Bootcamp Workout: Bringing The War Home
By Mickey Z.
28 September, 2014
World News Trust
Photo credit: Mickey Z.
“I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. Fortunately, we were on the winning side.”
- U.S. General Curtis LeMay, after the Good [sic] War
When you’ve worked in gyms as long as I have, you become numb to the fitness-as-military-worship motif. For example: Bootcamps, civilian-military combines, Navy Seals this or that, and the ever-ubiquitous “Train Like a Soldier!”
This approach not only normalizes the dangerous “soldier as hero” myth but also has the potential to turn something healthy like exercise into a dysfunctional obsession. With this in mind, I allowed myself to imagine what it would look like if I were asked to create a “realistic” Marine bootcamp fitness class and make sure my students ended up on the “winning side.”
Step 1: Create an Enemy
Since preparing for war is most rewarding when you have an especially evil enemy, gym members will suddenly be greeted with posters depicting the owners and members of a nearby gym to be plotting our destruction. I’ll have daily e-mail blasts, fabricated videos, and falsified internal memos to help back up the claim. Give me one week and my gym’s members will hate and revile that other gym’s members. P.S. It’ll help that the other gym has much lower rates and thus attracts, you know, those kind of people.
Step 2: Bankrupt the Gym in Order to Save It
Speaking of rates, I’ll raise our gym membership fees for all members -- except those in the top 1 percent in terms of income, of course -- and use at least 50 percent of these ever-increasing fees to fund my class even if that means other functional aspects of the gym are neglected. Hey, anyone who complains about broken treadmills or a dirty sauna is clearly trying to help the evil-doers win.
Step 3: Encourage “Gym Support”
On the first day of class, I’ll have three initial goals for my students:
>> Crush their spirit.
>> Erase all independent thought.
>> Teach them to accept humiliation as normal.
From there, it’ll be easy to convince them to never disobey an order.
Step 4: Push Them Past Any Reasonable Limits
This is easiest of all because, thanks to the Church of Crossfit, most gym goers are already severely overtraining. I’ll just kick things up a notch… or three. In no time, I’ll be able to sit back and watch the trainees spouting my words to shame the weak links in the class. To keep the military metaphor as accurate as possible, I’d expect one of out three of the female students to be sexually assaulted.
Step 5: Provoke a Pretext
Classic stuff: I’ll get a couple of my fellow trainers to disguise themselves in the rival gym’s colors before attacking two of my students on the street. By the next morning, the members of my gym will be lining up to pay higher dues in the name of retribution.
Step 6: Two Words: Shock. Awe.
Finally, I set my students loose on the other gym -- in the name of humanitarianism, of course. They’ll leave it destroyed, looted, and toxic from our secret use of banned weapons. Meanwhile, everyone will be too distracted and proud to notice as our gym devolves into utter disrepair. Just in case, we’ll hand out free ribbons in the shape of a kettlebell so gym patriots can show their support for the brave men and women fighting for their freedom.
Of course, when the class ends, we’ll find a good reason to “boot” the bootcamp students out of the gym with no medical help to deal with the physical and emotional scars of their experiences. When they inevitably wind up homeless, we’ll mock and demonize them for being out of shape. But fear not, if any of these former “heroes” are accidentally [sic] killed by the police (also gym members), we’ll make certain they’re given the honor of a coffin draped in the logo of our gym!
Realistic enough for ya? Did I miss anything?
Mickey Z. is the author of 12 books, most recently Occupy this Book: Mickey Z. on Activism. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on the Web here. Anyone wishing to support his activist efforts can do so by making a donation here.
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