Weekly Newsletter

If you've ever complained inwardly or to someone else about 'dole bludgers' or someone 'getting something for nothing', chances are that you're no better. The opportunities you've been given in your society FOR NOTHING, the environmental resources you consume damage and destroy FOR NOTHING. That's the problem with people who lack empathy and want more for themselves and their inner circle of friends and family, they can't take a look at themselves and extrapolate on their own assumptions. There is nothing wrong with being born with these privileges and opportunities, just recognise them and be fair, or perhaps even generous, to those who didn't have your luck.

Anyway.

This is an excerpt from the weekly newsletter that I get from an old weightlifting icon in the US, Dave Draper. Always fun to read, I thought I'd share this week's edition and see if it can't add a little motivation to somebody's excercise regime.

> Is your exercise time an obligation, a responsibility?

Why not? Obligation and responsibility develop strong women and men. Strong men and women undertake obligations and responsibilities. One's strength and health is a responsibility, a major responsibility and a largely neglected one. Look around you and what do you see? Seven out of ten feel neither obligated nor responsible for their strength and health, shape or well being. We all lose, we all pay and it doesn't stop at their waistlines. For you and for me, our exercise is an obligation, one we embrace with open arms as it streamlines our life. And, I suspect, the iron is far more than responsibility alone. By itself responsibility is a chore, and chores can get old and redundant, imitated and boring and lifeless and bitter. Our workouts must never take on the characteristics of a chore, lest we become an image of what we do.

> Is your training a habit, a blank, going through the motions without emotion?

Good habits are very good. In the door, to the weights, sets and reps, sweat and strain, hi-goodbye, out the door and home. The workout doesn't have to be a ritual, a production, a ceremony, a major project. Just do it. It's the emotionless blanks who need a nudge. I know people like that. They're zombies walking heavily through the gym with their arms extended, mouths open and their eyes like galvanized quarters. "Take me to your exit." From the stationary bike, magazine in hand, they make a lap around the gym floor before sitting on the leg extension for an extended length of time thinking of cookies. If only we could inspire them to grasp a barbell, dumbbell and pulley. They would come alive, their vacant eyes would see and they'd grunt audibly with their once-silent open mouths. Nice sneakers, though... clean, snappy. Cool iPod.

> Is your time on the gym floor recreation, playtime and talk time?

Nothing wrong with a little fun, mixing business with pleasure and few friendly words with your buds and chums. Intermingling is healthy, supportive and fulfilling. I know some hard trainers who can carry on meaningful conversations throughout their workouts with tacit nods, grunts and a few key words. I seldom feel alone or abandoned in the gym, amid a crowd or at the solitary crack of dawn. I don't have much to say and I do have a lot to do. But there are some who enter the gym, look about earnestly, as if seeking inner training direction, and adroitly zero in on a sucker, the most likely to respond to grandiose conversation. Sports are a favorite (bearable), opposite sex is in the top five (pitiable) and politics slither in like a venomous snake (deplorable). Just leave the magazine in the rack and the cell phone in the locker-room. This is a gym. Starbuck's is down the street.

That doesn't mean you can't have fun. Feel the steel.

> Do you love the deed?

Not once have I not loved the idea of weightlifting. The practice itself holds other experiences. The early attempts to move the iron are novel and exciting, curious and mysterious and inventive. Continued applications of force against steel yields rewards that multiply and are most desirable. Don't you love the pump, muscular growth and regular increases in strength, the designing of workouts, their smooth execution and the last engaging rep? Obstacles and plateaus be leveled by cannons; they test the body, mind and soul. Enduring them lifts us to new levels of completeness, physical, mental and spiritual. Who among us doesn't appreciate endurance and its plentiful fruits?

Appreciation borders on love.

As if these delights were not enough, there are more: the comfort of expression and freedom and the understanding born of discipline and purpose, compromise and patience, no matter the abundance or scarcity indwelling your bones. These joys are difficult to distinguish from love.

> Do you skip workouts without disappointment or guilt or total collapse?

Did you pause to think about the answer? Or did you say with assurance (indignation, perhaps), "I don't skip workouts, Bub." The answer is usually somewhere in between. We all miss workouts. Life has a way of inconveniencing us from time to time, demanding our attention. Family, job, TV, weddings, funerals... it's always something. One postponed training session is tolerable, two is unmentionable, three threatens sudden implosion and four borders on death by firing squad; five, they seize the spouse, kids and dog, and, six, the western hemisphere is vaporized. No seven... no... none! If you don't agree, I can't help you. You're doomed.

> Are those hours and days of the week with the iron a passion?

If you don't know what passion is, go on to the next question. You don't need passion to exercise; ordinary interest, common sense and responsibility will do just fine. But to train vigorously and enjoy it, passion is essential. Passion is the inner fervor, the burning desire, the lust-less love, the insatiable zeal that causes the lifter to lift beyond his limit, to train when the castle walls are burning and to grin as the bar bends on his back and crumbles his shoulders. The passionate trainer never misses a workout, even when he should. One more set leads to another, one more rep to another, and another. Passion is one degree short of obsession. Obsession is a disease; passion is love. Don't you love to work out? Of course you do!

> Do you train and leave it in the gym, or do you pack it up and take it with you?

I've actually seen people leaving the gym as if nothing had happened. They're fresh and bright and smell good. Not staggering, not red-eyed, no bruises, no gasping. "You forget your high heel sneakers, Sue?" I say under my breath, hunched in the dark corner by the rusting metal, sagging bars and cobwebs.

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