Sunday, January 11, 2009

Muscles

You know when you do something new, you sometimes discover that you have muscles you've never much thought about before?

I'm at that point in skiing. The muscles near the hip that pull my legs forward, never much noticed them before. But now, sitting on the davenport with my laptop on my lap and my legs up on the ottoman thing, if I lift one of my legs, I notice.

I'm perfectly happy to exercise to the point of minor muscle soreness/tiredness. It makes me feel that I've put some effort in, but doesn't hurt a lot.

My lower back is tired (but not in a bad way), and my elbow. What the heck, my elbow?

My worst muscle discovery ever was after my eye surgery. I'd never much thought about the muscles that move my eye around; it's not like I'd ever gotten them pulled or sore. But then they were sore! It's like, you know those muscles exist, because you can move your eye around, and we've all seen pictures, but who thinks about them? Even now, when I'm really stressed, those muscles get a little sore.

This skiing thing is weird. I see people ski by, just flowing along, and I'm doing something absolutely non-flowing. I think I need to get my legs strong enough at being bent, and my skiing balance practiced enough that I can go on one leg and lift up the other without getting tensed up. It's tensing up that causes me problems, I think.

I'm hoping to try out the "skate" skiing, because that looks absolutely flowing and fun (but hard!).

1 comment:

  1. I was thinking about you this morning when I was taking a x-c lesson today. I'm with you on needing to get a little more flow going. "Trust your leg and ride your glide," I kept hearing this morning.

    Skate skiing looks totally fun (if exhausting), and I want to learn that one of these years, too. I like reading about your sporting life--makes me feel inspired about working on my own.

    ReplyDelete