Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

Getting Healthy 267time we left the Exercise Camp, he was doing fifty minutes a day prettyregularly.The other good thing about setting up our gym was that it wasa definite do-it-yourself project—a Jungle Depot special. We had tobuild the bench we used for bench pressing. Of course, we neededto borrow tools and materials from the guerrillas, but we did all thework ourselves. That activity gave us exercise, a sense of accomplishment,and a purpose each day. When it came time to build the barbellsfor the bench press, squats, and military press, we all pitched in. Itfelt good not to be the lone carver. We took a fairly stout log, one thatwas six inches or so around, and whittled away at it so that the barwas down to about an inch around and the ends were still the originaldiameter. It took us a week or two to accomplish this, but we allchipped in. Again, we sometimes worked alone on it, and sometimeswe worked together, but they were “our” weights. When we got strongerand wanted a heavier barbell, we did the same thing with a largerlog. We jokingly called it our Flintstones gym, but we also took pride inhaving done it ourselves.None of us had ever been a gym rat before, but we figured out agood approach to working out. One day I would focus on my upperbody with pushing exercises—bench press, military press, and pushups.The next day it would still be upper body, but pulling exercises likecurls and pull-ups. The day after that was the lower body, with squatsand abdominal work like sit-ups and crunches. We all set goals for ourselvesand these were something crucial to staying positive. We hadonly one long-term goal—of getting home again, but we also needed tokeep focused on the everyday and the short term as well.This didn’t apply just to our physical work but to our mental andemotional efforts. Writing in journals still occupied some of our time,as did learning Spanish and reading. Sergeant César Augusto Lassohad given me a Bible while at Caribe, and my goal was to read it from