With the abundance of conveniences and instant gratification, getting and staying physically fit has become quite difficult in modern Western society. This is not a good thing, however, as being physically fit has a number of benefits beyond being able to survive in an austere environment. Being in good physical condition improves your health and helps you feel better. Being physically fit does not require a personal trainer or a gym membership any any sort of equipment. While all those things will certainly help and enable you to excel at being physically fit, they’re not requirements for getting started. All you really need is motivation and discipline. Motivation and Discipline Motivation and discipline play very different roles for me in exercise. My motivation is what got me committed to the task, but my discipline is what keeps me on it. I don’t rely on motivation to decide whether or not I’m going to get up and go work out. If I did, I’d quickly get worn down by the inner struggle of having to give myself a pep talk every day. Instead, I depend on my discipline to handle that. Discipline is the voice in my head that, though exhausted, says, “Hey, it’s time. Get up.” That voice doesn’t have time or patience for debate or complaining, it’s just time to go do the thing, so let’s go. Motivation signs the checks, discipline cashes them. Ready, Go! The exercise routine outlined here is a basic set of body-weight exercises that will help you maintain a minimum level of physical fitness. This routine won’t make you Mr. Olympia or beef you up, it will improve your health and mental well-being. Once you’ve mastered this routine, add more reps and time or start looking for more challenging options to make yourself better.
15:00 Run Jogging for 15 minutes is intended to warm you up, get your heart beating and your lungs breathing. Running will improve your cardiovascular and circulatory health which are two of the quickest, easiest, and most helpful wins that you can get. 20 Jumping Jacks Start by standing straight with your hands at your sides. Jump up and while you’re in the air, spread your legs to the side so that they’re wider apart than your shoulders. At the same time, bring your hands up so that they touch over your head. Then jump again and return to the starting position standing straight with your hands at your sides. You have completed 1 jumping jack. 20 Squats Start standing with your feet shoulder width apart and your arms extended out in front of you. Bend your legs slowly until your thighs are parallel with the ground and you are in a sitting position. Stand back up and return to the starting position. You have completed 1 squat. 20 Lunges Start standing straight with your hands on your hips. Step forward with your right foot and lean forward and down so that your left knee touches the ground. Stand up and step backwards with your right foot so that you are standing back in the starting position again. Then step forward with your left foot so that your right knee touches the ground. Step back again with your left foot so that you return to the starting position. You have completed 1 lunge. 20 Push-ups Start with your palms flat on the ground slightly more than shoulder width apart and your legs extended out with your toes together or up to six inches apart. Only your hands and your toes should touch the ground. Your body should remain straight during each push-up. Bend your arms to lower your body towards the ground so that your elbows form a right angle like the corner of a square. Then extend your arms to push your body back up until your elbows lock straight again in the starting position. You have completed 1 push-up. 1:00 Plank Start with your elbows on the ground directly below your shoulders and your toes up to six inches apart. Only your elbows and toes should touch the ground. Time begins counting when only your toes and elbows are touching the ground. Keep your body straight and off the ground for one minute. 20 Flutter Kicks To perform one flutter kick, start on the ground and place your hands palm down under your butt. Keep your feet together and lift them 6 inches off the ground. Your feet should not touch the ground for the duration of the exercise. Keeping your left leg out straight and off the ground, raise your right leg up to a 45-degree angle and count “one”. Lower your right leg and raise your left leg to a 45-degree angle and count “two”. Switch legs again so that your right is back up and your left is down and count “three”. Switch your legs one more time so that your left is up and your right is down and count “four”. You have completed one flutter kick. 2:00 Rest, Repeat
Take a short rest to recover and start again with the jumping jacks. You should cycle through a total of three times.
