I’ve been trying to exercise more lately. I’m now running on a machine at home for about an hour a day. I’m not really getting tired, but my big problem is that I sweat A LOT. (I’m overweight, so that probably has something to do with it.) I’ve been trying to manage it with towels to wipe off the sweat, but I would have to use an unreasonable number of towels to get through the whole thing without being drenched in sweat by the end.
So what I was wondering is: Could I cool my body down with fans, AC, drinking cold water, etc enough that I could greatly reduce the amount I sweat during exercise? I tried using a small fan I have in the house, but it wasn’t really powerful enough to make any meaningful change. If I got a big fan or more fans or whatever, could I achieve what I’m after? Or does that not remove the body heat fast enough for my body to not start sweating?
Or if anyone has any other solutions to this that would help. I think stamina-wise I could probably push my exercise longer, but I’m not really willing to do that if it means being covered in buckets of sweat for like half an hour.
Yeah I was being casual, and I’m not an expert by any means.
I bring it up because, for me, sets of specific bodyweight exercises (like legs one day, shoulders/back another, and so on) is just more time efficient. It gives enough resistance to get sore, and gets me exhausted, all in one setting, instead of running separately. It’s easier on my knees, with no risk of shin splints and less risk of injury than heavy weights.
I’m confused, and I am wondering if we are using terms differently.
To me, a set is a group of continuous repetitions. For example, if I do 20 bicep curls in a row, I did one set of 20 curls. But if I do 2 curls, then walk away and drink some water, and then come back and do another 2 curls, and repeat this 10 times, then I have done 10 sets of 2 reps of curls.
So when you say the following, I am honestly quite bewildered at what you might mean -
I think the nomenclature I am familiar with would be a “split” - a way of structuring your workout routine so you do, say legs one day and arms another. Or pushing motions one day and pulling motions another. Which is great - lots of people do various kinds of splits and enjoy them and see the results they want from them.
Also, if what you are doing works for you, I think that’s great and you should keep doing it. But I also want to gently push back on a few of your statements for anyone else who may be reading and interested.
One thing you say is that it gets you sore. But I think it is worth noting that soreness itself doesn’t really indicate anything beneficial. You can hit your quad with a hammer and you will be sore in the morning. Soreness can be useful as a rule of thumb, since it typically indicates that you tried hard, which is a good proxy for stimulating muscle growth. But consistently being sore doesn’t, on its own, guarentee hypertrophy - and if pursued excessively, can actually work against potential gains, as soreness can inhibit one’s ability to perform optimally in their next workout. Instead, if you are pursuing strength or hypertrophy goals, the appropriate metric is progression in lifts over time. If you bench 135 for 5 reps today, and then in a month you bench 145 for 5 reps, or you bench 135 for 10 reps, or even if you just feel like benching 135 for 5 is easier, then we have an excellent indication that muscle growth is going to be stimulated.
In the same vein, you talk about being exhausted. And if you like feeling exhausted after your workouts because it helps you sleep better or it elevates your mood, by all means continue. But exhaustion doesn’t necessarily correlate with improved strength, hypertrophy, or fitness. After all, I can exhaust you by telling you to walk across the Sahara desert. But if your goal is to win the 100m sprint, that isn’t going to help much. Some of the best training programs I’ve run into are actually quite short, and are designed to leave the trainee with plenty of energy in the tank after their workout so they can come back as fresh as possible for the next workout.
Finally, I take issue with saying that running causes shin splints, or that lifting weights is dangerous. All physical activity carries the risk of injury, of course, but the biggest reason people develop overuse injuries is simply going too hard, too fast, and overdoing it. Or using poor form in their chosen activity. Or simply bad luck in the genetic lottery and dealing with the accumulated damage on the body over the course of a human lifetime. There is nothing special about calisthenics that make them some sort of injury-proof exercise - plenty of people note that push ups hurt their shoulders, pull ups hurt their elbows, or pistols hurt their knees. That doesn’t mean that push ups, pull ups, or pistols are bad exercises - it just means that if you try them and they hurt, you might need to make some adjustments, or else try a different exercise to reach your goal. Similarly, sure, some people get shin splints running, or hurt their backs deadlifting. But running and deadlifting are not bad or especially dangerous either - just some people may need to adjust their routines, or their form, or choose some different kind of exercise if they can’t resolve the issue they are facing. The human body is a wonderful thing, and in my view we should be encouraging people to use it in any way they can, in every way they might want to try - and if there is a problem for some person in particular, then we can deal with it when it comes up, rather than warning them off something before they’ve even tried it.