PenteKing’s BodyBlog

This post is going to be about nothing in particular. To borrow a metaphor, I want to empty the drawer of my mind. As a writer, I find this a useful exercise, and while I normally do this in private, I thought I’d lay my random thoughts out there for the bodybuilding community to peruse and comment upon.
·        I always thought of wrinkles as God’s way of stepping on your face.
·        I also think that God is a comedian playing to an audience that’s too frightened to laugh.
·        If you doubt that God’s a comedian, then please explain the duck-billed playtpus to me.
·        And even God admitted he made a mistake by making the avocado pit too big (Played by George Burns in “Oh, God!”)
·        For those of you contemplating politics as a career, adopt this philosophy courtesy of George Bernard Shaw, “If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.” (Are you paying attention, Hillary?)
·        Did you know that true love asks for nothing? Her acceptance is the way we pay
·        Did you also know that life has given love a guarantee to last through forever and another day?
·        The first thing Fidel Castro did upon seizing power in Cuba was to ban Christmas. This made him a rebel without a Claus.

• St. Thomas of Aquinas pondered, for nearly twenty years, the question, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”  He wouldn’t have pondered quite so long if he would have thought to ask the related question, “What kind of dance?”
  

• And crawling, on the planet’s face, some insects, called the human race. Lost in time; lost in space; and meaning.
  

• You can run from everything except yourself.
  

• Humpty Dumpty was pushed!!!
  

• How do you suppose the fork felt the following morning when it discovered the spoon had run off with the dish?  And what of the knife?  Now there’s a love triangle it would be very interesting to know more about.
  

• If it’s better to give than to receive, why do some many people have their hands out?
  

• A gentleman always says what he means, and means what he says. A simple philosophy, but mine own.
  

• When choosing between two evils, pick the one you’ve never tried before.
  

• A lie is every bit as good as the truth if everyone believes it.
  

• A people that value its privileges above its principles soon lose both. - Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) Inaugural Address January 20 1953
  

• On this poem
  
• I’ve spent so much time
  
• Trying to make all the words rhyme
  
• But to my chagrin
  
• I now find
  
• I haven’t a poem
  
• Just a silly old rhyme
  

 
And that, my friends, is that. Today’s program has been brought to you by the number 6 and 12 and the letter N.
 

…before my 70 mile bike ride for the American Diabetes Association, and I’m training like the event is going to happen tomorrow morning. A friend of mine told me that I should back off some so that I’ll save some energy and enthusiasm for the actual event. He’s afraid that I’ll leave it all in the gym and on the training route and have nothing left in the tank for the big day.

I reject that philosophy. Train like your life depends upon it, each and every day because you never know when you’re actually going to be tested. Something could happen tomorrow that calls upon all your resources. If you slack off, then you won’t have the reserves to call upon when it genuinely counts. You’ll be weighed in the balance and found wanting, and that, my friends, is the worse defeat at all.

 More later.

As you may or may not know (it really doesn’t matter), I fancy myself a novelist. I’ve completed five (count ‘em, boys and girls - 5!) novels of varying lengths. They are titled (in order of completion) - Graves’ Tomb; Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children; White Rabbit; Venus in Sackcloth and The Garage Sale.

Like any wannabe novelist, I’ve polished and rewritten, and then polished and rewritten some more. I’ve showed them to friends and family. I’ve shared them with members of my writers’ groups (many during the course of the years). I’ve written and written and then written some more.

Today, I received another rejection. I can’t tell you how many of these things I’ve collected, because I’ve stopped counting. (And that’s a good thing because otherwise I’d become suicidal.) It’s been more than twenty years now since my first submission, and I have to face the fact that the publishing world simply does not give a rat’s ass about my work. I’ve been weighed in the balance and found wanting. I’m not the literary genuis I imagined myself to be. I’m a hack, stringing together words that NO ONE will ever see in the solitary confines of my home office.

Twenty years. You know what the worst part is? All that time I spent churning out those novels that no one will ever read - those are minutes I’m never going to get back. 

I know all the pros about this: it helps the environment; it saves on energy costs; it’s better for your mood and physical well-being. All that may be true, but I suspect it’s nothing more than plain old balderdash. Let’s face it. Springing ahead and falling back does one thing really, really well. IT THROWS OFF YOUR BIOLOGICAL CLOCK.

