The week before my sophomore year of high school, my class went on an adventure / bonding / team building retreat. It was, to quote Eddie Izzard, ...an activity center, where you climb a tree and eat a sausage and it's kind of… It builds your character so you know about sausages.
Though I'd been at the same school since age 5, I'd been well entrenched as an outcast for the past two years. (Ah 13, the magic age when girls turn on each other and boys turn into knuckle-dragging pack animals) When we were divided up into teams, I was paired up with the Most Hated Girl in School and her three henchmen - all in the name of making us "bond," of course. They were doing an excellent job of ignoring me and I was doing my best not to smack them all senseless until we got to the adventure wall portion of the day.
You know the one... 8' tall wall with no ropes or ladders... get your whole team to the top and revel in your newfound sisterhood.
Or, in my case, listen to the girls who hated me the most count to "3" and then drop me when I was almost to the top. I landed heavily on my left knee and felt the simultaneously strange and revolting sensation of my knee bending to the left, rather than to the front as is normal. The only thing I could hear as rolled around in pain was the muffled sound of them snickering into their hands.
I learned some unpleasant lessons that day.
The diagnosis was a severe lateral ligament sprain with a little anterior cruciate ligament stretching thrown in for good measure. I spent the next 8 weeks with my knee immobilized, hobbling from class to class and trying not to think about the fact that my volleyball, field hockey, and horseback riding careers had all come to a screeching halt.
I healed, eventually, but that knee has always been weak. Anyone's who's known me for a good amount of time has seen it go out when I've spent too many hours dancing, or been hiking too long without a break. It's always a reminder of that day.
I tell you this story now so that you may all appreciate my gut-wrenching frustration after my knee gave out again on Friday, in the first 5 minutes of my training session.
It was bound to happen. I've been working myself very hard and the joint is not yet as strong as my mind wants it to be. But as I lay on the mat, looking up at the skylight and waiting for the pain to subside enough for me to straighten my leg and assess the damage, I just wanted to cry; it was such a bitter pill. For a split second, I wanted to wave the white flag. For a split second, I wanted to just limp home and give up. For a split second, I was utterly defeated.
I sat up eventually, and Chief came over to see what had happened. When I explained, he told me in no uncertain terms that I would not be jumping or kicking anymore - I was so afraid that he was going to boot me from the class. Nope, instead he told me that we could use this "opportunity" to build strength in my upper body, my abs, and eventually my weak knee and that then I can jump and kick.
Never before have I been so glad to hear the words more sit-ups for you!
I'm still a little gimpy, but after three days off I was back at the gym tonight working on all of the things that don't involve my knee - trust me, that's plenty. Abs! Biceps! Triceps! More Abs! At least I finally got to break in my new gloves (which were waiting on my doorstep when I limped home Friday night, of course) with a few rounds on the heavy bag.
I'm trying to think of this as a detour, rather than a roadblock. I'm not so much a kickboxer right now as I am a boxer, but I'm working my way back up to the kicking one day at a time.
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