BH 6: Taking the true measure of 'less is more'
Every Body High is about the dancing to be done with age
She and I were about to arrive at the space at once, right between the paper towel dispenser and the resistance-training machine for one’s lower back. I gestured toward the metal.
“No,” the young woman told me on Tuesday, flashing me her hands. She had on sunglasses and was—I’m guessing—30 and of ambiguous racial background, even underneath those shades.
“But, wow. That is so nice. At this gym?”
I laughed and said that I tend not to fit in.
Seated on the back machine now, I watched her say over a shoulder as she headed toward the stairs, “Only way to be, right?”
On occasion, working out at a gym in the heart of Hollywood is like something out of an illicit romance film. But unless I arrive at 6 am, the experience is better typified by trying not to confront the guy who’s been monopolizing the lats machine for damn-near a half hour. This fucking Hollywood gym is that obese person whose dedication level is announced by their refusal to stop texting while doing lower body “work.”
But the main reason for embarking on a new approach that de-emphasizes weight training came to me en route to the gym last month. A Men’s Health guide to training over 50 said that I should be lifting half as many weights as I am and need to double up my yoga.
This was hard to hear. Yet, I get it. Even as I try to get below 190 pounds by July 30. There’s an attachment on my part to the earned pain of old-man recovery. But yes, there’s benefit to spending less time in deep muscle recuperation. Even a low-key masochist can see that.
Now that I’ve broken free from the spell, it’s also clear that I lifted weights way past my comfort zone because of the security in numbers. One’s “progress” is undeniable. I bench press this, my leg press personal best is that. And as much as I adore yoga, the unrepentant guy in me trusts that tangibility of heavy-weight resistance training.
It’s a dude thing, too, to want prominent upper-body muscles. Short of drugs or a surgeon’s knife, not much else does a better job of hiding insecurities.
There was a revelation the last time I was at that chain gym. Out of edible THC, I decided to go ahead and exercise in the spiritual raw.
Lo and behold, as I worked through my yoga poses that elusive point of separation between my abdomen muscles and the hated belly fat became as real and target-ready as when I’m at peak THC.
This connection was already going strong, with or without my gummies.
At minimum, here was a financial win.
I had already committed to trying this other new thing, away from the gym on Sunset. Missed most of all might be the body builders, the ones who used to get hyped off of Drake songs to lift. (It’s a great laugh to watch these men mute the exuberance while gently bouncing to “God’s Plan,” so that no one might notice.) My membership will stay in good stead, but the cannabis revelation confirmed a readiness to move on.
In this next place, there would be neither Drake songs to draw strength from, nor Drake songs to snicker at those low-key drawing strength from them.
Setting counts for so much. A routine Yoga with Adrienne session that I have done a dozen times made me develop abs absolutely, but also had me examining my issues of adequacy and agency. Looking up from your mat past a pair of trees to a real live sun that’s trying to break through a huge morning cloud will take you places that the studio at 24-Hour Fitness won’t likely.
‘I’m never going to get big lifting this light weight.’
Echo Park is so much less drama and also just a mile down the hill from home. As part of my transition into low-impact resistance training, I want to commit to using this resource. On Monday I’d walked down and taken the DASH bus back to the crib.
Today I did the DASH thing down. Maybe I’ll walk that slope back home.
A nice thing about a company that’s not paid me to say it
For reasons not worth getting into, I had only been vaping and consuming edibles over for the past week, and I’d been taking that stuff in less and less as the days went on.
This reporter was one annoyed camper when he finally got his hands on some flower. The flower was not fantastic, but I was over the aforementioned vaping kick and knew there would be joy in the reconnection. A sort of homecoming.
That’s when I thought about Vienero’s line of vegan-dyed rolling papers. I wanted an especially fat smokeable of this mediocre bud, and my own papers were too small for the gig. Unbleached papers and hemp cones and even long Vienero matches were sitting on my desk.
Owner Taylor Adami says her products are “for those who appreciate the duality of visibility and discretion.” Images of Nero are on her vegan cones, interspersed with the an angel who bears horns. The New York entrepreneur tells me that “Vienero is literally my Roman Empire.”
All I can tell you is that I next watched a YouTube video on how to pack the perfect cone and put my unremarkable cannabis into one of Ms. Adami’s cones, twisted it closed, and had an experience above my current cannabis station. The angel with horns is also on the long matches.
In spite of myself, I laugh at them.
After the session with Adrienne, I dropped my yoga mat and backpack near the chin-up bar and did a quick half-dozen ones, because up next was the soft-resistance training I had come to the park for. Admittedly, there would be zero focusing on this less-is-more project unless I ticked off that box where I prove the old guy’s still got it.
The old guy who has to be the most attractive in his age group at the gym, lest he start seeing that oldster as a rival.
Six chin-ups. Beat that, old Japanese man!
The resistance training is fine. The Greenfield Outdoor Fitness equipment comes with accessible video illustrations, in case how to use them is unclear. I worked on my chest for the second time in two visits. If I did this low-resistance stuff long enough, I could feel a twinge of something happening this time, too.
On the rowing machine, I had another, less grown-up revelation.
I am never going to get big lifting weight this light.
“Getting big" isn’t even the aim of this project. Yet that voice is in my head. The skinny boy. The narrow kid. A guy at the Gold’s Gym in Venice said that to me once, while I was trying to change my physique in three days, in order to look good at a film festival: You ain’t never going to get big lifting weight this light.
I weigh a shade over 192 and have gotten there while not eating well (A solid 4 on a one-to-10 scale). Still, the prospect of reaching 189 by July 30 feels likely. This week I’m approaching the right yoga-to-serious-weight-training ratio. Exercising doesn’t hurts less, and the fact doesn’t make me a shallow person.
I’ve learned along the way that, as fulfilling as it is when I catch myself in the 24 Hour Fitness locker room mirror—in profile—and see that the dreaded waist crease is fading, not spending my time in deep recovery is better still.
There is so, so much to learn.
Tip Drill
“Tip Drill” is a wildly inappropriate song and video by turn-of-the-century St. Louis rap sensation Nelly. Don’t even look it up. It’s disappointing that I’ve stooped so low. If only there was something—anything—to be done about this desperate headline.
It’s not clear exactly what’s to be accomplished in this space just yet. As I tell my old White friends who in part might be considering a Trump/Vance vote because I’ve been a crap human in the past, remember that I am a work in progress.
Hey, this old, white friend would rather eat dirt than vote for Trump (or Biden - I haven’t forgotten Gaza). Just for the record.