My Neck, My Back

Looking back, I realize that I originally started this blog to encourage myself to write about growing up in the unique way I did. After the first couple posts, I've kind of gotten off track. Consider this post to be a return to the original purpose of the blog.

I have always hated the idea of going to the gym to exercise. There is something fundamentally broken in a world where we invent machines to do all the work for us (at great expense in terms of social injustice and environmental degradation), then invent machines to keep our under-worked bodies from the inevitable atrophy that results. I like the idea of exercising because there is work to be done. Cardio? Walk or bike to where you need to be. Resistance? Surely there is a ditch that needs digging, or wood that needs splitting. When you live in the country, there is always manual labor to be done.

I always loved doing this kind of work as a kid. Well, that isn't quite true. When I was younger I'd be working with my dad. He'd say, "I want to see the sweat dripping from your nose," in a kind of a half joking way. I was perplexed. I thought he was joking. Or exaggerating. I'd sweated before, but dripping off your nose? Surely that was a myth.

At some point, probably around the time puberty hit and I started to bulk up, I learned to love working. I discovered that sweat does, indeed, drip from the end of your nose when you get going. Especially in hot weather. Splitting firewood, digging a ditch to lay pipe, carrying rounds of wood...I was your guy. I remember on one occasion my dad and I were cutting wood on a steep slope. He, being older and wiser, had chosen a tree above the road, so we could roll the rounds down to the truck. One particularly large round bounced past the truck, off the other edge of the road, and thirty yards down the steep hill on the other side. He said, "Oh well, leave that one." I was having none of it. In the arrogance of youth, I slid down that hill, picked up the forty pound round of oak, and carried it back up the hill. I still remember (and now understand) his look of combined envy and disbelief.

When I got to graduate school, I was working at a computer or a lab bench all day (sometimes not seeing the sun once), and my metabolism started to slow, I discovered that I was going to have to start exercising not to do work, but simply to keep myself from going to pot. Two friends took me under their respective wings and showed me around a gym. One taught me to swim and not to feel too self-conscious getting into and out of a pool. The other showed me around a weight room, acting as coach and spotter. His bulk as all from the gym, and designed mostly to look good. Hence, most of it was on the front. He had nice pecs, good biceps, and abs. I wasn't much at the bench press or doing bicep curls, but when it came to back exercises (seated rows, lat pull downs) I was always adding quite a bit of weight after his sets. I never thought much of it. I had strong back and muscles, that was just the way it was. Thinking back, I think of a couple of particular activities that might have contributed to this fact. Splitting wood for instance. Besides carrying the big rounds, there is swinging the 8 or 12 pound maul.

Then there is swinging a pick. I once spent a week digging a ditch to lay water pipe. You see, we had a lovely spring that was the source of our water for most of my childhood, but it was inconveniently located on a neighboring piece of land owned by somebody else. She had another spring above her house (the one we used was above our but below hers) so had no real use for the water we used. Why pump it uphill when there is perfectly good water above your house that gravity will bring to you? However, at some point our relationship with her soured. She became increasingly paranoid, stopped taking her pills, and began doing things like running naked through the woods, threatening passersby with loaded guns, and filing frivolous lawsuits. We (or more precisely my father) were the frequent target of her ire, so it was inevitable she would stop letting us use her water.

It was a result of this water conflict that I found myself tasked with digging a six inch deep trench up half a mile of meadow, passing the pipe through the culvert under the dirt road at the top, then digging another quarter mile of trench through the forest, across land owned by one friendly neighbor to a spring owned by another friendly neighbor. Lest you get the mistaken idea that we lived in a thriving metropolis here, I should point out that a total of two other houses were within shouting distance of the house I grew up in. And even then, if they were walking on gravel or running the sink, they'd never hear you. Before we got a phone, we used to hold shouted conversations across that very same quarter mile of meadow I became so familiar with.

