The Fitness Guru

More inspiration for a beautiful Saturday!!

I sat down this morning, having finished off my oatmeal with flaxseed and spiralina shake, with a cup of shade grown, free- trade Guatemalan coffee, ready to write a piece about the nature of bipartisanship in the fitness world. “Oh, can’t we all live together in harmony?”, I thought, “the P90Xers and the Perfect Push-Upists, the Scarsdale Dieters and the Fat Flushers? Can’t we take a page from the noble book of our politicians and all sit together at the table and learn how to work as a group to better humanity?” Yes, not all is right in the political world. Yes, the give and take is still slightly….what is the term?…….out of whack. But, hey, at least “bipartisanship” is a searchable term now.

I sat down to write all of this but before I could even start, I was Twittered. Tweeted. Twitted. For those of you not in the know, Twitter is the next Facebook, which was, of course, the next MySpace. With Twitter, individuals can update their “followers” on the goings-on in their lives. Perpetual status information. It would be hard not to know a little something about Twitter as it seems that their PR people are working over time to have articles published in as many magazines and newspapers as possible.

But this Twit was not from their PR department. This was Lance Armstrong. I follow Lance for absolutely no reason other than to see what events he considers update worthy. In this case, it was the theft of his $10,000 bicycle. Yup, $10K. The bike was apparently stolen right out of the back of a van during the grueling Tour de California.

For those of you who don’t pay such close attention to Lance, this was the second time in a week that he hit a speed bump in his pursuit of yet another Tour de France title. The first bump came last week when it was announced that he would not be submitting himself for rigorous drug testing throughout his training period. Huh? I thought that the whole point of his comeback was that he was going to prove that he was the exceptional athlete and that drugs had not played a part in any of his victories. He had hired a very well known doctor who was going to keep track of his test results and even go so far as to post the results on the web. But apparently, the testing was pretty darn expensive and even if the results were posted, Lance and his team worried that the information would be a little too complex for us to understand. So, forget the testing. It was a bother anyway. Let’s get on with some good old fashioned bicycle racing.

The Tour of California is especially unpleasant at the moment: rain, cold, windy, yuck. Couple that with having to deal with a flat tire and Lance ended up with an especially unpleasant ride. Again from Twitter: “”Maybe one of the toughest days I’ve had on a bike, purely based on the conditions. I’m still freezing.” So when I got the Tweet that the bike was gone, I became a little suspicious. I’m a child of the Watergate era so it doesn’t take too much for me to start to see some sort of conspiracy. As much as I wanted to see Lance traveling around the country searching for his bike, I was left with the feeling that it is some sort of ploy.

Come on. We have all had that time that we went to the gym only to realize that we left our sneakers at home. Yeah, it’s a bummer, but deep down there is the little cry of “yes!” as you realize that you won’t have to work this time. You have your excuse.

Is the loss of his bike more deception on the road to his Return To Greatness? Probably not. Probably some 12-year old clepto is delivering papers with a pretty jacked up ride. Will he find the bike? I vote no but I could be wrong.

In the end, more than anything, I’m bummed because we are still without a hero. Boy, could we use a hero. President Obama was elected as a hero, but I think we all understand that, with what he is up against, heroism is relative. We’ve got A-Rod spiking himself and poor little Michael Phelps got getting nailed doing bong hits (author’s note: why are you punishing him by giving him more time with nothing to do? Don’t you think a better punishment would be longer hours of training and practice? Is time away from the sport, camped out on his sofa watching reruns of Tool Academy, really going to teach him a lesson?). Lance has dropped the ball that he never really possessed. He had the chance to prove his abilities and the bring back an edge of nobility to a sport that has been put through the ringer. Not him. Not this time around.

Any nominations for a new hero we can celebrate?

Whaddaya mean, A-Rod’s on the juice?!? Sure, baseball’s quarter billion dollar, Madonna-loving power hitter, the supposed greatest player to ever play the game, is now coming forward with his little mea culpa that, sure, once upon a time, he used steroids, but he is honestly sorry about the whole dang thing. Boy, that makes me feel a lot better. One friend of mine suggested that the situation isn’t such a problem because baseball has been steeped in a fine tradition of cheating for decades: players have always sought the unfair advantage and this is one opportunity for them to do it again. Why does that logic make me feel even slimier?

A-Roid Rage

Here we are in an age when cutting corners and trying to unfairly scamper to the high ground have gotten us all, the world community, in a peck of trouble. Look at all the financial scandals, from the Madoffs to the sub-prime mortgage fiascos—in the end, its all steroids that people were taking in order to achieve their own short term goals. A-Rod, like Barry Bonds, probably would have made the Hall of Fame on the talents that the good Lord gave him. But he had to go and stick himself with a needle to bump that batting average just so, and with that bump, came a paycheck that is mind-boggling. Without the juice, he may have made only eight figures over the span of his career, but with the juice, HA HA, nine figures are his. Would it be right to say that he should be left with eight figures and no chemical advantage over the other players?

And I don’t even care about A-Rod. He is a fascinating case study but if he were relegated to the back page of the Post for the rest of eternity, I wouldn’t blink. My problem is the message: if you take the juice, you can excel and have fame and fortune in professional sports. And so thousands of kids—KIDS—kick back and figure “hey, if A-Rod can do it, I can do it too.” And they start taking steroids because they believe that its ok and that it is actually part of the game. And that is a huge problem.

The steroids become part of the belief that there is a short cut to success. Happiness is in a bottle. Can’t run fast enough. Try this bottle. Can’t lose the weight? Try this bottle. And in an already physically unhealthy society where two out of every three adults are overweight or obese, we are turning to bottles to make us even unhealthier because they promise quick results.

I woke up this morning to the news release that powerful diuretics were found in over the counter “natural” weight loss supplements. These are very potent drugs and they were added to “nutritional supplements” that you can by at any local vitamin store. The diuretics help you lose weight, sure, but the consequences can be very serious. And across the Atlantic, British researchers announced that seven minutes of exercise are the bare minimum needed per week to stay healthy (so long as those seven minutes are strenuous.)

Come on!! Shoot me now!! Do we really need that?

The researchers would probably say, “We are trying to impress on people that would ordinarily not exercise that the minimum of effort necessary is quite simple to accomplish. Therefore, we are helping the population to become healthier.”

I say there are too many people who believe that there is quick way out, a fast, painless answer akin to A-Rod taking a syringe in the butt on his way to a $250MM contract, and research like this will keep these people from going out and discovering a healthier lifestyle.

It’s moronic and frustrating.