The Hipster's Guide to Building a Home Gym

I've mentioned a couple times now my home gym (I think I called it ghetto gym before, but I'm realizing now hipster might be more accurate) and promised I would feature it in an upcoming post. Well, you are all in luck; this is that post.

I need to make very clear that this is not a pretty gym. There is no pink. There is no comfy, ergonomically correct machines guiding your limbs across perfect planes of motion. Nothing is new in my gym. Its all bought used, or built from scratch. 


If you like shiny, stop reading now, this is not the gym you are looking for. 

Yes, that is some sort of pipe elbow. 

When I first decided I wanted to work out at home, I knew I wanted a hardcore gym. My inspiration was my brothers gym. Well, his first gym, he's since upgraded to something much shinier. I remember seeing he had chains hanging from the rafters in his basement and was so impressed with the toughness of it all. Who needs fancy equipment? This is more authentic. 


So I set to work over a couple of weeks to gather the most authentic gym equipment I could find. Also, incidentally, the cheapest...I didn't want to spend the ten grand it could easily cost to put a new one in.

The Hipster's Guide to Building a Home Gym

1. Know someone handy enough to build you a power rack. 
My power rack was going to be the biggest piece of equipment in my gym. I did some research and sent my father the specs I was looking for. He came over one weekend and we had it set up in an hour or two. The bars on the side I use for pull-ups and chin-ups, so it does double duty. Love love love my power rack. 

Another blog post to cover the building of the power rack.

 2. Scour the classifieds for used gym equipment. Bonus points for finding bright red vinyl with cigarette burns. Your husband must freak out a little bit at this, but you tell him although this weight bench might be old, its tougher than any old WalMart weight bench. This is the granddaddy of weight benches.

3. Cracked weights with cement dust dripping out of it is also an important part of any gym collection.

4. A homemade ply box made of pallets add a fun twist. See the post: How to Build a Plyo Box in Five Easy Steps for instructions.

5. Rusty equipment adds that extra bit of toughness. (Also makes it look like you've been working out for years...)

5. All lightbulbs must be bare, and ceiling rafters visible. No fancy light fixtures or ceilings for us.  If they could flicker a bit and buzz a little, that would be cool too. This all adds to the authenticity.

6. The only two things I bought new: the foam mats, and the yellow 10 pound kettle pictured below. And really, my husband bought me the kettle as a surprise, so it might not even count. The foam mats were a necessity for me though...that cement floor is hard on the joints.

And that is how a hipster builds a gym. Recycled gym equipment. Homemade power racks. Ceiling rafters. Rusted metal bars. Throw in some obscure music and you have yourself a gym.

The Upper Body Workout That Left Me in a Puddle on the Floor

Five weeks until Tough Mudder. My last week of training went not too bad. Skipped a workout, but fit another run in on another day, so it works out right? Switched a terrain run for a 5K race, and managed to squeeze it out in 27 minutes, which I was happy with.

So this week my goal was to spend some more time on my upper body strength, as it is not my favorite area to deal with (see my previous post Why I Love Leg Day), and thus sorely lacking. I enlisted the help of my husband to come up with a set that focused on upper body, and also featured mostly body-weight moves.

What he came up with was probably the toughest workout I've ever had. I was a panting, sweating mess about halfway through. If he wasn't there talking me through it I never would have made it. And I get to do it again the day after tomorrow.

Do this circuit five times, with no rest:

• Chin ups x 5
• Push ups x 10 (hold for 5-7 seconds halfway down, then raise)
• Plank 60 seconds
• Clean and Press x 12

And that's it. It doesn't look like much now. Four little itty bitty bullet points. But there was times in between exercises that I couldn't have uttered a complete sentence to save my life. I dropped to the floor after those 60 second planks and didn't think I would make it back up. Today, my upper body feels good, no pain or DOMS, just pleasantly achy.

Normally I wouldn't do core work on an upper body day, but figured might as well. And my husband definitely assisted on the last few chin ups, so I can't take credit for all of them.

And that's it! The first upper body workout that I didn't hate but still kicked the crap out of me.

Happy training!

TM Countdown: Six Weeks

Six weeks to go until Tough Mudder. 

Its time to buckle down and focus on strength, mobility and nutrition. 

