OnePhatMan

No change in weight this week. I’m surprised, because I expected to gain a little with the resumption of weight lifting. Perhaps I didn’t because I wasn’t really pushing myself (the shoulder, and all that) and instead just working back into getting things in motion.

Do you ever feel like life is trying to beat you down?

I’m having one of those times right now. There are moments when I think my body is falling apart on me, where I wonder if I’ve run myself into the ground before I’m ever 40 years old. Remember how I wrote earlier in the week that I worked out with weights for my chest and back and it didn’t bother my shoulder? That was before I worked out with weights for my biceps and triceps, which killed my shoulder. It was pretty much a total shock to me, because all the exercises I were pretty focused on the arm muscles, with minimal shoulder use. Right now, I’m not sure if I’m going to work out with weights next week at all; I might give my shoulder a few more weeks to heal.

Almost five months of having a bummed shoulder for one reason or another is starting to get old.

Then there’s the knee. I’ve been through all the things that make it hurt, and the more I look at it all, the more it seems that the foundation of that irritation is the elliptical trainer. Most of the other pain sort of builds on what the elliptical does the first thing in the morning, so I want to stop using it.

And yet, that brings in another rub. Walking in the neighborhood is good, but to get the sort of workout I get on the elliptical would take probably two hours of walking. Running just exacerbates the knee thing, so I’m contemplating a treadmill (another of those damned mind-numbing machines) because I can (a) set it so I’m always going uphill to get a much more efficient workout than walking in my flat neighborhood and (b) the one I’m looking at has all sorts of padding and shock absorbers to help out on the impact.

Of course there’s a catch. A $2200 catch, to be precise.

Not that I can’t afford it or that I don’t think I’m worth it. I just get more and more frugal the older I get and $2200 is nothing to shake a stick at.

Then again, it’s cheaper than a knee replacement.

Finally, the icing on the cake: yesterday, while doing the exercises to help my knee—

And on a side note, it’s pretty funny when you think about these exercises. Their purpose? To strengthen my quads to better support my knee. The man who hikes the tallest and steepest trails he can find—as fast as he can—every week, who does his squat work with anywhere from 150-200 pounds of added weight, who does step-ups with 60 pounds in each hand, who lunges with 80 pounds in each hand, who does leg extensions with 150 pounds on the bar has been told to do leg lifts to stengthen his quads.

Leg lifts, as in, “lay on the bed and raise your leg 12 inches off it, then lower it.”

Heh.

—the simple exercises to help my knee, I managed to nearly pull the small muscle in my lower back that plagues me if I ever let my form slip at all when I’m lifting. I say “nearly” because I didn’t actually pull it, but I did something to the point (stretched it, maybe) that if I move a certain way it comes very close to doing one of the big spasms that feels like my back is being wrenched. When that happens, I’m out of commission for a week, so for the next few days I have to be careful of how I move.

But why am I telling you all this? To complain? It may sound like that, but I hope it doesn’t. I’m not trying to complain, or whine, not at all. I want you to understand one of life’s greatest lessons:

Shit happens, and you deal with it.

Life is going to throw you a curveball every chance it can. There will be times when you think things are perfect, where you feel like the king or queen of the world, and there will be times when you think that same world is conspiring against you, trying to beat you down and into submission. You feel like even your own body has turned traitor, doing its best to sabotage you at whatever you’re trying.

You can’t always control what life gives you, but you can for sure control how you deal with it.

Do I ever want to scream and rail that things aren’t fair, that I’m too young to have two important joints in pain, and a back that seems to look for reasons to pull? I’d be lying if I said I never did. Late at night when I’m trying to get to sleep, when I can’t get comfortable because no matter how I lay my shoulder hurts, it’s easy to let my mind go that way, but you know what? That’s just the melodrama of my inner Prissy, who thrives on such things.

That’s not who I choose to be. I choose to be the sort of person who deals with problems and setbacks head on. Complaining about a problem never solved it, even if it made the one doing the complaining feel a little better temporarily. Taking action, that’s what solves life’s problems, and I choose to be an action-taker, whether it’s removing weight-lifting from my life to help my shoulder or spending an arm and a leg (the bad ones, though, not the good ones) on a treadmill.

Who do you choose to be?

And now, it’s time for me to go. I believe I’ve found the perfect hike: it’s over five miles, and it’s uphill almost the entire way. I’m going from Five Points, a local neighborhood near the base of Monte Sano, to the very top of the mountain. The only thing that would make the hike more perfect would be if I could make it a loop. Unfortunately the laws of nature dictate that you can’t make a loop that’s uphill the whole way unless your name is M. C. Escher, so I have to leave my car at the top and get my wife to take me back down to my starting point at the bottom.

Have a terrific weekend, and think about ways you can solve your problems.