Social Workout

Workout

Warehouse Parties, Hoop Tricks, Barefoot Walks, and Pulled Traps

With princessmichelle out-of-state for the weekend, I was responsible for my own fitness plan.  Because we'd been to the gym Thursday evening, I missed my usual Friday morning workout.  Without anyone watching over me to make sure I finished working at a reasonable hour and made it to the gym, I let my workday bleed into the evening long enough to miss Crunch's closing time, so I decided that my Friday evening workout would take place at a warehouse party in Gowanus where I danced for two and a half hours.  

On my way out of the party I passed a group that was hula hooping and they saw my jealous glance and let me play with their hoop for a minute.  When I was finished, one of the girls demonstrated a simple trick where she was able to kneel while hooping and stand back up again.  While I didn't try it myself at the warehouse, I resolved to try it for myself the next day in Prospect Park

So Saturday I headed to the park and practiced hula hooping for about an hour and a half.  I successfully figured out her trick after a few tries, and then a lanky guy with muttonchops from a neighboring group approached and offered to teach me another trick.  He showed me how to grab the hoop as it was going around my hips and raise it above my head and then bring it back down again, staying in motion the whole time.  While I had some difficulty with this at first, eventually I was getting it and able to do it several times without messing it up.  A pretty productive weekend for my hooping ability!

Unfortunately, my weekend was about to take a turn for the worse.  I headed to Crunch after the park and lifted some weights, focusing on my chest and shoulders.  Between sets of bench press and seated dips, I was doing some light dumbbell shrugs, more just to fill my recovery time than anything.  Without doing anything out of the ordinary, in the middle of one of the sets I felt a twinge in my trapezius and knew immediately that I'd pulled something, though it wasn't really until after my workout had finished that the muscle stiffened up.

Despite my neck and shoulder getting stiffer and more painful as the evening progressed, I decided to head to the Brooklyn Lyceum for a party put on by a hippie marching band trying to raise money to go to the US Social Forum in Detroit.  It was a bit early in the evening for a party, though, and the crowd wasn't really moving, so I didn't feel like it was a good place to get my dancing in.  So after a few short musical sets I started walking over to Crown Heights where there was a loft party getting started.  I arrived too early for that party as well, but a couple of friends contacted me on the way and convinced me to make a detour to Long Island City to meet up with them at a bar for a couple hours before returning to the party.  I didn't dance for very long because it was already quite late -- mostly I just wanted to check out the space and the music.

I woke up this morning and the neck injury from the previous day had gotten even worse.  The night of dancing probably exacerbated the issue.  With extreme stiffness and pain even from relatively small movements, I decided it would not be a good idea to hit the gym again, and since it was raining all day I was not going to go play in the park, either.  Instead I arranged to watch Hot Tub Time Machine with some friends who live in South Slope and get in a little workout by walking barefoot through Prospect Park two and a half miles to their place.  I figure if my injury wasn't going to allow me to do vigorous exercise, I may as well condition my soles and ankles a little.

Now the movie is over and the weekend is over, and tomorrow princessmichelle will be back to make sure I get my exercise in before midnight.