GYM RAT EXPLAINED PERSONAL MOTIVATION

I asked a gym rat man the only question that matters: “What keeps you going?”

At least that’s what I meant to ask when I said, “What keeps you from folding, from locking your door, closing the curtains, having food delivered, give up your car, and just shut it the hell down?”

This was a man who’s been through the ringer, the sort of ups and downs that break normal people with strong wills. Not that a gym rat has an extraordinary will, or more extraordinary than any other, but they’re a gym rat for a reason.

He earned the name.

“Why do I keep going?” he asked back?

“God no, that’s not the question. I know why people keep going, you just look like someone who could quit and no one would notice,” I said.

“No one?”

“Look around and tell me who you’d like to miss you,” I said.

“Oh, I see what you mean.”

“So why don ‘t you just fold like most of America?” I said.

“Well, I could say it’s because I’m not a quitter, and once I started coming in I never stopped. Hence, the name gym rat.”

“Hence?”

“That was for you, writer boy,” he said. “You used to be a teacher, didn’t you?”

“Never, but I like the Shakespearean flavor of ‘hence.’ It could make a comeback if you keep using it.”

Gym Rat Question

“I keep coming to the gym so I can do the things I like doing,” gym rat said.

“Do you do things you like to do, or things you have to do.”

“Sometimes things I have to do, but mostly what I like doing,” he said.

“What would that be?”

“Things I like.”

“Like what?” I pressed.

I wanted to hear him say what I wanted to hear, not something he made up on the fly, which might be the same thing. What I wanted to hear was an umbrella statement, a definite definition, which is so elusive.

Is he a gym rat because he likes to see what he can do? To test himself against his personal records from the past? To learn? To teach? To stand around bullshitting over the fence, except it’s over a bench?

A common feeling among gym rats early on is finding the fountain of youth. Old folks feeling their bodies come alive with better circulation sounds pretty good.

Middle aged people come in and resume their college workouts, or high school PE class. They are the people running their guts out on treadmills looking like they might pass out.

A six minute mile from a seventy pounds heavier body isn’t on the schedule is what I told myself in the same place. A six minute mile doesn’t sound like blazing speed to the average sports fan, but it’s a fair push.

Don’t you try it on a whim. It’s not a whimmy sort of thing. I ran a five and a half minute mile once to see what it felt like. It happened in my twenties, in my running days, at the beginning of a since canceled race, the 15K Cascade Run Off.

It started on the east end of the Burnside Bridge one year and I was feeling fast. So I started up front with the real racers, the expected winners and top finishers. And I took off in a sprint, which was their starting gear. And it was downhill, which helped.

The miles were timed on the street and when I passed the first check point it read 5:30. I was gassed and still had 8.3 miles left. I trotted in under an hour with a nice purple face.

Young gym rat

If you’ve asked yourself why you didn’t find a gym when you were younger, what’s the answer? Is it any different than the excuse you have today?

Chances are good that the body you have today wouldn’t be any different if you had worked out more before the jobs, the husbands and wives and kids, before the mandatory visits to places you didn’t know you wanted to avoid but now do.

Everyone has the same amount of time every day, the difference being how they get used.

If a younger person sees an aging wreckage of human wasted still repping out and counting sets, they get a message. They see themselves, at least their future selves, in the geezers. And they should.

Why does anyone keep doing things? Because we can, and we like knowing we can.

Once you stop it’s hard to pick back up. Ask me how I did it.

You’re got time no matter your age.