Another in a series of peeks into your exercise options.
It was a thing of beauty in an evening otherwise dominated by sweat and missteps. Two women stood facing one another, red vinyl body bags on their left and right. On cue, they began punching the bags with side kicks – left foot/right, left foot/right, left foot/right. After less than a half dozen kicks, they were in synch. Bam! Bam! Bam!
There’s something no-nonsense about a piece of workout equipment that looks like it should be hanging in a medieval dungeon. It involves lots of stretching, a good deal of hanging as well. And your body will certainly feel the effects. Torture? Depends upon your perspective.
Yesterday I felt like getting in a good, full-body, no-nonsense workout.
So I raked the yard.
Raking leaves used to be a Rockwellian pursuit epitomizing fall in America. A time when we rolled up our flannel sleeves, grabbed the Yo-Ho and dedicated ourselves to a Saturday in the yard. For weeks, it seemed a pointless task: Rake a bunch of leaves, a bunch more would fall. But we persevered until the last fallen oak-leaf soldier had been eradicated. We derived a sense of satisfaction through the process, both physical and in the knowledge that we were keeping the homestead in order.
Then, something happened. The birth of cable TV and the promise of 14 straight hours of college football on Saturday, perhaps? Or was it the invention of the leaf-blower, which introduced horsepower to the task, making it suddenly attractive to our 10-year-old kids? Maybe raking’s demise as an respectable physical activity can be attributed to the lack of a celebrity promoter, a Suzanne Somers or a Tony Little, to add sizzle to the cause.
Whatever, raking leaves has become yet another act of physical exertion that we’ve dropped from our repertoire. Which is a shame, because with the meager investment of $15 for a rake (the Ab Circle Pro, by comparison, is $199.75 plus $34.50 shipping and handling), you can get one good full-body workout.
According to AARP.org, raking leaves offers various benefits. It works your arms and upper body and, perhaps more importantly, tones your core — your stomach and back muscles. Maybe you won’t develop six-pack abs by raking leaves, but you will tone your body’s most important muscle group. (Check out this AARP article for tips on raking and bagging.)
Raking can also offer a good aerobic challenge, especially if you make the activity a challenge in itself. At the risk of raising eyebrows, I try to set a PR every time I take to the leaves. The first time I tackled the yard this season, it took me 23 minutes and 15 seconds to rake the north quadrant of our front yard; Last week, I nearly cracked the magical 20-minute barrier, cause for a victory lap around the cul-de-sac.
Perhaps most seductively, raking burns calories, more than you might imagine. According to the Self.com Health Calculator, a 170-pound person burns 348.16 calories during 60 minutes of leaf raking. That beats the following activities (according to another calculator, the Fitness Partner calorie calculator):
Why put up with the hassles of traffic and pay $10 — the going rate based on a drive-by survey of Thursday evening’s State Fair preview — for premium parking to this year’s N.C. State Fair, which opens today and runs through Oct. 25, when you can park for free and encounter zero traffic? And, you get a 2.7-mile (one way) nature hike to boot. Here’s the deal: