Basketball and kung fu

I used to be active. I played basketball every chance I got and loved any and all sports. I have never been a skinny, athletic looking person but nonetheless I was in fairly good shape. So I could eat cheeseburgers and french fries and drink sodas but I was active enough, I stayed an average size. That's not really true today. And my body can tell.

I keep saying I'm going to go on a diet and start exercising but there's two problems with that idea. One, I hate exercising and two, I love food.

Now, when I say I hate exercising, I mean waking up extremely early and running and doing sit ups and pushups and crap like that. If I'm not playing basketball or any other sport, then the only time you can catch me running is if someone is chasing me. I find people that run just to run a little weird.

When I played ball in school, I hated the very beginning and end of practice because they made you run and run and run and do push ups and sit ups and stretching. I hated that! I understand the point of it all but still, I spent almost the entire 2 hour practice running. I didn't mind running when I was playing defense or trying to get open so I could catch a pass but running just for the "exercise" of it? UM NO.

In basketball practice, at the very end of practice, after we'd run up and down the court a gazillion times, the coach made us do suicides. They call it that for a reason. Here's what you do; you stand at the end of the court, you run to the free throw line and back, then to half court and back, then to the free throw line at the other end of the court and back and then to the other end of the court and back. We did that until we were about to die, or until we would rather kill ourselves than do another one, hence the name suicides. In the middle of practice, if we messed up, we did suicides.

Anyway, the point is, I only like to be active if there's a ball involve.d I can play a game of basketball and would love the feeling of not being able to walk afterwards. In fact, I'd do it again the next day.

But the problem is, where does old, out of shape people play ball at these days? There's no way I'm going to a public park and showing my big, fat out of shape butt off.

I tried to join a gym but I'm way too self conscience and then there's that working out for no reason concept again. Why would I get on a treadmill and walk and walk and walk?

The last time I played basketball I was pregnant. YES PREGNANT! I was at my grandma's and we started playing horse. Of course, horse turned into a game. And I was like 7 months pregnant too! So picture a 7 month pregnant person dribbling a ball around, schooling a bunch of boys. Yep, that was me! Well sort of. I tried to not overdo it but when it comes to basketball, I always do. I had to force myself to stop playing because I was afraid Corbin would have just decided to come early.

So the point of this is what? I have no idea.

I watched Carolina lose to DUKE last night. DUKE of all stinking people! So basketball is on my mind. And, I've been thinking about the whole being fat thing too. So naturally, I'd write a blog about the two intertwined. Naturally.

Anyway, Allen is supposed to be teaching me karate soon. I'm still waiting though. I'm supposed to be his first student. We've tried this before and we couldn't do it because he made me do the whole stretching warming up thing before, including sit ups and push ups and well, as you read, I hate that stuff! So I complained and whined and I guess he gave up. Plus, he had an issue with being tough on me. Apparently in karate, if you have whiners, you have to yell at them and stuff. And Allen didn't like yelling at me. But, he's going to have to learn to yell and I'm going to have to deal with this stretching thing so that I can learn the art of kicking butt.

I'm excited about it. I've always wanted to learn karate. And it'll be a good workout for me because it's not like just exercising for no reason. I'm exercising so I can learn how to kick people in the face and take their guns away and all that violent stuff.

I believe it'll be good for me to because I desperately need an outlet, something to relieve my stress. In the process, I am hoping to get in better shape. It's a win win for everybody, except my body, at least at first. Later though, I suspect my body will thank me.