Topic: The Health, Fitness and Exercise Thread

@render I have had it come and go in the past too unfortunately. I would be interested to know if you stopped doing the strengthening exercises once it had calmed down, though. My understanding of the knee is you don't really strengthen it but every muscle around it. Since cycling alone disregards some key muscles in the leg (not to mention core.. and the rest) it does make sense that you'd need to keep doing this kind of work once the pain has gone to keep these muscled developed and stop the pain from coming back. That's my take, anyway.... as you say, doing combined exercises (cycling + running) seems to help.

@kyleforrester87 I've continued to do the exercises even after getting back to activity but not really noticed the difference. It could be that they just weren't the right exercises but I've tried quite a bit over the years with different physios etc and each has given different advice. I tend to find that if I just back off of the activity a bit for a few weeks then I can manage which might not be ideal but I can make it work and it's either that or throwing ludicrous amounts of money at physios for not a great deal of return.

@render That's annoying, its so hard to play the long game while keeping motivation up etc.

My knee is doing pretty good at the moment I’m really glad to say. I did a 100 mile event at the weekend, 5 hours 34 minutes total time including 10-12 minutes of stoppage with an average speed of 18.5mph. I placed 27th out of 330 but I think it was better overall as people registered on my route could have jumped onto the shorter routes mid-event. First place apparently did it in 3 hours 20 so I am calling BS on that one 😂

It was somewhat flat at about 4000 feet of climbing but still very happy with that time considering I haven’t cycled over 70 miles for about 6 months.

I really did struggle through the final 15 miles though, my pace took a nose dive, I felt sick, my hand was numb and I was just generally very miserable. I told the guy I was riding with to ride on as I started to hold him back, but in the end I bounced back a little and he beat me by less than 2 minutes.

Still recovering today so I know I really pushed myself - lots of fun.. in hindsight!

@AgentCooper thanks man, really appreciate that. I have been relying on cycling a lot these past few years and although I always seem to be carrying some sort of ache or pain it’s been particularly rough this year with the injuries, but feels like I am past the worst of it 🤞🏻🤞🏻

@kyleforrester87 Impressive numbers my man! It's cool to do events/races every now and again to get a change of scenery but also that competitiveness/camaraderie too.

@Thrillho thanks mate. Yes, although cycling ones can be a little hit and miss as you get spread pretty thin on the longer courses. So you can sometimes feel like you’ve paid £40 to just ride on free public roads. I assume runners stay a little more grouped….

@kyleforrester87 Nice work! Interesting that you mention the hand going numb during the ride — When I dabbled in cycling a few years ago I had annoying pain in the outer elbows that I just couldn’t figure out how to get past. Which is weird because you’d think cyclists would mainly struggle with leg issues, but the arms are also given a heavy work out too. Largely due to the arm pain, I wasn’t able to go for longer than about 20-30 miles. So kudos for pushing through!
(Also, the saddle pain and discomfort is an obstacle… 😅)

@TabulaRasa Yeah, I find that whilst I’m nursing one injury then I’m more apt to strain something else because it throws off my biomechanics. Hang in there!

@Th3solution you can get over most aches and pains with bike adjustments and strengthening, but at the end of the day it’s not an arm chair and after so many miles you will fatigue and get sore. So core strength and arm strength are both pretty important, those weaknesses and imbalances all seem to come out in the wash the longer you cycle. I have some strength and conditioning to do for sure..! As for your butt, with a nice firm saddle with minimal padding complimented with some good quality shorts with padding you do build up a tolerance pretty quick. But certainly, the day after your first ride in a long while and your butt will HURT. I also use a product called butt shield all around my ass and man parts to stop chaffing

@kyleforrester87 I went to a bike shop to be sized for my height and arm length and so I guess you’re right about that elbow pain and it is just something normal to get past. It’s that strange isometric and static contraction of the outer arm muscles where you’re constantly pushing out, elbows extended, mile after mile. When I finally flex my elbow joint I can just feel the burn as my arm muscles scream out in confusion as to what I’ve just put them through. 😂

What’s your feeling on using a Peloton or stationary bike or doing spin classes?

@kyleforrester87 Most of main tend to be trail races so not such a problem with roads, occasionally crossing a smaller one.

And people can be quite spread out. Most events I’ve done have had multiple distances going on at the same time on slightly different courses as well. The last half marathon I did was the super hilly one in 2h30 with the fastest person in 2h6 and slowest in just over 5hrs!

@Th3solution yeah I have a smart trainer, I ride Zwift on it (basically an openworld multiplayer online cycling game) - it’s good for training, group rides, racing etc and adjusts the difficulty to simulate hills and inertia of the bike generally, it feels quite realistic really and definitely leads to improvement in real life. I have not used it in a while due to my knee though… it’s very hard to not go flat out all the time on that thing. Plus you get XP and level up and stuff so obviously appeals to the gamer in me 😁 Spin bikes in the gym, perhaps less so from what I have heard but I have never tried them.

@Thrillho how’s the old tendons?

@kyleforrester87 Still not great. Still quite tender and a bit sore if I've been sat down for too long. Going to be a while before I'm out there again I think.

Don't know whether it's worth seeing a physio or not as I can't tell that there's much that can be done other than rest. Maybe some stretches but perhaps some advice on helping prevent it again. Just weird that it's flared up now to be honest as I wasn't doing anything more than I have over the last 18 months.

