Exercise and Men at Work

Well how you doing today? Been awhile I guess but that don't mean I ain't here no more, just taking a break is all. I was out doing some work fixing a buddy's garage and it sorta hit me that I should get the experience down in this blog, You know, to keep it alive an' all.

Well, it's relevant cause when your working doing manual labor, your exercising too so that converts to another great way to keep yourself fit and healthy. That's so long as you don't overdo things and go put out your back or some such stupid thing.

So here's what I think of giving you all some exercise tips for men at work just to keep yourself in trim without doing any damage to yourself along the way.

Rules Rule OK!

First up, safety first rules should always be obeyed! Now they don't make them rules for no good reason, so you ought to follow them and they'll keep you safe. Like wearing a hard hat and protective clothing in any construction zone like I was doing on my buddy's garage.

We were rebuilding a collapsed brick wall and had to shore up the roof with some temporary planks of wood that were braced for strength. Lucky I did cause a chunk of loose masonry fell and zipped right past my nose.

An inch or so closer and it would have bounced off my hard hat, but if I wasn't wearing one, it would've made a big dent in my unprotected head. So yeah, safety stuff is important!

Next up, take care with power tools. Some of the big ones like power saws or masonry cutters can rip your leg off in a second if you slip and let the machine yank itself out of your grasp. You need to be strong enough to hold the cutter or saw firmly so it don't move or rip when your cutting.

Also, watch out for drills and other machinery cause its way too easy to have accidents with them.

Work is Exercise

Anyhow, to the exercise part. When your holding onto a big masonry cutter and slicing through a wall, you need some strength in your arms and body to hold it firm while moving slowly along the cut line.

This is actually pretty good exercise cause it builds up your muscle strength. So does mixing up cement by hand or in a power mixer. Either way you gotta shovel sand and cement into whatever your mixing it in and after a few dozen shovel loads, your arms are gonna get a good workout!

Same goes for sanding, drilling, cutting, stucco work, pointing, bricklaying and just general labor around the construction site. It's all a great health ride (see: www.healthride.org) worth being on. So never think you don't get a good workout when your working except if you're at a desk.

But I don't mean that. I mean working on something physical and tough and its a great way to get and stay in shape.

Jake
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