for nearly 50 but I want better as I know I am getting the odd twinge and exercise will help prevent this or reduce this.

I once read that you take 3x longer than your break in exercise to get where you were before the break. Not a good thought!

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Resting hr is currently 58bpn so if that's a measure of base fitness it's not too bad. I've got a reasonable base but I know I'm not as fit as 9 years ago, even 6 years ago.

It’s not a measure of anything unless your usual resting HR is 70 bpm or something. Your resting HR will go down, as you get fitter, but that’s relative to you. You’d need to know your own history to know whether that resting HR is good for you. You can’t compare it to someone else, see yours is lower, and state you are fitter.

 

[Time Waster]

Yep, it was 58 to 60 over most of 2021 except when under the weather. Which usually indicates an improvement. Agree that RHR is a relative measure for me alone. 2 to 4 bpm less than 6 months ago with only a bit more gardening being different. Not a bad thing I reckon,

 

[CXRAndy]

If you truly have 15mins spare, then the only way to increase fitness is HIIT. High intensity interval training. Once you've warmed up do, do 7-10mins of maximal effort. You could use the Concept rower and do 2k in 7-10 mins after warm up.

Same with cycling. If you can spare 30mins then you're into short sprint races. There are some really short races like 15mins, but I dont know how often.

Take a month or maybe two before go full bore HIIT.

 

[Milkfloat]

Crack out the C2 and build up slowly with good form, that combined with some intervals on the turbo and some real world riding will be a great combination. The key will be to ease in slowly and don’t go nuts straight away in order to reduce the chance of injury. For the C2, the rowalong videos on YouTube are excellent.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Also reflect on “fit for what?”.