Reddit reviews Triathloning for Ordinary Mortals: And Doing the Duathlon Too

I've probably been in better-than-average shape for most of my adult life with just a few periods of falling off the wagon. My starting template was the lovely little book "Triathaloning for Ordinary Mortals" that I discovered while going to college back in the Pleistocene. If you ignore the 'triathlon' part (I had to quit running at 20yo, my knees kept blowing up) it's a pretty nifty set of simple guidelines: work out 3-6 days a week for at least 20 min at a time for a minimum total of 3-5 hours/week, don't take more than 2 days off in a row unless you're sick or injured or something, keep your heart rate up while you're doing it, mix up what you're doing and the intensity through the week/weeks, and keep building more time as you get time especially on your 'long day' (unless you're OK where you're at of course, then you can kinda cruise at that level). Everything is just tracked by time so any given week you can bike, run, hike, skate, ski, go to the gym, paddle a boat, do a workout video, shovel snow, whatever. It all counts so long as your heart rate is up.

If you take those guidelines + bolt in some resistance training at least 2x/week & sprinkle in some yoga when you get the chance, you've got a flexible system that can run for the rest of your life without getting bored. If you decide to get into a sport you can use the majority of your time to specialize with that, and if the seasons or your interest changes you can just float over to other activities. Recently I've decided to increase my weekly volume to 8+ hours/week to see where that will take me, but if I get tired of that or run into scheduling issues I can always ratchet it back down without quitting entirely.

This time of year the type of exercise I'm doing often depends on the weather. I'm aiming for a bunch of mountain bike hours primarily, but if the ol' man and I spy a prime opportunity to nab a hike or backpacking trip (often involving pack rafts & fishing because you can't ever combine The Dirtbag Arts too much), imma be on it in a hot second. :)