So you should probably join a fitness club such as you see advertised in the newspapers by photographs of attractive models wearing leotards fashioned from a maximum of eight leotard molecules. Before you join such a club, you should take a tour conducted by one of the fit and muscular staff persons. This person will show you the various rooms and pieces of equipment, then hold your head under the whirlpool until you agree to buy a membership.
Here’s a useful checklist of the features a good fitness club should have:
A powerful odor of disinfectant Various species of hairs in the sinks Signs all over the place reminding you that the management is not responsible A loudspeaker system playing soothing musical numbers as performed by the Dentist’s Office Singers A door that says “WEIGHT ROOM” that you never venture through because large sweating men go in there and emit noises like oxen with severe intestinal disorders Two women in the sauna who are always there, no matter what hour of the day or night, talking loudly about growths in their pelvic regions
Saunas
The word “sauna” is Finnish for “very hot little room with strangers in it breathing funny,” and people who’ve tried it agree that it’s a very invigorating experience, provided you get out in time. If the door sticks or anything, you have about as much chance of survival as the unfortunate corals who happened to be residing on that reef where we detonated the original hydrogen bomb, because the usual temperature inside a sauna is 180 degrees, which you may recognize as the recommended final temperature for cooked turkeys, very few of which live to tell about it.
This high temperature is, of course, very good for you because your body contains traces of toxic minerals such as lead, which get in there when you get drunk and eat paint, and the heat helps you sweat them out. Really, I’m not making this up. Here’s a direct quote from Shape magazine, an authoritative journaclass="underline"
“Sweating is now a significant route for eliminating trace elements from the body.”
So that’s the good news. The bad news, of course, is that these trace elements have to go somewhere, presumably onto the sauna seat, which means if you use a spa sauna, you’re lounging around on a lot of other people’s trace elements.
So what I recommend is that you build your own sauna at home, which is a lot easier than you might think. All you need is a few simple hand tools. (No! I’m not going to tell you which ones! I’m sick of making all the decisions!)
Using your hand tools, construct a handcrafted little wooden room that has a bench inside it and a sign on the door that says “WARNING! REMOVE ALL CLOTHING AND JEWELRY AND DENTAL FILLINGS AND PACEMAKERS!” Now all you need is a way to raise the internal temperature to 180 degrees. You could always set fire to the sauna, of course, but then you’d have to handcraft a new one every time you wanted to use it, which would leave you with very little time in which to eliminate your elements. So I suggest that you take the more practical route, which is to plug in 40 toasters set to “medium brown.” They’ll give you all the heat you need, plus you’ll get a healthy aerobic workout clambering around in there trying to keep all the little levers pushed down. Keep the number of the Burn Unit handy.
Okay! Now you’ve bought your fitness outfits, you’ve found a place to do your workout, and you’ve built your own sauna. The only remaining question is ...
When to Actually Start Your Fitness Program
Not today, certainly. You’ve done enough today! I would rule tomorrow out, also, seeing as how it comes so soon after today. You rush into these things, and the next thing you know, you’ve strained a ligament or something. So I would say the best time to begin would be first thing after Easter, although not the one coming up.
Chapter 3. Women’s Total Complete Aerobic Fitness Workout
Warming Up
To understand the importance of warming up, let’s take a look inside a typical human muscle. As we can see, it’s very dark inside a typical human muscle. This means that most of the time the individual muscle cells are fast asleep. The purpose of your warm-up routine is to allow these cells to wake up gradually—to stretch, to scratch, to go to the bathroom, etc. If you just start jerking them around, they’re going to be very cranky, and they may develop a condition that professional medical doctors call a “Charley horse,” which is usually fatal.
WARM-UP NUMBER ONE:
CLEARING YOUR MIND OF WORRISOME THOUGHTS
You can’t loosen up effectively if you’re worried about nuclear war, or the likelihood that somebody might steal your wallet while you’re doing your exercise routine. So your initial warm-up step should be to lie down on your back with your knees bent and your feet planted 17 inches apart, then, with your left hand overlapping your right, clasp your wallet to your chest, raise your head to an angle of about 36 degrees Fahrenheit, and watch “Happy Days” or a similar television situation comedy rerun where they never talk about the likelihood of nuclear war. Hold this position until about a minute and a half before your neck develops a “crick,” which is usually fatal.
WARM-UP NUMBER TWO:
LETTING YOUR MUSCLES KNOW
YOU’RE ABOUT TO START MOVING
Lie facedown on your wallet with your legs together and your arms away from your body at an angle of about 7 degrees, then have a friend or hired servant place his or her face about an inch from your various major muscle groupings and say, in a pleasant, musical voice, “Everybody up! Time to start warming up for a Fitness Workout!” Then have your friend listen closely to your muscle groupings for the sound of good-natured cellular grumbling. If necessary, he or she should prod them very gently with the eraser of a number 2 pencil, such as you used on your college boards.
WARM-UP NUMBER THREE:
PUTTING A TAPE OF LOUD ROCK ‘N’ ROLL-TYPE
WORK-OUT MUSIC ON A GHETTO BLASTER-TYPE
STEREOPHONIC LISTENING DEVICE
One thing you have probably wondered about for many years is why musicians who sing rock ‘n’ roll tend to be extremely thin, if not actually dead, whereas those who sing, say, opera, tend to be humongous wads of cellulite. The reason for this phenomenon, scientists now believe, is that fat cells are actually destroyed by stupid lyrics. In one recent experiment, scientists at the University of Iowa reduced a live 450-pound hog to an object the size of a harmonica in less than six hours by repeatedly playing the chorus to “Shake Your Groove Thing” at it. Other songs with proven fat-reduction lyrics that you’ll want to have on your workout tape are:
“My Baby Does the Hanky Panky”
“Yummy Yummy Yummy I’ve Got Love in My Tummy”