Working on an exercise plan

[unixronin]

I’ve always had trouble maintaining a regular exercise plan ... and frankly, it’s mostly because I find exercise so damned boring. So to try to work around this, I’m going to try to remember to do some work with the hand weights while I wait for the espresso machine to warm up and build steam pressure, which typically adds up to about fifteen minutes that I’m usually not doing anything anyway.

Today I started with thirty each front and back forearm curls, wrist spins, inward/outward double blocks, outside raises to overhead, and half-circle sweeps at shoulder level, all left and right together, then finished up with fifty alternating full-speed karate punches, all with three-pound hand weights. The last had me coughing a little — I’m still clearing the last of the crud out of my lungs from a rather nasty cold — but not enough that I couldn’t finish the set.

Hopefully I’ll remember to do this every day until I manage to form a habit. I need to dig up my PT notes and see whether I missed anything, and figure out a good time to fit in the leg exercises too. I just wish there was some way to get my left foot and ankle fixed so that I could run again. I probably won’t ever get back to the physical shape I was in before Splat Day, but I should be able to get significantly better than I am now if I can just manage not to let it lapse out of boredom.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

When I was in PT in rehab after the knee surgery, they passed me a set of hand weights and started listing off exercises, one at a time. I'd do that set, then they'd give me another. I listened to the description of the last one, thought about it for a second. and realized, "Hey, that's just a karate punch." So I started doing karate punches at full speed. The poor PT just about freaked ... he was worried I'd tear a rotator cuff. I relented and slowed down just because it was probably easier to appease the PT than to convince him that I started doing martial arts when I was 16, that I'd trained under everyone from USAF unarmed combat instructors to the President of the International Okinawan Gojo-Ryu Karate-Do Federation, and I wasn't going to hurt myself.

But yeah. I'm not going to overdo it. :)