Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Wimping Out ---uh, I meant "Working Out With Brice!"
So, I just returned from yet another mad madcap session at the 24-Hour Fitness Gym with my adorable 23-year old trainer Brice, and I am compelled to write about it because it was a very emotional session for me. Why, you ask? Well, I will tell you...and even if you'd not asked, I would tell you anyway.
When I was a young, tall, slender(er) and spry 20-something actress in Manhattan, everyone belonged to a health club, because , oddly, being young and already perfect was not good enough. One had to be young and constantly working out in order to be even more perfect than one already was: one simply had to work out!
My club of choice - and the club of many of us who lived on the Upper West Side- was the famed Paris Health Club on West End Avenue at 96th Street. So popular was it, with the theatre folk, that I even found myself sharing a hot tub with the much-feared NY Post (and sometimes NY Times) critic Clive Barnes, chatting amiably about our workout regimens and never mentioning a word about our shared professions: he knew me and I knew him, and none of that mattered because we were half naked, in bubbling hot water and both exhausted from our gym routines. We saw each other at our absolute worst, and wanted to chat about it, and we didn't care about much else.
We had found the commonest of grounds, and were relaxing on them. I remember thinking I could never really take his reviews seriously again, because my body was actually much less saggy than his was, no matter that I was a deal younger and a girl. I just couldn't fear him after those times in the hot tub. So health club memberships served several purposes, health-wise, business-wise, etc.
And I was a pretty regular gym denizen. What I lacked in consistency I made up for in intensity and drive when I did work out. I always had a gym membership, even when I rarely used it, and I always deducted it as a legit tax/business expense. We all did, since it was part of our professional toolbox to stay fit and pretty. There were several decades when I was never without a health club membership.
AS the years passed by, however, and I slid more over into the teaching and directing areas of my career, then finally to administration at Barter Theatre, my club days faded gently into the background, and whenever I did finally get off my enlarging rear end to get some exercise, it was usually to walk around some neighborhoods long enough to feel virtuous and call it a day.
But now I live in San Francisco, the city that IS a gym. And in order to even climb the hill I live o, I have to train for it. So I joined - along with Peter, who is dizzy with a new found workout regimen -the 24-Hour FItness Gyms, so popular in this new city of ours. SO popular , in fact, they sell memberships at Costco, at a discount! This town is serious about its people getting in shape because it knows that if its citizens allow themselves to get soft and flabby, all business will come to a standstill: no one will want to walk outside! SO, EVERYONE belongs to a gym here, and cute latex outfits are very very popular.
No matter your age, you had better buy something made of latex. I wonder if headbands count.
So, not only have we joined, but we have hired personal trainers to make us feel so guilty that if we do not keep our appointments with them, we will feel even worse than we already do. It helps that mine is very good at what he does: Brice knows just how far to push me each session, and he is a bright, voluble talker: it's like having my own live radio show playing at all times, taking my mind off how close to totally expiring I constantly am when I am doing as he instructs. But I keep on, and by the end of our bi-weekly 50-minute sessions together, I feel high as a kite on simply getting it over with!
Today was no exception, and he did work my arms and legs very hard, so that I felt like I was floating out to the garage and that my arms were made of helium-filled balloon animals. But before we got into it, I warmed up in an area where there were a lot of people in their twenty's killing themselves with difficult, strenuous exercise, and I got very sad. Sad because they seemed to have no idea how very beautiful they already were, without all that hard work. They all seemed to be chasing some elusive ideal that was just beyond their pumping, lifting, slinging, slugging reach, and no matter how hard they grimaced and no matter how many gallons of red-faced sweat poured out of them, it was an ideal that was always going to be far ahead of them: they would never reach it. I know this now. But I did not know it when I was their age.
So, I got sad for the wisdom I had to live 3 decades or more to receive" perfection is right now.
One consolation is this: if I had not worked that hard then, I might not be in the shape I am now, relatively youthful for a woman in her 60's. If I hadn't laid down the good bones of my physical self way back then, I might not be as strong as I am now, and that scares me because I am not very strong at all. But at least I am alive with a vibrance that permits me to go to Costco, buy a discounted gym membership and use it. Hell, I'm alive enough and strong enough to have moved across country, change my life and start a new one in a city I love. So who's to say my early health club addiction did not help this time be possible? I guess we'll never know.
But, for now, I want to reach out to those gorgeous kids sweating next to me in the gym and say: it's okay, you're stunningly beautiful. Relax , take good care of yourself, but remember: you are perfect, ripe and ready, right now, just as you are.
