I’ve put on a little weight this Christmas. National Geographic called to offer me a job: starring in a documentary on the high seas. My role is the whale. Gaining weight is awful. Now my ankle creaks like a goat’s knee, and I walk with an unsteady, hesitant gait, like John Wayne after a few drinks. I should get back into sports. Some people do it to lose weight, and others do it for fun.
I’ve run out of necessity enough in the last 40 years to have lost all desire to do it for pleasure. And besides, I’ve been at war with mainstream sports ever since I learned that the truly enjoyable competitions aren’t good for losing weight. I’m talking about darts, billiards, chess, or, when I’m in extraordinary shape, pétanque.
January is a month of almost obsessive-compulsive exercise. Suddenly, guys who were used to double cheeseburgers are switching to mixed salads, walking to work, and joining badminton academies on weekends, as if it were perfectly normal to spend Saturday hitting a feathered ball that flies up high and comes down in a whirlwind.
Perhaps it’s because of my own weight, or other people’s, or because the Winter Olympics are coming up, but lately my friends have been inviting me to try strange sports. Just the other day, they suggested I play tennis. A few weeks ago, they suggested swimming down a river. And a few days before that, they suggested I participate in a beginner’s taekwondo championship. What have I done to deserve this?
Tennis is the most mundane sport in the world after weightlifting, which consists of coating your hands in chalk and causing one or more hernias with the sole aid of a barbell with two heavy weights at the ends.
Tennis is the most mundane sport in the world after weightlifting, which consists of coating your hands in chalk and causing one or more hernias with the sole aid of a barbell with two heavy weights at the ends. There are true masters at breaking their backs in a single movement thanks to this Olympic discipline. Trump imitates them very well. It’s also good for ripping T-shirts and underwear of all kinds. The most advanced players, at the moment of maximum effort, always lose a tooth, which flies across the gym and crashes onto the mat, to the thunderous applause of those present, who recognize the power of the weightlifting mule.
Tennis, like all ball sports, has slightly more excitement than weightlifting. Two players stand facing each other, separated by a net. The game consists of striking a small ball with a racket so that it passes over the net and preferably lands within the boundaries of the state, the county, or whatever administrative unit happens to contain the original striker. The opponent, in turn, must intercept the ball with his own racket, refining his skill until he manages to match or surpass the original feat. And so pass six hours, ten chocolate bars, fifteen liters of energy drinks, and roughly three hundred white towels. A real tennis player never wipes his face twice with the same towel.
Of the three offers received, swimming down the river might seem the most entertaining at first glance. However, those of us who have stared death in the ever-deceptive waters of a river know that, apart from barbecues and certain basic needs, everything you can do in a freshwater stream is either boring or deadly. And in the worst cases, like fishing for large salmon, it can be both at once.
Finally, regarding the taekwondo proposal, it’s wise to thoroughly understand this discipline before forming a mistaken impression. Initially, the idea of walking into a gym and starting to dish out kicks and headbutts to a horde of crazed Koreans is very appealing. But unfortunately, reality isn’t as glamorous as it looks in the movies. In real taekwondo, as in almost all combat sports, just when you’re finally starting to have fun, someone blows the whistle, stops the game, and gives you a warning. Conversely, when you’re the one getting hit, the person hitting you walks away happy, without the referee calling a foul. And if you logically decide to retaliate and smash a stool over your opponent’s head in response to the barrage of blows, you could face a severe sporting sanction and lose a fortune, something that will put you off massacring Koreans for the next fifteen years.
Furthermore, the first experience with this type of martial art is very different from, say, your first day of beach volleyball in the Caribbean. Taekwondo for beginners consists of a very long theoretical lesson in which, suddenly, when you least expect it, a Chinese man dressed in white pajamas invites you to get on a mat to move on to the practical part. Then, he slowly explains how you should block the kick he’s about to deliver. He explains it in Chinese, but gestures in your language and smiles a lot, so you’ll trust him. You nod like an idiot, as if you’ve understood everything perfectly, because you like to act like an expert on the subject. And then he gets up, straightens his pajamas, smiles at you with an angelic face, gives you a brief bow, and while you’re intently protecting your face with both hands in a butterfly shape just like he taught you, the Chinese guy delivers a spectacular flying kick straight to your balls, which, admittedly, teaches you to speak Chinese with miraculous fluency.
And then you decide to leave the classes through the back door, legs wide apart, hopping about, and cursing the Koreans, the friend who got you into it, and the inventors of each and every Olympic sport. And there’s no doubt about it now. You’re never too fat to have to resort to taekwondo.
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