By Leica R. Carpo, Publisher
Sunday Inquirer Magazine
I COULD never sit still as a child.
I had to be literally strapped into my high chair and force-fed to eat. As I could run and chew at the same time, I did not see the point of sitting down to digest my food. Belonging to a fairly active family, I was perpetually influenced to get involved in one form of physical activity or another since the age of 3.
My dad had me waking up at 6 a.m. for swimming lessons in Wack Wack with Pete San Pedro before I could barely walk. My mother’s crush on Jimmy Connors prompted her to enroll me for tennis lessons with Manila Polo Club’s pro Tom Falcis at age 9. Then one summer, my uncles and aunts got it into their heads that we all needed to learn some “self-defense tactics” so I and my clan of 30+ cousins found ourselves taking Tae Kwan Do lessons three times a week with 7 degree black belter Mr. Hong. From there, I expanded my sports’ repertoire to other fields to include Jane Fonda/Hot Legs aerobics, Billy Blanks’ taebo, Bela Lipat’s Ashtanga and Pye Trinidad’s Bikram yoga, as well as golf, badminton and even boxing. I had become not so much a sports addict but a workout fanatic.
I must confess that as I aged, the appeal became less about fitting into my high school jeans but more about the adrenaline rush that accompanied the racing heart and sweaty brow of a pulse rate galloping at maximum speed. Another key element was finding the right crowd to work out with. I relished the camaraderie and friendly competition found in “Group Workout Sessions.” Solo workouts just didn’t do it for me. No one likes to suffer alone.
Over the years I have found that “getting physical” was a thought bubble that began in my head and found its way into my extremities. After I had wrapped my mind around the activities needed to get my heart pumping, like the urgent need to wake up at the crack of dawn, the importance of working through a cramp and the need to keep running even though my lungs felt like they were on fire, my legs and arms took over. “Sucking up the pain,” says my sweet sister Chesca, is all part and parcel of kicking ass. Amanda, my super athletic sister, says that there is always some degree of discomfort involved, and that the difference between running a mediocre race to a winning one is the degree of pain you are willing to take on to finish it.
From Jane Fonda’s line of “going for the burn” to the Adidas slogan of “Nothing is Impossible,” it all boils down to putting your body into a situation that will push it to its limits. From a 9.77-second hundred meter dash to a 1,003-mile ultimate ultra marathon, there is no physical undertaking that is not up for grabs. World records like personal records are meant to be broken.
Basically, it’s not a question of “how can I get physical” but more of “how physical can I get?”
Editor’s note: First photo shows (l-r) Amanda, Chesca, Fiona and the author. Second photo shows the author just before the swim leg of last month’s Alabang Mini-Sprint.
Read the Sunday Inquirer Magazine’s Getting Physical issue on May 11.
August 17th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Isn’t Pye Trinidad uncertified as a Bikram teacher? She was certified for the first three years— but cannot re-certify herself as she is blacklisted by BikramUS for putting up her underground studio. All Bikram Studio’s should be approved by Bikram himself– and there are certain requirements for all his studios, which her studio did not follow. That is why she has started teaching hot yoga in PULSE studio, instead of Bikram. I hear, she has also taken a teacher’s course for Ashtanga. Technically speaking, she is shouldn’t be teaching Bikram at all. I’ve taken Bikram from most teachers in Manila, and in my opinion, she is the least effective as she does not do individual posture corrections (which i feel is important, because improper postures may lead to unecessary muscle pain and body misalignments).