Snowed in. Let me tell you about my Smart Bell.

Well, I've been making it down to the river on all kinds of gruesome days, but today I believe the weather has me beat.  The day-long rain began to turn to sleet and freezing rain around six o'clock last night, and that turned over to snow in the early hours of this morning.  The result is a thick (for Memphis) blanket of ice and snow on all the city streets, and from the radio traffic report this morning it sounds like there's nothing but trouble for the small number of people out there trying to navigate them.  I do believe I will stay in.

My strength routine for this month is taking shape.  At my last teaching job in the 1990s I became good friends with the school's wrestling coach, and he introduced me to a thing called a Smart Bell, invented by a friend of his, U.S. National Team wrestler Paul Widerman.  A Smart Bell is a steel object that sort of looks like a steering wheel; it is precisely balanced to facilitate numerous strength-in-motion exercises.  My Smart Bell, more than 15 years old, weighs 15 pounds; it appears that modern-day Smart Bells are lighter.  That suits my general attitude toward weight training, that the amount of weight is less important than precise technique.

I've got a set of Smart Bell exercises that my wrestling-coach friend showed me years ago.  I've looked all over You Tube for video footage of these exercises, but haven't had much luck; perhaps one day I'll post videos of myself doing them.  In the meantime, I'll point you to this video in which a guy does some of my exercises in one approximate form or another.  (Actually, he does some other exercises I'd never seen before that I should consider incorporating into my routine.)

My routine goes like this:

1.  Standing torso-twists (similar to what the guy is doing at 1:37 of the video)

2.  Orbital circle (not on the video)

3.  The Russian (what the guy is doing at 0:28)

4.  Pushups, placing the Smart Bell on the floor and gripping it

5.  Situps, holding the Smart Bell behind my head

6.  Squats (what the guy is doing at 1:10)

7.  Circle (what the guy is doing at 0:44)

8.  Lunges (the guy does lunges at 1:23, but I do them with the Smart Bell behind my head, and I actually walk across the room)


So there it is, my March strength routine.  I hope readers will find this information useful.  I'll let you know when the spring thaw allows me out of the house.