The day after I got back from my drive to Gary, Indiana I managed to throw my back out while putting my shoes on. After pulling myself into the standing position using the assistance of a table and a fair amount of swearing. I hobbled   to work and got to tell my story of woe to parents and co-workers who were wondering why I was moving a little stiffly.

After a little laughter, the consensus was I’m getting old.

I trained for months for a high profile tournament, worked hard at the gym, started climbing, generally ran around at all times and am constantly on my feet teaching karate. And my undoing is putting on my left shoe.

Awesome.

What this has done is basically ground all of my activities – weight lifting, training, and everything else – until I can start to move without the fear of immediate, excruciating, fall-on-the-floor-wonder-if-this-is-what-dying-feels-like, maybe-I’ll-be-paralyzed-for-the-rest-of-my-life, pain. An unforseen benefit is I have gotten to hear all of the stories about everyone else who has tweaked their back doing everyday things and experienced the joy of waking up and not being able to get out of bed. 

I don’t do well with forced inactivity. I actually don’t do well with any kind of inactivity. I can generally chill for a day or so, but then I start to get antsy, and twitchy, and apparently really irritating to all people around me.

What this means, is over the last 3 days. Yes, only 3. I’ve have been neurotically obsessing over the fact I can’t go to the gym. This in addition to the wedding I leave for tomorrow means I will be gone until Monday, and – gasp – means I’ll be forced to take a whole week and a half off of any kind of training type activity.

The rational part of my brain understand this. In fact, taking a week off is good for you. (Here is a whole bunch of supporting evidence brought to you by the power of Google). However, I still obsess over the fact I’ll be lethargic and terrible for a whole week and a half, I mean what else would I do without the gym?

Obviously I will lose all semblance of self control, throw myself into a pit of twinkies and eat myself out with the aid of chocolate fudge and marshmallow cream. I will emerge 3,000 pounds heavier, stinking of processed sugar and sponge cake, a behemoth more at home in the Triassic era than on a karate floor.

Or…

There is a remote possibility that maybe a week off will finally give all of those injured bits of me a little time to heal. Apparently pounding on yourself for months – years at a time is bad. Whoever would have guessed?

The problem with being obsessed with training, or physical fitness, or anything, really. Is that you tend to overdo it. This can be good or bad, depending on the context, but is also something that I personally need to become far better at recognizing. When your hobby becomes your life, it only gets worse.

A week of forced hiatus might be just the thing I need to jumpstart my way into a whole new appreciation for what I do.

But, just to be safe, I’ll stay away from the Twinkies.