A friend of mine is one of the laziest guys I have ever met. John is 42 years old. This guy is also eats the worst food. He simply pays no attention to what he shovels into his mouth as long it tastes good. His favorites are pizza and Chinese food. This guy is the worst morning person you have ever seen. The dude has this screaming alarm system but it goes off for about one and a half hours before he even hits it. Then he lumbers around for an hour just getting oriented. When finally conscious, he drinks extra large triple, triple coffees and eats processed cinnamon waffles. He refuses to use maple syrup or even butter on the waffles but instead spreads on processed lard and then pours corn syrup over the lard. He works as little as possible and instead prefers to watch television or play video games. This guy is absolutely addicted to video games. Finally, he drinks beer and whiskey almost nightly and smokes about a pack a day. He thinks I am absolutely crazy – you get the idea.
Other than the odd bar fight or running from the police on occasion I have not really seen this guy do any type of voluntary physical exercise since high school. Good genetics have kept him in relatively decent health although he is an unsettling shade of white that I don’t think I’ve ever seen. You simply can’t get this guy off of the couch or out of the chair he sits in to smoke and play video games. Enter paintball.
It’s funny but ironic how someone so lazy and unlikely to exercise could end up absolutely personifying the philosophy I aggressively promote regarding moving your body. Let me explain. About a year ago, he ended up getting a contract for work at a large paintball site. He ended up organizing some large props for an indoor paintball park. While helping to create these mock houses and forts for this paintball company, he fell in love with the game. I’ve rarely seen such a metamorphosis.
I mean, this guy was given some free passes; went once to try it at the behest of the owners and simply fell head over heels for this activity. He brought along a couple of co-workers who ended up having similar experiences. John and his buddies in turn met some cops and ex army guys at the park who were equally enthused. They began to have grand battles full of the intensity inherent with winning or losing in combat. Within a month he had his own gun, the camouflage outfits, accessories and he was meeting his new pals a couple of times a week to play out the epic drama of battle. He was addicted to this stuff, he loved it. Instead of the television or the computer, John had his bag of gear and was happily headed out the door to the paint-ball park. Make no mistake, this was exercise. Your heart races when you do this stuff and there is a plenty of physical activity involved. John was exercising! I observed intently.
It wasn’t the physical movement, though. If you stripped it down to the actual exercise, put this guy in a big empty room and made him run around in exactly the same way he would never do it. It was the other stuff that created the activity. It was the cops, the ex-army guys and competing with them, the look-alike guns, the fear and pain of getting shot. It was the thrill of the hunt, the yearning for victory in combat (even a mock version). It was the black boots and the camouflage outfit. It was the accessories – the high speed munitions, the scopes and grenades. It was the yearning to do better and to learn how to thrive and win in battle. It was the competition – avoiding the shame of defeat, striving for the thrill of victory.
It was all these things and so much more. It was an overwhelming force raising the dead into euphoric and intense activity. I had witnessed it first-hand. Fun and passion had won out over discipline, denial and hardship. There was no boring, hard, repetitive cardio gym workout to despair over, there was just sheer happiness. Yet, exercise was very much taking place.