Dogwood Winter

My tribute continues with harder workouts involving more resistance: I got a saber, like a real one, finally, at long last, with many thanks due in probably a dozen directions. I'm also incorporating a lot of body-weight resistance type exercises and general strength builders, in addition to the usual. This is partly due to my high desire to develop a lot more physical strength at the moment and partly due to the fact that we're having (another) Dogwood Winter right now. The weather here in the spring is pretty variable with lots of rain and temperature variations, and at the moment, it's finally starting to warm up from the last blast of sub-40 temperatures. It's also clear for the first day in a few, yesterday spitting snow on and off all day and the day before cold rain and sleet. Today looks better, but at the moment, I'm trapped in the office (with no immediate assignment).

Feeling rather creative and not wanting to waste the hour that I'm stuck here (waiting on a student), I decided to do some more of those body-weight exercises including plenty of squats and pushups... but nothing too "weird" in the office. Then, I was struck by an interesting/clever notion. I took a box filled with books and slid it to the middle of the floor, picked it up (it weighs around 60 pounds), turned around, carried it across the small room, and put it on top of the filing cabinet, which is about at shoulder height. Then I stepped back, went back to the box, and proceeded to put it back in the floor. After standing back up, I repeated the exercise a few dozen times. I don't know if it was a great one or not, particularly since I didn't work up a mighty sweat (which suited me just fine here in the office), but it was different and interesting and hopefully building some kind of functional strength, as opposed to just doing repetitions of routine calisthenics.

Hopefully the weather will persist today so that when I get home I can go spend time with my saber (and other drills, outside) again. My hands are mightily sore, though, since I've hardly put it down since I got it. I don't know if that means that I should ease up or not, but I'll push myself a little more first to find out.