To Lift or Not to Lift

To lift or not to lift- that is the question:
Whether ‘tis greater to go to the gym
And endure the soreness that will result,
Or to remain lying on the couch,
And, by watching ESPN, avoid such muscular distress.
To exercise, to rise from the couch-
No more- and by exercising to say I face
The exhaustion of a grueling workout
That each exercise holds-
‘Tis a situation
I do not wish to encounter.
To relax, to stay at home-
To relax, perhaps too long. Ay, there’s the issue,
For in that relaxation what gains I may miss
When I could instead undergo thy heavenly bench press
Must make me fear growing weak.
That is the idea
That makes disaster of relaxing.
For who really wants to confront the defiance of the dumbbells,
The sweat dripping and blurring thy vision,
The elderly man stealing a desired machine,
The thunderous music blasting through headphones,
The Dane doing Crossfit as he steals the squat rack,
And the condemning looks
That more strapping participants throw like darts,
When they too could relax
Yet always choose not to?
Who would heed the ache associated with each workout,
To push and grind through a seemingly endless hour,
But that the horror of losing progress while relaxing,
The abs and biceps that could have been achieved
That others instead claim for themselves
While I wallow on my couch,
Wishing I had gone to exercise
Instead of watching the same SportsCenter for the third time?
Thus the possibility of regression makes fitness enthusiasts of us all,
And thus the bliss of laying on the couch
Is tainted by a smaller physique,
And lackadaisical SportsCenter re-runs
With this regard their segments are cut short
And lose the battle for my time in favor of the unforgiving weights.