I had reached the tipping point.
At my peak I was never exceptionally chiseled and I never had the stamina of a cross-country runner, but I knew my way around a weight room and I had no problem breaking a six-minute mile without even really pushing hard.
So after tipping the scales at 300 pounds and finding myself getting winded after walking up only a single flight of stairs I knew that I needed to start getting back to the old Jason.
Or, the Jason that I was at some point before I became the guy who has to rock back and forth to get up off of the couch.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
Through familial connections I find out that a guy that I’ve always thought was pretty cool is going to “boot camp” at some place in Modesto. That’s where I live now, and since he shoots over there after dropping the kids off after school, it seems like natural progression.
Pure Form Personal Fitness Training here I come.
There are two things I didn’t realize when I walked through that door. The first – I should have walked many, many more miles before diving headfirst into this shallow swimming pool. The second – these people really, really take this stuff seriously.
“Okay Jason, so the warm-up goes something like this – we stretch with this ridiculously strong rubber band back and forth like this until you feel your muscle detach from the bone and then you just let the cramping that will consume you from your terrible diet just drop down into this obscure push-up position and contort your body awkwardly forward only to spring back up and do it again as many times as possible. Just keep doing that until we tell you to stop.”
Seems like a workout I think I can handle.
Oh. You missed the warm-up part of the previous paragraph. Well, that was the warm-up to the next part of the warm-up – planking. Planking was something that I thought that only high school hipsters did so they had something to take pictures of and turn in or impress moody hipster chicks that still find everything ironic and think that quoting Proust at 16 makes them seem “mature.” It isn’t. It’s apparently an exercise and it is very, very difficult when you weigh more than the standard “watch-the-dial-spin” scales can actually count up to.
I think I was about six-minutes into this exercise in pure madness before I thought I was going to pass out.
The rest of it was just a blur.
Pick up this weight. Row or pull with that strap. Something with a sandbag and a medicine ball jump slam.
Much to the surprise of myself and my trainer Doug I didn’t die. I felt I was going to. I wanted to the next day. And I really, really wanted to the day after that. But I pushed through it. I chucked my dorm diet for bananas, grapes, protein shakes and Quest bars. I’ve eliminated caffeine from my diet. I no longer drink soda. Of any kind. I don’t eat anything after 8:30 p.m., and the only thing that I drink after that point is water. I am on a normal sleep cycle for the first time in probably 20 years.
And I have absolutely no clue whether any of it is working – I’m too scared to step on the scale.
I will say this. I feel better. I know that the choices I’m making today can’t hurt my chances long-term. I can’t say that about the choices I was making just a month ago. It’s been a long, steep and curvy road and I know that this is going to take a whole lot of dedication and a whole lot of hard work.
Nobody ever flashed a World Series or a Super Bowl ring – a Nobel or a Pulitzer – and talked about how it all just came together and snapped into place like an erector set.
So take it easy on me tomorrow Doug.
On second thought – don’t.