Push-Ups

Push-ups are the pride and bane of my existence.

Well, actually my kids rank higher on both the pride and bane scales. But push-ups are pretty high up there.

They're a source of pride because people's eyes tend to bug out when they hear that I do, say, 80 or 90 push-ups in the course of a karate class.

They're a bane because they're hard and painful to do.

To get a black belt, my school requires people to do a set number of push-ups and sit-ups, in excellent form and quickly. Good form means, among other things, your body needs to be straight--you can't stick your butt in the air--and you need to get down low enough.

The number depends on your sex and age. For push-ups, adult men need to do 75, women 35. However, "senior" men and women, 50 and over, do fewer--50 for men, 25 for women.

The push-up requirement was introduced after I had already been in the school for a while, I think I was a green belt (my school goes white, blue, yellow, green, red, brown, black). And until that point, we hadn't emphasized push-ups in class. I was NOT good at them, and it was a lot of work to build up to the right level.

I'm not Mr. Upper Body. Some of my buddies in the school, including Hulk and Gumba Frank, as their names suggest, are blessed with lots of upper body strength. They can crank out the push-ups. I tend more to the model of the lean, mean fighting machine--Terry, a former black belt at our school (now in another state) used to say I had go-go-gadget legs, they could kick so far. But I have really had to work on the push-ups.

At one point, my Old Sensei--more of a mesomorph than an ectomorph like me--was trying to get me to do 200 to 300 push-ups a day, in sets--increasing the number of push-ups I could do in sets. He said when I could do 200 push-ups in five sets of 40, I would be able to do 75 for the test. "Your arms will be so big, you'll have a wife AND a mistress," he said. "But then you'll have issues." I tried, and I did boost the number of push-ups I could do. But my shoulder was beginning to hurt something ferocious, interfering with the push-ups. Once I did 75 push-ups in good form and without stopping, but that was a peak I never attained again. Instead, I turned 50, and needed to do only 50 for the test.

I have typically put my hands pretty wide for push-ups, rather than right next to my body. They're just easier that way for me--I am not sure what different parts of my body these wide push-ups engage, but I think they work the shoulders more and the triceps and chest somewhat less. Lately, I've been trying to do more tight-in-hands push-ups, and doing other exercises to strengthen my triceps. No surprise, my triceps have hurt since my last class Thursday.

I have been treating push-ups like weight lifting--I give myself a day off in between. Now that I'm back in core karate class again, and now that we do even more push-ups than we used to, I use those classes (three a week) for my push-up workouts.

Before, in physical therapy, the therapists suggested push-up variations, like putting a medicine ball under one hand and then switching, or putting my legs up on a bit Swiss Ball. I did find a little variety made the push-ups more bearable.

I'm missing karate class today because a contractor is coming out to look at our leaky roof--something that has to get fixed. I may see if another location in my program has Sunday hours I could attend, or else I'll make it to the Tuesday class.

Buddy Night

It's "Bring a Friend to Martial Arts Class" week. Tuesday night, I brought my buddy Steve, who was more of an athlete than I was in our youth (we met as adults). He's a bit younger than me, though firmly in middle age. I thought he might enjoy punching something for stress relief.

Steve's visit helped me realize how far I've come. He said the class was a lot more physical effort than he expected. In two hours of tennis, he thinks he burns only 75% of the calories he burned in an hour of core karate class.

Starting off (after stretches) with 55 push-ups and a minute of sit-ups was tough. Then the punching and kicking drills, both shadow boxing and hitting mits, began to wear him out.

We were paired up to work together. Halfway through the class, he told me, "You're trying to kill me, I can tell." I told him, "Yeah, your wife put me up to it," and he got a long laugh out of that. (Or else he used it as an excuse to rest a bit.) I kept urging him to slow down, but he mostly wouldn't. Later, he said he was afraid he was going to throw up a few times.

After working on some close-range defensive moves, we finished with more sit-ups, and with those leg drills where you lie on your back, point your legs up to the ceiling, and your partner shoves your legs down to the floor.

When I drove him home, before he got out of the car, he shook my hand and said, "Thanks for inviting me. I'm never going to do this again."

Then after exiting the car with some difficulty, he spotted his teenage son and cried out, "Help me into the house!"

Old Sensei

Yesterday I had a class with my Old Sensei.

When I say Old Sensei, I don't mean he's Mr. Miyagi's age. He's actually in his early thirties, I would guess. I just mean he was my sensei when I joined the school in early 2001, and he is transitioning out of the school--another sensei is taking over, New Sensei, who I would guess is also in his early 30s.

It was good to take a class from Old Sensei. I've always thought of him as the world's strongest rubber band--he's so incredibly flexible--and he has beautiful form. I actually did a few kicks with my left leg by mistake, I was so caught up in the class.

"It's good to sweat again, isn't it?" he asked me after class. He also joked with me about my lack of a suntan--I was wearing shorts, and he said he thought I was wearing white pants. I mostly say out of the sun because I had skin cancer once on my ankle, which was actually one of my motivations for taking up martial arts in middle age.

Today I worked on physical therapy for my knee at home, and plan to do some crunches and sit-ups and slow karate kicks before bed.

Why Do Martial Arts?

One of my college friends, Rob the Comic Lawyer, wrote me an email with this to say about my martial arts endeavors:

Nice to hear from you, but clearly you are too old for this shit. Go back to chess. Take up sailing, like me, where there is some exercise hopping around the boat and pulling on ropes, but most of the time I get to sit on my fat ass and look at girls in swimsuits.

