The Long Fist of the Dating Law

"Where do you meet people?" I hear this all the time from adults. Once outside of academic institutions, we generally only come into contact with other adults through work or through friends. If you've had the same friends long enough, you've probably met all their dating eligible friends already. Being a fan of continuing education and "special interest" classes, I continued to meet potential mates long after leaving university.

The longest relation I ever had was with someone I met at the dojo. We trained together for years, earning our black belts together. Like dating someone you work with (which I avoid), dating someone you train with can be awkward if the relationship ends. Regardless of how poorly it ends, you will still have the same Sensei so unless one of you plans of giving up martial arts, you will be thrust together, often and aggressively.

Fortunately my ex is a pretty mature guy and we have managed to remain, at least civil if not friends. Generally we see each other at seminars greet each other politely and then go with our different crowds. Recently though, we have been exchanging friendly text messages. Mostly regarding advice on gifts for Sensei, some have turned more personal and friendly. 

Great, I thought, we've turned a corner, we will be actual friends now. We meet at seminars and hug. We chat, we train together. All is good. Guards came down, spirits and friendly banter rose, all was good. And that was why I was caught off guard but not shocked when I was the recipient of a long fist to the nose at a kung fu seminar on Saturday.

You can't go home again, at least not without your guard up.

Don't Look Back

I did pushups this week. At least 10 in every class I've taught. As a karate Sensei this would normally not only be considered no big deal but a surprisingly low number. I haven't been able to do pushups for nearly a year. A mountain bike crash last October left me with an impinged shoulder and a career as a karate instructor left me with enough inflammation to keep a firm lock on that impingement. 

Over the past year I've been through countless doctors’ appointments, sports medicine doctor appointments, x-rays, ultrasounds, bone scans and a cortisone shot. On a side note, the cortisone shot was at the beginning of the cycling season and though I was able to jump from 30 km rides to 110 km rides in a week without feeling any ill effects in my legs, the pain in the needle site was so miserable I cannot fathom pro athletes willingly subjecting themselves to this. Imagine having paraffin wax injected into your muscle, and then feeling it harden over the course of a week and you pretty much have the experience of a cortisone shot, all the discomfort with none of the annoying side effects like actually fixing the problem. Then suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that I wasn't in pain.

Chronic pain is a funny thing, what keeps you awake at night in the beginning, becomes so familiar that you forget what it feels like not to hurt. When it disappears there's a weird period when you don't notice because you've gotten so used to just getting on with it. Other people's sympathy for your pain lasts about 2 weeks, after which no one cares or remembers anymore and if you remind them you are viewed as "milking it", so you put up and shut up. You learn to ignore the pain until you slip into bed and the full force of your over doing it during the day catches up to you.

The pain is gone, and now I have to deal with the weakness. Weakness is not something I deal with very well. I'm a very small female, the grade school girl who was picked last for soccer baseball - a made up sport for weaklings. I have devoted most of my adult life on not being delicate, not fitting the mold of the "delicate China doll" (which I have been called). I take great pride in surprising people with my strength and "toughness". Needless to say, struggling through some rather mediocre pushups doesn't sit very well with me. 

This is where professional me and personal me have to sit down and have a serious conversation. Professional me says that loss of strength is to be expected after such a lengthy recovery. That I should take my rehabilitation one day at a time and celebrate the successes along the way, "look, you did over 70 pushups this week, 3 weeks ago you couldn't do one." Just like I would say to a student in my situation, and I would mean it! Personal me spends a lot of time looking back at where I used to be. Personal me remembers the 100 push up warm-ups and clapping push up days. Personal me gets frustrated by my weakness. Both professional me and personal me have a lot more empathy for others than I do myself.

I've seen this scenario played out many times with friends and clients alike. People who used to be athletic, who got away from their sport and then stayed away because when they tried to re-enter it, their ego couldn't handle not being at the top anymore. That is exactly what it is, ego. The only person judging the number or quality of my pushups is me. No one else is thinking, "yeah, she's a nice person, very professional, takes pride in her work...but...have you seen her pushups lately? What is going on there?” The fact that so many people I know have quit after absence from sport due to ego scares me. I am a very humble martial artist, by an ego maniac about my strength - for my size or any size. I don't want to become another quitter. I don't want to be frustrated.

I'm trying very, very hard to breathe deeply, enjoy the journey back and to not think about asking, "are we there yet?".

Job Hazards and Personal Disasters

Coming from both a training and a theatre background I have friends who hate exercise, friends who are athletes, friends who are fit and friends who used to be athletes but currently hate exercise. The latter is where our story begins today.

Years ago I vowed never to train family or loved ones. Whenever I have tried to personal train someone close to me it has turned out disastrous. First, they have the lowest compliance with the programs I have created for them. Second, they try to bargain their way out of doing the workouts THEY approached ME to design for them. And, they argue with me when I try to correct their form, something that drives me nuts. 

