Exercise and I have never been good friends. And by that I mean I hated Exercise, Exercise hated me, and we had a mutual understanding of avoidance. But I very recently decided we needed to put our past behind us and come to terms with one another.
The friendship is coming along rather better than I expected it would, but we do occasionally have our hiccups.
Feeling pretty confident about our newly acquired stability, I decided today to delve a little deeper into my relationship with Exercise. Weights. Now, I have to admit today was my first encounter with weights, aside from the little one-pound purple bars my mom had in the house. Thus, I was a little hesitant to broach this particular aspect of Exercise's personality, but with the encouragement and guidance of two friends, I decided to make a go of it.
At first I thought "yeah, I can do this," "No problem," "doesn't even hurt!" and so on. Then those thoughts turned into "ooh maybe not," "nope, definitely not," "is there anything smaller?" and "oh gosh, I'm such a wimp!" But I kept on going because I'm prideful and I didn't want Exercise (or my two friends) to know he was winning this particular battle.
I believe it was during the fourth position (I know that's not the right word, but I'm so new at this that I don't know what the right word is) that my fingers started to tingle. No big deal, right? I shook my arms out and moved on. My friend pulled out the fifteen pounder (ugh, so much heavier than fifteen pounds should be) and started showing me what to do for this next set, and suddenly I realized that I had lost feeling in my left thumb. What?! Did not know that was a thing.
So, there I am, trying to remain calm and appear less pathetic than I feel, and my friend tells me to grab the weight and start pumping it.
Nope. That did not happen. This is the part where I realized Exercise and I have NOT come as far as I had thought. I couldn't get my hands to close around the weight. At this point my friends take notice, and have me explain what I'm feeling. Throughout the following, my left was worse than my right.
My arms, from elbows to fingertips, tingled, except for the segments between my wrist and the top joint of my thumb on both hands. Those were numb. The tingling felt a lot like that "my foot's asleep" feeling, but less sharp. It never hurt. I left the weight and sat down on a bench, where I laid my hand down on my knees: or rather, I tried to. I laughed. I had discovered that my wrists were suddenly paralyzed. The only way I could get my palms to lay flat against my knees was to turn my entire arms so that my elbows stuck awkwardly up in the air. My concerned friends maneuvered my hands (I don't know if it was more out of concern or curiosity) so that they flat, but as soon as they released them, my palms popped back up. It was one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen my body do. With effort I demonstrated that I could open and close my fists (I never tested individual finger movement). After a few moments of laughter, my friends suggested I lay on the floor to let my blood flow normalize, and within just a few minutes it did. I regained full function of all my extremities with only minimal tingling, and we moved on with our workout (though I didn't lift anymore weights).
I experienced no pain or cramping (though there was a spell of dizziness). Now, three hours later, I feel perfectly fine. There is no sign that anything happened.
What have I learned from this? Friendship is not easily won.
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