Fitness, exercise and sports.

I only skimmed through it, though what I did read of that link was very nice information. Helpful link. =)

Hassknecht said:
Sadly, we don't have exercise bars in our parks. Extremely annoying to say the least. But my gym is maybe 500m from me, so that's fine, too.
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I don't know about "most parks", I just know about the local park nearest to me. But when I think of the calisthenics exercises or body weight exercises as posted above, or some of the other exercises I mentioned earlier that take place in "jungle gyms", I think children's playgrounds, and that's where you can generally find "jungle gyms" in the United States. Sadly, where I live, laws are pretty strict about "trespassing" and "neighborhood watch" and people are just generally overly-suspicious about potential pedophiles whenever they see adults near children, so going to most of these in my area is out of the question. =(

Leads me to wonder what it is about New York City (where some of the videos I'd watched were filmed) that makes it totally okay for adult, gangsta-styled men to take over playgrounds for their own exercise use that Southern California lacks.
 
What about near schools? Where i live, near every school there is a small running track and at least a pull-up bar, also plenty of basketball courts. Though i personally don't discriminate, as i tend to do exercises with whatever i can grab, if i cannot go to an appropriate place.
 
No. With the exception of the park I mentioned, there's nothing like that around here. All such places are WITHIN the property of the schools themselves, so going to these basketball courts or bars (the physical object kind, not the drink-dispensing establishment kind) and tracks is trespassing unless I'm a student. I've done it, sure, and nothing can stop me from doing it. But it's a difference between doing it and getting away with it and doing it and getting arrested because it IS technically illegal and any cop can use it as an excuse if they wanna, and I just don't wanna bother with that scenario. I've already been pulled over for having passengers in my care (yeah, what're the odds?) and not buckling my own seat belt and driving a piece of shit car, and I've already had the police sicked on me and rummaged through my belongings because of how I looked, so trust me, the police around here have NO compunction with finding excuses, if they wanna.
 
LoL.

Well, i surely didn't imply you should brake laws, as i was not even aware that one can tresspass in school teritorry. Here almost all schools are public and you can even go inside, even if you're not a student, not to mention free use of basketball courts and some metal bars. Maybe that's because the facilities are not that high grade, so no one cares.

P.S

Do you look like a gangster? Blue bandanas, sneakers? :question:
 
They're public schools. But that doesn't mean anyone can just stroll in on their property. Yeah, I can see how that sounds rather confusing. But that's why I dislike these laws. I understand that some people wanna protect their kids from dangerous people, but facetious laws is just busy work not actual solutions. Anyway, that's besides the point. Bottom line is, for everywhere in about 20 miles around me (that I know of) just about every jungle gym is part of a school's grounds, and public or not, people are pathetically easy to spook lately, so they'll call the police on just about anything. Hell, I was walking my dog and cut through my old high school's grounds to avoid walking around a block I didn't wanna traverse, and the amount of stares that generated astounded me. I mean I'm JUST walking my fucking dog (she's a German Shepard, so it's not even like I look like I'm "scouting" with a cute pet).

AskWazzup said:
Do you look like a gangster? Blue bandanas, sneakers? :question:
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That's a story, one which I'll avoid. No, I'm white. I have a strong aversion to heat and sweating so I wear very few layers of clothes. For most of my life I've had to wear glasses for my near-sightedness. I wasn't active in any atheltic sports at all so I was quite skinny. I was oblivious to any and all fashion trends so my manner of clothing was very nondescript. So, if you were to gauge me PURELY by outward appearance, when I was in high school, you'd think "stereotype of 'nerd', modern version". No, a thing happened which simultaneously irritated and embarrassed the fuck out of me, and that combination of displaying irritation with face beaming beet red apparently made my classmates assume the worst that I was going to shoot up the school, so they sent the police to pick me up, escort me home, and pillage my room while I was "watched after" to make sure I wasn't holding any weapons. And you know why the students and the faculty were so paranoid about me shooting up the school? Had there been a recent school shooting that made people on edge? Nope. September 11th, 2001. I shit you not, it was the goddamned 9/11 terrorist attacks 2-3 months prior that made people think the worst of everyone around them (this isn't conjecture, they TOLD me this is why they were "being so careful"). So, naturally, this means I, a 16 year old kid, who looks like a frail nerd, am therefore a terrorist, so I have to be removed from school BY THE POLICE as everyone watches and whispers about what's going on, furthering my humiliation. And yeah, that's the abridged, "non-story" version.

