Bruce Vain

Weightlifting has become very popular in recent years. People head to the gym on their lunch hour to work out, or stop by on the way home to “pump iron” and “get that championship form” while “trying to avoid a hernia.”

Having nothing better to do one day, I called my friend and personal trainer, Phineas Farnbottom III, to ask him about this fad.

“It’s bad, very bad,” he said in answer to my question.

I asked him why.

“You watch anybody who is trying to lift a heavy weight – say an air conditioner, or a refrigerator, or a car,” he said. “They’re straining, making horrible faces. Nothing that makes you look like that can be good for you. Plus, if your wife sees you moving stuff like that around the house, she’ll get the idea you want to work and ask you to paint the den.”

I explained that I wasn’t referring to lifting just any weight, but the actual sport of weightlifting.

“Oh,” he said. “Well, that’s bad too. If you become big and strong and healthy, you have no reason not to paint the den. You can’t say you don’t feel like visiting her mother, either.”

I asked him about the health benefits. Could weightlifting be beneficial to your health?

“Well, I suppose from a purely physical standpoint, it is good for you,” he said. “But if you do it too much, you could become exhausted, and that could be very expensive.”

How’s that?

“Let’s say you’ve just bench-pressed 300 pounds,” he said, and then he started laughing. “Okay, no, let’s don’t say that. Let’s say somebody who had a snowball’s chance in hell of bench-pressing 300 pounds actually bench-pressed 300 pounds. I shouldn’t put ‘you’ in that sentence.

“Anyway, let’s say they got the weight up, and now they’re so tired from doing it they fall asleep while they’re still holding it. The plastic surgery alone could cost thousands of dollars.”

So is there any good reason to get involved in weightlifting?

“Well, you could get girls,” he said. “In truckloads.”

To make this essay complete, and to give you, the reader, the most comprehensive coverage of the latest sports trends, I determined that it was necessary for me to experience this weightlifting phenomenon.

Truckloads of girls had nothing to do with it. Never even crossed my mind.

I went to a local, hole-in-the-wall gym for my first weightlifting workout. You should never go to a health club or one of those fancy fitness places to pump iron. They have instructors who will tell you exactly what you’re doing and how to do it, thereby removing almost all risk of injury. Half the fun of working out is hurting some new part of your body and then complaining about it later. Plus, it gives you an excuse to skip your next workout.

The first thing you’re supposed to do is make sure your hands aren’t slippery. Don’t want the weights to slip, right? You de-slipperify your hands by putting white powder on them. The problem with the powder is you forget it’s on there after about thirty seconds and scratch yourself in a male region. For the rest of the time you’re in the gym, it looks like you’ve been groped by Edward Talcumhands.

The next thing you’re supposed to do is walk around, swing your arms, and grunt at people. At least, that’s what everyone else there was doing. I tried that for a while, but I got scared when some of the guys there started grunting back. Between the grunting and the white brand on my crotch, I was afraid I was initiating some bizarre weightlifter’s mating ritual. Plus, I didn’t know what proper weightroom etiquette was after the grunting stage of a relationship had been reached, so I just kept to myself after that.

Picking the proper “station” (weightroom talk for “place with a lot of heavy metal plates lying around”) to work out on is vital. Never go to the one that all the really large men hang around. They can all press or lift or endure roughly 5,000 percent more than you can. This makes you look bad, especially if you forget to change the weights after they leave and you get trapped underneath them when you try to pick them up. Luckily, a very nice man lifted the weights off me. He also complimented me on my handprint.

I’m fairly certain we’re engaged now.

Another key point: No matter how much weight you lift, always grunt like a grizzly bear giving birth when you do it. That way, the people who can’t see how much weight you’re lifting will think you’re straining tremendously, striving with every fiber of your being to be the best you can be.

So those are the tips I gleaned from my experience at the gym. No, wait, there’s one more I almost forgot: Wash your gym shorts before you get home, because your wife will NOT believe you when you say “It’s just powder from when I accidentally scratched myself before lifting heavy weights.”

All in all, though, the best advice I can give you about weightlifting is to lie down when the urge hits and wait till it passes. You’ll save yourself a lot of pain and embarrassment. Plus, you’ll be well-rested when your wife makes you paint the den.

bhamv

Nice, sounds like a Dave Barry article. Is it Dave Barry?

Bruce Vain

Nope, that's an original, but I get that comparison a lot -- I like Dave Barry's stuff, and much of mine tends to mirror his.

After I posted it here, I realized it might not fit exactly within the parameters of the board. If so, my apologies.

Redlemon

It certainly is funny. TFP Humor is generally for things that people have stolen from other sources or gathered through email forwards. You might want to PM a moderator to have this thread moved to TFP Literature, which is for original work.

I'll agree that it was Barry-ish, but also has something that makes it yours, not his. I look forward to more, if you want to share.

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I can't read your signature. Sorry.

Brewmaniac

I'm impressed with your writing, keep it up!

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"That's a joke... I say, that's a joke, son"

Bruce Vain

Well, thanks. I've posted a number of essays in other places on the 'net, but this is my first foray here.

bhamv

Whoa, hey, didn't want to sound like I was accusing you of plagiarizing Dave Barry or anything. Didn't know you wrote this yourself.

I like it though, you should write and post more.

Bruce Vain

No biggie. It's flattering that you'd make that comparison.

Thanks!