I’ve always been a bigger guy, but I’ve always been rather athletic. Maybe, I’d go a year or so without exercising, but if you needed me to run, lift, jump, or whatever, I was down. It’s almost like all of those muscles were just lying dormant until needed.
Recently, as I began becoming more active, I realize this no longer holds true for me. Age has finally caught up with me, and those muscles became “use it or lose it.” I realized this when I decided to do some pushups (the first ones in YEARS) and I even gave myself a break and decided to do them on my knees. In the past, I could easily knock out 75 or 100 of these. Yesterday, I struggled to do ten.
It wasn’t even my muscles that were the problem, it was more my joints. My poor shoulders felt like they couldn’t handle the strain and I decided to stop before I hurt myself.
I also began doing bodyweight squats. Again, in my mind, I could easily do 75 of these. I struggled to do 15 and my legs were like Jello afterwards.
As I’ve been slowly exercising, I’ve noticed that I don’t respond like I used to. It disappointed me at first, but then I realized, I just have to start at ground zero. I can’t skip any steps. I’m not going to go in with 15% strength. I’m going in with 0%. So, I’ve been designing a short routine to slowly condition my body.
Yesterday as my first workout. I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say these were my maxs, but these were definitely the point where I felt stressed.
Knee pushups: 10
Ball crunches: 22
Bodyweight squats: 15
Stretching: 8 mins
Punching bag work: 15 mins
So the plan is to reduce this and try and do it a bit each day. It shouldn’t take me more than ten minutes and I think it’ll help me slowly wakeup these old muscles and give me something to build on.
Knee pushups: 8
Ball crunches: 20
Bodyweight squats: 10
Stretching: However long as needed
Punching bag work: as desired (every other day probably)
So, this is where I start. We will see where it goes from here.
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