Ted Botha

The biggest challenge in the quest for fitness isn’t the physical exertion or the aches and pains. It’s other people.

One of the first things you learn as a kid is that there are players and there are people who kick shins. By the time you’ve reached adulthood, the kid in Little League who kept tripping you has grown up into a tennis player who throws his racquet at you or a weight-room despot who threatens mayhem if somebody blocks his view of the mirror. He doesn’t kick shins, but he might as well. So if you thought that the primary drawback of exercise was the workout itself, think again. It is, in fact, the people whose presence you have to endure while you’re working out.

As kids, of course, we had someone to watch over us on the court or on the field, making sure we knew how to play, and more important, that we played fair. As adults, however, we’re left to our own devices. Team players have now gone solo, swapping football uniforms for jogging shorts, soccer balls for mountain bikes and decorum for a pair of inline skates. There are no more umpires and no more whistles, and each person makes his or her own rules.

Need proof? Go any place where people gather in large numbers to exercise – parks, gyms, even marathons – and see for yourself. The cyclist’s idea of who has the right of way is different from the jogger’s is different from the blader’s is different from the horseback rider’s. If it isn’t a jungle out there, it’s like one big jungle gym. Or is that a gym jungle?

“That’s the sporting life,” a friend of mine recently said. Oh, really? My dictionary defines sporting as ‘of or having to do with sport.’ So far, so good. It can also mean ‘sportsmanlike.’ Now, why would the English language have found it necessary to link a specific activity – in this case, sport – to such characteristics as (according to my dictionary ) fairness, generosity and courteousness? To remind us of our propensity to kick shins, that’s why. Do we call a good engineer an engineering one? A great chef a cooking cook? Of course not – there’s no need to. But a sporting athlete … now, there’s an ideal to strive for.

Even when exercise isn’t involved, we still use an expression that invokes the qualities of its most admirable participants. When someone’s looking for the best in you, what do they say? “Act like a mechanic” Nope. “If only you were more lawyerlike”? Never. But “Be a sport”? That’s the ticket.

Now, when it comes to ‘unsporting,” Webster’s renders the definition simply as ‘not sporting.’ This hardly prepares anyone about to enter the exercise arena, which is why I’ve compiled a few addendums to the term. As someone who’s spent much of his adult life being jostled, cursed and nearly run over in the pursuit of staying fit, I feel as qualified as any dictionary writer. So here goes.

1. Relating to the obnoxious way many people, men in particular, act when they exercise. (Which isn’t to say that I haven’t been jostled, cursed and nearly run over by more than a few women in my time, but the percentages don’t speak at all well for the male gender.)

2. Having to do with someone who commits a transgression against a fellow athlete and then has the uncanny ability to act innocent.
(A case in point: the cyclist who approached me from the rear recently, almost knocked me over, then left the scene so fast that all I could see of him was his back and his brand of helmet. I did get to hear his voice, however, which, after blowing a whistle, shouted, “Out my way, asshole!”

3. Said of someone who should know better but chooses to forget that he does.
(Often wrongly applied to a person who doesn’t purposely forget to be fair, courteous or generous, but is too exhausted to remember, is daydreaming or is listening to his Walkman, all three of which leave you vulnerable to be run down by someone who fits definition No. 2. As for the guy on the $4,000 mountain bike who disregards what the rest of the cyclists, bladders and runners on the path are doing, there are better words than unsporting to describe him. The cyclist in No. 2 would know what they are.)

4. Related to a need for control.
(Mostly used in connection with the guy who thinks that being able to hoist 200 pounds gives him jurisdiction in the free-weight area over someone struggling with half that amount, and the guy in the pool who swims down the middle of the lane even though there are other people trying to share it with him. The latter often wears paddles not so much to aid his stroke as to cuff you as he passes.)

5. A type of behavior often shown when dealing with one’s own anger or frustration. (Applied in cases where someone tries to alleviate his work- or home-related tension while exercising in public when he should, in fact, be letting loose on a punching bag in a padded room. If you don’t get in his way, he’ll make sure to get in yours.)

6. Indicative of someone who is partially literate.
(In this form, the word comes up only when there is something to read, such as the RULES OF THE GYM sign in the locker room. This infringement is especially grievous if you consider that someone has actually gone to the trouble of composing some rules in an arena where there are painfully few. The signs, which seldom contain very difficult words, say things that you’d think someone wouldn’t need to be reminded about in the first place, such as “Wipe the Cybex clean after use,” “Rack your weights,” and “Don’t blow your nose in the pool.”)

7. Said of someone who thinks that the preceding definitions apply only to other people, even after he has jostled, cursed on nearly run over someone else. He’ll argue that they did it first. He’ll claim it’s the first time he’s ever done it. He’ll deny, deny, deny. He’ll refuse to accept this simple truth, one that would make exercise a lot easier. In life – and particularly in sport – nobody’s perfect. (Except me, that is.)