Just One Man

I try really hard, but it feels like a crusade. I am just one man. Fitness magazines are the purveyors of myths. It’s the stuff conspiracy theories are made of: They play on fears, I sell only truth. I can get my clients to agree with what I say. They need to believe it.

I do it too. I want what I want and I want it sooner than now. Don’t ask me to wait. God bless you if you come at me extolling the virtues of patience. I admit the hypocrisy inherent in asking it of the people I train.

That said, here’s the deal: Men would be better off cutting the weights they use in half and paying strict attention to form. And women would be better off applying a little meathead logic to their training, in essence, Lift More Weight!

I see it all day long. Men and boys alike, hoisting weights far too heavy, stressing their joints, destroying their ligaments, all so they can answer the question ‘how much can you bench?’ without feeling like a giant pussy.

Contrarily, filling the group exercise studios, are the women. Buying the myth that cardio will burn their fat, and high reps will tone their muscles. Wrong.

I honestly wish I could turn the gym up-side-down, shake it like a snow globe, and have the men settle in the classes, and the women on the free weight floor. Why?

Back in the 80’s I was a meathead, mullet and all. I wore a thick, tight, gold chain, tapered Levis, high top sneakers, and listened to Motley Crue, Dokken, and Great White. I also buried myself under the heaviest weights I could hold. Now I’m paying the price. My back kills. My neck is all fucked up and my knees protest every time I run more than ten feet. I wish I could sit down with 80’s Bry and tell him his life wasn’t any better bigger. As a matter of fact now, almost thirty pounds lighter, life is a million times better.

When I started personal training for a living, I was perplexed about why it was so hard for my women clients to lose weight. I put them on elaborate cardio programs, low carb, high protein diets, and had them perform hundreds of reps with low weights, but none of it worked. At the end of the day they might have been lighter, but their body fat percentage not only stayed the same, in most cases it went up.

Then it hit me. My certification manual didn’t differentiate between the sexes. It didn’t have separate chapters for training women as opposed to men. It dealt with changing human muscle, not gender specific muscle.

Muscle doesn’t tone. It gets smaller, stays the same, or grows. There is no rep range that’ll tone and not build. It’s a myth that women can build bulky, huge muscles. It’s against their physiology, completely contrary to how their bodies work. Estrogen is anti-muscle building, testosterone builds. That’s why we men can usually whip themselves into shape faster than women.

The benefits of weight training have finally caught up to and are now surpassing cardio and range from increasing insulin sensitivity to preventing and reversing osteoporosis. Several exercise journals have reported recently that resistance training is actually better than cardio at burning fat. Who knew? I try to get my clients to understand that exercise isn’t about racing against calories. Calories in vs. calories out doesn’t always work. My clients get an education on metabolism, how it works, why their bodies are in fat storage mode, and how to get their bodies to start spending what it has saved.

And therein lies the problem. With so many periodicals catching people’s attention with, “Loose fifty pounds of fat in ten minutes,” I can’t compete. My plan of retaking control of a metabolism that has slowed takes at least six moths of hard work, determination, and discipline. Shit!

It is all about choices

When Rachel and I started dating I had a head full of therapy. It was unarguably the best therapy I’ve ever engaged in. It forced me to look at and challenge my core beliefs, including many I didn’t know I had. My therapist was versed in the art of Determinism. Determinism is the belief that everything in nature is caused. The definition of Total Determinism is that all someone’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are caused by one or more determinants, and that beliefs, especially those which are emotionally loaded, are powerful determinants of thoughts, feelings and behaviors. “We are what we believe.”

It’s a philosophy like any other, open to debate. Rachel and I spent many a night curled up on either side of our favorite green couch debating Determinism’s boldest statement: Free will doesn’t exist.

To prove its point, determinism uses deductive reasoning: If man is bound by determinants, then any choice he makes is not of free will, he is motivated by unconscious desires to serve his determinants.

Rachel disagrees.

“It’s all about choices,” She stated, point blank, then waited for me to respond.

I was apprehensive. Rachel, like me, loves to play devil’s advocate. It’s one of those qualities about our mates that we only find endearing in hindsight.

“There is no free will if we’re bound by determinants.” I answered, expecting her to accept my airtight case.

“I don’t believe that. Even if you are behaving on an unconscious level, you can still make a choice to do or not do something, it’s all about choices, ” she pulled out some eighties logic on me, quoting from an old Rush song, “Even if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

It was the first time I heard her say it, and it won’t be the last. Like all mantras, it’s only powerful if the person saying it truly believes it, and she does.

