I'm Okay. Really

Yesterday, after writing a blog post about medicine balls, I ordered a 45-pound slam ball from Amazon. This particular brand of ball does not seem to have the best reputation for quality and endurance (nor the worst), but the 45-pound model was ridiculously cheap. So cheap, I have to wonder whether the price was a mistake. So cheap, I honestly wonder whether what I paid would even cover the cost of free 2-day shipping of an item that weighs 45 pounds.

I'm not on steroids. (I know: that's exactly what most steroid users say. But I'm not.) Just in case any of you were worried about that, or worried about me in general and my new enthusiasm for medicine balls. I'm aware that many or most or all of the people (besides me) who are genuinely interested in 300-lb medicine balls

are on steroids. I'm not interested in becoming even bigger than I already am. I'm not interested in competing in strongman competitions. What I want to do is become thinner. I want to use the medicine balls to burn off fat, more than I want to use them to pack on muscle. If some of my muscles get bigger in the process of burning off fat, that's okay with me, but it's not the main focus.

If I were seriously interesting in developing huge muscles, I would be starting an exercise program centered primarily around lifting barbells and dumbbells -- and around taking steroids and HGH and things like that. But I don't want the huge muscles. I want to get smaller. I want MORE of a neck, not less of one. I don't even know very much about steroids and HGH and other things used by -- well, apparently by top athletes in every single sport where it's not specifically banned and rigourously tested, as well as a lot of the top athletes in sports where it is specifically banned and rigourously tested. I don't know very much about the banned substances, but I get the distinct impression that they're dangerous in various ways. Some people insist they're not, but those people seem to me to be either using steroids (etc), and in denial -- or selling steroids (etc).

I hear that steroids (etc) are expensive, too, so even if I were convinced that they were safe as milk, even if I wanted to take them, I couldn't afford to. (I don't even drink milk, because of health concerns. I don't pour milk on my cereal or oatmeal. If I'm in the mood for a beverage which resembles milk, it's almond milk for me.)

I'm not planning a lot of barbell and dumbbell lifting. Just calisthenics and and cardio and medicine balls. And the medicine balls are mainly intended to intensify the effects of the calisthenics and cardio: burning fat, strengthening my heart and lungs, lowering my blood pressure and resting pulse rate.

HEALTHY stuff. Before my surgery back in August, I said to myself that if I survived, I would make a stronger commitment to my physical health. And that's exactly what I'm doing. And my blood pressure and pulse rate have been coming down -- not dramatically yet, but that's okay. I'm taking small steps in the right direction.

You know, some day I will meet a beautiful woman who is into heavy slam balls and mechanical watches and the Latin language and languages in general and healthy, steroid-free living and quantum theory and Moleskine notebooks and almond milk and kitties, and sparks will fly.

I'm Still Pure Mental About Medicine Balls

More specifically: about slam balls, because, as far as I can see, medicines balls over 20 pounds are all or almost all slam balls.

I'm getting very good results from working out at home with my 8 pound medicine ball and my 5 kilogram ball and my 20 pound ball. But I want to go heavier.

The guy behind the gun counter at the big sporting-goods store said they could get medicine balls as big as 12 or even 15 pounds. The fact that they sell guns and do not sell big medicine balls (big from my point of view) are only two of the things that make me uncomfortable about the place. Going there again after several years reminded me that I had already told myself I probably wouldn't need to go there again. Ever. In my life.

Of course, I can buy slam balls as big as 300 lbs from Amazon. I have actually been having wildly irresponsible thoughts about doing exactly that. Once a 300-lb ball was delivered, would I be able to get it as far as from the sidewalk up onto the front porch? Interesting question. Then again, I don't see what would be so bad about leaving it outside -- who would steal it? Very likely no-one who wasn't using a forklift. It might stay right there on the ground outside for a very long time, looking like a spherical yellow lawn ornament.

I have actually been more seriously thinking about buying a slam ball which weighs 45 lbs or more.

A more responsible thought is joining a gym which has huge heavy slam balls. Which gyms have what size balls? I don't know. After looking in at the above-mentioned sporting goods store today, I spotted a nearby gym. But it's still under construction.

