FitnessFixation.com

The second-creepiest picture ever.So I am DONE with my required 30 days of workin out, and here’s the number one thing I got from it: It didn’t feel that different from my usual routine, perhaps because I both got sick near the end and had to take a li’l time off, and because some of my workouts were less athletic and more like standing around with a dumbbell in hand. So you could say I probably have a relatively active life in general anyway, or that I have a way of building in rest when needed by phoning in workouts, or that if there’s a loophole (like a 30 minute minimum), I’m already halfway through it, and probably need near-constant surveillance to deliver an acceptable showing. Say what you will, your words can’t hurt me, man.

Before I go on about me, which kind of bores even me sometimes, I did read something (yay for me) all by myself with no one helping me with the big words about some female athletes experiencing performance gains after pregnancy. It may have to do with hormones, or better oxidation due to increased blood volume, or just the fact that pushing a FULL-SIZED BABY out of your VAGINA raises your pain threshold. Here’s a quote: “Women re-evaluate where they can anchor pain and many psychologists believe that woman’s pain threshold is effectively reset so that when she resumes or takes up training again, nothing ever seems as uncomfortable.” Uh, ya, I’ll say. I’ll tell you what, it raises something, that’s for sure, like questions about whether this is really a reasonable way for the species to perpetuate itself. Personally, while I may have been willing to consider performance-enhancing drugs and high-altitude training, there is absolutely zero part of me that thinks childbirth is a good idea, even if the second go-round made me into an Olympic contender. But I guess if you do go through with it, there ought to be some perks, aside from the kid you end up being uncommonly fond of in an unprecedented way.

The story includes a rumor that in the 1970’s and 80’s, some East German athletes were impregnated and then had abortions in order to get the performance benefits, known as “the abortion doping scandal”. I imagine that some coaches immediately questioned the wisdom of this move, when the hormone fluctuations started and the athletes began throwing objects at their heads in a fit of pregnancy rage. Oh, don’t tell me they all just fucking glowed…
The creepiest picture ever.

Me, yawn: I have been designing my own workouts and exercising on my own lately, and that’s all fine and good, I’m glad I can do that, but I probably need to get my ass to a class or training very soon. The truth is that I just can’t push myself on bad days the way I can with some sort of audience, even if that audience doesn’t really care what I’m doing and are more concerned with their own workouts. On my own the thought of stopping or slowing looms large; with people around, my own ego and desire to keep up or finish or show off serve me well sometimes. I’m a big believer in using the small, bitter, icky parts of you to get better, and I’ve been blessed with the need to prove myself, which is why I’m even better sometimes with a coach, and I’ll compete with a monkey given half a chance.

Here’s one thing I did notice the other day: Doing this exercise shit has made me more likely to work at things I’m not good at. Before I got into this fitness howdy-do, I mostly stuck with activities I had some kind of natural aptitude for, because I really like being good right away, I don’t want to have to experience frustration or look like an ass. But when you go to classes and train, there’s generally something on the agenda that doesn’t come naturally. My case in point right now is jumping rope. Every person who has ever met me with a rope in hand is sick to death of hearing how it took me a year to get semi-capable at skipping rope, and to be able to do it without dying for more than 30 seconds at a time. Now most of my late-night lonely workouts now have lots of jumprope rounds in them, because it’s very convenient, blah blah. But the idea that I voluntarily pick up a rope and set a timer and then do it for more than 30 seconds is just the product of having to do it over and over in classes until it got easier. I’m not saying it’s like I can do triple-unders now like a jumprope master, or that this is on par with solving world hunger, but it is something I was no good at, that I found difficult and mystifying, and it isn’t so bad now. I’m glad to have had that experience, and I’m glad I looked like a knucklehead publicly while learning it, and I’m glad I was forced to persist even when it took for-fucking-ever to learn, because those things are good for me, even if they are not my favorite things to experience.

Um, I also wouldn’t mind if everything else came easily from now on though. Lesson learned, noted, check. How’s your challenges? Try anything you suck at?

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 9:44 pm and is filed under blah blah, body building, challenge, exercise, fads and facts, healthy crap, news and research, one for the ladies, parents, sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.