Drop Dead Healthy by A. Jacobs (books to read to increase intelligence .TXT) 📕

Mark Merchant gives me the Roman Legionnaire’s Workout, which involves smashing logs in Central Park with a huge metal mallet. Typical feedback from passersby on the walk home: “Hey, are you Thor?”

And today, I’m trying another: pole dancing. As I mentioned early on, it’s the most popular class at my gym, so I figured I should check it out.

Before I begin, let’s get something straight: Pole dancing has nothing to do with stripping. Aside from the technicality that 95 percent of it takes place at strip clubs.

At least this is the position of pole-dancing evangelists. Pole dancing is an art form, like a vertical ballet. Or a sport, like gymnastics, only with more pelvic gyrations. But it’s not sleazy.

Their line of argument is a tad whitewashed, for sure. But after my pole-dancing session, I can say that the gist is true: Hanging and twirling on a pole will get your ventricles and atria pumping.

When I arrive, thanks to years of training as a sharp-eyed journalist, I observe that I’m the only man. Fifty women and me. This ratio turns out to be common in almost all my classes, not just those involving G-strings and erotic dance. When it comes to fitness, Americans like to reinforce stereotypes: Women prefer community. Men are rugged individualists.

The instructor, a Latina with close-cropped hair, takes us through a series of warm-up stretches and hip thrusts. Here’s where I expend a lot of energy trying not to act or feel creepy. I’m here as a professional, after all. This goal is made much more difficult by several factors. For instance, the instructor repeatedly yells phrases such as “really spread your legs!” Also the outfits don’t help. I try not to stare, but trying to avoid cleavage here is like trying to avoid old white guys on the Senate floor. It’s omnipresent.

After fifteen minutes of warm-up to, what else, Lady Gaga, we choose a pole. I’m alarmed to find out that we aren’t given our own individual pole. You share with three other dancers. I’m assigned to a pole in the corner with a trio of women, each one wearing a different-colored pair of high heels (red, black, and white).

Anna (red) is up first. She’s part Asian and part Swedish. Her T-shirt reads I HAVE A HEART-ON FOR PEACE.

She grabs the pole and does the back hook, the chair, the jump and slide, the fireman’s turn. She wraps her legs around the pole, she slides upside down, she arches her back.

Then she grabs a towel and wipes down the pole. Dr. Tierno would be proud.

My turn. I try to remember the tips from our instructor: “Keep your hips away from the pole when you’re climbing, because otherwise you just look desperate.” And “If you don’t have heels, remember to point your toes.”

I did my best, but as you might expect, my performance resembled a fourth-grade asthmatic trying to climb the rope in gym class.

“I’m impressed that you’re trying,” says Anna. I recognize the tone: It’s what I use when Lucas is trying to read a five-letter word.

“I think I got pole burn,” I say. I point to my red calf. Anna gives me a knowing nod.

“Look at this.” Anna points to her own legs, which are dotted with brown bruises. “You get used to it. I don’t even feel it anymore.”

Turns out Anna is a ringer. She’s president of the U.S. Pole Dance Federation and is organizing next month’s national championships. When she finds out I work at Esquire, she tells me that she’d love it if the magazine would cover the event. She writes down her phone number on a scrap of paper.

When I get home, I show Julie that I have gotten the digits of pole dancing’s most powerful official. “So proud of you!” she says.

The Goal

Friends keep trying to recruit me to their own fitness classes. “Oh, you will love Zumba.” Or hula hooping. Or faith-based aerobics, whatever that is.

Julie got me to attend a class at her gym. The teacher spent the class sitting comfortably in her chair at the front of the room and yelling at us to lift our glutes. I found it offensive. If you’re going to shout about glute-lifting, at least lift a glute or two yourself, right? The instructor’s obesity added to my skepticism.

The variety strategy is backfiring. It’s getting numbing instead of inspiring. It almost always boils down to moving your arms and legs in a room with mirrors.

I need another way to motivate myself to exercise. Maybe I need a goal. All my fitness books talk about goals. You need a goal, and preferably a publicly and loudly stated one, one whose failure results in high levels of humiliation. But what goal?

“Why don’t you do a triathlon?” Julie asks one night as we scrub our BPA-free dishes.

“I don’t know,” I say. “It doesn’t seem so healthy.”

At the start of my project, I considered a triathlon but dismissed it. I’d even watched a few YouTube videos on triathlons, including one that purported to be a motivational video. It featured stumbling runners collapsing on the road and convulsing. There was a woman on a stretcher. With an IV in her arm. That kind of motivation does not work on me. When I watch Saw III, I don’t say to myself, “Hey, I really want to be chained up in a sociopath’s basement.” Same idea.

Though triathlons have an aura of fitness about them, I’m not sure they’re maximally healthy. Between 2006 and 2008, fourteen people died while doing triathlons, either from heart attacks or drowning. Triathletes abuse their joints. Extreme endurance sports, according to some studies, lower life spans. Or maybe these are just studies designed by lazy people to reinforce their choices.

But Julie pressed on.

“You don’t have to do the ones that make you vomit blood. You could do a smaller one.”

Maybe she had a point. A smaller race would still get me training. And also, I could tell my friends that, yes, I finished a triathlon,