Health and Wellness the Tasmanian Devil Way

The path to cardiovascular fitness is generally perceived to be long and arduous.

Our finest doctors point us to the treadmill, the local high school track, the stair-step machine, and the jump rope.

These, they tell us, reproduce the interesting sensations of primitive man who, while waiting around for TV to be invented, spent the better part of his discretionary time being chased across, say, the width of Africa, by saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, and the occasional wildebeest, resulting in either an enviable fitness level or sudden death between the jaws of the predator.

This motivates a fellow, this sudden death and jaws business, but it is hard to recreate that keen sense of purpose in today’s more sedate world. Thus the treadmill, high school track and so on.

These however are outside of our ordinary routine and can be hard to fit into our schedules.

The great trainers will tell you that the finest athletes don’t consider a workout as a isolated activity at all, but see instead tintegrate a fitness routine into an all around healthy lifestyle.

Searching for models to emulate, more and more they are pointing to Warner Brothers cartoon characters as examples of best practices in this arena.

I don’t know exactly how these trainers operate when they have someone in front of them who seeks to attain the current fashionable level of fitness, but I would bet they first ask them what level of fitness they, the trainee, would like to attain.

They will say, these newcomers, optimists all, that they will be satisfied with being able to clench the tow ropes of three ocean liners between their teeth and pull them into shore with a smooth freestyle stroke, while on ‘off’ or light workout days, showing up world-clss weightlifters, gymnasts, ski jumpers, and mountain-climbers.

They don’t want to overdo the whole goal thing, you see, and have deliberately set their expectations low here in the early going.

“What should I start with first? A million jump ropes? A round-trip sprint up and down the Empire State Building?”

This is where the trainer earns his money. He laughs gently at the notions.

“My friend, my friend, I’m afraid you have it all wrong.”

He pauses, choosing his words carefully, for this is a learning opportunity.

“Have you ever seen a Warner Brothers cartoon character on a stair-step machine? Does Bugs Bunny run laps around a track? Does Wile. E. Coyote skip rope? No, of course not. You see, these wise citizens have incorporated the fundamentals of cardiovascular fitness into their daily lives.”

“Their daily lives?” This interests the student. “You mean they do not take time out of their busy day to beat themselves silly at some wretched piece of exercise equipment or other in order to achieve the recommended blood pressure and levels of triglycerides?”

“No, of course not. Let us take Wile. E. Coyote as an example.”

The trainer refers to his notes.

“Mr. Coyote’s professional life seems to consist of chasing the Roadrunner more or less his every waking second. I say professional life, but it may be that he has reasons of his own and it may be more of a hobby or avocation. Regardless, my point is, have you ever taken a good look at him? That fellow doesn’t have an extra ounce of body fat on him! His ribs show through on a regular basis and the general impression he gives off is one of exhausted scrawniness. You see what I’m saying?”

“Yes, of course,” says the eager student, “that’s the very level of fitness I seek to attain!”

“Exactly! We have much to learn from Mr. Coyote. By way of the visual records we have to work with he runs somewhere in the neighborhood of two or three hundred miles a day at top speed. The Roadrunner brings out his personal best day after day. But, you see, he has integrated this workout into his daily schedule. Why, I’ll bet that if he set off to run three hundred miles each day on a track, the routine soon enough would get boring. As it is these workouts seem to leave him no worse for wear than if he had only taken a brisk walk.”

The student listens as to a master. The trainer goes on.

“Speedy Gonzales, Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Daffy Duck, all incorporate interval sprints into their routine. Chiefly in order to preserve their lives. My point is that simply by identifying an arch-enemy or perhaps a nemesis and looking to them like you would be a good snack in the slow middle hours of an afternoon, you can easily work a cardiovascular routine into your day.”

“Sort of like taking the stairs up to your floor at work in the morning instead of the elevator?”

“Exactly like that! You’re catching on.”

“How about for mental fitness and emotional health?”

“Here we can turn to the many characters over the years who blow their top, one of those ancient pieces of wisdom that seems to have been lost in today’s busy world.”

“Blow their top?”

“Yes, I’m certain you’ve seen them. It may be Porky Pig realizing that he has been had by Bugs Bunny yet again, it may be Father Bear reading the headlines in his favorite chair at night, it may be Daffy Duck coming to the conclusion that he has been outwitted by Tweety Bird. My point is this: do they sit around stewing over their frustrations and mucking up their inner works so that they feel all frozen up inside with unspent emotions?”

The student shakes his head uncertainly.

“No, of course not. They simply enlarge their heads a bit and separate it from the rest of their bodies for a short length of time while turning beet red, and expel high pressure steam from their ears, noses, mouth, and this space where their heads used to be attached to their body.”

“I have seen that!” exclaims the student, now remembering.

“There may or may not be at the same time the sound of a tugboat or freight train or factory whistle blowing at full volume. This is up to the participant himself. In any event, this is a much healthier approach than meditation or quiet contemplation, neither of which has sound effects at all, and which both simply leave that high pressure steam bounding around inside the body, building up pressure. This routine also relieves sinus congestion.”

“My goodness.”

“You will notice too how quickly these characters bounce back from injuries.”

The student nods.

“You read today of ball players being out for an entire season due to some trivial injury or other. This is to make me laugh. Why, Wile E. Coyote drops off cliffs and plunges to the desert floor below him miles down and just a moment later he is back at it enjoying his workout, chasing like some sort of madman after an upright, flightless, desert-dwelling bird.

He slams regularly into picturesque scenes of tunnels and highways painted onto the flat facing sides of sheer rock formations. Despite inducing sounds effects similar to a cast iron frying pan being slammed against an anvil, his recuperation time can be measured in seconds, not months. I think we can all draw the rational conclusion in this case.”

The student nods his head. “But what about these injuries where characters have and ankle injury and their foot is wound in bandages and resting on an ottoman?”

“You have a good eye, son,” the trainer says kindly. “But did you notice anything else in these scenes?”

“Well, there was another character, sometimes a small boy, sometimes a talking animal of some sort, who was whacking at the fellow’s foot with a stick heavily weighted at the top end.”

“You are absolutely right. And did you see anything fly out of that injured foot?”

“Why, yes I did! Stars and exclamation points and odd pieces of punctuation off the typewriter keyboard in the following manner: ###!!!!++++!!!!####.”

“The way it works the kid or the talking animal is beating all the ill health out of the broken foot or in some cases a bandaged cranium. You see, when all the stars and punctuation marks are gone, he knows that the foot is healthy again.”

“I had no idea.”

“Come now, let’s get to it. See that Roadrunner over there? Why don’t you take a few turns around the desert and try to catch him. Stay on your guard, and don’t entirely trust any merchandise you might order from Acme, there’s a lot of dissatisfaction on Yelp with their products.”

“Couldn’t I be the Tasmanian Devil instead?”

“I don’t think so, who knows what goes on inside that guy’s head.”