Déjà Vu

I was on my way from the locker room to the weight room the other day when I passed a guy on the stairs who, by the look of him, muscles pumped, sweat beaded on his forehead and a far away glassiness in his eyes, had just finished an intense workout. There was a singular attention to his presence; he seemed intent but not necessarily focused, hyper aware of his environment but on auto-pilot nonetheless. Not an uncommon appearance among those who have just finished a session of hard physical activity.

Continuing up to the weight room, I found myself ridding my mind of everything except the processes of the tasks at hand - the order of my exercises, the settings on the machines, the loads, the reps, the sets. And then there was the focus on the muscle groups being worked: the isolation of the sensation of the muscles engaging as the load resists the movement, the exertion of energy at what seems to be the top or peak of the repetition, the tempo of the set and the rhythm of my breathing.

As I neared the end of the routine I found my mind leaving the room before my body did. I was wiping the sweat off of the seat and back of the "hammer," the apparatus on which I do the "lat lift" exercise, when I realized that my mind was already gathering my back pack, water bottle and towel and was headed out the door and up the stairs to the cardio workout room. I tried to call myself back to myself but I found that, in my head, the only words that seemed to mean anything were the numbers of a set count, "one - two - three - four, two - two - three - four, three - two - three - four...," as though I were counting off rests in a piece of music.

I physically rushed to gather my belongings and headed out, following what seemed to be a part of my consciousness, toward the next floor up where the bikes and treadmills were housed. I seemed to catch up with myself as I stood on the scale and registered the weight: 196.2 lbs.

There was a lightness to my sensations. My breathing was deep but slow and controlled. My mind was cleared of so many bits of brick-a-brack and the muscles that I had just worked were feeling firm and alive that the setting of the treadmill machine for a 30 minute brisk walk on a gentle incline was completed with little thought and with a smoothness that my mind wordlessly admired. I was oblivious to the bank of television screens set to different channels with the sound turned down and closed captioning turned on that stretched along the wall in front of me. It was just me, my legs and my breathing.

There was an effort to complete the 30 minute distance-less trek but when it came to an end and I dismounted the machine I could feel my heart pounding in my chest and I could feel the blood surging through my body.

I wiped the sweat from my face and neck, stretched out my muscles and, as before, I followed a bit of my consciousness that was several paces ahead of me. My movements were deliberate and they felt, well, oddly graceful. Keenly aware of everything around me, I felt like I was on autopilot. I could tell that my body was propelled forward by a silent momentum and when I passed a young man who had just exited the locker room, headed for his own workout, it occurred to me that I might well be venturing into a similar space as the gentleman that I had passed just an hour earlier.