Actually recent research suggests that morning is NOT the best time for exercise.

Apparently, early morning exercise does not result in a prolonged reduction of blood pressure during the rest of the time when you are not exercising.

The same exercise done in the late afternoon or early evening does result in a general reduction in blood pressure, so is probably more beneficial for your general health.

I don't know the scientific or physiological reasons for this.

But if it is true then is a shame, because early morning is the most convenient time to exercise - if only because you can combine it with your morning shower. On the other hand it is also the best time to do your most demanding piano practice - and that is much more important!

But as it is the most convenient time for me it wins over late afternoon

Another reason I have heard against morning exercise is the fact that your body has (hopefully!) been sleeping all night so to go straight from waking up to exercising, your muscles are not warmed up/stretched out at all/ready for it (like they might be in the afternoon as you would have been walking around all day etc).

By the evening the muscles would be nice and ready but then doing exercise that late may make it difficult to get to sleep!

Planning is the answer; bung the dinner in the oven - do exercise, quick shower, eat dinner, sorted.

*sigh*

I know - it never quite works that well.....

I play my recorder to exercise my lungs.
I can exercise back and legs by reclining the sofa and clicking it back upright again.
I go up and down the stairs in the house quite a lot, and shove a vacuum cleaner round now and again.
I carry the shopping upstairs, having got the internet delivery van man to bring it to my door.
I get out of my seat in my consulting room to call the next patient in, and also walk up the stairs for coffee at half time.

When my knee injury was playing up, they put me on all those horrible gym machine things *shudder*. Why they have to make apparatus to oppose us doing movements which may or may not actually be part of our natural repertoire is beyond me- I really would rather do sport for its own sake than climb onto a heap of designer metal and repetetively bash out series of movements. Trouble is, very few sports actually appeal to me. Most of them end up with pain and breathlessness, and I don't like the sensation of either. Of choice, I'd do ice skating (okay, very very sore when one falls over, but I'm good enough to manage to avoid falls much of the time), skiing (but currently have injured anterior cruciate ligament), trampolining (ditto) or sailing (but it's rather cold to do that one up here)*. I was a not very good gymnast as a kid, and loved hurling myself around, but I'm already paying the price in arthritic joints, which further makes me unenthusiastic about heavy exercise.
Swimming? Hideous. It's cold, wet, requires rather skimpy clothing in a public space, and is fairly rubbish for anyone with lots of dioptres of myopia .

*I realise all of these require silly equipment too. The difference is the freedom to practise and develop a range of skills, not just doing the same thing all the time.

I regularly do one aerobics class and at least one dance class per week. I've lost track of the number of times I've been lectured that it's not enough, usually by someone who has just discovered exercise and has embarked on an over ambitious program. I've been doing this for years and it works for me. At one time I did three dance classes per week, but I've calmed down now.

Recently I've started doing ten minutes of yoga every morning and I find that helps wake me up. Contrary to popular belief I don't find yoga relaxing, in fact it is quite strenuous. I figure that 10 mins per day adds up to almost one yoga class per week!

I also do the odd bit of swimming, skating or canoeing depending on the season and my mood.

Last week I attended an opera workshop (in the audience of course) and one of the singers said that she kept herself fit for stage work by doing dancing and yoga. That made me feel that I am doing something right.



Good for you - walking is good exercise. In the past I've found that walking helped me recover from post viral illness and it's easy to build into a daily routine. I noticed an improvement in my fitness levels when I moved to an office one floor up and had to keep running up and down the stairs. The little things do add up.

My exercise regime has taken quite a bash over the last couple of months mostly due to pressures of work and a succession of flu, chest infection, twisted ankle, cold and oh joy another chest infection.

I do have a bit of an all or nothing approach to exercise. After GCSEs exercise was running for trains/buses pretty much until I hit finals at which point I started swimming 2 to 7 days a week. I kept that up for about 5 years then other than some occaisional long walks did none until 2 years ago when I joined a gym. I've mostly managed 2-4 visits a week but haven't been as good recently.

This is going to change again next week. I've booked myself a personal training session on Monday and a spinning class.

I'd prefer to go back to swimming but it makes my excema worse. Exercising outside would be nice but I don't like running as if it is cold I end up wheezing and if it's mild there's usually something pollenating that causes me to wheeze.

As I love food and put on weight easily (I want to loose quite a few inches at the moment) I think getting back to the gym would be a good idea.

But I thought you didn't mind getting your kit off, being German??

As a short sighted person myself, and a one-time competitive swimmer, I can tell you that it is far easier for someone with rotten eyesight to swim well than to play a good game of football, or a racket sport.

On the other hand the pleasure of the many hours I have spent in the pool was somewhat lessened by my inability to fully enjoy the "scenery".

The problem about swimming and short sight is less the swimming part for me; it's more the walking around the edge of the pool, which is wet and slippery, when you can't see where you are putting your feet. I end up holding on the the wall most of the time, while walking very slowily, which gets some odd looks!

If by 'scenery' you mean the acres of flab, cellulite, varicose veins, rheumy eyes and hairiness often on view in such places, I would suggest that short sight is a blessing.

The down side for me is, I can't usually see the clock!

When I was doing my serious swimming training that was not the case - it was a pool full of fit teeangers and young adults. Even when I returned to 'masters' swimming for a few years the thirty-odd year olds I trained with had mostly retained the physiques they had as teenagers.

This was a serious problem with sets of timed repeats. I always had to ask the swimmer in front to read off my times for me.

...pant...pant...pant...gulp

My personal best has just gone up to 2.5 miles from 1.7 miles. With the days getting shorter and the weather getting worser(?!), I thought I'd better make my distances longer while it's still reasonably decent weather. Did it in an average 17 mins/mile which I'm satisfied with. I started off wearing hat, scarf, gloves and jacket, and by the end I'd discarded all of them and was having to carry them - I'm going out in a tee-shirt next time

Nice one You just can't win with layers of clothing sometimes - I've gone out running with a hat and gloves and all sorts, 5 minutes later I'm running back home 'cos I'm too hot

Ran a couple of miles yesterday and doing an exercise DVD later on

It's not so much the being skimpily dressed bit of swimming which bothers me, it's the fact that others are so neurotic about hair and cellulite and stare - I tend to swim with glasses on because I hate not being able to see, so I do notice that. I happen to think that the human figure shouldn't have to be pummeled about and scraped and plastered in gunk in order to meet some imaginary ideal æsthetic, but meet hostility over this stance especially when swimming. The biggest problem with skimpy clothing though is that it is cold when one is wet, and our local pools have horrid draughts hosing through the changing rooms .

Actually one of the most off-putting thing about enthusiastic exercise is how people make a virtue out doing it....

*sprints out of thread and then flops back into the sofa*

I do alot of dancing, and unfortunately this is also the case with dancing! Why can't people simply enjoy it, instead of having to be so catty about other people? It's sad when I have little six and seven years old girls come up to me before class in tears and tell me how other girls pick on them, because our school choose not to have children under the age of twelve in any sort of makeup. How upsetting for them