Is Anyone Else Old School?

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  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,188 Member
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    NorthCascades wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    I don't believe in "no pain, no gain". I'd say "no challenge, no gain".

    In my world, being active is and should be fun (among other things, such as energizing and health-promoting).

    Pain is not - for psychologically sound people - fun. Challenge is fun. Even a bit of temporary discomfort to hit a goal can be fun, to see what I can accomplish.

    But pain? Nope.

    Here are some fun quotes from Teton Gravity.

    Type I fun is fun the entire time you're doing it. It never sucks, you're never glad it's over, and just want it to keep going on and on.

    Eligible activities: Riding powder, riding slush, drinking cocktails on a boat, lift-served or shuttle-assisted mountain biking, really anything lift-served, fly fishing, aprés.

    Type II fun sucks the entire time you are doing it, but you are excited to either brag about it at the bar later or look back on it and value it as a character-building episode. People in the Tetons love it for both reasons.

    Eligible activities: Mountain running, randonee racing, Tough Mudders, ski mountaineering when all you get to ski is rotten snow and/or ice, hiking the Appalachian or Pacific Crest trails. For Teton locals, see The Grand Teton Picnic, in which participants bike 20 miles, swim 1.3 miles across Jenny Lake, hike 7,000 vertical feet to the top of the Grand Teton... then do the entire thing in reverse.

    Ernest Shackleton practically invented Type III fun during his failed 1914 expedition to cross Antartica.

    Type III fun is never fun while you're doing it, you often feel your life is threatened, certain doom is usually at hand, and half the time it ends in a harrowing rescue. Afterwards, you swear to never attempt anything similar ever again.

    Eligible activities: Failed polar expeditions, Apollo 13, sailing around the world solo, anything described in a Jon Krakauer novel, ....

    Soeaking only for myself here, I think I like about a 1.5 (I don't know how to say that in roman numerals).

    Yesterday, loosely related to another thread, I experimented with singing at HR 152-154bpm (which is just on the lower border of estimated AT range, for me), just to see if I could. It worked for about 200m (rowing machine), about a minute at that split, though the last 50m was dicey (and it was a sea shanty - Whiskey Johnny - in the first place, so kinda cheating).

    That was fun. ;)
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
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    NorthCascades wrote: »
    Type II fun sucks the entire time you are doing it, but you are excited to either brag about it at the bar later or look back on it and value it as a character-building episode. People in the Tetons love it for both reasons.

    Eligible activities: Mountain running, randonee racing, Tough Mudders, ski mountaineering when all you get to ski is rotten snow and/or ice, hiking the Appalachian or Pacific Crest trails. For Teton locals, see The Grand Teton Picnic, in which participants bike 20 miles, swim 1.3 miles across Jenny Lake, hike 7,000 vertical feet to the top of the Grand Teton... then do the entire thing in reverse.

    Speaking of the PCT, I just heard the last north-bound thru hiker reached Glacier Peak Wilderness today and at 15 miles per day should reach Canada in about a week, closing the door on the class of 2018.
  • OldAssDude
    OldAssDude Posts: 1,436 Member
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    NorthCascades wrote: »
    NorthCascades wrote: »
    Type II fun sucks the entire time you are doing it, but you are excited to either brag about it at the bar later or look back on it and value it as a character-building episode. People in the Tetons love it for both reasons.

    Eligible activities: Mountain running, randonee racing, Tough Mudders, ski mountaineering when all you get to ski is rotten snow and/or ice, hiking the Appalachian or Pacific Crest trails. For Teton locals, see The Grand Teton Picnic, in which participants bike 20 miles, swim 1.3 miles across Jenny Lake, hike 7,000 vertical feet to the top of the Grand Teton... then do the entire thing in reverse.

    Speaking of the PCT, I just heard the last north-bound thru hiker reached Glacier Peak Wilderness today and at 15 miles per day should reach Canada in about a week, closing the door on the class of 2018.

    Ever since i saw the movie "wild" i wanted to hike the PCT.
  • AnneMariSchmidt
    AnneMariSchmidt Posts: 4 Member
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    I am old school - hitting the gym since 1995 and currently training Gironda style.
  • Pfraidenburg01
    Pfraidenburg01 Posts: 6 Member
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    Yes I am also old school, there are NO short cuts or miracle pills, methods of losing weight and getting in shape. I am certainly no expert, but have lost almost 25 pounds with tracking and trying to reach my target calories per day and working about about 5 days per week.
  • psychod787
    psychod787 Posts: 4,088 Member
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    I am a combo of old school and new school. I think that diet is important, not as much as calories, but balanced for me helps. I lift 4 days a week, but work on super sets and drop sets more than the standard 5x5 or 3x10 style. I don't run. I walk. My joints don't like running. I believe in hard work. I think much of our issues with obesity are too much Hyperpalitable calorie dense food intake and being ffaaarrr more sedentary. Exercise does not have to be formal in my belief. Working in the yard. Walking to the store. Cleaning your own car and house....ect. aka to me, old school. I have no idea if this will work long term, but have the idea that increasing NEAT is just as important as formal exercise. Just my humble opinion.
  • kiela64
    kiela64 Posts: 1,447 Member
    edited October 2018
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    aokoye wrote: »
    I agree with essentially everyone that this isn't "old school" it's just basic. Basic isn't bad, mind you.
    no pain no gain as long as you don't push the pain to the point of injury.
    The issue with this is that a lot of people don't know when they're reached the threshold into injury. That and, depending on what you're training for, you need lower intensity weeks built into your plan.

