Morning Routine

randypandy5001

Good morning !

Last night I decided I needed to start doing my exercise in the morning. I do have a limited time because of when the gym opens and when I have to be to work. Luckily for me, I live about a 6 minute drive from my gym! This give me about 30 minutes to work out.

Today I did a spin class. I use the Peloton app to find a 30 minute class and I feel great. I forget how refreshing it is to start the day with exercise. I do know that Peloton does offer other classes that I can fallow. Has anyone tried their strength training classes? If not, what are some of your strength training exercises?

My weekly schedule looks like: M- cardio, T- strength (arm/ shoulders), W- cardio, TR- strength (legs), F- cardio, SA- strength (core/ back), SU- rest (yoga, stretch, light walk).

Any tips/ tricks/ feedback are welcome!

sijomial

What are you actual fitness goals? (Both strength and fitness goals.)
What do you enjoy? (And is enjoyment the priority over results?)
What does cardio mean to you?

If I was serious about improving strength I would dedicate more gym time than 90 minutes a week.
Very low time equals low volume and only hitting each muscle group once per week in your schedule is very limiting.
I'd do my cardio elsewhere to create more time. I'd also be thinking of training more than once a day (some days) if that's possible and suitable for you.

With just 30 minutes a session for lifting I'd be looking to minimise warmup time and would have to sacrifice recovery between sets to get more volume in.
e.g. alternating push/pull and/or upper/lower lifts so while you are working one set of muscles the opposing ones are recovering.
I'd definitely be doing compound and not isolation exercises to get the most out of the limited lifting time.
I'd also be trying to minimise showering/changing time through being very organised.

randypandy5001

Currently, my goal is to be able to Kayak 10 miles in Lake Superior by July 25th. Also to look similar to Christine D'ercole.

I really enjoy spinning and find a lot of resolve in doing it. I am alternating between push and pull to maximize time. Showering/ changing is done external to the gym so the 30 minutes is purely for exercise. I can add additional time on weekends easily.

sijomial

How long will 10 miles of kayaking take?
Although of course Spinning will help general CV fitness it's not going to be endurance training. And of course it's lower body muscles.

e.g. I'm training for a six hour bike event in May and although every week I'm doing some shorter more intense rides, hill training and intervals I'm also doing a long ride weekly of increasing distance/duration.

Can you fit in a long training session at the weekend perhaps? Preferably kayaking or similar.

AnnPT77

I do kayak and canoe (but mostly row). If your goal is multi-hour kayaking, I agree with sijomial that you would benefit from some endurance cardio in your schedule, preferably endurance cardio that involves upper body work.

I'm not sure exactly what that upper-body endurance cardio could be, other than kayaking (preferable, because conditioning is surprisingly activity-specific), canoeing, maybe swimming?

I'm not suggesting rowing because rowing gets more of its power from lower body, and machine rowing or sculling are very linear, whereas kayaking and canoeing are more powered from core in a . . . turning or twisting? . . . movement, plus of course shoulders/arms to some extent. (Sweep rowing, the one with one oar per person, has more rotational torso action vs. being linear like sculling, the one with two oars per person, but it's still majorly about leg power.) However, machine rowing might be marginally more helpful than something like cycling, which is totally lower body, assuming you could get decent rowing instruction (even most gym trainers do it incorrectly).

cwolfman13

randypandy5001 wrote: »

Currently, my goal is to be able to Kayak 10 miles in Lake Superior by July 25th. Also to look similar to Christine D'ercole.

I really enjoy spinning and find a lot of resolve in doing it. I am alternating between push and pull to maximize time. Showering/ changing is done external to the gym so the 30 minutes is purely for exercise. I can add additional time on weekends easily.

That's a tough one. For the kayaking, you would want to be doing more long duration endurance conditioning. While the spinning is great for your overall cardiovascular system and conditioning (and I personally love my 1x per week spin class), it doesn't do much for long endurance conditioning. Unfortunately, endurance conditioning is also quite activity specific. So ideally, you would want to be out kayaking as much as possible. I'm not sure what takes the place of that in a gym type of setting. I do some kayaking here and there in the summer, but it's pretty recreational (and frankly lazy) and on a river and I usually have a couple of beers on board.

I used to do a lot of long distance endurance cycling, and really the only thing that could prepare me for riding a century of half century was to spend a lot of time in the saddle slogging out the miles. One of the reasons I don't do it anymore is because of the training time suck. I was doing numerous events annually over the course of about five years and other than my "winter break" (Oct - Dec), I was spending about 8-10+ hours per week just on my bike. A lot of my weekday rides were in the 60-90 minute range and I always made sure to get a long ride in on the weekends of 2-3 hours. I'd say if anything, if you can get out on a lake on the weekend for some extended periods of time, do that.

As to your strength training, with the limited time, you'd get the most bang for your buck with a full body program rather than a split...that way you are hitting every muscle group at least 2-3 times per week, which is ideal.

DaffyGirl88

randypandy5001 wrote: »

Good morning !

Last night I decided I needed to start doing my exercise in the morning. I do have a limited time because of when the gym opens and when I have to be to work. Luckily for me, I live about a 6 minute drive from my gym! This give me about 30 minutes to work out.

Today I did a spin class. I use the Peloton app to find a 30 minute class and I feel great. I forget how refreshing it is to start the day with exercise. I do know that Peloton does offer other classes that I can fallow. Has anyone tried their strength training classes? If not, what are some of your strength training exercises?

My weekly schedule looks like: M- cardio, T- strength (arm/ shoulders), W- cardio, TR- strength (legs), F- cardio, SA- strength (core/ back), SU- rest (yoga, stretch, light walk).

Any tips/ tricks/ feedback are welcome!

@randypandy5001 I have done almost every type of class that they offer, strength, stretching, yoga, barre, boot camp, and (of course) spinning. I highly recommend all of them for a well rounded variety of exercises. However, as others have said, the best way to prepare for a long distance kayaking trip is to get out on the water and start racking up miles. Sounds fun, good luck!