Keep Your Physical Capabilities Alive

The other day, I was holding an armful of mail, including a package, in one arm while my next-door neighbor was out tossing the football with his son. I waved with my freehand to say hello, and my neighbor unexpectedly tossed the ball to me, which I caught. When I went to throw it back, I threw it over his head and into a bush in front of his house.

“Sorry! It’s been quite a while since I’ve thrown a football.”

Whoops. I could chalk it up to having my hands full, I guess. Or I could blame it on exactly what I said it was: I was out of practice.

I’ve never been a great football player, mind you, but I know (or used to know) how to throw a tight spiral. And I’ve always been generally athletic, overall. Do I particularly care that I let my throwing skills atrophy? No.

But it’s a good reminder to not let the same thing happen to my physical capabilities that do matter.

Disuse Syndrome, Injury From

No, I’m not talking about Lamarck.

I’ve seen this happen a lot with men as they get older (even those who are around my age).* They harken back to a time when they were athletic, or at least physically capable, and they assume that capability is inherent and neglect to test it out for—I dunno—ten years. The next thing they know, they have to sprint for some reason or another and they instantly pull their hamstrings. Or they go out and play flag football, ski, or whatever else as a sedentary person and tear their ACL. 

“That’s not me,” you might say. But when was the last time you’ve run at an all out sprint? When was the last time you jumped as high or as far as you could? As an adult, when did you perform a somersault last, if ever? When was the last time you tested your strength by picking up something heavy and moving with it? Hell, have you even just spun in a circle recently to see how your body handles being dizzy nowadays?

If you’ve not done any of these things recently, you are not operating as your best physical self. You are letting your physical capabilities die and you’re losing touch with yourself.

Maybe I’m just lucky that I can say that in the past week, I’ve lifted weights several times, picked up and moved 185-pound pieces of lumber around my property, Spiderman-ed around my attic for several days, sprinted in my backyard while playing with my son, and somersaulted.**

It’s especially funny to those that have seen 40 Year-Old Virgin, but it’s actually true in this case: If you don’t use it, you lose it.

The human body is like a car—the better care you take of it, the better and longer it runs. Just make sure you get out and redline it with some frequency so it remembers what it can do.

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*Women are not immune to this, but are maybe a little less susceptible because testosterone is the likely culprit. 

**That last one was just because I mentioned it in this post, though I do somersault with some regularity since it’s the main way I get over my bed to my nightstand if I need something during the day. But I’m also a weirdo, so…