The smallest activity can make a big difference
the other day I got asked a bit late if I wanted to sub in for a game of pickleball but I had already run a 10k and did some calisthenics so I initially told them to count me out but they informed me that it was not a serious match and it was more of a bunch of older guys just hitting the ball back and forth.
I asked him to insure that he was absolutely telling me the truth and he assured me that he was. Once I arrived there and saw the 3 people I knew that he was in fact telling the truth. It honestly was just around 90 minutes of not really competitive at all hitting the ball around. I am a very sweaty person and I barely broke a sweat. It didn't even feel like a workout but when I looked at my watch readout afterwards I found out that I had done a bit more than I thought I had and certain more than, as I often say, sitting on the sofa and watching Netflix.
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This is one thing that I really enjoy about pickleball. It can be very competitive if you want it to be, and believe me, there were some people on the other courts that were taking it very seriously. With us though we had an unspoken rule that if you had to do an "knee breaker" to reach something to just let it go. We were keeping score but we switched up partners every set and nobody was really striving to be the best. This was exactly what I was looking for and I was kind of happy that in the end, my watch told me that I had burned significantly more calories than I really thought I would have while barely breaking a sweat.
This just goes to show that a little bit of activity can do you a world of good because this 600 extra active calories was something that for me anyway, would be an entire meal or if I wanted it to be, around 4 beers worth of activity calories.
My heart rate never entered any sort of danger zone either and during the entire thing it all kind of seemed really laid back
Here comes the point of me writing this at all: Before I transitioned to cardio as my primary form of workout and away from weights, even this level of activity would have been very taxing on my cardiovascular limits. I never realized it at the time and was reading, I think, biased literature that kept telling me that weight lifting was the best form of exercise. I guess it depends on what your objectives are. When I was doing 99% weights and almost zero cardio, I looked fantastic on the beach, but simply playing a game of toss the frisbee that involved even a little bit of running would be very taxing on me very quickly.
I think that for me this accidental decision to switch over to cardio has been a very good one because I generally just feel better and even though I have lost a great deal of muscle mass and miss it kind of, the results I am seeing in my ability to do real activities are something that make me very happy. Before, I could look in the mirror and flex and be like "hell yeah" but ask me to play a game of really anything that involves running and I wouldn't be able to do it for very long even though I probably looked like the person that would be the MOST capable of it.
There is a lot of benefit to weight lifting, of this much I am sure because I dropped a ton of weight and really enjoyed seeing the benefits in the mirror. With cardio the results are not as visual, but if you pay attention to how your endurance is changing, which is something that before affordable technology like these cheap sport watches existed was probably very difficult to track, you will start to appreciate the changes to yourself as much as you would the muscle growth.
I also don't have to pay as much attention to my diet, which honestly, was a real pain back in my lifting days. I still make certain to lift a little bit to maintain what I can from my previous muscle mass, and I also still take protein supplements, but in the meantime I am also enjoying delicious carbs a lot more than I used to and I know that I can because I am burning more of them with my constant BPM rising activities that previously I was incapable of.