IdahoSpud

Is anyone else on the DuPont schedule? Is it even possible to maintain any kind of exercise schedule with these whacked 12 hour shifts?



I'd like to hear any advice. Right now it's pretty much "train any time you can and when you've had enough rest to do it"

Carbonfiberboy 

I used to do a rolling shift schedule in the Army. I didn't do much during a shift period, mostly weights, but then I did a lot of stuff during the off times. That worked fine when I was young. I wasn't cycling then, just weights, skiing, hiking, and climbing, depending on season, weather, and length of time off. I didn't have a schedule, just did what I could when I could.

J.Higgins 

Rolling shifts have got to be the most unhealthy and demoralizing abuse of loyal employees that I've ever seen. I actually left a company that went to that sort of thing. I have not researched it enough to make a studied comment here, but I'm assuming that there is some company benefit to it from a bean counter aspect. Kaizen, Six Sigma, Lean, and all of their mutated incarnations are only good for the company and rarely healthy for the employee.

The older you get, the longer it takes your body and mind to recover from extreme work schedules. When I was in my 40's, I worked a 3-day 12-hour shift schedule. It was great because my kids were young and still home and the four days off were all play days. Trouble is, the first day off after those long days was usually spent resting and recovering.

SapInMyBlood

I do shift work on a mine site. 2 weeks on, 2 weeks at home. 12 hour days
I workout every day after work, rotating between gym lower body, gym upper body and 10-15k runs outside (37-38c).
But it basically takes up all my free time at work

IdahoSpud

That sounds like a pretty nice arrangement. I'm assuming that the mine site is somewhat remote? Sounds like how offshore oil platforms work.

DuPont screws you with three weeks of swapping back and forth from days to nights - so that you can finally get one week off. That week off is nice, but slamming your sleep schedule around for three weeks isn't.

IdahoSpud

Unfortunately, there is no easy way around shift work when 24 hour coverage is needed. Emergency Services do it, and so does the military and utility sector.

It is definitely a much easier thing to handle at a younger age - but I'm now 60 and it's not effortless like it was when I was 30.

Nowadays it takes a day or two to shake off the night shift sleep patterns - let alone find the energy to exercise. Certainly a routine schedule is impossible.

J.Higgins 

The corporations that desire to run 24/7 have reduced their labor forces by adopting a more punishing schedule. I am/was career military, and afterwards, I worked companies that had three stable shifts in order to handle the coverage. They discovered that they could handle 24 hour coverage with fewer people by forcing them to work harder. Fewer people spread out over longer hours = fewer employees and less paid in wages and benefits. Its a corporate win no matter what. This next statement will sound contrary to my previous thoughts expressed here, but I totally believe that anyone who is lucky enough to be able to hang onto a job like that with great pay and bennies is lucky... as long as you can handle it. It has just got to beat flipping burgers.

I'm retired now, so a little 20/20 hindsight is available here, so just let me say that if I had to do it again, I wouldn't. Nothing can replace those lost hours with your kids or loved ones. You'll never get a chance to do those things again, ever. When I think of the months... YEARS when added up, spent away from my family and friends while off in some screwball foreign land playing wargames (USAF-style), I just get a little crazy. If I had to do it all over again, I would have found a way to go to school right after my first college degree and stay until I couldn't learn any more and then get better jobs with better pay and bennies.

A little rant-ish here, and for that I apologize. Its just seems that this world is so full of new sensitivities about this and that, and nobody does a thing about the legalized slavery going on in the corporate world.

SapInMyBlood

Yeah about 2000km from where I live, fly in and fly out

At least there's an AC gym and we can run on the airport runway after 5pm
But no matter what putting in 184 hours in 14 days takes its toll

Dirk de Chablis

When I did night shifts, I would get on the bike as soon as I got back and did 2hrs and then sleep but I was on IT Support so not the most physically taxing unless I had to move the server room around

IdahoSpud

Were those 12 hour long shifts? When I've tacked on the commutes and shift turnover, I'm usually too whipped to do more than visit with fam and play with the dogs for a little while, then I'm starting to fade out.

Dirk de Chablis

Sometimes 15hrs or longer if an install goes pear shaped, but mostly 10-12hrs, I the summer I would ride in 40 miles and would do 60 miles on the way back

guachi

One of my workcenters in the military had these idiotic schedules and we had a unanimous vote among the plebs to ditch it. We switched to either straight days or straight mids and you could switch to the other schedule if someone left. The schedule in the OP is so awful I can't imagine anyone having a life of any kind on it.

locolobo13 

Way back I did shift work similar to that. 5PM to 1AM 4 nights a week. Then one or two graveyards, 11PM to 7AM. It was messing with my head. As soon as possible I got into a straight graveyard shift. That worked a lot better. Only had to adjust to one schedule.

Took a few weeks to be fully acclimated. Nothing like waking up in the middle of the day, panicking, thinking "WTH?" Then realizing..

If you think a full time night shift might work you could ask.