TRX is two straps suspending your life between your sloth of yore, a strength of core, and much - much - more.

It’s amazing how TRX, which stands for Total body Resistance eXercise, with its hanging and slanging, can move the mind, boost the body, and vitalize vocal chords – that is, if moaning next day about stiffness, is any indication.

TRX is suitable and safe, once you’ve conquered the niggling fear that the bands may come unattached from the door or bar stand, leaving you face-plant attached to the floor, in that the positioning of your person, relative to the straps, is relative to the tension you wish to create. Closer to the attachment base makes it easier to perform the exercises.

But what if the required exercises are mandated by a personal trainer who makes Attila the Hun look like a wuss? What if, to that tyrannical trainer, fatigue is an unfamiliar concept, empathy a useless emotion, and concern an unknown characteristic? If your trainer has you alternating lower core work that offers - but seconds of respite – before plunging into upper body work, maybe capital punishment is not such a bad idea - and maybe legalized abortion, up to the age of your fitness trainer, is a great one.

We all know having a trainer pushes us just that little bit further than we want to go, and that that extra effort is the formative-change building block that leaves us, if introduced properly, with incremental, inevitable, and indelible physical improvements in strength, stamina, and flexibility.

Let me tell you of my first TRX try from my wrong side of Hell’s tracks. I met TRX way back on Wednesday August 24th, 2011 between 10 and 11 a.m.

It has taken me until now to recover from the ordeal. But here’s how things went down…as I wrote back then.

“It’s important to document my lament because my next session coming this Friday may have me take a powder, go on the lam - disappear - dreading as I do the dire and dreadful demands on my body development via TRX.

I have the shakes. And the willies.

Aah, the shakes. One of the principles behind TRX is to have the body stabilizers - diaphragm, pelvis, abdomen – steady, if not quell, the shakes that come naturally with using strange straps to do any strenuous, odd physical work. Do you recall ever seeing a gymnast lower into an iron-cross position, using ropes or chains, and how they’d exert to reduce the amount of incidental and peripheral movement?

Tis yeoman’s work.

 Well, with me, the shake was a quake of Jell-O. On bennies. I was a wiggly morass of motor-mechanical skill motions gone asunder, as I floundered to adapt and apply this strap-handle regimen to a mind and body woefully unprepared for it.

It wasn’t that I was in “bad” shape. In fact, after weeks of walking, oft weekly weight training, with proper eating – meaning my emotional-binging staples of ice cream, microwave popcorn, and potato chips were receding - had me, if not a Superman, at least not a blimp. Yet, because I had not experienced moving in all compass directions, seemingly concurrently (though actually consecutively) my muscles rapid-fired complaints of ‘what the heck is this’ to my overwhelmed brain.

That first session was so arduous that I invoked the ‘wing’ clause. I cut the lesson short by two minutes telling the instructor of my date with an all-you-can-eat-chicken-wing-ding affair. Another minute of the four lower exercises would have left me a wasted space, wasted and spent of mind, body, and spirit.”

Back to today.

I’m exaggerating. Just body and spirit. No one in their right mind would do TRX.

Seriously, you’d have to be crazy NOT to try it. It is such a change, a diversion from the ho-hum routine of most exercise sessions that it awakens the mind – and startles the body – with possibilities – once you’ve stopped quivering in fear.

So what are these exercises to be treated with utmost respect and regard? The four I did are but four of hundreds of exercises that can be undertaken with straps.

Did you see the first Mission Impossible movie starring Tom Cruise? Do you remember the scene where he drops from a wire, barely hovering but keeping it together, above a computer terminal? Well, this first exercise done resembled Tom’s position, kind of, except the legs, instead of staying split wide open, opened and closed like a V-door, if a V-door actually existed. This exercise verges on fun, and having your legs in motion like this, sort of in air, is a new feeling. It tingles. You support yourself with legs in air by your arms in a tripod position, with the tripod firmly on the floor. Your feet ache in the stirrups.

Speaking of stirrups, this is a birthing-examination process. Wonderful way-out exercises spring out unexpectedly.

