I've done bodyweight exercises for years, starting in 2014 after finally determining to recover from serious neck and back injuries I experienced after my car was t-boned in 2001. Cracked six vertebrae, two in each spinal region, some hip and knee injury. For years I walked with a cane but in 2014 got fed up with the whole mess and worked myself back into shape. It's an ongoing process, as it is for all of us after we hit age 50-60... or, rather, it hits us.
I just turned 65 recently and my Medicare replacement program notified me of some participating gyms that offer no cost or low cost membership, so I'll check those out. I'm not interested in free weights but would like to find some good weight machines, access to a pull-up bar (my apartment door frames won't handle that stress), treadmills, etc. I know from visiting a physical therapy clinic in 2019 to recover from another car collision (driver hit me in 2018 while I was on a bike ride), I know it's easier to exercise some body parts more efficiently with weight machines, especially the legs, hips and lower back. And it's hard to beat curls and pullups for biceps, lats, etc. I can't really approximate those effectively with body weight alone.
I vary my workout a lot, depending on how I feel or what seems to need work. When I'm doing long walks or jogging along a favorite rural route, I'll stop along several spots to do pushups, usually doing 50-100 in sets of 10 or 20 interspersed throughout my usual 3-5 mile route. If I do the long 5-7 mile route, I'll stop at the crest of a long incline to do core work -- 50-100 crunches, leg raises, scissors, etc., to work the abs, hips and back.
While I'm walking I'll do isometric exercises for my arms, including biceps, shoulders and neck. And shadow boxing. I was an amateur boxer years ago and still find the no-contact parts of the workout useful for muscle tone, balance and overall flexibility. Often that's part of my warmup before jogging or running, since neck pain has been my main hindrance for years, with worsening cervical spine stenosis. The warmup exercises help relieve some of the pain temporarily, long enough to finish a 1-2 hour walk, jog or run. But the pain always creeps back later in the day, especially while I'm sleeping. But at least these basic exercises relieve some of the pain and stiffness long enough to get me through jogging or cycling.
Unfortunately the neck pain has gotten bad enough that I've cut way back on cycling, from around 5,000-6,000 miles a year to only 600 miles this year. I'm still spending about the same amount of time exercising, but Strava doesn't give nearly as much credit for running as it does cycling, so on graphs it looks like my activity and effort have plummeted to 25% of my former activities. In reality, my jogging and running workouts feel significantly harder than cycling, other than some cycling interval training and hill repeats, and the occasional time trial to check my one hour tempo effort.
Part of the problem is a beta blocker I'm taking now (to prevent migraines, not for high BP or tachycardia) has reduced my heart rate 10-20 bpm, so while my perceived effort is the same, Strava interprets it as loafing. Strava interprets a leisurely 2 mile errand walk, sans HR monitor, as equal to my 5-6 mile running workouts with HR monitor So I'm going to discontinue wearing my Tickr for most workouts, other than an occasional maximum or near maximum effort once or twice a month.
For example, last Sunday I did a brutal 6 mile run with intervals, including hill strides and several sprints on the flats. Wearing a heart rate monitor, rather than my former heart rate of 160+ bpm on the same efforts, Now, with the beta blocker, I'm around 140-150 bpm. Strava estimated the relative effort for that at 75. That was one of my most exhausting running workouts since I resumed running in late 2019 and I was so achy that night I could barely walk Monday. But I slept well.
Tuesday I took a 9 mile walk over a four hour period, alternating between a brisk and leisurely pace, combined with some shopping and store browsing. Not really a workout, per se, despite the miles. No heart rate monitor. Based on similar recent walks wearing a heart rate monitor, Strava would have estimated the relative effort at around 30. But without the Tickr, it said 99.
My usual leisurely errand walks of 1-2 miles get a relative effort score of around 5-10 wearing the HR monitor, 20-30 without. It defaults to my age group estimates without the heart rate data. Even modifying the zones and thresholds make little or no difference.
That's ridiculous and makes Strava's relative effort gauge useless for my workouts. Some of the YouTube training plans I've seen also tend to dismiss heart rate and zone training as a useful metric for anyone other than elite athletes in their primes. I disputed that notion for awhile but now I gotta admit - they probably have a valid point about maintenance fitness activities for someone my age in my condition.
Between age and meds and substances that affect my heart rate up (thyroid, Sudafed, caffeine) and down (beta blocker, some supplements), heart rate is no longer a useful metric for me. I have no other heart issues, no complications to worry about, so I'll just go back to relying on perceived effort, breathing, etc., to gauge my efforts for routine, hard and recovery workouts. Worked fine for me up until I got a Tickr in 2019 or 2020 and began obsessing over useless trivia.
So I'll keep the Tickr for occasional checks at home using the Elite HRV app, and for indoor trainer sessions, especially intervals and max efforts to gauge my maximum heart rate. But I'll be glad to be rid of the uncomfortable pressure on my chest during routine running and cycling sessions.