Arrgh! Where did that week go? It was all work work workity work. And sitting on my arse watching the cricket and MotoGP too, must admit.
So! It’s time for another New Years Resolution Update. Imagine that there’s some sort of theme tune to go along with that… doo doo dooooo.
All my goals are ticking along nice and dandy. I think making them specific, realistic and enjoyable has helped. About time I learned that lesson!
8. Try three new sporty activities in 2007
Old school folks may recall my first Body Combat class way back in November 2001. I was 117 kilos at the time and my face went redder than my hair. My punches were feeble and my kicks were about as powerful as a chihuahua lifting its leg to pee on a car tyre, but I was an enthusiastic participant and was soon addicted. I was proud of my big red face. I loved throwing punches and kicking and screaming, even though I was only assaulting thin air.
Five-and-a-bit years later my pal Vicki called up and said she was going to try a kickboxing class and did I fancy coming along. Like Body Combat? I asked. Nooo, she said. Like boxing gloves and kicking the crap out of people. AH HA! I said. This could count as a New Sporty Activity for my list! Gloves ahoy!
I hadn’t been to a gym class since May last year, because of the dodgy knee. It was bizarre being back in a mirrored environment. I still did my automatic sweep of the room to see if I was the biggest, and I was. But in height only. Hehehe!
The instructor was a bloke and he was the real kickboxing deal, black belt and everything. I’m so used to techno music and instructors who say “woohoo” and “work it, ladies!” that it was a bit unsettling at first when it was clear this was more sporty than aerobic-y.
First we did drills and circuity things - shadowboxing, then switching rapidly back and forth between kicks, push-ups, sprinting on the spot, star jumps, sit ups. It was rather grueling! But sooo much fun! You have to remember I’d spent the previous eight MONTHS limited to nothing but boring knee exercises and boring stationery bike riding, so it was a real treat. Oddly enough my fitness level hadn’t dropped off; I easily kept up with the class. My face was merely pink instead of the old Call The Ambulance red.
Next up the group was split in two. Half of us got our gloves on and the other took the pad thingies. Us Gloved Ones did a lot of running between the Pad People and punching them in all manner of styles. Holy CRAP, I loved punching people. Really! I just thought of everyone who had even remotely annoyed me over the past 29 years and let fly. POW POW POW! One Pad Girl said to me, “Whoa, that is a scary face!” and her neighbour said, “She is taking it very seriously, isn’t she?”. Damn right, girly!
Then we had to kick, which was even better. My favourite was a drill where you just had to do roundhouse kicks over and over for one minute, really fast, then switch to the other leg, then back to the first leg, and so on, until your pins turn to jelly. I love roundhouse kicks. It was amazing after all those years of kicking nothing at Body Combat to actually connect with something, even if it was only a girl with a big cushion! My knee felt good and I loved the sound of my foot smacking the pad, pow pow pow.
But then we had to swap over, and I went from overly-aggressive freak to total WIMPY ARSE. Oh dear. As soon as I had those pads in my hands I wanted to run home to mummy. I didn’t think these nice girls with their pretty ponytails would punch so HARD. I was totally unprepared and compleeeetely useless at holding the pads, and got smacked in the cheek and temple by mistake. So I just sort of floated the pads around my head, cowering beneath as they rained blows down on me. I could dish it out but I sure couldn’t take it! Hehe.
The hour was up by then, and after that was the sparring class, where the pads get put away and you assault people more directly. But since Vicki and I were beginners the dude suggested we wait a few weeks for that. Fair enough! “You’ll be in a world of pain tomorrow,” he said, “But don’t let that put you off. You gotta come back next week!”
So that was 8th January and I have not bloody been back. Tis why I hadn’t written about it sooner, I was too busy SULKING. I woke up the next day and my knee was completely cactus. Unable to straighten my leg properly, hurting like a mofo, blah blah blah. It took two long weeks of limping and rest and ice and exercises before I could even get back on the boring stationery bike on the gym. Grrrrrr. It was similar to what happened with the swimming - the knee felt okay at the time, it was only the next day that it was all out of whack. I don’t think it was the kicking that did it, because I’d been really careful with them at the time. I think it was the over-enthusiastic hopping and skipping and springing around; all the short and sudden movements.
So that’s what led me to revising my goals to make sure I was working within my limitations, as opposed to working within my fantasy dream world. At times it’s deathly boring but after almost three months, the knee feels much stronger for sticking to low impact stuff. It still pisses me off that I can’t go back to the kickboxing class yet - One, because it ruled; and Two, because I see the instructor all the time at the gym and I haven’t been back to his stinking class, and I HATE the idea of anyone thinking I didn’t go back because I’m a scared little prissy pants. I am thinking of wrapping a big red bandage around my knee that says “HURTY” on it, so he knows there was a legitimate reason.
I am sure I’ll get back there someday. Anyway, I am going to put that down as a New Sporty Activity, and I don’t care what you say! I had not punched anyone with gloves before so it totally counts. Woohoo!