From Creampuff to Marginally Able

My sparing efforts at building my strength are paying off.

I decided to try adding one resistance exercise to my life. This was several weeks ago. I knew I would never go to a gym again or do long workouts or do multiple sets of anything. I wanted something sustainable. It was okay with me if I never maxed out my potential. I am old. I just want to be pretty strong as well as resistant to injury, and lifting also improves cardiovascular health and strengthens the skeleton.

I did a bit of research, and I learned something I should have realized long ago: there is no fitness industry. There is a vanity industry for men who want to look good to other men.

I exaggerate, but I won’t retract what I said. I learned that nearly everyone who gives “fitness” advice involving weights is really giving muscle-bulking advice for guys who want other men to admire them. It’s kind of gay, really. The gurus constantly use the word “gains,” but it rarely refers to strength gains. It’s about having big, puffy show muscles that aren’t as strong as they should be.

I found out what I really needed was to lift very heavy weights no more than 5 times per set. When I was young and even more stupid, I was taught to lift 8-12 times, and that builds man-love muscles but doesn’t maximize strength.

If you look at competitive powerlifters, including the ones who use drugs, you will see that they don’t look like bodybuilders. They outperform bodybuilders without gaining useless mass or prancing around in locker rooms in their underwear taking creepy selfies.

Even powerlifters do things wrong. They lift to win at events involving very specific muscles. This isn’t the way to build the most functional strength. If you want to be able to lift furniture and carry luggage and so on, you should do exercises that involve more than one muscle group, because that’s what life involves. Otherwise, you end up with weird gaps in your strength.

I decided to do one exercise, which I made up. I put two dumbbells by my feet. I lift them to my waist using my legs and back. I curl them to my shoulders. I press them overhead. Then I do things in reverse.

This works pretty much every leg muscle. It builds up my back, arms, and deltoids. It’s supposedly good for my core, which is what you use to do things in real life when not wearing tiny, shiny thong panties and competing for trophies while smeared with oil.

I started out with horrible form, swinging the weights and whatever else is bad, but I did not care. I figured the weaker muscles would catch up with the stronger ones, and from then on, I would be okay. This has turned out to be true for the most part. I will never be able to give my back and legs a real challenge with dumbbells I can press over my head, but my arms are catching up to my deltoids and pectorals and whatever else I use to press dumbbells.

I am not Charles Atlas. I started out with two 42.5-pound dumbbells, which is not impressive, and I am still using the same weight. I went from three terrible reps to 4 pretty good ones.

It doesn’t sound like much of a routine, but I am not the same person I was. I don’t make old man noises when I bend over to pick things up. Things feel lighter. Squatting is no longer something I think of as dangerous or a major challenge.

I have continued researching, and I was told I should use my legs and back to toss the dumbbells up to shoulder level, reducing the awkward strain on my back. This is safer, supposedly, and it produces something called explosive strength, which doesn’t sound good but allegedly is. So now I’m exploding, as instructed.

I use dumbbells because they give a better workout. A barbell does a lot of the work for you, just as a machine does. If you can press 200 pounds over your head on a bar, don’t even begin to think you can do it with dumbbells.

Also, dumbbells are cheap and easily stowed, and they don’t require a bench.

I considered getting something called a trap or hex bar, which has a big back-and-knee-sparing loop you stand inside, but they’re not as effective as dumbbells, and they take up room.

Now that I’ve found one quick, productive exercise I like, I am considering adding two more: deadlifts and squats. Sort of.

My understanding is that unless you use a straight barbell, you’re not doing real deadlifts and squats. There are other names for what you’re doing. Anyway, I am considering doing similar exercises with the biggest dumbbells possible. Weights I will never be able to lift over my head. This should make my back and legs strong and help me make it through old age without spine issues, broken hips, and knee problems.

Oddly, dumbbells like the ones I have are cheap, but big ones are very expensive, whereas fairly heavy barbells and weights are less expensive than huge dumbbells.

Based on what other people are doing, I think there is no way I will ever need more than 200 pounds per dumbbell. I doubt I’ll even get that far. I figure if I get dumbbells that hold 200 each, I will never have to replace them.

I would be amazed I ever needed 400 pounds of weight. If I manage to deadlift 200 pounds, total, I’ll be thrilled beyond description. I may be able to get up to 85 per side with the dumbbells I have, so I should be in no hurry to look for bigger ones.

Learning the truth about strength training has lowered my esteem for the human race to new levels. It should astonish us that men all over the world, overwhelmingly, are more concerned about looking good (to a limited population segment that likes that kind of thing) than being strong. Ordinarily, you would expect that kind of thing from women.

I love doing one set and quitting. This has been my MO for years, during the brief periods during which I have exercised. It works. I don’t like exercise. I hate the smell of a gym. It’s like smelling a big pile of underwear mixed with soured bologna. I don’t like that “two more sets to go” feeling. My goal is to keep my one-set philosophy and refrain from adding any more exercises than I have to.

Another great thing about strength training: you can do it twice a week and get results. I have been doing my little exercise three times most weeks, but the pros say it’s not necessary. They say two will work.

If they are right, I should be able to get 75% of the benefits of three-set exercises, working out about 30 minutes per week. That may sound bad to fanatics, but I prefer to compare the results to the results of doing nothing. By that standard, they look amazing.

