On Physical Things, Part Deux

I decided I wanted to restart lifting weights. I haven’t done it since being here, just because the SRC is a daunting place for me–people look at you and watch you, and I like to work out in peace.

At any rate, I head down to the SRC and get my palm-print recognized and coded so I can get in and I head into the weight room. Oh. My. Damn. Lemme explain something first: at my place in Charlotte, there are simple weight machines; you put the peg in the hole for the weight you want, then use the machine. Simple. And there’s one machine that can do the exercise you want, so there’s not much variety. That’s okay, ‘cuz I just do basic exercises to work the big groups of muscles and get gone. Shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes for a thorough workout that leaves you shaky for the rest of the day.

So anyway, I walk into the weight room here, and just stop. Shit. There are about three rows of machines, and they all fucking look the same. I wander in, with all the macho guys just staring at me with my little notebook (hey, I’m a stickler for records) looking completely clueless. Luckily for me, an acquaintance was there, and I shamelessly appealed to her for help in identifying the four machines I needed. Leg press, bench press, lat pulldown, and tricep pulldown, and the last two were probably on the same machine. She said, “Do free weights. They’re better for you anyway.” Yeah, okay, I know that, but then I need a spotter, then I need to depend on someone else to complete a workout. But I decide to try the bench press using free weights, with Vic (the acquaintance) spotting. Uh-uh. Wobbly as hell, and, to me, rotated 90 degrees, messing up my grip and the like. So I go ahead and hunt down a machine for the bench press. Except the machines use free weights. Or, rather, the machines require loading the weights on various knobs. No little pegs here. So I manage to do the bench press, getting in a good set to failure, my usual modus operandi.

Then I set about finding the leg press machine, although that’s a bit backward for me (largest muscle groups should be worked first, and the leg press works more than the bench press in those terms). After figuring out which knobs hold the weights that will actually be lifted, I see there are a total of 90 pounds on there, and I figured that would be cool for a “first workout”. So I jump on, breathe, and push. One leg moves a little. Nothing hurts, it just doesn’t move. So I check the weights, and Vic comes around to see if I’m alive, and it turns out that what I thought were backboards for the weights are, in fact, 100 pound weights. Two hundred ninety, I cannot do. So Vic and I start taking off the weights, and when I roll off the 100 pounds, it manages to crunch down on my foot. My immediate thought (after moving my foot and breathing deeply to avoid screaming)? “Ignoring air resistance, of which there probably wouldn’t be much, how would you compute the different masses and heights (within the weight itself) to create a potential energy to kinetic energy conversion problem? ‘Cuz it swung down in a smooth arc onto my toes, but, of course, the mass is not centered at the top of the weight, and the actual center of mass didn’t hit my toes. Is that some kind of integral, since it’s a summation of potential energies? Or… I dunno.” Um, yeah. I just took a Physics exam on (rudimentary) Work-Energy Theorem stuff this morning. Which I got a solid B on, methinks. I hate physics.

Although my toes are not broken, they are big and swollen and hurt like mofos.

In other news, remember when I ate the asphalt a couple of weeks ago? A fascinating side effect: I think I have another sac of fluid in my leg. I’m sure I’ve written about this before, but I have two sacs of fluid, one on the tops of each kneecap. It’s just generally squishy, and serves to make sensation in that area really weird. It’s easily hurt (and hurts for days, I shit you not, when bumped), but just to rub it, there’s not as much sensation. So those are from five years ago, when the Old Man decided he didn’t like my tone of voice. When I fell, however, I acquired what I think is a third one in a weird spot: it runs down my leg from just under my knee to about midway down my shin, on the left side, on my left leg. It squishes, it hurts, and there’s a… distance… in the sensation, just like the other two. As long as I keep all low-lying funiture out of my walking path, I only have to worry about cruching the bubbles on my knees under desks. I’m now even more über-sensitive about my knees, though–I hate to have people brush past to get into a seat further down the aisle, and I’m extremely careful when pulling up to a table. Sigh.