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April 20, 2008 — There is some good and bad, some yin and yang, to the offseason in Vail. Take, for example, all the amazing restaurant deals in town.
This is a wonderful thing, right? Yes, we can sample the savory sabores of the Valley’s unrivaled cuisine for 50, sometimes 60 percent off. Consider this, however: the mountain is also closed, and eating all this fantastic, buttery, rich food is often unaccompanied by the exercise necessary to keep the belly within the boundaries of a zero-sum game.
Stuck in bad weather at home, with snow and rain (or both) adding more inches to the ample 463 we’ve already received this year, the body wants for exercise when the mind and spirit, oppressed by the foul weather, seek nothing more than a blanket and a movie marathon on TBS.
Enter the Russian kettle bell.
Yes, the Russian kettle bell (Bear with me on this).
The Russian kettle bell can be viewed as just another exercise fad sweeping the nation, but it’s one with merits beyond the “Gazelle” machine sold by that pony tail guy, and far better to me than palates or yoga, or Bowflex.
First off, it’s cheap. All you need is a kettle bell ($60 or $70) and the will to exercise (this second part is the difficult part, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something, which I’m most definitely not.)
But I’ve got some kayaking to do soon, and I would hate to plunge into that icy water without removing the layer of goat-cheese soufflé which seems to have padded my middle section.
So, on bad-weather days I can descend to my basement, pick up my kettle bell, and get going. Twenty minutes later I’m all good. I’ve got my base workout taken care of. If I want to go for more, I can, but the best part is there’s no loading and unloading barbells, there’s no funky machine, and there’s very little cost.
Anyway, I’m starting to sound like an advertisement here, so I’m going to clam up and head downstairs for the “Turkish getup.”
If you’re interested, check it out here (and don’t be put off by the Eastern Bloc weirdness – just go with it).
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