A Karen Calls Me Weak

My physiotherapist told me I’m weak. This is not an easy thing for a life-long lifter to hear.

It all started about 12 years ago, when I found a physiotherapist who made it possible for me to keep lifting the way I want to as my age marches on inexorably.

In 2013, I felt like my right hand was about done for. I’d started to get sharp pains shooting through my hand on the pinky side whenever I lifted. Then it started to hurt when I opened doors. I knew I was in real trouble when my friend tossed me a Nerf ball, and the pain of catching it made me break out in a sweat.

I went to my doctor. She poked around at it and had me wear a tensor around it for four weeks and not use it for anything. I thought it helped until I pulled on a door handle again, and it felt like an electric shock. When I went back, she asked if I’d be open to an acupuncture referral.

I was not. My mental image of acupuncture was a sensei in a martial arts movie lighting a candle, clapping his hands, and humming. Then he rubs a young hero’s compound fracture, murmurs an incantation, and suddenly everything is all better. I described this image to Dr. Conly in detail. She said something like, “Um… no. That’s not what it’s like at all.” She gave me a number, and I had an appointment with Karen for later that week.

The Karen

The appointment was a life changer. For anyone as deluded as me, acu-pokery is 100% legit. I described my pain to Karen. She nodded and asked questions as she massaged my hand around that pinky finger area that was causing so much pain. She would hold out her hand and tell me to push against it one way, then the other, or maybe pull it this way or that. I don’t remember the final action she had me perform, but I remember everything being quite boring until I followed that last instruction and felt searing pain from the meaty part of my palm on the pinky side right to my elbow. It may or may not have been accompanied by a short, sharp shriek.

She’s like, “Okay, I think we found it.” Boy, had we. She got out her tools and started talking to me about dry needling to prep me for what was to come. She said I likely wouldn’t even feel most of them when she poked them in, but that I’d feel my muscles twitch as she triggered the nerves in there.

At this point, I didn’t care what she did. I had about written off my right arm. I thought that shooting pain in there was just my life now. Not to mention, when she triggered the pain so specifically and acutely, it hurt badly enough that I was sweating and feeling sick to my stomach. So I was putty in her hands as she took my forearm and started massaging it with her fingers, looking for where she’d place the needles.

She stuck a few tiny needles in different spots on my forearm, and I felt nothing, despite seeing the darn things standing there in my flesh. She’d then flick the end of them, and I’d feel my muscles twitch and watch my fingers curl. It’s an odd and disconcerting feeling but nothing serious. However, there was a strong sensation emanating from one needle, not a piercing pain, just a dull soreness. When she flicked the end of that needle, I felt pain like I never have before. I felt it in my soul. I’m certain my dead ancestors woke from their celestial rest and went, “What the hell was THAT?!” My fist seized. My whole body clenched. And she again said, “Okay, I think we found it.” No kidding.

She flicked the end of that one a couple of times, and my reactions diminished each time. It wasn’t just that I was ready for it. I could feel something change in there. I asked her what was happening, and she summed up acu-pokery in a way that I’ve never forgotten. She said that the pain I was having was from a muscle firing continually in a pattern that it shouldn’t, and that the dry needling is much like the keyboard command Ctrl + Alt + Delete. It makes the muscle forget the harmful pattern it’s in and go back to factory settings.

When she pulled that last needle, she had me try performing the action that triggered my pain before. I was tentative at first, but the pain was gone. And I mean 100% gone. Some internal circuitry was rewired, and my arm was brand new. I was shocked. Karen was not.

Turns out, this was about the easiest case she was going to see all month. She said one of the muscles in my forearm was taut as a steel cord, and once it was relaxed, there was no more issue. What’s more, she gave me a few stretches to do, and said we were all done. I thought there’d be follow ups, but she said that’s not how she works. She said it was good to meet me, but her goal is for me to go away and not come back.

I do go back, but it’s for different things. I’d say I’m in there once every two years. Sometimes it’s a quick fix, but I’ve also had a few strains that need multiple treatments. Still, Karen’s goal is always to get it fixed and get me back in action. I keep expecting to go in there one day with a shoulder pain and have her say, “Well, you see, Adam, you’re getting old. Stop trying to lift heavy.” But that’s not her style. She listens to what I want to do, then resets the muscles that are misfiring, and gives me exercises to ensure they do what they need to.

So when I started having hip pain from my Taekwon-Do workouts, where do you think I went?

