I Blame Tiger Woods
Most golfers didn’t work out with weights when I was young. I grew up admiring a generation of world-class golfers who wouldn’t know a bench press from a French press.
That all changed when Tiger Woods showed up. I watched him transform from a lanky straw-hat-wearing junior amateur champion to an agile, fit, and strong Masters champion. Everyone talked about his physique. Inspired by him, all the PGA Tour wannabes hit the gym in droves seeking beach bodies and twenty more yards. I did too.
What happened next is all Tiger’s fault.
It took over seven minutes to orient myself to the various divisions of labor inside the Greensboro YMCA’s lifting area. Free weights loitered in one room that spilled into a larger room of weight machines and treadmills. After thirty minutes building courage, I climbed onto a machine to risk embarrassing myself. Everyone around me had purpose. They flowed through their exercises in choreographed precision, like an Everlast-inspired TV ad.
I’d never set foot in a weight room, but years of playing soccer and other sports instilled a false confidence of strong legs. The leg machines seemed a good place to start. I hoped to look less like a shrimp to the girls in the gym who weren’t paying attention to me anyway.
One of my buddies on the baseball team had prepped me. He recommended starting with three sets of ten for each lift. Work one major muscle group each day, he’d said.
Within forty minutes, I blew through full sets of squats, leg curls, calf raises, and leg extensions, then finished with the seated leg press. I felt invigorated, imagining driving distance gains with every repetition. Until I stood up and had to grab the top of the press to steady myself.
After a shower in my dorm, my legs felt like jelly. No worries, I thought. But after an hour seated in a Business Ethics class, worry caught up with me. My legs felt numb.
“Class dismissed,” Dr. Rolnick announced.
I stood to take a step and crumpled like a slinky onto the floor. Laughter. Embarrassment. Spectacle.
“Are you okay?” One classmate shouted.
“I’m fine,” I said, getting up to try again.
Crash! Face, meet floor. My legs had decided they were taking the rest of the day off.
How will I make it down three flights of stairs, then walk four hundred yards back to my dorm? Wait? Will I ever walk again? But more importantly, is it too late to drop this class and save myself from showing my face again in it?
Two guys helped me out of the classroom, down the stairs, and back to my dorm. By fully extending my legs in a locked position, I found I could waddle up the first flight of dorm stairs in slow motion like a young leg-braced Forrest Gump.
After the first flight, I thought, I’m gonna make it! But I almost lost it on the second flight. Once on the third flight, I did lose it, crumpling to the concrete steps. Two field hockey coeds bounded over me headed to the men’s soccer team’s dorms. Their giggles rubbed salt in an open wound.
Twenty minutes later, I collapsed inside my room without additional social damage. But now I was stuck. And scared. Scared because I felt no pain, other than a bruised ego. Did I cause nerve damage? I called my coach. No practice for me. I called my parents. They were sympathetic but unhelpful. Then I called the football team’s trainer who gave me an ounce of hope. He told me extreme muscle fatigue could occur if you overdo a muscle group. “Get some rest and stay off your feet,” he concluded. That was the easy part given I couldn’t move.
This also meant I couldn’t escape. The rest of the day got terrible. With nowhere to go and no way to get there, my strength goals withered as “friends” and teammates stopped by to needle me. I didn’t step into a gym again for twenty years.
Each time his fist punched the air suspended in an arm cloaked in his trademark red, my anger, pain, and shame flared up like a flashback in a comic book origin story. His intense eyes stared me down. His wry smile showed little guilt.
Tiger Woods, I blame you.