Tag: exercise

A Strava Wanker & A Pint

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Something remarkable happened to me today. Firstly I promise I’ll never become an exercise wanker, apparently they’re called Strava Wankers in honour of an app that allows you to record your run and post it online for all your friends to see how great you are. I admit I do have the app but it allows me to take the piss out of my friend when I run faster than him which probably makes me a hypocrite in some way. Anyway the point before I went off on one, twice, was that something remarkable happened today. While running I stopped hating everything about existence in that moment, usually the twenty five minutes worth of moments I run for, and found myself looking up and around myself at the sun and the fields, and realised I was actually enjoying myself. I felt that happy feeling I’ve heard people get from exercise. Apparently it’s not all about pain, suffering and just wishing you could either walk or magically be at the end of the run or life. It’s possible but I might actually get something from this exercise thing other than competitive pride sores on my feet and ego.

What my ego doesn’t like though is the realisation that I am not unique. I’m thirty-four and I’ve taken up exercise. It makes me want to vomit. I was cool once. Soon I’ll be wearing lycra and high vis jackets, and leaning against the bar in country pubs on a Sunday talking too loudly about the incredible milage I’ve just done on my super duppa bike. Well I probably won’t but I never thought I would take up exercise either. I must say though that I really can’t wait for the pubs to be open, to just drink a nice pint in a beer garden or in a nice cosy corner by a fireplace. Chat a little shit with people and stumble out into the night air. The worst thing is I can’t see this happening until the end of the summer just in time for rain and cold dark nights. Fireplace it is then. Maybe someone can create Strava for drinkers although I can’t possibly think how quickly we would get distracted from it and move on to being interesting again. Interesting in that drunken and barely interesting kind of way but you’re drunk so you don’t give a shit. I’m hardly in quarantine, I still work and while some things have changed not a great deal has; but my god I hope this bloody thing ends soon. I’ve just about had enough of it now. I want a pint.

5k Challenge

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I may have just done something stupid. This whole doing exercise outside while it’s sunny thing has taken a hold of me and I agreed to go on a 5k run. Five thousand metres. Not something to be scoffed at. I managed three thousand last week but my knee started hurting at the end so I’m fearing the same may happen today. This time I suspect my rather unsympathetic friend may not pander to my excuses and the abuse will flow. While this is nothing new I am exposing myself enough that something is making me feel wary at the prospect of what’s to come.

But this is all part of this new healthy and energised human being I’m attempting to create. I am in my mid-30s now which is the usual time people have breakdowns and decide it’s time to exercise. And I thought I was unique. I even had a dream last night about eating too many of these pizzas we’re making and getting fat. It wasn’t exactly deep in the subconscious but that’s a fear I can’t deny to myself any longer. My belly was so fat, I can’t possible think how many pizzas I had been eating.

How much of this then is me being vain? I won’t deny there was an aesthetic element involved in the horror I felt at the enormity of my gut but I’m sure I had convinced myself previously it was all health related. The subconscious never lies though. Saying that we do start to become more aware of the aches and pains that once either didn’t exist or only existed for a short period. Now they feel like they never go away. The desire for life must be so strong in people who reach serious old age. My god everything must just hurt endlessly.

I’m supposed to be running in about half and hour and I feel so full of sandwich and the cup of tea I’m currently drinking. I’m going to do a little yoga as a warm up of sorts and crack on. I’ll report back when it’s all over.

Huh huh…huh huh…huh huh…collapse…

I was actually leading the way until about the three kilometre mark at which point I saw a waypoint in the distance and my body started to assume it was time to walk. I thought I felt a little wretch at four kilometres and by then my friend had caught up with me although saying that he had only been about five metres behind the whole time and I know that because I could hear him suffering too. We parted at the four kilometre mark and I struggled my way back and dragged myself over the finish line. It really was a battle of the mind. Having completed a few Vipassana courses in my time I can confirm the relation to meditation is an accurate one. My knees held strong though which was reassuring too. In short though; can taste blood. Tight muscles. Light head. Fucked.

The Collective Jogger

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

It is simply a lovely day outside. What is the worst thing possible when days are like this? Not being able to answer the outside worlds call to come play of course. But we have been, we’ve all become crazy exercise freaks, running as if it’s something we’ve alway thought about doing. I’ve even seen more ‘rotund’ individuals out walking. The eternal question then is whether these people are now desperate to go outside because they can’t, because they’re used to more exercise than being stuck around the house allows or simply everyone else is and they want to get on it too.

Don’t underestimate the value of one person doing something because they heard everyone was and it was a good idea. We rarely acknowledge that we’re a herd animal, this solitary individual human is a twentieth century construct and it doesn’t seem to do us many favours as a whole. We see others then and think that we should join them otherwise we may be either missing out on something or may be left behind from lack of participation. Humans are the ultimate self-delusional bullshitters.