Is it any wonder why I despise my local joint union high school administration? Or for that matter, why I wanna steer clear of schools because of finicky people who have itchy phone-the-police fingers?
 
Off topic, but is being a nerd still a thing? I always wanted to be a nerd, because my school grades were killing me (and the fact that i mostly skipped half the lessons in a school year). Can you still be considered a nerd , having awful grades and playing basketball like a maniac?
 
Walpknut said:
You just need to call yourself some stupid "fandom name", wear tacky t-shirts.
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Hardcore gamer? I kid. I was one of those rare exceptions in my school. One of the popular kids, played some sports, but I also was in band, hung with the D&D kids, and generally got along with most people. That being said, I did jokingly write an email to a gf at the time, from a dummy account, telling her that she was going to die in a week and to have a nice day. A parody of the Ring in many ways, and she got that, but I ended up being suspended for that little stunt due to a...you guessed it! Overreacting teacher. Everyone knew it as a joke, everyone knew I was a jokester of sorts, but something had to be done! Best week out of school ever. Other than me wrecking my car the day before it all happened. Later getting dumped. Losing my academic something or the other in the process. Ahh! Youth.

/offtopic
 
Yeah, I'm ALMOST jealous of all you guys saying you grew up in places where all this stereotyping stigmatization of personal character and ethnic groups was a myth, cause it was sadly all-too real in sunny Southern California, growing up. XD

Back on topic, however, due to some kind of screw up, my gym membership got canceled, and coupled with the current hectic state of my schedule making getting signed back up take longer than it should, it does provide me with a dark cloud bearing a silver lining. I've been searching EVERY park in my area using google satellite imaging to find any that can conceivably have some bars to work with, and assuming one has what I need, I'm quite eager to try to focus on some bodyweight exercises. The last time I was at my gym, it was the bodyweight workouts that pushed my body the most, so forming a regimen of different routines that I can do on my own, instead of relying on machines that get "claimed" at a gym I need to drive to that only exercises targeted muscle groups, is an exciting prospect for me.

Well..... that is, of course, assuming any of these parks HAVE what I need. The closest park "near" me that my internet searches CONFIRMED had the fitness stations/bars I'd need was 50miles (80km) away from me, so..... yeah, that ain't happening. >_<
 
i'm having a hard time imagining how this is possible. The hell kind of place are you living at? Can you google map the area here?

Well, at winter, when it's freezing outside i sometimes do my pull ups while hanging from the staircase near my flat :lol:, or at work i sometimes find a branch or some kind of industrial object and use them for all kinds of movements. I have found a good amount of exercises that you can perform on very basic objects. Also, if you have a good friend you can do bench presses and shoulder presses with his weight (i do this with my brother), it's pretty hard to describe this without pictures, but if you're interested i could probably find some pics on the internet. It's a pretty good way to work your chest and shoulders without any equipment.

Also, don't get too carried away with some crazy gymnastics moves that are sometimes shown in the videos, because if you don't have the necessary strength and agility yet, they can really fuck up you joints. I almost fucked my shoulder that way, when doing a compound pull-up/press exercise.
 
AskWazzup said:
i'm having a hard time imagining how this is possible. The hell kind of place are you living at?
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The United States of America. If you extrapolate the kind of "easily scared" attitude that I described in my abridged story above and apply it to EVERYTHING, you'll see a world where Darwinism is hampered by cushions and padding. Most playgrounds got torn down and replaced by big plastic things, and the fields of sand or chunks of bark or even regular old dirt got replaced with foam. No monkey bars, just plastic slides. No whatever-you-call-that-metal-dome-with-a-pole-in-the-middle, just swings. Big playhouses made out of plastic, instead of the series of metal poles making up fun obstacle courses for the kids to toy with. When I was looking up more videos on youtube, I found more people in the states citing the same problem. The conversations went along identically to this one. Those living in the states would lament, "I wish I had a place like that to workout at near where I lived" and those living in Europe would whimsically remark, "I just use kid playgrounds XD" and the states guys would reply, "We don't have those" to which the Europeans would, in shock, stammer, "Wait WHAT?" Local policies as a result of "fear for our children's safety" over the past 20 years has just nerfed our playgrounds- LITERALLY!

