Fitness

one thing leads to another

February 12, 2023 by krisis Leave a Comment

Sometimes getting older feels a lot like the old lady who swallowed a fly. One thing leads to another. One minor inconvenience that you might not have even noticed in your youth quickly cascades into bigger and bigger problems until your entire life is a wreck.

That’s not just my pessimism at play! I’m actually hot off of a few miserable months after just such a bit of bad luck.

Image by Ulrike Leone from Pixabay

The bad luck involved our sectional couch. It was destined to happen. The day I met the couch, I turned to E and said, “I’m going to hurt myself on one of its legs. I just know it.”

The legs are set exactly at the corners of the couch rather than in from the edge, and since they are metal they’re surprisingly thin – enough so that your foot could catch on them rather than impacting and sliding off in one direction or the other.

Of course, it came to pass. I was walking across the room for no particular reason and slammed my foot directly in the middle of the couch’s leg, toe-first.

It was more than a stubbed toe. It was a collapsing onto the ground after, seeing stars for an hour, ice-packs all night sort of impact.

It felt exactly the same as when I fractured middle finger just before COVID struck, another one of these inconveniences that put the whammy on my life and my plans for months on end. Something felt internally wrong in my foot.

I visited a doctor first thing the next day. He shrugged at me. “Maybe it’s chipped,” he said. I pleaded for a X-Ray, but he said that even if it was broken, it wasn’t in a way that would require a cast or splint. He thought giving me a boot would be overkill. I’d just have to not walk it off.

Easier said than done. [Read more…] about one thing leads to another

Spring Thing: Hip-Hop For Parents (and other adult beginners)

May 11, 2017 by krisis

Last night I went to an actual dance class for the first time.

Not Zumba. Not step-aerobics. A dance class in Philly for parents, adult beginners, and other gawky human beings with necks like storks.

I’ve always loved to dance, ever since my mother would hold impromptu dance parties in our living room to records like Rufus and Chaka Khan and CeCe Peniston’s “Finally.” I lived for weddings and school dances, where I had an excuse to show those skills off on a real dance floor.

For whatever reason, it never occurred to either of us that I ought to take an actual dance class. While I’ve gone mashed-potato for mashed-potato with my mother for years, it isn’t quite the same thing as learning choreography.

In the ensuing years I’ve taken a lot of gym classes with dance elements, but they’re always more work-out than dance steps. I had one fantastic Zumba instructor who did the bare minimum of Zumba and then plugged in tons of great pop and hip hop into the rest of the class and pretty much treated it like we were training to be in music videos. I was sorely disappointed to find that wasn’t the norm in other classes.

Ever since then, whenever I meet new people doing any kind of fitness-related thing, I always ask them, “Have you ever been to a real hip hop dance class for adults who have never danced before? Like, I want to get as close to Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 as I possibly can.” [Read more…] about Spring Thing: Hip-Hop For Parents (and other adult beginners)

Using Pokémon Go for interval training (or, how I went from Couch to 5k in one day)

July 12, 2016 by krisis

I just ran five miles.

The last time I ran five miles was NEVER. The longest run I’ve ever been on (even with a generous definition of “run”) was The Color Run 5k – and that was with Allie as my personal pace car.

The last time I ran 5k was last night.

I had no pace car these past two days – just Pokémon. I return to you accomplished, sore, sweaty, way more knowledgable about Pokémon Go and with four more levels to show for it, but still not much more of a Pokémon fan than I was two nights ago.

How did mobile game I don’t even love get me from couch to 5k in one day, and from 5k to 5 miles the next?

The first step was deciding I was playing – and running – for efficiency. I generally only have an hour to play at night after EV heads to bed if I expect to have time to do anything else before passing out. With limited time to play, I wanted to maximize my level gain and cover a lot of physical ground to try to collect a lot of stuff – both Pokémon and items – since I’m way too weak for my local Pokémon Gyms.

The temptation is to amble constantly so you can engage with each potential encounter or to camp in an area that’s heavily lured. Here are three ways to short-circuit that to turn playing into more consistent exercise: [Read more…] about Using Pokémon Go for interval training (or, how I went from Couch to 5k in one day)