If you have a basement gym, you might as well use it

Over the last year, I've gotten a lot of mileage here on the blog posting about my adventures at the gym.

I was never a weight lifter until May 2024, when Elissa and Mark bought me four sessions with a trainer named Kirk at Ohio Sports & Fitness (OSF) in Willoughby, Ohio. My knowledge and enjoyment of strength training really blossomed under Kirk's guidance, and I enjoyed working out with him twice a week almost without fail for 13 full months.

As of a month ago, however, I no longer go to OSF, nor is Kirk serving as my trainer. This has nothing to do with the gym or with Kirk. The facility is great with a lot of friendly and very helpful people. As for Kirk, what can I say? He's an amazing personal trainer whose extensive knowledge blends well with his positive personality.

He's a good egg, that Kirk.

No, my disengagement from the gym has nothing to do with them. It was simply a decision I made several weeks ago when I decided I needed to free up some time in my otherwise hectic life (something I mentioned this past Monday in an egregiously gratuitous game show-related post).

One of the changes I made in my routine was to shift the site of my twice-a-week strength training to our house rather than an outside gym.

It turns out we have a pretty nicely equipped gym in the back room of our basement, thanks to the efforts of my son Jared. When we still lived with us and was really into lifting, he stocked that room with everything you really need to build muscle.

That includes two adjustable weight benches, a rack for bench pressing, a barbell and various weight plates, a full assortment of dumbbells, a machine for hamstring curls and quad extensions, and a bunch of other stuff I won't even list here, all placed on a series of heavy-duty rubber horse mats.

For the longest time I felt guilty I wasn't taking advantage of this nice exercise setup located right in my own home. Now I do.

I admittedly miss Kirk, and I miss the atmosphere at OSF, but so far this change has been for the better. It cuts significant time off my morning routine, and it doesn't involve any sort of membership or personal training fees.

It also helps that my strength training goals are relatively modest. I'm not looking to bulk up or anything. Really, all I want is to maintain what I have in an attempt to stave off age-related muscle loss.

The Tennant Gym is more than equipped to help me do that.

Now if only I could get a machine for the basement that makes me not want to eat cake all the time...

The long, long days I wouldn't trade for anything

It was a pretty typical Tuesday in mid-June, if a somewhat exhausting one.

Up before 5am, get dressed for the gym, have some coffee and do my New York Times puzzles, then head out for a lower-body workout with trainer Kirk.

Lift, grunt, suffer a little. Legs feel like jelly, but I get through it.

Head home. Shower and dress as quickly as I can, then hop in the car for the 15-minute ride to the office. Resting on the passenger seat (and the floor) next to me are my laptop, my lunch, my PA announcing bag, and a separate bag with a change of clothes.

Get to the office, go right into meetings. Rip through my to-do list as best I can over 9 hours.

At the end of the day, I head to the men's room, lock myself in a stall and change into more casual clothes in preparation for announcing that night's Lake County Captains baseball game.

I get to Classic Auto Group Park two hours early to prep. Go through lineups, pronunciation guides and game scripts. Put my pregame and in-game reads in order in the thick three-ring binder handed to me by Jason, the Captains' game operations manager. He's good at what he does and very funny, but he also runs a tight ship. We all want our game production to go as well as it can.

As game time approaches, I exhort the fans in the stands to get loud as I read the Captains' starting lineup with all the energy I can muster.

The game itself goes pretty well. I don't miss a cue, and there's good chemistry between me and Liv, the talented on-field host.

After the last out, I pack up my stuff and head back to the car. I get home a little after 10pm. I brought my dinner to the ballpark and already ate, so I jump right into the shower.

Once I'm out, I move to the kitchen to pack my lunch for the next day. Then I shave, brush my teeth and climb into bed. I've been texting Terry throughout the day, but we chat for a few minutes and catch up on our lives.

By 11pm we turn out the lights. I plan to walk my normal 2.3-mile loop first thing in the morning, so I won't get more than 6 or 6 1/2 hours of sleep. That really isn't enough, but it's something I accept. I'll catch up tomorrow evening.

This can all be a little tough on my 55-year-old body, but here's the thing: I choose to do it. I control my schedule, and I love it all.

It is maybe the ultimate freedom to be able to determine how your days are spent. I have a job I really enjoy. I have the ability to exercise and take care of my body four mornings a week. And I have a supportive spouse who allows me to pursue my PA announcing passion on many an evening (more than 100 events a year).

