A Typical Day

I was contemplating my daily workout to see if I am doing enough or doing too much. I am sixty-two years old and my wife got wind of my daily stuff and mentioned I may be doing way too much.
  • 0501hours: I get up from what is often a good nights sleep, about seven or eight hours.
  • 0502hours: I do a variety of calisthenics to include squats, pushups, trunk twists with weights and some dumb bell weight work. 
  • 0830hours: I take a break from work to run stairs. I do five flights, up and down, for about five repetitions, sometimes ten for a total of about twenty-five to fifty flights. 
  • 0930hours: I take a break from work to run stairs. I do five flights, up and down, for about five repetitions, sometimes ten for a total of about twenty-five to fifty flights. 
  • 1030hours: I take a break from work to run stairs. I do five flights, up and down, for about five repetitions, sometimes ten for a total of about twenty-five to fifty flights. 
  • 1130hours: I take lunch, an hour, perform chi-gong exercises then a tai chi chuan form. I then do squat jumps, pushups and two visualized kata with focus on different scenarios as well as principles, etc. Then I repeat that with the same routine but the next two kata the same way. Then I repeat until all ten kata are done along with the exercises, etc. I also do lunges before beginning the kata/exercise/visualization, etc. processes.
  • 1400hours: I always do ten repetitions of the five flights for a total of fifty flights up and down to finish out the day.
Note: Yes, I am at work but I have the privilege of working at a place with what we call flex hours, i.e., we call it exempt and non-exempt where I am the non-exempt. That means I can flex my hours throughout the day as long as I complete or make up to achieve eight or more hours of actual hands-on work. There are days when I don’t get any exercise because of the work loads or the time requirements or the project time constraints, i.e., end dates coming up fast. 

I also go home and occasionally walk two miles with my wife and we meditate for a minimum of fifteen minutes a day. Then there are the weekends where we walk two or five or eight miles dependent on schedules or how we feel. We do five miles without fail on Sundays and this weekend, being memorial weekend, with a three day weekend we will walk what I call, “The deuce (two miles), the wooden nickel (five miles) and the crazy-eight (eight miles) walks.” That doesn’t include chores or errands or outings with and without friends. 

Do you think I am overextending myself physically? I don’t feel it mentally at all except every now and then I get to thinking, I can stop now on these stairs I have done enough only to tell myself, I don’t think so, can’t quit and can’t turn back, gotta get it done mentality ;-) I am sixty-two years old after all and I am semi-retired, i.e., I don’t actively teach in a dojo, I don’t actively participate with others in the dojo now and I do spend considerable time self-individually-training in karate and martial arts with lots of research, study and other learning things ergo all the articles I write on my blogs. 

What do you think, too much or not enough?  (Note: I do spend an exorbitant amount of time contemplating, analyzing, studying, dissecting, and synthesizing things about writing, creating and developing things of martial arts disciplines and defense/offense, etc. Marc MacYoung has another writing on violence for defense out and it is awesome!)


1 comment:

  1. Too much or not enough; I guess it comes down to how you feel.As long as your're feeling good, got for it and test the limits from time to time.

    I'm 58. I get up at 5AM as well. From 6 to 7 I alternate between running (between 4 and 5 miles) and Taijiquan practice where I break down the form, work on stances, maybe do some standing work, etc.

    Fairly regularly at work (maybe 2 or 3 times a week), between everyone's coming and going, I find that I am alone in the office. I take that opportunity to work on the form as a flowing exercise.

    I do my long run on the weekend. Right now a little more than 7 miles. By the end of summer, it'll be up to 10 then 12 in time for a half marathon I'm running in October (on my birthday this year).

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