Smooch Face, Sets, Reps, Archetypical Exercise
Iron On My Mind, released to Kindle 5/12/2011
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Does everything have to be intelligent, educational, insightful and constructive? Can we just once be dumb, silly and senseless? I’m weary of enlightenment; I’m up to my ears with instruction, bent over with profound, heavy and deep. What I wouldn’t give for the peace and freedom of stupid.
I’ll give it my best shot.
I’m glad I don’t have to train today. Sitting before the computer -- more like, body slumped over desk, head propped against screen, fingers clutching keyboard, drool dangling from open mouth and eyes vacant -- my energy level is in the wastebasket, along with spirit, spark and spunk and empty containers of Chinese take-out. I’m a mess.
Confucius say he who eat rice while writey newsy letta is a noodle.
No, there’s nothing particularly wrong with me. It’s just Monday, and Mondays are as stiff as a crowbar, feel like a spider bite, have a sulphuric taste and smell like burning rubber. Birds don’t sing on Mondays and puppies yap at passersby. I hate Mondays.
If I don’t have something -- anything -- on the screen resembling a newsletter by noon the first day of the week, I’m in a world of hurt. Or, as Laree, the local poet laureate, likes to put it, “You’re up to your pants pockets in pooch poop, pal.”
Smooch face… she’s such a tease.
Yes, dear... tap, tap… How to build big muscles fast... tippy, tippy, tap, tap…
Tell her I said smooch face and I’m toast.
Don’t look now, girls, but I’m heading for the gymski. It’s the only place I get things done. I tried a real job once, but that didn’t work. Today, of course, there aren’t any. Lifting weights, on the other hand (or better yet, both hands), has everything: action, methodical movement, balance, rhythm, mathematics, science, mechanics, history, therapy, healing, life lessons, invention, suspense, drama, emotion, delight, delirium… the list goes on… purpose, goals, benefits, advantages, fulfillment… the list never ends… strength, health, romance and casaba melon deltoids.
Speaking of deltoids, I skimmed a current muscle magazine I found at my neurologist’s office to see what the latest rage was for building bridge-wide shoulders. Lo and behold, it offered a variety of routines including the latest Freaky Monster Shoulder Rack Crasher, the just-released Rugged, Ragged, Ripped Rock Pile Deltoid Detonator and the trusted-but-tricky Ocean-wide, Mountain-High Valley-Deep Don Howorth Cap Creator. Gadzooks, I struck it rich, big and huge simultaneously.
The exercises included unimaginable, almost fictional, near extraterrestrial, certainly revolutionary movements such as the barbell press, the dumbbell press and the lateral raise. I dug further and discovered how these movements were performed and why. It is all so amazing, fantastic and transcendent.
I’m guaranteed in extra large print I can have these marvelous, boundless muscle structures in weeks, if not days or moments, should I apply ample force, consistency and high hopes and by all means when I take the prescribed combination of extra secret supplemental ingredients (XSSI) on sale now for this month only, hurry while they last and, if I do hurry, the hurrying can be applied to my repulsive aerobic program.
The last part almost sold me, but I do Bomber Blend and I don’t do aerobics… or alcohol or drugs.
Being an observant and scholarly lad, I noticed nothing’s changed except the bodies. Gee, was my first reaction to the stupendous leviathans whose names I can’t recall, demonstrating the classic exercises and endorsing the XXXL-ST-7 Super Natural Capsules and 4XST Protein Powder with added Strontium-90 and Plutonium -- Ethanol-Plus, if you’re a green bodybuilder.
The weights are the same, the benches and racks look familiar and the children haven’t changed, but the bodies are out of sight. Gee, again. Good thing I’m 69 going on 70, or I’d be tempted. Like my inebriated neighbor and mentor said to me after he hadn’t seen me for a very long time: “Gee, DD, you have muscles on top of muscles.”
I hit a double overhead arm shot, making my baseball biceps bounce.
He went onto say stuff like, don’t you have better things to do, dimwit… time’s a wastin, loser. Odd old guy. Hard worker. Sharp as a bayonet. Always grinning. Lived forever.
Where were we? Oh, yeah… Having discovered beyond a doubt that plain and simple, old-fashioned and original exercises work -- presses, curls, laterals, pulls -- I’m going to apply them to this old bone rack with renewed confidence, vigor and inspiration.
I want to be the best built 70-year-old dude in my retirement community in 2012, even if it kills me. I remember the last words sharp and grinning Louie (short for Lucifer) said, as if they were only 50 years ago, “Why bother, ya mutt.”
This is the staggering shoulder routine I shall engage this inflexible, unyielding and aching Monday afternoon, the same routine I raged about as a B-29 Bomber as recently as 1966. It’s the best.
Note: I do fewer supersets, handle less weight, go slower and, though the pump is less exhilarating, the pain, burn and fatigue are increasing exponentially. Who said there was no hope?
Seated press-behind-necks supersetted with side-arm lateral raises (3 sets x 12, 10, 8 reps)
*PBNs have been known to hurt the innocent. Beware.
Steep incline dumbbell press supersetted with bent-over lateral raises (3 sets x 12, 10, 8 reps)
Do this twice a week when your hormones are popping, your judgment is clouded and you suspect it’s jolly-good fun, and you’ll grow like a river rock.
Splish, splash, sploosh… The Bomb
Yellow Post-it Note…
The best part: After the workout (Hallelujah!!) I depart the lovable gym a restored man, redeemed and refreshed, recomputed and redistributed. That roar you hear bursting from my innermost core is true laughter, raw courage and pure creativity.
“Get the irons, Sentry. He loves the irons. How’d he escape this time? Never mind, let me guess -- the ventilation ducts? He dug another tunnel? Overcame the guards… scaled the north wall… the old laundry truck trick?”
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