Category: Fitness

Recovery Redefined

I’ve written elsewhere that you can use your pain as the catalyst for figuring out your life’s purpose.

In one section of a chapter in Working Assets I talk about opting to have a purpose-driven life.

People who exert their time energy and labor on “Keeping Up with the Joneses” are less happy. They go into debt buying things that make them appear rich.

In the Andrew Hallam book Balance: How to Invest and Spend for Happiness, Health, and Wealth he talks about the four quadrants of success:

Having enough money.

Maintaining strong relationships (with yourself and with others).

Maximizing your physical and emotional health.

Living with a sense of purpose.

It’s living with a sense of purpose that is key to flourishing in recovery.

I recommend you buy Balance to have on hand. It’s one of the great personal finance books.

Whether a person can hold a full-time job or not the difference is in doing things that give you joy every day.

One person might bake a cake. Another person might ride a skateboard.

I’ve come to redefine recovery not as only possible when a person returns to having a normal life.

Hello–I worked in corporate insurance offices in the 1990s and wasn’t thriving. Even though I technically recovered.

My purpose as I see it that gets me going is to advance my vision of recovery in two ways:

From whatever illness or distress or trauma is in a person’s life. In whatever guise recovery comes to them as.

Healing is possible and there’s hope for healing.

I’m fond of using the skateboarding analogy as a recovery lifestyle that could suit a person.

In Working Assets I also make the case for doing volunteer work when you can’t work at paid employment.

In my view we must expand the definition of what constitutes recovery.

If you ask me the four quadrants of success should be achievable for everyone regardless of what we’re in recovery from.

This is because It’s Not About the Money. It’s Not About Acquiring Material Things.

Plain and simple recovery is about finding what gives us joy and going and doing that.

On and off the job.

Finding the job that is the right fit can enable a person to recover.

Setting Up a Home Gym

I’d like to round out the scope of competitive information to give readers in this blog.

To set up a home gym I recommend getting this equipment: A 36-inch foam roller. A set of 5-pound, 8-pound, and 10-pound dumbbells. (Use a set of 5-pounders to start. Or 2-pound dumbbells first if you’re out of shape. As your routine gets easier add the 8- and 10-pound sets.)

A 10- or 15-pound kettle bell. (I have 10- 15- and 20-pound kettle bells.)

A 10-pound body bar. (Start with a lower weight if you have to.)

A resistance band. Medicine ball. (I have a 12-pound ball.)

Gym equipment can be bought on Amazon. I bought the dumbbells and medicine ball at Modell’s as well as training t-shirts and pants. Get fitted for the right sneakers while you’re at it.

First: you might have to buy an exercise mat to cover a rug or carpet. I have a hardwood floor in my living room where I exercise regularly.

Watch YouTube to see the correct form for exercises.

What you can do at home:

Foam roller stretching and other stretches. Push-ups either regular or elevated from a coffee table.

Dumbbell exercises:

Pec flyes, bicep curl, kneeling bicep curl, chest press, lunges and squats, walking lunges, lateral raises, triceps kickback, chest press with squat, renegade row, one-arm row, briefcase row, calf raises, farmer’s walk, dumbbell bridges, lateral raises, alternating lateral and frontal raises, donkey kicks, fire hydrant kicks.

Kettle bell exercises:

Swings, goblet squats, curtsy pulse squats, side squats, one-leg dead lifts.

Body bar exercises:

Frontal raises, hip bridging from floor.

Core exercises:

Figure 4s, leg raises, bicycle crunches, alternating V-ups, Russian twists.

Other exercises:

Planks, disc slides knee-to-elbow, plank jacks with disc sliders, side plank with hip drop, wall sits, jumping jacks, medicine ball slams (on hardwood floor or mat), triceps dips off chair, butt kicks in place, high knees in place.

(Disc slider exercises can only be done on hardwood floors or an exercise mat. Cloth-side should face the floor.)

Buona Salute a Tutti

This is what Italians are telling everyone:

Buona Salute a Tutti–Good Health to All.

We are living through an exceptional time in the history of human civilization.

I recommend exercising, listening to the radio, reading a book, making art, writing in a journal, calling friends and family on the telephone, and watching or reading news from a trusted source.

It can be hell when you’re forced to isolate indoors in your apartment. Practicing what I call mental hygiene could help a person survive this challenge.

I’ve been ordering things online: a book to read; ink and paper for my computer; a sweater reduced to a ridiculously low cost.

Luckily in June I had set up a home gym. This was auspicious as on Monday the mayor of New York City shut down gyms. Along with bars, clubs, cafes and restaurants, museums, theaters, and arenas.

In the next blog entry I will talk about setting up a home gym.

Yes–I bought a lot of my equipment like a kettle bell and resistance band from Amazon.com.