There are ups and downs, of course. Some days feel better than others. My mood fluctuates like anyone else's, often because I fail to be grateful for everything I have.

Still, it's all perfect. Or maybe "perfectly flawed" is a better way of saying it, because problems and issues still come thick and heavy. But they're only so bad.

After a day like this, I worry whether I'll have the energy to pop out of bed the next morning and do it again.

One way or another, though, I always do.

I couldn't begin to ask for more.

Here's what I've noticed about going to the gym: Everything is heavy

"Yeah, that's the idea," you probably said to yourself upon reading the headline of today's post. But hear me out.

I know the point of weightlifting is to move heavy things around in an attempt to build strength. You're supposed to make your muscles fail, thereby breaking them down and allowing them to rebuild themselves bigger and stronger.

And the only way to make them fail is to lift heavy objects.

Yet there's a difference between "heavy" and "HEAVY."

Like, the first set of everything I do is "heavy." By the time I get to the last rep, I'm working hard to get that weight into the air (or out to my side or whatever the movement calls for). But it's not to the point that I've lost the will to live.

That's not the case when I'm dealing with "HEAVY" weights. These are generally the types of weights my trainer Kirk will give me when I'm working out under his tutelage.

We'll be doing, say, a dumbbell incline bench press exercise. He'll walk over to the dumbbell rack and select two that are, for him, not a problem to move, but that are, for me, at least a small problem to move.

He'll hand me the dumbbells, I'll lean back on the bench, and I'll proceed to lift them 10, 12 or 15 times, however many reps he tells me to do. The last few reps are decidedly uncomfortable, and my earnest desire is for the set to end so I can go back to the mostly comfortable lifestyle to which I'm accustomed.

But then we'll proceed to a second set, and this time Kirk will hand me a Volkswagen or a small elephant and tell me to lift it about the same number of times.

I'm not speaking literally, of course, but he inevitably picks large dumbbells of the kind I normally associate with Mr. Universe contestants and that one women I see every day at the gym who is way stronger than me.

Even if/when I successfully complete this new and decidedly unfair task, Kirk will keep handing me larger and larger objects to lift. It's as if he's playing a practical joke of which he and all the rest of the gym-goers are aware, and I'm serving as a source of endless amusement for them.

I know what my face looks like when I'm really struggling to get a weight into the air, and I'm sure it's hilarious if you're just standing there watching. I also start to contort my body in a way that undoubtedly defeats the purpose of the exercise but also makes me feel like I'm making some progress toward lifting the 4-ton anvil Kirk has given me.

When we get to the heaviest weights, I'm quickly beyond caring whether I live or die. All I know is that existence = suffering and the only way I will make it through is to perform the prescribed number of reps, whatever it takes. This is when I know we have reached the level of "HEAVY."

And, if you'll pardon my language, it really sucks.

Then, suddenly, without me realizing it, my 1-hour session with Kirk is over. He gives me a fist bump, tells me I did a good job, and walks with me back into the gym lobby.

I collect my things from the changing room and head out to my car, noting that while my arms are fatigued to the point I simply cannot lift them over my head any longer, I have logged another workout. Victory.

The next day I am sore. And weak. My daily creatine powder helps, but there's a certain level of muscle fiber breakdown my 55-year-old body simply cannot overcome without the passage of at least a few days.

Yet there I am back at the gym soon after, sometimes the very next day to work on another part of my body while the first part tries desperately to repair itself. This cycle of suffering ends only if I die or decide to give up lifting, which in the eyes of the gym rats around me is kind of the same thing.

So back I go. It's hard knowing that while "heavy" is at least manageable, "HEAVY" is the only way I'm going to get better at this.

And worst of all? I'm paying both Kirk and the gym owner Frank for this suffering.

It always bears repeating: No one ever said I was a genius.

I go to the gym to experience regular doses of misery...and that's OK

I'm not sure "misery" is even the right word, but there's no doubt my most productive gym workouts involve bursts of discomfort.

Like, for example, leg days often include walking lunges. I carry a dumbbell in each hand and take elongated steps from one end of the gym to the other, then I turn around and lunge my way back to where I started.

