It turns out you use your ribcage more than you ever could have imagined. You can imagine how much you use your ribcage when it snarls at you every time you move it in a way it doesn’t appreciate.
Having broken my humerus in a fall from a horse in 2003 (An x-ray technician said blandly to me, “Aren’t you a little old to be breaking an arm?” “I was trying to get out of the spelling bee,” I replied tersely), I was already aware of the fragility of my body and the frustration of negotiating everyday life with a busted something-or-other. Physically, I knew what I was in for when I got the fracture diagnosis: I’d be floored by tasks I’d ordinarily do in a trance, like carrying in the groceries or lowering myself into my car. Emotionally, this has been a whole new monster.
Although a lifelong fixation with horses makes riding one of the most important things in my life, and while I missed it when I was bound in a sling for 8 weeks, I experienced none of the clawing the walls and banging on the bars I have as I’ve been limited in boxing training. I watched wistfully as other riders schooled my horse to keep him in condition while I healed, and I was counting the moments until I could get on again, but at no point was I tempted to do something really ill-informed, like pushing my body before it was ready.
Two weeks into my rib recuperation (I had been back in the gym, in a feather-touch sense for a week), I declared myself ready to rejoin my team. It was a Medicine Ball Night, those terrible evenings in which we brutalize one another’s abdomens with objects that equate to 15 pound basketballs and mimic body shots thrown by opponents.
I thought I was being smart: ordinarily, the balls are thrown onto the bellies of victims prone in the ring by partners standing over them. Lo wasn’t in-house that night (which is, of course, how I got away with this in the first place); I didn’t trust anyone else’s aim, so I requested a modification: my partner would straddle me and pound the ball into my gut with an overhand motion that imitates axe-splitting a log.
She was happy to comply. She’s a teenager with eight years’ ringtime looking eagerly toward 2012 now that we know women will be fighting in London. Medicine ball is her passion. Her brown eyes flicker fire when she hears it’s a Medicine Ball Night; her ability to absorb the percussion of the ball with her core is preternatural. She grounded herself on my thighs and grinned, “Ready?” before starting the assault.
I felt my rib re-break on hit five-of-ten. Unfortunately, if you have enough breath to say anything during a medicine ball series, your partner isn’t doing her job.
“TEN!” she exclaimed, leaping up to switch me places. I rolled heavily to my good side, bracing the bad with my elbow in a gesture that had become so familiar in the past weeks. I closed my eyes and willed them to swallow down the tears that were forming. In boxing, only certain fluids are allowed.
“Are you OK…?” she asked. “Dad!”
Her father stood over me, appraised me with eyes that have seen his three children come up as fighters and their nearly-20 collective years of boxing injuries and said, “Rib’s broken again, right?” I nodded, still lacking speech.
“Mike’s gonna be pissed. What are you doing in here anyway?” At this point I had breath enough to answer, but no words to float on it. He nudged me affectionately with his toe and hooked a thumb down towards the floor, ordering me out of the ring. I sulked through a few ginger rounds on heavybag before giving up, packing up, and getting out.
Lo got home about an hour after me, just enough time for things in my side to really start to seize up. His eyes narrowed as I walked up to him to offer a one-armed hug. “What did you do?” he sighed.
“medicine ball…”
“What?!? Are you serious? Can’t you think for yourself the one night I can’t be there with you?” He paused for a breath, saw how bad I was feeling, and cut himself off. “Alright. You’ll heal. Again.”
I’ve been healing. Again. It’s given me a lot of time to think about why I was so eager to get back to the gym full force that I did something absurdly stupid. I can’t formulate a cohesive answer, just as I can’t when someone asks me, “Why do you like boxing so much anyway?”
Some of it is the empowerment. I love walking through a parking lot measuring up my fictive opponents as they carry grocery bags to their cars or weave with their eyes down texting their way to the entrance of a store. In my mind, I could take out approximately 95% of the people I encounter on the street. Just feeling that, oddly, makes me a bit more benevolent to others, as if I’m some sort of cut-rate goddess looking fondly down on her underlings.
Some of it is the satisfaction of accomplishing something really, really hard. Boxing like you mean it is like having the toughest workout of your life…five days a week. No matter how many practices I attend, I always, at least once, have a moment during the session when I think I’m not going to be able to make it through. When I do, I feel like the baddest girl in the world. There’s a lot to be said for feeling like the baddest girl in the world, especially when a great portion of one’s life is devoted to mulling over postmodern theories in a seated position or arguing about someone’s questionable use of “finger quotes” in a class debate.
Some of it is the environment of the gym – the filthy, drippy environment of the gym where the blood is cleaned from the floor once a week (if someone’s feeling particularly motivated). Where I learn leverage, breath control, distance, and Spanish phrases I’m not allowed to say in front of Lo’s grandmother. Where industrial space heaters intended to grace airplane hangars thrum beneath our workouts, keeping those who need to cut weight on track even though it’s freezing outside. Where people who have no idea what I study or write or my stand on composition pedagogy or the rhetoric of science tease me about my whiteness in an un-self conscious way that seems golden in a life of painfully careful phrasing and anxiety about what someone will think of what I think. Where, most of all, I can forget myself; my worry isn’t strong enough to claim space in the moments when I have to focus everything I have on slowing my heart rate enough in the one minute rest to get through the three minutes of work in the upcoming round. Where I get to Be. Or to be.
How can I not miss that?
