Skip to main content

Very Specific Soreness

I work out enough that I get sore from the exercise. I'm not entering any body building competitions any time soon (although I do have a friend who does that), but I am no stranger to working a particular muscle so much that I will be really sore afterward. However, I've noticed that I don't get sore like normal people. No, my body decides to mess with me.

For example, once long ago, I was participating in a kickboxing class. This was the same kickboxing class that led someone to question whether I was being abused and that allowed me to win a game like tag with a seven year old girl. Still, for the purposes of this post, the pertinent part was that we had to do a bunch of drills. And in one particular instance, we had to practice kicking with our lead leg. Since you're kicking with your lead leg, you generally don't put too much power into this type of kick; it's the equivalent of a jab. However, precisely because it is a strike that you throw quickly, it's a kick that you should be able to throw often. So, that's precisely what we did. We practiced throwing like 200 of these kicks (I don't remember the actual number, but it was at least 3 digits).

Mind you, we didn't do a bunch of other kicks or throw other types of punches that day. We just kicked with the lead leg. A lot. Do you have any idea how your leg feels the day after throwing that many kicks? It is super sore. It aches and you have to move it slowly because it hurts if you try to move at normal speed. But I had only kicked with one leg, so I only had one tender leg. My friend made fun of me because I was walking slowly, but only because one side was sore (she was also nice enough to walk at my slower pace, so that made up for the jokes on my behalf).

These days, I don't do much kickboxing. Instead, I do CrossFit workouts at work. This leads to the same basic problem, since I sometimes have to do a metric crap-ton of repetitions. For example, there are days when we have to do something not-so-affectionately dubbed "Dirty 30." This works out to the equivalent of 270 sit ups in a row (3 sets of 3 exercises, with 30 reps of each exercise every time), so everyone always end up sore afterward. Oddly enough, I have very little desire to cough or laugh the next day (it hurts), though I will happily run a mile or do lunges if I have to. Again, it feels incredibly awkward to have this big mass of ache in one part of your body, but to be perfectly fine elsewhere.

The most interesting example of this came recently, when we had to do something that was dubbed "Filthy 100." First off, it's never good when it has a name. If it has a name, it's going to be difficult. It's also not a good sign when it has a large number in the title. In this case, we had to do 100 reps of something like 9 exercises. I didn't even finish the whole thing, but I was super sore for the next couple of days. But what made it really funny was that the soreness was concentrated around my shoulders. I couldn't lift my hand up to my shoulders without a dull ache, and I certainly couldn't reach my back without that same pain. Showering was much more of an adventure at that point.

I mentioned this all to the Mild Ex, and she started cracking up. Not just because I was sore "like an old man" again, but because it was just my shoulders that were causing issues. Seriously, who walks around with sore shoulders? I've heard plenty of people complain about "leg day" or having sore abs, but shoulders? That's a first. Apparently, though, my body likes to mess with me in very specific places, and in very specific ways.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pink

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit. I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right. However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of th...

Dreams

Normally, I don't eat very many sweets. I tend to eat pretty generous portions, but I generally prefer savory food over sweet. In fact, I usually prefer things half as sweet when possible. My preference doesn't have anything to do with health reasons, it's just one of those things that I've always liked better. That said, I do inevitably eat dessert, particularly if I'm out with other people. My stance towards dessert is roughly equivalent to those who are social drinkers . If other people want to munch on something for dessert, I'm not about to cross my arms and refuse. That'd be just a tad gauche. So, I do eat some dessert. I even have a few standby favorites that I'll usually order when presented with them (brownies, creme brulee, and apple pie). But left to my own devices, I'm not about to go hunting for dessert. Apparently, this means that the sugar can really mess with my system under the right circumstances. As I've discovered, ...

New York City Trip (Day 1)

After my crappy flight , I was now in Newark, New Jersey at 7AM on a Friday morning. I had done a little bit of reading up, so I knew which bus I needed to take and where I was going to get off. All in all, getting into the city was surprisingly easy. I suppose speaking the language does make things simpler. Through no real planning of mine (a theme of the trip, at least on my part), I picked one of the later bus stops at which to get off, Grand Central. I actually just figured that getting off at Grand Central would give me options, and heck, it's called Grand Central. That just screamed "decent place to disembark that might be close to some stuff" to me, so that's where I got off. However, it also meant that we drove down 42 nd St to get to my bus stop. That just happens to be a big street, and it gave me a glimpse of Times Square as we drove by. My bus stop choice had accidentally given me a rough layout of the city. Go me. I had about 6 hours to kill...