The sharp pains were localized to the greater trochanter. It’s that bony bump right there in the front. I was getting a pain there on both sides every time I jumped, bounced, or even stepped off a curb. I remember walking to Karen’s clinic from my office and noting it as I stepped from the sidewalk to the street. Right and left, ouch and ouch.

I was excited that day because I’d be telling her about my new martial arts hobby, she’d say it’s great for balance and flexibility, she’d stick a few needles in my hips, and we’d be good to go. Perhaps that needling would even help me to go deeper into my splits. This is not how it went down at all.

Karen did her usual diagnostic work. I laid down on the table, and she moved my legs through their range of motion in various ways. She did comment that my hips and quads were looser than most guys my age, even after just a few months of Taekwon-Do. And she did encourage me to keep it up for its overall health benefits. But after a few quick needles around the hips, she had me start doing some different kinds of tests.

She had me kneel on the floor in a lunge and extend my arms in front of me. She pushed my arms from side to side. She had me hold a bunch of different poses like that. Sometimes she’d tell me to push against her hands, or she’d have me brace myself and not let her push me to the side.

Then Karen sat me down for a talk. No more acu-pokery, no more exercises, it felt like a break in the pattern.

“I’m going to give you some core exercises,” she said.

“Okay. So… like sit-ups and stuff?”

“No. Not just abdominals. This will be comprehensive midsection work. Spine, pelvis, diaphragm as well as abdominal.”

“Okay. I don’t really know what that stuff is.”

“I know,” she said. “Your hip pain is a compensation for weak core muscles.”

“Weak?” I said.

“Yes, your core is weak. I reset the muscles around your hips, but they will just need to keep firing to compensate for the weakness in the core until we resolve that piece.”

“All right, but… there’s that word again. Like… I doubt I have a weak core. Don’t all the weights I do have some… I don’t know… aren’t they core workouts too? Sort of?”

“Like what?”

“Well, I’m not a machine guy. I use dumbbells and bars. And I use good technique. Like, say I’m curling a 110 lb. bar. I’m holding the pelvic tilt to make sure I’m not swinging and cheating. Curling weight like that while keeping good posture has to be at least some core workout, right?”

“Your core is definitely supporting that exercise, but you’re not targeting it. You’re not giving it a workout.”

“Well, that’s just one thing. Like… all the other weights, and moving them around, and stuff… that’s not core related?”

“Adam, I had you hold that lunge position and put your hands in front of you, remember?”

“Yeah.”

“When I pushed your hands to the side, you lost your balance and put your hand down to brace yourself, right?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, it just pushed me off balance.”

“Yes, and that’s because you have a weak core. That should not knock you off balance. Look at the size difference between us. I should have to work to push you off balance.”

“Okay, but…”

I trailed off. I had a rare moment of self-awareness. It was likely brought on by my job. I worked in the safety department for a big corporation at the time, and I heard myself doing what everybody does when they get information they don’t like. See, my company wants to be able to say that they value safety above all things, so they go find the best and brightest safety experts that they can and get a third-party evaluation. Then, when their investigations turn up some serious needs for improvement in a few areas, everyone argues with the information. Suddenly, we don’t like these so-called experts anymore because they didn’t say we are just the bestest company that they’ve ever seen.

I heard myself doing the same thing, and I changed tack.

“Okay… um…” I tried to think of what I wanted. But what I really wanted was another shot to see what she was talking about. “Can we try that again? Like, with me knowing that I shouldn’t be falling over?”   

“Absolutely. Pop down onto the floor.”

I tried again and again. She gave me different poses to hold, and then she’d give me a light push, and over I’d go. Sometimes I’d be able to hold up, but I’d always waver, and she assured me that with a healthy core, I’d be rock-solid in any of these poses.

With my delusions and denials addressed, we got onto the solutions. Karen gave me some very simple exercises to do with big rubber bands as well as some terribly punishing ones that I’d never done before. There was planking, renegade rows, and these one-legged deadlifts with a shoulder press and a hop that I called Warrior-Supermans because it was like a combination of the warrior three pose in yoga, shifting into a leap in the iconic Superman pose. Those sucked.

I also told her that I had a free consultation at my new gym. One of the instructors there would give me a few free workouts if I asked. Karen said this was a very basic core program and if I gave her instructions to any fitness guru, they could take it and run with it. So I was equipped with some specific exercises, and I could get my guy at the gym to give me a regimented workout to incorporate them. Little did I know, this was the beginning of a whole new world of workouts for me.

