Fitness Park Workout on the Charles River

Posted on June 2, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

Due to living downtown, I spend a lot of time running, biking, or walking on the Charles River path. It’s a great fitness outlet provided by the city that gives you trees, grass, and a river while still being very close to the heart of Boston. One thing I’ve never done on the path however, is use the Fitness Park they built a few years ago. It has pull-up bars, benches, and a variety of other pieces of equipment you can use for a workout. I always see people using it but I’ve never taken part myself.

A bunch of people working out on the Charles River Fitness Park after work. One guy was just doing Karate and not actually using the equipment, whatever floats your boat dude.

I didn’t just want to do one of my own routines because the city of Boston went to the trouble of installing workout guidelines scattered throughout the Fitness Park itself:

There were also signs for people in wheelchairs to show them how to use the equipment in the park:

I decided that I’d follow these guidelines and use that as my workout. My question was, “Can I get a really good workout in by following these guidelines or are they just for people who need the extra help and don’t know how to do it themselves?” They have clear pictures for each exercise with a table for reps including different difficulties: Starting Par (easiest), Sporting Par (moderate), and Championship (hardest). So I decided to go for the Championship status to see if I could do it.

I’m obviously not in a wheelchair like the descriptions above but I did the workouts modified. I went through the Championship level and decided that it wouldn’t be enough so I went through the sequence twice at the Championship level before moving onto the next set of exercises.

Again I had the same experience here; I found that doing the highest recommended level wouldn’t be enough to get a serious workout in. I’m not crazy strong/fit by any stretch of the imagination but I do think that I’m not really in the target market for these workout guidelines. Someone who exercises daily probably doesn’t need much help to figure out how to use the equipment in the fitness park and how many repetitions it will take to give them a good burn. So I continued with the same methodology of going through each sign twice at the highest level before moving on. Here are the other pictures just for description of what I did for exercises:

The exercises included stretching, horizontal chin-ups, sit-ups, push-ups, vault bar, more sit-ups, more push-ups, chin-ups, knee lifts, body curls, arm rotations, back arches, more chin-ups, log hopping, bench dips, bench curls, toe touches, body stretches, more bench dips, and a cool-down. I spent 42 minutes going through these workouts and had a min/max/average heart rate of 77/157/117. I was sweating heavily and pretty spent after the workout was finished but I didn’t find that these signs provided a tremendous amount of value to my workout, I could have done the same thing on my own. However, it was fun to explore the signs and to use each piece of equipment in the park. I probably wouldn’t do the same thing again but I can definitely see myself using the fitness park to mix in some upper body fitness into the middle of a run or bike, much like the Spartan Race WOD I did earlier in the week. Despite my disinterest in using these signs I still think they’re a positive thing for the city to have invested in. Anything that can help people get moving and exercise a bit is money well spent in my opinion.

Resistance Bands on the Charles River Fitness Park

Posted on May 31, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

Having just come back from Hawaii, the last thing I wanted to do today was to workout inside. So I went for a short 10 mile bike ride. However, having already done a bike ride this month I decided to stop at the Fitness Park located along the Charles River to get in some alternative exercise. I brought my roommate’s resistance bands and did a shoulders/biceps/triceps workout. For those of you who think resistance bands are for sissies, guess again. You can make them as easy or as tough as you want depending on the strength of your band and/or the tension you create for yourself. I got a good burn going on my muscles and my muscles were shaking by the end of each set. We used to use them all the time when I played high school and during my brief stint in college as well. They are great for strengthening things like rotator-cuffs for example. You can also get a good burn doing just about anything as long as you’re doing it right (i.e. consistent tension in the band throughout the range of the exercise, if the bands go slack you’re doing it wrong).

Using a heart rate monitor for the first time during a resistance band workout I found that I should probably mix in some type of cardiovascular component next time. My min/max/average heart rates were 67/96/125, so pretty low intensity as far as heart rate goes. I was feeling a serious burn in my muscles but I wasn’t exactly working my lungs at all. It would have been great to do one set of shoulders/biceps/triceps and then jump rope or do abs as a way to get my heart rate average up overall. I felt ok with not doing this today because I had already biked 10 miles so I figured that was good enough cardio for the day.