If done correctly, this exercise makes my hamstrings, quadriceps and calves burn. And my legs invariably feel like jelly for some time after I finish.

But then I do another set. And another. And usually another.

The same holds true for any exercise. When it comes to strength training, if you can comfortably perform a particular movement, you either need to add more resistance or more repetitions to make it more challenging.

Or both.

While I am in no way a workout veteran (I'm still adapting from being a runner/walker to being primarily a lifter), I have learned to "embrace the suck," as someone put it.

In other words, there not only have to be times when you say to yourself, "Man, this is no fun at all," you also have to figure out how to enjoy that feeling.

I'm getting better and better at it.

I go to the gym five times a week. Two of those sessions are done under the supervision of my trainer Kirk, while the other three are entirely on my own.

It never fully escapes my notice during those solo sessions that, should I choose to put down the weights and walk out of the gym at any point mid-workout, no one would stop me. Nor would/should anyone even notice or care.

I am 100% responsible for my own motivation and for pushing myself to muscle failure, which is the point where you really benefit physically from weightlifting.

While I've never actually quit in the middle of a workout, early on I found myself backing off effort-wise when things got tough. I might do fewer repetitions than prescribed, or I might ignore proper form in favor of just getting the weight into the air.

But as I've built physical strength these past 5+ months, I've also built mental strength. I continue to need Kirk to set my workouts and ensure I'm performing exercises correctly, but I don't need him there in person for my one-man workouts to be beneficial.

I am slowly learning to embrace the suck, a point I never thought I would reach.

The application to life outside of the gym is readily apparent. Whatever you do, the only way to get better is to apply yourself in a way that's not always going to be enjoyable. "No pain, no gain" has some truth to it, though it doesn't necessarily have to hurt.

It just needs to be uncomfortable for you. Sometimes very uncomfortable.

I find myself these days with more muscle on my frame than I ever had (or thought I had) when I played football as a high schooler, but the real benefit for me to this point has been mental.

I just wish it hadn't taken me more than a half-century to learn.

The temptation, when you're trying to be healthy, is to eat the same things over and over, day after day

When I started working with my personal trainer Kirk a month or two ago, he mentioned that I should be eating roughly half my body weight in grams of protein every day.

I weighed a little over 200 pounds at the time, so the goal was about 100 grams of protein a day.

I was actually already getting much closer to this amount than I realized, but because I am so goal-oriented, I immediately leapt into action to ensure I would exceed those 100 grams.

I added Greek yogurt and low-fat cottage cheese (both solid sources of protein) to my diet. I also began drinking a protein shake a day, and I changed out my leafy green lunchtime salads in favor of turkey breast sandwiches.

Mission accomplished. I've probably been averaging 150 grams of protein, which is a good thing when you're regularly strength training and trying to build muscle.

The problem is that, having enjoyed success with this regimen, I'm sticking with it through thick and thin.

My dinners vary, but my breakfast, lunch and snacks are all the same every day.

The food choices are healthy, but I know I need more variety. Consuming essentially the same thing on a daily basis almost inevitably means I'm eventually going to fall short on my intake of certain vitamins and minerals.

Or at least I believe that to be true. I haven't consulted a nutritionist about it.

The point is, healthy eating should not be formulaic eating. I've not gotten sick of anything in my new diet to this point, but I'm also depriving myself of the joy of variety and experimentation.

I will have to fix that.

I just so relish the feeling of accomplishment when I get to check the box on my daily to-do list that says, "Eat 100 grams of protein."

♪ ♫ Everything hurts! Everything hurts! ♫ ♪

My wife is both an active person and someone in her mid-50s. Sometimes these two realities clash, particularly when she engages in high-intensity yardwork or certain home projects.

The result is soreness felt across her entire body. She even made up a song to describe this feeling, the complete lyrics to which are contained in the headline of today's post.

"Everything hurts! Everything hurts!"

It's just those two words sung over and over to an incongruently happy little tune. I used to laugh when she sang it, in a way that only someone not suffering from full-body discomfort can laugh.

That is, until I started strength training. Suddenly, I understood the deep meaning of the "Everything Hurts!" song in ways I didn't fully anticipate.

As I mentioned last week, I have (finally) begun to lift weights, something I should have started doing years ago. I do it under the tutelage of my trainer, Kirk. Well, sometimes I do it under Kirk's guidance, and sometimes I do it on my own.

