Anybody Care for A little Whine

Saturday, Boot Camp.
Time to set up the stations.
Put the jump rope here. It will be more painful that way.
Two laps, outside, jump rope; slip rope, stairs mitts, plates, fourteen stations in all.
Don’t stop.
Keep the intensity high and do the push-up station here.
Count the number and call them out.
Thirty-five, next time forty, next fifty.
Fierce says, “I think I am dying”.
“No your not”, I say, “Just push on through”.
We do the two hundred shoulders, the fast abs and Sparta thanks us for the excellent work and the healing.
Seems she is in a “mood”.
She warned us before the class that she was in "that mood” and needed healing.
Healing is accomplished by pushing everyone to his or her potential and beyond without anyone dying or walking out.
We all make it.
I then transition to a training session with weights and other strength exercises.
I join a group this day, all younger than me and watchful.
Sparta looks at me and says, “push-ups, fifteen”.
“I just did push-ups”, I said and immediately realized I was whining.
I try to avoid whining at all possible costs.
If you don’t want to do something, leave. Don’t whine.
If you are still whining and over the age of sixty then you really have more problems than I can enumerate.
And suddenly I am whining.
“I am whining”, I say,"I didn’t really mean to".
“I know, you very seldom if ever whine, it is good for me to hear this, it helps the healing.”
Healing, I am not worried about healing I am worried about face and maintaining it.
I do have some Ego.
I drop down and do the fifteen push-ups and feel flushed because I have stepped into murky waters and I don’t like it.
I do the squats, the dips and return to fifteen more push-ups.
I finally finish with the last set of fifteen push-ups and gratefully get to move across the gym to curls and arms presses.
The session ends.
Sparta thanks all for the good work.
As I leave the floor I am trying to decide which wine I might present to seek forgiveness for that last whine.
I am sure a Dry White Chardonnay would be the best.
Sparta might share some as I have heard it goes real good with Crow.

The Old Man Is Wanting

I have been weighed and measured.
I have been found wanting.
I guess maybe I came too late.
It seems Fierce has taken the field.
Sure I can’t count.
Sure I can’t memorize the punch sequences.
Sure I'm slow and occasionally purple
Now Fierce has the upper hand.
She is young, fast and aggressive.
She hits the mitts with precision and speed.
She hasn’t caught Ammo or the Ambassador yet but she has the eye of Sparta.
The next protégé?
The old man has walked the crooked mile and has the crooked smile.
He has the crooked jab and a really crooked cross.
His crooked, broken uppercut is a total loss.
So the old man with the little crooked smile, will continue on it seems, at least for a while.
And watch as Fierce runs the next hundred miles.

Oh Momma, So Many Questions

Big class last night.
A lot of punishment was meted out for slow learners.
The whole class paid.
Why is it, the guys can’t count past four?
The girls don’t have that counting problem.
Why is it the strongest looking guys struggle the hardest with the 200 shoulders?
Do they pick up too much weight?
Why is the running such a difficult task for some and yet others run with abandon?
I believe those, the easy runners, could run all night long.
Why didn’t May and Audrey join us last night?
Was the music too raw or did their advanced years keep them at bay?
What did the Yoga instructor say to one of the guys at the front of the line in the middle of the class?
Better yet, why did they laugh?
“Tell us all”, my old high school coach would say.
Where was Cheshire and Transformer?
Will we ever see the Mighty T again?
How much sweat have those mats absorbed?
Don’t they feel heavier?
Do the crunches ever get any easier?
When will a six pack or even a one pack start to show up?
Is the turtle shell the best I can hope for?
Where has Sweat Shirt Boy (SSB) been and why is he now back?
Is my new name really going to be dumbbell?
Or was it a missed modifier causing the command to sound like, “pick it up, dumbbell”?
Shouldn’t it have been, “pick it up, the dumbbell”?
Was it the lack of a comma, some other errant punctuation or a participle placement problem?
“I sure hope so”, said me in my mind as I type this.
All night the questions rumble through my mind as we jump rope, hit mitts, pound the heavy bag.
Sometimes they are funny enough that I begin laughing out loud.
I am fairly sure a number of the players question my status, “is he really all there”.
I have a counting problem, I have a hearing problem and I frequently still try to put the gloves on the wrong hands.
But in spite of these issues, I will keep coming back, keep pondering deep and not so deep questions and continually wonder if I will be able to do this when I am eighty six?

