Day 153 - Do Prison Cell Exercises

Date: June 8th, 2010

I make all sorts of excuses to justify not exercising.  I was busy.  I was stressed.  I walked from my car to the office so that's kind of like going for a jog.  You know, in the sense that they're both form of movement.  My room is too small.  The sun was in my eyes.  Exercise is for heathens and Republicans.  You know, the usual stuff.

I decided, as a nice change of pace, to actually attempt to find a way to gain a modicum of fitness in my room.  Now, during the week in Lansing, I live in a... well... let's just call it cozy.  Its not exactly a place you can run laps in.  I'd been using that as a reason to justify lazing about every evening after work instead of getting out there and burning of the delicious chocolate-chip pancakes, juicy steak, cheeseburger, salad.  Ahem.  Yes.  Salad, that I had for lunch. 

Well, I ran out of excuses when I found this site.  If a prisoner can do these exercises in their cell (and with what I imagine to be significantly more stress than I have to deal with), the surely I can muster the energy to give them a try.

I don't know what all the fuss is about.  

Prison looks quite comfortable.

As a more general term, it turns out, "prison exercises" refers to just about any repetitive motion exercises that you can do in a confined space without benefit of machines or equipment.  And if you take the safe search off google, you'll see the other repetitive motion exercises you can do in a confined space without benefit of machines or equipment.  I guess what I'm saying is, don't search for "prison exercises" without the safe search on.  I may or may not have gotten scarred for life.

The specific one that I tried was an exercise I'd never done before.  Some basic exercises like pull ups, push ups, sit ups and others are also listed on various sites as prison exercises.  The one I found and tried is apparently called a burpee.  So, you know, that sounds attractive.  It is actually really freaking hard to do too.  Look at the link - its a mix of a jump, a squat and a push up.  

Since then, my legs, knees, lower back and shoulders have been in some serious hurt.  My body does not want to go back to prison.  No no.  It is definitely protesting this decision.  Granted, I've done the exercises again, three more times, since I initially tried them a week ago.  That's probably why my legs are still screaming at me.  The biggest thing, though, is reminding myself that I don't need money to get fit.  I just need the willingness.  And an interesting set of google search terms.