A Workout in the Woods Leads to a Revelation

When I'd played in these woods as a child, they'd always seemed larger, more dense. Back then, I knew every dirt trail and each island in the meandering stream that might as well have been the Amazon, and a good part of my youth was spent wasting time in that little chunk of nature.

I hadn't often returned when I got older, for the most part having moved on to bigger and better pieces of wilderness where I could get in real trouble.

But a workout blog I follow (rosstraining.com for those keeping track) had been making a big deal in the past several months about the concept of being able to train anywhere, anytime, regardless of the weather, and it was followed by a YouTube clip of the writer, Ross Enamait, practicing what he preached.

"It is entirely possible to receive a quality workout with little or nothing," he wrote. "You certainly do not need a state-of-the-art facility to apply yourself diligently and consistently. With creativity and effort, you can exercise almost anywhere."

The woods though? Kind of odd, I thought.

I had never worked out here before - there was something different about that, something structured, that didn't seem to have a home amongst the towering maples and patches of skunk cabbage.

But I was never much for the mayhem of commercial gyms either, what with their god-awful dance music, spiky-haired trainers, and preponderance of cellphone usage that made a 40-minute lifting session take six hours. I could never deal with them, and to be honest, I wasn't the kind they wanted there anyway.

So over the years, I gravitated toward the smaller places - the lifters' gyms, the fighters' clubs - the places filled with guys like me, who came for the workout, not the conversation, and enjoyed the hard, swear-laden rap that served as background for the clanging of metal or the sweaty whap of leather on leather.

But this was different than even those. And here I was, standing next to the Amazon, slightly confused about what to do but knowing I had to do something.

So I started to pull a rock out of the dirt. Which was harder than it looked. And much dirtier. And buggier, too.

Once it was out of the ground, I picked up the 80-pound stone and threw it a couple feet. I followed it, picked it up, and threw it back. Then once more. And I found it strangely ... satisfying.

What followed was an hour or more of no music, no trainers, and no sounds (other than the ones I was making) as I ran through a series of rock-throws, pushups, and pullups (done from a tree branch) that left the skin on my hands sore and my muscles cramping from exhaustion.

As I walked back home, I realized that Enamait was right: no equipment had been needed, and a simple thing, tweaked here and there and done repeatedly, beats whatever you can do at an LA Fitness. And it was all accomplished in the sunlight, away from the sickly masses that make the gym the germy hive it can become.

"If you put forth a true effort, you can be challenged by almost anything," he wrote. "The significance of individual effort cannot be overstated."

That's what it came down to, I thought: individual effort. Put it in, and it goes a long way. Don't, and no amount of fancy equipment is going to help.

It's a lesson that didn't come easily, but was necessary all the same.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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