Exercise is easy when you choose the bulking-up plan
By Burton W. Cole
The year remains fresh and new. There’s still time to start — or reboot — those pesky resolutions, like showing up on time for work, calling your mother more than twice a year, or dropping 15 pounds.
(Pro tip: Buy a 15-pound frozen turkey, stand on the bathroom scales while holding the turkey and record your weight. Drop the turkey. Check the number again and, ta-dah, 15 pounds vanished. You’re doing great with your vow to lose weight! Bonus points if the frozen turkey shatters the scales, and you no longer see any numbers. Mission accomplished for this year. And next.)
For me, I’m going to get back into shape — or maybe just get fit for the first time.
I’m tired of my wife eying me as that big sack of mashed potatoes overflowing the easy chair in front of the TV. I want her to salivate over me as her big, thick cut of beefcake — overflowing the easy chair in front of the TV.
No sissy fitness program for me. Keep your yoga mats and Nikes. I don’t want to end up looking like a garden rake, rescue crews screeching up alongside me to offer emergency transfusions of Whoppers with cheese.
I want the heavy stuff. The he-man stuff. The kind of fitness that gives a guy arms as thick as tree trunks and legs as powerful as pickup trucks. I want to look like the Incredible Hulk, only not as green. And with a better vocabulary. (“Ugh. Burt smash. Then Burt obliterate. Burt decimate, eradicate, eliminate and extirpate. Ugh, big words give Burt headache.”)
I told all this to my wife as she flipped through my Muscle & Fitness magazine.
“Yuk, that's gross,” she said. “Veins popping out all over those musclebound goofs is disgusting.”
Then, having an interest in mending, she studied the back pockets of the guy on Page 174 in case she ever needed to use that particular stitch.
Despite my wife’s absolute lack of interest in men with muscles, my mind’s made up. This is the fitness program for me, and for a very good reason:
It is based on a concept called “bulking up.”
Other programs doctors strongly recommended that I try immediately are based on a barbaric principle called “losing weight.” Medical personnel jabber on about fewer health problems if I’d — to use their highly technical medical jargon that I don’t quite understand — “push away from the table” and “stop eating like a pig.”
Call me old-fashioned, but I dislike radical fads.
Muscle magazines for us bulker-uppers advertise products like “Mega Weight Gain” and “Mass Builder.” This is the kind of program a fitness buff like me can endorse.
I have a natural flair for bulking up. According to standard height/weight charts, I’m already 7-foot-8.
That’s why I have trouble squeezing into tight spaces, like my easy chair. The doctor suggested another theory, but it’s too ridiculous to even mention. For an educated person, she sure doesn’t know much about being, uh, tall.
Why, at my height, am I not playing pro basketball? Because I choose a more practical program to package all those extra inches. I concentrate my height in in one central area, where I can see it and keep better track of it. I believe it is more structurally sound to have a solid center of gravity.
Also, I am afraid of heights. That’s why I stopped at 6-foot-0. It is the highest I can go without a parachute. Width works better for me.
Now, as a bodybuilder, I simply will shift a few bits of bulk from my center of gravity to other areas, such as my biceps, shoulders, chest, thighs and calves. With so many new homes to choose from, my bulk should be eager for travel.
I excavated my weight bench from the garage. It has all the attachments—lateral pull-down, leg press, cable rowing, flyes, curls, bench press and few other bits of medieval torture pieces.
So I am ready to get fit. It’s my resolution and I aim to keep it.
Now if you'll excuse me, I’m in training. I need to work out with a hot fudge sundae. Building all this mass isn’t as easy as it looks, you know. But I’m confident. If I do this thing right, I could grow to 8-foot-3 by next Tuesday.
Meet Burt and the all-you-can-bulk-up buffet for a solid workout at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or at www.burtonwcole.com.