A better use for that medicine ball that seems to weigh three thousand pounds as you lift it over your head? Toss it at whoever tells you you're not.
When I was a young, tall, slender(er) and spry 20-something actress in Manhattan, everyone belonged to a health club, because , oddly, being young and already perfect was not good enough. One had to be young and constantly working out in order to be even more perfect than one already was: one simply had to work out!
My club of choice - and the club of many of us who lived on the Upper West Side- was the famed Paris Health Club on West End Avenue at 96th Street. So popular was it, with the theatre folk, that I even found myself sharing a hot tub with the much-feared NY Post (and sometimes NY Times) critic Clive Barnes, chatting amiably about our workout regimens and never mentioning a word about our shared professions: he knew me and I knew him, and none of that mattered because we were half naked, in bubbling hot water and both exhausted from our gym routines. We saw each other at our absolute worst, and wanted to chat about it, and we didn't care about much else.
We had found the commonest of grounds, and were relaxing on them. I remember thinking I could never really take his reviews seriously again, because my body was actually much less saggy than his was, no matter that I was a deal younger and a girl. I just couldn't fear him after those times in the hot tub. So health club memberships served several purposes, health-wise, business-wise, etc.
And I was a pretty regular gym denizen. What I lacked in consistency I made up for in intensity and drive when I did work out. I always had a gym membership, even when I rarely used it, and I always deducted it as a legit tax/business expense. We all did, since it was part of our professional toolbox to stay fit and pretty. There were several decades when I was never without a health club membership.
AS the years passed by, however, and I slid more over into the teaching and directing areas of my career, then finally to administration at Barter Theatre, my club days faded gently into the background, and whenever I did finally get off my enlarging rear end to get some exercise, it was usually to walk around some neighborhoods long enough to feel virtuous and call it a day.
But now I live in San Francisco, the city that IS a gym. And in order to even climb the hill I live o, I have to train for it. So I joined - along with Peter, who is dizzy with a new found workout regimen -the 24-Hour FItness Gyms, so popular in this new city of ours. SO popular , in fact, they sell memberships at Costco, at a discount! This town is serious about its people getting in shape because it knows that if its citizens allow themselves to get soft and flabby, all business will come to a standstill: no one will want to walk outside! SO, EVERYONE belongs to a gym here, and cute latex outfits are very very popular.
No matter your age, you had better buy something made of latex. I wonder if headbands count.
So, not only have we joined, but we have hired personal trainers to make us feel so guilty that if we do not keep our appointments with them, we will feel even worse than we already do. It helps that mine is very good at what he does: Brice knows just how far to push me each session, and he is a bright, voluble talker: it's like having my own live radio show playing at all times, taking my mind off how close to totally expiring I constantly am when I am doing as he instructs. But I keep on, and by the end of our bi-weekly 50-minute sessions together, I feel high as a kite on simply getting it over with!
Today was no exception, and he did work my arms and legs very hard, so that I felt like I was floating out to the garage and that my arms were made of helium-filled balloon animals. But before we got into it, I warmed up in an area where there were a lot of people in their twenty's killing themselves with difficult, strenuous exercise, and I got very sad. Sad because they seemed to have no idea how very beautiful they already were, without all that hard work. They all seemed to be chasing some elusive ideal that was just beyond their pumping, lifting, slinging, slugging reach, and no matter how hard they grimaced and no matter how many gallons of red-faced sweat poured out of them, it was an ideal that was always going to be far ahead of them: they would never reach it. I know this now. But I did not know it when I was their age.
So, I got sad for the wisdom I had to live 3 decades or more to receive" perfection is right now.
One consolation is this: if I had not worked that hard then, I might not be in the shape I am now, relatively youthful for a woman in her 60's. If I hadn't laid down the good bones of my physical self way back then, I might not be as strong as I am now, and that scares me because I am not very strong at all. But at least I am alive with a vibrance that permits me to go to Costco, buy a discounted gym membership and use it. Hell, I'm alive enough and strong enough to have moved across country, change my life and start a new one in a city I love. So who's to say my early health club addiction did not help this time be possible? I guess we'll never know.
But, for now, I want to reach out to those gorgeous kids sweating next to me in the gym and say: it's okay, you're stunningly beautiful. Relax , take good care of yourself, but remember: you are perfect, ripe and ready, right now, just as you are.
A better use for that medicine ball that seems to weigh three thousand pounds as you lift it over your head? Toss it at whoever tells you you're not.
Labels: SF Workout
Post a Comment