Mick’s rehab

I was slightly alarmed last week when an appointment card from my osteopath arrived suggesting it might be a good idea to turn up with a T-shirt, training shoes and some tracksuit bottoms. Frankly, in any chart of “things you don’t want to hear”, being told to turn up to a doctor’s surgery with sports kit ranks alongside your girlfriend peering at a swab and saying, “Ooh, it’s gone all blue.”

Of course, not being a Mancunian drug dealer, I don’t actually own any tracksuit bottoms, so I went to Selfridges, which, this being the height of summer, was rammed full of big thick coats. Happily, these gave me something to hide behind as I approached the sports department. I grabbed the first tracksuit I saw and was asked by a salesman what sort of sport I’d be doing. “I won’t,” I said loudly. “I shall be selling cocaine to schoolchildren in it.” This seemed better somehow. And ‘no’, I didn’t want to try it on because I would never wear such a thing in a public place so it didn’t matter if it was the wrong size.

Later, the osteopath showed me down several flights of stairs into a basement where there were many implements of torture on the walls and a chap called Mr Wong in the middle of it all. Mr Wong, it turned out, was a “corrective exercise” specialist. And he had some bad news! To make my slipped discs better I must wear tracksuit bottoms every day and move about even if I didn’t want to go anywhere.

And so we began. He made me lie on the floor with a pressure pad under my back and told me to raise my legs while keeping the pressure in the pad level and even. It was impossible. Each time I began to raise even one leg, the dial dropped immediately to nought. Mr Wong said my stomach was “unbelievably weak”.  This, of course, is rubbish. I fill it each day with a great deal of food and wine and it has never split once. But before I had a chance to tell him all this, I was on all fours. Except I wasn’t.

My left arm was not capable of supporting the weight of my unbelievably weak stomach, so the front left quarter of my body was being supported by my face. Even I was surprised by this. But, having made the discovery, it softened the disappointment of not being able to do a single press-up.

Then I was standing in front of a mirror looking at my tracksuit bottoms while Mr Wong asked me to gyrate my hips. Now I’ve seen elderly people in Benidorm doing this so I know it’s humanly possible. But I couldn’t do it at all. This gave Mr Wong all the information he needed to prepare an exercise programme, which I must follow rigidly twice a day for the rest of my life. And then he began to assault my posture.

Apparently, I must learn to stand like a Coldstream guardsman. Chest out, stomach in, head back. And I’ve got to stop locking my knees. I must bend them slightly, like you do when you’re skiing. I tried this for five seconds and my thighs felt like they’d caught fire. Mr Wong made another note.

It turns out that there’s not even to be any respite when sitting down. I must make sure my ears, shoulders and hips are all in a straight line, something that’s not physically possible because I have too many chins. Also I must ensure that the screen on my computer is level with my eyes so I don’t have to look down while typing.

Fine, but I use a laptop and if I get the screen high enough I can’t see any of the keys. Actually, the main problem with my new exercise regime is the sheer complication of it all. In one routine I must stand in front of a mirror and, while not laughing at my trousers, breathe in while holding my shoulders back. Then I hold my breath while pulling my tummy toward my spine, and then I must bend my knees until my thighs are parallel with the floor. And then I breathe out while standing up straight again.

It is in no way physically taxing, not even for someone whose muscle structure is made up of pure fat. But the brain power required to remember what comes next is huge. What staggered me about the process most of all, though, is the mind-numbing boredom and the slow rate of improvement brought about by each held breath and stretched limb. So as you lie there, in your silly trousers, stultified by the tedium of it all, you start to intellectualise the process.

And I’ve arrived at an alarming conclusion. If I fail to spend 27 hours a day lifting things up and putting them down again, I’ll be back in a world of pain and misery. And if I do spend 27 hours a day lifting things up and putting them down again, nothing will happen. In other words I must spend the rest of time making a massive amount of effort for no reward at all.

 

Written by: Mick Edge

Submitted; 28th May 2008

Edited by: Brenda J Earnshaw WRR Editor