52 Lives

There are times when you find yourself exercising by sudden. You were supposed just to go to the airport and catch your flight, but you ended up running couple of kilometers in the terminal, dragging your heavy bags. Or you started building IKEA furniture and hours later you were still sweating trying to get it done. I don’t know how useful this kind of exercise is, but I suppose the sweating is good, right?

This Saturday I faced that kind of situation. And luckily it happened to be very good exercise. Here’s a short story about that exercise.

Promises, promises…

I promised my son in the beginning of summer that we would someday put the tent in the backyard. As the summer in Finland is coming to its end and available weekends are running out, I had to take action and fast! This day we were coming from the mall by car and I told my son the good news: next night would be spend in the tent. Needless to say, he was really enthusiastic about the idea!

So we arrived home and after moving the lawn I brought the tent to our backyard. My son was helping me (bringing stuff, asking questions ), so we got it ready easily.

Put Yer Hands On The Pump!

After the tent was set up, we started to bring additional stuff in. My favorite is the inflatable matress, which brings comfort to camping. It’s huge, it keeps distance to the cold ground and it feels like you were sleeping in your soft bed.

But it holds a terrible commitment…

I used to have a motorized pump for filling the matress. Unfortunately the pump’s battery got broken, so for the last two times I’ve filled the matress with a hand pump. You can imagine how long it takes… I can tell you it takes about an hour! So it has been a decision of comfort/discomfort. If I use the matress, I get extra luxury for the camping, but I also get blisters in my hands. On the other hand, if I don’t use the matress, I wake up with stiff bones and my back hurting.

Well, this time I chose to use the matress and started pumping. I remembered that it’s always tough to get the matress filled, but I decided to think it as an exercise. Like going to the gym or something. Yeah. This time it wouldn’t be so terrible!

So I pumped. And pumped. The matress looked like it didn’t hold any air. Pumped again. No change. Pumped even harder. OK, time to change the position. I thought that changing the style of pumping would make it easier. So I pumped

• using both hands while sitting.
• using both hands while standing.
• using both hands while standing on my knees..
• using only one hand and either bending the arm from the elbow or by pressing it down from shoulder.
• using my leg.
• keeping my hands on the pump while making squats.

At one point I decided to keep pumping no matter what using different pumping styles. Somehow I got the matress full, altogether it took about one hour. I had been sweating a lot in the hot tent, so I was beat up when I got out of the tent. But what an exercise it had been! It had been similar to body pump or circuit training. Good training for the hands (extensor, shoulders) and back!

Aftermath

I recommend matress pumping for busy dads if they don’t have time to go to the gym. The kids (at least small ones) love to watch the pumping, so you’re basically doing three things at the same time:

• You’re babysitting.
• You’re exercising.
• You’re doing something useful.

Even though there are these good arguments that support hand pumping, I’m still going to buy a new motorized pump This time I will get the model without the battery, so that it’ll last longer.

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