On Picking Up Slightly Heavy Things
Friends,
Is there any question more guilt-inducing than when someone who has given a serious go at writing is asked “Are you still writing anything?”
I am! I am still writing a lot. This newsletter, countless emails, reviews, little journal observations, snippets of fiction, and more. The difference now, compared to ten years ago when I was starting the first year of my master’s program in creative writing, is that I rarely try to get other people to publish that writing. But about once a year I pull a full essay out of my brain and want to do something with it. This year there’s been two, both of which I’m proud of. I’m working on finding a home for one of them, but the other I wasn’t sure about. It’s about starting to go to the gym for the first time at 40, and about doing so in Taiwan. I think the topic is a little too generic for most websites—so many people my age suddenly get into weightlifting or marathoning or rucksacking that our stories are a dime a dozen. Then I thought I could probably get it published if I really leaned into the Taiwan aspect of it, but that didn’t feel right either. However, it definitely fits the theme of this newsletter, and ultimately I decided to share it with you, gentle reader. So this month’s newsletter is a little different than usual: a long essay on a single topic, and we’ll skip the links this time. Back to normal next month. I hope you enjoy.
(suggested thematic listening: my playlist of Taiwanese songs I listen to at the gym)
"On Picking Up Slightly Heavy Things"
I hate every single minute I spend in the gym. Every minute. It's not just the work, though the exertion is annoying, as are the occasional bits of uncertain pain, and the indignity of having to listen to the grunts of the guy at the next machine. A little worse is the small panic at the sight of each person who passes by and looks in the window: do I look like an idiot? Do I look weak?
These are small things. They're not what keep me seething, keep the white-hot ball of rage burning inside as I squat or lunge or press or curl or hinge or whatever these movements are supposed to be. The fuel, instead, comes from the benefits. Going to the gym gives me more energy. I'm in a better mood. I have fewer random aches and pains. It's everything the annoying evangelical people have been saying to me all these years.
It's so stupid.
Like, seriously, that's all it takes? Spending a few hours each week picking up and setting down heavy objects? A little sweat, a little heart racing, a few moments where you feel like you're either going to vomit or faint or die? That's all my stupid body needs to work better? And then there's the fear, the stupid fear that not only is this whole pathetic process actually working, now I have to spend the entire rest of my life continuing to feed time into these stupid machines in order to keep the benefits. That for the rest of my life some part of my stupid body will sore from exertion, which technically should be better than the soreness from sedentariness, but for some reason isn't, not at all.
41 years and here's what it took:
Not the occasional twinge of pain in my lower back after too long at a desk, twinges that made me think of my father laying on his back on the rug, watching upside-down TV after he got home.
Not being embarrassed multiple times by barely being able to make up the "easy" hikes of Taiwan, ones people have told me their grandparents do on a regular basis, ones where I see grandparents easily, steadily outpacing me.
Not the fact that my comfortable sleeping positions have slowly winnowed down to one single specific option that I have to work my way into.
Not the scoliosis, which I'd assumed but not confirmed until moving to another country with socialized healthcare where getting a for real checkup was a realistic option, nor the subsequent discovery that it has made one of my legs longer than the other and is generally making the rest of my body A Mess.
Not the hundreds of "hey, stand up straight!" reminders when I didn't even know I wasn't doing so.
But, vanity: flipping through a few years worth of photos and realizing that one consequence of said physical flaws is that I'm leaning to one side in almost every single one and thinking, "Well, that's only going to get worse," and now here's to hoping I prove myself wrong.
And, credit where credit is due, some of my favorite public intellectuals paved the way as possible before I got here. Glen Weldon a decade or so ago when he described wanting to get arms like tree trunks and then he just did it and at the time I thought this had no relation to me but apparently it stuck in the back of my head somewhere, ready to emerge, a voice primed to remind me that "If Glen Weldon can do it..." (The other thing that stuck was him describing a specific conversation with his trainer about the best exercises to do right before a speaking event to inflate his arms temporarily, and again, at the time I thought, "wow, that's funny and silly," and now I think, "wow, that's funny and silly and totally something I would do.) And Jamelle Bouie, who sprinkled social media posts about cereal, video games, and tricep dips equally casually between his political analyses. But the big one was Tressie McMillan Cottom, who, brilliant sociologist and writer and thinker that she is, weaves her need to be strong enough to Hulk Smash and overcome treacherous foot bone structure in order to deal with The Way The World Is Shit Now and posting about trainers and squats and showing how her hinge form was miles ahead of Pete Hegseth's pathetic attempt to kettlebell and just radiating how meaningful the practice had become to her is what really made it seem like something possible for me.
