The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #450: Remembering The Easy Exercise Plan and making a Thirteenth Hour Exercise Card Deck
https://archive.org/download/podcast-450/Podcast%20450.mp3
In one section of The Thirteenth Hour, the main protagonist, Logan, ends up in a desert dungeon, where he languishes in a dehydrated and depressed state for some time until he decides he has something to live for, at which points he starts rehabilitating himself by trying to regain his strength bit by bit. It’s the montage scene of many an old action movie – the wounded hero picks himself up, gets pumped, learns to shoot with his uninjured hand, sharpens his sword, prays, meditates, etc and then proceeds to kick major ass. I envisioned that in the space of a dungeon cell, Logan, like those heroes of old, really would not much room after having hit rock bottom, but he’d do what he could. I was writing from experience there, since I’d done some version of a mini exercise plan that could be done in a very small space for years. In fact, I still do to this day.
So it was with quite some amusement and good humor that I recently found a little volume I’d written for my parents as a gift in 1993. It was a collection of exercises I’d used myself, probably influenced by the ones we did in my martial arts classes as well as a little volume I had in my room, one of the Royal Canadian Air Force exercise plans, which had progressively difficult, short calisthenics routines designed to be done without any equipment in about 11-12 min per day (I actually found a scan of a volume very much like the one I had as a teen – you can find it here – a lot of the advice and perspectives are as valid now as they were when first designed, decades ago in the 1960s, and the final line, “wishing is not enough” is so good I have nothing else to add).
My own, more humble, handwritten “Easy Exercise Plan” ended up back in my hands again the last time I went to see my folks, after which I apparently put it aside to look at later. But it ended up getting left in a pile that sat collecting dust, and I didn’t have a chance to go through it until just yesterday. And, lo and behold, there were a lot of the same exercises I still to each day! I guess some things just don’t need to change very much if they work.
In this episode, I envision what would happen if I combined these exercises with a card deck – one exercise per card, 52 total, 13 per segment: 1.) loosening up, 2.) body weight strength, 3.) martial arts, and 4.) cool down stretches and meditation. I figured you could draw a few random cards from each section (coded by four different colors), and string them together, giving you a multitude of short, bite sized workouts that can be done without any equipment and in very little time. I think my eight grade self would find this pretty handy.
Turns outs this approach to exercise even has a trendy new name – “exercise snacking” … who would have guessed? Is it the same a formal, longer workout? Nope. But something is better than nothing, to my way of thinking, and if doing something more frequently since it takes less time means that you then are more active, on the whole than you used to be, then win, win, right?
If you’re interested in beta testing this game with me (I just need to make the artwork), email me!
Thanks for listening!
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