On exercise

I have always done some sort of exercise. In the beginning, as kids, it starts as running around before we even really knew what the word meant. To me, it was called "play." It wasn't long, however, until I started making this more organized. Then, it was a hockey coach explaining conditioning drills that I, a little 8 year-old with sphaghetti legs on skates, would be doing. Soon came the much-dreaded running of junior high basketball tryouts, followed eventually by a few seasons on the court, mixed in later with high school football and rugby. Around that time, I also started hitting the weights, and have been doing so ever since.

After high school I decided that I should study sport and exercise. Now instead of concentrating on something else when I was running, I would be thinking about the formation of acid, anaerobic threshold, and mitochondrial activity. That does a fairly good job of taking the fun out of it. However, I carried on and eventually (thankfully) managed to forget those things while running or biking or whatever.

I have given various reasons for continuing to exercise. Don't want be fat, need to be in shape for my work, good for my bones, blah blah blah. But there is a more important reason, and even I was not consciously aware of it for a long time. I think I just became aware of it today.

I exercise because of how it makes me feel. Not because of how it makes me look. Not because it allows me to lift more or run faster or have less back pain. This is a real feeling - to me, exercise itself is a feeling. It no longer means a room. It does not have the connotations of a treadmill, or a vinyl weight bench. Not even a sidewalk or a dirt bike path. Those are no more exercise to me than a few strings tightened over a piece of wood are music. That is just a guitar, not music. It is the forming of those callouses on the fingers that move over those strings, the anguish hidden behind words in the lyrics, and their connection to someone listening that make music. In a similar sense, it is not even feet pounding on pavement or a laboured breath that make up exercise. It is the pain running up the legs that soon goes numb; the pull of ribs on lungs starving for air; the fact that the only one in control of whether or not to take the next step is you.

They say that people who exercise regularly, then stop, get depressed. I can see why. Medically, maybe it is because the body stops producing certain chemicals. But I don't think the reason is because you don't see weights moving up and down in front of you, or another lamp post move past you. Maybe it is the effect of those chemicals that I call this "feeling," I don't know. But this feeling is something I need every once in a while. When my body is screaming to stop, I want to know that I can still go. In fact, I think that is my favourite place to be: When everyone is around me has had enough, and I have too. Faces are flushed red, hands are on knees and breath cannot be recovered. I have been in this situation so many times. And I think I can see the true make of a man when he like this. Will he stand up straight and carry on, or will he turn away? When everything is gone, does he still have more? And when I crack a smile, will he put his head back down and concentrate on his breathing? Or will he smile too?