At the beginning of November, Greg’s school announces the beginning of a wrestling unit in Physical Education. To Greg’s horror, the kind of wrestling they teach at school “is COMPLETELY different from the kind they do on TV” (80). Greg has to wear a revealing singlet, and because he is in the lowest weight class, he has to wrestle with Fregley, a bizarre, unhygienic student that Greg usually avoids. Greg decides to try to move up a weight class by gaining muscle, and he asks his parents for “serious exercise equipment, and some weight-gain powder, too” (87). Greg’s parents explain that he has to prove that he has the discipline to stick to an exercise routine, but Greg claims that “if [he] get[s] pinned by Fregley one more time, [he’s] gonna have a nervous breakdown” (89). He decides to make his own weight set out of milk and juice jugs (which he got from the fridge and emptied) filled with sand, but after a disastrous workout session where Greg uses Rowley to test the equipment—Rowley needs help getting the barbell off of his chest after Greg startles him in a prank—Greg abandons the idea of working out.

Greg blames a girl named Patty Farrell when he flunks a Geography quiz because she tells the teacher that he should “cover up the United States map before [they] got started” (94), making it impossible for Greg to cheat.