Sisyphus was a sissy-fuss

THE BORING PART:
I've mentioned it already, but I've been working this year to lose weight.  Up until now, I've approached it without a specific focus other than "eat less, exercise more."  There's a program for iPhone called LoseIt that's helped me a lot, by logging the foods that I eat and the exercises that I do.  The initial weight came off quickly, but I don't credit that to an amazing program or anything.  It was just that I was finally getting off of the couch a little bit and not going out to get milkshakes for me and Courtney every night.  I've been stalled about halfway to my goal for a while now, though, and it's because I haven't really focused.  My workouts have solely been time spent on the elliptical machine, since I knew that I could work up a decent sweat without having to leave my children in the kids club at the gym for too long, and because I was kind of nervous to approach weights on my own.  I did my free session with one of the gym's trainers, and I won't spend a lot of time on why, but I wasn't really pleased with it.  I know that those guys make their living on repeat clients, but it felt like he was trying to get me to "subscribe" to whatever workout he planned for me in a given session, rather than setting me up with a real, long-term program that I could work with.

THE GOOD PART:
Now that it's summer, I've been taking the kids to our gym's pool when I can, and that's where I met Khalid.  He's a former defensive back for the Texas Tech football team, and he is seriously cut.  When I found out that he trains people on the side, I asked if we could meet sometime.  This guy is all about having a plan.  I've just started working with him, but I'm excited about where it's heading.

For last night's workout, he told me to stay off of the weights, and to do twenty minutes of stairclimber and then a few other exercises.

"Only twenty minutes?" I thought.  "I usually do nearly twice that on the elliptical or treadmill.  This'll be a piece of cake."

Oh, Danny...

Have you people tried the stairclimber?  It is the first time in my life that I've really been frightened by a piece of exercise equipment, and this is coming from a person who was once pinned under a very heavily-weighted bar during a bench press gone wrong in high school.  I thought it would be a lot like running stairs, which I've done before.  The difference is that if you get tired when you are running stairs, you can stop.  The machine is pitiless, it just keeps churning out more stairs for you to climb.  Stumbled when you caught your toe on the edge of a step?  CLIMB, YOU PUSSY.  The stairs are growing unsafe to walk on, because they are too covered in your own sweat?  FUCK YOU, CLIMB SOME MORE.  Trying to skip a track on Pandora?  I DIDN'T GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO DO THAT, BITCH.  STAIRS!  STAIRS!!!

(I imagine the stairclimber is really vulgar and loud, by the way.)

You know how the treadmill has the rails on the sides where you can stand for a second if you need to?  Not so on the climber.  Do you like ice cream?  Hey, me too!  But now imagine that instead of eating it at your own pace, you were seated with your mouth held wide open while Nolan Ryan hurls scoops of ice cream into it like fastballs.  That is the stairclimber.

I can't be the first person on a stairclimber to be reminded of Sisyphus, doomed for all eternity to push a boulder uphill, only to watch it go tumbling back downhill again.  But I like to think that as he watched that rock falling away from him, he thought, "Yeah, that sucks, but at least I get to walk DOWNhill to go retrieve it."

That's right, I just compared myself to a mythical figure and declared myself the better man.  This is the mind that brings you these blog entries.