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Having a clean home has many benefits, though most aren’t well understood until you’ve lived in a place that isn’t well kept. Usually, this is the place where you live when you’re first out on your own without anyone telling you to clean up after yourself. Some of those benefits include:
Depending on the condition of your home, starting to clean up can be either a very daunting prospect or a very simple matter. In either case, breaking the chore into small, simple tasks that are easy to accomplish will help you progress towards your goal. On the topic of goals, it should be made clear that your goal should not be to keep a spotless home. The simple act of living in a home is going to necessarily create a degree of messiness that is acceptable. Set your goal for cleanliness on good, not perfect. A home that’s kept too clean can feel sterile and unwelcoming. Similarly, a home that is not kept clean feels careless, haphazard and just plain filthy. Divide and Conquer Whether you live in a dorm room, an apartment, or family home, the process of dividing the work is still the same. Look around your home and identify the areas and the tasks in each area that will help the room become clean. Most homes have a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. Even if you share a dorm room, you still have areas in your room that serve these purposes. Your kitchen and bathroom may be in a community area, but in your room, you still have a place where you keep your food and your hygiene items. Once you’ve identified each area, it’s time to identify the things that need to happen in that area for you to be satisfied with calling it ‘clean’. For example, in a bedroom you might call it clean when there are no clothes on the ground, the bed is made, and the floor is vacuumed. In the livingroom, you may need to pick up the kid’s toys and arrange the couch cushions. However you go about identifying the areas and tasks within each area, doing this will enable you to start tackling the work and to be able to see your progress. It also makes it possible to schedule the work. Make it Routine If you only clean up when you feel like the mess is too much, the task will become huge and daunting and your tolerance will slowly grow and the mess will grow with it. Also, when you start living with another person, their tolerance for mess will probably be different than yours and if you only clean up when one of you feels the need, then whoever has a lower mess tolerance will become the “whip-cracking neat freak” and the one with a higher mess tolerance becomes the “lazy slob”. Either way, feelings of resentment will arise. Having divided the home into areas and tasks, you can schedule the work. Depending on the size and level of mess in your home, you might be able to pack all the work into one afternoon every week, or you may need to pick of one task in one area per day. Creating a routine for cleaning will not only help you stick with it, it will reduce stress among the people you live with as the expectations are clearly understood. Common Areas and Tasks Keep in mind that some tasks depend on others being done first. For example, you shouldn’t vacuum the living room if you haven’t picked up the kids GI Joes first. I have yet to hear of a vacuum that can defeat a plastic action figure.
There are many good reasons to be able to kick open a door. Maybe you lost your keys and can’t get or wait for a locksmith. Maybe there’s a fire and you need to get someone out. Maybe … When you find yourself in a situation where the best option is to use brute force now and repair the door later, it’s good to know the best way to do it. Anatomy of a Door The Knob The weakest point on any door is the knob. The knob contains a small metal plunger about the size of an adult thumb that rests inside the door frame and the door itself. Unless there is also a deadbolt or chain lock, this small piece of metal is the only thing keeping the door shut. The Deadbolt or Chain Many doors have other locking mechanisms in addition to the knob. These include deadbolts, chain locks and swing arm locks. Only deadbolts are visible from the outside as both chain and swing arm locks can only be activated from the inside. You can identify a deadbolt by the hockey puck-like fixture usually about a foot over the knob. The Hinges Most external doors have three hinges on the opposite side from the knob. The hinges are attached to the door and the door frame to allow the door to swing open and closed. There are typically three or four screws in each flap of the hinge holding it to the door and frame. This creates multiple points of reinforcement and is typically much stronger than the knob. The Door The door itself can vary widely in quality and strength. The doors found inside a home are typically made of thin, flimsy wood that is easy to break but typically don’t have a lock or have one of those that you can open with a simple flathead screwdriver. External doors are typically solid, strong wood that are difficult to break through. The Frame The door frame is more than just the trimming around the door. It’s what the various locking mechanisms connect to in order to keep the door shut. In the event that you do kick open a door, it’s likely that you’ll destroy the frame in the process and have to replace it. Open Sesame This next part, if put into practice, will result in damage to your home and possibly injury to yourself. Be smart and make sure that you’ve exhausted all other options before you employ this one. The best, quickest, and safest way to kick open a door is to kick with