Scott Adcox

I’m not really too keen on paying for a gym membership every month, and at this point I’m not really interested in building new muscle or bulking up either. I really just want to do some core workouts and focus on toning and endurance to supplement triathlon training. So I was looking around the web and found some stuff on the Bulgarian training bag–pricey. I also found Matt Wichlinski, who has a great video on making your own, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

The only thing I did different was to use a kid’s inflatable ring pool toy instead of a tire inner tube. I needed it to be lighter because The Missus wants to use it too. It seems to be working pretty well (I’m sore).The bag I made weighs 16.5 pounds. It cost me $2 for the ring, about $4 in duct tape, and the sand was free at the beach. I’m going to make a bigger one, hopefully around 35 lbs for some other exercises.

While I was at it, I bought a basketball from Walmart for $4, cut a small hole in it and filled it with sand too. I used Gorilla Glue to seal the opening, duct taped it shut, wrapped the whole ball in a garbage bag, and duct taped it more. I ended up with a 23lb medicine ball! Here’s a photo of the finished ball.

If you haven’t checked out Livestrong, it’s the best site I’ve seen so far for tracking everything. They even have sports (like rugby) listed so that you can just pop in the amount of time you spent playing it will throw it into your calorie track. Lots of foods are already logged there, so just type in what you ate and it will more than likely show up. It also lets you group together common meals you eat and recommends healthier food choices.

There’s an active community there, and they also have really cool programs called “Dares” set up that allow you to join in and participate.

Success is much easier when you are quantifying everything. They have Facebook integration and an iPhone app, and I hope there’s an Android app coming out soon.

Other cool features–a water tracker in the sidebar that lets you hit a button and claim hydration. It’s actually a great motivator to drink more water.

I was just talking to someone this weekend about the benefits of running barefoot, and after reading that article I found these Nike Free Trainers on sale. I’ve been wanting to try them for a while, and it just so happens I’m due a new pair of training shoes, so I’m giving them a shot.