There’s an App for That?-Wednesday, January 4th

Lifting day with Critter yesterday.

When I arrived at 6:20am there were considerably more people there than when we had hit the gym the week before.  I guess folks are all trying not to break their New Year’s resolutions before day 3.  They will.  Oh, they will.

Critter said he gives it to mid-February before the majority of them drop out, like fumigated flies or Nickelback from relevancy.  I’m more optimistic.  Late February is where my money lies.  We’ll see.

It could also be argued such prognosticating on our part is the pot calling the kettle black.  We’ll see.

My Freshman year of High School I made a New Year’s resolution to begin spelling my name with a slanted “T” that looked like the first two strokes of a “Z.”  The resolution was the result of pure laziness and vanity.  A cursive “T” took forever to pen, with its curly loops. The adapted “T” I was working on made it much easier to sign my name quickly, which I was certain I would have to do many hundreds of times in a row at my future celebrity record signing.

In celebrity signing, too many strokes of the pen is the enemy; speed is the goal.  After all, I couldn’t leave my fans waiting!  Sure they’ve enjoyed listening to my pop single play over and over again through the speakers at the corner Media Play* while they waited in line for me to pen over my face on an artistically stylish album cover that I designed myself in a drunken stupor, but they also had to buy my second new single-tape before leaving the store. So can we sign a bit faster, please?

I spent hours in Mrs. Ogle’s Honors English class (don’t be jealous) writing my name in straight lines down my notebook.  TJB, I’d scribble.  After I joined a fraternity I’d add the “…” behind the B.  To explain the meaning behind it I’d have to kill you.  Would it be worth it?

That was a useless resolution, but sure enough, I kept it…and still sign my name that way.  This, I am hoping, will be a more fruitful resolution.  Although, technically, “The Year of Health” is not a New Year’s resolution because I started it a few days before the New Year.  Hence if I fail it will just be another attempt at a better life foiled by mediocrity, illness, or the siren call of Starbucks (if I were to guess). I’ve wasted many a good hour at Starbucks that could have been an hour spent at the gym.

As I hinted above, only time will tell.

Oh, and Rhonda has some opinions on it.  But if you want to know those you’ll have to ask her about that. I’m trying to keep this blog positive.

But today was a lifting day with Critter and, despite the larger crowd (four small guys who could bench me instead of only two last week, oh, and an Ewok…I’ll explain the Ewok in another post), we again had the run of the gym.  We began on the elliptical, my trusty friend who, every time I step off it, I feel like I’m doing a “walk of shame.”  Elliptical, you sordid mistress!

We quickly moved on to those lovely warm-ups I’m so fond of.

Supermans? Yes please.  60?  Sure, why not.  And leg-ups.  Oh, and these things called “ab-twists” that make you look like you’re trying to start the lifting machine like a lawn mower, but the machine has run out of gas.

And then I laid down on that bench of misery again for the bench press.  Faithful readers will remember that 90 was the poundage I pressed before.  Chris, always the sunshine of my early Chicago morning, suggested I go with 100 this time.  I suggested he go to hell and loaded it up to 90 pounds.

It’s a good thing I know my body.  Lifting this time around was even harder than before!  I have a theory on why…

Imagine a flock of sheep (which also can be identified as a mob or a herd…thanks to Trent Kissinger for that tidbit of useless trivia that surely pushed something important out of my head).  In the center are the awesome sheep.  They’re awesome because they’re smart enough to stay in the center.

Now imagine a pack of wolves wanting to eat the sheep.  Which sheep do they eat first?  The dumb ones standing on the outside.  Why?  Because the smart ones on the inside have doused the dumb ones in soy sauce, that’s why.

So now all the dumb sheep are gone, eaten.  The awesome sheep are all that are left…they are now the perimeter of the circle, which has grown much smaller. But the wolves are still hungry.  And with the idiot sheep gone, the wolves start attacking the awesome sheep and having them for dinner, further depleting the strength of the flock.