And that took some work! I've been anti-exertion almost my entire life.
Everyone has those stories of things they did when they were a child, the ones their parents love telling, the ones that are embarrassing when you're young then endearing when you're older. Here's one of mine: Elementary school, Baseball, first team sport, first hit. I put my hands in my pockets and stroll to first base.
This memory sums up my engagement with physical activity for the thirty-odd years since. Oh, I flirted with the idea of it. After all, sports promised friendship and some sort of ethereal appeal to the other sex. I got my growth spurt early, caved to all the people who said I should play basketball since I hit six feet tall in middle school, found I barely was coordinated enough to dribble the ball, had a coach who said I needed to eat baloney-and-gunpowder sandwiches to get meaner and made us run sprints until someone vomited, then decided that was enough for me. Tried again with track and field (less coordination required) but realized... no. As an adult, I’ve treated my body like my car, doing the bare minimum maintenance in order to keep it running for as long as possible. Yet, like my car, I had no clear idea what the bare minimum was, so I made it up as I went along. For a while, daily dog walks, or once a week yoga classes, or a few half-hearted pushups here and there.
So when I made the decision to get in better shape, I didn't know where to start. I'd read just enough online to be dangerous, vague notions of bone density and resting heart rate. I started combing through fitness subreddits and YouTube videos and very quickly shut down due to decision paralysis. Do I bulk or cut or neither first? What schedule and routine do I follow? What do I need to buy? How can I make sure I don't hurt myself? Did I need to have an arms day and legs day? Core day? Chest day? Shoulders day? How many rests? How many days are in a week? Then, after a few days of doing the basics, suddenly I needed to decide whether to increase reps or sets or weight and how could anyone decide where to start? I also knew myself, knew that I could handle a little daily stretching and moderate daily step goals (insert the "going for a stupid little daily walk for my stupid physical and mental health" meme image), but I needed more than that and doing more than that was outside my reach. Not enough discipline. So I shopped for a personal trainer, close to home, Google Maps reviews.
Enter my once-a-week trainer, M. I got lucky. Personal trainers all have to be patient, I assume; it seems like a job that would be impossible for anyone who can't handle repetition and slow measures of time. So M is unsurprisingly patient. More unusually for Taiwan, M is my height, which makes my pitiful attempts to copy his movements a little easier. Plus, he's really worried about me remembering how to use the machines correctly and not break myself, because he thinks I'll try to do these exercises without him to disastrous effect. Which, he's halfway in the right place: I'm definitely in danger of hurting myself due to clumsiness and distraction, but I'm not going to attempt a majority of the exercises he has me do on my own. I stick to the tiny, underused, undermaintained gym in my apartment building, partially due to anxiety of being around other people while exercising and partially because I don't want to spend one more minute on this activity than I have to.
M wears all black, including a black face mask he only lowers to sip from his ever-present milky, presumably protein-forward beverage. He's leaner than you'd expect, but moves with enviable smoothness and efficiency. When he doesn't understand what I'm trying to say in Chinese, he just slowly repeats back what he thinks I've said in a way that makes it clear he'd be a good teacher.
M reminds me to breathe.
M gives me homework, and M is someone I don't want to disappoint, which so far is working out as a replacement for inner motivation. M is a problem solver in a way that inspires confidence. A hip that refuses to open correctly is met with a barrage of targeted exercises, most of which he does effortlessly then I painfully stutter my way halfway through. He dutifully asks me if my energy is okay or if I'm dizzy when he catches me trying to dissociate so my mind can be less present for the Bulgarian Split Squat part of the program. And he hasn't yet allowed me to die.
A friend asked me how Taiwanese gym culture compares to American gym culture, but I am not familiar with either one, so I cannot speak to this. I can only speak to the small gym where M and I have classes, which has four main stations and enough mirrors to make you constantly paranoid about where your eyes are pointing.
Whichever trainer gets there first sets the music, it seems, and on the days I go there's a 50/50 chance of it either being electric dance remixes of pop songs they played on the radio when I was in high school or the most random rap playlist I've ever heard. Weird versions of a Linkin' Park song, then Eminem, then Mac Miller. Trying to focus on correct form while an EDM version of "Zombie" by the Cranberries plays in the background is a whole new level of challenge, "and their bombs, and their bombs, and their bombs." Or, picture this, in the gym are three trainers who all look like they're around 30; two other clients, women who look about my mom's age; and me. In the background, ASAP Rocky belts out:
Listen close I got some shit to tell you, motherfuckers get familiar
It's not just model bitches on my genitalia
Did Azalea's from Australia, trips to Venezuela
Cinderella's under my umbrella for different weather
Ella, ella, ayy, just play it like I didn't tell ya
I am curious as to the level of English comprehension in the room, but not curious enough to ask. The other patrons are chatty with their trainers in a way I would not be even if I was fluent in Mandarin and didn't hate the minutes spent there, and I wonder if this disappoints M.
