Bucket of spit

Pierini Fitness is better at certain exercises than others; so are most middle-aged men.  One exercise he’s better at than others is the pull-up.  He’s done lots of pull-ups in his middle-aged man training past and has recently resurrected his yesteryear above-average greatness. 

When he belonged to a gym years ago, he had no trouble getting his pull-ups workout completed.  While there always seemed to be a waiting line for the bench press, with Monday being “International Bench Press Day”, the pull-up bar always seemed to be available.  And, he used it to do lots of pull-ups.

Then, his pull-ups prowess went through a decline when he slacked off, but now his pull-ups performance is headed back the other way.  He’s been doing pull-ups lately and, slowly but surely, his rep quality and volume are improving. 

So highly does Pierini Fitness think of pull-ups that he came up with one of his many famous sayings, “Any middle-aged man worth of bucket of spit should be able to bang out a dozen pull-ups.”  But until late, he wasn’t worth a bucket of spit because his single set maximum reps of pull-ups fell short of this gold bar benchmark. 

Knowing that there’s nothing new under the sun, Pierini Fitness began wondering about the origin of the “bucket of spit” figure of speech.  After some research, he learned that it was former Vice President John Nance Garner who coined the expression.  Vice President Garner served two terms in that office when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was President.

According to an article appearing on the website of the Briscoe Center for American History, Vice President Garner was a crusty, sharp-tongued Texan, known during his lifetime as “Cactus Jack” and built a reputation on biting commentary and one-liners. Apparently, his observation was that the office of Vice President “is not worth of bucket of warm spit.”

Putting history trivia aside, there’s something about this figure of speech that middle-aged man Pierini Fitness likes. He likes it better when it doesn’t apply to his character or fitness performance. 

Last Friday, in a single set test of maximum reps for the standard-grip pull-up, he was able to bang out twelve legitimate reps.  It was a new best for him in his current fitness, health and wellness journey begun last August 31, 2018 and he’s now “walking” around in cyberspace acting like a middle-aged man pull-ups comeback kid.

Stay tuned for a video in the future but until then, Pierini Fitness is a proud middle-aged man who, in the fitness department, is worth more than a bucket of spit.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum