The Super Bowl to me is something like Halloween—seems like it should be a huge event with themed food and costumes and decorations, but for a long while I never felt like I could get anyone to play along.
 

Partying with the Lombardi. 

 

As a kid, I wanted the Super Bowl to be on par with Christmas morning for suspense and excitement. My parents—big football fans—entertained me by putting out bowls of potato chips and M&Ms. I drew the teams’ logos on balloons with a Sharpee. (Which is, I’m sure, the only reason I remember that Buffalo and Washington were in a Super Bowl together.) For a while (and who knows, maybe they still do it?), the Church of the Redeemer had a fund raiser selling sub sandwiches for Super Bowl Sunday—you preordered them with your desired toppings and then picked them up the day of (ostensibly while attending your pre-football church service). I so clearly remember eating one of those subs that it must be among the all-time best sandwich moments of my life. And, like, that includes hamburgers.

 

But still, when it came down to it, the Super Bowl was usually just me, Ma and Pa, watching TV on a Sunday night—a real exercise to see how long my 10-year-old self could pretend I was having a party when just my parents attended.

 

My, I was a sad, lonely little child, right?

 

Actually, one year in elementary school I spent the first half of the game at a friend’s house. We made little signs with pictures of a glowing Joe Montana triumphing over a John Elway outfitted with stinky lines. (Yes, I was a childhood 49ers fan. Gimme a break—I grew up in southwest Florida, and I wanted a reason to be interested in the postseason.)

 

Now, I knew I was sort of a precocious little sports fan as a kid, but as a grownup, I figured, I’d finally have the kind of Super Bowl experience I’d been looking for. Right?

 

Eh, despite all the excitement I’d see on the TV commercials leading up to the game, too few of my real-world acquaintances were at all interested in getting a little crazy on a Sunday night.

 

When the Bucs won the Super Bowl, Little J and I bounced around our Gillespie Park house for 10 minutes, then headed to Main Street in search of the elated crowds of Tampa fans we were sure would be spilling out of every bar.

 

Yeah, it was dead.

 

Of course, the Super Bowl isn’t really a bar-going kind of holiday, anyway. It’s a backyard barbecue event—chips and guac and people crammed onto couches in living rooms, just like they do in the commercials.

 

I could be wrong, but it feels like the Super Bowl is a bigger deal in general than it was 20 years ago—the commercials, of course, and the more co-ed approach to sports marketing. Now it’s more of a national holiday than it was then, when it appealed to true football fans and hardly anyone else.

 

And now, at long last, in my 30s, I finally get to enjoy a worthy Super Bowl celebration, thanks to the Harribles laying claim on Super Bowl Sunday as their signature party to host. It’s perfect: chili dogs and seven-layer dip, beer and a living room packed with people who are as enthusiastic about the game as they are about the commercials. (And perhaps even more so for the former this year, with all the New Englanders and New Yorkers in our midst.) It’s a football-centric, chips-and-dip, plate-on-your-lap, yell-at-the-refs, high-fiving, trash-talking, laugh-until-you-cry kind of Super Bowl party. Just what I was looking for.

 

Now if only we could get them to declare Super Bowl Monday as a national holiday…

It still feels like I’m struggling to get back into an exercise routine after the sloth of the holidays. So even though I felt a post-hockey-tournament cold coming on, I dragged myself out to a Saturday morning soccer practice a couple of weekends ago. (Well, the practice started at 12:30 p.m., but I still keep saying “Saturday morning”—such is the nature of my Saturdays.)

 

Anyway, the coach and a couple gals on the team had invited a trainer to take us through some fitness drills—quick-feet tippy-toes dancing over the nylon “ladder,” sprints, and various games of tag and capture the flag designed to make your competitiveness overcome your lack of lungpower.

 

At the end of all this, the trainer guy, John Brockhoff, shilled a bit for his fitness biz. Turns out, in addition to fitness training, he teaches a bunch of self-defense courses, including a seven-week women’s-only class as well as the Israeli hand-to-hand “krav maga” technique, which he teaches to private citizens as well as the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office.

 

Well, kudos to his sales pitch. He emphasized the mental aspects of self-defense, especially when it comes to women fighting against domination-minded predators. He also gave no points for pretty little self-defense gimmicks that might make you feel better but wouldn’t do any good whatsoever against an aggressive, real-world attacker. And to send his point home, the 5’5”, 160-pound Brockhoff demonstrated an attack on one of our teammates (and a student of his), wherein he snatched her up in a moment, hand firmly over her mouth, and dragged her about 20 feet away in five seconds. She never made a sound.