There is another idea though and that is whether this increase in collective energy and focus on a particular thing makes it easier for others to get involved. If someone has a strong energy it can be easier to follow them, equally to reject them, but what if it is similar with this running lark. There has been research over the years on the power of collective meditation, one example directly related a group meditation in one city which coincided with a drop in crime during the same time period. What if somehow this focus on exercise is sweeping others up and making it easier for them to get involved in something they wouldn’t ordinarily. Can we sense the collective as much as we can see it running past our windows looking all healthy and happy? I wouldn’t dismiss it too quickly, there’s undoubtedly a lot out there that we don’t know and don’t understand. To dismiss without much thought or simply because we don’t understand is as foolish as to accept blindly.

But will all this last of course? Does a collective energy continue on an upward trajectory or will the collective focus change to something else once we unlock the doors of our quarantined purgatory. Once the days are taken up with the daily monotony of previous existences, of work, will we forget about our newfound love of the outdoors and of running trainers. Let’s be honest probably to a degree. I hope people at least remember how much fun they had when forced to spend time with themselves and a few realised a little about themselves. Maybe some won’t return to those previous jobs. Perhaps this is why they’re desperate to rush us all back to work; suddenly it becomes clear there is more to life than some dire job that takes up all our time and gives us barely enough to survive on in return. It turns out there are other ways of existing after all. Oh to go barefoot once more.

Own It!!

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I’m having one of those ‘Own it!!‘ days. It began when I was feeling a little lazy earlier while ‘working’ and decided to put a podcast on in the background. I wasn’t in the mood to learn anything so dismissed the more intellectual ones I like to impress people with and listened to Joe Rogan instead. His guest was comedian Bert Kreischer who I discovered recently on another podcast and who seems like the kind of guy who would deeply offend certain people. In that case as far as I’m concerned he is doing the job a stand-up comedian should be doing; using humour to highlight our worst tendencies and hypocrisies. Joe Rogan’s podcast is generally a hit although he gets it wrong sometimes, but there are some like this one in which you feel as if you’re just hanging out with two mates smoking, drinking and talking shit. While some may dismiss that kind of behaviour I feel they miss the point that people need that. They need to talk shit and not care. Sometimes Joe Rogan can start talking about exercise and health and you know the man lives what he’s saying, there’s an intensity to it that dare I say is inspiring.

For anyone who has read any of these on a regular basis they will be aware of how a couple of months ago I had an own it!! moment after an energising salt water cleanse. It’s a powerful one and it makes you realise how much a healthy gut can have an effect upon your mood and your energy levels. I slowly slipped back into my old unhealthy ways and am now back relying on coffee for energy and pastries for a easy lunch. Needless to say I’m groggy and lethargic most of the time but importantly having not always been groggy and lethargic I am aware of there being other states of existence. Much of this is mental, the drive to achieve and the energy to make it happen comes from the mind in many ways but if the gut is a second brain then we can’t overlook it’s contribution too. I’ve just started reading the book Gut by Giulia Enders again and seeing as I’ve just got over my readers block I’m pretty confident I’ll make it beyond page twenty this time.

Nobody should go through life lethargic and groggy, and if one thing is clear as the world falls apart around us is that life is finite, why waste it killing time. I’m going to finish this bag of coffee I’ve got, transition back to green tea and cut out the bloody sugar which I’m surrounded by from working in a bakery and being weak. How long this will last is anyones guess but considering this daily blog has lasted about four months now I’m clearly capable of the previously impossible with a little effort. I’m probably going to do some yoga, some calisthenics and go for a run after this. I’ve got to do something with my time, might as well own what I say.

Free Time Anyone?

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

What is interesting with this coronavirus situation; is what people are going to discover about themselves in this period. I mean this in a completely positive way. Yes this could be a piece on the worst elements of peoples characters coming out but i’ve already talked about scumbags stealing the last pasta out of the hands of old ladies. What I mean is that if you ignore the possibility of illness and the stress of financial ruin and homelessness, I know I’m asking a lot here, this does create the most wonderful opportunity for people to find a lot of time on their hands. It is only a matter of time before we’re in lockdown, a pasta trip may be in order, but when lockdown does come we’re going to be forced to interact with ourselves a lot. That will result in a lot of ‘self-interacting’ I’m sure but when people get bored of that and have watched all the series on Netflix they can endure they may just be forced into something else.

What they will end up doing is anyones guess. I imagine if they have access to an instrument then they may learn an instrument. If they have enough books or ebooks then people are going to become rather well read. I imagine people will find the time to exercise as well as needing it when stuck around at home all day and night. Maybe people will find the time for creativity, all you need is a pencil and a blank page, and the possibilities are endless. I recommend people search online for courses because there are an endless number to complete. I mentioned the other day I had developed a new hobby, well I’m currently doing a course on edx.org and there are an infinite amount to complete. We may just connect with old friends and family, all it takes is a quick message to see how people are.

