Doing the Impossible Still Impossible

When I was in high school it seemed liked each year at some point they had some sort of President’s Fitness Challenge. If you could pull off the required number of sit ups, push-ups and other forms of torture that would win you a patch. Oh how I wanted that patch. I’ve always been fairly active but also weighed way too much for any seriously skinny people endeavor like sprinting or running with any respectable time.

It seems like an oxymoron, for if you do it… well, it’s possible isn’t it? In the life of someone who’s got a lot of excess weight there are some “simple” things that for more average weight folk are just not simple at all. Sliding into a booth at a restaurant, tying your shoes, finding clothes that fit… aren’t hideous… and don’t cost six times more than they should.

My level of activity seems make my weight a bit of an illusion in some areas. A 300 pound plus guy with a normal blood pressure always seems to confound the doctor. During High school I think only one thing held me back from that illusive “presidential fitness patch”. Lets just say you find a kid who weighs the kind of weight I did doing pull-ups.

But the gym teacher had a plan for me. He said each day to just come in and “hang” on the bar. I’d develop my arms eventually to be able to do a pull-up. That’s right dear readers I couldn’t do a single pull up, never mind the 6 or 7 needed to get the patch. So hearing the Rocky music in my imagination I went time after time to “hang” on the bar. I pulled and pulled… and at the end of the year… GUESS WHAT… absolutely nothing. No sheer will could moved that mountain of flesh vertically upward. Some of you that remember it can now insert the agony of defeat image they used to play on tv years ago where you saw that poor skier tumbling and smashing down the mountain.

But guess what… I still can’t do a pull-up. Not the expected story you geared yourself up for is it?

Sure, there is a story I’m building up to here. The other day I went for a swim at the local gym pool. There was a ton of people in the pool and I looked at crossing two lanes and worming my way by a half dozen kids to the ladder to climb out after my swim. Then I saw another swimmer just casually lift herself up by the arms on an edge to sit and then pop up. I have never done that in my entire life either.

I don’t know what came over me, the lunacy of the idea being un-impossible or merely the fact I wanted to avoid the section of all those kids but I went to the edge of the pool and did my best positive thinking secret envisioning of me repeating that. Then… I popped and rolled and yanked and wallowed and frankly felt like a beached whale. But I did somehow crawl my way out of the pool without a ladder. It wasn’t pretty or graceful but it happened. Is there a patch for getting out of the pool without a ladder? There should be.

Next goal is building up the bike riding skills enough to do some multi-mileage touring.

And don’t forget that at Foolsfitness we have personal trainers that specialize in shoes tying and in booth fitting into.- Alan