“Activity,” he said, “is not a luxury. It is a duty. First things first, second things never.”
He dropped the sentence like a dumbbell. And you could feel that it came from his world: from a world in which one does not discuss whether one breathes.
He spoke of hypertrophy, of building muscle; he spoke of how the muscle grows under resistance, and he said the sentence that, in its simplicity, always sounds like a truth:
“Building muscle is simple, but hard.”
The word “hard” had something calming about it. Because what is hard is at least honest.
He spoke of the six movement patterns – pulling, pushing, squatting, extending the hip, stabilizing the core – and he mentioned, without getting lost, the order he had already taught Hans: eight, ten, twelve; top set, backoffs; logbook.
“Who writes, stays,” he said, and Hans Castorp felt how this sentence awakened an old sound in him. Writing – that was identity. Writing – that was confession. Writing – that was danger. And now writing was suddenly training.
Zieser looked into the audience, and his gaze – that gaze, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, that can both assess and participate – rested on Hans Castorp for a moment. It was not an unfriendly look. But it was precise, like a measurement.
“Mr. Castorp,” he said, and the audience turned slightly, the way one turns when someone is mentioned by name. Hans Castorp felt a tiny, cold spot between his shoulder blades: the spot where visibility hurts.
“You sit there as if you had time.”
Hans wanted to say something – that time up here is different, that you lose and gain it here as in a game – but Zieser allowed him no excuse.
“Right here, right now,” he said. “Stand up for a moment.”
Hans Castorp stood up. Not heroically, but politely. He stood up because he had been asked to – and because recommendations, as Gustav von A. once said, are the gentlest form of command.
Zieser nodded.
“So,” he said. “And now sit back down. And remember how little that costs. That is activity. Not the ten thousand as a number. But the opposite of sitting.”
A short punchline followed, dry and unmistakable:
“Sitting is the new smoking.”
People laughed a little, because one has to laugh when a truth sounds like a joke.
Zieser then spoke about the “ten thousand steps” – and here too his mixture of myth and correction showed itself. He said that the human being is not a running animal, but a “walk‑trot animal”; he said it was less about the magical number than about the fact that you have to move the body regularly so that it does not sour in on itself. He did not say the word “sour”; but you heard it.
He did not end his lecture with pathos, but with one of those sentences that act like a full stop because they are so simple that you cannot add anything to them:
“There are no miracles,” he said. “There is only training.”
The applause was polite but strong. In such establishments people like to clap, because clapping creates a feeling of participation without your having had to do anything yet.
