Muscles

When I was in high school, I took a weightlifting class.  Technically, I was the second strongest person in the class, by the end of it.  That surprises most people, since I look rather... wimpy.

There were two exceptions, though.  The first was lower-leg exercises, where I was quite weak and hardly improved.  But the other exception is the one I want to talk about.

On the first day of class, we tried to establish "benchmarks", so we could measure our progress.  One of the first things I did was situps.  ...I can't remember the details, but I did a respectable number... 60 or something, maybe.  But it hurt.  A lot.

The next day, my stomach was completely shot. I could hardly roll out of bed.

The next class was two days later, and I was in even more pain.  I think I did, like, five, before insisting I was going to tear in half if I did one more.

But I never recovered... for the rest of the semester, I probably got up to maybe a dozen situps.  It was pathetic.  ...But I just couldn't get any more in, it hurt so badly.

Of late, my back has been very sore.  I decided exercise was in order, and I found a nice set of back exercises to try out.  A month later of doing them every three days or so, I can't say I'm much better... but it has gotten me thinking about building up my strength again.

With that in mind, I decided to do some sit ups.  ...My tummy is quite a bit larger now than it was even three years ago, so I thought it might help with that.

I did eight. Eight!  I was embarrassed. That was all I could muster in one set.  The next set, I did three before quitting.  I tried a third set, but just got through one.

The next day, I could hardly roll out of bed.  : |

I knew better than to try again the following day.  And it still hurt the day after that, too.  In fact, it's been a week since I tried it.  ...And I thought today was the right day to try again.  I could still feel some pain, but not much.

I did two sit ups, and then just fell back, stomach muscles screaming.


W. T. F?!?

...How do I fix this?

1 comment:

Victor said...

I wouldn't be surprised if it were some sort of permanent muscle damage, a scar or something, dating back to childhood. Martha has a similar problem with her back -- she shredded the lower back muscles in jujitsu class many years ago, and the muscles now respond with great pain to any non-trivial exertion.