The Prime Directive Made Me Do It

Don’t stop just because you hit me”, came the command.
Why not I think to myself.
It was hard enough to ever begin throwing punches at this strikingly beautiful woman, albeit an athlete and a trainer skilled in the pugilistic arts, which made it fairly easy to stop.
Deep in my heart was the paternal command, “never hit a lady because if you do I will destroy you”.
As a little kid I believed he could and would so I didn’t even hit my sister unless I knew my father wouldn’t be around long enough for her to forget.
That primary directive, instilled in childhood, has been a guiding principle of my existence.
So when I began boxing I threw tentative punches.
I was “ridiculed”.
The punches got harder until one day she said, “well, I believe you have overcome your primary directive”.
I was slamming punches into the mitts strategically placed to catch body blows and her head was rocking with each punch.
I reacted by decreasing the intensity of the punches and partially returning to the primary directive.
The medical side of me was also concerned about the blood vessels in her head.
Then recently because of low attendance she decided to have Boxing Night, not to be confused with Boxing Day, the English Holiday,so named because of the boxes of gifts given to one and other.
We received no gifts but were instead exhorted to do a series of punch combinations, over and over.
When a jab I threw slipped the mitt and caught her in the corner of the left eye, I suddenly had an acute attack of the Primary Directive and stopped mid-punch.
That is when she threw a punch at me saying, “don’t stop when you hit me, keep going”.
So in spite of the Prime Directive and the inbred chivalry demanded by my mother, I kept throwing the punches although much more controlled.
I really don’t have to worry about her as much as she needs to worry about me.
I don’t remember the punch sequences all that well and I am always worried about one going awry.
Well we did get through the evening, no blood was drawn, no injuries were encountered except for maybe that little six-year old that resides in the soul of every man.
He went home wondering when his Dad was going to come down and destroy him for breaking the Prime Directive.
He didn’t sleep so well that night.

What A Great Weekend

Ammo had a birthday and Sparta threw a party.
Tri-thlete, Ammo’s main buddy was there.
Cheshire was in attendance with M. He does look very Bond-esque.
Transformer showed accompanied by the Mighty T even though they have both been skipping out on training.
Aerobasis and Phoenix showed.
Elmo was there alone as spouse was off in the south doing good deeds for a person in need.
I and my better half were also invited: we did show late but better than never I hoped.
By the time we got there, enough lubrication had been passed around so the conversation was flowing easily.
The only scary part, after we were introduced to a table of great food just about everyone left the room.
That prompted me and my wife to begin sniffing ourselves to see if we really did smell that bad.
We had been out in the rain watching a high school football game and who knows; maybe we did smell like “wet dog”.
Soon enough the people gathered back around the table and in the living room and the conversation continued, more animated by the minute.
This somewhat reassured us it wasn’t an offending odor; maybe it was just the way we were eating, you know fingers and all.
I had been warned that Sparta had an early training session the next day and wanted an empty “Casa” by 11:00 PM.
I could easily see that was going to be a tough deadline to hit.
It was just too enjoyable and the camaraderie was intense.
Small knots of people were now occupying almost every room in the house; the conversations involved world issues, the course of democracy, friendships, exercise stories and many other themes.
I began working my way to the exit about 10:30 because I also had an early morning commitment and I was going home to an empty house just ready for sleeping.
As I said my goodbyes to Sparta, I figured her best hope:
The Margaritas run out before the new day begins.

Back In Training

Two weeks is a long time to be away from the routine.
It is tough getting back in stride.
It takes a long time (months and years) to develop some strength and endurance and unfortunately it is lost in a matter of days to weeks.
Starting over is like starting at ground zero.
The effect of stale air for thirteen hours and jet lag has been riding my back like a 300 pound gorilla.
I am slowly shedding the extra burden but last night the effects were still apparent.
I had trouble getting through the laps.
My punches weren’t crisp; as if they ever are all that crisp anyway.
I couldn’t remember a sequence even after being told three or four times.
The weights seem to have gotten heavier; stiff muscles fail to uncoil easily.
Travel is hard.
Eating differently is hard.
Sleeping in strange beds is hard.
“Maybe it is just age”, I say to myself.
I reject that as a bad excuse.
Returning to an ordered life with a “Spartan routine” is the answer.
Diet, exercise, adequate sleep along with periods of deep meditation are the keys to success at any age.
Travel makes it difficult but not impossible.
Discipline is the characteristic that remains weak.
So I am back in the gym, trying to re-learn the lessons of Boot Camp.
I am back in the gym trying to re-educate reluctant muscles.
I am trying to re-assert a severe discipline on my daily activities.
I am trying to keep control of a diet.
What is the purpose?
The purpose is to be at the top of your potential and to feel good.
And I definitely want to feel good because I have seen how good it feels.

It's All Greek To Me

I have been gone far too long from Boot Camp and the daily rigors of the gym.
I have tried to find exercise equipment in Greece but it seems exercise equipment is in short supply, at least in the Hotels where I have been resting my head.
The saving grace, all of the monuments except for Olympia are built at the tops of the mountains.
I have been doing a lot of climbing.
To see the Acropolis, it is necessary to climb a mountain road in the middle of the city and then ascend hundreds of stairs.
This was also the case for the Ancient Monasteries of Meteora, Delphi, the Mycenae ruins, the ancient castle on Naxos and any other site you wanted to visit.
It seems acropolis means "top of the hill".
It would make sense building it up on the mountain as it provided commanding views of the waters and land.
One could see approaching armies or enemy combatants.
The only problem I saw, the peasants that grew the food lived down in the valleys.
So one day a priest or priestess of the temple needs milk, he/she asks his/her buddy, since they are going to the valley anyway, to bring back a goatskin of milk and maybe some figs.
Later when the person returns, he/she says, "did you get the eggs"?
"Eggs"? "What are you talking about, eggs"?
"I am not going back down there, you can go if you want eggs that bad"!
Running up and down the hill for supplies and sacrificial objects such as one hundred oxen could either wear you out or make you want to walk to the Hot Gate, ready for the next battle.
And boy, did they ever battle over here.
Maybe it was caused by someone always forgetting to get the eggs.