Category Archives: Views from the Exercise Room

This category is just as it says, “Views from the Exercise Room”.  It’s my personal observations of the people I meet and view during my own fitness routine.  But it’s even more than that.  Here you will learn some novel and effective ways that will make you lose weight and become physically fit.

100 percent exercise focus at the Pattaya Centara Grand Mirage Beach Resort

.While doing one hour on the elliptical machine here at the five star Pattaya Centara Grand Mirage Beach Resort  I exercise focus. This is because there’s only one way to do certain things–the right way.

exercise focus at Centara Grand Mirage Resort
The Centara Grand Mirage Resort is where I exercise focus. The surroundings here are beautiful. There’s an old saying. “No Pain, no gain.” Enjoying the terrific ambiance here is my reward for going through all the pain in this resort’s fitness center.

Exercise focus are the keywords to exercising the right way

That’s why I will continue to use these two key words from now on.  This is because if you forget “exercise focus” you might as well forget about going to the gym.

I have my own USB device in the slot.  Which means I’m listening to my own music instead of the hotel’s.  Which is pretty awful. I’m not learning Thai.  I have another USB device with thirty half hour Pimsleur Thai lessons.  Which I used to listen to while doing my workout.

The reason I’m not is I concentrate too much on the Thai lessons.   When I really need to have exercise focus on my mind.  So when I finish my hour on the machine I use up only 600 calories.  If that much.  It’s also a letdown so trying to learn Thai on the machine makes me less motivated.

Exercise focus requires paying close attention to what you wish to achieve

If I play the right kind of music, I’ll get 700 calories out of the machine. That means in five sessions, if I don’t eat or drink too much,  I’ll lose 3500 calories.  And it takes 3600 calories to lose just one pound.  So if  I’m doing 5.5 exercise sessions per week,  I can lose 1 pound a week or four pounds a month.  And I’m probably hitting the machine harder than anyone else in the room unless it’s Lutz the East German who sometimes works out on the machine next to me. What this place really needs, and what every similarly equipped exercise in the world needs are specially engineered machines that operate a lot like slot machines.

The principal behind such machines is the same whether the exercise machine is an elliptical machine, which is my favorite in the whole place, a treadmill, bicycling machine or stair climber.

Pattaya Centara Grand Mirage Beach Resort focus exercise
Notice the electronic control panel on this stair climber exercise machine. As with so many other exercise machines here at the Pattaya Centara Grand Mirage Beach Resort I can exercise  focus by keeping track of the calories I burn off. I can also plug in my music Usb into these control panels. Listening to the right music pumps me up so that I work much harder. Listening to the right music burns off 750 calories instead of say only 600.

The Pattaya Centara Grand Mirage Beach Resort has USB slots in most of these types, most of which retail for at least $10,000.  But the Pattaya Centara Grand Mirage Beach Resort is a five star hotel where the equipment alone here costs a fortune to buy and maintain.

I pay a lot of money to be a member of the Pattaya Centara Grand Mirage Beach Resort physical fitness center where I get what I pay for. And I get a body that weighs just 75 kilograms which is the same I weighed in College.  Which is not bad considering that was over forty years ago when I was on the college cross country running team. I have a pretty good idea of what I’m doing.

But most people don’t focus exercise which is perhaps the main reason why Americans weigh twenty-five pounds more than they did when I was back in college.

Focus exercise is the whole idea behind the slot machine like exercise machines I have in mind.  I’d like to stick all that overindulgence in fattening foods right in the faces of anyone exercising on my machines.

When I think of that article Newsweek printed several years ago suggesting that exercising did not help Americans burn off calories because it tended to create an excuse for snacking afterwards, I keep thinking of all the dumb people I’ve met in the gym over the years including the Pattaya Centara Grand Mirage Beach Resort .

The gist of the Newsweek article went like this. A person goes through his/her exercise routine, and after completing it, feels good about himself/herself which becomes reason enough for having a couple of drinks or having a piece of cheesecake or other desert. So whatever calories one’s consumed by exercising is now more than made up by the extra food intake, beer, coca colas or other soft drinks. When I read that article I felt Newsweek was being extremely irresponsible because the message I was getting was, “Why exercise. It really doesn’t do any good.”

exercise focus at Pattaya Centara Grand Mirage Beach Resort
It isn’t easier to exercise focus at the Pattaya Centara Grand Mirage Beach Resort. But if you live less than half a mile from such a state of the art facility, why not?

I’m still going to get to my idea for a new line of exercise machines that will indelibly impress exercise focus upon the minds of their users

It’s just going to take a little longer to explain.

Keep in mind that when I go out at night, I might drink as many as 14 beers.  After all, I live in Pattaya which is the most fun city on the planet. I really enjoy the comradely of my friends who come from all over the world.  From countries such as Germany, Norway, England, Austria, and even in my home country, the U.S.  Pattaya hardly never closes, and the women are the most beautiful in the world. The problem is it’s so much fun here that men have major problems keeping out of the bars.

Realizing this, I will go out and try to have a great time, but I will also limit such fun times to a manageable level. Say 14 beers.

