Total Fitness Workout

Looking at today's poll made me try to think of any sport or activity I've done that I would say satisfied EVERY part of my fitness requirements. I at first thought of crew in college (to any that might recall my size, I was NOT the coxwain...seven in the lightweight eight, bow in the varsity four). But then, even with that we did land workouts once a week (weights, PT workout, ergo)and ran each day before we got in the boat so truthfully even it needed supplement. Does anyone do anything that truely gives an adequate aerobic workout (in the target heart range etc.), anerobic workout, and improve flexibility? That Aikido come so close is great, I think. Even in the military we have different activities we use for each with our pilots, special ops, etc.
As for just adding in things to Aikido to supplement it like crew did, I'd rather not: that would have to add time on to the class, or delete something already there (which I wouldn't want). Making the class longer might keep some folks with family/other responsibilities from attending, when they could, if they wanted, always do weights/running/ whatever at home or work.

We have an extra session each week which is devoted to physical fitness and flexibility.
We do circuit training/interval training, weight training, uchi-kome, randori and lots of stretching. The extra session means that people who are not interested don't have to be involved and still get the training they want.
Unfortunately not every club can use their dojo/training area as much as they want especially if it is a sports facitility etc. Having your own facilities is certainly a luxury....

Unfortunately I think sometimes people's priorities are not the same as mine and so if I ran an additional fitness session as well as aikido people would not attend aikido as regularly. I like to think it is up to others to get themselves in shape - I try to do some fitness training with the students every so often; not so much to get people in shape directly, but to illustrate that they are getting fat and lazy and need to get in shape!

I think excercise has to be directed towards what you are going to do. People's fitness requirements are very much dependent on what they are doing. For example, I reduced the amount of (upper-body) weight training I was doing because it started to reduce my mid-distance running speeds and made me feel I was slower at moving. As has been said many times - it is not just the amount of excercise, it is the type and intensity which is important.

For me aikido is too technical and too short to get either a good aerobic or anaerobic work out, although it does train my body and I do get them both to some degree. However if I did aikido and nothing else my fitness and strength would suffer. My regime now involves a good spread of excercises, although in their own way they are geared to improving my martial arts ability i.e.:

-swimming
-running
-weights (specific excercises to improve triceps, shoulders, back, stomach and muscles involved with striking)
-intensive bokken work
-using a punch-bag and kicking and striking without a punch bag
-various excercises derived from kung-fu/chi kung


However, not everyone has the time for this, so it is up to the individual!

Ian

Originally posted by ca Looking at today's poll made me try to think of any sport or activity I've done that I would say satisfied EVERY part of my fitness requirements.

Swimming probably comes the closest in my opinion but I don't really enjoy swimming for exercise. I swam in high school and they kept trying to get me to shave my body. Too much hair in that forest.

Collegiate style wrestling

Well, Erik, there's always waxing . You're right, swimming probably would come close---but I never learned how . One of the reasons I had such good balance in the boat on crew, I think---fear of falling in!
Sounds like most folks have to mix and match to get what they need---guess if I want to come close to one-stop exercising I may need to join the tadpole class at the Y.