It IS hot here. Not fun for me being in and studying. To be comfy I have to turn on the a/c which I don't like to do. I cool the whole house when I am only in one room. I have the chiro this morning and a deep tissue massage tomorrow. I need a full Swedish massage but haven't gotten around to finding a therapist (I went to one here and didn't like her at all).
I am in major complain and vent mode this morning, so if you don't want to hear it, skip ahead.
Yesterday morning I did my first full UBWO since my accident. I did a little bit of everything and tested myself with all the different machines I used to use as well as dumbbells. It was early (about 4:30) and I had the weight room mostly to myself (two other people were in there). I was very careful because of my healing clavical and sore shoulders, neck and back. There is simply no way, with all the studying I have to do, that I can afford to injure myself right now.
So I used very light weight (5 and 10 lb dumbbells and lower settings on all the Cybex machines). One of the men said to me "If you're not going to use real weights, there's no reason to bother lifting." He said it in such a sarcastic, judgmental way but even if he was nice about it, I think I would have wanted to rip his head off.
I didn't explain anything to him, just glared at him. I remember when I lifted years ago and had my bicycle accident. I was really hurt. They had scaped me off the road and put me in the ambulance. I was out for over 2 months with a variety of injuries but I came back to the gym and reinjured myself with a lat pulldown because I was doing it the way I had always done it without acknowledging my injures. Then I came back after that and someone chastized me for the way I was using a shoulder press (because of the lat pulldown injury I couldn't extend my arms all the way out, but the dr said I could go back to the gym and do half reps to get into shape). Well I left the gym back then and the rest is history. Not this time.
My knee is also still injured so I have to go light on the leg machines AND slow on the elliptical and treadmill. I see people looking at me like "Geez, you think SHE'S ever going to get into shape with that little bit of effort???????" I KNOW there are people at the gym who are just screwing around or who are going to get hurt due to lack of form, but that is not everyone and it's certainly not me, so I don't appreciate the looks or the comments.
grrrrrrrrrrrrr.
As someone who "knows" how to do it, I can be judgmental along with everyone else. But it's like I tell my husband when he is bellowing about the person driving in front of him, "You don't know what this person's story is." I remember driving home from the hospital the day my mom died and I was in a fog. I thought I was okay enough to drive but I wasn't being aggressive enough for the other drivers around me (I lived in Boston) and they kept beeping at me. I tell my husband, "Maybe they're driving that way because they're an idiot but maybe they just had a death in the family and are grieving or maybe something very upsetting has just happened or maybe they're just coming back to driving after an accident [I was very skittish when I started driving again after this last accident]. Driving and these other things do NOT always mix, but sometimes you don't know that at the time." Anyway, the same is true at the gym. Sometimes you don't know what a person's story is. I hear people (mostly men) make fun of people who read on the treadmills but I have a friend who has had 2 knee surgeries and does the treadmill but must go slowly and she reads magazines. She just needs to put it on the lowest setting and get the gammies moving, not get a full cardio workout in. She's on the treadmill mostly for rehabilitation reasons, not for working out. Just this past weekend I thought about taking one of my bar review books with me to read on the treadmill since I'm going slow anyway. It's best to go and get a power workout in but if you can't, then it's better to be there and go slow than not go at all.
Anyway, I just needed to vent. Some of my closest friends are weight lifters/body builders, but the judgment runs rampant in this crowd and this weekend I was just fed up with it, especially since I go early to get away from this sort of thing AND it's very difficult to come back after major traumatic injuries. It's been really hard for me but I'm trying to do it consistently. And what I'm doing is no one else's business.
Sorry for the soapbox but....
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Thanks for listening.
Susan
Maybe I miss comments like that because I have my MP3 player and headphones on...gimme a break though - when I came back after my lipo surgery, I stuck to machines and very light weights for the first couple weeks, since I was coming off a 4-week layover. Jerks.
(since you're staying at your parents' place in FLA, I keep envisioning Seinfeld episodes where Jerry goes to visit HIS parents in their retirement community...too funny...)
DiamondDeb , 06-16-2003 01:21 PM
Goddess Jessica , 06-16-2003 02:34 PM
mixerchick , 06-16-2003 03:12 PM
