SIDCHAs

For those who don't know, I do my kettle bell workout every fourth day, starting with the 2nd of the month, then the 6th, 10th, and so on of each month. Today is the 17th, so tomorrow I do it. (Incidentally, on alternate even-numbered days---the 4th, 8th, 12th, etc---I row indoors or run, depending on the weather). What does lifting have to do with getting on my knees? I don't have a bench, so I "bench press" from the floor. I don't like lying on a dirty floor, so I incorporated mopping the floor to start my workout. Still getting to the knees part. With a roughly 500 square foot (~50 square meter) floor, I found holding a big sponge by hand faster and more…

With the Rocky movie franchise overdone, it feels hard to imagine the original when it came out. Neither the movie nor Sylvester Stallone were institutions. I grew up in Philadelphia and I remember some of its popularity, certainly for Rocky II. It was nominated for 9 Oscars and won 3. If the Rocky movies are about anything, they're about a man finding within himself the discipline and motivation to achieve greatness through incredibly hard work, foregoing fancy equipment or flash in favor of homegrown, homemade grit and basics: you have all you need, you only need to dig deep enough to find it and act on it. I think we like the movies so much because we know we can approach that practice and ethos…

Fun with language Longtime readers may remember that most of my life I ate chips, pretzels, and ice cream almost daily. I felt helpless to stop. It was frustrating. A few years ago I switched to fruit, nuts, and vegetables for snacks. I'm never going back. I wrote about how I started calling a head of cabbage a bag of chips in my post How to eat a bag of chips every couple days and lose weight, having fun with language, since cabbage had become my most common snack. Replacing TV After years of just doing them, I started timing my burpee-based calisthenics routines. They're about 15 minutes. I do two sets daily, for 30 minutes, which is about a TV show length. In the…

I may sound like I'm bragging or humble-bragging, but I'm just sharing my results from answering the questions at a web page, Worldfitnesslevel.org, that an article in the New York Times, How to Age Well, linked to. It says that At 46 years old I have the fitness of an under-20-year-old. Old man still got it. So read it and weep, all of you who value fitness but don't practice a fitness sidcha. Burpees cost nothing and take a few minutes a day. Rowing and running take longer but are more enjoyable. To those who don't value fitness, that's your business and your values. Personally, I prefer fitness. That's why I exercise vigorously every day and have for years. If I don't, I lose my…

My post today on LinkedIn, "Among a Man's Best Feelings," begins Among a Man's Greatest Feelings I've lived a fairly academic life—earning a PhD in astrophysics and an MBA. I've kept myself in shape and lifted weights, but mostly to play sports, which kept me thin. I never consistently lifted weights. Not that I lift huge weights now, but I'm lifting consistently for years for the first time. Every man has his values and I'm not a woman, so I can't speak for anyone else. But speaking for myself there are few greater feelings than to put on a shirt that used to fit well and find it too tight around the chest from benching, or your biceps from doing curls. Or to find jeans…

I hit 100,000 burpees a couple weeks ago, on September 5th, if I remember right. Each ten thousand felt like a big milestone. Hitting six figures felt like it should be a biggest milestone yet. Instead I'm writing this minor post. It's the biggest number with the most zeros, but the greater accomplishment is to see them like brushing my teeth---not that big a deal, just something I do. I have a minimum level of fitness I consider acceptable for myself. Some people are more fit than I am, some less. Where I am feels right to me. More fit would be nice, but I do other things with my time. Less fit would be unacceptable to me, however acceptable to others for themselves. To…