UrbanUpdate

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Paul "Bowhunter" Ryan’s return to Capitol Hill last week was met with thunderous praise from every corner of his largest constituency: conservative-ass white GOPers. Sure, with all this time out on the road, Ryan has puffed up a bit, as Rep. Jeff Flake noted, but he wasted no time hitting up the Capitol gym to pump out a P90X routine. Despite all hte backslapping and pull-ups ad nauseam, not all is looking rosy for the VP nominee; namely, the GOP campaign is going up in flames faster than a pile of discarded "Romney/Ryan" signs dowsed in gasoline. Let’s just say that Ryan and his pater familias are going through a period of Campaign Confusion at the moment.

Now, i’ve just completed Week Five of P90X, which introduces a new round of workouts to submit my poor, broken body to. The underlying philosophy of the program is based around this change-up in a process that Tony Horton calls Muscle ConfusionTM. Is Ryan’s campaign transition and my own a coincidence? Let’s delve deeper.

Muscle Confusion TM

Most casual fitness folks have a routine: you go to the gym three times a week, run on the treadmill for 30 minutes each time, maybe throwing some resistance training at the end. Or you go for a long bike ride each weekend. Or your girlfriend drags you to Bikram yoga. Whatever ercise you’re getting is great. Keep it up.

The problem, so says P90X overlord Tony Horton, is that by doing the same routine from week to week, our fitness level plateaus. The same muscles are being used in the same motions at the same degree of intensity; so after a certain point they don’t become stronger or bigger or more toned, simply because they don’t have to. You’re not confusing them.

The P90X program is meant to do just that. The first month consists of the same workout for three weeks, followed by one week of rest. The fifth week introduces new combinations of ercises that apparently befuddle the biceps and perplex the pectorals. For instance, before I was working out my chest and back together, now my back is paired with my biceps and my chest is paired with my triceps and shoulders. Pretty heady stuff, I know. Tony Horton is so convinced of the magic to this approach that his company trademarked Muscle Confusion TM.

I’m not sure I buy this in the context of P90X. I’m no physiologist, but it seems that ninety days is too short a timespan for my muscles to hit an inescapable plateau. My improved strength and toned body are a result of the shear amount of ertion I’m undergoing; if I kept up the same routine as the first month, I bet I’d be on the same fitness trajectory. If anything, the Muscle Confusion TM helps stave off boredom, which has become a bit of a problem, so at the end of the day I welcome the change with open arms.

Campaign Confusion

I doubt that Ryan feels the same about his own shake-ups. As has been widely reported this week, the Romney campaign is facing a potentially devastating identity crisis. Undecided voters feel like they don’t know what the man would actually do as president, perhaps because he and Ryan refuse to outline actual policy plans. They just shit on Obama’s decisions and hope for the best. Not the best platform to run on, but who am I to judge. I’m a liberal New Yorker so my vote doesn’t count, anyway.

The people who can judge this muddled approach are the voters in swing states, who are flocking to Obama. It doesn’t help that Romney had not one, but two gaffes in the past seven days. Remember his impetuous and factually inaccurate critique of the way Obama handled the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens? It seems so long ago! Then on Tuesday, a video from a fundraiser in May surfaced (via Mother Jones in which Romney states that "47 percent...believe the government has a responsibility to care for them...[M]y job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." Ouch.

So while I undergo my own form of confusion, Ryan and his pals are undergoing their own— a tough week, guys, am I right? It should be noted that Ryan is still fundraising for his congressional seat, should the whole vice presidency thing not pan out. And, hell, perhaps he can fall back on becoming a P90X trainer. He’s confusing the American people enough already; might as well do it for the sake of physical fitness.

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