For the past couple months I've joined my neighbor Don in some particularly grueling exercise workouts in his basement. Both of us have a strong interest in exercise and fitness as a way to compensate for medically compromised body parts and general athletic ineffectiveness. If you assembled all of the healthy pieces between the two of us you might be able to construct one medically sound human. So we hit the workouts aggressively to have some strength and conditioning to fall back on when the odd knee, hip, or shoulder inevitably "takes the conversation off-line," as we like to say in corporate-speak.
Don has accumulated a variety of exercise equipment that gives us an unusual number of workout options for a home-based routine. The participants often include his early-20's daughter Jessie, his college-age son Ryan, the occasional other relative and Karen has joined us once. Jessie goes about 110 lbs. and routinely shames us with her core strength.
This all transpires in his basement and we've been trying to come up with an appropriate name for his "gym." For now I'm going with the "Dojo De La Muerte." "Dojo" is a Japanese term which has come to mean a place where people practice martial arts. Essentially, a workout area. "De La Muerte" is Spanish for "of Death." So we've done a classic American thing and appropriated from other cultures that which we desire to suit our needs. Plus, "of death" is what you feel like during most of the workout.
As we gather to begin the proceedings the first order of business is to pick the musical accompaniment for the workout. We use Pandora on Don's iPad or Macbook which requires that you to select an artist as the basis for a semi-random selection. Being old and male, Don and I are in agreement that 80's hard rock is a good genre for pain and suffering disguised as exercise. Usually we end up with Van Halen or the Scorpions, but Green Day has been reliable too. Karen wanted to pick Justin Timberlake or Pink when she participated which caused us to gawp at her in abject horror. Jessie likes to pick obscure indie bands because she's young and contrarian. Emo has no place in the Dojo. We make plenty emo of our own during the workout.
Before the warm-up there's the "pre" warm-up to get the heart rate going. Most of the time this entails me putting on the boxing gloves and Don putting on the pads to catch the punches, or vice versa. We jab and slug for a couple minutes with varying punch types. We can often tell what kind of day the puncher had based on the vigor of the warm-up swings. When there's a little oomph in the jabs and crosses then we know something's up. "Difficult budget meeting today?" "Having an argument with the missus?"
The regular routine is based on rotations of exercises with a focus on core muscles (primarly abs and lower back for you exercise noobs) and it's all upper body stuff. The warm-up circuit consists of 5 exercises done once. Then we do three circuits of 5-6 exercises, done twice in two rotations. It takes about 60-75 minutes to do the whole thing. The warm-up circuit is bad enough. We're already sweating and panting when that is done and making declarations like, "Well, that was a good workout. Time for cocktails?" But no, there is much more. So much more...
Don conjures up the specific exercises based on some workout books he has and things he has seen others do, plus I'll throw in my two cents on occasion. He types and prints out the routine so we can consult it as we go. Naming conventions are a bit of a struggle as there is often explanation required as we go.
Me: "OK, I'm on 'Plank of Death.' Which Plank of Death is this again? Is this the one with my arms on the exercise ball or the one with my toes on the ball?"
Don: "Uhhh, I think it's the toes."
"Dips on Dangerous Wood" involve a piece of homemade workout equipment. Don and his son Ryan, neither of whom is a carpenter, fashioned out of 2x4's a device intended to support our weight while we do shoulder dips. Shoulder dips require you to hold yourself up with your arms straight up and down, and then lower and raise yourself using only your arms and shoulders. We have yet to dismember ourselves due to equipment failure but it's only a matter of time. I did nearly lose a pinkie once on another exercise when it got smushed between two dumbbells. The fingernail has been black and blue for 5 weeks. I keep thinking it's going to fall off but it's been barely hanging on -- like the Survivor contestant who isn't in any alliances.
"Dumbbell Swinging Thing" is the thing where we, uh, swing the dumbbell.
Each exercise lasts a standard amount of time regardless of how many reps you can complete. Our current duration is 50 seconds. If you can't do reps the whole time, you have to hold the position until the time is up. This is where the suckiness of the whole endeavor comes to the fore. The 50 seconds can be especially grueling for exercises like dips, pull-ups, or, OK, almost all of them. The greatest aid in surviving is having the person keeping the stopwatch call out the remaining time. Anyone failing to call out at least every 10 seconds is roundly cursed and abused. Jessie is particularly prone to forgetting to call it out -- or maybe she's just tweaking her elders -- which is guaranteed to elicit wails from us like, "For the love of GOD woman HOW MUCH TIME IS LEFT!!!"
The other key coping mechanism is berating the other for getting one involved in such a painful use of one's free time. While we both use this outlet, Don is a little more talkative than I am and does it more frequently. Some examples:
"Davey, why do you make me do this? I hate you."
"Don't make me do the pull-ups again. Just don't."
"Why did you come over here? I was nice and comfortable on the couch."
Another focus of discussion is the debate about The Worst Exercise. We argue about this with such passion and energy it's like we're putting on a local production of 12 Angry Men. In my opinion there is no argument: it's the pull-ups. Regardless of how many legit pull-ups I can do, hanging by the arms for 50 seconds when you're a load like I am is nothing short of misery. It is truly unsurvivable without someone calling out the time. Then, when you can finally release, your hands and forearms hurt for a good 20-30 more seconds like the aftertaste from a $2 bottle of tequila. Don often tries to make the case that one of the Planks of Death is worse or maybe the "push-ups on Bosu with toes on exercise ball" (another crime against all that is good and pure in this world) but he knows in his heart it's the pull-ups.
That was my opinion...until we added two new heinous exercises this past week. One is the aforementioned Dips on Dangerous Wood. The final 10 seconds of that one is less humane than waterboarding. The other is Bosu ball crossover push-ups. This one is awful in its own right but comes at the very end of the workout when there is nothing left in the tank and your arms have the tensile strength of cotton candy. Basically you do a push-up with both hands on the rounded part of the Bosu, then swing one hand out to the side and do a push-up, then one back in the middle, then the other hand out to the side for a push-up, and so on. When we do it we're laughing at the absurdity of what we're attempting. It's one of those laughs that is surprisingly similar to sobbing. I'm still leaning toward the pull-ups as The Worst Exercise but it's a close call.
At the opposite end of the Worst Exercise are the one or two "vacation" exercises. There are a couple relative respites during the routine where the physical humiliation is less egregious compared to the rest. One of these is shoulder shrugs. We now call shrugs "Club Med." Even though you're lifting heavy dumbbells with your shoulders for 50 seconds it's a picnic compared to some of the others. You envy the person doing shrugs. You loathe them for the frolic in the springtime meadow they are doing compared to whatever you're doing.
Eventually the misery ends. We "police the Dojo" which involves putting the gear away so that it resembles a family basement again. Then we drag ourselves upstairs, talk about how we never want to do that ever again, how we will never speak of the horrors we just endured, and then we settle on a time to do it again a couple days later.
