Not Fit But I Know It

For my whole life I've been a very active guy. My sports peak was definitely high school where I played a sport every semester for all four years. I think I got some kind of commemorative pen for my achievement at my final sports banquet.

The fact that I was playing so many sports tricked people into thinking that I was actually good at them. One day, probably Junior year, Bobby Larsen was at my house and we were skateboard when all of a sudden he realized and told me, "Hey I'm better at sports than you". I protested as any guy would, but he was right. I was never really that good at any of my three sports. But I had been there from the beginning and I always showed up, so I was grandfathered into all-league titles and CIF Championships.

The disadvantage of never getting really good at any one sport is that college varsity athletics are an impossibility. I have joked around about playing special teams for Princeton football, but I'm not actually that interested in an endeavor where the percentage chance of death is in the double digits.

What was left, then, were the club sports. My sophomore year I gave rugby a try for one quarter. Back when I lived in England I had loved the sport and one of the top ten achievements of my life is knocking a kid unconscious during practice one day. In college, though, I found that I would no longer have that opportunity. With the average college rugby player roughly twice my size, my only goal was to avoid injury. After 10 minutes of playing time during which my sole achievement was a foul that I didn't understand, I called it quits.

This year I had considered playing Frisbee, but I found it hard to force myself into a sport with a name as stupid as "Ultimate".

In the absence of organized team sports, I had started working out. By sophomore year, I was running or lifting basically every day, usually with my friend from Physics camp Rob Biederman. We began a routine replete with broken record catchphrases like, "Go big or go home...literally". Before a really heavy lifting exercise one of us would request an inspirational song, Rob liked "Enter Sandman", I usually preferred "Lose Yourself". I never got to bodybuilder stature, but I was in good shape.

And then I went to China. China is full of workout equipment that you would expect to find in one of those black and white 1930's weight loss documentaries. I'm not sure if you know what I'm talking about, but if you do that's exactly what they're like. Some of the workout equipment actually included a giant swing and seesaw. Or maybe I was just at the playground.

So when I came back to school this year, I was a bit out of shape. It didn't help that I never got back into a workout routine, or that every week Quad celebrated Fried Fuesday, with Onion rings, mozarella sticks, and chiken nuggets. At the start of this semester my fitness had reached a new low.

Thankfully I received a phone call from Rob over spring break. He had fallen into a similar situation, and decided that it was time to do something about it. I asked if there was any one thing that pushed him over the edge, and he said yes. The other day, he said, he had taken a long look in the mirror. He then claims to have begun weeping. If the story is true or not, the fact remains, Rob and I were on a highway to obesity and we both wanted off.

And so, this past Monday we headed back to the gym for the first time in a long time. On tuesday the range of motion for my arms and legs was approximately 10% of normal, which is to say we had a good workout. We have pledged to continue our workout into the summer, as Rob will be in NYC as well. So, if you don't recognize me the next time you see me, yes that is me Tom Knight, I'm just that buff (or at least I will be).