Exercise - Passion for Aviation and Travel

One of my favorite topics: exercise!
- I consider myself a fitness nut, and I proudly wear the title. I work out for 4-4.5 hours every weekday (3 hours on weekends), tracking my heart rate and other metrics, and I have extremely detailed plans for where I want to take my physical health. And that’s great for me! However, you don’t have to be a fitness enthusiast to enjoy exercising, but you do need to establish a routine.
- In my opinion, exercise is not just a “hobby” or “recommendation”; it’s a necessity for a proper, human life. If you think about it, just 12,000 years ago (and for hundreds of thousands of years prior to that), before we started a more sedentary life as farmers, humans’ only job was moving around, chasing for food, eating, and sleeping. 12,000 years is not enough time for us to have really lost what we were naturally evolved to do best, which is to exercise, eat, and sleep. Although our modern lives provide many excuses to shun healthy habits surrounding these three things, we can easily build new ones. It just takes time and a plan!
I believe that there are 3 general “classes” of exercise: stretching, static training, and dynamic training. I would define them like this:
- Stretching is exactly how you would expect it, encompassing everything that involves the improvement of flexibility, effectivity, strength, etc., without using internal or external weight to affect your body directly. Examples are toe touches, quad pulls, child’s pose, etc.
- Static training is the use of internal or external weight in a pre-defined motion to achieve some effect on your body directly. Ideally, if your technique is good, that motion would be close to identical each time you performed it. This could be body weight training, weight lifting, etc.
- Dynamic training is anything else, usually encompassing any exercise that involves movements that cannot be exactly replicated each time. For example, when running, while those with advanced technique would perform the same action with their legs for every step, ultimately how the step actually hits the ground depends on the terrain, your stamina at that point, and a myriad of other factors. These exercises can involve internal or external weights.
- We need a combination of these three classes of exercise to support a healthy lifestyle and, in fact, reach our full potential as humans.
Now that you understand the importance of exercise and what it entails, I will outline what I recommend you do when trying to incorporate exercise into your routine.
- Stretching
  - Stretching is essential, yet it often gets relegated to just 5 minutes before or after other workouts. While some stretching is better than none, we need to do more than that to reap any benefits from it.
  - I recommend setting aside at least 20 minutes every day to stretch. I also highly recommend stretching right after you wake up, as it can energize you significantly and serve as a meditative way to start your morning.
    - 20 minutes may seem like a short amount of time, but in fact, it can add up over many days (in a week, you’re stretching for over 2 hours!).
    - I would recommend doing one of two things:
      - Focus on a specific part of your body: Identify the area that needs the most improvement (e.g., leg flexibility, back/shoulder pain) and find about 6-8 stretches that target that specific part. If you do any PT or rehab, then this is the perfect time to do your PT exercises.
      - Work your whole body: Find a range of 10-12 exercises that target all parts of your body, starting with your feet and ankles and progressing up to your neck. While this doesn’t achieve as drastic an effect as the first option, it can be a good way to wake up all parts of your body for the day.
    - I highly recommend trying the first option if possible, as I’ve found that you can achieve great results from it over a few months. However, the second option is also fine if you prefer a more gradual and meditative experience.
- Static Training
  - Static training can manifest itself in several forms, but the most common (and recommended) for most people is either weight training or bodyweight training.
    - Unless you are strongly opposed to using external weights, physically unable to do weight training, or traveling and don’t have access to weights, I would highly recommend weight training. Why? Two reasons:
      - 1. It’s much easier to follow the core tenet of static training, i.e., progressive overload, with external weights than with bodyweight. You can easily track your progress by adding another 5 pounds to your workout every week, but how do you know that adding 10 more push-ups every week is sustainable, especially if your body weight fluctuates over time?
      - 2. From experience, bodyweight workouts are generally a lot more psychologically taxing than using external weights. Most of this is because you will likely have to do A LOT more of the bodyweight exercise to elicit the same response as from using external weights. Imagine doing 200 push-ups a day to achieve the same result as doing a bench press 5×5, and you can see why it’s easier to commit to a sustainable weight-training routine.
    - If you’re really jonesing for bodyweight training, I recommend finding a way to incorporate both in each workout, with 70-85% of the workout being weights and 15-30% being bodyweight exercises.
  - Your schedule should give you workouts of 1-1.25 hours, preferably 6 days a week.
    - Why 1-1.25 hours?
      - This is about the amount of time you’ll need to complete 9-10 workouts, each with 4-5 sets of 5-10 reps, with at least a minute of rest between sets (I’ll discuss how I arrived at these numbers in more detail below). If you prefer math equations, look at this: (10 workouts) * (4 sets per workout) * (1.5 minutes per set) = 60 minutes. Add in some fudge factor there, and that’s how you can see why 1-1.25 hours is ideal. Whether you believe my math or not, if you follow this structure for a week, you will clearly see that you will end around the 1-1.25 hour mark each time.
