Keeping fit on a narrowboat

[Simon Todd]

Hi all and hope you are all keeping well. I’d like to discuss how you keep fit while afloat. I’m keenly researching for our early retirement and so far have found almost nothing on this site or any other. 
We’re early 50s and pretty fit, usually running around 40 miles a week and strength training 5 out of 7 days. Not too much room for that on a boat and CC makes gym membership not practical. So what do you guys do? 
cheers guys

 

Simon

[OldGoat]

Plenty of towpaths to run on

 

     OR

 

Go boating and uses lots of locks - That's what a boat is for.

Find a mooring near a long flight of locks and work your way up and down - regularly?

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Simon Todd said:

Hi all and hope you are all keeping well. I’d like to discuss how you keep fit while afloat. I’m keenly researching for our early retirement and so far have found almost nothing on this site or any other. 
We’re early 50s and pretty fit, usually running around 40 miles a week and strength training 5 out of 7 days. Not too much room for that on a boat and CC makes gym membership not practical. So what do you guys do? 
cheers guys

 

Simon

 

You will be possibly surprised how much of a work out you will get just moving your boat regularly through manually operated locks.

[Tonka]

By doing locks.

[Mad Harold]

Take a trip along the Huddersfield Narrow. (Only ) 42 locks from Aspley Wharf to the Standedge Tunnel.A distance of about 9 miles.

That will keep you fit  (to drop )

[Simon Todd]

I fully appreciate the locks are a form of keeping fit but on those non cruising days I’ll need to work out. Running as you’ve all acknowledged is easy but room for weight training, yoga, stretching or calisthenics is certainly tricky. 

[Tony Brooks]

for fitness I like parts of the GU where the locks are just not far enough apart to ride up so I walked. the OP could run. For something more strenuous he could try Hatton or Tardebigge at the trot.

[jpcdriver]

Make sure you have a cassette toilet (and don't buy a trolley). That will help with weight training.

[Mad Harold]

7 minutes ago, Simon Todd said:

I fully appreciate the locks are a form of keeping fit but on those non cruising days I’ll need to work out. Running as you’ve all acknowledged is easy but room for weight training, yoga, stretching or calisthenics is certainly tricky. 

I note that you say we,in your post,so I assume you have a wife.

Hope I am not being too cheeky,but I'm sure you know the only other excercise a gentleman should take.?

[Jen-in-Wellies]

5 minutes ago, Simon Todd said:

I fully appreciate the locks are a form of keeping fit but on those non cruising days I’ll need to work out. Running as you’ve all acknowledged is easy but room for weight training, yoga, stretching or calisthenics is certainly tricky. 

The tow path is your garden. Good for anything that doesn't involve large kit. If it is cold and wet, then that will just toughen you up. You may have to make some small changes in your life when on a boat. Not happy about that, then don't live on a boat! Boating itself is a good work out. It's why the few remaining CaRT staff lock keepers don't have a gym membership as part of their employment deal!

Jen

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Simon Todd said:

I fully appreciate the locks are a form of keeping fit but on those non cruising days I’ll need to work out. Running as you’ve all acknowledged is easy but room for weight training, yoga, stretching or calisthenics is certainly tricky. 

 

One of the things about boating is that you have to adapt your housebound lifestyle.

 

I have seen people often doing some of that stuff on a carefully chosen spot on the tow path, especially yoga.

[Simon Todd]

1 minute ago, jpcdriver said:

Make sure you have a cassette toilet (and don't buy a trolley). That will help with weight training.

I’m not lifting that above my head!!

[Jen-in-Wellies]

Fixing most boat engines is better than yoga for improving flexibility. As is clearing a weed hatch!

[bizzard]

Good excercise is to saw up your fiewood with a hand saw-bow saw instead making a horrible racket that really travels and stink by using petrol chain saws. By the time you've got the thing going and adorned yourself with all the elf and safety togs and discovered the chains blunt a handsaw would have done it. Folk play chain saws here, cutting up stuff not much thicker than twigs, the noise is awful. 

[jpcdriver]

Polish the boat - wax on, wax off. 

[Ray T]

Try bow hauling the boat for stretches instead of using the motor.

 

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Ray T

[sirweste]

45 minutes ago, Simon Todd said:

Hi all and hope you are all keeping well. I’d like to discuss how you keep fit while afloat. I’m keenly researching for our early retirement and so far have found almost nothing on this site or any other. 
We’re early 50s and pretty fit, usually running around 40 miles a week and strength training 5 out of 7 days. Not too much room for that on a boat and CC makes gym membership not practical. So what do you guys do? 
cheers guys

 

Simon

 

 

Yeah it is a bit off a faff having no space, particularly during the winter. 

