Things I learnt after joining an MMA type gym:

I have been sick again. No biggie. Except it always is. This time though – I stayed off the cortisone. YAYAYAYAYAYAYA….

Sorry. Got a bit excited there for a minute.

What with the sick and all, and it takes me forever and a day just to have clear lungs again, and the spending allot of time indoors so you don’t breathe cold air and what what…. A very odd thing happened to me.

I missed going to the gym. I missed the challenge. The comradery. The giggling like a spastic tonsil. The sense of getting stuff DONE.

I will probably only be able to go back in a few days because I am gifting myself a few days to get completely better. But to help me get through this odd sensation of missing a thing that actually causes me to walk funny, here are a few things I have learnt after joining an MMA type gym:

• Stairs were probably invented just so that your trainer can torture you.
• Every day is leg day
• Not all stairs are equal.
• Badly done burpies are still better than no burpies at all.
• Skipping like a deranged monkey with one leg is better than not skipping at all.
• It takes 8 gym days for your brain to actually figure out the whole skipping thing. At approximately 06h07 on the morning of the 8^th day, you will be skipping like a graceful and rhythmic swan. In my mind anyway. If swans could actually skip that is.
• Also on the 8^th day, you will do your first proper set of assisted (feet hooked into something or someone) sit ups. None of those half crunch things here. No, no, no. Full sit up, gloves touching my mirror partner. Graceful as a dolphin. No grunting, snorting and panting here. No, no, no. Ok I lie. There are huge amounts of grunting and snorting. But you will still do them. Like a boss.
• I am as agile and flexible as I am fit. Which is to say I move like a blob of butter in cement. But moving is what actually counts.
• You don’t have to be good at something to love it.
• The relative sense of accomplishment that accompanies every single ache is profound.
• Sometimes, the instruction to move going from your brain to your thighs (I’m talking to you left thigh), is completely ignored. More than ignored. It goes to its room and sulks for a few hours. Leaving you hobbling around like a lopsided turtle singing its own theme song. And by theme song I mean curse words muttered at a level only bionic dogs can really hear….
• Sometimes, just showing up is already a win.
• Once you have successfully managed to collapse onto the toilet seat, your will to ever stand again leaves you.
• Not all ow’s are equal.
  • Some ow’s are perseverance.
  • Some ow’s are accomplishment.
  • Some ow’s are strength.
  • Some ow’s are a lesson.
  • Some ow’s are sweet.
  • Some ow’s are worth the breath.
  • Some ow’s are Oorah and Hooah.
  • Some ow’s are worth the standing all skew like a retarded tree for a moment when you stand up, while things settle and other things loosen.
• It is impossible to balance on a Pilate’s ball when you have the rhythm of a deranged dandelion in front of a fan.
• It is even more impossible to plank on said Pilates ball when you have been cursed blessed with as much boobs as I have.
• Lifting with your legs and not your back is all very relative until you have to try lift and push a tractor tyre down the length of training hall.
• Shin pads don’t mean doodely if the person you are ‘fighting’ is as new to kickboxing as you are and their sense of placement is as crap as yours is. Be prepared for a sore inner leg just next to the shin pad thingy. Please notice I said ‘fighting’…. Fighting without quotes implies some kind of skill. I have only ” skill.
• Knowing where to place and keep your feet AND boxing with the correct hand first AND thinking about where your kick is supposed to go AND being correctly defensive is FREAKING HARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Clearly this is multitasking at a whole new level.
• Kettlebells are from the devil

Yes – I get completely and utterly physically knackered. But in that moment, my mind is silent. My mind is calm. For the first time in a long time. My mind is consumed by what I can do.

Not what I can’t do.

Sometimes going to the gym every day is kinda like the Nac Mac Feegle – all bravo and yelling and disorder and theft of livestock and tattoos but when you get right down to it…

Brave as hell.

And just as crazy.

Breath

9 flights of stairs doesn’t sound like much right?

9 down and 9 up.

Most people fly through it. It is the 9 plus that gets them.

Me?

Today I stood at the bottom of a stairwell and listened to breath.

The panting rasp of someone with the lungs I have.

The laboured inhalation of someone with the fitness level of an overweight rock.

It used to embarrass me – the thought of someone hearing me breath heavily. The idea that I would be judged and found wanting. It is why I never did sport at school. The sound and the jiggle and the red face and the sweat. And yes, the coming last.

Children can be cruel. But sometimes, we are our own worst tormentor.

So today, I stood at the bottom of a stairwell, 40 minutes into a seriously hard gym session. A gym session full of the things I thought I couldn’t do.

I listened to breath.

And I thought –

How Blessed is that sound?

How Joyous is that sound?

How many times has that sound meant something else?

How many times has that sound been accompanied by panic, because I just couldn’t get enough breath?

How many times has that sound, slightly twisted, echoed around a hospital room – for weeks on end?

You feel free to judge me all you want.

The breath. The sweat. The red face. The jiggle. The coming last.

Until you hit a wall one day, and breath becomes a thing you actually have to think about….

The breath is what matters.

The doing.

The being.

So who gives a crap if I came last?

At least I took part.

At least I was there.

Sometimes, when breath is all you have, that is where your Hope and determination lies.

 

 

Picture found on – https://embodypilates.wordpress.com/2014/06/19/pilates-breathing/