My friend Grayson came hobbling into the gym last month for our thrice-weekly circuit-training class with her foot in a huge brace. She looked mad.
Grayson is the co-proprietor of Jimmy’s, one of the only restaurants in Aspen that has virtually no offseason, with locals packing a full house year-round for feather-light crab cakes, weekly salsa dancing and an extensive list of top-shelf tequila.
Grayson can usually be found rushing down the street coming from the gym still dressed in workout clothes and a black down jacket, her pink and blond long hair in a high ponytail. She’s ambitious as heck, no matter what she’s doing, and that includes, of course, her training. She’s petite, with narrow hips and a small frame, but that doesn’t stop her from lifting heavy weight and always adding some element to every exercise that makes it 10 times harder than it needs to be. Let’s just say she subscribes to the “no pain, no gain” philosophy.
“What happened?” I dared to ask the first day she came in with the brace.
“I tore my Achilles tendon. At least that’s what the doctors are saying.”
“Ouch,” I said.
I’ve had an Achilles injury and know how painful it can be. I also know that Grayson had been training for the Lausanne, Switzerland, marathon with a group from Challenge Aspen, a nonprofit organization for disabled athletes. The deal was each participant raised $4,000 for the cause and received training tips and a trip to Europe. She had a lot more invested in it than the race.
When she told me she still had every intention to run the marathon, I bit my tongue. I wanted to tell her she was crazy. I wanted to warn her that she could do permanent damage to her tendon. I wanted to tell her to mellow out or ask her why she is so psychotically driven.
Grayson went to Europe and finished the race.
When it comes to training obsessively, does being healthy become unhealthy?
My dad is another example. A marathon runner for almost 30 years, he finished over a dozen races with a personal best of 2 hours, 56 minutes. He ran and he ran and he ran, but he rarely cross-trained or stretched. When he was in pain, he took Advil. When the Advil stopped working, he took stronger pain medication. Despite all that medicine, his hip joint degenerated to the point where he can’t run anymore. So now he’s on the Floyd Landis program of riding the bike on a bad hip until he can’t move anymore. (I don’t know if he has considered using performance-enhancing drugs, but I wouldn’t put it past him.) It’s a slippery slope, but that’s just the way he operates.
I was thinking about Dad and Grayson the other day when I went back to yoga for the first time after pulling a muscle in my back. I had taken a whole week off because I didn’t want to aggravate the injury. I usually practice every day and hurt myself because I, too, had become a little too ambitious with my postures, trying to go deeper into a backbend before my body was ready. Even though it didn’t hurt at the time, I know the exact moment the injury occurred. I would definitely put forcing my body into exaggerated, unnatural positions under the category of unhealthy- health, even if yoga is supposed to keep me looking the same way when I’m 90, at least according to Bikram.
When I finally went to class, I avoided doing any of the postures with my arms over my head because I was afraid it would put too much torque on the muscle that’s injured. I’d cross my arms behind my back for more support, or hold them in front of my chest in the prayer position.
The teacher called me out in front of everyone, and when I told him I was injured, he said, “That’s not going to do anything to help you.”
He was right. The next day, I was fine. My back felt a lot better. It made me feel foolish, like I was being a big baby. I also felt guilty for not going back to class sooner than I did. I guess I’m not one of those hardcore types to push through an injury after all. But at least I’m healthy.
Freelance columnist Alison Berkley can be reached at alison@berkleymedia.com.
