Day Laborer (still going) and Urban Deranger (demoted)

[ericb]

Greetings!

I have a couple of systems that have kept up with the testing and tinkering. They help me when the regular routines are too regular.

System 1: Day Laborer
This one is pretty simple. Take something with me to work and exercise with it before I go to the restroom. Lately it's been one of three things - a heavy backpack, a plate loaded kettlebell, or my adjustapole (I'll explain that if you want to know - think two sided adjustable shovelglove). Making it before the restroom makes it short and a little … erm, focused. It also lets me cool down on the walk to and from the restroom.

System 2: Urban Deranger
I usually walk during the week over lunches and in the evenings with family. Sometimes I want a little more oomph. So, I take something with me…something heavy and not easy to hold. It looks a little odd, hence the deranged part – how many people do you see walking on a nature trail with a heavy bag or stick? Things I carry on a regular basis: a canvas bag with the stuff from my heavy backpack (which contains 20-40 lbs of the ankle weight weights, not the straps), my adjustapole with different weights on each end, or just my briefcase loaded down. Then walk my normal route.

I also combine the two on occasion and take something heavy with me to the restroom and take the long way there. It’s a great way to get in some effort, and I can do silly things like walk on my tippy toes so that it goes from odd to silly. The people in my office are used to my oddities, and I even have people come in for some “therapy†with my tools.

I’ve seen both systems mentioned in one fashion or another. Not anything new, just two things I enjoy doing.

[ericb]

Well, I knew I wasn't being unique. Just a little embarrasing how close in proximity these posts were to mine.

Someone talking about walking while shugging (Petros): http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=6899

Someone talking about working out at work (larisa001):
http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=6201

Just a couple of updates on mine:

For Day Laborer today I brought in my shuggable adjustapole to work. My boss picked it up, swing it around and missed his Macbook Air by millimeters. Almost a very expensive budget workout tool.

And for the Urban Deranger, I did it last time with my wife. We passed a weighted basketball back and forth the whole time. It was a lot of fun. I'll remember the element of play in exercise going forward. It's something I've read on, but I tend to think of exercise as being a serious enterprise.

[chiangmaiboss]

I am retired now but when I worked in prison I used to bring push up bars to work in lunch bucket and when inmates locked in I would use them. This is when I worked in school building. Other times I would just use inmate weights at gym when gym was closed.
Also, about bathroom, on long flight from Thailand to US i go to bathroom 1 time per hour and do hindu squats. usually 50 at a time. Also helps to prevent blood clot in legs.

[ericb]

I think 50 Hindu squats would make it veery hard for me to return to my seat.

My schedule for next month includes a lot of hotel nights. I brought my pushup bars in honor of your contribution. Maybe I can work in both the pushups and squats and see how things go.

I chuckled today in my meeting - thinking about how much space was in the handicapped stall In the bathroom and wondering how much I could exert myself without arousing suspicion.

[chiangmaiboss]

Eric here is another idea to make working out interesting. This is old idea and actually I learned it from convicts in prison. Get deck of cards and throw them 1 at a time. Black cards are hindu squats and red are push ups. Number cards are whatever number they are. Jacks are 11. queens are 12 and kings are 13. Aces were 15 at first and 20 after I got stronger. Or you can make picture cards all ten also if you want. Go until you get through deck or until you cannot do any more. I used to carry notebook with me. When I finish I added up cards that I threw and then gives number of reps you did. It was fun and kept from getting bored.

[ericb]

I think the card workout idea is great! I used to do something with my workouts and diet where I rolled a dice to see if it was an easy/med/hard workout and light/normal/gorge on the diet. Since I figured most of the time should be normal a 2-4 on a die was the standard. 1 was light, 6 was hard/gorge. If I wanted to gain mass, I added another to the top on both workout and diet. Leaning up was usually an add to the light eating with no workout change.

(off to dust this one off) - it worked well at the time....easy to adjust if I knew what the norm meant. Sometimes had trouble with that - with No S and 14 min exercise standardization this would be much, much easier!

[chiangmaiboss]

I think dice idea very interesting but I think I do not have discipline for this system. I generally eat a lot and have a hard time with diets, Fortunately Thai food is somewhat less fattening. Still i eat a great deal and have to work out pretty hard just to stay at same weight.

[storm fox]

Eric, are you referencing Dan John's "Workout Randomizer?" I think it's a pretty good way to keep things random and fun.

[ericb]

Eric, are you referencing Dan John's "Workout Randomizer?" I think it's a pretty good way to keep things random and fun.

The actual beginnings of my system predate this - although I really enjoy Dan John's version as well as Ross Enamit's (I just did the deck of cards workout two weeks ago, my legs still don't work like they should).

Once upon a time... I like to tell long stories, so here goes. Once upon a time I was in middle school math class and got a two part math question that went something like: 1) how can you use a randomized number generator to achieve a standard result 75% of the time? and 2) what would it be used for? The teacher was looking for innovative results. I came up with a 2 die additive roll - so you add the two dice together. If you rolled a 4 through 9, you come up with a 75% probability. I did the math all by hand and I have the scratches somewhere - I looked at it not too long ago. So, when asked what I would do with it I said I would use it to do more pullups in gym class. A 2 or 3 I'd do 1 or 2 pullups respectively each day. 4 through 9 was 3 pullups, then 10 was 4, 11 was 5, 12 was 6. At the time I could only do 4 in a row, so I thought going one less would get me more practice. Three weeks later I had to bump my numbers by 1 rep to keep progressing. My nerd met my muscles and I've never quite been the same.

I think from an Everyday System perspective a two die roll is a little too complicated for a system, but once you have the math down it's easy to use as a score for something. I was trying one dice for a while (mentioned it here) but the range of numbers from a two roll is a more exciting and it injects just a tad of mental math to my day.

Another way I've used this from an exercise perspective - I wrote down a list of 6 shugging exercises and then rolled the dice each time I was done with the last exercise for my 14. It was fun and terrible - I ended up doing 6 consecutive sets of 21 of Churning Butter (it wasn't even my weighted exercise!!!) - I thought my elbows were going to come off. But I kept rolling and ended up with some respite on set 7 - only to churn butter for the next 2. Something I never would have written down - like a semi-structured v. unstructured freestyle day. My rolls that day were 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 5 6 9 - it's nice because even though I weighted to pendulum swings (like a clock) for the 75% 4 - 9 rolls, I ended up doing something else.

[ericb]

Hello -

I thought this was going to stick (Urban Deranger). It's been absorbed by a couple of other things I've been doing so it's no longer a formal system - more like a subsystem of Urban Ranger (which it was anyway) and 14 minutes of anything. Still fun, but I don't consider it separate.