Wow where’d I go?
So here’s the deal. I don’t know what the hell is going on but apparently I never had a gym membership. After being a layabout for a couple weeks (or, as I like to call it, intense recovery!) I figured that I should let that stop me so I have devised a home workout plan to keep me going until I figure something better out.
First I bought one of those Iron Gym things that are basically a pull up bar that you can hang on a door without any hardware. So I have been doing pull-ups like crazy. I try to do a few sets in every position…chin up, pull up, and parallel grip. On the box it shows the dude doing a lot of other exercises which I think are basically worthless but you can modify them to where they’re pretty effective, I think. For example, the push-ups the dude is doing on the box or commercial seem to be pretty lame but if you do incline push-ups with the thing it seems to work really good because you can drop your chest down past your hands and get a deeper range of motion. If you can wedge it against a door frame it will hold your feet to do crunches also. So really I think I’m getting a pretty good upper body workout with it.
Of course, what about legs? I was thinking about this while I walked around campus, and I was dreaming up some pulley contraption to rig up in my garage to simulate squats, when it hit me. My backpack is f’n heavy. So I went home and loaded it up with some physics books and did Indian squats and lunges, and it really seemed to work.
So there are a few ways in which I’m keeping myself going. I guess I stopped frequenting this site because I figured calisthenics isn’t "real" bodybuilding or something, but I can see the results in the mirror. Maybe if I was still throwing the iron around I would make gains faster but whatever. I’m pretty stoked.
February 5, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Good on you Jesse. Do what you can, with what you have. Well done.