On Being Incredibly Out of Shape
There’s a difference between gaining weight and being out of shape. Once upon a time, a year after I had Lucas, I got down to my college weight. But was I as in shape as I was when I was dancing and working out 15 hours a week in college? In the words of the great Kanye West…
HELLLLL NAAAAAW.
So the point here is that being out of shape is defined by not your weight but your strength, endurance, mobility, and flexibility. All things that have slipped away from me like a trout sliding out of the hands of a sloth.
Once upon a time, I was strong in body and mind. Now I’m incredibly out of shape. I’d consider it a workout if I did the mom stroke, which is essentially hopping on one foot in an above-ground pool while wearing a skirted one-piece and getting only the bottom of my hair wet. The only way I could be in less shape is if I just threw in the towel on walking altogether, getting wheeled around in the half-Segway, half-mall massage chair I was rolled down the hospital hallway in after giving birth to Lucas.
Recently (last week), I decided it was time to get back in the game. In the words of the immortal Julia Roberts: Big mistake. Big. Huge. I started with taking a real Vinyasa flow class, as opposed to the restorative yoga I’ve been dabbling in, which is basically paying $20 to take a nap. At one point in the class, my body seized up six ways to Sunday and I thought, “Nope. You can’t do this.” I stood there and did nothing, pretending to be enthralled with a spot on my mat. That spot, it turns out, was from a tear that I cried during downward-facing dog.
Two days later, I joined three of my coworkers in a light Crossfit training (oxymoron, I know). There’s nothing like huffing and puffing your way through a jog around the perimeter of a room next to a couple of able-bodied 20-somethings to give you perspective into how truly, absurdly out of shape you are. A couple sets of lunges later and everything inside of me was screaming. In fact, five days later, and my quads were still like “YOU STUPID BITCH” every time I tried to sit down.
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to take either advanced yoga or gentle yoga. Those in their mid-to-late thirties can relate to my dilemma. At a certain point, you reach a precipice. Your mind remembers being able to do great things with your body. But your body has given up. Alex and I were at the park playing with Lucas on the monkey bars this weekend. I, in my newfound fitness euphoria, attempted to do a pull-up. You can only imagine how that went.
So yeah, I checked into the geriatric-friendly gentle yoga.
The sad thing about being incredibly out of shape is that only once you start trying to get back into shape do you realize how bad things really are. When you haven’t tried, you still believe you can do those things. Nope. Jig is up. You can’t. You won’t get back to able-bodied 20s fit either. Your muscles are thin and ragged and they really hate you right now. But at least you can try.
The Olive Gal
green of skin, black of heart
Amen, Amen and Amen!! My body just cried reading this.