This season's fashion keyword: LAYERING

I bought a small compression sleeve.

I bought a medium compression sleeve.

I bought a large compression sleeve.

I didn’t know which would fit.

So I put all of them on.

I. AM. VERY. COMPRESSED.

Calfway there and livin' on a prayer

Walgreens rudely doesn’t have calf-compression sleeves so I had to improvise and buy a knee one. But I’m not certified on knee-to-calf conversion measurements so I bought one that’s way too big. But I layered one of those stick-on heating pads (which was designed for backs, so again: more blind-guessing conversions) underneath and I’m just hoping for the best.

Also: My ankle looks weirdly puffy.

Also: I have no idea why I’m in possession of two mismatched wastebaskets at work, but it makes me feel richer than Midas so don’t tell anyone.

I legit just got eye-rolled-at by a dude at the gym I had the not-know-my-place-ity to acknowledge as we passed each other in the hallway

I’ve been fully conditioned to not waste my time trying to make friends here, but I sometimes slip up and I accidentally did the eye-contact-and-imperceptible-bro-nod thing at him as we approached each other and he rolled his eyes so hard at me that he almost fell over and won a free ophthalmologist appointment and a lifetime membership to a bitchy gay gym.

AND!

Not only was he not nearly hot enough to pull off that diva shit, but when he came out of the locker room in his billowy, voluminous gym shorts he was standing on a pair of pasty white stork legs that were more chickenshit than Bill Barr in a roomful of grownups.

Leg day, bro. Less eye roll, more leg day. Then we’ll talk.

I felt a little unplugged and unproductive at work yesterday, but I went on to have a killer leg workout and 9 to 5 rehearsal

Then I woke up today totally scattered and exhausted, so I took my first sick day in months. It’s hard to discern an off day from the onset of a depressive episode, but I decided today was an onset and I’m glad I called in sick and spent the day sleeping to an Alexa playlist of classical orchestral music. Because I woke up human again. Lingeringly groggy, but human. Onward!

This is the crazed, shaky grimace of a man whose quads are screaming so loudly that his hip flexors are calling 911

Leg Day is here in all its fear-of-accidentally-tooting glory, and I’m not walking out of this gym until I’m physically unable to walk out of this gym.

Leg Day always goes better

when you’re halfway done and you can already barely walk because you timed it just right and snagged the good quad machine that destroys all things good and holy in you except your encyclopedic knowledge of Sondheim trivia and your will to live with under 100 pairs of super-cute shoes.

Also: Pink + Provincetown + muscle-cut + T-shirt is code for gay + gay + gay + T-shirt.

Boilerplate

Today’s episode of Surviving Leg Day was brought to you by OutOfYourLeague.com, the dating site where everyone else is half your age and going through life on a supermodel scholarship; the How Not To Light Your Gym Selfies podcast, which we promise to listen to one of these days; a grant from the Black El Camino T-Shirt Badassery Council; the words “abductors” and “lumbar region”; and the generous support of thousands of don’t-skip-leg-day memes posted by social-networkers like you.

Note to all the foxy ladies out there: Somehow I’m still single

But you should see my legs.

Observations from the field

The secretive, elusive and—DUH—stealthy stealthfier has developed a heightened feeling of comfort in his new brodude gymnasium surroundings and is escalating from his initial timidity and instinct for social self-preservation to now displaying a precipitous drop in common sense and a brazenness not traditionally observed in any heavily populated, non-stand-and-model gym habitat. To wit: Observe how he has abandoned his heretofore steadfast habit of sneaking up-the-nose-to-the-harshly-lit-ceiling stealthfies from his sweaty lap and begun to purposefully suck in his gut and blithely twist his iPhone for a quickie (a quickie STEALTHFIE, perverts) with devil-may-care concern for detection, focus, observable F-stop comprehension or rudimentary photographic composition.

What could cause this abrupt deviation from his deeply entrenched norms? In-the-field brocial anthropologists have posited the highly plausible theory that he’s nauseated to the point of profound disorientation by today’s brodude-gymnasium-sound-system song playlist titled Painful, Instantly Forgettable Songs That Each Repeat The Same Six Words Ad Nauseam Until You Poop Uncontrollably On The New Equipment Or More Preferably Just Take Slightly More Brazen Gym Stealthfies.

We will need to undertake more rigorous in-the-field observation to establish a possible causal relationship. Hopefully with a slightly less shitty playlist.

(CONFIDENTIAL NOTE to the guy in the tight gray technical shirt and butt-hugging black shorts so you all better not read it: Dude. I’m as addicted to my iPhone as the next powerless-over-checking-Facebook-every-three-minutes guy, but even I know to put away my damn phone WHEN I’M LITERALLY PEEING NEXT TO SOMEONE—ESPECIALLY ME—AT A URINAL. It honestly looks like you’re pretending to be on your phone so you can not-so-secretly peek over the partition at my winkie. And that is NOT the story of how we met that I want to tell our grandchildren.)

(CONFIDENTIAL NOTE to the guy in the red sleeveless shirt and loose gray gym shorts so you all better not read it and I really mean it this time: Never stop jumping rope.)

Opening night pump! Because these show tunes aren’t gonna flex themselves!

