Exercise – Regular Guy

Healthy Attitude

brian — Wed, 14 May 2014 16:50:47 +0000

Sometimes I worry about things. I worry my favorite TV shows will go away (that actually happened last week – not happy about it). I worry that I will miss out on a good joke. I worry that bad health things will happen to me.

That last one can take up some serious brain space, which is why I broke down a month or so ago and joined a gym.

Even though I hardly resemble someone who had an OK career as a college athlete, I have tried to maintain some sort of physical fitness, especially in recent years.

I have mainly restricted those efforts, however, to long walks and the occasional session on an old, somewhat broken exercise bike in the basement.

Anything more strenuous went on the backburner for a couple of reasons. First of all, I have a lot of trouble running because of knee and ankle injuries from my wrestling days. Secondly, I’m lazy.

But I finally overcame that second recently when I saw an offer I could not refuse. I had looked at buying a treadmill or something similar for the house many, many times, but just could not justify the expense. An affordable membership fee made my cheapness (I guess that is a third reason) a moot point.

With that obstacle out of the way, I have managed to conquer the second reason. By looking for natural openings in my daily schedule, I have put in more than 20 workouts since starting this project in early April. I have even done some long outside walks on days when I either can’t go to the gym or feel like a change of pace.

The bonus is that, thanks to the elliptical machines, I can get a more strenuous workout without having to worry about my bad knees and ankles. I have worked my way up to almost three miles at a running pace.

When I shared one of my successful workouts on Facebook – I rarely do this because I don’t want to be “that guy who is always talking about his workout routine” – a college buddy joked that I had probably never run that far before.

I know he was kidding, but I made sure to point out that when I used to wrestle, I regularly ran more than two miles a day. I credit thank kind of background with letting me get back into the flow of things so easily.

Sure, I had tried to get back into shape before, but my creaky joints and my laziness teamed up to foil those plans. Now that I have found something to make it a little easier on my body, I fell back into hold habits much easier than I expected.

Like any normal person, I never really liked running, but I remember the feeling of accomplishment after a good solid workout. I have started to feel that way again. I even considered breaking into a jog while taking a walk through town one day last week, but I thought about my knees.

The worries about my health haven’t completely subsided, but I definitely feel better about things. In fact, I feel good enough to consider running in a 5K sometime this summer.

That’s when I’ll really worry about my health – my mental health.

The Right Shoes

brian — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 18:02:34 +0000

I go through this at least once a year. For a variety of reasons, I decide I need to make changes to my workout regimen.

Currently, I walk for about half an hour between two and five times a week. Everything depends on the weather and my schedule. I also have an old exercise bike in the basement I will ride on occasion, especially when in the winter.

But I can never seem to leave well enough alone. That’s how I ended up at a few stores last week looking for new running shoes.

I did need to get a new pair of shoes for exercise regardless of whether I wanted to add running back into my schedule, but I figured if I was going to put a crowbar in my wallet for the new kicks, I might as well really put them to use.

The problem is that, thanks to my many years of wrestling, I have pretty bad knees and ankles. This means that whenever I start this running kick, I’m really just on an inevitable path of giving up running because my legs just can’t take the pain anymore.

So when I went shoe shopping, I had to balance my natural cheapness with the need to find a pair of shoes which might make the torture of running a little less painful. Since I’m not a big runner, I didn’t know exactly what kind of shoe I wanted. I did, however, know exactly what kind of shoe I did not want – five-finger shoes.

These goofy-looking things popped up a few years ago. They are called the “barefoot alternative” and look like gloves for your feet. Apparently, they help you run better. I guess that’s supposed to help you overcome looking completely stupid.

Five-finger shoes would have never crept into my mind while looking for running shoes under normal circumstances, but I have recently heard stories of people wearing them in everyday circumstances.

Unless we all have some need now to climb through trees to guarantee our survival as a people, I can’t understand why we can’t get along with sticking our toes in normal shoes.

A New York comedian posted a photo online this week of a guy wearing a pair of these shoes while riding the subway. Now I know that you should expect weird things when in the city, but the person looked like they were wearing dress pants.

If you get dressed for work with the intention of looking professional, how can you honestly grab a pair of foot gloves and not realize how incredibly moronic you will look with them on?

As a society, we have unfortunately allowed some very unfortunate fashion trends to proliferate – popped collars, jean shorts on men, Ed Hardy shirts. We can’t let people think that the foot glove deserves a chance to succeed.

I tried to do my small part by buying normal shoes. If everyone of us contributes a little to this effort, maybe the people who wear these kind of shoes will see the error of their ways.

Then again, a portion of the population hasn’t realized that the bill of a baseball cap is supposed to face forward so I might be expecting too much.

Getting into Shape

brian — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 11:17:53 +0000

A little more than a year ago, I made a pretty big decision. I noticed that I would get up pretty early most mornings, but I didn’t really accomplish much.

In the time I had before I had to shower ad get ready for work, I would usually watch TV or goof off on the Internet.

Most times, I had good intentions of accomplishing something like doing some reading or writing, but I hardly ever followed through and pretty much just wasted my time until I had to get moving.

Even though I am a fan of the sloth, I thought things needed to change. So I decided to start exercising because, well, I could stand to get in better shape.

I started off by going for short walks. I knew I wouldn’t get back down to my fighting weight this way, but I thought I had to do something.

At first, I thought walking would bore me, but I ended up really liking it. I bought an MP3 player and discovered different routes around downtown. Everything looked so different in the early morning light.
Instead of music, I usually listened to podcasts. I learned a lot about pop culture and sports during my walks. If you saw a guy laughing or nodding in agreement to no one in particular as he walked through downtown over the past year in the morning, that was probably me.

I managed to keep going through the fall and winter. Since we had a pretty mild winter, I couldn’t use the weather as an excuse. Like I thought, the weight really didn’t come off since I was just walking, but I started to feel better. I could tell the difference when I missed a few days of walking.

I used a pedometer to track my mileage and kept a running tally. Between my 39th and 40th birthday, I walked more than 200 miles. That’s not the most incredible number, but I’m glad I really stuck with something.

The hard part was trying to decide what to do this year. Did I just see if I could top that number? Did I up the ante a little? Did I just pat myself on the back and go back to my lazy ways?

For now, I have decided to switch the focus from walking to running. I have pretty bad knees and ankles from my wrestling days, but want to see how long I can stave off that pain.

I have not had the greatest motivation at the start, but don’t want to give up right away. I know I can do it because I used to run all the time when I competed, but I also know how much I hate running so the temptation is to throw in the towel before I even get into the habit.

The hardest part is that I lost my MP3 player about a month ago and have been too lazy and cheap to buy a new one. I’m a baby that way. Entertainment will play a tremendous role in whether I feel motivated to get the exercise I so badly need.

So I guess I have to suck it up and go buy myself a new toy so I can feel like running in the morning. I hope I survive.