Image by Mohamed Hassan, via Pixabay
In the past few months, I’ve gotten back to the gym. Partially to counter-balance all the lazing about I did (and, honestly, still do) mid-quarantine, and partially to counter-balance all the moping about I did mid-quarantine.
It helps. It really does.
But it’s amazing to me how much my expectations of the benefits of exercise differ from the reality. My (still substantial) gut tells me that after a few months of regular exercise, I should feel great—supple, limber, full of energy. And, most of fall, hungry to get to the gym as often as possible.
Ha.
The reality is that I’m tired, cranky, and constantly surprising myself with muscle cramps in new and exotic locations of my body. Sure, I enjoy a post-exercise endorphin rush. But my greatest motivator to exercise is that, when it’s over, I can do pretty much whatever the hell I want guilt-free. (By which I mean drinking one beer and playing video games on the couch; If my thing were strippers and blow, that might be a different story)
This isn’t just a matter of growing old. I wrestled four seasons in high school—two varsity—and felt the same way every damn year. I would begin the pre-season full of pep and vigor; but by post-season I would be convinced that my muscles were deteriorating and I would soon be in a hospital bed, begging my parents not to look at my browser history after I was gone. I compared notes with teammates, several of whom agreed the end was around the corner. At these times, we would begin looking at our coach Mr. W with a certain amount of suspicion, as if he were lacing our egg whites and whey isolate shakes with arsenic.
This attitude buried the truth: that in February we were consistently putting up weights and running sprints that would have seemed impossible in September, or even November. Asthma attacks always plagued me during the first workouts of the school year, but would disappear entirely to the point that I would forget they were a possibility. There were certainly things to criticize about the wrestling team experience—so many “character building” activities for young men are just the blind leading the inexperienced—but Mr. W poisoning us for our inheritance money was not one of them.
The lesson that I appreciate now, that I didn’t appreciate at the time, is this: Being better almost never means being comfortable. Progress is not pleasant in any immediate way, and often the only way to get any satisfaction out of it is to keep your eyes on the horizon, looking to the long-term.
I’d be lying if I said there weren’t days that I choose to zone out to a podcast on the elliptical. But for the most part, my go-to is the rowing machine. Rowing is a good aerobic exercise that also offers some full-body resistance, so I feel like I get all my working out done in a compact 30 minutes. I also like it because it’s a slog. It’s hard to do, and mostly unpleasant. So at the end of a session, I feel accomplished—a little bit tougher, mentally.
Even if there were no other benefits to rowing, I wonder if this toughening is enough all on its own. Life has a way of hitting us with hard times. It doesn’t pay to crumble when they arrive.