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Lamentations
Mar. 20th, 2019 10:35 pmYou know how every once in a while, out of nowhere, one of your tastebuds will swell up and hurt you, mysteriously for no reason? I am being attacked by a tastebud. It is on the left side of my mouth.
I've been doing pushups for the last, I don't know, three weeks, and I used to be good at pushups but I am now not good at pushups. I was only ever good for a brief window of time. Prior to that, I was awful. Then after being good for a bit, I had to stop for several years because my abdomen was busy with other stuff and then healing from that other stuff. Since then, I have been back to being terrible at pushups.
When I was "good" at pushups, I could do something like 17 in a row before my arms could not push me up anymore. Then there was the gap; then for the last two years I have made occasional feints at doing pushups again, but have remained in the three-pushup to seven-pushup max range before giving up because they were clearly not working. It's hard to explain the "not working" part; I suspect my body does something weird with glucose and carrying oxygen to muscles, the upshot being that I can exhaust my muscles without stressing them to the point where they microtear and signal my body to build more muscles. When my body is doing whatever that thing is, I can do pushups to the point of collapse (it doesn't take very many), and then not feel remotely sore the next day, or make any progress whatsoever.
In any case, this time I am finally back around to where the pushups are working, and I know they are working because my whole body hurts all the time. Also, my posture is better and I have defined shoulders. Annoyingly, all the ways I have to track "getting better at pushups" take my subjective attention; the easy metrics are not in effect. Like, I can't just track the scale because I immediately gained two pounds - which is not muscle and is also not me eating more, which I don't; it's water weight, water my body is holding on to so it can more efficiently carry stuff to and away from the muscles. You see immediately why this is both a sign that I'm doing this right and also a huge disincentive. I do not want my clothes to fit worse. I want to avoid osteoperosis and maybe be able to open jars someday.
I also can't be like "look, I am able to do more and more pushups" because no. I did get up to 10 pushups and then immediately improved my form and am back to seven pushups, but better ones that hurt my body more. This is a metaphor for my whole life.
These pushups are the most "why do you keep hitting yourself" thing I am doing at the moment and I have to give myself a lot of not exactly pep talks because I don't need persuasion that this is something I need to continue: it is my hobby now. Instead, I have to persuade myself to give my muscles time to recover and rebuild, and - critically - to not do something idiotic like mess up my shoulder or neck by doing unreasonably more pushups than the pushup muscles can support - which I very much want to do because the inflammation from being horrible to myself is the only time I have felt warm this whole winter. (You can tell me it is spring all you want but I am not buying it until soil temperatures hit 55°F.)
I've been doing pushups for the last, I don't know, three weeks, and I used to be good at pushups but I am now not good at pushups. I was only ever good for a brief window of time. Prior to that, I was awful. Then after being good for a bit, I had to stop for several years because my abdomen was busy with other stuff and then healing from that other stuff. Since then, I have been back to being terrible at pushups.
When I was "good" at pushups, I could do something like 17 in a row before my arms could not push me up anymore. Then there was the gap; then for the last two years I have made occasional feints at doing pushups again, but have remained in the three-pushup to seven-pushup max range before giving up because they were clearly not working. It's hard to explain the "not working" part; I suspect my body does something weird with glucose and carrying oxygen to muscles, the upshot being that I can exhaust my muscles without stressing them to the point where they microtear and signal my body to build more muscles. When my body is doing whatever that thing is, I can do pushups to the point of collapse (it doesn't take very many), and then not feel remotely sore the next day, or make any progress whatsoever.
In any case, this time I am finally back around to where the pushups are working, and I know they are working because my whole body hurts all the time. Also, my posture is better and I have defined shoulders. Annoyingly, all the ways I have to track "getting better at pushups" take my subjective attention; the easy metrics are not in effect. Like, I can't just track the scale because I immediately gained two pounds - which is not muscle and is also not me eating more, which I don't; it's water weight, water my body is holding on to so it can more efficiently carry stuff to and away from the muscles. You see immediately why this is both a sign that I'm doing this right and also a huge disincentive. I do not want my clothes to fit worse. I want to avoid osteoperosis and maybe be able to open jars someday.
I also can't be like "look, I am able to do more and more pushups" because no. I did get up to 10 pushups and then immediately improved my form and am back to seven pushups, but better ones that hurt my body more. This is a metaphor for my whole life.
These pushups are the most "why do you keep hitting yourself" thing I am doing at the moment and I have to give myself a lot of not exactly pep talks because I don't need persuasion that this is something I need to continue: it is my hobby now. Instead, I have to persuade myself to give my muscles time to recover and rebuild, and - critically - to not do something idiotic like mess up my shoulder or neck by doing unreasonably more pushups than the pushup muscles can support - which I very much want to do because the inflammation from being horrible to myself is the only time I have felt warm this whole winter. (You can tell me it is spring all you want but I am not buying it until soil temperatures hit 55°F.)
