A workout is where you make it
By: Dorcas DenHartog
Seasoned New Englander that I am, I knew from the sound of the sleet on my window that night that tomorrow would not be a snowblower day. Sure enough, I opened the door to the driveway that morning and nudged the crusted snow with my toe – no give. I gave it a hard whack with the back of my heel – and it dented. A little. Confirmed: This was not going to be down jacket-shoveling, like you see in the ads for Ski Utah. This was going to be a get-dressed-to-sweat workout. And I could not have been happier. Injured, I have not been able to run for several months, so exercise has been limited to core, physical therapy, and the elliptical. This was like the heavens had plopped down a gym in my front yard and said, ‘Who needs machines?! Circuit train on THAT!’
Fueled with a mug of strong, French roast coffee, I dressed as I would for a run in the cold rain. Armed with my one, trusty man-made tool, the shovel, I headed out the door.
Some of the tricks to a good driveway-shoveling workout: 1) Lift the shovelfuls with your knees – it targets glutes and quads. 2) Carry, don’t throw the shovel-fulls to the side of the driveway for added endurance. And 3) alternate your arms and throws – exercise both right and left arms, shoulder girdle, and transverse abdominus equally. Although track runners may choose just to use their outer/right side.
One and a half hours later I was done.
I followed it the next evening with a creative solution to the slippery mess that continued to fall, by shovelling a corduroy pattern, on the hunch that if the tires slipped on the frozen pavement they would ‘catch’ on the ribbons of shnow. (That’s Inuit for sh**tty snow).
And yesterday, as a gift to the mailman, I shovelled out my mailbox. Three days of frozen precipitation, super-compacted by freeze/thaw and the snowplows gave me another 45minutes of long-distance strength.
Now, because it’s not a workout unless it’s posted on Strava,I’ve been reviewing their training mode choices to see how best to enter my exercise. Multi-sport? What’s that? Cross-fit, maybe. But they’d sue me for misappropriating their brand. Obstacle racing, no, because it was just one obstacle – well, trillions of H2O molecules. It was Aerobic, but I visualize Jane Fonda and scrunchy socks and leotards and 1980s Top 40, not my Darn Tough socks and Mountain Hardware Gore-tex, with the growl of city snowplows and and chickadee songs in the background
I’m going to settle for Circuit Training. Meanwhile, I’ll ask our Strava-man, Lee Peters, about adding a Farm Boy strength icon to the choices. Data entry would include density of the material moved (snow, hay, manure, type and age of wood), distance moved horizontally and vertically, and maybe the length of the lever (pitchfork, shovel, or arms).
Meanwhile, here’s to winter exercising with a purpose, the way we used to do it.