Really what I am attempting to do is put a positive spin on all this because even when something is ninety-nine percent negative there is still that one percent we can choose to focus on. Choose may be the wrong word because events are not always our choice, but it is there, it does exist. Like I said I am far too often filling these pages with some bullshit about how fucked the world is and all that goes along with that but sometimes it is important for the sake of our sanity and those around us, to not necessarily be positive, but perhaps to see the positives. There’s a difference, I’ll leave it up to you to decide what that means for yourself.

Fat Bastard

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I was going to talk about something serious, intellectual and philosophical. Minds would be blown by the insights, people would never be the same afterwards, life would forever be viewed through the lens of a new prism previously unknown to exist. Prior to the moment of world changing magic though I made the fatal error of some self-indulgence on one of these health and fitness websites. It appears I’m not healthy. There is something called a Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR for those in the industry. It is a way to see you metabolic age which apparently peaks at about seventeen years old and is basically a good indicator of our bodies actual age. It turns out mine is thirty-nine years old and unfortunately according to the Gregorian Calendar that is not an age I will reach for another five years. It appears all those feelings of aches and pains actually mean something other than I’m just soft, like to complain and feel sorry for myself. I am just soft, like to complain and feel sorry for myself clearly as evidenced by this piece but it’s not always nice to be proved right when it means I’m proving I’m not in good shape. Apparently I need more exercise, sleep and leaner proteins.

I also discovered I have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 26 which means I am ever so slightly overweight. I am though 14.5 stone, 90 kilograms or 200 pounds depending on where you’re from, and six foot three or one metre eighty-eight also depending where you’re from. I’m a reasonably big man, and recently I’ve been trying to build a little more muscle, not much but a little. What does this mean for my BMI then? Muscle is heavier than fat, so how can I be sure whether I am overweight or just putting on more muscle? That has always been my issue with things like BMI and why all of these things needn’t be taken too seriously or dogmatically. Apparently I should ideally weigh between 10.8 – 13.7 stone, 68 – 87 kilograms or 152-192 pounds, but after being ill for three weeks once in India I weighed 68 kilos, I could see ribs in my back. I was not healthy. This isn’t me making excuses, I know my little tummy could be shrunk back but I don’t agree with their description of a healthy weight.

The final one was body fat but I couldn’t be bothered to make the effort to measure my waist and hips just to discover what I already know. So I need to lose a little weight and become a little healthier. I wouldn’t say I’m unhealthy but clearly I can’t say I’m healthy either. Ultimately though as I suggested earlier I take these things with a pinch of salt and not a serious pinch at that either. As a species we’re not healthy. We may have eradicated poverty in a lot of the western world but we’re all addicted to at least a few consumables like sugar, salt and fat. It’s good to get a little shot of drive to give me that little boost to continue my exercise and better diet. I’m just sore all the time and tired with it. I am thirty-nine after all, it’s all part of getting old. Saying that at this rate I’ll probably be in my mid forties by this time next year.

An Understanding of One’s Own Fallibility

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

It’s interesting as you get older you start to become more aware of your bodies fallibility. This isn’t something I’ve just started to notice but certainly something that is becoming a far more accepted part of my existence. We have the obvious times such as the body taking longer to recover after exercise. I do some cross fit once a week with a friend and I think I may have hurt my back a little tonight. Being a tall lad a bad back is nothing new and I worry about what it’ll be like if I’m still going in thirty years. I hurt it about five years ago trimming grapes in France and it took years to recover. Clearly it’s still a vulnerable issue. My knees grind and my shoulders feel sore regularly. I suspect part of this relates to something I’m doing wrong in my diet but equally I’m just not a young man anymore. Don’t get me wrong I’m not old but as I said I’m starting to really be aware of my bodies fallibility.

I am attempting to paint the front of someones house at the moment. I don’t trust the ladders without another person holding it and I was going to go up in a basket on the front of a forklift but we just discovered the forks don’t go wide enough. In the past without a doubt I would have just said “fuck it” and gone up anyway, everything would have been fine and the job would have been done. Now I’m aware that with the forks not securely holding it in place if I go too far to one side it could easily topple, if you include the ridiculous wind we have presently the lack of stability becomes even more of an issue.