The thing is, the good playgrounds like those videos show were still around when I was a kid- I'm almost 30, after all -so I can clearly remember where they were and what they were before they got torn down. It's depressing, to say the least. =(
 
Well, i don't really use kids playgrounds, we have bars that are actually meant for sport and anybody can come and use them. They actually just build one near a school not long ago and now i'm going there since spring. And various people use it, from the young to the not so young (pushing 60), i often even chat with some strangers that i meet while doing exercises. It's nice to see that more people are starting to use them.

Also, how are you almost thirty, when you went to the 7th grade in 2001-2002? I think i actually went to the 7th grade at the same year and i'm not almost thirty ( well if you round the number to the base of 10, then yes :lol:).
 
I think you misread my ages from my abridged story? I said I was 16 and in high school in 2001, not the 7th grade.

But it's starting to make sense when I see those awesome videos with intricate arrangements of large, sturdy pole structures when I find out they're located in Europe. I miss the simpler kid's structures from when I was little. Over 10 years ago, before I had a job and lost all my free time and back when I had a bike to ride before it got left out in the rain to rust into a pile of useless metal, I used to ride down a bike path that went almost straight to the beach from my home for 25 miles in each direction. It was an arduous trek every time, I always got massively sunburned, I cramped my legs for days afterwards each time, but it was always fun, and the stop at the beach for an hour or so to mingle at the pier and order a few burgers before heading back the other way was a nice focal point for each outing. Since it's been so long, I don't even remember if the beach at the end of the trail had some bars and other arrangements (I recall they had a bunch of tetherball stations, that's all that comes to mind...) but unless I drove there and I arrived on the bike path I'd be too exhausted to work out at all anyway... XD

To harken back to an earlier post, at no point was I confusing my current level at what the guys at Calisthenic Movement are capable of. I mostly use their videos as a reference for what to AIM for, but I'm going to be using their beginners channel to practice getting there, first. But that "Jump Assisted Skin the Cat" maneuver still looks pretty daunting.....
 
I think I can consider my self lucky, we have so many ways to just do sport here without spending really much money. The countryside is pretty nice for just walking/runing, and there is a sports ground with pretty much anything that you want, at least for such a small town, a soccer field, a basketball field, even a baseball field. And of course a 400meter runing track. And not far from it there is even a place with a 30m swiming pool. Or 25m not sure. Its open during the whole year since its inside a building, during the summer you can enjoy the really large 50m one outside.

So yeah! There should be no reason to be obese in this town >_>
 
So, I've been continually trying to track down places that might have better jungle gyms than my closest park (which has a set of pull-up bars a full quarter mile away from the parallel hand bars), but in the meanwhile making the best use of what I can, be it the distanced bars at the park, or my own furniture at home. I'm on a mission to see if I can find a regimen that fulfills all my workout needs and can be completely swapped out for what I've previous used gym membership for. If I don't need to go to a gym to get equal exercise done, then that's the single "make or break" feature of my insurance that I can do without, so I might choose to opt out of this insurance, if the rest doesn't suit to my liking... but that's a separate topic.

Ever since AskWazzup first posted that video from Calisthenic Movement, I've been watching their videos almost religiously. I'm still on beginner routines, as I can't do continuous full body dips quite yet for very long, though negative dips aren't as effective anymore. I attempted the most beginner variation of the Skin The Cat maneuver, a leg assisted version where you try to control your "descent" as slowly as possible, but I have ZERO control over my speed when I'm not balancing myself perfectly upside down, so I've got more to work on my arms and shoulders before I can get there. I tried using dog leashes instead of rings for the Ring Flies and Ring Rear Delt Flies, but I'm not strong enough for either just yet. At least for my core workouts, chiefly L sits and raises, I'm just working on increasing the frequency and number, and trying to extend the duration of my holds (can't last more than 10 seconds, yet, need to be able to get up to 1-2 minutes eventually).

Very exhilarating experience thus far, and I'm still trying to figure out the best routines to use. =)
 
all the post of this thread are very much helpful and i will do this what in video says for making abs thanks for this useful videos.
 
As I have learned, abs are all about incredibly low body fat, not how many crunches (or L-sits) you can do. It's pretty easy to bulk up your arms or chest if they're starting out flat, but a 6-pack is a hefty endeavor.
 
Pretty much, yeah. For abs to show properly most need below 10% body fat. Abs aren't exactly a sign of good health :D
 
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