Exercise Daily. Eat wisely. Die anyway.
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Welcome to the string gymn.
Inside a hammock, a big stretchy mass of string, you meet resistance in almost every direction but up, and there you have that gravity thing Newton was tweeting about.
On each side you have a plane of tensed string. Reach a toe up. Move it out to the side. How high can you stretch? Pick one of the colors out there. Bend at the waist. What can you twist? Be careful. Know when to say when. Now try the other toe.
I suspect you will quickly discover that your body has one side toward which all of these exercises feels more natural. Use that, but then go to the other side and try it there for a while.
Body parts can move and flex. Legs can point out and up the sides, or reach up in leg lifts. The back can be stretched and exercised. I just have to say, please don’t get too carried away. While you are less likely to experience road rash than if you took up riding a bicycle, you don’t want to jump in the hammock and hurt yourself.
I am sure that there are many long, dense, dusty pages of law dedicated to hammocks, silly people with hammocks, foolish people with hammocks, and really really dumb dumb and dumber people with hammocks. There is no doubt a gaggle of lawyers are seeking to reclaim damages from hammock related incidents, and possibly even attempting to prevent hammocks from being distributed to the clamoring masses.
Don’t become the next hammock poster child!
Log Roll
The most demanding hammock exercise is bridging.
Ironically, it can also be the least demanding. Arch your back slightly, and hold it just above the weave. Rock. It’s pretty comfortable, and yet it moves and strengthens that lower back.
Decide which section(s) of your body you would like to raise up. Dig in your heels. Bonus points for raising those beauttocks. If you start with your heels, you can even do the wave, a lift that moves underneath your knees, up through your waist, pulling everything nice and tight, and then sliding up to your shoulders. The neck picks it up next, arching just a little bit. Gently, cautiously, carefully. Look a bit right, look a bit left.
Add weights to get the arms involved, or just grab into the web.
If I did that exercise a bit more, I might have six pack abs.
Oh, weight…
We now have two La-Z boys (not my sons, but chairs) in the living room. They are comfortable – but not anywhere near the hammock. They rock up and down when you choose not to use the foot-rest (What? Send this back to the designers!), but they don’t rock sideways. They don’t move; they don’t swing, they don’t breathe, they don’t rock or pass through a breeze. And they cost many multiple times more, so I’m told.
I’ve traded up.
Slalom
Another exercise move is a slalom. You can’t do this in a “traditional hammock.” If you rocked end to end (where the energy is stored) it would resemble doing sit-ups or crunches. Ok, there is room for those sorts of exercises, somewhere. They can actually be done sitting sideways, too.
Sitting sideways in a hammock allows you to roll from side to side. It is a gentle rock, which you can accelerate or adjust.
Pretend you are Lindsey Vonn. Well, for some of us it’s a bit of a stretch. Pretend you are behind the starting gates of a big hill. One filled with nubs and gouges, designed for slalom skiing. It’s a frosty morning. Punch through those gates. The crowd roars.
Lock heels together (good form) and sway knees back and forth. You should feel your hips rock, and you can adjust the motion as it moves your lower spine. You will find it takes very little energy to keep this up for hours, because the hammock catches and slings back the energy as you sway. This is one of the most basic exercises; Hammock Slalom. Without the risk of torn ligaments, I hope.
Musical suggestion: classical or classic Led Zep. Immigrant Song, oh yeah.
Advanced Slalom
One knee up and the other sideways. Take the raised knee and bring it across your body to the other side. Change sides routinely.
Lock hands behind head. Squirm as vigorously as you find comfortable. You can take the basic hammock rock and “lead the pace” with part of your torso, arms, or legs to increase the level of exercise and work the lateral waves of energy that pass through you.
You can also take turns raising the leg that is not turned sideways, swaying back and forth like a human metrenome. It is the only way I can think of to move your back 18 different directions, at varying intensities, with relative safety.
You can also do a jack-knifing sit-up. This is quite exhilarating for the first twelve seconds. Repeat at will.
Musical recommendation: Pink Floyd or dub/reggae.
Donner and Blitzen
The last two reindeer had a pretty poor press agent. Last billing, and names that might have been forgettable except for the tenacity of children’s minds. Literally translated from German, they are thunder and lightning.
Stretch out one leg straight as far out to the side as you possibly can, comfortably. Bring the other knee up close to your other side, as far as it desires, and Rock. That’s about as good an exercise as it gets.