@Thrillho sorry to hear that. Was it bad before you were running with the push chair? This is the one to fix it, for sure. Plenty of times a day, for a while. Should be a bit sore holding it for a bit but not really bad.

Thinking of getting a Garmin Venu Sq from Amazon for £110

What do people think? Is that a decent price or is that just Black Friday tomfoolery?

Looks like it records weights, swimming and yoga which are the 3 things I'm doing right now but also has the scope for going running if my feet ever heal up.

Seems very similar to the vivoactive 4 but it doesn't have an altimeter and a gyroscope. Not sure how much that will affect me or not

So I did get that watch in the end.

I am really glad I got it as opposed to a cheaper one. I bought a cheaper one back in the pandemic and while it was decent, exporting data to other apps was all manual and fairly time consuming.

The Garmin on the other hand, integrated automatically with Strava, MyFitnessPal and the app my local leisure centre uses which is called MyWellness. I wish it wasn't the case that Garmin (and I'm guessing FitBit) have a bit of a monopoly on user friendly app integration but I am sure it's unintentional and the integrations are only worth programming for one or two device-apps simply because they are the most used ones.

Sooo, app integration is very good. I can see everything at a glance. I think integration with MyFitnessPal is the game changer though because it records your exercise calories as well as the deficit adjusted calories that someone should eat to lose weight (or credit to gain weight). I don't take the figures as gospel but I use it to have a rough idea of what's going in and out.

The other thing I like about the Garmin compared to the no-brand watch I had a few years back is that it records data almost constantly and produces graphs and stats of lots of things which I find quite interesting, if not entirely useful. Stuff like heart rate, body battery, stress etc. Again, nothing to take as gospel but as a rough general idea, it's interesting data to look over.

Something I don't like about the Garmin is that the app integration is actually "too good" and it outputs the data almost instantly to Strava, MyWellness etc. The problem with that is that my recorded Swims aren't always accurate. I pretty much always do 900m/36 lengths of a 25m pool. Most of the time it's accurate, especially if the pool isn't busy and I'm not swimming to avoid people but occasionally it can be up to 150m out either way. While you can edit the distance in the Garmin App, it would have already been automatically exported to Strava where the distance can't be edited. I normally just rename those swims with 900m in the title for clarification even if the pace etc is still calculated incorrectly based on the inaccurate distance recorded.

It's also changed how I swim a bit, mainly so I can get the data recorded as accurately as possible. It requires a firm and fast "push off" the side at the end of each length to register the start of a new length which is something I didn't really do before. I also take a quick ~20 second break before I change stroke so it registers as a new "interval" so I get accurate pace data for each stroke type. I also now do 100m of each stroke before changing because of this so I don't need to wait around as much between lengths. Before I got the watch, I would swap stroke every 50m (2 lengths) both to make it easier for me to count and to keep my interest up (breast stroke is my slowest stroke and 100m of it can get pretty boring sometimes!)

It's not amazingly accurate at detecting which stroke I do either. Front crawl is listed as Freestyle which is fine because it pretty much is the default stroke chosen for Freestyle and back stroke is listed as backstroke. Breast stroke is unfortunately recorded as Freestyle as well though, but with the intervals I can still easily tell what is FC and what is BS. The only time I've ever had it say Breast Stroke incidentally, is when I left it recording as I was doing my stretches! So it's definitely capable of recording breast stroke, just apparently not while I'm actually doing it!

Overall I suppose swims have got a lot less relaxing because of the watch but at the same time, they've got a lot quicker as I have to swim in a way that the watch is happy with so it's swings and roundabouts. It is still relaxing enough though and my preferred way of doing cardio.

Overall I'm very happy with the watch so far. Hopefully it lasts a long time and I don't have to replace it. I think it was worth the extra money to go for the Garmin (£110 on sale Vs £20-30 for a no name brand) just because the app integration saves me a lot of time and faff which of course can greatly affect motivation.

@ralphdibny Nice. I'm glad it's worked out for you and sounds like things are going pretty well for you too at the moment. I've never used a watch for running, just my phone as I use it for music too (I guess some watches can probably do that as well though).

As for me, I've finally got running again over the last few weeks. Have been doing fairly easy runs and not even back to 10k but feeling good. Most of my outings have also been with my daughter in the running buggy which makes things a fair bit harder on any sort of incline.

@Thrillho cheers bud and yeah some watches can but I think it rinses the battery life. I might get a cheap-o MP3 player if I get back into running but my feet are really bad at the moment (seeing a physio at the mo). Would be good for the car too!

Nice one, has the Achilles healed up now then or is it still tentative?

I've a bit apprehensive about posting details of my exercise lately because me posting always seems to coincide with me falling off it all so I am being a bit superstitious at the moment 😂. I thought posting about the watch might be a bit of a loophole in the superstition. It also records yoga and weight training which I may or may not also be doing 😀😂🤫🐈‍⬛

That reminds me that I haven't provided an update on my dicky wrist. It never fully healed to be honest but I had to get on with my life so I've been using a boxing wrap to wrap it up for support while doing yoga and weights.

@ralphdibny The Achilles are mostly okay now. Occasional tenderness in them but I think it’s all been from bouncing my daughter to sleep for the last year so it just depends on how well she’s been going down these days (or how well I remember not to do it).

Plenty of stretching pre and post runs too are helping.

It sucks your feet are still playing you up but it sounds like you’re (currently 😁) doing loads of other stuff instead.