Tag: workout

Posted in fitness, Life

The green kettlebell

Posted on by William Douthwaite

So I’m just walking down the street with the big dog, as I so often do, and spy a green kettlebell sitting in someone’s driveway.

Okay, someone is clearly in the middle of a MetCon (metabolic conditioning) workout where someone repeatedly runs and does kettlebell swings and other exercises for time.

The strange thing is, there’s no “someone” around. The garage door is closed. I don’t see anyone running. The twenty-pound kettlebell is just parked there in front of the street.

If you’ve ever read my stuff, you know I like to speculate about things like this.

Maybe it rolled out of a delivery truck. The driver pulled out too quickly and the box broke apart when it hit the street, stranding the green kettlebell.

Perhaps it escaped the garage gym. We’ve got a collection of dumbbells and kettlebells in our garage. This one could have tumbled past the cars and almost to the street.

Someone may have thrown the kettlebell out of the garage in anger or frustration. Some workouts can be infuriating. Why not take it out on your equipment?

Someone was cleaning house. Garages get cluttered with equipment no one uses. Enough is enough, and some of it goes to the curb.

Could it be a signal?

  • Leave the package in the driveway with green kettlebell. Or else.
  • Where’s the meeting? Look for the green kettlebell.
  • Meet me by the green kettlebell.
  • If the kettlebell’s out, don’t come knocking.

“Let’s paint the garage!” And now the green kettlebell clashes with the new purple walls. “It’s gotta go.”

“It didn’t look like this in the picture.” Few things do. Whoever ordered it expected a different color. Ship it back? Too heavy. Just leave it on the curb. Someone will take it.

“You spilled green paint all over my kettlebell?” I’m going to kill you!

I have never, ever seen a kettlebell in a driveway. Only in a gym or in my garage.

Posted in Life

Alone

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Samuel Girven on Unsplash

I was the only one at the gym the other day.

Members have access to this gym twenty-four hours a day. It’s not a big gym. It probably doesn’t have too many members. It’s a hole-in-the-wall kind of place in a strip mall next to a Cuban restaurant. But it’s well-equipped, close to my house, and extremely affordable.

It was a Thursday, outside of my usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday routine. On those days I join about a dozen other people to workout.

But this day, three others were there at 9 am. Fifteen minutes later, they left, and I was alone. The front door was locked, 90’s metal music filled the air, and I still had a few sets of bench presses to go. It felt weird. Not creepy, just unusual.

So what’s better? A room full of people to work around? Having to wait your turn at a bench? Or having the place to yourself, with no one watching you, judging you, or waiting for you to get done at a station?

It really doesn’t matter. Most people just do their own thing. They’re not watching. They’re focused on doing their own thing. I probably do more observing than most.

And maybe that’s why it felt so strange. There was no one to notice, no one to watch.

How would you feel if you were the only one at the gym?

Posted in Life

Gramps

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Andrew Valdivia on Unsplash

“Hey, that’s a lot of weight, Gramps!”

Yeah, he was talking to me. Sixteen-ish, the young man was chatting it up around the gym, making sure everyone knew he was there. A little shorter than me and quite a bit heavier, he helped me add twenty-five-pound plates as I got ready to do some squats. When he watched me get ready for some deadlifts he reminded me that I was the oldest guy in the room.

I’ve been called Grandpa and Apa by my grandchildren. In fact, when I was playing with a bunch of MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) kids, they all called me Grandpa because my grandson did. But I’ve never been called “Gramps” before. It’s a label I’ve always associated with someone much older than me. Apparently, I qualify.

Is it normal to feel younger than your chronological age? My dad would argue with me about his age. When I asked him, “Did you ever think you would live to be ninety?” he would chuckle and say, “I’m not that old.” So, I’d ask him, “When were you born?” He would correctly answer, “1924.” “So, you are in your nineties!” He’d shake his head in disbelief.

There is one older gentleman I see in the gym just about every time I am there. Ed walks with a cane, sits on a few machines, and cranks out a few light reps. I give him credit. He’s there, doing more than most people. When he’s there, I don’t feel like “Gramps.”

Anyway, I’m just going to receive that comment as a compliment. I’m there doing more than most, too.

Posted in Stories

I’m done; he’s just getting started

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Sam Moghadam Khamseh on Unsplash

When I arrived at the gym on Saturday, I got there just as a man about my age was fumbling for his key fob to get in. I said, “I got it,” and swiped mine for the both of us.

He then signed in on the same clipboard as I do, a Silver and Fit membership that I get free through my insurance. I said, “Oh, so you’re the other old guy.” He didn’t answer.

I get right to work at the gym. My workouts always start with squats, so I find a rack and start doing warmup reps with an empty bar and then increasing weights until I get to my working weight. It only takes me a few minutes and I’m ready to begin my five sets of five reps.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him slowly and deliberately get ready to work out. He sat on a bench and unpacked his duffle, laying out his gear. He took off his sandals, put on socks, and pulled his knee braces up. After he put on his shoes he hung two weight belts over a bar on another squat rack. He certainly was well-equipped.

By this time, I’d finished my squats and moved on to overhead press.

In between sets I watched him set up his phone on tripod and aim it carefully at the squat rack where he would be working. He sat for a few moments, writing in a notebook. He found a few plates and loaded up the bar. Finally, he started doing a few warmup repetitions.

Having finished my presses, I moved on to deadlift, which for me is only a few sets. I was done by the time he began his workout.

