Fitness Update

A few more catch up posts I need to crank through before we officially turn our backs on the old year.

The final quarter of 2025 ended up being my worst workout stretch of the year. Not a huge surprise, as the weather turned, I had a couple weeks of foot pain, I spent several days shuttling C back-and-forth as she battled her mystery illness,[1] and then the holidays hit. My longest stretch of not breaking a sweat before December was three days. I will add a small asterisk to that, as over spring break S and I only took short walks each morning. But that was still better than the absolute nothing I did for seven straight days in late December.

That killed my numbers for the month, and I logged just 17 workouts in December. This was pretty poor timing as it coincided with the time of year I eat the most crap and I managed to pack on 4–5 extra lbs. over the final five weeks of the year. Something to focus on losing right away in the new year!

Those drug my Q4 totals to 63 of 92 days, or 68%. For the year, I worked out 274 days, or 75% of days. I also had five bonus workouts mixed in: shoveling snow on days I also worked out, a second walk after other cardio, moving M in 90°+ heat.

One obvious area for improvement is not letting as many weekend days slip by without doing something active. Once we got deep into summer I hit an excellent groove with my swimming. This year I will aim at getting into that rhythm earlier in the season.[2]

That said, I’m pretty proud of how diligent I was with my workouts. For years I’ve taken a little notebook to the gym that listed my strength workout for the day, but I never did a tangible tracking of those workouts. Logging them into the chart I found on Reddit last January was a great visual reminder and motivator of where I was. That helped me turn 2025 into my best fitness year probably ever in terms of events. In typical me fashion, though, my weight barely budged over the first 11 months of the year. I’m not sure how much room there is to adjust my caloric intake, as I’m always hungry. I suppose that’s one goal going forward, to experiment a bit in finding more snacks that knock down those hunger pangs while giving myself a chance to burn off the extra pounds.

Other goals for this year are to find some additions to the Old Man routine I’ve been on for over four years. It is effective, has variety to it, and is focused on the physical limitations we hit as we get older. But I need to be better about mixing supplementary exercises into it. I also need to be more committed to stretching, core strength, and other non-sexy parts of working out. It’s relatively easy to do a cardio workout, or lift weights for 40 minutes. It’s harder to be equally motivated to lay on the ground for 10–15 minutes afterward doing boring things like planks, mobility work, etc.

I’ve printed off and begun filling in my 2026 sheet. I’m already off to a better start than I was a year ago. There is one other major change in my fitness routine for 2026. But that’s a topic for another post.