    All of my failed attempts at fitness and weight loss were fueled by these “no pain no gain”/push yourself ideas. I went really hard at the gym, on the elliptical at max HR for an hour until I could barely walk, went jogging or for long walks on hills with no warm up or stretches, from zero to 100 and straight back to zero because I hurt myself or would just be immobilized with DOMS & give up.

    I still don’t know where the line is for injury threshold. I can push myself way more than I should, and I have to hold back or I will burn out or screw myself over. I don’t usually get the pain until after I’ve got an injury often so I have to stop before any pain. (For context I went to my cousins wedding with a killer 6 day migraine and a then-undiagnosed dislocated knee. 😐 I danced on that! In HEELS! Because my dad asked me to and I wanted to be polite & sociable 🙄 I also had a DVT in my leg for over a week & thought it was a muscle cramp - until I started coughing up blood because it turned into a PE - and at that point I was so anxious about wasting people’s time in the ER being there 8h because I wasn’t doing THAT badly 😂 I just kinda suck at detecting ‘normal aches and pains’ versus ‘severe and needless suffering’ so maybe it’s me lmao)

    If this stuff is basic I have to go even more basic and actually try to do consistently stuff that isn’t very challenging on its own but actually continue doing the thing. I think this more applies to people with a foundation in fitness like OP, not noobs like me with weak & irritatingly fragile bodies.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,188 Member
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    AnvilHead wrote: »
    aokoye wrote: »
    I agree with essentially everyone that this isn't "old school" it's just basic. Basic isn't bad, mind you.
    no pain no gain as long as you don't push the pain to the point of injury.
    The issue with this is that a lot of people don't know when they're reached the threshold into injury. That and, depending on what you're training for, you need lower intensity weeks built into your plan.

    One of the issues I have is that I'm extremely goal-oriented. If I don't check myself from the "no pain, no gain" thing, I'll ignore all the warning signs and push right through them to try to reach my goal - and often, right into an injury that leads to much bigger setbacks than if I had just been a little more moderate in the first place.

    As I've grown older and (hopefully) wiser, my #1 objective is to avoid injury as much as possible. If that means cutting a workout short, reducing the intensity and/or avoiding a particular exercise that's giving me problems, so be it. Being able to work out moderately and consiently yields better results than constantly trying to go "hardcore" and resultantly being injured or recuperating from an injury half the time. I don't have a need to try to impress myself or anybody else with how "hardcore" or "old school" my workouts are.

    Yes, in spades.

    When 30-somethings and younger at my Y say things like "I have to do this now because I won't be able to do it when I'm older", I laugh inside.

    But the older I get, the more important the thing you're talking about gets for me. I like to push myself, but if I go too far, that means injury, which means (increasingly longer) recovery, which means (increasingly quicker) detraining, which results in slow (or even negative) overall progress. Smart, gradual progress beats "no pain, no gain" every time.

    It was true even when I was younger and more resilient, though with slightly different timelines - I was just too pig-headed to realize it. ;)
  • Keto_Vampire
    Keto_Vampire Posts: 1,670 Member
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    AnneMariSchmidt wrote: »
    I am old school - hitting the gym since 1995 and currently training Gironda style.

    Yes, Gironda-esque movements are definitely some "old school" hidden gem exercise variations. That guy was well ahead of his time in his era. I still do plenty of Gironda variation exercises
  • aokoye
    aokoye Posts: 3,495 Member
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    kiela64 wrote: »
    aokoye wrote: »
    I agree with essentially everyone that this isn't "old school" it's just basic. Basic isn't bad, mind you.
    no pain no gain as long as you don't push the pain to the point of injury.
    The issue with this is that a lot of people don't know when they're reached the threshold into injury. That and, depending on what you're training for, you need lower intensity weeks built into your plan.

    All of my failed attempts at fitness and weight loss were fueled by these “no pain no gain”/push yourself ideas. I went really hard at the gym, on the elliptical at max HR for an hour until I could barely walk, went jogging or for long walks on hills with no warm up or stretches, from zero to 100 and straight back to zero because I hurt myself or would just be immobilized with DOMS & give up.

