Pumping Irony

Worshipping the rubber mat.

Bicycling on the Ford Bridge this glorious morning, I spotted a lone rower (sculler?) resting on the perfectly calm river below. It was a perfect Zen moment: a man balancing exquisitely in his knife-thin craft, oars extended, a water bug on the wide expanse of the Mississippi. . . .

I didn’t do any rowing last night at the gym (it’s a little hard on my twingy lower back), but — as promised — I finally did mix up my usual routine a little.  Ten minutes on the Elliptical Death Machine got my heart pumping pretty good, after which I moved over to the rubber mat area of the gym. There, I stretched out my quads, my hammies (ouch!) and my lower back (cobra pose) before launching into some ab work that I’m sure entertained the multitudes on the cardio machines behind me.

First, the prone cobra, which is supposed to help spinal mobility, but probably made me look like a beached whale. Then, the reverse crunch, which could be interpreted as an inability to rise after a bad fall. And, finally, the side crunch, which I frankly don’t even want to talk about.

Most people don’t like to exhibit their awkwardness in front of a crowd, and I’m no different. I like to amble confidently from station to station at the gym, pretending that I really know what I’m doing. So, this whole idea of flopping clumsily through some floor exercises in a public manner is a bit of stretch (sorry) for me. I’ve always thought exercise, like prayer, ought to be done in private.

But, I guess I should start thinking of the gym as a sort of exercise church (The P.T.’s are the ministers?) and myself as an acolyte. That might work — growing up as a Midwestern Lutheran, I never had to talk, really, about what I was doing in the pew or what I believed might be my reward. So, in that sense, it was a lot like my current gym experiences.

Of course, I haven’t been to church in a long, long time. Hmmmm. . . .

Anyway, yesterday’s workout reformation (sorry) inspired me to climb on the mysterious stair-climbing machine, which stands in the back of the cardio room like — well — a pulpit (sorry). I’d successfully avoided the urge to use this machine, fearing that my creaky knees would not survive more than a couple flights of mechanical stairs. But, it actually wasn’t too bad on the knees — tough on the calves, but not too bad on the knees.

Which would’ve allowed me to give thanks in a certain way, but I decided not to go there.

Watch your back, Jimmy.

Remember the scene in It’s a Wonderful Life when Jimmy Stewart’s sitting at Martini’s bar and prays for deliverance from his financial crisis only to get slugged by Mr. Welch, the school teacher’s husband? (OK, so you never saw the movie . . . but stick with me here; I’m about to make a point.) Well, I’ve been lecturing myself for months about doing more abdominal work at the gym — not that I need it — and when I finally get serious about the ab crunches and twists and lower back and core work, my back seizes up like nobody’s business.

Wednesday night’s sweat-a-thon had me doing back extensions, “total abdominal” crunches, and moving 90 lbs. this way and that in the swivelly chair thingy. Seemed like a good idea at the time. But yesterday I climbed out of bed feeling a good deal older than I am, and today I’m stiff as a board.

This is the kind of thing that continually vexes me. I’m supposed to push myself through my strength training routine by upping the poundage and working my weaker less-strong muscle groups, but it’s hard to do that without waking up the next day feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck. And, because I don’t particularly enjoy that sensation, it tends to persuade me to stay more inside my comfort zone, which will prevent me from reaching my fitness goals — whatever they are.

Yeah, yeah, I know: I should be incorporating a regular stretching routine into my weekly workout regimen. (Maybe on the off-days between my cardio-strength training sessions?) And, I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t mind spending a little time today working out these kinks in my back and shoulders and neck. But there’s work of the income-earning kind to be done. Maybe tonight.

The good news is that there are plenty of ways to treat and prevent back pain, as Gina Demillo Wagner points out in this helpful feature in the June 2007 issue of EL. The piece argues, in fact, that the best way to bounce back from a back injury is to get back into the gym, because only through strengthening your core will you head off future back troubles. This, of course, is a piece of advice I’m going to respectfully ignore today.

The stretching tips, however, sound pretty good to me right now. That and a dose of homeopathic arnica might be just the thing.

I’ve been riding my bike into work recently, but today, which promises thundershowers after work, I decided to hoof it. My lovely wife will drive me home after the gym if the forecast holds true.

I had almost forgotten how delightful it is to walk. Indeed, a couple of blocks into my trek, I realized that I’d almost forgotten how to walk. My gait was uneven and I actually felt a bit off-balance as I navigated the sidewalk and curbs on my way to the park. I was trying to slow down and enjoy the sights and sounds of the morning, but it seemed like my legs wanted to move at a faster pace than my eyes and ears. Anyway, by the time I crossed Hiawatha Avenue and entered the park, I had settled into a pleasing rhythm. The falls loomed near, and I was curious to see how high the creek would be after all the rain of recent days.

