On Gear-Heads and Common Sense

Yesterday my partner appeared, adorably (as usual), at my apartment door with a pack of tennis balls and two small wooden rackets ala 1960's (we think). Three dollars spent at goodwill. We had an evening of hilarity at a tennis court that is a thirty minute walk (along a river bike trail) from my house. I was proud of myself because I had made gym plans earlier in the day and when she arrived just before lunchtime with our new equipment, I was able to let go of my "routine" for another activity. This flexibility is key for me because of my history of compulsive over-exercise. My nutritionist advised that as long as my activity is around 30 mins/day, I don't have to worry so much about what I am doing to get my heart-rate up and my muscles moving. This is a relief because given my chronic pain and mobility issues in my hips, a lot of repetitive exercise is off-limits. Because neither of partner or I is an actual tennis player, I wouldn't say the tennis playing itself was much of a workout but combined with the sixty minute walk, I would say it was successful movement. But here's the other thing I realized: I liked having the outlandishly old equipment. And here's why.

Experts are always saying that the key to losing weight and getting healthy is finding exercise that you like doing. I'm personally finding that the other key is finding something not excruciatingly painful. But I know I find myself a little less willing to learn new physical things as I I get older because I'm self-conscious about my body and my coordination. My family never had the money to invest in dance classes or karate and my neighborhood (a working-class, working-poor neighborhood in urban Massachusetts) didn't offer much by way of sports teams. And of course, with the budget cuts in the early 1990's, we had no phys ed in school and for a time, no playground. Needless to say, my physical skills are limited.

It took a few years with a phenomenal anti-racist, anti-classist feminist therapist in Boston (who is against participating in DSM diagnosis) to figure out that part of what was keeping me from learning new physical things was a feeling that if you don't have the advantage to learn something early on, you shouldn't do it. It's not available for you. And this is one way, I think, class oppression continues across generations. It's not just in how much material wealth we have, but in how much we feel opportunities to learn new things (intellectual, physical) are available to us as adults. My parents, for instance, haven't taken a class unrelated to work for as long as I can remember. Anyway, I broke this cycle in Boston. I took my first dance class from one of my grad school besties who studies Middle Eastern dance. I was atrocious. But I moved. And I got to show off my flexibility, even when my coordination was suspiciously absent entirely. I also signed up for university yoga classes. I had been doing yoga since being involved in a high school yoga club (which functioned as a lunch time catch all for all the new kids who had no friends--I had just moved from MA to Maine) but did most of my learning through books and dvds because I felt classes were too expensive. I got in a little bit of a rut again when I moved to Ohio but the four months of Krav Maga classes with my partner this winter helped me dig my way out of the "undeserving" mindset again.

I think I've gotten a little off-track. Here's the thing about gear-heads and playing with old tennis rackets that I'm trying to get at. The idea that you need expensive special equipment to be involved in sports is not only materialist and ridiculous, but it actually functions as a form of class oppression. I led girl scouts on hiking and camping trips around Alaska in a three-year-old pair of 60 dollar LL Bean boots. I've hiked all over Germany in doc martins that I waitressed in for six years. 3 dollar pajama pants work for yoga (or, if you are in your living room, your underwear). You can bike in sweatpants. Goodwill tennis rackets are fine. This isn't to say that biking shorts that wisk away sweat aren't nice, that smartwool socks that cushion hiking boots aren't helpful, that yoga shorts themselves don't help when you reach a certain level of balancing postures (fabric can be impeding). But unless you are training, you don't need stuff to work out. You need company. You need to replace your running shoes every 6-12 months (regardless of how much you pay for them). You need to pump up your bike tires (my bike was bought used from a fabulous Boston organization Bikes Not Bombs and has been running great for years. My bike pump cost me six bucks).

I went to college in the mountains in Maine. There's a certain subset of people who hike who are obsessed with the lightest gear, the most high tec gortex boots, and wool hats that have specific branding emblazoned across the front. These people profess that its dangerous to go out without specific kinds of gear. The problem with this is that it make mountains feel off-limits to a whole class of people. What's dangerous is going out without common sense and a water bottle.

Two days ago, I was walking from the pool to the locker room in my one piece red flowered swimsuit that I purchased as a first-summer camp counselor when I was 18. A twelve year old waiting with her little brother said to me: "That's a pretty swimsuit. Where did you get your tattoo?" And pointed to my back. And I thought to myself: all I need to workout is my body.