Exercise

Exercise the Jedi Way

February 27, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Earlier this week I succumbed to the Dark Side of the force. I was tooling down the 101 when I was cut off by a Mercedes whose driver was more engrossed in her cellphone conversation than upon driving.

So I extended my arm and used the Force to take the entire car apart piece by piece. Ok, I didn’t really do that, but I thought about it. I thought about it the same way I wished that I could use the Jedi Mind Trick to get out of a jam.

Somewhere in the archives is a post in which I describe my love for Star Wars and how my son has come to love it as well. Throughout the week we have mock light saber fights. It is kind of fun, we chase each other through the house pretending to be powerful Jedis.

But the big difference is that he is a little bit older than eight and I am just a hair short of 40. His little sister thinks it is hysterical to see her old man do somersaults and all sorts of other crazy gymnastic moves. When I started doing handstand pushups against the wall she really thought I was nuts.

Anyhoo, who knew that someone had taken the time to turn the Jedi way into exercise classes:

Thanks to a “Star Wars” enthusiast who goes by the moniker “Master Flynn,” the Jedi workout is the new way to fight the battle of the bulge. And now gym-shy geeks everywhere can finally fulfill their dreams of getting droid-like rock-hard abs.

Flynn was on the set Wednesday sharing his moves â€” including the Rebound, Follow-through and the Lock â€” with the TODAY family, who were all cloaked and armed with lightsabers.

Flynn, 38, started New York Jedi in 2005 after staging a fight with lightsabers at a Halloween parade in New York’s Greenwich Village.

“I had the idea to do a fight scene with my friends on the parade route. People were so impressed when they saw what we were doing, and they wanted to know where they could learn to move the way we did,” said New York’s resident Yoda.

After putting up a forum on his Web site, NewYorkJedi.com, Flynn says people from all over the world were asking questions and sharing information to better their own lightsaber skills.

The Force for fitnessIn early 2006, Flynn decided to teach a class on the art of lightsaber
battling, incorporating storytelling and choreography. The class started out with just a handful of students, but now has 30 to 40 people attending twice a week for two-hour sessions in New York. Word of mouth made the class so popular that Flynn also started LAJedi.com, and has partners teaching classes in Los Angeles.

“This was never meant to be a fitness thing,” said Flynn. “The class was about appreciating swordsmanship and performance.”

My Fountain of Youth

February 24, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

In one of our ten thousand discussions the Shmata Queen and I spoke about the beauty of aging. We compared notes about the benefits of aging, the sudden appearance of aches and pains and a dozen other new developments.

That wacky woman made the usual crack about how men don’t appreciate what pregnancy and childbirth do to woman’s body and how in some ways we have it easier. Of course she also expressed how she would do it over again a million times, but that is a different story.

Anyway as has become apparent to anyone who reads this blog I am wrestling with aging gracefully. It is a bigger struggle than I like to admit, but that is because I am feeling less than satisfied with a number of things. Some of them are things that I have control over and some I can’t do a damn thing about.

So as to avoid being a complete hypocrite I am working on changing the things that I have control over. In particular I am less than pleased with my fitness. If you look at this picture of me at 20 you will see a man with a full head of hair and a rock solid body. That physique was the result of hours of swimming, weight lifting and general exercise.

In other words it took a lot of hard work to reach that point. (Side note, I didn’t put the picture up and I am not going to.) In truth it took years to get there. I wasn’t ever heavy as a kid. I played a ton of sports and more often than not spent hours outside.

I mention that because when I get frustrated that I can’t fit into the jeans I wore in college I need to remember a few things. Twenty years later I don’t exercise like I used to. In part that is because I simply cannot. I don’t have the time. Life and the responsibilities of father/husband won’t allow me to spend the same amount of time on myself.

Add the joy of a metabolism that doesn’t work as well as it used to and you have your recipe for looking less like Charles Atlas and more like the Michelin Man.

But because I am determined to change this I have committed to finding more time to exercise and to becoming smarter about how I do it. I have to be better than I was, at least in the sense of making the most of my time.

I also have to contend with some of the changes that the years have brought down upon me. One of the things that I have done is I have begun foam roller exercises. I haven’t been doing them for very long but am exceptionally pleased with the results. Slowly but surely I am working out kinks that just didn’t disappear. If things continue to progress like this I expect that I am going to find that my progress into improved health accelerates.

And that my friends is a goal worth working for. Exercise is going to serve as my fountain of youth. It is going to be the mechanism for insuring that I remain young both in body and mind.

Stay tuned to this bat channel and I will be sure to keep you posted on how things develop. In the future I’ll share more about the weight lifting and whether I resume swimming. I am also playing around with getting into the Russian Kettlebells. I have heard good things about it.

I’ll keep you posted.

Wii Fit

February 16, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

This past holiday season we succumbed to the call of the wild and were assimilated into the collective. That is geek for we got a Wii. I love it. Been having a field day playing Guitar Hero and Lego Star Wars with the big guy.

My BIL recently gave us Wii Fit as a gift. If you’re not familiar with it go take a gander at this link. Ok, for those of you who refused to click the simple explanation is that Wii Fit is an accessory that turns your Wii into a useful tool for exercise. It combines Yoga, Aerobics, strength training and balance games that you can use to get yourself to improve your personal fitness.

I used it for the very first time early Sunday morning. It was a bit disconcerting when I stepped on the Wii board and it told me that only one person at a time is allowed on the board. Fortunately the kids weren’t close enough to hear me tell the machine to go bleep itself. In return the machine flashed a picture of Homer Simpson on the television and made some sort of laughing noise.

For a moment I considered jumping up and down on the board. I figured that if the damn thing was going to make fun of my weight I might as well punish it by giving it a pounding. Of course that was ridiculous, machines don’t think or feel pain. Ok, maybe they have some basic A.I. functionality but this sucker isn’t going to feel any pain.

So I continued on and discovered that the Wii Fit considers me to be several years older than I am. Great, the damn thing continues to mock me. But that wasn’t enough to deter me, I have thick skin, like an elephant but not as wrinkled.

Onwards and upwards. Forward I went through the exercises and discovered that Yoga is a cruel activity developed by an angry Indian Rajah whose sole purpose in life was to try and torture me. Damn, I haven’t any flexibility. When did I turn into the Tin man from the Wizard of Oz. Someone get me some oil.

I battled the machine for a good 35 minutes or so. Got a semi decent sweat worked up and figured out that the machine is partially right. I am out of shape, but not the way the thing thinks I am. I play basketball three days a week and lift weights. I have some extra meat on me but I can hang on a lot longer than the dumb machine gave me credit for.

It was a good reminder that I am not twenty any more. Notice how I keep mentioning that age thing. Yes, it irks me a little, I am not real crazy about this next birthday. But I prefer turning 40 to dying so you can expect me to be around a bit.

In the interim I figure that Wii Fit and I are going to spend a little more time together. Can’t hurt to do a little bit more. Besides, I demand satisfaction from the machine and the only way I am going to get it is to spend some more time beating it up.