Either way, I'm currently in the stage where I go the gym and work out, and anywhere from 12-24 hours later, my muscles hurt.

Part of this comes from being an older Gen Xer like my wife, and part of it is apparently the unavoidable consequence of activating muscle fibers that have lain dormant for many years.

My daughter Melanie, an avid gym-goer and someone in excellent shape, warned me this would happen.

"For about two months, it's going to be bad," she told me at the outset of my strength training journey. "Then you'll get to the point where it's way more enjoyable and sometimes you can't wait to get to the gym and lift."

I'm going to take her word for it on that last bit.

Actually, I already like the workouts themselves just fine. I love breaking a sweat, and I appreciate the work Kirk and I do on achieving proper form for each exercise.

It's the aftermath that gets me.

Hours after my first leg day last month, for example, Jack and I drove to Toronto for a weekend getaway. What started as intense leg weakness following the workout that morning soon developed into considerable leg soreness.

I walked around Downtown Toronto the next day kind of bowlegged. Every time Jack and I would get into the car, I had to turn around and essentially fall into the driver's seat, rather than bend down and slip easily into the vehicle as I normally might.

It's June 12th as I type this, so I'm not necessarily yet enjoying any of the fun results of strength training. That's coming, and there may even be signs of it by the time you read this.

But in the meantime?

Come on, sing it with me...

"Everything hurts! Everything hurts!"

I have once again been bullied into better habits

I like to tell the story of why I began drinking black coffee after years of pouring cream into it.

The date was September 15, 2022. My family and I were at Pine Ridge Country Club in Wickliffe, Ohio, for the Wickliffe Schools Athletic Achievement Hall of Fame induction ceremony. (Someone had scammed the organizers into inducting me. I still can't explain it.)

After the meal, I poured myself a hot cup of coffee to cap off what had been a very enjoyable evening. As I reached for the small pitcher of half and half, my daughter Elissa looked at me and said (in a tone of undisguised condescension), "When are you going to grow up and start drinking black coffee?"

I replied to her, "Right now, I guess." And I did. I drank that cup free of additives, and I have not drunk anything but black coffee ever since that moment.

I have said many times that Elissa bullied me into what is undoubtedly a healthier habit when it comes to coffee drinking.

Fast forward to about a month ago, when Elissa and her boyfriend Mark presented me with a card for a personal trainer named Kirk Simmons. As a reward for coming to their house and taking care of their pets while they were on vacation, they had paid for four training sessions for me with Kirk.

"You'll love him," Elissa said. "He specializes in cranky dads."

Well, sign me up!

I hadn't expressed any interest in personal training, but everyone in my family knew of my longstanding intention to start doing more than just cardio-based exercise. I knew I needed to lift, and deep down I knew I probably needed some sort of kick in the butt to start doing it.

Two days after presenting me with the card, Elissa and Mark were at our house. A very persistent Elissa told me, "We can sign you up with Kirk now." I promised I would do it myself within a day or two, and I did.

Once again, my low-level fear of incurring the wrath of Elissa had pushed me into making a better lifestyle choice.

Here's the funny thing, though: I'm typing this post on May 31st. As of today, I haven't had a single workout with Kirk. I did meet him at the gym for my initial assessment yesterday morning at 5am (yes, 5am, which didn't seem to phase Kirk because the man is an ex-Marine and could probably conquer a small island by himself on three hours sleep).

All he did was conduct a body scan to assess my muscle mass and prodigious fat deposits, and some movement tests so he could get an overall idea of my flexibility, stability, problem areas, etc.

My first workout with Kirk is still four days away, but by the time you read this, he will have put me through my paces several times already.

How can I be so confident this is going to work out? Because I know myself. I'm excited to do this, and when I'm excited to do something, I do it no matter how difficult it is or what obstacles life throws at me.

I don't know that I'm ever going to be a true gym rat or anything, but by the time you read this, I will have at least transformed into a "gym guy."

Which is saying something for me, a lifelong runner/walker and formerly avowed non-lifter.

The upshot of today's post? You need to have a loving bully like Elissa in your life. Or maybe just hire out Elissa herself to threaten you into making better choices.

Trust me, she's very good.

The AI Blog Post Image Generator did a nice job creating the photo you see at the top of this post. But it also produced this image, which makes me laugh no matter how many times I look at it.