It is not entirely unusual for a passerby to spy me on the elliptical for a brisk 44 minutes. If you’d like to marvel at my lack of grace on low impact gym equipment, I’m most fond of the Aquatic and Fitness Center. I favor the AFC not for its sweeping vistas of the pool below, but for its WiFi. WiFi-connectivity is essential to timing my “workouts,” as 44 minutes is exactly the time it takes to watch a single episode of “The West Wing” on Netflix. What strikes me is that I’m very often the only man using the elliptical. Even as a boy, I was the only male elliptical user. (I would note, however, that my boyhood was relatively brief as it was interrupted by the occasion of my bar mitzvah and the impending manhood it brought with it.)
I will confess I once had a brief flirtation with fitness. I even subscribed to the aptly named Men’s Fitness. Each month, Men’s Fitness provided some astonishing number of elaborate exercises, each more convoluted than the next.
Though my subscription has lapsed, I assume this month’s issue featured the Burmese One Legged Libertarian Hand Stand Squat. At some point, I came to the realization that fitness is not for me. My lifestyle requires essentially no level of physical vigor, as my major occupations include reading, writing, smoking cigars, drinking espresso and going to meetings. At no point during any of these activities does someone try to establish my resting heart rate nor do they ask, even in jest, what my VO2 max capacity might be.
Any exercise I may partake in is entirely ironic. It would be absurd for me to strive for my muscles to bulge as I lift a pastry into my mouth. My only task that requires any level of fitness is maintaining enough composure while walking briskly to change the NPR podcast I’m listening to. Any attempt to increase my bench press or my mile time would just be exhausting efforts in self-mockery. It was this realization that led me to the elliptical.
The elliptical has no pretense of fitness. It is the machine that requires the most minimal level of exertion. This is not to say that I can’t break a sweat if I so desire, but it is not so vigorous that my argyle dress socks hold me back.
The purpose of my exercising is to simply get the Ya-Ya’s out. The Ya Ya is an abstract feeling — those little feelings of anxiety you get during the day. I always believed the Ya Ya was a phrase of Yiddish or at least Jewish origin, as Mike, my tour guide of the ancient Israeli site of Caesarea, used the phrase. After a long day on the tour bus schlepping around Tel Aviv, he instructed all of the little kids to run laps around the ruins of the Caesarea race track to “get their Yas Yas out.” As much as I wish it were a Yiddish phrase, the phrase and the feeling it describes can be most accurately attributed to The Rolling Stones and their 1970 live hits album “Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!”
The elliptical is as much as a refuge as it is an opportunity for exercise; Yas-Ya’s are dispelled by my clopping around and by the surreal sense of time the elliptical creates. The machine itself is really a marvel. The genius of the elliptical is that the foot stays entirely in contact with the pedal, greatly reducing the stress on the body.
My fellow men are truly missing out on an opportunity to find some serenity in our chaotic lives. I urge you to leave your cellphone at home, pick up a high value used iPad on eBay, find a 44 minute show, pair it with a nice hill setting and let your troubles escape you. Until then, I remain separated from my fellow elliptical users by my lack of an oversized philanthropy tank top.
Abraham’s column runs biweekly Fridays. He can be reached at a.axler@cavalierdaily.com.
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