Here at my blog, we try to keep our bodies as fit and sharp and angular and ripped and toned… as our minds. Which isn’t easy, when you spend your average day crushing lesson plans, book work, a dozen or so useless new Korean words, and cheap escape plans to the cajun food place two blocks from here into your brain pouch.

My personal brain finances, most days.

There’s a lot of room for improvement if my body is ever going to look half as good in a one-piece 1950s striped swimming costume as my mind does, clearly. And, despite the fact that I’ve said this many times before, this week past, I made my determined face, lifted the toilet bowl, blocked my nose, and took the plunge.

I got back in the gym.

GymCRAZYum 2014: The Year of our Washboard

Pictured: My back after thirty hyperextensions this morning.

Yes, I am back and FLABBIER THAN EVER, you unwashed corndog eaters! I got in there on Monday and have hit it every other day, and I’ve gotta tell you: I havr never been in so much pain in my 27 year long life.

Holy bags of clam shit, why did nobody remind  me this hurts so much? No, well, it’s not all that bad. I’ve got a standard push-pull-legs type setup that *sigh* I got off of a celebrity workout plan (and no, I won’t tell you which celebrity), but that my gym overlord and some friends have all approved as being equal parts good for me and probably lethal.

Mondays are (and I’m pulling these names from a memory I think my brain is trying to burn in a fire): lateral raises, incline barbell presses, ab rollouts, and lowering myself into the depths of hell itself from two metal bars using nothing but my cannoli arms and the torturous mocking of people who’ve gathered to mock me as motivation.

“Look at him: trying to better his life. What a gas!”

Tuesdays start with bar squat things, then something which, I shit you not, is called a “Dumbbell Bulgarian split squat”. Let that name soak in for a second because God damn. Nothing you ever voluntarily do to your body should ever include the words “split” or “Bulgarian” in the same phrase. That should be a finishing move in Mortal Kombat, or one of the weird businessmen from Hostel. But here we are, in the name of self improvement. Also, its not as bad as all that. Follow it up with 30 of the previously mentioned hyperextensions, and a trip on the leg press machine (essentially a training machine for kicking your way out of a coffin one day), and you’re good to go.

Good to go home walking like a green plastic army man, maybe.

For the last day in your workout cycle, come in hard with weighted pull ups and bent over barbell rows. Try not to look at the pullup bars. Just ignore them. Barbell curls, next on your list, are designed to make you feel like the (wo)man you are, flexing whatever the fuck muscles you done gone and accumulated in those arms and bursting awesome all over your gym shoes with every successful rep.

And you’re going to need that awesome, for that godless pull up bar. But not yet. No, first, you’re hitting some alternating hammer curls, which are, while challenging, not nearly as cool as they sound.

Lame, yes, but stupid? Also yes.

Last on your list is the pullup bar. I cannot even begin to explain to you how much this sucks. I’m a nice guy, and many people in my life have remarked upon how few real-life enemies I seem to have. I felt like this apparatus hated me with a fiery contempt the second I put hands on it. Holy shit. If you’re not familiar, this machine is a staple in any action movie training montage, circa 1980s and 90s. Our hero puts both his hands on a fixed bar above his head, then pulls himself up from the ground using only his arms and a personal prayer hotline to God himself. This shit was brutal like college football rings on a proctologist.

Although apparently Tom Jones’ buff uncle doesn’t have any fucking problem with them.

And that was it. Week one, in the bag. I fell short on a bunch of exercises I was supposed to include, and had to augment some of these to accommodate my porcelain bone structure and babyshitsoft musculature, but I got it done. And next week’s going to be three more days of this, or this week will have all been a waste. And there’s not a chance I’m letting that pullup bar win.

I will burn down that gym before I let the pullup bar win.

I’ll be checking in once a week to bug you all with my progress and thoughts on the matter. I’d love comments and suggestions, if you could leave them at the bottom of the page, and I’ll try to get back to you.