The first gym I telephoned about this told me that their slam balls are usually locked up. They're only taken out for classes. No lone-wolf slam-balling at any old time for them! Which is disappointing, but I guess I can see their point, which -- I'm guessing -- is safety. And far be it from me to denigrate safety. Seriously.

Seems like a LOT of local gyms don't even answer their phones on Saturday afternoons. What, are they all CLOSED on weekends? Sigh. Most of them would probably be out of my budget range, too, unless I can arrange to get a free gym membership because I'm poor, which some people actually seem to think I can do.

It may be that I am kind of crazy to to build my fitness plans around slam balls to such an extent, but you know what? I don't particularly care if it is crazy, it could still work. I know somebody who lost an amazing amount of weight on a cabbage-soup diet, and who very enthusiastically preaches the Gospel of Health through Cabbage Soup. Which is crazy, but, much more importantly, it actually worked for him, so who's crazy now, huh? I think that a huge variety of approaches to diet and exercise would each work well for some people. Would, and do. It may very well be that focusing to such an extent on heavy slam balls would be crazy for most people but brilliant for me, because I'm just built that way. (And there's also the possibility that I've stumbled across fitness gold here and am far, far ahead of my time.)

There's an Australian company called Iron Edge which makes fitness equipment, including slam balls as heavy as 85 kilograms. That's over 187 pounds.

They have some YouTube videos featuring a young man who is very thin, but wiry, who actually picks up the 85kg balls and carries them around and throws them and such, and also makes comments about the balls which I find humorous. I don't know how much he's cracking up his Australian target audience, and how many of things which crack me are just things Australians say. Like when he describes some amazing feat which Derek Boyer, Fijian-Australian strongman legend and Iron Edge spokesman, has performed with the heavy slam balls in training, and then dryly adds something like "[...] which, in my opinion, is pure mental."

Besides being funny, the fact that this fellow is so thin and can still carry and toss an 85-kg slam ball makes me confident that I can carry a 300-pound ball. Eventually. If I work very, very hard. Probably not today.

And it may actually be very tricky to even find a slam ball as heavy as 85 kilograms, let alone 300 pounds. (And I've said in this blog, and I stand by it: they should make them even bigger than 300 lbs.) I don't know yet how common they are in gyms. Maybe they're all over the place, and it's just a matter of hooking up with a gym.

Or maybe, to most fitness enthusiasts, the very thought of slam balls as heavy as 85 kilograms, never mind 300 pounds, let alone even bigger, is still pure mental -- either because it really is pure mental, or because I am from the future.

Okay, Okay, I Admit It --

I'm COMPLETELY obsessed with 300-lb medicine balls!

Furthermore, it ANGERS me that so far I have only found one company, D-Ball, which makes medicines balls that big. This is a 300-pounder from D-Ball:

It's 15 inches, which is a lot bigger than, say, a basketball, but also a lot smaller than some other medicine balls which are much lighter.

(A d-ball, or dead ball, also known as a slam ball, is different from a traditional medicine ball in that it does not bounce, so that you can slam it straight down into the floor or ground or point-blank against a wall without having to worry about it bouncing all over the place and injuring people.)

And more recently it has begun to anger me that there are -- as far as I know -- no medicine balls which are larger than 300lbs. The next-biggest I've found so far are 85-kilogram slam balls from an Australian company called Iron Edge:

85 kilograms equals about 187 pounds.

There are people running around loose out there, purporting to be experts on such things, who say that slam balls only go up to 150 pounds.

The 300-pounders are used, among other uses, to train for strong-man competitions in which one has to pick up a stone or a keg which may weigh as much as 450 lbs, and then either set it down on a shelf around shoulder or eye-height, depending upon the strong man, or carry it for a distance before putting it down on such a shelf. How, I recently asked, are you going to train for that if there are no medicine balls bigger than 300 pounds?

