EXERCISE

by

Mike Crowl

Practice makes perfect. If you don't use it, you'll lose it. So they

say.

Some time ago a member of our family purchased a set of exercise

videos with the aim of building up her/his muscles. I'm not allowed to

be more specific, but the videos gave a real boost in the physical

department.

She/he disciplined him/herself, getting up at the crack of dawn every

morning to chug through those demanding exercises - while the

demonstrator chauntered through a flow of esteem-building speeches.

Various other members of the family gave the exercises a go - with

varying degrees of success. Still, I don't think any set of videos has

ever had more use in our house. Certainly the original purchaser got

value for money.

While everyone else tackled the videos, I didn't. I was still walking

to work every morning: a sufficient, demanding-enough exercise, and

pleasant. A good way to allow the early-morning-family-arousing-stresses

to flit off like startled sparrows. I use to run most of the way, but my

legs had begun to find pounding down the hills jarred the hips and knees.

Still, the walk was enough to keep me fit, I said.

If so, why did I find my knees creaked more when I knelt - and it was

more difficult hoisting myself up again? (If I could rouse the body to

such a level of enthusiasm as to want to get up again.)

Why did the floor seem further away when I bent to pick up bits of

paper or safety pins? And why did it take three attempts to grasp them?

Why did I have to sit a little further back from the steering wheel

than before, and find the pedals further away? Why did the plate on the

meal table seem not quite where it used to be? (There's many a slip

twixt cup and lip was finally starting to make sense.)

Why did I feel like a formerly deft and agile adolescent struggling

with clumsy-making growth spurts?

Lack of exercise.

My family has been nagging - sorry, encouraging - me, for some time,

to do some exercise. (There's particular concern that they can't see the

telly if I'm standing just to one side of it.) So the other night I began

the exercises, in company with a couple of other family members who'd

done them before, and wanted to get back into them again.

I enjoyed the exercises which required me to lie on the floor, because

at least I didn't have to keep my body vertical at the same time, but I

wasn't too fussed about the exercises that seemed akin to some of the

spine-dislocating, hip-unhinging and bone-crackling one of my children

does in modern dancing.

I know these exercises will do me good. (I used to have a best friend

who was always telling me things he suggested would do me good.) I

know that if I play difficult music on the piano, and work at it, even if

I can't play it up to speed, I'll have fingers that move when I want them

to, instead of fingers that ice-skate across the keys because they can't

be bothered to dig their nails in.

I know if I'd kept at that memory course that I wrote about some time

ago, I'd be remembering all the names of the people I want to remember -

including the name of the sub-editor of the Midweek, which has eluded

me for three days until the very moment I wrote those last few words.

And I know if I wrote 700 words a day, as the pundits say I ought,

(inspired or not), I'd produce a column with half the sweat and strain.

I think.

But I don't like doing these exercises. They make me feel a hundred

and fifty, they make me feel as though I'm no longer capable of any

physical effort - and I am! I really am!! - they make me feel as though

if I have to hear that trainer's voice one more time burbling

visualisation babble I'll smash his fancy face in. (Fortunately the tape

is getting so worn his voice is becoming something of an audio blur.)

Apparently Henry Ford didn't say history is bunk, he claimed

exercise was. "If you're healthy," he said, "you don't need it. If

you're sick, you shouldn't take it."

How (ouch! oooof!) true.

Fourth Column and
                  What constitutes a Taxman'sColumn
On Artists' responsibilities
                  On Books or Graphology                   
On Beards or Clothes
On Dinosaurs
On Vicars and belief/doubt - and Nuns
On Exercise
On Being a Techno-Freak
Columns on Words and Word play:-
Bafflegab
Cant is my Wont!
Flabbergastation, Generation X (and a
few other generations)
Ickle-Uckle
Large Bird Mangled with a Weapon
Short course in new Maori

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