Thursday, August 23

Workout/Film

Well, that's pretty much it.

Workout was explosive lower body stuff and a mix of explosive/interval upper body stuff. Finished it up with Tabata (8x20sec on/10sec off) Burpees. I did a better job counting this time. The first two sets were 8 each, the next 4 were 6 each and the last two were about 5.5. I find that the quality of my burpees is significantly increased if I have something to jump up and touch. It forces me to explode out of each jump instead of doing it half-heartedly.

Speaking of burpees, here's some crazy stuff. I've tried a handful of those out, and they pretty much rock. It illustrates that you don't need to own or purchase anything to workout like a champ. Just think of something reasonably full-body/ROM and do it. If it is too easy, change it. Keep altering and training. You can make a workout of anything. We all have enough time and space to take care of ourselves. Why then, are there things like this or this? Well, laziness and poor eating habits start it off, but the biggest thing, in my opinion, is that people are looking for excuses. Gyms, diet foods and the like simply provide easy excuses for us. Things like "I can't afford a gym" or "I won't workout because I ate my 100 calories of wheatthins instead of half a box" or whatever.

We're missing the bigger picture. A "good life" (I know that's a subjective term) involves more than just one aspect of health. Mental, physical, emotional, intellectual, et al are all components of enjoying life. We tend to be so focused on the little details or distracted by the marketing of the American Dream that we lose sight of the ability to craft our lives into whatever we want them to be.

I know I'm getting soap-boxy here, and I'm on a tangent, but, to say it again, this is my blog. I'll say what I want. (I do love making that point) I feel that there are so many paths to live a rewarding life and if you completely neglect any of them, you'll be left out in the cold wondering why everyone else smiles so much more than you.

End Psuedo-Soapbox-Rant.
--
Workout Total:
30 min lower body explosive
15 minute upper/full body mix

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

dusty, you training for parkour or something? if you were, you wouldn't just get up on your soapbox, you'd take a flying leap off of it and completely over several buildings as well. and land in a dead sprint.

dusty.rhodes said...

"what in god's holy name are you blathering about?"

funny... i didn't even get to the film session in this post. I was breaking down ultimate video as well... that'll be for a later post then. The misnomer remains.

Anonymous said...

yo. have to weigh in a little bit. obesity in america is about a lot of things like you said (lifestyle, affluence, poverty, technology, diet, marketing, industrialized food chain)...but one of the primary causes behind all these causes is agricultural overproduction and the biggest villian is corn. corn and all its ridiculous bi-products have have gotten more abundant and cheaper (thanks to ridiculous farm subsidies and no attempt to control over-production)...and now corn and especially high-fructose corn syrup is packed, processed, and forced down the throats of americans almost everywhere we go, especially low-income americans. it has become literally the cheapest way to get calories and the most unhealthy. as a wiser man than me pointed, while our surgeon general is raising alarms about obesity, our president and our leaders are passing farm bills that keep the river of cheap corn flowing....guaranteeing the cheapest and most abundant calories available will continue to be the unhealthiest.

no wonder we have a problem.

- brandon

dusty.rhodes said...

You're *absolutely* correct. I didn't even touch on that.

The problem with this issue for me is a two parter:

1. You don't *have to* eat anything with corn in it.
2. Our government in cahoots with agribusiness do their best to make it as hard as possible to accomplish #1.

The solution, in our economic structure, has to be consumer-driven. Our government is not looking out for *our* health as they place the health of industry (follow the money!) ahead of the health of people. There are a ton of hurdles to that solution such as consumer health education, horrible food pyramids, price per calorie (for low-income folks, you get a ton more calories if you buy heavily corned-up foods than if you buy unadulterated foods!), advertising (why would someone cook for themselves when they can go to mcd's and SMILE?) and so forth.

Summary: Everyone has the power to solve this problem for themselves and their families, but the government and agribusiness make it so damn hard.