We are all fooling ourselves with fitness
PEOPLE tell me I look fit. ‘Are you working out?’ they ask. I nearly thought Joe Brolly was cracking onto me the other day. I’ll admit I was chuffed though. A proper man, a manly, sporty hard man, telling me I looked good.
The thing is I’m not that fit. I’m not working out. Yes, I’m thinner than I was. And yes, I take a bit more exercise than I did when I was young. But I’m not fit.
Technically, according to some guidelines on exercise I am an exercise maniac. If you accept that the recommended exercise levels of 30 minutes of moderate exercise like brisk walking five days a week is enough, then I am doing at least twice as much exercise as I need to. I should probably consider cutting back. I brisk-walk everywhere. I even cycle, vaguely briskly, some days. And I swim slowly, which I reckon takes about as much effort as walking briskly.
But I am not really fit. I don’t really push myself. I don’t get the heart rate up. I don’t ‘feel the burn’ on any muscles. I don’t really have many muscles to feel the burn on. I move a bit, but that’s about the size of it. Yet, somehow, I am considered by the official guidelines to do twice as much exercise as I need to do.
My fundamental problem is that I am a very lazy person. I always have been. They told me in school. Lazy. Lazy about exercise, lazy about study, lazy in general. Not my fault of course. It’s just how God made me. I get bored you see. I can’t help that either. Also I don’t like things I’m not good at. Don’t get me wrong; I am up for a certain level of challenge if I think I can actually get good at something. For example, I’m learning broadcasting fairly late in life, and I enjoy the challenge. It also helps with my self-loathing. If you are learning new things as an adult, you never get too cocky. So it keeps you in your box, reminds you of your weakness.
But dancing or sport, I just knew I’d never be any good at them. No aptitude whatsoever. No feel for it. So for years I didn’t do any sport. Now, recognising the need for some exercise for mental health purposes, I do a bit of genteel solo activity. That way you’re not letting down your team-mates and you’re not making a show of yourself, and you’re only comparing yourself with yourself.
But I never got fit. I settled on an unchallenging routine. Pootling up and down a pool and along in the sea, and walking here and there. It was enough to keep me moving, but it was a safe space. Equally, I knew it wasn’t enough. And then, recently, Public Health England confirmed this. Walking is not enough, they say. You also need to be doing tai chi, weight lifting, ballroom dancing, racket sports, Nordic walking or some form of resistance training. I knew this.
Basically I knew I should be doing something that helped balance and muscle building. But the guidelines were my excuse. I was doing double the guidelines easily, so I must be fine.
So I need to take these new recommendations as a spur to take it to the next level.
I will not be doing tai chi or ballroom dancing. Yet. However, I do actually have a voucher for a couple of one-on-one Pilates lessons. I got it for Christmas, from Santa. I left it out to remind me to use it. I eventually put it in a drawer, because it was looking at me all the time and making me feel bad about myself.
I should say I basically have no idea what Pilates is. Seriously. I have no concept of what I would be doing. All I know is I won’t be able to do it. It is not a safe space for me, and I certainly won’t be doing it with other people. I know they’ll be too busy to be watching me. But in fact, I would be so bad at it that they will actually stop their own Pilates just to watch me. But I’m going to give the two private lessons a go. And, maybe, I should go to a PT, as they’re called, and get some kind of a weights routine. Not just yet. When I have some time on my hands.
It won’t be easy. But it will possibly be less humiliating than Nordic Walking. Brendan’s new show ‘Brendan O’Connor’s Time Out’, where he interviews well-known people about the people and things that made them who they are, starts on Friday, August 17, on RTE 1 at 9.35pm