      - Note that this only works if you don’t waste your time talking to other people for 20 minutes or taking a huge break between exercises or sets. You need some discipline!
    - Why 6 days a week?
      - First of all, you need at least 1 day of rest from static training a week. That’s a non-negotiable.
      - Second, if you structure your workout correctly (which I will discuss below), you will evenly distribute various muscle groups throughout the 6 days. This means that there will be 2-3 days of rest between each muscle group, which is ultimately more important than full days of rest in general. Your body can easily handle that, but again, you will have to be smart in how you structure it.
  - You should keep your static workouts at the start of the day, preferably right after eating a small breakfast and about 1 hour after waking up.
    - Static training gives you energy, which is obviously most important at the start of the day. Also, generally, gyms are usually less packed in the early morning than in the late evening, making your workouts more efficient
    - This also allows you to take a pre-workout supplement (which may contain caffeine, among other ingredients) if you wish, without worrying about staying up at night.
  - Ideally, your splits should last 6 days: Push-Pull-Legs x2 (Or any variation, e.g., Legs-Push-Pull).
    - As I mentioned above, if you do this correctly and consistently, then you will have 2-3 days of rest between the same muscle group. For example, I do Push on Mondays and Thursdays, which gives my body more than enough time to recover that muscle group, despite still working out in between.
    - Anecdotally, I have tried many different splits, and I believe PPL is the best IF YOU STICK TO YOUR PLAN. Bro splits, upper-lower, whatever, are still fine if you are consistent, but PPL is the best if you are committed to building all-around strength for the rest of your life.
  - Try to think that you will have this same workout routine for the rest of your life. Unless you are a professional powerlifter (in which case you don’t need my advice anyway), there are no specific goals associated with strength training. Simply, you are just trying to get stronger over time!
    - Trust me, as someone who has worked out for many years and has seen significant gains, there will never be a time when you feel like you’re “strong enough.” Yes, you will feel better about yourself and receive more attention, but you will never lose the drive to continue going to the gym, which is great! Because you will also never reach a point where your body can’t get stronger.
    - Even when you get older, though may have to adjust the workouts or lower the weights, you can still be a strong mofo by following this routine.
  - Instead of listing a bunch of workouts to pick from, I am just going to drop a link to a copy of my most recent workout plan (as of the time of writing), and you can take that as inspiration (it will take a second to load after you click the link, be patient): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQGxONKlnpT_RMtKp78cnDZYFeXuh3Z8scEgw5n-qL1wTjAqt0eQLcX6MPiuVFmctyDLsVKk5xn0JIR/pubhtml?gid=1612806004&single=true
    - Note that the ONLY columns I have are the exercise name, the number of sets I have to do, and the ACTUAL load and reps I did. I like to keep it as simple as possible, and I also want to show EXACTLY what I actually did that day, so I can look back and see whether I am actually progressing or not.
    - Generally, I’ve found that the best way to build a lot of strength and a decent amount of muscle is to start almost every day with a 5×5 workout and then transition to 4×8-10 reps for every other workout after that.
      - For this to work, the main exercise (and the first exercise) has to be the most complex exercise you do (so the exercise that works the most muscles and tendons). For example, on Push days, the bench press and overhead press are usually the most complex exercises I do, so on one day, I do a 5×5 bench press and the other a 5×5 overhead press. These will be heavy, but NOT your max. More like 70-80% of your max.
      - Then, the rest of the exercise should gradually transition from most complex to least complex. Again, with the Push example, I then proceed to a 4×8 set of overhead presses or 4×8 sets of bench presses (depending on the day), followed by a 4×8 set of incline dumbbell presses, then a 4×8 set of machine flys, and so on. This way, you are able to go from hitting the most muscle possible to isolating just one or two at the end. Consider if this was the opposite and you went from the most isolated exercise (e.g., skull crushers, which works only triceps) to the most complex (e.g. bench press, which works almost your entire upper body, including triceps); you would essentially have worked your triceps for 5-6 exercises before you got to the most important exercise! Obviously, this is not what you want.
      - Additionally, it is essential to increase the weight from set to set during each exercise. Specifically, for the 5×5 exercise, you will perform the beginning weight (BW) for 2 sets, then BW + 5 for 2 sets, and finally BW + 10 for 1 set. For the 4×8-10 exercises, you will do BW for 2 sets, then BW + 5 sets.
    - Each week, you’ll want to progressively overload gradually so that you can build strength over time.
      - Emphasis on gradually. Just because you can max 245 on the bench from day 1 doesn’t mean you should. It’s much more sustainable to start in a range that you can do a 5×5 on with about 70-80% of your maximum effort, such as 175-185, and then increase by 5 pounds each time.
      - It is different for each exercise based on the type and amount of weight you can add, but I would add about 2.5-5 pounds each week to the BW of each workout, whichever is less.
      - If you ever get to a point that you cannot do the full 5×5 or 4×8 from the workout, DON’T KEEP TRYING TO OVERLOAD PROGRESSIVELY. Stop at the weight you’re at and try again the next week. Perhaps you are sick, and that’s the reason you can’t improve, and you need to give your body some time to recover. If you still can’t hit it after next week, then drop the BW by 10-20 pounds and then work your way up again.
        
