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Discovering muscles and the agony of Reps

This is a short one - 870 words. Born out of true anguish. And Reps. That dreaded thing called Reps.

There’s a Bermuda triangle in your body. It’s somewhere in your back, in a spot you cannot touch nor fathom. It’s the uncharted place which could very well be hosting an entire alien biosphere, for all you know.

Normally, you don’t think about. Unless, you pull a muscle there. Then you begin to wonder which of the five movements you did yesterday resulted in you pulling a muscle there.

Muscles 💪

Yeah, muscles. It’s the thing that Arnold spent most of his adult life nurturing. It’s also the thing you admire when Brad Pitt removes his shirt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I’ve seen muscles sell cars and deodorants. Muscles have dominated the world for a while now and yet, I don’t really think about them a lot.

It so happens that our body has hundreds of muscles - 600 to be exact. While I am sure all of them play a role, I am blissfully unaware of most of them. Most muscles are like a Gautham Menon movie. You know they exist but you don’t think about them at all unless something brings them to your attention. Am I saying that a new GM movie dropping is like you pulling a muscle? Maybe. You wonder how it happened? You aren’t sure if you did anything to deserve it?

And, maybe, you think about how you can make it go away. 

So why am I talking about muscles? I mean, I’ve always had a similar relationship to it as I would with a billion dollar sports car - something fancy that others had. 

The reason I am talking about it is I am reminded of their existence once in a while. Let me step back. 

A whole new universe 🌎

First we had electricity. Then we had diodes that emit light. We also had the internet. And smartphones. There was social media and messenger. And from all of this emerged something - a whole new universe.  

In this universe, well-toned women (and men) instruct you to do things with your muscles. An Alien comes to Earth and walks into a home. It sees humans doing strange dances and contortions in front of a light panel that seems to emit images. Naturally assuming the existence of some mind control technique, it begins seeking the alpha who controls all the humans through the tele-device.  

In any case, I am talking about fitness videos. I am not sure they scare aliens but they do scare the hell out of me. They are making me discover the existence of new muscles.

One direct consequence of the pandemic and N’s increasing zeal towards fitness is that through a combination of guilt, shame and the occasional self-motivation (rare, like an Elon Musk promise), I am become one of the mind-controlled. I stand before the TV and repeat what’s being instructed, sweaty, miserable and wondering about all the decisions (I am looking at you A1 chips) that led me to this point.

Reps 🔂

There are words that terrify me. Fascism. Purity. Infection. Reps.

Reps - short for repetitions, for we don’t want to tax our jaw muscles, do we - sounded innocuous, at first. But it’s the most insidious thing that I’ve seen in a long time. The premise is quite simple, really.

A well-toned instructor shows you some contortion. Often, by itself, it is fairly achievable. A little groan and a wince and I can get my body to do a reverse bug or spasm-ing dog or whatever they call it. 

Is this it? I am fit already.  

But then, the instructor tells you, often with a smirk, to repeat that another 20 times. This is when you really learn about exponential curves.

Reps 1 - 5: Like knife through butter. Your smugness is the size of a planet and steadily growing.

Reps 5- 10: You start feeling a little bit of the heat and with that comes the realization that your body disapproves of whatever’s happening to you. You ignore it, for the lady in the screen has told you exactly this would happen. 

Rep 11: You are feeling the prisoner-of-war vibes. Words like torture float through your mind. But you are also disgusted at your own softness, the lack of discipline of any kind. You hope to turn muscles that are custard to the consistency of a Gello. 

Rep: 13: Each rep feels like a monumental event from then on, similar to when Edmund Hillary first conquered the peak.

Rep 14: Impossible. And yet.

Rep 15: “Have people died doing reps?” and “Why is the room getting darker?”

Rep 16: You are mildly blacking out and some muscles have pulled a Kerala on you (gone on strike, that is).

Rep 17: You are a filthy pig drenched in your own sweat, your body in a shape that’s God most likely never intended for it to be and you are staring at the blank ceiling of your house. 

At that point it strikes you that you could just stop doing this.   

And for what its worth, the jaws have muscles too and I would much rather exercise them.

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Tyag