Photo by Savannah Rake
“We aren’t like other people,” my mom said. “We need rest. If you overwork yourself, you will get sick. It’s just the way it is.”
This is the statement that followed me through middle school volleyball, through high school AICE courses and chorus rehearsals and performances and now in college as I attempt to tackle an editorial position on SCAD District, a full course load, a weekly column and the ‘BEE Fit’ challenge. I have never stopped trying to disprove my mom’s theory.
I am a self-professed control freak. My biggest issue with control is when I can’t make my body work the way I want. It’s one of the reasons I joined the wellness challenge.
On Tuesday I showed up to Group Workout No. 3 despite the feelings of sluggishness and the lack of motivation I felt through the previous few days. I made it through two rounds of the circuits.
Every burpee intensified the pressure building between my ears. Every plank row emphasized the weakness in my muscles. Every breath I took felt like a painful wheeze; as it turns out, Momma was right.
We were supposed to do three or four rounds of the exercise. My coaches came over to me and asked me if I was okay, and somehow through the spinning tunnel vision I managed to tell them that I needed to stop. With singular focus I made my way to the water fountain where Ali met me and told me to sit down while he filled my water bottle.
Let me disclose this right now: this was not an instance of low blood sugar. I know this because I’ve experienced multiple hypoglycemic episodes, and this was different. It felt like my entire body was made of hot and cold fever, and the scraping feeling in my lungs made it hard to breathe.
According to an article on Fit Day you should take a break from exercising one day out of the week. The author of this article feels that a single day is just enough time to let your muscles rest, but not enough time to lose motivation. Wellbridge simply suggests athletes take a day off “here and there” depending on their level of fitness. Shape has a more relaxed view, saying you should build rest days into your weekly exercise routines and sometimes even take a week off to repair and rebuild your muscles (again, only sometimes).
What these articles are missing is what Active pointed out: each person has a different threshold of what his or her own body can handle. No one person reacts in the same way to intense physical activity as another. All of the articles are right, just not for everybody.
This is what I wasn’t told when I started my new fitness routine. The image of these impressively fit super-humans and the image of normal people who sometimes can’t do something — or even just need a break — didn’t compute in my mind.
“This happens to everyone sometimes,” Isabella said. “It happened to me today.”
“It happens to me, too,” Ali said.
Despite their reassurances, I couldn’t help feeling like I failed in some way. My body, which had served me so well up to this point in the competition, was ill. There was nothing I could do to make it do what I wanted it to. It was infuriating.
After a few days of rest, a successful Group Workout No. 4 and some Internet research, I felt rejuvenated. I’m stronger than before. It turns out my coaches — just like my mom — were right.
