Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
P.E.
I told my trainer* this evening that I would say I feel like an old man, except I’m quite sure that as a kid, I would have felt just as winded if not worse. Teenager me had nothing but disdain for physical fitness; I saw no percentage in it, since I couldn’t use my body to earn a living (hey, no wisecracks!) I was a creature of mind. If anything, I resented the time it took away from my studies.
Team sports were particularly humiliating, so from the moment I first had the option (10th grade), I took the weight training classes. I’d do a circuit or two around the machines, but mostly I’d hang with my tribe, the Hispanic gangsters who liked me because they liked my sis, who taught English at the same school. And we all avoided the SJs, the Asian toughs who really did know how to use the machines and could have kicked all our asses in a heartbeat if we weren’t so far beneath their contempt.
I was never as bad as the guy on the left, nor as buff as the guy on the right. I believe in the Golden Mean.
I don’t recall building up much muscle back then. Is it possible for a body to change so fundamentally? Or was my problem a lack of weight? Nowadays, I see myself as a rather hairy philosopher’s stone, readily turning fat into muscle provided I give it the necessary investment of pain and sweat. Sadly, this body is a catalytic converter that can run the reaction in both directions, quite capable of converting gold into base metal, better known as pudge. So perhaps in high school I couldn’t put on the muscle because I didn’t possess the necessary lard. I weighed 135-140 pounds back then, which is damn near impossible for me to believe. But yeah, I did. There’s a photo of me and the old gf at the beach, and I’m wearing nothing but a pair of cutoff jeans. Not exactly washboard abs, but nothing flopping over my waist band, either.
It took lower back pain to get me to exercise. That, and an abiding disgust for my pudge-ridden body. I’m happy to say that even after 6 months of no exercise at all (thanks to that horrid commute), my old fat pants would fall off me — so I didn’t back-slide that much. On the other hand, I’ve been working out for nearly six weeks, and I suspect I still can’t fit into my super skinny pants.
We had to run laps for our high school weight training class. Was it a mile a day, or a mile once a week? Maybe a mile a day. You’d think that would have given me the habit of running, if not an actual love for it, and in fact I did run on occasion while at Berkeley. But running is boring (and ultimately destructive, I suspect). I’d much rather hop on the elliptical and read a book or watch TV while I’m shvitzing away.
And now, 31 years later, it’s weights I keep coming back to. Except, now my trainer tells me I have to build up my core strength and my flexibility before I can use the machines. She’s put me on a strict diet: no more than two machines per workout. You know what? I can handle an hour or more on the elliptical at high resistance and I’m okay with that. I can even do an hour of weights, and I’m okay with that too.
But this core stuff? Oh. My. God. Ten minutes, and I’m about ready to die. And yet I keep coming back for more. She says I’m one of her two favorite clients*****, I think because of the amount of punishment I’m willing to suck up.
Sometimes, masochism pays.
D.
*Yes, I’ve become one of those rich yuppie** bastards who has a personal trainer: two sessions a week for four weeks, after which I should be able to figure out for myself how best to keep in shape. Any guilt I might have over this, any self-accusations of egocentrism, any worries that I have become a stereotype, tend to evaporate ten minutes into the session, when the sweat’s pouring off me in rivers. She works me far harder than I can ever manage to work myself.
**Hmm. The Y in yuppie no longer applies, does it? So what am I, a muppie***?
***M for middle-aged****.
****Which is such a delightfully optimistic term, don’t you think? Because by calling one’s 40s and 50s “middle-aged,” it assumes a life span of 80 to 100 years. Which wouldn’t be a bad deal, assuming I can keep busting my ass at the gym like this. Hey, stranger things have happened. Look at Jack LaLanne, still going strong at 94.
*****The other is a woman with one leg.
I love Jack LaLanne but I don’t know which picture is grosser up there, the belly flop on the left or the wing nut on the right. Both of them gave my stomach a toss. Blech.
What are we now? Really? Muppies? Mofos? Who knows?
I’ve had trainers from time to time but I got tired of them because they tried to talk to me while I was working out. I like the silence, the sweating and my own heavy breathing.
Supposedly, if you can’t hold a conversation while you’re exercising, you’re working too hard (?) or something like that. Maybe it adds to the aerobic aspect of exercise if you have to talk while panting?