It’s kind of like bondage sex, without the sex. But you’ll sweat!

No less than Drew Brees, an NFL star quarterback, knows the value of TRX: “Tell me why someone you know deserves a TRX Suspension Trainer or Rip Trainer this holiday season, best answer wins!”

Bodyweight exercise, moving your being through air, working against gravity, is what TRX is all about. It’s tough and testing. You may stink at the exercises initially. But you will improve with repetition and you’ll never forget the sensations and newness of all that TRX has to offer, even after you become an old hand with it.

You can use the TRX Suspension Trainer at home, while away – any and every day - and you’ll be set - and fit - for life.

 

Can France, whose cyclists came second AND third in the 2014 Tour de France, better that - this 2015?

Actually, the future for France could ride on the shoulders of a young man who didn’t even make the podium. Romain Bardet is younger than 3rd place finisher, Thibaut Pinot, or 2nd place’s Jean-Christophe Péraud. The latter is now 38 or so, he’s on his last legs, but Pinot at 25 and Bardet at 24, well, Vive la France!

Bardet is no pedaling pushover and no dummy either. He’s taking courses from the Grenoble School of Management – via correspondence. But he shows up for tests and showed up, coming 6th in the 2014 Tour - but to look at him - you’d think he just graduated from grade eight. He’s thin as a stick, as are all competitive cyclists, but he knows - as we should know – that the Tour and management - BIG Business - share one HUGE characteristic, a characteristic that allows one to hit the heights:

Timing. Is. Everything.

And, for this Le Tour, with its 3,344 kilometers, there will be plenty of instances to apply timing techniques.

You know what, let’s forget France for a sec. Who can, for example, the Americans pin their hopes on? Their best rider in the 2014 show, finishing 5th, was Tejay van Garderen. The self-proclaimed pizza lover, and rock star fan, rides for the BMC Racing Team.

BMC is quality. Period. It ranked second world-wide in 2014.

And Tejay wore the Polka Dot Jersey, awarded to the “King of the Mountain” - for a day, in his first Tour de France foray...

American or French favorites aside, all teams and nationalities will get going from this year’s Stage 1, all 13.8 km worth, in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

It’s a totally nifty fit, given Utrecht city scapes show about 50 bicycles – of all colors and sizes - to each car. Churches, cyclists, cut-stone causeways, canals, cafes, predominate. Bicycles standing, leaning, sprawling, when not pedaled by commuters, school kids, sightseers....have major meaning in this motto, for this medieval-to-modern city: Utrecht we all cycle.

OK. We all cycle, and the French, Americans, and a myriad of other nations have high hopes but here’s the lowdown on how this may run out. Italy’s Vincenzo Nibali, of Team Astana, is the big Kahuna, having won the 2014 edition. Then and there he was Mr. Consistent and Mr. Maestro Dominant, winning four stages and the overall title. (This season, as of April’s end, he hasn’t won, however, so – are all bets off? Or on?

Maybe keep ‘em on. Astana team director, Giuseppe Martinelli, says Vincenzo is 100% focused on the French race. So, possibly, probably, he can defend and keep the yellow jersey.

Martinelli sees Vincenzo peaking, pedal perfectly, by the time wheels roll for La Grande Boucle on July 4th, no small thanks to his training at the rarified and rough heights on a Tenerife goldarn volcano, the 12,198 foot peak, Mount Teide. It was a perfect setting to clear his head and beam in on training and technique, after all the hoopla and hurrah he has experienced in winning the 2014 trophy.

This year, to the winner and the almost 200 losers, the fast charging, exhausting race will be featured by, and on, “Dimension Data.” Purists and geeks alike will, in the opinion of Tour owner, Amaury Sport, and creator Dimension Data, dig the cool graphics and love the real-time information “stuff” available to possibly 190 countries – and perhaps even to the 10 million roadside fans - if the latter stare at their apps instead of stare at their athletes whizzing on by...

But, basically, my oh my, looking up at reality or looking down at app technology - either way - the Tour de France will feature and reside in what it does: foes will pedal furiously over hill and down dale. They'll fall peloton pell-mell, or singularly in personal-unique hell, they'll nearly blow lungs and almost burst hearts, climbing, chasing, catching and...