I’ve rarely had accidents in my life, never broken a bone and usually just taken the reckless choice. While I have had a few close calls, it is unclear what it is that has led me to learn to be a little more sensible. It is not common sense as I suspect that is still lacking. Perhaps being aware of other peoples accidents as we get older allows us to become more sensible and potentially boring as a result. Let’s see what happens but I hope next time I go downhill mountain biking or something fun and dangerous I’m still more interested in the excitement factor and going really fast. It’s such a shame when people lose that zest for the wilder side of life. Maybe I need a little bit of an adventure to remind myself of my more youthful ways. Hibernating through the winter by the sea may not always be good for us after all. It can be the more extreme things in life which remind us it’s all real and we’re still alive. A little bit of adrenaline in my old age can go a long way. I did always want to learn how to paraglide. I wonder, maybe it’s time to dig around a little in that old box of fantasies.

Exhaustion

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

They say variety is the spice of life. Well they say something is the spice of life but I’m exhausted and exactly what it is doesn’t feel overly important right now. If that is accurate I guess the assumption must be that variety makes life interesting, and keeps you coming back for more, gives you energy and enthusiasm one could say. Variety in the sense of exhaustion, as exhaustion is just another part of life is it not, would suggest that different types of exhaustion make the act or sense of exhaustion interesting and worth repeating, eliciting enthusiasm even. Does exhaustion give you energy in that case? It is said that the more you do; the more you do, and that is not accidental repetition. When people exercise for the first time they may be able to run for five minutes before suffering for a few days and forcing seven minutes out of themselves the next time. Eventually they’re running thirty minutes every day and find themselves more energised throughout the day as a whole. Arguably they’re doing more but feeling less exhaustion, and with it exercise becomes some sort of a paradox.

The point to all this is that today I have experienced some variety in my exhaustive state. I returned from Sheffield last night, slept three hours and went and delivered bread. Let’s just say I was pretty tired by the end but somehow I felt that past tired feeling in which you can’t seem to stop and won’t until you collapse. After about another three hours sleep I went to my kickboxing class and worked hard. Today I sparred with the coach as numbers were odd and while clearly he holds back, he’s still too fast for me and got me with a good uppercut at one point. I was pretty tired during the class because I was working hard and it can be an exhausting sport when you do put the effort in. When I got back to the car I felt pretty happy with myself, post exercise dopamine release or something like that, but I felt energised and could have done more.

I am looking forward to my bed but it is important not to allow exhaustion to stop us from doing things. We are far more capable of finding energy when we have to than what we convince ourselves as we flop onto the sofa and watch a film. When we listen to the idle monster, or the inner bitch as I’ve heard it said, in our mind we do less, and feel like doing less the next time. It’s a vicious spiral, the opposite to the runner improving time and regularity each day. It can be hard but once we train our minds to quit whinging, embrace the new routine and just do it, it is remarkable how quickly it can be easy to do anything which in the past you would convince yourself you were too tired for. The body and mind are incredible things, individually and together, perhaps it may be time to stop wasting them and start making the most of the remarkable things we’re capable of as a species.

Resolutions Update 2.0

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Part of my resolutions are about to begin. My friend owns some exercise equipment and I’m going to use some ski machine thing I think, or at least something which he says is going to probably make me sick from the twenty minutes of effort I have promised him. The reason sick is actually a good thing for once is that as a result of my attempts at beer making I have not been too far from the toilet these last few days. If this continues I may be writing a piece soon detailing a salt water cleanse, or at least the benefits of it, over the intimate details of the procedure. My friend also drank the beers on Saturday but was sick on Sunday and seemingly felt better after. I unfortunately trained myself when younger not to be sick which can be good when drinking and smoking excessively but along closing the heart chakra apparently, which is perhaps a story for another time, it does mean that my body doesn’t necessarily expel poisons by vomiting in times it should. This attempt at doing some crazy amount of exercise when already feeling a bit weak and ill is completely the most ridiculously illogical approach and reminiscent of tv series from my youth like Jackass or Dirty Sanchez. I am though willing to give it a shot because while I doubt it’ll actually make my sick, I know it is at least an opportunity at making a start on my resolutions and I’ve passed up on far too many chances already. I am though losing weight by being ill so at least the belly is slightly shrinking. Does that mean I am inadvertently sticking to my resolutions? Only in the most perverse of ways. I also accept fully that nothing I say in any articles after this one can be taken with any seriousness and I may have completely destroyed any sense of credibility I have had the good fortune to acquire these last two months. But fuck it, here goes nothing….

…If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs is a line from a poem by Wilfred Owen about the folly of patriotic war and death, this line about the effects of chlorine gas during the First World War. It feels comparable to what I can taste in my mouth now. That old familiar taste of iron. The stabbing sensation in the ears and the throbbing of the head. My legs feel like jelly and either I’ve got cramp or I’ve hurt my hamstring but I completed twenty whole minutes of surprisingly gruelling exercise skiing, running with some bag on my back, lifting some heavy ball repeatedly and doing push ups. I didn’t vomit, I knew I never would despite the silliness of the first paragraph. I should be proud of myself apparently. I’ll let you know tomorrow if I manage to scrape myself off the floor.