As a kid, I hated gym and avoided exercise. As an adult, I recognize I need to get moving if I want to be healthy, so I have been looking for ways to make exercise more fun.
A few weeks ago, one of our stations during the gym class I take was at the punching bag. You hit it with a baseball bat, swinging for a home run, whacking the bag with all your might.
I loved it! I’m not comfortable with violence against living things, but beating the crap out of an inanimate object was fun.
I teased my instructor: “You didn’t tell me you were training us for the zombie apocalypse!” He laughed, and I realized I’d found a whole new way to think about exercise.
Here are some of the things I am now training for:
- To journey There and Back Again,
- to become a Jedi,
- to survive the three dangers of the Fire Swamp,
- to become a dragonrider of Pern,
- to win the Triwizard Tournament,
- to follow the Beavers across Narnia,
- to outrun the Daleks,
- to ride with the Rohirrim,
- and, of course, to kick ass during the Zombie Apocalypse.
I doubt I’ll ever sign up for a marathon, a triathalon, or a long-distance bike race, so there’s no point in training for them. I suppose it’s just as unlikely I’ll ever be face-to-face with a zombie, need to walk across Middle Earth, or run faster than Daleks roll.
But I love the idea of getting ready, just in case.
How about you? Do you have any unusual goals to help motivate you when you work out?
