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Through the coaching session I started looking at what shape the balance cushion should take. I also have a balance pad myself and examined why it looks that way.
As you can see in the picture it has a dotted side. This is intended so that you do not slip when you do your workout on a carpet. The other side is smooth, which makes it difficult to slip on a wooden floor.
What I also thought about is what I paid a while back for this balance cushion and €30 is a ridiculous price for a small piece of rubber filled with air. The quality is poor and as you stand on it you can feel the surface below and that is not challenging at all while working out. What I get out of this is that you should pay more if you want a good balance cushion.
I tested with the gelatin based bioplastic I created last week if it slips away on a wooden surface and on a carpet. It did not slip away.
I want to try different shapes to cast in bigger molds. I've teared down an old broken clock and going to use the housing as mold. This would be a flat mold. For a rounded shape i want to use a salad bowl
According to safety.com it is important to consider the price, function and space if you want to buy fitness equipment.
Their top 10 consists of (price included according to Amazon and a small description):
Indoor rowing machine (€500). Rowing machine for cardio and condition exercises. Gyms and rehabilitation care.
TRX bodyweight trainer (€50 - €105). Long strap with two handles that you can mount on the ceiling or stand on, most often used when training chest or upper leg. Gyms and rehabilitation care.
Power tower pull up station (€240). A "tower" with which you pull yourself up from your arms, mainly used for upper body training. Gyms.
Resistance bands (starting from €20). Elastic bands with different resistance force, used for training legs and feet. Gyms and rehabilitation care.
Spinning bike (€500). Mostly for exercising cardio and stamina. Gyms and rehabilitation care.
Wall mount cable station (€900). A tower with weights and two cables with grips, while pulling the cables the weights will come up. Used for upper body exercises. Gyms
StrengthTech EXM2500S (€2500). A fitness machine that you sit on and lift weights from your arms, mostly used for arms and chest exercises. Gyms.
Bosu balance cushion (starting from €75). A round balance cushion with which you can train your whole body, also recommended for injury prevention and used both in private and rehabilitation. Gyms and rehabilitation care.
Treadmill (€1100). Treadmill where you can walk and run on, used for stamina. Gyms and rehabilitation care.
Source: https://www.safety.com/home-gym-equipment/
Conclusion
Fitness equipment is expensive and especially if only used during a lockdown. The most interesting thing to focus on is the balance cushion because the use is focused on your whole body and it is used both privately and in rehabilitation. In my current physiotherapy treatment we also often use a balance cushion and in the past she has also recommended that I do exercises at home by purchasing one or using a different pillow, but that is not the same. When I think about how I could recreate this list of equipment with bioplastics, most things related to weights fall off because it is difficult to make bioplastic heavy. To put it in an exaggerated way, you may need a 50 cubic centimeter to have 1 kilo of weight.
I've tried to do research in bioplastic work out equipment but as far as searched i couldn't find any. This is a big insight because I could be the first one that could create one.
If i focus on a balance cushion the next step would be to experiment with bioplastics in what composition at the same time is firm and squishy. If i found the right composition then I will focus on how other can recreate it.
I had a reframing session with Laura and it helped me a lot by looking at my project differently and also gaining new insights.
She made me realize that this would be a great solution to stimulate home fitness and that there is a possibility that this hasn't been done yet in the fitness and the open source world.
Because I want to make it accessible that everyone can copy it, I got the tip to use stuff that everyone also has at home or can easily buy in the supermarket. Not everyone has a broken clock that they can take apart.
I also got the tip to ask other people how they exercise at home during the lockdown, so I asked some friends of mine.
My friend Rolf mostly exercises in his backyard without any equipment and goes out for a run around the block.
Matthijs goes out for a run as well and works out at home and in his backyard. Sometimes he uses his 1 year old sons toys to do his exercises and in addition he uses weights and a skipping rope.
This week I want to create a bigger gelatin based balance cushion. I want to try out two shapes, flat and rounded. For the flat one I use my mold from the housing of the old clock. For the shaped one I use a mixing/salad bowl.
Once again I used the Bioplastics Cookbook by Margaret Dunne.
I upscaled the amount:
1L water
200 grams of gelatin
120 grams of glycerine
In the flat shaped mold I put some transparent foil so it would not leak when I cast.
I mixed everything together in a bigger pan than before and kept stirring until it became one composition and started to thicken. When it thickens i poured it in both molds.
After casting in the molds I've let it dry for two nights next to an open window before taking out.
The picture above clearly shows the difference between the flat and the rounded shape. I've tested them by standing on it with my whole weight and doing a short workout.
