I’m trying to get ready. What I’m trying to BE ready for is not entirely clear. A friend accused me of enjoying core fitness work, and I recoiled in mock disgust. I can understand why he thinks what he thinks, but I don’t enjoy getting fit. I enjoy doing some of the things that get you fit, riding, running, et. al. If none of it led to the transcendent moments of flow, stoke, or ineffable joy I get on the bike, you would not catch me doing a push up or turning a pedal for that matter.
I used to think that discipline was key to maintaining fitness, but I learned, over time, that discipline is fleeting, and that I would need more tricks to achieve this inarticulable readiness to shred.
One good trick is to make plans with other people, essentially stealing their discipline, or some small part of it, for yourself. Other people, in my experience, have a maddening tendency to show up, and in so doing, more or less emotionally coerce you into showing up too. For something like ten years I’ve met twice a week with a group of local people to do pushups, sit-ups, burpees, lunges, squats, sprints, curls, triceps dips, etc., etc., but trust me, nowhere in the list is something fun to do. It all sucks. And yet, we do this thing, and it helps us do the other things we like to do.
It’s like a cult, but we don’t quite kill ourselves, so there’s no documentary forthcoming.
Another good trick is indecision. If resolution is the core of discipline, the bloody-minded determination to do a thing, then indecision would seem like the core of its failure. But let me tell you, what I think and how I feel right now, has an inappropriate influence over what I do later, in the sense that, if I feel tired at night, I will decide not to ride in the morning. I will allow I feel at one point in time to change how I behave at a later time.
There is some basic human fallacy here, that how I feel now is how I’ll feel forever. It’s the root of all sorts of mistakes, but I’ll leave that aside for now.
So, I employ indecision in this way. I never decide not to do a thing in advance (OK, sometimes I do, but I really try not to), because I might feel better/more motivated when the time comes. Essentially, I leave open the possibility that I might ride, even if I can’t conceive of wanting to, based on how I feel. At this stage of my life, it’s possible that indecision has gotten me out the door more often than any sort of resolute discipline.
And you can employ these two tricks together. When a friend says, do you want to do X (where X equals something physically/mentally daunting)? You say, “Maybe. Let’s catch up in the morning.” Then you have the double whammy of coercion AND indecision, and then you’ve shown up and done a thing, and that levels you up for the next thing.
For a 52-year-old man, I appear pretty fit, and I’d wager I am, compared to the rest of my cohort, but very little of that derives from being an organized, resolute or disciplined human person. Instead, I ride the coattails of others, set traps for myself and dither my way into situations that require work to get out of, via cardio-vascular and muscular exercise. I am my own worst frenemy.
At some point, likely not too far in the future, I will find myself on a ride, a ride on which I’m having a smashing good time, and I’ll realize that I can do all the things in the context of that ride that I could hope to do, and that, that is the shimmering moment in which all this discipline and anti-discipline comes together to produce joy.
It might even be worth it. I can’t, honestly, decide, but I’ll figure it out one day, maybe.