Can maintaining fitness be easy?

April 9, 2010 6:34 PM

Achieving a fitness level is difficult. Once I've got it, should it be as much of an effort to maintain that level? Or is it OK if it starts to feel easy?

I am someone for whom fitness goes in cycles. Historically, I'll be very into something - running, elliptical workouts, yoga - for a year or two - and then something (usually bronchitis) will cause me to take a long pause, maybe a month or two. And then I don't get back on the horse for a long while, maybe another year or so. So I am no regular athlete.

I'm currently doing a lot of exercise, and it's become very important to me, mentally. Initially, everything was really hard, and I was tired a lot - I went from not working out at all for a long time, to doing tae kwon do twice a week, and then I started jogging again. I also have Type I diabetes and fibromyalgia with blessedly mild symptoms, which makes things a bit trickier.

Now, however, I've achieved a reasonable level of fitness. I am enjoying the activity, but it isn't always hard anymore; I don't come home from the gym and feel like I've really pushed myself to the limit. Today, in fact, I hopped on the treadmill, ran for 30 minutes (slowly: 5.2mi/hr) and hopped off. I didn't get red in the face, I didn't feel like I was dying - I wasn't even breathing that hard. I know I was still getting good exercise - my heart rate was up, and my breathing did increase. But, unusually for me, the activity felt pretty easy - or at least manageable.

I started thinking - well, that means I have to push harder next time. Go up to 5.4 mph, or run 40 minutes. But I am wondering if that is true? If I simply wanted to maintain my current level of fitness, and I just ran the same distance at the same speed five days a week for the rest of my life - would that work? Or in order to maintain my aerobic fitness and current strength, do I have to keep pushing harder, increasing time or pace or number of lifts and pushups I do?

I may work, too, to increase my fitness. But because I haven't had experience with maintaining it, I feel very confused! And I'd like to know some guidelines. I guess I can't quite believe that I could just go run for half an hour, and feel just fine, and still manage to look and feel in shape! :)

All insight appreciated, with thanks.

posted by mccn to Health & Fitness (4 answers total)

I think you've highlighted one of the reasons so many regular exercisers get injuries; we don't become addicted to exercising, per se, but rather, we become addicted to improving. When we cease to improve, we feel guilty, lazy, dissatisfied etc.

This is bollocks of course. You can reach a level you're happy with and perfectly maintain that for as long as you like. Your fitness will not decrease just because it "feels" easy. Increasing your workouts will increase your strength, fitness etc. but maintaining will, well, maintain it. If you're happy with your current level, don't feel obligated to push it until you hit a wall through injury, physical limitation etc.

I think you have stumbled across the secret of successful long term exercise. Enjoy it.
posted by smoke at 7:27 PM on April 9, 2010 [8 favorites]

I too, have fibromyalgia, and I've been working with an exercise physiologist on exercising for fitness in a non-hurty manner. She basically said that, with fibro, it's more important to be exercising regularly to maintain fitness than to push hard each time--particularly if pushing overly hard leads to having to take breaks from exercising. Hope that helps.
posted by eleanna at 8:02 PM on April 9, 2010

My personal experiences with myself and others has been that maintaining a fitness level is way less effort than achieving it. Maybe a quarter of the effort to stay in the shape you're currently at. It's also been my experience that loosing said fitness level takes about 3-4 weeks time. Missing a week straight seems to set you back by about 50%.

No research to back this up, just my two cents.
posted by RawrGulMuffins at 11:56 PM on April 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: @smoke - I think you've hit it right on the nose. It's a mental thing - I feel like I should be really working hard when I exercise, and if I'm not, I feel like I'm cheating somehow! It's nice to have it pointed out that that is just irrational. :)
posted by mccn at 2:55 PM on April 17, 2010