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How I Exercise

Last updated: 2024-07

Exercising is a big part of my life, and has been since my early twenties. It’s one of those things that I’m so grateful that I discovered when I did for multiple reasons: it makes me feel great; it has unlocked and enabled other physical hobbies such as hiking; it maintains my physical health as I age; and it’s fun.

This page contains a few bits about how I approach exercise and what I’m doing at the moment, my history with exercise, and my plans for the future.

My current exercise routine

My current exercise routine is almost purely strength focused. My daughter is still quite young and, as such, I have less time to exercise at the moment due to the demands of parenting a child of this age. I had to make a decision about what to prioritise and landed on strength over cardio for the time being.

I exercise every third day by performing a calisthenic strength circuit based mostly off of Convict Conditioning by Paul Wade. I’ve been a fan of calisthenics for strength for a long time and the exercises in this book continue to make me stronger and fitter despite me having used them solidly for over a decade. I also supplement these exercises with a few from Convict Conditioning’s follow-up book.

Convict Conditioning is based on performing six strength movements known as “The Big Six”. These are each broken into 10 “steps” which start from rehab and “prehab” conditioning exercises, get progressively harder, and ultimately end in an incredibly tough “Master Step”. For example, the Push-up series starts with “Wall Push-ups”, travels through kneeling push-ups and regular push-ups, and then ends with the athelete training using one-arm push-ups.

Workouts or training sessions are made by performing a mixture of the Big Six movements based on a routine that the athlete constructs to meet their goals. An athlete following Convict Conditioning will be aiming to add reps to an exercise (e.g. push-ups) with the goal of hitting a particular number of sets and reps, thus “qualifying” to start training using the next movement in that sequence (e.g. “Close push-ups”). Earlier/easier forms of the Big Six make great warm-ups to perform at the start of workouts.

I try to stay as close to a “pure” Convict Conditioning system as possible but I have had to adapt the system to my circumstances. The first adaption is performing the exercises in a circuit. I like to perform the exercises as a circuit as it gives me some mild cardiovascular benefits and means my workouts are a bit shorter as well. The trade-off is that I get to put less into each exercise as I am still mildly tired from the exercise immediately preceding it. I’m fine with this and I enjoy the circuit approach.

Secondly, I have artificially halted my progress on “Full Push-ups”. I developed shoulder pain from performing “Close Push-ups” for years without training any Pull-ups for two years. I went back to peforming “Full Push-ups” and have artificially halted my progress here while my Pull-ups catch up. My shoulder pain disappeared as I became stronger in Pull-ups.

Thirdly, I found Step 7 of the Squat series — “Uneven Squats” — disproportionately difficult. From reading in strength forums I gather that this is a common critique of the Convict Conditioning plan. I had milked “Close Squats” for all they were giving me, so I decided to borrow an exercise from another system to get some progression in. I wrap a towel around a vertical pole e.g. a lampost and use this as a balance aid while I squat on one leg in a “Pistol” movement. I call these “Towel-assisted Pistols”.

Lastly, I do not have a pull-up bar setup that is suitable for performing Stage 3 of the pull-up series; “Jackknife Pulls”. I use graded assistance bands instead. I have struggled to make serious progress with pull-ups and have suffered a number of setbacks with this movement series. Whereas most of my exercises don’t suffer much when my training is disrupted due to illness or schedule changes, I always seem to lose a disproportionate amount strength and reps on pull-ups if I miss even a single session. I ended up not training vertical Pull-ups between late 2018 and mid 2022 due to not being able to have a pull-up bar at my home at the time, and not having suitable equipment at the park I was using to train outdoors.

I much prefer to exercise outdoors, first thing in the morning, and I will prioritise exercising amongst as much nature as I can. Since 2018 I have been using local parks which are available to me. I use the children’s play areas as these have climbing frames which I can use to hang from and perform some bar moves. These aren’t perfect however, so I currently perform most of my exercises in the park but then return home to use my pull-up bar in my back yard to finish off with pull-ups and grip work. I like this and it gives me a small break which benefits me because pull-ups are by far my weakest exercises.

My current routine is as follows (reps and times are a snapshot of 2024-08):

My history with exercise

I started exercising for the first time in September 2012 just before I started my second year of university. I had spent a year living with a flatmate who was into weightlifting for strength rather than aesthetics and I loved how much joy it seemed to add to his life. A whole summer of drinking in pub beer gardens and eating leftover/mismade pizzas from my job at Domino’s to save money meant that I was also feeling a little bloated and chunky.

