Freshmen should accept the inevitable slothful behavior that accompanies college life and stop working out obsessively, said fitness guru and Tae Bo pioneer Billy Blanks after a tour of the University Rec Center on Sunday.
Describing the high percentage of freshmen using their university’s rec center as “deplorable,” Blanks encouraged first-year students to adopt a sedentary lifestyle in preparation for their sophomore through senior years. He noted that freshmen considering graduate school eventually should take special care to ignore their physical health.
“It’s never too late to start being sedentary,” Blanks said sage-like, adding that freshmen should not be discouraged by how long it takes to really get out of shape. “You didn’t get in shape overnight, and you won’t get out of shape overnight.”
Freshmen often attempt to retain the physical health that high school sports or relative youth afforded them in high school, by working out six to seven times per week at the rec center, Blanks said. But because the typical college lifestyle demands long hours of laying on couches and sitting on bar stools, all attempts at physical prowess are futile.
Blanks recalled a conversation he’d had with a college freshman recently, who had tried in vain to combine a successful social life with good physical health.
“He’d ask his friends if they wanted to go on walks and he got laughed out of the room,” Blanks said, adding that the freshman finally saw the error of his ways and is now happily waddling and wheezing his way through his sophomore year.
There are many ways for freshmen to speed up the physical degeneration a successful upper-class experience requires. First, start smoking cigarettes as soon as you can.
“I know they taste like shit at first, and you wonder how anyone could possibly get addicted to the nasty little fuckers. But keep smoking. You’ll soon be hooked,” Blanks promised.
Second, start drinking lots of beer, every night if possible. This helps in two ways. It aids in the procurement of the elusive “beer belly,” the jewel in the crown of the successful upperclassman. Also, if taken in high doses, beer prevents all chances of breaking down and going back to the rec center to work out, because moving too fast will make the imbiber vomit.
Third, do drugs, especially those that can be smoked. Like cigarettes, smokable drugs do irreversible damage to the lungs and make any exercise outside of a one-night stand impossible. Blanks said his recipe for success includes daily use of sweet green, a hit “here and there” and lots of prescription pain killers, which he said really help in maintaining a high level of slothfulness.
Fourth, and most importantly, get cable television.
“And watch it,” Blanks said severely, noting that many people will get cable, watch it diligently every day for a couple weeks, and then the remote just sits there collecting dust.
Blanks recommended starting slowly on the cable television; watch it for twenty minutes the first day, thirty minutes the second, and so forth.
“Eventually, cable television watchers can get up to 10, 11, even 20 hours of consecutive television viewing every day,” Blanks said, noting that he can view up to 22 hours of television in one sitting.
When asked if his cable television recommendation had anything to do with his virtual monopoly of the late-night infomercial market, Blanks recoiled in self-important horror.
“Please,” he scoffed. “This is something freshmen should do for themselves, to make themselves feel better. I’m just a facilitator.”