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

Five Tibetans

[ewen]

Google turns up this illustrated guide to The 5 Tibetans. They're fairly popular in various yoga communities. There's even a Wikipedia page. There are various books around too.

I've been doing them for about 18 months, pretty much every day, and would definitely recommend them. I've no idea about "kicking the regenerative processes into hyperdrive", but it's (a) about the right amount of exercise to do daily, (b) fairly quick (10-15 minutes normally), (c) exercises most core muscle groups in both directions, (d) is a fairly good progression of exercises. unixronin may want to take the fourth exercise fairly gently at first, given that it's flexing the knees a fair bit.

I've no idea if the Tibetan Monks history is true or a recent invention. But it's not the history which is making them work. It's exercising the right sets of muscles.

Ewen