Even the Dumbbell Weight I Lifted Holds a Small History: Poet Seo Yun-ho’s ‘Companion Gym’

The dumbbell in Seo Yun-ho’s hand carries more than a number. The poet began with 5 kilograms, the weight of the dumbbells he bought to use at home, the first pair he chose at a gym, and the body weight of a friend he had to say goodbye to. When he moved to 6 kilograms, just one extra kilogram made him stagger.

In the dumbbell area surrounded by mirrors, Seo was the person lifting the lightest weight. Someone beside him lifted a dumbbell heavier than the combined weight in both of Seo’s hands, roaring like a dinosaur from the Mesozoic era. Seo felt intimidated. A warning not to drop dumbbells with a thud did not really apply to him. He was already setting an example by putting them down gently.

For Seo, going to the gym means making one choice after another. Which machine should he use? How much should he lift? He likes watching people repeatedly add and remove weight plates, considering each decision. One day, when 10 kilograms felt light, he switched to 12. Soon he decided that perhaps he should return to the weight he had been lifting. Stepping back, he writes, is also a choice.

The hardest choice comes before all the others: whether to exercise at all. His smartwatch celebrates seven workouts in a week with fireworks, while warning him to try harder when he fails to burn his target number of calories. Sometimes he checks whether the bus home will arrive within five minutes. If it will, he tells himself he will go home instead of visiting the gym. If the display says 12 minutes, he goes to work out.

Seo has little interest in goals such as “3 at 500,” the combined 500-kilogram benchmark for the squat, bench press and deadlift. A lesson from his life before exercise, he says, is that escaping the absolute world created by numbers may make it possible to continue for a long time. Recently, he began using a 12-kilogram kettlebell for full-body exercise, recalling the 10 kilograms represented by 20 half-liter water bottles. He sees that as the beginning of progressive overload, and as another small chapter in the history of the weight he chooses to lift.