I'm no Nautilus wuss.  All those machines with rotating cams designed by pointy-headed freaks without a single ab to wash their Argyle socks on?  Forget it.

And I'm no Aerobics pencilneck either.  Mincing dorks in Spandex, never once noticing that Richard Simmons, the Bozo-the-Clown guru at the head of the class, is both fat and skinny at the same time?  No way.  

But don't go thinking I'm an endurance freako, either.  Techie nerds! Jog here, cycle there, read your 'caloric burn' meter and download the results while you sip your post-workout sports drink.  Here's my opinion, you Jack-Skellington- crybabies, and I'm only going to say this once before I kick your skinny ass right out of your cross-trainers:  it's not exercise if you can talk on your cell phone while you do it.  

Whoa, whoa, whoa!  You think I'm a 'functional training' circus freak then?  What kind of--I oughtta smack you upside the head with your Bosu Ball, that's what I oughtta do.  Look, I ain't training for no Vegas show with a name you can't pronounce, and a French name at that.   

So that might make you think I'm a free-weight guy.  Think again, Conan the Wuss-barian.  Lifting barbells is for teenagers and convicts.  And look, I have nothing against convicts, because I am one.  Four years in San Quentin, back in the early '90's.  Straight time.  I won't tell you the charge, but it rhymes with gagrivated blissault on a thenior fitizen.  No one messed with this guy back in the big house.

Kettleballs?  Shmettleballs.  

Crossfit?  Shross-fit.  

Olympic Lifting?  Chagrintic Drifting.  

And so forth.  

I don’t even know why I’m standing here talking to you, I’ve got a workout to get to.  

What's my workout, you ask?  

Er, hmmm.  How can I even begin to explain it to a normal person?

Well, it's hardcore, for one thing.  It involves...effort.  Lots of hard work.  Intensity.  I lift really, really heavy things and then I put them down.  And I do extra cardio, but it's not really cardio, see, it's more like, something you've never seen before, involving heart rates, and EPOC, and other, you know, indicators.

I used to compete, back in the days before it was all about sponsorship and drugs.  We were the real deal.  The competitors would all go to someone’s basement whose parents weren’t home.  We’d put some Metallica on the hi-fi and then we’d do screaming most-muscular poses until one of us passed out from oxygen deprivation.  Then we’d try to revive him.

Then we’d get worried and call whoever’s parents owned the house and try to explain that our friend was dead in their basement wearing only posing trunks.  Then usually the guy would wake up to say he was only kidding, but he’d be mad that we’d ratted him out and drive away in his Ford Pinto.

Then the rest of us would be stranded there in our posing trunks and socks because Mitch was the only one of us with a car and we’d left our clothes in the Pinto.  And then an ambulance would show up and we’d be stuck with a stiff fine for False Reporting to an Emergency Response Team.  And sometimes trespassing as well. 

Those were the days, man.  Those were the days.