No Pain, No Gain

The Bible says our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Everyone knows that eating properly and regular exercise are essential for maintaining a healthy body. Studies have also confirmed that exercise is important for our spiritual health, as well. Still, having this knowledge and applying this knowledge are two different things.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the gym and lately, I’ve had a little voice in my head telling me I really need to start exercising again and get in better shape.

I can usually shut that little voice up with massive quantities of chocolate and lie down until the urge to exercise goes away.  However, my twelve-year-old son had been bugging me to take him to the gym so he could build up his muscles for football.  He weighs all of eighty pounds.  I keep telling him he has to be at least bigger than the cheerleaders.   But I finally gave in and succumbed a few weeks ago.

We started out on the ellipticals.  After about five minutes, my son informed me he was done. He’d done his twenty miles.  I looked over at his machine and gently explained that the distance read 0.2 miles.  Back to the drudgery of my own elliptical, while I watched the little distance indicator move at a snail’s pace.  After finally doing my mile in the record time of thirty minutes, I was rather proud of myself.

Next, my son dragged me over to the free weights where sweaty, grunting muscle men pumped iron.  I felt a little out of place among these body-builders, with my scrawny, saggy old lady arms and legs, as I grabbed the five-pound weights.  But, hey, at least nobody else was using them.  I would have used two-pound weights, but five pounds were the lowest weights available.

And at least there was a good chance nobody had sweated all over them.

After a brutal five minutes, we headed into the equipment room, where we could spot-treat our problem areas.  I sat down at the first machine, designed to strengthen the shoulders and upper back.  The weight load had been set to one hundred pounds.  With a little embarrassment, I moved it to ten pounds.  After ten reps, I was huffing and puffing and ready to move on, so I sauntered over to the quadriceps machine, where a guy sat, busily texting.  He ignored my overt hovering, which is why my quadriceps are still in such bad shape.  At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  The crunch machine for abdominal muscles was next.  I have always hated crunches.  This time was no exception, as I think I tore something.  There’s no obvious hernia, however, so I may just have to lay off that machine until the burning sensation in my lower left abdomen goes away.  After a few other exercises, my son grew bored and was ready to leave.

As we passed the room with the ellipticals on our way out, I decided to try the stair stepper, as I still hadn’t worked my weak quads.  I turned on the machine, set the pace, and climbed step after step.   Everything was going great until I tripped on my own feet and fell down the moving steps, banging both my knees.  It has been several weeks now, and I still have big black and blue lumps on both legs.  But you know what they say, “No pain, no gain!”