Leisure

Gold Oriented

Your Olympic Training Begins Now

Armchair athletes don’t receive gold medals. They don’t even receive those chocolate coins wrapped in foil that look like gold medals. So if you’re inspired by London, here are five ways to get off the couch. With any luck, Olympic organizers will fold them into a new super-cool pentathlon in 2016.

JAV TALKIN’

Your Personal Javelin Coach

The Training: Throwing coach Tom Pukstys is slightly busy in London right now helping bring home the gold, but his Sunday javelin clinics resume in October. Until then, there’s always lawn darts.
Degree of Difficulty: Low. Throwing’s easy. The real trick: staying out of the way.

EN GARDED MOMENTS

The Perfect Foil for Your Sabre

The Training: The ability to swashbuckle. Some people are just born with it. Others could spend some time with a two-time Romanian Olympian sabre fencer working on their parry.
Degree of Difficulty: Low. You are nothing if not a natural-born swashbuckler.

FIRST ROW

Like Having a Friend with a Boat

The Training: Your entry into the world of strokes, coxswains and bullhorns starts with rowing and sculling classes in Lincoln Park. Because a stunning pair of lats should never go to waste.
Degree of Difficulty: Medium. Breaking in a new coxswain is never easy.

ALL YOUR VAULT

A Guy to Teach You to Pole Vault

The Training: This Whitney Young track coach/pole vault guru has everything you need to launch yourself a few meters into the air: a pole, a mat and an unwavering belief that he can get you airborne.
Degree of Difficulty: Medium. You also must believe you can fly.

BAD-ASSES

Badminton at Chicago Park District

The Training: This 10-week intro course will put you on the road to becoming the Lin Dan of America. (And as you know, China’s Lin Dan is the greatest badminton-er in the world.)
Degree of Difficulty: High. You can’t say “shuttlecock” without giggling.