Blogpost for Wednesday, 23rd September 2009.

Chopping Wood
Fitness this afternoon was particularly enjoyable—mostly for the wide (and interesting) range of exercises I got to do. It seems that being in the recuperating stage of injury has its own benefits—my training focus has moved to the upper body, and I’ve been put through a series of workouts focussing on my arms, abs, shoulders and hips. I’m glad about this because in a sense, it means I have time and space enough to rest, and focus on this area of development. Bulk up the stick thin arms, strengthen the back, solidify the core, add mobility to the hips.

And so, thus, immobilized by my current hamstring reparations, today’s exercises involved a wall, a medicine ball, a big long hammer, and a massive tyre.

How strange!

Yeah, pretty much. After the routine warm up on the rowing (elliptical) machine, things fired off with throwing a 3kg medicine ball against the wall in a series of patterns. From my left, this meant thrusting my hips and swinging my arms forward and then releasing the ball, as if I were hitting a forehand. Similarly on the other side, rotating my shoulders from perpendicular to parallel to the wall, and releasing, as if I were hitting a backhand. Forward overhead throws involved sticking my heels to the ground and using only knee flexions and arms to generate as much momentum as possible. Then there were backward overhead throws (with my back facing the wall, hauling the ball over and behind my head). Forward pushes—involved using more of the wrists, forearms and a quick forward toss to rebound the ball off the wall and catch it again, without touching the floor. One of the more interesting ones was to push/throw the ball at an angle downwards, at the floor just where it met the wall—so that it bounced right back up at you.

What made it all particularly interesting (and challenging) was that these balls have an almost zero bounce return. They’re weighty, made of solid thick, dull rubber, and have no air in them whatsoever. Instead of a springy “Boinggg!” (think: taut basketballs), or the neat “Dook!” (think: fresh tennis balls), all you get from a medicine ball is a deadening, almost depressing “Dud.” And yes, you get it no matter how hard you throw it against the wall. What you expect to bounce back up to your waist comes lolling back to your shins—or in worse cases, your ankles(!)

In a sense, this makes med balls good training tools because their sheer unresponsiveness forces you to make every throw a good throw. After twenty minutes of throwing balls against the wall like a maniac, you learn how to distinguish a good “dud” from a bad “dud” (sheesh…). You learn how to welcome the weight of the ball back into your arms after a rebound. You learn how and when to release the ball to generate maximum power through the arc of your swing. You learn also, that a half-ass throw always ends up with a rebound to your shins—which throws off your rhythm—forcing you to pick up and start again from scratch. I don’t think I’ve mastered the finer intricacies of med ball throwing, but it’s definitely fascinating in a Dudley sort of way. Hur hur hur.

What was equally fascinating was the second exercise with the hammer and the tyre. While wall throws were done in the courtyard outside the gym, we moved on to under the trees by gym for our next exercise. There greeted us, like black, over-sized polo mints, two humongous tyres. Kapi went into the gym briefly and came out with two big hammers. “Have you done this exercise before?” he asked, as he looked, frowning, from tyre to hammer, hammer to tyre again. “Erm… no?” I shook my head slowly. What was he going to make me do? I didn’t have time to think much before he thrust one in my hand and said “Watch carefully.”

Remember Kapi’s “once-only” mantra I talked about the last time? Here it was again, and I stood fascinated, wide-eyed and (slightly) open-mouthed as he began to re-enact the entire motion of chopping wood, hammer in hand, on the rim of this wide rung tyre. “The bottom hand does not shift… you swing your other arm back like this… lift the head, always, in front of you…and then swing down hard like this… BAAHHH!” (Kapi likes to use sound effects when he’s teaching to heighten understanding. It really helps.) He hit the tyre so hard, the rubber mass quivered and, to my astonishment, out buzzed at least a dozen mozzies, startled awake from its dark depths.

“Wah! So many mosquitoes!!” I thought. “What if they’re dengue?”
I must admit that for the briefest moment, I thought about calling the dengue hotline to report. Haha!

For the next half hour, I stood under willow trees outside the gym, lumbering with a massive hammer in hand, pretending to cut wood. “Doong! Doong! Doong!” I reckon everyone should attempt to hack wood (or at least pretend to) at least once in their life. It was surprisingly stress-relieving, and more of a work out than I’d expected. For the first since I stopped court work, it felt glorious to feel tears of sweat running down my brow and cheeks again. What was also cool was that Kapi seemed happy with the way I was hitting the tyre, and decided to film me going through the motions. “Good technique, very good technique” he repeated every now and again, as he whipped out his dslr to take a video. Wearing a ratty tee shirt, grey berms and specs, I joked about how I would’ve worn something nicer had I expected this!

What wasn’t half so glam was that I went to the bathroom right after to wash my hands and realised that I had one big pee sai dangling from my nostril all that time -_______- Wah lau!! I was grossly startled for a second--"Damn unglam lah!" I grimaced. But then I thought about camera close ups,... and just had to laugh out loud.

-Shakes head- Sarah, Sarah!!!!