Nine Years of Never Missing a Workout

There are some particularly challenging hindrances when you are always aiming at telling the truth. One is that you barely say anything at all. Another is that you often expect from others to also be telling the truth. This expectation has dominated most of my life, most notably my childhood. For any advice I would then receive I would assume that it was a product of careful reasoning.

One such advice I was blindly adhering to was the prioritisation of the cultivation of the mind over the body. Even though I was repeatedly reminded of Juvenal’s quote mens sana in corpore sano (a sound mind in a sound body) and was indoctrinated into the benefits of exercising, spending 90 minutes daily on my body would be an act of vanity, as opposed to the fulfilling act of developing my mind. In fact, the overall pedagogical structure of my childhood was in stark contradiction to Juvenal’s quote. For instance, gymnastics was vastly underrepresented by the school curriculum as compared to sciences. Also, whereas mental homework was daily assigned, memberships to fitness activities were seldom promoted. Surely these were decisions made after careful consideration of all involved factors in growing up the right way (my then naive mind would think).

Still, I always had an innate desire to start exercising, though I did not act on my desire for many years, until the second year of my doctoral studies. Behind me I had seven years of full commitment to my studies. I was doing very well, having graduated in the top five in my undergraduate class and having secured a PhD position at a world top-tier university. I was also having a genuine fun in studying, learning new things and doing research. Nevertheless, I was increasingly feeling unfulfilled because of the development of an acute understanding that I was not entirely acting out my life in compliance to my deepest desires.

Some day in May 2013 I was so overwhelmed by this feeling that I impulsively stepped into a gym. An ant walked into a room full of elephants. That’s how I felt. With a height of 1.85 meters and a weight of 65 kg I was skinny, flabby and weak. If I were to showcase these attributes I would characteristically either wrap one of my palms around the bicep on my other arm or I would use both of my palms to wrap one of my thighs. That was me. The others? They had an athletic body ranging from good to excellent to outstanding. I was thus out of shape, out of place. So I thought of walking out.

But I got over myself and focused on executing my plan. I had planned to do three bicep exercises (cable curl, preacher curl and barbell curl) and three triceps exercises (skull crusher, cable push-down and bench dip), each comprising three sets of ten repetitions. Reluctantly at first, then more decisively, then enthusiastically I started working out. The last exercise I did was the barbell curl. The exercise consists of holding a barbell with arms hanged down, then curling the barbell upwards by engaging the biceps, and then repeating from the starting position (see picture). Even though my arms were already burning before commencing the exercise, I was able to do the first set, which was challenging but was not particularly painful — I did this set with a 7.5 kg barbell, a fact that is now a testament to the road I travelled. For the second set I increased the weight to 10 kg. This time I felt the pain, unpleasant and excruciating pain. I very intensely thought Why the fuck am I doing this to myself? Then it was all over. Until my break was over and I begun the third set that is. I kept the same weight. In the fifth or sixth repetition I could barely hold the barbell, my arms being in serious pain. But I managed to push through the pain for another repetition. I found myself screaming as I was lifting the barbell to my chest. I was on fire! I went for another repetition but I succeeded in only slightly lifting the barbell as my arms collapsed and dropped the barbell to the floor.

That concluded my first gym session. I did my work. In sharp contrast to the way I walked in, I walked out of the gym with the air of owing the place.

Since then, apart from a period of four months during which I was injured, I have never missed a workout. I do five training sessions per week, each lasting about 90 minutes. Additionally, I run and cycle outdoors as often as I can. I am thus spending a lot of time exercising, time that I was reluctant at first to spent on an activity that on the outside would seem as to not be progressing my life in any meaningful way. I could not be more wrong.

Work. When I started working out I was deeply indoctrinated into the stupidity of what has become a dogma of waking up early in the morning and working hard. Including exercising into my daily routine would contradict my then philosophy of how to live a productive life. I was afraid I would get behind with work and would start missing deadlines.

Still, my desire to exercise was so strong that I blindly ignored any potential negative consequences. And, sometimes, acting out on ill-defined reasons may pave the road for good things to happen. In particular, keeping consistent with working out quickly helped me to penetrate through some of the detrimental thinking I had about work. This concerned my invalid syllogism whose conclusion was that the difficulty of my work was the main hindrance to my productivity, given that I was working very hard but was barely productive. True, doing research in computer science will always be for me a very challenging and mentally exhausting activity. But, because of being constantly tired from overworking and because of the innate feeling I had of missing out on other things I should be doing in life, I was seldomly truly focused. To remedy this, I was trying to work more, which was leading to increased exhaustion, to enhanced feelings of missing out on life, and to decreased productivity in a vicious circle.

The gym broke this circle. As with any high intensity physical activity, it created a space where I could get my mind completely off work whilst satisfying my then unfulfilled desire of working out. This heavily contributed to higher levels of concentration in my working hours, therefore to increased productivity, thus to a shortened working life, and hence to an overall better quality of life.

