Charles Carroll
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John & Paul,
Remember Dorthy Parker’s famous play on words? “You can lead a horticulture
but you can’t make her think.”
Years ago, many years ago, I had a friend whose sweetheart left him. He was
a blubbery guy, one of those softies who cinched his belt tight so that his
soft stomach simultaneously showed over it and under it.
Anyway, he went to one of the serious gyms in San Rafael to get fit and
discovered to his and everyone else’s surprise that underneath all this
smooth tissue was a mesomorph trying to break free. In three months he was
huge and ripped. Every time he went to the gym he just got stronger, and
leaner, and more muscular.
So of course, this being California, enormous pressure was put on him to
enter a local bodybuilding contest, which eventually he did.
So he is working out, working really hard trying to sculpt his body. And we’re
talking after one of his workouts and he tells me that he has been using a
new machine. Yep, a C2, probably a model A or B, and what a terrific job the
machine was doing with his lats.
He said he loaded the machine “full up.” In retrospect I suspect he meant
that he had set the machine to 10. So by “full up” he must have meant the
highest Drag Factor possible. He said he would hit the machine for 45
minutes to an hour at the end of a work out.
At the time I had no idea what he was talking about, and almost no curiosity
to find out.
A few years later my nephew and a friend of his, both from LA, were in town
on a project. The friend turned out to be a Southern California bodybuilder
deeply imbued with the culture and with deep knowledge of it. I told him the
story of my first friend and he just laughed.
“You don’t get huge on a Concept2,” he said. “It’s an aerobic machine. It’s
for endurance. You burn calories on it. You lose weight. You improve cardio.
But you don’t build muscle mass on it. A real bodybuilder doesn’t get
anywhere near an erg, unless he is trying to lose smooth tissue. Even then
he is really careful not to use it too much. It’s guaranteed to make you
lose mass. Nobody who works in a gym knows how to use a C2. What’s more if
you don’t know how to use them correctly, you can really hurt yourself.”
By this time I had my own, a model C, and agreed with him. Ironically, and I
have to add this to the story, a few months later I would hurt myself on
mine. But that was 15 years ago, and we didn’t have all the resources that
are now available to us. It is a pity to insist on staying ignorant when
there is so much light shed all around us.
Cordially,
Charles