thousand of anything: Working Out

According to fitness experts, an average person should exercise at least 20 minutes 3 times a week. Yes, that's the absolute minimum to preserve good health.

With this in mind, I decided to make a trip to the gym this morning. But then I decided against it. What's so fun about working out on the treadmill or elliptical machine which is stationary inside an enclosed building? Unless, of course, if you are one of those people who enjoy watching the numerous TV channels offered by the gym while you are running on the treadmill. The way I see it, if you are not working out with weights, forget about going to the gym.

It's really so much fun and I dare say, healthier to exercise in the parks or anywhere close to nature. I mean, unless it's raining hard or snowing, or there's a haze blowing from Indonesia, there's no point in working out indoors. The air is fresher outside, the greeneries relaxes your mind and your eyes, the chirping of birds somehow makes you feel livelier and happier.

In any case, I do believe that we humans must regularly get back to nature. Especially for those of us who live in concrete jungles and hardly take the time to even relax in our own garden (that is, if you have one!)

I have a large field in front of my house that many residents here do their morning or evening exercises. But you know, I kinda get bored with it. Sometimes, you need a change of environment, a change of scenery.

Furthermore, it's no fun to be jogging round the field and keep bumping into your neighbours at every round! Especially when you are running in the clockwise direction and they are running in the opposite anti-clockwise direction. You are bound to meet them halfway every round!
First time, you both can simply exchange greetings of "hi!"
Second time, you can casually ask "How are you doing?"
Third time, you can say "Here we meet again!" and let off a pretentious laugh.
After that, I believe we will have a hard time coming out with decent one-liners. Maybe at the 10th round (if you can last that long), you can say "Wow! You're still here? Not bad! Not bad! You know what? I think I'll be making my move. See ya. Bye!!"

Of course, another stategy is to simply run in the same direction as your neighbours. Then, depending on how fast or slow you run, you will never ever bump into them. If your neighbour is ahead of you and he or she runs much faster than you, you are at risk of him or her catching up with you from behind and strike up a one-liner with you. So you have to be as fit as your neighbour to avoid him or her catching up with you.

However, if you are much faster than your neighbour, then you run the risk of bumping into him or her from behind and you will need to come up with a one-liner yourself. So the trick is to run at the same pace as your neighbours. The only problem here is if you are fitter than your neighbour, running at his or her pace will bore you to death!

Recently, I invented a third stategy. This is called "No Talking" stategy. It works like this. First time when you meet your neighbours at the field, let them know that when you exercise, you must fully concentrate and focus at the work at hand and you won't want to talk or involve in any kind of conversation with anyone unless it's an emergency. So, once they know your stand on this, each time you bump into them on your run, you either just smile or nod your head. Or just pretend your are focusing on your legs and don't look at them! They won't blame you or say you are arrogant because you already told them you won't talk during exercise. Good idea, no?

Now you may ask why bother with all these strategies? Why not just indulge in good old gossips with neighbours? Isn't it much more fun to be discussing which neighbours did what while at the same time improve your health by jogging? Or chat on Tun Mahathir's exit from Umno and if any Umno members follow suit. Or if David Cook really deserve to win the American Idol title when your neighbour is so eager to watch the results tonight and have no idea who won?

Yes, that could be fun, but according to fitness experts, if you can talk and chat so much without losing breath while exercising, you are not exercising hard enough! So there you go - no pain no gain! Not only that, it also defeats the whole purpose of exercising!

For me, I no longer jog on the field in front of my house. I now go to public parks. There are so many of them. Like Taman Lembah Kiara in Taman Tun Dr Ismail for one. I have even taken photos of the park. It's such a nice place with a lake and fountain and jogging tracks for joggers.