I’m a fitness freak, at least occasionally. Not a wanna be, just on again, off again, sometimes…
It is very hard to be a full time freak, and I only know a few of these types. One is a very good friend; another is a cycling provincial champion.
They are very very determined individuals, where as I am flighty and prone to inactivity. That is it in a nut shell.
Being very fit is actually quite easy. It involves one thing, consistency. That is my occasional downfall (as in my lack of it), but luckily I have these two individuals to motivate me.
When I was a kid I liked beer and cigarettes. They aren’t part of the fitness toolbox….. however I had a motocrosser, which is part of the toolbox. I had no idea that working out would make me faster, nor did I care really. I was lazy but liked the thrill of riding. Thankfully it just so happened that MX is a very demanding sport so I had some minimal level of exercise.
Notice the mention of two wheeled mechanisms….
When I was 22, I decided wanted to learn to fight since I had been picked on a lot when I was growing up. So I joined a Tae Kwon Do club and promptly blew out my knee. After several months of non existent recovery, I returned and blew it out again. I then joined a boxing club (where they broke my nose) and trained there for half a year or so before buckling my knee once more (it needed surgery).
Six years had passed until I got the ACL in my right knee repaired. There simply was no fix in Canada until 1990 or so. I hadn’t lost my desire to learn self defense and I ended up receiving my black belt in Karate in 1997.
Amazingly I wasn’t even close to being fit, as far as that really goes. The club I trained at was a good place people wise, but very unstructured. The Sensei was one of those individuals who was anti-intellectual/anti-book learning. Accordingly he knew nothing of sport science or how to train properly. For instance, one week we’d do hundreds and hundreds of push ups and the next week we’d work on stretching.
There was simply no consistency.
Consistency……
It is a beautiful thing, you know. It is the key to being fit. I discovered this by training one winter (the same year I got my shodan) with a friend who was crazy enough to race a mountain bike for 24 hours non-stop.
I had bought my first mountain bike in 1992 and gradually embraced the sport more and more as I gained fitness. By 1996 I was definitely a hard core enthusiast. You know, the kind of rider who goes out west and rides up a mountain for the hell of it….
Lowell, the 24 hour guy and I spent the winter of 97/98 doing intervals several times a week. These were maximum effort sprints of very short duration. They are very demanding and I required 9 or 10 hours sleep to recover.
When riding season started we were very fast. I moved from the last 1/4 of the pack to the top quarter when I raced that year.
That summer I wanted to encourage and cheer on my solo racer training partner so I rode from Waterloo to the course in Orilla he was racing at, on my bike. It was around 115 miles. I had left late and showed up at 11 pm and couldn’t find his campsite.
Some people put me up for the night in their tent, which was awesome. The next day they told me they were a man short for their 4 man team, so I raced with them in the four person category and still helped my solo friend with his race.
So I rode 115 miles and then entered a 24 hour bike race…..
So I was pretty fit back then….
but then I met Nathan, who is certainly a fitness freak, and most certainly obsessed with all things fitness. He was a very skinny, very talented wrestler who happened to run my Alma Mater’s boxing club which I joined soon after gaining admission to WLU at 33 years of age.
To tell you the truth, I though I was going to kick a bit of ass. You know, being I was (ooooooh) a black belt after all. Luckily I’m not cocky by nature or the coaches (one of them absolutely loved beating people up) would have laid me out. Nevertheless, I was not too far off their game, and much better at boxing than the others so I did (quite happily) get to get in some whup ass.
By the end of school I was a fair boxer and returned to the boxing club where I popped out my knee. I was 38 at the time. I almost learned more there in six months than six years in karate. Why? Consistency of course. I had a decent base to build on so I could workout 20 rounds or so at a time and not be completely gassed. I threw zillions of punches. I learned, most of all that it is the feet that make a fighter, not the hands.
It’s been many years since I’ve sparred and I’m ok with that for the most part. The last time I sparred I broke another friend’s (he runs a karate studio) nose so I guess I ended things on a winning note. I don’t miss having black eyes or headaches from getting pounded. I do miss the excitement in a very big way.
I’ve been pissing around with bicycles since then. I’m fast again, maybe faster that before. I reconnected with Nathan too, who’s a big strapping guy now. He’s doing a PhD in History on fighting and wrestling, go figure. He also works out pretty much every day; sometimes for weeks at a stretch.
We talk all the time, and occasionally workout which is great. He’s one of my motivators; he gets at my laziness. The other is the Provincial Champ (Master’s Expert). He’s my age (45) and won 6 of the 7 races in the series. He averages 12 mph to my ten on a closed course we ride.
Consistency is the key, I’ll tell you. They’d tell you too, no doubt about it!
Drew