Normally, I can hear the falls by the time I enter the park — maybe 50 yards away — but today the rushing water was drowned out by some ear-splitting mechanical noise coming from somewhere beyond the creek. So, my moment of quiet contemplation at the falls (at the spot where President Lyndon Johnson stood in 1964; his shoe prints are in the cement — really) became more of a micro-moment.

Until I realized that my calves were tightening up. This is the thing that always kills me when I try to run (well, that and my recalcitrant left knee), and I try to remedy it by stretching it out. So, there I am: standing in LBJ’s footprints overlooking majestic Minnehaha Falls, 100 decibels of industrial noise destroying my already poor hearing, leaning into the rock wall to stretch my calves.

I’m never sure how to stretch most parts of my aging body, but I generally am able to loosen my calf muscles with very little effort. Apparently, they get tight because of micro-tears in the muscle, which inhibits blood flow.

Anyway, they feel fine by the time I leave LBJ’s little square of concrete, though my ears are still ringing from whatever machine was making all that racket. Don’t these people have any respect for the urban wilderness experience???

(Wilderness addendum: I saw two caterpillars on the asphalt path in the park and a Cooper’s Hawk soaring over the river, a perfect blend of the pedestrian and the glorious.)

After my Crapmobile episode on Monday, I was anxious to get back on my regular workout schedule, so last night I hit the gym after work and went through my regular routine — except I built in some time between the elliptical machine and the strength training room to actually do some stretching!!!!

It’s a stretch, of course, to say I did much loosening of the muscles — a little hamstring here, a little quadriceps there — and it was on to the weight room. The dirty little secret about Craig’s fitness regimen is that I really like how it feels when I’m lifting weights. The tightness in the muscles is a sign that something’s going on in my body that might be a good thing. I don’t get the same buzz from the cardio stuff — though all that panting can’t be a bad thing — and stretching . . . well, is just stretching.

I’ve been taking the advice/challenge from SW, my fitness guru, who’s been encouraging me to throw on some extra weight, and now I’m finding that the 80 pounds on the lat pull-down thingy that a couple of weeks ago left me exhausted after two series of 10 reps doesn’t start feeling impossible until I’m nearly done with the third series. I’m up to 120 pounds on the bench press and think I can move it to 130 next week. I did 115 on the chest press thingy last night; I hadn’t ventured beyond 105 before.

This all seems like a good thing: I’m noticing a little definition on my upper body and arms, and that’s encouraging. I’m not aiming for some statuesque physique (I’d have to do something about my abs, then, wouldn’t I?), just hoping to ward off the floppiness inherent in middle-aged saggification.

Still . . . . Check out this piece on geezer bodybuilding in today’s New York Times. It seems that a growing number of oldsters are taking up the sport (?) and entering shows around the country. These are guys who start out just wanting to get back into shape and then start thinking maybe they and Schwarzenegger have something in common.

Could this happen to me?

In my dreams. . .

Jeeze, has it been 11 days since I last posted something here? You’re going to assume, of course, that I’ve also been derelict in my fitness regimen and simply didn’t want to pen one more pathetic post about how hard it’s been to get to the gym. But, no! I’ve been keeping up rather nicely with my workout schedule. Three days last week — cardio, resistance, yada yada yada — and Monday and Thursday this week (Wild game on Wednesday derailed my plans: beer, not better-fication).

Anyway, today I actually did some stretching — a little pretend yoga after my normal meditation session (surprise, surprise: I’ve had a Vipassana meditation practice for the past 10 years), which got me sweating and yearning for more flexible hamstrings, especially). It got me thinking about the whole flexibility thing and the “functional fitness” approach to keeping limber in my middle age.

As Fernando Pages Ruiz explains in this EL story from July/August 2002, an aging body like mine stiffens with age because it’s lost a good deal of its moisture content and is more prone to cellular micro-injuries that leave layers of scar tissue that further restrict movement. A regular stretching routine, he points out, stimulates the production of tissue lubricants and helps muscles rebuild themselves with a healthier cell structure.

There’s really no right way to stretch, of course — which is of great comfort to this geezer, who can’t actually touch his toes without curling up in a fetal position. (This morning, however, I was able to touch the floor without bending my knees — with my feet spread out just about as far as they would go. Whoo-Hoo!) The key, as I understand it, is simply to extend your muscles gradually beyond their point of comfort. When I do this, it feels pretty good, though it takes a surprising amount of effort to get there.

Monday I’ll get another opportunity to practice what Ruiz preaches.