Ammi Midstokke: The body goes back to school

Like many outdoor folks, I have a kind of rotating affliction of, addiction to – no, affection for, a particular sport. I pretend it keeps me “less prone to injury,” although we all know this is a losing game as we age. I get injured putting on a sweater. Judging by my companions in the chiropractor’s waiting room, I’m not alone.

This rotation of sports allows me to cycle through friends in a similar six-month rotation. Last winter and spring, I trained for a bike race that had me confined to a vocabulary of RPMs, liquid calories and Strava stats. Only other riders have the built-up tolerance for those conversations or mileage boasting. Temporarily disgusted, my running friends shun me. The only people who can hang year-round (but no one really likes because we’re tired of hearing about their brick workouts) are the triathletes.

I’ve been a lackadaisical runner at best and uncommitted jogger at worst this year. Actually, since the bike race in May, I haven’t wanted to do much of anything other than send my robot vacuum around the house and partake in the occasional Untrained Epic Day. These adventures make us sore enough to justify another week of lethargy.

I decided I needed an Old Sport Reinvigoration and a New Sport Intervention. This primarily involves me watching a YouTube video or some Olympic reruns, being overwhelmed with inspiration, and spending a small fortune on all the equipment necessary to reach mastery skill levels in an entirely new-to-me endeavor.

“Why is there an 80-pound punching bag in our Amazon shopping cart?” Charlie asks.

“Oh, that,” I say, “I was going to put it in our garage gym, you know, for everyone to use.”

“And the nunchucks?”

I dusted off my running shoes so they could earn some real dust outside and started taking my bored brown dog on runs. There is always a certain measure of humility and comparison when trying to get back into a neglected form of movement. For some reason, we always remember how easy it was to touch our toes at 20 or how fast we were that one time we were in peak training, fantastic shape or trim from a recent bout of giardia.

But there is nothing quite as humiliating as putting on a karate gi and stepping into a room full of agile and competent teenagers martial-arting their way to the next rad fight film. With my white belt and loose bun, I look like a quintessential middle-aged mom preparing to shoot a laundry soap commercial. In fact, that was the only question I had on the day I signed up for Tae Kwon Do: “How do I wash this uniform?”

While no one has ever accused me of being agile, standing on one leg while flailing the other leg in the general direction of a distant target and managing to not punch out my own tooth or dislocate a kidney is an athletic miracle in itself. The best part is that we line up to do these exercises so I can clearly see the difference between my drunk ninja and their crouching tiger. All these nimble youngsters soar through the air, their movements so fast that their pants make snapping noises, and I have the speed, precision and jumping range of a toddler on cough syrup – back when it was still laced with codeine.

When they asked if I had any “martial arts experience,” I mostly lied because I wanted to keep their expectations low. There was a time I took a class to learn to defend myself against my big brother after he’d signed up for wrestling in middle school. There’s nothing more ambitious or in need of validation than a 12-year-old boy who lost every match on the mat. As far as I can tell, the sociological impetus for siblings is primarily validation and pranks. I can probably attribute much of my survival to those classes.

Thirty years later, I’ve signed up again because my body forgot a few things about movement and I’m opposed to yoga unless I’m injured or only able to fit into my lycra wardrobe (like between Thanksgiving and New Year’s). My body forgot how to move in directions other than forward. It has one speed – the one that assumes we’re going to be at this all day so we better pack snacks and take it easy. My reflexes have been responsive only to falling glassware since my child learned how to walk without risking daily concussion.

Also, it’s been 14 minutes since I picked up a new hobby. With any luck and a lot of practice, I might even be able to talk the family into letting me get real nunchucks. Meanwhile, I’ll take the dose of humility with grace (the only kind I have), watch these young kids with awe as they patiently teach me, and appreciate all the stretching it takes for me to recover from a class. I might not learn any new tricks, but maybe I’ll remember a few old ones.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com.