Very few people exercise consistently all their lives. Arnold Schwarzenegger let himself go to the point where he had moobs and looked like he had never touched a weight, and he was only in his fifties. Sustainability is better than maximal results you can only maintain for two years.

I will be more than strong enough. I already am, for that matter. You don’t really need to be able to bench 350 pounds in order to get through life. A person who has no trouble with 150 is prepared for just about anything life will put in his way.

Not that I think benching is a good idea. I agree with the people who say it’s silly. How many situations require you to push things away from yourself with great force? Nearly none. On the other hand, my exercise simulates the exact type of task most men have to do over and over. Lift from ground to waist or chest.

Groceries. Luggage. Furniture. Fat babies. Packages. Appliances. You know I’m right.

Benching requires equipment that takes up half a living room, and it doesn’t do you much good. Besides, if I benched regularly, I would have a 50-inch chest in a year. I hit 48 in law school with limited machines. My chest blows up and leaves the rest of me behind. I would like to be able to fit in a jacket.

I will never take drugs. It’s amazing how many boys and men are on them now. The boys are stunting their height, making their hair fall out, and covering themselves with acne scars. The men are encouraging cancer, strokes, heart attacks, and joint and muscle destruction.

I guess I see at least one drug user every time I run errands. Yesterday I saw an obese bald guy who looked miserable and appeared to be on drugs. His arms looked swollen. They stuck out sideways over his gut. He swayed from side to side as he walked; I guess his thighs rubbed together. He had a pained expression as he walked. His mouth was open. What is the point of doing that to yourself?

I think the guy two houses down is on roids. He looked normal the first time I saw him. A couple of years back, he came out of his house, and he was grotesque. I couldn’t believe it was the same guy. He was bald, of course, with one of those creepy convict beards. Tattooed. Way too tan. Scary-looking. Pumped to the max. He must be pushing 60. I don’t know what possessed him.

Testosterone replacement is normalizing drug abuse among American men. Everybody wants to be big and intimidating, not that bodybuilding is in any way a martial art or helpful against people who can really fight. I’ll bet we see a wave of strokes, heart attacks, and cancers starting 5 years from now.

I would guess the guys on testosterone claim they don’t take drugs. Yeah, okay. Doctors call testosterone a drug, and so should you. Having enormous testosterone levels is not okay. Check out photos of the faces of men who take it.

Men claim they take it because they have medical issues. Yeah, they say that about weed, too. Kids in their twenties are taking testosterone, from doctors, and posting muscle photos. Guys who looked perfectly normal before they started.

Men always want people to think they’re naturally big and strong. Somehow they think it’s more impressive if it doesn’t come from a vial. I think they want people to think they’re genetically superior to everyone else. Has kind of a Nazi smell to it.

It reminds me of the story of the Chinese guy who sued his wife for not telling him about her plastic surgery. He married her, and they had kids who took after their pre-surgery mom. He was not pleased.

When I was in college, I lived on a crew floor, and some of the guys took steroids. How do I know? Well, there was a guy we called Mongo. He was loaded with muscle. Saw him a couple of years later, and he was smaller than I was. He was actually kind of a little guy. Explain that without drugs.

Another guy had legs like Earl Campbell. You could stick your hand in the ruts of his thigh muscles, not that anyone ever did, I hope. Our floor counselor was skinny in high school, and other kids beat him up and broke all his ribs. As a rower, he had biceps like honeydew melons. Not from rowing.

He ended up rowing for Puerto Rico in the Olympics. Yeah, that was legit.

I think a lot of testosterone users are letting quacks kill them slowly. “My doctor said it was okay, so TIME TO GET PUMPED!”

Go look at Alan Ritchson’s photos from his The Hunger Games days, and then look at his post-drug Reacher face. He admits he’s on testosterone. Somehow he has managed to lose body fat and end up with a puffy face. He looks constipated and crusty. His eyes look dead. He looks like he’s straining in the bathroom, to be graphic.

Still photos can be doctored, but I saw the show, and he looked very bad. Aged. Like his heart could stop at any minute. And he walked like his legs were glued together.

How is he going to come back from that? He can’t take that stuff forever. Sooner or later, he’ll have to get off the needle and go back to being a skinny guy with a 15″ neck, just like the new Dwayne Johnson, except even smaller. That’s not easy for everyone. Drug muscles are addictive.

When he was young, he was a slender guy who looked like the picture of health. His skin was very smooth. Now it looks like a gravel road.

Harvard Medical School says that when you take testosterone, your body stops making it. When you come off it, I guess you turn into Richard Simmons until you recover. And then you have whatever to-you unsatisfactory levels you had before you started.

I’m sure there is a legitimate use for testosterone therapy, like when you’ve had parts torn off in an industrial accident or you’ve been married to a feminist for 25 years, but as for elective users, I think any therapy that requires constant bloodwork and vigilant monitoring of one’s circulatory health is suspect.

I don’t think my level is a problem. I have tons of energy. I sleep well when my baby son allows it. I’m far from depressed. I am still fertile, or at least I was in early 2024. I respond to strength training. I don’t feel tempted to vote for liberals.

I want to be able to cope with life’s minor challenges. I want to get through this life without new joints or a back brace. I do not have to be super-strong to be satisfied, and I do not expect to look much better than I do right now. I think this is the best attitude.