        Although this may hurt your ego, in the long run, it will help solidify your gains more effectively. Sometimes, I have to drop the BW of an exercise by almost 50 pounds, but when I eventually get back up to the weight I was at, it feels like moving a feather. Remember, you are trying to do this for THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. Time is no object; never use a lack of time as an excuse not to treat your body right.
        
        If you don’t follow this advice, I guarantee you will either get extremely frustrated or hurt yourself. Either way, it will kill your motivation to continue working out.
    - You can clearly see that I don’t do the same workout for each muscle group on both days that I hit it. For example, my Monday Push is very similar to my Thursday Push, but critically, the bench press and overhead press have changed. This is another way in which I can allow myself to recover more easily throughout the weak
    - You can also see that I do abs on every workout day at the end of my workout. I’ve tried doing a separate ab day or a 30-minute-long ab circuit every other day, but I’ve found it’s much more psychologically and physically sustainable to do 1-2 ab exercises every day. And trust me, it works!
- Dynamic Training
  - Like stretching and static training, dynamic training is essential; I would even go as far as to say that it is the most important type of training since it is what humans were evolved to do (i.e., running for 20+ miles a day to hunt down food).
  - Fortunately, nowadays we have many more options for dynamic training. While it’s hard to give a precise definition, I would use the term to encompass all types of exercise where the motion of your body is somewhat unpredictable (and thus, dynamic).
    - Some examples of dynamic training (obviously not all-inclusive):
      - Running
      - Mountaineering
      - Tennis
      - Soccer
      - Jiu-jitsu
      - Surfing
      - Dance
    - Note that while many of the exercises we think of as “cardio” do fall under dynamic training, they are not synonymous!
  - Whereas for strength training, it was easy to apply general rules for WHAT kinds of exercises to do, unfortunately, dynamic training is not the same, since there are many different types, strategies, and approaches that all achieve other goals. However, I will give some ideas for HOW you should think about setting up your dynamic training:
    - First, you need to find a goal. This is very different from what I said above for static training; while for static training, I recommend NOT having a goal and just trying to get stronger over time, dynamic training needs to have a goal associated with it. Why? Because, unlike static training, where you often see the benefits help you in your daily life (e.g., by making you more muscular and sexy), dynamic training usually doesn’t work like that. With dynamic training, the benefits you derive can improve your overall health, but primarily, they are directed toward the specific goal you’re working toward.
      - Finding a goal may or may not be easy, depending on what you already do. For example, if you already play pick-up soccer 5 times a week, then it’s easy enough to pick a goal like, “Make it on the club soccer travel team.” However, if you don’t do any of these types of activities, or you don’t like the activities that you do do enough to devote a serious amount of time to, then here are some ideas on how to find something:
        
        What are you naturally good at? While something specifically physical can work (like “I run faster than most), it doesn’t have to be just physical or fitness related. It could be, “I have extreme willpower,” and thus you could run for miles after everyone else stops, even if you have to run slowly (making you suited for ultramarathons). Or, “I know intrinsically how to place my body parts to achieve a certain position,” which would help equally with gymnastics, dancing, or rock climbing. It’s much easier to get deeply involved in something and do well at it if you are already naturally good at it.
        