Between sets, when M is over me adjusting the amount of weight or the position of the bar, I sit there in the same uncomfortable feeling as waiting in the dental chair. He speaks to me in Mandarin because I asked him to in order to get some practice, which means sometimes I step forward when he tells me to step back. Sometimes I'm stupid and agree with what he's saying even when I don't understand. It makes me feel like a toddler when I'm there, because I can't follow many basic instructions and I'm constantly trying to hurt myself. I am also relearning the way your teeth buzz when you exert your body.
Here's what else I have learned so far:
Things I thought would get easier don't get easier. Climbing five flights of stairs still sucks. The only difference is that now I catch my breath faster and could climb more if I needed to. But it would still suck.
The day after working out, it's really hard to tell the difference between "I'm sore because I had a good workout" and "I'm sore because I overdid it." However, two days after, the difference is very obvious.
I am clumsy. I knew this, abstractly. I was already used to having to move slowly through the world if I didn't want bruises and broken dishes. But in the gym, clumsiness is more certain, more concrete. I tell myself to push both my arms forward a certain amount and they go different distances. I am unable to take consistently sized steps. I keep hoping for the gym to improve this part of me, but results so far are lacking...
Working out involves a lot more waiting, resting, and looking at your phone than I thought.
This is good for writing, because, like when you're in the shower or when you're trying to fall asleep, the brain is unusually free to wander around, to dig out ideas.
There are no ideas while actually doing the exercise, though. That requires the full noggin. Sometimes when I'm walking in my neighborhood I feel like there's too much to remember to do, like wave to my neighbors, make a little eye contact and smile at people but not too much, watch out for dog poop, stand up straight, take care of traffic. Lifting turns that up higher. Am I using my left and right sides equally? Are my feet firmly planted? Am I keeping my wrists straight? Am I stopping when I'm supposed to? Am I pausing for a second to keep momentum from cheating me out of some of the work my muscles are supposed to be doing? Am I breathing correctly? Am I breathing at all? And, while I'm doing all this, am I checking to make sure that my eyes aren't landing on someone else in the mirror?
In an odd way, exercise scratches a similar itch to my video game addiction, in that they are both fed by the simply formula that time invested almost always leads to some increment of progress.
There is a feeling when your scapula moves up and down against your shoulder muscle, massaging it slightly, that is incredibly satisfying and maybe worth this whole process by itself.
Stamina is a little bit about your muscles and a little bit about your lungs, but apparently a big part is just the literal heart muscle getting stronger through usage, just like any other muscle.
If cardio is literally making your heart stronger through working out, does that mean my heart is sometimes literally sore without me knowing? Really? They should have sent a poet.
And then there's the diet. Two problems: 1) I'm vegetarian and 2) I don't want to do protein powder for reasons that I don't fully understand myself. Apparently for my height and age and all that jazz I'm supposed to be eating about 3000 calories and 160g of protein per day. I worry about the mental health aspect of constantly tracking, not going to check my weight regularly either, so instead I just looked up what my common meals have and figured that I'm nowhere close. So now every time I walk through the kitchen I'm grabbing handfuls of pumpkin seeds, peanuts, and/or tofu. I get to eat like a teenager, which is great sometimes, but other times I feel like I have to eat like a teenager and that kind of sucks. And I have to pay attention to when I eat this absurd amount of food, because if it's too close to the gym I'm going to feel like I need to throw up and if it's too close to bed I'm going to sleep terribly.
But I'll keep doing it all, for now. This dedication, driven partially by vanity, is amusing to witness. It is not the mid-life crisis I expected. Sometimes I wonder if I wish I had started earlier, but who can say? Maybe it would've turned me into an asshole, or, depending on who you ask, a bigger asshole. Maybe I'm on that track right now. I feel stupid for writing this because I can barely call myself someone who lifts weights, and I'm not even running marathons like many of my suddenly-fitness-focused cohort. I also feel stupid because for the generation after me all this work will probably be a pill instead. And sometimes there's this feeling that all of this is a round of self-improvement, but self-improvement for what? For being able to spend more time doing physical activities, which I in general hate? Of course, this is the wrong attitude. I have a little more energy, even subtracting the energy I have to spend, and, plus, there's the benefit to my stupid mental and physical health. Going through this process—doing something new, that's hard, that takes dedication—makes me better, or at least feel better about myself. Which, I've slowly learned over the course of a life, might be the same thing.