Total Physique Online

Reprinted with kind permission from Laree and Dave Draper (thanks guys!)
From Dave Draper’s Post Column

Today I am reminded why I don’t take voluntary layoffs. They are forced upon me like poison when I least expect them.

As the year rolled to an end, I promised — threatened — I’d take a week from my training to allow the body’s systems to rest and repair. I had the telltale signs. The joints were glowing, the central nervous system was shorting out, the heart was racing, the digestive system was rebelling, the muscles were aching, the spirits were sinking and the mind was numb. No pump, no burn, no drive.

The real problem: no courage. Laying off the iron is like leaping off a cliff.

Laree, of course, knew this weakness well and taunted me periodically (every 30 seconds) with cute remarks, like, “Hey big fella, how’s the old layoff coming along?” or “What will you do today with your free time? Get a job?” or “Ya can’t do it, can ya, ya neurotic lump.”
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Reprinted with kind permission from Laree and Dave Draper (thanks guys!)
From Dave Draper’s Post Column

January is not exactly hanging around gathering dust. No cobwebs in the 31-day stretch, as we note we?re already past the halfway mark and the days are getting longer. Reluctant to welcome another year, many of us poked cautiously at its edges — will it be better, will it be bitter, shall we commit, what?s our strategy? And, then, oh, no, here we go again. The days, like cars of a freight train, are rumbling by.

Big plans or no plans, we cannot ignore the first month of the year, as if it were a pause for contemplation or a moment to reflect. Jump right in; be strong and courageous, hopeful and alert. Hesitation is behind us, bombers. Hesitation is doubt; doubt is absence of trust, and where no trust exists there is fear. Fear paralyzes.

Many of us never skipped a beat, the heavy metal accompanying us like a faithful dog (or a monkey on our back) from December, across the imaginary timeline and into January. Some of us — the noble — are content to be back in our comforting refuge after an obligatory respite, our generous contribution to seasonal family joys and
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Reprinted with kind permission from Laree and Dave Draper (thanks guys!)
From Dave Draper’s Post Column

It has recently occurred to me (between 1990 and 2006) that I?m not as young as I used to be. And I have a sneaky suspicion some of you are experiencing a similar awakening, sudden and stunning in its arrival. Well, it?s about time. Youth gets to be old after awhile.

Getting older is a real test of one?s humor (I got a D-), especially upon discovering there?s nothing funny about it. But we?re comics and clowns and we joke about our looming frailty, lumpiness and fussiness and laugh (not of the rolling-in-the-aisles variety, more like a snicker) at the iron-headed irony. The symptoms of time?s inexorable passing are pesky and less than kind and I offer my observations for your examination:
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Reprinted with kind permission from Laree and Dave Draper (thanks guys!)
From Dave Draper’s Post Column

I feel like I’m in a psychedelic haze. It’s the middle of December, by jolly golly, and We’re up to our ears in plastic snowmen, blinking Santa Clauses and grinning red-nosed reindeer. Bewildered people with gaily colored packages balanced on their heads dash hither, thither and far, ribbons and

snowflakes whirling behind them. If I hear bells jingle or choruses sing another note of White Christmas, I’m pulling the emergency cord.
I know what I’ll do: I’ll go to the mall, get stuck in traffic along the way, circle the parking lot fighting for a space, walk half a mile to the brightly lit shops advertising end-of-the-world sales, join the shoppers swarming the aisles like a South American army ants, resist an impending panic attack, take a few blows to the body and escape to the parking area the size of Manhattan to search for my car — wherever that could be.
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