The rounded shape worked fine and challenging to do exercises and would like to continue with that. The flat shape didn't work out because it functioned more like a mat and you could stand on it as long as you wanted. Another application for the flat shape could be a fitness mat.
Making fitness equipment by yourself from bioplastic to stimulate home fitness during the lockdown (Covid-19).
Gyms - Accessible for everyone
Rehabilitation care - Specific way of fitness with focus on a part of your body. Guided workouts.
Sports club (for example a football club) - Two or three times a week training and one match.
Fitness equipment companies - You can only exercise with expensive equipment or if you have a lot of money
Fitness equipment: Money and space.
Sports club: Closed during the lockdown, athletes are stuck at home.
Rehabilitation care: Closed during the lockdown, people are lagging behind with rehabilitation or physical complaints.
Gyms: Closed during the lockdown, people do not know how to workout at home.
What if fitness equipment was cheap and mini.
Foldable fitness equipment
What if there was a priority plan for specific patients for physiotherapy during the lockdown.
Priority for patients who have to relearn to walk for example.
What if gyms bring their equipment to you.
Renting equipment from gyms.
I had a second reframing session with Laura. Through this session I learned what I can investigate further to improve my story that I want to tell.
How do you dispose the gelatin balance cushion?
It was difficult to find anything about this but I did find this video. It is very different from what I have been doing, in this case a swimming pool filled with gelatin. This inspired me to try something alike.
I made a saline solution with water and put a sample in it. After an hour it got softer than it was and I could easily pierce it with a spoon.
Due to the bioplastics week in the first block, I saw that my samples are still good and have no fungus. This is because I kept them in a foil in a dark place, in my kitchen drawer.
I have not thought about which exercises the user can do with the balance cushion because it makes sense to me but perhaps not to other people. I will ask my physiotherapist about some exercises.
To do some inspiration Laura gave me a tip to look how people work out in third world countries.
In the article below Craig Weller tells about how he exercised when he spent a few years in different third world country during his time in the navy.
He had a rope and two rings that he could hang in an industrial place. In addition all he had were sandbags and rocks and with these limited materials he developed a fitness program. He used rocks for underwater weighted sprint exercises
A part of the program cosisted of:
Mobility warm-up (dynamic leg swings, high-knee running, etc.) Sandbag sprints, 6 rounds (2 overhead, 2 underhand, 2 rotational) Stone sprints, 5 rounds Underwater rock running, 1 round
Due the reframing session with Laura and coaching/brainstorming with Marjolein I decided to change something in my concept.
Gelatin gets harder over time and keeping it soft all the time will be tricky for the user and the chance of fungus is also high because it also retains moisture if it stays soft.
It seemed logical to me at first to seal the balance cushion with transparent foil and keep it in a dark place, but there it started to get moldy.
I also realized that during the bioplastics week I left my samples next to my open window for a long due my laziness to clean it up and store it somewhere else. These samples were much smaller and in the next week I will try to maintain better supervision during drying.
Now I want the balance cushion to get harder over time. The user will do different exercises based on the hardness of the balance cushion. As a result, the exercises are no longer monotonous and the user has a different schedule of exercises every week based on the hardness.
I will also look for an mould in a local store where I will make my final product.
When I was shopping I found the perfect mold for casting a balance cushion at Albert Heijn. It's a big hard plastic salad bowl, I'm not sure what kind of plastic.
900 ml water
100ml dishwasher soap
200 grams gelatin
120 gram glycerine
The recipe is the same as before but with a slight change. I'll add 100ml of dishwasher soap. I do this because it worked in the bioplastics week and had no fungus. Depending on the soap color, the balance cushion takes on that color, in this case green.
I added the soap later on during cooking.
After it got thicker I poured it into the mold. I poured the leftovers in a deep plate i had lying around to see how that will turn out, out of curiosity. I left next to my open window to dry for two nights to be sure that I can take it out of the molds.
The one in the metal plate dried very fast and hardened as well, it started to warp a bit.
It is nice to see that if you hold it in a certain light you will see a rainbow through the dishwasher soap I added.
The balance cushion came out nice as well. It is the right size and will shrink over time, but it is good for strength and balance exercises.
I left them for the next few days on the same place next to my open window.
During the coaching session with Marjolein I asked the other students if they had some tips for fungus prevention. Desiree told me to flip the piece over time by time. Desiree's tip in combination with the dishwasher soap did the trick.
Due to the current measures related to Covid-19, we are stuck at home. The gyms are closed and people who are in rehabilitation cannot go to the physiotherapist. It is difficult to exercise at home because many people are limited in sports materials. Sports materials are often expensive to purchase and the exercises you can do with them are often monotonous.