 

I have a couple of kettle bells, but motivation to use them out in winter is low! I also have a Beastmaker set-up so I can still keep climbing finger training up. 

In the summer I try to moor somewhere quiet, with a decent width of towpath, so I can have space to exercise. Use my bike to do interval / sprint training where the towpath allows.

I loath gyms, but there are some national ones (AnyTime Fitness) that means you can use them in various locations, still not really viable in my opinion though.

 

Obviously running would be no issue for you, but strength exercise is indeed a hassle! I tend to haul the boat quite a bit, I work locks pretty hard and i have 25l drums that I physically carry in pairs back to the boat from the van (farm carries), which is usually a 5 minute or so carry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mrsmelly]

48 minutes ago, Simon Todd said:

I fully appreciate the locks are a form of keeping fit but on those non cruising days I’ll need to work out. Running as you’ve all acknowledged is easy but room for weight training, yoga, stretching or calisthenics is certainly tricky. 

Hospital is full of athletes. I have tended to follow what my parents did/do to keep fit. Dad never did any sport or running in his life but that killed him early he died aged 90 and was always fully mobile. Mum likewise wouldnt know what a gym looked like or any kind of sport and so far shes not doing too bad aged now 100. The trick it seems is not to have fad diets and not get overweight. Mum always has proper milk and white bread with butter if she has a bacon sandwich, Dad had full English breakfast most days of his life. So eat a balanced diet and ensure you dont run out of beer and you should be fine................Im hoping it works for me as it did for parents 

[tehmarks]

I hate running with a passion, but you can't have any better access to running than living moored to the towpath. Cycling too. They take care of my cardio requirements, and I fill the rest in with bodyweight exercises in the style of the military — press-ups, sit-ups, planks, etc etc etc. I'm very enthusiastic about exercise that doesn't require equipment, and it certainly does the job for me as a fit and very active 31 year old. That sort of routine got me Army-fit a few years ago, though I never did join thanks to breaking my leg into three pieces halfway through the process.

 

In fairness though, my passion is for climbing and mountaineering. Any extracurricular exercise is filler and training for getting into the mountains, rather than as the sole form of exercise I do.

 

@sirweste: that is genius. I have a portable fingerboard that I hang from bridges because I couldn't think of any feasible way to mount one on the boat. Chapeau!

Edited January 26, 2021 by tehmarks

[Simon Todd]

@tehmarks. That’s really interesting, thanks for the info, do you struggle for floor space?

Edited January 26, 2021 by Simon Todd

[Mike Hurley]

All boats are gyms, carrying gas bottles, bags of coal, logs, cassettes, shopping etc.

[tehmarks]

43 minutes ago, Simon Todd said:

@tehmarks. That’s really interesting, thanks for the info, do you struggle for floor space?

 

Only because I live in abject chaos! To be honest, I haven't had the motivation to look after myself most of the past year; I've been living in a mildly depressed fog for most of the pandemic. Decided to stop being so useless last week, and now that my floor is spotless I reckon there's plenty of space for that sort of thing, even though I keep my table/sofa bed permanently in bed mode.

 

In sunnier times I tend to do my exercise on the roof, or the towpath if the towpath is surfaced or otherwise serviceable.

[Mike Todd]

2 hours ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Fixing most boat engines is better than yoga for improving flexibility. As is clearing a weed hatch!

I wish I could do that! (I nearly said could still that but I am not I ever could!)

 

Gave me shivers (literally) just to look at it . . . 

[nbfiresprite]

3 hours ago, Mad Harold said:

I note that you say we,in your post,so I assume you have a wife.

Hope I am not being too cheeky,but I'm sure you know the only other excercise a gentleman should take.?

 

He might not be a drinker

[doratheexplorer]

The standard answer of going boating doesn't really cut it.  If it did, then so many boaters wouldn't be so fat.  It's better exercise than sitting on your arse, but unless you're going to single hand 30 locks every day, then it doesn't really stack up. 

 

However, one of the great things about boating is that the towpaths are just brilliant for walking and running (and sometimes cycling on).  Watch the really muddy towpaths - I use trail runners with extra deep lugs in winter, and switch to standard road running shoes in summer.  The great thing about towpath running, is that you rarely have to cross a road and it's virtually impossible to get lost.  If I'm doing a 10k run, I'll just turn around after 5 and a bit kilometres, which means I have a short walk to warm down at the end. 

 

Yoga/pilates on a boat is excellent to, since the gentle rocking movement of the boat means that you have to compensate to balance and that works your core better.

 

The downside to all this, is that the canals pass a lot of pubs...