MUSCLE UP: LIFTING WEIGHTS AND WASHING UP FOR DISEASE PREVENTION

Lifting weights and building muscle in the right gym is disease prevention, as long as you wash your hands regularly and don’t touch your face.

Common knowledge, right, don’t touch your eyes or mouth after handling weights in a public gym. But how bad can it really be?

Well, remember all of the reminders in public bathrooms to wash your hands before leaving, to wash your hands after you’re done? Now add some grimy gym rat in weight lifting gloves that smell like the fermenting sweat sock you found behind the dryer after three years.

That’s the sort of bacterial film left on weight machines and Olympic bars without mentioning whatever’s on the dickhand of the guys who skip soap and water on the way out.

That’s disease prevention right there, but not the sort of disease prevention gyms and weightlifting are best for.

Unless you’re a competitive body builder obsessed with size and veins and tan, lifting weights is not a normal activity. Why bother to lift, you selfie addicted, protein shake drinking, cut off sleeve wearing animal.

As a self-tenured professor of Gym Ratology, my research shows people, men in particular, lift for two reasons:

To prepare for the unexpected curve balls life throws at everyone at some point

Or

To recover from the curveball / bean ball life buzzed you with.

Both are about muscle fitness, one more about mental fitness.

For example, a man with a weight lifting habit has better balance, but if they do fall, extra muscle helps absorb the blow. added slabs of meat on thighs may prevent a broken leg. Same with arms. A regular squat routine protects hips.

At least this is the theory I hope works if I take a dive.

I interviewed a man in the gym recently, which means we talked when we were in the same area. It turned into an interview when the conversation veered toward cancer. (Just to say, I didn’t bring it up. Not this time.)

He said his dad had cancer and survived, but the ordeal took the life out of him. He went listless and sedentary after a busy life full of physical activity. Then he had a heart attack and died.

“And that’s why I come to the gym,” he said.

This is called anecdotal evidence by hardcore scientists. I call it proof in the pudding. Say proof in the pudding in Latin and I’ll bet it sounds very sciencey.

This gym rat man had it down and he’s two years older than his dad was when he died. His mental health is solid from the gym. To keep up my end of the conversation I have him a short take on my own story.

I moved my workout from my garage to a membership gym when my wife thought I needed to get out more. She has a very active social life with her circle of friends and probably thought I was slipping. At the time I was a 24/7 caregiver for her step-dad and she might have right about slipping.

Caregiver literature talks a lot about burnout, so I used to gym to keep things balanced. And build muscle into my fat beer gut. After my father in law died I kept going and didn’t leave until I got cancer.

Since cancer treatment takes a toll on the immune system, and cancer was enough of a challenge without an extra infection, I went into an isolation bubble.

To re-cap, I went from semi-recluse caregiver and joined the gym to build muscle and practice being a functioning person in society, and left to be a medical recluse. Nice circle, don’t you think?

I returned to my scene of fitness and muscle looking so bad I got comments like, “Why are you so yellow?” from my Cambodian gym buddy. But, I came back as soon as I could risk it. I needed to start a comeback or I’d never come back like the dad of my interview subject.

My advice if you or someone you know is struggling to make their new normal make old sense: Work with what you’ve got left to work with. Strain your range of motion with resistance training, and strain your brain to remember what day it is. Gym rats know it’s not about Monday, or Wednesday, or Friday.

Say it with me: Is it push day, pull day, or leg day; back and biceps, or chest and triceps? Retrain your brain for this routine and stay on schedule. Work it right and the memories of death and dying, the anxieties of medical doubt, and the stress of insurance screw ups fade to their proper bad dream place.

(Bad dream? Ask me what happened when I learned my insurance was canceled while I was on the way to my first chemo appointment.)