proteanme

Right now, I’m in a squat off with my friend BH. She texts me, SQUAT, and I get up from my desk and do 30 squats. My bike thighs are already starting to give way. I’m hoping the squats will salvage them, at least kind of. Right now we doing 4 sets, so 120 total squats. My plan is to increase our sets by 1 a week until we are at 10 sets of 30 or 300 squats.

My other friend, MD, has workout flash cards, illustrating all sorts of body weight exercises. Core strength is what they are currently into. Tonight, on our Zoom hang out, we talked about V-ups for a good 5 minutes .

Most days, MTB does hot yoga in the back room of our house, courtesy a space heater turned on high. Sadly, her online yoga class often freezes up We have a bandwidth issue and often at the same time she is doing yoga, I’m video conferencing for work. We tried to upgrade our internet connection, but that would mean some dude coming into our house to hook us up with a new modem. No thanks.

When we went to Target a couple of weeks ago, we’d been hoping to score a jump rope and some 20 lb barbells, but the workout and fitness aisles were almost laid bare. All that was left were some 3 lb weights, an exercise ball and a couple of yoga mats. It was unexpected. And the unexpectedness felt jarring.

I bought some new running shoes. I’ve had them for a week. So far all I’ve done in them is march up and down a single step stool for a half hour while watching episodes about Gwenyth Paltrow’s horrible Goop enterprise. But the weather has been crap. Cold and rainy, and I’m not going to start up running until the sun comes back out.

I can’t tell, am I newly interested in body or trying to keep my anxiety and depression at bay? Am I dabbling with some magical thinking that fitness is going to protect me or that fitness proves I’m ok? I think all of it’s true. And in the absence of testing, my fitness is a sign to me, that today, I’m ok.