Exercise: Making it Accessible

I mentioned before that I’ve become interested in using kickboxing for exercise, and that I bought a punching bag to make it more effective. When I bought it, I had planned on hanging it in our attic from a beam, which was in place for some sort of room construction (which was never completed). I followed through with this plan. Problems quickly popped up with this, though; problems which, admittedly, could have been avoided, if I’d done a little more research and put my grey matter to use.

But I didn’t. I got it home, lugged it up two flights of stairs to the attic, and hung it up as quickly as possible. Just like the overgrown kid I am – “A new toy!” Then I tried to use it and noticed the problems.

The first problem that appeared after mounting the bag in the attic and hitting it around a bit is connected to this simple fact: I’m not a carpenter. Not only am I not a carpenter, I never even took shop class in school; my knowledge of woodworking is woefully inadequate, more or less nonexistent, actually. Which, of course, would explain why I mounted an 80 pound punching bag to a beam that isn’t nearly sturdy enough to hold it, at least not for a long period of time with me knocking it around.

To make it clear, I did test the beam, or rather my wife did. She weighs a good deal more than 80 pounds, and she hung from the beam, and it didn’t give at all. We figured, okay, if it’ll hold her, it’ll hold the bag – simple math, right? Well, yes. But see, I didn’t proceed to push my wife around while she was hanging from the beam, throwing hooks at her and front kicks and all of that other stuff. She just hung there. Apparently, when you hang an 80 pound object from a chain, and then punch and kick it around, when the bag jerks down on the chain, there’s a little bit more stress than 80 pounds being applied. Who woulda’ thought it, right?

More specifically, when I hit the punching bag or, gods forbid, kicked it, bad things started to happen. The beam warped an awful lot, to the point where it went beyond “normal warping” to “hey, that might just snap in two!” It warped in both directions, both side to side and up and down. Furthermore, if I just shoved the bag and let it swing back and forth, I could hear the beam creaking at one point where it was attached to the ceiling. I could imagine the nails slowly but surely squeaking out of their holes.

I also discovered something else that could be seen as “not good.” Shortly after mounting the bag, I noticed a thick, white wire running along the top of the beam. It crossed over to another beam, and went to a light bulb. Oops. Okay, so I mounted an 80 pound bag on a weak-as-jelly beam that has a live electrical wire on it. Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done…

The final blow (pun woefully intended) to the plan of having the punching bag in the attic was heat. Summer hasn’t even officially arrived yet, and our attic is already hot. Once summer arrives, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if temperatures up there hit 120 Fahrenheit. While I know that you’re supposed to get warmed up during exercise, I’m not sure a heat stroke is on the agenda for health and weight loss.

Of course, all of this led to me not using the bag much. I was afraid of it falling on me, I was afraid of getting electrocuted when it fell on me, and I was afraid that if I spent more than half an hour up there, I’d either collapse or melt, perhaps both. None of that sounded appealing. I also didn’t use it simply because it was out of the way; it being in the attic proves that the saying “out of sight, out of mind” holds at least some truth.

So, having had enough of not using it, I went on a scouting mission in our house to find a better spot. All of the ceilings were more or less out of the question: we have an old house, in which the ceilings are 1) about 9 and a half feet high and 2) covered with plaster. I didn’t really want to buy another chain setup, and I really didn’t want the bag slowly making the hole in the ceiling bigger and bigger. Success in my search came quickly, however. I’m not really sure what it’s called, but there’s a sort of portal between the large part of our bedroom, and a smaller area; that portal has some quite thick woodwork, and being part of the wall, I figured it’d be sturdy enough to hold the bag. The bag was remounted there, and my guess proved correct: solid as a rock. I’ve used it three or four times now, and haven’t seen any problems.

Hopefully, having the bag in my our bedroom will help me stick with it, as it’s obviously far more accessible now. Certainly, I’ve already used it more in the last couple of days than I had in the past few weeks, when it was in the attic. Let’s hope the expert at Duke University knows what he’s talking about when he says that our environment plays a large role in what habits we have. (I’m still unconvinced that willpower plays no role, though. Having the bag in my bedroom will probably help, but I can still walk by it without using it, unless I throw some willpower into the mix.)