A Roll of the Dice Leaves Exercise to Chance
Vincent Morris's workout is a game of chance. Each day, he rolls a 20-sided die he still has from childhood days of playing the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons to determine his morning exercise. Each number on the die represents a different exercise.
"My wife thinks I'm crazy," he says. "But it gives me variety and allows me to make the dice the bad guy."
Mr. Morris was active when he was younger and he played football at Boston University. Now, as the 43-year-old communications director of the Senate Commerce Committee, his job is largely sedentary. "I'm at a desk nearly all day and I hate that," he says.
When he fell into a gym rut and became bored with his running and weights routine, Mr. Morris began asking friends what they did for exercise. "One friend was really into Pilates, and another swore by spinning," he says. "I also started reading articles about trendy new workouts like paddleboarding."
A year ago, he made a list of all of the workouts he thought would be physically challenging and fun enough to keep him engaged. He came up with 20, ranging from rock climbing to boxing to lifting with kettle bells. He gave each one a nickname. Paddleboarding, for instance, is called the "Rihanna" because "I kept seeing all of these photos of Rihanna paddleboarding in magazines," he explains.
The die allows "me to workout angry if I don't get what I want," he jokes. "But when chance smiles on me and I roll a three, that means I just shoot hoops and do some sprints while dribbling the basketball."
Mr. Morris lives in Washington, D.C., where he writes speeches for the Senate Commerce Committee. He is married and has three daughters ages 4, 6 and 9.
Mr. Morris works out seven mornings a week. During the work week, he's often at the gym by 5:30 a.m. and exercises for an hour before he returns home to wake his kids and have breakfast with his family. On the weekends he gets to the gym at 7 a.m.
Mr. Morris will roll his die twice to determine his day's workout. He dedicates 30 minutes to each exercise. Some days that means he'll be doing an hour of cardio, and other days all strength.
Workout No. 11, named the Alex McCandless after the subject of Jon Krakauer's book "Into the Wild," is one of his favorites. It requires Mr. Morris to climb 200 floors on the stair machine. "I named it after McCandless because he walked into Alaska, and when I do this I feel like I'm walking forever." He says he usually can climb 150 to 200 floors in 30 minutes.
No. 18 he likens to "something Arnold Schwarzenegger would have done in his body-building days." Mr. Morris uses free weights and does three sets each of bench presses, bicep curls and military presses, in which a person stands, feet together and raises a barbell to the chest and then lifts it overhead. For his "Full Metal Jacket" workout, he walks around a nearby school for a mile wearing a 50-pound weighted vest.
He admits that some days he cheats. "If I roll a water workout during the week, I roll again because the pool doesn't open early enough," he says. If he rolls two consecutive numbers, he'll roll again so he won't do the same workout back to back.
During the week, Mr. Morris's breakfast is Greek yogurt with blueberries, bananas, wheat germ, flaxseed and honey. On the weekends he typically cooks eggs, bacon and pancakes with his kids. He tries to bring lunch to work at least three days a week, usually two or three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on whole-wheat bread. Other days he eats lunch out with colleagues.
His wife usually cooks dinner, which might be chicken, beans and rice or pasta. Mr. Morris has a weakness for sweets. "I eat a lot of candy," he confesses.
Mr. Morris's gym membership costs $70 a month. His weighted vest cost $70.
He owns five pairs of Nike Air Presto sneakers. Nike discontinued the lightweight sneaker about 10 years ago, so Mr. Morris buys them used off eBay for about $20 a pair. "They're nylon with no laces and feel like you're wearing slippers," he says.
"Workout 16, the burpees, is really tiring."
To perform burpees, he starts in a standing position and drops into a squat position with his hands on the ground, then kicks his feet back and lowers himself into a pushup position. He then jumps from a pushup position back to a squat and jumps straight up as high as possible, with arms overhead. He repeats as many as he can for 30 minutes.