47 is an odd number, literally. It is close to 50, a nice round, even number that is worth commemorating, but 47 is not 50. So why am I writing about 47? It has nothing to do with the number of the next POTUS. It is not the number of years I have been married to Pam, my saint of a wife, which is only a paltry 41. It is not the number of years since my high school graduation, which is 48. So WTF am I writing this for? Frankly, I could have just written about the number 1, which is the real significance of 47 for me.
In the summer of 1974, 47 years ago, I began my first physical, not spiritual, rebirth. In the summer of 2020, 1 year ago, I unknowingly began the rebirth of my physical rebirth. Simply put, I changed my exercise regimen dramatically in my 47th year of exercising. That is why 47 is so significant to me. And that is why I could just as easily have written about the number 1.
I did not expect this change. I did not seek this change. I did not even understand that I needed to make this change. Nor did I understand just how important this was going to be for me. The reality was that I had been in an exercise rut for years, smugly thinking that I was fit. And to some extent in one dimension I was.
As the summer of ’74 began, I had just completed my first year at UCLA, and, frankly, I was overweight and out of shape, having skipped most forms of exercise for the prior couple of years. I don’t really remember what prompted me to step foot onto the red clay track at Beverly Hills High School, my alma mater, but I did. It was not pretty. It was not pleasant. But at least that first outing was brief, possibly only a single lap, a lap during which I probably walked more than I ran. And while my start was inauspicious, that single act was the catalyst for the commitment I have made to exercise ever since.
Running became my go to form of exercise. My raison d’etre in the exercise world. I could never explain why. I was never more than marginally good at it. But I was that guy. The one that everyone got irritated with. I ran. Not because I had to. But because I liked it. I liked to run without music in my ears, as I just loved the sound of my heart beating in my chest and of my feet slapping the ground. I felt bad if I didn’t do it. Yeah, I was that guy for 46 or so years, while covering about 25,000 miles.
Of course, running was not the only form of exercise I did, but it was my favorite. During the rest of the 70s and through all the 80s and 90s, I did other things along with running. I spent lots of time playing pickup basketball until I realized that it was too easy to get hurt and keep me from running for months. On a whim in the mid 80s, I decided to check out a Masters Swimming workout at the Jonathan Club. It turned out that if I liked running, I was actually naturally good at distance swimming, despite having never done any organized form of it. So for the next 17 or so years, I swam with a Masters team, logging somewhere over 6,000 miles in the pool and ocean. In the late 80s, I dabbled in cycling and did several international distance triathlons and, later in the 90s, bike centuries.
But since I stopped swimming in ’03, I became much more one dimensional. I ran. I sort of lifted a few weights, but there was no organized or thoughtful or consistent approach to my lifting. I didn’t realize it, but my body was changing in ways that were not positive. My running stride was shortening. My mobility and balance were waning, and most of all my core and glutes were pretty much useless. But I still smugly believed I was fit. And in a cardio sense, I was. I just assumed that my physical degradation was due to aging. I began to wonder just how much longer I could run.
Then Covid happened, and I was not lifting at all, not even sporadically. That was when my Tonal entered my life. I had no expectations for it other than replacing my disorganized, unthoughtful and sporadic approach I had towards weightlifting and for keeping me away from Equinox. It enabled me to do both of those things admirably, I was wrong in thinking that was all I would do with it.
I recently celebrated my 1 year Tonalversary. It is shocking to me just how much fitter I am today than I was a year ago. Let me be clear, I will never be the guy who focuses on building big delts, lats, pecs or biceps or getting super strong. I am not interested in those traits. On the other hand, at 66, I am totally interested in maintaining muscle mass and bone density, in training all the muscle groups in my body, in improving my balance and mobility, and in maintaining my cardio fitness levels. When I got my Tonal, I had no idea just how important all of these goals were going to be to me. Nor did I realize how effective it would be to enabling me to achieve them.
I breezed through the first program I tackled. It was a pure beginner program, and I kept my weights low to ease into using the machine. Then I started the second program, and all my illusions of fitness evaporated when I tried my first Bulgarian split squat. After lowering the weight to the bare minimum and falling out of most of the reps, I realized I needed to press reset. My mobility and balance were awful and my glutes apparently had not been used in years. That was about 11 months ago. Suddenly I was not so smug. In fact, I was pretty depressed. All I wanted to do was to avoid doing another Bulgarian split squat. I mean, who needs them, I asked myself.
Then I got mad at myself for being so lame. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I needed them. So I decided to incorporate body weight versions of them into my pre-Tonal warmup stretches. At first, I was happy doing one on each leg. Then two. Then three. Since then, I have done about 1,000 of them. They are now one of my favorite movements. They have become the poster child for the rebirth of my physical rebirth and the genesis for restoring my belief in incremental improvement, despite being on Medicare.
With the help of the Tonal Coaches and community, I have transformed myself. Over the past 11 months, I have mastered many, many movements that I would have thought impossible to do a year ago, movements that have enabled me to focus on my core and my glutes and on a lot of other muscles in my body. I have lifted over 850K pounds in that time, a low number compared to most Tonal users, but a significant number to me. I cannot even count the number of burps, burpees, mountain climbers, squat jacks and other body weight exercises I have done. Sure, I still have limitations and physically cannot do a goblet curtsey lunge consistently right, but mentally I believe that I can and will master them.
Due to a running induced metatarsal stress fracture in January, I stopped running. I began to believe that I would never run again. I could not exist without cardio and had no interest in returning to Equinox, so I bought a Peloton bike, which I have used for cardio for the past six months. But spinning is not running. I will continue to use the bike because of the ease in which I can get a great cardio workout. But returning to running has been lurking in the recesses of my mind for the past month or so. I miss it. So much so that the other day, I put on my running shoes after doing a core workout on Tonal and went for a run. My pace was slow and easy. My distance was short, under a mile. My cardio was a bit labored. But my stride was remarkable. It felt long and fluid. My glutes were firing. My core was stable. I realized I would still be doing some form of running for years. I thanked my Tonal the whole way.
