Monkey bars on the east coast during the late 80s and early 90s: to us, a jungle gym was one of those half-geodesic domes with the industrial-gauge pipe that you were supposed to climb on (and fall off), and which most kids seemed to just use as a fort or secret lair.
In any event, thank you everyone for the great replies! This is exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for, and I’m hoping to have great fun getting into semi-decent shape. ^^
Incidentally, since I don’t have much background in isometric exercise, I’m curious: followed strictly the workouts in the 100/200 pushups/situps/squats webpages recommend each set be broken up by a 1-2 minute break, but each workout also hits a completely different set of muscles. As such, is there any reason I couldn’t simply rotate between the three with no breaks, as in 10 pushups, then 10 situps, then 20 squats, and then back to pushups without a breather in between?
(Disclaimer: I haven’t read any of the attached links)
Just chiming in to say that, while you might think that push-ups are the same as benchpressing x% of your body weight, there is actually more to it than that. Doing pushups requires (and, therefore, builds) strength in your abs and back muscles that get ignored while doing bench-presses.
Speaking of ab and back muscles, don’t underestimate the benefit of doing toe-touches.
ETA: Grew up in the SE USA. Monkey bars were the horizontal parts of a jungle gym.
There’s a blog I ran across through CrossFit written by a guy who moved to Europe and didn’t have access to most of the equipment or facilities he’d kind of taken for granted in the US. He does a lot of improvising, incorporating workouts into his daily activities, making use of “found” equipment. One post was about how he found an alley during a run that he later used for chimney wall climbs. In another, he created a workout that he ran through before skiing in the Alps that consisted of exercises like snow crawls, burpies, squats with skis and poles held overhead.
With some creativity, you can make a pretty good fitness routine out of very minimal facilities. There’s the famous case of the shovelglove that some guy posted on his webpage that spawned a decent-sized community. He just wrapped a sweater around a sledgehammer and made up a handful of functional-movement exercises.
When I was traveling to visit my family in the US last year I didn’t have gym access. So I did runs in the park, pull ups and muscle ups on playground equipment, push ups, bodyweight squats, handstand push ups, stuff like that.
Each lesson had 2 different sections: one with weights, one without. The program without weights only required the use of a couple of chairs. Both programs were pretty good, though using weights produced faster results.
It kind of bugs me that you can download the course for free now. If I recall we had to pay $2 a week for the 12 week lesson plan. Spending 24 bucks over the summer was a chunk of change for a 14 year old in 1974.
I’ll probably try yoga if I can find a qualified teacher, but friends who’ve spent time in the region have told me that most “established” local schools are taught by fraudulent or simply unqualified teachers, and my ability to study any form of yoga will really depend on whether or not there are any traveling teachers staying in the area for a few months, so I’ll basically have to wait until I’m there and ask around.
And man, wow, just having finished the first workout from the 100 nj workout websites, I can’t believe how much more exercise I get from doing small repetitions in sets: I’ve been doing squats, crunches, and pushups in single 30 and 40-rep intervals, and I don’t feel nearly the burn I got from doing much lower reps in 5 sets each.
So thanks, everyone, for giving me a fun new way to torture myself.
Re: pushups, many years back I studied jiu-jitsu at a place where push-ups were part of the warm-up. But the instructor’s thing was that you should not be able to do 12 push-ups. So he had all kinds of ways to make them more and more difficult until you found one that you could not repeat 12 times. Me, I’ve always had a weak upper body, and never got past the diamond hand position.
That’s what I do, though in larger sets. 20 squats, 20 lunges, 20-30 push-ups, 80-100 crunches, repeat from the beginning. I don’t know if this is recommended or not, but I haven’t injured myself doing this.
Out of curiosity, is there any point when it would be advisable to do isometric exercise every day, instead of every other day as the 100x workouts recommend?
Before I injured my shoulders I was able to do one-arm pushups without any trouble; I found it stressed my lower back and was more of a balance thing than a pure strength exercise.
That was at a time when I was doing multiple sets of 100 pushups. I had never been able to bench more than 135lbs so one day when I found myself in a gym I decided to see what I could do (my fitness routine was pretty much all bodyweight exercises with some very light dumbbell routines included) and was pleasantly surprised to be able to bench 205 several times (I weigh 170). Lots of reps at a lower weight definitely builds strength in addition to overall muscle endurance.
Haven’t had a gym membership in many years - I agree with everyone who’s recommended simple things like pushups, squats, various crunches, lunges, pullups and so on. Free, you can do them anytime/anyplace, no equipment required, etc. For endurance, go running (or walking/hiking if that’s more your speed), swimming or ride a bike (ideally some combination of these things).
weight training is dandy, but you should build muscle AND run your ass off. personally i would go and find where locals are playing basketball, but if you don’t play it’s moot.
After I retired I gained a bunch of weight. Even though I took a part-time job I had a lot more free time on my hands and was stuffing my face. Dieting by itself only lead to losing a few pounds. Weight lifting itself only lead to losing a few pounds. Dieting & weight lifting lead to loosing a few more pounds.
Then I incorporated the treadmill. First walking, then speed walking, and then running. I do at least 30 minutes, and usually 60 minutes per day. Between the weight training and the treadmill I can be a little more liberal about the diet aspect. I still watch what I eat but I’m not starving myself by no means. I’m even drinking beer a couple of nights a week.
Since last July I’ve lost over 45 pounds. My metabolism has clearly changed. The bad part is I had to spend a good chunk of cash on new pants.
I am not here to criticize any marathoners or the like, but “progressively longer” may not be the way to go. Google high intensity interval training or, heck, here goes one example.
I would strongly advise against running in India until you know the area quite well and know where the packs of wild (read savage) dogs are located, and even then it may not be safe. Do not rely on the what the locals say i.e. that the dogs will not hurt you. To the dogs you will smell strange and they may attack you just walking around never mind running.
I have never seen a basketball hoop/court/game in all the time I have spent working in many diverse areas of India, so that is likely a non-starter.
You may be lucky enough to find a “country-club” with tennis courts near where you are going to be located and you can often get a temporary membership for little money, also some military facilities allow temporary memberships to their gyms.
Yoga is certainly a possibility, but as previously stated, just about everybody seems to be a a self-proclaimed expert.
I personally carry the elastic stretch bands (about $15) in Wallmart and find these work well for me.
Thanks for the advice! I’ll definitely look for a country club/other reasonable area, and I would definitely never run in an area I don’t know: there’s a huge colony of rabid monkeys right outside the town where I’m staying, and so once I know the area I was planning on basically running up and down the side of main street: no dogs, it’s 1.2 km each way, and since it’s a very rural area there’s practically no vehicle or foot traffic. ^^
You never know, the next big wholistic fitness craze could be Omi no Kamis Pack O’ Hungry Dogs & Gang Of Rabid Monkeys Interval Training. Outrun the former and fight off the latter and you’ll be in pretty good shape.
I don’t know though, if I’m running from rabid animals I think that’s a case where I would WANT to be a marathoner: most critters can outpace me in the short run, but if I can keep away from them for long enough I can hope that my filthy hu-man endurance will last longer than theirs.