Superman’s Dad

I had delayed getting my free fitness consultation at my new gym until I could assess all the trainers. I don’t want to train with people unless they are practicing what they preach, and I settled on this young guy (which to me is about 30 years old) who had great physique and was typically working out when he wasn’t actively training somebody. I’d see this guy running at high speeds, on an incline, wearing a weight vest, and I knew I’d found my guy.

Upon talking to him, I found out his name is Jorel. Anyone even remotely familiar with comic books will immediately recognize this as the name of Superman’s dad. Actually, you don’t even need the comic books since this character has been played by Russell Crowe, freaking Brando, and most recently, Bradley Cooper, so I thought it was squarely in the center of pop-culture knowledge. Nope.

Jorel was unaware of any relation to Superman. I said surely his parents must have known, but he couldn’t confirm or deny it. I pitched many related jokes and references, but none of my Superman material was landing, and I eventually abandoned the bit.

I gave Jorel the news that I had a weak core. He was unsurprised. Apparently, it’s a very common thing in gym meatheads that just goes undiagnosed forever unless they take up something like martial arts and discover it. I gave him Karen’s exercises but told him he could improvise and add any other core exercises. I also let him know that I wanted to train for Taekwon-Do matches. This entails 2-3 minutes of maximum output, a minute or less of rest, then another round of 2-3 minutes of maximum output, and then repeat that cycle several times for a total of 20-30 minutes.

He loved the specificity of the request and said he’d design a workout that hit the appropriate muscle group but also worked in the TKD training. We met the following week, and he looked loaded for bear with a clipboard and a stopwatch. He took me into a part of the gym I’d never used before, the hardwood floor studio where people do yoga and stretching.

“So you’ve probably never been in here before,” he said.

“I cut through it on my way to the fountain sometimes.”

“Yup, you and all the other gym rats. All right, just so you know, I didn’t put any push-ups, pull-ups, or anything like that into this routine. I know you’d just kill it and feel like a hero. This is a lot of core and cardio. It’s going to get your heart rate way up, give you short recovery time, then shoot it up again. Not fun. You done hits before?”

“Maybe,” I said. “What exactly is a hit?”

“High intensity interval training.”

“Oh, okay. H-I-I-T. Got it. Uh… I don’t think I’ve done it before.”

“No interval training at all then?”

“Not really.”

“Okay, it’s gonna get interesting. Go give me 500 meters on the rowing machine. Just light and slow. Then we’ll stretch and get going.”

As we stretched, he gave me a better idea of what we were about to do. “I’ve got five exercises for you. As soon as you finish one, you’re onto the next right away. No break. When you’re done all five, you get one minute off, then we do them again. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, adopting the frame of mind that I have in the Taekwon-Do studio. Master Arden does not tolerate sighs or groans when he assigns strenuous exercises. There is but one acceptable utterance, and that is: “Yes, sir,” and it has to sound chipper.

This is not precisely what it looked like, but when I aske AI for Superman's Dad making a Gym-Bro do burpees, this is what I got. I felt is was worth sharing.

Jorel explained and demonstrated each exercise.

1. One minute running in place, high knees, every third step, pause and hold the knee as high as you can for one second.

2. Bear crawl backwards for 20 metres, pulling a 20-pound dead-ball and return in forward bear crawl.

3. Ten burpees.

4. Side-step with a resistance band around the ankles 20 meters with right leg leading, 20 meters with left leg leading.

5. One minute of sumo squats and bicep curls with an 80 lbs. barbell.

Number one is pretty easy to picture. The second one involves a dead-ball. If you’ve never used one, these obstinate bastards are like those old utility balls from elementary school but filled with sand. If you were to wind up like a world-champion 10 pin bowler to send it rolling across the room, it’d go about three feet, stop, and laugh.

Now for the burpees. A burpee is doing a push-up, then standing up, and jumping with your hands in the air, then down for another push up and repeat. But Jorel’s burpees come with instructions to ensure that they are authentic. With his entire body flat on the floor from toes to chin, palms down next to his chest, Jorel pushed up explosively and whipped his hips forward, planting his feet right where his hands had been a second ago, landing in a perfect athletic stance, then hopping up and raising his hands above his head to finish the movement.

“That’s how I want you popping up every time. That’s what’s going to engage those hips and core. Got that?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

For side-stepping with the band around the ankles, the only imperative was I had to keep an athletic stance and only lift my following leg after fully planting my lead leg. I was soon to learn that, though simple, this would cause a good burn in the legs.

