A few days ago I went to a new fitness studio, fittingly named “Old School Gym”.
Now, to digress, I used to view myself as an above-average fitness level kind of a guy. I thought pretty high of my ability to handle high-intensity, high-power exercise.
Until that very moment.
More precisely, I went to Old School Gym’s Kickboxing session which the owner, whos name is Max, described rather humbly as a nice warm-up exercise with some kickboxing elements in it.
And I definitely warmed up. You know its getting tough when the sweat suddenly starts to fall in ones eyes, but this time it was just the beginning. At some point it became my partner’s sweat, I noticed but didn’t care. Everything became covered in sweat. I literally couldn’t see because of it flooding my eyes, getting into my nostrils. At some point I couldn’t gather any breath between those mad, ridiculously intense sets, loud, sudden laughter of the trainer mixed with the animalistic grunts of other people all just flooding with sweat, bloody in the face, jumping and kicking violently; this all put me in a weird delirium-like state.
It was pure suffering. WHO ARE THESE TITANS?! – Was the only thought in my head as I watched other guys, most of them in their teens and early 20s continue the exercise as I slumped down on the sweat-covered floor, having given up with that over-exhaustion stomach sickness, simply looking at this feast as man who, having finally accepted his death, looks for the last time at life’s unnecessary rumble from somewhere far away, just about to transcend in peace.
The taper-off activity consisted of 150 pushups, 200 rapid stomach presses and 250 back crunches to be done in about 10 minutes.
If I ever make through this training in full without slacking, I’d buy myself a treat!