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Fitness Watch
Drastic Setback—or Fitness Opportunity?
By Bruce Adams
I recently squandered a perfectly good opportunity to advance my
campaign for better overall fitness. On a frosty winter morning as I walked
from my car to my workplace entrance, I slipped on a glassy patch of ice
obscured by a micro-dusting of freshly fallen snow. With the improbable
lightning-fast speed usually associated with martial arts movies, my left
ankle folded under, shattering my tibia and fibula at the ankle and
instantly rendering my foot a dangling piece of useless bony meat. After a
relaxing twelve-hour emergency room stay, my ankle was reassembled with
nine pieces of stainless steel hardware.
You might think that a multiple fracture and subsequent surgery is not the
sort of thing that has the word “opportunity” stamped all over it. But
contrary to any impression I might have previously made with my gloomy
outlook on maintaining a healthy lifestyle in a hazardous world, I am
actually an optimist by nature.
Within a day of the accident I had identified a number of silver linings to
this particular dark cloud. For one, though the knee-to-toe cast I would be
sporting for the next eight weeks was an itching, burning, chafing
nightmare, it elevated the energy level required to carry out essential
tasks like standing or going to the refrigerator for beer, thus providing a
source of potential self-improvement. Crutches, I reasoned, presented a
physical challenge that would improve both cardiovascular fitness and upper
body strength, particularly the shoulders and triceps. The same could be
said of the wheelchair used for longer treks.
Thus adversity became opportunity as I eagerly threw myself into my new
handicap-driven fitness regimen. Each time I muscled my way from home to
car or tooled down the hallway at work, I did so with verve and panache. I
attacked the handicap ramp, kicked Rockette-style with each crutch-assisted
step, and refused all offers of assistance from well-meaning but misguided
enablers.
All along I visualized the amazing, almost magical, transformation that was
occurring little by little under my shirt as rippling muscles strained
under the physical demands of single-legged ambulation. Most people require
discipline to exercise daily; all I needed was a trip to the bathroom and I
was feeling the burn. Jack LaLanne would be proud. Like Rocky, I felt
myself undergoing a change from non-contender to ideal physical specimen.
After a few weeks I graduated to a walking cast, allowing me to amble
unaided, looking rather like Chester of Gunsmoke fame. It was then that I
chanced to glance into a mirror, but instead of Rocky Balboa, the
reflection staring back was closer to late-period Jake LaMotta. The sight
of my less-than-Olympic-caliber physique appreciably reduced my capacity
for further self-delusion.
Evidently my daily crutch hikes had been inadequate compensation for the
vast stretches of time I spent viewing Turner Classic Movies. Moreover, I
had anticipated weight loss simply because leaving my second floor bedroom
entailed life-threatening stairway crutch acrobatics. How much bother would
one willingly undergo for calorie-dense, nutritionally-challenged snack
food?
Here’s where I learned a little something about willpower. Motivated by
hunger and boredom, I discovered that just days after a serious operation,
while on pain killers and wearing a cast, one is capable of walking on
crutches down icy porch steps, driving blocks to a grocery store, trudging
through parking lot slush, and carrying a shopping basket in one’s mouth
for a couple slices of supermarket pizza and a jumbo cookie. Eating became
one of my few methods of distraction from physical irritation and
psychological discomfort.
When I returned to work—still on crutches—I calculated the extra time
needed on the morning drive to gimp into the store for donuts (just rewards
for courage in the face of adversity). And before long I was a frequent
rider on the supermarket handicap power cart, its basket filled with
additional compensation for pain and suffering.
In eight weeks, I’m pretty sure I reached or exceeded the upper threshold
of my lifetime weight range, a fact I have not yet confirmed since it’s
impossible to get an accurate reading from a digital scale while balancing
on one foot. Yesterday the cast came off. Soon I will begin as much as six
months of therapy to learn to walk properly again. It’s depressing…but
nothing a nice stromboli and classic movie won’t fix.
Bruce Adams is an artist and educator
living in Buffalo.
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