Monkey bars, here I come. 

How to Burn Rhubarb Jam

Ahh good to be back. I've been on hiatus for a couple of weeks, but I swear not out of laziness. Things have been busy.

The weather has been absolutely beautiful here, so I've been spending a lot of time in my garden beds. I fell off the training wagon for a bit, so this week I've been slowly and painfully climbing back on (why, hello, Advil.) I also took a trip to Bar Harbour, Maine, and did some mountain climbing for the first time. Its been a busy three weeks.

The beautiful spring weather has brought a lovely crop of rhubarb, so I harvested some of it a couple of days ago and attempted to make a jam.

Berlin, my cat, is stalking through this tangle of rhubarb.

I love the thought of making my own jam. My family goes through so much of it. I've always held back from making it though - I've only made jam once before, years ago, and it was a lot of effort for results that were just meh. I figured my canning skills were ... lacking. My confidence was restored last weekend when I was at a birthday party, and my brother-in-law's mother said "No. Anyone can make jam." Huh. Well, ok then.

So I went for it. The recipe was as follows:

3 pounds rhubarb
4 cups sugar
lemon juice, to taste

Step One:
Cut off the leaves. Wash the rhubarb and cut into 1/2 inch pieces. Put the sugar and rhubarb into a large glass bowl and cover. Place in the refrigerator for 24-48 hours, coming back to stir the mixture gently a couple of times.

Step Two:
Pour the mixture into a large, heavy bottomed pot. Using high heat, bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. My cooking time was a little over half an hour. The last bit of cooking time, add the lemon juice in to taste.

Note: When stirring, stir gently. The rhubarb falls apart easily. Also, when nearing the end of the cooking time, it will start to stick to the bottom, so be wary. (Mine stuck to the bottom, and I made the mistake of scraping it back up. It turned the batch a brown color, which was disappointing. It smelled a little burned at first, but luckily did not seem to affect the flavor, though. Its delicious.)

Step Three:
Ladle the jam into your jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe down rim, and screw on lids. Process for 10 minutes.

My jam is wonderful, albeit a little discolored. I most definitely have not gone to the fridge and eaten a spoonful of it.

Actually, yes. Yes, I have.

So in my delight at producing a tasty jam, I now have jam fever. I turned my sad attempt at a vegetable garden I started three years ago (I order my veggies from a local farmer now, so no need to grow my own- I'll leave it to the professionals) into a strawberry patch. I look forward to making -and not burning- some strawberry jam.

Stay tuned for more adventures in jam. Wish me luck.

Strawberry Patch: The Beginning.

How to Build a Plyo Box in Five Easy Steps

I'm sure many of you were on the edge of your seats this weekend, wondering how the box would go. Well, rest assured, it went awesome, and I now have a box on which to do box jumps.

If I were to build one again, I would make sure to watch for a few things, which I'll list at the end of the post. In the meantime, follow these Five Easy Steps to build your own Plyo Box. (Thanks Steve, for the correct terminology, "Plyo Box" is much more descriptive than "Box". To those that don't know Steve: I sat beside him when we went to see Avengers this weekend.)

Step One:
Pick up some pallets at your local hardware store, shipping depot, or friendly potato farmer. You should be able to get them for free if you ask nicely. If you ask extra nice they will also help secure them into the trunk of your Civic.

Step Two:

Gather your tools and prepare your space. It was a nice day, so we worked outside. You'll need a reciprocating saw, drill, screws and a hammer for prying. 

Step Three:

Use the saw to cut the pallets roughly in half. You might need to eliminate the middle slat completely to make the two halves equal size. The width I chose was 21 inches, it seemed to work out perfectly on two of the pallets. Keep the bottom slats on, and try to ensure you have a bottom slat near the outside edges. You might need to pry one off and re-position it. We also reinforced one of the pallets that I would be landing on with some extra braces that were left over, you can see on the top pallet below.

Step Four:

Place a half-pallet on top of another and line it up so the edges are square. Take your drill and, on an angle, screw the bottom slat of the top pallet into the top slat of the bottom pallet. It sounds complicated, but basically you are just screwing them together to keep it safe. Repeat 2-3 times on one side, and 2-3 times on the other. Repeat until all the half-pallets are screwed together. 