Another college buddy, Joe-Bobbie, Rust Vendor, had similar concerns about my sanity in a phone conversation.

So: Why do this?

First, apart from the occasional (only once, I hope!) ACL surgery, muscle pull or bruised toe, it's good for my health. Even after gaining weight during recovery, I weigh a good 20 pounds less now than when I first joined karate. I no longer need cholesterol pills, and a hernia I was starting to develop in my belly button is gone.

Why not just go to the gym? As yesterday's entry shows, it's often harder to make it to the gym than to karate class. Class is more fun; you feel an obligation to attend because your friends and sensei expect you there, which gets you in the door; somebody is up in front of you pushing you to do your best.

It's thrilling. There's such great stress relief hitting or kicking a pad.

So far, we're talking just about core classes, where you don't hit or get hit by other people. But what about contact--kickboxing, grappling--the kind of thing that did get me hurt?

I'm sure I will return to those classes in February with some fear. But I also eagerly look forward to my return because it's empowering and thrilling to be in controlled but strenuous physical combat with another person. It's like a very primal chess game, where you can learn, and improve, and see how well you can defend yourself.

My friend Larry, of The Family That Fights Together, talks about how we sit at our desks, we have to be nice to all sorts of rude people. How often are we given the chance to literally face up to our fear and do something physical about it?

As my friend Wendy once wrote about taking up boxing:

As I progressed, Tony finally hinted that he wanted me to spar. At first I demurred. What was the point? I asked. Deep down I worried I wasn't good enough. But one cold Saturday morning Tony stuck a mouthpiece in my jaw and strapped headgear on me. "Let's just move, kid," he said. To my surprise, when he hit, I hit back.

I'd never been struck so hard by another person. And there was something about it that made me feel terribly alive.

The confidence the I can defend myself--and the related knowledge that, for instance, in a room where a bunch of paunchy bosses are criticizing my work, I know I could knock any one of them to the floor, even though I'd never do that--is very calming.

I'm sure this has much to do with having been a geeky kid who felt like he could never defend himself. I wish I had taken this up years and years ago, before middle age. But I'm so glad that I finally found it.

I don't get those feelings of empowerment from a gym. I get them from martial arts.

Life Interferes

I really, really planned to hit the elliptical machine in the gym today.

I packed a gym bag, almost making myself miss the morning train. I was going to go in the late morning, but the stock market was choppy, and, as an editor at a financial news service, I needed to stick around. Then I was going to hit the gym after 4, but some of my reporters' stories and story ideas needed a lot of input; then a former colleague called, needing help on a project; and on and on.

Even though I didn't get to the gym, I was still late getting home, I had so much to do (and the subways conspired against me). Home at 7:45 P.M., eat, greet my wife and daughter...and I'm exhausted. I'm heading to bed.

Tomorrow, I have another "core" karate class at noon; now my plan is to fit a cardio workout in on Sunday--sometime between church and a friend's surprise birthday party the next state over--and do a home or gym physical therapy session for my knee on Monday.

Don't Compare

My Old Sensei always used to say, "Don't compare." I need to remember that tonight.

We were doing a lot of kicks tonight. I was substituting gentle knee kicks, which ironically don't hurt my knee, for all other kicks with my left leg--or any roundhouse kick. I felt slow and awkward in my combinations. My knee brace was alright, but slipping a bit by the end of class.

I was paired up tonight with another brown belt, one I haven't met before. He looks to also be middle aged, but younger than me. He was quite smooth and fast in the kicking combinations.

I was able to do "spinning" back kicks, but with me it was more a "stepping back kick," I don't want to spin on my knee.

Then we worked on defenses against the single-hand choke--something I haven't done in six or seven months, since before my ACL operation--and of course I was awkward.

At the end, we did extra crunches and push-ups--I don't know how many, because my New Sensei was drawing cards from a deck and calling them out numbers. If the numbers were below 6, he doubled them. As we were getting close to the end, my form in the push-ups was awful.

As I was on the way out, New Sensei asked me how it was going. I said well, but I felt slow. He said to consider my classes now simply stepping stones, and to take it at my own pace. In other words: Don't compare.

Tired!

I'm not accustomed yet to working out so vigorously in the evening, so it was hard falling asleep after my return to karate class, and I had trouble falling and staying asleep. So yesterday, the day after my return, I was exhausted. I think I'll adjust with time and be able to fall asleep quicly and well--I did in the past.

One of the good changes about class is that we do more push-ups and more sit-ups/crunches than before--I had been thinking about staying after class to do more, but it's part of the routine now. So in total, we did 75 push-ups--55 at the start of class, in the pattern of 10 push-ups, followed by a rest while counting to 10, then nine push-ups, followed by a nine count, etc.--then two sets of 10 slowly at the end of class. I did the initial 55 with my arms wide, and the final 10 with my arms close to my sides.

And after doing as many sit-ups (feet and bent legs held down by a partner) as possible in 60 seconds (52 for me), we did I think 40 crunches at the end of class, working on both middle and oblique muscles.

So I may be able to get a pretty full resistance training workout by adding tricep raises on a chair and (this will be new to me) pull-ups after class. Maybe some neck work too, though we do some calisthenics related to the neck at the start of class.