Let’s Get Physical

There’s one more thing we need to discuss before I tell you about Saturday. I have, for most of my life, avoided the gym.

When I was seventeen, my mother warned me, ‘you’re very beautiful for a boy, be careful: people will try to use you for that beauty.’ While I liked the idea of being used for my beauty, her warning imbued me with enough concern to eschew enhancing my physical beauty and enough arrogance to believe such eschewal was in my best interests.

Around the same time, I heard Katherine Hepburn say that she didn’t like to watch her movies because, she said, ‘it’s like watching myself rot.’ At that point, I made the decision to put off working out until I was older, so that as I aged, some aspects of my physical form would be improving, even as age took its toll.

I came up with a game plan: I would begin aerobic exercise in my mid-thirties for its cardiovascular benefits, as well as its fat reduction. Thirty minutes per day, four or more days a week. Strength training would begin in my mid-fifties; the resistance would increase tensile strength of bones and prevent fractures, as well as improve my musculature.

But recently several new studies have suggested that the bulk of calcium deposition occurs during our mid-thirties. This meant that strength training should begin concomitantly with the aerobic exercise.

So in mid-March, I joined a gym and began working out a half hour a day, four to five days per week. I had no idea what I was doing and ended up injuring myself so badly I hobbled around on a cane for about three days.

After that, I got a trainer who tells me what to do in a safe manner and allows me to think about other things while I work out.

As my body began to change, some things were difficult to get used to. I normally sleep on the softness of my arm, but it was now lumpy and hard. At first I used the Stairmaster too much and when I turned around I was knocking things over with my over-developed ass. To take care of that problem, I switched to what my friend refers to as ‘the fancy prancer’ but what my trainer calls the elliptical machine.

I wasn’t quite used to the increased strength and stamina either, but it turned out to be rather useful, as you will soon find out.

This is a lot of verbiage when a simple photo montage will do, so here you are. Or, rather, here I am.