Aug 20, 2019 3 min read

It is funny how quickly you lose what you don’t use. This has been true for me numerous times in my life. I am no longer very adept at using Microsoft Excel, for example. At one time I would have considered myself more than adequate in its use, but several years have passed since I last used it with any regularity.

The same can be said for my fluency in the French language. At one point in time, I spoke with accuracy in both a grammatical sense and with what I was told is an appropriate accent. Sadly, I have had little opportunity to use that skill since college, so in the years since I used it regularly, I find that I can now barely form a sentence.

Most recently, I have rediscovered the “use-it-or-lose-it” phenomenon at the gym. Forever seeking the weight at which I am both healthy and happy simultaneously, I have tried many endeavors to find it. Sometimes I do the treadmill for extra cardio, sometimes I work at physical labor around our farm, and occasionally I will go to the gym with my sister. They all work well if you stick to them. (That consistency is definitely where I have discovered my struggle resides.)

Our recent foray to the gym had my sister and I using weight machines, stretching and working particular muscle groups with weights that we felt we could sustain over multiple repetitions. If the third or fourth set felt too difficult, we backed off on the weight being raised in each rep. I read somewhere that being able to complete all the repetitions with fewer weights helps tone muscle, while using more weight bulks the lifter up. And I CERTAINLY don’t need help bulking up.

Still, we broke a sweat. We finished our hour by using stationary bikes, pedaling at various difficulty levels – which I believe these days is called interval training. Immediately post-workout, both of us remarked on the focus and attentiveness we felt in our brains, and how alive all of our muscles felt.

The following morning however, we nearly simultaneously texted one another to ask how the other one felt. We discovered that different muscle groups struggled, but we each felt the results of the previous day’s workout. (According to the use-it-or-lose-it philosophy, I can say that apparently my glutes and delts have not been utilized recently!)

Interesting to note, my laughter muscles – and I want to be clear that it was only the part of my abs used for laughter – were not sore. I had wondered if they would be, based on how much we laughed at one another while at the gym. Good to know our senses of humor are still intact.

What a sad world I would live in if it had atrophied from disuse.