Push Ups Again
Dec. 4th, 2010 12:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueWoke up very late. Got dressed and went into Cambridge for a poetry reading, but it turned out we had the day wrong and it's not until tomorrow. So we came home. But first we stopped at a specialty grocer for bramley apple pies and Perugina. And for Ciro, a copy of the latest issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and for me a two-foot-long French marshmallow stick, lavender flavored.
I've been enjoying buying things lately, which is unusual for me. I think it's because I have so little insulation from my awareness of how hard the recession's been and how many people are still without work; it feels important to support artists and businesses since I can. It's a strange but rewarding kind of Christmas spirit. It feels like the end of Scrooge* every day.
I've been watching the PBS Circus documentary, which means I keep thinking about whether or not it is a good idea to take tumbling classes. Not because I could ever be a gymnast or aerialist (in terms of circus talents, I am firmly a clown), but because I have never been able to do so much as a cartwheel and have always been disappointed in myself as a result.
As we all know from my doomed pushup quest, I am not someone who has ever had upper body strength. I can't do handstands; I can't breakdance; I can't do certain yoga poses. And it's hard to train that stuff up without harnesses and a spotter; if you can't support your own weight in a position, you can't exactly do it half strength while you work up to it - not without changing the angle and using different muscles.
I could weight lift, I suppose, but I get intellectually disinterested in exercise for exercise's sake, or building muscles without a clear idea of what those muscles will allow me to do. If what I want is the confidence I would gain by knowing I could do a back flip, it seems like I should maybe train with someone who could teach me to do a back flip.
On the other hand, I think of a class full of other people who probably took gymnastics when they were kids, or who rock climb, being trained by somebody else for whom this comes naturally enough that they dedicated their life to it. I think of trying to do the hardest thing in my life, working hard at it, and being so bad for so long that it frustrates all the people who are doing this for fun.
I like being good at things, and I'm talented at a lot of them. This is not one of those things. Failing over and over again at something I may not ever be able to do while the people around me boggle at the fact that I can't do something "so simple" does not sound fun to me. I managed to get to the point where I could touch my toes after years of working on it by myself; the years before that, when I was in gym classes and martial arts dojos, I never made progress and I always felt awful, because my teachers first got angry and then gave up.
So there's another part of me that says "just find a swim club or something." I don't have to be the best at everything I do, but I don't want to go back to being the kid you regret having as your partner.
* I do mean specifically Scrooge rather than A Christmas Carol generally. Albert Finney plays those scenes with such fragility, a bewilderedness, confusion and doubt mixed with delight and relief.
I've been enjoying buying things lately, which is unusual for me. I think it's because I have so little insulation from my awareness of how hard the recession's been and how many people are still without work; it feels important to support artists and businesses since I can. It's a strange but rewarding kind of Christmas spirit. It feels like the end of Scrooge* every day.
I've been watching the PBS Circus documentary, which means I keep thinking about whether or not it is a good idea to take tumbling classes. Not because I could ever be a gymnast or aerialist (in terms of circus talents, I am firmly a clown), but because I have never been able to do so much as a cartwheel and have always been disappointed in myself as a result.
As we all know from my doomed pushup quest, I am not someone who has ever had upper body strength. I can't do handstands; I can't breakdance; I can't do certain yoga poses. And it's hard to train that stuff up without harnesses and a spotter; if you can't support your own weight in a position, you can't exactly do it half strength while you work up to it - not without changing the angle and using different muscles.
I could weight lift, I suppose, but I get intellectually disinterested in exercise for exercise's sake, or building muscles without a clear idea of what those muscles will allow me to do. If what I want is the confidence I would gain by knowing I could do a back flip, it seems like I should maybe train with someone who could teach me to do a back flip.
On the other hand, I think of a class full of other people who probably took gymnastics when they were kids, or who rock climb, being trained by somebody else for whom this comes naturally enough that they dedicated their life to it. I think of trying to do the hardest thing in my life, working hard at it, and being so bad for so long that it frustrates all the people who are doing this for fun.
I like being good at things, and I'm talented at a lot of them. This is not one of those things. Failing over and over again at something I may not ever be able to do while the people around me boggle at the fact that I can't do something "so simple" does not sound fun to me. I managed to get to the point where I could touch my toes after years of working on it by myself; the years before that, when I was in gym classes and martial arts dojos, I never made progress and I always felt awful, because my teachers first got angry and then gave up.
So there's another part of me that says "just find a swim club or something." I don't have to be the best at everything I do, but I don't want to go back to being the kid you regret having as your partner.
* I do mean specifically Scrooge rather than A Christmas Carol generally. Albert Finney plays those scenes with such fragility, a bewilderedness, confusion and doubt mixed with delight and relief.
Here via a random content search, hoping that's okay
Date: 2010-12-06 09:22 am (UTC)FWIW, it is possible to work towards some of those things on your own -- there are some modifications for things like handstand that let you do it half strength. I did a linkspam here about the various routes towards handstands against the wall:
http://sun-salutation.dreamwidth.org/28050.html
And I've lacked upper body strength all my life, and never ever dreamed I'd be able to do a handstand.
Re: Here via a random content search, hoping that's okay
Date: 2010-12-06 10:02 pm (UTC)Re: Here via a random content search, hoping that's okay
Date: 2010-12-11 03:36 pm (UTC)Two: whenever I get frustrated about the slowness of my body's development in terms of fitness, esp. when I fall off the exercise train and then, stumbling and cranky, by a ticket to get back on said train only to get kicked in the face by someone, I think of two things. One: the Newbie Chronicles, http://www.runnersworld.com/subtopic/0,7123,s6-380-383-492-0,00.html, where a new runner chronicles his his progress. Now, unfortunately, the first one isn't still up, but most of them are. it's really nice to see his gratingly slow, but eventual, honest progress. He's not one of those superrunners they're always interviewing, and I find his honesty incredibly comforting.
The other item is I like to think back on my tree-climbing days. I don't know why, but I was so incredibly determined to climb our trees. I tried a million ways. I tried scooting up, and jumping, and using a stool. Finally I learned how to use a rope for the first hop, anchoring myself. Eventually I managed to do it without anything. But it took me trying every day for two years. I mean, seriously, that was me, almost every day, going in the backyard for daily tree climbing. And suddenly one day I looked down and I was like, holy crud, I have MUSCLES. And I had the strongest upper body of all the kids in class, and when I got in gymnastics, even though I got made fun of for not knowing everything (they'd all been in class since 2), no one rivaled my body strength.
Then, alas, we moved, and pecans are a bitch to climb, so I stopped and lost my upper body strenght. Eh. Life. ;)
-Val