The Workout

Due to a few complications with the fairer sex, some disillusionment at work, and a particularly obstinate portion of Halo 3’s singe player campaign, I have been experiencing quite a bit of frustration recently. When this happens the coping mechanism that I usually employ involves whiskey in a restorative practice I call “working out my issues with Dr. Glenmerangie”, but every now and again I find that it can be very therapeutic to simply go to the gym and lift heavy shit for a while.

Much to the surprise of those who know me by my frequent and often back to back appearances at the local icehouses, I am a fully paid member of a local gym and have been for the past three years. What should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone is that I only went for about five months, and have only maintained my membership because canceling adds air of finality to an ongoing shame. Sometimes I will make overtures towards going back to the fitness club; buying a new pair of workout pants or do some online research on various exercises. But then I discover that there is absolutely nothing more comfortable to nap in than workout pants and I can’t sit at a computer for too long without googling something naughty.

I’m never even motivated to go to the gym as a matter of health. The last thing I did solely for the benefit of my physical well being was to quit smoking and all that served to do was balloon me from 147 to 188 pounds. I literally gained twenty percent of my previous “unhealthy” weight and arranged in into unsightly gut rolls around my abdomen. There also seems to be a knowledge set that goes along with regular workouts. Whenever I am at the club I see people following their pre described motions with a fluidity and confidence honed from years of habitual workouts. For me, going to the gym is not unlike sex; I don’t do it frequently, I am never at it long enough to do any good, I’m pretty sure my form is awkward, and I have no idea if I am using this particular machine correctly, but through it all I am always proud of myself for making the attempt.

A strange perversity exists in the fact that I would go to a gym because I am displeased with my body, only to find that the place is lined with mirrors. Workout music is also a key factor in the exercise experience and it is the mirror phenomenon that has led me to identify one of my favorite songs as strangely appropriate to the situation. As evident of the fact that I am the occasional butt of a cosmic joke, sometimes when I am gracelessly operating a machine that has oddly placed pads and an alien looking pulley system a member of the Men’s Swedish Olympic biathlon team with blonde hair and 0% body fat will stand right next to me in the reflection and begin to work a weight stack that I thought was only there for show. Little does Bjorn Borg know that in my ears, my seemingly innocuous ipod is piping in Depeche Mode, and David Gahan is currently reminding me that “I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor.”

There is, however, something vastly different about using exercise as a form of exorcism. Whenever life has me bound into my tight little ball of nerves, it almost invariably involves the things in my world in which I have the least amount of control. In these cases there is nothing I can do to immediately rectify my situation and so I slip into the familiar pattern of insomnia, mild depression, and frequent viewings of Dr. No. The alternative, I have found, is simply to make your body feel as worked up as your mind until the whole of your person acquires a blissful, spent feeling that makes your bed your bestess friend in the whole wide world. The beauty of this approach to exercise is that you pay no attention to the lasting benefits of whatever workout you are doing. The goal is simply exhaustion. Let the fitness aficionados wonder why you are military pressing the squat machine in a reverse lotus position or cast side long glances as you push the entire nautilus machine in circles around the weight room, just as long as you end up feeling absolutely depleted you have done your bit. Now all that’s left to do is go home and collapse in a sweaty mess on your bedcovers and smile at the fact that your bodies cry for sleep is louder than your brains protests about shit you can’t solve.