injury & why warm-up = juicy goodness

Just this morning I injured my neck again. For the third time in 2 months. I'm kind of tired of injuring myself. So I'm gonna do a little extroverted introspection here to get to the root of it.

So here were the sources of the injuries:

1. Extreme backbend partner yoga, from cold start
2. Swing dance backflip, cold start after 4 hours driving in car.
3. doing 40th (pushing muscle failure) rep of parallette dip / push-ups

The first two I will put in the category of "insufficient warm-up" and the third I will place in the category of both "insufficient warm-up" (those were my first exercises of the morning) as well as "pushing too hard."

As a child I had a body-building instruction manual co-written by Joe Weider and Arnold Schwarzenegger, which amongst its gems included:

1. "Never count your reps. If you need to count, just say in your head "one, one, one..."... all that matters is the last rep. You've got to push your muscles to exhaustion. Its in the last 10% of your reps that you get 90% of your muscular growth."
2. "If there aren't enough weights to load up the bar for your max squat, simply have a friend stand balancing on top of your shoulders to add that amount of weight."

Those have been words of inspiration my entire fitness career. The first part has, honestly, been a bit more useful than the second... though with my acro practice, I am starting to really see the wisdom of point 2... I would actually amend it by saying:

3. Drop all the weights. Add humans atop your shoulders and increase their weight and number gradually as you improve both strength and balance. Start with small children (40-80 lbs), transition into fit girls (80-120 lbs) and move up from there until you can comfortably squat supporting an adult male (175 lbs)

Oh, and to get back to the initial subject line of this blog:

ALWAYS WARM UP BEFORE PRACTICE!!!!  :)

Yours in health and play,

Greg

on basketball, children, and ambidextrousity

The doctor gave me a choice: "If you have discipline, I can give you this flexible brace, otherwise I'm going to set it in a hard cast."

I opted for the brace; of course I was disciplined. Silly me.

4 days after breaking my wrist in a snowboarding accident, I was back to 8 hours of day of typing at the computer, writing emails and books. It felt fine at the time. So good, actually, that I stopped wearing the brace alltogether after about 10 days. 45 days in, however, I wasn't so sure. Serious pain began to shoot up my arm, and my fingers curled in agony. At the 60 day mark, I went back for my checkup and explained the situation. The doc looked at me with a mix of compassion and sorrow: "You said you had discipline. I instructed you to keep off it. Now this may take a really long time to heal."

Doh.

Fast forward 6 years. The wrist is basically healed. And then I decide to get in a hellacious car accident, slamming my wrist right into the dashboard at an unencumbered 45 mph to dead stop. Unfortunately, my wrist did not break that time. Instead, it simply absorbed all the impact in the bones. The bruise was so deep it didn't even show up for another month, when all of a sudden this strange purple, yellow, and green coloration surfaced on my upper forearm.

And now, this wrist is my constant reminder to slow down and to be careful and gentle and enjoy some of the more subtle things in life. Which brings me to: children.

My daughter Alyson is a completely physical girl. When she's not playing outside, she's playing Wii Sports or wrestling or hooping. And naturally she wants me to share these activities with her. So the other day on the Wii, my wrist really starts to complain, and I beg out of the game.

Today, we play basketball, where by both height and skill she is woefully outmatched, and with pain shooting through my dribbling arm, I have a Eureka moment: I can play the whole game with my left hand lead!

Now, gentle readers: brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand is one thing. Playing basketball, dribbling and shooting is a whole nother story... and, a great education. It was some of the funnest basketball I've ever played. :)