We revisited it when I pondered leaving my job. "You can choose to stay and see how it goes, or you can choose to take a chance." (I was going to leave out the part where now I work only half the hours and make more money). "See, it's all about choices."

When we thought about moving to escape the fourth most polluting powerplant in the country, I doddled, worried it was a mistake. "We can stay or go. Either way it's a choice." It was her way of of forcing me to recognize the truth...need I say it again?

On Saturday Rachel and I were faced with a dilemma, more mine than hers. We went to BestBuy to buy a camera to take pictures of our new puppy, Mow Mow, (not here until June 12th, stay tuned).

While we were there we picked up an extra memory card for the camera and a zip drive for Rachel to save all her school work.

Rachel scanned the receipt in the parking lot:
Camera $179
Extended Warranty $29.95
4 Gig Memory card $29.95
No zip drive.

“We have to go back.” Rachel said without thinking. But she’s in a relationship with me, a former criminal, and as lazy as a retired donkey.

“But it’s way back there,” I whined. This from a man who jogs three miles, three times a week, to nowhere in particular, “it serves them right.”

Rachel crooked her neck, as if trying to rattle loose the thorn stuck in the logical side of her head, the one that allows her to date an unethical heathen like me. “Seriously?” she asked.

“They’re a big, faceless, conglomerate,” I stopped myself there, knowing my argument, if not contested, could easily mushroom. It would start slow. I’d take more than one lollipop from the bank or sneak nine items through the eight item grocery line, and eventually, I’d be taking down armored cars.

We went back. I let Rachel do the talking since for her it meant another feather in her ivory wings, for me it was one step back from Hell.

In the car she smiled, held my hand, leaned in and kissed me softly on the cheek and said, “See, it’s all about choices.”

The Wait...

I used to love cocaine. I dabbled in gateway drugs, but not for long. Pot was a daily habit from day one, but coke brought me out of my shell. The real Bryan surfaced without fear of reprisal socialized with others, even girls. But I ended up on the seedy side, smoked all my worldly possessions (and some other people's possessions) until I ended up in rehab, then eventually prison. But none of it compared to the waiting. Any recovering addict will tell you that the waiting is the hardest part, worse than coming down. So I've assembled a montage of moments in my life where The Wait has caused me to gray prematurely:

The earliest I can trace back my hatred of The Wait is Christmas. At least two full months of build up for one day of reckoning. It was especially trying for me because the more presents I got, the more I thought Mom loved me. (See post Presents=Love for details).

I spent a total of nine years drinking and drugging. In that time were countless instances where The Wait took its toll.

The Wait almost destroyed me the day my lawyer told me the Assistant Attorney General wanted to put me in a line up. I panicked because I was guilty and another charge of armed robbery easily doubled any time I was already looking at.
All I could think about was the fact that in every movie, the perpetrator was always number five, so my mantra became, 'Don't be five. Don't be five.' The day of the line up, they handed me my number, 5, and I took it to the jury box where I was told to stand with five cops and a homeless guy they plucked off the street ten minutes prior to the victim's arrival. I was sunk. I figured my only choice was to capsize and confess in front of everyone. But my grandmother put up her house to pay my lawyer ten grand and I wasn't about to waste her life savings.
When the moment of truth arrived, the cameras switched on, and everyone was in place, they announced that the victim was coming in. The Wait ground time down to a slow, steady vibration that rattled my head. While I waited for it to crumble, questions begged: Should I look straight ahead, or make eye contact with the victim? Was it too obvious to look around at my counterparts to see what they were doing? Was that nose pick a signal from my lawyer telling me to look more innocent?
I decided to copy number 6 and look straight ahead, like a cop. They brought in the victim. I remembered his face, having stuck a gun into it a year prior. He walked down the line, stopped between me and 6, then scurried out of the courtroom.
That's it. Thank you all for coming. We have some lovely parting gifts for you. I'm going to prison now. Good night.
But The Wait had other plans, another pass through. Was this a good sign? During the second walk, the victim stopped again, between me and 6.
When all was said and done, The Wait made me sit in the court cafeteria until my lawyer came and told me the victim was unable to identify anyone in the line up. As a joke, he gave number 6 his card.