It turns out a poorly timed leg day—desperate vanity dictates that I probably should have cycled into a chest day on opening night—is especially unproductive the day after shredding a bacon-size piece of flesh off my shin. But it’s too late now, and my man-fleshy butt is off to the theater for its official show-tune debut.

And to all of you gym members too dumb to notice that I’ve been taking stealth selfies every time I work out: AT LEAST LOOK UP AND NOTICE MY SHIRT!

Leg Day in cheap, ill-fitting track pants is more miserable than Melania on Smocking Hamburder Night

I’d like to think my pants are all bunchy in all my uncomfortabunchy zones because of my mighty man quads and cantilevered cantaloupe calves, but it’s really because I was a big Clearance Clarence who was reeled in by the racing stripes. These stupid pants are tailored for cartoon ostrich legs, and they’re literally compromising my manly squats.

But they have pockets!

In other news, my Graffiti Wonder Woman shirt hasn’t sparked a single conversation about which is the definitive cast recording of Sondheim’s Follies. (It’s a tossup for me between the OBC and the Papermill Playhouse. Any other opinion is invalid.)

Snapping groin injuries at the squat rack are cripplingly painful and all ...

but you don’t know TRULY debilitating pain until you’ve put your hand in the pocket of your polyester knit track pants while you have a hangnail.

When you’re all psyched up for a killer leg workout

but when you warm up at the squat rack you feel the tiniest hint of a twinge of an old tendon injury deep in your awkward buttish region so in the interest of preserving your ability to walk you have to abruptly pick another body part to work out as you bob and choke in a bewildering sea of whatdoIdonowness so you decide to do chest and triceps but you’ve been thinking about destroying your quads all day so your head just isn’t in it but speaking of my head here’s an artistically composed pec-deck portrait of me and my phrenology shirt.

LEG DAY DIARY

What’s worse than doing split squats?

Right: Doing split squats with a manbun who won’t leave your line of sight.

Also: GASTROINTESTINAL JOE SHIRT!

Things I’ve accomplished today:

• Had my first formal voice lesson in 30 years, and already determined some bad habits I can start working on unlearning
• Went to Target and bought only what was on my list
• Did my first leg workout since I started running last spring ... and freaking KILLED my legs without sacrificing proper form
• Accepted a very romantic marriage proposal from one of my 934 freakishly hunky gym crushes as all the rest of the guys in the gym struggled to mask their jealousy through forced smiles and wan applause*
• Attended a Full Monty line bash where I remembered more of my lines than I’d expected
• Sat down and actually played the piano for the first time in months as an overture (for lack of a less obvious metaphor) to my New Year’s resolution to practice with specific regularity
• Made it to my 11th day without having Diet Coke
• Wrote a blog post that doesn’t use the word “boobies”
• Oops
• Didn’t kill anyone intentionally
• Did some laundry without expecting a gold star on my chores chart
• Boobies
• Oops again

* This one is a total fucking lie

A stealth selfie from my seat on the leg-press sled

Because skipping leg day is like skipping childbirth day; it hurts and it sucks and it never seems to end, but it’s important for your body and you’re always glad you did it when it’s over. Even though you walk funny for a while. And there might be some surprise pooping. But at least I don’t have to mash up peas and save for college after a 225 lb. squat.

Flashback Friday: Garters and Underpants Edition

Last year at this time I was in a show that obligated me to wear sock garters. And underpants.

I have no such requirements for the show I'm in now. Just sayin'.

Get your tickets at theatrecr.org. DO IT.

Kill me now

It’s not every day you get to say adductor and post pelvic images online—much less have a relevant reason to brag about the amount of weight you just squatted—but I just added 10 pounds to my squat weight—I’m up to 215, baby!—and in the middle of my third set I felt a sharp pop in my left rear adductor that all but sent me toppling to the floor. (And if you’re a man who’s ever had an adductor injury, you know that its close physical proximity to your kill-me-now pain zone means that its crippling pain instantly radiates directly to your kill-me-now pain zone, which can literally make you beg to be killed now. Kill me now.)

So until you kill me now, I’m now gingerly hobbling—and lord-knows-how popping the clutch as I drive—through the rest of my evening until I decide how serious this injury—which is not uncommon for me but never at this intensity—is. I apologize in advance for any near-future lateness.

Fun bio-vocabulary fact: An aDductor is a muscle whose contraction moves a limb or other part of the body TOWARD the midline of the body while an aBductor is a muscle whose contraction moves a limb or part AWAY from the midline of the body. Abductor has the same etymology as the concept of abducting a person by taking him or her away from something. Kill me now.

This morning I voted to go to the gym instead of voting to go vote

I also voted to do a pretty intense leg workout at the gym, so I’m pretty sure there won’t be any kind of runoff in the next few days. But after work I finally voted to go vote, though in all the civic excitement I forgot to vote to finally get my flu shot afterward. And now that I’m home and my shoes are off, I’m voting to stay put. Which, my fellow citizens, is my Constitutionally exercised right to democracy inaction.

Gym math

Residual headache + pre-workout shake jitters + chronic elbow tendinitis flareup = only vertical, non-elbow-using activities at the gym = no options but leg day = certain messy death at the squat rack