by Jon Herrera

Trying to Get In Shape

I used to be an avid cyclist.  I would ride a couple of hundred miles a week.  I read a lot of magazine.  Kept up with the Tours in Europe.  Watched the Cyclists in The Olympics riding their $40,000 dollar bicycles.  I was a sucker for all the gimmicky wheels, cogs, gear shifters, tires, water bottles, and clothes that were featured in ads and hanging on the walls of  my local bike shop.  But then I had to earn a living, and being Lance Armstrong was not going to be the way to do it.

I also had a brief bout with body building and bought some old weights and a bench at a garage sale.  I actually used them for a while, too.  There is nothing quite like a good pump.  But that passed as well.

I did fall in love with Nautilus Machines and I still find them to be amazing bits of engineering.  I also find the cost to be pretty amazing.  Which is why you mainly find them in Gyms, but I have never really been big on gyms.

I’ve been doing a bit more traveling lately, and while I have my Insanity Workout with me, I am often on the second floor and don’t want to be jumping up and down that much.  So I end up using the occasional Work Out Rooms I find at the motels.  This is almost always a running machine, a stationary bicycle, and maybe an elliptical trainer.  I like these machines, but I don’t like the things they tell me.

I used an elliptical trainer for 30 minutes and it told me that I walked 1.5 miles and burned a little over 60 calories.  This was a workout that left me pretty much wiped out and the stats tell me I did next to nothing.  I have not used the Insanity Workout as much as I need to.  There is something really depressing about working out and feeling like you have given it your all only to see that you haven’t even worked off breakfast.

I’ve practiced Yoga off and on for the better part of my life, mostly off recently.  But I still do enough to keep limber and I have completely incorporated abdominal breathing into my regular life.   I have also done a bit of Tai Chi now and then.  I am always thinking of joining one of those groups that meets in interesting places around the city-one meets in front of the Art Museum.  I like this idea of public displays of arcane and mysterious movements.  Besides, it’s hard to master martial arts from a video or a book, you really need someone standing there nagging-I mean, giving instructions.  Maybe I just need to get one of those cool outfits.

I’ve done a couple of other workouts on the elliptical trainer and I enjoy the workout while I am doing it.  It’s usually a few hours later that I am feeling the small aches and pains.  But then I feel pretty good the next day.  Back in my cycling days I usually hated the actual cycling, but I loved the way I felt while I was riding a couple of hundred miles a week.  I am working full time again and traveling a good deal.  This gives me time in motels with workout machines, but it leaves me with little time to use them-or do all the things I would like to do.  It’s all good.

Jon Herrera
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Published by Jon Herrera

Writer, Photographer, Blogger.

2 Replies on “Trying to Get In Shape”

  1. Your journey around the exercise world sounds very familiar, although I never had an inclination to try Tai Chi. I had a very nice road bike for several years, but when TT’s knees started to hurt and he wouldn’t go riding with me, the fun was kind of sucked out of it. I’ve settled on walking. It’s easy to do, requires only good shoes and socks, so the investment is minimal. And, of course, Yoga. Oh, Yoga.

  2. My real workout is walking back and forth to change the backgrounds in my portrait studio, so I have to agree with the whole walking thing. Yoga is as Yoga does,as Elvis famously said.