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Letters From Little Rock |
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a semi-regular column
Letters From Little Rock is my column on whatever topic strikes my fancy at the time. Check in as often as you like, but I make no promise as to when new columns will appear. I hope to add a column on a weekly basis, but honesty compels me to admit that I might not even maintain a monthly schedule. September 19, 2004 Every year around this time I start to examine my life and in an effort to stave off panic I make BIG PLANS. Sometimes I make up my mind to achieve a certain unachievable writing goal before December 31st —complete a novel for instance—and sometimes I decide to achieve some totally unrealistic financial goals, like become a millionaire by x-mass. The last couple of years I’ve attempted to achieve impossible fitness goals. I was actually doing pretty well last year. I had lost a little weight and was feeling much more energetic, but as per my usual, my job went haywire and completely threw my routine off. For some reason my employers decided that due to their incompetence and general inability to cope with the ramifications of their own incompetence it would be necessary for roughly three quarters of our work force to work seven days a week for a couple of months. When I have to work that kind of overtime I’m lucky if I remember to bathe and brush my teeth let alone spend thirty minutes per diem performing unnecessary physical labor. When my routine is thrown off in this manner, I go into what I call SIEGE MODE. BIG PLANS are not compatible with SIEGE MODE. In SIEGE MODE I only expend the energy that is absolutely necessary, sleep a lot, and try to pretend that my life is not flashing before my eyes at an alarming rate of death. Needless to say, after we made it through our little crisis at work, I did not follow through on my exercise regimen. I did however reward myself with several new wines and a couple of new restaurants. The net result of my BIG PLANS for improved fitness? I gained almost ten pounds before the year was out. This year, hold the laughter, things will be different. I’m not so much trying to lose weight as I’ve begun to realize that this is not a realistic goal, and maybe it isn’t even a very intelligent goal. The main thing I’ve come to realize is that fitness as such should be about feeling better. I’m not particularly overweight. I guess if I had my druthers I’d weigh about 175 instead of 190, but I’m not normally considered fat. Another ten pounds and I’d give up the argument but right here at this weight, I insist, I am not yet fat, just a little soft in the middle. What I’ve decided is that instead of worrying about calories and my heart rate and all that tommyrot, I’m going to do something that will actually make me feel better. After a little thought, I’ve decided that the main obstacle to my previous efforts at fitness as such was my incredible lack of flexibility. For a guy who was once an athlete, I’m stiff as a board. I was never as flexible as some guys on the team, but I was always fairly comfortable with our stretching and warm up exercises. Last year when I started in on my exercise regimen I was intelligent enough to stretch as best I could before exercising and discovered that it was almost impossible for me to actually perform what we used to call a “hurdler’s stretch.” Touch my toes? Hell, I could barely wave at them. That is why this year I’ve decided that my BIG PLANS are to perform yoga exercises once a day every day. So far (two weeks, no lapses) everything is going better than expected. One thing I’ve noticed is that even though my weight is still about 190, I’m a little slimmer around the waist. I also feel much better. I think that one thing about it that is to my liking is that not only does it make me feel better generally, it makes me feel quite relaxed but alert when I’m finished. When I lift weights or walk on a treadmill I just feel sweaty when I get done. I even went so far as to buy one of those Pilates balls and a yoga strap. So far they are both doing pretty good service. I can tell I have a long way to go before I’m as flexible as I was at fifteen, but I have hope. Actually, when I was fifteen I was playing football for a coach named Jack Roseberry. At the time he was probably about as old as I am now and had only recently begun doing flexibility training and he was quick to point out that he had become more flexible at thirty-something than he had ever been as a teenage football player. I think it’s a goal I can achieve myself. Although, I doubt I will ever get down to my weight at graduation. I think I weighed between 145 and 150 when I graduated. I fluctuated between 155 and 160 for years. A funny thing happened when I turned thirty. I took a week off from work gained ten pounds and never have looked back. I didn’t wear any of my work clothes during that week off and can actually remember Sunday morning before going back to work standing in front of the dryer asking myself how I could possibly have shrunk every pair of jeans I owned.
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