Icicles in Hell: An Exercise Blog from Dave

During the winter the amount of exercise I get drops significantly. I use primarily my power wheelchair since the manual simply can't handle the snow. When we travel with the manual I opt, much more regularly to sit in the car and wait while Joe runs errands. In the summer, I usually go with him. So I worry that I'll lose arm strength and endurance over the holidays. This year I decided I'd try to see if there were exercises I could do to keep myself strong and flexible. I was pleasantly surprised that there were lots of seated exercise videos that I could follow along with. I'm up to about an hour a day and I'm kept interested because I vary the programs depending on the day. I thought I'd share some of these with you.

First up there's these guys ... I enjoy their banter and it's nice, on an exercise tape aimed at helping people with limited mobility and people who are fat, that one of the people is big ...

For an aerobic workout that's fun, at least for me, even though some of the music is annoying, I like this woman, who looks fairly passive but puts you through your paces ...

Then there are the shorter ones ... I like the arm exercises here ... I use an eight pound weight, just recently moved up from the five pounder and it gives me the sense that my arms are really working. It's only nine minutes but it is, for me, a long nine minutes.

Then theres' these folks, I like the wry grin on the face of the guy up front, it's odd because it starts when they are already going and seems to continue after it ends, but for a light workout, it's great ...

A couple more, like I told you there's a lot of resources. I like the short inspirational posters that pop up in this one ...

And, then, this guy also has a nice manner, I can't do some of the stretches at the end ... but the rest is good for me ...

I also have a few wheelchair exercise DVD's but I found that I used those so often I got bored with the routines. Mixing these in really helped.

I decided to share these because, while there were lots, in fact there are several I left out, I found that these were the ones I came back to time and time again. I thought these would be a good place to start if you're looking for some exercises for the winter. I'm hoping that when I'm back on the road in my manual, I'll still have the ability to push myself long distances.

I am sitting here shaking my head. I never, in my life, thought I'd write about exercising!!!

No wonder it's cold out, hell froze over.