The Work-Out
- Rae Antonoff
- Jan 16, 2015
- 3 min read
So with the new year, I’ve decided to start working out. I’m completely okay and happy with my weight and body image, but there are a few things I feel like I should work on. My goals are not really specific to losing weight, but things like I want to tie my shoe without being pissed and I want to be able to walk up two flights of stairs while having a conversation with someone. The following is a running record of my process written after working out for the first week.
Day one.
I don’t get people that work out for the fun of it. Because It isn’t fun. Pushing your body to this kind of limit on your own is strange. Doing something in the real world like hiking, working, surviving your daily life, there is an actual, tangible goal. Working out at your house by yourself is comparable to masturbation. You beat yourself into exhaustion and just end up sweaty and feeling gross. I guess it's good for you, but it's hard and I’d much rather have someone else do it for me…so actually, working out is EXACTLY like masturbation.
Day two.
Flexibility, breathing at the correct opportunity, being able to jump into and out of plank position like a possessed weeble wobble-- these are all pipe dreams. I realize that this will get better over time, but as it stands now, I resemble a break dancer, shot on a handicam by someone with was fired from the set of Cloverfield, and slowed down to half speed, awaiting either a sad trombone interlude or the benny hill theme song on loop.
I may have made a sex tape like that.
Day three.
Still fat.
Day four.
Thighs have started to hurt. This workout seems to mostly work my legs. I fantasize about the logical conclusion that I’m not actually going to lose any weight, I’m just going to get gigantic massive hulk thighs and that the size of them will offset the rest of my body.
Day five.
Today was a lot of jumping around and cardio. I’ve started to develop a hyper awareness of the amount of movement the fat on my body goes through when I do high impact moves. I’ve come to call this the aftershock effect. Where the jumping provides the earthquake, my stomach’s covering ripples throughout. I can only imagine the millions of microorganisms, that are found on every human body, are fleeing for safety as their perfect sedentary host has forced their world into utter turmoil every day. Tiny little alarm sirens in a frequency I cannot hear warn the populace as an epidemic of motion sickness runs rampant throughout the community. One tiny figure wearing a sandwich board with “the end is nigh” scrawled on it looks up and resolves his fate, taking a deep breath as he witnesses the flood waters rising from my post workout shower. It’s like Titanic meets the Watchmen, only with a lot more arms and legs.
Day six,
Tragedy.
While doing jumping jacks I noticed a sound in the background which was different than the normal “boom” of the reverberations that normally go through my house. In a workout induced haze, I mentally checked my body and realized that I did not tighten my core. It was the sound of my belly producing an aftershock and hitting me back. A sudden sadness crept upon me, like the result of a dramatic realization that you always knew existed, but never really objectively understood until a precise moment of clarity. Like the mortality of the older people in your family, the WWE is not real, or that Intercourse, PA is not the Shangri La it is billed to be.
I clap when I do jumping jacks. Twice. And only once with my hands.
Day seven.
Rest.
I’m supposed to not workout today and take measurements of my body. They want me to record weight, chest, arm, thigh, and hips. These however, do not provide any information that would help me actually see progress. I’ve added a few more measurements. The number of inches my belly shows when i raise my hands up - 4 and a half. From a scale of one to ten, how hard is it to pick up a single index card that has fallen on the floor from a standing position - 5 if normal, 7 if glossy. And finally, navel depth...I don't know what to call it, a finger knuckle maybe? So I'm about a fuckle and a quarter?
-Armas
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