Training in Chattanooga
When you hear the whistle blowin' eight to the bar
Then you know that Tennessee is not very far
Shovel all the coal in, gotta keep it rollin'
(Whoo, whoo, Chattanooga, there you are!)
I’ve been behind schedule updating this newsletter because we (my wife, our cat Ziggy and our dog Palbert) traveled down to Texas, where we’re staying through the new year. Now that the dust from being on the road has settled, I’m back in action, and looking forward to sharing some of the highlights from the road and our time in Texas.
On the way down to San Antonio, we had a much appreciated two day layover in Chattanooga, Tennessee. While Nashville and Memphis are famous for their music scenes, Chattanooga is Tennessee’s best visual art city.
Situated along the Tennessee River in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, it’s really not a surprise that the city is a hotbed for artists and cultural institutions. The juxtaposition of natural and human-made aesthetics is clear from the moment you arrive in town.
I was eagerly anticipating our time in Chattanooga for one primary reason, which was doing a fitness session at the Main Terrain Art Park; a public space built on a former industrial site where art and design serve as a catalyst for motivating physical activity.
My wife and I started the day off with a nice brunch of biscuits, gravy, grits and fresh fruit. After a hearty meal, we headed over to the Main Terrain Art Park. It was mid-morning on a weekday, and it was empty, which I didn’t mind one bit.
We started out by engaging with Thomas Sayre’s large sculptures in the center of the park, which were inspired by the site’s industrial history and Chattanooga's iconic Walnut Street Bridge. Each sculpture, which consists of a large bridge-like steel structure on top of a stone obelisk base, is movable via a hand wheel. Turning the wheel offers a decent amount of resistance, and requires a sturdy grip. It was a nice “warm up” for the fitness trail.
There are several fitness stations along a paved path. I started at the pull up bars for two sets of twelve pull ups. The bars are arranged in an open geometric structure, which is more artful (à la Sol LeWitt) than the typical pull up bars you’d find in calisthenics parks. The width, texture and quality of the material made it really easy to attain a perfect grip around the bar.
The next station was gymnastic rings. They were really high up, which meant that for someone like me who is roughly 5’ 7” tall, getting up on these rings took a literal leap of faith. I was just kind of figuring things out, exploring the potential for my body to move around on the rings. It was a combination of putting up resistance and going with the flow. I focused on engaging my core and staying stable the whole time I was up on the rings. I did a couple of L-sit and hollow body pull ups and ended with a move called skin the cat. I haven’t done one in ages, but I think I picked it back up rather well.
After the rings came the dip bars. There are two sets of parallel bars for doing dips and other calisthenics movements. I chose the higher bar so that I could maintain a hollow hold position. I traversed the bar from one side to the other, doing a total of ten dips in the process.
The last station I stopped at was the climbing wall. Climbing culture has gotten pretty trendy and I did enjoy watching it during the Summer Olympics, but it’s not an activity that I’m particularly jazzed about. That said, it enticed me, and despite the wall’s fairly small size, it provided a nice grip strength workout.
After the climbing wall, I did one more lap around the park, hitting up each station once again. I’d fulfilled my desire for a good morning exercise session, and Sayre’s sculptures whet my appetite to view more art. So a short drive to the Sculpture Fields at Montague Park was in order. The thirty-three acre public park is full of artwork by some of the most acclaimed modern and contemporary sculptors like Chakaia Booker and Mark di Suvero.
In art and design, the principle “form follows function” ascertains that the form of an object should be chosen based on its intended purpose and function. In fitness, functional training involves training the body for the activities that are performed in daily life. A key aspect of making gains in our overall strength is maintaining good form. The Main Terrain Art Park is indicative of the best of both the art/design and fitness worlds. Its purposeful layout offers ample opportunities for art lovers to become fitness buffs, and vice versa.
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Outdoor fitness parks/trails are the best