While your foot is in the neighborhood, you might as well give it a little massage. It takes some punishment and deserves a little TLC. You can grasp it gently and stretch the leg, carefully going for greater flexibility.
You can also move your foot out to the side, with the knee down, so an entirely different library of exercises comes in to play.
Musical recommendation: (Don’t think I won’t go there.) Carols, sleigh bells, or Gregorian chants? Ho ho ho!
The Wishbone
Spread your heels wide. If you want, you can bridge a bit, raising the pelvis. Again, use your hips and heels to capture the energy of the hammock and bounce it back. Sometimes placing one’s arms along the back edge of the hammock helps with balance. You can pull side to side or pull on both sides (get a good grip on multiple hammock strands) and tug yourself side to side. Pull hard enough and you can lift your head and back a bit. Don’t strain. Look right and left. Necksersizes.
You can lift your legs straight up, or swing them to either side. Discover the highest band of color you can tap with your toe. Now swing that same toe to the other side. Can you do it with toes? Repeat.
Toe Touch (Advanced Skill for the Limber)
I used to be able to take my big toes and touch them to my nose. I enjoyed showing off this skill in the middle of the office, to the amazement of the staff, until one day they heard a bit of a popping noise. They begged me not to try it again, just as I was loosening the joints up a bit.
Wow, I just made that happen again. Still crazy after all these years. Hmmm, what about the other side? Oh, yeah, barely. That must be the sound of ligaments loosening. I had a breakfast cereal that sounded like that once.
Touching one’s knees to the nose is a much less stressful activity. I should take it up some day. Careful stretching of knees and toes is always advised.
Now I only attempt this nose-touching business in the hammock, rather than trying to stand (in a suit and tie, no less). It must have been the leather dress soles.
A hammock can help you breathe, and redistribute weight. I love to go for a good sound stream and move my lower back and hips and other bits, raising them to an arching pelvic rock. A hammock dance – can’t script this.
Hammock exercises should be taken with a hammock rhythm, or use that energy to boost up or kick back the rhythm. I’ve heard each hammock has its own dynamic cycle. My research on the subject is ongoing.
Yoga and hammocks go together. Stretch, bend, breathe deeply, move. Listen to a Blue Jay scrawtch. Stick your toes out in the sunlight. Hear the doves call, and the winds chime. Flex!
My Sad Story
I was out rollerblading several years ago, and made the bad decision to jump a heave in the sidewalk. The sidewalk is now fixed, but my back isn’t. My back aches after standing on hard surfaces for any period of time, like museums. Or Costco. The hammock provides a wonderful opportunity to stretch, thrust, rotate and otherwise engage that injury. It truly is therapeutic. Now, if I could just get my favorite museums to install a hammock zone.
Any little change in the position changes the stretch or bend. I was describing the exercises I was developing one evening to my (sadly skeptical) family. My son listened to a few bends and twists, and summed it up. “Basically if you imagine a fly, trapped in a spider’s web, struggling to get free…”
He ALMOST nailed it. I don’t view it as a struggle at all – unless perhaps against flabby muscles and stiff joints.
Finally, just getting in and out is an exercise. Below, you can see some durn fool demonstrating a workout.
Because of litigation, hammock purveyors now routinely tell you not to do certain things. Here are a few quotes.
“Do not spin, rotate, or twist. Customer assumes all liability and risks resulting from use of hammock.”
“Do not spin or twist or rotate your hammock while in use or otherwise.”
“Do NOT try to stand on your feet or kneel over the hammock as neither should you try to jump over or while using the hammock. Do NOT try to spin while lying down in the hammock. Do not sway excessively with the hammock. Remember, it is not a swing…“
I’m not entirely sure what all of this means. Gentle swinging is obvious and a delightful sensation – within reason. Swinging while also swaying from side to side is a sensory banquet. I call it the gymbal. Gentle rocking from side to side is almost obligatory. Spinning? I’m just going to say this: be sensible, know what your body and the hammock can support, sustain, and enjoy!
They make a dangerous cycletron!
I saw a news story about a young man who could not go to the gym because of this pandemic thing. He had plenty of wood, and could have just started splitting it but NO, instead he made weights (barbells), a bench press, and even a treadmill from logs. He could have just pulled out a hammock!
Ingenuity is a marvelous thing!
Mi Mayan Hamaca 