Fitness

Story on top, links on bottom

When I got into working out in college I had the privilege of a fully equipped, private gym almost entirely to myself whenever I wanted. I lifted weights and used a rowing machine, and when I lost access to these facilities I realized having a private gym is actually very expensive. This lead to a growing interest in calisthenics. I spent a summer working out on the bars at Columbus Park (which used to be a slum btw), and met three people who changed my life.

Columbus Park

I met David Case, a mid-80s Tai Chi and Boxing instructor who could do a back lever with 70 lbs of weight on him.

Such an impressive man, he told me two things that have always stuck with me:

"It doesn't matter what you do so long as you do one more than you did the day before."

and

"I wish I had stretched more."

Watching him scoot around the workout area of Columbus Park you could tell he was incredibly powerful and not mobile at all. He showed me where his ribs had fused together from years of boxing. I touched his floating ribs and they felt like a single plate of armor. I had no idea the human body could even do that. In his 80s, David Case could do a one-armed pull up but could not comfortably touch his toes. That day I promised myself I would never quit doing yoga for the rest of my life.

At the time I was in the park 4-5 days a week. I met everyone who worked out there with any regularity, and noticed the people who were sporadic. Every time I was there, another guy was doing push-ups without fail. We never knew each other's names but he always motivated me, gave me fist-bumps and commented on my progress. His influence was so positive that I remembered him years later walking through the park and thanked him. He was still doing his push-ups, albeit quite a few more than before.

The last meaningful encounter I had was with a 40 year old man who looked 25. I thought he was a recent college graduate, and when he told me he was 40, running home from work through the park to do some pull-ups before going home to his kids I was shocked. When I asked how he did it he just said

"Cultivate a lifestyle of movement. Life gets busy and you have to force yourself to not fall into the sedentary lifestyle."

So now I take the stairs. I'll get off the elevator a couple floors below my office and sprint up as fast as I can to work. I do lunges to and from the coffee machine. Sometimes I'll just sprint a block for the hell of it right in the middle of the street. People give me weird looks sometimes but I don't care, it feels too good.

Unfortunately I don't live close to bars anymore so now I get a full workout in my apartment. Here's what I do:

Kettlebells

Kettlebell evangelist Pavel Tsatsouline single-handedly convinced me to reduce my home gym to a yoga mat and 5 kettlebells. His books, Kettlebell: Simple and Sinister and The Quick and The Dead are now the two guiding forces in my day-to-day workout. I found that despite only doing the workouts in this book for the past year, I can still approach a pull-up bar and do 10 clean and slow without struggling.

Yoga

I said I'd never stop. B. K. S. Iyengar may have been a little crazy but Light on Yoga is incredibly comprehensive and has the only Yoga program you'll ever need. I used to use an app that generated workouts for me but if you really want to get serious about Yoga this is the book for you. The training program is 300 weeks long.

Cycling

Biking to work can be dangerous in the city. I've seen too many people almost die right in front of me to have any desire to bike around Manhattan or Brooklyn. I love cycling outside of New York City but while I'm in the city I hit the Zwift. I prefer gravel bikes because they let you get to more remote, prettier places.