There’s all this talk about fitness goals and i got caught up in it earlier this year when I thought I wanted to get fit enough to be invited to work out at Gym Jones. I really thought this was a good idea for about a week until I realized that it would require me to be a level of meathead that I am unaccustomed to interacting with, much less being. At some point my “FU” reflexes would probably kick in and things would degenerate into an ass-whooping that I would be on the wrong end of. Better to avoid situations like that.

So my new fitness goals are much more sensible. Or at least the goal is to be more sensible:

You probably don’t know Imran, but he’s a friend from the gym who is about eight feet tall.

So when he’s swinging a kettlebell, it’s probably going much further than I’m swinging it. Let’s say it’s proportional to height. I’m only 5′ 9 1/2″ (at least I used to be) and if he’s 8′ tall then that means he has to go 1.4 times further than I do. Since a swing is in an arc, let’s just multiply that times pi. Maybe even times the gravitational constant. That’s FORTY THREE times more work he has to do. But he’s probably FIFTY TIMES STRONGER than I am. At least he throws around those 28kg kettlebells when I’m grunting under the effort. I mean, he ran two laps around the gym in 1:12 when it took me 1:25. Let’s cube that because we’re three dimensional which would mean he’s ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE PERCENT FASTER than me. Plus he’s like half my age. I should not try to keep up with Imran.

OK, so you’re thinking my math is off. It often is when I’m comparing myself to Imran, who is stronger, smarter, and has a cooler name than me so I really should tell you my real goal. Really. Here it goes.

I want to keep doing things like this:

And keep looking like this:

Except maybe not so squinty.