The Trampoline

Like most people I imagine, I hate making an effort to work out.  It's cold outside?  I don't want to go out to run, or even walk to my apartment complex's gym.  Yoga?  It's an awful lot of work to get out my yoga mat, unroll it, set up my yoga video on my computer, get my strap and blocks, do a 20 minute workout, then roll up the mat, tie the blocks together with the strap, and put it all away.  Whine, whine, I know it's pathetic.

Another problem I have is injuries.  I had a particularly great summer of running back in undergrad.  I loved it, I ran every day.  And then the dreaded shin splints started.  At first I ignored them, thinking they'd go away as I brought my physique up.  Wrong.  They got worse.  So bad, in fact, that I had to quit running completely and it hurt to even walk for weeks.  Clearly I'm an idiot for letting this go on for so long, but I really loved running.  Now I can only run every other day or they start coming back.  If I really committed to running regularly I imagine I would condition myself enough to prevent this.  But I haven't.

And then there's the numerous arthroscopic knee surgeries I've seen.  All these crazy athletic people's knees look like crap.  Seriously.  Cartilage, as it turns out, does not like to be abused.  It doesn't like constant pounding on pavement.  And seriously, who has a park with soft dirt to run in that doesn't take a 20 minute drive to get to?  I don't.  I've got streets and that's it.  Yeah yeah yeah, they say running actually improves your cartilage health?  That's never been proven and just seeing some of these people at 40-50 years old (not that old at all) with knees like 80-somethings.  Ouch, no thanks.

So what's my latest solution?  A trampoline.

My mom's been doing this (and I've been making fun of her for it) since I was a toddler.  She has (really) bad knees and she does this almost every day.  I grew up watching her jog in front of the bedroom window with a cassette player in one hand (switching off for evenness) and staring out at the view.

So here I am, cringe, following in my mother's footsteps.  I bought myself a trampoline for less than $30 and started jogging on it while listening to music or watching The Big Bang Theory.  I move my arms around (out out, up up, etc) to tone them.  And I jog.  Virtually no stress on my shins or knees.  Some stress on the arches my bare (lets be real, I wear socks) feet, but I imagine this would be easily relieved if I wore sneakers with good arch support.

Technically, jogging on a trampoline is called Rebounding.  According to Livestrong you burn about 410 calories per hour on this thing.  A sparkpeople forum member made the following chart:
Calories burned per 10 MINUTES of rebounding
220lbs/100kg---51.1----99.6------151.1
209lbs/95kg----49.2----95.2------144.1
200lbs/91kg----47.6----91.7------138.5
191lbs/87kg----45.9----88.1------132.8
183lbs/83kg----44.2----84.5------127.1 
176lbs/80kg----42.9----81.7------122.9
170lbs/77kg----41.6----78.9------118.5
163lbs/74kg----40.2----76.1------114.2
154lbs/70kg----38.4----72.4------108.4
147lbs/67kg----37.0----69.5------104.0
141lbs/64kg----35.6----66.6-------99.5
134lbs/61kg----34.1----63.7-------95.1
125lbs/57kg----32.2----59.8-------89.2   <--me

Which means I burn somewhere around 100-200 calories per 20 min routine.  Which isn't THAT much, but it's a good start.  What's most important though, is that it uses basically all of the muscles in your body (core, legs, arms) and thus tones everything.

And the moral of this story?  It's easy: slide out from bed, roll to living room, plop down in front of TV.  It's temperature controlled: I often do this in my underwear and sports bra, spending the heat status of my apartment.  I don't have to go anywhere for it.  Basically I'm in heaven.  And I have no excuse at all to not be exercising every day.