Polska Brain Jelly

I’m finally able to walk again.

My legs have recovered from the elliptical torture device training extravaganza.  They aren’t sore and I don’t feel like every step might make my face intimately familiar with the ground.

So I wake up this morning and head to the gym.  It’s another day of weight training.  This time the instructor has printed out a workout routine for us to use for the next two weeks.  It only includes Tuesday and Thursday on mine, so either he a) hasn’t read my email (I couldn’t be that lucky), b) realizes that I’m old and out of shape and that my email probably bit off more than I could ever begin to chew (again, not that lucky), or c) just made the same routine for everyone.  Since the guy that arrived at around the same time I did got the same routine, I’m voting for c.

I scan over the routine while he’s explaining some of the workout and I breathe a sigh of relief to see that an elliptical machine is nowhere to be found.

Is it bad when you have nightmares about ellipticals chasing you only to find you have no legs to run with?  I think I hate ellipticals more than I hate clowns.

Great, now I’m probably going to have nightmares about being chased by clowns on ellipticals.

Anyway, today the sheet says I get to warm up on a stationary bike.  To my surprise, I find one available.  The class must be thinning out already.

Warm up and most of the routine go great.  It’s mostly upper body with a few leg exercises.  I take it a little easy on the legs.  They have made it clear that if I mess them up again they will pack up and leave.

I finish all of the machine exercises which leaves just the core workout left.  It’s abs and obliques today, and I mull over which to start with.

In my younger days, I was the sit-up master.  I could do sit-ups all day.  I could out-sit-up just about everyone.  I did sit-ups on the ground, in an incline or even upside down.  I was fast, I was good at it.  Sitting-up was my thing.

Again, I stress that I’m no longer young.

I was feeling good.  I had successfully completed a workout routine without killing myself and was feeling worked, but not exhausted.  I decided it was time to do what I did best: sit-ups

I’m laying down, feeling good, about to perform my pièce de résistance.

I do a sit-up.

Well, it was my intention to do a sit-up.  What happened was my upper body left the ground, hit a forty degree angle and stopped.  My feet soon thereafter proceeded to come up off the floor, which then threw off the whole process and I collapsed back down in a heap of disbelief.

I start wondering exactly how long it had been since I had last done a sit-up.

Okay, the square root of… carry the one… subtract by the angular momentum of Pluto…

Yeah, it’s been a while.

I figure that I’m just rusty.  My technique is a little off, but once I get started it will all come back to me.  I am the sit-up master, after all.

Take two.  I do a sit-up. I attempt to do a sit-up.  Again, my upper body leaves the ground, lower body leaves the ground, I collapse back to the ground.

Yet again, reality rears it’s ugly head.

I’m really beginning to hate reality.

At this point I realize that a sit-up is probably beyond me.  I’ve already flopped on the ground twice like non-sitting up fish, so to save face I continue to do some crunches like that was my intention all along.

I didn’t even attempt the obliques.  It involves balancing on one elbow and twisting my body.  I can’t even do a sit-up, how do I expect to hold myself up with one arm and twist my body towards the ground with out breaking something, curling up into a fetal position and dying.

I head home, defeated again.  This time by gravity and my apparent lack of abdominal muscles.

Stupid reality.