Vienna
I’ve had a lot of injuries over the years—shin splints, ankle issues, weird knee things. But none have really lasted as long as this one, so I promise this is the last time I’ll talk about this until it’s completely gone.
This whole ordeal affected me more than just physically: let’s face it, I’m addicted to constant movement. So naturally, not being able to do so properly caused some pretty serious problems.
Last semester, I had a very basic exposure to exercise psychology in my Foundations class, and one of the main topics was, of course, dealing with injury. It was nothing I haven’t heard of before: decrease in self-efficacy, anger, impatience, the list goes on and on. I guess because my past injuries have been so short-lived, none of these things really sunk in for me—by the time I would start getting really irritated, I would heal. Well, five weeks of this thing dragging me down eventually got the best of me, and who else would suffer the consequences but Irving himself. I won’t go into details, but what I did learn was how important it was to verbally admit that I am not invincible. And what was even more important was having someone tell me I’m not.
He put this way: I’m the kind of person who would rather rush to class merely for the rush of endorphins after barely making it on such a short period of time than leave early so I can walk slowly and settle down before class starts. And while it’s not necessarily bad, he does say that I miss out on so much because I’m never just still. Don’t get me wrong—this isn’t a cue for me to completely flip my active lifestyle upside down. In this case though, moving is getting me nowhere. I’m not giving my body enough time to recuperate after suddenly stressing it out.
The stars aligned for me the next day: soccer class was cancelled, it was raining, and the world told me to take the day off. So I did. And it did wonders—today, I went to my first Zumba class after weeks (despite taking it super easy)! It’s nice to be able to work out on the ground again, instead of those low-cardio machines I’ve been strapped to these past few weeks.
“Slow down, you crazy child.” - Billy Joel, Vienna
For the record, I’m not super pikon about everything anymore. :]
