Lesson Interrupted

I got my second of three knee injections today. The package insert warns you to avoid “strenuous” exercise for 48 hours. Also not supposed to do a lot of load bearing or standing for longer than an hour. Yeah but that applies to other people and, besides, some dances aren’t that strenuous. Am I right?

So the original plan was to go to both lessons but maybe skip the faster dances like cha-cha or swing. I was willing to make one concession and sit out the group class so I would be off my feet for the 45 minutes between lessons. I explained this to JoNY and she had Argentine Tango and Fox Trot planned for the first lesson. Piece of cake.

Except that my knee ended up getting real sore towards the end of the Fox Trot. I felt fine coming in to the lesson but I guess I just wasn’t up to being on my feet for that long. So I rescheduled to do a double on Thursday and then skipped my second lesson which is why you are getting a post when I would normally be dancing.

I’m mostly cool with the Argentine Tango. There’s a part at the end where she hinges away from me but they want me to turn my upper body towards her while lowering into my legs as much as possible and keeping my head facing forward. Its awkward to get into because we just do kind of a run – slow, slow, quick, quick slow which is all outside partner and she’s on my right side. Then I have a slow to rotate my upper body and get into the twisty position so she can do the hinge on my left. Not completely sold on that part.

Also, we introduced timing for the first time in forever. Last week we just brought the steps back after sleeping on it for a month. Now we added the music and the actual timing. That’s always a trick because you get used to doing something at one speed just to get the footwork down. And then you find out that certain parts seem to run at hyperspeed and you are slow and behind and having to adjust the size of your steps. At this point, it is passable but I don’t yet feel it is up to the Argentine Tangos I’ve done with other instructors.

For the Fox Trot, we just went back over the step we learned last time. It starts after a push away explosion where I bring her into to shadow position and I do a chassis so we are on the same foot to start the shadow open naturals. Two problems with that right now. In the push away, we aren’t that far apart and so she’s rolling into me and I don’t want to get super ahead of her so I’ve got to make all my steps tiny to be able to pick her up. Plus the connection on the shadow open naturals doesn’t feel secure. Haven’t quite figured out where my hand needs to be. It is suppose to be on her side but relatively high rather than on her hip. Which doesn’t leave a lot of real estate before you get into the inappropriate touching zone. JoNY thought it felt fine but I’m not there yet.

I also kept my work out earlier in the day. Because I had to cancel the last one, they were wanting to confirm whether I’d be there and wanted a little more detail on what I had done. This is good because then they could adjust the workout to avoid doing anything that might seem strenuous. As I said, we don’t do a lot of leg work anyway but this allowed them to focus on core and shoulders. The most interesting exercise was doing curl to press while standing on a Bosu. If you aren’t familiar with that, it is a half balance ball so it sits flat on the floor and you stand on something that is inflated so it isn’t stable. Then, I’m doing these curls and presses – not with a lot of weight but any movement changes your center of gravity and requires rebalancing so you don’t fall off.

Walking over to the fitness center was all kinds of fun. We weren’t in the official wind chill warning zone yet but it was still cold when the wind hit. In some strange way, when the wind stopped, the air temperature wasn’t that bad. Or maybe that was just like being hit with a hammer. When someone finally stops it doesn’t feel as bad. Tomorrow is supposed to be the worst day since we aren’t supposed to get above 0. That’s in our Farenheit scale if you are reading this from outside the US. In the scale everyone else uses, it is about -18C. We aren’t going to be as bad as other places farther north but I think there are schools already closing. I suspect it will be a ghost town at work as lots of people are planning to work from home.

One last little thing happened today and then I’ll call it a post. If I haven’t mentioned this before, I’m big into bird feeding. It was something my parents got us all into. It just makes things a little more cheerful at times to see and hear the birds around the house. Well this cold weather is the worst thing for them so I was filling up one of the feeders and there was this little nuthatch sitting on top of the feeder pole. I think it was so cold that he didn’t want to expend the energy to fly away so he just kind of froze and stayed there while I filled the feeder. Normally, they don’t let you get that close so that was kind of fun.

OK, that’s all for now.