Human Freedom
When I swim, I feel like a perfectly free human being.
Physical pain compromises a person’s life in myriad ways. It can cause us to walk slower, talk slower or not talk at all. It can cause us to choose to remain seated, or use an elevator instead of the stairs, or have particular lighting requirements in the room. Wherever the pain and whatever kind of pain, it is always a net negative for our lives.
We snap at loved ones and colleagues. We snap at ourselves. We sit for far too long in comfortable chairs, using punchy massagers on our legs. I sit. I sit far too long in my comfortable chair with the punchy massager on my legs. But maybe you do, too, I don’t know your life.
In any case, most of my pain from total knee replacement surgery is abated. There is a small amount of soft tissue on the outside of my knee area that still feels a bit tender, and the ligaments on that leg that are holding upper and lower leg together most often feel stretched and tight at the same time. Sometimes the ligaments feel wobbly. I had my knee replaced on 24 March, 2023. It’s now January, 2024, and since the beginning of August, I’ve been going to the gym 4 days per week. I decided this because previous to my osteoarthritis starting to rage, I was in the best shape of my life when I attended the gym four times per week. In order to regain fitness, I should do that, I thought.
Before my surgery, during the decline of my right knee (my left is also in decline, there’s enough sympathy to go around, no worries), I went to the gym less and less, and began swimming more and more. Four days per week at the gym turned into a solid two days per week, with two or three days of swimming. My whole life, I never really enjoyed swimming laps. I enjoyed being in the water, and enjoyed “going swimming,” which meant playing in the water and going down water slides. Then came the COVID pandemic. That is of note because, when we went back to school after remote learning, our wellness coordinator at school gave us the option of swimming once per week in the school pool, and she would act as lifeguard.
This intrigued me because going back to school with masks on and a pandemic still raging, and all the kids with their emotional instability (more so than usual I mean), affected all of us, and not in a good way. It was all very weird. And then B, our wellness coordinator, offered swimming and I thought, “Getting in the water will help. Why not?” Please remember, going swimming to me was playing in the water. So I showed up and got in the water, and realized this pool was not for playing, it was for swimming laps. It’s a rectangle with a spring diving board at one end. No matter. I suited up and got in.
The first thing I realized was that I did not have a mask on my face, and I felt free.
The second thing I realized, at about lap 5, was that my face was not looking at a screen as it had been for over a year.
It took me another couple of weeks to realize the best benefit of swimming laps: I was unavailable. To anyone. Students could not reach me, parents could not, administrators could not. Well, I mean, if they wanted to they would have to walk all the way to the pool and walk in and find me and holler at me. They aren’t going to do that; at least, they wouldn’t do that at my school, anyway.
The fourth thing I realized (yes, I catch on slowly) was that fitness was capable in the water. My knee felt amazing when I was swimming, and by that I mean I was free from pain. My pain level became very clear when I started swimming, because I only felt it when I was on land. And I started trying to do cardio in the pool. It’s still difficult for me to do, and I still don’t quite understand how I can burn so god damn many calories in only 30 minutes even when I don’t go fast, but I sometimes try for cardio.
Swimming saved my fitness during that knee decline, of about 2 years. When I decided to have it done, it was scheduled about 3 months out. During that time, and the 6 months prior, I had to modify nearly every movement I did in the gym, because my IT band and other ligaments were acting up and causing me pain, because they were attempting to splint my leg. I had gone to a physical therapist who gave me particular exercises to do each day/week, and I did those and did what I could in the gym, otherwise, but now that I’m thinking back on it intentionally, I really let my knee go far. I was incapable of squatting with my butt below my knees, which is a major part of our workouts, both with weights and body weight only. Lunging was difficult. Even a tiny bend in the knees to do a push press overhead was painful. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t jump. I couldn’t bend my knees at all without pain. I could still row and use a stationary bike, but it wasn’t great.
I just heaved a big sigh, just now, while writing this, committing myself to having my left knee done before it gets that far. I’ll have an easier time gaining back my muscles if I don’t let it go that far. My fitness tanked even before surgery.
Now, nearly 10 months after surgery, I am happy to report that my plan for getting back into the gym 4 days per week at least, is working. Success means different things to different people, of course, but for me, it means being able to do everything I couldn’t do before. I can bike again. I can row. I’m not supposed to run, but I tried a little jog across the gym a couple of months ago and I could do it! I can use a jump rope for about 60 jumps and then I start to feel it, so I avoid that. Every so often I’ll do it and it should get better, but I don’t want to hurt my other knee, or the new one. And I can squat.
Never in my life would I think to celebrate such a movement, but let me tell you what a joy it is to be able to squat low again. All of my leg, butt, and back muscles are celebrating it as well. My muscles are back, and they might be bigger than before, I don’t know. They feel it, however. I can front squat as much as I could before, and I’m only five pounds away from what I could previously back squat. My deadlift is only 35 pounds away from before, as well. My bench press has improved tremendously, and it’s only ten pounds away from my 1 rep max from 7 years ago. My cardio fitness is back, as well.
In most measures of fitness, I am this close (makes finger gesture to indicate 1 centimeter) to being better than before, and it’s only been 10 months! Because of this focus on increasing my strength, I’ve been experiencing a lot of muscle soreness, which means I sit and use the punchy massager on my legs most days. That massager really helps to move the stuff out that’s causing the soreness–I think it’s lactic acid.
Becoming accustomed to soreness is something that I remembered quickly and didn’t mind. Doing Crossfit style workouts with weightlifting and cardio with weights will cause soreness, both soon after the workout (if you sit down for a while) and also the next day or the day after that. Delayed Onset Soreness is what it’s called. It’s a thing.
The fall semester of this school year was difficult for me, and swimming once per week was a hard-earned pleasure. I didn’t put any restraints on myself this time, no cardio requirements. Just swim for 30 minutes and forget everything. I often set my mind to one thing while swimming, as a type of meditation. Swimming laps can be very meditative, and I use that time to my best advantage for wellness, I guess, by both moving through the water and keeping my mind off of school. School infects everything; that’s another story.
This semester is even more difficult, not only because I’m teaching an additional class that I wasn’t before, but also because teaching that class meant I haven’t been able to swim. I swim at my local rec center about two days per week–no, that’s not true. I used to do that. And it had been every Saturday that I would swim. But I haven’t been able to swim at school, and haven’t been swimming at the rec center either, and I don’t know why.
So this morning, despite the -7 degree temperature, I went to the rec center and swam. When I got in the water, I felt completely liberated from everything that has been more torment: pain, unease, anxiety, stress, worry, and more pain. When I pushed off from the side of the pool, I thought, “I feel like a completely free human being.” It was gratitude for being able to afford the rec center membership, and therefore gratitude for my job. I felt grateful to myself for pushing so hard to increase my muscles recently and get back to full health. I felt grateful for health insurance, such as it is in the United States. I felt my muscles stretching, and my hands plunging into the water, and my legs fluttering, and I felt free from pain for the first time in a long, long time.
Physical fitness is freedom.
Pursuing it is worth the effort.
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