A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN CLEESE. Note this Rippetoe-friendly point: “I was so skinny. I was a bag of bones up to about fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Because in those days, you’ve got to remember, Ethan, it was quite a long time ago. Working out in gyms, with weights, was a very unusual thing to do, you know? It never occurred to me that one could build one’s strength up. I started going to gyms in London, and I found after a couple years of working out, I simply got a little bit stronger. And that made a lot of difference and gave me a little more control. Because if you’re very lanky and weak, you don’t have the biophysical coordination. While I had good hand-eye coordination – I could always play ball games quite well – it was only after I started to work out for a few years that I began to feel physically less clumsy and awkward.”