Prison is tantamount to being The Wait's bitch for three years. Want to know what it's like? Here's an easy way to find out: Lock yourself in your bathroom for three years. You can come out once a day, for an hour, but only if it's in the company of rapists, murderers, and drug dealers (This might not be much different than Thanksgiving for most of you). Every other day make sure someone comes in and strip searches you, don't forget the bend and spread. Every meal should be served stale, cold, or leave your wondering why the small breasted carcass that was baked and presented to you as dinner coincides with the shortage of pigeons in and around the yard.

The Wait serves only one other force in the universe and that's Cancer. They go hand in hand. Once we accepted Mom's diagnosis and consequent death sentence all that was left was The Wait. Sounds morbid, perhaps a bit cynical, but there is a gift in Cancer. The Wait allowed me to tell her everything I needed to, and she me.

The Wait still tests my patience. The puppy won't be here until June 12th. Four agents have my manuscript and none have gotten back to me. I've spent my life waiting. And when each episode of waiting ends, another begins, until I realized, I do it to myself.

Maybe The Wait is trying to teach me a lesson.

STOP WAITING...

Dog Whisperer For A Day

You can't deny that you love him. I do. I admire anyone that cracks a code, looks beyond the naked eye, and can interpret subconscious desires. It is awe inspiring. Something I aspire to. Cesar Milan, AKA The Dog Whisperer, may be the second coming of Christ, here to balance the dogs because we humans are a lost cause. Maybe Jesus had it wrong the first time around. Besides, any species that walks behind another picking up its droppings is clearly not in control. So who’s mastering who?

I wish I could bring Cesar to work with me to balance the pack of trainers that run aimlessly around BSC, me included. I think he would agree that our current pack leader, an English bulldog, has been given power he doesn't understand. He is what Cesar would call: Insecure Dominant, the type that ends up squashed under the wheel of a car, either hit because of overexcitement or because he was pushed; no one cares to ascertain which.

Marykay is best described as a Yorkie. Submissive, almost to her detriment, but not because she's weak; she lacks confidence. When she breaks out of her shell she'll topple any sized Alpha male and assume leadership of the entire pack.

Alex is the resident, oversexed, Rottweiler. Once he grabs hold of your leg, it's best to just let him finish, otherwise you'll have one cranky Rottie on your hands and that's everyone’s problem.

Chad is a Lab. Loyal, highly intelligent, seemingly balanced, but periodically gets into his bag of dog food and eats the whole thing.

Pete is a pit bull who Cesar would call a red zone case, too aggressive to train. For the good of the pack we'd have to put poor Pete down before he kills us all.

Cori’s one of those unique hybrids with the intelligence of a Border Collie and the drive of a Husky. But the duality makes her chase her tail incessantly. Even after she catches it, she'll try again, expecting a different result.

Angelica is an Afghan, bred for show. A hopeless flirt, she devastates the pack with her glare that says, "Sniff it if you want, but mount me and I'll end you."

Tim is a Duck that doesn’t know he’s not a dog. The pack accepts him as one of its own but only because it’s our nature, and in times of famine, we’ll look to young Tim for sustenance.

And me, I’m best described as an old mutt, one of those dogs that gets himself into trouble if I'm not exercised enough. I’ve done serious pound time and new tricks seem to evade this old dog. This post is a perfect example.

Maybe I should get in line behind Pete.

Dog Day Afternoon

Take a second.

Look at her.

Ask yourself:

Self,

What in the world would prevent you from bringing that face home?

Only my desire to eat it just to obtain its power.

That's our potential dog. Someone I'll take anywhere from two seconds to three months to name. Like the time it took me twenty nine days to come up with the name of my favorite cat. We brought him home. He slept. Mom wanted to call him Snoozy. I balked. He had white paws. The name Mittens was kicked around till it rolled near my feet and I kicked it out the door. I told everyone to leave it alone. He'd reveal who he was in due time. This particular feline had an affinity for waking out of a sound sleep and dashing off into any given direction. Zoom? Mom asked, frustrated but aware of how stubborn I can be. One day he snapped to, bolted toward the kitchen, and forgot his claws were no match for linoleum. Headfirst into the cabinet his name was finally revealed: Dizzy.

Of course there were surnames: Dizzy Machismo (Diz Machiz for short), Dizzle, Cutesie Wootsie Dizzy Whizzie. The list went on.

I've always wanted a dog but now, in the face of the most stability I've ever known, I cower in the face of a decsion with long lasting ramifications. It's like Rachel says, "You always do this whenever you're faced with something big to decide." She's right.

