Or elbows. Knee caps. Or self esteem.
Covid has not been kind to my emotional eating habits. Take away the gym and my social habits with close friends and all I have left is the shovelling of Cadbury bars toward my mouth. Non stop. X 12 months.
I am now in a much better place. Not that Covid is less stressful (cause family practice during Covid feels like when you stick on a pantyliner and the adhesive gets stuck to your labia right away instead....it continues to be that painful), it’s just that I’ve decided that I can no longer feel so bad from all of the bad coping skills I’ve acquired.
So onward and upward. More water, more movement, more mindful eating...here I go.
So in a fantastic frenzy of New Year’s body resolutions, I found and purchased this wheel.
“Help your abs grow stronger” it says, “increase your arm strength”.
What it doesn’t say is that you need a bit of both areas of strength before you use it.
How do you know if you have either? Well...I think it was a good measure of arm strength when I tried to get out of a pool while in the middle of strangers two summers ago and couldn’t pull myself out.
Despite trying to bob up nonchalantly first.
And having some small child watching me the whole time, then having to pretend I was doing a funky dance move at the side of the pool. While smiley broadly on the outside (crying heartily on the inside). The child’s knowingly disappointed face watching me intently, said it all really.
I knew I had no ab muscles when I tried to do a sit up and popped something in my neck instead.
Still. The shiny box made promises. And the price was right.
It comes double wheeled for “stability”. Which was reassuring as after trying the hand stand, I know my stability isn’t my stronger point.
But, after being forced to take physics in university and never knowing why, it finally came in handy, realizing that past a certain point, your force will move the wheel forward no matter how much you wish the wheel would stop.
So. If you don’t have arm strength and are a bit shy on abdominal strength you should hold off on the wheel that promises arm strength and abdominal strength.
Because otherwise the course of events is as follows.
You position yourself like a boss on the floor, after fixing the hand grips to the wheel uses up most of your will to live.
You look at the instructions and memorize the proper technique.
You grasp the wheel handles tightly, and slowly ease yourself forward feeling so bad ass that “yes you are doing this”!!!
The double wheel feels sturdy as hell. Your inner queen starts to shine.
You feel a pull in the region that must be your abs.
The wheel inches forward slowly. Your arms tighten and you feel something starting to burn. The burning is your muscles last feeling before they die.
The wheel inches forward with more enthusiasm, almost as if you don’t have control of it.
You don’t have control of it.
The wheel moves at lightening speed, your right elbow makes the sound you last heard when opening a bag of chips as it hits the ground.
Your lower back becomes separate from one of your vertebrae.
Something underneath you bounces and in slow motion makes first a sticking, and then a strange recoil sound. That something is your skin.
Your knee caps dig into the ground in a way you have neither agreed upon, nor imaged was physically possible.
Your glasses fly off.
Your child shouts gleefully “look at mommy she fell over!”
Your hair is a bit caught in the wheel.
Your soul dies.
You try it again convinced that what just happened wasn’t in the brochure.
And.
You.
Repeat the steps above.
All of them.
Save yourself from the wheel of hell.
Do some push ups and sit ups and May the force be with you.