Well, folks, I have inadvertently developed a new exercise. It focuses primarily on the abdominal core muscles but also provides an intriguing bit of accentuating capacity for the back, triceps, forearms, and shoulders. In fact, it is pretty close to a total body workout.

The beginning part of this exercise is locating an appropriate crawl space underneath a house. Ideally, this space should be about 32 to 36 inches high. I cannot guarantee the effectiveness of said exercise if those dimensions are significantly altered.

In this crawl space, one should locate four spots to dig square holes. Approximately eighteen inches wide and from six to eight inches deep. These holes could become foundation piers for an additional support beam, should one’s floor be excessively sagging. I do not recommend a long handle shovel for this. I do recommend something a bit more technologically advanced then bare fingers. Using that approach might interfere with the latter aspects of the exercise.

The key part of the exercise is filling these holes with concrete, preferably concrete that is not already set and cured. In other words, you’re going to pour and mix fresh concrete in these holes. Yes, under the house.

As you may have already deducted, this will require getting concrete mix back to the holes in the crawl space. A more rigorous exercise experience can be gained by using eighty pound bags of concrete. At my age, and given my general lack of ambition, I settled for fifty pound bags.

I recommend initially setting the bags just inside the access opening of the foundation of the house. You might try tossing them ten or fifteen feet inside the space but that might have intended consequences for the bags as well as the person tossing said bags.

The subsequent relocation is the primary aspect of the activity. I suppose that one could lay the bag of concrete on his or her back and then do a low crawl underneath the floor joists. I must admit, though, I have not actually tried this approach.

What I did was to set the bag on a piece of triple folded cardboard approximately eighteen inches wide and three feet long. Then, my first experiment involved pushing the cardboard. Push the bag, crawl forward two notches, push the bag, crawl forward, repeat as needed.

After having semi-successfully used this approach to move the concrete bag to the first hole about thirty feet inside the crawl space, I decided to experiment with a different approach.

This one still involves the cardboard but using a crawdad approach. Back up, pull the cardboard toward you, hopefully having remembered to set the bag of concrete on the cardboard. Back up some more, pull the cardboard some more, continue repeating this until you have reached your destination. It might be fifty feet or more to your last hole, depending on spacing.

In addition to the initial benefits mentioned, it seems that this exercise (which I am confident will soon replace Pilates and surpass yoga in popularity) might also work on the hip muscles a bit, as well as the back muscles. Repeat the process an adequate number of times, and it begins to be fairly simple to determine which muscles are particularly involved.

Then of course, there is the additional benefit in regard to your self-imposed physical therapy which comes from the actual pouring and mixing the concrete in the holes. I recommend the fast setting concrete for this. But of course, that has very little bearing on the ultimate muscular benefit.

For even more rigorous activity and more rewarding exercise, I recommend forgiving people you don’t like, being kind to people who have been unkind to you, and returning good for evil. (I must admit, this concept is not original to me, but I do find it more challenging and of even greater benefit.)

I do not, however, recommend waiting until you are seventy to start doing either of these sets of exercise. Good luck and good to you!