I meant to bring the bands with me on my trip to Hawaii so I could get a workout done in the airport but I totally forgot and left them at home. I would definitely bring these on travel with me as a way to get a quick and effective workout in my hotel room instead of using the bogus equipment usually found in hotel workout facilities. I’d also use them for rehab as well if I were injured. For example, my roommate had shoulder surgery a while back and he’s been using them pretty consistently to regain strength. I used them last summer when I aggravated my shoulder 2 months into the P90X+ workout program. A mixture of rest (i.e. no shoulder exercises) and resistance band workouts helped me to move past the shoulder issue. I’m even thinking of getting a set of bands to keep at my desk at work for those times when I’m sleepy at the end of the day, getting the blood flowing is a great way to wake back up.

I like resistance bands because they are light-weight, low-maintenance, and can be used inside or outside to give you a serious workout so I definitely approve of using them as a way to stay fit and augment your normal workout routine.

Rollerblading on the Charles River Bike Path

Posted on May 31, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

Hockey has been a big part of my life ever since I was a munchkin. I got my first pair of ice hockey skates shortly after I could walk and then spent the next 18 years of my life eating, sleeping, and breathing ice hockey. So naturally I’ve been conditioned to have a negative attitude toward people who play roller hockey. It’s even worse for people who rollerblade and aren’t even playing hockey. I had to swallow my pride my sophomore year of college when me and some of my buddies joined a local roller hockey league, I had to get a pair of blades. It took a while for me to warm up to it but it became a decent alternative because my school didn’t have club or intramural ice hockey, roller hockey was the next best thing. We spent two seasons beating up on the local adult league teams before I transferred schools and headed to Tufts. Since then my rollerblades have been in storage at my parents house.

I realized part-way through this month that my rollerblades still existed so I had my parents bring them down on their next trip to Boston so I could use them for a day of fitness. They managed to escape my 100 Item Challenge last November because they were already stowed away up in Maine. In the spirit of this month’s fitness experiment, I decided I would give rollerblading a try, just to see if it was a legitimate form of exercise. Every time I run or bike along the Charles River, I see people rollerblading. I die a little bit inside each time I see people use that heel-stopper to slow down, ugh, maybe you’d only understand if you were a hockey player, it drives me crazy. I had memorial day off from work and it was a beautiful day so I decided it would be a great idea to do some rollerblading.

Me on the Mass Ave bridge overlooking the Charles River. If I have a shred of dignity left it's that my rollerblades are made for roller hockey not inline skating (i.e. hockey boot not some weak plastic thing with a heel-stopper).

Believe it or not I actually had a decent workout. I rollerbladed for 10 miles and really tried to push myself pretty hard on the straightaways. I got my heart rate up, got my lungs going, and pumped my quads until they wouldn’t stop burning. I even passed several people riding their bicycles (wah wah wah, sad trombone for the bikers). I saw half a dozen other rollerbladers out cruising the Charles River bike path as well. I felt pretty weird now that I was one of them but the heart rate, tired legs, and sweat drenched clothing helped to redeem the value of this kind of workout for me. It was extremely low impact but still gave me a great workout. My min/max/average heart rate was 91/155/137.

I wouldn’t say that I’m going to put rollerblading immediately into my weekly workout routine. I still can’t get over the mentality that I’d rather be playing hockey instead. With that being said, I would definitely do some rollerblading if I were coming back from an injury. I typically bike when I’m sore, injured, or recovering because it’s low impact on my joints. However, when I had a hip flexor problem last year biking was out of the question because of the demands it places on those muscles. Rollerblading would have been a perfect workout to maintain my cardio and keep my quads in shape.

