The Real Insanity Workout

*trod, trod, trod, plod, trod*

I have an obsession. Not the good kind, and certainly not the cologne®.

Like many good Americans, I have some form of fitness tracker. Put bluntly, my phone tells me how many steps I've taken in a day. What good is this? Plenty, if you are obsessive.

You'd think I'm not obsessive. Laid-back is a term that has been used to describe me since I was in my mother's womb, taking over a week longer than predicted to be born (woo hoo! Geminis rule!). If only I'd had a smartphone. That's a whole week I could have been getting extra steps.

For the past two years, I've been using a Samsung® app that tells me how many steps I've taken. This app also tells me how many steps I've taken in a month.

What would be a reasonable number? People often hear they should take 10,000 steps per day (though there is evidence that number should be much higher), but the average American takes something like 5,000 steps per day. How many should you take?

For the month of October, I averaged over 16,129 steps. That's not a random number. 16,129 multiplied by 31 equals about 500,000 steps. For the year, I have averaged 16,129 steps (or more) in five months. I try to be around 15,500 in the other months. For the past 24 months, I've averaged 15,000 steps or more every month.

There's a reason for this. Reasons being debatable and slippery things. But at least one reason is my friend Josh.

(I'm done with cute nicknames. It's just easier on all of us.)

Josh lives in Florida, but he came up to visit us in Maine a while back. Josh saw my obsession with steps firsthand and decided he had to get his own step tracker. "We should go for 500,000 steps this month," Josh said early this year. Josh had the steps fever. Sure. Let's do 500,000! Josh keeps me motivated. Josh also needs to send back the beer packaging I sent him eight months ago.

Because. Steps equal fitness. At one point, I was ranked in the top 2,000 people in the world by Samsung's fitness app. And the top 20 was a total joke, with people averaging 60,000 steps a day. They hacked the system. Cheaters! Your steps are worthless.

But how worthy were mine?

It turns out, steps don't equal fitness. Not at all, really. To be sure, walking to work, hiking the dog and going for runs is great stuff. But why does my lower back get sore and stiff when I go for walks? Why are my arms sore after playing Frisbee® for 45 minutes in the street? Why don't my pants fit?

There's more to fitness than steps. For starters, walking in 15-minute loops around the fourth floor at work isn't the same as doing speed work out on a track. And, shockingly, there are other muscle groups in the body.

The thing is, I don't *want* to go to the gym. I really don't. In my 20s, I was something of a gym rat for years. Five or six days a week, I'd do 5 miles on a treadmill and then do a rotation of exercises (leg days had nine stations with three sets each; arm days had six stations with three sets each). Then I'd walk the dog and take a 30-minute walk at work to boot.

This, of course, is crazy. This is a single male who is renting a room in a home and doesn't really have any other responsibilities.

So now I focus on steps. But there needs to be room for the gym rat. Because, from time to time, my back starts to hurt when I'm not doing core exercises.

Reluctantly, for the first time in three years, I'm going to the gym regularly again. Just 3 miles on the treadmill now, with a rotation of nine stations, three sets apiece. No leg days, no arm days. Just a few exercises for each.

Then Daisy and I go do a trail run for 3 miles. Gotta keep that steps count up.