Recently (and very foolishly) I broke that vow and now I am remembering why I made it in the first place. The most difficult of all, even more so than training my exercise hating mother (which I didn’t think possible), is training someone I am currently or used to date. Most people date others with common interests and I am no exception. When I belonged to theatre companies, I dated actors (and subsequently vowed to never do that again; a vow I’ve had no problem keeping), now I generally date cyclists or martial artists. The martial artists don’t need my professional services – they know the human body better than any family doctor I’ve ever had. Then there are the cyclists; the epitome of grace and fluidity on the bike, complete disasters off of it!

Normally, when working with a client I have strict parameters around the relationship. We meet at the gym at a mutually agreed upon time. If they are late, the time is still subtracted from their session. If they cancel at the last minute, they lose the session. They listen, they ask questions, they do what they are told because, well, that’s why they hired me!

People I date(d) show up late, and think nothing of calling and cancelling at the precise time I am expecting the doorbell to ring. Ah yes, the doorbell is ringing because they are training in my home. Maybe it’s the theatre training or maybe the karate sensei in me, but when I am training someone, anyone, I get into the role. I treat everyone like a client. I don’t give kisses or caresses, I don’t want to sit and chat or cuddle a bit before we head into the basement. Work is work and I have no problem compartmentalizing. I dated another black belt for years and for the first 2 no one at the dojo even realized we were dating. I have watched another sensei punish his wife with pushups in class. It’s all about the discipline in karate and dojo is dojo, it is a separate and distinct society.

As startling at it is, here in the closing months of 2011, many people still hold on to the ancient, outdated beliefs of the traditional roles of women and men. Women should be nurturing and vulnerable and need protecting, and although they are supposed to have a butt you could bounce coins off of, they aren’t supposed to kick butt to get it that way. Men are supposed to be providers and protectors who can also fix things. The fact that most men provide for their families with desk jobs that make them out of shape has not altered expectation anymore than wanting a woman with a great body has even though exercise is the only way to achieve it.

Now, when you are a female personal trainer who also has a couple of degrees of black under her belt, even the most traditional or sexist of men recognize that you don’t need their protection. Unless they have really healthy self esteem, though, they will not appreciate that you are also more athletic than them, until you have them in your basement, teaching them some strength exercises. They may be able to handle you being more flexible (men really don’t care about flexibility, anyway…at least not their own); they may be ok with you having better balance. But even the most progressive guy will feel emasculated if you are stronger. That’s when the arguments start. The nice guys, with healthy self esteem or at least modern views of gender equality will make excuses and explanations for why they have the weaknesses they have. The insecure guys who hold fast to sexist stereotypes about guys and dolls will feel so threatened they begin to tear you down, dragging your self esteem to their levels. They start by looking around the room and telling you what needs fixing (because, they can fix it, they are manly men) or cleaning (because you are not a womanly woman). If the insecurities are really bad, his exgirlfriends will start to creep up in conversations over the next few days. Generally in a reference to how good she was at something that either you are hopeless at or that you are really proud of but she does better. It’s an ugly game. Sadly, that doesn’t make it any less popular.

My sensei has a lot of platitudes he repeats to us. We call them “Senseisms”. Some of them are hysterically funny and some of them are so insightful you’ll find yourself repeating them anytime a friend is in need. My favourite is, “don’t blame yourself for what other people lack.” The next time I find myself in my basement, listening to the litany of charges against my femininity I am going to remember that the list has nothing to do with my lacking femininity; the lacking is of self esteem on the “manly” side.

Fell In Love With a Road

Well, I'm back from a one woman mini-training camp. Having some time off, and sensing my "vacation" plans about to fall through and become day-trip activities around the city I was trying to get the hell away from, I shut off my mobile, left the laptop, packed up the bike and headed for the hills. Oh those hills. 

I had always disliked certain areas of this vast province I live in. Judgments based on both over exposure and non-exposure at the same time. Sometimes, when something is too familiar to you, you take it for granted. I opened my mind, traveled several hours out of the city to places that were a prominent feature of my childhood and put my tires to the tarmac; testing myself on the toughest climbs in the area. Then it happened, I fell in love with a place I used to hate because I finally really saw it for the first time.

This was a very transformative training camp for me. In recent years I had spent more time on my mountain bike because riding my road bike brought up a lot of bitter-sweet, sad memories. All that was stripped away layer by layer, climb by climb, and beneath I found the little girl who first fell in love with the freedom, the challenge and the wonder of riding a bike. I was reborn as a cyclist out on those climbs. Along with a lot of sweat, I left behind all the negative associations that had piled up around my bike and realized they didn't have anything to do with my riding. I was riding a bike long before any of the negative stuff ever happened.

Grinning like a maniac, I attacked twisting, snaking descents with a fearlessness I haven't felt in a long time. Climbing the toughest hill I have faced to date, I was overcome with a strange experience. First my arms, then my face started to tingle; not in a pins and needles sort of manner, but in a feel-good euphoric sort of way one would generally only experience if they were very fortunate during an entirely different type of cardiovascular activity. It was wild. It was definitely a cycling first for me, and I want more....

Whatever it is you used to love to do, before it became not fun anymore, before life or disappointment or negative associations got in the way, I hope you rekindle that spark and fall in love all over again. It's magical!

Doing my bike courier impersonation at the train station