ROLLING YOUR OWN

(Subtitle: I’ve Got Nothing; What do I do now?)

During the Great Depression, many people couldn’t afford ready-made cigarettes, so they bought a bag of Bull Durham cigarette tobacco and some rolling papers and took care of business that way. Not that I’m advocating for smoking and the tobacco industry, but that attitude is what I’m going for here as it relates to a person’s health and fitness. As this recession continues and trends deeper toward a serious Depression, more and more of us will have to find inexpensive ways to make up for not being able to afford health clubs and personal trainers. My suggestions are as follows:

To replace free weights or lifting machines: find something that has an ample, comfortable handle and weighs at least 10 to 15 pounds. For me, it is a portable drill inside its carrying case. Currently, I do the following exercises once every second or third day: left arm curls, right arm curls, (by curls, I mean holding the object so that your elbow is tucked into your side near your hip bone and your arm extended straight out at an angle perdendicular to your body and parallel to the floor, and the weighted object firmly in the grasp of the hand on that arm. Then raise the extended arm up until its path "curls" up to where you can touch your same-side shoulder with the knuckles of the hand holding the weighted object touching that shoulder. This completed action constitutes one "curl") and one-armed military presses (the exercise starts with the hand holding the weighted object touching the same-side shoulder, then extending the arm all the way up as far as it will go. This movement constitutes a one-handed—or one-armed, if you will—press) and those deltoid exercises where you grasp the weighted object with both hands—knuckles up—while allowing the fingernail-side of the gripping hands to dangle at their lowest point in front of you, then raising the object from this resting position up to where both hands are tucked neatly underneath the chin.

Another suggestion: You know those cloth grocery bags they’re asking people to use right now because they're "green"? It shouldn’t take much imagination at all to find 10 to 20 pounds of canned goods or whatever to put in one of those bags and do the same exercises I mentioned above.

A third suggestion: Take an old (or new) broomstick and put gallon milk containers filled with water on either end. Each container will weigh 8.33 lbs., which will make the weight resistance to the force exert trying to lift it a total of 16.66 lbs. This may be a little tricky if the containers are allowed to slide back and forth, so you may have to use some ingenuity in fastening the milk containers to the broomstick to keep that from happening (a quick fix might be duct tape). Also, with this apparatus, you will be doing everything as a two-handed operation.

Why would any of these substitute weight devices work? you might ask. My answer is this: first of all, you don’t need the heavier weights to get good exercising results, unless you are in an advanced program. You can get stronger just lifting what I have described here. In fact, let me talk a little about the nature of strength training. To create greater endurance in the muscles, the ideal approach should be to lift something that is not very heavy several times, hopefully, until they come into some kind of state of exhaustion. To build heavy lifting strength, the correct approach, I'm told, is to lift something very heavy a just few times. What many of us require—and I’m talking about basic fitness here, not making the US Olympic team—is the former, building endurance for the purposes of creating and maintaining health.

To replace all those nifty cardio machines down at the gym: go to your local park and (depending on the state of your health) walk, jog or run around it a couple, three times, making sure to do this at least 6 times a week.

To replace those "step-up" machines at the gym, find a curb that is at least 12" to 14" off the ground, but don’t go higher than 18". I use a cement curb that rises around the outdoor volleyball court at my local park.

To replace the ab machines at the gym: do sit-ups with knees bent. Then do sit-ups with knees straight. One set will work your lower abs., and the other set will work much of the rest of your abs. True you can be probably get a more efficient abdominal exercise if you buy one of those exercise balls, but I’m talking rock bottom expenses here. And using just your own body is free. So the price is right.

Speaking of your own body, you can get additional abdominal benefit by doing leg lifts, preferably with legs together, then with legs apart, repeating this exercise several times, if possible.

And don’t forget that old stand-by, the push-up. It doesn’t matter that you may not be able to do more than a couple. Just a do a couple a day till you can do more. If you stick with you should be able to do increase the number of push-ups you eventually do. And if this is still too difficult, don’t be afraid to do "fake" push-ups until you get the strength you need to do regular ones. By "fake", I mean pushing off of some raised object. It could be a footstool or it could be the side of a couch, depending on your fitness level. But it should make a pretty good progression to go from the side of the couch, then when enough strength has been developed, to graduate to a footstool, and finally to the floor.

I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that I haven’t prescribed how many repetitions of any of these exercises to do. That’s because I don’t know how many your body might recommend. That’s right. I said, your body. Listen to it (If you honestly do not know what I’m talking about, read—or re-read—the blog entry called "Let Me Hear Your Body Talk, Body Talk").

Wait. I’ll even give you an example of what I mean. Some months back, it dawned on me that I could use the curbing at my local park for step-ups. Good cardio, good interval work, good for building leg strength. At that time, I was doing two sets of 15 step-ups for a total of 30 a day, but I noticed I was getting some sharp pain on the outside part of my knee, so after a week, I stopped. Just recently I went back to doing the step-ups, surprising myself by very easily doing 60 step-ups in sets of 30. My own body gave me the cues as to how many, how long, how often. And that formula has worked well for me most of my adult life, once my competitive years ended. No more "no pain, no gain." Now it’s "Train, don’t strain."

I hope you found some valuable information here. If you did, let me know at the.juiced.avenger@gmail.com

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THE JUICED AVENGER!