Health. Better quality of life is not only being evidenced by fewer working hours but also by improved overall health. The fit body physique, the strengthened ability to do everyday activities, the decreased fatigue and the increased energy levels that result from exercising are cumulatively providing me with a lasting feeling of healthiness and ableness. Exercising is also a remarkably reliable method to shut down my mind, which unmistakably leads to increased clarity of thought, better decision making and less anxiety following a workout. Additionally, exercising is often to me an experience of oneness with the universe, an experience I can most closely relate to the one of lying in nature in summer sunsets with friends and talking about shit. Perhaps this is because these are the settings where I can be at most ease to enjoy life the most.

Progress. Exercising is the easiest way that I found of familiarising myself with progress. This simply works by reaching the limit of what I can do in an exercise and then pushing a little further to surpass that limit. The easiness about this is that the effort is only physical, as opposed to mental, which can often block my way forward. True, there is some mental effort involved in every successful and safe gym session. For instance, the mind needs to tolerate being uncomfortable, so that it does not easily give up when the body gets stressed. It also needs to have a constant focus on the muscle group being exercised, so that it is the only part engaged in the exercise, as opposed to, say, engaging the back to cheat the way out of lifting the barbell with the biceps. But all of this effort is not creative as in writing or problem solving. So I cannot get stuck. I just do it. And by doing it I can do more the next time. This to me has been immensely useful in setting and working towards goals outside of the gym. It has taught me to break down goals into steps, to have the patience to progress through the steps, and to love the feeling of uneasiness that accompanies any difficult endeavour, as the gym convinced me that pain is the only way forward.

All of the above cumulatively contributed to getting me addicted to exercising. The word “addiction” often has a bad connotation in that it refers to something on which one is depended on to go through life. But addictions are building blocks that make up our daily lives. Some of them are hindrances and some of them are beneficial to life. Addiction to exercising is only beneficial to life. Personally, I see exercising as an essential tool of bettering oneself in all sorts of ways, from being more healthy to being more pleasant, to being more productive. I am therefore happy I am addicted to working out.

Still, as the 6th century BC Greek poet Cleobulus wisely reminds through the centuries, moderation is the best thing. In 2019 I was reminded of this the hard way. This was the year I have so far been most physically active. In addition to my five 90-minute gym sessions, I was climbing from ten to twelve hours and was running about 30 kilometers every week. My favourite days were the Sundays. After a good breakfast, I would cycle to the climbing gym where I would train until noon. Then, following a quick lunch, I would do some work on my laptop for a couple of hours, which I would follow with another climbing session until late afternoon. Cycling back home would mean that I would relax for an hour or so before hitting the gym for weight lifting and calling it a day.

Adding to the enjoyability of this lifestyle were the consequent and frequent minor injuries. I used to relish the calluses from holding the barbells, dumb- bells and wall climbing holds, the muscle strains, the various abrasions and the occasional wrist and thumb sprains. More precisely, I used to relish the feeling of being active and alive, which the minor injuries were strengthening. So when I felt something snapping in my lower back (as I was doing the preacher curl in a gym session) I did not pay particular attention. The subsequent mild pain on my left buttock was the result of just another minor injury, I thought. But the pain did not go away. Instead, it got progressively stronger. Within a few days I could barely walk. Life got miserable. In timing myself one morning, I spent 20 minutes to wear my socks as I was desperately trying to find an angle on which to bend whilst tolerating the pain. The problem that I had was that a big piece broke off from one of my lower spine discs to find its way next to my sciatic nerve. And it was squeezing the hell out of it. The debilitating pain lasted for four months.

Then it was summer. I went to my parents house in Cyprus on a long holiday. The house is only five minutes from the sea by car, a convenience that I fully took advantage of. My back pain was still in a terrible state, prohibiting me from doing any physical activity, including walking. Swimming was however different: I would let my legs float and use them only insomuch as I did not feel pain whilst propelling forward by using mainly my arms. For the first time in four months I was thrilled to find a physical activity whereby I could make progress. And progress I did make. Within a few weeks I could more fully engage my legs. My back pain started slightly receding. Soon I was able to swim long enough and with enough effort to run out of breath. Gasping for breath out of exhaustion for the first time after months of minimum physical activity was one of the most exciting moments of my life.

I since then had a phenomenal recovery. By extending my repertoire of exercises with back strengthening ones and by getting well educated on the correct execution of each exercise, I have gone from swimming to long walks, to gym sessions, to running and climbing, to calisthenics at home in covid lockdowns, to the strongest back I have ever had.

Today, as I am writing this in May 2022 I am looking back to nine years of exercising as fondly as one looks back to a great lasting friendship. I am on holiday in Budapest and have just finished my gym session. I took my very first gym picture. Looking at the picture I am proud of the road I travelled. I enjoy looking great. Still, making progress is what has always been my main focus and joy out of exercising. The greatness that I see in a progress-oriented mindset is that it is always concerned with the present, as opposed to an outcome-oriented mindset, which is always concerned with the future, thereby making for an anxiety inducing mental makeup. Doing my best today is progress that I can make and enjoy today. And for as long as I am physically able I am planning on doing so.

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