My flatmate gave me two books to get me started: Convict Conditioning by Paul Wade (discussed in depth above), and Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe. I tried training with Convict Conditioning in my bedroom at home but I couldn’t build the habit and only worked out intermittently. I knew that, at the time, I needed something to force me to exercise and help me build the habit. I joined the university gym and started on my Starting Strength journey.

Joining the gym did several things to help me start exercising, beyond the obvious access to equipment. It was a space separate to my home which was single-purpose. At the time, I didn’t do well with doing anything non-homey at home: I studied/worked in the library or the computing clusters at the University. I was able to tie gym visits into my schedule on campus which meant I was more likely to exercise. It also triggered my desire to get the most for my money. I am a famous skinflint, so by dropping £150 on a year’s access to the gym I was guaranteed to make use of it and attempt to get the cost-per-workout down to as much as possible. Finally, it also allowed me to use exercise as a social activity by training with friends.

I started training with two friends who came with me but it became clear that we had different needs and different levels of commitment and got different things out of the training, so eventually it became me training by myself. Across the semester, I experimented with training at different times of the day and different routines but soon found that I liked to train first thing in the morning because I was far less tired and more likely to enjoy my workouts. During the holidays and weekends if I slept in, I would just head to the gym as my first activity after I woke up and train a little later.

I adored Starting Strength. It revolved around barbell training moves used for power lifting, to get the most “bang for your buck” out of a movement. Other than the use of barbells as opposed to bodyweight, this philosophy rhymed with everything I was reading in Convict Conditioning as well. I trained three days a week alternating an “A” workout and a “B” workout:

Progression was done by achieving 3 x 5 reps of a given weight on a given lift. If I achieved this, then the next session I added 2.5Kg to the bar and attempted 3 x 3 reps using the new working weight.

My strongest exercise by far was the Barbell Squat and I shot to consistently squatting 80Kg as a working weight pretty quickly. At the time, I weight about 82Kg so I felt that this was a decent achievement. I eventually built to squatting 120Kg while weighing approx 85Kg, but my range of motion suffered and I felt shaky at the bottom part of the movement.

My Deadlifts were also fairly strong. In general, one can lift more on a Deadlift than via any other lift. My Deadlifts progressed well but not as fast or as smoothly as my Squats. I was eventually Deadlifting 145Kg while weighing 85Kg.

My weakest exercise was the Overhead Press, followed by the Bench Press. This tracks with most people’s experiences but I really struggled to make progress with these exercises. I rarely managed to break 30Kg on the Overhead Press and struggled with 50Kg on the Bench Press. It was these experiences that lead to me introducing calisthenic exercises from Convict Conditioning to supplement my barbell work.

In 2013 I was struggling with Bench Press. I could barely bench 35Kg and my friends were lovingly calling me “Squatty No-arms” due to my elevator-cable legs and relatively weak upper body. I decided to add in extra pushing work via the Push-up series from Convict Conditioning. This started with simply doing Wall Push-ups at home, and eventually blossomed into doing full calisthenics workouts on days between my barbell days.

Looking back, I was definitely overtraining but my body responded great at the time. I was eating enough calories to support the extra, relatively light, work and I really enjoyed the calisthenic work. It worked, too. The extra pushing got me benching 40Kg but it still lagged as my weakest movement.

I read a lot of exercise manuals at the time and struggled to find a way to fit everything in. I tried to synthesise lessons from Barbell programmes, Calisthenics approaches, yoga, and tai chi. I had a lot of fun but nothing stuck except for Starting Strength and Convict Conditioning (and its follow-ups).

Gradually, I discovered that I found the bodyweight training more fun than the barbell work. Workouts were like play, but still brutal and I could feel them making me stronger. During the summer of 2013 I switched it up my training routine so that I trained Convict Conditioning during the week and then did some barbell training on a Saturday as a sort of “play” or “sports” day. In October 2014, I didn’t renew my gym membership and committed fully to calisthenic strength training.

As noted above, I had to make a few adaptions to the stages and exercises in Convict Conditioning. I had a pull-up bar in my back garden at my flat which the landlord let us put up; however it was unsuitable for Jackknife Pulls. I tried a lot of different approaches to train Pull-ups. I tried neutral grips, I tried the Armstrong method, I tried negatives for time, etc. Nothing really stuck until I nabbed some graded assistance bands and started working through them in 2016 or so.

At the same time, I started adjusting my routine. One thing I always appreciated about Convict Conditioning is that Paul Wade outright says that his job is to give you the building blocks and that routine building is up to you. I originally trained an A/B split routine with workouts on Mondays and Tuesdays followed by a rest on Wednesdays and a repeat of the split on Thursdays and Fridays.

