From J to Z

Photo by Victor Freitas

“I’m bulking,” I say to my sister-in-law while scanning the box of vegan Korean beef from Trader Joe’s into the macro tracking app I just downloaded, even though I have no idea what a macro is or why anyone should be tracking them. The app informs me I need to consume 3,500 calories each day in order to properly bulk, which I decided I would like to do exactly twelve hours ago.

My sister-in-law lets out a long sigh, because she’s used to absurd pronouncements from both my brother and me.

For his forty-third birthday earlier this year, my brother decided we should do a triathlon. Not that we should sign up for an official triathlon—we should do our own triathlon, just the two of us, in the neighborhood. And so, on the morning of his birthday, we woke up early to swim a mile at the gym, bike 30 miles through Rock Creek Park, and then run five miles on the streets of suburban Maryland.

“Why are you guys so ridiculous?” is a question my sister-in-law asks roughly once a month.

I’ve been going to the gym regularly for more than a year now, and while I’ve noticed myself getting steadily stronger, I’ve been curious about what might happen if I actually followed a plan beyond just wandering around the weight section and haphazardly copying the routines of the more muscular gym bros I’m too intimidated to approach.

My first instinct was to hire a personal trainer, until I remembered my bank account does not match the fancy gym I belong to.

I know their eye-watering prices because two separate trainers have approached me over the last year, part of a constantly rotating cast of impossibly attractive men who roam the floor in tight-fitting shirts with the word “COACH” stretched across their impressive pecs.

The first time I talked to Darius was to inquire if our gym had anything I could use to work on my calves. I held up my phone to show him an exercise I’d googled in case he wasn’t familiar with how to build calf muscles, despite looking like he just walked off an Abercrombie photo shoot. After he pointed to the machine located directly behind me, he asked if I might be interested in scheduling a free personal training session.

“I’d love to,” I replied, “but you should know I’m probably the poorest person in this gym.”

He laughed, even though it wasn’t meant to be a joke, and proceeded to set up a time for me to come in for a consultation.

We met the following week, and after a brief chat, he led me through a series of movements involving a wooden bar that made me feel like Ralph Macchio at the beginning of Karate Kid before he knows what’s happening. Darius stood next to me during this performance, jotting things down on a clipboard and asking about my fitness goals.

“I want more muscle,” I told him, when what I really wanted to say was that I’d like to look exactly like him and the other trainers who seem to have been carved out of marble.

“We can definitely get you there,” he said, making more notes on his clipboard that I imagined just were different variations of the word “delusional.” After we were done, we sat in a small office and he slid a laminated price card across the table. Darius explained he was a Tier 3 trainer at the gym, which meant he was the most affordable.

The first number I saw was $3,000.

“I’ll definitely think about it!” I said as I left, because that’s all I could really afford to do. Think.

Tayelin approached me about six months later at a new location the gym had just opened in D.C. I was in the middle of my first attempt at using the upside-down bench press machine, and it was going about as smoothly as you’d imagine for someone who calls it the “upside-down bench press machine.”

When he asked if I was interested in having a free consultation, I let him know I’d already had one and didn’t want to waste his time with my limited budget.

“You’d be helping me out,” he said, smiling. “Plus, it’s always good to know your metrics.”

Tayelin led me through the same routine, watching as I raised another wooden bar over my head and said he was making notes on things like shoulder mobility and core strength. This new location had a body-scanning machine, which he showed me how to use before leaving the room so it could analyze me from head to toe while I stood in my underwear, gripping two handles on either side of me like I was riding an oversized Segway.

Afterwards, the machine spat out a one-page summary detailing all my vitals, and Tayelin and I sat in another small office where he said my body fat percentage was good for “a man my age.” When he slid the same laminated price card across the table, I told him that while I wished I could start a package with him, I was leaving on a three-month trip to Buenos Aires soon.

Well, that and I definitely couldn’t afford it.

In this latest round of getting in touch with my inner gym bro, I remembered I had a Nike Training app on my phone that includes a series of workout programs, complete with videos and tutorials. The best part is it’s free, if you don’t mind giving away all your data to the Nike corporation.

Luckily, I stopped worrying about my data long ago.

I found a program that’s designed to build muscle and lasts for six weeks, which I promptly sent to my brother asking if he wanted to join me in the challenge.

“I’ve been working 20-hour days,” he wrote back from his office in New York. “Haven’t had time to get to the gym lately.”

Slacker.

Deciding I would just have to be the most jacked brother in our family, I clicked the join button and loaded up the first workout for me to attempt that night at the gym.

The program begins with an upper body routine whose first exercise is holding a plank on an exercise ball for a beat, before using the ball to trace the letters of the alphabet. The entire alphabet.

I made it to J before collapsing onto the soft, rubbery floor of the stretching area.

I sweated through the rest of the workout that night and have since finished the first week. I most certainly haven’t packed on any noticeable muscle yet, but I have managed to make it to the end of each day’s program.

And maybe that’s the real challenge—not just bulking up, but showing up, letter by shaky letter, until I make it all the way to Z.