i.

Trained chest. I noticed that one arm twisted in an unusual fashion under weights – it made my body look weird and horrific. Dislocated and uneven. More concerning was that there was no pain – just distortion. My arm and shoulder just naturally took on a strange collapse or backward twist that made my arm feel and look much shorter than the other. It did not hurt.

My body is hypermobile, my hips are back are ‘slack’ whilst my arms bend in unusual movements. My nerves twist and electrocute through the motions that raise responsive electric storms in my lower back and shoot off across my buttocks down to my feet, where they shoot from my sole into the beyond.

I need to align, today one foot walked on its side, I felt re-balance of fragmentary counteraction reaching through injuries, muscle, fat and statue. I stand, wonky scarecrow – thinking about how to fix, feel and elevate the countless actions that have created this incongruent whole. Nearly monster.

ii.

Arms in the gym, the workout felt well-rounded and not too hard.

Eyes turned inwards, imagining myself as a hypnotised shaman or fortune- teller with blue painted skin. Thinking about Cindy Sherman exhibition at the portrait gallery – I think there was a picture like this. I imagined my eyes spinning backwards.

Whilst training I closed my eyes to try to locate the muscles that I targeting. Some emovement felt a jumbled message, searching through the muscle fibres as if I was searching through the jungle.

Sometimes I could locate the right place, other times not – hit and miss. I feel motivated and well but nauseous from training.

iii.

Woke up at 5am to be able to drive to the gym for 6am. I felt muffled and ‘vagued-out’ by sleep or lack of it. I had been awake since 3 on and off with awareness of a different pace.

My shoulders hurt from yesterday’s training – and I trained chest today. Maybe I need to split these body sections up, I think they are too close, they both use elements of the same pressing motion and I think irritate and constrict each other. Note to adapt my plan.

The training I’ve started now is more ‘rounded’ than before; I try to hit muscles from different directions – I did this before, but it was more based on gaining size, so big heavy compound movements initially. I’m now doing a range of exercises that target muscles on different axis, that’s how it feels. I choose the exercises which I remember, and can do, for some reason I’m just not comfortable with others, just forget or don’t register some – why? I can’t yet articulate, maybe discomfort, uncertainty, feeling of exposure, not challenging enough, or can’t make that particular mind-muscle connection.

I don’t have a particular goal in mind apart from losing fat – and maybe re-revealing re-finding some of what I built through the past. I can see my body is forever changed and forever changing; without illness or extreme diet I will never have skinny legs, I have a thick waist from heavy squatting and leg press, my shoulders are rounded (not ‘capped’) bigger than before bodybuilding.

Losing fat both thrills and feels like mourning. I exercise through the fat that I inhaled and lived-in during grief – it now breathes as exhalations of past and present emotion, making shifts and becoming energy.