        In your past, what activities have you most enjoyed doing? For example, perhaps you live in Kansas, but the one time your family went hiking in Colorado is etched in your mind forever. Just because you don’t have mountains around you now doesn’t mean you can’t make a goal to climb Everest! There’s no need to theorize about what activities you might enjoy; just think about past activities that you have already enjoyed!
        
        Think about what you would find the most pleasure in achieving. It could be something you have never even spent one second on (for example, recreating a beloved Simone Biles routine if you can barely jump off the ground), but a better approach is to choose something you find impressive and work toward it. For example, marathons and triathlons are extremely popular, offering numerous opportunities and a wide range of online training regimens. If in all doubt, pick one of those and you will quickly find whether you like it or not when you start the training.
      - Your goal should be very specific. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated, but a good goal is something that has a measurable outcome (I either ran the marathon or not) rather than something vague (I got better at running).
      - Once you’ve found a goal, put it on your calendar! Even if you don’t know exactly what it’ll take, give yourself a deadline, and you’ll see how quickly your body will adapt. If needed, you can always change the deadline, but it’s better to have something rather than nothing.
        
        If it’s something you have to pay for or put a lot of time into, like a $1000 Iron Man or a 3-week mountaineering trip in Nepal, then you don’t need to commit to it immediately. Just pencil it in, and if you find that you are really committed to it over a month or two, only then pay for it. While a bit more risky, especially for newer activities, the benefit of paid activities is that they motivate you to work 10x harder than if they were free or low-cost.
    - Next, you need to set up a routine.
      - Like static training, I would ideally make my routine 6 days a week, but for around 2.5-3 hours a day.
        
        I know, I know, this sounds crazy: If you follow this routine plus my strength training routine, then you would be working out for close to 30 hours a week! That’s close to the level that amateur athletes train. But that’s what we’re going for, right? If you’re reading this, you don’t just want to be average; you want to take it to the next level. And trust me, even with a career, a life, etc., it’s more than possible. You just have to have discipline, ambition, and a smart routine.
      - Whereas we put strength training at the beginning of the day, I would almost always put my dynamic training at the end of the day. If you follow my general routine layout, then I highly recommend starting 4 hours before you sleep and ending, at the latest, 1 hour before you sleep. If you sleep at the recommended 9 pm (which I will talk about why in a different article), then this would be 5-8 pm. Conveniently, this is right after most people’s working day!
        
        Why at the end of the day? Because dynamic training usually drains your energy. Not only does this help you sleep better when you’re utterly exhausted (as in, often within 5 minutes of hitting the pillow), but it also just makes more sense to do your longest, most energy-depriving activity at end of the day when you’ve eaten through most of your diet, you’ve probably sat on your butt doing work all day (so essentially, rested), and you’re psychologically ready to hit the workout.
      - Now what should you actually do?
        
        I can’t speak for the specifics for every possible activity, but generally a good strategy is:
        
        Monday: Activity-specific training (about 60% of max effort for 3 hours)
        
        Tuesday: Activity-specific training (about 60% of max effort for 3 hours)
        
        Wednesday: Either smaller activity-specific training or lighter adjacent exercise (about 40% of max effort for 1 hour)
        
        Thursday: Activity-specific training (about 70% of max effort for 3 hours)
        
        Friday: Activity-specific training (about 50% of max effort for 3 hours)
        
        Saturday: Rest day
        
        Sunday: Activity-specific training (about 75-85% of max effort for 3 hours)
        
        You can see that for most of the week, you are exercising WELL BELOW your max effort. Simply put, you can’t exercise at your max, or anywhere near your max, for 15-20 hours a week and expect to last very long. It’s more important to GET THE REPS EVERY WEEK than to work out at your limit.
        
