New strength circuit

Happy May Day, everybody!  Time for a new strength circuit.  It's warm and dry here in Memphis, so I'm moving it out to the backyard.  Today I did three laps of the following circuit:

Hindu pushups, 10 reps
Lunges with cinder block, 10 paces
4-way abdominals, 8 reps
Bent-over rows with cinder block, 2 x 10 reps
Lunges with cinder block, 10 paces
Cleans with cinder block, 10 reps
Lunges with cinder block, 10 paces

There's a video demonstration of Hindu pushups here.  There's a video demonstration of lunges here, although I've always done lunges walking forward rather than staying in one spot.  I hold the cinder block up over my head.  For a demonstration of bent-over rows, look here.  And you can see cleans here; I go on to lift the cinder block over my head when I do them, and I don't drop it to the floor afterward--I've only so many cinder blocks.

I think one of the biggest mental obstacles to somebody wanting to start an exercise program is simply having ideas of what to do.  In the case of weightlifting and other strength work, I've found it helpful to keep a list of all the different exercises I know.  I divide the list into categories of different parts of the body: abdominal exercises, upper torso exercises, biceps and triceps exercises, wrist and forearm exercises, leg exercises, and so on.  Then, when it's time to draw up a routine, I pick an exercise or two from each of the categories.

Where, exactly, did I learn the exercises I know?  Well, some of them are ones everybody knows: pushups, situps, and pullups, for instance.  I learned more as I did weight training for my high school and college cross country teams.  As a teacher I also did some coaching, and I learned all kinds of exercises from the coaches of other sports that I worked with.

These days, the Internet makes it easy to learn new exercises.  If you google "weight training" or "strength training" or "weight exercises" or something like that, you'll find more information than you want, along with lots of You Tube videos like the ones I've posted above.

Meanwhile, for my in-the-boat workout today, I met Joe down at the riverfront and we paddled in the harbor for 100 minutes.  I'll be working back into some more intense stuff as the week goes on.