Return to the YMCA

The other day (Tuesday, March 1st, 2016) I went to the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym for the first time in slightly over two months.
I like to work out, and used to do it two or three times per week.
I haven’t been able to do it since my left knee was changed; I now have a metal knee. Say that to the Transportation Security Administration at an airport and they go ballistic. “You in deep trouble, boyeh!” Aging geezer arrested for bomb in leg.
When I walked in I noticed good old Michele Andrews, the morning exercise-coach. She knows me.
“Boo,” I said to her. “What am I gonna find different about this place since I last was here?”
She started leading me around; she’s a really nice person.
“All the machines in our exercise-circuit are new,” she said; “but only a different make.”
“I’m only interested in three,” I said; “the leg-press, a calf-crunch, and a recumbent bicycle, and it looks like the recumbents are same as before.”
“They are,” she said; “but the leg-press is different.”
She led me to the new leg-press.
“Let me show you,” she said.
I got on, and we fiddled various adjustments.
We cranked it to the lowest weight-setting.
“Don’t overdo it,” she said. “You guys just outta surgery have to be careful, even though you’re walking pretty good.”
“That’s what they all tell me, but I feel wobbly,” I said.
We went over to the calf-crunch, an entirely different machine. “Our old machine was sitting,” she said. “This one you lie face-down to do your calf-crunches.”
I tried it. Body-location has to be just so. “Not as easy as the old machine,” I said.
Years ago I called Michele “Amazon-Lady,” but not to her face. She’s very muscular, and does body-building. She walks like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But I haven’t called her that for some time. She’s a really nice person. Although that may be because she has to be, although I doubt it.
I was told she used the be fat. But she sure ain’t now.
“Be careful,” she said. “No higher than the lowest weight-setting.”
Which is what I did. At my rehab I use a higher weight-setting, but I couldn’t at the YMCA.
At the rehab I also do the leg-press with only my surgical leg.
But that seemed impossible at the YMCA. I couldn’t halve the weight.
All machines are different.
Another thing we do at the rehab is balance-training, mainly to offset my feeling wobbly.
They have a four-inch foam pad, and I try to stand on it with one foot.
They don’t have those pads at the YMCA, but they do have a partially inflated half-ball.
We got out the rehab’s half-ball, but “Don’t try only one leg on that thing,” they said. “Only on the floor.”
Which is what I did at the YMCA, and no half-ball at all.
What I forgot was step-ups. Six inches at the rehab, and I coulda done ‘em at the YMCA. I used to, and they have the same step pads.
The step-ups make a difference. There is a giant staircase outside up to the YMCA. I call it “Jacob’s Ladder.”
I started doing step-ups about a year ago, and discovered doing them made it easier to climb Jacob’s Ladder.
What I could also do was the recumbent bicycle, which my rehab does as warmup. Ten minutes at a modicum of resistance.
Tain’t much, but it loosens up my surgical knee.
I did it twice at the YMCA; once as warmup, then as cool-down after exercising.
I probably will try to get my rehab to allow that cool-down after my next rehab session. I seem to recover better having done it.
The Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym is lined with mirrors.
So I can view myself working-out.
I’m on the recumbent. I glanced to my right, and there I was, a bloated old geezer with lily-white hair.
I’m told I look better than years ago when I was heavier.
But what I see is depressing.