I used to spend a couple of hours in the weight room, but really, an hour is long enough. I lift twice a week and on other days incorporate more core yoga and different exercises. It's important to listen to your body. I will shut it down if I'm tired.
I spend around three hours on the track and two hours in the weight room, five or six days a week.
Your core is so important. Get your endurance up. Running and long-distance. Swimming is good as well. Important to have a good core, utilize the proper exercises to strengthen it. It goes out to the rest of your body and makes sure your body is right.
I had a few months of physical prep where I was training six hours a day - I was doing an hour and a bit of yoga, I would do a couple hours of cardio and weight-lifting, and then I would do an hour or maybe two of martial arts training.
Well, you have your regular classes, like three hours every other day, three times a week. You get twice a week to have an ice practice. Once a week you have weight lifting. It was great.
In terms of working out, I'm in the gym, maximum, twice a week, but for a pretty intense period of time: two or two and a half hours nonstop. Most of the exercises are body weight. We're talking pull-ups, chin-ups, decline rows, elevated push-ups.
Running strips you and works your core, mixing it up with different exercises so your body doesn't get used to one thing, so you can really get intense with your workout. I never like to stick to one thing; otherwise, you don't really see that many results.
I think some of the most important exercises are all the core exercises that you can do to maximize training in certain areas of your body.
I think yoga has given me better posture. People don't realise how strong it makes you. You have to use your body weight to hold yourself. As you get older, you're supposed to lift weights, but I find that kind of boring. Yoga is lifting my own body.
Core strength and stability is very important to me. Tennis is all about rotation of the body and my ability to create power. I incorporate a lot of abdominal, back and glute exercises into my gym sessions.
Your least frequent, most extreme exertions will have the greatest influence on your fitness. The peak moments of a workout count far more than the amount of time you spend working out. This is why a series of 40-yard sprints at full speed benefits you more than half an hour of jogging. It's also the reason why lifting a weight heavy enough to make your heart pound and your muscles burn counts more than spending hours at the gym always in your comfort zone, never truly challenging your body. When a work-out becomes an unvarying, monotonous routine, it loses its effectiveness.
Being tired isn't anything. What's important is the mind. The body being tired isn't important. You can get over the body being tired by resting for a half-hour or an hour. What's important is whether the mind is tired.
If I can get to the gym 3-4 days a week and spend 50 minutes to an hour and a half, irrespective of whether I lift something or not, I'm getting in shape.
I meditate twice a day. I meditate two hours every day. I spend at least an hour working out. So that's three hours every day of something mind/body discipline. Other than that: nothing.
We'd always said boxers shouldn't lift weights. Now I realize some champion boxer started that rumor. I noticed if I did weights a couple of times a week, I would be able to hit that jab a lot longer. After sparring, everybody's gone, and I sneak into the weight room. Spend 40 minutes in there lifting weights.
I'll spend about an hour and a half working out: mobility, activate whatever muscles, a full-body session every time, some full-body exercises and some upper-body exercises.
Yoga has trimmed my body in a way that the gym never could. I used to be a gym rat, but I switched to yoga and am now almost 10 pounds lighter. One important thing I've gotten from yoga is breathing. When I'm cooking, the top part of my body collapses down. It cuts off my diaphragm.