    I still don’t know where the line is for injury threshold. I can push myself way more than I should, and I have to hold back or I will burn out or screw myself over. I don’t usually get the pain until after I’ve got an injury often so I have to stop before any pain. (For context I went to my cousins wedding with a killer 6 day migraine and a then-undiagnosed dislocated knee. 😐 I danced on that! In HEELS! Because my dad asked me to and I wanted to be polite & sociable 🙄 I also had a DVT in my leg for over a week & thought it was a muscle cramp - until I started coughing up blood because it turned into a PE - and at that point I was so anxious about wasting people’s time in the ER being there 8h because I wasn’t doing THAT badly 😂 I just kinda suck at detecting ‘normal aches and pains’ versus ‘severe and needless suffering’ so maybe it’s me lmao)

    If this stuff is basic I have to go even more basic and actually try to do consistently stuff that isn’t very challenging on its own but actually continue doing the thing. I think this more applies to people with a foundation in fitness like OP, not noobs like me with weak & irritatingly fragile bodies.

    Honestly I think the primary reason why I am very good at knowing my limits, in terms of not pushing to or past injury, is because I've had four major knee surgeries and really good physical therapy after all of them. It probably also helps that those surgeries were primarily related to congenital issues that didn't start causing issues in adulthood. That and that the one injury I had from organized sport as a child was a broken wrist that I was in no way shape or form allowed to work through.

    I've gotten really good at knowing what my knees' warning signs are, how to discuss my knee pain, instability, and tracking issues (the later two of which have been corrected) with my doctors, when to go to the doctor, and when to seek a second opinion (which is why the last two surgeries happened with a different orthopedic surgeon than the first two).

    My physical therapists, for my knees at least, have all been really good and all have specialized in sports medicine. All of them and both of my surgeons regularly work with elite athletes (both surgeons have worked with Olympians) and they know how to push me very hard while also not pushing me into injury. It's through the, "this is going to hurt but your knees aren't actually in any danger and you're not on your way to an overuse injury" in physical therapy that I've learned how to not push too hard.
  • aokoye
    aokoye Posts: 3,495 Member
    edited October 2018
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    AnvilHead wrote: »
    aokoye wrote: »
    I agree with essentially everyone that this isn't "old school" it's just basic. Basic isn't bad, mind you.
    no pain no gain as long as you don't push the pain to the point of injury.
    The issue with this is that a lot of people don't know when they're reached the threshold into injury. That and, depending on what you're training for, you need lower intensity weeks built into your plan.

    One of the issues I have is that I'm extremely goal-oriented. If I don't check myself from the "no pain, no gain" thing, I'll ignore all the warning signs and push right through them to try to reach my goal - and often, right into an injury that leads to much bigger setbacks than if I had just been a little more moderate in the first place.

    As I've grown older and (hopefully) wiser, my #1 objective is to avoid injury as much as possible. If that means cutting a workout short, reducing the intensity and/or avoiding a particular exercise that's giving me problems, so be it. Being able to work out moderately and consistently yields better results than constantly trying to go "hardcore" and resultantly being injured or recuperating from an injury half the time. I don't have a need to try to impress myself or anybody else with how "hardcore" or "old school" my workouts are.

    See I am that person who had four knee surgeries before turning 31. I was under 25 for the first two and 29 and 30 for the second two. By "major" All for were tibial tubercle osteotomies and then the last two involved MPFL repairs (the lack of which probably caused the first two to lead to me needing more surgery despite them being good TTOs). A cumulative 24 weeks being non-weight bearing makes for really good impetus to try to not push yourself to injury ;) It also leads to being really good at temporarily getting around on crutches.

    For me pushing through those surgeries into injury would have meant an increased time on crutches at best. At worse it could have involved a shattered tibia (had I decided to disregard the non-weight bearing thing and/or taken a fall while on crutches).

    I'm probably less goal oriented than you are, or at least goal oriented in a different way, but for me, the only way to reach the goals in my very lengthy physical therapy protocol (it was something like 23 weeks in length and went from day zero to getting back to sport) was to work within my limitations. So it really was a, "you want to run? Well you need to not hurt yourself and you need to do xyz and meet abc benchmarks first."

    I also am at a place in my life where if I do too much I simply won't have the energy to do other things that I want/need to get done. I will also burnout - I'm still working on perfecting coming back from burnout though I'm getting better at it. This past late spring/summer was a battle of how not to push myself into burnout. I suspect part of the burnout issue has to do with my mental health issues as well. I could probably exercise seven days a week (where exercise equals purposeful strength or cardio - walking not being counted in this for me) and not hurt my knees or get various other injuries. That said it's totally unsustainable for me. I would be way too tired to actually get other responsibilities done and I would eventually stop exercising entirely. Exercising 5-6 days a week is my max, though it's looking more and more like six days a week is only sustainable for short periods of time (a few weeks).

    It has also become very clear that the less strength training the better for me right now because I just don't like it - at all. It's a "less is more" situation as more leads to zero. I want to like it, but I really don't. I do it because it's good for my knees (which is to say, quad, glute, and hamstring strength is important) and lets me keep cycling. My physical therapist is ok with me doing two weight lifting related exercises twice a week (and side plank variations at home). She would prefer I do more, but more is sustainable for me right now and we'd both rather I do something than nothing.

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