20 Years of Weightrooms

My earliest recollection of being in a weight room is somewhere around 12 years old, getting ready for middle school football season. I had my Arnold Schwarzenegger weight set at the house for a few years prior to that. I had done countless curls with the plastic, sand filled weights, before I ever stepped into a gym.

For the next 20 years, working out and lifting weights had been a pretty regular part of my life (minus a 6 month stretch after a major surgery I had when I was 18). Genetically, I have always been pretty thin, not muscular but thin. I worked out very hard through college and at one point in my early 20s, I had actually gotten to a point of being pretty muscular.

Like everybody else, the time commitments of work and parenting had limited the amount of time that I can spend in the gym. After workout out hard the first 6 months in the beginning of the year, and losing a lot of weight I had gotten back to a somewhat regular routine. Additionally I also play in a football league during the winter months and noticed that I have gotten a lot slower in this last year. I am not as quick off the ball or as fast in the open field as I used to be.

As soon as the season was over, I decided that I was going to try something different. I decided to go 90 days without lifting a single weight instead of a kettlebell. Every workout I am doing over the summer is modeled around losing weight, increasing speed, increasing agility. All of this is being done without a gym.

The only piece of hardware is a kettle bell (picture and one of the exercises I am doing is below.)

The workouts have included things such as step ups, horses, sprints, running, jump ropes, standing jumps, pull ups, push ups, and on and on and on.

When I started this little project, I initially thought that I could never duplicate the intensity of a weight room workout in a park with only a kettlebell. I was way wrong, I have done some of the most intense workouts in an open field with noting bu the kettlebell pictured above. I am so pleased with this style of workout that I am actually entertaining the idea of canceling my gym membership. I am about 1/2 way through this 3 month experiment.

Note the picture on the right, it doesn't look very hard. It isn't at the beginning, however do this non stop for 3 minute intervals and you feel like your legs are about to burn off.