What that means is I must exercise like hell the next day for an entire hour, and I do mean hard. Weight lifting, leg lifts, chin ups and all that doesn’t even count.  Even if you do it at the Pattaya Centara Grand Mirage Beach Resort fitness center

I need to be going flat out without let up as hard as I can for one whole hour straight.  And all that intermittent activity is simply not going to do the job. As for strength and muscle tone, doing the elliptical or rowing machine is going to give me all the muscle I’m going to need.  Especially when I am also doing the 45 minute swimming sessions.

Even at that, I’m still deceiving myself.  If I do not exercise focus.  I must remember that I drank 14 beers so exercising flat out for an hour the next day is only going to get rid of seven beers.  So I will still have to come out to do another hour’s exercise the next day to get rid of the remaining 700 calories.  And that’s only if I”m drinking San Miguel Lights which according to San Miguel contain only 100 calories a bottle. If I had been drinking Heinekens or Singhas at 160 calories a bottle I’d would have only exercised away 8.75 bottles of Heineken after two nights of pummeling my body on the elliptical machine.

This is what I mean by exercise focus.  In order to keep the pounds off, one has to pay very close attention to how one is exercising.

What I have in mind for those who cannot figure all this out are slot machine like displays. The way it works is this: Say it takes a person fifteen minutes to do 160 calories. That’s one beer whereas a light beer runs around 100-110 calories. So whenever someone’s exercising does 160 calories an icon of a beer bottle comes up. Suppose then that the same person does 320 calories and it takes him half an hour to do it. A new icon comes up with two bottles of beer on it.

But there’s got to be a lot more to it than that.  Even though the exercise machine is getting the right message across. But think about what’s happening so far. Whoever’s exercising on this machine has worked out pretty hard and it’s taken him half an hour just to balance out two beers he’s consumed the night before or the six beers he’s thinking about drinking tonight. After forty-five minutes have passed, chances are he’s starting to feel the strain of so much exercise, and yet, an icon for just three beers pops up. So far, the machine has shown him just where he stands by

introducing the Jack’s Corbett’s Theory of Relativity. Which is: it’s easy to down three bottles of beer but it takes considerable effort to eliminate their fattening effect on the human body.

The machines need to be programmed to do more than just showing how many beers a user’s burned off.  I suggest showing light beers as well. Because one never knows ahead of time if his progress will be measured in light beers or regular beers. So when the icons come up, for the number of light beers a person’s removed from his growing beer belly, two light beers will equal 220 calories. But…to make the program even more informative and effective we need to throw in Coca Colas and other soft drinks such as Sprites, Orange Fantas and so on. What most Americans don’t realize or want to conveniently forget is that a single one of these soft drinks will be roughly the same as a bottle of regular beer—160 calories.

Getting back to that old Newsweek article, whoever wrote it, suggests that most Americans who exercise use whatever exercise they do at the health club as an excuse to get an ice cream, a piece of pie or something else that’s full of empty calories.

So the exercise machines need to also be programmed to pop up icons of pieces of pie, ice cream sundaes, etc.

Things are now starting to get very interesting for whoever’s using the machines. Still, we haven’t gone far enough. What we really need is a computer program for exercise machines that can compete with video games and Facebook.  So I suggest that all exercise machines employ a feedback system  similar to what the  Pattaya Centara to the Grand Mirage Beach Resort exercise machines.  When they ask users to key in their weight, age, and exercise goals.

Suppose for example that a man takes fifty minutes to do just 320 calories on the machine.

When he finishes his exercise a message can pop up that reads, “You Lazy Sloth.  My grandmother can do better than that.”

Or a 16 year old male gets off an exercise machine after exercising for just fifteen minutes.  A message pops up that reads, “For a 16 year old you are very soft. We doubt that the Army would ever accept you.  And if it did, you’d be sure to fail basic training.”

For a young woman who gets off an exercise machine after just ten minutes a message might pop up that reads, “You will soon become a fat cow if you keep such a lazy performance up.”

Or say a man who’s keyed in his weight at 95 kilos puts in a bad performance on the machine will be prompted with a message that reads, “You really are a sad tub of lard. Be content with remaining fat for the rest of your life.”

I know all of this sounds harsh, but people need to know the truth. And the truth is the world as we once knew it is rapidly becoming a world of fat.

Even the Chinese are getting fat due to their becoming more affluent.  And being able to adopt an American diet of Kentucky Fried Chicken and fries, McDonald’s, Pizza, and Burger King Whoppers.

Believe me, I’m not just picking on Americans. As

a German doctor once told me, “I don’t care what country the young people are coming from but when you look at World War II and what we Germans, you Americans, the Russians, English, etc went through none of us would be able to endure what all those soldiers survived.

People today have gotten so soft.” Americans are still among the hardest working people on earth. Their problem is they’ve just gotten way too fat.

