Manly Pursuits
Or, how the Network Geek plans to look good naked.
It may not always seem like it, but I’m a goal oriented guy. Anything I’ve ever done that’s been worth doing has been to accomplish a goal, some goal, any goal. So, what keeps me motivated to keep working out? What else? Sex. I want to look good, naked. Not just okay. Not just better than unappetizing. I want to look good.
Like most men, my problem is my gut. I’ll never look like a Men’s Health cover model and I may never have a tight “six-pack” like they do, but I sure as hell can look better than I do right now. Sure, I’ve lost twenty-five pounds in the past several months, but I also gained several back eating Thanksgiving left-overs. But, I’m not so old yet that I can’t improve myself physically. At least, I’d like to think, even as I get ready to turn forty in just a few short days, that I might still not send someone running from the bedroom screaming in terror.
Right, now if that image hasn’t scarred you for life, read on for an update on my exercise plan. I’ve been hitting the heavy bag for a bit now. After someone who’s in such amazing shape it makes me embarrassed to even admit to them that I’m working out at all asked how things were going with that, I added a three minute round before my brisk, just-under-two-mile walk, in addition to the three minute round I’d box with my inanimate opponent.
Saturday, I bought a nine pound medicine ball. There were a surprising number of choices and weights. Twelve was the heaviest they had, but I went with the leather clad nine pounder from Everlast. It looked good and felt good and it reminded me of old boxing movies. Movies with training sequences set in dark, dank, gray, old gyms filled with torn canvas bags patched with rolls of cloth tape and, yes, worn, leather medicine balls that the boxers threw to and at each other.
Medicine balls put me in mind of Hemingway and his rough-and-tumble heroes, who became mine. They remind me of the fitness craze that swept the Thirties, before we all started using giant weights and steroids or more legal supplements like creatine. But, the funny thing is, the fitness gurus and rediscovering the humble medicine ball. Men’s Health, for instance, has been running work outs that include medicine balls for quite some time. In fact, it seems to me that quite a few of their abdominal workouts in the past several months have either included or centered around the simple, relatively inexpensive, medicine ball. In particular, there’s the The Ultimate Medicine Ball Workout, as developed and used by the University of North Carolina Tar Heels. Go look at it. It looks easy, doesn’t it? Trust me, it’s not.
It takes work to get and keep in shape. I’m not willing to make it a full-time job just yet, but I am willing to put a little more into it than I have been. There is a reason they call it “working out”, I suppose, and if I want the result then I’ve got to do the work. Modern exercise science hasn’t changed that, either.
Good thing I have a goal to reach for, I guess.
