The Training Partner

First, I identify a part of my body that doesn’t hurt and hurt it. When it is good and sore, I choose another body part and move on

Photo taken by author

Dave Gottlieb, who takes bodybuilding seriously, challenged me to write this piece. In addition to taking care of his body, Dave is a brilliant savant. But not the Raymond Babbitt kind, as portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the 1988 movie Rain Man. He devours books few of us would take up such a challenge. I kid you not. He has a quirky sense of humor. Read his stuff, and you’ll understand what I mean.

So, here we go!

Mental power and physical strength are only a thought away. I tell myself as I crank up the radio and back out of the driveway. I am on my way to the gym, dashing down the avenue of mid-life fears in search of great strength and a Herculean physique.

By the time I reached middle age, my body had undergone more repairs than a Havana taxi. I turned to my doctor for advice. He examined my parts, checked my fluids, and prescribed some of this and that.

“Overall, you are in darned good shape for a woman of your age,” he assured me gleefully.

“I’m still young,” I protested.

“Oh, well, in that case, I’d recommend you take up bodybuilding. You can’t top it for reversing the aging process!”

Unsure of the outcome, I decided to give it a try. Following my doctor’s advice, I found my way to the nearest gym — but not before I bought Joe Weider’s book, How to Lift Weights Properly, whose principles offered enough ideas to keep a masochist joyful for a lifetime.

When I started, I was told I shouldn’t be surprised by bodybuilding’s jargon. For instance, T-bar rows are not performed in a rowboat. Nor are pec-dec flyes air-borne insects.

These days I am well acquainted with the bodybuilding jargon and the workings of any gym, and I’ve been happily miserable ever since.

I push my way through the glass doors into the brightly fluorescent-lit gym. The top floor, where the salespeople have their small cubicles, is filled with gleaming high-tech equipment and newly decorated. I march over to the women’s locker room in the basement at the far end of the gym. This place is shabbily old, equipped with second-hand exercise machines. Here is where the die-hard bodybuilders work out. We call it “the dungeon.”

I produce my weight-lifting gear from my Nike gym bag, which quickly piles up on the bench as I toss it there. Ruby walks in five minutes later, bearing a large black gym bag and wearing the same determined look I saw a few minutes ago when I glanced at myself in the mirror. She tosses her bag onto the bench with a loud sigh.

“Traffic,” she mutters.

With deft fingers, she pulls the leather belt out of her bag as I begin my own stories about the aftermath of our exhausting workout of the previous day.

“Oh, man, I could hardly lift my arm to get dressed this morning,” she says. “Do you think we should use the dead-lift straps today?”

I know she is feeling enthusiastic since the straps are used for wraps around the bar to assist in heavy lifting and successfully prolonging the agony.

Ruby and I often joke about the “day after” and how we carefully schedule our whole day around ways to avoid stairs. Our conversations usually go this way:

“How did you feel after our leg workout yesterday?”

“You kidding? Had a hard time climbing into my pants this morning.”

“Ah,” says Ruby, “someday I’m going to retire from this, stretch out in my backyard, read trashy novels, and contemplate cloud shapes.”

We know, of course, this will never happen. Our shared spirited ritual of the body has become a mutual fixation.

With a sense of satisfaction, we psych ourselves for our workout. First, I identify a part of my body that doesn’t hurt and hurt it. When it is good and sore, I choose another body part and move on. Eventually, my entire body is in deep pain, including my hair and teeth.

Ruby and I met at the gym four years earlier and sought each other out in a lighthearted combative challenge. I sized her up — the broadness of her shoulders, the thickness of her quads. She was performing behind-the-neck bar presses, and my eyes immediately darted to the size of the plates on either side of the bar she was working with as I counted the number of reps she could squeeze. When she finished, she spotted me in the mirror and walked over. “I have been watching you for weeks. I like your workout routine.”

Damn. My combative mood melted into a pool of ruin.

We became workout partners.

* * *

The gym is usually busy with arms swinging dumbbells and faceless bodies contorted into impossible positions. Armed with straps, hooks, and belts, we rush past them toward the pull-down bar. I sit down on the narrow bench. Ruby moves the pin to a number I have no desire to identify. I can tell she is challenging me by the sparkle in her eyes. I inhale deeply.

