Week 2 was something of a strange bird. The weather was so nice on Tuesday and Wednesday that I couldn’t bear to bring myself to spend my workouts indoors, so I took to the neighborhood soccer field as a change of pace. My day at the soccer fields on Tuesday was fantastic: I did some light jogging, stretched out, did a good half-hour of juggling (I got up to 120-something using just my feet), and capped it all off with some push-up/sit-up/tricep-lift circuits that left me pleasantly burnt out.
Wednesday was less pleasant. I showed up later in the afternoon and kicked the ball around for a while before a group of young-20′s dudes (there’s no better word to describe them) showed up and began to creep into my part of the field. A pretty nice guy asked me to practice with them, and I politely turned him down, explaining that, A) I’m missing a ligament and a good chunk of cartilage in one knee, and B) I don’t have health insurance. He wished me the best and went back to shanking balls five feet left of the post. But just five minutes later, another (less-than-nice) guy told me to “come help out.” Not being entirely sure what that entailed, I also turned him down with a jovial “Maybe next time, dude.” He did not take kindly to this and proceeded to yell at me across the field about how the dudes in question were “renting” the field and — here’s the kicker — that I needed to “Play or pay.” I stopped, stared at him for a second, and then turned my back on him and resumed juggling, to which he only replied, “Hey, go faster, Pele.” Clearly, my Gandhi-like calm in the face of the conflict unnerved him, leaving him with the option of yelling some idiotic quip at me from fifty feet away.
I bring this up because these kinds of exchange, both polite and less-than-polite, keep happening at the gym as well. As I mentioned in my previous post, I generally start my SERF workout by shooting hoops for the first 20 minutes. Almost without fail, somebody asks me to play one-on-one or “run game” or whatever with them, and I turn them down. At first, I explained the whole screwed-up knee scenario, but lately I’ve just shifted to saying, “I’m on my way out. Sorry, dude.” (The “Sorry, dude” is what really sells it.) Most times, that works just fine, but every now and again I’ll get a pushy dude like my friend from the soccer field. My favorite came last Friday, when I was shooting on the only open court in the whole gym:
19-year-old Frat Guy: Hey. Hey. (Waving from across the court.) You wanna ball?
Me: Thanks, but I can’t. I’ve got a bad knee.
Fratguy: What?
Me: I’m rehabbing a bad knee. I don’t have any cartilage in it. So I can’t play.
Fratguy: (Confused look.) Really?
Me: Yeah. Really.
Fratguy: Come on.We just need one more. Come on.
Me: Maybe next time. (Turns around; resumes shooting basketball.)
Fratguy: (Turns around. Yelling to similar frat-friends.) He said he can’t play. Yeah, I don’t know.
(I moved courts at that point — mostly because Fratguy and Friends had enough for a full-court game and I thought it polite to leave it to them — and ended up in a side gym with a bunch of Korean exchange students hurling the ball at the hoop. Oh, the ignominy of being cast out of the sporting community!)
Back when I was nineteen and my knee was recently gimpy, those kinds of moments used to upset me a lot, usually enough to keep me from going back for a couple days until me and my over-developed sensitivity got over it. But by this point, after years of begging off those pick-up games and shoot-arounds, I’m beginning to see the humor in it. I still appreciate being asked — it still means that I’m still part of that population of sporty dudes, even if only by appearance — and I’m beginning to re-orient myself around what I can do, as opposed to what I can’t. That, in and of itself, is a pretty big shift in my worldview, one that I hope will help me stay on this whole going-to-the-gym horse.
The only other big development this week is in my actual workout. Using some of the websites from my last post as stepping-stones, I’ve started doing circuit workouts. And they’re brutal. The general guidelines: start out with some kind of heavy cardio — essentially sprinting — that gets your heart rate up, then do a series of oppositional exercises in quick succession. Repeat. So, for example, I’ll play some basketball and stretch out, then head into the SERF’s basement fitness room. Once there, I’ll do three solid minutes of flat-out sprinting on a stationary bike (which, in my current state of disrepair, has me at near-puke after the first two minutes). After that, I move to doing bicep curls (arms), then quad lifts (legs), then chest flies (chest), then tricep pulls (back to arms), a set of leg presses (legs), and finally a set of push-ups (chest) and sit-ups. I take a short rest, typically doing some more stretching and trying not to black out, and then repeat the cycle.
I should point out that I have yet to make it all the way through the third cycle. Granted, I’ve only been doing this in earnest for my last three gym days, but I hope that this will continue to get better. Wish me luck!
Links about circuit training for the curious:
Fitness Advisor Page (complete with links to possible exercises and how to do them)
Random Sports Coach (comprehensive list of circuit exercises)
1. Good job. Keep it up.
2. I’m reading these out of order. I think I’ve read them all now.
3. Twelve minutes of sprinting on a bike DOES NOT EQUAL ten and a half hours of slow biking. Just no.
4. Spinning class is a mighty good butt-kickingly varied thing, though.
5. At some point I should give you elaborate details on bike settings and knee care. There’s a lot you can do, right and wrong!
6. I, your bike-loving sister, think you should get the Wii. Here’s why: Yes, it may be dangerously, distractingly fun. However, you’re going to be as distractable as you are. So, if you don’t get it, you’ll just get distracted by something less fun. Being distracted by the Wii might involve thinking “Aww, man, I should be writing a paper”, but it will also involve remembering that you have it to be distracted by because you accomplished something entirely unrelated to school waaaay back in the summertime. That’s my preachy two cents.
7. Find someone to play catch with while treading water (I assume there’s a pool?). It’s really hard work and really, entirely zero impact.