Like a chess pawn or kangaroo, I biologically lack the capacity to backpedal, so once I decided to Become a Runner, I immediately binge-purchased gear in the requisite neons and crashed through a training program. On race day, mulish overconfidence fueled me through all 13 icy miles. Triumph! Exercise-endorphin nirvana!

The shock of discovery came twofold. Alongside my freshly activated glutes arrived cognizance of my own perilous hubris. My whole adult life, I had operated under a specific and tidy problem-solving logic: Whenever an issue arose, I would, on my own, lurch toward a straightforward quick fix, a plug-and-play solution, instead of making sure the... See more

The first thing I do after getting up each morning is perform a “gluteus maximus burnout,” a nifty exercise wherein you stand rigid and tall, lift one leg out to the side as high as it will go and hold it there until you feel like you’re about to pass out and die.

Two years is roughly how long it takes to achieve moderate fluency in a foreign language, to acquire an associate degree or to gestate an African elephant. This also happens to be the length of time that I recently spent pretending I could walk.

Physical therapy, for anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure, is a sort of fast-tracked ego death, a cold slap in the face to lots of things that you might have believed to be true about yourself. Only after I started remedying my “gluteal amnesia” (real medical term) did it become clear how little I knew about basic affairs like walking, standing and... See more