Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Jiving to the Thumpa Thumpa

Some days when when Husbandman is finally out of the house, and E is happily on his way to preschool, I steal away at "my office" (usually a local cafe) and commune with an absurdly strong coffee and my computer. Occasionally, the muses are kind to me and half-way decent writing gets up there on the screen.

Some days, even though I'm still laid up with darn broken leg, I gamely search for employment hoping that the wilds of NJ will start to feel less foreign. This doesn't actually work but I do it anyway.

As I get older, (I'm 46) and tighter and less ambulatory and let's face it, crankier, the one activity that always makes me feel better (I'll save sex for a future blog ) is exercise. I'm now an obsessed member of my local Y and the gym therein.

I was already exercising by the time the leg broke but I had no idea if I could continue any kind of routine while I was healing and officially off my feet. I saw my self getting older faster and fatter and God forbid, crankier, sitting on my ass at home watching way too much HGTV--another inexplicable obsession. Unable to contemplate this future vision of myself, I went to the gym in my wheelchair, in the cast. I presented myself to my Maureen my favorite trainer (who rocks) and I asked, what can I do now?

Maureen brought me to the "weight room" a space filled with muscle-bound bipeds who grunted often and sweated even more.The room was cold and vibrated with 'athumpa thumpa' music. She moved lots of equipment out of the way, anchored the wheelchair on the shiny floor. She put weights with long cables into my hands and said, "Pull this."

I pulled. And I pull again. Soon I was pulling cables from every direction, working up a sweat in my unassuming wheelchair, trying to shoulder press large heavy objects that would kill you if they dropped on your head, and realized afterward that I was feeling a whole lot better because I didn't have time to think about anything else. I was jiving to the thumpa thumpa. Every time I came across an exercise I couldn't do, Maureeen and I and other trainers found ways to do the exercise in a universally user-friendly way. Here's a quick pet peeve: I get really sick of the word 'adapt' or 'adaptive' when referencing pwd's. When will equipment and non-crippy people for that matter, adapt to us?

Who knew that cables and weights could offer hours and hours entertainment and education? Well, I did. But there's a huge difference between thinking about something crankily, and actually doing it. In the evening I tell the soft bellied husbandman that "I had a really good work out today." He looks up from his Time Out magazine and nods vaguely in my direction. He has no idea that when my skinny left leg is finally set free I'm taking it and the rest of this body back to the gym. This time we're hitting the pool.

No comments:

Post a Comment