And

And

Chivalry and cruelty will reign.

Chivalry will, if you crash around a hairpin turn, rule. The peloton, the “flying ball” - will wait for you. Cruelty is plain. Teams use members as “domestiques” who only differ from slaves by wearing aero-dynamic skin tight garb, as they grunge and grind - and gear along - doing the scut and muck work of the team’s favorite, front runner.

(Sidebar: at least all of these cyclists, slaves or stars, share one, common to them, but uncommon to us, characteristic. Their heart sizes are up to 40% bigger than average!)

But in the end, we are all toast. We viewers have always toasted happy, memorable times. We’ll grab the bubbly – and we will witness one winner, who willingly won over, and put one over, the 7 mountain stages – for this 2015 is all about the mountains - and the 21 stages in total, and who will too, grab the bubbly. He’ll  wheel, happy, into Paris proper. We’ll squeal. His hair and ours, figuratively and literally, will be let down - a partying on the town - as we simultaneously, in sync, kick back, celebrating with that champagne-filled flute, drink.

To think that this flute thingy compares, like not at all, with car racing where men in  cars make a few one-day afternoon turns and then spray bottles of champagne at deafened crowds – and to think – of what finally, has not purposely been discussed here – but matters most:

The points of contention and spirited debate for elite road cycling will remain: who is using illegal drugs, what’s being used, will they get away with it, and should we care?

 

Soccer’s gonna whup hockey in Canada. But there will be scraps in Canadian living rooms - the remote will be fought for - as the 2015 Women’s Soccer World Cup, a booting war, hosted in June, by the Great White North, will pit itself against the Stanley Cup playoffs, full bore.

Keep beer ready to keep temperatures steady. Keep painkillers at side to keep fists on the downside, and all of us, keep this in mind: this soccer spectacle, this “beautiful game”, will attract more eyeballs in this hockey-mad country than any sports competition before it.

Prior to this, the three biggest facts of life in Canada, domestically or internationally, were hockey, hockey, and hockey – not necessarily in that order. But now, they’ll have to take a back seat (or at least ride side-saddle) to this World Cup.

The last Women’s World Cup in 2011, in Germany, was a doozy. The unheralded, never-a-contender-before Japanese stunned Germany in the semi final then twice, against the Americans in the final, came back from behind to tie, then win the game in the penalty shootout. 62 million + viewers worldwide tuned into the final.

So, for 2015, take the hell-bent-for-leather Americans, the madder-than-hell Germans, the ready-to-defend Japanese, toss in the always-a-bridesmaid-never-a-bride Brazilians, who’d love to avenge for their men’s terrible thrashing at the hands of Germany in the World Cup of 2014, and, ultimately, add in the loaded-for-bear-and-beer Canadians (who are in Group A with China, The Netherlands, and New Zealand - all ranked below them by FIFA) and it’s no wonder the anticipation for this soccer showcase is building mightily.

The Japanese, as befits their culture, play as a team and star worship isn’t their bag. No matter. There are enough other bright lights to stoke fans’ fires. USA has Abby Wambach, with her 180 international goals, Brazil - Marta Vieira da Silva, and Canada, their beloved, Christine Sinclair. These three razzle dazzlers will put on a show of offense that will shut up those negative nabobs who complain that soccer lacks scoring. Watching highlight reels of their best goals are a sight for sore eyes. Just watching “Marta” – she the "Pelé with skirts" - her footwork, feints, speed, shots, her overall soccer samba style -  all way, way HOT - will draw in neutral observers and make them rooters for life. Abby, for her part, is making boosters of NASCAR into potential soccer followers. She was the honorary green-flag starter at the Daytona 500.

Canadians, therefore, are in for a treat, and that ginormous country is hosting the games in cities ranging from Vancouver in the west to Moncton in the east, some 2,655 miles apart. About the only untoward fact in the preparation and promotion of the World Cup is that Toronto, the biggest city, will not feature any games.

