Bendable, poseable
May. 25th, 2011 05:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12My right arm ached for all of Monday after I played cricket with my friends on Sunday. This on its own is insignificant, but then I realised that not only was it hurting on Monday, actually throwing the ball while playing was both excruciating and effortful. And that got me thinking about, well, how much things had changed.
I am not an unfit person. I run every day for up to an hour and no less than half an hour. I walk everywhere. Stairs do not leave me breathless, and I imagine if I swam laps, I would be able to do about 20 of a 50-metre pool before I really started to feel it.
But I am clumsy, oh so very clumsy. I walked into the sides of beds and tables, I trip over anything and everything, I whack my arms and shoulders against doorframes. My legs are covered in bruises. It's as if my body no longer knows its own dimensions.
And I am weak. My arms lack strength, and gone are the days when I could do 100 sit-ups without even feeling it. My hands and wrists are ruined by 10 years spent hunched over a computer.
None of this would matter, but I used to be a gymnast, and I notice the difference.
There was a time when I could do handstands and cartwheels and even backflips on a beam of wood only 10cm wide. I could tumble and flip across a sprung floor or over a vaulting horse and launch myself into the air as if I expected to fly. I could do 50 chin-ups, 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, walk around on my hands and even climb up a rope with weights strapped to my feet without using my legs. And, most importantly, I could fly around the uneven bars. I could do a glide kip (start from 6.20, the rest is all training), a long kip (at 0.08), and even giants (that girl's technique isn't great, by the way). I loved bars so much. The feeling of flying, leaping, circling around those two bars is incredible and I have never found anything remotely similar in any other sport.
I don't want to act like all this stuff came naturally, that it was easy. It was the result of 10 years of training, seven years of which consisted of 9-10 hours per week. Each of those skills was hard-won, and I fell over, stumbled, and struggled before I was able to do any of them. The strength I had took years to achieve. But once I had achieved it, it was amazing.
What gymnastics gave me was an incredible sense of control. I have never felt so secure in and comfortable with my body as when I was a gymnast. This was nothing to do with how my body looked, but rather because it did exactly what I wanted. I was balanced, I was supple, I was strong and agile and powerful. I never understood physics better than when I was doing a glide kip; I understood instinctively that if I held my head this way, that would happen, if I flicked my wrists just so, brought my toes to the bar at just that moment I would end up not under the bar but above it, poised to flow into the next move in my routine.
And now I am bruised and clumsy and my arms lack the strength to throw a cricket ball and although I can run fast I cannot launch myself into a somersault and above all I am earthbound. And sometimes that makes me kind of unhappy.*
___________________________
* I am aware that mine are the very definition of First World problems.
I am not an unfit person. I run every day for up to an hour and no less than half an hour. I walk everywhere. Stairs do not leave me breathless, and I imagine if I swam laps, I would be able to do about 20 of a 50-metre pool before I really started to feel it.
But I am clumsy, oh so very clumsy. I walked into the sides of beds and tables, I trip over anything and everything, I whack my arms and shoulders against doorframes. My legs are covered in bruises. It's as if my body no longer knows its own dimensions.
And I am weak. My arms lack strength, and gone are the days when I could do 100 sit-ups without even feeling it. My hands and wrists are ruined by 10 years spent hunched over a computer.
None of this would matter, but I used to be a gymnast, and I notice the difference.
There was a time when I could do handstands and cartwheels and even backflips on a beam of wood only 10cm wide. I could tumble and flip across a sprung floor or over a vaulting horse and launch myself into the air as if I expected to fly. I could do 50 chin-ups, 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, walk around on my hands and even climb up a rope with weights strapped to my feet without using my legs. And, most importantly, I could fly around the uneven bars. I could do a glide kip (start from 6.20, the rest is all training), a long kip (at 0.08), and even giants (that girl's technique isn't great, by the way). I loved bars so much. The feeling of flying, leaping, circling around those two bars is incredible and I have never found anything remotely similar in any other sport.
I don't want to act like all this stuff came naturally, that it was easy. It was the result of 10 years of training, seven years of which consisted of 9-10 hours per week. Each of those skills was hard-won, and I fell over, stumbled, and struggled before I was able to do any of them. The strength I had took years to achieve. But once I had achieved it, it was amazing.
What gymnastics gave me was an incredible sense of control. I have never felt so secure in and comfortable with my body as when I was a gymnast. This was nothing to do with how my body looked, but rather because it did exactly what I wanted. I was balanced, I was supple, I was strong and agile and powerful. I never understood physics better than when I was doing a glide kip; I understood instinctively that if I held my head this way, that would happen, if I flicked my wrists just so, brought my toes to the bar at just that moment I would end up not under the bar but above it, poised to flow into the next move in my routine.
And now I am bruised and clumsy and my arms lack the strength to throw a cricket ball and although I can run fast I cannot launch myself into a somersault and above all I am earthbound. And sometimes that makes me kind of unhappy.*
___________________________
* I am aware that mine are the very definition of First World problems.
