Accepting the Dings in Stride

Sometimes you just have to accept that your body is not going absorb shocks the way it did in your youth, and that you just have to grin and bear it and keep moving.

Yesterday,  during a surprisingly warm morning, I played outdoor basketball with grandson Grayson. Mostly I rebounded for him, but then we played a few games with him shooting from outside ("downtown') and me from near the basketball. (At age 7, he was swishing some 3-pointers. We may have a future Larry Bird on our hands.)

 It was a lot of fun, and I figure I burned about 150 calories (Gray had suggested such a burn might be a side benefit for me). But near the end of our session, I reached for a rebound and the ball battered the little finger of my left hand. In my teens and twenties, it was a ding that would be forgotten in an hour. A day later, though, the little finger is bruised and a little swollen. It looks like a partially inflated birthday party balloon. So I keep taking a stab at icing it, but it's not that easy to wrap your pinkie in ice and keep it there.

I do hope to play much more basketball with the grandson. It was good for bonding and it made me do more bending and stretching than I usually do. However, perhaps I should occasionally remind myself that I am in my 70s now.

Unrelated to the basketball dings is the soreness I have had in both shoulders for the past fews weeks. It is particularly intense when trying to sleep at night or upon rising in the morning.

I am really not sure what brought on these particular dings. My best guess is that the shoulder pain is a reaction to my ending a couple of my aerobic workouts with some light weight-lifting. It was nothing radical -- just some curls and such with 8-pound weights in each hand. However, I hadn't touched weights for a long time, so maybe the exertion activated some bursitis in the shoulders or aggravated arthritis. Or somehow I strained the rotator cuffs of both arms. Who knows?

Anyway, I won't be doing any more random weight-lifting again anytime soon, but I will try to stretch out the arms and shoulders, and keep them as supple as possible. 

Maybe the basketball will be good for that.

                             © Robert G. Holland  2014