Good health has been an overwhelming focus of the past several years. However, in a medical version of Gresham’s law, bad ideas about individual health found their way into circulation and drove out the good ideas. Nutrition and exercise were discarded in favor of requiring surgical masks, emergently seeking vaccine dosages, avoiding friends and family, and sometimes, even wearing two masks. Even the gyms became non-essential and were forcefully closed.
In my youth, I was always active, though I never paid much attention to nutrition. Over the years, as my activity decreased and my poor nutrition stayed the same, a slowly malevolent process was taking place. Where once the mirror reflected a youthful athlete, the insidious process at work had finally caught up. By the time the lockdowns were announced, the mirror revealed that only a Dad-Bod was in sight.
The first day of lockdown, I was shocked, and so I started walking. Frankly, it was more an experiment than anything related to exercise. I wanted to see who, if anyone, would still be outside, and so I began simply walking around my neighborhood at first. There was hardly anyone, so my walking radius expanded, and I added the nearby shopping center to my route. The plaza contained a supermarket and several fast-casual restaurants. I thought, Surely, there would be people there.
Very few people were lined up in their cars awaiting curbside takeout orders, so I broadened my radius again. The experiment culminated in what became an almost seven mile daily walk, past the elementary school, down the previously busy road, and back through the shopping center to my neighborhood.
I listened to too many podcasts. Trish Wood became a particular favorite backing track to the beat of all my steps. Sometimes, when I wanted to blow off more steam, I listened to music. I sang out loud, played air drums and air guitar, and generally didn’t have a care in the world. The world certainly didn’t any longer, and I was the only one outside.
I lost a significant amount of weight — almost 40 pounds. The few people left to interact with told me I looked good. I felt really good. Memories of my college days playing rugby came back, and, as it turns out, the local men’s rugby club was still practicing.
I bought a new pair of boots, laced them up, and went out to the pitch to toss a large, oblong ball around, tackle and be tackled, ruck, maul, scrum, and maybe prove to myself that the years hadn’t taken too much of my athleticism.
In perhaps my favorite story to tell from the Pandemic years, I found myself playing in a non-sanctioned match on a field that had been closed and was not being maintained by the county. It was raining and gloriously muddy.
The ball had gone out-of-bounds and I took my position at the end of the line-out to inbound it. The ball was thrown too long, and sailed over everyone’s head, including mine, and it was now my job to capture the loose ball for my team. I reached to pick it up, smashed into my opponent, and knew immediately afterwards that something wasn’t right. Laying on the ground, I reached up to my shoulder to find my collarbone in two pieces.
Covered in mud, and wearing my rugby kit and boots, I put on a surgical mask for the first time to gain entry to the hospital. My wife, who was at home watching our kids, scrambled to find a babysitter, which wasn’t an easy task at the time. She couldn’t bring the kids because the COVID protocols at the hospital allowed only one visitor. Nonetheless, she found a way to come to the hospital and help.
When she arrived, I was still sitting in the waiting area, and she texted me, “How do I find you?”
The mud, now dried and flaking off me, had left a trail through the hallways. I replied simply: “Follow the dirt.”
Suddenly out of commission for any physical exertion, unable even to play the cello, I was able to reflect on the differences between how I felt prior to the Pandemic and after I had been exercising regularly for months. In a comfortable recliner, in an uncomfortable arm-sling, I researched what it would take to turn my garage into a gym.
I suppose I wasn’t the only one to do this, because all of the home gym equipment was sold out. It wasn’t until almost a year-and-a-half later that the garage was transformed into a gym with a real squat rack, bench, bar, and set of real weights. That was two years ago, next month.
Since then, and thanks largely to my wife, who discovered a great nutrition program, I have an entirely different understanding of the importance of nutrition and regular exercise.
Today, I am the strongest that I have ever been, and I can run wind-sprints along with any of the kids I coach on the baseball or flag-football teams. My previously high blood-pressure is normal, and my weight is kept in check by planned bulking and cutting cycles.
There was no big-pharma. There were no injections. There were no other drugs. There was only the cold iron, myself, and a will to move it.
Life is capable of driving you out of your mind. The way it all comes down these days, it’s some kind of miracle if you’re not insane. People have become separated from their bodies. They are no longer whole.
I see them move from their offices to their cars and on to their suburban homes. They stress out constantly, they lose sleep, they eat badly. And they behave badly. Their egos run wild; they become motivated by that which will eventually give them a massive stroke. They need the Iron Mind.
— Henry Rollins, Iron and the Soul
Today, the gyms are open again; their parking lots are full. Good health no longer consists of staying home, wearing a mask, and being afraid of others. It was never truly built on that foundation, and now those events are almost a long forgotten memory; a silly epoch from our youth where everyone dressed up for a costume party. Some people took it far more seriously than others. Some still do.
When I reflect back on the Pandemic years, the daily walks grew into a newfound discipline towards my health, fitness, and nutrition. This was by far the most positive aspect of the entire experience for me.
In that sense, the Pandemic was a catalyst for my own personal growth. While I was wrong about many of the things that occurred, including how long it all would last, I don’t prefer to bury any of it in my past — to pretend like nothing happened. To this day, I like to think that the possibilities to grow personally, intellectually, physically, or emotionally are retained by everyone at all times and under any circumstance. Often, only the catalyst to change is lacking.
Walking in solitude; manly-men in short-shorts smashing into each other; a broken bone; a set of iron in a garage gym; a mind re-connected to its body. I can almost hear my wife ask again, “How do I find you?”
The answer is still the same: get dirty; put in the work; work against that which works against you, and always — follow the dirt.