Turns out they have an answer for that: they just train with stones or kegs, with the same objects which are used in the competitions. Here are some people training with the stones:

And I have an answer for THAT: they should use medicine balls in the competitions. The heavier ones may be sand or steel shot or other things on the inside, but they're rubber on the outside, and that's the way to go. No discussion, I'm right, everyone else is wrong. Rubber, AND SPHERICAL, is the way to go. Yes, the Atlas stones are spherical, but there are also kegs used in competitions, and sandbags used for training, which are not.

Spherical is the way to go because it's most difficult shape to lift and to keep steady. Barbells and dumbbells have handles specifically shaped to fit your hands, to make lifting easier, and to make it easier to keep them steady once they've been lifted. Nautilus-type machines make it even easier, because zero energy is required to stabilize the load: you just go straight up and come straight back down.

Well, what are you there to do: lift the maximum amount of weight off of the ground, or get the maximum effort into your workout? A sphere, a ball, requires the maximum effort to be lifted by a human, and the maximum effort to stabilize it, to keep from dropping it. And in return for that maximum effort, it returns the maximum reward in building strength. Right now, having used medicine balls which weigh much less than 300 pounds, I can feel muscles all over my body which have been woken up and stimulated. (In a good way.) Including some muscles which I can't recall ever having felt before at all.

There are some medicine balls which have indentations in them, sort of looking like the Death Star, and in those indentations are handles. Talk about completely missing the point of what you're making.

Okay, I admit, I don't know all of the biological science, and maybe there are plenty of good reasons to use barbells and dumbbells and Nautilus-type machines, and maybe I'm totally wrong to say that medicine balls are always the way to go. Maybe saying that only proved that I'm a total noob at the entire subject of lifting and throwing weighted objects. I suppose it's even possible that I'm completely wrong about the Death Star-medicine balls. But that's not my point right now. My point is that medicine balls are way cool and that I love them almost as much as kitties.

Rubber is the way to go because stone can scuff up your skin really badly and you don't need that. Also because you don't want to go around throwing either stone balls or barbells or dumbbells, generally speaking. Generally speaking, I think it's safe to say, throwing stone balls and dumbbells and barbells is a bad idea. And throwing Nautilus-type machines, of course, would just be much worse.

But you can throw the medicine balls and slam balls. They're designed to be thrown. You can throw them in more ways than the shot from the shot put. The shot is also way cool, but that's for another post.

I Didn't Work Out With a 300-Pound Medicine Ball Today

I went into the sporting-goods store, went right for the 20-lb medicine ball lying on the floor and lifted it up. The young lady working the cash register asked if I needed any help. I told her the truth: that I had just come in there to do a set with the 20-pounder.

I asked whether she was aware that medicine balls as big as 300 lbs were made and offered to the public. She said no, seemed genuinely surprised and asked what medicine balls so big could possibly be used for.

I told her that I saw two possibilities: 1) Frontin'.

Somebody might buy a 300-lb medicine ball just so they could pay 3 or 4 strong people to carry it into their home, and keep it on their floor and try to convince other people that they actually exercised with it; and 2) I asked if she'd seen those World's Strongest Man contests on TV. She said she had. I pointed out that in those competitions, sometimes kegs and stones and other unwieldy objects were lifted which weighed 300 lbs or more. I asked rhetorically: How would someone train for such a competition, if not with a 300-lb medicine ball?

We chatted a little bit more about medicine balls. Just in case it's not already completely obvious: I'm fascinated by medicine balls these days. I happen to have owned an 8-pounder and a 5-kilogram ball for years. I googled looking for exercises in which I wouldn't actually have to throw the balls. One thing I found is called the Russian Twist.

I am really feelin' the Russian Twist right now, which I've been doing with the 8-pound ball. I'm feeling it in a really good way. I guess, technically, a Russian Twist is not done with a weight, and if you do it with a medicine ball or some other weight in your hands, it's a Weighted Russian Twist.

