South City Confessions: Fitness after 40 is a different animal

Everything hurts, the will to do it lessens, and the expectation of what you were before never leaves.

Just stay in the ring.

I’ve long likened going to the gym and staying in shape to participating in the Royal Rumble wrestling event. Everyone’s favorite wrestler would be piled into the ring at the beginning of the pay-per-view bout, and the goal would be to not get thrown out of the ring. Last body standing sort of victory lap.

That’s how I’ve approached the gym and fitness in general for the past decade or two. Being the best or most ripped was never on the agenda, because I don’t have the time or discipline to pull off a Hemsworth or Gosling eight pack. Without personal chefs and trainers to go with the immortal need for more time, there’s just no way. I’d rather draw it on my stomach.

The goal has always been to stay in shape, and not become a shape.

Once you cruise past 40, it starts to become harder. Metabolism must be generated through activities instead of simply being readily available to help burn the bad food that you just ate. Watching what you eat becomes less of a joke, because that’s the bigger battle. Keeping tabs on your body is how most fitness journeys start, and the connection should never disconnect.

Pounding a Big Mac won’t match the workout you just did, unless you happened to burn 600-650 calories running around the building. I just knowingly eat a Big Mac afterwards while understanding it’s not a good idea. You must know what you’re doing with food in order for real gym results to follow. My “never gonna give you up but I definitely should” food habits revolve around fast food and candy. A doctor could be taking my order while shaking his head, and I’d only pause before taking my burger and fries back to my car to devour inside five minutes. I have to make that decision to stop, not the wise doctor. If everybody stopped eating bad food because their doctor told them to, the world be a lot skinnier place. We gotta throw down the gauntlet.

After a few months without a gym membership, I’m back in the building of sweat doing crunches, curls, lifts, and pulls of all kinds. Part of it has to do with that image notion: looking at strong and sexy as you want to look. I want to maintain the look I achieved over the past 5-10 years after running and consistent fitness merged into a single lane. That overall desire has lessened over the past year or two due to the redundancies of the practice and the new labor-intensive job. After lifting plumbing all day, lifting weights doesn’t exactly scream “good time” to me-but that’s where the mental part comes in. The repetition meter must be paid for the results to continue, something I’ve learned lately in uncomfortable ways.

For example, I love making my wife do a double take when I am doing something shirtless around the house; the same way she likes when I stop and take an extra gander at her body in mouth watering admiration. It’s clean motivation, my friends. We’re all looking for the right double take, though: the one where she is impressed with what she sees, not the one where she’s wondering who replaced her husband with the guy from softball field 9 at Forest Park. You want to satisfy yourself, but you need honesty from those closest around you to sometimes jumpstart the motor to get back in the fitness swing of things. Everybody needs that humbling; knowing how to take and handle it is something we all work on every day.

No, I’m not doing CrossFit (too expensive) or the Orange Theory matrix sweatbox (I need weights, not more sweat). I get and admire their appeal, but I’d rather hang out at a cable machine for 30-45 minutes instead toning the body and keeping things tight. All the hunk of flesh beneath your chin wants to do once you get into your 30s is revert to soft flab or less than muscly if you let it. Reaching 40 years of age just starts to speed things up while raising the difficulty of remaining consistent.

Yes, just going is a great goal. Yes, it’s still hard work. If I did it for a living like an athlete or movie star, it would still be hard but the combined ambition of making money would fuel the workouts. As a plumbing supply picker and delivery man, it helps but doesn’t come near required. I may be the only person in the building at Crescent who is stepping into a gym this week.

That’s where the mental part of it comes to the forefront. In some way, you need to want to be there-or it can seem like work or school. After being a part time workout guy and then a no gym guy, wanting to do it is merely growing off the ground as we speak. I still dread going due to the redundancy and my bigger lack of desire to try something else, but that wall comes down with time and repetition.

You’ll go because you like the way it makes you look, but also due to how it makes you feel. Don’t let anyone kid you. Being told by people that you’re looking great is a delight. When people take notice, it’s a huge mood boost, especially if it’s genuine and not forced. Having it back in my life doesn’t exactly come off as a “right when I thought I was finished, they pull me back in” expression, but more like a challenge.

The challenge to recapture what I had before, and then maintain it. More abs and less Swedish fish. More presses and less fries. Keep it simple. Stay in the ring.

Stay in shape, and don’t become a shape. Planet Fitness is a quieter gym with less noisy asshats (a siren goes off if you drop a weight), doesn’t have a mirror everywhere to catch the most unflattering angle, and is fairly cheap. It’s also where the old Kenrick theater used to be on Watson, so there’s nostalgia too.

In order to keep the boring yet rather painful rigors of exercise after 40 at bay, a little nostalgia and a simple yet direct mentality are required.