I used to be addicted to Altoids. It was the early 90s. I was a smoker and I did not feel that chewing gum was really doing the trick to get rid of my post-cigarette yuck mouth. I would go through two or three tins a week. At one point, when I cleaned my terrifyingly filthy room, I found over fifty of them. I wish that I had a cool story of how I made them into some kind of amazing art project, but all I did was throw them into a now very clanky garbage bag.
I had first had Altoids when I was a sophomore in high school. My friend Robin let me have one in Psych class and I thought that I had eaten a match flame. It really burned! And they had an intense peppermint flavor that I found highly unpleasant. I did not exactly run out to buy any. In fact, I had kind of forgotten about them until my senior year when I went from a kid who smoked some times to a full-fledged smoker. Neither of my parents are smokers, and my whole life I had been revolted by the smell of cigarettes. And the breath of smokers—dis-gus-ting. I would surreptitiously chew the fluorescent green Extra gum, but high school teachers are fanatical gum prohibitionists, and I felt that it really wasn’t doing the trick anyway. So I sought sterner stuff. I remembered the eye-watering power of Altoids. I bought a tit; at first I felt that I had made an error, there was no way that I would learn to love the fiercely minty taste. But much like smoking, one day I was hooked.
What does all of this have to do with push-ups?
In addition to their powerful taste, Altoids have quite a memorable advertising slogan:
"The Original Celebrated Curiously Strong Mints"
And jaunty print ads that celebrate how curiously strong they are:
In contrast, I am shockingly weak. Due to my considerable heft my legs are strong, but not impressively so. I can squat and leg press in the moderately high ranges, but any gym rat over 150 lbs. could probably beat my numbers easily. My bench press is not just shockingly bad, it is hilariously bad. I am not actually sure how bad, because it has been so long since I tried to lift weights, but I think that I bench about what I did in seventh grade now, which was again—shockingly weak. I picked this challenge because I wanted something that would show a marked improvement over a year. When you are as weak as I am, there is nowhere to go but up.
Everytime I have hired a personal trainer or joined a gym has been a horrible, expensive mistake. No matter the gender they always take one look at me and decide that I will be the audition tape they send to The Biggest Loser. I’m not a person, but a project. The world will see their amazing powers of motivation and kinesiology when I am transformed into a lean, mean, fighting machine. They see my size and immediately start overworking me. They don’t bother to find out my base level of fitness, which is terrifyingly poor, but just crank up the intensity until I get injured. I never work out with them again. I come back to the gym a few times, hoping that I’m there on the trainer’s day off. Maybe I’ll use the treadmills, but I avoid the weights altogether. I’m embarrassed, angry, and ashamed. Eventually I stop going. I cancel the membership (or as is more often the case) tell my bank to stop payment on that debit. I’m in no better shape, and now my knee has a weird click that won’t go away for six months.
This has happened several times, so I think that I must be the problem. I do not know how to speak up for myself and tell them that I cannot perform at the level that they have set. That although I am lazy at a cellular level, laziness is not why I cannot exercise at that intensity. That my spirit is willing, but my body is—repeat it with me—shockingly weak. But it doesn’t have to be that way forever.
Of my ten challenges, three of them are related to physical fitness, and this is the one that I feel most confident in my ability to succeed at, and I predict, long before any other of my projects. Big talk, I know, especially when at present I can only do two push-ups, count ‘em up—2 push-ups—II push-ups.
But this is where technology comes to the rescue. I purchased a fitness app bundle the other day, and one of the apps is an app specifically for reaching 100 push-ups in a two month-period. Now, even if I take five times as long to complete this challenge, I will be well on my way to 100 pushups before a year has elapsed. The app does not take into account my extremely weak arms; it starts with me needing to complete twelve push-ups on the first day.
12 - 2 = 10 more push-ups than I can currently do
Don’t worry, I have a solution:
I do as many push-ups as possible at first, then make up the rest with wall push-ups
When I can do 100 wall push-ups in on sitting, I will start the program over with knee push-ups
When I can do 100 knee push-ups at a time, I will restart the program doing full push-ups
Following this plan, I will achieve my goal in about six months. And if I need to modify it down again, I should still be able to complete the goal in eight or nine months, which is still a huge win.
As always, wish me luck.
A tiny little progress report:
I have been playing guitar left-handed for about a week now, and it is incredibly frustrating to be as bad at something that I had at least some ability in before. I will have a new video of me playing tomorrow—hopefully this time I won’t be standing a pool of darkness. I feel like I improving on certain things like picking and strumming, but regressing on chords. Have I mentioned that my fingers hurt?!
I have been taking an online drawing course for about a week. I also started a class in painting and drawing at the park by my house. The Chicago Park District gives high quality arts and craft instruction for a very reasonable price. My eight week class cost only $32 and is free for senior citizens. Yay, Socialism! I went to my first class on Monday, and there are only four of us students. I am the only man and the only one in the class who has to pay full. I really like the instructor, Stephanie and my classmates are a delight. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
I don’t have any progress reports for the other skills yet. At least not progress that can be seen.
Thank You,
Jeremy
Contact me: jeremydnichols@gmail.com