Lindqvist Sven - Bench Press

Bench Press. From Instruktionsbok i muskelbyggning (Instruction Book for Muscle Building) by Henry Bergstrm, 1961.

Today, a sandstorm blows up as Im doing my bench presses. Its the one that used to blow in my childhood, just before I fell asleep. Its all around me as I lie there on the bench, like a biting, whining mist.

Then all at once, Im standing on the shores of a glassy lake.

During my bench presses today, Im harvesting my compost heap. I pick out the bits that havent rotted down: hard sticks, old bottle tops, pieces of glass, rolled-up toothpaste tubes and other indigestible plastic and metal objects.

They resisted transformation, and must therefore be thrown away.

As I lie there doing my bench presses today, my great grandmother is sitting in her chair, taking her after-dinner nap. All I know about her is what Grandma told me: that she used to take an after-dinner nap holding her bunch of keys. When they fell out of her hand, she would get up, rested.

I watch the bunch of keys as it falls.

I dont remember my dreams. I sleep deeply and wake up the way the school nurse used to pull a plaster off a cut; with a single ripping motion, night-time reality is gone. And with it my dreams, if I had any.

I dont remember my childhood. Its as though its been erased. The only thing I can call to mind is my bed, standing in my parents bedroom. Its one of those adjustable ones that can be shortened or lengthened to fit a growing child. The frame is ivory-coloured, with the same sheen as a sweaty forehead . Im afraid of falling asleep in that bed, because its full of nightmares I cant wake up from.

When I became a parent myself, I was the one who always saw to the children during the night. Being able to calm and console children who were frightened in the night gave me a feeling of deep satisfaction through them, I was consoling my childhood self.

But Ive never managed to console myself to the point where I dare give the dreams free rein again. Im afraid they might regain their power and force me back into the nightly hells I experienced as a child.

At the gym, Im bolder. Its daytime and light, Im awake and have just proved the strength of my waking self with a series of heavy lifts. So I can risk slipping back into my childhood bed for a moment. I can risk opening a little crack and letting in the fragments of dreams that come floating through in the wake of my great exertion.

Today it was a dog, whose shaggy coat I did in afro-style plaits, leaving wide, bare strips of skin along its little body, fat as a piglet.

Claudius Galenus lived in the second century AD and was personal physician to the emperor-philosopher Marcus Aurelius. One of his most famous books is called On the Maintenance of Health.

Galenus viewed the art of physical training and the art of medicine as two complementary branches of the same subject, the science of health. Medicine was only needed when physical training failed. Galenus was the first European to formulate a comprehensive programme for developing the powers of the human body. Or to be precise, three programmes : one for children, one for adults and one for old people.

Galenus places particular emphasis on what he terms tension exercises exercises requiring strength rather than speed. The basic form of tension exercise is lifting a weight, but tension can also be generated by the posture of the body itself holding ones clenched hands stretched as far forwards and upwards as one can, without shaking. The degree of difficulty increases if weight is applied to the outstretched hands; for example, if another person pushes them downwards with equal force: This strengthens the muscles and nerves.

You can also take a dumb-bell in each hand and extend them forwards and upwards without shaking. Some people stand between two dumb-bells and pick up the one on the right with their left hand and the one on the left with their right hand. This exercise works predominantly on the sides of the back.

I still see exercises like this every day at the gym. And I know what Galenus means when he describes the difference between the warmth that comes from outside, from the rays of the sun, the warmth that is generated by feelings of shame or anger, and the warmth that training produces, the bodys own internal, animal warmth, which is the most beneficial to a human being.