“You can do it,” whispers Ruby, my conspirator in the pursuit of perfection, who’s standing at attention behind me as I’m desperately pulling poundage exceeding that of my body weight. I can feel her breath landing on my soggy hair.

When I stand up, my knees are weak, and bile forms in the abyss of my stomach.

A glance in the mirror confirms I’ve crossed a border from which there is no return. So I ponder my appearance as Sam walks over. His body is tall and muscular, his buns are tight, chest upright.

“Hey, Sam! I had a dream about you last night,” I call out. I met Sam at the gym three years ago. He is the one who told me that bodybuilding is a mental sport and that big is good, but bigger is better.

“Oh, yeah? What about?” He is wiping beads of sweat off his dark skin with a white towel. I can see his eyes twinkle under the flickering light.

The gym goes quiet.

“That you shrank in size.” My lips stretch in a twisted grin. This lighthearted banter is tossed around to ease a deep-rooted fear of having our kidneys pop as we squat or our veins burst while we carry rusted weights over our shoulders.

The roar of laughter cuts through the tension in the airless room, and we pose. Energized by what we perceive in the mirror and still smiling, Ruby and I limp painfully to our next task.

Veins roll to the surface as I measure the extent of my superlative efforts at balancing the dumbbells above my chest mercilessly and envision hugging a tree while I bring my arms above me in a wide arc. Slowly I lower my arms to the sides only to bring them up again, contracting my muscles to the most painful extent I can stand. I can see Ruby tower over me, her sweaty tee-shirt clinging to her breasts, beads of sweat rolling down her muscular arms, veins pulsating on her rippled forearms.

“Come on. You can do it! It’s all you. I’m not helping.” She places her hands on my elbows for support.

“Hey, why do you turn the dumbbells like that?”

I hear a familiar voice from behind me. Concentration spoiled, I drop the dumbbells and look up, gasping as a guy in an oversized flannel shirt minus the sleeves, backward-turned baseball cap, and baggy low-rider shorts bear down on me.

At first, I can’t remember who he is. Oh, yes. He is the guy who insists, with a convincing air of superiority, that the plates get heavier in the summer — something about the molecules. But he has the deadly habit of lifting heavy on bench presses without a spotter. I don’t remember his name and don’t care to know, either.

“Someday, we’ll come in here and find you dead with a bar on your chest,” I once told him.

Ruby and I walk over to the squat machine, step up to the rack facing a mirror that will soon display our faces in a twist of agony. Grip the bar, lean into it, bend the neck until the head slips under, and feel the cold steel across my shoulders. Step back. Now squat: down, then up, my thighs painfully inflamed. I can hear my breathing, though I’ve lost control, and I’m practically unconscious but still doing the squats.

“Attention, members! Attention members! It’s now 9:45. Please rack the dumbbells! The doors will be closed in fifteen minutes sharp.”

Ten minutes later, crippled by muscular aches, we rise magnificently above the pain and refuse to be ruled by the persistent voice coming from the loudspeaker.

There are more shoulder exercises yet to perform, which need to be approached from a different angle. I ignore the flickering lights as I push the dumbbells over my head with an output of force. My body remains miraculously glued to the bench.

Sam shouts from across the room, “Hey, do you think they are serious about closing on time tonight?”

“Nah,” says the guy with the baseball cap.

But suddenly, the room has gone dark, and the only light is the gleam of our crazed eyes fixed on the mirror, staring at unseen dumbbells as they slice their way upward and downward in alternating movements.

Taking a short break, I’m massaging my inflamed shoulder.

“Ruby, we are locked in here for the night.”

“Is that why it’s so quiet in here? Hey, I can’t see where the cables are. I need to finish my lats.”

I can hear Sam’s heavy breathing from the other side of the room.

Suddenly, a desperate voice. “Help! I’m pinned under the bar.”

Ah. I recognize the voice. The guy with the baseball cap is screaming at us from somewhere in the room.

Ruby, Sam, and I nearly collide by the bench press. And while we reach for the bar, I remember something the guy said a few hours ago: “If you ever find me pinned under a bar, make sure to add a couple of plates before you call the paramedics.”