the bottom of your heel above the knob so that your force can be applied most directly to the deadbolt or chain lock as well. This technique will focus all your force into a small area and apply it most directly to the plunger and then to the frame. It may take several attempts depending on the quality of the door, but, if done properly, an average sized adult male can kick open a door in fewer than three kicks. When this technique is successful, the door should fly open and your foot might continue continue moving forward and down towards the ground so be ready to balance yourself to avoid smashing your face into the door frame. The worst way to force a door open is by slamming your shoulder into the door. Shoulders are not designed to absorb these kinds of impacts and you’re most likely going to injure yourself. Slamming your body weight into the broad side of the door distributes your force more generally throughout the door and is less effective. If kicking isn’t an option for some reason, it’s better to throw yourself so that your shoulder blade hits the door as close as you can get to the frame on the knob side of the door. If this works, you’ll likely find yourself charging into the room and falling into a heap as you stumble in.  Source
The people that answer the calls made to 911 are well trained and prepared to gather the information necessary to send the proper first responders to the site of an emergency. You can count on them to ask you the questions they need answers to in order to send the right responders with the right equipment to the right place. Having some basic pieces of information ready will do a lot to help them do their job better. By its very nature, any situation that requires a call to emergency services is going to be stressful and emotional. It’s critically important that you stay calm so that you can pass information back to the operator. If you’re panicking and crying, you’re not giving information and you’re not helping the situation. Stay calm. Speak clearly. Your ability to keep a level head is what will enable you to to the most good. Give Your Location The point of calling emergency services is to be able to have help arrive at your location so naturally you need to be able to tell the operator where you are at that moment. Town or City In a town or city, you should look for street signs, businesses, or other notable landmarks that are as close to the scene as possible. “I’m at the corner of 5th and Main next to the statue of Abe Lincoln.” Highways or Country Roads If you’re traveling on a highway or country road, you’ll need to know which road you’re on and which direction you are heading. You should also track intersections, mile markers and exits as you travel. “I’m on I-205 North just before the I-84 off-ramp.” Countryside If you’re in the wilderness, you should also already have a good idea for where you are. Look for landmarks like rivers or mountains or valleys and you should be able to give an approximation for your distance and direction from that landmark. “I’m on the north side of Larch Mountain about a quarter mile from the peak.” Describe the Event You need to be able to describe the situation with as much detail as is possible. Different situations have different priorities that you should keep in mind and be able to pass on to the operator. Traffic Accident At the scene of a traffic accident, keep track of how many and what type of vehicles are involved. Pay special attention to any injuries that people may have sustained. Also be on the lookout for any fuel leaks or hazardous cargo as this will pose a serious risk to the people involved and the first responders. “There’s been a 3-car crash. It looks like the middle car was pretty mangled and there’s someone still inside, but the doors are jammed and won’t open.” Active Crime If you encounter an active crime, make sure that you’re in a safe place before calling. If you’re in a safe place, you should keep track of how many people are committing the crime, what they look like, whether they’re armed, and if there are any innocent people involved. “There’s a robbery at Joe’s Cafe. There are two men wearing ski masks with brown T-shirts and blue jeans. They’ve got pistols and there are about a dozen people inside.” Medical Emergency In the case of a medical emergency, it’s important to be able to describe the person’s condition as accurately as possible and to give a timeline of the events from the moment you realized something was wrong until the point you called. If you know that the person’s medical history, be sure to mention that as well. It’s likely that the person needing assistance is someone close to you. You’re going to be stressed and worried. At this point, the best thing you can do to help this person is to get help as quickly as possible and the best way to do that is to get as much information to the operator as quickly as you can. Stay calm. “My dad is having trouble breathing. He’s 78 and has had two heart attacks. He’s still conscious, but is wheezing and gasping for breath.” Stay on the Line
Once you’ve passed back your information, be ready to answer any additional questions that the operator may have for you. Don’t hang up the call unless the operator instructs you to or you’re in danger. It’s likely that the operator will ask you to stand out on the side of the street to flag down the first responders when they get to the area. The operator will be in contact with the responders and with you and will pass on any questions that the responders may need answered in order to deal with the situation. |
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