Evolution of my thinking on fitness

I thought it would be good to write down a few thoughts on how my thinking about fitness has changed over the years.

Currently I am planning my workouts to enable recovery and prevent injury first and foremost. My secondary goal right now is to change my shape to look good in proportion with the skeleton that I have.

I've been doing regular exercise since I was about 12 years old, but the focus and the effectiveness has changed over that time. 

Age 12-17, Years 1991-1996

I was an obese kid around age 12, and I wanted to turn this around. I had a long commute to school so it was not easy to stay after school to be part of a team. I ended up doing a lot independently, mostly some light weights, plus running, hiking, cross-country skiing mostly. Also some tae kwon do. By the time I graduated high school I wasn't overweight any more.

Age 17-18, 1996-1997

In my freshman year in college, I did intercollegiate heavyweight rowing. I felt that we overtrained, with competitive season involving morning and evening practice 5 days/week, and race days on Saturdays. I ate like a horse so I never looked like I was exercising that much. By the end of the competitive year I looked like a frog - big legs and skinny everything else - and I was burned out. I felt that amount of training was too much to be effective for me, although that year I am thankful to have learned how far I actually could push myself. I had to work the summer afterwards, and I ended up with a 45 minute commute, so I was not able to continue training after the school year. I dropped rowing in the fall because I needed to do other things than rowing during my time in college; rowing only left time for rowing.

Age 18-31, 1997-2010

Regular activity in order to keep good mental health. Not very effective, higher rep, max effort weights. My health fell off the rails a few times when I stopped activity and sleep. Hence the name of this website. Very apropos of this question, there was a news article today (10/22/18) that discussed the importance of activity on mental health.  During this time I did do kung fu lessons for a few years and enjoyed the group aspect and the connection to intuition.

2010-2013

Crossfit. This is when I got involved with crossfit gyms and learned the Olympic weightlifting movements. I hit some great maximum lift values but wound up with a stress fracture shortly after.

2013-2017

I switched to more group exercise weightlifting classes 2-3 times a week. These were fairly good for maintenance, not the best for making changes, and I kept on getting injuries that set me back. Eventually I moved to a new location and wound up going 4 days per week to a conventional gym. This was a good new habit.

2018-now

Exploring playing around with weightlifting to do the following: prevent injury, achieve hypertrophy (muscle growth), explore AGT (anti-glycolytic training) to manage lactate and thereby build metabolism and maintain recovery.