Dragon Boat Racing on the Charles River with Living Root

Posted on May 27, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

Dragon Boat Racing is described by Wikipedia as being similar to outrigger canoe racing but instead of a traditional 6-man outrigger canoe there’s a 22 person crew in a canoe with no outrigger. Of the 22 person crew, 20 people are paddlers all facing the front of the boat, one person is the drummer who sits on the front of the boat calling the cadence (similar to a coxswain in rowing), and another person is the steersman who stands in the rear of the boat and keeps the crew on course. It was started as early as 1500 years ago by the Chinese as a way to pay hommage to their dragon deity (one of their 12 zodiac signs) in return for good fortune in the rivers and to promote rain for their crops. Today Dragon Boat Racing is done all over the world with formal associations in Australia, the U.S., New Zealand, Italy, Hungary, and many other places. Up until a few weeks ago I had no idea such a sport even existed.

I found this random image on Google and while their timing looks way off, it's a good picture to get the idea of what Dragon Boat Racing looks like (Image courtesy of Google Images and http://richardbrickman.com/richtext/?p=41).

I found out about this sport through a friend of mine who emailed me a suggestion for a new type of workout for my 30 day lifestyle experiment on fitness (feel free to email suggestions to theyoungurbanunprofessional@gmail.com or tweet @youngandurban). My friend sent me the website of a local group in Boston called Living Root who practices three times each week and does various races in the Northeast and Canada. Their website indicated that they were very receptive to new recruits, even offering a free first practice, discounted first month practice, and then if you’re really interested after that then you can drop the $200 to become a member of the team year-round.

After a quick set of internet searches (Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, etc) I found that the web is loaded with info on dragon boat teams, events, and training plans. Who knew that Dragon Boat teams from all over the world were blowing up the Twitter-sphere. I quickly decided that it looked AWESOME so I emailed Living Root’s team leader David Parker to get some further details on the team’s practice schedule and what to expect on my first day. He seemed super stoked to bring me on and I was psyched in return to give it a try.

Saturday Morning 8:45am - Getting the dragon boats ready for a great practice on the Charles River.

I arrived first to the docks so I could be ready when everyone showed up. I was kind of blown away by how chill and inviting the team members were. I was quickly introduced to many smiling people who were totally pumped to do some dragon boat racing at 9am on a Saturday morning. They supplied me with a life vest, a paddle, a short lesson and then promptly seated me in the rear of the boat. From this position I could watch other people’s form and try my best to keep time.

I found it to be an exhilarating workout, especially while sprinting. The fact that we were also practicing in the Charles River with the Boston Skyline as our backdrop was also very cool. Wearing my heart rate monitor I saw that my heart rate routinely peaked around 150bpm with my average staying around 130 throughout a 1.5 hour practice. When we were done I was totally beat and I could tell that my shoulder/back muscles got WORKED from all the paddling. I’d be excited to see how fit I’d become if I paddled three times a week for a year in addition to my hiking and running routine.

Here’s a video of the Living Root Team from 2010 to get a glimpse of what it looks like to do Dragon Boat Racing (feel free to ignore or mute the techno music in the background lol):

There were several things that I enjoyed about this team/practice/sport. 1.) The coaches really emphasized teamwork because you could have a boat of super strong athletes but if they’re not working together in synch then they’re useless. 2.) I enjoyed the raw power that’s needed to pull your weight in the boat. Using your back/shoulders/abs to drive the paddle through the water was a great feeling. If you’re not pulling your weight then you’re dragging the whole team down. 3.) I had a great experience meeting the various members of the team, it seemed like a solid community to be a part of with some veterans, some newbies, and overall a bunch of motivated friendly people.

I’m sure with some focus on my technique to help harness and focus my enthusiasm I could actually get pretty good at this sport. Unfortunately, much like the Boxing workouts I liked so much earlier this month, the practice schedules conflict with my work schedule. Practices are at 6:30pm twice during the workweek and once on Saturday mornings. During the week this would be impossible for me to get to practice and on Saturdays I’m generally on an adventure somewhere climbing/hiking/other shenanigans in New Hampshire/Vermont/Maine. I think if I worked in the downtown or Cambridge areas I would definitely sign up for a year just to try something new. However, until a new work arrangement happens, I’ll have to put Dragon Boat Racing on the list of awesome things I’ve tried, enjoyed, and would totally recommend to other people who are looking for a fun alternative form of exercise.