Working on it





I am being a lazy piece of sh*t.

I realize this while lying bed, in my underwear, laptop sitting on my chest.

I wouldn't have had this bummer epiphany, but someone just did the old "Hey everybody! Look at me! I'm at the gym!" FB status update.

Taco Bell was a bad choice

Son of a bitch.


Is it really necessary for you to let us know this? Do I really need to know how your glutes workout is progressing today? 

No. I don't.
Now you've gone and ruined my whole plan of sitting here in a pile of my own filth, googling things like "chinese watermelon babies" or what Nicholas Cage would look like as your favourite Disney Princesses.


I had a nice little night planned. I just wanted to sit here and pretend that this was good. Kind of like pretending a "*" in the word shit makes it ok.



Instead, I'm now forced to remember what I had conveniently forgot.

It's time for me to go to the gym.  

I know that somewhere behind my laziness this is what I want to do.... but it seems so far away right now. I can hear the background buzzing of that Tony Robbins-esque voice in my head telling my legs to go but at the same time my legs are telling Tony to go suck a high hard one.


Ok. Just get off your ass and go. Stop being shitty. You know that you will feel better once you do it.
I hear myself say this and yet so much of me is saying "Fuck it. Just go tomorrow". In fact, I can already think of a thousand reasons why tomorrow's a better day to go....

But none of them are good ones. 

Dammit. I would rather do a trust fall with a pod of Orcha whales than go to the gym right now so

it's going to take some creative self-convincing in the form of a quasi-inspiring blog post to get me there.

For as long as I've been going to the gym, you would think I wouldn't still have to fight this daily battle anymore, yet there's still that part of me that just wants to say "pass" every time.

So why the suck? Is it me?

No...that can't be it. IMPOSSIBLE says ego. It must be the system. (when faced with your own bullshit, always blame the system)

It must be........The GYNASIUM itself.
Weird word isn't it?

Let's analyze this whole 'GYM" thing shall we?

When you stop and look at it, the gym is a pretty weird place and it's no wonder a lot of people don't subscribe to the whole thing. The very idea of a gym is ass backwards.
Think about it: You pay someone money to lift a bunch of their heavy stuff.
Isn't that supposed to be the other way around? Aren't you supposed to pay me to do the heavy lifting? 



Working: Getting paid to lift heavy stuff.

Working out: Paying to lift heavy stuff.

Am I missing something here?

Apparently the word "out" in that sentence is pretty important.

The gym is this weird bizzaro world where normal societal rules break down. It's like the Twilight zone, but more sweaty and smells like feet. For example: In the normal world, wearing clothing is kind of a given. In the gym however, you've got old dudes just hanging out in the locker room....
and when I say hanging out I really mean "hanging out". Those dudes are buck ass naked and free as a bird, just blow drying their balls.

Nothing quite like catching some old dudes ball-breeze in the face.

Thanks Pops.

Outside of the gym, people (white one's especially) tend to avoid doing things like running unless there's a ball involved or if they're being chased.

Or if there's waffle makers on sale.

In the gym however you see them lined up on treadmills running their little legs off.

Just kicking their asses to stay in the same spot like a bunch of Nike themed gerbils. For me, there's something lost in that. A big part of jogging involves actually going somewhere. Outside. Staying in the same spot just seems a little maddening. It makes me feel as if all the gyms have secretly tricked us into running on treadmills that make them electricity.
Shouldn't they do that anyways?


So ya. The gym is a bizarro world but is it really any wonder seeing as it's the creation of a heavily flawed creator? Humans can be a little Busey sometimes and our views on "normal" are anything but. Nobody born in the last 50 years is exempt from the daily face fucking of all-permeating advertising. With this lifetime of minute to minute barrages to our perception of what health and success looks like, how can we be expected to have a healthy view towards it? 




I can do a thousand now....

Let me know if you need a spot.

We grew up watching cartoon with heroes that looked like Greek Gods. I played with He-man toys that looked like steroid-induced lab experiments. My sister played with Barbie dolls with physics-defying measurements. Like it or not this exaggeration of the human form seeped into our perception of what healthy looks like. 





Now we crowd into mirror-panelled gyms where we try to run and push ourselves to an unobtainable perfection while secretly comparing ourselves to everyone working out around us. Sure, it all starts off innocent enough, with a casual glance to see how much someone is lifting but next thing you know, you find yourself checking out another dudes calves and shit gets weird....


Bizzaro world I tell you. At the gym you see these guys looking like steroid meat buckets, flexing for the mirror but chances are that under those muscles they have all the insecurities of an anorexic girl staring at her sweet 16 birthday cake.


How is someone supposed to workout around this? This is bullshit I say! I'm in a crowded gym and the only thing being used is the fucking mirror?!

And yet even as I write that I know I'm being a total hypocrite.

I would be lying if I said that I don't like to see the results of my long hours at the gym when I look in the mirror. Of course I do. It's a feeling of accomplishment to see your hard work carved into your body in the image you wanted.

This face says "I have sand in my underpants"

But even as I say that I can hear Tyler Durden's voice whispering in my ear if it was really me that chose that image? About how he "He feels sorry for guys packed into gyms, trying to look like how Calvin Klein or Tommy Hilfiger say they should".

Damn you Durden. You win this round.

You are not your khakis.

As much as I agree with our favourite soap making anarchist, my situation is a little bit different. 


