Vlog the Inhaler, or The Occasional Video Blog Musings of Jim Thornton

Slowly but surely, I hope to post all the exercises that Leslie tried to show me over Thanksgiving. As regular readers will recall, I got to the Y early, lifted 68,000 lb. as measured by the Fitlinxx computer system, and only then did Leslie arrive to put my shaking bulk through additional dryland paces.

Pathetic as the first of these were, things got even worse as each new exercise began requiring more and more skill, coordination, balance, and flexibility, none of which I have. Brute strength? Sure. But these other things? Even with practice, they may be beyond me.

In the attached video, Leslie looks sweet enough in her virgin white Nike attire, but she has a dark side. Think angry school marm with a ruler. She uses the ruler to measure her disobedient male students. When they fail to measure up, and we always do, she uses the ruler to beat us.

Here is Leslie in her dark school marm Nike outfit. She is saying, "Okay Jim, it's your turn now. You may need to break your hips, but you will do a split by the day's end, so help me god! Oh, stop snivelling! Why oh why must you make me hurt you?"



When she arrived at the Sewickley Y, she brought along a hand-scribbled document with the exercises she had decided to teach me. These ranged from the twisting medicine ball slam, to the superman banana.

Careful scrutiny of this primary document shows evidence that Leslie has been practicing all this weight training stuff seriously for years. I ask that you give particular scrutiny to her lower case i's. Note how there is nary a single heart-shaped dot above any of them.

I fear Leslie is slowly but surely lifting all the girl out of herself, but who am I to judge?

Here is the primary document:



I am hoping, by year's end, if I ever finish my new article on novel hypnotics and the mayhem they can cause, to post all Leslie's dry land lifting and related exercises in a well-labeled, one stop vlog. It has not escaped me that my vlog is not always the most pragmatically useful source of swimming-advice, that I more often than not have appropriated this space for purposes of jotting down and sharing with the wet world at large my seemingly always bubbling spring of [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz [/ame]


In this, I sometimes delude myself into believing I am doing my fellow swimmers a service of sorts. You know how our Christian brothers recommend praying for "those more miserable than ourselves"? I have, in my mind, put a palpable, if not punchable, face on such recipients of God's mercy.

In any event, I do hope to contribute the complete Leslie dryland inventory soon, which I suspect might prove more helpful to most viewers than the certain knowledge you are better off than at least one wretch!

For now, here are a few more bricks in the Sisyphusian wall.

I hope you enjoy it.

All my best,



J I M M I E

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMszfqhdPdA"]YouTube- 1-legged squats hip hinges dead lifts done right and wrong[/ame]