The Last Word On Nothing

There’s no crying in baseball. There’s no crying at the gym, either. Yet there I was by the slant board with tears streaming down my face. I am an ugly crier. Worse, once I start I cannot stop. My face was turned to the wall, so my instructor hadn’t yet seen the tears. “You’re overthinking it,” he said. “Why don’t you take a break. Run a lap.”

I am not new to gyms, but six months ago I joined a Serious Gym. Serious Gym isn’t like my previous gyms. Each day is a different workout, and you do the workouts together as a class. Most of the strength workouts rely on kettlebells, a weight that resembles neither a kettle nor a bell. Instead imagine a cannonball with a thick handle on top.

Most sources trace the origin of kettlebells to Russia, where they were first used as counterbalances to weigh grains and other goods. And then men did what men do: They started swinging them around and turned a mundane tool into an exercise torture device and a measure of manliness.

Kettlebells are tricky. (In fact, the Russian word for kettlebell—girya—is derived from a Persian word that means ‘difficult’). You don’t hoist them like a barbell. You don’t curl them like a dumbbell. You swing them and flip them into the air. You do this because you joined a Serious Gym and this is what everyone else is doing. Except they make it look easy.

On Monday, I arrived at Serious Gym and checked the whiteboard. I was relieved to find that it would be an easy day, a bunch of yoga-like movements and stretching. But then the owner walked up to the board and said, “Nope.” Big mistake. Today is a hard day, a brutal day. Get your kettlebells, suckers. We’re doing a bazillion rounds of clean and presses.

This was bad news. A clean and press requires you to hoist the bells from between your legs up to your chest (the clean) and then press them up above your head (the press). This isn’t supposed to hurt. But when I perform a clean, the bells flip over my hands and smack against my forearms. Like this: Clean. Smack. Ouch. Press. Clean. Smack. Ouch. Press. Clean. Smack. Ouch. Press.

I have wrist guards. I bought them after I bruised my arms so badly that they swelled and turned dusky purple. But I forgot them on Monday.

Still, I launched into the workout. The instructor convinced me to use two 12-kilogram weights (a total of 52lbs — beginner level at my gym, but heavy for me). The first few felt manageable, but after a handful sets I began to falter. Finally, I could press no more. “Just do cleans,” the instructor told me. Fifteen seconds on, fifteen seconds of rest. Fifteen seconds on. Clean. Smack. Ouch. Clean. Smack. Ouch. Fifteen seconds of rest.

Suddenly the instructor was in front of me. “You’re doing it wrong,” he said. He showed me how. I did it again. Nope, still wrong. And again. Wrong. And again. Still wrong. Wrong. Still wrong. More wrong.

“You’re overthinking* it,” he said. And that’s when the waterworks began.

“I will never figure out how to use these stupid Russian weights,” I thought. “Six months in and I can’t even do the most basic exercises. I have failed. I’m a failure.”

I’ve felt like a failure before, of course. It’s a near daily occurrence. But usually the feeling applies to writing (or motherhood). Exercise is supposed to be my reprieve. Yet somehow my instructor had taken exercise and imbued it with the very worst parts of the writing process. The frustration, the self-doubt, the second-guessing, the feelings of worthlessness.

“Take a break,” the instructor told me. So I went outside to jog around the gym. As I jogged, I cried and fumed. What I love about the gym is that you go, you do the workout, and it is done. You don’t fret about whether you did it right. You don’t take gym problems home with you, because gym problems are simple. Things like ‘I want to lift more’ or ‘I want to run faster.’ Those are solvable problems. There is a clear path to reach your goal. But there is no way to magic your body into doing a perfect clean and press. The relationship between practice and perfection is not always proportional. Some learning curves begin with a long flat line.

As I finished my lap, I tried to pull myself together. I had to do more cleans, more presses. But then I had a freeing realization: Working out is a hobby not a job. So I walked into Serious Gym, grabbed my bag, and walked out. Because when gym problems get complicated, you can always leave.

And then, because all writers are masochists, I went back the very next day.

***

Top image courtesy of Knuckles via Wikimedia Commons

Second image via Wikimedia Commons

*I find the phrase “You’re overthinking it” to be utterly useless. If I’m the kind of person who overthinks things, do you really believe I’ll be able to underthink it? What would that even look like? Is the movement required to do a kettlebell clean and press buried deep inside my lizard brain? Yeah, seems unlikely.