The ditch digging wasn't actually so bad. There was a lot of it to do, but, unless I hit a root or a rock, the going was pretty easy. To my knowledge, that pipe has never frozen from that day to this, so I guess I got it deep enough. Another time I was asked to dig a new outhouse hole. The outhouse had always been 100 yards up the hill (inconvenient in the dark, or snow, or during a bout of stomach flu). We decided to locate it closer to the house this time. Far enough that the smell wouldn't bother us, but close enough to avoid the long trek in the dark. I discovered, a few feet down, that we had cited the new hole over bedrock. I had put in enough work by that time that I wasn't easily dissuaded. I can also be a stubborn cuss. Telling me I won't, can't, or shouldn't do something will sometimes get my back up, and I will do whatever it is, come hell or high water. This was one of those times. It is possible that my dad had told me it was a bad place for the new outhouse. In any case, I was damned if I was going to give up. I went to the shed and got the digging bar (a 20 pound iron bar with a point on one end and a wide prying thing on the other). I methodically forced that bar into the cracks in the rock, broke it up, and shoveled the gravel out of the hole. The hole on that outhouse wasn't as deep as some of the others, but we used it for a year or so.

Looking back, I'd say that it was experiences like those that made for my non-traditional physique. I have a tight spot in my middle back I can trace to an entire day swinging a Weedeater (when mowing that much area, another tool would be better, but some grass grows on inconveniently steep slopes, and can really only be cut by a fool and a Weedeater).

Most of the time I forget that I grew up in, essentially, preindustrial conditions. Today I use a computer with as much facility as most, text, carry a cell phone, and know last week's internet jokes at least (I know who Rebecca Black is and hate her song as much as the next guy). Every once in a while it becomes clear that my life has not been like those of most people I know. Sometimes it is a skill I have (making a fire, digging an outhouse hole), but more often it is a cultural reference I don't get (Peanuts cartoons for instance). I've learned to fake it. I know that the parents in the Peanuts cartoons spoke gibberish, so I laugh along with everybody else when someone makes a joke about that, but I don't get it. Not really. Most of the time people ignore the awkward moment.

Why do I do it?

I have been practicing some form of Japanese martial art since the year I graduated from high school. I've moved more than once, lived in various parts of three different states, changed styles, and grown up a lot. I've gotten two degrees, had children, been married and divorced, and I keep coming back. I find when I train regularly, my life feels better. Whatever else is going on, if I have a dojo and go regularly, I can keep it together. Over the years, I have been asked the question, "Why do you do it?" many times in a number of different ways. 

The first time was in an Aikido class, the summer after I graduated from high school. I would commute 40 miles each way (5 of those miles on a dirt road) on the old motorcycle I had bought twice a week to take classes from one of the toughest women I've ever met. She taught us Ki-Aikido which is a style founded by one of Morihei Ueshiba's (the founder of Aikido) students. He, I am told, was asked not to call his style Aikido, as it was more mystical and less martial. He (and thus my teacher) taught the power of energy to effect an attacker without touching him or her. I was sitting on the mat, an awkward 19 year old, usually too shy to speak up in unfamiliar company, with these 30+ men (the teacher that night was a man, not the regular female teacher), steeped in the Iron John mystique of Robert Bly's men's movement. The teacher asked us all to answer two questions, why we started in Aikido, and why we kept doing it. I can't precisely remember the answers, but am sure that, "I do it to control the violence inside me," was one of them. This drew appreciative murmurs and nods from the assemblage. At the time I honestly didn't have any violence inside me. My life was a pretty sheltered one and my reaction to conflict was to retreat, not to get angry. So, at that point in my training, my answers were a very simple and honest, "I started Aikido because my parents were doing it (precisely speaking this was true, but it was a little disingenuous), and I keep doing it because it is fun." This drew indulgent, "Well, you'll be more sophisticated when you are older" looks from the others.

An excellent answer to this question was suggested to me by my friend and (briefly) Renshinkan Karate teacher, Kevin. I was in another class, struggling to push my stiff ankles to adopt Renshinkan's particularly rigorous interpretation of the forward stance (zenkutsu dachi), and he asked me a question:  "Why are your here?" He meant it in the big sense. Why was I there in that class instead of home in front of the TV, or taking a stroll on the beach. When I, taken by surprise, stumbled to find an answer, he suggested one:  "Because I choose to be." For whatever reason I would rather be sweating in that room, with my ankles hurting and my thigh muscles shaking than any of the other things I could be doing. It is an excellent answer, but it doesn't really get to the heart of the question. Why would I choose that? There are easier, cheaper ways to get exercise that put you at much lower risk of injury. 

