THE CRUSADES - by dougal macdonald Chief Evangalist - Day 19

My "Prison Break" audition picture

God gave us a brain....and I think he'd like us to use it.

I believe that creative thinking is nothing more than believing that you are a creative thinker and then using your brain to create stuff. I am no Michaelangelo but I have proven my theory many times during the course of my tenure on this planet.....on myself... and yes I do know about all this left brain right brain stuff.

So what has this to do with health and fitness. Well I read an article recently, written by a top international trainer who made a very bold statement. "My perfect gym" he stated "would be a room with an automobile in it."

To make this even more convoluted, when people hear that I'm a fitnessprofessional, they very often, offer, unsolicited, the comment "Oh I hate gyms and I don't have any equipment, so I can't train."

REALLY....OK, this is where the automobile and the creative thinking comes in.

If you had a room, admittedly with a bit of length, containing a small auto you could build a super solid routine with any amount of compound exercises. Pushes, pulls, lifts, squats, stretches. Even a driveway and your auto would do.

Ok, what else am I talking about? When I was walking this morning....and by the way, I did a personal best for my 3+km route 26.50, I saw a lady and her daughter walking up the hill in front of me. By way of a quick explanation a large majority of our population in South Africa have no access to their own transport and they mostly live some distance from the nearest taxi route. In order to get to that route, they walk.

Mother and daughter were obviously going somewhere for some time since they were both carrying luggage. The interesting part was the fact that they would walk, stop and down luggage rest and then repeat the process. No thought, just do, that's just how it works here.

At first glance this seems fairly cruel and an archaic way to travel, but actually the up side of this is that these folk are super healthy. Getting from one point to the next is AN EXERCISE ROUTINE, and they do it EVERY DAY.

That is why the "have not's" in South Africa are a very healthy bunch. They either walk or ride bicycles and generally are carrying something with them.

When they get to the taxi they are subjected to the most hair raising and suicidal ride on the planet. One hundred and plenty kms per hour through rush hour traffic weaving to and fro is not a pleasant experience, but the up side is that for the duration of the ride their heart rate is up around 90% of max which means they get a solid Hiit cardio workout eavery day without leaving their seat.

I remember some years ago seeing before and after transformation pictures of a woman in a remote area of South Africa. She had no access to a gym so she made her own set of barbells by securing empty 2ltr plastic soda bottles onto each end of a broomstick and filling them with water. By varying the amount of water she had a whole set with varying weights. That's CREATIVE. BTW her transformation was unbelievable.

The point of all this is that you do not need a designer gym with fancy schmancy nachines that shape your abs whilst serving a skinny, latte without wings and turning the pages of cosmo for you at the same time.

All you need is to use that brain God gave you, get creative and go workout.

GO TELL SOMEONE, GO TELL LOT'S OF PEOPLE.