Workouts Where You Find Them

On occasion during those cold winter nights I needed to cut weight, I threw on a garbage bag, a couple of turtlenecks, full sweats, and then jogged the mile or so to Naramake elementary school, my alma mater, to run laps of the building.

I'd also use the playground's gymnasium equipment to include a strength training workout.  I'd swing across the ladder bars, do pull-ups, and even attempted some Rocky IV style upside-down sit-ups (in constant fear of breaking my neck).  Basically, I did all the things I wasn't strong enough to do in elementary school ten years earlier.  Ironically, at 17 my height became a bigger impediment than my weight: the equipment was low enough so that I could easily reach up and grab the bars.  Obviously, it was designed to prevent perilous falls for a 10 year-old rather than allow me a full-extension pull-up.

Playground workouts are a thing, now, and I think it's partially about the finding utility in the environment around you - I used the playground because I didn't have a gym.  In this, a related phenomena is people preforming stunts around their cityscapes, finding physical obstacles in the everyday.  Skateboard stunt videos - people flying off stair railings - have been popular since MTV's Jackass, but I prefer the stripped-down, equipment-less spirit of free-running.  The sport has gained much exposurey through Youtube, but especially through Sébastien Foucan's parkour run in Casino Royale (and the best Bond film opening, ever).  To clarify, I'm talking about watching, not participating in free-running.  I'm not sure I'm even the same species as these guys.

Even Stan Lee parkours!  I found this good-humored video via InfinityList.  Highlights are "Lee's" opening neck-crunch warm-up, Spiderman-ing up the wall, a legs-splayed rope climb, and the bird scare run.