The fifth and final exercise was no walk in the park either. Standing with legs wide apart, squatting to pick up a bar, standing up, then curling it felt awkward. It was also a timed thing. I usually do 10 curls in a set and call it quits. Doing it for a full minute is more like 12-15 reps. It’s a lower weight, but that’s more endurance than I was used to.

With the instructions given, Jorel gripped the stopwatch around his neck and said, “All right. Any questions?”

“No, sir,” I said.

He shot me one quizzical look, realizing that I was sticking with the whole “sir” routine, then said, “Okay. Three-two-one. Go!”

I began the new workout like most fools do, going super hard to show what a gamer I am. The high stepping with the pause worked in went fine, though Jorel reminded me a few times to keep the knees high, especially during the pause.

The bear crawl was okay too. But I learned that alternating hands to drag the ball, while the other supports your bodyweight starts to burn the shoulders very quickly.

Doing burpees with shoulders that are already worn out is unmitigated hell, full stop. That was a struggle.

Through the side steps with the resistance band, my hips were burning, but I was able to recover my breathing. The high knees, followed by bear crawl, followed by burpees had me breathing in ragged gasps, and I focused on trying to breathe with each step to get it under control. Jorel noticed.

“All right, I see what you’re doin’ there,” he said. “Good job. Keep recovering that cardio during these exercises. That’s what they’re here for, so you can get prepped for round two as we finish round one.”

I finished up the last two exercises, but I was still breathing really heavy by the time the round was done. I put my hands on my hips and walked in a circle to recover.

“That’s good,” Jorel said. “In through the nose, out through the mouth. You got 45 seconds before round two.”

I just nodded in response, too winded to bother with anything more.

“You gettin’ tired?” he asked with a hint of laughter in his voice. I was clearly wrecked.

“No, sir!” I said. We’re not allowed to say we’re tired in Taekwon-Do either.

“No, huh? Okay,” Jorel said. “Fifteen more seconds.”

The second round was worse than the first because I knew what was coming. As the high knees burned my legs, I knew that the bear crawl was looming, and the burpees… the burpees were unthinkable. I had been sweating in the first round, but I began trickling and pouring in the second round. I left a trail of sweat on the bear crawl route, and there was a puddle where I did burpees. I attempted to get my breathing under control during the last two exercises, but I was still puffing like a steam engine on a steep hill when I finished.

“Okay, good work. Breathe,” Jorel said. “You tired now?”

“No… sir,” I said, not nearly as loud as last time.

“You’re… you’re not tired yet?”

“No… sir.”

“All right. If you say so. Let’s go for three then. Comin’ at you in… thirty-five seconds. Try to get some good deep breaths in.”

I gave it my best, but I was still actively panting when the third round started, and it never got better. The entire round was pitiful. I was exhausted. I did all the exercises, but I was laboring hard. Just a few steps into my bear crawl, my shoulders burned so badly, I was sure I’d never make it. I tried to disassociate from my physical body, convincing myself that the arms would continue to hold me up if I ignored the burn, and that it was just pain, not muscle failure, and I managed to cross the floor.

I made it through the 10 burpees, but they were slow. I did them like a man knee deep in peanut butter. I attempted to recover my breath through the last two exercises as I had before, but it didn’t seem to work. As I completed them, my breathing was just as desperate and panicked as it was at the end of the burpees.

Jorel said, “Okay, big guy. You tired now?”

“No… sir,” I wheezed.

This time he actually laughed. “Okay, okay, I get it. You’re not gonna say your tired. I like it. That’s cool. But you are cooked, okay? No more for you. Go do five minutes on the treadmill. Just a fast walk and steadily slow it down to normal speed.”

As much as that first HIIT sucked, I tend to feed off of workouts that beat me up like that. I started doing them two or three times per week. I could eventually do five cycles of that HIIT in about the time it took me to do three cycles that first day.

After that, me, Karen, and Superman’s dad came up with more HIITs with different exercises to target core and cardio. Not only did I feel leaner, faster, and stronger, but that nasty hip pain went away, which was how the whole thing started, a little twinge with every step I took. The core work knocked it out.

I didn’t pick up the pen with a moral in mind, but clearly there is one in this story: staying active as one gets older means getting good advice and following it. I wasn’t prepared to believe I was weak and change my workouts, and I would have told you that acu-pokery was nothing but hocus pocus, but I was wrong on both counts.

Sometimes... you gotta listen to the Karens.