But Americans, I noticed a long time ago, have adopted an exercise system of their own. It goes like this. An American man or woman age 16 to 50 goes to the health club. He/she now runs around the track for a couple of minutes or uses a weight machine and then this individual heads to the drinking fountain. It’s now time to take in everyone who’s nearby who’s also going through the motions of exercising. Our busy walker now begins to talk with whoever else is around that he or she knows.

After a few minutes it’s time to do another set of weights or whatever the person is doing. Perhaps even a minute or two of running around the track. But two minutes will be pretty extreme for such a person. The key after all is to check out who else is there, to engage in a little idle chit chat and then to run off to the sauna or Jacuzzi in order to find even more people to gossip with. The presence of a sauna, steam room or a Jacuzzi is very critical in a decent exercise facility because our stalwart exercise afficionado cannot manage all this self deception forever. Only by spending at least ten minutes in the hot tub/Jacuzzi, Sauna, Steam Room can the self-deluder have the slightest excuse for believing that any meaningful time was spent at any of the health club’s facilities.

Okay…it that’s the American style of exercise, what’s the Asian way?

Thankfully I’m in a very good position to answer that one.  Because when I’m over exercising at the Pattaya Centara Grand Mirage Beach Resort Fitness Center I’ve got a lot more Asians exercising around me than Americans. I’ll have to say roughly half the Asians who come here on a regular basis actually do spend a little time at it. All of these would be Thais, however.  Because if they exercise week in and week out, they must be Pattaya residents. I’ve heard from the employees here that twenty of them are doctors.

But there’s a lot of Asians who exercise who are  Pattaya Centara Grand Mirage Beach Resort guests paying  at least $150 to $200 a night to stay here. These are the least committed of all. They are also the fattest because they do not exercise focus.

Most of the young ones will get on the elliptical machine for about five minutes and that’s about it. And very few of them will do the rowing machine on account of its being too difficult for them. If they were Americans I’d really be embarrassed for them, but they aren’t. Then there are the older ones.  And they are from all over Asia be it from Thailand, Korea, China or wherever.  Oftentimes I’ve seen them answering calls on their cell phones while going through the motions of exercising on the elliptical machine or treadmill. The Koreans in particular have a particular affinity for completely ruining an exercise session because their cell phones are more important to them than staying trim and fit. But the High So’s from Bangkok also appear to be pretty competent with their cell phones.

And then there are the Iphone worshipers. These might be the most pathetic of the entire lot. I keep wanting to ask them. “How can you do any kind of a job exercising while you are playing around on your iphone?”  How can you exercise focus doing that?

Then there are the swimmers. Now don’t get me wrong, there are actually Thais who take their swimming seriously. On the other hand, this hotel gets extremely crowded with rich people staying here who are from Bangkok. I wind up oftentimes seeing a young guy bring his girlfriend or wife to the lap pool which is right in front of the elliptical machines. So I am able to observe their exercise methods thoroughly.

In most cases the women do a lot more swimming than their soft bellied men.  The woman might actually swim two or three laps in the twenty-five meter lap pool.  While her boyfriend or husband meanders around for a few feet.  Then walks halfway down the length of the pool before ascending the ladder so that he can get his rest.  Or immediately retires to one of the recliners so that he can watch his woman swim a couple of times around the pool.

Once in awhile a young man might bring his woman to the middle of the lap pool where he starts making out with her while being completely unaware of the other swimmers trying to get around them. This in a 25 meter lap pool where swimmers should exercise focus.

The Norwegians and the Swedes, the English, and the Germans, Dutch etc are usually health club members.  Who  pay a princely sum for a year’s membership.   On the whole being a frugal people such Europeans are pretty serious about their exercise. And then there are the Russians, some of whom undoubtedly stay here full time like myself. But a large portion of the Russians are hotel guests who do not have annual health club memberships. Most Russians are pretty serious about their exercise programs. However, most of the Russian men seem to go out for the weight lifting and the hotel’s ample lineup of strength building machines.

Having huge muscular bodies seems to be a pretty macho thing with such Russians.  I’ve seen a lot of the Russian women about as dedicated as the men.

There’s more Russian women than men, however, who go for the aerobics machines such as the elliptical, stair climbers, treadmills and so on. Some of these Russian women are very dedicated and they have the bodies to prove it. I remember one attractive Russian woman in her middle twenties to early thirties who’d exercise nearly every day for three hours straight. But I think I’ll call her, “Icy Eyes” because not once over a two month period did she ever smile at either me or any of my friends.  Nor did she so much as say hello even after she was spoken to first. I heard she had taken a room for two months for herself and one of her children. So figuring $200 for the room over sixty nights that would come to $12,000.

But once again, as I’ve said before, the entire world is turning to fat.  Someone should pay me a lot for writing this article.  For showing how important the keywords exercise focus is to keeping a slender attractive body.  And divulging the concept for a lot of future profits. No matter what company produces the software for the  new Jack Corbett exercise machines.  Potential profits can easily run into the millions.   Perhaps billions of dollars.  While saving the entire planet from its present course of Irreversible obesity.

You might also be interested in reading  “Curing Obesity requires rejecting  the AMA calling obesity a Disease”