Ever since Saturday night, I’ve been dragging ass, and the reason is the fact that my biological clock is out of whack. I’m a creature of habit (and then some). It really throws me off my game when my routine is disrupted, and shifting the time is disruption on a mega-scale.

My friends tell me to take a chill pill. My colleagues at work tell me that it isn’t so bad. They say that I’ll adjust in a week or so. A WEEK OR SO!!??? I can’t wait that long. I’ve got weights to lift, races to run, and bicycles to ride. I’ve got six weeks until my bicycle event. How am I expected to be at the top of my game when I’m out of sorts and grumpy all the time. It’s not right; it’s not fair.

Somebody help me!!

Which, vacation time aside, is the longest non-posting period I’ve had since starting this blog. Is it that I have little else to say, or simply the fact that I seem to be busier lately than I have been for the past few months? Truth be told, it’s a touch of both. I’ve been perusing the web site, posting comments to other bloggers, soaking in the news about the Arnold, researching information on how to improve my physique, so it’s not as though I’ve been slacking off completely. Yet, I’ve had little to no inspiration to put anything down on paper. From comments I’ve received from other members, lulls such as this happen from time to time. I wouldn’t know, never having committed myself to anything like this before. I write as a hobby, and pride myself on my short stories and novels, yet even there, I’ve been in an extended dry spell. I started a novel about a man who learns he has a terminal disease. Like most people, after dealing with the initial shock, he goes about trying to put his life in order. When I started the novel, it seemed vibrant and fresh and new. Looking at it, now jaundiced eyes, it seems trite and banal - boring beyond words and not worth the effort of finishing.

Perhaps I’m simply going through a phase. I can only hope so, because feeling this way SUCKS! I’ll post again when I’m in a better mood. For those of you who read this and end up getting depressed, please accept my heartfelt apology.

Which, for the cinephiles among us, are the last words uttered by Jimmy Cagney in the film, White Heat. (An over the top performance, but one for which he will be fondly remembered.)

Anyway, I bring it up because today, I completed 75 miles on the bike. I mapped out the route, got everything that I might need (spare tube, wrench, water bottles, money, etc.) and set off. I fully expected that I’d complete about fifty miles before tiring, but much to my surprise, I had the necessary energy and stamina to complete the whole 70 mile route. And believe me, brother, when I rolled into the driveway of my condo complex, I felt like the hero of Breaking Away (my gosh, we are certainly in a cinematic frame of mind today, aren’t we?).

It may be egotistic of me, but I think I’m entitled to a smidgen of satisfaction. I did it! Seventy miles, with only one 15 minute rest period, and I covered the entire distance in just under four hours, thirty minutes. This means that I averaged 15 miles per hour, which is pretty decent.

I’m psyched; I’m pumped; I’m feeling like a twenty-year-old kid again. Whoo-hoo!

Once again, it’s time to weigh in on the exercises which will do a body good. For what it’s worth, here are my top 15 suggestions. I should note that these exercises will build strength, stability and stamina. They will NOT necessarily build the physique of your dreams. However, by incorporating these exercises into your routine, you will lay a solid foundation upon which to build a physique for the ages.

• 4-Point Tummy Draw In and/or standing tummy draw-in;
• Floor Cobra or ball cobra;
• Plank (progression: forearms, hands, one foot lifted, forearms on ball);
• Spinal crunches on Physio-ball;
• Hip Raises on Physio-ball (progression: leg curl);
• Supine Lateral Ball Roll (tough exercise!);
• Ben Leg Dead Lifts with both legs (weight 35 pounds or less);
• Squats (progression’ Bench squat, ball squats on wall, unassisted);
• Lying and standing dumbbell flyes;
• Cable Woodchopppers (high-to-low and low-to-high)
• T-Bar row in half squat position (great core exercise!);
• Single leg deadlifts;
• Single Leg Squats (progression: hand on wall, holding dowel, unassisted);
• Body Weight Rows;
• Push-ups (progression” wall, Smith machine bar, floor, physio-ball, medicine ball)

 Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? Additions? They are all welcome.