photo by Steve Penland

Thursday, October 6, 2011

I started dryland again this week.  Every spring and fall, when the oval is closed for skating, I need to do dryland as my main workout.  Last time I did dryland after a layoff, in June, I failed to take into account how unaccustomed to a particular activity the middle-aged body can become.  As a consequence, I hobbled around in pain for several days.

So this time, I thought I'd be smart.  My workout called for 36 minutes of "down time."  Now, to a speedskater, "down time" is not a restful term (as in, "Wow, work is really stressful right now.  I need some down time.").  No, to a speedskater, "down time" means "the total amount of minutes spent squatting in a position that one would be very familiar with, should one be in a place that equates "hole in the floor" with "toilet." (OK, well, we're not really that low, but you get the picture).

So, 36 minutes of down time.  Thirty-six minutes of down time isn't a huge workout (my longest ones are 50 minutes), but it's an insane amount to jump back into after a layoff (never mind that I used to do it, 5 years ago...5 years is a long time in the life of an aging athlete!).  Last time I started up the dryland again I discovered that even15 minutes was  too long.  So this time, I decided on five.

Five measly minutes of exercise: one minute of dryskate (going through the skating motion in shoes); one minute of squats (up-and-down, with no weights); one minute of Karlstads (a tricky little maneuver involving balancing on one leg in a squat, jumping up on that leg, landing on the leg, and then immediately jumping onto the other leg--it's guaranteed to make me look extremely uncoordinated); one minute of baby steps (assuming the squat position and then moving forward with, well, baby steps); and one more minute of dryskate.

Five minutes.

And still, the next day, bits of me were aflame.  True, not as bad as last time--last time I had the full-on "hot, itchy, sticky, excruciating" muscle pain. This time it was just moderate soreness, just enough to make me wince every time I sat down.  Unfortunately, the pain was mostly on the left side--left glute, left adductor.  I say "unfortunately" because, since none of the exercises I did were asymmetrical, the predominance of left-side pain meant that I've been neglecting my physical therapy exercises again.

I go to PT TieGuy (Coach TieGuy's brother, and yes, they're both physical therapists) for therapy on my chronic left-side low back injury.  Apparently the back dysfunction will (if I neglect my exercises) cause my left glute not to "fire," which leads to all sorts of bad things.  Seems I spent a lot of time, pre-treatment, with the left side of my butt not really functioning.

That's right; I was doing my skating and dryland workouts half-assed.

And it seems I must be half-assed again, judging from the left-side pain.  I need to start doing all those PT exercises again, and get back in to see PT TieGuy.  In the meantime, though, I've got more dryland workouts to do.  Dryland workouts are no fun; unlike skating, there's no thrill of speed, no satisfaction of feeling the technique come together, however briefly; no lap times to focus on and obsess over.  Just endless, painful, silly-looking exercises--which are, unfortunately, quite good at improving the strength of exactly the muscles one needs for skating.

Dryland even looks unpleasant.  My favorite dryland memory is of the time, several years ago, that I was doing a lengthy dryland workout at the oval.  As I was doing a 3-minute set of squats, a woman came out of the oval building and approached Coach TieGuy to ask if she could borrow his phone.  As he handed over his phone and explained its use, I continued my relentless up-down up-down up-down.  The woman kept glancing from the phone to me and then back to the phone again with an increasingly concerned look on her face.  Finally, she leaned closer to TieGuy and said, in a hushed tone, "Is that person being punished?"

So...five more weeks of "punishment," and it's back on the ice!

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