Who Needs an F---ing Gym! -- For Romae

As many of you know, over the past two years, I have worked to lose weight and get fit, so that before I left for Spain, I was fitter than I had been in a very long time. One thing that I had been doing is that I had been going to the gym religiously, 6 days a week. Well, I have not been doing that here. I’ve walking around like crazy, but in terms of lifting weights, I hadn’t done anything. I’ve looked at a couple of gyms. One, called DIR, is the trendy gym in Barcelona, and they were going to charge me €120 for 3 months, and I could only go there before 2 p.m. That’s about $180. They also were going to send me to a doctor, because I’m older than 36 (what a random age) to make sure that I wouldn’t have a heart attack at the gym. That would have cost me another €50. Then I went to this other gym near my apt., which was only going to charge me €80 for 3 months and not make me see a doctor. It was a good price, but it seemed like a pretty bare-bones gym, which I still may join.

But! Then I realized I knew enough about this stuff that I could create my own workouts at home, and not have to buy any extra equipment if I didn’t want to, and get a great workout in.

So this is my “Who needs an f---ing gym” workout.

I did exercises 1-2-3 together rotating them into one superset.

1. 3 sets of 15 push-ups. I did them the regular way, but some of my students had pointed out to me earlier that you can hit the muscles differently by putting your feet on various height chairs and sofas, so I’m going to do that on subsequent days.

2. 3 sets of 15 squats. You don’t really need weights to get a good squat in, but in the future, I’m going to use water bottles (see below).

3. 3 sets of 15 crunches.

I did exercises 4-5-6 together rotating them into one superset

4. So I was trying to figure out what to do about my biceps, shoulders and back without weights. Then I realized that I have these 1.5 liter water bottles that I buy, and while they’re not incredibly heavy, they have some resistance. So I did 3 sets of 15 bicep curls using the water bottles as weights.

5. Then I used them to do 3 sets of 15 side shoulder extensions.

6. Then 3 sets of 15 lunges, to help my weakened quadriceps muscles (thanks to the gout), and of course my butt.

I did exercises 7-8-9 together rotating them into one superset.

7. There’s a name for these, but I don’t remember what it is. Anyway, you prop off the couch face upward, with your hands on the edge of the couch, and your body parallel to the floor, then you drop and push back up. It’s for your triceps, and even without weights, it’s an amazing workout for them. 3 sets of 15.

8. 3 sets of 15 legs lifts, lying on my couch.

9. 3 sets of 15 calf extensions on my terraza.

Then, the next time, I’m going to get a set of 6 water bottles that come in one packet, with a convenient handle, I’m going to use that as a weight, and do a back exercise with them, and then also use them for some squat activity. Today, I just did 3 sets of side extensions.

All listening to my 30 minutes Ipod workout playlist. It took 30 minutes, and I figure if I do something like this 3 days a week, I’ll stay relatively fit.

Yippee!!!