jump!

This week, at gym class, I struggled to clear four low hurdles without a pause between each. Pretending not to notice, Ella, the instructor, let me do a few rounds, before chiming in with,

‘Right, Helen. Now jump straight through. I know you can do it’.

Like other things that no-one told me about getting older, fast twitch-muscles get lazier and less responsive with age. So, I could blame my inability to jump low hurdles without pausing between them on my lazy fast-twitch muscles, a mechanical problem, and leave it at that. Or I could take a different tack, and describe the way jumping hurdles feels inside myself, which is that, compared to twenty years ago, my feet feel less springy and my brain just a bit less bound up with my feet. I haven’t forgotten how to jump. How could I forget that? It’s that something in my brain makes me hesitate (Is it safe? Might I trip?), insisting that I look both ways before springing up.

Six months ago, the gym at my local physio was a room I glanced through the doorway of and vowed never step into, on my way down the corridor behind a physio who would draw me stick-figure exercises to do at home to correct whatever niggle had brought me there, exercises I did obediently for six days straight and then never again.

Today, I’m a regular in an exercise group in the gym I used to look askance into. In the fluorescent-lit gym, I step up on and down from a high box, throw a weighted ball on to a wall before lunging and throwing it back with a twist, lift weights and do Bulgarian squats, all with a timer set to one minute.

I’m tempted to blame my hesitating before jumping hurdles on my cheap Target runners which, in a men’s size 42, are the right length but too wide for my feet. Runners which, since I bought them, have signified my messy relationship with money, specifically my unwillingness to pay out for shoes that, I rationalized, I only needed once a week for gym class.

I think it says something about me that the two things I baulk at, in the gym, are boxing and hurdles. I can hang from a bar and do Schwarzenegger arm lifts. I can do an upside-down push-up with my knees on a high box. But I struggle to go hard boxing against the teacher, and to jump hurdles without a pause in between.

‘Faster’, Ella will say, as I box against her, wearing fat gloves.

‘Harder’, she’ll say, holding her gloves firm.

‘I can’t’, I’ll say, red faced.

‘Yes you can’, she’ll say.

Then, from somewhere within, I summons just enough breath and thrust before I’m saved by the timer going ‘Brrring!’.

‘Good job’, she’ll say. ‘High five!’

And so it goes.

The gym I go to isn’t glamorous. The lighting is harsh, black rubber floor squares give off a funky smell, and there is zero design sense. Despite this, every week, six of us (‘Okay, ladies’, Ella calls us), meet there for weight and circuit training. There are no men in the group. They, I assume, are too busy or important or embarrassed to jump hurdles and do squats as an investment against frailty in the future.

‘Have you taken up running lately?’ my son asked recently, at dinner.

‘No’, I say, surprised. ‘Where did you see me running?’

‘Along Sandy Bay Road towards town’, he said.

‘Oh’, I say, ‘that’s me running late for gym’.

A few years ago, I realised that if I wanted to avoid health appointments when I was old (and I did), it was up to me to look after my body before I arrived there. I decided to heed the latest research, with its emphasis on resistance and weight training, even though, when I looked at my diary in the cool light of day, there were no obvious gaps to heed it in. Still, I felt had no choice, especially after my marriage ended and I found myself entertaining a single future. If I wanted to look forward to what came next, rather than living in quiet fear of it, I needed to stay physically strong. Simple, really.

Apparently, fast-twitch muscles can be retrained. If I work at it, and wear runners that fit, I can teach my brain to be more intimate with my feet. I can’t be as agile as a goat, but I can run unthinking down stairs. If I practice jumping, with my heels up and back, kicking them behind like a bunny rather than splaying out like a Mummy, I can jump hurdles straight through.

Also, if I keep up with gym, with a few morning exercises between classes, I may go longer before needing to see a physio, a happy bonus. But really it’s the long game I care about. If I can jump low hurdles, and similar ‘foot speed’ moves, it might save me from one day joining the one in three people, over the age of 70, who, caught unawares on a pavement or stair, are unable to prevent a quick trip up turning into a full-blown fall.