More volume or greater intensity ?

What is the best way to go forward this year having, last year, experienced 2 strokes ?

It’s time for me to write the first, and perhaps only. health related post of the year and I think it’s natural this year to wonder what might be the best way to proceed given that my exercise and fitness choices seem as limited as they are.

At the end of 2024 I wasn’t so much learning to walk again – that would be both strictly untrue and me being a bit of a drama queen, as to say that I was consciously training myself to walk more smoothly and as much of the time as I could without my Gandalf staff (walking staff). Towards the end of the year I had increased my walking range to an hour per walk including a short section on a rougher trail and consistently nearly every day. Also now i’m not limited to a single choice of a walking route but have doubled that because I can, some days, take on the steeper of my two previous rucking routes – one that gave me a good workout with load and now gives me a workout even without a loaded rucksack.

In the past iv’e always been able to define my perceived need for exercise in terms of what it is that I am training or preparing for : usually in my case a hiking expedition in mountainous terrain or in one case just how far I could push the whole exercise idea at that age. Now, I find it less easy because I don’t find it realistic to be planning for something that might well be out of my reach completely : I don’t at all regret my time spent training for Yosemite or the bush/mountain country of the New Zealand back country and my only regret is having not got to the canyon country of Utah USA.

Perhaps a good approach is to ask myself what it is that I am training for or preparing for now and my immediate answer would have to be neither/nor. Today i’m not so much in training as trying to maintain a base level of being non sedentary – according to Dr Peter Attia that is achieved with only 15 minutes of exercise per day and i’m outside that although my only exercise right now is walking.

If I could state a goal it would be the ability to perform say an hour of grade two ‘cardio’ exercise several times a week : grade 2 cardio often being defined as 60-70% of maximum heart (for age) and able to hold a conversation while exercising. I’m just about at that level when I take the steeper hill option but that accounts for only about 15 minutes per walk. One potential option would be to do an exercise in the way I used to perform it and that was to do cycles, reps or repetitions of one of the steeper hills by going ‘up down up’ rather than up once and move along as I have to do now.

Another way of thinking through the problem is to define what my options are and then have a time of experimenting with what seems to work for me. Iv’e said before that going straight into a new years resolution kind of exercise plan is never a good idea as this time of year makes for a very bad time to start outdoor exercise and my past experience of seeing starters at the gym only serves to show that most of disappear within the first month – replete with their fresh and shiny new kit.

In the spring I intend that my main exercise might be rowing on the local river as and when I get the little CLC Skerry completed and launched : I will carry on with my regular walking programme and fully intend to have doubled my range by the time spring arrives. I do also want to get back out on my recumbent trike although that will have to wait for some new components – it needs mudguards and mirrors all round and a couple of support stanchions to help me with the in and out.

My current ‘final thought’ about how to approach a new exercise plan is to honestly work out where I am weakest and start effort at that point : right now it seems to be overall physical strength so I think I have to work on adding some resistance exercise whether that be here at home or maybe even using a commercial gym again. My own answer to my own either/or question is basically ‘yes’ and by that I mean to add everything I can think of right now and anything else that I might add to all of that so far.

Postscript – non contingent changes.

Everything I say about exercise is contingent – for example, at the moment, i’m down with the sickness so there isn’t much happening in terms of physical exercise and it’s pretty much all I can do to potter around getting an hour or so of boat jobs done. Having made the decision to work through the winter I can see now why taking a break from late October to early February wasn’t so much a good idea but actually essential : it’s not just that it’s a very hard time of year to work with plywood and epoxy resin construction but the daylight is so limited – it’s dark just after four so to try this experiment again I need a much better set up outside.

So, exercise is mostly contingent, right now, on not having flu although the second side of an exercise and health kick is still about nutrition and mostly, in the past, iv’e got it badly wrong except for the short time that I committed to a long and hard gym routine 3 or 4 times a week and one thing that I found and enjoyed was lifting heavy weights. It didn’t matter so much what I ate as I wasn’t trying to be a ripped bodybuilder – in fact I had to increase what I ate because I was simply trying to pack on some muscle mass.

Nowadays i’m anything but trying to pack on some mass, in fact everything I do now is with the intention of losing lots of body weight in the form of fat. As some of you may be aware iv’e been practicing a fast of 30-40 hours once a week and although promising I have the distinct impression that I may be defeating my own ends as soon as I come off a fast each week – my self delusion was that I could justify my insane sugar craving with that once per week fast but it really doesn’t help to then be on a biscuit fest for the rest of the week. This week then iv’e changed things up with 2 distinct dietary alterations : first, when I come off the fast I try for keto or low carb meals and secondly the absolute and not contingent rule is zero biscuits……McVities must be having an emergency board meeting this week !