I ask myself the question periodically. I ask it when I am getting up at 4:00 to prepare for a 6:00 karate class. I ask it when I think about the ligament damage and "arthritic changes" the doctors tell me are present in my wrists from years of unnatural twisting. I ask it when my right shoulder aches where it never quite healed from being separated after a bad highfall. I ask it while writing another monthly check for dojo dues. I could probably have supported a crack habit on what I've spent on martial arts over the years. An Aikido teacher I respect once told me a story. A young man came to him and wanted to start studying Aikido. This enthusiastic young man waxed eloquent about the wonderful health benefits of Aikido training. The teacher (approaching 70 years old) pointed at his left earlobe and said, "You see this? I have been training for years and this is the only part of my body that doesn't hurt. There are a lot of things to be gained from Aikido. That isn't one of them"

I can tell you some things that aren't the reason I do it. I don't do it for self-protection. I am almost 36 years old and I have yet to get in physical fight. Chances are very good I have done more damage to my body in my training than would be done if I got beat up some day and couldn't fight back. There is also ample evidence that the kind of training I have done (rote drills and practice with a compliant partner) conveys absolutely no advantage in a fight and may actually make one less effective. When the adrenaline dumps, even if you can remember them, you lose the fine motor skills necessary for fancy small joint locks. Even blocking probably goes right out the window. It is people who have learned to deal with the adrenaline, take a punch or two without losing their focus, and react with simple large motor movements like punches and kicks who do well in real fights. There is an extensive literature on this subject you can search out for yourself if you want to know more. 

In his book Meditations on Violence, Sgt Rory Miller lays out this argument very nicely. He has trained traditional Japanese jujutsu to the point where it can be used to devastating effect in a fight. What he says is that, in order to reach that point, you have to train yourself to a hair trigger. You have to react to a perceived threat in an instant with deadly force. Jujutsu, after all, is a battlefield art. Unlike him, I don't work in a prison where I am threatened with deadly violence on a daily basis. I don't live on a battlefield where I have to kill or be killed on a moment's notice. I have no interest in training myself to the point where I will break your arm if you are in my blind spot when you say "good morning." The Aikido teacher whose earlobe didn't hurt related another anecdote about this subject. When approached by a student who wanted to learn Aikido for self-protection, the teacher said, "If you want to protect yourself, go buy a shotgun. Aikido is a long slow road to winning a fight."  Even in New York, a state with very stringent handgun laws, I could get a pistol and a concealed carry permit for less than the cost of one year of training (and that includes ammunition and range time so that I might actually hit what I'm aiming at). I don't train for self-protection. My training may help me if I ever get in a fight, or it may provide that moment of hesitation that proves to be my downfall (wait, did sensei teach ikkyo or nihonage osae from this attack?). Regardless, it isn't the reason I keep choosing to go back. 

When I really think about it, I have to admit that the awkward 19 year old was on to something. I do it because it is fun. Now don't get me wrong. I have gained a lot of confidence from my training. I am no longer that shy kid and part of the reason for this is martial arts training. I may be deluding myself, but I believe I have a better chance in a fight than I would without it. I am not a trained ninja assassin, will never throw a chi ball, and do not have to register my hands as deadly weapons. I don't know how I will react if somebody takes a swing at me, but I am pretty sure that if I keep my cool and connect, I will acquit myself better than I would have without training. Sometimes I want nothing more than a place to go and hit things or people and yell and have that be socially acceptable. 

All of these are benefits, but I am not thinking about any of them when I change out of my street clothes and step out onto the mat. The thing that I love and the thing that keeps me coming back is the feeling I get when I can go all out against somebody. When they come full speed with that attack and I know that I can throw them and trust they will take the fall without injury. When they hold the pad and I know I can put everything I've got into my kick and they'll be safe. I get this feeling of intense focus combined with complete awareness. I believe that this feeling is what is meant by the Japanese term zanshin, often translated as no-mind or awareness. I think some people get this feeling from a triathlon, yoga, or meditation. For me, meditation happens in motion. I do my best thinking while walking, swimming, or otherwise going from one place to another. And I achieve zanshin under pressure, on the mat, sending somebody flying through the air. So why do I do it? Well, I could say I do it because I love it. I do it for the way I feel in the middle of it. I do it to achieve relaxation and focus. Or, like I said when I was 19 years old, I do it because it is really really fun.