Am I Supposed to be Impressed by John Delaney's Fitness?

There’s this man (checks Google)…yes, he’s still running, okay. There’s this man, John Delaney, who is running for president. He was in Congress and now he gets dragged on a national stage, a tale as old as time. But above all this, the guy does box jumps.

He posted this video on Twitter a few days and yikes. Kind of embarrassing. Now look, his box jumps are fine. Form is fine, not scraping up his shins is fine. The problem is just that, though. They are fine. Nothing to brag about. Any Crossfit bro with a chip on his pulled shoulder will tell you that a 30-inch box jump is novice-level shit. It’s like running an eight-and-a-half-minute mile, solid good-for-you-now-leave-me-to-my-cleans territory. And he only did 10 of them? He might as well have live-streamed a brisk mall-walk.

I’m not saying, by the way, that he should be doing more. Everyone should workout at their own fitness level. Pick up a 5 lb., weight, put it down, break a sweat, hit the showers, if that’s what gets and keeps your blood flowing. Set your own pace and don’t injure yourself. Be okay, boomer. But don’t brag about it. Social media is for scaling perilous box jump heights that serve no purpose but to impress people. Impress me! You wanna hang with the fitness thots? You gotta act like one.

“But he’s 56,” you say, “Surely that counts for something.” No, sorry. You gotta do more than exist to impress me. He deadlifts 350 lbs., supposedly, which “puts him just below an ‘advanced’ level, according to Kilgore Academy, a personal training institution in Texas,” according to a September profile of Delaney’s fitness in Washington Examiner. Wow. A deadlift that’s below advanced, I just got wet. Also, “He eschews the bench press and squats, fearful of getting injured,” which give me a fuckin’ break. Put yourself in harm’s way or get out of my feed. There’s a picture of him in that article at one of those incline chest press machines. A machine! That’s basically one fitness level up from sitting on the couch and thinking, “I should get into pushups.” I should add that he’s wearing jeans and a polo in that picture, the noobiest gym attire there is. Were it not for his meaty triceps, I’d suspect the entire Delaney-works-out thing was invented expressly for this Delaney-works-out profile.

It is nice for the man that the man exercises (even if it’s only when cameras are present), but I’m sorry, it is no achievement that this man is 56 and upright in a gym. That this is “his thing” is embarrassing. Give me someone who is at least 75 running around in a tight, Jack LaLanne jumpsuit with a wild look in his eye and a leg gone permanently stanky from too many burpees. Delaney is just giving us mediocre here, which what else is new, I guess.