I noticed that I was consistently tired and underperforming on the “B” workout which included Bridges and Pull-ups. Looking back, this was mostly environmental and a result of poor sleep due to bad sleep hygiene and undiagnosed ADHD. I was also starting to experiment with supersets to get some more cardio benefits and make my workouts a bit shorter.

Midway through 2015, I completed my transition to performing all of the Convict Conditioning exercises as a circuit in a single workout. I did this by gradually moving more and more exercises from my “A” routine into a single superset and then gradually moved my “B” workout moves into that day as well. This made me enjoy each workout more, but also meant I needed longer to recover. Long-term I also suffered from only exercising twice per week which contributed to some unwanted weight gain and made my workout routine more fragile as missing a day had a large effect on my mental health and physical strength.

This stayed the same for several years until late 2019 when I managed to start running consistently. I had tried a few times to start running alongside my strength routine but it never stuck as I never got much from it. In 2019 I managed to make it stick due to having learned much more about how I build habits as well as having a better environment to run around.

Picking up a running habit

After a few false starts across the years, I finally built a running habit in November 2019 as a supplement to my strength training and get some cardio in. I first trained using the Couch to 5K programme via the NHS podcast series. I modified the series mildly by only performing two runs a week instead of three, so that it fit alongside my strength routine. I compensated by performing each run twice rather than once so I progressed much more slowly than most but this worked for me. I finished the programme around April in 2020.

I kept running the 5K for a few months but then realised I was getting bored. I started on the Couch to 5K+ podcasts and got some use out of those to improve my pacing and stamina. I replaced one of my runs during the week with the “Speed run” from this group of runs to add some variety and try to get faster.

This kept me going across the entire summer but I started getting itchy to do more “progress” again. I had halted my progress on strength training to focus on running but I felt that I was spinning my wheels again. After a month or so of tentatively reasearching how to go beyond running 5K, I finally stumbled upon the Bridge to 10K programme. This is a program designed to take an athelete from running a 5K to running 10K consistently and takes a similar approach to Couch to 5K in that it uses timed intervals and build up your capacity over time. I discovered some podcasts which suited me music-wise and started building to my 10K in October 2020.

There was a mild interrupion in 2021 when my father died but otherwise I built to my 10K slowly and solidly by replacing my 5K runs with one of these sessions. Once I achieved my 10K I stopped using the “Speed run” session from Couch to 5K+ and started running a 5K and a 10K once each per week, using my own music to prevent me focusing on speed.

When we moved house to South Tyneside in 2022, I found some new running routes but they weren’t as satisfying as my old route. I also developed a knee injury from twisting my knee on the stairs after a run and a hike on the same day in 2023. This flared up after longer runs and gave me pain and weakness when walking or even standing, which further discouraged me from longer runs.

I responded by shifting focus back to strength training and put my running into maintenance. I dropped the “5K and 10K per week” routine and started running a mixture of 5K, 7.5K, and 10K runs based on what I fancied, but tried to get a 10K in at least once a fortnight. Late in the summer of 2023 I mixed things up by running down the coast from South Shields to a metro station in Sunderland, which was approximately 14 kilometers. I really enjoyed the “trail run” feel of this, but it flared up my knee something rotten.

COVID infections across late 2023 and mid 2024, combined with the birth of my daughter in March 2024 have resulted in me shelving running for the time being. I plan to return to it when I feel able but I may also explore cycling in order to avoid aggravating my knee too much.

Plans for the future

Short-term, I am focusing on trying to achieve a solid set of Pull-ups without an assistance band. Once I have accomplished that, and built some reps, I will push for progressing the remainder of my Convict Conditioning exercises much further than I have been. I also need to investigate more core exercises. I’ve been reading that the core can take a lot more training and recovers very quickly. My Leg Raises may not strictly be enough here so I will look into doing a supplementary core workout on one of my “off” days as an experiment. I also need to start stretching to avoid pain later in life, but I’ve consistently failed to build a stretching habit. The only one that I’ve managed to make stick in the past has been the “Trifecta” from Convict Conditioning 2.

I hope to return to running sometime in the next year but this will be strictly at the service of my cardiovascular health, and will play second-fiddle to my strength work.

I’m also aging, which is unavoidable. I know that as I approach my 40s my ability to recover from exercise will start to decline. I think that I will need to drop my “strength circuit” routine sometime in my late thirties and return to a split routine to give my body more time to recover. I’m not sure what this will look like, but I plan to retain Convict Conditioning as the backbone of my training and to reintroduce cardio via running if I can or cycling if I cannot run.

I am looking forward to continuing to exercise well into my middle-age and hopefully beyond.