Step Five:

Place in a spot where you have some headroom. I had some extra foam, so I placed the foam in front for softer landing. I might pick up some more foam to place under the box as well, so the box sinks a bit, and therefore less chance of it moving on me. I have some pallets left over, so I can increase the height easily as I  need. This is currently at 19.5 inches. 

And there is your Plyo Box! Easy peasy.

Some lessons learned:

1. Pick pallets that are of equal width. My bottom two are about an inch and a half wider than the top two.
2. Pay extra attention to the bottom slats. We didn't pay enough attention, and left a half-pallet missing a bottom slat on one side and didn't realize until we were ready to screw it together. Then we had to scramble to make it even.
3. The pallet's wood is very, very dry. We encountered a lot of splitting, so if you have a magic trick against splitting, now is the time to employ it.

Good luck on building your own Plyo Box.

(I have some pallets left over, so I'm excited to try something from the list of 35 Amazing Uses for Old Pallets...even though, after this weekend, the count now should be at 36.)

Happy box jumping!

Weekend Project: Build a Box.

So. I have no idea how I'm going to do this yet, but it is going to happen.

I've established already in the blog that I'm putting a home gym together in my basement, and that I'm heading to Tough Mudder in a couple of months. And Tough Mudder is not about how far you can run, or how much you can bench press. It's more like how well you can haul your body over a ten foot wall.

I'm trying to incorporate different types of exercises all the time, to keep challenging myself. I recently started biking, which I used to do a lot of when I was younger, and I am really, really loving it. Biking 10k is so much easier than running it. Must be the wheels.

Anyway, back to the box. I saw this article 35 Amazing Uses for Old Pallets (which I'm sure everyone has seen by now, it's had several rounds on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest) and got inspired.

I am going to build a box, with pallets.

And then jump on them.

Here is an excessively long video on box jumps (1 minute, but you get the point after 12 seconds) about how to do them.

I'm hoping this fun and almost child-like exercise ("MOM! Look how high I can jump!!") will give me some explosive power to get me up over that 10 foot wall.

This is my plan for the weekend:

First step: Collect old pallets.

Second step: Nail them together into some box-like structure.

Third step: Jump on them.

Shouldn't be too bad right? Stay tuned to see how it turns out. 

Almond Butter: A Review

We grew up with peanut butter. My kids are growing up with peanut butter. Some of my best food memories as a child is melted peanut butter dripping hot off a toasted english muffin onto my fingers or a plate below.

On the scale of healthy food, peanut butter has its good qualities and its bad. High in protein, spreading some PB on a slice of whole wheat bread offers a great protein to carb ratio. Also, it is high in monounsaturated fat - one of the better fats. However, it's the added sugar, salt and vegetable oil that's making me think there must be a healthier alternative.

In my effort to go more natural, I'm going to give almond butter a test run.

The First Impression
Seeing the container in the store is a little off-putting. The packaging (no offense, Barbour's) looks like it hasn't been updated since the seventies. And since there is no added vegetable oil to keep it from separating, the oil sitting on top as at least half an inch deep.

Stirring was a little ardous as well. The oil has not only migrated to the top, but the thicker parts of what was supposed to be smooth butter has dropped to the bottom. So the stirring process has to mix the oil back in, but also scoop up what can only be described as "almond sediment".

Once this goopy task is over (and the rationalizing that went with it) the result is... different... and pretty darn tasty.

Its nuttier tasting than peanut butter, not as thick (as evidenced by my drippy looking container - sorry for the grease stain), and the texture is...more real. Like they had actually crushed nuts and made it into a paste.

Skippy Peanut Butter.

Barbour's Almond Butter. 

Comparisons

We have to double the numbers in the Skippy chart so we are measuring the same quantity. 

The regular peanut butter has double the saturated fats, and a whopping 130mg of sodium compared to the 2mg in the almond butter. There is slightly more protein in the almond butter, and 60% of the daily recommended value of Vitamin E, a nice little antioxidant. Skippy doesn't even list Vitamin E.

In Conclusion
I like the almond butter. It has a more sophisticated taste, it was processed locally, and the sheer volume of sodium we would be cutting from our diets is staggering.

Which brings up my next challenge: switching the kids over.