Burning Ones

Posts tagged with ‘exercise’

• Mr. Miyagi: King of Task Based Exercise

  From May 05, 2009 @ 6:00 am

  I won’t in any way claim to be physically fit. In fact, my health has always somewhat boggled my mind. I’m currently a trim 275, I can bike 50 miles in a day no problem going 13 or 14 MPH, I can set up and tear down a sound system, I can ‘run’ a mile in around 8 minutes, and my wife doesn’t think I’m all that fat. Oh, and I love to eat meat and recently a good glass of wine or bottle of beer is a welcome accompaniment to my evening meal.

  I know… Not a exactly shining example of davidic perfection.

  I would like, though, not to blame this on my sin of gluttony love of food/lack of discipline/flat feet/lack of friends to do it with/lack of money for a gym membership. Instead (don’t worry, I won’t dodge), quite simply this comes down to the fact that I hate exercising for no other reason than my health. I loathe the gym for this reason. It’s literally a place that you go to do nothing but exercise for a few hours. I don’t know if any amount of podcasts or audio books could make up for the frustration that would build within me (I’m getting frustrated right now!). What I need, if I’m going to exercise at all, is task-based exercising.

  Task-Based Exercising

  Task-based exercising is something that makes a ton of sense to me. Let me describe it at it’s heart. For people like me who just refuse to be motivated by health alone, what we need is a task to accomplish that’s also a work out. For example, I hadn’t gotten on a bike in years and then I found out that my work and school were only ten miles away from where I lived. The budget was tight and so I said to myself, “I can bike ten miles. How hard can it be?” So bike I did.

  And it was wonderful!

  I was getting a 20 mile bike ride in 4 days a week, which is the kind of bike ride that most people don’t have time for. Plus, because I was biking instead of driving, I was able to, for the most part, bypass hairy traffic situations. This didn’t end up saving me time (it took me about 20 minutes longer to bike in than to drive in, for those who are interested), but it did keep me moving rather than sitting in a car in stop and go traffic and it was fun. There’s very little as satisfying as when you’re riding along and the sun’s coming up over the horizon and you’ve got morning dew in your beard and… Sorry about that. I’ll try not to fantasize in here.

  I had a task to do: Get Tim into X (where X is School or Work). I chose to do it by biking. It would have been easier to drive (albeit much more expensive. One day I’ll actually chart out how much money I think biking saves me) but I seized the opportunity at minimal cost to myself and I got in much better shape.

  Mr. Miyagi

  

  This article’s title is, for the 1 uncool person that reads this blog, obviously a reference to the incredible, classic 80s movie, The Karate Kid. It’s a story about a rough and tumble teenage boy who gets transplanted from all he knows to a strange new place where he must face the evil teenage gangs of the underworld and save the fair princess who has a crush on him.

  OK. Exaggeration.

  But really, it’s an awesome movie. Best part? Mr. Miyagi. See Daniel does really move across the country and face a rough group of martial arts savvy kids in his new school who don’t take a liking to him (also, dirt bikes.). Daniel is unable to stand up for himself and gets the crud kicked out of him. Miyagi San takes pity on him and offers to train him in the mysterious ways of kick-buttery.

  How then does he approach this task of all tasks? Task-based exercising of course! Mr. Miyagi doesn’t teach Daniel a bit of karate for a solid half of the training montage. Instead, pointing to a humongous collection of cars (where did he get all those cars!?), he delivers to Daniel the now famous line, “Wax on, Wax Off.” A whole slew of these scenes ensues. Daniel’s stuck painting fences, waxing cars, and sanding floors (while Mr. Miyagi is off either getting drunk on sake or catching flies with chopsticks, presumably because they annoyed him and not because he was, erm, hungry…).

  Eventually, Daniel snaps. He was all excited when Mr. Miyagi offered to help him and instead he figures that Mr. Miyagi was just looking for cheap labor.

  But then Mr. Miyagi totally jumps him! And out of nowhere Daniel’s blocking all of Miyagi’s stuff! And it’s then revealed, of course, that what looked like nothing but chores to Daniel were actually secret ninja arts of death to Miyagi San. Then Daniel asks, “Have any more cars?”.

  That’s not exactly how it goes down. But it could have been.

  Reality

  Unfortunately, since we moved I haven’t been able to bike into work anymore. The distance went from a truly manageable 10 miles to a whopping 25. I actually tried to do it for a little while (when our minivan finally broke down), but the combination of 50 mile trips on the bike per day and a circa 5 hour in-transit time quickly defeated that effort. I really do believe that eventually I’ll be able to do it (According to Wikipedia, typical reasonably fit riders should be able to ride at about 20 mph. I could deal with an hour.) However, without a task to do, I don’t really bike anymore. I don’t do yard work. I don’t break down or set up the sound system all that much anymore. Basically I’m back to square one.

  However, recently I worked up the muster to actually try to start jogging. I set up a little nearly mile long loop through a park right near my house that I can do in about 10 minutes (hey, I’ve got 10 minutes a day.) and running is a much better work out than biking is (I can’t run the full mile and I’m pretty darn winded afterword whereas, like I said, I can bike for pretty much as long as I’m wiling to go for).

  So yeah, my advice boils down to this: If you have trouble selling yourself on exercising for nothing but your health, choose a harder way to do something that you’re already doing if you can.

  Errata

  1. I was sad to hear, although I have no idea why I was surprised, that Pat Morita, who played our beloved Mr. Miyagi, passed away on November 26, 2005.

  2. I haven’t read Leo’s Blog in awhile (it had kind of descended into a long series of 10-ways-to-do-x-better when I finally unsubbed) but I still think he’s a capital guy with a great family and a good head on his shoulders about productivity and life. He’s a big fan of what he calls Functional Workouts. It’s very similar to my idea of task-based exercising. Also, a lot of his exercise material is really worth reading if you have a rainy day to kill.

  Have any exercise related tips or sites of your own to share?

• I Think I’m Fat

  From December 19, 2007 @ 2:06 am

  Ok, so, honestly, I know I’m not fat. I have, however, gained weight. And for some odd reason it’s only in my tummy area (or at least what I can tell). And even though I entertain the thought from time to time that I’m pregnant, I know it’s not true, and I really am just plain over weight. I didn’t think I was gaining weight until my family decided to make little comments here and there: “Jess, you’re gaining weight,” “… when you get health insurance you should go get your cholesterol checked- it’ll probably be high,” “doesn’t eating that cause you gain more weight?”

  So because of all this and the constant eyeing of my tummy I had to ask my family to stop making comments about it because of how upset I was getting. I’ve realized how much power I let my family have over me. Now, whenever I’m somewhere I instinctively fold my arms across my stomach or I make sure to pull out my shirt when i sit down. Ugh, it’s horrible. I hate looking over weight because I feel like my parents have a reason to call me lazy. I mean, not that I agree, but outside of physical problems I really don’t think its biblical to be beyond a healthy weight limit. So now I’m struggling with the thought of exercising. If I exercise tomorrow morning it will be with the intent of proving something to my family. But I still think it’ll be good to exercise and its a real crappy idea not to. Ugh, oh, well. I’m probably going to learn (or am learning) some valuable lesson from God and maybe when I come out of it my family will have less power over me :-).

  This would explain the dream that I had where I had on a beautiful red dress and my mom walks by and says, “that looks tacky.” So I hid under the covers all night so no one would see me.