Meet The Garage Gym

Last post, I bemoaned the physical slide I’ve taken over the last year.

Not shifting blame, it’s all my fault.

But I’m taking steps to change it, and I figured I’d take a minute to share what I’m doing.  Maybe it’ll help some of you guys.  Or maybe you’ll just find it interesting.  Or maybe not.  Regardless, this is my place and I get to share what I want, so here goes.

😉

It’s been two and a half weeks since I got back to running regularly.  Recall that the Doctors told me not to run at all due to my plantar fasciitis.  Instead, I should do these various exercises they gave me, which did jack squat.

You’d think that disregarding medical advise, saying screw it, and hitting the pavement would make things worse, right?

Nope.

As of today, the fasciitis is almost totally gone.  Yeah, I had some pain when I first got up this morning, but it was more ankle joint pain in my right foot than heel pain.  I’m officially calling BS on the Doctors’ prescription for fasciitis and liking my own.  I’m just pissed at myself for taking almost a year to do it.  Grrr…

I’ve not just been running, though.  I’ve also been going on walks with the kids to hunt Pokemon (my kids love Pokemon Go.  Aw hell, I love it too, who am I kidding?), so that’s a great excuse to get them outdoors.

And I’ve been lifting again, and training at a local MMA gym.

Key elements of my regime are my garage gym, my MMA gym, and the Christmas present from my wife: the Garmin Vivoactive HR.  I’ve already talked about the MMA gym, but the other two deserve discussion.

Let’s talk about my gym first.

When we first bought this house, I brought with us the heavy bag (75 lbs) I’ve had since…2004, I think.  I’ve always hung it up, but honestly got varying degrees of use out of it.  Same thing applies here.  I hung it up, but only sporadically used it.  Since I started up at the MMA gym with the boxing coach, though, I’ve changed that.  Now it gets pounded regularly.

There it is.

Then, a couple years ago, when I was getting ready to deploy in support of Naval Special Warfare, I decided I really was tired of sucking at pull-ups.  I found some tips online about how to build your own pull-up bar, so I installed one.

I got some good use out of that bar, and by the time I deployed I wasn’t a complete embarrassment anymore.  At least, not in the pullup area, anyway.  😉

A year ago, after I got back from deployment and when I was lifting all the time, I thought hard about buying a Power Rack, a bench, and a bunch of weights.  That would have cost $1,000-1,500 at the minimum.  Lucky for me, around that same time one of my wife’s friends was getting sick of her husband never using his weight set, so they offered it to us for free.  I accepted.

It’s not exactly the king of equipment, and it lacks some of the safety of a Power Rack, but it works for benches, squats, and most of the other things I could want to do.  And the price was right.  🙂  I’d like to get a better weight tree and some more plates, but for the time being it’s got what I need.

Finally, my as my wife’s gotten more into strength training as opposed to just running, she’s fallen in love with the TRX.  So we installed one of those, too.

I built that wooden box for my wife, so she can more easily reach the pullup bar, and so she can do plyometric jumping things off of it.  I’ve ended up using it as well.

You can also see my bike against that wall there, too.  She’s a Cervelo S2, and she’s super awesome.  I have GOT to get out on her more this year.

So that’s the garage gym.

I’ll do another post later today or tomorrow about the Garmin.  This one is long enough already, I think.

For now, what do y’all think?  Not too shabby, eh?