Lessons from the hole.......

I befriended a fellow in the later stages of life who had an illustrious career in his youth. He was one of Canada's most prolific bank robbers. He never physically harmed anyone, never fingered a co-conspirator, and wound up serving most of his adult life in prison.

He had paid his debt to society, and in his later years when he was basically harmless, he was paroled.

While I came from a solid working class background, he was born under far humbler circumstances. While my life path took me through university and graduate school, his path took him on a tour of Canada's correctional system. Yet somehow we became friends.

Having spent most of his adult life in prison had given him a different perspective on everything, and I consider myself very blessed that in his later years that he would pass some of his hard earned wisdom to me.

When someone lives a life doing without, they develop a different way of thinking. You give the man a lemon, and he will make lemonade. To my friend the glass was always half full.

I had started a quest to honour my Hercegovinian ancestry, and that was to lift 1,000,000 pounds of free weights. While I was making progress, my triceps just were not moving as I had hoped. I had started to worry that I might have to join a gym.

Being a Hercegovinian, I am uneasy about gyms. I always wonder why some guys seem to make a life out of walking around naked in the change rooms. Are they so insecure that they need to ""free willy"" all the time? Also why do people in gyms always come up to you from behind, and what about the bacteria and germs.......... Maybe a pig from the Black Sea used the equipment......

My friend had spent time in the hole, old school style. No television, 1 hour per day in the exercise area alone, and 23 hours a day in a lit windowless cell. The guards would take the prisoners shoes away so as to deny the inmate the opportunity to hang oneself with the laces. Bed was a concrete shelf that was 18" above a cement floor. You would get a blanket at 6PM and at 6AM they would take the blanket away. In the hole one had two choices; either you did calisthenics until you collapsed from exhaustion, or you beat your head against a concrete wall to earn a trip to the prison infirmary. The "Prison Dips"involve grabbing the edge of the bed shelf with your arms behind you, and lowering ones butt to the floor, and lifting ones body weight with your arms from behind while your feet in socks can slide on the cold concrete. Over and over again. The ultimate triceps workout, guaranteed to either tear your rotator cuff, or give you the ability to spring like an ape. There is the "Hand Towel Pull Up", where you drape the hand towel over the sprinkler system pipes, and "Blanket Bed Strap Sit Ups" .

He took the time and showed me the entire set of hole exercises. End result was a centimeter on my arms in a month.... My friend has taught me to utilize to ultimate effectiveness the spartan home gym I have (dumbbells and a plain wood bench). You don't need a specialized machine if you can intuitively or deductively find a fulcrum point.