I know it’s good to be prepared, safe, and methodical. Take your time, and make sure your form is correct. Everyone has their own style. I just don’t have that much time to be in the gym. I get in and out as quickly as possible.

Some people say they don’t have time to work out. Guess why?

Posted in Stories

The people in workout videos never change.

Posted on by William Douthwaite

Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

Most of my home fitness exercise is done with streaming Beachbody workouts. I’ve done Insanity, Insanity: Asylum 1 and 2, P90X, P90X3, and most recently, p90X2. When you stick with a program for several months, you get to know the people working out in the video. I know everyone’s names and what they do.

Just recently I thought, “These folks never change.” They never improve. They always use the same weights and do the same number of reps. On the other hand, the more workouts I do, the better I get. I increase my reps and my weights and improve. I’ve never actually gotten better than any of the cast. But I am closing in on them.

So in one sense, these are real people doing real exercises on a set somewhere. But they aren’t really there. They aren’t really exercising with me. I’m in a room of people who exist in a different dimension. You know what? It’s like they are living in eternity! They never age, never die, never get injured, never get sad, and never get sick. They are always enthusiastic and laughing. In their world, I don’t exist. They don’t know my name. They don’t know I’m exercising along with them. Our existences never intersect.

Except on the internet. I can search for and usually find them on social media. I learn about their real lives. Guess what? They really do exist! They have full names and families and friends and careers. They’ve aged since they made their exercise video. Just like me.

Posted in Stories

My fitness journey continues

Posted on by William Douthwaite

We moved to Florida in June of 1996. The sunshine state is a very different place to pursue ongoing fitness. You can go out for a run, a walk or a bike ride just about 365 days a year. Once in a while a severe thunderstorm or hurricane might break up your routine. But not very often.

We purchased a couple of bicycles when we arrived and made good use of them for rides of various distances. I continued to run three to five miles three or four times a week. We took the dogs for lots of walks, too.

We spent our first seven months in a rental while we waited for our house to be built. We discovered Alpha Fitness, a gym within walking distance of our home. I started going there three times a week, mostly doing upper body barbell and dumbbell exercises. My legs got plenty of activity from running and biking.

Our new home was on the other side of town, about five miles away. When you’re traveling that distance, there seem to be more reasons not to go and workout. But then Alpha Fitness moved to a location exactly halfway between our house and where I worked. I passed by every day and it was so easy to stop in there on the way to work, at lunch time (only a mile away) or on the way home in the evening. With a decent locker room, I could easily clean up on my way somewhere else. I went there three times a week for several years.

I split my workouts between upper and lower body and added quite a bit of strength. For a while I followed a 5×5 routine to build strength. Five sets of five reps each, rotating between back squats, dead lifts and bench press. You start light and add five pounds each time. I also included a few sets on some of the machines for legs and arms. I actually got up to a 310 lb. dead lift, a 200 lb. bench press and 275 back squat. Not too bad for being 5 foot ten inches and about 165 pounds.

After reaching those weights, I got a little tired of doing that and there was a change in management, so I dropped that membership in favor of doing some exercise routines at home.

I think it was the summer of 2009 that we purchased our first Beachbody workout DVDs, Insanity. You think you are in good shape till Shaun T. takes you through what you think is the workout but is actually just the ten minute warmup! But we stuck with it and found that it really increased our cardiovascular fitness. I still did a little running on the off days of the workout schedule.

After completing Insanity, I got the next two in that series, Insanity: Asylum and Insanity: Asylum 2. These workout DVDs had you working with an agility ladder on the ground, a jumprope, dumbbells and a pull-up bar. I got one of those pull-up bars that hangs from a door frame, but never liked it very much. I was also never able to do many pull-ups. All the plank work really helped my shoulders get stronger.

Some friends of ours had the P90X DVDs and weren’t using them. We borrowed them and for me, this was definitely next level. These workouts involve a lot of pull-ups, push-ups and power jumps. They were tough and they were long, usually around an hour. The yoga workout was ninety minutes. It was the first time I had ever done yoga. I never did that particular workout very often, since it took so much time. But by sticking with it, I worked my way up to ten pull-ups and thirty pushups.

We’ve incorporated so many of Shaun T’s phrases into our conversations. “Why do I do the things I do? ’cause I wanna look good!” “Dig deeper.” “Come on, y’all, let’s goooo!” “I’m smiling because I love it!” “This is bananas, yo” “It’s not a coffee break people”

P90X wasn’t my wife’s cup of tea, but she continues to do Insanity workouts. She also checked out some alternative classes at Thriv Fitness, the reincarnation of Alpha Fitness. She liked the TRX workouts, the spin bike classes and the hot yoga, too. She got me to try them, too, and the variety and challenge was good for us. I also worked my way through P90X3, which are all thirty-minute workouts (even the yoga). I think we also tried a twenty-five minute variation of Insanity, a boxing type workout with Australian coaches, and something called Piyo, a mashup of Pilates and yoga led by Chalene Johnson.

Variety is definitely the name of the game when you are working out at home. Plus, discipline. the upside is, you improve each week, while your video workout buddies stay at the same level. It’s extremely satisfying to outdo them. I think the publishers of these workouts know that.

We cancelled out membership at Thriv when the owner’s verbal abuse got too much for us to take. It was a good move. A few months later, they taped an “Out of business” sign to the door leaving many members and employees in the lurch.

But that only gets us up to 2018. The journey isn’t over yet.