I want to show that it is possible to make your own workout material with the stuff you have at home and what you can get from your local supermarket, which is cheaper. I want to do this by means of a gelatin based balance cushion in a way that everyone can make it themselves. With a balance cushion it is possible to do exercises that train muscles throughout your body.
Due to the different material properties that gelatin entails in the process that it hardens, the user can maintain a sports schedule. This starts with soft where the focus is on strength and balance, after which it hardens and the user can focus on stamina.
For getting some inspiration we did a brainstorm session with Micky. The day before I've went to the beach to do some inspiration myself and I found some shells that might come in handy to use as materials.
At first we had to look around in our room and to sketch what we see.
Secondly for each theme I came with some idea's and put it in a mind map. Afterwards in duo's we had to show what we had and put the idea's together.
Theme 1: Covid-19
The ideas translated:
Moving/exercise
Soap dispenser with Arduino
Reset button
Human contact
Make everything by yourself
Reusable face masks
Morphsuit that protects from bacteria for people who work in healthcare
Spreading people/distancing
Country land of the future
Theme 2: Materials
The ideas translated:
From old or broken skateboards to furniture
Gelatine swimming pool
Edible clothing from mango leather
Home exercising/workout set from bioplastic
Giving shells from the beach a new purpose
Finding a way to become more durable by making things by yourself
Theme 3: Homo Faber tools
The ideas translated:
Plasma sphere
Lava-lamp
Inflatables that work on their own
Reusable tools
Guitar tuner with Arduino or Processing
Making moulds for skateboarding wheels
Combining Material & Archiving with Covid-19:
Combining Material & Archiving with Homo Faber tools:
Combining Homo Faber tools with Covid-19:
Bioplastics: especially to think about future applications.
Electronics.
3D modeling and printing.
This part is hard to choose for me because they all have aspects that are interesting. I will look through the resources to get some inspiration and to make a choice.
After getting some inspiration I've decided to choose for theme 2: Material Activism & Archiving. For the idea i have in mind it will have a slight piece of the Covid theme.
I got inspired by these resources:
Radical Matter, by Kate Franklin and Caroline Till, 2019.
Biofabricating Materials by, Cecilia Raspanti, 2019
Blood Bio Leather, by Shahar Livne Design
Due to the current Covid-19 situation we have to sit at home and facilities such as gyms and physio practices are closed, we are limited in material with which we can exercise or move. I want to see if it is possible through material properties of bioplastics to be able to make exercise material at home in order to be able to do exercise to stay physically active.
As is described before due the current Covid-19 situation. Because we have to stay at home, we do not exercise enough so that you can start to feel down and possibly become depressed. By exercising this is a way to counter such a thing and to stay in shape physically and mentally.
I want to recreate a balance cushion i have at home by making one from bioplastic and to look at the material properties that it will be the same as what the balance cushion can do.
Moulds
Recipes (have to do further research in what kind of recipe)
Agar
Glycerine
Water
Gelatine
Holland and Barrett
Albert Heijn & Vomar
Action
Sligro (I don't have a card for it)
Other source that can be helpfull is my physio therapist. The physiotherapy practice is in the same building where I live in.
In my first experiment i want to experiment with agar based and gelatin based bioplastic. From this experiment I want to discover which composition is the strongest, but it also has to be squeezable.
I chose agar and gelatin because I discovered during the bioplastics week that it is quite firm. In this case it was slices but now I want to make it thicker and massive to see if it stays that way and what happens when I squeeze it. If it is really that sturdy, I want to see what would happen if I stand on it with all my weight.
For the gelatin based recipe i used the recipe from the Bioplastic Cookbook by Margaret Dunne. I doubled de amount of ingredients because I want to make a bigger piece than before in the bioplastic week.
24 grams of gelatin
120 ml water
15 grams of glycerine
I warmed it up while stirring with a spoon so that it became a composition that started to feel thicker while stirring. Then I poured it into a bowl and placed it next to an open window to dry.
I did exactly the same with the agar based bioplastic. The agar packaging stated that 3 grams of gelatin is equal to 1 gram of agar and I used that in my recipe. I had written down a formula to calculate how much I needed.
8 gram of agar
120 ml water
15 grams of glycerine
I let them dry for two days before testing.
What struck me is that the agar based bioplastic had shrunk a lot in comparison with the gelatin based one.
After drying i squeezed both of them with full force to see what happens and also did a durability test by standing on them.
After testing both, I came to the conclusion to continue with the gelatin base bioplastic. I chose this because that of agar shrinks enormously and quickly. When the gelatin is pressed and squeezed, it quickly "inflates" again while remaining dented with the agar.
On a small scale, the gelatin base bioplastic has the right properties for a balance pillow and the next step is to make it bigger.