When I was in law school, I started training at the UCLA gym as a way of handling stress. I started again just a few months ago. With my gloves and belt I hurried back downstairs. It was a leg day. I put on my black gloves and spent a few minutes stretching before looking at the weights. I went to one of the squat racks and broke down the weights that were already there. Whoever had been there before me had been squatting three hundred and fifty pounds. Weightlifting is a lot like life, and the lessons are much more apparent from the beginning. Breaking down three hundred and fifty pounds and storing the excess weights means you have to do just one thing at a time. I left a hundred pounds on the bar, wrapped a small white towel around the center of the bar and fastened my black support belt around my waist.

It’s still a lot of weight for me although Rodney says I should be able to squat my own weight by now. I wanted a spotter. I looked around but didn’t see anyone I knew. Squats hit the quadriceps femoris muscle group, also known as the front thighs. I stared at the bar and concentrated my energy on it. This is part of my self-realization.

“Approach the bar like a lion.”

I heard Rodney’s voice and looked up to see him in the mirror. Not quite six feet tall, black guy with a buzz cut. Rodney is a former Marine and former member of the Chicago Police Department, probably in his midthirties. That’s as much as I know about him except that he has won the Mr. South Bay Contest and some other local contest I don’t remember the name of. I have not yet been able to figure out what Rodney does besides work out, and the subject has never come up. That’s how it is here: conversation is strictly limited to the body. I ducked under the bar, then straightened partially so that it rested across the back of my neck and my shoulders. I felt the weight settle on me. I stood the rest of the way so that the bar cleared the rack.

Rodney pushed a block of wood a couple of inches high behind my heels, and I backed up onto it. “Ok, baby, set often. Now and then. Set of ten. You know I’d do it for you if I could.”

I squatted to parallel. By the eighth rep I was breathing like a horse and my face was contorted in an ugly way.

“...ten.”

I put the bar back on the rack and grinned at Rodney. He grinned back and put another seven and a half pounds on each side of the bar. “Ok, ok, let’s not be standing around. Pyramid. Five. No jive. Five.”