 

Dude, I wanna throw elbows. Sign me up.

 

So, after I recovered from the sinus infection that may or may not have come from going to soccer practice with a head cold, CCB and I headed over for a Tuesday-night krav maga class in Palmetto.

 

It's not unlike boxing, with a room full of people performing coordinated combat moves with such vigor that you break a sweat one minute into the warm-up. There are just a lot more moves to learn with krav, and all those moves require technique with a reason: If you’re own the ground, fight your way to your feet quick and get ready to kick; crank that elbow all the way around as though you’re trying to knock someone’s jaw off; don’t punch to the throat, punch through the throat. There’s a lot of encouragement, but nothing half-assed will fly.

 

In short: Fight as though your life depends on it, because some day it might.

My hyper-competitive self gets down when other people talk about their dedication to the gym—so many sets of so many reps with this much weight targeting that part of the body, then a set amount of time on cardio machine of your choice. Sure, I like to think I’m in decent shape, but I’m not following a conscious exercise pattern, and without that kind of gym-like quantifier, my workouts don’t feel real enough. So, were I to create my own signature, extreme, P90X-style workout based on my week’s activities, it might look something like this.

 

SUNDAY

Hockey game:

Three-minute warm-up—wearing 20 pounds of equipment, skate a couple half laps, stretch groin, hip-flexors, hamstrings, quad, shoulders, back wrists. Take some shots. Alternating between skating hard for about 80 seconds of game time (two minutes or so real time, with stoppages of play)—stopping, starting, turning, pushing against people along the boards, picking yourself up off the ice—then about 80 seconds of game time on the bench resting and rehydrating. Repeat through three 12-minute periods, approximately 50 minutes to an hour real time.

 

[For a hockey tournament: Repeat above workout five times in three days.]

 

MONDAY

Boxing:

30 seconds punching the mitts in combinations—jab, straight, hook, uppercut, duck, uppercut, slip, straight—then a minute of “Sugar Rays,” or sideways shuffles around the ring while CCB and Big J get their time on the mitts; two sessions on the mitts and two minutes of Sugar Rays for each three-minute round; three rounds.

            Do squats for a three-minute round, with two 30-second intervals punching the mitts as fast as you can.

            Next, shadow boxing in front of the mirror: throw combinations, holding an eight-pound dumbbell in each hand, for 30 seconds, then Sugar Ray while holding the dumbbells up by your chin for 30 seconds; continue for a three-minute round; rest for 30 seconds, then repeat for a total of five rounds, occasionally replacing the Sugar Rays with push-ups, squats, burpees, etc.

            Jog backwards around the building.

            Do lunges around the building, stopping at every corner to do 50 squats, for a total of 200 squats and 1/6 mile of lunges.

 

TUESDAY

Lunch break:

Walk from Nancy’s Bar-B-Q down Ringling, across Bayfront Drive, past the marina and up over the Ringling Bridge and back, approximately three miles. In an hour.

 

WEDNESDAY

Multi-Sport Extravaganza:

Head to an open part of a GT Bray soccer field with a soccer ball, football and baseball bat, balls and mitts. Warm-up with some baseball catch. Kick the soccer ball back and forth for approximately 10 minutes, moving farther and farther away for longer kicks that are more likely to go astray, so you have to chase the ball a lot. Play catch with the football, trying to hit each other on crossing routes, approximately five minutes. Take turns batting and shagging fungoes, approximately 20 minutes. (The shagging part is surprisingly exhausting.)

 

THURSDAY

Stationary Bike Tetris:

In guest bedroom, ride the stationary bike while playing Tetris on the original Nintendo. Play one game, so long as you make at least 130 lines—between 10 and 15 minutes; anything under that requires another game.

 

FRIDAY

Hockey practice:

10-lap leisurely warm-up skate. Circle drills, skating around each of the five face-off circles on the ice, alternating between forward and backward, with puck and without, regular speed and sprint, for a total of five times. Team drills, lots of starting and stopping in small areas on the ice. Iron man (no subs) scrimmage for 10 minutes. Team sprints.

 

SATURDAY

Soccer game:

30-minute warm-up with passes and a little jogging. Play full 90-minute game, consisting of 20-40 sprints of various distances—usually between 10 and 60 yards—as well as some quick changes of direction to target those thighs.