Fond Memories.

• By vishwa on General

• February 17, 2011

I vividly remember those iron cast dumbbells at my native place. They were painted green. Whenever I visited my town as a young child during summer holidays the sight of them gave me immense pleasure.  I also enjoyed viewing my maternal uncles go through various dumbbell drills.  It fascinated me.  I remember my elder uncle lying to me that if he continued weight training with the dumbbells for another 1 year, the built muscles would last for a lifetime.  How funny!  But what mattered me more was that weight training from my childhood never seemed unfamiliar to me.  For me it was something everybody could perform.

My  elder uncle was a farmer and the younger a doctor. Both gave ample importance to physical fitness whatever was accessible.  My doctor uncle endorsed weight-training. He thought many of us could derive benefit from it.  I also remember that he had ordered a wooden stand where we could perform push ups, for the elevation we derived from the wooden stand gave as a better range of motion making the exercise more challenging. To increase the resistance to the push-up, we would elevate even our legs by placing them on a six-inch platform.  In addition,  since I was studying in Bangalore, he had asked me to buy a chest-expander which was readily available here in the city. I got one. We both were happy, as a new piece of equipment was added to our training arsenal.

I will narrate an incident of those days. I had hurt my lips while I was exercising and was bleeding badly. I will tell you how. I was working on the chest-expander. I performed the bicep curl. I performed that by holding one end of the handle in my right hand and the other end went into front of my right foot. Suddenly, when I was curling, the handle slipped from my right foot and hit my lips. I was foolishly watching the mirror while executing the curl, my attention should have been on the equipment. The result–swollen lips for a day or two.

Lastly, I would like to mention that I have two Indian clubs at my gym and one among the two, which is made out of rose-wood was brought by me from my native place.  I have fond memories of it, as it is a very old equipment but still in use at our gym.