        Every week will be the same or a very similar exercise, but every 1-3 weeks, you will add some sort of progressive overload to each activity. That could be adding 5 pounds to your pack (e.g., if you are mountaineering training), 1 second to your mile time (e.g., if you are marathon training), etc. It will be unique to each activity, but this progressive overload is vital to building your stamina base over time.
        
        Over the long run, through progressive overload, your max effort will increase significantly. So even though you are still training at only 40-85% of max effort at any given time, the amount of power in every workout will naturally increase along with the max effort.
        
        How should you judge “max effort”? While it becomes clearer and more intuitive over time, a good place to start (and possibly, to use in general) is your maximum heart rate (which is often estimated as MHR = 220 – age, but obviously depends on your specific circumstances). Why?
        
        Out of all the indications of exerted effort, it is probably the easiest to measure while exercising for the normal person. Most smart watches nowadays have it built in!
        
        One of the most important concepts in training are the aerobic/anaerobic states. Essentially, you are in an anaerobic state when your lungs can’t supply enough oxygen to meet your cells’ demand, which most often occurs in the most strenuous exercises and can only be sustained for a little while. The aerobic state is the opposite, where there is enough oxygen for your cells and this type of exercise can sustained for long periods of time.
        
        The whole point of the 6-day training routine I suggested above is to build your aerobic base over time and to use your anaerobic state only when necessary (e.g., at the crux of a rock climbing route or in the last 100 meters of a race). Unless you are solely a sprinter or something like that, you will need to use your aerobic base for most of the time anyway, and thus, by building it up over time with sustainable training, you are well-suited for any endurance goal you partake in.
        
        Furthermore, the anaerobic threshold (the divide between the two states) can be estimated as 85% of MHR. You can now see how I got my max percentage of 85% during any exercise!
      - How can you track your progress over time?
        
        First of all, DON’T MAKE THIS MORE COMPLICATED THAN THIS HAS TO BE. Rather than try to log every single possible stat, listen to your body and correct when you need to correct. As long as you follow a gradual plan of progressive overload, there’s no way you can go wrong.
        
        Here are the only things I track (specifically for my training, which is mountaineering related):
        
        1. Date
        
        2. Load (specifically, weight of my backpack)
        
        3. Duration of workout
        
        4. Speed of the stairclimber or elevation change of the trail
        
        5. Avg. heart rate
        
        6. An A-F rating of how I felt during the workout
        
        7. Notes
        
        That’s it! There’s nothing special here; numbers 1-4 should be known already, they’re set by your routine, while number 5 can be easily gotten from a smart watch, and numbers 6-7 are just observations you make about how you felt during the workout to help you recall later. Obviously, you will have different columns, but the idea remains the same.
        
        Remember, your progress is ALREADY defined by your routine. Every 1-3 weeks, you will add a small increment of load, keeping everything else constant (especially duration and any other factors , like speed of the stairclimber in the example above). It is NOT defined by your heart rate or your feelings, those are just indicators to see whether your body is ready for the added load or not.
        
        Ideally, for the same workout on the same day of the week in progressing weeks, you should see the same average heart rate while you increase load. That way, you know your body is handling it. In the real world, that probably won’t happen; likely, the first week with the new load, it will slightly increase then every following week it will decrease until you add a new load. But that’s great and expected! Because it means your body is adapting.
- Final thoughts and notes.
  - What should I do if I’m injured or sick?
    - Simple: DO NOT EXERCISE. Your workout routine may suffer a tiny bit, but remember that you’re doing this for the long run. It’s better to spend a week or a month getting 100% better than exercising at 70% (or less) and really never improving. You will just prolong the illness and increase the likelihood of getting more seriously hurt. IT IS NEVER WORTH IT!
  - “But I don’t have the time to commit to 16 hours of training a week!”
    - I wrote this article for non-professional, high-level athletes who want to take themselves to the next level without paying for a coach while still living a normal life. While you can still follow the general principles if you can’t commit to the entire routine, recognize that you will progress much more slowly or not even at all.
      - We all have $hit to do in this world. Those who separate themselves are the ones who prioritize those things that are important to them. You have to figure that out for yourself what that is.