I'm the exact person they had "Invitational" events for at school sports day AKA My Life In Sport
[this post originally appeared in my FROTH newsletter. You can subscribe here and I’m pretty sure your cryptocurrency investment will go gaga within minutes]
From the moment I finished my first 'fun' run as a child I knew that sport was not going to be a huge part of my life and that the names of things can often be misleading. Which is why I've never released a Live Recording, eaten Jumbo Shrimp or am very rarely found involved in a Civil War. But I do love a medal.
At school we were forced to play sports, naturally. First football and cricket, then hockey and rugby. Because what stick-thin 12-year-old wouldn't love being chased around a freezing cold field and leapt upon by boys twice his size. God this sounds like a Stephen Fry novel already.
#SPON inasmuch as Huel gave me some free Huel during Edinburgh 2016 god bless them. #earlyadopter
In my later school years the options were broadened, first to include badminton, which I obviously chose as being wiry and short actually seems to be the MO for that bizarre sport played only by your Dad's friend Tony at the local leisure centre on Wednesday nights.
After that, rowing was an option, which does strongly imply that I went to the sort of school where as a 9 year old I'd have to make toast for an older boy under threat of being bogwashed or traumatised in my sleep. Thankfully that was not the case and the Stephen Fry parallels end here, but with hindsight it was and is quite a posh school so I think on the one hand I've turned out fairly well-balanced and on the other I have massively under-fulfilled my potential.
Suffice it to say, rowing was basically a cheat code because the 'pitch' was the sea and that sea was the English Channel, which is rarely the millpond you need to row a little boat in. Most of the time, instead of rowing we'd have to go for a run (unaccompanied by a teacher, foolishly) along the seafront, whereby we'd duck into the arcades and play Lethal Enforcers or the Simpsons games. Ironically I got very good at both of those 'team' 'sports'. Cowabunga.
I got into skateboarding in my teens. Noone would have called it a sport then. Now it's in the Olympics probably. My bones and mettle are too brittle to have kept it up but its legacy lives on in my mind and dress sense.
I think there was a period of about 10 years between university and Ten Years After University when I did very little exercise. I've never been a big lad. It shows up mainly in my face and neck. Like a beard of laziness. I'd run round the park sometimes and christ I'll wang a frisbee about with the best of them (not the actual best like people who actually do that competitively though obvs). I've never enjoyed team sports. Or much competition at all for that matter.
Age certainly underlines the differences in people's fitness levels. Now more than ever. Because now is the oldest I've been. Except nowadays the 'beard of laziness' for most people is more a beard of responsibility or children or high-powered job that doesn't allow the time to casually exercise at 11am like some arsehole comedian.
A few years ago I saw an infomercial for the Insanity workout with loveable hard-ass Shaun T at the helm. Something in it intrigued me and soon enough I tried the gateway 'fitness test' that vacuums you into the cult* like those people outside the scientology lair. The results were unsurprisingly horrific and yet somehow, curled in a distressed, damp heap on the floor of my lounge, I turned a corner. I decided to Give It A Shot. 60 days. About an hour a day of jumping about on my Ikea rug until I was, by some measure, 'fit'.
I kept up these lounge workouts, the occasional run round the park, serious high-intensity sports like Volfsball until almost one year ago. That is when I attended my first Crossfit class. I didn't know much about it, aside from its cult-like status and insanely-ripped participants in quite boring Netflix documentaries about it.
But I've been going for a year. It must be good for something. I can do a pull up or two. I can tolerate a burpee. And I can unironically use terms like 'snatch' and 'AMRAP'. Ok maybe not the last one.
I suppose the one thing I have learnt to take from exercise is the mental health aspect. Sure, I want to be able to hover-run for a space-bus when I'm 90, but chiefly I don't want to cry in the street if I miss it. I'm not trying to be flippant. I just like to fight against things until eventually being convinced by them. I live in a bubble of inevitable hypocrisy. I don't like team sports or exercise or competition and yet here we are One Year Later, and while my bank account might not be thanking me, my ageing glutes and brain must be.
It can be difficult to get across the appeal of Crossfit or any of the things I love to hate about it. So what better subject/target for one of my classic Rap Ups. Yes, this has devolved into self-promotion again. Sorry. I think you'll enjoy it though. There's something for everyone. And ultimately, it's really short.
*the irony of making fun of cults while extolling the virtues of Crossfit and regularly performing improv are not lost on me.