That’s Some Crazy Kid, Lady
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I try to put myself in the shoes of a beginning weight trainer and cannot. I remember myself always as doing chins and dips in the family kitchen in New Jersey. I’d slide one a chair with chrome legs and red plastic-covered cushions from the kitchen table to the doorway, enabling me to reach a flat overhead support. My eager fingers struggled to maintain purchase as I hung, writhed and wriggled and pulled, getting "one more rep." This stuff is fun.
"What are you doing, bomberoo?"
"Chins, Ma."
I was a busy fellow and in due time two more chairs were arranged back to back. I’d stand between them, hands in place, and, after sufficient oxygenation and mental preparation, I’d leap into position and commence dipping. As the house was small, its occupants many (five, including me), and my practice private, I invented a method whereby I could accomplish my muscle-making work in a condensed time span. I’d do a bunch of chins till I burst, followed by a bunch of dips till I burst, rest just enough and repeat the wonderfully nasty deed till I had drawn five lines in pencil, one for each superset (cool name, I thought) on a pad on the table top. Not only did this quick-pace technique improve the chances of privacy, it was more fun and effective -- it hurt more. I was onto something.
Then came Tarzan, Jane ’n Cheetah, my steel hand-grippers, the Herculean spring set and that pile of used weights from a neighborhood muscle-dropout, and the rest is history, like the Brooklyn Dodgers and fins on a Cadillac. For me to think of life without a burn or pump or the pursuit thereof is like an ordinary kid -- or adult -- considering his day without slurpies and Game Boy.
A new person walking into the gym, uninitiated, unaware, unbroken, innocent and clueless. What can that be like? I mean, they’re familiar with gym settings having seen them as backdrops in Channel 2 News about health and conditioning, or there’s the gym on the big screen with the rugged hero bench pressing with his gorgeous co-conspirator while they detail plans to thwart the enemy. But the yet-to-flex, pump and burn character knows nothing of how the equipment works or what it does, what the weights feel like in their warm, callous-free hands or what progressive resistance to their limited efforts will require, cost or demand.
Oh, my.
Crude, dude. I don’t mind walking and climbing and swooping on the high-tech machines. There’s something advanced or scientific or important or legitimate about the LED panel. But the iron weights with handles and bars. I dunno. They used this stuff a hundred years ago, along with horse-drawn wagons and mustache wax.
Laying flat on a thinly padded bench with a 45-pound Olympic bar in one’s hands above one’s head is one unsure experience for anyone. The cold iron rod feels out of balance and is about to plunge in any direction it leans, and it continuously changes lean and direction with every breath one breathes. "Down" is the command, yet the weight, increasing in heaviness with the lengthening moment, wants to go at once left, right, forward and back. Down she goes with a sudden lurch toward the forehead, instantly overcompensated by a thrust to the right, then left, and settling finally and abruptly on the upper abdominal region. Oomph! Safe... off target, but safe. I can’t breathe, my heart’s pounding, but safe. I’m bad! I’m bad!
What’s next? Oh, yeah. Press the bar steadily till your arms are fully locked out and directly overhead... repeat this for 8 to 10 repetitions. No problemo.
It gets worse. Dumbbell presses are twice as hard, as the dang stumpy iron instruments -- there are two of them, one in each hand -- want to go in every direction, fast, all the time, no matter how hard one tries to control them. That’s why, we are told, they are twice as good for us.
Anyone using the Lifecycle?
It’s trendy to work out. Young start-up trainees persist in exercising because of the novel and sexy nature of the athletic activity. Their high hopes and innocence contribute. They say, "This is a cool and fun sport and having a lean and strong body will be cool and fun, too. Wow! Let’s go to the cool and fun gym and lift weights." With a little bit of luck, five out of ten will last three weeks and two will be hooked for a season. There are frequent distractions when one’s a young boy or girl. Commitment and discipline are not at the top of the list. Nor are patience and sacrifice. Hard work, neither.
Older exercise start-ups persist because they must. At 40 they feel and look 50, which is not bad compared to their lazy or less-informed neighbor who hasn’t even considered a visit to a gym. Their blood pressure has increased with their bodyweight; their energy has decreased with their muscle tone and they need a diversion beyond Reality TV. Life doesn’t make sense, but they want to stick around anyway.
And then, without form or physical presence, the timeless words of the ageless traveler of eternal space become known to them.
Hark! Everyone can and ought to benefit from weight training. It's one of the safest and most direct ways to achieve strength and health in one's body, one's mind and one's soul. The activity of lifting weights is simple, challenging and fun and requires only basic training to begin. Skill is gained by continued practice of the fundamentals and understanding is discovered workout by workout, day by day. Few things teach more completely and more indelibly than hard work, diligence and perseverance, the tools of character that come from and are intrinsic to hopeful and significant weight training. Fear not! Be wise, Blast it.
The first rep is the hardest.
Fly high and you can see forever.
God’s speed, bombers... David X
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