After my stop at the sporting-goods store, I walked around the strip mall. Literally: I walked all 360 degrees around it. I saw one bird in the trees behind the strip mall; it was flying too fast and close for me to tell what kind of bird it was. I walked for about 40 minutes altogether. Got a little endorphine thing going on right now. Hope I don't feel 300 years old and like all my bones have been crushed when I wake up tomorrow morning. I think I'll be okay. I think I may finally be doing that thing I've been telling myself to do for years and failing to do: starting an exercise routine and building it up gradually, in a sustainable way, without injuring myself. Those 5-mile walks I was doing a couple of months ago, soon after my surgery: that was overdoing it. That was unsustainable. But I should be able eventually to do 5 miles and more at a stretch, by gradually working up to it, and carrying drinking water with me. I don't have to get there today. I don't have to be a beautiful super-athlete today -- and it's a good thing that I don't have to do it today, cause I can't do it today. 40 minutes walking and a little bit of light, careful medicine-ball work was good for today. Plus plenty of stretching.

Did I mention how much I love the medicine balls? I can picture myself carrying a medicine ball on a long walk as if it were a pampered dog. And by the way, I have found a way to throw a medicine ball in my house: I just lie flat on my back and push the ball with both hands straight up, hard as I can. So far, I don't seem to be in danger of putting a hole in the ceiling.

Medicine Balls

I have some medicine balls. Not this many:

One of mine is slightly larger than a basketball and weighs 5 kilograms. That's right: kilograms, not pounds. I wonder where it's from, originally. Probly not Murrka.

Another one is slightly larger than a shot which is thrown in the shot put. And there's got to be simpler way of mentioning such a shot. Then again, maybe not. It's just barely small enough that I could put it like a shot. I'm very curious about how far I could put it. I'm not going to find out today because it's icy outside. Okay, I could go outside right now and put it. I probably won't. We'll see.

I know that exercise with medicine balls generally involves throwing them. But I can't throw them inside my house, which has limited space and fragile walls and floors. I watched a video yesterday in which a trainer had his clients throw medicine balls as hard as they could against cinder block walls. At one point the trainer said approvingly of his client, a UFC fighter, "Yeah, he's trying to throw that ball right through that wall." I sometimes hold a medicine ball and move around with it, or shift it from hand to hand, or throw it up, but not high enough to hit the low ceiling, and catch it before it hits the floor, and repeat. I don't know whether I'm getting good exercise when I do such things, or injuring myself, or neither. Hey, maybe I'm doing both!

Yesterday I was holding the 5 kilogram ball, and I actually wondered whether it was about as heavy as medicine balls get! Yeah, it seems kind of silly in retrospect that I wondered that, because I googled it and found medicine balls weighing as much as 300 pounds.

The 300-pounders are not any bigger than regular medicine balls. I don't know what they're made of, whether they're rubber all the way through -- extra-heavy rubber -- or basically just iron or brass with a very thin coating of rubber, or what. I don't know -- if you can play catch with one of those, you may be overdoing it, and maybe you just need a really good hug. But who am I to judge? Go ahead and get your freaky strong on if you want to.

I'm pretty sure that I could lift a 300 lb medicine off of the ground or floor all by myself. I'm also pretty sure that if I did it right now, I'd injure myself. But it doesn't have to stay that way. I could transform myself from a Great Big Fat Guy to a Great Big Freakishly Strong Guy Who is Not Fat At All. It's possible. Or I could go thin. I've been thin before, it wasn't bad at all. It was much easier to jump around like a cat when I was thin. Or I could just forget about everything except enjoying lots and lots of great food, and go for 500 lbs. (Weighing 500 lbs, that is. Not working out with a 500-lb ball. Although that too would be possible...)

I think that tossing the medicine balls as described above, repeating for dozens of reps, is good for me. I think I can feel myself getting stronger and less fat. Tossing a medicine ball just a little ways into the air, because of the low ceiling, I can feel it in muscles all over me, from my calves to my neck.

I think it's possible that I won't write any more Great Big Fat Guy posts. Maybe instead, the next Great Big Fat Guy post will just be a Great Big Guy post. That'd be sweet. And I think it's more likely than me weighing 500 lbs. Yeah, I really feel it all over. Feels good. There is no doubt, I'm getting some good exercise from these medicine balls.

(But, of course, a well-rounded exercise program includes many kinds of exercise. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that medicine balls can do it for you all by themselves.)

(Although...)