As much as I’d like to panic about the lack of work, it’s pretty normal for January (ish), so I’ve been doing some physical therapy on my shoulder while I have the down time (I’m determined to be positive about the work prospects for this year).
Said physical therapy has me doing some strange-looking (and painful) exercises with one of those resistance bands.
I usually opt to do my exercises at the gym, mainly because I’m more likely to do them if I make myself get up and go somewhere that’s not my apartment. Also, while I’m there I can swim (sort of – mostly kick sets for now) and sit in the steam room.
My gym used to have resistance bands available for use, but they were removed a couple of years ago, presumably due to concerns about members using them to strangle the sweaty bastard who refuses to wipe down the equipment after use.
So I bring the bands that the physical therapist gave me, and work through my exercises, usually with no issues other than failure to keep the obscenities to a discreet volume.
Except today, when I got mansplained.
The phenomenon is recounted in this article* by the utterly brilliant Rebecca Solnit (to whom I humbly offer hommage with the title of this post).
As I was doing the exercise that I like to call the Sieg Heil (exactly what you’d imagine, only with a resistance band), a man swathed in overpriced brand-name tech fabric offered some unsolicited advice after staring at me for a full five minutes.
“You really shouldn’t do that,” he began (whatever happened to ‘hello’) in that tone. “You could hurt yourself. If you like, I can show you how to work out.”
“It’s a physical therapy exercise. I’m pretty sure she told me to do it this way for a reason.”
“You see,” he continued “your shoulder is a very complicated joint and you have to be very careful, especially with those dangerous bands. You know the gym got rid of them.”
“The physical therapist told me to do this. I think she might have gone to college.”
“Maybe you could start with the easy pushups. You know, the ones on your knees.”
It became clear he wasn’t going to listen to me. As I tried to decide if I wanted to fart loudly, belch, or resume swearing (if you can’t reason with them, scare them off), I was saved by the swim coach, who ran up and jokingly yelled “Five more! Your butterfly sucks!” while holding her hand at a height that I wasn’t going to be able to reach without dropping the band (or maybe even if I did).
At the sight of my exercise being legitimized by an actual staff member, he slunk off… somewhere. I was laughing too hard to really pay much attention.
*I highly recommend River of Shadows, the book referenced in the article.
Filed under: humor, life in LA, Non-Work, Off-Topic, rants, exercise, health, medicine, men, physical therapy, Rebecca Solnit, resistance band
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