Currently I'm working overseas on a modelling contract (and yes I know how dickish that sounds) so I'm hired based solely on how I look. I don't book jobs for being a "swell" chap so as as a sheer necessity, I need to be in the best shape possible within my means when I walk into that casting room.
What that translates to: it's my job to get my ass to the gym and kick it into shape.

There's not a lot of work for a guy in this industry who doesn't have abs. If there was I sure as hell wouldn't put myself through this workout every other day.


It's somewhat unfair in that aspect because it gives me an added reason to get off my butt and go to the gym. If I don't, I won't get paid. It's that simple and as ridiculous as it sounds; its the reality I'm living these days. When I think of someone who has a full-time job along with a couple kids, it's crazy to hold them to the same standard and yet after years of TV and movies we all can't help but want perfect bodies with 300 style abs.

Can I just paint them on?


Maybe it's time to break out that Ab grill.

Looks legit.

Today's reality is that our lives are so easy now that we pay money to go to places that are hard; to win back our couch inspired midsections. We do this because our bodies miss that feeling of doing. We humans are do'ers. We need to fight for what we have but our current world is lacking the good fights and full of all the wrong ones. We are geared to fight predators and the pains of hunger; not the mind-numbingness of traffic and loss of attention span.

MUST.......INSTAGRAM!

With a fridge full of pudding pops and an endangered species list of predators, our days of fighting to stay alive are over. Instead, we cram into over crowded gyms to kick our asses so that we can feel alive again. We do workouts like "Insanity abs" that make us look like insane people while doing them.


As much as all this is about being in shape, and about itching that urge to battle, I think the deeper reason all of it is for stillness of mind. We run for the calm of the storm. The oneness that comes when you're focused on pushing yourself past the pain. Past a body screaming no. The real reward is the stillness of mind that 99% of the time won't shut the fuck up. The cleansing of our mental palates. Sure, working out is a physical challenge but it's the mental and spiritual reward that rings loudest. Maybe self-improvement isn't the goal.... Maybe self-destruction is. That weird desire to beat the shit out of yourself just to see if you can take it.

To feel alive.

Or maybe you're just vain and want to look tight for your next Mexico trip. Whatever it is, we strive to have hard bodies that tell of hard lives but the reality is that we don't have the type of lives that lead to hard bodies. Our lives are pretty damn easy (physically anyways) and our bodies can't help but show it. Back in the day people had hard bodies because life was hard. They had to.
You grow up eating dirt and rocks and you're gonna look tough. 

Now we look soft because it's representational of our lives. Our physicality has been forgotten. 

Not too long ago, a wine and cheese party meant years of planning. It meant raising a cow, feeding it, milking it. Then turning that into cheese. At the same time you also had to make a field to grow grapes in. Harvest them and mash them up with your bare feet and bottle it for a long ass time before It would be ready.

"Extra large diet coke please"

Now you press some buttons on a phone and someone brings it to your couch.
Welcome to the end of using your legs.
There's a price to pay for anything anywhere and that lazy uninspired body staring back at you from the mirror is screaming the cost. 

You have people sitting at home watching shows like the The Biggest Loser and the only burn they feel is pizza-induced heartburn while they talk about finally starting to work out.

Tomorrow.









Inertia is the name of the game and when you haven't worked out in forever, tomorrow seems a hell of a lot more do-able than today.



So it's on us to close our laptops, turn off our TV's and get our heart's pumping again. While myself I'm keen on things like running, swimming and the odd humbling yoga sweat-fest; for the most part, I focus on weight lifting.
I just think it's kind of a cool idea: Lift heavier weights than your body wants to thus tricking your body into adapting and growing stronger. Your body thinks "Hmm, Kevin seems to feel the need to lift this stupid heavy thing over his head a bunch of times; must be super important. I better get good at doing it". You're basically bluffing you body into thinking it's life or death that you get stronger because after all; only an idiot would lift a bunch of heavy stuff just for the fun of it right?

Hey look: a mirror.

Right.


So whatever it is that gets your fitness boner going all the power to ya but remember it doesn't necessarily have to be at a gym. The G-Y-M  shouldn't be our only refuge for physical activity as it's full of unhealthy stereotypes and ultimately; it's just some shrewd business mans way of charging you for something you could otherwise do for free. 

Obviously.

So why not start by popping in a VHS tape of your favourite 80's workout vid and crush some reps in the living room.

Or better yet; tune in to everybody's favourite chair-confined pensioner "The sit and be fit lady"!

If the living room is feeling a little crowded (Hong Kong this means you), then take a page out of the Chinese play book of living forever and make like these exercising Chinese elderly doing some WTF exercises in an outdoor park. How bad ass is it when you're working out while wearing a fucking winter coat?!

Now that's commitment.

But wintertime weirdo workouts in the park aren't for everyone. Sure, the idea of working out outside sounds nice. It would be great if everyday you could Hatha it up in that field from The Sound Of Music, doing downward dog surrounded by daisies and butterflies? Sounds just peachy but if you live in Canada like I do, where it's colder than a Russian smile outside, that shit just ain't happening.

These days most people live in urban areas and if you live in a big city with lots of traffic, your door can open to tailpipe smog that is about as fresh as the smalltalk on the View. This can be a serious nature bummer and can make it kind of hard to get outside and run around in the grass.

But we can still imagine:

So finally, when all of these options seem less than ideal, you can suck it up and go to a gym.

Just like I'm about to do.

Right after one last status update ;)