Last week I described the intense new workout I'd found in the Men's Health Gym Bible. Its mix of fast-paced weight exercises and interval (read evil) cardio pretty much kicked my butt. I literally could not finish the routine. Taking that as a sign that it was a "good" workout, this morning I tried to do it at home...in the living room.
Most of the weight exercised translated just fine. I had a couple of dumbbells, so I didn't have a problem doing the squats, lunges, shoulder presses, wood choppers. Where I did run into trouble were the lat pull exercises. My living room, apparently, is not equipped with a lat pull machine. Believe me, I looked.
Not wanting to kill the flow of the routine or miss a beat, I settled for just pantomiming a set of lat pulls. Note to self, miming a lat pull does not work the same set of muscles as an actual lat pull. It may, in fact, work the opposite.
My Marcel Marceau-style lat pulls were just the beginning. When it came time for the interval cardio work, I realized that my living room (and home for that matter) doesn't so much have an elliptical or treadmill machine as it does a couch and chairs. Again, not wanting to throw off the rhythm of the workout, I just started running in place.
The idea of interval training is that you're supposed to go nearly all out for thirty second, go easier for a minute and repeat. Just for fun tonight try and go all out in your living room. Laps around the couch don't work too well. I'd love to be rich enough to afford a house that would accommodate sprinting.
Finally, I settled on running in place as fast as I could while speed punching the air. Sufficed to say, I think I got my heart rate up, but I wouldn't want to see video of the process. It probably looked like I was having some kind of seizure. If my wife had been awake that early, she might have tried sticking my wallet in my mouth.
Home workouts are great. I've found a few DVD's that I really like, but at the end of the day. I won't be canceling my gym membership anytime soon.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
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