Oh, well.

Well, for Abby, Toronto or no Toronto, she’d rather be on grass. Not the smoking kind, but the standing. Man, does that woman have power. Not only is she a huge influence for her sport on the field, she’s changing it off the field too. She led a lawsuit, claiming gender discrimination, because the Canada 2015 version will be held on artificial turf. (The men’s World Cup is played on natural grass.) She didn’t win the suit, in fact she withdrew it, but you know what - B.C. Place, where the final will be played, is installing a more player-friendly artificial surface because of her dogged determination and good legal-wonk works. (She’s also raising awareness on concussions, but that’s a story for another day.)

Gone will be the concrete feel of the 40mm fiber pile height. In will be the, slightly cushier, playable height of 60mm.

So, Abby burns with results...

And desire. She retweeted the punchline: America has a score to settle.

Well, so does Canada. Never gone for Canada’s Sinclair will be her angry memories of Canada’s game against the Wambach Americans in the 2012 Olympics. Canada was leading 3-2, with all three goals scored by Sinclair, when Wambach began to count. Out loud. Near to the Norwegian referee, Christiana Pedersen. “I got to 10 seconds right next to the referee, and at 10 seconds she blew the whistle,".

Canada’s goalkeeper had had the ball in her hands and the referee tooted, saying she  possessed it for too long, six seconds is maximum, and awarded the States an Indirect Free Kick – which, seconds later, led to a penalty kick - which tied the game up, Wambach scoring it. This call is so obscure, that the last time it had been called in a high-level match was, pundits think, back in 2002 in a Premier League contest.

Sinclair was seething and was suspended for her comments about the ref “...the ref decided the result before it started.”So she’ll be primed and pumped for this 2015 Women’s World Cup. In front of her hometown followers. Wow.

Unfortunately, trust organizers to take the “Wow” out of the tourney with an official motto that means nothing and everything: “To A Greater Goal.” The amorphous catch-all is meant to be inclusive, one supposes, and in this they’ve succeeded because, to a person, 100% of the earth’s populace will think it stinks. Despite that unfortunate theme there is a very bright idea, a first time EVER idea, to offset it, and that is to showcase the trophy across Canada before the spectacle takes place. The twelve lucky cities’ fans can get pics of them with the trophy and take shots at partner Coca-Cola’s Robot Goalie.

What’s the upshot, the final shot? With less than 30 days to go this “largest women’s sport competition in the world” is halfway to its goal of attracting 1.5 million spectators.

Small wonder, given the super-compelling star, and scintillating soccer-side, stories.

 

I cheat, you cheat, we all cheat - and Kendall Schler, the so-called St. Louis Marathon winner of 2015, is the latest sports cheat. Should we care?

For if we do, let’s build a Cheaters Hall of Fame that ranks the most distinguished, despised, cheaters amongst us. And for that cheater – the award for 2015 must go to Kendall, for she didn’t even pretend, ostensibly, virtually, actually, or otherwise - to run the race, having entered it after the last check point. I mean, if you are going to cheat, run the 26.2 miles and cheat by putting itching powder in uniforms of all your competitors, or something. Or hide all their shoes the night before. At least make an honest effort to cheat. Geez, who knew we needed a cheaters scale?

In America’s “pastime” baseball, cheating is almost lauded and lionized - so long as the cheating doesn't involve drugs. But if you steal catcher signs while standing on second, or spit on the baseball, while standing on the mound, or hit with a corked bat while standing at the plate, well, those time tested, time honored transgressions are just part of the game. Play ball! The difference between our baseball cheaters and Schler are the ingredients of skill, talent, and effort – the baseball players still need them. 

So Kendall's cheating is particularly egregious. Cheating to get an edge, here or there, is one thing. Complete and callous misrepresentation is another. At least if she had run the race and won by cheating with home-made rocket powered shoes, we could admire her ingenuity.

Equipment cheats are somewhat admired. Garth Snow, the Philadelphia goalie back in 1997 wore shoulder pads so huge, so oversized, a family of two could room there. Yet because the NHL, at that time, did not have specific sizes for such pads on the books, all he broke was the spirit of the game’s mores. (His miscreant ways didn’t hurt his future job prospects in the NHL either: he later became the NY Islander’s general manager and president.)

