HEALTH

It’s a Core and Hand Day

Not among my favorite days, but there it is

My three hand exercises

It’s Thursday, which for me means exercising my core and my hands. Both of these are important, but I truly can’t enjoy core. I endure it, and that’s the best I can say about it.

I only started getting serious about hand strength recently when I could not unscrew a jar top without mechanical assistance. I had thought that my regular pull-up workouts were keeping my hands strong, but nope.

I enjoy the hand exercises enough to devote ten minutes to only hands, split between the three items in the picture: a foam ball from Amazon (not an affiliate link), a softer ball we have had for years, and a wadded up ball of paper towels.

I like the last one the most. It’s reusable (assuming my wife doesn’t throw it in the trash), size adjustable, cheap, gives nice resistance, and feels good in my hands. Try it!

Core

I did mention that I don’t like core, right?

I mean, really, does anyone enjoy sit-ups? I never did, and many years ago I thought they might be a bad thing to do. It seemed like more strain than gain, and straining isn’t good, is it?

I recently found that the U.S. Army agrees: they decided that sit-ups are not a good exercise. Those guys have guns and tanks; I’m sure not about to argue with them. But core is important, maybe more important than anything else, so they and I now do other things, like this:

Rolling Side Plank

I thought that I invented these rolling side elbow planks until I ran across them online. Nope, someone else thought of those.

I like them a lot, though I can only do them for about a minute at a time; I’m panting, and my heart is racing with just that much. It’s a tough exercise, at least for me.

Static planks are great, and I do them too, but oh, man are they boring! The rolling planks are fun, and I even get a chuckle when I roll too hard and fall over…