Posts Tagged ‘outdoor exercise’
Exercising Outdoors
Arms over my head, pushing to the limits of my reach and strength, I grunted like a powerlifter to gain a morsel beyond what it felt like I was able. It occurred to me that all this effort to clear snow off our roof might look like more work than reasonable, yet a similar effort lifting weights in a gym would appear to be a noble pursuit.
Why do I work so hard outside on our property when I could just join a gym and go indoors to lift weights for exercise?
Doesn’t that question just answer itself?
It was very rewarding to have our Avalanche snow “rake” work ideally for these snow conditions. I was able to use the plastic sheet attachment to bring down perfect large blocks of snow.
Here is a shot of the Avalanche in action when we first got it back in 2019:
It performed flawlessly for me again yesterday. Of course, that’s only half the job. Where the roof snow comes down at the front door and across the deck, the densely packed piles need to be shoveled away after my arms have been exhausted by the overhead pushing of the rake.
It was a day of big exercise at my outdoor gym facility, but I’m not sure I feel any stronger this morning for all that effort.
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Works Slick
It made for a great workout that got me huffing and puffing, and soaked in sweat out in the great outdoors. Getting exercise by splitting firewood beats lifting weights in a gym because when you are done, you have a beautiful pile of firewood. Simple as that.
I wouldn’t describe it as quick, but splitting wood with my new tool, the Splitz-All was definitely faster than with my Swedish patented Smart Splitter. The additional benefit of the Splitz-All being portable will likely lead to this being my primary weapon of choice for a while.
Using the supplied chain to bundle the cut logs and hold them upright even after they split worked just as advertised. Also, popping the tool back out of a log that isn’t splitting easily took less effort than with the Smart Splitter.
The dead tree from the paddock is now all split and stacked in the woodshed.
One reason the splitter is such a good exercise workout is the efficiency of hammering away, one after another, on the bundled logs. There is no pause needed when moving immediately after a split to pounding on the next log.
I look forward to getting past my urge to split every log as fast as possible just because it works well enough to allow for that and slowing down to a more sustainable pace so I won’t bonk before everything is split.
When I’m no longer capable of splitting wood with muscle power, the next tool will likely involve hydraulics.
Until then, Splitz-All is my weight lifting machine. One that produces the bonus output of a valuable useable product.
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Relative Something 