Or how about the equipment shenanigans of one Carl Brewer, who played defense for the Toronto Maple Leafs, a million or so years ago - before they became an utterly ugly joke (and team-cheated by purporting to be a NHL franchise)? Carl cut the leather palms out of his hockey gloves so he could hold foes without anyone noticing.

So hockey and baseball, we know, harbored sly individual devils, not above cheating, or at least skirting the edges of fair-to-foul play. But in some sports, like curling, for instance, cheating was so frowned upon – and the players were so decent - for a long time competitors were to call themselves out - if they "burned" a rock by touching it with their foot while sweeping, for example. Nowadays, such an honor system would seem naively quaint, even stupid.

OK, we’ve touched upon individuals – but how about that team cheating stuff? Many know the outlines of the 1919 Chicago White Sox “Black Sox” cheating scandal which had eight of their players accused of cheating - playing below par for payoffs from gamblers - in the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. At least here one can slightly sympathize with their rationale and roguishness. The team owner, Charles Comiskey, was miserly to the nth degree, 9th inning, anyway. Players were hurting, and hungry for cash. Fair enough. Sort of.  So team cheating has a history...

But literally, nothing but nothing can top, or bottom, the bogusness of the 2000 Paralympics Spanish Men’s basketball team. The 12 players were supposed to be of below intelligence. 10 of them were perfectly normal in IQ – but obviously leagues below in morality and ethics. They faked being sub-standard (an IQ had to be below 70), won the gold, and were only later disqualified when their celebratory acts looked normal. These fiends are the worst example of cheats coming and going... In a way, maybe the 10 cheaters are way, way, way dumb. Did they honestly think they wouldn't feel guilty for the rest of their lives?

At least the White Sox and Spaniards were adults. How should we grade adults who cheat out kids? Should there be a special, stinky, icky, dirty category for their machinations?

Yes.

Kids are innocents – at least so far as administrative acts of larceny are involved. You need adults to pad a roster and nefariously pick the cream of the crop from a too-wide pool of eligible players. Here, we’re talking about the Jackie Robinson West, little league baseball team from Chicago. Their national title was stripped from their small shoulders by Little League Baseball, because they had used ineligible players – some being from outside the allowed geographical boundaries. Here is a situation even viler than the Spanish one.  

But back to the bigger question. Why do we cheat? If you say you’ve never cheated, you’re a liar. We all have fudged in some ways, minutely or hugely. Is it because we lack self-esteem? Is it the chance for monetary reward, or fame? Is it because of blackmail or peer pressure? Or because we’re bored, or angry with the world? We get sucked into this vortex early. Heads I win, tails you lose - we know that crack from when we were kids...

Let’s close with Kendall. The wayward woman is, ahem, running in good company. Serial cheat Rosie Ruiz cheated in the New York AND Boston marathons. Clearly, Kendall has a way to go before she can fill Rosie shoes – but give her time: her ethics reservoir is dry of honesty and barren of sincerity. Undoubtedly, she can run on those sad facts for miles and miles – from here to eternity...

 

At least be able to snap it off at lunch. Make it mandatory. All American government employees must watch pornography at work, obligatory.

Call them work jerks.

In work-watching porn continuously, they’d save US citizenry from their bureaucratic belligerency - and that US citizenry beleaguered, spied upon, and put out - would have, finally and thankfully, deliverance from governmental incompetency.

The Federal government, however, is considering laws to ban porn watching at work. They should be ashamed of themselves.

The government, not the porn peepers.

Because not only is porn watching a relatively victimless crime, unless your child is mixed up in the scene, it is a pastime that will do less harm to John Q public than if the government,  as is its wont, continues to nose and poke around in our affairs. At least this way, in watching porn, they’ll have their hands (and god knows what else) full.

