For the past three weeks I have been limited to a beaten down basement gym consisting of a bench press, one dumbbell, a broken treadmill, and a bike. Thank goodness for the pull up and monkey bars outside or else I would not know what to do with myself. I have been trying hard to adapt my exercise routine to fit my life in Beijing. Yes, I spend 60 yuan every time I want to use the pool and I will run outside for about fifteen minutes and feel like I just smoked a pack of cigarettes, but I feel like I have been adapting quite nicely.
If I learned one thing from spending weeks on ships and subs it is that you need to use your resources wisely and make due. What I am working with in Beijing is a far cry from the facilities I had at my fingertips for a month at USMC Base Quantico, VA or at USNA. In both places I had state of the art lifting equipment, daily fitness classes, and an outdoor pool all for free or as I like to say “mien fei!” Thank you tax payers.
Back to my Beijing dungeon weight room – I have been getting into what is called cross-fitness workouts and luckily most of the exercises require little to no weight, just pull up bars, a floor, and occasionally a place to hold your feet. This is enough for the basic maintenance of fitness, but I knew I needed other exercises to stay in shape for football. Because of this I made up some lifts utilizing my resources and also came up with a new type of lifting style that combines Tai Chi (which I am currently learning) and weights. My innovations are:
-I use the pull up bars outside to practice for the Obstacle course at school by shimmying down them until they reach the monkey bars. At that point, I jump off and get on the monkey bars and swing to the end and finish with a 20 yard sprint. 3 reps, 1 min break in between.
-The treadmill is broken and cannot go over a 9 minute mile pace so…I incline it to the max and put the 20 kg weight over my head and run for intervals. 400 m intervals, 4 X, total 1 mile.
-Outside the gym is a basketball court with a broken rim. I jump and touch the rim ten times and sprint 20 yards. 3 reps, 30 second rest.
-Pushups and sit ups 2 minute maxes followed by pyramids: (1-10, 10-1 pushups x2, sit ups x3)
-Jump rope for one song on my iPod straight, rest, choose new song repeat
-Tai Chi with weighted bar. Go through all of the movements of Tai Chi while holding the weighted bar and marinating balance. Repeat for a full sequence, rest and do it again.
-Finish with stretching and hanging from the pull up bars (best way to crack a back).
I am not really boasting about anything, but more writing to those who know how much I enjoy taking the time to exercise after a busy day. Beijing can make a person really lazy. It has, what I call, perfect napping weather all day…dark, cloudy, and cold.
I am still developing my work out, but I am hoping that things change in three weeks when I move into my room at Capital Normal and my campus has a pool, gym, and track. For now I am making due and trying to stay in somewhat good shape, but as you can see it is pretty hard and I have to be pretty inventive.
And I am not joking about the Tai Chi exercises, they actually work really well and I think I could market it if I had some celebrity back it…but I guess you could say that for just about anything
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