I am neurotic to the point to paralyzation. Too many what-ifs to consider. Most notably: What if I fail? What if I ever look at that adorable little face and consider it a nuisance? There's never a good enough time or a good enough place.

I have a tattoo. A wolf howling. I got it because it was always a dream of Mom's and mine to see wolves in their natural habitiat. Mom wrote in her diary that she regretted never doing it before cancer took her. I got the tattoo to remind me that life is too short to wait. To date I've seen that nature show with all the wolves but not my dream. Time is ticking.

Maybe I should get a dog.

Nature vs Nurture

Can’t say that I liked him at first, wasn’t his fault really, dudes just don’t typically like other dudes. Besides he was an alpha male, so am I, sometimes, when Rachel allows it. Plus, he’s all fucked up. A neurological disorder has rendered him walking as if he was hit by a car, recently, maybe daily. Rachel calls it a mild gait disturbance. Yeah, like I only have a slight case of neurotic.

In actuality, he has hereditary spastic paraplegia. I’m not sure what that means, but it looks like his upper and lower torso are in a race, and the upper is winning. It instantly makes me feel bad for him. Then I feel bad for feeling bad. Then I feel grateful. Then I feel tiny because two days ago I felt bad about myself for a tenth of a second. Until I realize, I’m not him.

But Gary and I share the same affliction. His was genetic. Mine was environmental. We’re both survivors. Maybe that’s why I perceived a clash where there was none. He’s hard to get to know, but in a shy unassuming way. I’m hard to get to know because arm’s length is close enough, unless you’re a hot chick.

Last night we all went out to a bar, a hole in the wall pub with barely enough room to move. While walking out he inadvertently bumped into a chucklehead that took his instability as provocation. I saw his face, ready to say something smug to Gary. My fists clenched. I’d have punched him square in the neck without thinking twice if he spoke (I'm sure Gary would have had he seen it too). That’s how I know I like him now. He’s loyal to a fault, and braver than I’ll ever be.

Say hi to Gary.

What Dreams May Come

It’s been a harrowing experience, trying to live a dream. It all started with an unusual love of books. Perpetual anger toward my parents caused passive aggressive tendencies that prevented me from actually opening them. I expressed anger by reaching dizzying heights of ignorance, just to hurt then as much as they hurt me.

But I couldn’t fight the allure. I perused the book section of Caldoor, looking for that one that sent shivers up my spine. It was usually a heavy bound, thick papered, science fiction novel, something that would jive with my love of the genre. I was already a fan of Space 1999, Star Blazers, and DC Comics. But I never read a word of it. I just fell into that catatonic state in front of the TV while Mom shook her head at my grades, on the phone with Dad who, from his house an hour away, shook his too.

I have an old copy of a book I tried to write when I was ten. It reminds me that from a very early age I was enamored with books. Saturday I came as close as ever to the fire, the dream that burns if I get too close but fails to warm me when I stand too far away. For the past three years I’ve tried to put on paper what everyone says is a fascinating life. On Thursday of last week I finished my third attempt, the one with a voice, a cadence, a common thread. So I paid the fee to attend The Muse and the Marketplace, a two day writer’s conference held at the Omni Parker House in Boston. I went the extra mile and paid extra to have the first twenty pages of my memoir read by the agent of my choice.

At 4:10 the room cleared of the previous twenty minute appointments. Hopeful authors scampered off, excited or devastated; agents tend not to beat around the bush. I walked to my table, hoping to see a contract spread out, no words necessary. But instead I found a friendly faced man, the one I chose, sitting patiently. I sat down and introduced myself.

“Let me ask you, what are you doing now?” he asked in response to the twenty pages that chronicle my first day in prison.

“I’m a personal trainer at Boston Sports Club.” I answered, wondering if he was expecting to hear, ‘Robbing jewelry stores, didn’t you read?’

He looked impressed, then pulled out my manuscript and said, “Well, I read this and you’re a really good writer. Your descriptions are right on, not too detailed, just enough to put me there.”

I’d like to say I breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed. But his compliment set off a frenzy of anxiety. He was supposed to tell me it needed a lot of work. He was supposed to tell me his agency wasn’t taking on new clients at this time. He was supposed to take out a tube of lighter fluid, saturate the pages, and set them ablaze.

Instead, I heard, “Feel free to send this to the agency.”

Last night I sent it. Now I wait for a rejection or worse, a positive response. I might have to revert to my old ways, lest my head explode. I’m not used to praise.

Ignorance truly is bliss.