For:

If porn had been invented and the internet constructed, back in 1969, presidential pretender Teddy Kennedy might not have driven his car into the tidal channel off of Chappaquiddick Island late at night and perhaps campaign volunteer Mary Jo Kopechne might be alive today.

If porn were a staple, perhaps horny male TSA employees at the Denver International airport wouldn't cop feels of hunky males’ private parts.

And forget about Hilary Clinton, privately, wiping her server clean, think about this:

if pol-pole man Billy Clinton had had unlimited access to internet porn while governor of Arkansas, and later as president of America, perhaps he may not have indulged so ignorantly with every Toni, Dicki, and Henrietta.

Hilary would not have felt so put out by Bill getting off with Monica and Gennifer - the two affairs he admits to - that she might not have indulged her frightening fantasy to be President of the US of A.

If government-types got jollies from siliconed and sweaty bodies, perhaps, just perhaps, they wouldn't have come up with a mind-numbingly dumb, offensive, diagnosis like the one that called Malik Hasan's Fort Hood slaughter: a case of "workplace violence."

They won't, if they work at the IRS, target you because they don't like who you associate with. They’d be too busy figuring out how to target their favorite porn stars for follow up phone-sex.

If porn were a reality the FBI forensics unit - or 26 of its 28 experts - would not have unrealistically, possibly criminally, matched hair samples in criminal court cases to the favor of prosecutors.

If President Obama had no lines of decency, and watched porn constantly, he wouldn't have, as he did recently, drawn a red line when Syria threatened to chemicalize its citizens, then atrociously, ignored that same redline when Syrians got the governmental gas.

Secret Service and Drug Enforcement Administration sleaze balls could have had a ball with a perpetual porn parade instead of embarrassing Uncle Sam, what with these stiffs trying to short change hard working, donned in tights, Colombian putanas, ladies of the night.

Instead of frenzied lending, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac workers could partake in frenzied grinding - to porn - instead of rubber stamping HUGELY risky loans to those with solvency shortcomings.

If porn were available for teachers

“educators”

they wouldn't have to do such a lousy job of instructing our kids (or making passes at them.) And, specifically and recently, Atlanta’s 11 teachers, administrators, and principal found guilty of cheating, by inflating kids’ test scores, may have instead, lived honest, if somewhat seedy and sordid lives.

If Detroit municipal employees could have filled their plate with porn, they wouldn't have had time to fill the slate with their ruinous policies, and wreck the Motor City, thus emptying the town out.

Remember John Beale? He was the EPA employee who pretended he was a CIA employee.  Perhaps if he had watched porn, where nothing is left to the imagination, he would have not fired up his hokey imagination and defrauded the EPA of nearly $900,000 in unearned pay.

Back to Barack. If he dealt with his fantasies via porn, he wouldn't harbor the farcical fantasies of striking an honest, measurable nuclear deal with Iran or of trying to persuade courts of his inimical idea to have illegal aliens take over the States.

If Obama's minions had been busy observing bawdy bodies they wouldn't have had the time to convince their boss to awfully trade five Taliban leaders for army deserter and fly-by-nighty Bowe Bergdahl.

If Illinois governors such as Rod Blagojevich, George Ryan, and Otto Kerner had indulged themselves with sex on screen they might have refrained from indulging in non-clean crimes of corruption, perjury, and fraud. (Though, ironically-happily??? they may be receiving real live porn pokes and feeds in jail!)

And if Anthony Weiner...forget Anthony - that guy’s already up to the bottom of his unzipped fly with his own hanky panky, porn-packaged, perverted-penis, wiener promotion system...

Let’s face facts. Even if we think having our government workers watch porn Monday to Friday is terrible, it’s not like we can do anything about it. They can’t be removed from their jobs. It is virtually impossible to axe (figuratively) a shirker from employ.

And whether it is boredom causing the day long porn-peek fests - of the feds, by the feds, and for the feds - or rather it is simply an act of these aardvarks to "act out" as a lark - is of no import.

Remember:

if these folks who work in government were properly functioning people, they wouldn’t be working for the government in the first place.

So, to save the American citizenry from desultory public servants’ freedom-infringing activities - the porn show must go on!