Get the metaphor?  Sheep=muscles.  Wolves=weights.  Last time my muscles were stronger because, while last time they were full of dumb-ass fibers, there were still more of them and many were expendable.  Now I’m sacrificing strong, good muscles to the weight-lifting gods…which is why 90 pounds felt like I was lifting Carnie Wilson to the Wilson Phillips blaring from my ipod (don’t ever let anyone step all over you!).

If I have to explain my metaphors to you every time, these posts are going to get really long…

By the way, the above story also makes a good moral tale for your young children, where you can ponder together whether they’re the idiot sheep or the awesome sheep of the world.  If you’re unsure just ask their PE teacher.  They’ll tell you.

Critter, however, had no noticeable trouble with his awesome lifting that morning.  And while I struggled, he was very encouraging to me, even once saying, “Breathe and don’t be a pansy.”  That’s motivating in a Dr. Cox sort of way.  You’re aces, Critter.  Aces.

While he may have whooped me on the bench press, I did best him in the fly machine (75lbs for 3 sets of 15 reps).  When I was at the gym last Thursday lifting without Critter, which is not half as enjoyable, I did spot a man curling the 90lb weights.  His veins looked like they could move Hershey Syrup they were so huge.  I was not jealous as I can still buy shirts at any local store and not have to take out the sleeves, but my plaque-clogged arteries were jealous.  They can barely move the paint-thinner blood coursing through my body.

We also did incline presses, tricep-extends, tricep pull-downs, and tricep reverse curls.  I am in love with my triceps.  They never complain, they always do what they’re told.  They’re the “me” of the muscle world: small but obedient.

And then we get to the last part of the work out.  Critter pointed me toward a machine and said, “Lift that while I go get something.”  I can tell when I’m being given a meaningless, time-stalling task. But being the tricep of that relationship, I did what I was told.

He came back with his iphone.

“I have an app for the last workout.  What do you want to do, 5, 7, or 10 minutes?”

“Of what?”

“Ab work!”

If I’m the tricep of this relationship, he’s the idiot sheep.  Really? Let’s do 10 minutes.  Please.  I mean, I can’t touch my elbows together because my arms feel like jello, and I’m pretty sure that the 70 year old man lifting behind us on the bench press was laughing out loud and pointing while I was lifting.  But I’d like to fail again this morning, so, please, 10 minutes.  Line it up.

Actually, I said, “Do we have to?”

“Fine, 5 minutes,” he replied.

It was at this moment that the workout became me looking at an iphone screen the size of a tea biscuit trying to figure out what the figure on the screen was doing while lying on a mat at an awkward angle.  I didn’t have my glasses of course.  That, plus the sweat dripping from the vast tundra that is my forehead made it difficult to see. (And, no, I’m not getting contacts.  If you mention the contacts thing again I swear I’ll throw soy sauce on you.)

Because I couldn’t see, Critter did the interpreting.

“Regular crunch.”  For a count of a gut wrenching 40.  “Lumbar crunch” which made me think of futons.

Leg lifts.  Reverse crunch.  Arms-out crunch.  Captain Crunch.  I was done.

By the last exercise I was lying there sure that I would never get up from that green mat.  They’d have to scoop me up and my abs, which now felt terribly heavy, would be the last to lift off the floor.

I didn’t know there was an app for Hell; but there is.  If there is a Hell it certainly involves those exercises.  And an iphone, probably.  With a cracked screen that is “your fault” so they won’t fix it.

I’d had enough.  With all my idiot muscles exorcised and my awesome muscles bruised and beaten, I limped wearily from the “smell area” to the “smellier area,” aka the locker room.

“I’m going to go use the elliptical,” Critter informed me cheerily.

“I’m going to go crawl in the shower, ” I said resolutely.  And, as per last week, my arms refused to reach above my shoulders, so my neck did most of the movement required to remove the dirt and shame from my face.

C’est la vie.  In the game of life, though, advantage goes to Brown today.  Now, if only they’d have an app that would work out for me…

*Hey, this was the early 90’s and it’s my fantasy…choose your own media store and let he who hasn’t dreamed of one day signing autographs in a mid-priced media chain throw the first stone!