Move the Squeaky Hip

SIMPLE SATURDAY – As I noted this week, I did a triple session on Wednesday. One hour of walking as I listened to Spanish and talked to a new friend. Then back at the office. One hour of boxing later that night, then right to yoga class for one hour. On an intensity scale of 1 to 10 for all workouts combined, I was at about a 3. In boxing, when I was hitting the bag, I think I bumped it up to a 4.5

Which is perfectly fine. The reason?

I knew I’d be sore. Or something would ache within 24 or 48 hours. The soreness that starts at 36 hours and runs a few days – that’s when you know you’re really out of shape.

The soreness is fine. It makes me feel young and alive again. What I can do without is the bad pain.   All those times blurring the line between good and bad pain were some of the dumbest moments of my life. Yet I had to play with that blue sprain up to my knee. I had to get out of the air cast and the moleskin, and basically sleep with ice on it if I wanted to be the trooper I felt I had to be. But now, I am much wiser. I don’t kid myself. I remember my mother telling me, “You’re going to pay for this someday”.

The ache in my right hip and down my leg is troublesome. I didn’t want to believe my doctor after the scope when he said, “You’re going to need it replaced.” I told him no way. I will handle it myself.

I felt it by the next morning.   It was my own fault. I know what will piss off my hip and what will not. Feeling the bad pain was an easy excuse to not go back to the gym – to rest, relax, let the body recover. Yet I knew better.

I didn’t go back and jog, which is what got me into trouble in the first place. But I did go back to the gym and move. I lifted and worked all areas around the squeaky hip. Then the next day, I walked and lifted other areas of my body. Intensity level still needs work. By Thursday, I was in a body pump class and that’s where the teacher was on me a bit. I was late, slightly unmotivated, not totally present. Yet I showed up, got on board, and said thank you.

And guess what?

The hip stopped hurting.

We tell parents and kids all the time that the body wants to move even when it’s injured. We draw the line at injuries in the acute state – breaks, bad sprains – but as soon as the body can move around, it wants to. We often can make major gains in shooting or ball-handling when a kid is forced by an injury to only do a few things that the brain can focus on. We’re really careful with post-surgery injuries in that the kids can’t come in unless I am there to put a leash on them. But everything else calls for some common sense.

Our bodies need to move – we sleep better, we eat better, we parent better, we coach better, we live better. I haven’t been moving that much lately thanks to my regular routine of walking under an avalanche of work I created for myself. After deciding to not walk into the bottom of the debris this week, I took a detour to the gym. I already feel significantly better.

I’m still at an embarrassing intensity level compared to what was the norm several years ago. But I’m fine with it. Granted, every once in a while an instructor yells at me for not paying attention, and I smile and apologize to my instructor. She’s right. I am wrong. She doesn’t know how badly I want to add some type of score or ball or goal to body pump or yoga or walking. If they put my intensity level up on the wall, or my team’s ranking, I’d return to the animal I once was.

The change in mindset is this: The goal now is to feel good and keep going back.