More Exercise

When I listed my exercise equipment, I neglected to mention my bicycle. I sometimes take it out on the Gordon bicycle path that runs along the coast of Lake Champlain at the old air force base. This is where I can freely go the fastest. There is a train track that runs between the path and the lake. When I was reaching the end of the path one day, a train started coming down. After I reached the end of the path and turned back, I rode as fast as I could to catch up to the train, and I eventually passed the engine. But then the train sped up and was soon gone. The engineer blew his horn and waved as he passed by. When I bicycle, I normally wear my helmet, bicycling gloves, and some velcro-strapped shoes with relatively flat soles. The velcro straps save me from getting shoelaces caught in the chain, and the flat soles make it easier to press down on the pedal with any part of my foot. I once tried bicycling with my Ozark Trail vecro strap sandals, and I injured my foot while passing too close to a fire hydrant. That was a few months ago, and although my foot is in good shape again, there is still evidence of an injury on it. So that was my first and last time wearing sandals while I ride. It's shoes from now on.

I went out on my bike today and bought some more exercise equipment at Dollar Tree, where everything is a dollar. I bought a jump rope, a pair of hand grips, and a set of bungee cords. I bought the bungee cords mainly for strapping things to the back of my bike, but they can also be used like resistance bands or ropes. They offer greater resistance than my resistance band but less than a rope, which doesn't give at all. The hooks on the cords can be hooked together to loop the cords, or hooked onto the cord to loop it onto something, or hooked onto some kind of handle, such as the handles I have with some resistance bands or even the hand grips I bought today. Using hand grips as handles allows me to exercise my hands and arms simultaneously. For example, I can press down on the hand grips while pulling on each end of a cord. This also offers a little bit of help to my left hand, which is not very good with hand grips. I have never been able to jump rope, and I might never be able to, but I am finding other uses for the jump rope. I hung the middle over a closet door and closed it, which allows me to pull on each handle of the jump rope. Pulling on the handles provides isometric exercise, and while doing that, I can move the handles around, combing isometrics and aerobics. Besides this, the jump rope will allow me to do various isometric versions of isotonic exercises I have been doing with my resistance band. The bungee cords will also be good for this, since they don't give as much as the resistance band does.

One other thing I've been doing for exercise is boxing. I can make a makeshift punching bag by filling a clothes bag and hanging it over a closet door by its rope handle. I have also found a foam seat pillow hung over my bed and my mini trampoline turned on its side useful for punching. I do it low intensity with bicycling gloves on, since I don't want to injure myself. I figure boxing can do for the arms something like what the impact of running does for the legs. This is not anything I have read about or can prove, but it seems to make sense.