cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6259624
Any of you do late night workouts? What’s that like if you do?
I have all the equipment I need at home. The problem is, our schedule is fucking bonkers. I work 7:30ish to 4, I take my oldest into school and take her home since I work at the school. My SO isn’t home until 4:30, we pick the other kiddo up at 5. Dinner at six, bedtime at 7:30, kids are out by 8ish. Oldest has dance on Mondays till 6. SO has class on Tuesday till 8. She has homework and readings to do every week as a result. Weekends got swim class, dance for the little guy, library, groceries, naps, plans with the kids or friends or family.
I’m doing all this math on every hour of the week and I’m coming to the conclusion that I could get a solid hour every day if I wanted after everyone goes to bed. From 10 to 11. My ADHD keeps me up anyway, I likely won’t make much noise, the living room already has those foam padding jigsaw tiles on the floor to keep the kids from tumbling on the hard floor. It’s in the basement, the kids sleep soundly, my SO isn’t a night owl like I am.
This seems like a no brainer and that usually means I’m overlooking something. The one thing keeping me from working out at home was privacy, and this gets me that because people will be passed the fuck out anyway. Obviously this is like a twice a week and eventually a three day a week thing.
How fucked up are my mornings going to be? Weekdays we’re up at six to get the day on schedule. Am I going to be totally fucked those mornings?
I would worry more about the effect late night training could have on your sleep.
Some light soreness in the morning is expected and not to worry about.
Try doing the workouts late at night before bed, and then try doing them early on the morning by waking an hour earlier - see how your body responds. I ended up finding it easier to get to sleep earlier when I tried the latter.
You will be sore at first but as you keep doing an exercise soreness quickly stops. It will come back if you stop working out or switch up an exercise.
If noise is a concern I would recommend bodyweight exercises, squats to target legs and glutes, pushups to target shoulders and pecs, probably another leg exercises for calves and hamstrings - squats target the quadriceps more than the hamstrings. I’m less versed on bodyweight but there’s probably good programmes out there - you don’t need to pay for them, look around on reddit. Feel free to send me a programme if you find one and I can give you an opinion.
But you can also run this by your family, ask if the noise is bothering them, and try incorporating equipment that won’t bother them. For example you can pick up a kettlebell to add some weight to your squat. So to me it’s not so much a question of whether you can work out during this time period (you definitely can), but if you will get enough sleep afterwards for the gains to count and not affect your day. I can theorize all I want but hey, you won’t know until you try. Push through the first two weeks if you’re feeling sore and tired, and see how it goes afterwards. If you work at a desk you can also look at getting a walking treadmill so you can put in steps while at work.
I have an adjustable kettlebell, I might give that a shot. Less to move around and very easy to keep I’m the living room. I could probably find a decent YouTube video of a full body kettle bell routine for amateurs. I’ll look around. I do love the kettlebell in theory and it looks very effective in practice. I’ll send you what I find. Thanks Crit!
There’s a LOT of exercises you can do with just a kettlebell. The soviets were big proponents of it, and it’s a great supplement to body weight exercises. With two kettlebells, you can do incline pushups for example, which allows you to move beyond the normal range of motion and past your hands. You don’t even need to use it directly as resistance.
You can do goblet squats, you can push it up above your head instead of a barbell for the overhead press, you can do deadlifts (though you will put on weight very quickly with deadlifts so a kettlebell will probably never reach your level), I love the kettlebell swing too even though I have no idea what it trains lol. It’s good cardio.
You can start with a beginner’s fitness routine if you want but at some point you will need either more reps or more weight. I find most beginner routines to be too light, but it’s good to wrap your fibers around as it were. Then when you feel more comfortable with the movements you can look at a more rounded full-body workout - I think this is what you need anyway, to avoid soreness and make use of your one hour time. Full body is not necessarily more tiring, that is really just a function of how many exercises you have.
At the gym I used to follow phraks greyskull which is strength-based and has only 3 exercises, to give you an idea. 3 times a week. It’s so simple it takes up a single picture to explain:
You will reach the limit of a kettlebell however if you try to follow it at home. My point is what matters for your energy is number of exercises and time, not necessarily intensity and weights.
phraks greyskull
Man there was a time where this was all I was doing too. Its been so long that I had forgotten about it! Great suggestions, definitely sold me on the kettlebell. Yeah, I don’t need to turn into a brick house, I just need to stop being sedentary. When the kids are older it’ll be way easier to dedicate time to an actual gym or just exercise during the day. With phraks, it should be easy to extend as needed. And my kettlebell is adjustable up to I think 55lbs.
Working out as late as 20h-22h definitely disturbs my sleep. I’m planning to resume working out soon, but I’m still not sure about the time. Too much work… I’m so stressed out >_>
The way I see it, my sleep is already fucked do to ADHD, the 2yo getting up anywhere between 3am to 5am, and my body decaying do to inactivity. At least working out can resolve the last point. Maybe the first point (I always slept better on workout days, less mind racing).
At a minimum I can use the time to stretch out my body.
deleted by creator
